The Suffragette Scandal (Brothers Sinister #4)(61)
His lip quirked in disgust. “Just enough to prove I wasn’t the resilient white knight I believed myself to be. I was a liar and a fraud and a cheat, just like everyone else. I needed to learn that lesson.” He took a deep breath, and then he looked up at her. His eyes met hers. They sparkled with that look she knew so well, that black humor that she’d come to care for. “I didn’t much mind until now.”
Her heart thudded in her chest.
“I don’t think I can stop being a liar and a fraud,” he said. “But, for the first time in a very long while, I’m beginning to believe in something.” His voice dropped. “In someone. I’m sorry, Miss Marshall, but I can’t let myself do that.”
She could scarcely breathe. She didn’t know what to say. She only knew she couldn’t look away from him, couldn’t have told him to leave no matter what he revealed at the moment.
“There.” He brushed his hands together. “That’s said. It’s a pack of lies.” He shrugged. “It’s as honest as I know how to be at this point. That’s why I’m leaving, Free.” He looked over at her. “I brought you something.”
He reached into his jacket pocket. His hand closed on something—something large enough that he had to turn his wrist to get it from his pocket. She caught a flash of gray metal.
“Here.” He reached out and set the piece on her desk. “It’s a paperweight. You have papers; I thought you might put this to use.”
Free leaned forward and picked up the piece he’d placed before her. It was heavy and yet intricate. The paperweights she had seen before were fussy blown-glass balls encasing pleasant flowers. This bore no relation to those things. It was a single strip of iron, worked into a curlicued ball. The metal doubled and tripled back on itself. It was warm from resting in his pocket; the edges were rough against her skin. And yet it seemed surprisingly delicate.
“What is it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing but a big wad of metal.”
“This is beautiful,” Free said slowly. “Beautiful and somehow, sad. And harsh. All at the same time. I’ve never seen its like. Where did you find it?”
He shrugged indifferently. “Just outside Strasbourg. Some six years ago.”
“Did you commission it yourself or did the artist have a regular stock of these paperweights?”
Edward snorted. “I commissioned it,” he told her. “It’s just a trifle.”
She didn’t think it was a trifle. She turned the piece around, catching hints of half patterns hidden in every twist of metal. “Was this to commemorate some occasion? The artist that made this was an incredible genius. The loops look random at first, but they’re not. When I look at it from this angle, I almost see…a rose? There are thorns on that part, I think, and these loops from this angle form petals.” She gave it a quarter turn. “But this looks like a hawk. I could stare at this for hours.” She looked up at him and suddenly frowned. “Edward, are you well?”
“Perfectly so.” The smile he gave her was just like every smile he’d ever delivered—easy, untinged by emotion and, Free realized, utterly false. His left hand gripped the arm of his chair so tightly that his glove bunched. His other arm was ramrod straight, braced against his leg as if it were the only thing that held him upright.
He was lying to her. Of course he was; he hadn’t given her this piece because it was an inconsequential paperweight that he’d commissioned on a whim. It was because it meant something to him.
“Don’t be such a man.” Free stood, rolling her eyes. “You’ve gone pale. Here. Let me get you a glass of water.”
“I am not pale,” he said brusquely. “I don’t need a glass of water.”
She came around the desk and she set her hand on his wrist. “Your pulse is racing.”
“It is not,” he said in contradiction of reality. He had begun to breathe fast, and his skin was turning paper white.
Free rolled her eyes again. “Stop being ridiculous. Now are you going to stay here while I fetch you something to drink?”
“Hmph.”
“That wasn’t definitive agreement, Mr. Clark. Let’s try this again: If you get up now, I’m kicking you in the shins. Your shins won’t like it, and my toes will like it less.” She gave him a tight smile and ducked away.
But as she found the pitcher of water, she considered. He’d said he needed to tell her a great deal the other night, but that he wouldn’t. She’d thought he didn’t wish to. She of all people should have realized that the memories he held were so painful that he couldn’t. After everything he’d told her, she should have understood that much.
He was still in her office when she returned. Instead of seating herself in the chair on the opposite side of her desk, she leaned against the edge of the table, a few feet from him. “Better, Edward?”
He took a sip of water. “I thought you wouldn’t do this caretaking stuff. You know, too feminine. Too motherly.”
She simply smiled. “I believe that women are human beings. That belief is not diametrically opposed to thinking that men are human beings, and that if one human being has the opportunity to be kind to another, she should do so.” She looked at him. “And I knew you would say that. That you’d say something to provoke me to avoid talking about yourself. You’re always deflecting my questions.”