She did not know where that last thought came from. The thought of returning to London, after all that had happened, sent her head spinning in reverse. If James was hurt, even if it was no more than a scrape, she would stay here until he recovered.
Her memory kicked at her. She was being dreadfully naïve. The amount of blood she had seen was consistent with nothing so small as a scrape.
And if he had been killed . . . The thought of never seeing him again, of never exploring where his searing kisses might lead, was too devastating to contemplate.
“You should go and enjoy Bealltainn,” she whispered to Elsie. “It only comes once a year, and the band is starting up.”
Elsie’s face softened with want. “Are you sure, miss? What will you do?”
“I’ll stay here and wait for word from Mr. Cameron.” She would wait forever, if she had to.
A blur of movement caught her eye. The man Georgette recognized as the innkeeper stalked toward them. “See now, Miss Dalrymple, I need my pencil back. And the dishes need washing and there’s four or five men waving their cups about over there. Move a bit faster, if you will.”
Elsie untied her apron strings and tossed the filthy, wadded-up bit of fabric on the floor. “I’ve better ways to occupy my time, thank you very much. And a better job waiting for me, come morning.”
She gave Georgette a saucy wink and then she sauntered toward the door.
The innkeeper stared after her. “That girl is bound for trouble,” he murmured, low under his breath.
“Didn’t you know?” Georgette watched the door close on Elsie’s eager steps. “A lady never forgoes the pleasure of dancing.”
The innkeeper eyed her uncertainly. Not that she blamed him. She sounded hysterical, even to herself.
“I suppose you’ve come for the key,” he huffed.
Georgette brushed the back of her hand across the tears that still wet her cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
“The key,” he repeated. “For the room.”
Georgette stared at him. Heavens. She had paid for a room. Suddenly, a quiet place to escape the noisy public room and the roaring noise of her fears seemed just the thing.
“Yes, please.” She pushed her chair back and forced her feet to move. They rejected the idea, but she insisted on their obedience. “But please, should anyone come asking for me, send them straight up. I . . . I am waiting for news.”
Please, God, let it be good news.
“Of course, miss.” The proprietor’s shifting eyes told her exactly what he thought of such a proposition. After last night, she couldn’t blame him.
She accepted the key and made her way up to the room. She sat on the edge of the bed and concentrated on just breathing. When she had been downstairs, with the clamor of glassware and the chuckles rolling like church bells from the mouths of nearby patrons, the idea of silence had seemed unspeakably appealing. But now that she was here, the suffocating absence of sound inside the room, and the faint, merry sounds of Bealltainn coming from outside the window, merely pointed out how alone she was.
Worry lined her stomach like lead in a bucket. She was quite sure there was no way she could sleep, not with the uncertainty of the outcome.
No, sleep would not come tonight.
She would just close her eyes and wait.
Chapter 29
JAMES SQUIRMED IN frustration beneath Patrick’s hands. It was the second time today he had sat for the man’s suturing skills, and if he never saw another needle, it would be too soon. The wound itself might not hurt, but the damned needle was causing a dozen new injuries and seemed to find, with unerring accuracy, every ready nerve beneath his skin.
“Easy now, almost done,” Patrick said, as if sensing his patient was about to turn unruly. Such intuition was no doubt a useful skill for a veterinarian to have.
In a roommate, however, it was most annoying.
In fact, the very idea of a roommate made James want to gnash his teeth in frustration. He had indulged in a good, long look around the kitchen as Patrick shaved his beard a bit too enthusiastically. Everywhere he looked, evidence of his lonely bachelor’s life taunted him. The punching bag, with a hole in one end spilling sawdust onto the floor. The unused copper pans above the equally pristine iron stove. Upstairs, he knew his sheets would smell of nothing but his own loneliness and perhaps a good whiff of terrier.
He wanted to return to Georgette and sleep with her head on his shoulder, and wake up in bedclothes that smelled of her.
The reminder of what he still needed to do to keep her safe pricked as surely as Patrick’s torment of a needle. His friend finally stepped back, regarding James with an authoritative air. “I suppose you would not listen if I told you to go lie down.”
James rose with a groan. “Not even Gemmy listens when you say that.” He hissed between his teeth, testing his ability to stand and finding it questionable. “I cannot stay. You know that.”
“Aye.” Patrick nodded. “I suppose I do. How about I come with you then?”
James eyed his friend. His first instinct, of course, was to tell him no. But he was finding himself considering a lot of things today he would never have imagined. He nodded slowly. “I would appreciate that.”
Patrick stepped over to the washbasin and washed his hands. “How are you feeling? I have something I could give you for pain, but it’s meant for horses, and I can’t vouch for what it might do to you.”
James ran a hand along his injured cheek, where the bullet had grazed his skin. On either side of the stitches, the skin there felt exposed and raw where Patrick had shaved him. A mental image of his tanned forehead contrasting with the pale white skin the beard had recently covered made him wince. “Hang how I feel. I must look ridiculous.”
Patrick dried his hands and then hefted one of the unused copper pots from its anchor on the wall. He spun it around and held the gleaming copper surface a few inches from James’s face. “ ’Tis not too bad. I’ve a feeling your bride will not mind.”
James peered at his copper-tinted image. He looked like . . . well, truth be told, he looked like hell. The row of stitches along his jaw could not be missed, and a smear of blood still stained the hair around his ears.
But more importantly, he looked like his father. When he had grown the beard eleven years ago, he had been a twenty-one-year-old youth, with rounded edges and an earnest look in his eyes. He had wanted something to hide behind, something to distinguish himself from his family.
Now he was a man, with the hard, angular planes and the beginnings of the weary, careworn lines he had glimpsed across his father’s desk this evening.
He rubbed his hand across the uninjured side of his face. “She’ll likely not recognize me.” He scarcely recognized himself, but there was something settling about seeing his face for the first time in over a decade. He was a Kilmartie.
And there was no shame in that.
“Kiss her, then.” Patrick shrugged. “That will set her mind to rights, soon enough.”
James could not help the chuckle that built in his chest. Kiss her, indeed. That was something he planned to do, every day for the rest of his life.
They headed toward the door together, but James pulled up short at the sight of Georgette’s corset. It was lying on the kitchen sideboard atop a cluttered pile of his books and papers. He had forgotten about that. He liked the way it looked there, a bit of feminine frippery amid his things. He tucked it up under his arm and admitted to himself he wanted to make a life with her, not just a marriage.
But first he needed to make sure she was safe.
He stepped outside, Patrick on his heels, only to see William and Cameron riding toward him through darkness. Their horses were winded, their faces grim. They pulled to a halt in front of him.
James glared up at his brother. The man had clearly located the magistrate, but tha
t did little to settle the anger that surged through James.
William had left Georgette. Alone and unprotected.
James might have just garnered his father’s favor after eleven years of estrangement, but that did not matter in the face of this betrayal. He was bloody well going to kill his brother.
“What in the hell are you doing here?” James demanded.
“Thanking God you are alive.” William’s face dissolving into a shite-eating grin. “But good God, man, what happened to your beard?”
“Burton tried to kill me again, and you’ve left Georgette unprotected. Is the first thing you have to say to me really something about a bloody beard?”
William swore as his horse half reared. He struggled to bring his mount under control. When he finally had the animal settled again, he regarded James with a solemn expression, all trace of humor vanished. “I did not leave her, Jamie. She left you.”
“What?” James asked, incredulous.
“She’s gone missing. Out the window.”
“But . . . I took her shoes!” James could well believe she would climb out the window. She had proven remarkably tenacious in the brief time he had known her. But walk about without shoes? In the dark?
With Burton possibly stalking her?
His breath near froze in his lungs.
“Apparently, that did not stop her.” William’s voice was a terrible rumble. “I thought she was locked in the library, safe where you’d left her, but when I peeked in to check on her, she was gone. I rode here to tell you and intercepted Cameron along the way.”
David Cameron cleared his throat and handed something down to him. James closed his hand over the folded piece of paper with fingers gone cold.
“She found me at the Gander and gave me this for your family,” Cameron told him. “I was given the impression she was worried about you, but after speaking with William and hearing his concerns about the situation, I confess I am no longer so sure.”
Cameron’s words stubbornly pushed their way through the tangled web of James’s thoughts. He motioned for Patrick’s lantern, and his stomach churned in nervous anticipation.
He unfolded the note. Read it.
William, your brother has been shot on the road from Kilmartie to Moraig. I cannot find him, and beg your assistance with the magistrate in mounting a search.
James crumpled it in his hand. His stomach no longer felt empty. In fact, it felt boiling full. A rabid sense of betrayal snaked its way inside him and set up shop. “She knew I was shot,” he croaked. His heart did cartwheels in his chest, turning over and over and stealing what breath he had left.
How did she know he was shot if she had no role in it?
“Aye.” William nodded grimly. “She knew you were shot. She just didn’t know you survived.”
IT PROVED EASY enough to find her. They returned to the Gander to ask around, and the innkeeper sent James straight up. Perhaps it was the prospect of thwarting four very large, very determined men, one of whom had caused a great deal of physical damage to the property last night. Or perhaps the Gander’s proprietor held no respect for a lady who had four different men asking after her. Whatever the reason, James was waved toward the stairs without so much as a blink from the man.
The other three men followed close on his heels, the pounding of their boots an ill match to the purposeful rhythm in his head. James pushed them back with a stern hand. “I’m not inviting an audience, gentleman. I will do this alone.”
William’s eyes widened at the rebuff. “That is daft, Jamie. She already tried to kill you once, though her aim could use some honing. Would you march in and bare your chest so she has a clear target at your fool of a heart?”
James shook his head. “I can handle myself, now that I know not to trust her.”
“You can handle yourself against a man, sure enough.” Cameron’s voice poked at him like a stick. “All of Moraig knows that. But having a woman draw a knife on you is different, especially when it is a woman you care about.”
James drew in a sharp breath. He had not realized his feelings for Georgette were so bloody obvious. But emotions were irrelevant here. All that mattered was the truth, and his interrogation techniques would not be improved by onlookers. He squared his shoulders against their dissent. “I’m going alone, whether or not you approve.”
William looked ready to strangle him. Patrick, damn his eyes, just looked sympathetic. Oh, he understood their objections. He would have lodged the same argument himself had their positions been reversed. But none of them had any idea of the depth of feeling that had passed between him and Georgette in the space of only twenty-four hours. Her perfidy was something he had to address in private.
“Ten minutes,” James offered as a concession to the worry lining his brother’s eyes. “Come up in ten minutes if you don’t hear from me by then.”
After a long, tense moment, William nodded. “Just make sure it’s not a body we’ll be coming up to collect.”
James took the rest of the stairs two at a time. He opened the door with a silent hand. The chit had not even thought to turn the key in the lock. A dangerous mistake, that. Anyone could come in and find her the way he was doing, stretched out on the bed with only her silken hair for a blanket.
She slept, lost in some deep and twitching state of slumber. He contemplated shaking her awake, decided against a jarring hand on her shoulder. The gentlemanly side of him objected to jerking such a peaceful body from her dreams. Far kinder to do it with words.
Not that he was feeling very kindly toward her at the moment.
She had left a lamp burning low on the bedside table, and he reached over to turn the wick up. An object that looked suspiciously like his money purse snagged his attention for a half second before he set the corset down beside it. Evidence that she was involved in some way, and a possible motive as well. Had she really shot him for so paltry a sum?
His gaze returned to Georgette. She had not taken the time to pull back the bedcovers, and so James stood and stared at the length of her body a full minute before he lent his voice to the necessary process of waking her. She was so mind-numbingly beautiful that his fingers twitched to touch her.
But beauty had no place in this debate. A lioness could be beautiful, and still rip out your throat before feeding on your carcass.
He sat down on the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight but she did not stir. He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with air and purpose. “Wake up, Georgette.”
Chapter 30
A VOICE HISSED AT her through terror-filled dreams, bidding her to obey in a tone that brooked no argument. Wake up.
Georgette did not even consider ignoring such a summons.
She opened her eyes and found a stranger sitting on the bed next to her. She pushed herself up on frantic hands and scrambled backward, unsure of where she was, which bed she was in, and whose angry face scowled down at her. She felt as confused as she had on waking this morning. The circumstances, and her surroundings, were so eerily familiar she almost closed her eyes, just to see if she was dreaming.
Only one thing stopped her. The eyes. Those haunting green eyes, this time illuminated by lamplight instead of sunlight. They were the same, and yet they were different.
This time, they were not inviting her to come closer.
“James!” She swallowed her gasp of joy, ignored the dark look on his face in favor of focusing on the fact that if he could glower, he could breathe.
His expression was not surprising. He was mad at her. She had known he would be, for leaving the library in such a cowardly way, but she would address his grievance later.
For now, her heart skipped its gladness.
He was alive.
She launched herself at him, her arms wrapping themselves around whatever piece of him she could reach. How could she have fallen asleep? The l
ast thing she remembered was promising herself she would not. She let her nose rest there in the curve between his neck and shoulder. He smelled the same, soap and old blood and warm wool and hard-ridden horse. He felt the same too, his muscles strong and tense beneath her hands as she rested her palms against his back.
But he looked like someone else entirely.
She pulled back and studied the new architecture of his skin, where once his beard had been. She cupped the smooth surface of his injured cheek with one shaking hand. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
“Indeed.” He did not speak in the same hushed tones her own voice offered. His tone, and the guttural way he rolled his vowels, sounded like thunder in her newly awakened head. “Does the fact I am not come as a surprise?”
It should have been a question. But the way he said it, grave and hard, made it clear he did not entertain the idea.
He blamed her. Her body began to shake. It hurt, those words, the culpability he obviously placed in her. But how could he not blame her, when she also blamed herself?
“Randolph said . . .” Georgette swallowed and shook her head against the terrifying memory. “He said . . . you were dead. I did not know what to think.”
I was so scared. But uttering the last of it would not erase the accusing look on this man’s face. And so she chose to keep it inside, where she could nurse it, protect it.
Cherish it. Fear was an emotion she had long held of a husband, but it was not something she had ever imagined feeling for one.
His eyes flashed at her. “Pretty lies, Georgette. But dinna—” He seemed to catch himself, though the brogue he kept hidden made her heart stutter. “Do not sit there and pretend you don’t know what happened. I saw your note. My only question is, did you pull the trigger or did you set Randolph on me to do your dirty work?”
She shrank back on the bedcovers. “Neither,” she whispered.
“Did you leave the safety of Kilmartie Castle and my brother’s protection for a reason? Or did you merely fancy a bruising walk through dark woods to cap off your eventful day?”
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