Page 154 of Immortal Rose

I frowned. “As I’ve told you a dozen times, Oliver is my friend. I’m grateful for his kindness.”

“Does he know you see him that way?” Hugh challenged, taking up his next toothpick.

“He does, yes,” I said. Well, he did now.

“What Radcliffe feels for you is not mere kindness,” he continued. “Whether or not you encouraged those affections, you have him by the leash all the same.”

“And what does it matter to you?”

“It matters,” Hugh said, continuing his work, “because you deserve more than a weak man playing at love.”

My hands curled at my side. “Oliver is not a weak man. He was ill for most of his life—”

“You know damn well that is not what I meant,” Hugh said derisively. “He’s weak of spirit. What else would you call allowing the woman he supposedly loves to vanish from Fairgate and only making a few discreet inquiries about it?”

“He asked his father to help me and for an advance on his inheritance to pay for a solicitor,” I shot back. “He offered to marry me in order to have me released from Fairgate into his custody.”

Hugh looked up sharply, his gaze narrowing. “Is that so? How fortunate I made you the better offer.”

I turned away, glaring into the fire.

“He undertook those things at very little risk to himself,” Hugh continued, “likely knowing those efforts would fail. Even now, he risks little on your behalf. He’s made no attempt to defend your honor in the press or among the Patricians.”

I recoiled at his words. “You don’t know that.”

His face was grim. “I do. He has not written to any paper or scandal sheet in support of you. He has not met with anyone in Parliament who might be swayed.”

I shook my head. “His family—”

“Should not factor into this at all,” Hugh finished hotly. “He will never strike out on his own or make his own way in the world. He doesn’t have the will for it.”

“What was he meant to do?” I demanded. “What would you have had him do?”

Hugh’s gaze was so hot, it scalded. “I cannot tell you that. I only know what I would have done,” Hugh said in a low voice. “Because if you were to disappear, I would blaze through this godforsaken world and every soul who stood between us until I found you again.”

I stared at him, shocked to my core. Heat flooded through me, as if he’d called that very fire to my blood.

Tearing his pale gaze away, Hugh sighed, dragging a hand over his face.

Why? I wanted to ask, almost trembling with the force of the question. Why did he say such things and then pull away? What was the point? To prove the power he had over me by leaving me wanting?

Because that was what this was—wanting.

It was the contrasts of him, both irresistible and fascinating, I decided. The reason for this fixation. His beautiful life here, even as he worked in the shadows. The shocking paleness of his eyes against all that midnight-dark hair. That the same hand he’d used to viciously beat a man had also fed a small dog as he’d serenaded her with a song.

Want, need—they were fleeting things that would burn themselves out quickly enough. They were nothing at all like the sort of slow-building love of stories, where the gentle heroines gathered each precious moment with their intendeds like the loveliest of bouquets. That was the sort of love that existed in a sunlit garden, innocent and exhilarating.

There was nothing innocent about the way I felt now.

This was something . . . all-consuming. Overwhelming. Senseless. A fever in which the only cure was ruin, in every sense of the word.

The inevitability I’d felt at Briarwood Palace had returned, and it frightened me—the sense that all along, something greater was working to drive us together, even as we tried to strain apart.

This was no sunlit garden. This was two souls meeting again and again in the shadows of night and recognizing the other through darkness and disguise.

I had already taken a step toward the desk when he said quietly, “I find I require a small hand to place this next piece.”

I scarcely recognized my own husky voice as I answered, “I find I have a small hand.”