He had never loved her.
And it did not matter how much time had passed. He had not forgotten a moment of the time he had spent with Ara. Kissing her, holding her, the wildness of her burnished curls tangling around them. The soft giggles he could coax from her lips with his wandering mouth and hands.
He shook himself free of the memories, cloying like ivy, threatening to choke and overrun him. “My history with her renders it an impossibility. What of Strathmore? He would be an excellent man for the job.”
“He is otherwise occupied,” Leo said curtly. “I grow weary of your objections, brother, as they are all immaterial at worst and flimsy at best. You are the man I have chosen, the man the Home Office has chosen, to protect her.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he thundered as the last, fine filament of his control broke. “I will not do it.”
“Sodding hell, Clay.” His brother fixed a dispassionate frown upon him. “I did not wish to do this, but you have left me without a choice. If you do not take on this task, you will be suspended from service. The Home Office requires you to perform this duty, and they will not accept anyone else. Do you not think I already tried to substitute another, knowing of your past?”
His heart thrummed faster, his chest rising and falling, each breath harsher than the next. He had never supposed Leo would attempt to protect him in such a fashion. Though they had come of age side by side, Leo possessed not a modicum of maudlin sentiment, or so Clay had always supposed.
“Suspended from service,” he bit out, as though the words tasted bitter and ugly in his mouth. For they did. His work in the Special League was what had given him purpose these last eight years. Because of her, it was all he had. And now because of her, he also stood to lose it.
How bloody fitting.
“I am sorry, brother.” Leo’s somber tone said more than his apology could convey.
He swallowed the bile that had begun in his stomach and worked its way into his throat. “I do not have a choice, do I?”
Leo’s lips compressed. “I am afraid not.”
He spun away, stalking down the hall, intent upon inflicting damage upon the first inanimate object he spied. With his fists. But there was nothing in sight that he could punch, aside from damask-covered walls and tables rife with bric-a-brac. Pictures of her. Pictures of her husband. Of the two of them with a small lad.
He could not face them, so he turned back to the fate awaiting him. His life had never been his to rule. Why should this assignment be any different? He would do what he must. Because there was no other option.
“Very well. I shall do it.” He gave a terse nod, feeling a heavy weight descend upon his chest as he acquiesced. It held the finality of a death sentence, and he had never felt more like a man being informed of his impending swing upon the gallows.
“Good man.” Leo strode to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know what this is costing you, Clay, and do not think that I don’t appreciate it. I will continue to assert pressure for you regarding the creation of a peerage.”
Following his previous assignment, there had been rumbles that he may be rewarded for his service to the Crown with a title. Clay knew better than to hope for such an eventuality.
“Do you think I give a damn about gaining a title?” he asked dismissively, his lip curling. “I never have, and I never will.”
But that was a lie, and he knew it. For if he had possessed a title, he would still have Ara. He never would have lost her.
“Even so,” Leo said, “you deserve recompense for your service. There is no man better.”
“I am doing this because I must and for no other reason,” he persisted. “But I do not like it, Leo. And neither will I forget it.”
His half brother gave him an odd little smile then. “Let it be just one more to add to the vast catalog of black marks upon my soul.”
Clay could only hope it would not also be a black mark upon his.
Chapter Two
Eight years earlier
Whoever he was,he had been the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. But she supposed she would never get to know his name.
Ara had been watching him for three days in secret. On this, the fourth day, she lingered hours past the appointed time, and still he did not come.
The first day had been purely unintentional. She had been engaging in the impulses her father so reviled by wandering as far away from Kingswood Hall as she could possibly find herself. She had ridden a feisty mare to the edge of Papa’s sprawling country seat, all the way to the woodland that had always held her fancy, and had tethered her mount to a tree so she could wander about in unabashed joy at her freedom.
Papa was not at home and would be gone for the next fortnight at least. Mama was prone to the megrims. Her brother Cecil had gone abroad. Her sister Rosamunde was happily being the Countess of Somerset, off with her husband or one of her paramours.
Which left Ara in possession of a great deal of free time and an unprecedented lack of chaperoning. Perhaps it was because she had already had two seasons, and at one-and-twenty, she was expected to make a match soon with the Marquess of Dorset. Whatever the reason, she would not complain.
