Page 90 of Dare to Love a Duke
The worst of it was that she was right. He’d sworn to destroy anyone who harmed her—and that harm came from him.
He turned back and stared at her. She had her arms wrapped around herself.
Touching her was an impossibility. Soon, he’d have to rely on memory alone to conjure her. Empty hours and days and years would crawl past with only remembrance of Lucia.
“Please,” she said brokenly. “Lasciatemi. ‘Leave me.’”
“I am so sorry.”
Her gaze met his and he saw hopeless despair. Yet there was nothing he could do to change it. There was nothing left to say.
He strode quickly from the parlor, moving sightlessly through the club until he was outside.
Tom tore off his mask and threw it into the gutter. There’d be no further need for disguises.
But he’d spoken honestly. He would find some way to make everything right for her, though they could never again be together. He would discover what it meant to go through the motions of living when his heart had been torn from his body.
It was hers. It would always be hers.
His mother stared at him, face ashen, while Maeve’s mouth hung open. They sat across from him in the small parlor his mother liked to use in the morning after breakfast. But the sunny yellow walls and fire cracking cheerfully in the grate did nothing to dispel the constricting weight of the Powell women’s silence. A clock ticked, counting the thick moments that followed his confession.
Tom fought to keep from surging to his feet and pacing. He owed his mother and sister the fullness of his attention, and so he kept himself where he was, arms braced against his knees as he leaned forward.
His father’s death. His loss of Lucia. Now this—telling his mother and sister that their reputations were ruined, because of him.
He wanted to rage, to howl. But that would do nothing to ease his torment. It felt as though his bones were made of iron heated to white hot, searing him from the inside out.
“Please,” he said tightly after minutes passed, “say something.”
“What do you want me to say, Tom?” It was a measure of his mother’s distress that she didn’t call him Tommy lad. “Shall I congratulate you on your business endeavor?” Her mouth tightened. “A club for... fornication.”
“A place for freedom,” he said gently. “And the establishment employs so many, giving them a good wage.”
“That makes it so much better,” she snapped, then pressed her lips together. A sheen of tears filmed her eyes. “God above, Tom, what were you thinking?”
He raked his hands through his hair. “I’d hoped no one would ever learn of it.” Thank Christ Brookhurst hadn’t discovered that Tom’s father had been the operation’s founder and original owner. But that was a small consolation. It had been Tom’s choice to keep the Orchid Club open, and now he had to face the agonizing consequences.
“But they did,” Maeve said quietly. Her hands fisted in her lap.
He ached with the need to hold her close, to comfort her, but from the rigidity of her spine, he saw that she’d refuse his touch, so he stayed where he was.
“Will anyone receive us now?” Maeve whispered.
He had to be honest. “I... don’t know.”
His sister rose from the sofa and drifted to the fire, where she watched the flames move in a taunting dance.
“How?” his mother asked in a hoarse voice. “How have I failed as a mother that would lead you tothis?”
“It wasn’tyourfailure, Mam.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled away. Anguish cleaved him to be rejected by his own mother. “’Twas mine alone. And all of us pay the price.” He looked back and forth between his mother and sister. “An apology cannot remedy this, and it’s an insignificant thing, but I do apologize. I’m sorry.” His voice cracked as he tried to speak. “I’m so damned sorry.”
His mother’s expression remained stony. But she did not leave the room, and he clung to the minimal consolation this offered.
“And this was the Duke of Brookhurst’s doing,” Maeve said, turning to face him. “The dissemination of this... news.”
“He did not take kindly to my opposition.” Tom stood and moved to her, carefully testing the tension between them. He silently exhaled when she did not walk away from him.
“The bastard,” Maeve spat.
