The world narrowed to the intensity of his gaze and the pulse pounding in her throat. She wanted to deny him and retreat behind the armor she had worn for years.
“I wish to return home,” Alice whispered as she battled the need to say the words she had spoken to no one.I won’t betray Charles that way.
One of his hands moved to cup her cheek, and she dug her toes into the soles of her boots to stop from flinching, but something gave her away.
“Who?”
“Why do you care? This—us—is about finding Jackson and nothing more. Let me go.” She held her breath, waiting for the warm gloved hand to release her, but instead he looked into her eyes, moving closer, so they were mere inches apart.
The lane pressed in on her then. The shadows, the stench, and the memory of Charles’s hands trembling with rage as he struck her. She had never told anyone what happened, but of course Ezra and Maggie knew some as they’d been close.
Her dear, sweet brother had turned into a deranged man in his last few months, and he’d turned his anger on her.
“It will destroy you if you don’t find a way to let it out.” The words were a low rasp. “Trust me, I know this.”
“I have nothing to let out,” Alice said with a great deal more strength than what she was feeling. Looking up at him, she saw understanding in his eyes, and he confirmed why he did what he did.
All the exercise, and the fighting. The horse races she’d heard he participated in. It was his way of coping with the hell he’d endured. Alice’s heart broke again for the child who’d had his innocence stripped away.
He cupped her face with two large palms and looked into her eyes like he could read everything she wasn’t telling him.
“H-he didn’t mean to, but in the end he was not right in the head.” The words came out before Alice could stop them.
“Your brother?”
Alice didn’t cry. She’d made herself shut everything that hurt her out of her head… especially what her brother had done in his fits of rage, but right then the tears came.
“Alice.” Her name came out as a plea. He released her, but only for a second, and then he was pulling her gently into his arms. Strong arms that held her pressed into his hard body.
The faint smoke of the tavern fire clung to his coat, and for a moment, she allowed it. Allowed him to comfort her, because it felt so good.
The damp stones beneath her boots, the cold night air, the mutter of voices nearby, all faded until there was only the steady rhythm of his hand at her back, and the whispered, “I’m sorry,” breathed into her hair. “So sorry.”
“H-he wasn’t right in his head.”
“Shh, now.” She felt a hand cup her neck as the other ran up and down her back. “I’m sorry.”
“My brother was a good man,” she said into his necktie. She breathed in fresh linen and the spicy scent of his cologne. “He wasn’t in his right mind after he returned to me.”
He didn’t add anything to that, just held her, and Alice let him. In that moment she wanted his strength.
Since her brother’s death, no one had done this. No one had just held her and said it would be all right. Her aunt had of course supported her, but no one had really known the hell she’d endured. He held her as if she was fragile and would break.
It was that thought that had her stiffening and easing back. Alice clenched her eyes shut briefly, and when she opened them, shame flooded her body. She was not weak. She would not break in this filthy alley in the arms of a man she barely knew.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” He was still close.
“That.” Alice waved her hand at him.
She wasn’t used to having to explain herself to people, just as she wasn’t used to falling apart as she just had before someone, especially not him.
What were you thinking, Alice?
Ezra had seen the bruise on her face toward the end of her brother’s life, and it had been then that he’d said she was not to be alone with Charles anymore. She’d argued, of course, as she’d been the mistress and he the footman, and yet he’d stood firm, and somewhere inside her she’d known relief.
Alice had hated herself for the fear she’d felt being close to her brother when she knew it was not his fault he had turned into the man he had become. One minute he was her sweet Charles, and the next a man so angry he wanted to hurt the only person who had loved him unconditionally.
