by Hope Tarr
Almost.
Milread stepped back from her “patient” and shook her head. “Two ribs broken, maybe three.”
Sweating with the strain of holding his arms away from his battered sides, Jack bit back an oath. “Just bind them, will you?” Every breath brought him to his chair’s edge, but he refused to give in to it.
Milread vented a heavy sigh then bent to her task of winding the strip of cloth tight about his torso. “’Tis a fool’s errand, Jack,” she said, coming around to the front of him to tie the ends into a neat knot. “One man canna take on an army.”
Grateful to be able to lower his arms, he eased himself back against the slatted chair. “Aberdaire hasna an army, only a handful of nincompoops in satin breeches and powdered periwigs.”
“Be that as it may, ye’re still only one.”
“I was only one before, and I got her out then.”
The breath he drew to brace himself before standing proved to be a mistake and one that cost him dearly. Blades of piercing pain stabbed his sides, bringing fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead. Biting back a wince, he leaned a hand on either chair arm and hauled himself up, the room seesawing as he gained his feet.
Milread rushed to lend him her arm, and to his shame he was obliged to lean on it. “Aye, that ye did,” she said once he’d nodded that the dizziness had passed, “but this time they’ll be on their guard—and you weak as a kitten. How ye’ll even manage tae keep your seat long enough tae ride out o’ this inn yard let alone forty odd miles is anyone’s guess.”
“I’ll manage.” His movements as stiff and mechanical as those of a wind-up toy, he released her arm and reached for his shirt, hanging over the back of the chair.
Milread had managed to soak out the worst of the bloodstains though there was no helping that the one sleeve had a long rent down the side. He’d buy a new shirt in Linlithgow, he supposed. Until then he’d keep his coat on.
Taking pity on him, she stepped behind to help him on with it, feeding his arm through the sleeve. In a suspiciously quavering voice she said, “If ye should, uh, happen upon Luicas whilst ye’re in Linlithgow, will ye do something for me?”
“Aye, anything. You’ve only to ask it,” he said, grinding his teeth as she guided his other arm through the sleeve.
“Tell him I…love him and that…that I want him tae come home.”
Slowly he turned about. “I will, lass. And dinna look so downcast, for I mean to bring the both of them back safe—or die in the trying.”
Seated on the edge of his unmade cot, Callum swiped the torn knuckles of his right hand across the stream of snot leaking like blood from his left nostril. He’d thought that the bashing they’d given Jacko in the tollbooth cell might finally curb his craving for revenge but, like sweets nibbled by a child, it had only sated his appetite for the time.
Bruised and battered though Jacko was, in time his heart, like his body, would heal and he would be whole again. And so it wasn’t enough, no nearly. Turning his tear-swollen eyes up to the drooping ceiling, Callum allowed he wanted more. He wanted it all.
Broken—Callum would settle for nothing less.
It was late afternoon the following day when Jack rode Beelzebub into the courtyard of Aberdaire Castle. He’d taken a room at an inn in town but had halted there only long enough to bathe his face, comb his hair and put on the fresh shirt he’d bought to replace his ruined one. Not that he thought for a moment that Claudia would fault him for his appearance but, above all, he mustn’t let Aberdaire or his bully of a butler see just how badly beaten he really was.
Everything hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to hold off breathing. Yesterday he’d sneezed and he’d been sure his busted ribs would explode and join the little fractured stars swirling before his eyes. Even his jaws ached from the effort of clenching them against the pain.
Grateful for the whiskey Milread had insisted he carry with him, he took the flask from his pocket and drew a small sip to gird himself for dismounting. The liquor scored his throat but it would, he kent, lessen the pain in his limbs and trunk. But no spirit, no matter how strong, could begin to numb the raw, renting anguish he’d felt ever since that afternoon when he’d learned the terrible news. Claudia was to wed.
After taking another measured swallow, he capped the flask and tucked it back inside his pocket. Fortified, he braced himself to climb down, hoping he might do so without falling flat on his face as he had once earlier. Fortunately this time he navigated the distance from saddle to cobblestones and then from drive to steps without incident. Sliding one hand along the baluster, he gained the portico, staggering past the two startled footmen to enter.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the butler once he’d gained the great hall.
“The Lady Claudia is not at home to you nor are you welcome here.” MacDuff, Jack noted with some relish, still sported a small bandage across the bridge of his nose that, when last they met, Jack had busted. “Now kindly take your leave.”
Voice raised in the hope that, wherever she was, Claudia might hear him, Jack said, “I’m no leaving, kindly or otherwise, until I’ve seen her.”
Claudia was hiding out in her room from Lord Haversham and making a show of working on her needlecraft under the gimlet gaze of Mistress Dunlevy when she heard raised male voices from the great hall below. Jack? Even as she told herself her ears must be deceiving her, she threw aside her embroidery and shot from her chair.
She was out the bedchamber door and haring down the hall to the curved stone stairs, the portly housekeeper huffing to keep up. But no, her hearing hadn’t played tricks on her for there he was. Jack, her Jack, his broad back to her as he argued with MacDuff. Caution, indeed even the terms of the bargain she’d struck to gain his release were for the moment forgotten in the onslaught of pure joy rushing her. She vaulted from the stair landing and hurried toward him, the heavy skirts of her crimson brocade the only thing keeping her from breaking into a full, undignified run.
“Jack,” she said, not able to contain herself even as the sense struck her that something with him wasn’t quite right.
Slowly, as if overnight he’d reached the age of Peadair or Pol, he turned to her. The sight of his face froze her in midstep, the smile slipping from her lips. Bruises in variegated shades of green, purple and plum stained the left side of his face. The eye above was swollen shut. His mouth was swollen too, the bottom lip split in several places.
“Jack, mon Dieu, what has happened to you?” Glimpsing the butler’s watchful gaze, she said, “You should not have come.”
He started toward her, gait stiff and none too steady. “So I’ve been told but now that I have, is there somewhere we may be private?”
She glanced to MacDuff and then the housekeeper, who’d just gained the hall and was marching toward them. “Leave us,” she said, a directive meant to encompass them both.
MacDuff’s icy gaze settled on her face. “Milady, are you certain that is wise?”
Holding back a shiver, she lifted her chin to regard him. “But of course. Surely you would not wish Monsieur Campbell to carry back tales that I am kept prisoner here?”
She punctuated the latter with a light laugh, but her warning was all too clear, for MacDuff inclined his head to Mistress Dunlevy, who shrugged and retreated toward the stairs.
“This way.” MacDuff led them to a small sitting room of Tudor style furnishings and traceried windows set just off the hall. “See you dinna overstay your welcome, Master Campbell,” he said, then backed out, pointedly leaving the door ajar.
As soon as she judged the butler to be out of earshot, Claudia turned to face Jack. “You are free, are you not? They did set you free?” she asked in a low voice, fearful that his bruised face might mean he’d escaped instead.
“Aye, they did. And for that it seems I am in Lord Aberdaire’s debt and—” he paused, gaze searching hers “—yours as well.”
Schooling her voice to coolness, she said, “Ah well, a life for
a life—we are as you say in English ‘even’ now. But, mon Dieu, what has happened to you?”
He shrugged, then immediately his features contorted as though even that small movement must cause him great pain. “Since he couldna have the pleasure of seeing me hang, Callum brought his mates around to the tollbooth and gave me a proper sendoff.”
“Oh, Jack.” She waved him to a chair, a heavy brocade affair with gated legs, but he shook his head although he looked poised to drop at any minute.
“I stopped off in the town before coming here. At the inn I heard you were to wed some Sassenach lordling. Is that true, Claudia?”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, Viscount Haversham, this Thursday next. It is to be a small ceremony in the castle chapel and then we will leave for London.”
His bruised forehead bunched in a scowl. “Is this some manner of bargain you struck with Aberdaire so that he’d intercede on my behalf? If it is, you should ken I’ll no have you selling yourself for my sake.”
Recalling the part she’d sworn to play, she tried for a gay laugh but it came out brittle as old bones. “Selling myself? But I am sure I do not know what you mean.”
“Do you love him, then?”
“Lord Haversham comes from one of the oldest families in England. I am told the title was conferred by the Conqueror himself. Given the circumstances of my birth, I count myself fortunate the viscount will have me.”
One hand braced to his left side, he closed the distance between them. “That’s no what I asked. I asked do you love him?”
She fisted her hands at her sides to keep from reaching for him. “You know that I do not.”
He slowly raised his hand to touch her. Claudia knew she should move away and yet, weakling that she was, she held her place and let his rough, busted knuckles stroke down her cheek, even that slight contact sufficing to melt her resolve along with her knees.
Gaze on hers as his hand slid along the column of her neck, he asked, “Do you love me?”
Choking back a sob, she said, “What does it matter? We come from two different worlds, Jack. That we thought to be together in a world of our own making was a foolish dream, chéri, for outside of our hearts no such place exists.” She bit her bottom lip, trying not to cry, and because she was weak, turned her face to press her lips into his wrist. “This must be adieu. Promise me, oh, promise me you will leave now and not come back.”
“I willna.” He reached for her again but this time she found the strength to back away so that his outstretched hand met with only air. “I’m staying at the Hawk and Dove on the High Street. Every day, every night between now and Thursday next, I will wait for word from you.”
She shook her head. “Then you will wait in vain, for I will not send for you.”
Beneath the bruises his expression hardened. “Dinna be a fool, Claudia. If you go through with this marriage, you’ll have sacrificed yourself, us, for naught. Knowing what I do of your background and birth, of your recent history since coming to Scotland, do you really expect Aberdaire will let me live once you and Haversham tie the knot?”
She shook her head, mind reeling. “If you leave, you will be safe. It must be so, it must. Go home, Jack. For both our sakes, go home and forget you ever knew me.”
“Heed me, Claudia. That you love me and I you makes you mine more than any vows said before a priest. And so it willna matter a whit if you’ve a wedding ring upon your finger or no, for if you dinna send for me, make no mistake—I will come to claim you.”
The betrayal in his eyes tore at her heart. Unable to bear it, she swept past him to the door. The kindest, safest thing she could do at this point would be to persuade him to hate her. And so on the threshold she turned back and prepared to deliver what would amount to the coup de grâce, the final, fatal blow.
“I am une femme du monde, a woman of the world, Jack. For such as I, la nuit tous les chats sont gris. At night all the cats are gray.”
From his study window Aberdaire monitored the courtyard below where a stiff-legged Jack Campbell remounted his horse and then walked it back down the drive. Though he detested weakness in all its forms, it was fear that the earl hated most, and yet to himself he admitted that MacDuff’s announcement of Campbell’s impromptu appearance had shaken him and mightily. Why was it that the bothersome brute simply would not go away?
Frustrated, he brooded on possible ways and means of accomplishing Campbell’s permanent disappearance but in the end discarded them all. MacDuff had made a hash of dispatching Gunn, such that the body had been found on the road bordering Aberdaire’s property instead of buried as he’d directed. They’d been fortunate to arrange for a scapegoat to take the blame, but he’d told himself he must tread warily from thereon. This was rural Scotland after all and not London’s East End. A second body turning up in as many months would be bound to draw suspicion.
Yet he’d kent enough of men and human nature in his nearly half century of living to recognize determination when he saw it. Jack Campbell was nothing if not determined and not for a moment did Aberdaire deceive himself into believing he meant to allow next Thursday’s marriage ceremony to carry on.
He was still lost in grim contemplation when MacDuff’s heavy knock sounded outside his study door.
“What the devil is it now?” he barked.
The butler came to the door but backed off from entering. “There is a…a person to see you, milord.”
“Whoever it is, send him away.”
A young dark-haired man of wiry build and shabby clothes insinuated himself inside. Christ, but MacDuff must be growing daft to be bringing tinkers into the castle and to his very study door at that!
“The tradesmen’s entrance lies at the east gate,” he snapped, and then started to turn his chair back to the window.
The rustic spoke up, “I’m no tradesman, Your Lordship, though I have come t’ offer my services.”
Callum had followed Jack to Linlithgow, where he’d found the township abuzz with gossip about the impending marriage of the English Viscount Haversham to the earl of Aberdaire’s French daughter, Lady Claudia. Lady Claudia. So the Frog scut was an earl’s by-blow—he supposed that explained her hoity-toity ways.
As for what Jack was doing in Linlithgow, that was just as easily reckoned. The bitch had got him wound about her little finger and now that he’d had her he hadna the sense to move on to greener pastures—which suited Callum just fine.
“We’re fully staffed at present but, if you wish, you may leave your name with MacDuff. Should a vacancy occur—”
Callum narrowed his gaze on the crippled man. He’d come too far to turn back now. “Och, but I’d hate tae have tae cool my heels in town, milord, for who knows but I might just let it slip out that ’til a fortnight ago, Lady Claudia was spending her days working in a tavern and her nights shagging my hangman braither.”
Predictably Aberdaire wheeled about. Features drawn tight, he demanded, “Who are you?”
Stepping inside, the butler answered, “Allow me to present Master Callum McBride.” He hesitated. “Jack Campbell’s brother.”
“Half-braither,” Callum corrected, determined once and for all to step free from Jack’s shadow.
The earl’s silvery-blue gaze slipped over him and Callum forced his shoulders back from their usual slump. “Well, Master McBride, you’ve the devil’s own nerve to strong-arm your way inside my castle and then attempt to blackmail me. But fortunately for you I admire boldness. What I dinna admire is stupidity. Your actions, while ill conceived, have just enough of the former to interest me. What service is it you propose to render me?”
Callum licked his lips, schooling himself to answer slowly, carefully, for he’d never have another such chance. “If I ken Jack, and believe me, Your Lordship, I do, he’ll die before he sees Lady Claudia wedded tae another. He’ll die, d’ye ken me?”
“Only too well. I take it you’re offering to hasten that happy event?”
“Aye, that I am—for a
price.” He took a gulp of air, girding himself before blurting out, “One thousand pounds, and ye need ne’er trouble yerself about Jack Campbell again.”
With such a sum Callum could live like a king. He could live anywhere. Since Tam’s suicide, the gossip had made the rounds, and the village where he’d meant to live and die now felt more like a prison than a home.
Thanks to Jack. Always Jack.
Even more than he wanted the money, he wanted his revenge—and this time he would have it. The very best part, the pearl beyond a price, would be witnessing the look on his half-brother’s face just before he fell down dead at Callum’s feet. If he could manage to make him beg and squirm a bit before, so much the better.
The earl’s voice called him from his thoughts. “That’s a great deal of money, Master McBride.”
Callum snorted. “Is it now?” Pointedly he looked about the study, taking in the fine velvet drapery, the gilt-trimmed furniture, the polished gold and silver that seemed to gleam from every conceivable corner. “For some, milord, but no so great a sum for others, aye? And then again ’tis a verra great service I mean tae be rendering ye.”
The earl continued to deliberate. Watching him lace and unlace his long-fingered hands, Callum felt his heart drum and his bowels tighten for suddenly it seemed as if the hopes of a lifetime, his lifetime, were pinned on Aberdaire’s next few words.
“It’s a verra tempting proposition you’re offering. Tempting indeed.”
“Dinna toy wi’ me, man.” Nerves strung taut, Callum advanced, but the butler’s brawny hold on his arm pulled him back. Shrugging free, he demanded, “Yeah or nay, which is it tae be?”
Gaze glittering, the earl regarded Callum over his tented hands. “I will consider all that you have said and should I elect to accept your services, MacDuff will contact you in a day or two.”
Furious, Callum punched a fist into the air. “I’ll have my answer now.”
“Do you dare give an ultimatum to me, you flea-bitten whoreson?” Though chair-bound, Aberdaire seemed to gain in height as, shoulders squared, he wheeled himself forward. “Why, if I were of a mind, I could have MacDuff here make you disappear, so I’d advise you to hold your tongue about my daughter’s past liaison with Campbell and await my decision.”