Page 57 of A Caribbean Heiress in Paris
One of the men stepped closer, as if to whisper something to her, and Evan’s fists clenched.
He took a couple of menacing steps forward in the hope that they could see he was in an extraordinarily volatile mood. “I suggest you allocate a few yards between yourselves and my woman,” he barked. Thankfully, the men heeded his warning, but they stayed to watch, leaving him and Luz Alana to face each other with an audience.
“Do you mind? You interrupted the game.” She waved a hand at the two who were still holding up the plank with their knees, eyeing him and his betrothed with interest.
Evan pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled slowly in an unfruitful attempt to summon even a shred of serenity. This was what Luz Alana reduced him to: prayer and hyperventilation. At length, he looked at her and was confronted with a very unfriendly pair of chocolate brown eyes, but right beneath that anger was such clear hurt, he almost wanted to look away.
“If you wanted to come and see the rum, I could’ve brought you.”
She scoffed. “My rum is not your concern, Evan.” He kept getting distracted by her mouth. She’d been biting at it through dinner, and it was still pink and puffy, just like when he kissed her. “There are three things I need to always be safe. My sister, my grandmother’s recipes and my rum. It’s all I have.” He flinched at the crushing certainty in her words. She truly felt that alone. He wanted to refute that, but he knew she wouldn’t believe him. He hadn’t given her much reason to.
“If you’ve inspected the rum, then what are you doing lingering out here?” he asked, temper flaring again. “You must know this is not safe, Luz Alana. Sailors are not proper company for a young woman.” He sounded like a bloody arsehole.
“Cubansailors,” she corrected with such studied composure Evan sensed something beyond her irritation with him was amiss. The sailors in question had moved on with their evening, probably once they realized there would be no melodramatic conclusion. “And I was here because they invited me to sit with them after your guard denied me entry to the warehouse.”
He thought what he’d been feeling was rage, then what she said registered and he almost shook with anger. How much more humiliation would this woman have to endure because of him?
“He did what?”
“He didn’t believe the rum being stored there was mine.” She said the words with such excruciating calm. By the time she finished Evan was certain he’d turned to stone.
“Luz Alana,” he said, reaching for her, but she moved away.
The warehouse did not belong to him. One of the Scotch distillers he was friendly with offered it to him. He should’ve asked more questions about who the man employed.
“No, I don’t need your apologies.”
It wasn’t as if he didn’t realize this went on all the time. He’d seen Murdoch and Raghav experience snubs and outright humiliation on more occasions than he could count. Which had led him to impulsively initiate more than one scuffle in the past. There were dozens of places he wouldn’t step foot in because they’d harassed Murdoch or mistreated Raghav. Over time, he’d come to understand that it was not for him to determine how these incidents were approached. Responding with aggression or civility was not his decision. That belonged to the person experiencing the slight, the offense.
His role was to bear witness to it and help when and if he was asked.
None of that knowledge seemed to be working now. He wanted to break things. He wanted to inflict violence, hurt the person who had hurt her.
“If you’re to survive the next ninety days with me, you must learn to let this kind of thing go,” Luz Alana said, snatching him out of his thoughts.
“Whoever it was, they will be sacked,” he told her, which only seemed to infuriate her further.
“And then what? You give him a real reason to hate people who look like me?”
She was right, of course, but Evan needed forsomeoneto pay for this. Some punishment to be exacted on the person who had done this to her. Then he remembered why she’d been out here alone in the first place.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he confessed, and she laughed bitterly.
“Youcan’tfix this.” Her eyes were bleak. “There are certain people whose prejudices cannot be budged, not even by the Earl of Darnick.”
That stung. The bitter truth usually did.
“I don’t want to dwell on this, Evan.” She sounded exhausted. “Self-righteous outrage is not a luxury I can afford.”
There were so many things he wanted to say and do, but they were all for his own benefit. His pride was smarting because this woman who he’d come to respect, to care for in the span of only a few days had been mistreated, and he was helpless to make it better. Nothing he had could protect her from this.
After a long moment, when he felt more under control he reached for her hand, and to his surprise she took it. She looked done in, and despite how much he wanted to place the blame on that damn guard, he knew he was partly, if not entirely, to blame. She’d come here on her own because of him.
“Let me take you to see the rum,” he pled, and he almost wept with relief when she allowed him to tuck her into his side before making his way to the door of the warehouse.
“Is that him?”
The guard’s eyes widened as he saw them approach, the sneer he’d had on his face when she’d previously spoken to him now replaced by alarm. Evan kept her hand in his as they walked. He was vibrating with animosity.
