The Knight (Endgame #2)(45)
But Geoffrey acted strange the rest of the night. He kept asking me about my dance with Jonathan, even though we had maintained appearances. It’s almost as if he knows the truth.
He did, because he had followed my mother the night before their wedding.
Now I’m wondering if the eyes I feel inside the house have a name. Geoffrey St. James.
“Ah, you found it.”
The voice startles me, and I jump from the chair. The diary falls to the rug amid the scattered chess pieces. This is the way he found me weeks ago, at the beginning of our month. Now we’re here at the end. I know him better, but there are even more questions.
Gabriel isn’t wearing a shirt, just low-slung slacks that reveal muscled abs and a trail of dark hair. He looks unrepentant about hiding the diary, about having startled me, but then he always did like to play.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gabriel crosses the room to the fireplace, kneeling to reveal the bunched muscles of his back. He settles a stack of logs from the metal basket beside the fireplace and strikes a match. The roar fills the vacuum of quiet with crackles and pops of a new fire. When he faces me, the light flickers against his broad shoulders, his muscled arms, leaving his expression an enigma.
I pick up the diary with two fingers, as if it’s poison. And God, it is. How long has it been poisoning that house? How long has it been making me sick without even knowing it? And Gabriel doesn’t seem the least bit surprised.
“How did you know my mother was afraid?”
He settles into the other armchair, long legs stretched out. He’s the king of his domain—and a checkmate against him seems nearly impossible. How had I ever thought I could make him helpless? Abandoned? “Because she told someone,” he says.
“Who?”
“The father of my good friend Damon Scott.” His tone is sardonic. “You may remember him.”
I swallow my shock. “Hard to forget the man who auctioned my virginity.”
“His father, Jonathan Scott. That’s who she was going to see the night she was murdered.”
The night she was murdered…when she was still married to my father. When she wore rubies and a beautiful dress. Stay home, sweetheart. Stay small. That’s when you’re safe.
Stay safe.
“She didn’t have an affair,” I say, not quite believing it.
“I didn’t say that. Only that she didn’t feel safe. She told her old lover. He promised to protect her, and on the night she planned to leave Geoffrey St. James, she died.”
Cold doubt slices through me. “You think it was my father. That he killed her.”
“It’s more important what you think.”
“You’re just saying that so I’ll abandon him. The ultimate victory, that’s what you called it.” And if I turn away from my father, he will have truly lost. “He couldn’t have been the one lurking outside the house at night. He wasn’t the one who vandalized my house.”
“If you say so,” Gabriel says, sounding unconcerned.
“He wouldn’t have hurt her. He loved her.” Except I remember the way he’d talked about her flaws, with the horrible acceptance. As if he could have blamed her.
“You say that as if it’s a good thing. Love. In my experience it makes everything worse. It makes people do horrible things, things they’d never commit otherwise.”
He isn’t talking about my parents anymore.
He’s talking about himself. “What are you so afraid of?”
“Afraid? No. I think fear is a more rational feeling. Like hunger. Desire. Natural expressions of the human condition.”
“So is love.”
“No, love is a game. Like chess. One you’re going to lose.”
I don’t have anything left—not if I doubt my own father, my only family. Not if I’m afraid of the walls around me. “Like my mother lost?”
“Did she?”
“You know what happened to her.”
“I really don’t.”
The answer has been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for a long time—before I found the diary. Before Gabriel ruined my father. Maybe from the beginning, when I huddled under my covers as a child.
“Someone killed her. It wasn’t a drunk driving accident. That’s what Daddy didn’t want me to find. That’s what you didn’t want me to find either. Everyone’s trying to keep me in the dark. Why? Why can’t I know that she was murdered? Who are you protecting?”
“The only person I’m trying to protect is you.”
The words ring with truth, but I don’t know if I can believe him. This might be part of his plan. To make me turn away from my father. To break the final bond of the St. James family.
“It hurts me more to keep secrets. That’s the legacy of my family more than anything. Lies. Half-truths. Smiles that hide more than they share. I’m sick of it. Tell me, Gabriel. If you care about me at all, tell me.”
He looks away. “If I tell you, you’ll have no reason to stay.”
“Then love me enough to let me leave.”
A rough laugh. “And you still think love isn’t a game.”
He stands, the glint in his eye threatening to prove his point. And God help me, but I want him to try. If this is all he can offer me, then I want him to play.