Page 31 of The Duke and the Darkness

“I came upon your parents’ carriage after it had been attacked,” he confided gently. He knew she wouldn’t trust him with her secrets until he revealed some of his. “Your parents were already dead, but you…you were still alive, lying unconscious at the edge of the street where you’d crawled to get away. The other attackers ran when they saw me, but the man who went after you had his back to me. He was on the ground on top of you, one hand yanking up your skirt and the other fumbling with his fall.” Devlin forced himself not to look away from the pain in her eyes. “He was too busy to notice me until I grabbed him by the throat and threw him off you.”

“You killed him?”

God help him, he’d wanted to. “He got away.”

“They all got away,” she corrected in a breathless whisper.

“Yes. But so did you.”

“How?” She squeezed her eyes shut against the memories and shook her head. “I clawed at your neck, there was blood beneath my nails—I was certain it was you!”

“It wasn’t me. It must have been the man who attacked you.”

“But I saw you there! I saw your face…” Her voice trailed off in confusion.

“You woke up for a moment and must have confused me with the man who attacked you.” Only a moment in which she’d stared up at him, terrified, before the darkness overtook her again. “I picked you up and ran with you to the nearest surgeon. I left you with him and went to your home to tell the butler and housekeeper what had happened, to find out if therewas anyone I should notify. That was the last time I saw you. The next morning, word was sent to Dartmoor House that you’d died. I attended your funeral, put flowers on your grave… You were dead.”Christ.His shoulders slumped beneath the weight of it all. “Until four nights ago when you reappeared at Barton’s.”Like a ghost from the fog…“I didn’t recognize you. Hell, how could I have?”

“That was the point,” she said quietly, turning to stare out at the passing city that was dressed in nighttime black, as if mourning. Shadows swirled inside the swaying carriage from the coach lamps and passing gas lights, the darkness alive around them. Fitting, he supposed, since they were both creatures of the night, both living out a hellish nightmare. “Being dead was the only way for me to survive. I had no idea who had murdered my parents or why, or if they thought I was a witness to be silenced. Playing dead was the only way to make certain they wouldn’t try to kill me again.”

“So you buried an empty coffin in Peyton Chandler’s grave and became Elizabeth Wentworth.”

“Yes.” She absently plucked at the curtain that swayed with the rocking motion of the carriage. “It was my mother’s maid who had the idea. Proctor had gone to the surgeon’s that night, along with Wilkins, the footman. They’d said men had come to the house searching for me. So the two of them took me to Richmond where I would be safe. I was so distraught, so terrified, in such grief for my parents—Pretending I’d died was the only way to stay safe. I knew that even then, even in the hours following the attack.” A single tear slipped down her cheek, but she made no move to brush it away. “In the days that followed, I could barely rise from bed, eat or drink anything… I could barely keep breathing.” Her voice lowered until it was little more than a breath itself. “If Proctor and Wilkins hadn’t been there for me, I would have truly died.”

Devlin could barely believe his eyes as he stared at her, but he remembered the shape of her delicate face, her expressive blue eyes and dark chestnut hair, even if the rest of her had changed completely. Gone was the gawky, shy girl he’d met only a few weeks before his mother’s musicale, to whom he’d not paid the slightest bit of attention. In her place had blossomed a woman he couldn’t push from his mind.

“We moved to France as soon as I was able to travel,” she continued. “My father had placed a good deal of his fortune in overseas accounts and businesses there, under the false name of Elizabeth Wentworth, and Wilkins helped me locate the funds. He also helped me hire investigators to learn everything I could about the attack. But there were always missing pieces.”

“Now you’re back to find them.”

She nodded out the window at the night. “The wars ended, and it was safe to travel again. And I already had enough information.”

“Enough for what?”

She pinned him beneath a gaze so fierce it ripped his breath away. “To find the man responsible and punish him.”

Suddenly, the events of the past few days fell into place, and he realized what scheme she’d been playing at with him at Barton’s, at the opera, and even tonight at Vauxhall. Her unspoken accusation burned into him. “It wasn’t me.”

“You were there.” Her eyes blazed in the darkness, full of hatred and fury, and made even more intense by the quiet control of her voice. “Perhaps you weren’t the one who attempted to rape me—”

“I was not.”

“But youwerethere. Why would you have been there if you didn’t have a part in it?”

“Because I went to stop it.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “When I learned the attack had been planned, I rodeafter your carriage as fast as I could, but I arrived too late. Your parents were already dead, and you were on the verge of dying yourself. I did all I could to help.”

“No, you helped plan it,” she forced out through clenched teeth. “That was the only way you could have known that the carriage had gone the wrong way and stopped in that dark street. That was the only way you could have known where—and when—” Her fury choked off her voice.

“I didnotplan it,” he said as forcefully as possible yet remaining calm. “I had missed the end of the musicale—”

“You were bedding the opera singer.”

Devlin paused to keep his composure. “Yes, I was.” He leaned back against the squabs and slowly shook his head. “Do you really think me such a monster that I could make love to a woman the same night I’d hired men to kill you and your family?”

Her silence answered for her. She thought himexactlythat kind of monster.

He shook his head. “If I had planned to kill your family, why would I have gone to such trouble to save you?”

Her lips parted. He knew that look…Doubt. He knew she wanted to believe him, but ten years of hatred, grief, and revenge had driven her to this point. It would take more than a few simple denials to make her believe him.