Chapter Eleven

Talia knocked on the study door. No answer.

She stopped, staring at the grain of the dark wood panel as she debated.

She knew Fletch was in his study. They had not spoken since the carriage ride home in the earliest hours of the morning, but Talia had thought of nothing but their conversation since then.

Even in her tousled sleep, she had dreamt of his words, or rather, the lack of his words. She had awoken to find Fletch had sequestered himself away in his study. The day had passed, and he had not left the room.

But now that darkness had settled, the time for her to get ready to go to the next brothel was quickly approaching. She needed to talk to Fletch. Needed to settle her mind before they went out looking for Louise again.

Without another knock, she turned the door handle and stepped into the room.

Fletch sat in one of his wide leather chairs that he had moved to the large window overlooking the gardens. The only light in the study was the flicker from the fireplace. It cast long shadows across the room, only a sliver of Fletch illuminated. He sat with his right bare foot propped atop his left knee, wearing only dark trousers and a white linen shirt open partway down his chest.

Asleep. Or so she assumed. Talia started to back quietly out of the room.

"Is it time to leave for the Pink Filly?"

Talia moved into the room, her silk slippers soft on the floorboards. She came to a stop next to the arm of Fletch's chair, looking down at him. Dark circles sat under his eyes—or was that merely the shadows? She noted the half-empty brandy glass in his left hand, balanced on the opposite chair arm. Had he slept at all?

"It is not yet time, but soon," she said. "I was about to go darken my hair and pull myself into the uniform."

He nodded, taking a sip of the brandy. His look didn't veer from the window.

Talia drew a deep breath. "Fletch, I know you said one year and I would be free to move about as I wish. I propose that after we find my sister, I excuse myself from London with her to help her recover."

His gaze snapped up to her. "That was not our agreement, Talia."

"No. But I did not realize how little…esteem you had for me. I was mistaken because you were kind with me. I understand now that all of this has been solely for your aunt's benefit. Do not worry. I will attend any functions you deem necessary to continue the facade. I wish your aunt to know the truth no more than you do, as I do admire her."

His head tilted down slightly, but his look stayed riveted on her. "Why are you even suggesting this, Talia?"

She shrugged, her voice taking on a defensive tone she didn't care for, but couldn't curb. "While I am grateful, above all, for your assistance in finding Louise, your opinion is such that I am beneath you, Fletch. Not worthy of you. And as much as you are entitled to your viewpoint, I would prefer to not be held under the thumb of a man that does not respect me, that holds me in disdain."

"Holds you in disdain? Talia—"

Her hands clasped in front of her, twisting together as her voice pitched higher. "Please, Fletch, please, I just want to find my sister and escape this city that has torn me into a thousand pieces."

Setting his brandy glass down, he stood, facing her. "Talia, you clearly are mad if this is what you think."

"Mad?" Her face crumpled, her head trembling. He thought her beneath him, but she hadn't expected him to be cruel. "What? You have not humiliated me enough, Fletch? Now you would like to remind me of how insane I am as well?" She spun from him, looking out the window at the dormant plants filling the rows of neat, square plots. "You made me…made me…" Her voice petered out.

He moved next to her, his chest touching her shoulder. "I made you what, Talia?"

Her head shook violently. "It does not matter. I have been a fool since I arrived in London. I intend to stop that from continuing to be the state of my life."

She turned and strode to the door.

Fletch intercepted her, jumping in front of her a step before she reached the entrance. He grabbed her shoulders, halting her motion as his grey eyes pierced her. "You are not beneath me, Talia. You are so far above me, it is laughable."

"I am not laughing, Fletch."

His grip on her shoulders tightened, jerking her body slowly with his low words. "I am going to die, Talia. Die."

Her hand flew to her belly, stunned. Stunned and not believing his words. She staggered backward, ripping herself from his hands as her voice shrank to a scared whisper. "Wh—what?"

"I am going to die, Talia. Soon."

"What—when—no—how do you know this? Are you sick? Is someone trying to kill you?"

"No."

"Then what? This cannot be." Her head shook furiously.

"It is, Talia."

She looked up at him, her eyes going wide. "No. No. No. You promised me you would not die, Fletch. Before I agreed to…to marry you…you promised…you swore you would not give me footing and then rip it away from me."

She ran past him to the door.

He snatched her around the waist before she could get her hand on the knob. "No, Talia, let me explain."

"No, you bastard." She spun, hitting his chest. Her hands clamped into tight fists, ramming his chest, pummeling him. "You bloody bastard. You swore to me this would not happen and I trusted you. I trusted you and you used me. You bloody well lied to me and used me. You swore, you bastard, you swore."

He grabbed her wrists, forcing them down to her sides. "I did not want to tell you now. I never was going to tell you, Talia. I thought we would have more time before you knew."

"So you were just going to bloody well die on me one day?" She twisted her arms, trying to break free from his hold. "Out of nowhere? Just happy one day and dead the next?"

"I thought it would be kinder this way, Talia—you not knowing what was to happen. I was not going to tell you, but I cannot have you believing I would ever reject you. Ever. I would never think you less than me."

"How is that kind, Fletch? How is this kind? You know what happened to me—you know what happened when my father died. How we lost everything in that moment. How could you do this to me?" She looked up at him, her eyes to slits as she yanked at her arms. "This…this is nothing but cruelty."

He lifted her wrists above her head, shoving her back onto the door and clamping her arms to the wood. "Dammit, Talia, listen to me. I never meant this to be cruel. But what happened last night—it was even crueler. I will never not want you, Talia. Never." His head dropped before her, his breath hot on her face, his grey eyes only an inch from hers. His voice went low, rough. "Of all the words I have spoken to you, Talia, none has been truer. I want you. This, you must not doubt."

The ferocity in his look stopped her struggle. Stopped her from fighting to leave.

Her eyes closed to him, her mind still unable to comprehend what he was telling her. "But why—why do this to me? Marry me when you…"

"I just wanted normal, Talia. For the time I have left. I wanted you. Normal. I was selfish. But I wanted—needed something real. And you appeared and you are real, Talia. Real. Genuine. Owning every second of your life, no matter where it has taken you."

Her head dropped, tears she could not control slipping off her cheeks to fall into the space between them. Slowly, her head lifted, her eyes opening to him, her words trembling. "But why? There is no reason—why do you have to die, Fletch? Why?"

"It is destined, Talia."

"Destined? No, that is insanity. How could that be?"

"My brother, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and five before him—all of them died by the time they were thirty-three. Every single man in my lineage."

"But you are…"

"Thirty-two and three quarters."

Her knees gave out. Only Fletch's hold on her wrists above her head kept her upright.

"But why? How? Not you, Fletch."

"Yes, me. Everyone has tried to escape the curse, and all have failed. I have accepted it, Talia, and you need to do the same."

"No. This is ridiculous. A curse cannot kill you. There must be some explanation."

"There is none. The curse is real, Talia. Real and it is coming for me soon."

Her head swung from side to side until she buried her face in her upper arm, refusing to hear his words, refusing to look at him.

"My death—this ends with me, Talia. The Lockston line. This curse. I refuse to condemn an innocent child to early death. It is why I pull from you before I climax. My actions have not a thing to do with you."

She pulled her face free from her burrow, looking at him. "You do not want an heir?"

"No, and that was why I wanted to marry you." He loosened his hold on her wrist, letting her arms drop. "Aside from my aunt, who is not long for this earth, there is no one to inherit the fortune. My brother died years ago without an heir and my sister died in childbirth. There is no one of the line left aside from me."

His hands went to her cheeks, cupping her face. "You are my chance to do something meaningful, Talia. The estates, the wealth, I want all of it, every bit of it I can control, to go to you, your family. You are the most good—the most deserving—person I have ever encountered. And also the most wronged—what you have endured at the hands of what we like to label gentle society has been atrocious. There is nothing gentle about this world we live in."

"You married me in pity?"

"I married you because I want the estate to go to you. Because you are worthy of it. Because you are strong. Because you are smart and will know how to use it best. Because you see so much more of the world than I can. Because I want to leave a legacy through you. Pity has not a thing to do with it."

Her fingers went up, wrapping around his wrists. "But you have the possibility for a child, Fletch. With me. You could have a girl. She would not be cursed."

"I will not chance it, Talia. This is the way it needs to be. I am the last in the line. A line that needs to end with me. I made that decision years ago. But you—wanting normal with you—I did not plan upon."

"No."

His hands dropped from her face as he jerked away. "No?"

"No. You have a chance to leave a true legacy, Fletch, your own flesh and blood, and you are not choosing to fight for that. You look at me and you want normal—well, this is normal, Fletch. Wanting a life, wanting children with you. If you are asking me to deny that, then everything we do in this marriage is only a performance—furthering the farce it started out as."

"Talia—"

Her hands went onto his chest, pressing into him. "No, Fletch. You wanted real—this is real. Me. Me wanting to bear your children is a real desire. I want a real family. Not a life where I am waiting for death to come and rip me to shreds again. I cannot live like that."

He looked up to the coffered ceiling, his head shaking. His gaze dropped to her, his fingers clasping over the back of her hands on his chest. "You do not understand what life is like, Talia, knowing when you will die. Knowing the year. I have known my whole life."

He paused, taking a deep breath, his chest trembling under her hands. "I harbored the smallest hope, for some time, that my brother would survive, and I would be free of the curse as well. But he did not. Three days before he turned thirty-three, he died. It came on sudden, and he was dead within hours."

Talia's fingers curled on his chest, her heart splitting at the agony pulsating in his grey eyes.

But she could not conjure words to help ease his pain.

She had suffered loss as well, but her father's death had been a blow, a shocking occurrence that had dismantled every piece of her life in its wake. Fletch's loss was very different—something she could only barely begin to imagine. He had lived with loss his whole life—a suffocating, always impending cloud of pain that never parted to let true light shine upon his life.

Yet for everything she didn't understand in the moment, could not yet comprehend, she knew one thing—she could not promise him anything she honestly wasn't about concede to.

And she already knew, deep in her gut, she would not concede to accepting his death.

Not as he had clearly done.

Her hands slid down his chest from under his grip.

"I…I cannot…I have to get ready for the brothel, Fletch." Her voice came out a mere whisper, her chest allowing no air to her words.

Fletch nodded, leaning past her to open the door for her.

Talia stepped past him, her feet in a flurry until she reached her chambers and collapsed into the chair before her dressing table.

She looked at herself in the mirror, noting her red-rimmed eyes.

She stared at herself a long time, truly coming to terms with all that had happened to her since leaving Norfolk. Arriving in London. Searching for her sister. The things she had had to sink to. Approaching Fletch. Every moment they had spent together. Becoming his wife. How incredibly important that man in the study below had become to her.

She was not the woman that had left that tiny village in Norfolk to bring her sister home. And she never would be again.

She now knew she would battle to the depths of hell to save someone she loved.

And she was not about to allow Fletch to die on her.

Not without a fight.