He said nothing. Perhaps the cliché had horrified him mute.
“My family was ecstatic,” she added.
“He’s rich. Havelstock,” Lorcan said finally. In a rather neutral tone.
It wasn’t a question. It was a conclusion he’d drawn.
She nodded. “And so... well, Henry... had a much younger brother. And a short time after we were engaged, about three months, they hired a new governess for him. I remember him mentioning her in passing one day.”
Lorcan took this in with a fixed gaze and single, cynical uplifted brow.
“There came the day, a month or so after he’d mentioned this... he took me for a walk. The walk we’d often taken in the woods near our home, for there’s a little path that meanders down to a sort of pond—oh, this doesn’t matter. And that’s where he told me he was in love with her. He was perfectly gracious, he was absolutely himself in every way—he’d always been kind and direct—when he told me about her, which actually made it more horrible. I kept thinking it must be a terrible dream. He said he was tormented and ashamed. He wept. He was wretched. I have never been so confused, you see, because my impulse when someone I love is in torment is to do anything at all to make it better for them. Andthe only thing I could do to make it better for him was to be... to be somebody else.”
She was trembling now as if she’d just, at long last, regurgitated poison.
Lorcan silently reached for the coverlet folded on the settee and wrapped it gently about her shoulders, cocooning her as she’d wrapped him after he’d rescued the child.
The coverlet smelled like him. She could not say why this was so soothing, when the man before her was a walking disturbance.
“He told me he hadn’t slept a night through in months. But he said because he knew me so well, and esteemed me so greatly, that he decided hemusttell me. Because he knew I would not want to marry a man who could not...” She paused. She gulped in a breath. “...love me as I deserved to be loved.”
She glanced over to see that Lorcan had gone white about the mouth.
“The worst part was—Henry was also absolutely glowing. Despite the weeping. He could not keep his face from glowing when he said her name. Because he was so very in love. And I could full well imagine how miserable he was to hurt me, because we were such dear friends, and we always told each other our happy news and he could not tell me about her and... Lorcan... are you quite all right?”
His face was fully pale now, and his skin was stretched taut over his features, and his eyes were flat and hard.
He looked... murderous.
It was the expression, Daphne thought, her attacker must have seen when he’d dangled from Lorcan’s fist.
“Go on,” was all he said. In a tone so pleasant it ironically made her uneasy.
“Some people in town were kind, but the pity...” She shivered. “I could not abide the pity. I had a few very close friends, but they were engaged, and it was as though they didn’t want my disaster to taint their happiness.”
“A pox upon the pitiers of the world.”
She smiled faintly at his inimitable brand of solidarity. How bolstering his unequivocal approach to the world.
“And the shame of it. It was such delicious gossip, you see, when he went off and married her. Of course, everyone outwardly agreed it was a scandal, but so many saw him as such a romantic figure. Defying his father’s wishes for true love, and so forth. I went from being admired and emulated to ‘poor Daphne’ overnight. No one knew what to say to me, even people I thought were my friends.”
His mouth was a thin line now.
“Lorcan... In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined anything so horrifying as that moment he told me. I could not reconcile this person I loved with this person who was inflicting such terrible hurt. It made me question everything I thought I knew about life.”
He said nothing for a long moment.
But this was clearly because he was exercising considerable restraint.
Finally he abandoned it. “Daphne, your beloved was a selfish bastard.”
She reeled as if he’d struck her. “How dare—”
He was calmly unmoved by her rage.
“You can tell me to go to the devil if you choose. But I do not know how to say this any other way. A real man would not have asked you to choose. He wanted you to take responsibility for his misery, or for your own. Mostly I suspect what he really wanted was absolution for doing something dishonorable from someone he expected would give it to him. Because you loved him. He’s an absolute despicable knave. Thegoverness. What a weak bloody fool. How bloodydarehe.”
Daphne went rigid. Her mouth dropped in shock.