A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) by Kimberly Bell

Author:Kimberly Bell [Bell, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-18T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

The last piece of the door landed on the bonfire in a cloud of sparks. Ewan lowered himself to the grass and looked out at the ocean. It would take a long time for the hardened boards to catch and burn down, but he was determined to see it done.

It hadn’t been easy—the hinges were rusted with age, so they’d had to tear it down with axes. His hand had throbbed the entire time and the wood was practically petrified from age. It had felt fitting, though, that it should be a struggle. After seeing that door in his nightmares for twenty-five years, it would have been insulting if it had come down without a fight.

The entire time he was chipping away at the boards, moments from the past and present warred for his attention. Before, he’d only ever had terrifying memories of that place. Now in among the bad, there were new memories. Deidre’s demanding that he take her. Her gasp when they joined together the very first time. He and Angus laughing as they cursed every oak tree in Scotland. The first piece of the door breaking free, letting daylight into the cellar. It would never be a place he thought of fondly, but there was more to it now than just listening to his mother dying in the darkness.

A piece of green wood popped. The boards had finally started to catch. He leaned back against a boulder and finally let himself think about her. It was safer not to—the first thought of his mother was always her ragged breathing beside him as she struggled for air. The pain of the memory was close to unbearable, but the anger he felt at his memories was why he’d stopped letting himself think of her altogether. It was too easy to hurt someone without even realizing he was doing it.

This time, he was able to remember. It still hurt. God, did it ever hurt. The tears came in rivers, alone out on the cliff with only the fire to see. But after he remembered it all, after it stole his breath and ripped him apart, other memories came. Things he’d lost in the brutality of her death. She’d been young. He didn’t think he’d ever realized it before, but she couldn’t have been more than eighteen when he was born.

He remembered her laughing. They’d packed food and brought it out to the cliff’s edge. Ewan had decorated her with little flowers, hundreds of them, and she’d laughed. He remembered that she used to sing while she sewed. He would hide under her chair, staging great battles with his wooden soldiers. Sometimes the soft melody of her voice would lull him to sleep and he would wake up to her calling his name and carrying him off to bed.

“Are you all right?”

Ewan looked up to find Rose on the edge of the fire. “Aye.”

“May I sit with you?”

He nodded.

She joined him in the grass. “They should have torn it down years ago.

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