Delilah Marvelle - Forever a Lord

Though his fists instinctively popped up to swing, Coleman knew pulverizing his own sister’s husband was not what he owed her. “Atwood doesn’t exist anymore,” he rasped.

The duke slowly turned him. “I have stared at the painted miniature of you as a child so many times. No one has eyes quite like yours. I don’t know why I didn’t see it. The bruises on your face were very distracting.”

Coleman couldn’t breathe.

The duke leaned in. “Your sister devoted everything to the hope of finding you. And this is how you repay her? By running from her family when they come to you? Don’t you care to know what happened to her? Or how she died?”

A warm tear trickled its way down the length of Coleman’s cheek. He viciously swiped at it, welcoming the pinching from grazing the bruise on his face.

The duke held his gaze. “She died in childbirth. Many years ago. It would have been a girl. Our third. Neither survived. I just lost our eldest son, as well. Typhus took him. Yardley here is all I have left of her.”

Coleman stumbled outside that grasp and leaned back against the door, feeling weak. He had been running and running from the past to the point of delusion, and now, it would seem, he had become that delusion. At least he had protected Auggie’s good name to the end.

Dearest God. None of this seemed real. “And what of my mother? Is she dead, too?”

The duke shook his head. “No. She is very much alive.”

He drew in a ragged breath. “I’m glad to hear it.” He nodded. “She was good to me.” He swallowed, trying to keep his voice steady. “And my father? The earl?”

“Still alive.”

Coleman set his jaw and tapped a rigid fist against his thigh. “Of course he is.” He pushed away from the door, knowing his father’s face had replaced so many faces in the ring since he took up boxing at twenty. His pent-up hatred for the man was but one of many reasons why he’d never sought his family out. Because he would have smeared his father’s blood across every last wall in London. “Is he here in New York?”

Yardley approached. “No. He doesn’t know we have been looking for you.”

Coleman raked long strands of hair from his face with a trembling hand. “And why doesn’t he know?”

The duke sighed. “Augustine always believed he was responsible for your disappearance. And I have seen more than enough to believe her. I therefore opted to never include him in whatever investigations we conducted. Including this one. We feared he would impede.”

These men clearly knew his father.

Yardley leaned in. “Come upstairs and have a brandy. Talk to us in the privacy we all deserve. Please.”

Coleman half nodded and drifted across the lobby alongside them, submitting to the request. He followed them up, up red-carpeted stairs until he was eventually ushered into a sweeping lavish room graced with windows facing out toward Bowling Green Park.

It was like he was ten again and looking out over New York City for the first time. It was eerie. He awkwardly sat in the leather chair he was guided into.

A glass filled with brandy was placed into his hand. He could barely keep it steady. The amber liquid within the crystal swayed. The last time he had touched crystal of similar quality was when he had smashed a decanter against that cellar wall he was being kept in and screamed until he could feel neither his body nor soul. He felt like a freak then. And he felt like a freak now. For here he was sitting with his long hair and butchered face holding an expensive tonic meant to be sipped by lace-wearing fops. He’d never felt like he truly belonged anywhere. He was neither fop nor street boy. His boxing was the only world that made sense. Fight or fall.

Yardley slowly sat in a chair across from him. “My mother had a dream you were still alive. It induced her to create a map of your whereabouts which I had kept since her death. That is why we are here. Because of her. Her soul was clearly connected to you. She was never able to let you go.”

Coleman drew in a ragged breath. He had dreamed of Auggie on occasion, too. She had once appeared in a boxing match beside him, startling him into missing a swing. She never said a word in his dreams. Only smiled. And now, he knew why. She’d been smiling from beyond.

The duke brought his chair closer and sat. Leaning forward, he whispered, “What happened to you the night you disappeared? Can you speak of it at all?”

Coleman stared into his glass of brandy. The boy he once knew insisted he say something. In the name of his sister. “I spent five years confined to a cellar after my father had crossed a man he shouldn’t have.”

Yardley dropped his hand to his trouser-clad knee. “Five years? By God, what was done to you?”

Coleman continued to stare down at his brandy.

The duke leaned in closer. “Were you beaten?”

Bringing the brandy to his lips, Coleman swallowed the burning liquid. “I wish I had been. I take physical pain incredibly well.”

Both men fell silent.

Coleman sensed they wanted him to say more. But in his opinion, he’d already said enough.

The duke searched his face. “How did you escape?”

Coleman took another quick swig. “I didn’t. One day, my captor opened the cellar door, put a wad of money into my hand and told me to start life anew. So I did. And you’re looking at it.”

Yardley observed him for a moment. “After holding you hostage for five years the man just let you go? Why?”

Coleman shrugged. “It might seem difficult to believe, but we became incredibly good friends. He knew he had kept me long enough and wasn’t interested in taking me to Venice. He was getting married and people in his circle would have started asking questions. They were already asking questions.”

“You befriended this man? After he— Did you not go to the marshals after you were released?” the duke demanded. “To press charges?”

Coleman shook his head, his breath almost jagged. “I didn’t want what I knew of my father touching my sister or my mother. It would have destroyed their lives if I had resurfaced.”

The duke held his gaze. “How many were involved in your disappearance? Who were they? And when were you smuggled out of New York?”

“There was only one man involved in my disappearance. A Venetian. And I never left New York.”

“You never…? All this time, you’ve been…?” The duke closed his eyes and grabbed his head with both hands. “Jesus Christ.” He rocked against his hands for a long moment.

Coleman set aside the brandy on the small table beside him and rose in a half daze. “I appreciate that you shouldered my sister’s plight, even after her death. I know if she had been the one missing, I would have fought for her to the end, as well. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see her one last time. I would have liked that. She and I didn’t part on the best of terms and I—” He swallowed hard, trying not to give in to emotion. With his sister gone, what more was there to return to? Nothing. Their mother had always lived for their father. Who was he to break her delusions of a man she loved? “I should go.”

Yardley rose. “Go? No. You can’t. We are here to take you home with us. To London. Where you belong.”

Coleman walked backward toward the door and swept a more than obvious hand to his beaten face. “Do I look like I belong in a ballroom, gentlemen? Too many years have passed for that.”

The duke rose. “Atwood. You can’t leave when we’ve just now found you. We have yet to know you and genuinely wish to assist you in making the transition back into our circle. It will take time, mind you, but—”

“No.” Coleman shook his head. “I abide by my boxing name, not my titled name, and want no other life than the one I have now. People depend on me. I have a purpose other than living with regret.”