She knew at once this was so in essence brutally correct that it scorched away not only any temptation to protest, but another sort of an obscuring mist.
Shealwaystook responsibility. There had always been some man willing for her to shoulder a burden rightfully his.
But now she could see the whole affair precisely as Lorcan saw it. And he saw it with absolutely no impartiality.
How novel to take strength from someone else’s outrage on her behalf. How nearly dizzying, as though a window had opened and new air rushed in.
She felt shy, suddenly. Reflexively she turned her head to breathe the scent of Lorcan clinging to the coverlet.
She stopped herself.
“Did your father and brothers offer to castrate him?”
Lorcan’s tone suggested he already knew the answer.
And for the first time in her life, Daphne knew what the answer ought to have been.
It was a moment before she could answer.
“They were embarrassed. I was embarrassed to have humiliated them so. My father was... he seemed... angry. And distraught.”
Angry and distraught withher,she understood now. The rejection and abandonment of her, the daughter of an earl, for a governess had reflected badly on him.
Her father had, in fact, fussed and railed as though he’d been thwarted. He’d been in a panic. Of course he’d been in a panic.
He’d been counting on Henry to pay his debts.
She was still subdued. Reeling from her epiphany.
“Oh, I am certain he was,” Lorcan said ironically.
Loyalty was the very bedrock of her being. Lorcan’s irony landed painfully. She smacked down a reflex to defend her father. But that new, invigorating anger was now quietly bubbling beneath the sludgy strata of memory.
Lorcan was wearing his gambler’s face.
Carefully still, giving nothing away. He was watching and waiting for her to make conclusions.
She sat for a moment, turning over in her mind and heart fresh, sharp, stunning realizations.
Lorcan finally said carefully, “Do you still love him? Havelstock.”
The world felt strange in his mouth. “Love.” Farcical, even.
He felt he hadn’t a right to it. All his life it had been more of a theory. Like plump pillows, knitted blue coverlets, endless comfort and plentiful food... it had seemed a luxury. Or a frivolous plaything for those who had no worries of survival. Or a drug to take when life was grim. That the price he’d paid for peace of mind, for success, for climbing his way out of St. Giles to the top of a secret little empire was dodging it neatly. Satisfying mutual appetites, never making any promises. Avoiding entanglements. Moving quickly on. Thus were his relationships with women.
But now, watching Daphne, he wondered if it was the one failure of courage in his life.
He thought about what she’d said the night he’d first kissed her: “Is it muscle... or is it scar?”
He began to wonder which one she’d hoped it was.
Muscle implied you could dive back into the fray, stronger than ever, to try again.
Scar suggested nothing, particularly something like love, could get through anymore.
He found he was tensed waiting for the answer.
Daphne was watching him. “No. I don’t know. Surely not? I haven’t seen him in years. AndIam a different person now than I was then. It was just a shock to hear his name in the sitting room and I suppose it’s like... I suppose it’s similar to the way your bones ache when the weather changes.They remind you of how they came to feel that way.”