“You’re saying… hiring the first man who appeared on your doorstep saved you from that torment.” He didn’t state this as a question, but she heard one beneath the words.
Felicity plucked at a seam in her skirts, carefully considering her answer. “I hope you’ll forgive my forwardness, but that isn’t at all what I was getting at. I hired you because… because even though you startled me when we met, you didn’t frighten me.”
“I… don’t follow.”
She wasn’t certain she did either, but here they were. She was about to make herself vulnerable to his ridicule and somehow, she didn’t care.
She wasn’t afraid. For once.
“There is something about your presence, Mr. Severand, that I find comforting. And with a nervous disposition like mine, a reassuring presence is like a rare treasure, indeed. That is why I engaged you on the spot. I… felt immediately safe with you.”
He didn’t answer for a beat longer than she expected. “But… I told you I am a dangerous and violent man.”
“And, as it happens, I am in need of a dangerous and violent man.”
He sat stock-still but for his shoulders lifting and lowering with what seemed like labored breath. He said nothing. Just remained immobile for an increasingly unsettling length of time.
“Does that… Did what I revealed bother you?” she worried.
He set his glass down and stood abruptly, retreating toward the window, beyond which a misting rain dimmed the light of the streetlamps. He stared out into the darkness for a moment, and Felicity absurdly wondered if he yearned to be out where he belonged.
Because he was part of that darkness.
He marched toward the door, and just as she feared he was about to leave, he shut them in and strode back to the adjacent window. “Before we go any further, Miss Goode, I need you to look at me.”
Stymied, Felicity stood, as well. Was he going mad? “I am looking at you.”
“Can you see my face?”
Oh. That. “Not… in exacting detail.”
“You should, before you invite me to attend you in public.” His voice never lifted in volume or octave, but it was threaded with increasing tension. “I do not fit comfortably into a ballroom or a lady’s solarium. You might regret asking me to. I will stand here, and you can approach at your discretion.”
“I don’t see why that’s necessary—”
“Just… come closer.” His tone took on an edge, but was also weathered by something she might have identified as dread mixed with a resigned exhaustion.
“Please,” he amended more gently.
“Very well. If you insist.” Felicity was equal parts curious and cautious. She thought Daniel might have experienced something like she did as he braved the lion’s den.
Unafraid, but very aware what sort of beast she approached.
He could devour her whole, but she knew he wouldn’t. At least, she was fairly certain.
She didn’t stop until she stood before him, her head tilted back as his bent down to grant her unrestricted access to examine him.
He stood like a statue, like an effigy of some ancient Roman general beneath her gaze, and Felicity was certain he didn’t even breathe.
It became instantly apparent what he’d meant for her to see.
What he feared she would revile.
His face was a monument to violence. Indeed, a map of it. His nose crooked and dented, as if it’d been broken too many times and then cobbled back together. A slash interrupted his bottom lip. Another, his brow. A few more disappeared into his hairline, which was so black it gleamed blue in the candlelight. His left eyelid closed slightly more than his right, granting him an eternally malevolent glare. Some of the skin on his left cheek appeared glossy and tinged just a little pinker than the rest of his weathered, craggy features. Deep grooves bracketed a hard mouth, which was pressed into a hyphen and whitened at the corners.
He was too brutal to be handsome. His jaw square and wide, his chin strong and sharp. The hollows of his cheeks were deep as canyons and the skin beneath his eyes bruised from sleepless nights, creating a starkness about him that threatened to break her heart.
But it was his eyes she couldn’t look away from.
They weren’t dark as she’d first thought, merely set deep into a heavy brow and rife with shadows.
The gaze he affixed onto her was a mercurial silver/grey. The striations within the irises might have held some green and gold if he stood in the sun. Transfixed by their beauty, Felicity found it impossible to identify what she read in those eyes. No word existed in her vocabulary to do so, but it tugged at her with an aching intensity.
His expression could have been cast from marble, and yet it was wary and prepared, as if he expected her to strike him. Or spit upon him.
Or scream and flee.
Perhaps some people had done.
Unexpectedly, her fingers itched to explore his compelling face. To smooth over his brow and draw a thumb over the pinkened skin of the long scar.
What unimaginable pain he had endured.
A strange, dark part of her hoped he’d answered in kind.
That out there, someone else was just as broken.
Dismayed by her uncharacteristic ferocity, Felicity became suddenly aware of how warm his breath felt on her skin, feathering over her cheeks in apple-scented puffs. Indeed, warmth emanated from every part of him, and the recognition struck her with bewildering force that beneath his elegant clothing and inelegant features, Gareth Severand was a man.
An incomparably large man with expanses of flesh and muscle so diametrically opposed to her own, she couldn’t fathom what they must look like. What it must be like to move through the world as he did. A tower of strength and
