a warning on his lips, but the girl recovered inches from the earl’s warding hand, mumbling an apology.
Who was she? Some indigent relative looking for crumbs in the final hours? There would be no crumbs for any one of them. Not if Bane had a say.
‘So you are Mary.’ The old man’s voice sounded like a door creaking in the wind. ‘She said you were no great beauty, but not that you were a beanpole. You take after your father.’
‘You knew my father?’ the girl asked, and Bane sensed how keenly she awaited his answer. Her body seemed to vibrate with the depth of her interest.
The old man grimaced. ‘I met him once. Kneel, girl. I’m getting a crick in my neck.’
Like a supplicant, the girl sank down. Anger rose hot and hard in Bane’s throat on the girl’s behalf, but she seemed unperturbed by the command and gazed calmly into the dying man’s face.
She spoke again, but her low voice did not reach all the way to Bane in the shadows beside the door.
The old man glared at her, lifted a clawed hand to twist her chin this way and that. Glimpses of her profile showed strong classical features, a straight aristocratic nose. Lush, full lips. A narrow jaw ending in a decided chin. Not a classical beauty, but a face full of character.
The sight of the old man’s hands on her delicate skin caused Bane’s hands to fist at his sides, made him want to go to her rescue. An impulse he instantly crushed. A weak old man could do her no harm. And Bane had no interest in her, despite her allure.
She was not his type of woman.
Ranger growled, more a vibration under his hand than a sound. Bane glanced down at the dog and signalled him to settle. By the time he looked back, the old man had released his grip on the young woman. ‘No,’ the old man said, answering the question Bane had not heard. ‘My reasons are my own.’
The girl’s shoulders seemed to slump, as if she had hoped for a different response.
Bane remained still in the shadows, content to watch a little longer, content to choose his own moment to reveal his presence.
The old man peered into the shadows on the other side of the bed. ‘She’ll do,’ he said with a triumphant leer. His smile was a mirthless drawing back of lips over crooked yellow teeth.
The woman, Mary, jerked back. ‘I have given my thanks, my lord, I do not need your approval.’ Her words rang with defiance. Brave words, but the voice shook.
Bane ruthlessly quelled a tiny surge of pity. He had no room for pity or mercy.
Beresford wheezed a laugh. ‘Bold piece, ain’t you. No milk-and-water miss. All the better.’ He flicked his fingers in dismissal. The girl rose to her feet and turned.
Bane knew the moment she saw him. The widening of her eyes, the hesitation, the flare of recognition in her gaze, not recognition of him as a person, but of his presence. The connection between them was a tangible thing, a twisting invisible thread that kept their gazes locked. And he felt … something. A tightening of his body. The kind that heralded lust. Not something he wanted or needed right now.
He shook his head, a warning to remain silent, and it seemed she understood for she strode back to Mrs Hampton’s side as if she hadn’t seen him at all. An unwanted trickle of admiration for her quiet calm warmed his veins.
He dragged his gaze back to the man in the bed. It was time to be done with this farce. Bane forced himself not to square his shoulders or take a deep breath. He was no boy worried about his acceptance. He belonged here and he cared not a whit if they thought otherwise. He signalled Ranger to lie down, yet still he hesitated to take the first step.
The earl again looked over into the shadows on the far side of the bed. ‘You said he would come,’ he quavered.
A man trotted up to the bed. Tight lips. Eyes that darted hither and yon, never resting long enough to be read, bald pate shining. ‘He is expected, my lord. I sent word as you ordered.’ A dry, officious voice. A clerk of some sort. Solicitor, Bane decided.
‘The storm must have delayed him.’ The solicitor rubbed his palms together with a papery sound. ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow will be too late.’
A flash of lightning punctuated his words, the room once more a colourless tableau of frozen players.
Bane stepped into the lamplight in that moment. His shadow loomed black over the bed and up the wall behind the dying man like some portent of evil. ‘I am here.’
The old man’s gasp was eminently satisfying. No doubt he had carried the hope his elder grandson would miraculously die at the eleventh hour.
Thunder rolled beyond the window, drowning out the old man’s muttered words.
Bane’s lip curled. It no longer mattered what the old man said. Beresford Abbey was a few short breaths from being passed on to a man who likely had not a drop of Beresford blood.
Oh, the old man had tried to make the best of an heir he despised once he’d discovered Bane had survived to stake his claim. He’d tried to force the twelve-year-old Bane into the appropriate mould. The right sort of school, the right education. As much as his mother’s family would permit. And Bane had used what he needed to take back what was rightfully his. His mother had fled the Abbey because she feared for Bane’s life. She had lost her own, trying to keep him safe. The powerlessness he’d felt that day still haunted him. He’d fought. How he’d fought. And those men, they had laughed at him. Mocked him. After that day he had sworn he would never let anyone make him feel weak and helpless again. He never had. And never by the man lying in the bed.
He’d used the best of both his worlds. The strength of the coalminers he’d worked alongside in summer holidays and the power of the nobility given by the title he would inherit. He’d taken control of his life.
No one would ever manipulate him again. Not his mother’s brother, or the earl.
Bane glanced over at the watchers. If one of them, just one of these relatives, had taken pity on his mother, offered her their support, he might have been able to find a little mercy in his heart. But they hadn’t. He bared his teeth in a smile that would do Ranger proud.
The old earl looked him over, his red-rimmed, faded blue eyes watery, his face a picture of scorn. ‘So, the scavengers are circling.’
‘You sent for me, Grandfather,’ he said his tone mocking.
The earl’s gaze lingered on Bane’s face and he shook his head. ‘A curse on your mother for sending my son to an early grave.’
Bitterness roiled in his gut at the vilification. A drunken lord driving his carriage off the road was hardly his mother’s fault. His chest tightened until his lungs were starved. Not that he was surprised by the accusation, just by his own visceral reaction, when there was nothing this decayed piece of flesh could do to her any more. ‘But for you, my mother would be alive today.’
Yet even as he spoke the words, the old guilt rose up to choke him. The knowledge that he had done nothing to save her. ‘But she beat you in the end.’
The old man sneered. ‘Did she now?’
The
