He couldn’t help it, he laughed. He was exhausted and all his compassion was gone. She punched him on the arm, hard enough to cut his laughter into a yelp of pain. He stood up and strode away from her, kicking at a thorny yellow rose that tried to catch his trousers.
“Bloody hell, Ariana.”
The dramatic sobs turned into a steady stream of crying that she tried to muffle with her overskirt. With her face covered and her petticoats showing she looked like the skinny girl who used to run through the forest with him, bossing him around and tormenting the wildlife. He couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t known her. He sat back down beside her and patted her shoulder.
“No one loves me,” she said, muffled by fabric.
“That’s idiotic,” he replied.
“My parents have to love me.”
“My parents don’t have to love you.”
“I think they only just pity me.”
“You’re being a bit pitiful right now. Really, stop this.” He stopped patting and tried to pull the skirt from her face. She looked a fright and he bit back the urge to tell her so.
“People love you,” she said.
“I got banished from my own family’s village and my betrothed not only couldn’t leave me fast enough, she wouldn’t glance in my direction before she went.”
She sighed and wiped her nose with a handkerchief she pulled out of her sleeve. “Lucy got you banished. And Maria never really loved you,” she said, holding up her hand to keep him from saying anything. “And that was because you never gave her a proper chance. She would have, though, if you’d been yourself. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“But I was being myself and still no one loved me. Which means I’m unloveable.” More tears flowed and she made no effort this time to check them. Her sodden handkerchief hung limply from her fingers.
He rubbed his aching head and looked around him at the beauty that had always surrounded him. The rainbow of fragrant roses, the verdant forest, his beloved animals, the fields. And the luxurious house that he’d grown to believe was truly his. The very best times he’d had here had always been with Ariana. Everything in London had been false, made worse by his prideful lies.
“I love you,” he said. He shook his head when that only made her cry harder. He wouldn’t stoop to trying to convince her. “Do you remember that rabbit that bit you when we were wee children?”
She stared at him in astonishment as if she couldn’t believe he would remind her of such a thing. “Yes,” she said feebly, rubbing at her arm where he knew there was a scar the rabbit had left behind. “Even the animals hate me. And I always loved them so.”
He took the handkerchief from her and wiped her nose to little avail. She snorted and shuddered and looked at him as if the world were about to end. Shouldn’t he be the one crying to her? The love of his life had left him only minutes before, and she truly despised him. He was the one who was truly despicable. He found that thinking about Maria hating him didn’t stab and tear the way he thought it would. Only apathy and a bone deep tiredness remained.
He deserved to be hated, if he was honest. Whether his intentions were good or not, the outcome had been all bad. Ariana’s intentions with her strange following had been good as well. She’d made a lot of people’s lives better in her own bossy, selfish way. She hadn’t deserved to be plotted against.
“You may have loved them,” he said, “but you didn’t care what they really needed. That rabbit, and the owlet, and that family of mice you trapped. I told you and I told you they weren’t fit to live in your cages. It didn’t matter how much food or warm blankets you gave them. You weren’t letting them live the way they were meant.”
She sniffed. “Are you saying I caged Nick?”
He nearly let out a growl when he heard her say the bastard’s name. The thought of Nicholas Kerr and how he’d wronged Ariana made him clench his fists with fresh rage. She didn’t really love him, she couldn’t have. He didn’t like thinking she was the sort who could be charmed by a handsome face, but it was better than thinking she’d actually loved that worthless clod.
“And why would Milo want to kill me? Why? I don’t know what I ever did to them.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “Why am I so thoroughly unlovable?”
He wished he could tell her she was being overly dramatic. But someone she trusted had tried to kill her. “People don’t kill other people because they don’t love them.”
“No, they do it because they hate them. That’s worse.”
“They do it for a lot of reasons. He was an evil man. Greed and love of power don’t mix well with evil.”
“He never seemed greedy or evil. He was kind and helpful. I don’t understand this at all. I only ever wanted any of them to be happy and comfortable and free to practice.”
He sighed and took her hand, not letting her squirm away. For being the cleverest person he knew, she was also the stupidest. Or perhaps just the most naive.
“You tried to cage a wild animal again, Ariana,” he said gently. “A beautiful, spacious cage but a cage all the same. And this time you put a whole load of them together and expected everything to be wonderful just because you gave them nice things and rich food.”
“No one was a prisoner there,” she said. “Most of the people who turned up had nothing. They should have been—”
“Grateful?” he asked sardonically. “Like all those rabbits and pigeons you tried to tame
