Peggy’s Love: The Victorian Highlanders Book 5

by St. Clair, Ellie

  “Well, son,” Carter began, but they were interrupted when a tray came between them.

  “Rory,” came a voice in his ear, and he turned to find Maggie leaning low over him. “Ye may want to make a visit to the back room. And ye’d best be doing so rather quickly.”

  Rory narrowed his eyes at her. “What are ye on about, Maggie? No more betting for me. Especially backroom betting.”

  “There’s no betting back there tonight,” she said, and then tossed a bag of coin on the table in front of him. “Also, ye best be taking this. I’m sure your woman will want it back.”

  “My woman? What are ye on about?” he asked. Who could she possibly be referring to?

  “I believe she’s yer wife, but she’s back there with Gowan at the moment,” Maggie said with far too much nonchalance, and Rory leaped out of his chair.

  “Peggy — with Gowan?”

  “Well she didn’t go willingly, but there’s something ye should know — I sold out to Gowan, though he still allows me to run the place,” Maggie said, and this time there was a look of regret in her eyes.

  “Go, boy,” Carter said, shooing him away. “I’ll keep your wife’s coin until ye return.”

  Rory could do nothing but nod as he raced to the back of the building.

  Chapter 22

  “Peggy! Peggy, where are you?”

  Rory burst through the door into what he knew to be the back room, where typically card games were played with a buy-in that was beyond what most patrons would ever consider. He came to a sudden halt at the sight in front of him. Peggy was sitting in a chair against the wall, her wrists bound behind her, her ankles tied to the legs of the chair. Beside her stood a massive Scot, who Rory thought he recognized but couldn’t quite place.

  “Rory, I’m fine,” Peggy said, straining against her ties, “but watch—”

  Her words were cut short when Rory was cuffed in the head from behind, causing him to bend over in momentary pain, though he was far more concerned about his wife.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” he roared, and when he turned to look behind him, he launched himself toward Gowan, standing there with a smug grin on his face. He should have known the man had something to do with this. But before he could reach him, another pair of arms reached out to grab him. Rory growled and was about to fight him off, when Gowan’s voice — sounding almost bored — interrupted him.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  Rory heard a choked cry, and swiveled around quickly to find that Peggy, still bound, now had a knife to her throat, courtesy of Gowan’s first guard dog.

  “Let her go,” he growled, and Gowan merely laughed, only angering Rory further.

  “Not quite yet,” Gowan said. “I believe that you are here tonight attempting to acquire funds in exchange for part of your hunting venture? Well, there’s a new deal now in place. I would like you to sign it all over. To me.”

  “What?” Rory said, panic beginning to flutter in his chest. Not only was the clan’s entire dependence the last thing — besides Peggy — he would want to lose, but there was no physical way he actually could sign it over to Gowan.

  “Gowan, surely you must understand that I have no means to do so. The land all belongs to my father and to the McDougalls. Even you are smart enough to realize that.”

  “Then what is it you are attempting to disperse of tonight?”

  “The Glasgow operations,” Rory said after the guard brought the knife ever so much closer Peggy’s neck.

  “Very well,” Gowan said with a mock sigh. “That will do for now, until you receive your father’s permission for the rest of it.”

  “That will never happen.”

  “Well, then, your wife will remain with me.”

  Gowan had finally found a weak spot within Rory, but perhaps… perhaps he could make him believe otherwise. Enough, at least, to force him to release Peggy.

  Rory swallowed hard, then said the words that he never, ever thought would cross his lips, but was forced to say anyway.

  “Very well, then, you can have her.”

  “I can, can I?” Gowan asked sardonically, as Peggy gave a choked cry.

  “Sure,” Rory said with a shrug of his shoulder. “We were forced to marry after we were found in a… compromising position. I never wanted a wife, and least of all a woman who would involve herself in my business, the type of woman who would go as far as to follow me to Glasgow when clearly I came alone for a spot of fun.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rory saw Peggy’s head turned toward him sharply, and the expression on her face broke his heart as her eyes were wide and her bottom lip was caught between her teeth. He could hear her sharp intake of breath from across the room, could see the way she stilled as she listened to him speak.

  He wished there was a way to tell her that he didn’t mean a word he’d said, that it was all for show. She was a smart woman, and he had hoped she would realize it herself, but at the same time, he had never exactly articulated his feelings toward her, so why would she assume anything other than what he said?

  They just had to get through this, he assured himself. Then he could take her in his arms and tell her all that he needed to say, assure her that all would be well and that — that he loved her.

  The realization took hold of him with such suddenness it was as though he had been shocked with one of Adam’s new-fangled electrical inventions, and yet at the same time he had never known the truth of something so deep within his soul.

  For he had loved Peggy McDougall all of his life. He had just been too stubborn, too immature to realize it. That love had changed over the years, of course, from his love of her as a girl who was almost like a sister, to affection as a friend, to the love of her as a woman who he desired. His heart ached at the distance that suddenly stretched between them, at his urgent need to tell her all of this, to explain to her what a fool he had been. But he couldn’t. He wanted to do anything but hurt her, and yet he could see no other way out of this. Gowan preyed on emotion, which was the very reason he had been unable to touch Rory for so long.

  “Are you so sure about all that — that she was an unwanted responsibility?” asked Gowan, looking back and forth between them. “You seemed awfully close the last time I saw you.”

  “She’s a beautiful woman who I enjoy in my bed,” Rory said with a forced grin. “Is that so hard to understand?”

  “And she could be easily replaced?”

  “Sure,” Rory said, holding his grin. “Why, what do you have in mind for her?”

  “I’d consider it a trade to keep her for myself, and then you would never have to worry about another debt toward me,” Gowan said, and when his eyes turned to Peggy, every instinct within Rory was driving him to lunge toward Gowan and squeeze the life right out of him before he could do anything to hurt his wife.

  But somehow, reason won out, and he crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall in a display of nonchalance.

  “I canna say I like the thought of conceding anything to you, Gowan,” he said. “Least of all a woman. But if you want my seconds, then so be it. I’ll keep my hunting business, thank you very much.” Gowan’s eyes narrowed, and Rory knew he had him there. “Besides that, we both know that I truly do not owe you a thing. I’ve paid my debts in full.”

  “Then why are you back here, if ye don’t have any money to spend, hmm? Ye blew me off for years. Sure, you’ve paid now, but if you had all that for so long, I think perhaps I should have charged a bit more interest.” Gowan smirked, and Rory pushed himself off the wall as he walked toward him.

  “You’re a crook, Gowan,” he seethed, and Gowan laughed.

  “That may be, though I’m not an idiot,” he said. “Empty yer pockets.”

  “Very well,” Rory said, and laid all he had out on a table in front of him. It wasn’t much. A few coins, enough to buy some drinks tonight, his hotel room key, and a handkerchief.

  Gowan scoffed. “What am I supposed to do
with this?”

  “I was only here to meet an old friend,” Rory said with a shrug. “You’ve overthought this, Gowan.”

  With a scowl and a snarl of disgust, Gowan reached out an arm, knocking all of Rory’s belongings off the table.

  “Get out of my sight,” he said. “Never set foot in here again.”

  “Very well,” Rory said, bending to pick up his key. “Farewell, Gowan. Peg.”

  It took all he had to walk out the door without his wife, but he knew Gowan, and he was well aware that any interest Rory showed in Peggy would only convince the man to hold onto her. No, if Gowan thought Rory didn’t care, he’d let her go as easily as he had him, and Gowan was too proud to admit he had made a bad deal.

  One of the guards followed Rory, escorting him out the door. Rory saw Carter O’Connell watching him, but the man wisely said nothing, giving him the briefest of nods as Rory exited the establishment. The guard shoved him out roughly before slamming the door behind him.

  Rory rounded the corner, enough so that he was out of sight, and waited, albeit very impatiently. While it felt like hours, it was actually only minutes later that Peggy emerged, forced out not quite as roughly, but still she stumbled slightly as she entered the dark alley. Rory waited for her to choose her direction, and luckily she began walking toward him. When he stepped out of the shadows, she shrieked, but he reached out and grasped her arms.

  “Peg!” he said urgently, wrapping his arms around her now, holding her close. “It’s me. Oh, Peg, I canna tell you how good it feels to hold you. When we were in there—”

  But she interrupted him by shoving back away from him, and he was so caught off guard he fell a step back.

  “Peg?” he asked, seeing the stormy expression on her face, the tears that ran down her cheeks, immediately understanding why she was so upset. “Peggy, I didn’t mean a word I said in there. I was just playing Gowan. If he thought you were of any value to me, he would never have let you go. Peggy, I love you. I could never live without you.”

  “You love me?” she choked out. “What a time to tell me, Rory. Sure, you do. Clearly you just say whatever you feel, whenever you want, never thinking that there might be consequences.”

  “Peggy, you have to understand—”

  “I understand, Rory, I do. But you have to understand this. Ye haven’t said a word to me about love or anything of what you feel besides the fact that you want me in your bed, which is lovely and all, but sometimes a woman needs to hear more. Especially when she’s told you that she loves you many times over, and you say nothing at all in response. Which is fine — I didn’t want you to lie to me. Just as I don’t want you to lie to me now to make all you said in there better.”

  “But Peg,” Rory said desperately, reading the storm swirling in her eyes, the blue of them now as dark as Loch Ness on a stormy night. “’Tis the truth. It took me far too long to realize, I admit that, but I do love you. I always have and always will.”

  “Well,” she said, stepping back away from him when he reached out to her once more, “perhaps ’tis too late.”

  “Peggy,” he said in an attempt to reason with her as she took a farther step back, and then another. And then, before he could anticipate her next move, she turned from him and ran.

  Chapter 23

  Peggy had no idea where she was going. She knew she was being foolish, that she should not be alone in the streets of Glasgow without any sense of direction.

  But her heart had won out over her mind — as it usually did. She could not be in Rory’s presence for another moment. If she stayed, then she would likely accept his words of repentance, as much as she knew there was not an ounce of truth in them.

  All right, maybe she knew, deep down, that there was a bit of sincerity in them. She was aware that he cared for her. But the thought that all of a sudden, in this very moment, he would decide that he loved her? That, she couldn’t believe. She wouldn’t be that naive.

  She was well aware that he was a man who enjoyed life. She had known that when she fell for him as a girl, and she had known that when she married him. Unfortunately, she had let her emotions overcome all reason. It had been a mistake, she thought as the tears began to flow, blurring her vision and causing her disorientation to become even worse. She never should have married him. It would have been better to love him from afar, to know his rejection was not so much of her but of married life, than to have him within her grasp and lose him and his love.

  And now what was she to do? She couldn’t very well return home to Darfield with him. To live in the same house with him would be agony, and she wasn’t one of those women who could just turn a blind eye and live her life in the shadows of what could have been a great love.

  No, her only option was to return home, to Galbury and her parents. They would be upset, she knew, but she had to make them understand that this was for the best. As for how Rory would fare following it all, with her father and her brothers’ concern for her, she wasn’t sure, but then, that would no longer be her problem, would it?

  She knew this would likely mean she would never marry again. But so be it. She would have loved to have had children, had always longed to be a mother, but she now knew that she couldn’t do so with a man who didn’t love her. If only it hadn’t taken her so long to come to this realization.

  For the truth, which she hated to admit but had to nonetheless, was that she had always hoped, in the back of her mind, that Rory would decide he loved her in return. But he never had. And now she knew he never would. For no one could say such things as he had to Gowan about someone he truly loved, now could he?

  Peggy’s thoughts were interrupted when she heard shouts around her, and she instinctively sought the darkness of the shadow from the building beside her. Just where was she? There was some sort of argument happening around the corner, and she peeked around the brick to see what it was. Two drunks who had just emerged from a tavern were squaring off, only it seemed they were both so inebriated that they could barely manage the swing of a fist. It was then Peggy looked back at the tavern, and when she recognized it, such relief coursed through her that her skin tingled with it.

  It was where they had visited last time they were in Glasgow. Somehow, likely with the Lord’s intervention, for she could think of no other way, she had managed to find her way back, for she was staying not far from here. Surreptitiously making her way around the corner, she went undetected as she finished her trek back to the hotel, where, to ease his mind, she would tell Rory she was leaving, pack her things, and head to the nearest train station. All she wanted now was the peace and security of the Highlands and her home.

  * * *

  When Rory finally entered the hotel the next morning, the proprietor gasped upon seeing him, and Rory could only imagine how he must look after roaming the streets all night looking for Peggy. When he returned to his room and looked in the mirror, it was worse than he had even imagined. Deep, dark circles hung under his eyes, while his hair stuck out at odd angles and his clothing was greatly disheveled. Well, what did he expect?

  It had been the worst night of his life, wondering where Peggy was and unable to keep from imagining all of the horrible things that could have happened to her. He sat down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands as he tried to decide what to do next. He should go back to the police station, check the hospitals, look into all of the inns and hotels he could find. But he wasn’t so foolish to think he could do so without at least an hour of sleep first, or he would never even make it down the stairs of the hotel.

  He peeled off his shirt, kicked off his shoes, and was about to lie down when a knock came at the door. He groaned but went to answer, just in case it was Peggy. He was startled to find one of the porters.

  “Sir, while you were out, a note was left for you, as was this package,” he said, and Rory told him to wait a moment while he found the last of his coins. He gave one to the boy, though he wondered how he would find his way home for he no longer h
ad enough money to buy a train ticket.

  What this was all about, he had no idea. He opened the package first, finding a piece of paper folded on top.

  As you left in haste last night, I kept this for you. Remembering where you were staying, I dropped it off this morning. Reach out if you’d like to continue our discussion from last night, but from the looks of things you will no longer be needing to sell. — Carter.

  And there, underneath the note was, miraculously, a bag full of coin. Why had Maggie given him this last night? He certainly hadn’t earned it. Then he remembered. Peggy. She must have been at one of the tables, and if her combination of skill and luck at Vingt-et-un was as he remembered it, she had likely won it all. Now she only needed to return so he could give it to her. He hoped she wouldn’t mind if he borrowed a bit — though clearly he had already taken enough — to get back home.

  Then he noticed the scrawl on the next note, and his heart started to beat much faster. It was from Peggy. Thank God. He ripped open the envelope, seeing that it was written on stationery from the hotel. So she had been here.

  Rory,

  I am sorry to have left you as I did last night. I was quite upset, though I behaved rather stupidly, I will admit. I am returning home. Home to Galbury, that is. I apologize for following you to Glasgow. I never should have come. Stay and have your fun. You are a free man now.

  Peggy

  An unbidden growl arose in Rory’s throat at the words written in front of him. A free man? Did she not realize he had no desire to be a free man? What more did it take to prove to her that he loved her, that he wanted to be with her?

  Well, he supposed he could see why she had initially been slow to believe it. But she must give him another chance. She had married him — so did she not owe him the opportunity to explain himself once more, at the very least?

  Filled with relief that his wife was, thank goodness, safe and on her way home, Rory fell down on the bed in an exhausted, though restless, sleep.