“Well, not exactly, Yer Grace. But His Grace—that is, yer brother … I mean—”
A female voice interrupted him. “Who is that you’re talking with, Fenwick? You should be—”
Alex watched as his housekeeper’s jaw dropped and her eyes widened in shock.
“Your Grace!” she exclaimed. “Fenwick, it’s His Grace! In a kilt!”
Another voice joined the fray. “I say, Your Grace. I had no idea you were home!”
Alex turned to find Sergeant Griggs, his brother’s batman. He had lost an arm and was out of uniform, Alex noticed, but otherwise seemed the same. A white-haired, elderly woman, a lady judging by her attire, held fast to his one remaining arm.
“This is Lady Lavinia, Your Grace,” Griggs said, making the introduction. “It’s Blackthorne, my lady. Home from Scotland.”
The elderly lady held out a hand, but Alex was a good foot distant from where she had aimed it. It took him a moment to realize she was blind. He stepped forward and bent over her hand. “So nice to meet you, Lady Lavinia.”
“This is wonderful! This is perfect,” Lady Lavinia said. “His Grace returned alive and well. If that doesn’t beat all. I don’t mean to be a rattle-box, Your Grace. I mean a prattle-rate. Or is it a prattle-rattle? Oh, dear, where is that girl when I need her? Take me to my room please, Griggs.”
The elderly woman looked upset. Alex was ready to follow after her to inquire if he could be of some assistance, when he saw his brother standing in the East Wing drawing room.
“What is all the commotion?” Marcus said. “Have you found them?”
“Good news, Your Grace—I mean, your lordship,” Griggs corrected himself with a grin. “Your brother’s home. His Grace, I mean.”
Alex stared at his younger brother, the infamous Beau, and saw that his looks were not what they once had been. One side of his face had been terribly scarred. Alex crossed the hall and stepped into the drawing room with Marcus, shutting the door behind them.
“Well, laddie, your big brother is home. How about a fond greeting?”
The tears in his brother’s eyes reassured him he had been missed and brought a lump to his own throat. When he saw Marcus was going to shake his hand, he realized it was up to him to close the gap that lay between them. He opened his arms wide. And Marcus stepped into them.
He hugged his brother hard and realized it must have been a hundred years—well, twenty at least—since he had held him thus. He could not keep the grin off his face when he at last released him.
“Where have you been?” Marcus choked out. “We were told you had drowned.”
He spread his arms wide. “Here I am. Alive and well.”
“Why did you not come home?”
The smile disappeared as he thought of Kitt, but he forced himself to speak lightly. “A cunning lass held me captive through trickery.” When Marcus would have interrupted, he held up a hand. “She’ll repay the debt she owes me in full. Never doubt it. As for where I have been … why, seeing to my lands in Scotland.”
“Are you the mysterious laird of Clan MacKinnon?”
“The laird,” he said with a thick Scottish burr. “And married to its lady.”
Marcus gasped. “You are married, Alex?”
He smiled cynically. “The witch would tell you so. I say it is for the courts to settle.”
“What witch?”
“My wife. But Katherine is not a fit topic for discussion. Where are my children, Marcus?”
“I hesitate to say.”
Alex frowned. Marcus’s worried look, combined with Fenwick’s distress, suggested things were not as they should be. He felt a chill of alarm. “I trust they are well.”
“As far as I know.” Marcus swallowed hard and said, “I seem to have lost them.”
“Again?” The twins’ last adventure had ended with them being found none the worse for wear in London. If they were lost somewhere on the property, they would show up soon, stockings torn and ribbons flying. He grinned, put an arm around Marcus’s shoulder in a bear hug, and said, “You really must be more careful.”
“You are so different, Alex. What has changed?”
It was true. Whatever wall had existed between him and the rest of the world had come down during his sojourn in Scotland. He guessed that meant he was no longer afraid to let the people in his life get close to him. He owed that to Kitt, he supposed. She was the one who had taught him to love again. And how precious life could be when one believed one would not have much more of it to live.
“I have realized how short life can be, Marcus,” he said. “I am no longer willing to let doubts keep me from loving my children. Or let acrimony separate me from my only kin.”
He watched the smile form on his brother’s face, saw how the scar drew his lips up slightly on one side. Marcus was no longer perfect. But then, Alex no longer wanted or needed perfection from his brother.
“Scotland is good for you, Alex. You should go there more often,” Marcus said.
“Perhaps I will take the twins to see Blackthorne Hall next summer.” He smiled and added, “If we can find them.”
“I believe they are somewhere in the hidden passageways within the Abbey. Are you familiar with them?”
Alex nodded. He had good reason to remember his near-fatal visit to the dungeon of Blackthorne Abbey. His anxiety increased at the thought of his daughters lost amid the dark passageways. Some of them were quite dangerous. “There’s an entrance to the passageways in your bedroom, Marcus. We can start looking there.”
They were deep within the honeycombed passageways when Marcus said, “There is something I have been meaning to say for a long time.”
“Can it wait?” Alex asked.
“I have waited too long already.”
Alex had always suspected that his brother could have told him at any time whether the twins were his children or not. He had never wanted to know for sure. Now, it didn’t matter. He would love them whether they were his or not. Still, he held his breath as he waited for Marcus to speak.
“I never lay with Penthia, Alex, except that one time you founded us together. I never put myself inside her. Reggie and Becky are your daughters, not mine.”
Alex released a shuddering sigh. “It’s good to know the truth at last, Marcus. But before I left, I had made up my mind to love them no matter whose children they were. And I made up my mind to forgive you.”
“Thank you, Alex.”
Alex thought he heard someone calling Marcus’s name somewhere in the passageway. “Do you hear that?”
“It sounds like—It is! Eliza!”
“Who is Eliza?” Alex asked.
“Elizabeth Sheringham, now Elizabeth Wharton,” Marcus said. “My wife.”
“It seems I have been gone a great deal too long. The Beau has accepted a leg-shackle?” Alex studied his brother in the glow of the lantern he held and realized Marcus looked different, too. Less attractive. But more content.
“It is a long story, Alex,” Marcus said. “Suffice it to say I did not act honorably toward the lady, that my friend Julian Sheringham—before he was killed at Waterloo—engaged himself to her, and that after a period of mourning, she has recently become my wife.”
“Miss Sheringham did not care that your looks were spoiled?”
“No, Alex. She is concerned only that I love her.”
Alex felt a stab of envy. “It is a love match then?”
“It is on my side. It was for her, I think, in the beginning. But there have been problems.”
Alex smiled ruefully. “With women, there usually are.”
They separated then, Marcus to hunt for his wife, who had also disappeared, and Alex to continue the search for Regina and Rebecca. He headed in the direction of the dungeon where he had been locked as a boy. He could hear Becky long before he got there.
“Is anybody there? We are locked in the dungeon and cannot get out. Help, someone! We are locked—”
He lifted the
lantern to the hole in the dungeon door and said, “I can hear you, Becky.” I’m home. I love you both. I promise to be a better father. Please be all right!
“Father, is that you? You’re home? We are locked in!”
What if he had not hurried home? What if he had stopped to wait on his valet? They might have died of thirst. If memory served, the skeleton was still there. His father had said it had always been there, and he would not be the one to remove it. The twins must be terrified to be locked in with it.
“There is a key,” he replied in a choked voice. “I will be back with it shortly.” His knees threatened to buckle as he moved along the passageway to a crevice where a skeleton key hung on a hook. When at last he shoved the dungeon door open, he saw Regina lying on the floor with her head wrapped in what looked like a makeshift bandage, with Rebecca kneeling at her side.
For several moments he couldn’t speak past the constriction of fear in his throat. At last he managed to say, “Reggie, Becky, are you all right?”
“Reggie is hurt, Father. She fell and cut her head.”
He crossed hurriedly and sank down onto one knee beside his injured daughter, setting the lamp where the circle of light lit both their faces. He was alarmed to feel the stickiness of blood in Regina’s hair.
“Who put this bandage on?” he asked.
“I did,” Becky said in a faint voice. “I tried to stop the bleeding.”
He lifted Reggie into his arms and pulled her against his breast. His eyes closed as he felt the warmth of her, smelled the lilac soap that both twins used. “Reggie,” he murmured. Thank you, God. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
He looked down at the second twin, the one who had always been afraid of blood, and said, “Thank you, Becky. I think your nursing may have saved your sister’s life.”
Alex’s vision was blurred with tears, but he reached out a hand to Becky and when she took it, he pulled her close, holding both girls snugly against him.
He wanted to tell them how much they meant to him. He wanted to tell them how much he loved them. He wanted to start over and be the kind of father he should have been from the very beginning. What should he say? How could he make them understand?
“Papa is home,” he said, his breath warm against Becky’s brow.
“I love you, Papa,” Becky whispered in his ear.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
Over the following year Alex dedicated himself to being a good father. And to prosecuting the Earl of Carlisle in the House of Lords. He had to be content with punishing Carlisle, because despite the best efforts of the Bow Street Runners to locate him, it seemed Mr. Ambleside had disappeared from the face of the earth.
Alex was sitting in his carriage on the dock the day the Earl of Carlisle stood waiting in line to board a ship bound for Australia, chained hand and foot.
“You’ve convicted an innocent man,” Carlisle said. “You haven’t wanted to know the truth. You’ve believed what you wanted to believe.”
“I saw enough to convince me you’re guilty of attempted murder,” Alex said. “You deserve every year of the seven you’ve been sentenced to serve in bondage.”
“One day I’ll come back to England,” the young man vowed. “And when I do, I’ll ruin your life, as you’ve ruined mine!”
“You’ve no one to blame but yourself,” Alex said. “Take your punishment and learn from it.”
There was no time for more words. The line of chained men began to move up the gangplank. Carlisle refused to budge. “I’m a lord of the realm,” he cried out. “I don’t belong here!”
Alex winced as a cat-o’-nine was applied to the earl’s bare back.
Carlisle howled with pain.
“Shut yer trap,” the sailor with the cat ordered. “Unless ye want more.”
The earl looked at Blackthorne with hate-filled eyes.
“I’ll be back,” he cried, as he was inexorably pulled up the gangplank. “Seven years is not forever.”
The sailor laid on with the cat, and the earl screamed.
Alex tapped on the roof of his carriage, and it moved away before he lost his nerve and offered the man mercy.
“Maybe he’s right, Your Grace.”
Alex looked across the seat at Michael O’Malley. He had taken the boy into his home as a guest, insisting that Mick needed an education if he was to be of any use to him in the future. The boy had absorbed information the way a parched landscape drinks the rain. The thirteen-year-old had grown inches in the past year. With the fashionable clothing Alex had insisted on purchasing for him, and with his ability to mimic accents, he could easily pass for one of the Quality.
Alex had wanted to have Mick’s whole family as guests, but the boy had protested. “We’ll not be taking charity, Your Grace. I’ll agree to the schooling, because I can see I might be of more use to you as an educated employee, but positions must be found for Glenna and Corey and Egan.”
Alex’s offer of help had come too late to save Mick’s youngest sister, Blinne. She had been sold to persons unknown a week before Mick came to get her. Alex had hired the Runners to look for her, but he did not hold out much hope. He knew Mick blamed himself for not coming to her rescue sooner.
“I’m surprised at you, Mick,” Alex said. “How can you, of all people, take the earl’s side?”
“I think sometimes things are not always what they seem.”
Alex thought of Kitt’s protestations of love. Was that a case of things not being what they seemed? “I’m not mistaken about Carlisle.”
“A man’s life is at stake, Alex. Isn’t it worth at least investigating the possibility that the earl might be Mr. Ambleside’s innocent dupe, as he’s always claimed. Especially since Mr. Ambleside, who might have proved him innocent, has escaped entirely.”
“I’m not wrong. But I will follow up on the matter.” He couldn’t be wrong. Otherwise, he had ruined an innocent man’s life.
When Alex returned home with Mick, he found his brother and his brother’s new wife, Eliza, in the drawing room having tea.
“I cannot believe you could be so cruel as to send that poor young man to Australia,” Eliza said as she poured a cup of tea for Mick and handed it to him.
Alex slapped his gloves against his free hand. He was feeling too uncertain at the moment to accept such criticism gracefully. “He would have murdered me for a piece of property,” he snapped back.
“Are you certain he was guilty? He did not look like—”
“Looks can be deceiving.” Alex was in a position to know. Kitt had lied to him with eyes that promised love. “I don’t wish to discuss the matter further.”
“Very well,” Eliza said. “I will be glad to change the subject.”
Alex picked up the cup of tea Eliza had poured for him and lowered himself into a wing chair as far from Eliza Wharton as he could get. He had discovered the woman was a positive bulldog when she wanted something.
He had just taken a sip of tea when she said, “I thought I might invite your wife to come here to Blackthorne Abbey for a visit.”
Alex choked on his tea. After clearing his throat he replied, “I have no wife.”
“Have you repudiated your handfast wife then, Alex?” his brother asked.
“No.”
“Then you are still married,” Eliza pointed out. “Surely you must want to see your wife.”
“I have no desire at all to see her,” Alex said flatly.
“Is there any chance she might have been carrying your child when you left?” Eliza asked.
“None at—” Alex cut himself off. He had completely blocked out the memory of his last night in Scotland. It was entirely too painful. He had not believed Kitt when she said she loved him. Nor had he believed the other statement she had made.
The child is yours.
Dear God. It had been more than nine months since he had left Scotland. Was it possible she had borne him a child? Surely she would have contacted him by now.<
br />
“I’ve changed my mind,” Alex said, standing abruptly and setting down his tea.
“Then I can invite your wife to visit, after all?” Eliza confirmed with a delighted smile.
“There’s no need to invite my wife to Blackthorne Abbey,” he said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow to visit her in Scotland.”
Chapter 22
The Duke of Blackthorne was back in Scotland.
The word had spread in angry whispers until it had finally reached Kitt’s ears.
She sat in her bedroom rocking the black-haired, gray-eyed child who nursed at her breast. Gareth was the one good thing that had come from her encounter with the duke. And now Blackthorne was determined to take him from her.
As he had taken her inheritance. He had spent a great deal of money making sure she lost her claim to Blackthorne Hall in court. And then offered her a way to have it back. All she had to do was give him her son. His son.
“Ye should leave here, I tell ye, and take Gareth with ye,” Moira advised as she swept a perfectly clean floor for the second time. “When the boy is grown will be soon enough to demand what his father owes him.”
“Mayhap by then Blackthorne will no longer wish to acknowledge him,” Kitt said quietly. “I think I must give him up to his father, Moira. It was why he was born, you know. To save us all.”
“Blackthorne will take him away,” Moira said. “He’ll be as English as Yorkshire pudding by the time ye set eyes on him again.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“What makes ye think the duke will keep his promise to give over the land and the castle?” Moira said.
“ ’Tis all to be written down in a contract,” Kitt said. “Gareth in exchange for—” Kitt’s throat choked closed, making it impossible to speak. It had a habit of doing that lately, whenever she contemplated the impossible conditions Blackthorne had laid down for acknowledging Gareth as his heir.
She swallowed down the painful constriction and tried again. “Gareth in exchange for everything Grandfather lost to the English at Culloden.”
“ ’Tis the work of the devil,” Moira muttered. “Whoever heard of selling bairns for—”
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