“And Lavinia,” Pippa said quietly.
“Lavinia was crippled, her bright future extinguished.” His fists clenched. “I did it to her. If I’d been there . . .”
She reached for him then, her soft hands coming to his, grasping tight. “No.”
He shook his head. “I killed him, as surely as if I’d put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. If I’d been there, he’d be alive.”
“And you’d be dead!” she said harshly, drawing his attention to her blue gaze, swimming with unshed tears. “And you’d be dead.”
“Don’t you see, Pippa . . . I deserved it. I was the wicked one. The one who sinned. I was the one who gambled and lied and cheated and thieved. He was good and she was pure and I was neither; Hell came looking for me that night, thinking it would find me in that carriage. And when it found them instead, it took them.”
She shook her head. “No. None of it was your fault.”
God, how he wanted to believe her.
“I didn’t even stop after the accident. I kept at it . . . kept going to hells . . . kept winning. Tried to bury the sin with more of it.” He’d never told anyone this. Didn’t know why he was telling her. To explain who he was, perhaps. Why he was wrong for her. “Don’t you see, Pippa . . . It should have been me.”
One tear slid down her cheek. “No,” she whispered, throwing herself at him, letting him catch her and wrap her in his long arms, letting him lift her from the floor, press her against him and hold her there. “No,” she repeated, and the anguish in the sound made him ache.
“That’s what my father said. He hated me.” She started to interrupt, but he stopped her. “No. He did. And after the accident—he couldn’t look at me. Neither could my mother. We did not know if Lavinia would live or die—her leg had broken in three places, she was out of her mind with fever. And they wouldn’t let me near her. For a week, my mother said nothing to me, and my father . . .” He hesitated, the pain of the memory burning for a moment before he continued, “My father said the same five words. Over and over. It should have been you.”
“Jasper,” she whispered his given name in the darkness, and a part of him, long buried, responded to the sound of it. “He was grieving. He didn’t mean it. He couldn’t have.”
He ignored the words . . . the pain in them. “They couldn’t look at me, and so I left.”
He met her blue eyes. Saw the understanding in them. “Where did you go?”
“The only place I could think to go.” He stopped, knowing that this was the part of the story that most mattered. Considering his words.
He did not have to hide from her. She was already there. “To Knight’s.”
“I gambled for days. Straight. No sleep. I went from the tables on the floor of the hell to the beds above—tried to lose myself in gaming and women.” He paused, hating the story. The boy he’d been. “I swore not to look back.”
“Orpheus,” she said.
One side of his mouth kicked up. “You’re too smart for your own good.”
She smiled. “It helps when I’m with you.”
The words reminded him of how much he liked this woman. Of how much he shouldn’t. “Orpheus in reverse. From Earth into Hell. Full of pain and sin and every kind of vice. I should not be alive now to tell the tale.”
“But you are.”
He nodded. “I am alive, and Baine isn’t; I am well, and Lavinia suffers.”
“It’s not your fault.” She came into his arms again, wrapping her arms about him and repeating the words to his chest. “It’s not your fault.”
He wanted to believe her so badly. But it wasn’t true.
“But it is.” He held her to him and confessed his sins to her beautiful cornsilk hair. “I killed my brother. That is the cross I bear.”
She heard it . . . stilled. Looked up at him. And his brilliant Pippa understood. “The cross you bear.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “That’s why you took the name. Cross.”
“To remember whence I came. To recall sins past.”
“I hate it.”
He released her. “You shan’t be around it much longer, love.”
Her beautiful blue eyes grew wide and sad at the words, and it was he who hated . . . hated this night and their situation and himself. He swore, the word harsh in the candlelight. “I couldn’t save them,” he confessed before vowing. “But, goddammit . . . I can save you.”
She jerked back. “Save me?”
“Knight knows who you are. He will ruin you if I don’t stop him.”
“Stop him how?” He met her gaze, and she knew. He could hear it in her voice. “Stop him how?”
“I marry his daughter, he keeps your secrets.”