Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson
{ Chapter 25 }
His feet bare, but with trousers and a lawn shirt on, Talen stepped into the library of Washburn Manor, holding the lamp from his chamber into the shadows at this side of the library. Just another one of the expansive rooms he’d wandered through that day with Ness, trying to spark memories of the past. Memories that remained elusive.
Stubbornly so.
The dowager had been gone the whole of the day and well into nightfall. He’d been convinced she’d fled and stayed at the dower house to avoid him, but the echoes of the front door opening and closing had reached into the bowels of the house and had pulled him from bed and Ness’s warm naked body.
Not that he’d been sleeping. Not that he’d had any real sleep since arriving at this blasted place. Ness’s body—burying himself in her—had been the only thing keeping him from tearing apart this place brick by bloody brick.
A heavy wool wrap still draped over her robust form, the dowager stood bent over a table by the fireplace, her back to him, her head cocked as she tilted a book toward the light of the flames.
“You returned.”
She jumped upright with a squeak, her hand on her chest as she spun around. “Sweet lad, you frightened me. Do not sneak up upon a lady of my age or you’ll find me duly expired at your feet.”
“I believe you hardier than that, from what I have seen.”
She smiled, taking his words as a compliment. Whether or not he meant them as one he wasn’t sure himself.
He stopped a distance from her. “The travel to and from the dower house today wasn’t as quick as you had hoped?”
“No, no, it was not.” Her hand waved in the air. “My driver thought the road would be fine, but it was a slow slog, with far too many stops where the carriage had to be pushed through. Your driver was right to recommend against forging north at the moment.”
She motioned for him to come closer. “Come, see. I have it—here it is, your proper name. Come see by the firelight.”
Talen moved forward, setting his lamp on the table by the fireplace. She lifted up the book to him, holding it open to one of the first few pages. Long lines of names listed down the left and right sides of the pages. Names of people he should have known, should have heard of. People of his blood and bones.
She tilted the bible toward the fireplace and pointed to one line on the right side. “See, here you are. Right here. Conner Josiah Bartholomew Francis Burton. It was a handful, I remember that. Francis was your great-great-great-grandfather. I believe Josiah came from your mother’s lineage, though I fear I don’t recall the direct relation. And I was just studying the names of the past, as I’m not positive where Bartholomew came from. I don’t recall one in the line, but I haven’t looked at the bible in a long time.”
Talen stared at his name, written in such a fine script. Beautiful, even, where the letters looped together with the flourish of an inspired quill. His mark on history when he’d never had one.
Yet he felt no ownership on it. Couldn’t feel ownership on it. Not when this family that had created him had been the very same one that had destroyed him long ago, taking everything from him.
Taking his place in the world.
With a relieved sigh, a smile spread wide across the dowager’s face, her thick skin crinkling with age. “I look at you in this light and you look so young again, Conner. You look just like my own boy, Clayborne. It makes my heart happy to see you again. Alive. Healthy. I have worried on you for so long.”
His eyes flickered to her then back to the names scattered down the page. “My name is Talen and you see a past I don’t remember.”
She set the book onto the table and turned fully to him. “Being here hasn’t sparked any other memories? Did you visit your room in the nursery wing? I know much of that has been covered and isn’t in use now, but maybe there is something there that you would remember. A wooden horse or something akin to it?”
A caustic chuckle left his throat. “To my knowledge, I’ve never played with a wooden horse in my life.”
“But you used to, I remember that. You didn’t go anywhere without a horse in your hand.”
“I didn’t even learn to ride until I arrived in England six years ago. I have sea legs, nothing else.”
Her hands nervously smoothed down the front folds of her wool wrapper as her lips drew inward, his tone cutting off her babblings of the past. Good. He didn’t want to hear it. Hear what a happy life he had. Hear what was taken away from him.
He tapped his fingers on the corner of the bible. “This is helpful. Thank you for retrieving it.”
“Of course. Of course, anything to make this easier on you. I am so sorry for the past. For all my husband wrought upon you.”
His lips pulled back in a tight line. “You should know, aunt, that I don’t want the earldom. I imagine that is why you have been insistent on us staying until your son arrives. Honestly, I want very little to do with this place and my connection to it. The name, I’ll take that to the marriage vows only to protect Ness. Beyond that, I have my own wealth, my own life. I do not need a new one.”
Her lips parted in a silent gasp. “But, you—you are certain? The earldom is yours by birthright.”
He shook his head. “If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that rights are earned, not given. And I don’t want this right. Don’t want anything to do with this place. With the past. Ness and I will leave on the morrow, whether or not your son arrives.”
“But…but you are family. You must—”
“I must do nothing.” His eyes narrowed at her, his fury from yesterday instantly igniting into flames and surging through his blood. “With due regard, Lady Washburn, you may have saved my life, but then you threw an eleven-year-old boy onto a ship, injured, with no memory of his past. Everything of my life, of who I am now, is what I’ve built with my own two hands since then. Good and bad. I don’t need to be delivered from it, don’t need to be saved from it.”
“Oh.” Her hand flew up to her face, her fingers pressing against her lips. “I am so sorry, my sweet lad. So sorry for what path I sent you on. I don’t know how you will forgive me.”
“It is what it is.” The statement made, not offering forgiveness or condolences against her distress. Noble emotions that he doubted he’d ever be able to extend to this woman and her family. He inclined his head to her. “You will excuse me.”
Grabbing his lamp, Talen turned on his heel and strode out of the library, needing Ness. Her body, her arms around him. Needing him grounded to who and what he was. London. Harsh. Driven. Wary. Not to be trifled with.
Stepping into his room, he watched Ness sleeping on her side as he stripped down. The low light from the fireplace sent shadows across the top of her smooth breasts, her nipples just barely covered by the sheet he’d tugged over her when he’d left the bed. Her fingers moved on the empty mattress beside her, and her eyes fluttered open, drowsy.
Finding him standing next to the bed, she smiled and Talen crawled under the sheet, kissing her bare shoulder. At least the beds were comfortable here at Washburn. Thick mattresses that could cushion Ness from how hard he needed to drive into her.
Her hand lifted to land on his chest, her fingers curling into his skin. And just like that, the fury dissipated from his veins.
Ness looked up at him. “Is the dowager back?”
“She is.”
“And who am I marrying?” She pushed herself to sitting, the sheet falling down about her waist and exposing her breasts.
Damned distracting.
“You’re marrying Talen Blackstone.”
“Yes. And?”
He held back a wince. “Conner Josiah Bartholomew Francis Burton.”
The slightest smirk lifted the corners of her lips. “It is long.”
“It is.”
She nodded, her lips pursing. “But between us, it is Talen Blackstone I am marrying. Understood? You are Talen and no one else.”
“Understood and appreciated.” His head dipped, his lips moving down along her breast to her left nipple. Slipping it into his mouth, he swirled his tongue along it, marveling at how good she tasted. Always water to his thirst.
A mewl left her as she arched her back to angle herself better to his mouth and her fingers sank into his hair. “Did the dowager say anything else?”
“No.” He lifted his lips from her body for a breath. “But I told her.”
“Told her what?”
He moved onto her neck, finding the dipped burrow with his tongue where her collarbone, neck and shoulder triangulated, the exact spot that made the tiny hairs on her arms spike. “That I want no part of this family. No earldom. Nothing. That we are leaving on the morrow.”
“You what?”
His head popped up, his look finding her stunned face. “That I want nothing to do with this life.” He leaned forward, burying himself in her hair, his lips aching to be on her skin again.
She pushed against his chest, holding him away. “You just decided that?”
“I did.” His eyebrows angled inward as he found her gaze. “I don’t want this. This life.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” He jerked away from her hands on his chest, his arm swinging up into the air around them. “I don’t want the monstrosity of this place. It only brings pain. It brought pain—death—to everyone that I cared about. Why would I want this? I don’t. There’s no reason for it. So I refused it.”
“But you can’t just refuse who you really are.” She leaned forward, her fingers finding the center line of his chest. “It is your birthright, this place, the title. You must take it.”
Her touch suddenly burning him, he jerked out of the bed, the full of his naked body pulsing in the flickering light of the fire, muscles twitching. “I don’t want it. Don’t want this. So stop pushing it, Ness.”
She scampered to the side of the mattress, dragging the sheet with her. “Talen, no. I’m not pushing it—I’m just saying you don’t remember everything yet. I only mean that you’re making a decision that you might regret. A decision not but two days after you found out what really happened to your parents. Of course you don’t want that—what happened to them—in your life. But there was so much more. If you remember more about who your parents were, how they were, maybe that’s your connection back to the good instead of the bad.”
Her toes touched the floor and Talen took a step away from her, his fingers folding into fists.
She stood, clutching the sheet at her chest, advancing on him. “This family, this title. It wasn’t all horrible, Talen. I remember that. I saw you happy here once. Happy like any child that had a carefree life. I envied you that life.” She reached out, grabbing for his arm, but he snapped it away. Yet still she came at him.
“And your aunt even said so—she said you three, your mother, father and you, were happy. Happy. That was all I ever wanted you to remember by coming back here. That you were happy. Capable of it. Worthy of it.”
Every word she said, a nail pounding into his brain. She kept talking about a happiness he’d never known, like it was a given.
But what happiness could have existed if it all ended like it did?
False happiness?
That was the only thing that could have existed. His mother took her last breath in front of his very eyes, reaching for him, and he’d been too cowardly to stretch out even a finger to her.
He wasn’t fit to even sniff around happiness. Happiness had no place in his life. He’d always known that to his core and finally discovering what happened to his parents only solidified that fact.
“You were happy, Talen.” Ness took a final step toward him, her amber eyes pleading, glowing gold in the firelight, and he had to thrust a long step backward, his heels touching the heat of the marble hearth.
“Yet instead of memories of happiness in my mind, you just set the reality of the nightmare that I’ve managed to avoid my whole life into my head.” His words snapped, his voice shaking with a sudden rage he couldn’t control, his yell filling the room. “That’s what you gave me here, Ness. A nightmare that I have to live with every minute now. Horrors that cannot be avenged. That is what you gave me when you brought me here. Not happiness. The exact opposite of it. Hell. Demons I cannot escape. You did this.”
Her head snapped back and she blanched white, her eyes wide.
Without a word, she dropped the sheet to the floor, grabbed her robe from the chair he’d flung it across earlier, wrapped it haphazardly about her body, and left the room.
He didn’t stop her.