“She knows about me. And if I kept her as my wife, I would no’ continue,” he said, as if he was arguing to keep her.
“So you’ll stay at home with her? Try to be domestic?” he asked, his voice full of derision. “How will you fit in with her friends and family, when you simply don’t know how? My God, you couldn’t sit a gathering before you turned killer.”
He was right. Hugh had been too long in the field, and was so different from the people in her life anyway.
“If you can’t make a decision,” Quin said, his tone low and seething, “I’ll bloody make it for you!”
The dream, the ominous reminder of the book, Quin’s arrival—what more did Hugh need to see to realize he had to let her go…?
Apparently, Hugh needed to see Jane at the door with her bags packed, her mien stoic, and jaw battered. Hell, after the events of yesterday and the sight of the book this morning, she likely wouldn’t have stayed with him anyway.
Quin sucked in a breath at the sight of her face. “My God, Jane. Are you all right?” When she nodded, Quin shot Hugh a black look.
Jane was dressed for travel, her bags at her feet. She was truly leaving. Today.
“You’re goin’ with him?” Hugh asked, his voice breaking a pitch lower.
“What else would I do?” She smoothed her skirts. “I’m glad you sent for him when the threat passed. Very forward-thinking.”
“I dinna—”
“I thought so as well,” Quin interrupted. “Doing the right thing for both of you. Jane, we need to get on the road if we intend to catch the train in Perth. Say good-bye and come along.”
When she nodded absently, Quin collected her bags, then strode to the carriage—because they were leaving. Now.
Hugh had known he and Jane would part, but he’d thought he would have time to prepare himself. He turned back to Jane, staring down at her. “I was going to see you home.”
“You don’t think Quin can keep me safe?”
“Aye. Now. But I wanted to get you settled in, before—”
“Before you leave again?” She shrugged, her face cold.
“We knew it would come to this. No reason to prolong it unnecessarily.”
He exhaled, running a shaking hand over his face.
“We both have to get on with our lives,” she continued. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
“I doona want you to go yet.”
“Yet.”
“What do you bloody want?” Was he sweating more? He couldn’t stop seeing that dream before him.
Her voice quavering with emotion, she said, “We’re back to the simple choice. We put the curse behind us. Or you refuse, and once I leave here today, I will never want to see you again.”
He couldn’t promise her he would disregard or forget something that had molded him and he couldn’t easily give her loss, which was all she would have with him. But he had to know…“You’d be willing to be with me, even after everything you learned?” he asked, wishing she would say no. To find the one woman who could accept him, and to find her in Jane would be too much.
“I’d be willing to try, to see,” she finally answered. “To maybe understand everything better.”
“And after seeing the book?”
“That’s something I don’t think I will ever understand.” She shivered. “Yes, when I look at it, I fear it—but I also know we could be stronger than anything written there.”
Jane was here for the taking, ready to face hell for Hugh—and it humbled him. But shouldn’t he be ready to do the same for her?
“Jane, come along!” Quin called from the carriage. “We have to make a train.”
She turned back to Hugh. “If I leave here today, it’s over. Forever, Hugh. I must move on from this.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “If you don’t choose me now, you never will. But the sad thing is that one day you’ll realize what you threw away.” When he was silent, her eyes watered. “And I promise you, it’ll be too late to get it back.” She turned toward the carriage. Just as she was about to climb in, Jane stopped and strode back to Hugh.
She’d seen reason—she would stay with Hugh for a week more, a day more.
The cracking slap to his face took him completely off guard. “That was for the last ten years.” She slapped the other side of his face, even harder. “And that’s for the next!”
Forty-six
“I never thought I’d say this,” her father began, as he nervously regarded Jane’s face, “but perhaps you ought to just cry.”
Quin had suggested the same thing repeatedly on their journey back to London, right up until he’d deposited her in her father’s study. She’d been home for an hour—long enough for her father to finish explaining what he and Hugh and everyone else did.
“I’m fine.” I’m numb. When had her voice begun to sound so tinny?
She took a sip of her iced Scotch, defying him to say anything about her drinking so early.
“I’m sure this has all been a blow to you.”
“Are you competing for the most patent understatement?” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, really, Papa, imports?”
He shrugged helplessly, and she sighed. He’d finally been totally forthcoming with her—she thought. She’d been markedly less so about Hugh’s reasons for letting her go. “Who knows what he’s thinking?” she’d said to him and to Quin. “He made comments like he thought he wasn’t good enough for me….”
“Jane, you keep saying you’re fine, but you don’t look it.”
No, she’d been on the verge of crying since she’d first comprehended that Quin was there to retrieve her. In fact, she’d been as close to it as she’d ever been, without actually spilling tears. As she’d absently packed her things, she’d somehow prevented herself because she’d known that with her first tear, she might start something she couldn’t stop.
“You’re right.” She gingerly touched the chilled glass on her swollen jaw, but the pain made her wince, and her father flinch—again. “This has all been a lot for me to digest. I see you and Quin and even Rolley, and I feel like you’re strangers.” She’d tried to put on a strong front when facing each of them, but for right now, all she could seem to manage was a wary indifference. “And Hugh? I had an idea of him for half my life. Now that’s…changed.”
She wasn’t angry about Hugh’s role in deceiving her. He had a job to do, and after talking to her father, she better understood the seriousness and significance of what he did. One of his bullets could spare a million of them in some needless war, and yet his job was lonely and grueling and he would never receive credit—or support if he’d been captured. She’d forgiven Hugh—for this, at least—but her father? “As for you, well, perhaps you might have provided a bit more warning about all this, and a lot less pressuring me to marry an assassin. Just a thought.”
Her father couldn’t meet her eyes—and she’d noticed that for the last hour, he’d avoided looking at her mother’s portrait as well. “I regret what I did. But I swear that I believed Hugh would come around and do the right thing. The man has been in love with you for so long, and he’s always been honorable. But then, you understand that—you’ve always understood that. Jane, do you know how proud I was of you for choosing a man like Hugh? You saw things in him others couldn’t. I thought the two of you were perfect for each other.”
We almost were.
“Are you sure that you made it clear you were in love with him? And that you wanted to remain married?”
She made a sound of frustration. “You—have—no—idea.”
He briefly raised his palms in the air. “Yes, yes, very well. I won’t ask again.”
“Well, what do you propose I do now?” She rotated the glass against her cheek to the cooler side and added, “With all the money from my dowry that you’ll be giving me.”
He quirked a brow, but wisely said nothing.
“I really have no idea what a woman in my situation does.”
“Jane, I kno
w I promised you I could smooth this over with Frederick, but”—he tugged on his collar—“he’s not precisely available any longer.”
“How’s that?” she asked without interest.
“He’s engaged to Candace Damferre. Her husband expired with no heir, leaving her everything. Bidworth’s, uh, quite beside himself that they’re both free.”
What would Jane have done, weeks into marriage with Freddie, when his true love became free? Hugh might not have been able to give her a love-filled marriage, but he’d helped her father save her from a completely loveless one. “I’m happy for him.”
“Are you truly?”
“Yes. I couldn’t have gone back with him anyway.”
“I know, but I promised you something I wasn’t completely sure of because I was positive it would work out with you and Hugh.”
She shrugged. “Don’t feel guilty on that score, at least. You told me you could work all this out with Freddie,” Jane began with a careless flick of her hand, “if the marriage to Hugh was unconsummated.” She glanced up and frowned. “Your face is an interesting shade of red, Papa. Really remarkable.”
His fists were clenched. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Now, it seems”—she glanced both ways with exaggerated slyness and hushed her voice—“that I have to clarify if you mean literally.”
For the last week, Hugh had combed the small lakeside village and all the surrounding areas for word of his brother. After days of doggedly chasing down every lead, Hugh was no closer to discovering anything to indicate whether Ethan was dead or alive.
As Quin had said, many had heard gunshots, and some shopkeepers saw two men dragging Ethan’s lifeless body into an alley. One might have spied a very slim man loping down the street. The bottom line was that Ethan had disappeared, and Hugh had no more leads to follow.
Nor had he any idea where to go or what to do.
Without Jane, nothing held appeal.
In the past, his life had at least had some purpose, but he didn’t know if he could go back to his occupation. Yes, the odds had been against Hugh reverting to a normal life—but, damn it, he had changed. Jane had changed him, and he had to wonder if he could return to that same existence. Besides, if it was true that Weyland always knew everything, then he now knew that Hugh had compromised Jane—and then all but kicked her out. He feared Weyland had washed his hands of Hugh.
In his place, Hugh would have.
Hugh’s official missives to Weyland were responded to promptly, but coolly.
If not having Jane in his life had been painful before, now it was agonizing. Hugh knew exactly what he was missing. Worse, he knew how badly he’d hurt her. The more he thought about that morning, the more he regretted letting her go. But what choice did he have?
Where to go? He hadn’t been to Cape Waldegrave for almost a year. He should go check on his estate and see if any improvements needed to be made—then do them all himself. Beinn a’Chaorainn was on his way there. He could pay Mòrag in advance to oversee the property. He could pick up the rest of his things and close down the house for good.
To go there and not hear Jane’s laughter? Hell, who was he fooling? He just planned to go there to do eighty thousand pounds’ worth of brooding.
Jane’s cousins were hovering.
Claudia had basically moved in, and Belinda and Samantha visited as often as they could between time with their husbands and children. Today, Claudia and Belinda were flipping through fashion plates, smoking French cigarettes, and raiding Jane’s clothing.
During the last two weeks, Jane hadn’t had an hour to herself. Apparently, when Jane had returned home, she’d worried her entire family with her mottled jaw and insouciant demeanor. But now the bruise on Jane’s face had healed, and her headaches had disappeared.
She often wondered if Hugh had completely recovered.
When she reflected over her time with him, she could think of only one thing she’d have done differently, even after all that had occurred between them. “Trust me with your secret and you won’t regret it,” she’d told him. She felt a flush of guilt, knowing he would have to regret it. She’d demonstrated no understanding or compassion, but then she’d never felt such fury, such strangling frustration.
Jane had comprehended that she was losing the only man she’d ever loved—and that all the fight she had in her wouldn’t change that fact. Because she was losing him to something that didn’t truly exist….
“Janey,” Claudia began in a scolding tone, “are you thinking about Tears and Years again?” She shook her head slowly. “We don’t think about him any longer, do we?”
For obvious reasons she hadn’t told them what Hugh’s profession was. For some unknown reason, she hadn’t confided to them about the curse. Though telling them about it would actually have made Hugh more sympathetic to them, she knew Hugh wouldn’t want them to know. As it was now, they suspected he let her go out of shortsighted stubbornness or, taken with his past behavior, inconstancy.
She had told them she’d made love to Hugh, and they’d all counted down the days together until she could determine whether she was carrying.
Jane had been relieved that she wasn’t, of course. But she’d also felt a confusing pang….
“Jane, I don’t believe I’ve reminded you today,” Claudia said, flicking her mane of raven hair over her shoulder, “that you spent a decade of your life pining for him.” She gave Jane a piercing look. “You can’t get those years back. Gone. Spent.”
The first time Claudia had made this observation, Belinda had chided her, saying, “Jane needs to look to the future, not dwell on the past.” Now she said, “Claudia’s right. It’s been two weeks, Jane. You’ve got to at least begin to get over him.”
Claudia made a sound of frustration. “My Lord, Jane, I think you’d take him back—”
“Don’t you dare think that!” Jane snapped. “I’m not a complete idiot. Getting thrown over by the man I’ve loved—not once, but twice, mind you—destroyed any hopes for a rekindling.”
“Then what is it?”
“Things remind me of him. And every time I look at my father’s guilty expression, it kills me inside.”
With a firm nod, Claudia said, “Right, then. I think getting over him would be more easily done while traveling, perhaps to Italy, where gorgeous, virile men abound.” When Jane raised her brows at the idea, Claudia continued, “Haven’t you ever heard the old saying? The best way to get over a man is to get under an Italian.”
Forty-seven
“Courtland, you made this place sound awful!” Annalía Llorente MacCarrick said as she skipped along the winding walk to Beinn a’Chaorainn. “It’s beautiful—I can’t believe this is my new home!”
“Woman! Slow down,” Court grated, limping after her.
Now that she was feeling stronger after two months of illness, he always seemed to be slowing her down, chasing after her bright skirts. With his still-healing leg, he was scarcely able to keep up—which made him a nervous husband.
What if she stumbled, and he wasn’t there to catch her?
Yet once he’d taken her gently by the hips and glanced up, Court could do no more than stare past her. Whose home is this and what did they do with mine?
Squatters. Of course. Squatters with good taste clearly had taken over here.
The shutters and front door, which had been barely hanging on by their hinges, were new and painted. A shining brass knocker beckoned visitors, the gravel walk was free of weeds, and greens were planted in intricate, immaculate beds. The roof seemed to have been completely repaired, and through the spotless new windows he could see furniture and carpets. Had his mother done this? Who else would it be?
When he unconsciously squeezed Anna’s hips, she laid her hands over his and gave him a flirtatious smile over her shoulder. “Again already?” she purred, her accent giving the words a lilt. “My lusty Scot.”
He raised his eyebrows at her clear invitation, and just lik
e that, the house was forgotten. His voice grew husky. “I dinna give you enough at the inn last night? Or this morning?”
She turned in his arms and whispered, “I don’t believe I can ever get enough of you.” She cupped his face with her wee hands. “Courtland, why did you tell me your home was so awful, when it’s grand? Why did you say we’d have to live at the inn until you got it inhabitable? I remember the words you used: decrepit, dilapidated, and, um, what was the other? Oh, yes—sty.”
“I…it was no’ like this when I left it.” He dragged his gaze from her face and pondered his home once more. He’d known one day it would be beautiful, had vowed to make it so, but he’d never imagined this.
And he didn’t even know who to thank.
“I can tell you now that I was so uneasy,” Annalía continued, “not knowing what brutal Scottish wilderness you were bringing me to. And with the baby…”
Court had been dreading this, especially now that they were starting a family—albeit unintentionally. Even had she not been carrying, he had cringed at the thought of bringing her here. But then, he didn’t have a lot of options.
To keep her, he’d had to give up his life as a mercenary. Without doing that work, he had little money. It had been a conundrum that had crazed him. His inability to keep her in the style to which she was accustomed had been one of his concerns in marrying her, a wealthy and regal—literally—beauty. And after that first time she’d tried, she knew better than to offer money to him.
He’d planned to fix one room, then do his damnedest to keep her in it until he could afford to do more. Now Court felt like a weight had been lifted.
Anna tapped her chin, frowning in the direction of the freshly painted stables. “Courtland, isn’t that the horse my brother gave to Hugh?”
Court followed her gaze. It was indeed. Aleixandre Llorente had given Hugh that stallion for bringing his “unique talents” to Andorra to help rid his country of the Rechazado. Even Court hadn’t known Hugh could blow up a mountaintop, or that he’d do it, killing thirty men, without blinking.
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