A woman who had been a means to an end for people her entire life.
“My work... is necessary and difficult and dangerous. It saves lives and I’ll get justice for the ones lost.”
Surely she was intelligent enough to realize this.
She gave a short, bitter, wondering laugh. Then covered her mouth with her hand. And shook her head dazedly.
“By any means necessary, right, Captain Hardy?”
She continued the inspection of his face, as though she ought to have seen him as not a hero, but an agent of hurt and destruction, just as she ought to have seen the Gardner sisters for what they were.
He could very nearly taste her pain. It was in the air, metallic, like a storm. Or like blood in his mouth.
And now he had gone and done away with the last of her innocence and trust.
“I cannot adequately convey how sorry I am that you are hurt,” he said carefully, his voice low, hoarse now. “It was never my intent, and if I could have saved you from that, I would have.”
This just won him a look of scorn.
He felt he earned the right not to be afraid. Nothing had prepared him for the fact that love could be stealthier, and more treacherous, than a smuggler.
“I did enjoy our moments together, Captain Hardy, and for that I thank you. And you are indeed a hero, for which I also thank you. I suppose you rather saved me and Angelique from ourselves. I consider this a valuable lesson learned. But...”
She stood abruptly. She looked down into his eyes.
“...it’s just as well that I don’t love you.”
His lungs stopped. As surely as if she’d driven a knife in.
His heart ceased to beat.
She watched him for one second longer, perhaps to make certain that blow had indeed killed, for she would read it in his eyes.
She walked past him and made her way up the stairs.
Tristan was motionless. He wasn’t certain he was yet breathing. But his eyes never left her, as if he could will her back with the sheer force of his personality.
She didn’t return, of course. Her will was as strong as his.
After some time—he was uncertain how much—he stood, slowly. Disoriented, as if he’d awakened from a dream to find himself alone in a room that now was precisely the same and yet entirely different. He’d forgotten he was holding, in his hand, a letter to the king.
Finally he moved, slowly, out of the reception room, and paused to stand in the middle of that black-and-white-checked foyer.
Which was when he saw that his belongings were neatly packed and sitting next to the door.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Delilah made it all the way to the top of the stairs, to their little drawing room, where Angelique was mending a pillow that Mr. Delacorte had somehow managed to tear.
If snores could rend fabric, then Mr. Delacorte’s room would soon be in tatters.
Delilah paused in the doorway.
Angelique looked up into her face, then laid her mending aside immediately.
Delilah took two steps, sank to the floor, and laid her head against Angelique’s knees.
She didn’t think she could cry. There was a huge hot, raw place in the center of her being that hurt savagely each time she took a breath. As though Tristan had been crudely excised from her soul. All of her tears had been scorched away.
