Chapter 7: The Highwayman: Chapter 8

It was Murdoch who nudged her limp, despondent form from the planks of the pavilion and tutted over her until she allowed him to guide her back inside. The arm that kept her upright was solid beneath his suit coat, and he all but carried her up the steps.

“I’ve drawn ye a warm bath, lass, and found ye something suitable to wear whilst I launder yer dress.” Absurdly, he reminded her of a clucking mother hen, hovering nervously over her chick.

Farah nodded her thanks, her throat still too raw to say much of anything.

He went on, deciding to ignore or forgive her escape attempt, solicitous as ever. More so, now that tears streaked her cheeks and reddened her eyes. Once ensconced back in the bedroom, Murdoch relieved her of her shawl and purse, setting them on the jewel-blue chair.

“Did Blackwell frighten ye?” he queried with a false brightness. “Because although he’s a dangerous-looking bastar—er—villain, he’s really not so—”

“You were in Newgate with Dougan Mackenzie.” She didn’t pose it as a question, more of a soft declaration, one he couldn’t deny without perjuring himself.

Murdoch froze. His stout form working through a shiver as he found something arresting about her shawl draped across the chair. “Aye,” he gruffly confirmed. “For five long years.”

“What was your crime?”

He turned to her slowly, his face a mask of shame and pain. “My only crime, dear girl, was love.” He must have read the lack of comprehension on her face, because he continued. “I had a prolonged affair with the son of an earl from Surrey. When his father found out, charges were brought against me, and the man I loved turned on me in court, branding me a … predator.”

Farah’s already bruised heart jolted as another pang pierced it through, this one for the torment mirrored at her in the features of the wide Scotsman. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, surprised by how much she meant it.

“It’s ancient history, now.” He shrugged, summoning a wan smile for her.

“The past can long stay with us, Murdoch,” she murmured.

“Right ye are, lass.”

“Were you and Dougan … friends?” Farah ventured, knowing his rendering of the past would be kinder than Dorian Blackwell’s.

Murdoch shifted, retreating to the washroom door. “I owe him my life, many times over. And, as such, I owe my life for yers, as well.”

“How is that?” she whispered, uncomfortable with the veneration on his gentle face.

“Well, ye’re his Fairy, of course, his lady wife for all intents and purposes. We promised Dougan Mackenzie that we’d find ye. That we’d protect ye. That, if we could, we’d give ye back the life that ye’re owed, the life he would have wanted for ye.”

Tears threatened again and Farah fiercely blinked them away. “He told you about our handfasting when we were young?”

“Aye, it was one of our favorite stories.”

“Truly?” A soft wonder began to expand through her chest and she seized upon it. “Are you saying Dougan told you stories about me? That must have been incredibly tedious and uninteresting.”

Murdoch came forward and gently took her hand, drawing her toward the adjoining washroom. “Ye canna understand what prison is like, lass. When a single night passes in fear and despair, a week might as well be a lifetime, and a year becomes an eternity.”

Farah’s bare toes curled against the cold white marble floors of the washroom, streaked with silver and blue. Gilded silver mirrors and dainty white furniture upholstered in the boldest cobalt littered the room almost to excess. More windows spilled sunlight through gauzy sapphire curtains that fluttered in a spring breeze. A porcelain bath stood on a dais surrounded by the softest blue paisley rugs.

Murdoch busied himself by dragging a silk-and-iron changing screen from the corner and placing it next to the bath, talking all the while. “In Newgate, a story to make the time pass with greater alacrity has more value than gold.” He draped a large robe of heavy blue fabric over the silk of the screen. The draw of the steaming bath overcame her misgivings about disrobing in the same room with a relatively strange man. Of course, this would never be done back in London, but when one was a prisoner of the Blackheart of Ben More, one didn’t worry about paltry scandals.

“Thank you.” Stepping behind the screen, Farah undid laces of her bodice and pushed her dress from her shoulders. She could hear Murdoch bustling about the room, keeping himself busy for her benefit, she guessed. “Would you tell me about it, Murdoch, your time in Newgate with Dougan?”

The restless movement ceased and the older man gave a gusty sigh, or maybe it was whatever dainty chair he lowered himself into that produced the sad noise. “As I said, the nights are the worst,” he began in a faraway voice. “The hours of darkness break even the bravest of men, let alone frightened wee boys. We’d be finished with a day’s worth of work on the railway and return to our world of iron bars too exhausted to move, let alone defend ourselves from the dangers the night might bring. The sounds. The cries. The whispers from the shadows … they’re dreadful. If ye didna have friends to help protect ye…” He trailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.

“I’m sorry,” Farah whispered, stepping out of her skirts, and draping the stiff dress over the sturdy screen.

“Thank ye,” Murdoch acknowledged. “By the time I arrived at Newgate, Blackwell and Mackenzie had been there nearly three years. Thick as thieves and twice as shrewd, they were, each of them dark as the devil and just as ruthless. It always amazed me that ones so young could learn such cruelty.”

Luckily, Farah’s corset was laced in the front, and she went to work on that as she absorbed Murdoch’s words. “It’s hard for me to imagine a cruel Dougan,” she admitted. “But … he was kind to you?”

“Eventually,” Murdoch said evasively. “But once I proved myself useful, I was taken into their gang’s protection and that made life much easier for me, most especially at night. As ye likely know, Dougan had a gift for words and an eerily accurate memory. On the darkest and coldest of nights, he’d tell us about books he’d read with ye, and often he’d be sidetracked from the memory of the book and just go on about some adventure or another the two of ye had together.”

“He did?” Farah breathed, pausing before peeling off her chemise and exposing her breasts to the chilly air. Once she’d finished that, she bent and tucked her only treasure beneath the washroom rug, not wanting anyone to find it.

Warmth stole into Murdoch’s voice at the memory, and Farah’s heart clenched at the picture of her Dougan not yet a man, and yet not a boy, regaling a room full of hardened prisoners about the graveyard capers and bog adventures of a ten-year-old girl in the Scottish Highlands. “He described ye so many times, I feel as though any of us would have recognized ye had we seen ye on the streets. He told us of yer kindness, yer innocence, yer gentle ways and boundless curiosity. Ye became something of a patron saint to us all. Our daughter. Our sister. Our … Fairy. Without even knowing it, ye gave us—him—a little bit of sunshine and hope in a world of shadow and pain.”

“Oh.” Farah again lost the battle to her tears, and she stood behind the screen, naked and shivering, her arms wrapped around herself as she drank in Murdoch’s memories as though she could make them her own. She barely noticed her nakedness, as it was her insides that felt so entirely exposed and vulnerable. “Are you quite certain he was never angry with me? That he never—blamed me for his incarceration?”

The older man was silent for a time, and tendrils of panic snaked through her. “Please. You must tell me the truth,” she begged.

“Get in the bath, first,” Murdoch nudged gently.

Farah complied, stepping up and into the fragrant tub and lowering herself into lavender-scented water that lapped at her shoulders.

“The truth is, lass, that it would have killed Mackenzie to ever hear ye ask that question,” Murdoch continued when he seemed certain that she was situated. “It was only we who were closest to him who knew the particular depths of his fears for ye. He never told anyone but Blackwell and me yer name. To everyone else, ye were his Fairy, and that was all the information they ever got. He guarded ye like the jealous husband he was.”

“Our marriage was never legitimate, Murdoch,” Farah confessed, letting the hot water and lavender soothe the chill and the aches from her stiff muscles. “You must know that, as well.”

Murdoch’s rude noise echoed off the stone and marble of the washroom, amplifying his contempt for her words. “Dougan Mackenzie was as faithful and devoted a husband to ye as there ever was,” he insisted. “And after all these years, Mrs. Mackenzie, seems to me ye’ve stayed as true a bride to his memory as ye would have if he was alive.”

Farah’s hand skimmed across the still, clean water as his words pricked her with needles of guilt. “That’s not entirely true,” she acknowledged. “You know that I—kissed another man the night you and Blackwell took me from my home.”

“Aye, well…” If a voice could convey a shrug, Murdoch’s did so. “For a woman who, for all intents and purposes, had been widowed nigh on a decade, no one can blame ye for trying to fill the loneliness with company.”

“Your Mr. Blackwell certainly didn’t see it that way.” It disturbed her to think of the master of Ben More whilst naked. Suddenly needing a vocation, Farah picked up a bar of soap that smelled like heather and honey and began to vigorously scrub the past few days away.

“Blackwell’s as tied to Dougan Mackenzie as we all are,” Murdoch said cryptically. “He may be meaner than a coiled snake, and twice as deadly, but out of anyone alive, he’s the best chance ye’ve got.”

“That’s something else I don’t understand,” Farah began, lifting a leg above the water to rub the bar of soap all the way down to her toes. “You all seem to be convinced I’m in some sort of danger, but I can’t readily imagine what that would be, and no one is inclined to explain it to me.”

“Blackwell didna get around to that, eh?”

Farah pinched her lips together with a frown. “That was my fault, I suppose. I fled him before he was quite finished.”

“Ye wouldna be the first,” Murdoch grumbled, sounding more like an exasperated father than a loyal minion. A creak of furniture told her that Murdoch had risen and was coming closer. She tensed, but as soon as she heard him gathering her things from the screen, she relaxed again. “Mrs. Mackenzie…” he began.

“You might as well call me Farah,” she instructed, lifting her arms to pull the pins from her hopelessly disheveled bun and let her curls fall into the bath. “I feel we’re far beyond societal constraints at this point, Murdoch.”

His pregnant pause conveyed a shifting reluctance that piqued her curiosity. “When it comes to the danger, I doona want ye to feel like it can touch ye all the way out here. In this castle, ye have nothing to fear.”

“Yes, you’ve said that already.” Farah dropped her head back, wetting her scalp, and began to work the suds through her thick waves.

“I mean to say, I know it doesna seem like it now, but ye can trust him. The rest of us, we’d lay down our lives for yers, but Blackwell … he’d do that and more. He’d rip the beating heart from his chest. He’d give up his soul if ye’d only—”

“It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give … or a soul.” Dorian Blackwell’s smooth voice didn’t echo through the washroom as theirs did. He slithered into their midst with a serpentine stealth, striking before Murdoch’s words uncovered any of his secrets.

Gasping, Farah sank deep into the bath, thankful the water was now cloudy with soap, though she did draw her knees under her chin and anchor them with her arms, just in case. “Get out!” she insisted in an unsteady voice. “I’m indecent.”

“That makes two of us.”

He’d moved closer. So close, in fact, that Farah knew if she looked behind her, she’d find his mismatched eyes staring down at her from his towering height. Perhaps, despite the opaque water, he could see the flesh that quivered just below the surface. The thought sent bolts of heat and mortification through her.

“Leave,” Farah ordered, unable to face him for fear she’d lose her nerve.

“Stand up and make me.”

She sank deeper into the water, her rapid breaths creating ripples on the surface.

“Blackwell,” Murdoch cajoled. “If ye’d like to wait in the chambers, I’ll have her dress and—”

“That’ll be all, Murdoch,” Dorian said.

“But, sir.” Murdoch’s emphasis on the word was puzzling. “I doona think this is any way to—”

“You’re dismissed.” Only a man with a death wish would have argued, and Farah couldn’t bring herself to blame Murdoch one bit for abandoning her. The click of the washroom door felt like the slide of iron bars, locking Farah in her gilded prison with the most blackhearted criminal. Helpless, trapped, and naked.

If Farah had learned anything from her job, it was that those who took the offensive usually kept the high ground. “What could you possibly want that couldn’t wait until I was finished bathing?” she asked impatiently, proud that she kept any apprehension or weakness out of her voice.

Blackwell stepped from behind her, running long fingers along the rim of the tub. Dressed in only shirtsleeves, the dark kilt, and a vest, his lack of coat did nothing to detract from the startling width of his shoulders. He’d taken off his eye patch, she noted, and his blue eye glinted at her in the spring sunlight. “It occurred to me, whilst contemplating the unfortunate turn of our previous conversation, that our next communication might be better served if you are not in a position to run from me.”

Even in the steaming heat of the water, Farah’s blood turned to ice in her veins, but she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “You’re sadly mistaken if you assume that I will not run, or fight, if provoked.”

He positioned himself at the foot of the tub, the sunlight casting a blue aura over the thick ebony of his hair as he leaned down to grip each side of the basin. “Then by all means, consider yourself provoked, but do be careful, marble tends to be slick when wet.” His gaze touched the ripples of the water with suggestive interest, and Farah’s temperature swung wildly from chilled to overheated. A sheen of moisture bloomed in her hairline and above her lip.

He was calling her bluff, damn him, and he seemed infuriatingly unconcerned by the strength of her disdainful glare. She’d never been very good at nasty looks or confrontation, but she had an idea that before she and Dorian Blackwell were through with each other, she’d have a great deal of practice with both. “Well … say your piece, then,” she prompted, hating that her eyes couldn’t rest on him for any length of time without being quite overwhelmed.

“I intend to do exactly that.” His voice, usually the texture of cold marble, roughened with a husky note that was intriguing and alarming all at once. “I will talk whilst you finish bathing yourself.”

“Impossible!” she huffed, drawing her knees in tighter to her chest.

One dark eyebrow lifted. “Is it?” His fingers skimmed the milky water, sending ripples toward her that lapped against her knees. “I’d be happy to assist if you find yourself unequal to the task.”

Farah remembered what he’d said in the study. That he didn’t particularly like physical contact. Though the pads of his fingers idling in her bathwater suggested he may have been lying. Or was he bluffing now? Was she brave enough to test the veracity of his own admission?

“Touch me, and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” His voice cooled as did his regard, but he pulled his fingers from the water.

Farah desperately grasped for something to say, but her mind was suddenly blank as a sheaf of paper.

“You’ll learn that I do not respond favorably to threats,” he said rather drolly as he wiped his fingers on a hand towel hanging from a rack at the foot of the tub.

“Neither do I,” she countered, and watched his other eyebrow rise to join the first. “I gather that you want something from me, Mr. Blackwell; well, let me inform you that this is not the way to go about obtaining someone’s cooperation.”

“And yet, I always manage to get what I want from people.”

“I highly doubt very many of those people are self-respecting women.”

Blackwell smirked and rubbed his hard jaw, smooth from a morning shave, as some of the ice receded from his eyes. “I’ll grant you that,” he said, turning and stepping from the dais toward a plush velvet chair. “But, as you know, my world is ruled by many laws, not the least of which is quid pro quo.” He settled his long frame into the chair, his legs falling open and his hands resting on the arms with the indolence of a royal. “I can give you everything you want, Farah Leigh Mackenzie, and all you have to do is wash.” He gave the bar of soap a meaningful glance.

Farah couldn’t think of anything she wanted badly enough to warrant such humiliation, but then she remembered what Blackwell had said before. Dougan may have been brutally murdered. Blackwell was seeking vengeance for his death and wanted her help. If there was any truth to those words, Farah needed to hear them to ascertain it.

Bracing herself, she stretched her legs along the bottom of the bath and lifted her hand to reach for the soap. Her neck and jaw seemed an innocent enough place to start washing, as long as she was careful to keep the swell of her breasts below the murky water. “Tell me what it is I want,” she demanded, chagrined to hear that her voice had become husky and low, the words sounding like an altogether different command. A lover’s command. But they both knew better.

Blackwell’s anomalous eyes glinted as they followed the path of the soap down the column of her neck but, surprisingly, he complied. “Seven years is a long time to spend almost every moment with someone. Over the course of our time together, Mackenzie and I became like brothers. We not only fought, worked, and suffered alongside each other, we shared everything to keep our bond as leaders—as brothers—strong. And to help pass the endless time, I suppose. He shared with me the food you left, though now I doubt he’d done it if he’d known it was you who’d left it. We shared every sordid detail of our pasts, every name, every story, every … secret.”

Farah’s head snapped up, the soap pausing halfway down her shoulder. “Secret?”

Blackwell’s head dipped in a single, meaningful nod, though his eyes remained locked on the bar of soap. He didn’t continue until the soap resumed its glistening path along her flesh.

“In prison, needs, emotions, and fears are only weaknesses to be exploited,” he explained. “Mackenzie’s primary fear was for you. It tortured him that he didn’t know what had happened to you after his capture. His only consolation was that he’d killed Father MacLean, and thereby knew you were out of danger from him, at least.”

Blackwell turned his head to a slight degree, so his good eye focused on the soap she slid along her other arm. Farah became acutely aware that she was running out of skin, and the anticipatory intensity of Blackwell’s stare proved he relished that fact. Her arms could only get so clean, before she had to wash elsewhere.

How absurd this situation had become. The humiliating memories and dank, raw pain of Newgate Prison didn’t belong in this sunlit room with the fragrant, moist heat settling around them, turning the atmosphere hazy with steam. To Farah, the effect was something of a dream, blurring the lines between reality and imagination. Blackwell spoke of hard and valid truths, but the way he watched the soap turn her flesh into slick paths of glinting silk evoked the most sinful and debauched renderings her thoughts could devise.

“How fortunate for you that the water obscures so much.” Blackwell shifted in his chair, his knees falling wider and his nostrils flaring.

“Would Dougan Mackenzie forgive this coercion?” she challenged, doing her best to ignore the stirrings of her own body. “If you owe him as much as you claim, would he not wish you to spare my modesty?”

The spark of heat in his eyes died for a moment, before flaring brighter than before. “When we meet in hell, I’ll ask his forgiveness.” His mouth pulled into a harder line, his skin tightened over the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw. His dark eye gleamed triumphant and also dissatisfied, his blue one conflicted and aroused, and both were locked on the soap hovering at her shoulder.

Farah understood what she must do to urge him to keep talking. Lips parting on an anxious breath, she slowly washed the slim expanse of her chest before dipping the soap below the water’s surface, running it over her breast.

The immediate reaction of her body was both unexpected and acute. Sensation ripped through her, starting at her nipple as the soap grazed it, and coursing through her limbs before settling between her clenched thighs. Farah forced her eyes not to flutter closed as she savored this new and profound awareness. Instead, she studied Blackwell for any signs that he recognized the effect he’d had on her. That she’d had on herself in his presence.

So intent was he on the spot where her hand had disappeared, she doubted he noticed her reaction at all.

“Go on,” she demanded breathlessly, hoping to keep him distracted as she sorted out the insistent pressure now burning through her blood and combating the chill in her bones brought on by the content of their conversation.

True to his word, he complied. The dispassionate tone of his voice again conflicting with the intensity of his bold regard. “Since Dougan would likely spend twenty years in Newgate before the crown revisited his case, he asked me to swear a vow on the debt I owed him of my life.” He trailed off when her breath caught as she washed her other breast.

“Which was?” she prompted.

“That when they released me, I would hunt you down and make certain you were safe and cared for.”

“As you can see, Mr. Blackwell, I’m quite unharmed and well cared for. You may return me to my life with a clear conscience.” Farah laughed a little. “That is, if you even have one.”

“I suppose it does remain to be seen,” he said mildly, though he still hadn’t lifted his notice above the slight ripples in the water. “My seven-year sentence was completed almost a month to the day after Dougan’s death. And the first thing I did was go looking for you.” He leaned forward then, like a great cat readying for his lethal blow. “Do you know what I found?”

“No.” A slice of dread began to tangle with the heat in Farah’s belly, just beneath where the soap hovered in her trembling fingers. “Tell me.”

“I will. As soon as you resume washing.”

“I—I’m finished,” she lied. “I’m clean.”

Flames licked at the ice in his blue eye. “You missed a spot.”

An answering heat bloomed deep inside her. Low in her belly, no, lower—in her womb. Farah wanted to hate him. He held her captive. Manipulated her emotions. Used this wicked compulsion to gratify his own perversions.

And yet …

As the soap slid through sparse curls and into the cleft between her thighs, ribbons of unexpected sensation stirred from her most intimate flesh and unfurled across the expanse of her skin. Her mouth dropped open, but she caught the moan before it escaped.

Their gazes collided, the flames in his eyes darkened as his pupils dilated.

He knew. Though he could see nothing, he knew exactly where her fingers drifted, and precisely where the soap slicked over already moistened skin.

Despite her mortification, Farah also marveled. She’d been bathing for almost three decades and, while she’d found a tremor of pleasure whilst lingering here, it had never been so achingly insistent, so full of demand and promise.

That demand, those promises, were mirrored in the stare of Dorian Blackwell.

Whatever he read in her eyes caused him to slam his lids shut, giving Farah an unimpeded view of the angry scar across his brow and eyelid. The wound looked deep and angry. It was a wonder he hadn’t lost his eye. When he reopened them, she found herself staring at his wounded blue iris with rapt attention. To her disappointment, he’d conjured his signature chill again, though he cleared his throat before speaking.

“I will tell you that I found you had your own share of secrets, and not ones best left to the darkness, like mine, but secrets that would rock the entire British Empire.”

The soap slipped from her fingers, trailing down her womanhood and disappearing into the water. All the warmth and pleasure dissipated, and Farah shook her head in shocked denial. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The frightening speed with which the atmosphere between them heated and cooled was enough to make one consumptive. Hadn’t she just been having one of the most intimate moments of her life? And now he wanted to resume talking about the past. Revealing secrets. Tearing open old wounds.

She’d changed her mind. She did hate him. She hated how he was shaking his dark head, but in a mock semblance of righteous censure.

“Applecross was, of course, where I started my search. The orphanage’s records showed that one Farah Leigh Townsend succumbed to a bout of cholera, her tolerance having been weakened by her family’s fatal disease.”

Farah knew all this, but found herself riveted, wondering if the Blackheart of Ben More was really going to sit in the only shadows of the bright room and uncover the only concealment she’d thought she’d had left. He’d used her real last name. Something she’d never disclosed to anyone, not even Dougan Mackenzie.

“A terrible disease, cholera,” he continued, watching her reaction carefully. “It spreads through tight quarters like Applecross, leaving mass devastation in its wake. A single case is unheard of. So, with a little coercion, as you call it, I learned that a fortnight after MacLean’s death and Dougan’s arrest, a ten-year-old girl vanished from Applecross and Sister Margaret covered up the disappearance, using the excuse of burning a diseased corpse to cover the lack of a body.”

None of this was news to Farah. Having worked next to the records commissioner for nearly a decade, she’d been able to sneak a look at her very own death certificate. “Where did you go after?” she queried breathlessly.

Dorian gave her a wry look. “A complicated search such as that takes money, of which I had none. So, I immediately set out acquiring some, and found a little success.”

Farah rolled her eyes to encompass her lavish surroundings. “Only everyone in the world knows how you set about it.”

“Not initially. For a few years I made my living as a highwayman. In those days, the trains didn’t go so far, and the wealthy often traveled the rest of their distances in carriages.”

Farah straightened in the water before realizing that a dusky nipple bobbed above the surface before she ducked down again. “A highwayman? Did you hurt anyone?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t noticed her mistake.

He had, of course. “I’ve hurt a lot of people,” he told the swell of her bosom. “But we can discuss that later. We’re talking about your past right now. I feel we’ve quite exhausted the subject of mine.”

Farah’s heart leaped like a startled rabbit. “I have no past. I was an orphan and then I ran from Applecross, made my way to London and—”

“Don’t lie to me, Farah.” His soft voice was so terrifying, she’d rather he shouted. “You’re terrible at it.”

She busied herself by groping at the bottom of the tub for her missing soap, using it as an excuse not to look at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I know who you were … who you are.”

“Impossible,” Farah insisted. “I’m nobody.” There. She’d found the soap, but pretended to still be looking, as she chased it with slippery fingers.

“You are far from nobody. Farah Leigh Townsend, daughter of the late Robert Lee Townsend, captain of the Prince Consort’s Rifle Brigade in the Crimea, and more importantly, Earl Northwalk. You are the only living heiress to what has to be the most controversial, contested fortune in Britain until quite recently.”

His every word pinned her to the floor of the tub. She sank to her chin, wishing she could just slip below the surface and hide in the murky safety of the water without lethal consequences. He saw too much. Knew too much, and that could ruin everything.

“You’re mistaken,” She made another attempt at denial, hoping that she could convince him of her identity. “Farah is a common enough name, and Leigh a very ordinary middle name, so your mistake is understandable. But, in case you were unaware, Farah Leigh Townsend was recently discovered in a hospital in London, having miraculously recovered from amnesia.” She finally mustered the strength to meet the skepticism bleeding from Blackwell’s every pore head-on. “She married a Mr. Harold Warrington, Esq., not a month ago, to whom she’d been long betrothed. So you see, Mr. Blackwell, it is infeasible for me to be who you claim.”

His eyes narrowed on her and he spoke his next words very carefully, though caustic reprimand leaked like venom from his lips. “Imagine my surprise when I saw the banns in the papers. The long-lost heiress of Northwalk secretly married, the title of earl bestowed upon her husband, who happened to be her deceased father’s steward and of little to no blue blood. Naturally, driven by the oath I’d made all those years ago, I arranged a meeting with Mrs. Farah Leigh Warrington, and knew the moment I laid eyes on her that she was an imposter.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Farah scoffed. “How would you know a thing like that?”

A secret smile threatened the bleak lines of his mouth. “I know a thing or two about imposters, con artists, thieves, and greed.”

“Yes, I’ve heard you’re something of an expert.” Farah usually didn’t possess much in the way of a temper, but it seemed that ire made her feel less helpless than fear.

“Indeed,” Blackwell confirmed. “So believe me when I say that I recognized a soul as black as my own and just as devious.”

“I find it highly improbable such a thing exists.” Farah began to seriously consider an attempt at escape, modesty be damned. It only took one glance at Dorian Blackwell’s long and powerful limbs to squelch the panicked impulse immediately.

She wouldn’t get far, and she could only imagine how he would punish her this time. Farah couldn’t tell if her barbs had affected him or not, but she couldn’t think of another reason he would silently study her for such a long time. “Believe it or not, there are villains out there more evil than I,” he said finally.

“Doubtful.”

The upholstery of the chair protested as Blackwell’s strong fingers tightened on the arms. “I haven’t hurt you, have I? Touched you, even?” His smoky voice echoed with challenge. “I know men who would tear you apart just for the pleasure of hearing you scream. They would make you beg for death before they finished with you. They would use every part of your body and soul until they both shriveled and died and they’d leave you in the gutter like so much filth.” Blackwell stood then, his boots impossibly quiet on the marble as he stalked closer. “I may be a villain and a reprobate, but I am not like them.”

“No, you only associate with and employ them.” Farah’s bravado began to fail, and she grasped it with the desperation with which someone about to be swept downriver would reach for a rope. “Your hands may appear clean, but everyone knows you’re tainted with rivers of blood.” And she’d do well to remember that.

“That is where you’re wrong, Farah. If blood needs to be spilled, it is my hands that do the spilling.” Frost glazed over any of the warmth and interest he’d shown before, and suddenly her bathwater felt chilly and stale.

“I’m not going to help you hurt anyone,” she vowed.

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” He again stood at the foot of the tub, staring down at her with his unholy eyes. “I only require that you claim what is rightfully yours.”

“Someone else has already claimed it! The rightful—”

“Deny it again, and you won’t like the consequences.” Farah was fast coming to realize that the more toneless his voice became, the more dangerous he was.

“All right, yes!” she hissed. “I am—was—Farah Leigh Townsend. But don’t you think there’s a reason I never claimed to be her? That I took on the name of someone else and a life of relative obscurity?”

“I assumed it was Warrington.”

“It’s not just Warrington. Much of my father’s wealth was obtained the same way yours was. The spoils of war, the deaths of enemies, the cloak-and-dagger of lies and espionage.”

“How do you know this?”

“I remember him and my mother fighting about it when he returned from the Crimea.” A band squeezed Farah’s chest as it always did when she thought of the past. “My parents loved me, at least, I remember them loving me. So why they would betroth me to a toad like Warrington is a complete puzzle.”

Blackwell shrugged. “Sometimes greed is stronger than love.”

“No, it isn’t,” she argued. “Not real love. Only fear is stronger than love … and even then only if you allow it to be. My parents must have been afraid of something, in trouble, somehow.”

“And then they died.”

“Precisely.” She returned the soap to the tray, and didn’t miss the glimmer of something like regret that touched his features as he watched the action.

Deciding to ignore it, Farah ran her wet fingers over eyes made tired and puffy by her prior tears. “I could never stand the idea of marrying Warrington. He was my father’s age, and always unsettled me as a child. I was told my family died of cholera … Though as I grew older I always wondered if maybe…” She let the thought trail off into the steam, unwilling to give it life with her words. Could her life be that cruel? Was everyone she loved taken from her by the evil deeds of another?

Distracted from his ire, Blackwell gripped his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “This is all beginning to make sense.”

“I don’t see how it possibly can. My head is spinning.”

“A week ago, a member of the peerage approached one of my men, Christopher Argent, about a business contract of a rather sensitive nature.” Blackwell cast her a meaningful look.

“Argent.” The name pricked Farah’s memory. “One of your friends from Newgate.”

“One of my closest business associates,” he corrected slyly. “Argent contacted me right away. A king’s fortune was offered for the disappearance of a certain employee of Scotland Yard.”

Astounded, Farah gasped. “You can’t mean…”

“You. Mrs. Farah Leigh Mackenzie. Warrington found you, after all, and he wanted you dead.”

“No.” Farah began to shiver in the tub, and Blackwell folded his arms tightly across his broad chest, as though to force them to be still.

“You see, there is no returning you to your old life,” he said victoriously. “If I hadn’t made you disappear, he would have hired someone else to do it.”

“Why would he want me dead? He already has everything he could desire, I’m no threat to him.”

“On the contrary,” Blackwell said. “You threaten everything. You could ruin everything and expose him by claiming your title.”

“But … I wasn’t going to!”

“He couldn’t be certain of that. A risk is better taken care of before an actual threat presents itself.”

Farah couldn’t believe her ears. “Is that how you conduct your affairs?”

“Absolutely.” He said this without shame or remorse, and Farah found she didn’t want to look at him anymore. She hid behind her eyelids as her thoughts raced. What did she do now? She’d been happy—well, contented in her life. She’d had a purpose and knew her place in the world. Now everything had changed. There was no going back, and yet she couldn’t see any options on how to move forward.

“I haven’t anything to prove that I am Farah Leigh Townsend,” she began. “Especially now that someone else has adopted the name. Also, a woman can’t claim the title and lands of the peerage without being married. On top of everything, I’ll have to explain why I was posing as a widow all this time, and I have no evidence of any foul play in my family’s death. I don’t even know where to begin!”

“Leave all that to me,” Blackwell offered.

Farah’s head snapped up. The way he stood, like a general surveying his massacre over a battlefield, made her uneasy. “And you’ll take care of it all for a debt to a friend a decade gone?” she asked dubiously.

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “I am, after all, a businessman. I can return your fortune to you, in exchange for access to the only part of London society still denied me.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Farah stuttered. “How will I do that?”

Blackwell leaned over the tub, bracing his hands on both sides, his powerful shoulders bunching as they supported his considerable weight. “Simple,” he purred. “You’ll marry me.”