Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(33)

He knew what it was like to feel powerless, at the mercy of others. And he didn’t like seeing it in anyone else.

It was a sentiment as idiotic as kicking her door down would have been. After all that, he still saw himself as some sort of a hero—a strange and useless one, no doubt. He was no Bow Street Runner, no knight in shining armor. If he’d had chain mail, it would all have rusted at sea. But Ned wasn’t the sort of knight who perished in glorious battle for the sake of a poetic ending.

He had prevailed. He’d beaten back those doubts. He’d found his place and he’d learned to stand on his own two feet, free from that cloying hint of bitter dependence.

It looked as if Lady Harcroft—and by extension, Ned’s own wife—needed a hero. If he could bring Lady Harcroft the kind of peace he’d found, it would prove once and for all that his victory had not been temporary. It would be proof that he’d truly won, that he’d tamed his own response. It would be like a medieval tourney, his very own trial.

She looked at him with quiet eyes. “I should have been different.”

“Hold that thought.” Ned couldn’t touch her, not without risking another flinch. Instead, he knelt before her, making himself seem small and harmless. He looked up in her eyes from his vantage point on the floor. “Hold that thought tightly, with both hands. Can you feel it?”

She clasped her hands together.

“I believe what you just said was that if you had been a different person, your husband might not have hit you.”

She gave a second jerky nod.

“Well, let me show you something I’ve learned. Now, are you still holding on to that thought? Gather it all up in your hands—don’t leave any of it out. Have it? Good. Now stand up.”

She stared at him suspiciously. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“Lady Harcroft, if I wanted to betray you, I wouldn’t need any tricks. I would have come here with twelve men and your husband. I’ll stay here with my knee on the floor for now—you stand up.”

Warily she clambered to her feet; as she did, she started to drop her hands to her waist.

“Careful,” Ned warned teasingly. “You’ll drop the thought, and I specifically told you to hold it with both hands.”

“But there’s nothing there.”

“Nonsense. You can feel that thought in your hands, even if you can’t see it. You’re holding it, all one great weight. It’s bowing your shoulders. And if you run your thumbs over it, you can feel the surface. What does it feel like?”

Lady Harcroft glanced down at her empty hands. “It’s a harsh, spiked thing,” she said softly, “full of bitterness and recrimination.”

“I’m going to stand up now.” Ned did, and then, giving her a wide berth, he walked to the door and threw it open. He took three steps back, so that she could stand in the doorway without coming too close to him. Then he motioned her forward.

She crossed over to him.

“Now this is the hard part. Draw back your arm—yes, like that—and throw the thought as far away as you can.”

“But—”

“Just toss whatever you were thinking right out the door, like the slimy piece of refuse that it is. That sort of thinking has no place in your life. It wasn’t your fault. It’s never your fault if a man hits you.”

She glanced at him in hesitation.

“Go on. Throw it.”

“But I’m not holding on to anything.”

“Then it shouldn’t bother you to discard it.”

Tenuous logic, but then, doubts that wormed into his own heart had little truck with logic. Ned had discovered a thousand ways to cast out that legion on his own.

Louisa drew in a tremulous breath, and then looked out the door. Her gaze sharpened, and she focused on the valley that lay below. Slowly she raised her hands to her waist. Then she mimed a throw—a girl’s throw, halfhearted and tentative, the sort that would have made him toss up his hands in outrage if she had been bowling in cricket—but a throw nonetheless. And then she turned and gave him a faltering smile. It was the first smile he’d seen on her since he’d arrived.

“There. Now don’t you feel better?”

“That,” she said, stepping backward, “should not have worked. It was entirely irrational.”

Ned shut the door behind her. “It helped, didn’t it?”

“You’re a black magician, Mr. Carhart. How did you know? Did Kate send you to cheer me up?”

Ned shrugged. He knew because…he knew. He’d known doubt and uncertainty. He’d grappled with fear. And he’d won, damn it. Eventually.

It shouldn’t have mattered that he needed to employ such cheap tricks to claim his own triumph. It shouldn’t have mattered that in the worst of times he still needed every scrap of dark magic he could conjure, just to maintain his illusions. All that mattered was that he won, every damned time.

“It’s my job to know irrationality,” Ned replied with more airiness than he felt. “As for my wife…” He looked around the cabin and a second truth struck him. Someone had thought of everything. There were provisions. A little washtub stood to the side—no doubt where the infant’s napkins had been cleaned this morning, something Ned would never have thought of in a million years. She’d planned for this as carefully as for a siege. Now that he glanced into the small adjoining room, he could see the shadowed form of a nursemaid, holding a child in her arms.