Chapter 2

The words bounced across the room like a badly skimmed pebble, then plopped into silence. If Belle shared one trait with her brother, it was a Tarletonian tendency to do some of her thinking out loud, and she had caught herself by surprise. She had long since concluded marriage wasn’t on the cards for her; she was never going to fall in love the way Bonny had, the way the books had told her she would, the way she was supposed to. And without that, it seemed pointless to become the property of a man. Even if it meant she spent the rest of her life alone, unloved, and derided for it. Marrying Sir Horley, though? He was clearly a mess. But so was she. And really, was it the worst idea she had ever had? Many would argue it barely broke the top ten.

It took Sir Horley a moment to recognise she was serious, bitterness and mirth alike drying upon his lips like the dregs of his wine. “Why, Miss Tarleton,” he drawled out at last. “You have quite swept me off my feet.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Belle’s burgeoning sense of frustration fully burgeoned, and she yanked herself away, uncaring of the strands of hair she left behind. “Was that not romantic enough? When we have heard nothing from you for the best part of a year, and you have already made it abundantly clear that you would prefer me to be my brother.”

Sir Horley blinked at her, unperturbed by her outburst. “Well, I want to fuck your brother. That’s a kind of preference.”

There was something in his voice as he spoke. Something she recognised because she’d heard it in other people’s voices. Seen it, too, in their eyes. It was oddly lonely, to have such familiarity with a feeling she’d probably never experience. “You want to more than fuck him.”

“More than fuck him?” he repeated, with a touch of his old spirit. “I consider myself quite the connoisseur of carnality, a duke of depravity, a virtuoso of vice, but how, precisely, in detail if you please, do you more than fuck someone.”

“You’re in love with him,” Belle pointed out, still slightly irritated with herself for not having noticed previously. The fact was, other people seemed to catch love like the pox, and Bonny had always been highly infectious.

Unfortunately, it was very much the wrong thing to mention. For it sent the last traces of the Sir Horley she had known, cared for, and come—in all the foolishness of hope—to rescue dwindling away, as inevitably as stars before the dawn. His fingers, her lost hair fluttering like mayday ribbons, inscribed a gesture of dismissal. “He would never love someone like me.”

“For heaven’s sake.” It was too late. She had put her foot in her mouth, and the damage was done. But Belle tried away. She always tried anyway. “Bonny has loved all sorts of people, some of them extremely ill-advised. He does not love you because he sees nobody but Valentine. Not because he could not.”

“And now you have kindly offered yourself as a consolation prize?”

“I hope I think a little better of myself than that.” She sighed again, wondering if she did, in fact, think better of herself than that. It had been an impulsive proposal, admittedly. But she had not quite realised how this entirely-to-be-expected rejection would make her feel. “I know you would rather no wife at all. And I may well say the same of a husband. But surely with a little accommodation on both our sides, might we not deal rather well together?”

“Deal rather well together?” asked Sir Horley incredulously.

Repeated back to her, the words—the whole notion—sounded ludicrous. “I mean ...” Belle attempted a confident, reassuring smile, but it felt small and strained, even to her. “You will never desire me. I will never fall in love with you. Does that not seem a wonderfully comfortable arrangement?”

“Certainly.” There was such an upswell of enthusiasm in Sir Horley’s voice that it could only have been counterfeit. “A man dreams of spending his life with someone he doesn’t wish to fuck.”

“Yet you’re about to anyway. The difference is that you matter to me.” Belle was fraying into whispers. Breaking softly and invisibly beneath what she had always, in her heart of hearts, known was a poor facade of audacity. “And we could allow each other all the freedom we wished. And ... and be friends, just like we used to.”

“My aunt would disown me, Belle.” And there it was. Beneath his sharp words and studied indifference, sorrow deep enough to drown a world or two.

“Is she so worth being owned by?”

“We must all be owned by someone.”

“Perhaps,” said Belle. “Perhaps not. But at the very least I take care of what is mine. I do not cast it aside.”

“You might. If it was worthless.”

“Sir Horley.” She tried to catch his eye, but he refused to let her. “To me, you are a pearl beyond price.”

“You have confused what is cast with what is before.”

“That saying is very rude to swine.” Some part of Belle realised she had become distracted. The rest of her was too distracted to care. “In fact I would rather have a pig than a pearl, I think.”

“Once again, very much the attitude of a woman of means.”

“On the contrary, what would be the point of having a pearl if I lacked for means? I could sell it, I suppose. But then I’d have no pearl and, in time, no means either. A pig, however, makes for an excellent companion.”

He blinked at her. “I can’t decide if that says good things about pigs or poor things about your taste in companions.”

“Probably both,” Belle admitted. “But pigs really are excellent companions. They’re very clean and intelligent. They keep you warm on cold nights. They can till soil for you and provide fertiliser. They can root out truffles, and they are naturally resistant to parasites. Also, they are very thorough eaters, so you can feed them your enemies in order to ensure no traces of the bodies remain.”

“They’re also delicious.”

Righteously impassioned, Belle stamped her foot. “Do not speak of such things. I do not eat pigs. Pigs are not to be eaten.”

“Tell that to my breakfast.”

“You should look a pig in the eye someday.”

Sir Horley tilted his head inquisitively. He was not anything close to his old self. But in the gesture, she caught the shadow of her old friend: a prisoner in a cage of flesh and blood. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Because their soul will gaze into your soul. And you will never consume bacon again.”

“Belle, I ...” His voice broke upon its rush of fondness. And then he dropped his head not into his hands but against them, pushing his knuckles hard against his eyes, as though he meant to drive all emotion, all kindness and affection, back inside him. “I’m not marrying you.”

“Are you sure?” Belle aimed for teasing and backfired straight into pleading. “I’m very rich, you know. And I have a house.”

“What house?”

“Well, technically it’s Bonny’s house. But he’s not using it. And since he’s unlikely to marry or have children of his own in a legal context, probably it would pass to me or at least my children. If I were to have children.”

“Do you want children?”

“Do you?”

They stared at each other, Sir Horley still partially obscured, neither one of them willing to chance an answer.

“It’s still no,” he said finally. Lowering his hands, he focused a glare at her. “Of all the ludicrous, cloud-chasing, windmill-tilting, bubble-brained things you Tarletons have done, this one must take the prize.”

“Recall, I have shot Valentine.” Technically it had been years ago at this point, back when he had been determined to marry her for the good of both their families, and before he understood his tastes ran to Bonnys rather than Belles. But, to her, it still sometimes felt horribly present. Horribly close. Easier to pretend the whole thing had been a joke, a lark, typical Tarleton nonsense, instead of one of the most terrifying—the most terrifying and most regretted—experiences of her life.

Sir Horley’s lips softened with the faintest suggestion of a smile.

“And frankly,” Belle went on, “I don’t see why marrying me is any more ludicrous than marrying Miss Carswile.”

Any hint of warmth vanished from Sir Horley’s face, like someone had blown out a candle. “I will not have you throw your life away on me.”

“But you will throw away your own life? And Miss Carswile’s.”

“Saving my soul will give her something to do.” Sir Horley gave an ill-coordinated shrug. “Christianity is a dull business.”

Worried, exasperated, and quite at the end of her tether, Belle was reduced to stamping her foot again. “I don’t understand why you’re so determined upon this course of action.”

“Because, my dear”—leaning forward, Sir Horley propped his elbows on his knees—“people are different to you and therefore make different. Fucking. Choices.”

She bit her lip. “But this is a bad choice. One I think you’re only making because you think you’re not allowed to strive for happiness.”

“And you’re going to make me happy, are you?” It was not an unreasonable question on the surface. Except Belle wasn’t sure she trusted what lay beneath. “With your heart that cannot love and your body that will never tempt me?”

There was little in the world that could cut as deep as the truth. And though Belle was doing her best to bear it bravely. To remember he was drunk. He was unhappy. That unhappiness, in particular, sometimes made you say and do terrible things. Wasn’t she practically an expert in that herself? But—and here was another truth—she was not feeling very brave. Her bravery had fallen away, as ephemeral as Cinderella’s magic finery, as soon as she’d found Sir Horley sprawled on the floor, almost insensible. She had lost her twin to one love and she had lost her best friend to another—losses she could welcome, in return for the happiness of those she cherished. But she was not sure how she could bear a loss that brought no promise of someone else’s joy.

“I suppose I hoped,” she said, hating how weak she sounded, “there could be more to life or relationships or the worth of people than love and sex.”

Another silence. Sir Horley’s gaze settled upon her again, heavy as silt, and still tarry from drunkenness. Then he reached out and re-captured her hair, a fistful of it this time, and used it to yank her towards him. She yelped more in surprise than pain and managed not to overbalance by flattening her hands upon his knees. It felt jarring, emotionally as well as physically. Sir Horley used to touch her fairly regularly, with ease and affection. This was different, not threatening exactly, but she did not think he would have cared had she fallen. If she was comfortable. If she minded the sour sweep of alcohol that was his breath against her cheek.

“You never learn,” he told her, and she couldn’t tell if he was angry with her, or sad, or nothing at all. “You just never learn.”

That was unfair. For Belle thought she had learned rather a lot. Most of it quite negative. “What do you mean?”

“You keep trying, little Belle. Fracturing that indomitable heart over and over and over again.” He gave a sharp tug upon her hair. “And for what?”

“Presumab—ow.” She shifted her hand from his leg to his wrist. It did not help with her balance, but it mildly helped with being dragged about to his whim. “Presumably, I think it’s worth it.”

“But why? When you know they despise you?”

Belle curled her fingers into claws, and applied her nails, until he released her. She had, she was forced to acknowledge, a rather non-ideal history of enacting violence on men. On the other hand, they had a non-ideal history of frightening her, judging her, and trying to command her, to which Sir Horley was currently contributing. “Are we still talking about me?” she asked. “Because I don’t believe anyone despises either of us.”

“They would, though.” Sir Horley examined the marks she had left on the inside of his wrist, his words too dreamy for their purport. “As should you. For I am naught but poison.”

“You’ve certainly been drinking naught but poison.” It was slightly disorientating for Belle to find herself in the role of reasonable one . Normally 100 percent of conversational naughts were perpetrated by her.

“And as for you ...,” Sir Horley went on.

“If you dare to try and claim that I’m poison, when I came all this way on your behalf, I will poke you in the eye.”

“You’re not poison.”

Somehow being told she wasn’t poison was less reassuring than Belle had hoped it might be.

“But you’ll never be like them, either, will you? These people for whom love is an easy and inevitable thing?”

“Does that matter?” Belle tried, wondering if she should poke him in the eye anyway.

Sir Horley glanced up, his attention briefly focused, his pupils pinprick sharp in the haze of his irises. “You tell me.”

She wanted to say it didn’t. But she wasn’t sure that was true. In fact, she’d been asking herself the same question for what felt like the latter half of her life—ever since she’d realised the moment the handsome prince, or the dashing duke, or the beautiful skypirate declared his, her, or their undying love was the moment the story ended for her. No fluttering heart or teary eyes. Only a pit in her stomach. And a sense of wrongness stretching into forever.

Her silence, it turned out, was response enough. “See?” Sir Horley’s lip turned up sardonically. “Oh, don’t look so stricken. I’m sure they care for you. But they’ll never understand you. They’ll dismiss you as foolish and selfish, or shrill and wilful, or whatever other words they find for women they can’t fit in a box, and all because your pain isn’t the same as their pain, and the world isn’t made for people like us.”

“Then,” Belle said desperately, “couldn’t we at least have each other? You liked me once. Before you convinced yourself you shouldn’t.”

“Belle . . .”

“Think of the fun we could have. We would have money and freedom and whoever else we wanted. Whatever future we chose.”

“Belle . . .”

“And we would make a promise to always share the best gossip. And laugh at everyone else’s absurdities together. And you would help me buy shoes. And I would help you pick men. Because you have absolutely the worst taste in men.”

“You have absolutely the worst taste in shoes.”

“You see”—her voice swelled in triumph and the first glimmerings of real hope—“it is fair exchange.”

Except then Sir Horley rose, unsteady on his feet, and abruptly enough that Belle had to scrabble back lest they collide. He was of middling height for a man, nowhere near as statuesque as Valentine, but it still felt as though he towered over her. “For the last fucking time, Miss Tarleton, no. Whoever you thought I was, I am not. And whatever you think we can have is impossible.”

“More impossible than Valentine and Bonny? Than Peggy and Orfeo?”

“We must all, at some point, face the fate we deserve. You will find someone worthy of you. And I ...” Sir Horley broke off. Then sank back into his chair, his face turned away from her. “I will face the consequences of my actions.”

“What actions?” demanded Belle, with the tenacity that ill-endeared her to nearly everyone.

He waved a hand at her. “Go. I’m done with you. For once in your infuriating life, take a hint.”

“If you are sincerely seeking redemption through suffering,” Belle said tartly, “I think you will find redemption has already been provided generally to humanity courtesy of the suffering of Jesus Christ. Thus rendering”—she flicked her fingers at him—“ this at once hubristic and unnecessary.”

Sir Horley gave her a scornful look. “I feel like a married man already.”

“I’m not sure that’s a perspective on the virtue, or lack thereof, of anguish that your fiancée is likely to have considered.”

“When are you going to get out of my house?”

“When you have told me why you feel you owe the world your misery.”

“It will make my aunt happy.”

“She does not seem like a very good aunt.”

“Well”—Sir Horley gazed at her, his face stripped as bare as winter trees in the gloom—“I’m not a very good nephew.”

“Because you desire men?”

“Because I killed her husband.”

Belle opened her mouth. Then closed it again.

“Nothing to say, little Bellflower?”

“Did he ...” Her mouth had gone dry. “Was he cruel to you?”

“No. He loved me very much. And I him.”

“Was there some kind of accident?”

He shook his head. “His death was quite intentional. To be fair,” he went on, mildly, “he is not the only man whose life I have ended. But the others I murdered at Wellington’s side. So those deaths were glorious, patriotic, and just.”

This had gone in an unexpected and mildly startling direction. But from Belle’s perspective, there was only a kind of sadness in such a transparent attempt to shock her. “I don’t believe you.”

“How treasonous.”

“Not about the war,” she said impatiently. “About your uncle.”

“Ask my aunt, if you wish.”

Belle folded her arms. “What a splendid notion. When I meet her, I shall be sure to say ‘Why, hello, Sir Horley’s aunt, do let us discuss his history of murder.’”

“Be my guest.”

“For heaven’s sake”—she made an exasperated gesture—“I have read too many gothic novels for your nonsense. I will not countenance for a moment the notion that you killed your uncle. And you cannot let a sense of complicity in his death dictate your life.”

“God damn you, Arabella.” There was little rancour left in Sir Horley’s voice. Just a sick and endless weariness. “Are you in love with pain?”

“As we have comprehensively established, I am in love with nothing and no-one.”

“I’m not worth this. Are you truly so desperate that you would throw yourself away on a man who ... who ...”

“Who showed me care and kindness?” she suggested, when it became clear he did not know how to continue. “Understanding when, as you have pointed out, few people do?” She risked a smile. “Yes.”

“Even though I was never who you thought I was?” He offered her the bleakest smile she thought she had ever seen. “Even though friend was a mask I wore because I cannot bear who I am?”

This was another point of divergence for her with Bonny: he took it for granted that what he wanted, the world would deliver, perhaps because, when you were with a duke, it did. In Belle’s case, things had always been more complicated, but she had been trying, of late, to worry less about what she sought for herself and focus, instead, on what she could do for the people she cared about. There was even a kind of comfort in being able to offer freely to Sir Horley everything she most yearned for and feared would never be hers.

“I can bear you,” she said. “I can bear you easily. And I’ve already told you, I’ll take you exactly as you are.”

He stared at her, his face such a mask of scepticism that she half expected to be dismissed. But then something inside him seemed to give way, as though he’d lost a fight his heart had never been in to begin with, and he stood, coming close enough that his shadow fell across her and she had to steel herself against the scent of stale alcohol.

“Well.” She arched her neck—an act that had once been little more than vanity to her—so she could see him properly. “Perhaps not exactly . I would dearly love it if you were to bathe a little more often.”

Whatever struggle had previously occupied him, the surrender was still not easy. His eyes were distant, his expression a conflicted tangle of fears and needs. “You’re a damn fool, Arabella Tarleton.”

“I think you’ll find bathing is eminently sensible.”

“Not about that. About me.”

“Oh.” She was silent a moment. “Is it so terrible to be foolish about each other sometimes?”

“It’s never worked out for me.”

“Perhaps I’ve chosen a better subject.”

“You can’t—” He broke off, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t trust me like that.”

“It’s my decision.”

His knees buckled, and he slid slowly to the floor, Belle doing her best to steady him. His head came to rest lightly against her hip, and what an odd tableau they must have made. A knight and his lady, though Sir Horley was the most impure of chevaliers, and she an ill-chosen recipient of courtly love. His sudden closeness was slightly startling, especially after all his harsh words and the cruel, neglectful way he had pulled her hair. But he had not been wrong to call her foolish , for it also made her hope, just a little, that he might be coming back to her—not necessarily the man she thought she’d known, but whatever part of him had liked her once.

“Belle”—he made a damp raw sound, perilously close to a sob—“I don’t think I know how to be happy.”

“That is also something that has rather eluded me,” Belle admitted. “Perhaps we will have more success together.”

Tilting back his head, he gazed up at her—his eyes moonlit and tear-washed. “But I am to be married on the morrow. Even if—it’s already too late. What are we to do?”

“Well . . .” Belle thought for a moment. “In books . . .”

“Oh God.” He hid his face again. “I’m regretting this already.”

“In books,” she went on doggedly, “if a young lady feels obliged to marry one person when she, in fact, wishes to marry another, there is only one course of action available to her.”

“Don’t say it,” he begged. “This is madness.”

Belle said it. “Sir Horley, we must elope.”