So he always got up. No matter how desperately he’d wished to slip over into the next world and leave this one behind, that voice would never let him stay down.

“I don’t know why he did it. And he’s dead now, so I never will. Maybe he’d been beating my mother and needed a substitute. Maybe he took some perverse thrill from it. Sometimes I think … he just wanted to make me strong. Stronger than he felt, in his own life. Indestructible.”

“It’s very hard for me not to touch you right now.”

“Don’t,” he snapped in reflex. “I mean … I’d prefer you didn’t.”

“I understand.” She paused. “You have every right to be angry. I’ve been angry with that bastard for nearly two decades now. When word reached us of his death, I wanted to take the next boat to Ireland just to spit on his grave.”

“I’m not angry.” But even as he said it, his speech grew clipped. “Just what is it you want from this conversation? Are you trying to convince me that my father was a sick bastard? Because I already know that, Merry. Or is this little talk supposed to make me feel better? Should it warm my heart to know that you and your father and every last footman and chambermaid were all perfectly aware that I was being beaten within an inch of my life, and yet stood by and did nothing?”

“No,” she said, inching closer. “No, of course not. That’s exactly why you should be angry. Not just angry at him, but at this whole place. We all failed you, Rhys. You don’t owe this village anything.” Her leg grazed his thigh, and he flinched. “You’re holding so much emotion inside. I can feel it coming off you in waves. Just let it out.”

What he let out was a long, steadying breath. “The man is dead,” he said after a time. “If I get angry, I’ll just end up taking it out elsewhere. Hurting someone or something that doesn’t deserve it. And it won’t change a damned thing.” He cleared his throat. “In the end, I’m alive, despite his every attempt to kill me and my every attempt to die. Things happen the way they’re meant to happen.”

She growled. “I am so bloody sick of hearing you talk like that. You were not delivered to this place and time by the hand of destiny, Rhys. You survived, despite everything, by your own strength and wits and courage. I know it, because I’m a survivor too. And it’s so frustrating, to hear you go on about fate and destiny and ‘meant to be,’ when I’ve been holding that village together with hard work and sacrifice for years. I stayed when others left. I kept working when others had given up. For God’s sake, I married a man older than my own father. Don’t tell me it was all for nothing, and that my life would have turned out just the same no matter what. You insult me when you speak that way. You insult yourself. You’ve stayed alive, and not because fate preserved you, but because you’re a strong, courageous, quick-witted, resilient, good-hearted man. And it cuts me deep, every time I hear you deny it.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He rose to stretch and add wood to the fire.

“More brandy?” she asked him, once he was seated again.

He accepted wordlessly.

“I think I’ve come up with the story. For Darryl to tell, about the pool. Do you want to hear it?”

He didn’t, especially. But evidently she took his silence as a yes.

“It’s a bit like the one you told me in Bath. Darryl will have his own way with it, but I think it should go something like this.” She cleared her throat. “Once, back in the ancient times, when the moors were covered with forests and those forests were thick with magic, there was a small village where Buckleigh-in-the-Moor now stands. The village was plagued nightly by a bloodthirsty wolf. As they slept, the wolf would drag away their weak, their elderly, their children, and devour them. The people were helpless to defend themselves. Then one day a champion came. A strong man, and a good man, charged with protecting the villagers from harm. Every night, the champion would wage an epic battle with the wolf, incurring bites and gashes in his struggle to protect the town. In the morning, once the wolf had returned to its den, he would go to a sacred pool to cleanse his wounds and be healed.

“And there was a young girl. A very curious, often lonely girl. She would follow him in secret every morning, watching as he bathed in the pool, washing away the blood and allowing his wounded body to heal. To her, the champion was the most beautiful man she’d ever beheld, and the bravest. She fell in love with him, though he never noticed her. And the more her love grew, the more it pained her each morning to see the marks the wolf had wrought. Each day his wounds were deeper, more damaging, as the wolf grew more savage with hunger.

“One night, she stayed awake in secret and crept out of her cottage to watch the battle between man and beast. The champion fought with great skill and much heart, but this night the wolf’s teeth were keen with desperation. As the girl looked on in horror, the wolf knocked the champion to the ground and stood over his senseless body, preparing to seize him by the throat in his savage, spittle-flecked jaws. The girl drew an arrow and fitted it to her bow. Just as the wolf reared to pounce, she shot a flaming arrow straight through the beast’s heart, killing it instantly.”

She stopped. “Hm. I suppose we’ll need an explanation as to how this girl became such a skilled archer. And why she never killed the wolf on her own before, if so. More brandy?”

“No.”

One last trickle into her own glass emptied the bottle, and she let it roll into the shadows. “At any rate, the girl pulled the wounded champion to the sacred pool, and doused him with cool water until all his wounds were healed. And just as he began to open his eyes, she slipped away to hide, afraid to shame him in his nakedness. The villagers, having found the dead wolf, all came running and rejoicing. ‘All is well,’ they cried. ‘The wolf is vanquished, and the village is saved.’ They cheered and feted the baffled champion, and he bid them farewell. His work there was done. He went on to fight other, even braver battles in defense of other innocents. The girl never saw him again. But she waited there by the pool, quietly hoping he’d one day return, ever faithful to her love.”

Meredith drained her brandy. “She should turn into a rock or a flower or a tree, or something else we can point to now. That’s the way these stories go, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me.”

“Don’t you? I thought I’d made it rather obvious.”

Rhys rubbed his temples. He had a roaring headache from the brandy already, and he was tired of stories and games. “I suppose I’m not as clever as you give me credit for. Stop speaking in riddles, would you?”

“I followed you, Rhys. When I was a girl, I followed you everywhere, whenever I could slip away. And not only to the pool. Whenever you came to the stables, I would hide and watch you. If you took out your horse, I would follow on foot for as long as I could. When I couldn’t keep up, I’d return to the stables and wait until you came home from your ride, just to catch one more glimpse of you as you handed the reins to a groom.” She laughed a little. “God, the hours I spent in that hayloft, peering down. I perpetually had straw caught in my hair.”

“And so …?”

“And so I was there that night. The night of the fire. I was waiting for you to come home. I watched you fight him. You didn’t overturn that lantern, Rhys. I threw it. Threw it at him, but I missed the bastard. He’d thrown down the whip and reached for the hayfork, and—” Her voice broke. “I will never forget the look on that man’s face … It was pure evil. He would have killed you.”

Rhys choked back a wave of bile. “You should have let him.”

“How can you say that?”

“Better me than …” Damn it, he should have died that night. Somehow he knew in his soul he was supposed to have died that night. And because of her, he’d spent fourteen years stumbling through the world half-alive, looking in vain for an entrance to hell. All for nothing. Nothing.

Irrational rage welled within him. He clenched his hand into a fist. “For God’s sake, Meredith. You are a stable master’s daughter. You threw a burning lamp in a horse barn? You should have known better.”

She buried her face in her hands. “I did know, I do know. But I wasn’t even thinking. I just needed to stop him, and it was the closest object to hand.”

“All those horses … Jesus. They died horrible deaths. Did you hear them screaming? Did you?”

“No.” Her voice grew very small.

“Lucky for you. I still hear them.” Even now. Even now, in this dark, dank hell, he could hear those screams echoing through his skull. He put his hands to his ears, but it didn’t help, because the memories resided between them.

“I ran to raise the alarm,” she said. “And then my father forced me to go home.”

“Your father …”

“My father was maimed. I know it. I know it well. I’m the one who has bandaged and bathed and dressed and tended him all the days since. And it may be horrible of me to say, but I would do it again. That man would have killed you. No matter what the consequences, I can’t be sorry for having stopped him.”

He bent his head to his knees, feeling ill.

“Don’t you want to know why?” She put a hand to his shoulder.

He shrugged off her touch. “No. No, I don’t want to hear any more. My head is killing me. Just leave me be.”

He had an awful, sinking suspicion he knew what she would say next. And he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want that precious gift mixed up with all this anger and pain.

“Because I loved you.”

Damn, there it was.

Her voice shook. “I have loved you for as long as I can remember, ever since I was a girl. I loved you all those years you were away. I read every page of every newspaper I could find, scouring the print for word of you. I dreamed of you at night. I went to bed with other men, wishing they were you. And I will likely love you until the day I die, because if I could have stopped loving you, I would have found a way to do so by now.” She inhaled deeply, then released the breath in a rush. “There. I love you.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Meredith waited in the flickering dark, afraid to say more. Afraid to move, or blink, or breathe. There it was, the truth she’d been hiding inside herself for decades now. Hiding so deeply, she’d even been able to deny it to herself. Not any longer. The longer he went without reacting, the more anxious she became. Fear gnawed at her insides, working its way from the pit of her belly all the way to her limbs. Eroding her chin and fingers and knees from the inside, so that they trembled.

“I love you, Rhys,” she said again. Because what was one more time, after all? She laid her trembling fingers against his wrist. “Rhys? Please. Say something.”

And after a long, excruciating moment, he spoke exactly one word.

“Fuck.”

She nodded. Not what she’d been hoping for, but somehow unarguably fitting.

“Fuck,” he said again, louder this time. The curse echoed through the dark. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m so sorry. Until yesterday, I had no idea you’d been blaming yourself all this time. I imagined you thought the fire was an accident. Because it was. It was a stupid, tragic accident.”

He raised his head. “How could you keep that from me? Can you have any idea what difference it would have made, if I’d known that all this time?”

“That I threw the lantern? Or that I love you?”

“Both. Can you possibly imagine—” He made a strangled noise in his throat. “For God’s sake, my whole damned wasted life …”