Oh, but Mary didn’t want to remember that. Or what came moments later. A flash of wide, terrified eyes. A boy’s. The big, brown length of a horse’s snout. And then the hit. So hard she didn’t feel a thing at first. Just a jumble of sounds. And then the pain. Bright and blinding. She’d hoped she would feel peace. It had been so far from that. There had been nothing but regret.
“I didn’t stop,” Jack said. “Not for a half block. Couldn’t get the horses under control.” He looked away, the tendons along his neck standing at attention. “Nicky said to keep going, but you were lying there.” Jack ducked his head, and his lashes hid his eyes. “I knew what I’d done. I knew that if I left you there…” He bit his lip. “I was a liar, a thug. But I’d never killed a person.”
“How old were you?” She was surprised at the calm in her voice. Inside she was numb.
Perhaps so was he. His eyes were dry, clear, and direct when he looked up. “Fourteen.”
“And you—” She fisted her overskirt, her palms cold and clammy. “You recognized me? It was but an instant. When, Jack? When did you realize I was the one you’d run over?”
She didn’t want to know.
“Mary.” He stopped and started again, resigned. “Lucien’s barge.”
She flinched, the blow striking her in the center of her breastbone. Slowly she gathered her cloak and wrapped it around her. Clutching it like a shield, she approached him. He stood perfectly still, his eyes on her face as she came to him.
“All this time.” She stopped before him. “From the moment you recognized me”—for she could remember that moment too, the way he’d suddenly grown cold and distant—“I thought it was because of how Lucien and I were together.” Her teeth clicked. “You made me think that,” she ground out. “Made me feel like a whore.”
His gaze was impassive, as if he were merely listening. As if he weren’t even there.
She got closer, and her voice dropped. “When it was never that.”
“Oh, I hated seeing him touch you.” His retort was a soft whip. “Never doubt that.”
So cold. So very Talent.
“But that isn’t why you recoiled,” she snapped. “No. All this time, all these years of strife. It was out of guilt! For killing me.”
“Yes.”
Her hand met his face with a ringing slap. He didn’t flinch. But she did. He broke her heart.
“I would have forgiven you, Jack.” She stepped away from him. “Isn’t that ironic? I would have done it in an instant. You were a boy. A stupid, ignorant boy. And I ran into you, really.” She laughed low and ugly before tossing a glare over her shoulder, back at his pale, implacable face. “What I cannot forgive is that you held your own guilt over me. For years. You made me feel as though I were in the wrong. Deliberately.”
“Yes.” Weaker now. A ghost of a whisper. Pitiless. Hollow.
“Good God, I was so very wrong about you,” she said. “I thought you were redeemable, that there was hope for you.”
“No, there was never any hope for me,” he said. “Now you understand. There is only ugliness inside of me.”
Though her insides were shaking, she drew herself up and pretended that he hadn’t just run her over anew. “You don’t even care who you hurt.”
She got all the way to the stairs before he answered. “That is the only thing I do care about now. More than you’ll ever know.”
But it was too late. And he didn’t try to stop her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Holly’s new laboratory was a frigid cellar with low, arched ceilings that seemed to press down upon her. Stone and grit scuffed beneath her boots whenever she took a step, and the cold permeated her bones. She shivered once again, drawing her heavy smock-coat closer, and the shackles around her wrists rattled. Holly ignored them. If she thought about how she was chained to the wall… She took a bracing breath. Calm. Keep your wits, girl.
That rotter Talent had at least thought to provide ample light, by way of hundreds of candles in the three thick iron rings that hung from the ceiling.
“Quite adequate for the fifteenth century,” she muttered under her breath as she bent over the worktable and studied the infernal device she’d just created. Holly had never been accused of being ignorant. This electric prod that bastard had forced her to create, she knew exactly what the device would do to any GIM who felt the business end of the thing. And it made her ill.
Talent and Mary’s dislike of each other was well known. Regulators were taking bets as to who would do the other in first. All in good fun, of course. As much as people tended to stay clear of Talent and his foul moods, no one truly thought he’d harm Mary.