When Titus Conleith’s composure slipped, and he swallowed twice, Gabriel shook his head, intending to vehemently disagree.
“You can’t convince me otherwise,” Titus insisted, his voice a bit huskier with unabashed emotion. “If only for what you did for that girl.” He nudged his chin toward the door. “Where my wife has often been considered the crown jewel of the Goode family, Felicity is like… a treasured rosebud. She’s fragile and easily crushed. There are not many hearts in this world as pure and true as hers. I shouldn’t like to think how broken— how indelibly shattered— everyone in this family would be if we lost her. We have you to thank for that.”
Gabriel told himself he found it impossible to speak due to his healing wounds and not the tightness in his own throat.
For every moment he spent burning in hell, he’d have this to hold onto.
He’d saved Felicity Goode, because even heaven didn’t deserve her.
Chapter 1
A Year Later
There was simply nothing so dreadful as a day like today.
Felicity’s empty stomach rolled and pitched as she used the back of her soiled glove to wipe a bit of perspiration from her brow, then below her eyes, and above her upper lip.
Sitting back on her heels, she surveyed the damage whilst doing her utmost to take in a deep breath. To keep her heartbeat from galloping away, crashing into her ribs with enough force to break them.
To swallow around the lump of absolute trepidation in her throat.
Puffing out a shallow breath, she ripped her gloves off and tossed them in the dirt, fighting the tears filling her sinuses and burning the corners of her eyes.
Usually, tending her garden was rather cathartic, but not this morning. It would be a miracle if her winter jasmine survived the month of May.
It would be an absolute marvel if she survived the afternoon.
With all she had to worry about, all she had to fear, Felicity was unable to fathom why the ruination of her memorial garden was the thing that threatened her composure.
Indeed, her tenuous grip on her sanity.
She’d been digging in the dirt since four o’clock that morning, only stopping when the dizziness compromised her balance. Or, when her racing heart threatened to explode through her chest, forcing her to sit on the ground and wait for the spell to pass or for death to take her.
It never did.
So, she’d have to face what the day brought.
Or, rather, whom.
So many people. Not people… men. She’d have to meet them all. Smile at them, be kind to them…
And then choose one. Which meant rejecting others.
What a nightmare.
Glancing around her iron and double-paned glasshouse at the array of blurred and vibrant color, she noted the sun had climbed higher than she’d realized.
Oh, that she could stay here amongst the dahlias and crocuses, the hyacinths and begonias. She much preferred their company to that of most people.
Pushing herself to her feet, Felicity stretched the stiff muscles of her back and reached for the pot of aloe vera. It’d been something of an experiment, as such things didn’t tend to thrive in English soil, but she was determined to give it one more try in the house where the atmosphere was a little drier. Hopefully, she had time to get it inside for a triage, and return to tidy up the greenhouse and ready herself to face the day.
Carrying it gingerly with both hands, Felicity rushed from the hothouse into the courtyard of Cresthaven Place, her family’s stately whinstone home in Mayfair. She found the courtyard entrance to the rear foyer locked.
After recent events, she’d instructed her staff to keep all doors secured, and they must not have noticed she’d been outside.
It pleased her, though, that someone remained vigilant.
After knocking for several moments to no avail, she realized that the staff must be below stairs attending their own breakfast.
Which meant she’d need to go to the front entrance and ring the bell to summon her butler, Mr. Bartholomew.
Lifting her skirts, she scurried toward the deep courtyard arch— almost a tunnel— beneath which carriages passed through to unload their passengers away from the busy London streets.
The iron gate stood open in anticipation of the day’s bevy of alarming traffic.
A familiar sensation poured over her, one that had plagued her for several months now. It was different than her general sense of anxiety and unease. Indeed, her flesh warmed and the fine hairs on her body would lift to attention. Immediately an alarm trilled up her spine as if her back had been licked by a demon.
She felt this sense most often at night, when she was alone. She’d go to her window and look out into the dark.
And was haunted by the sense that the darkness stared back at her.
Doing her best to ignore her trepidation, Felicity noted that one of the aloe leaves was broken, weeping its syrup-like substance. She balanced the pot in one hand and did her best to coax the bend of the branch back in without it snapping.
It might have worked, had she not crashed headlong into the wall.
The clay pot shattered upon the cobbles of her drive, leaving a strange little oblong mound of dirt upon which was strewn the single plant.
It absurdly reminded Felicity of a tiny grave. She made a silly sound of amusement as she blinked down at it with something almost like relief.
Well, there was no saving it now, and she was almost glad she didn’t have to expend the energy.
She barely had any left.
Just as she reached down to tidy the pottery shards, the wall moved.
Felicity jumped back several paces, smothering a cry with her fingers as her brain slowly processed some facts she’d previously missed.
Walls were not broad and warm and covered in wool. They didn’t smell of cedar chips and expensive tobacco.
And they certainly didn’t have thick hair that gleamed like onyx glass.
With a horrified squeak, Felicity retreated several more paces as the impossibly wide man turned to face her.
He moved deliberately, she noticed, like a mountain or an ancient oak, as if taking care where he arranged his uncommon bulk in a world full of small and fragile things.
Normally, Felicity would be frozen on the spot, her mouth open like a demented fish as she searched her blank thoughts for something, anything to say to a stranger in these awkward and embarrassing circumstances. She’d be wishing the tiny grave between them was big enough for her to disappear into.
Perhaps forever.
She’d berate herself for her blindness, her clumsiness, and her inarticulate nature.
But something about the way the man stood in front of her, mute and quite unnaturally still, gave her the time to cobble a sentence together.
It seemed he, too, was frozen in place, stymied into silence by her inelegance.
“Oh, do forgive me for startling you, sir!” Though she’d put distance between them, she reached her hand toward him in a timeless gesture of mea culpa. “I wasn’t minding my step. Did I soil your coat? Did I cause you any harm?”
She squinted over at him— or, rather, up at him— and yearned for her spectacles.
Because of the extremity of her nearsightedness, she had to stand indecently close to people to make out their features without optical assistance.
She’d have given anything for them now.