Chapter Eighteen

Giles spent the next hour standing wordlessly before the smoldering pile of what had been his paintings. In his years abroad, he’d spent time in graveyards, among tombstones and carved remembrances. They were usually beautiful and peaceful, and an afternoon with the dead had given him time to be alone and, well, not be alone.

Nothing had made him think of death with as much visceral resonance as standing there in the courtyard, in the damp darkness, with so much of himself at his feet…destroyed.

Dawn was a dirty gray smudge on the eastern horizon when Giles returned to the castle’s interior. It took fewer than five minutes for him to realize that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Telling himself he had to be mistaken, he went to the room they shared. “Miss Em—Mrs. Warrington?”

No voice answered.

If she wasn’t there… He returned to the old solar that he’d turned into a temporary studio. Empty. A sense of foreboding permeated his senses. But he was still agitated from the night’s events. Surely his suspicion had to be in error.

Leaving the room, Giles caught sight of a maid at the other end of the corridor scuttling away, no doubt hoping she wasn’t seen.

“You there. Wait a moment. I’m looking for my—” The word caught in his throat and he swallowed. He’d been a monumental ass trying to force Miss Emery’s hand in marriage. If he’d witnessed another man do what he’d done, he’d have had some choice words for the miserable fellow. “I’m looking for Mrs. Warrington.”

The girl stopped and turned, trepidation on her features. “Mrs. Warrington left, sir.”

The maid’s words ringing in his ears, Giles stormed through the narrow spaces and uneven corridors of the old part of the building until he found the duke and burst in. His sire had taken one of the family rooms as opposed to the guest chambers, and was at the window with his hands clasped behind his back.

The tables between them, so to speak, had turned. More like the tables had been thrown out the fucking window, but that didn’t have the same ring to it, did it?

Giles stalked into the room. Though he bore no marks on his body, the last few hours had flogged his equilibrium. A hundred lashes had torn away the protective layers governing his control. The wounds inside wept—watery and bloody and bruised.

That would not stop him. He’d already lost his paintings. He wouldn’t lose Miss Emery, too. “Where is she?”

Not moving his hands, Silverlund turned his body slightly, brows lifting. “Your whore?”

The force of Giles’s rage could have snapped his bones as if they were no more than twigs.

That’s what the duke wanted. That’s what the man lived for. Thwarting his son and seeing Giles suffer. It was the duke’s daily bread.

“What did you do?”

“Really, you don’t think I’d sully myself with humiliating her now, do you?” The duke used the same tone as when he’d asked his wife why she had to leave to attend her cousin’s wife in her confinement. At the time he’d said that since “that old cow” was about to have her eighth baby, she should know what she was about by now, and as his duchess, Her Grace should stay close and attend his pleasure. Because she owed it to him, or some such.

Giles recalled the hurt on his mother’s face with startling clarity. Helping women through childbearing was something she took very seriously. The duke had dismissed it out of hand.

“Now, Your Grace? No. Later, if it suits your purposes, certainly.”

“You and I do think alike, don’t we, my son?” The duke grimaced. “I, for one, don’t much care for the position you’ve put me in.”

“If you blame me for your troubles, that’s your concern. I won’t be made to shoulder any responsibility for what you choose to do.”

The old man’s face darkened. Behind him, the rain began pattering harder on the window glazing. “Never responsible for anything, are you, Ashcroft? Never your fault. Never your concern.”

“For myself, certainly. But for you?” He snorted. “Never.”

“If it weren’t for your depravity, I wouldn’t be here now.”

“Tell me what you did.” Giles strained to stop himself from patricide. His soul already bore too many stains. His father wasn’t worth another.

The duke waved a careless hand. “Sent her awa— Where are you going?” His voice went sharp. “I haven’t dismissed you, you whelp.”

Giles paid no mind. He’d already turned his back to the duke. Nothing short of the divine metamorphosing Giles into a marionette and manipulating his strings would induce him to turn back.

…

The rain washed away the cold sweat from Giles’s brow as he stalked toward the stables. He needed a horse. The dark sky gave the morning light a flat quality. The storm beat down with unrelenting ferocity. The path cutting through from the kitchens to the stable yards had been worn by centuries of servants using it as a short cut. It was not paved with the smooth stones of the courtyard, nor lined with pebbles of the garden paths, and had already turned to muck. His boots were a disgrace.

Uncharacteristically, he cared not a whit. Getting back to her was the only thing that mattered. There had been mornings in Venice or Padua that he hadn’t been able to paint fast enough. The beauty of the light falling on that church or over that dusty little road or hitting the bridge over a watery street made him dizzy.

He wanted her more than all the light, all the beauty in the world. Because it all existed in her.

In the wake of the fire, though, merely going to the stables took an unusual act of will. The scent of the smoke clung to his skin. The memory of seeing his work devoured by flames replayed again and again in his mind.

It’d been years since going for his mount had affected him so strongly. Last night had dredged up those old memories of Icarus. He’d been a good horse.

Giles tilted his face down out of the wet onslaught. The duke had no right to affect him like this. He could do anything. Try anything. Say anything. As long as Giles could paint and fuck, the duke would have no power over him.

In the stables, warm from the carefully tended lamps and the blanketed animals, Giles went to the tack room. Most of the hands kept clear. When one brave lad, all lanky limbs and terror-filled brown eyes, stepped forward with an offer to help, Giles answered the boy’s bravery in softly reassuring tones. “I thank you, but this time, I’d prefer to tend to the task myself.”

Which he hadn’t attempted in years.

Focusing on what he must do to see each detail done correctly, beginning with brushing the coat, he moved slowly and deliberately. Each stroke mattered. Surprisingly, being near the horse brought a measure of calm, even as his muscles tensed with anticipation to jump on without a saddle and ride out, weather be damned. He wanted to be with her. Not break his neck en route and leave her alone for the rest of her life.

Giles walked the saddled beast into the yard, adjusted the girth, and slung himself up in one smooth movement. No sooner was he up than he turned the horse and urged it as fast as he dared, breaking into speed matched only by the desperate beat of his heart.

If he cut through the wilderness, he hoped to get ahead of Miss Emery’s carriage.

The horse’s hooves pounded upon the earth. Somewhere between the stables and entering the woods, Giles and his horse had become a unified pair. They jumped a fallen tree, sailing over the obstacle in one smooth movement, and Giles ducked just in time to avoid taking a twisting branch to the jaw. Another obstacle came into view. Giles’s body remembered riding as if he’d done nothing else all the days of his life and needed no conscious thought to make himself ready for the next jump.

But something happened just before they reached the next hurdle. The beast lost its footing. In an instant, they were flying together through the air. This time however, there was no perfect control. Only perfect chaos. They were helpless. Utterly at the mercy of their trajectory.

The horse screamed.

Giles rattled as he fell to the ground, teeth chattering against each other as he rolled, knocking against stones and forest detritus. His body smashed against a tree trunk, a tangle of limbs. The world narrowed on the reverberating crack of human bone. An onslaught of hellfire shot through his arm.

The horse righted itself. With an insulted whinny, it vanished with a trot into the thick forest, mud stuck with leaves and clumps of earth staining its muscular side.

Giles was alone. Alone with rain falling on his face and frigid damp permeating the layers of clothing all the way to his skin. When he coughed, white mist formed in front of his mouth with the force of the exhalation. Cold mud soaked his clothing.

There was nothing left in him to care.

A thousand if-onlys pierced the inside of Giles’s skull, each tipped with a poisoned arrow. If only he’d kept in practice after Icarus’s murder. If only he hadn’t been riding so recklessly. If only it hadn’t been raining. If only he’d slowed the smallest amount before attempting the jump. If only the duke hadn’t come. If only he could go back a few minutes and try again, knowing what he knew now.

Trying to move under the cruel mistress of fresh pain, Giles winced and inhaled a sharp breath. He turned his head toward the offending appendage. His arm throbbed, limp as it rested at an unnatural angle, splayed out on the ground beside him. His left arm.

There was something worse. Something more terrifying even than the tender claws of death caressing the vulnerable part of his throat: Giles couldn’t move his fingers.