“Which is a shame, Captain,” the boy continued over Lucas’ silent tumult. “Because I rather liked Mrs. Nelson. Kind lady. Brave. And—”

“Where is he?” he seethed.

Wide-eyed, Owen tiptoed, once more, carefully away. “The breakfast room with Her Ladyship and Mr.—” the boy gasped and stumbled out of the way as Lucas sprinted across the room.

Shoving past the boy, Lucas stormed into the halls, bellowing. By God, was his father a damned lackwit that he’d sack the bravest, most bloody honorable woman to set foot in this miserable household? He concentrated on his fury. It was safer than this cold seeping into his heart. She is gone and I am alone. And with her, has gone the sole happiness I’ve known. Fueled by that desperation, Lucas stormed through the halls. By Owen’s admission, the Earl of Lavery had gleaned Eve’s connection to a traitor and turned her away. And I was a coward, hiding in my chambers while she was sent away. A low, animalistic groan lodged painfully in his throat and he turned the corner. He skidded to a stop at the entrance of the breakfast room.

His parents and younger brother, Aidan, glanced up, the three pairs of eyes equal mirrors of shock.

“What have you done?” Lucas growled, not taking his gaze from his father.

“You are out of your chambers,” his mother whispered, pressing her hands to her heart.

Ignoring that useless observation, Lucas stalked forward.

His father shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand—”

“Do not pretend you don’t know precisely what I’m speaking of,” Lucas raged. He slammed his fist into his open palm. “You sent away Mrs. Nelson.”

That accusation was met with resounding silence. His parents exchanged a look. “I did not send the lady away,” his father began slowly. The earl cast a look at the two footmen against the wall and the men immediately took that silent cue and left, closing the door behind them. “The lady left of her own volition,” he continued when the Raynes were, at last, alone.

Lucas’ heart splintered. “Impossible.” He curled his hand over the back of a vacant dining chair. The woman he’d held in his arms, who’d helped free him of his past, and who’d let him inside her own world would not leave him with nary a word. Not unless she’d been so forced.

“Quite possible,” Aidan said tightly, calling Lucas’ attention to his glowering brother. “The lady was found out and knew there was no course but to leave.”

“Found out?” he repeated, hating that in this suddenly uncertain world, he’d become a hollow echo of other peoples’ confounded words.

“You could not have known,” his mother said softly.

Known what? He wanted to toss his head back and rail in frustration.

“That she is an Ormond,” his father supplied.

Lucas stood flummoxed, the steady ground pulled out from under his feet. Eve Nelson, daughter to the traitor at Talavera was, in fact, an Ormond. A long-time enemy of the Raynes, the lady would never have been granted employment or so much as scraps from the kitchens if her identity had been known. That useless feud was fueled by hatred and the quest for power and property. And for that, Eve had gone away. His parents could not know the proud, strong woman she was. The woman who’d saved him, even more than his brother-in-law’s rescue from that French prison.

“You sent her away,” Lucas whispered, alternating an accusing gaze between his parents.

“We did not, Lucas,” his mother said, wringing her hands together. “She should not have been here, as an Ormond,” At his leveling stare, the countess looked frantically to her husband. “Tell him, Winston. The young woman was already gone when we’d arrived early this morn,” she added, not allowing her husband to reply. “Why are you concerned with a maid?” she blurted. “When you’ve run off—”

“Because she is more than a maid,” he cried out. His voice echoed around the room. “She is...” He swallowed hard. Regardless of the feud between their kin, Eve Ormond was… the woman I love. The woman he could not live without. And more, he wanted to be the person she needed in her life, as well. He could not give his family those words that belonged to her.

His mother gasped and touched her fingertips to her lips.

“What is it?” the earl asked gruffly.

“You care for her,” she said, in stunned tones, staring at Lucas.

Nay, he more than cared for her. He loved her. Lucas gave a slow nod that was met with further gasps from his parents.

Aidan shoved back his chair so quickly the wood scraped the floor. “She is a bloody Ormond,” he bit out.

“She is more than her name,” Lucas said calmly. On the heel of that was the niggling certainty. “You sent her away,” he said. The words left him on a swift exhale.

As though attending a tennis match, their parents swiveled their attention back and forth between Lucas and Aidan.

Aidan’s cheeks flushed red in a damning testament of his guilt. “She is an Ormond who entered this home with designs upon the gladius,” Aidan said, pulling Lucas back from a sea of muddled confusion.

Designs upon the gladius? By God, he would kill his brother. Lucas clenched and unclenched his hands into tight fists to keep from bloodying his nose. Aidan had long been the hothead, who’d railed at their family’s failings through the years and who’d credited curses and feuds with their dire financial straits and miseries. “She did not come here for the goddamn sword,” Lucas gritted out through clenched teeth. “If she’d wanted the bloody thing, she would have made off with it weeks ago.” With a curse, he swiped a hand through his hair and glanced frantically about. I have to find her. “How did she come to be employed here?” he demanded of his father.

The earl looked helplessly to his wife, who gave him a slight nod in return.

“You cannot mean to find her,” Aidan shouted, slamming a fist on the table. “First, Theo would place the Renshaw family above her own and now you, Lucas,” he hissed.

Lucas leveled him with a single glance that had his younger brother averting his gaze. “I intend to do more than find her.” He turned to his parents. “I intend to marry her. Now tell me how I can find Eve Ormond.” And with that steely demand, he felt a return to the man he used to be.

Chapter 10

Eve sat on the same hard, wobbly chair in the same employment office she had on too many occasions. Six, if one wished to be precise. Which she didn’t. Not in this moment.

After journeying through the early morn into the afternoon hours, her back ached. Once more, she proved the already well-known truth: that a lady on her own, of a scandalous family, had few options. There were no opportunities to sit in misery and think of what might have been and what would never be.

She bit down hard on her lower lip as Lucas slipped into her thoughts, like he had since the moment she’d stepped inside his chambers those few weeks ago. And in that short time of being with him, the nightmares that haunted her had faded and the nervous song that kept her sane, had slipped off, forgotten, unneeded—because of him.

You foolish, foolish woman. There could be no good in thinking of him. Nor any point to it. Their meeting was as doomed as those star-crossed lovers penned by the great Bard. Nor had Lucas ever spoken of any feelings where she was concerned—and certainly not love. Just because they’d shared pieces of their pasts and known each other’s embrace, that did not make for anything more.

Oh, God. Where is Mr. Townsend? She’d been shown into his small, cluttered office nearly twenty minutes earlier and had sat with the misery of her own thoughts. When her worries should really be on her precarious state. Turned out for a sixth time with no references forthcoming, Mr. Townsend had proven munificent to a war widow too many times before. He’d be less forgiving now.

Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall and her mind raced. Eve hurried to her feet and she damned Lucas Rayne for having so gripped her every thought that she’d not considered the whole of the carriage ride and her journey to Mr. Townsend’s employment office just what she’d say to account for her appearance this day. She squared her shoulders as he pushed the door open. She’d not begged before and she’d not beg now. She would however—

Her frantic musings came to a screeching halt as a tall figure filled the doorway. Lean. Clean-shaven and his midnight black hair drawn back in a neat queue, Lucas stood there, staring back at her. He was here. Now? Surely she’d merely conjured him of her own yearnings.

Eve shook her head as he stepped slowly forward. She sought to make sense of his being here. “Lucas,” she managed on a hoarse whisper. He’d left his chambers in the light of day. Questions at his presence here receded under the weight of love and pride for him.

“Miss Ormond,” he greeted, pushing the door closed.

She wet her lips. “You should not do that.” As it was, the old, respectable owner would question Lucas’ presence and this meeting. “Mr. Townsend—”

“Can go to the devil,” he neatly put in and he came forward with a slow, languid elegance.

Eve gripped the sides of her dress. Then, his words registered; that same name tossed at her by his brother. Miss Ormond. “You know,” she said faintly.

“Know what?” he asked, winging up a dark, sinful eyebrow. “That you are an Ormond?”

She hugged her arms close, braced for that vitriol his brother had shown.

“Do you truly believe I care who your father or grandfather or uncle or great uncle or any old ancestor are?” he demanded as he came to a stop before her.

“It matters to your family,” she managed, her voice breaking.

“You matter to me,” he countered. A love so strong for this man before her filled her throat with emotion. Lucas captured her hands in his and, one at a time, raised them to his mouth. He placed a lingering kiss upon her gloveless fingers that sent heat racing from the point of contact. “And if I matter at all to my family, then they will accept you because they know that I love you.”

A strangled sob escaped her. With that admission, he offered her everything she’d never believed to know—the love of an honorable man. A man who saw her strength and worth and who saw her value, apart from her late kin. Yet, his brother’s palpable hatred for her on her name alone, as well as his parents, would forever be a barrier between them. “I love you,” she whispered and joy gleamed to life in his once hardened eyes. “But if you do this,” she went on, not knowing where she found those words to continue, “your family would never forgive you—”

“Then they can go hang,” he interrupted with the same curt anger he’d shown at their first meeting.  Her heart wrenched.

Eve pressed her shaking fingertips against his lips. “But someday, you would come to regret joining yourself to a woman so hated by them.”

He roved a gaze over her face and that slight movement was like a caress upon her skin. “Do you know what I will regret more, Eve? I will regret each and every day of my miserable existence that you are not in it. I will spend the whole of my life thinking how close I’d been to having the only person I ever truly needed, a woman who has more strength than I ever could and more honor than the whole of the King’s Army and—”

Another little sob filtered past her lips and she buried it in her fingers. “Please, Lucas,” she entreated.

His face spasmed and he took a step back, retreating. “I see.”

She creased her brow. What did he see?

“This is about me,” he said flatly, his gaze moving to a point beyond her shoulder. “I’ve been a recluse since my return, living as an angry, snarling shadow inside my parents’ cold manor. What use could you have for a man such as that?”

How could he see himself in that light? Eve moved in a whir of skirts and captured his face between her hands. “You are so much more than that, Lucas. You are a man of strength who survived when most others would have been destroyed. You see a woman and not a servant. And I love you.” And he is all I want. She needed him. Wanted him in her life forever.

Tears filled her eyes and a single drop streaked a path down her cheek. Lucas captured it with the pad of his thumb. “Then marry me,” he pressed, relentless.

Eve closed her eyes. He offered her everything and in taking that gift he held out, she’d be the selfish creature his brother accused her of being. A woman who lived for her heart and her desires. She’d lived these past years believing she was unworthy of love and happiness. Instead, she’d taken on the guilt of her father’s crimes and the sins of her ancestors before. Only to be set free, by Lucas. He’d shown her that she was more than her name and she wanted a life with him—as his wife. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of her. It was what she believed of herself that mattered. Lucas had shown her that. She opened her eyes and found his gaze trained on her face. “Yes,” she said with a tremulous smile.