Lenora hurried on bare feet down the hall, pausing only a heartbeat before quietly rapping on Peter’s bedroom door. She refused to think about the wisdom—or lack thereof—of what she was doing. After all, the last time they’d been alone in a room, they’d wound up in each other’s arms.
But that would not happen this time. She was too furious to let it.
He opened the door. Before he could react, she pushed past him. His room was dark, not even a fire in the hearth, a single lamp beside the bed the only light. And it smelled of him, dark spice and utterly male. She closed her eyes as memories assailed her, fighting against the pull of them.
“Lenora—” he began.
“No.” She steeled herself and turned to face him. Too late she noticed what she had failed to upon entering: that he was shoeless, shirtless, his hair unbound. He looked like a Viking lord with his feet planted wide, his shoulders a tense line, face hard and hands in tight fists at his side.
But she would not let herself get distracted. She focused on the hurt and anger that had been burning in her breast since the debacle of a scene at the assembly hall.
“What did you think you were about, accosting Lord Redburn like that?”
He flinched at the tightly wound fury in her voice. “It was badly done of me,” he said through stiff lips.
She gaped at him. “Badly done of you? That’s all you have to say?”
The sigh that escaped him sounded agonized, pulled from the bowels of his soul. “What do you want me to say, Lenora?”
“An apology would not be remiss,” she gritted.
“Very well.” He lifted his arms, as if offering himself to her. “I apologize. With every ounce of my being, I apologize. I never meant to create a scene, to embarrass you as I did.”
She slashed a hand through the air, her anger mounting—and her heart aching—with every word that spilled from his lips. Damn him. Why couldn’t he just leave her in peace?
And why did she still care so very much?
“I think Lord Redburn deserves your apology much more than I,” she snapped.
He looked like he might explode, so tense had he become. Then, in the space of a moment, he seemed to deflate. His shoulders dropped, and he looked more haggard than she had ever seen him. “Yes, you’re right. I will apologize when next I see him.”
She gaped at him. Surely he wouldn’t stand there and take whatever she had to give. He was stubborn, and overbearing, and never couched his words. This wasn’t Peter at all.
Fury flared hot, that he would deny her a fight when she was fairly itching for one. “One moment you declare you will not have me. The next you’re attacking a man—my intended, I might add—for touching me. Why, Peter? What do you want from me?”
Finally emotion flared in his face, yet it was dark, and desperate, and called to something deep inside her. He drew in a ragged breath but remained silent.
So this was how it was to be? He would stand there in silence while she railed at him? Fury pounded through her, for all she wanted and could never have. And for all she loved him still.
She advanced on him. “How dare you! How dare you come here and crash into my life and turn everything on its head. I was fine before you came along—”
“You were not fine,” he exploded, the words sounding as if they were ripped from him. “You were a shell, hiding every ounce of emotion you could manage. Do you think I didn’t see how it pained you to draw? How you refused to open yourself up to it?”
He was the one to advance then. Lenora gasped as his hands closed over her arms, hauling her against the hard breadth of his bare chest. “Imagine my surprise when I uncovered the passionate woman beneath.” His voice turned husky then, his gaze falling to her lips. Heat pooled low in her belly, her breath coming in short gasps, the fury in her transforming to a dark desire.
In the next moment, his face contorted. He let her go so unexpectedly, she stumbled back. She watched, stunned, as he retreated to the far side of the bed. The lantern light caught in the planes of his muscles as he ran his hands through his hair. “Forgive me,” he muttered. “It’s no business of mine. Redburn is your future now.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “he is.” She swallowed hard, forcing down the regret that sat like a stone in her chest. The anger that had fueled her into coming here had already fallen away, like dead leaves in winter, leaving nothing but a stark, barren landscape of her heart. “Just leave me alone, Peter. Please.”
Before she could think better of it, she hurried for the door. But she found she could not leave, though her hand gripped the knob, anchoring her to sanity in the storm of emotions battering her. Letting loose a weary sigh, she closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the wooden panel, unable to hold her head up a moment longer.
“Why did you come back, Peter?”
“I told you why.”
But she was beyond hearing the pained undercurrent in his voice. Behind her closed lids, she saw him as he had been earlier that afternoon in Lady Tesh’s drawing room, the anger that had burst from him when he’d lashed out at Clara.
“You said you returned to the Isle to pay Lady Tesh back for helping your mother,” she managed, her rasping voice echoing back to her against the door. “But that wasn’t the only reason, was it?”
A short, heavy silence followed. And then, “No.”
“Judging from the way you fairly attacked Clara about her father, shall I assume the other reason was His Grace?”
“Yes.”
She remained silent and still, waiting. Finally he continued.
“When I was thirteen, I went to Dane, begging him to help my ill mother. She was dying. I had no money, no connections. He was my last resort.” He pulled in a deep, agonized breath. “He refused me, turned me from the house. She might have lived if not for him.”
“And so you would make him pay for not helping your mother.”
“Yes.”
Her fingers tightened about the doorknob. A harsh laugh escaped her lips. “At least I know now why you intend to never marry. You mean for the line to die out with you, don’t you? As punishment. That’s the debt he must pay to you for destroying your mother’s life, for destroying your life.”
The silence was so great, she thought he would never answer. Finally his voice reached her, a whisper in the heavy air. “Yes.”
One word that proved what a fool she had been even to consider making a life with him. Her heart, already fractured, shattered. Any chance for a happily-ever-after between them had been doomed from the start.
Without a word, she opened the door and slipped from the room.
* * *
Peter stared at the place she’d been, the devastation left in the wake of her departure making mere minutes seem like hours. He had thought he could not feel any lower after the subscription ball. But this left that in the dust.
He couldn’t stay at Seacliff any longer. He should have left as soon as Redburn arrived. It had been pure stubbornness that had kept him from leaving. He was the only one affected, he had told himself. Once the promise to his mother was seen through, he could leave, and never give this island and the people on it another thought.
Lenora had made him see in mere minutes how wrong he had been.
The agony on her face would haunt him the rest of his days. By acting the animal and attacking Redburn, he had brought her grief.
He could not hate himself more.
Again a flash of the agony in her eyes, the fury in her voice. Lenora did not deserve the heartache Peter had brought into her life. He would leave tomorrow, and never return. And she would never have to suffer from his presence in her life again.
But by leaving, he would once more be breaking his promise to his mother. The guilt from ignoring her final wishes had haunted him all these years. By seeing them through, he could finally lay his mother’s ghost to rest.
He sank down on the edge of the bed, his head dropping into his hands. But how could he stay here knowing he was hurting Lenora? Her face swam up behind his tightly closed lids, white with strain, and he knew in a flash he couldn’t. To hell with how this affected him. He’d lived with the guilt for half his life. What he could not live with was giving Lenora even a moment’s more pain.
He surged to his feet, pulling a shirt over his head, striding through the door. Making his way down the hall on silent feet, he paused only an instant outside Lenora’s door before moving off to the room at the far end.
He rapped on the polished wood. She might be sleeping given the late hour, he told himself, preparing to move away and return to his room—coward that he was.
A faint voice called from the other side, “Enter.”
Taking a deep breath, he opened the door.
Lady Tesh was sitting up in bed, an open book on her lap, looking like a wizened fairy surrounded by rich brocade fabrics that glinted like jewels in the faint light. Her hair hung in a thin white plait over one shoulder, and she wore a lacy nightgown that came up to her chin. Beside her, a frizzled white mop rose up, two beady eyes peering sleepily at him. Then Freya yawned and dropped off to sleep again.
Lady Tesh blinked owlishly at the sight of him. “Peter. I admit, I did not expect you.”
No recriminations in the carefully modulated tone. Didn’t he deserve them? He had come into her home, fought her at every turn, though she had welcomed him with open arms, even including his friend, a stranger to her. And how did he repay her? He had attacked her guest in public, embarrassing her in front of the entire town. He deserved her anger, just as he had deserved Lenora’s.
Yet she looked on him with patient, sad eyes. It was the same expression she had worn when she had come to him all those years ago to help his mother.
God, what he owed this woman. And here he was, about to refuse her the one payment for her kindness she had requested from him.
He steeled himself and stepped closer to her bed. “And yet, I think you know why I’m here.”
A look of ancient sadness flitted through her eyes. “Yes.” She sighed. “Is there nothing I can do to entice you to stay? You have a mere three days, after all, until you make good on your promise to your mother.”
His lips twisted. “I find I don’t care about that now.”
She nodded, understanding sitting heavily on her frail shoulders. “When will you leave?”
“Before daybreak. I don’t want…That is, I cannot…”
She smiled, though it was a dejected thing. “I know, my boy.”
He blinked back a sudden burning in his eyes. “Well then. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Peter.”
He spun about, so quickly the fine wool rug burned the balls of his feet. In a moment, he was out the door, his mind already on the journey ahead. Trying his damnedest not to think about what he was leaving behind.