Authors: Tiffany Clare
“This conversation is far from over,” she said, perturbed that he was shutting her out of his thoughts once again.
“I intend to find out a few of the answers myself, Amelia. For now, stay home, and do not leave for any reason.”
P
acing the floor in Hart's office, Nick had one thing on his mind. And that was pummeling Shauley into the same grave that had been dug for Berwick. He felt helpless, and that was not an easy feeling for him.
He hadn't known where to start after leaving Amelia at the townhouse. He just knew he needed to do something, anything, that would have Shauley found out for the monster he truly was.
Hart entered, with a flurry of activity going on behind him in the main staff quarters. He was the same height as Nick, perhaps an inch taller. His frame was thinner but just as strong, and he could fight as lethally as Nick ever had in the ring. Hart looked like the perfect playboy, blond-haired, blue-eyed. Women generally fawned over him. Amelia, Nick remembered, hadn't given Hart a second look.
“I didn't think you'd be this busy,” Nick said apologetically.
Hart walked over to the sideboard and poured two glasses of whiskey.
“We have the jewel gallery showing here next month and have to test our security measures after the art fiasco last year. Lewis at the front said it seemed urgent, so I left them to it.”
After handing Nick a glass, Hart waved toward the chair arrangement in his office.
“Do you remember Shauley?” Nick asked.
“You mean the pompous bastard always following Lord Murray around like a lapdog?” Hart gave him a wry smile and swirled the contents of his glass around and around.
Nick had known Hart since his fighting days, not as a youth, so his friend would know nothing of Nick's past with Shauley. “The very one.”
“Why do I have the feeling you're about to ask for a favor?”
“You have ears in high places.”
“And so do you, my friend.”
“Not in this case. I need a worm in Lord Murray's ear. Something to cause his trust in Shauley to cease.” If it would have helped to go to Lord Murray himself, Nick would have done it, but they didn't see eye-to-eye.
“And what rumor do you want spread?”
So Nick told his friend a secret he'd long kept to himself. One that would not only threaten Shauley's job with Lord Murray but also have him arrested without delay. It was a distraction to keep Shauley off Nick's back as he tried to find evidence to tie the bastard to Berwick's murder.
“You play a hard game, Riley. Does this have anything to do with a certain secretary who's caught your eye?”
Nick downed his whiskey and pointed at Hart. “I'll ask you not to repeat that anywhere.”
His friend wore a grin like a Cheshire cat. “Just stating the obvious.”
After visiting a few more people who could help root out a few of Shauley's secrets, Nick arrived home after midnight.
He slipped into Amelia's room and climbed into bed behind her. Wrapping his arms around her and holding her close, he fell into the first deep sleep he'd had in weeks. But that sleep was short-lived, and he woke with a start, covered in sweat, sometime around two in the morning.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gathered his wits. He shouldn't have come to Amelia when his dreams were always just out of reach from his control. He wondered if they would ever subside. They were always the same. He was back in the school, waking up to the vicar over him.
He wasted no time in dressing, hating to leave Amelia's side at all, but he couldn't sleep now.
T
he soft click of her door woke her. When she turned over in her bed, it was to see that the covers were mussed where Nick had slept, but he was gone. Had his leaving awakened her? She threw off her blankets with a frustrated huff. This time, she would not be deterred from seeking the path toward which she and Nick had been heading. She was determined to follow him, no matter where he went to escape
them
. Because his sneaking away in the middle of the night needed to stop.
Bleary-eyed and tired, she crawled out of bed and cinched a corset around her waist before pulling on yesterday's dress. They couldn't ignore the problem that made it nearly impossible to move into another phase of their relationshipâor whatever it was that they had. She was determined to have an answer to that today too. They'd come leaps and bounds yesterday, but today she would not allow him to close himself off again.
After finding Nick's bedchamber empty, she headed downstairs, only to find him in his study, pacing the floor. His hair was disheveled, his shirt only tucked in at the front. Seeing him thus caused a lot of the frustration building in her to vanish.
She shut the door and flicked over the lock behind her on entering the room. Nick stopped pacing immediately and scrubbed a hand over his face, scratching his beard as his eyes focused on her in the darkness. It broke her heart, seeing him so exhausted from too many sleepless nights.
“I didn't mean to wake you.” He sounded genuinely concerned to have disturbed her rest, and that ebbed the rest of the anger that had built while she'd searched the house for him.
“And I didn't intend to let you sneak out of my room yet again.”
He rubbed his face again. “I couldn't sleep.”
“I could tell. As I have been able to tell every night for weeks, Nick. Please tell me what is going on.”
He didn't say anything. Didn't confirm or deny her observation. With a sigh she thought she wasn't meant to hear, he went over to the sideboard and poured two decent-sized glasses of whiskey. He held one out for her to take and motioned toward the library. She didn't normally imbibe in liquor like this but took the glass anyway.
“Sit with me for a while,” he said.
He was oddly unsure of himself. Not the Nick she'd grown to know and love since moving into this house. The Nick who ruled over everything and everyone in his life like each layer was a finely oiled piece of machinery over which he had complete control.
Tumbler in hand, she preceded him into the adjoining room. She didn't sip the liquid fire, afraid it would cloud her thoughts when they needed to have a serious conversation. If she beat around the bush with this, it would give him reason to hide behind the carefully constructed wall he kept erected between her and his emotions.
If she couldn't find a door through that wall, she knew she had to find a way to climb over everything he was avoiding.
Before either of them could sit, she blurted out, “I think you've been avoiding me. Avoiding having another dream while in bed with me. And we need to discuss why.” When she looked up, he appeared unperturbed by her questions, so she continued. “Help me understand what it is you're afraid of.”
“What confessions do you think to garner from me? I've often been a night wanderer. This is nothing new, and it's unlikely to stop. Telling you what haunts my dreams will not end them.”
“Then help me understand why you wander more than you have before. Haven't you noticed the strain it's causing between us? It makes me wonder if you regret what's happened between us. If I'm honest with myself, Nick, I don't think I can go back to being mere acquaintances. But if that's what you want . . . you have to tell me. My heart's too involved to have you slowly shrink away from me. I don't even know what you want from me. Am I your mistress? Am I your secretary? Do I even mean more to you than that? Because I feel that if I did mean more than that, you would open up to me.”
Nick threw his tumbler at the fireplace so fast that a strangled sound caught in her throat at his sudden show of violence. The glass smashed into a thousand shards of glittering crystal that smeared across the brick.
“Nick,” she whispered in her shock, fighting tears back.
Nick turned toward her, stalking her with all the grace of a lion eyeing a gazelle. She took a deep, steadying breath and braced herself. The only thing she was certain of was that he wouldn't hurt her.
He pointed at the fireplace. “That is what you do to me inside. That is how I feel. Broken, torn apart, afraid that if I lose you, there will be nothing left of me. I will be destroyed. Do you understand that?” His voice was low and dangerous.
“What do you want from me, Nick? Tell me what I am to you.”
“Everything,” he said with more force and conviction than she expected.
Amelia vowed to herself that if he wanted to end
them
, then she could handle the news.
Would
handle the news. Maybe. God, let it not be that.
She was sure she could be brave and stand up to Nick, no matter the decision he made. But now that the words she'd been itching to say to him for the past week were out, she wanted to take them all back. To pretend. To continue to love him because she'd been so happy until her brother had ruined it all. But to continue in the way they were, together but apart . . . it simply wasn't the way she wanted to live.
“Tell me what's wrong, Nick. It's just you and me here. No judgment, no theories. Just us.”
“It'll pass. It always does,” he said, as if that was the only answer she needed. It wasn't. It was so far from it.
“Stop lying to yourself. Every night that you pull away, I feel a little piece of my heart breaking. Whatever it is, you can trust me. Confide in me. Please. Before it's too late.”
His hands braced either of her arms. “That I want you as my own will never change. Is that what you need to hear? That I won't let you go? That you are mine, whether or not you want to be?”
She shook her head and closed her eyes for just a momentâlong enough that she could count to five so she didn't lash out at his nonanswer.
Opening her eyes again, she looked straight at him. “You're saying all this because you want to bury a past you think is so much worse than mine. It devastated me to have to tell you what my brother did, Nick. It made me feel half the woman I normally feel when I'm with you. I needed to be honest, and for the sake of our relationship, I let you in. I let you see me at my lowest. I let you see what broke me as a person. Why won't you do the same?”
Nick's forehead pressed against hers. His hands were warm where they covered her arms, looser now than the grip with which he'd originally held her.
“I can't and won't paint a pretty picture of my life growing up, Amelia. So much of it was filled with a darkness so black that it sometimes engulfed and decided my actions. I'm not diminishing what you felt in your situation, but there are some things better left unsaid. Better left in the dark, where they belong.”
Tears filled her eyes. She couldn't help her reaction. This wasn't anything more than he'd told her before. None of what he said helped her understand what haunted him. “I can't begin to understand why this makes you the way it does if you won't explain it to me.” Her frustrations were mounting, her anger brimming. She wanted to scream. Yell. Anything to make him understand that she could help him through his difficulties.
“I can't,” was his answer.
“You won't.”
“Trust me for now. Just let me get past this.”
“Do you understand the position this puts me in? All I know is that you are pulling away from me. I can't even grasp at a reason. I just . . . ” She dragged herself out of his embrace, not wanting his touch to soothe her. Distract her. “Perhaps we need time away from each other. Maybe I should go to the agency and find another job placement. Because the truth is . . . I can't live the way we are living. I can't
sin
, night after night, when you're heart isn't in it as much as mine.”
Every word tore a new wound in her heart. But this was nothing more than the truth. Time apart might make him realize what he'd given up. Looking at the resolve set in his steely gaze and his unwillingness to talk about the invisible truths standing between them, she didn't think leaving would help them either. But she was out of options. She had no other way to approach this if he wanted to cut her off from his life.
Worse . . . he said nothing.
Not a damn thing.
His expression was unmoving.
Unable to look at him a moment longer, for she feared she'd completely break down, she turned and ran for the door.
Why hadn't she just stayed in bed? Instead, she'd set herself on an unknown path. One without Nick. Why? She hated this feeling that was ripping her apart from the inside out. It hurt so much and so deeply that she feared the wounds could never be healed.
Biting her bottom lip on a half-escaped sob, she violently wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. Nick caught her as she fumbled with the lock on the study door, spinning her around and wrapping his arms tightly around her, crushing her against his solid body.
She wanted to break down. To just let the tears overtake her. But she held strong.
“I have already told you I can't let you go. Stay, Amelia.” His voice was so calm, just above a whisper. “I couldn't bear it if you left me. I can't let you leave. I won't.”
Hearing him beg tugged at her heart painfully. Amelia's fists clenched where they were trapped between their bodies. There was only one thing she could do.
She pushed him away, hating that she was seconds away from breaking down. Hating that she knew she had to hold it together when every second in his arms chipped away at her control. “You are breaking my will every day. Making me lose myself in you. Don't ask this of me. Please, Nick. Let me go.”
If she stayed, they would only end up back where they were. And she needed more than his physical comfort. He held her tighter against his chest, crushing her between him and the door as if he would
never
let her go.
“I told you I couldn't let you go. Don't try to leave. I warned you that you were mine the night I took your virginity.”
Tilting her head back, she stared at him, eyes awash with tears she was helpless to stop from flowing over her cheeks. “Why are you doing this to me?”
The gray of his eyes was stormy, as though waiting to unleash a fury she'd never seen. “Because I can't let you go. Because I love you.” His tone brooked no argument, so she said nothing to contradict him, just stared at him for another moment before pushing at his immovable body again. Nick's hand gently cradled her throat, his thumb forcing her head to lean against the door. “I've already told you that I wouldn't let you walk away. You belong to me.”