Unraveled (Turner #3)(46)

“My God,” she said into that silence. “You are direct.”

“I did not want there to be any chance of your misunderstanding me. And after last night, I very much feared you had.”

She contemplated his silhouette. “No,” she said. “I do not think I misunderstood what happened last night. I offered you a little affection, and you stormed off into the night. You can’t come back and ply me with hot milk and compliments and expect me to understand. Your explanation does not make sense.”

“Indeed,” he said. “There is one other thing. It is a little thing that perhaps I should have mentioned before now.” He sat back and folded his arms.

She waited. She waited a very long time, before she realized he was not cold, but uneasy.

“Don’t touch my face,” he said.

She waited even longer. She could hear his watch ticking steadily away, until finally he spoke again.

“You recall my mother locked me in the cellar,” he said. “And it flooded. When the waters were at their worst, she came back. I was huddled on the ladder. The waters had stolen all the warmth from me, and my eyes had seen nothing but darkness for days. I was almost blinded when she opened the cellar door.”

Miranda set her mug on the bedside table.

“She reached for me. I thought she’d come to her senses. She said, ‘Oh, my poor, beautiful boy.’ And she smoothed my hair back.”

His breathing had become harsher.

“I had almost no strength in my grip, but I took her arm. She leaned down and stroked my face with her other hand. I wasn’t holding on to anything except her; I was scarcely keeping myself upright on the ladder. And then…” He took a deep breath. “And then,” he said, his voice getting harder, “she pushed me into the water. It came up over my head, and for a second I didn’t think I’d have the strength to kick my way to the surface. When I did, she was gone.

“She hadn’t come to save me. She’d come to say farewell. Since then, I can’t bear to have my face touched. Everything else, I can manage. When you touched my face, it brought me back to that moment. Vividly. Never mind that it was decades in the past.”

Oh, she was dreaming this. This kind of thing didn’t happen to brothers of dukes.

“Don’t.” He set his hand over hers. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Just accept my apology. And…don’t touch my face.”

It was awful. She wanted to touch his face now, to hold him against her and let him know that he was safe. What a horrible mess.

Instead, she simply let out her breath. “You should have told me that before we started. It would have saved us both a bit of grief.”

“So noted.” Another pause. “Although I believe that if I had simply forbidden it, like Bluebeard, you’d have given it a try. Besides, you fed me that line about not giving me affection. I thought I was quite safe.”

Safe, because he’d thought nobody cared for him? She felt a lump in her throat. She didn’t think he would appreciate the observation, though.

She let out a breath. “Is there anything else I ought to know?”

He sighed. “I’m sure there is. I’ve been by myself for so long, I forget these little things until they crop up. I’ve been told I’m not the easiest individual to care for.”

“And who told you that? A former mistress?”

“My brother. Mark.” He twined his hand with hers. “There is no former mistress, Miranda Darling. There have been affairs, mind, but they never lasted long. Usually, she decides I’m stoic and cold only because I have been unlucky in love. She thinks she’ll be the one to melt through my defenses. She thinks that she can fix everything that is wrong with me by simply weeping over me. It lasts until she realizes I won’t spend the night, she can’t touch my face, and I despise women who weep for no reason. I have no tolerance for maudlin affection, and less for women who want to fix me.”

“Fix you?” Miranda said. “Why would anyone need to fix you? You’re not broken.”

“That’s precisely what I’ve always said.” He slid down to lie next to her. “Oddly, few people ever believe me.”

“I know what broken is,” Miranda said. “My father was broken, after my mother died. He just stopped working. He wouldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t even get out of bed. He just lay there and cried.”

“Good heavens. How long did it last?”

“Three years.”

“Three…three years.” He shifted to face her. “Three years.”

“I told you I know what broken is. That is broken—staring at the wall and weeping, while creditors hammer on the door and your troupe slowly slips away, stealing the best costumes in lieu of wages. When your friends leave you and you still cannot move, and nothing your daughter says can break you out of the spell. No man is broken because bad things happen to him. He’s broken because he doesn’t keep going after those things happen. When you told me about your mother, and how it made you resolve to be the person you are… What I thought was, ‘Yes, please, I’ll take him.’ Because you didn’t break.”

There was a pause. He propped himself up on one elbow and then picked up the watch he’d left on the bedside table.