‘The year I became a housekeeper. I’d worked so hard to make something of myself. And finally I had. I wanted to mark the occasion.’
‘Quite right,’ he agreed seriously. ‘So young...an extraordinary achievement.’
Slowly, Liam bent over and kissed the numbers, his breath seeping into her bones, marking her in a far more eternal way than any other caress. She shivered slightly as his fingers moved to skim over her ribs to the head of wheat inked there.
‘And this?’
‘For my father,’ she whispered, not missing the flash of sadness in his eyes. ‘He used to pluck one, and roll it between his hands, to see if it was ready. He would let me do it, too, not that I knew how to tell the difference. But it smelled of him.’
‘You loved him very much.’
‘Yes.’
Envy shone along with regret in his eyes as his lips covered every inch of the wheat. She understood. Her father had been everything to her, all she’d known, all that had beenhomefor her. And his...
Had not.
‘What about this one?’ he asked with a small smile, drawing the lines of the robin between her shoulder blades.
‘The first man I...knewwas called Robin. A sweet fellow, a footman in the second house I served. He was gentle, and never made me feel...less, for having been with him.’
‘Hmm.’
Rebecca laughed when she was granted a dark look from Liam, and the robin extra attention from his lips. Moving down her body, he found the rose on her hip, and raised a brow.
‘My mother,’ Rebecca said, surprised by the depth of emotion that filled her heart then. ‘She had a rose bush by the kitchen window. I think it was her most prized possession. It’s all I had of hers. Papa...he parted with all else but her ring. It was to be for my wedding. My uncle took it and sold it.’
Liam’s jaw clenched as he stroked the rose, and the display of anger on her behalf was heart-warming.
‘The roses here were my mother’s.’
‘Was she like Hal?’
Liam nodded. ‘I remember...her light. The warmth of her touch. Like the sun on a spring day. And I remember it dimming. Day by day, until she was gone. I was twelve when my father sent her to a sanatorium. He announced her death over breakfast two months later, as if it was the latest winner at the races.’
Tears pricked Rebecca’s eyes as Liam reverently kissed the rose, then lay down beside her, his mind clearly very far away.
‘How did you get this?’ she asked, trailing her fingers across the scar on his brow. If this was well and truly her last night with him, she wanted as much of him as he would give. To keep, to hold, to treasure.
Always.
The last thing Liam wanted to do was answer.
Beyond his confession of what had happened to Hal, they hadn’t indulged in any of this soul-bearing business, and he had been grateful for that. It was enough—too much, really—to share the nights with her, to be with her, without opening doors which had been long closed and would do better remaining so.
Wrong.
At every turn she had prised pieces of his soul from him, and he’d felt better for it.
So why not now?
Rather than answer his own question, he answered hers. ‘I got that the night I decided to sail across the sea,’ he sighed.
He felt her penetrative gaze studying him, waiting, giving him the space as always, to back down or give more.Give her everything.
‘After I left Thornhallow, I just kept...trying to get further away. I crossed to Amsterdam, made my way to Frankfurt, Rome, Lyon... Drinking, gambling away what money I made. I fought in prize fights. Worked in a vineyard near Bordeaux for a while, served as a night guard for a brothel in Milan. I wanted to forget. All of it. Myself. I did...things I am not proud of.’
He turned to face her, willing her to understand that though he might not be the monster others purported, neither was he some tragic hero.
