She spun around to find his eyes closed and breathing the place in. “Is this where you practice?”
“Yes, or other places.”
Like on the roof of the castle. “You said you escaped and went into the army.” She wanted to know what made him dance the way he did. “What did you escape?”
He looked at her, then laughed softly. “You say what you’re thinking.”
“Not always,” she countered cryptically, then smiled. “But really, what did you escape? Can you talk about it? We can talk about something else. I don’t know why I’m acting so comfortably with you. I don’t usually intrude on people’s private lives. You don’t have—”
“I escaped the defenses that kept me alive, like my father’s power when words like magic, witch, and murderer were being flung around, and Harper’s temper against bullies who left me as a pile of broken bones. If I had the animals at my command,” he mumbled under his breath. “Harry Gable, Timothy Cavendish, and the others would find living very difficult.”
Wasn’t Timothy Cavendish his stepbrother?
Wait—“What do you mean you escaped the defenses that kept you alive? Are you saying that you went away to fight so that…” she paled and felt ill. “So, you would die?
“It didn’t work out that way,” he laughed and pulled off his boots.
He left the protection of his hell, seeking…
Aria folded her legs, sat on the floor, and covered her mouth with her hands.
He’d wanted to die. It had been so bad he had wanted to die. And now, he lived with some of them who’d made him feel that way.
“What do you think of living now?” she asked, watching him sit on the floor beside her.
He turned his head to look at her and she was sure he was smiling—it was slight, hardly noticeable. But she noticed.
“It’s much better with dancing in it.”
Yes, it was a way to let all that steam out. Better than to take revenge on the people who hurt him. When she sighed though, he turned to face her. “What is a car?” She smiled at him. “What?”
“You said a car accident caused you to break your bones. What does that mean?” Did she want to talk about this with him? She hadn’t spoken to anyone but Mrs. B. And really, was this the time? She looked around at the soft golden candle lit studio…er, hall, with the aroma of polished wood soothing her nerves. This was a place to dance, to be free, and she was sitting here with a man who felt every instant of music and became one with it. There was no better place to open up than here. Before she could stop herself, she opened up to him.
First, she captivated him with descriptions of cars and how they operate, then she told him about her family’s celebration and the car crashing. Twice, when he asked her what it was like to crash, her explanation drained his face of color.
“My mother walked away unscathed. She insisted on sitting in the rear seats with me so my brother could sit near my dad in the passenger seat. She blamed herself for Connall losing his legs instead of it happening to her.”
“Your brother lost his legs?” he asked, horrified with her.
She nodded and wiped her eyes but kept going. “He was so active. He was always camping or hiking or practicing self-defense. He was a black belt—”
He put his arm around her while she wept silently.
“My dad never woke up, but he was alive. Maybe he heard them saying that the accident was all his fault, that he destroyed his children’s lives. But my mother never blamed him. I don’t know about Conn. He stopped speaking to anyone.”
After a while, when the marquess spoke again, it was to tell her that he understood now why she wanted to get back home so urgently.
“You do understand?” she asked, unable to stop her smile from forming.
“Of course.”
And here she had thought he tried to shirk his responsibilities. She was wrong about him.
“But dancing helps.”
She slipped him a repentant side-glance. “Do you want to dance right now?”
He didn’t laugh, but a sound came out of him, and he stared at her with shining eyes. “No, I don’t want to. I was hoping you would.”