Page 23 of The Confessions of a Lady
She cleared her throat and pushed out her chin. Her hand stilled on his chest. ‘He was a guest at the last house where I worked. I only saw him once or twice. You share the same features.’
‘Rumours running through the beau monde would say we share much more than just our hair and eyes. My brother was not a good man.’
‘Are you?’ She held her breath, dreading his answer.
‘I want to be.’ It was a brutal confession that fed the flame of doubt in Penny’s belly. Because evil men also rarely hoped to be good men. They already thought they were or believed themselves exempt from such judgments entirely.
She spread her hand wide on his chest. Her callused fingers caught on the fine silk of his shirt.
‘Is evil inevitable, do you think?’ Liam’s chest rumbled against her hand as he spoke. ‘A curse as unavoidable as love or death or fate?’
Tension ran through him. She felt it against her palm pressed over his heart, in the tips of his fingers digging into her hip, and through the rumbling timbre of his voice as it stroked along her senses.
‘Are you asking for me to be honest again?’
His lips tilted in a smile, but his eyes were swirling pools of pain. ‘Always.’
Penny indulged temptation, running her hand up his chest to his granite shoulder, down the ridged sinews of his bicep to land on his bare forearm. ‘I don’t think evil is inevitable. But I do think you mourn your brother. Sometimes, it is not theperson we grieve, but the hope we hold for them to become a different version of themselves. A better one. It’s the phantom person we mourn. And our chance of ever knowing that person dies with them. We are left with the finality of letting those dreams disappear. I think you grieve the loss of what could have been between brothers if Reynard had been a different man.’ Penny understood that kind of grief. She often wondered how changed her life would have been if her father hadn’t died a broken vagrant. If the dreams she once nurtured for a fictional father had manifested into a real one. But his death ended those fantasies.
Liam’s free hand tangled in her hair, wrapping around her neck, and pulling her closer. His lips brushed against her cheek. ‘Yes.’ It was a simple admission. And it cost him much. She knew it from the tremble of his body, the raw ache in his voice, the nearly painful flex of his fingers on her hip.
Slowly, like the tide rising on the shore or a candle melting into a hot wax puddle, he turned his head. When their lips were a breath apart, he paused. ‘Tell me to stop. Please, tell me to stop and I will.’
But the words wouldn’t form. Instead, she pushed up on her toes, closing the distance between them, pressing her mouth against his. She offered him comfort in its most tangible form. Because he was hurt. And alone. And breaking her heart with his sorrow. A soft brush of her lips against his, a mingling of breath, a glimpse of something cataclysmically beautiful. And then it was gone.
He stepped back, severing their connection. Whatever spell held them in its thrall shattered like glass on stone. His amber eyes hardened in the flickering candlelight and narrowed.
‘Why are you here, Miss Smith?’
He asked the question as if they hadn’t just kissed. As if he hadn’t shown her the jagged pieces of his shattered heart. As ifthe moment were nothing but a dream. He was like a wounded animal backed into a corner. When she offered to tend his wounds, he responded with hostility. Penny lowered her gaze, drawing her wrapper around her like it could protect her from his rejection. The need thrumming in her veins mocked her. The hunger aching in empty spaces lower than her belly, but just as desperate forsomething, echoed endlessly. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Insomnia seems to plague you. Were you looking for a story to read? You can borrow anything you wish from the library.’ He took another measured step backward.
Frustration and anger bubbled from her chest and erupted in a harsh laugh. Why did she care that he rejected her? Why did it hurt? She suspected him of horrible crimes. He was responsible for her mother’s imprisonment. He was the enemy. And she was the biggest fool of all to succumb to his charms so easily, then be hurt when he treated her like what she was: a servant.
‘I have no use for books, my lord. I cannot read. Just a poor, illiterate maid. Your generosity is wasted on the likes of me. I shall take my leave.’
He moved like water over stones, deftly blocking her exit. ‘You can’t read?’
Penny clenched her jaw, refusing to answer his question. Refusing to repeat her embarrassing lack of education, although it perfectly highlighted how far apart they were even when standing in the same room. Instead of holding his gaze, she looked over his shoulder. The credenza next to the door caught her eye. She hadn’t dusted it the last time she was in the library. She made a note to remedy the error.
‘Do you want to learn?’
Whipping her focus back to him, she blinked in shock. ‘Do I want to learn?’ The arrogance of his question after such a humiliating admission of her own ineptitude was like lamp oil to a flame. ‘You mock me, sir. Even the thought is impossible.’
‘Nothing is impossible if you have the will to achieve it, Miss Smith.’
She shook her head. ‘Ah. So, my ignorance is reflective of a weak will. Icouldhave learned to read; I just didn’twantit enough.’
‘That isn’t?—’
‘Don’t think I revel in my obvious deficits.’ She couldn’t bear to listen to this contradiction of a man any longer. ‘Every person longs for knowledge. Regardless of their station in life, no one rejoices in ignorance. But education is not for the working class. We have neither time nor funds to engage in such a luxury. Your question is cruel. Like holding a strawberry just out of reach to a starving person, and then assuming because they do not reach for it, they don’t want it.’
She hated how easily he unsettled her. Intensifying every emotion. Provoking her to unleash her sharp tongue, heedless of the repercussions she would surely face. Just as she was heedless of the consequences of kissing him. But the man was maddening. He triggered her on every level, making Penny forget her place, her subservient role, her lack of power. Liam swept her away in untamed emotions.
He refused to look away as the clock counted out one second, two, three. ‘I see. So, youdowant strawberries.’
Penny clenched her teeth together. ‘You are impossible.’
