“Aye. And yet his falsehoods were enough to make any man yearn for blood. None would have blamed you for killing him. You gave him every chance to recant his lies, and he refused.”
“His lies?” Gray said, twisting to glare at her. “Play you a farce with me, lady, to say so?”
“Of course not.” Catherine looked at him in confusion. “His accusations brought him what he deserved. Anyone who knows you could never believe you capable of committing such a horrible deed as that which he accused.”
She met Gray’s fierce expression head-on, searching his gaze with hers and watching his anger fade to surprise before his eyes darkened with pain. But in the next moment he tilted his head back, a sardonic chuckle rumbling from his chest. “You don’t know, do you? You truly have no idea what Gilbert de Clare was talking about today.”
“Nay,” she said softly. “I only know ’twas a shock to hear him speak so of you.”
“Ah, this is rich,” Gray murmured, shaking his head. “Eduard brought you here and wed you to me, and yet he neglected to tell you. How perfectly perverse—and how very like him.”
“What? What didn’t Eduard tell me?”
“About my sister and my past.” Gray’s gaze captured hers, searching her in a way that made her breath catch in her throat. “It seems that you have been misled, lady. I am not the man you thought me to be when we married.”
“Nay, my lord, you are much more. In truth I’ve never met someone like you in all of my life. I never knew such goodness could exist.”
His expression tightened. “I am not so different from other men, Elise. Worse, if anything.”
“Most of the men I’ve known were animals. You are not like them.”
The poignant simplicity of her statement made Gray go still. The aching well in his heart cracked open, sending warmth flooding through his chest. He sucked in his breath against the bitterness, against the pain that swelled and left him feeling exposed, raw and vulnerable.
His hands trembled, and to mask it, he raked them through his hair. “You would not think that if you knew the whole truth, lady,” he murmured.
“What is it? I pray you tell me so that I can show you how meaningless it is. It holds no weight compared to all of the good you do every day. To all of the kindness you’ve shown me.”
Calm descended over Gray. A calm like that he remembered from childhood, before the darkness had swallowed him and destroyed Gillian. His wife had inspired that calming feeling in him from the first, though he’d denied the gift, believing such a blessing undeserved by one such as he. Virgin or no, her soul had shone clear and sweet from the moment he’d seen her face on their wedding day. Only then he’d thought she’d known the truth about him. He’d thought that she’d accepted him in spite of it.
He tried to laugh again, but it sounded more like the choked rattle of a dying man. “Gilbert de Clare spoke true on more than one point this day, lady. I did have a sister. She was my twin. And she is dead because of me.”
Ignoring Elise’s startled gasp, Gray plunged ahead, committed now to his path of self-destruction. “Gillian was as beautiful and sweet as she was pure. I was supposed to protect her from harm.” His fingers clenched against his thighs as he forced the words to form on his lips. “And instead of keeping her safe, I killed her.”
This time Elise’s hands flew to her mouth and her gaze filled with horror.
He lifted his hands, palms up, pain shooting into his brain as he saw Gillian lying in his arms, saw the welling wounds on his own flesh, earned in his rage-filled attack on Thornby—watched his blood course over his fingers to soak his garments, the floor, her hair. His blood. Her blood. Mingled together as it had been from their conception.
Dropping his hands to his sides, Gray shifted his gaze to his wife. “I didn’t kill Gillian myself, lady, but ’twas the same as if I did. She died because of my sin. Because of my weakness.”
“What happened?” Elise whispered. Her eyes seared him with their innocence. “How—how did she die?”
Gray looked away again, the images firing through his skull. “We were still children whenMamancaught the pox. In order to ensure Gillian a home and food, I worked as an errand boy for Bernard Thornby, the whoremaster who’d led my mother to ruin. He all but owned me. I was young and stupid, and I began to drink as a way to forget. As the years passed, I started stealing from him, selling what I took in order to satisfy my growing thirst. When he discovered my thefts, he took revenge by hurting Gillian.”
Gray’s voice wavered, but he went on. “We were only fourteen, but that didn’t stop Thornby from beating her and violating her. He put his filthy hands on her and hurt her in ways no woman should ever be hurt—” His voice broke, then, and he had to pause before he could finish. “By the time I found her it was too late. My sister died in terrible pain, gasping my name with her last breath.”
Gray had watched Elise turn ashen as he spoke. Now she faced him, speechless, though he couldn’t tell if it was pity or disgust that he saw in her gaze. It didn’t really matter. She knew the whole truth about him now. Now she would cease this talk of goodness and see him the way he really was. Corrupt. Sinful.Irredeemable.
But instead of being relieved, he couldn’t help but feel as if he’d just jabbed a red-hot knife into his own gullet and gouged out what was left of his heart.
Gray pasted a mocking smile on his lips. “Less than a year ago, your brother learned of my past—how, I don’t know—but he found out the sordid details and used them against me, spreading the tales at Court. Only he claimed that it was I who had killed Gillian in a drunken rage. We came to blows over it. The king was not amused to find his two best champions at war. He forbade any further fighting between us. ’Tis why he arranged your marriage to me, as a union of peace between our houses.”
“I didn’t know.”
He remained silent for a moment before adding, “In truth, I despised your brother for trying to ruin me, and yet I cannot deny that he was right in a way. I did kill Gillian, through my weakness. I am not a good man, Elise. Justice and honor are but the trappings I wear to hide the sin beneath.” Gray looked away, unable to bear the weight of her gaze on him any longer. “Do not count on outward appearances when you judge a man’s worth, lady. I am proof that you will oft be deceived.”
Turning on his heel, he strode away, sure that if he stayed he might buckle from the pain. For in the past weeks, he’d watched his wife grow in confidence and freedom, watched the spring come into her step and seen the smiles come to her face more freely. Curse his soul, but he’d even tasted the sweetness of holding her as she shattered with passion in his arms.
And yet just now he’d earned a far more dismal response from her. One that damned the others all to hell…
