“It was worth it,” he said, still cringing. “If I had not been there Lorraine never would have made it out.”
“Lorraine?”
Alex looked Emmaline in the eye as he said, “My sister.”
“What happened? How did the fire start?” Emmaline asked, her horror clear on her porcelain face.
Alex shook his head again. “They believe it was an unattended candle or some other similar thing. Perhaps some embers from one of the bedroom fires even. My father drank heavily. It's highly possible he knocked over his reading candle, the fool.”
Alex cringed. Though he and his father had never seen eye to eye and the man had always been cruel, he did not like to speak ill of the dead.
“I was awoken by the smoke coming from my father's bedroom down the hall,” Alex explained, trying his hardest to keep the memories at bay. They snapped at his mind like rabid dogs as he tried to contain himself enough to tell the whole story.
“I yelled for help, but the fire had already spread to the upper floor above. Many of the servants were trapped above. I had only enough time to reach my sister's nursery before the beams above started to collapse.”
Emmaline gasped again. “How awful!”
Alex cringed. No amount of telling the story could take away the horror of it. Nor did he believe she could ever feel the true magnitude of it.
“I had just managed to get Lorraine out of her bed when I was struck by one of the burning beams,” Alex said, gesturing to his face. “It was only her screaming that kept me lucid enough to drag myself and her from the burning house.”
“Oh, Alex!” Emmaline exclaimed and he was surprised when she moved, taking hold of his face in both her hands. “How can you possibly think yourself a monster after something so heroic?”
She gazed so deeply into his eyes that for a moment Alex thought he saw the hero that she did. Her tenderness was heartwarming and he longed so desperately to lean into it.
Instead, he gripped her hands and pulled them away from her face.
“I dragged Lorraine out onto the lawn kicking and screaming and left her with one of the maids who had made it out,” Alex explained, his chest tightening. “That same maid told me she had seen my father headed for his study just before the blaze began and so I returned inside to find him.”
“Oh, Alex, no!” Emmaline said, trembling as if she were right there in the blaze with him.
Alex squeezed her hands, comforting her as much as himself.
“When I got there, I couldn't find him,” Alex admitted. His heart ached painfully. “I searched everywhere I could before the blaze truly took hold of the place, but it was impossible. When the beams of the second floor started to fall from above my head, I knew I had no choice but to get out or my sister should be orphaned without me.”
“You did the right thing,” Emmaline said, laying a hand on his shoulder. He flinched away from her, shaking his head.
“It was perhaps the only good thing I ever did. Since then, I have learned of many a debt my father had racked up. You see, when playing the devil, he was feared and cruel but as just another nobleman, he liked to drink and gamble and whore. Forgive my saying so.”
Emmaline nodded curtly and Alex was surprised at her lack of horror towards his words. Perhaps she was even more intelligent and worldly than he had given her credit for.
“Beside his will and the letter in which he stipulated I must marry and produce an heir to keep my title and estate, he also left me a mountain of debts and more keep coming out of the woodwork. I am unable to put down the devil's mask, not only because of my scars but because I must use it to keep my family afloat.”
The pity in the lady's eyes then was most degrading. And yet, Alex couldn't bring himself to be angry with her. How could he? She had sat and listened with nothing but empathy, without judgment. And she looked at him now without it still.
“I see it all so clearly now,” she said and when she lifted her hand again to touch the scarred side of his face, he leaned into her palm. “You truly are the man I believed you to be. You are no monster, Alexander. You are a true and honest gentleman. I see you.”
Her words sent heat coursing throughout his entire body.
Sitting on his throne in The Devil’s Lair the next evening, Alex felt lighter, less brooding, than usual. There was a welcome relief in his chest. Knowing that Lady Emmaline was not nearly so frightened of him as everyone else somehow made the weight of the devil’s mask a little easier to bear.
And watching over his club, he could almost imagine that everything he was doing would one day be worth it all. With her at home, he had a reason to keep on going. Lorraine was so far away in France that sometimes it made it next to impossible to remember why he was doing these horrendous things. But Emmaline had given him a new lease on life.
“See to that,” he ordered Sean who was standing nearby when a ruckus started on the gambling tables to his right. Tonight was a good night, he would not have it sullied by fisticuffs in his club.
“Yes, lord,” Sean said, dipping his head, adjusting his own mask before heading right into the fray.
Alex watched absentmindedly out of the corner of his eye as his best friend pulled two men apart before practically slamming their heads together.
