Elise made a move to follow her, but Asher held up a hand. “Let me,” he said softly.
The room went still again and everyone stared at him. He knew why. By being the one to comfort her, he was laying a claim to her that couldn’t be ignored.
And in that moment, he didn’t give a damn. He just wanted to help her. So he ignored their stares, their implications, and followed Felicity.
Felicity stood in the dark music room, shaking not from the coolness of the room, but from the terror in her heart. It had a grip on her, icy fingers spreading through her entire body, pulling her down to where she would eventually drown in ruin, scandal and despair.
“Felicity.”
She froze at Asher’s gentle voice at the door behind her. They had senthimafter her, rather than one of the women or her brothers?
She turned and found him closing the door behind him. He said nothing as he crossed the room to her, nothing as he folded his arms around her and drew her against his warmth and his strength.
She tensed at first, wanting to fight the support she knew wouldn’t always be there, but he didn’t let her pull away. He just held her and eventually she went limp against him.
She had no idea how long they stood that way in the silence, in the dark, but it felt like forever. It felt like it couldbeforever. That she could depend on him and never be let down or abandoned again.
Of course it wasn’t true.
At last he tilted her face up toward his. In the dim light she saw the tension there, the worry, but she also saw the need, the desire. She saw that he cared for her, because of course he had alwayscaredfor her.
“It’s going to be all right,” he said, and his tone was firm and certain, despite the situation.
She pulled away with a rough bark or derision. “All right? There is noall rightin this situation, Asher.”
“Nothing terrible has happened yet,” he reminded her.
She shut her eyes, pressing her fists against her sides. “No. Not yet. But tomorrow or the next day or the next week or the next month, it will. It will, Asher. If this man has broken the code, if the truth about what I did is in that book, and we all know it’s in that book…then everything terrible will come to pass.”
“You are banking on a lot of possible outcomes, fearing ends that you don’t know will happen,” he said.
She turned on him. “Don’t sport with my intelligence, Asher. You and I both know exactly what will happen. If it comes out that I murdered my husband, that I covered up that murder, there is only one outcome: ruin. How exactly that ruin looks will depend on many variables. But ruin it will be. My name will be dragged through the mud, my life will be analyzed in the cruelest ways. And worst of all, my entire family will be destroyed because of it. My brothers, who have both just found peace and happiness, will have it torn away and even their unborn children will bear the mark of my actions.”
He was silent and her heart sank. He knew what she said was true, there was no denying it. There was no softening it. She had bought herself time with her deception all those years ago, but not freedom.
And the cost was coming, demanding to be paid at last.
“What do you think you should have done differently?” he asked as he moved on her.
He didn’t crowd her, he didn’t hold her, he just reached out and took her hand, sliding his thumb along her skin in a soothing stroke.
She blinked. “That night?”
“Are you of the belief that you should have let him choke the…” His voice caught and he drew a long breath before he continued, “That you should have let him choke the life out of you?”
She felt the tear slide down her face and she gasped in pain at the idea of her life being taken. She remembered the fear of that horrible night.
“I-I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t know. I wanted to live. I still want to live.”
“And if you hadn’t struck him, if you hadn’t shot him,” Asher continued, “he would have killed you.”
She nodded. Of that she was utterly convinced. “Yes.”
“Then what you did is exactly what you should have done. And your family would rather have the fire of hell and the worst of the gossip rain down on them then the alternative, I assure you.”
She bent her head. “I know you’re right.”
He tilted her face back up, and now he was much closer. His heat wrapped around her even when his arms didn’t, his intensity drew her in.
