Conniving wasn’t a trait Eliza excelled at. Would he catch her out on her deceptions? Throw them out into the snow? Not once they were married, she was sure of it.
She swallowed, gulped, drew courage and reminded herself that this was kind of her idea in a roundabout sort of way. “Have you contacted the vicar?”
Darius nodded as he reached the top of the grand stair.
“What did you tell him?”
“Do you know the man?” he asked, suddenly evasive.
“He came to the village when I was a child,” she said after a short hesitation. “We used to go to church every week but then mother passed and we stopped. My father lost his faith when he lost his way.”
Darius paused in the corridor, looked both ways as if lost even here, and then turned right. He kicked the third door open gently and then set her on her feet but didn’t look as though he was going anywhere. He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and gestured to the room. “I think you’ll be comfortable in here. The children are one floor up so you will hear if there is a racket but I have a man in the room next door to the nursery to keep an eye on them.”
She forgot all about vicars and marrying a stranger at the mention of her siblings. “I should be with them, be closer. What if…”
“What if?” he prompted but she didn’t answer. “Nothing will happen to you here in this house. I have men watching the perimeter, the lower levels are guarded and the upper levels are locked up securely.”
She nodded but her anxiety only increased. Why did he still stand there looking at her like that?
“There is a bathing room through that door.” He gestured but still didn’t move. “The men are bringing hot water through the other room. Just be sure to lock the outer door.”
“You don’t trust them?” she asked, her hand at her throat. How could she possibly get naked in a house filled only with men? Her cheeks heated and she had to fight to push the thoughts away.
“I trust them with my life, I told you that. But we’re all still getting used to the layout of the house; stumbling through doors happens sometimes.”
“But you grew up in this house. I’m trying to remember you. I think I saw you from a distance, but I can’t be sure. It’s most vexing.”
Darius chuckled. “I wasn’t allowed to be anywhere near your silk skirts. The one time I stopped to stare at you, your father kicked me in the head from atop his horse. I learned my place.”
“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. He wasn’t very nice to the servants.” Or his own children.
“Is that why you don’t have any retainers?”
Eliza went to stand by the window, to peer through the dusty panes at the dark night. No stars twinkled; no moon lit the pines. It was as black as Darius had said his past was, but Eliza needed to turn away from his penetrating gaze. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to read her and she didn’t want him to know how she felt before she did.
“My father stopped paying their wages, became violent and sullen. The servants started to leave when the food ran out. The cook left first because without anything to cook, his position was redundant. The rest within weeks. Some I paid with the house silver, others with the crystal, some more with furniture and linens.”
Darius moved closer. She could just make out his reflection in the glass. “Your father didn’t notice any of this?”
Eliza shrugged. “Probably. The question should be, did he care? The answer to that is no. He no longer had to live in a house without coal, without food, without happiness. When he was home, he drank until nothing registered. Eventually he just stopped coming home.”
“Did you miss him?”
“No.” The two youngest missed their father, but she didn’t. His mood swings weren’t predictable when he was drinking. He became dangerous when drunk, belligerent when sober. “Even now I don’t mourn the loss of the man. I mourn the loss of what he could have been to us, Ethan and Nathanial especially. He should have been teaching Nathanial the ways of the estate, farming and husbandry. Ethan didn’t learn to ride. The girls never got to sit on his lap so he could tell them the stories of his ancestors. Perhaps that’s what I miss.”
Silence hung between them for some time after she’d let her words pour out. But then Darius spoke. “I miss my grandfather.”
Eliza turned back to face him, to gauge if he merely spoke words meant to assuage and reassure, or if he really did regret all those years spent away. “Why did you never write to let him know you were alive? That you were well?”
He met her gaze and his eyes darkened to an impossible shade, or perhaps it was the shadows of the past. “I wasn’t well. There was a large part of me that was afraid. If my sire discovered that he hadn’t succeeded in getting someone else, or perhaps circumstance, to kill me, then he would likely track me down and finish the job. The other part of me was ashamed of what I was becoming.”
She had no idea what he meant by that but she wanted to know. His mysteriousness was somewhat alluring and she struggled to maintain any sort of distance in the hopes to know more. “What were you becoming?”
“A true bastard. Not the illegitimate sort, the sort who wouldn’t hesitate to kill an unarmed man, to