Chapter Twenty-Five

With great effort of will, Giles lifted heavy lids. Another hellish night. Another bright morning provoking him to staunch resentfulness. It was amazing he had anything left in him to feel. That, in a way, was the ultimate betrayal. He could no longer ride or fence, yet he was left with an enormous reserve of energy. Energy that kept winding tighter, making his muscles stiffer and stiffer with each passing hour he wasn’t allowed to exert himself. He needed to burn away everything he felt and fall back into oblivion.

Oh God, no. And another unwanted visitor, too.

Giles pushed from the bed coverings. The bed curtains had been opened, allowing fresh air into the stuffy cocoon. Holbrook’s figure towered over Giles.

And the cat, apparently. The creature was curled on the pillow beside him, tail wrapped around his body, flicking back and forth at the tip. Giles, almost without noticing, had begun calling the cat King, after how he expected to be treated by the people around him. King looked perturbed at the interruption. Almost as much as Giles was.

“He’s still here, is he?” Holbrook gave the cat a suspicious side-eye.

“Stubborn bugger. Won’t leave.”

The scent of charcoal and paper hung in the air. Like things now forbidden in the house had been smuggled in.

Which was ridiculous. The servants had been warned against defying him, on pain of immediate dismissal. If any of them called his bluff, his credibility would be lost forever. He didn’t want to send his people out into the streets. He wanted them to obey him. And leave him alone.

Never mind that, though. Smelling charcoal and paper, indeed. Nobody’s senses could possibly be so attuned, save those who were blind.

“I have something for you.”

Giles flinched at the effort of standing. The soles of his feet ached from disuse. It was like he discovered he were made of iron only after he’d begun to rust. “Can’t it wait until the evening?”

“Close enough, old chap. It’s already five of the clock.”

“Is it?” He tried not to do what every instinct in his body fought to do…look at the light. Assess the quality of the shadows. See how the sun’s light hit the facades of the houses across the square.

Instead, Giles made a noise of noncommittal acknowledgment. He hobbled through the room, passing the banyan strewn haphazardly over a chair, caring not a whit about his nudity. It wasn’t anything with which his friend hadn’t any experience…and why shouldn’t he finally see his mangled arm? So what? It’s what everyone wanted to know, wasn’t it—how bad was it, really?

Bad. Very, very bad. Let them see.

“All right then.” Giles used his right hand to take a towel from the washstand, dip it into the basin of water, and awkwardly squeeze the excess from the fabric. “What is it?”

But Holbrook didn’t need to respond. Because in the reflection of the glass…there they were. Drawings. His drawings. Obscene drawings—ones he’d made of Patience the night he’d painted her in mica and fucked her in the fire’s dancing light as the swirls on her skin shimmered.

Something vile in Giles’s gut twisted. If he’d had anything to eject, it would have been summarily cast upon the carpet just then. Each stroke had been drawn by a man who’d known who and what he was. Who’d been something. Who’d attracted the notice of an extraordinary woman…

An extraordinary young woman whose life he could never be a part of again. Fortunate then, weren’t they, that she’d been sensible enough to throw that absurd marriage…what was it, proposal? No, that would be an insult to doe-eyed couples everywhere, the sort who cooed over each other most nauseatingly.

“I found them at Glenrose. I thought—”

Giles snatched them off the table and took long strides to the fireplace, his heel strikes against the floor making something in the room rattle.

“By God, Ashcroft, what are you—”

Giles was crushing them as best he could with one good arm, the unwelcome smells of his abandoned art invading his senses. The next thing he knew, Holbrook was upon him. “Stop, man. Stop.”

“They’re mine, damn you. You had no right to bring them here.” Giles was trying to wrench free—to no avail. It was worse than when he’d found a forgotten stash of studies he’d made of Icarus in motion several months after he’d found his horse’s corpse.

“You’re not making sense.” The duke’s grip was too strong—and he wasn’t a broken man. He wrestled the paper easily from Giles’s awkward one-armed clutch.

They stood together a moment. Giles, his body betraying him at every turn, panted from the exertion. Holbrook did not. “Damn you.”

“Resign me where you will.” Holbrook moved to the table with the drawings, straightening the paper as best he could without smudging the charcoal. The sketch on top was relatively innocuous, saving both Miss Emery’s identity and modesty.

There was no question that Holbrook had abstained from looking at the pictures. He was an odd one and could be damned principled when he chose to be. And loyal to a fault. Which was why he’d returned to Giles, no doubt. Believing he could be helped.

Fool.

The part of Giles that had gone a little mad after…well, after…wanted Holbrook to look at the drawings. He wanted to arouse his friend so that the part of Giles, the dead part, who’d once possessed the power to evoke such things in other people, wouldn’t be forgotten.

“We have an idea.”

Giles clenched his jaw. “We?”

Holbrook sent a significant glance over Giles’s nude body. “Care to cover up?”

“Feeling modest, Holbrook? Or merely intimidated?”

He gave Giles a tiresome look and replied drily, “To be one of the few in England to neither fear nor envy your cock puts me in a uniquely privileged position.”

“You can take a position on your knees, if you care to see what the fuss is about.” If Giles could find a way to offend Holbrook and drive him away forever, he would. Malachi was so much more depraved than Giles, though, nothing could shock him. Then there was the business with that damn loyalty again.

“Most tempting. But I thought you might like your banyan, because in a few minutes Miss Emery will arrive.”

Another knife to tender parts he’d never wanted to have. Why wouldn’t they bloody leave him alone? Giles went to the side table and poured himself a drink, not noticing what he poured. He tossed it back in one swallow without tasting.

“She won’t be admitted.” His voice was hoarse.

“I’ve already fixed it with the servants.”

“Then they’ll be out on their ears looking for new jobs without a character.” A bit of panic began to waver in Giles’s breast. Good God, this whole business was getting out of hand. Was he going to have to fire his entire staff to prove a point to Holbrook? That seemed wrong.

“They’ve been promised jobs with me if you prove to make an ass of yourself over this. And I’m not a ranting, tyrannical madman, so I’m sure”—his tone turned derisive—“they’re shaking in their boots at the prospect of seeing the last of you.”

“Even if I were to receive her, which I won’t, she has better sense than you.” Giles had been about to finish his statement with because she knows what to do with a good cock when she finds it. But he didn’t. Friend or not, what happened between him and Miss Emery was private. Saying as much to Holbrook would have been crass.

Holy dancing pigs, Giles had stumbled upon a line he wouldn’t cross. What would Silverlund say if he were here to see him now?

Giles snorted at the thought of his sire.

A knock sounded on the door. Giles tensed. “No. Send her away. Please, I’m begging you, man, have pity on me.”

But when the door cracked open, Holbrook did nothing to stop it.

Giles was suddenly desperate to cover himself. She couldn’t see his arm in this state. The other night it’d been cloaked under layers of billowing shirtsleeves, and that had been grotesque enough.

Too late. She stood in a glowing light, a picture so beyond Giles’s hope or ability. Her gaze fell. She paled. Then she and the duke exchanged a glance, and he gave her a small nod of encouragement.

It shouldn’t have affected Giles. It had naught to do with him.

Except that was a bloody lie even he, in his newly hollow existence, couldn’t believe. If he had to endure this, too, why the devil couldn’t he be too numb to care?

Miss Emery closed the door behind her while Giles struggled to wrap a blanket around his shoulders. If it’d been his right arm, everything would be different. His life, himself—it’d be salvageable. He’d still have all the bloody inconvenience of struggling with all the things people did throughout their days. All the indignity, disfigurement, and pain.

But he could have drawn.

The longing to draw and paint pulled to an acute point as he found a stray lap rug and covered enough of himself for what the situation required, then turned back to them. The sunlight of an early evening in spring pouring through the windows caught Miss Emery’s face—half in shadow, half in light. Her eyes were huge and clear. Filled with tender vulnerability.

Giles snatched the nearest object and, without bothering to see what it was he held, hurled it. “Why can’t you leave me alone to die?”

He couldn’t aim with his right arm any more than his right hand could draw a smooth, straight line. But it wasn’t directionality he required. It was force. Force he could produce.

The china something-or-other smashed into the wall. Shards flew in every direction, as shattered as he was. A moment ago it had been a something. Now it was a nothing. Worthless. Giles heaved one breath after another, gulping for the life he disdained as he fought to regain emotional equilibrium. Or the semblance of. It was the only sound in the room for a long time.

“Miss Emery, perhaps it would be better if you returned later.” Holbrook remained carefully calm, as if measuring his tone to avoid upsetting Giles further.

“I’m not afraid of him.”

Giles snarled. “Don’t speak of me as if I’m not present.”

“Very well.” The smile she returned to him was nothing if not willful. Willfully unyielding. Willfully obstinate. Willfully determined. Absurd, foolish, strong, beautiful woman that she was, driving him mad with desire at the lowest point of his life.

If it wouldn’t have embarrassed her in front of Holbrook, Giles could have crammed his hard cock into her then and there.

Was that why he needed her gone? Because making her his and his alone was now impossible?

But instead, as if nothing in the world were wrong, she found the paintings that had been taken down and piled together in the corner, the picture side facing the wall. She bent and started pulling the frames back to study them. “What are these?”

Inner turmoil churning, Giles took a long time answering. He didn’t want to remember he owned them. But in the upheaval he’d thrust upon the household since his return from Glenrose, they’d been overlooked. “My collection of Rubenses.”

“That’s what I thought.” She squinted and leaned closer to study the brushstrokes on the wood panel. “But isn’t he hopelessly despised?”

“Yes.” Giles waved his good hand indifferently. “Hopelessly despised by complete bores who know nothing of passion, excitement, and wild inventiveness.”

Miss Emery and Holbrook exchanged a glance. She rested the paintings back and righted herself. Her beauty was excruciating. All the more so because he’d never paint her again. The siren spoke. “I’ve brought a bonesetter.”

“What?” Giles shook his head. Was there a part of the conversation he’d missed when his mind took a holiday from his head and went to rusticate in his cock?

“He’s going to see to your arm.”

See to his what?

A flurry of a thousand needling emotions spiked his veins. “Like hell he is.”

Miss Emery and Holbrook shared another of those infuriating glances between themselves.

“Hell and damnation, stop doing that.”

She looked at Giles, nothing but innocence. “Doing what?”

“Looking at each other. You’ve spoken about this together, I take it? Planned what you ought to do? How you ought to handle me?”

“We have,” she replied matter-of-factly. “We both care about you and—”

“Stop. I forbid you to do so from this moment onward. Forget you ever knew me. The person I was is gone and will never, can never, return.”

Holbrook’s brows knit in annoyance. “That’s why we’ve brought the bonesetter.”

“I’ve seen a hundred doctors.” Giles tugged the falling end of the rug back up his shoulder. “If this were an option, they’d have told me.”

“Doctors who have been working under your father’s orders.”

“Not all of them.”

“Not so fast, Ashcroft.” Holbrook was using those infuriatingly measured tones again, the bastard. “Silverlund’s reach extends far. He’s a powerful man.”

Miss Emery nodded. “But he doesn’t know about this. A few years ago, there was an accident at my father’s shop, a very bad accident. One man died, and my poor father never stopped blaming himself. Another man lived, but with a leg… Oh, it was terrible. The doctors said he’d never walk again. But my father found the bonesetter and—”

“Enough!” The hope in Miss Emery’s eyes was worse than reliving the accident—as he did so often in nightmares.

“We’re not saying it will fix you, b—”

“I said, enough.”

It was worse than being caged. The bars keeping him imprisoned pressed upon him as if one broken bone in his body weren’t enough. As if every last part of his skeleton had to crunch and crumble to dust.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? About being fixed. The treatment might not work. Giles couldn’t hope. He didn’t dare. They could, if they wanted. It was their own bloody business. The fools.

“I’m not seeing any bonesetter. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not any day hereafter. Never will I let any such a person lay hands upon me. Not for any reason at all. Not even for either of you.”