the welter of his feelings for her he had almost forgotten her quest to seduce the truth from him. But Merryn, of course, would never forget. Merryn was completely single-minded. And she was so close to the truth now—so close and yet so utterly wrong.
The silence stretched so taut that the ticking of the grandfather clock seemed almost to split his eardrums.
“You are mistaken,” he said hoarsely, when he could speak. “Kitty did not kill Stephen.”
“I don’t believe you,” Merryn said. She was holding the material of the cloak tight about her neck now, like a shield. What he saw in her eyes now was different from all the other times she had confronted him. There was no anger anymore, no frustration. There was nothing but shining hope, so pure and confident, and—he shuddered to see it—love. Garrick could not bear for her to love him, not with what he had done. Not when he was so undeserving. Not when he was about to smash her hope and her faith once and for all. He could taste bitterness in his mouth.
“I have been looking at things the wrong way around,” Merryn said. “You are good and noble, Garrick. You have always done your duty—”
Garrick knew he had to stop this now, before Merryn stumbled onto the truth. He felt as though his heart was snapping in two. “I am neither of those things,” he said gruffly. “You are deluded, Merryn. I am neither good nor noble and I thought I had just proved that to you.”
She shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “I have no complaints that you could not resist me,” she said. She took a step closer to him and placed a hand on his arm. “I love you,” she said softly. “It is that simple. And I could not love you if you were the cold-blooded murderer you claim to be.”
I love you …
Garrick flinched. “No,” he said. He shook. This was too much; he could not accept it. Once he would have given so much for the love of a woman like Merryn Fenner, before Kitty’s betrayal, before Stephen’s murder. Now it was too late. He had killed a man and destroyed too many lives to deserve such generosity of spirit, especially from Merryn. The images danced before him, vicious memories. Kitty screaming, Stephen dying, lives changed in a second, hideous consequences stretching over the years. Those could never be wiped out by Merryn Fenner’s love. It was impossible. He looked into her face, saw her determination and the clear, pure love in her eyes and felt his heart snap.
“No,” he said again. “Merryn …” He cleared his throat. “You think that you are in love with me,” he said, “so you want me to be all that is good and heroic. The truth is that I am not. I never was and I can never be.”
She shook her head. “I cannot believe that—”
“Believe it,” Garrick said harshly. “Because I killed your brother and in the end that is the only thing that matters and it will always come between us.”
She shook her head. “No—”
Garrick thought savagely of the letter. There was only one way to end this, he thought. He had to tell her what he had done, what Stephen had done, but keep Kitty’s secrets.
“Merryn,” he said. He knew he was going to break her heart and shatter her illusions, but there was no other way. “Please listen to me,” he said. He tried to make his voice as gentle as he could even as he knew there was no gentle way of telling her. “I did kill Stephen,” he said. “There was no duel. You were right about that all along. I found Kitty and Stephen together. There was an argument. Stephen tried to kill Kitty and I shot him. That is why I am not the honorable man you want me to be.”
He saw the shock explode in her eyes. She backed a step away from him. There was an anguished, frozen moment. Merryn’s face, so rosy with animation a moment before when she had laid her heart beneath his feet, was now so pale he was afraid that she would faint. Her eyes were dull, opaque. “No,” she said again. She pressed her hands together and Garrick saw how much she was shaking. He wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms, to offer comfort for the grievous hurt he had inflicted but the torment in her eyes warned him to stay away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Merryn, I am so sorry—” But he could tell she could not even hear his words.
Her voice was a whisper. “Stephen loved Kitty. I know he did! He would never hurt her.” Her voice rose. “He would never hurt the woman he loved.” Her eyes were wild. “You’re lying to me. You must be!”
Garrick watched the hurt curl within her like a flower scorched in the sun, bending, withering. It was worse than ever he had imagined. He had thought Merryn would be distraught to be so disillusioned about her brother. Not for one moment had he believed that she would meet his words with so flat a denial. It was as though she simply could not accept what she had heard. Or did not want to accept it. Perhaps, despite what she had said about recognizing Stephen’s weaknesses, she had still seen her brother as a hero. Garrick’s heart ached for her. He watched her fingers tighten on her cloak until the knuckles showed white. She backed away from him toward the door.
“It was not meant to be like that,” she said and she sounded lost. “They were supposed to run away together—” She stopped. “Stephen would never do that,” she repeated. Her voice sounded raw. She was so open a person that now she had no defenses to hide behind, no way to conceal her pain.
Garrick watched her face crumple. “It cannot be true,” she said. It was more a plea than a protest, begging Garrick to deny what he had told her. He said nothing, clenching his fists at his side.
Merryn paused as though she were hoping for a reprieve and the moment stretched out unbearably, a torture to Garrick beyond whatever he had imagined.
“I thought you had some honor at the very least,” she said. “You gave Fenners back. You saved my life. Now you defame the memory of a dead man.” The candles fluttered in the draft from the door. She was gone.
Garrick took the letter from the desk drawer, threw it into the fire and watched it burn. He did not need it to remind him of his obligations. They felt like locks on his soul.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IT WAS THE MORNING OF the wedding, very early morning, dark and cold.
Merryn was sitting in her bedroom. Beside her on the bed the Fenner estate records lay scattered like snow. She had sought them out for comfort, hoping to find among the old documents something to anchor her to the past as she remembered it, to the happy days of her childhood, to the memories of that last summer. But it was too late. Something had changed. Everything had changed.
When she had fallen in love with Garrick she had wanted to exonerate him. She had wanted him to be a hero. But he was not. He really had killed Stephen and he had claimed that it had been because Stephen had tried to murder Kitty in an argument. Such a terrible slander, that Stephen had tried to kill the woman he had loved. It was surely impossible.
She did not believe it. She did not want to believe it. She could not believe it because it would mean that everything she had done to help Kitty and Stephen had been a terrible mistake, based on no more than a lie. And that she could not bear. She tried to close her mind to it. Except that she could see Joanna’s face and hear Joanna’s words.
I am not sure that Stephen did love Kitty. Certainly he never loved anyone as much as he loved himself …
A
