Silk and Shadows(153)

As a female, Eliza would never be able to understand the irresistible allure of the dark side of life. She would come to hate the memory of her father, her innocent love destroyed by all the people who would say he had been wicked.

If Weldon killed himself, he would deny Peregrine the pleasure of seeing him suffer. Quickly, before he could change his mind, Weldon put the pistol barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Downstairs, Jenny shivered and drew closer to Slade at the sound of the shot. "Why did you let him do that?"

"It's better this way, Jenny. No more innocents suffer, there will be no trouble for Peregrine or his lady, no chance that your reputation will be damaged." Slade's ice-gray eyes gleamed with chilly satisfaction. Jenny's tormentor was dead. A good lawyer could do murder without ever touching a weapon.

His expression warmed. "Since you're going to be my wife, your reputation is my business. You are going to marry me, aren't you, Jenny?"

"Yes, Benjamin," she replied as warmth blossomed deep inside of her. She stood on her toes and gave him a kiss of aching promise.

With her lover at her side, Jenny left the house of death forever.

* * *

Insisting that he was perfectly well, Kuram chose to ride the horse so Peregrine was alone with Sara inside the carriage. Wrapped in her cloak, his wife sat in the far corner of the vehicle, not touching him.

The darkness was thick with tension. Peregrine knew that he should speak, but was painfully unsure where to begin.

It was a relief when Sara's soft voice broke the silence. "Why didn't you kill him?"

Knowing how important his answer was, he hesitated before speaking. "After you left Sulgrave, I did a great deal of thinking and realized that vengeance could not alter or heal the past. Today, if I had stayed in a white heat of rage for just a minute longer, I would have killed Weldon, but the sight of you broke my anger. After that, I could not do it."

"Are you saying that you gave up your revenge because of me?" she exclaimed, incredulous.

Obliquely he replied, "After you and I had that argument, I realized that you were talking not only about right and wrong, but about choosing whether to live a life rooted in hate or one rooted in love. For too many years, the center of my life was hatred, Sara. Then I met you, and slowly, without my conscious awareness, the center shifted."

He paused, searching for the right words to convey his meaning. "If destroying Weldon meant losing you, the price was too high, for I would be condemning myself to a living death." Then, wryly, he added, "Before we married, I said that I trusted you to always be good. Fortunately I didn't know then how difficult it can be to live with someone who is always good, or I would have been afraid to try."

"I sound like a dreadful prig," she said with a shaky laugh. A streetlight outside momentarily illuminated her pure profile.

"You are not at all priggish about matters that count." Briefly there was a smile in his voice, but he was deadly serious when he continued, "Yin and yang mean many things. Light and dark, good and evil, even love and hate. Together, opposites make a whole. You are my heart, Sara, and your light balances my darkness. Will you come home?"

Instantly she flowed across the carriage and into his arms. "Of course I will!" she said joyously, her breath feather-soft against his throat. "When you told the driver to go to Haddonfield House, I was afraid that you didn't want me back."

With a gust of laughter, he said, "I was trying to do the gentlemanly thing, though it went against my nature." The knot of tension in his chest miraculously dissolved as he pulled her onto his lap and drew her close. "Whenever you wondered why I married you, I always said that I did it because I wanted to, and I never looked any deeper." He stroked a gentle hand through Sara's silky hair, which had come unpinned during her struggle with Weldon. "After you left, I realized that my words were a coward's way of saying that I love you."

"I didn't believe you would ever say that." Tenderly Sara lifted her hand to his cheek and caressed the chiseled plane with her fingertips. "You've changed so much. When I first met you, you were like some exotic, alien creature, forever wild and incomprehensible. It seemed impossible that you could ever love me as I love you."

"I started changing as soon as I met you, though I didn't realize it at first. When I did, I can't say that I enjoyed the sensation. But the formative years of my life were spent here, and the longer I stay, the more I feel like an Englishman. This is my heritage, and I no longer want to deny it." His tone became teasing. "In fact, I have succumbed to the most banal of ambitions: to become an English country gentleman and live quietly with my wife and raise children and horses."