Well, wasn’t that too bad? So whatever Divers must he wasn’t doing it. Not when what he must was get out of here and how the fecking hell could he do that if she died here on this bed? It was the most ridiculous thing. Forgive her indeed. Why the hell should he? All so she could go to Ennis? Who hadn’t even damn well troubled himself to secure her future?
But it wasn’t just that, was it, that made him speak?
“No. No, he’s not. And I’m the one who makes you feel alive. Not bloody Ennis. So if that’s what you want my forgiveness for, so you can go to wherever little heaven you think you can have with him and sit about on clouds, playing golden harps all day long, I won’t give it. Do you hear me?”
“But I’m n-not going t-to make—“
“Not while there’s still breath in my body. Because that’s not forgiveness. That’s giving in. That’s letting you go to Ennis when I’m not going to, when I want you to live which Rose, which Eirwin, which Ennis never got the chance to do, because of the trail, the trail of breadcrumbs that leads back to the first night I ever walked in this house, all these years ago. You are going to make it. So you stop all that rubbish you’re spouting like a broken watering can—"
"It's not r-rubbish."
“Because I’m not letting you go. Do you understand? And what I need, what I need you to do is press this till Havelock’s here, all right? Because Orwell’s right. Yes he is. And it’s all of it all right. Just hold this handkerchief here, okay.” He raked in his pocket. “Can you do that? Keep the pressure on till Havelock’s here? I want your word. You do not let go. I want you here till I come back. Then we’ll talk forgiveness. It’s the only way to have mine.”
Because it was.
The wound? All right the wound seeped blood, was possibly not as deep as it might have been and yes, the sweet smell mingled with the sickly candlelight. Yes, her teeth were chattering. But a quarter hour's ride? A half hour all told? Provided Havelock was there? She'd be all right. He had no choice if he wanted her to live. And he did. He could not lose her. What? To Ennis?
Orwell stepped forward. “I can do it for her, old chap.”
Hardly reassuring. In fact she really must be in a bad way because the wonder was she didn’t say so. But for him to do anything else was ridiculous. Orwell Rhodes had not been on that beach by chance. If he didn’t take charge it would be his head on a platter. Wasn't it bad enough that in some ways, his heart already was? When that moment when she'd fallen on the sand reverberated like a gunshot in his mind?
Equally maybe she was stunned by the thought she couldn’t waltz off with Ennis with his blessing? And that was why her gaze flickered to the side?
"Then you keep her alive till I come back. Do you hear that, Destiny? It's the only way to get my forgiveness."
Calm and measured. Calm and measured. Although surprise rippled at how he had risen to this with a passion. All the more reason to add.
"Just think, I'll also see you get Doom Bar Hall."
Now that. That was something he should have put on the table sooner, the obedience with which her fingers brushed the handkerchief.
He snagged another breath. Now to reach the door and more importantly the handle. He turned.
Rose.
Damn it all to the furthest reaches of hell. He hadn't imagined her in weeks. He didn’t imagine her now. Just the words, the words Destiny Rhodes had said that night, before he'd said what he had.
‘You’re not seriously blaming Chancery, are you, for what is her doing? Whatever is being said, mainly by her, I never egged him on. How could you think I'm that bad?'
Was that what Rose needed so badly to put right though? What, all along had been staring him in the face? What the man he’d once been would have seen far sooner? It was only the one he’d become who couldn’t afford to, even as he’d wanted to. The thing he already knew.
The thing about him and who was for him really.
God, but he was kidding himself about why he needed this woman to live. Truly, utterly kidding himself. About why it had cut to his bones about Ennis too.
And that was when he fought to calm his hammering heart because he also knew, he couldn’t leave here. Not right now. Not when he could remove that bullet and he could stitch that wound. He could be the one to save her.
But whether he could give Rose what she really wanted was another thing altogether, the places his head was in right now and the things he was being asked to forgive.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Destiny was not expecting heaven exactly, which was why surprise rippled. She was there, despite causing all these men to shoot each other and themselves. And she was not alone in the billowing white, the softness of clouds—amazing as a spring day. On the lonely streets of her heart she walked, she’d known the baby was a girl. She’d even chosen a name. And now Evadne wasn’t standing on every corner, always out of reach, no matter how Destiny strove to reach her, followed her down the dark and cavernous places of her mind. No, her hand, hot with a child’s clamminess, sat in Destiny’s. And they laughed. How they laughed. So the sound sat warm in Destiny’s heart, the forlorn places she’d forgotten existed. Was it any wonder she sighed? How beautiful was death, not to have to struggle any more. To be here finally lying here in Divers O’Roarke's arms, his breath warm on her face.
Divers O’Roarke?
Destiny flicked an eye open, shut, then open again. Why was Divers O’Roarke still here? Dressed, if nothing else? Forget the fact there was but one answer--because she wasn’t in heaven. Why the hell would she be in heaven after all? Because she floated? Spun on like a snowflake. For just that second as he looked into her eyes and she looked into his. And what else was there to do? No. She groaned. Starting with the hot pincers that someone had been sewn inside her skin, to the dry snake that circled her tongue, this was utter hell. From head to toe, was it any wonder she couldn't stop shaking? And when she tried to speak she’d have won first prize in the no-one had taught her competition? Yes. Forget heaven. After last night and him knowing she’d done awful things to him, please just let her die now.
“Please. Just tell me that you’ve been to Penvellyn.”
She tried to speak. But obviously she didn't do it very well, or warm brandy wouldn't spice her tongue.
“Easy. Here."
It wouldn't spill out of the corners of her mouth, dribbling down her cheeks because she couldn't actually sit up to drink it either. Was that why he was still here? She couldn't even sodding feed herself? Oh Christ, she hoped so. After what she'd done to him, anything else would finish her. She coughed.
As for why she was still here? Maybe even hell didn't want her? It was not outwith the bounds of possibility. She coughed again so her eyes watered.
"Please. Just tell me--"
"What?" He reached across her to set the glass back down. “And miss all your raving about Evadne?"
Oh Christ, how could she? So? She wasn’t imagining that wet and cold and sea-sprayed as he’d been, in the midddle of the night, it was still the warmth in his blood that had kept her teeth from chattering, while the breath was ragged in her throat and she’d shook from head to toe? When he could have let her go? She’d talked bags of prize rubbish to him too. But maybe that was why he was still here? So he could hear her talk some more?
Evadne? Even the name was stupid to her now. It wasn't the only thing. She turned her face to the side, flicked her eyes shut.
"Divers ... I ..."
“So? Who is she, Destiny?”
“Well, she's not one of Grandfather Austell's parrots. I'll tell you that."
Such a cheap way to talk about Evadne. But what the hell was she meant to say when she couldn’t even punch the pillow to her satisfaction? Turn over and hug it to her head, for the hot pincers in her side either? A side he’d removed a bullet from, deftly, carefully, his knuckles brushing her skin as he’d stitched it up again, when he could have left her to it after what she'd done. Well? 'Evadne is the life your curse
took from me. That curse you rashly and misguidedly uttered. Don't you know? Because you didn't like me.' Not that many people did, so she didn’t blame him.
The last thing she ever wanted was to win someone's pity, in the local, let's all pity her competition. Them wearing their guilt like a beggar's badge on their sleeve either, so they'd sit here and keep her company when she'd betrayed them something rotten.
This wasn’t about pity. Truth to tell, it was hard, with her body feeling as panned in as her head, to know what this was about.
But last night it had been about Doom Bar Hall. About her settling this to her satisfaction, which many might say, she hadn’t done or she wouldn't exactly be lying here, beating everyone else hands down in the dying swan competition. So really, the sooner he went and dealt with Lyon, the better.
She’d live. She always did. Look at last night. When she'd wanted finally to go to Ennis, who had stopped her? What way was that to carry on exactly? Certainly not in a way that filled her heart with the joy of them being together now, or any time soon.
Although it well-nigh killed her she ran her tongue over her lips. Then she turned her head to face him--something that killed her full-nigh funnily enough, except she wasn't laughing.
Well, he went to Penvellyn, he took charge, Lyon got sent to London. She got Doom Bar Hall back for her services in saving a crown agent. She put up her Christmas garlands. That crown agent moved on. All in a day’s work to him.
And her? Maybe he did make her feel alive—all right, he did or she wouldn’t be looking now at all the bits of his face she still hadn’t kissed--some might say feeling dead was preferable when all this mess resulted. And she would be one of them. There were things that could never be put back. Betrayal was certainly one. Task one? Let him go now. He was going to. And last night? Last night it was Ennis she’d wanted. Some bits of a heart could not be given away.
"I'll also tell you I never did this for to sit here talking Evadne to you. Lyon means to kill you, you know? He knows you were involved on that last job."
"I know why you did this."
Would he just take his sodding fingertips out of her sodding hair? Last night, when she’d opened her eyes and seen him there was one thing. But this?
"Well, good for you. He never needed me to tell him. Consignments have been short. Why do you think he killed Eirwin? So, what I need, what you need, is to go to Penvellyn and--”
“And you do realize, before you go further, I have a problem in terms of what to say about Orwell?”
“Orwell?”
He glanced down at her. “The Cleanser, in case you’ve forgotten.”
"Right." Great. As if her head wasn’t already so panned in, it was probably flatter than a bit of battered bacon on top, he took out the frying pan and finished the job. Why stop at great? Why not add great God Almighty. “Orwell?” Who’d only gone and lost Doom Bar Hall in the first place? And now was going to do it all over again, when she’d gone to such pains to secure it, that right now she couldn’t rise from the sodding bed? "And that's why you're still here? Because of sodding Orwell? Well, thank God I hadn’t seriously thought it was because I was knocking on death’s door. I might otherwise have failed to recover. What? Because Orwell's me brother, you ..." she broke off.
But maybe it was?
He just struggled to say it. So there were things he thought she’d guess. And this was one. Because if he handed Orwell up, how would that stand between them? So this was on her to say so?
No wonder her eyes felt as if they'd sunk so far into the back of her head, she'd never see out of them again and her mouth was drier than last year's dust.
As if all that wasn’t bad enough, the door flew open.
Talk of the devil and that devil always appeared.
As Divers O’Roarke tore his gaze from her expression, not quite as unreadable as worn Sanskrit, but not far off of it, he only knew he needed to make his the same. He snapped his mouth--which had opened in the hope of discussing this little problem--shut. He also leapt off the bed.
Gil. And Orwell. Well, well? To what did he owe the dubious pleasure? When he was what exactly? Dallying with a traitoress because earlier she’d talked rather nicely--for her anyway--of things that had undermined him? And she’d been, not just strangely beguiling in her trembling, haggard beauty. She’d been strangely cowed. For her anyway too.
Well, at least Lyon wasn’t here, making things all manner of worse for him. He had the floor--as a man who’d tried, ye gods and their miniscule fishes, to explain his present dilemma at that. Although he’d have liked her to understand a bit more of that dilemma, business was business.
He held up his hands. “All right, so you’ve come to drag me to Penvellyn jail to deal with Mr. Lyon? Let me save you the time by saying I’m ready and willing to come.”
Because? Well? He'd have to now. It didn't mean he couldn't still ask for a moment here, talk to her first. Although equally, given how her soft, trembling body had worked on him in ways he'd never expected last night,
maybe he should just leave now. How the world had passed from him in that moment when she first hit the sand, how he’d known fear, real fear for the first time last night, too. Business was business though. He’d made a good start. Maybe he had saved her, it was always going to be Ennis first with her. Why look a bigger fool than he already was? She’d done things to him but he’d done things to her too. Evadne? Evadne was one. And really, he had misjudged her for weeks, thinking she ran to Lyon when it wasn't with what he'd thought.
“Well, thank God for that.” Gil’s face wasn’t just earnest it was white. “Have you not looked out the window, man? We need to go. You need to go. Now.”
Orwell’s face was studied as a tomb. “And you need to play the dying swan, old girl.”
“Pardon me, but what do you think I'm doing? Lying here for the good of me health, in which case I'm making a sodding muck of it?" Destiny Rhodes croaked.
Divers lowered his hands. Look out the window? No. He hadn’t looked out the window. As to why he needed to?
“There’s soldiers out there,” Orwell added.
“What?” The bed creaked as she strove to sit up.
“They’ve got the place surrounded. No. Don’t get up.” Orwell gestured at her to lie back down. “Divers, you must go. You must go at once. I don’t know what’s up, whether Lyon, worryingly, has talked his way out of jail because—”
“What?”
She said it again as Divers crossed to the window. But then facing Christmas without her pine cone garlands and other things she’d flung herself on the table to keep, was probably bad enough. Facing it in jail was another matter, especially when, sure enough, the late afternoon drizzle was being brightened. And not by the sun peeping through the clouds either. The cheaply dyed uniforms were no trick of the eye, scarlet drops of blood in rusting foliage either. The Brown Besses, maximum range, or rather, best range for inflicting damage—hopefully on the house—fifty yards. Did he need an inch tape to measure the distance to the tumbledown wall they glinted above to know they could be fired with confidence, when this was what he did for a living? As for where the soldiers had been mustered from and why they were here ..? All the things he measured in an instant ...?
“I told you, sir, we both did, you had to take charge. And now--”
“Whatever we said is of no importance, Gil,” Orwell said. ”What is, is that you and Divers leave here now before it’s too late. Go by the passage. There’s a boat. I took the precaution of leaving it on the beach there when you wouldn’t leave last night.”
“Divers.” Gil yanked him back from the window. “There’s no time. They’re not surrounding the house fully armed, to parley, take up your offer of a cup of tea, with some fruit cake made by me thrown in. We need to get out of here now. Come on. This is over.”
Well, yes, he could see that. Over in every sense of the word. More over than the life of a ten day old corpse. Should he just say he was too ast
onished trying to swallow what knotted his throat, to say so though?
Had him, didn’t they, these damned Rhodes in every way?
So now? Like it or not he was going to have to start that new life. What the hell else could he do? Stand here and be killed in cold blood?
Coat. Hat. He donned one, jammed the other on his head, brushed aside her mounting platitudes, whatever they were as he shoved his pistol into his belt. He didn’t even know what she said for what was ringing in his ears--the sounding bell of doom--and the way his heart dropped like a stone to his boots. Whatever Rose had whispered last night, he knew one thing.
That was goodbye to the woman who had cost him everything.
Because she had.
As he pulled his hat down over his eyes, he said so too.
“Whatever else you think, of you, of me, of us," he added. "I broke your fall last night.”
Then he walked out the door.
***
The door shut, not a moment too soon--in fact a moment earlier might have been nice--but at least, now the door had shut, she could sink back on the bed. Not that she wanted to betray a weakness or anything, but when her head had just been panned in, how could she help it?
How dare he? Say she'd cost him everything he owned. A fine thanks for all she’d done for him. When, if everything she'd heard was to be believed—and some would say that it was--even the clothes on his back, did not appear to be owned. Certainly they were not owned by him. Everything about him was lies—the only things he did own. And, if he had become one with the smugglers, the chances were he’d lined the pockets he didn’t own, with goods that weren’t his either.
Honestly, the sodding cheek of some people knew no bounds and would win every sodding cheek competition going. As for that sodding guff about breaking her fall? Please don't tell her that in addition to raving about Evadne, she had shot her blabby big mouth off about how no-one ever did, while she was delirious? It was an odd thing to have said, standing there with that aura of power about him, so handsome, there she was again, looking at the bits of his face she hadn’t kissed, remembering the bits she had.
O'Roarke's Destiny (Cornish Rogues Book 1) Page 24