26. Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
H e heard the scrape of the door and it shot him out of a dead sleep and onto his feet.
For three panicked breaths, Thomas looked around, trying to get his eyes to focus through the daylight pouring into the room, blinding him.
There. Izzie at the door.
Izzie partway out the door.
He was across the room and to her in three strides, setting his foot in front of the bottom of the door, blocking it from opening any farther.
“Where are you going?”
Her dark hair disheveled, she’d dragged the dirty, thin shift he’d taken off of her last night back over her body and pulled her boots back on. Her eyes cringed as she looked up at him. “I did not think you would want me in here when you awoke.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Why would I not?” She glanced out the door, then looked back to him, setting her stare on his bare chest. “I’ve seen it too often at the grand houses I’ve worked at. People sneaking out of rooms they don’t belong in at the break of dawn. I was assuming?—”
“You assume wrong.” His words cut harsh into the quiet morning air.
She looked around his room, her shoulders rolling back awkwardly, like she didn’t know what to do with herself. “I am sorry, I don’t know…know how to do this properly. Being with someone. And I need to gather my things if I am to get an early start at making my way back to London.”
London?
He stilled, frozen in place for a second, and then he pushed at the door with the ball of his foot, closing it in front of her face.
“Not London.” The words hissed from him, the thought of her leaving to London sending a shot of panicked annoyance through him.
Her head snapped back. “Not London? Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t want you going to London.”
“But I…” She looked out the window in his room, her jaw clicking back and forth. “I have to go back to London.”
“Why? You could come back to Ravenstone with me.”
A cringe crinkled the edges of her eyes and she gave a slight shake of her head. “I…I don’t think I can do that. You know what I am, so I have to leave. I am off the assignment.”
The thought of her disappearing on him struck him hard—a blade straight through his gut. He didn’t want her to leave. To abandon him.
He set his hands on her shoulders, squeezing. “Izzie, I do know what you are. And isn’t that the best reason of all for you to come back to the castle with me? Am I not still in danger? Do you not still have a job to do?”
She stared at him, her eyes narrowing.
His head tilted down to her and he attempted to temper his voice against his damn instincts—ask, instead of order. She deserved that respect. “Do you want to come back with me?”
His breath held for the long moment it took her to answer.
Fuck. He should have ordered her.
“I do.” She groaned as a disgruntled curve came to her lips. “More so than I would like to admit. But honestly, Thomas, if I came back with you, what would that make me?”
Exactly what her father called her.
He exhaled a sigh. Please let that be the only reason she was resisting this. He could fight her ghosts. What he couldn’t fight was her free will if she truly wanted to be done with him.
His hands curled up along her neck. “You sleep in my bed or you don’t, it is your choice, not your responsibility. You are a woman that can choose what she wants.”
“Thomas—”
“No. Stop.” He shook his head. “I don’t want Callum sending someone else into my home for my own good. Do you think I can trust anyone at this point? Do you think I want to rot away with Jensen and Mrs. Havergrove being the only faces I ever see?”
“But what of Sylvie?”
“What of her? She has been dismissed. Do you need her for some reason?”
Her eyes veered off to the side, guilty.
“Oh, hell, she’s a guardian as well, isn’t she?” Understanding dawning on him, his hands dropped away from her neck. How had he been this blind to what had invaded his household? His eyebrows arched high as his look pinned her. “Only she’s the one that was supposed to find a way into my sheets. Was that your asinine plan?”
Her shoulders lifted, her cheek scrunching upward in contrition. “I was to have the day shift and Sylvie was to have the night shift. That was the plan.”
“And what, exactly, was all of that supposed to accomplish?”
“It was twofold. One, to give you purpose. That was me. Two, to make you feel something. That was Sylvie. Between those two things, we thought to reengage you with the world of the living, and to keep you alive by brute force, should it be necessary.”
“Callum knew all of this?” He turned, stepping away from her as his arm swung about him. “Set all of this up?”
“He and I came up with the loose plan, then Sylvie and I filled in all the details.”
His head shook, disbelief hitting him hard in the gut. That he was that stupid. That he had been manipulated so easily. That he so obviously needed someone to watch over him when he couldn’t look after himself.
Fury at the whole of it hardened into a ball in his stomach. A ball coated with a thick sheen of humiliation. That he had been blind to it from the start. That it had even needed to happen.
But if he was honest about it, he was also humbled by the whole of it—that Callum and Nemity would care enough to set this into motion.
“I thought I faked life better than this.” His hand ran through his hair, tearing at the strands. “I also feel as if I should go to Springfell Manor and beat Callum into the ground for doing this to me.”
She moved around to stand in front of him. “Or you should be grateful he and your cousin care enough about you to send me and Sylvie to Ravenstone in the first place. You think you don’t have people, but you do. You only have to look around and you will see it.”
He heaved a sigh. It was a hard thing to admit he had people, when he’d worked so hard at denying that fact since he’d landed back in England. “Except I shouldn’t have people—I don’t know if you can understand that.”
“You are correct, I cannot understand that. I’ve never had people that are mine, that are loyal to me beyond any reservation. You have that in Nemity and Callum.”
His look snapped to her. “What about the Guardians?”
Her head dipped, her eyes hiding from him.
He stepped toward her, invading her space. “What are you not telling me?”
“Nothing.” She didn’t look up at him. “It is just that this—this failure of an assignment—it was my only chance.”
“Only chance for what?”
“For redemption. To still have a job. To belong to something.”
“Why was it your last chance?”
She turned from him, wrapping her arms around her middle as she moved to the fireplace, setting her booted feet close to the last coals of the fire from the night before still heating the room.
Her head down, her chin almost touching the top seam of her shift, she shook her head to herself. “I am a failure.”
“In what way?”
“My last assignment, my charge died. She died on my watch. I failed her. Failed the Guardians.”
He could tell by her stance she didn’t want him near her, so he stayed where he was, studying her profile. “What happened?”
It took her long seconds before her mouth opened to answer, her voice haunted. “I was sent in as a lady’s maid to a young heiress, just put out into society. I was her chaperone when she was in the park and at social events when her older brother was absent. She was wild. And beautiful. And so damn na?ve. She thought nothing would ever go wrong in her life, because nothing ever had. That was how she grew up—protected from everything. It never even occurred to her someone would harm her. And it was my responsibility to make sure she stayed that way. Na?ve.”
She paused, choking on her last words.
“I was with her for seven months. Seven months I was a success, until I wasn’t. I became complacent, thought I knew everything about her. Knew how she would act, what she would do.”
“Until?”
“Until we were at a ball where she let a suitor slip her a drink he swore would make the party more enjoyable. It had laudanum in it. Then I lost her in the crush of the dance floor, and I couldn’t find her for ten minutes. Ten minutes too long.”
Her body started to shake and she wrapped her midsection tighter, trying to quell the motion. “I found her and the man in a back stairwell, where he’d already ripped off half her clothes. She was nothing but a limp rag doll, her limbs all askew on the stairs. By the time I took the bastard down and got to her, she wasn’t breathing.”
“What could you have even done?”
Her look snapped up to him. “If I had gotten to her sooner, I could have stuffed my fingers down her throat, made her retch it up. If I had my eye on her in that ballroom like I should have, I never would have let her drink that punch. There are a lot of should-haves from that night that I wish I could relive.”
He shook his head. “It does not sound like your fault.”
“My job was to keep her alive. She is dead. So I am a failure. It is as simple as that.”
“It does not seem that simple.”
Her eyes closed, her head shaking as her shoulders drooped, the lines of her face etched in agony. “It is to the Guardians. I was nothing to them after it happened. This—how I’ve failed with you—only confirms my incompetence. I am worthless.”
This was pain for her. A raw, searing pain.
For the ass that he was, he recognized how deeply this had wounded her soul. How she had put everything she cared about at risk when she’d admitted to him that she was a guardian.
It made him want to keep her by his side all the more.
He crossed the room to her, stopping next to her arm. “I know damn well you’re not worthless and I’m annoyed you would even say those words out loud.” He slid his fingers into the thick of her hair to gently trace the lines along the back of her neck, his voice softening. “So stay. We stay here another night and we don’t worry about the next day or the day after. We just stay in this world where we can forget everything we have ever done or ever been.”
She leaned back into his fingers along her neck, her eyes lifting him. “That’s not reality.”
“Who said we had to live in reality? Have you ever actually lived in reality?”
The right side of her mouth lifted in a smile she tried to fight. “Unfair.”
“Unfair or clever?” He could see her waning. Perfect. He ran his fingers slowly down her bare arm and grabbed her hand, pulling her with him as he backed his way to the bed. “So we stay. Give me that. Give me a day of non-reality and then you can make your decision about leaving to parts unknown—but at least give me the chance to convince you to come with me to Ravenstone.”
Hesitant, but a smile spread across her lips. “How do you think you are going to convince me?”
The back of his calves hit the side of the bed and he sat down, spreading his legs and pulling her between them as he looked up at her. “In bed, hopefully.”
She looked down at his fully nude body and his cock already a hard rod, and she laughed, letting him pull her down onto his naked lap.
Inordinately pleased with his own powers of persuasion, he captured her face in his hands, studying her for a long moment.
This was going to take great concentration and lots of her body writhing on his cock to convince her to come back with him to Ravenstone.
He’d never felt more determined.