Page 67 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
Dom’s stomach knotted, and the sweat from their lovemaking that covered his body turned cold and clammy. He waited to see revulsion or shock in Willa’s face. Surely any moment now, she would demand that he go, and never touch her again.
Instead, confusion clouded her dark eyes, but she was motionless and eerily calm.
Minutes before, they’d shared what was the most incredible sex of his life. Hell, it was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to him. The pleasure they’d created had both sent him into the ether, and also been powerfully carnal in a way that proved that there truly was no other woman for him—there was only Willa, now and always.
“Tell me what you mean,” she said, remarkably collected.
His chest tightened. He stood and strode to a window, where rain lashed the glass like whips made of water. It was impossible to see more thana few feet, and at this rate, they’d be lucky if the nearby swollen creek didn’t completely flood its banks and engulf the cabin.
“It was my seventeenth birthday.” The words came out of him, cold and toneless, because he’d lived in this part of his past for so long, and sometimes he could convince himself that he’d been able to make peace with it. Even if he wasn’t reconciled to what had happened, he had been able to fool himself that he could tuck it away, like a piece of meat rotting beneath the floorboards.
“Almost thirteen years ago,” Willa noted, her voice coming from close behind him. He hadn’t heard her approach.
“I’d been a man for a while,” he said without looking at her. “Working at the docks since I was ten, and what coin I’d earned there went straight to paying rent and buying food for my family. Even so, turning seventeen seemed big. Like I’d truly crossed into adulthood, especially when I’d seen so many of my mates on the block not survive long enough to grow a beard.”
He braced his forearm on the window and the icy glass chilled him even more than he already was. Willa had moved to stand beside him, yet he continued to stare out into the storm.
“I went out to celebrate with a few blokes,” he continued, dreading what was coming next, but there was no avoiding it now. “The night was a blur of taprooms and gin houses. We got into morethan a few brawls. Used to be one of my favorite sports, brawling. Never felt quite so alive as when you’re dodging punches and landing your own, your fist connecting with a face or body. I go to a pugilism academy now, but it’s not the same.”
He was stalling now, and cursed himself for prolonging the inescapable.
“It was at the Blind Dog that it happened,” he went on. “There was a bloke I knew, Tommy Frears. He wasn’t my friend and he wasn’t my enemy. Just somebody on the docks. Somehow, I got into a scrap with him and Tommy pulled a blade. We scuffled. I tried to dodge the chiff, but the next thing I knew”—he swallowed the bile that rose in his throat—“Tommy’s knife was sticking out of his throat. There was blood everywhere, on Tommy, on the floor. On me.”
“Self-defense,” Willa said, breaking into his grisly memories.
He shook his head. “Some at the Blind Dog said so, but there was no way to know for certain. Could’ve been that I stuck the knife in, or maybe he fell on it. I wish to God I could remember, but the whole night’s a drunken blur.”
“Was the constable summoned?” she asked quietly.
A rueful laugh escaped him. “No one cares about anyone dying in Ratcliff. Tommy’s people bore the body away, the tapster wiped the blood from the floorboards, and that was the end of it. Except,” he added grimly, “it wasn’t. Tommy waslike me, he worked to support his family, and with him gone, I saw how they struggled to pay for food and cover their rent.
“I tried to give them money,” he said, voice rusty like an old ax. “All of my wages, and my da had just started to turn a profit on leasing warehouses. Yet the Frears folk wouldn’t take a ha’penny from me. There was no official inquiry, no trial, but they blamed me for Tommy’s death, and they were right.”
“Even though you don’t know what truly happened,” she murmured.
“There had to have been some way to keep Tommy from winding up dead,” he growled, his jaw tightening. “I could’ve walked away instead of fighting with him.”
“And risk his knife sticking out ofyourback.” She rested her palm between his shoulder blades, but her touch was too comforting, and he shook it off.
“I tried to get on with my life as best I could,” he went on. “Made sure Celeste never knew—she still doesn’t.” He’d had to cajole and threaten people in their neighborhood to keep silent, and that, too, had added to his guilt. Yet he couldn’t let Celeste learn the truth about the brother she clearly—unreasonably—adored.
“And my brothers?” Willa asked.
He shook his head. “They were the only ones of the ton who would talk to me. I didn’t wantto risk pushing them away if they knew I was a killer.”
“That must’ve been a terrible secret to keep.”
“No more terrible than thinking myself a murderer.” His jaw went taut. “Still, when Da made his fortune and we left Ratcliff for Hans Town, I didn’t have the daily reminder that I’d killed someone on the floor of a filthy taproom. Got a huge new house that could sleep over a dozen families. Dressed up in togs that cost enough to feed us for a month. Went to university. Learned to speak proper and dance so I could become a gentleman like one of them nobs we used to mock,” he said with deliberate use of his old accent. Then, his tone softening, he added, “I met you.”
She made a soft noise, part chuckle, part sigh. “And we became engaged. But, Dom, when we pledged to marry each other, you hadn’t forgotten what had happened in your past.”
“I’d convinced myself that it was too far behind me to cause anyone any grief—especially not you. I thought, like a dolt, that I could be happy, that maybe I deserved to wed a princess like you.”
“Something happened to change that.”
His hand knotted into a fist. “Six weeks before the wedding, I was on the Strand, buying you a present, and I saw her. Tommy’s mother. She was selling posies.”
“Did she recognize you? You must’ve been greatly altered from the lad she knew.”
