If the Viscount Falls (25 page)

“The bloody arse ought to have said something the moment he realized it,” he said hotly.

“Why? So you could hem and haw about the truth? So you could keep me in the dark about whatever danger Nancy is in?”

Blast Ravenswood to blazes.

Dom laid the carriage lamp down on the table to face her. “I doubt she's in danger. Assaulting Nancy wouldn't suit Barlow's purpose, which is to have her child inherit Rathmoor Park. Even seducing her would be unwise; he won't want to draw attention to their association right now. In fact, he was probably the one to insist that Nancy tell the servants she was visiting Mrs. Patch. If you hadn't returned to the estate, no one would have known anything was amiss.”

Her troubled gaze bore into him. “His lordship said much the same. But if you really thought that, you wouldn't be racing off to London.” She rubbed her arms. “You wouldn't be trying to hide the truth from me.”

“I saw no reason to alarm you.”

That made her bristle. “I am
not
a coddled child. I can endure hearing about the ugly side of life!”

“Except when your cousin might be part of it.”

She searched his face. “If the facts demonstrate that Nancy is helping Barlow in some scheme, you should
want
to reveal them, if only to convince me to accept your version of things. But clearly they don't, or you wouldn't keep hiding them from me.”

“I wouldn't
have
to hide anything if you would trust my instincts as an investigator, damn it!” When she flinched, he tamped down his temper. He hadn't meant to say that, but she'd struck a nerve. “Every time I mention Nancy in less than glowing terms, it puts your back up. Then you refuse to listen to anything else I have to say.”

“It's not your mention of Nancy that does that. It's you
,
with your secretive ways and your running off without me. It's
you,
making decisions that concern us both.” Her voice grew choked. “This . . . ongoing argument between us is about more than just the investigation. You want me to trust you, but how can I when you hide your whole life from me?”

She was staring at his cheek now, and he had the perverse urge to shield it, like a child covering up the evidence of some misdeed. Suddenly, he remembered
what he'd accused Ravenswood of in the library earlier. What she must have overheard.

He groaned.

“Like that scar of yours, for example,” she went on, confirming his fears. “You want me to trust you implicitly? Fine. Then trust
me
for a change. Tell me how you got it.”

“What, your chatty new friend Ravenswood didn't explain it to you the minute my back was turned?” he said snidely.

A strange sorrow lit her face. “No.” She reached up to trace the line of puckered flesh, and his breath caught. “Though he did say this isn't your only one.”

The pity in her eyes unsettled him. “Damn Ravens-wood. He ought to keep his nose out of it.”

“I wish he'd told me more. Because Lord knows you never will.”

Perhaps that was why Ravenswood had forced the issue. He was taking a page from Lisette's and Tristan's matchmaking book.

God rot them all. For years, no one had given a damn that Dom remained a bachelor. But once Jane had dropped into his life again, his bloody family and friends had apparently decided that Dom needed
their
help to get her back. That he didn't have the sense—or, more likely, the stones—to manage it himself.

Well, he had both.

He caught her hand. “Why do you want to know about my scars? What does it matter, if you mean to marry Blakeborough anyway?”

Her eyes turned that warm coppery brown that never failed to stop his heart. “I haven't yet decided what to do about Edwin.”

“Then let me advise you.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it, then each finger one by one. “Don't marry him. Marry
me.
”

To blazes with being cautious. It wasn't getting him anywhere.

“Marry you?” she said tartly. “So you can give me half of yourself? Hide your past from me? Continue to shelter me from anything you think might alarm me? That sounds no better than the arrangement I meant to make with Edwin.”

Meant
to make. He wanted to take comfort in that, but he couldn't since she still hadn't said yes. She apparently wanted him to bare his soul before she'd even consider it.

“Fine,” he bit out. “You want to know how I got the scar on my cheek? It was a slice from a saber.”

“Where? By whom? Under what circumstances?”

“I got it while I was working. That's all I can say.”

She snatched her hand from his. “That's all you
will
say, you mean.”

When she turned on her heel and headed for the door, the thought of her leaving him with his proposal unanswered made his heart falter. “Wait, damn you.”

“There's no point.” She paused in the doorway. “Not when you insist on remaining a stranger to me.”

Was that what she thought he wanted? “Jane—”

She walked out into the stable proper, and his gut
clenched. He'd never told anyone but Ravenswood what had happened that day, and even Ravenswood had only received the barest of facts.

Because Dom couldn't speak of it. Some days he couldn't even think of it for fear that the weight of it would crush him.

But he couldn't let Jane walk away, either. He couldn't risk the possibility that she'd never come back. So perhaps he could tell her something. Just enough to pacify her.

“I got my scar at St. Peter's Field in Manchester, all right?” he called after her. Perhaps she wouldn't know what that meant. Perhaps she wouldn't ask to hear more.

But when she halted and turned to retrace her steps with a certain horror in her expression, he realized such a hope was futile.

“When?” she asked hoarsely.

Damn her for making him do this. “You know when. I can see it in your face.”

“Oh, dear sweet Lord. So you were at the Peterloo Massacre.”

14

J
ANE WISHED THE
words unsaid the minute Dom flinched. She wished she didn't know of the Peterloo Massacre, wished she weren't so avid a reader of newspapers. But she did, and she was.

Ten years ago, a meeting of radical reformers at St. Peter's Fields had ended in horror for hundreds of poor working men and women, earning it the name that compared it to Waterloo. But though Waterloo had been far worse, it at least had been fought during wartime, with real armies.

A thought stopped her cold. Dom would have been on the side of the militia who'd thundered in and wreaked havoc, not on the side of the meeting goers. But if that were the case, how had he been wounded?

“Were you among the soldiers?” she whispered.

“Don't call them that.” His words were sharp, tortured.

Them
. Not
me.
“Why not?”

“Because anyone who would cut down an unarmed
man for nothing more than speaking his mind doesn't deserve the title of soldier. Soldiers protect the innocent; they don't willfully slash and slaughter them.”

She watched him uneasily. “Some said the crowd brought the violence upon themselves.”

“Anyone who says that is a fool,” Dom clipped out. “Anyone who says that wasn't there.”

“So why were
you
there?”

She had to know, though she was wary of his answer. Because his eyes had gone bleak, like those of men who'd looked into shadows and seen themselves.

“Don't make me talk about it, sweeting. You don't want to hear—”

“I want to hear anything that will help me understand you.”
Why you didn't come after me. Why you keep me out even now.
“Every time you refuse to reveal your secrets, Dom, I assume that you find me unworthy to hear them.”

“That isn't remotely the case,” he ground out.

“Then tell me what happened. Lord Ravenswood said you torture yourself over it. I want to know why. I need to know why.” And she suspected he needed to tell it.

“Fine. Since you're giving me no choice . . .” He leaned back against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “I was there with the Spenceans who were pressing for parliamentary reform. But I knew we were in for trouble when over sixty thousand people gathered in that field to hear them speak.”

“You were worried they might turn violent?”

“The radicals? No. I'd spent months with the Spenceans as one of Ravenswood's spies, and I knew they were determined not to cause trouble. It was precisely because they feared violence from the local magistrates that they required that their people come unarmed, in orderly groups.”

He stiffened. “But the minute I saw the special constables forming two rows to force a passage from the edge of the field to where the speakers stood, I feared the worst.”

When he began to breathe more heavily as if struggling to keep himself under control, she swallowed hard. She'd never seen Dom so agitated.

“I even considered identifying myself to Hulton, head of the magistrates. He didn't know the Spenceans the way I did, and I thought I might convince him to refrain from taking any violent action.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “But Ravenswood had ordered me not to reveal my purpose. No matter what, I was to maintain my role so I could continue to spy on the radicals. I was to keep my connection with the Home Office a secret, even from the authorities.”

Lord Ravenswood's words came to her then:
Blame me as much as you wish, but you know that wasn't my doing. Nor yours. Stop tormenting yourself over something that was always beyond both our controls.

The massacre? No, surely not. Dom wouldn't blame himself for such a monumental disaster, would he?

“So I did my duty.” Dom's voice turned bitter. “Unfortunately, none of Hulton's advisors had the good sense
to recommend restraint. He grew so alarmed by the size of the crowd that he decided the speakers should be arrested. Then he listened to his damned Chief of Constables, who argued that the warrant couldn't be served without a show of force.”

When Dom fell silent again, his hands now gripping the edges of the table on either side of him, she prodded, “That's when Hulton called in the militia.”

“Yes, the bloody idiot.” He stared blindly out the harness room door into the stable. “The hotheaded young cavalrymen arrived on the field drunk. They pushed their way through the constables' too narrow passageway, and their horses floundered in the sea of people. So the riders began slashing about them with their sabers to clear a path.”

Sweet Lord. “Is that when the crowd began to fight back?”

A foul curse escaped him. “You can't call it fighting when one side has swords and guns, and the other has a few bricks and fists. But yes, when the crowd realized that the militia was there to arrest the speakers, they fought back.”

“Which only provoked the militia further.”

He nodded tersely. “The drunk cavalrymen panicked and started sabering and bludgeoning anyone within reach. Meanwhile, I'm told that Hulton saw the ruckus from afar and ordered the Hussars in. They unwittingly blocked the crowd from dispersing, which only made matters worse, and before we knew it, the situation deteriorated into rampant violence.”

“And you were in the middle of it.”

How awful it must have been for him to see the authorities attacking the people when he could do nothing to stop it. With her heart twisting in her chest, she moved close to lay her hand on his taut arm.

He didn't even seem to notice. “Eighteen died, most of them civilians,” he said in a hollow voice. “Five hundred more were injured, a third of them wom—” He broke off with a grimace of pain and guilt so profound that it cut her to her heart.

“Women,” she supplied as tears stung her eyes. “Yes, I heard that.” That must have been horrible for him, given his natural instinct to protect. “Why were so many women there?”

“There weren't.” His breath came in harsh gasps now. “It was ten men for every woman.”

“Then why were women a third of the wounded?”

“Because the damned militia targeted them!” As she gaped at him, his voice chilled. “I saw it with my own eyes. And most of the women's wounds were later found to have been caused by weapons, not trampling, which wasn't the case for the men.” He shot her a despairing glance. “What kind of monster deliberately attacks women at a peaceful gathering?”

She thought of Papa. “The kind who doesn't like the idea of a woman expressing her own mind, fighting for her own freedom.”

His jaw was as tight as an archer's bow. “You attribute to them some semblance of thought. But those animals were beyond thought. One of the Hussars—
a legitimate soldier who'd seen battle and knew how to behave in it—tried to reason with the militia. He cried, ‘For shame! Gentlemen: forbear, forbear! The people cannot get away!' ”