“I don’t know you at all. You vanished for twelveyears. Without a letter. Without a word. I thought you weredead.”
“I might as well have been,” Bishop admitted.
Her brows furrowed. “What does that even mean?”
How to explain? He had a good life with Crane, however, “It means I lost everything that was dear to me, Alyssia. My parents were murdered. I was to follow their fate as well.” His mouth curved, humorless. “Uncle’s orders.” He couldn’t stop a note of mockery in those last two words.
Her face lost all color.
“I ran,” he said simply. He’d long looked back at that time of his life with detachment, to be honest. “I hid. I waited. And I watcheduntil I could return and claim what was mine.”
“Your uncle did this? Are you sure?”
Bishop nodded. “His cutthroat was very vocal about that fact.”
Silence fell between them. Thick. Fractured. Familiar.
“I... I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She looked away before her gaze slid back to him. “Why are you here?”
“At the Lyon’s Den or in London?”
“Both.”
“The Duke of Crane saved me, and I’ve been serving as his right-hand man ever since. He lives remotely, rarely leaves the country, so it suited me. I’m at the Den for his purpose, in London for my own.”
Her throat worked. “And you just decided to play for me.”
“What else was I to do?” Bishop asked. “You’ve always been mine.”
She stared at him flatly, and a burst of laughter escaped her lips. “What a horribly male thing to say.”
Probably. “I’m still saying it.”
She faltered, her hand settling across her throat. “I don’t know what you expect me to say to that,” she said after a moment.
“I expect nothing.” Only that she wed him and no one else. He advanced toward her, against all judgment, needing to be closer. “I merely wish a chance to make right some of the wrongs from the past.”
“You owe me nothing, Giles.”
He didn’t like that sound of that. Not one damn bit. “Let me be the judge of that.” He took one last step, closing the final distance between them. “Can you do that?”
She sighed, but her eyes still held his. “I don’t know what I can do with this,” she admitted. “With you.”
He grinned. “You can do anything you wish.”
“Don’t be tart,” she admonished.
“Very well, but you also don’t have to do anything tonight,” hesaid. “Except believe that all my intentions toward you have only ever been good.”
Her lips parted, perhaps to argue, perhaps to laugh again, but no sound came, and he caught the faint tremor of her fingers as she tucked an errant curl behind her ear. A thousand things seemed to war within her gaze: anger, hurt, disbelief, uncertainty, acceptance, and a variety he couldn’t begin to name.
“Good intentions,” she repeated softly. “The past cannot be made up for with intentions.”
“No,” he admitted. She was right in that. “But it must begin somewhere.”
“I grieved you, you know.”
Bloody hell.
