“Get your son,” he ordered. Then, stepping over Osborne’s legs, he limped past the landlord toward the door.
“Who’s going to pay for all this?” the man said.
“That’s what I want to know. You can’t come into an honest house and break up things without paying.”
“I’ll pay,” Sarah said.
She was crying, Justin realized. He turned again when he reached the door, one hand resting high on its frame for support. Sarah and Drew were still kneeling, one on either side of Osborne’s body. One of Drew’s small hands was cupped gently around his father’s face.
“I’ll have the horses brought around,” Justin said, feeling sick. “Have Drew downstairs in five minutes.”
Sarah’s eyes moved from the angry face of the host back to his. Wordlessly, she nodded. He knew she was still watching as he limped out of the door of Osborne’s room, but despite that knowledge, he never looked back.
Chapter Thirteen
The earl of Wynfield had been sitting before the fire in his rooms, almost unmoving, since they had returned to Longford. He had removed his coat, but he was wearing the same shirt in which he had fought Osborne, its sleeve stained by blood and wine.
Occasionally he shivered, but he wasn’t really aware of being cold. Just as he was no longer aware of the aches and pains in his battered body. The memory of those matching pairs of eyes, looking up at him in shock from either side of an unconscious David Osborne, was so powerful it outweighed any physical sensation.
He had sent his valet to bed. Someone had knocked on his door much later, but he hadn’t responded. Tomorrow would be soon enough to face what had happened. And he would, of course, because it must be faced. Something still had to be done about Osborne. What had happened tonight had accomplished nothing. Except to create the accusing look he had seen in Drew’s eyes.
The knock that sounded on his door this time was very soft, and although he didn’t give permission, eventually the door opened. He turned his head and found Sarah standing in the doorway. Her right hand, holding a ring of keys, was still on the knob. She held the handle of a wooden box in her left.
“May I come in?” she asked.
He looked away from her, focusing on the flames instead. Involuntarily, his mouth tightened, the painful movement reminding him of the number of times Osborne had gotten in under his guard. Justin didn’t want to deal with Sarah tonight. The effects of the brandy had worn off, leaving him with a headache and a foul taste in his mouth. Of course, both might just as easily be explained by his self-disgust.
He heard the door close. Knowing Sarah, he understood that she would not be standing outside it. Still he didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see what was in her eyes.
He had a half second’s warning, the familiar fragrance of roses suddenly surrounding him. Then she set the wooden chest and the keys she had been carrying down on the table beside him.
When he felt her fingers touch his chin, he didn’t fight their pressure. He looked up, lifting his face into the pitiless exposure of the light. He watched her eyes widen, the pupils dilating just as they had before Osborne hit him. He could imagine what he looked like. He had seen the evidence of innumerable fistfights among the ranks. Broken noses and blackened eyes were common sights among His Majesty’s finest..
Sarah’s fingers released their hold on his chin, but her eyes held his a few seconds longer. Then, opening the box she’d brought, she removed a brown bottle from one of its neat compartments and took off the glass stopper. Laying that aside, she tipped the bottle, pouring some of the liquid it contained onto a piece of lint she had taken from another compartment. An acrid, medicinal smell replaced the evocative hint of rose water that had been in the air. Justin looked back at the fire, regretting that loss as well.
“Drew?” he asked.
“He’s finally asleep,” Sarah said.
She put her forefinger under his chin this time, tilting his head upward again. Although she was holding the soaked lint in her left hand, she didn’t apply it to the scrapes and abrasions. She held his eyes instead. And then she bent; moving very slowly, giving him every opportunity to turn his head. When he didn’t, her lips touched his. She applied no pressure to his bruised mouth, her kiss as insubstantial as the fog he had driven through on the way home. When she lifted her head, his questioning eyes followed, still fastened on hers.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
He laughed, the sound little more than a breath. “For what?” he asked. The words were as bitter as his laughter.
“For finding Drew. For bringing him home.”
“I did more harm than good, Sarah. You know that. More harm in dealing with Osborne. Certainly more harm in my relationship with Drew.”
She hesitated a moment, and then she laid the lint on top of the open bottle and knelt beside his chair. She took his hand in hers and, looking down on it, ran the tips of her fingers over the cut and swollen knuckles.
When she finally looked up again, she said, “Thanks to you, Drew is home. Back at Longford where he belongs. Away from David’s influence. And I assure you, that can only be good, however it came about.”
No matter how she tried to rationalize what had happened, Justin knew he had accomplished nothing, except perhaps to harden Osborne’s resolve. Maybe to insure that he would really do what he had only threatened before and take his case to the courts. For revenge, if not for profit. Whatever Osborne did, Justin knew it would be designed to make them all suffer for the confrontation tonight.
“Osbome will be more determined than ever to extract his pound of flesh,” he warned. “You may now add a quest for revenge to the greed that drove him before.”
“I know,” she said. “But at least now he understands...” She hesitated, taking a breath that was deep enough to be visible, before she continued. “At least he knows that we’re not alone. Or unprotected.”
“I didn’t make things better, Sarah,” Justin repeated. “If anything, what happened tonight simply made everything worse.”
“I’m not sure it could have been made worse,” she said. “David has always held all the cards in this game because he is Drew’s father. And he has always been greedy and unprincipled, uncaring of who he uses or who he hurts by what he does. Nothing you did tonight changed any of those things. Or could change them. Nothing ever really can, I suppose.”
Justin thought again of Drew’s shocked words, and of the brief surge of elation he had felt when he’d heard them. Brief because killing the child’s father had never been an option. It would have legal repercussions, of course. And it would forever alienate Drew. As it was, the damage that had been done to Justin’s relationship with the little boy might be irrevocable.
“No matter what happens,” Sarah continued, her voice still low, but filled with a mother’s instinct to protect, “I won’t let David have Drew. I can’t. Not knowing what he is.”
Which must mean, Justin realized, that whatever hold the man had once had on her emotions was broken. She had told him that what he had seen in the clearing was not what he had thought. And her behavior tonight seemed to confirm that. Knowing what he is...
“There are things Osborne had just as soon not have made public,” he said, remembering the Irishman’s reaction to that threat. “Going to court may expose his own past as well as...”
He hesitated, and she finished it for him, her voice soft, but steady. “As well as expose the details of Drew’s birth.”
It wasn’t Drew’s past Justin had been thinking about, of course, but hers. “If Osborne does what he threatened, Sarah, it will revive the scandal. There will be no help for that.”
“And Drew will suffer for it,” she acknowledged.
As would she. And he would suffer as well, watching them dragged through the mud of what would be a very public censure. He wondered if Osborne were sensitive enough to realize what a very apt revenge that would be for the injuries Justin had inflicted on him tonight.
If David were determined on that course, however, it seemed there was nothing Justin could do to protect them. Nothing except blame himself for mishandling the situation, as he had been since he’d returned to Longford.
“How much can you offer him?” he asked. He had finally come to the same conclusion Sarah had reached—the only way to get rid of Osborne, short of killing him, was to pay him off.
She released his hand. She put both of hers in her lap, holding them tightly entwined.
“Sarah?” he prodded after a few seconds of silence.
“As long as my father is alive, I can’t sell Longford or any of the attachments or even the furnishings. They don’t belong to me. I’m not sure what David will demand, but I’m afraid...”
Her voice faltered, but Justin knew very well what she feared. After all, Osborne had reminded him. Justin had drained her accounts to save his lands and his family name. To save Wynfield. To save his heritage.
Brynmoor’s wealth was more than able to bear those expenditures, but they had taken almost all of the estate’s available capital. Justin was confident that a renewed Wynfield Park, no longer neglected, mismanaged, or robbed by an addiction to gambling, would eventually generate more than enough to repay the money that had been used to save it.
Eventually, he thought. He knew he could do that, given enough time. If his reading of Osborne’s character was correct, however, he wouldn’t be allowed any time at all.
“Perhaps he’ll let me send him the money,” Sarah said, her eyes searching his for confirmation of that hope. “I could have Mr. Samuels set up some way to make a transfer of funds to David’s bankers at regular intervals.”
“Blackmail by installment,” Justin said mockingly. “Do you think he’ll agree to that?”
His sense of frustration was growing with the knowledge that they had little choice. And even if Osborne accepted that unlikely premise, they would be held hostage to him for the rest of their lives.
“I’m going to try to persuade him to. I’ll do whatever I have to to keep him from taking Andrew,” Sarah said, ignoring his tone. “My greatest fear has always been that I would see something of his father in Drew. But there is nothing of him there. You know that. You know Drew—courage and honesty at the very core. A genuine love and concern for others. But if I give him over into his father’s hands...” She shook her head, still holding his eyes. “I can’t do that. I will never do that.”
“If you knew what Osborne was—” he began, the question that had haunted him since the beginning finally given voice, almost torn from him by the depth of her despair.
“Don’t,” she whispered, putting her hand quickly over his to stop the words. “Please don’t ask me that.”
His mouth tightened against the need to pour out the long bitterness. The need to tell her what her betrayal had meant. Especially what it meant now—to all their lives. Blaming Sarah would change nothing, however.
“Then tell me why you wore the pearls,” he said instead.
Her eyes widened a little before they fell, again seeming to examine her locked fingers. When she looked up, her lips were curved in the smallest of smiles.
“Because you had given them to me,” she said simply.
It was the truth. He could read that in her eyes as well as in her voice. There were things Sarah was determined not to tell him. Determined not to explain. What she had just said, however, he found he could not doubt
“And that meant something to you?” he asked. “That I had given them to you?”
“It meant,” she said, her eyes clear and open, still meeting his, “finally I could hope.”
“Hope?”
“That someday...you might really forgive me.”
His heart hesitated, breathing suspended, as a vacuum of silence surrounded them. Those soft words echoed again and again through the void.
“And you want my...forgiveness?” he asked.
“I want what I once had,” she said.
She was smiling at him again, the movement of her lips so sweetly familiar it tore at the bitterness her betrayal had wrapped around his heart. A bitterness he had denied for years and had then been forced to confront when he again came face-to-face with Sarah Spenser. I want what I once had.
“And what is that?” he asked, his voice very soft.
“I want you to love me,” she said.
Again the silence grew and then expanded. She waited through it, her eyes calm and serene on his face.
She had made no defense. She had offered no explanation for what she had done. No contrition. And no promises. Only a desire, as simply stated as her comment about the pearls.
Because you had given them to me. He had known that was the truth. And his heart, using the same measure he had applied to that, found this was true as well. I want you to love me.
He had no reason to believe her. No reason to trust her again. She had betrayed him. She had rejected what he had given her, which had been true and unsullied, for the tawdry, worthless charm David Osborne had offered in its place.
She had borne another man’s bastard and had then asked Justin to teach that child to be a man. She had lain in another man’s arms and had then asked Justin to love her again. In doing those things, however, she had forfeited the right to ever ask anything of him. He knew that. And she knew it as well. That knowledge was in her eyes, raised to his. Still waiting.
No explanation. No apology. Nothing but the truth that was so palpably sincere he could not doubt it. I want you to love me. His throat closed, hard and tight, aching with the force of what he felt for her. What he had always felt. His eyes burned with tears he had never shed, not once in the horrors of the last six months. He denied them now, but somehow she knew.
Her own eyes filled at what she saw in his. Her hand lifted, thumb tracing compassionately over the fullness of his bottom lip as her fingers shaped the contour of his cheek. No words had been spoken. Nothing of the past. Or of the future.
Slowly he raised his own hands. They were stiff, and the swollen fingers ached with the movement. He put his palms on either side of her face, pulling her to him. His mouth lowered over hers, which opened, welcoming his touch. Responding without hesitation to the invasion of his tongue.
Her hands fell, caressing his shoulders and then his chest. He wanted to feel them against his skin. He wanted her to touch him as she had before, her fingers moving over his body as if she still found it desirable. I want you to love me.
He held the words in his mind, shutting out any doubts. Denying any fear of how she might react to his injury. The fire was dying. And in the darkness...
She put her hand on his knee, pushing away from him. His lips clung, reluctant to release hers, however briefly. He had waited too long for this moment. Too long to be denied. He knew, however, by her own reluctance to end the kiss, even as she was moving, that this was not rejection.
Finally she lifted her head, breaking the heated contact of their lips. His eyes opened in time to watch her stand. She took two steps away from him, her back still to the fire. He was afraid that if he released her eyes, if he lost hold of what was in them, she would disappear, and all this would be a dream. A fantasy created by the long, lonely years of loving Sarah.
She held out her hand. An invitation. And to accept it, he had only to stand. To walk across the distance that separated them and put his hand into hers. I want you to love me.
There was no wine to give him courage. Not yet enough darkness to hide the imperfection of his body. No more bitterness for him to brandish like a shield between them. Only her hand, reaching out to his.
With the courage that had served him so long, the earl of Wynfield rose from his chair and took the two limping steps that would bring him to his wife. He put his hand into hers. And when she smiled at him, all the fear that had gathered around his heart shattered like the skim of morning ice that gathers over the dark surface of a pond.
He turned, her fingers still resting in his, and led
her to the high bed where he had slept alone throughout their marriage. And where he knew he would never sleep alone again.
He had removed the bloodstained shirt, pulling it: off over his head. He threw it onto the foot of the bed, and then he hesitated, his eyes finding Sarah’s in the too-quiet dimness of the bedroom.
She had been watching him. Suddenly, she stepped nearer, her eyes tracing over the bruises, already beginning to darken, that marred his chest and stomach. She pressed her lips against each discoloration, kissing the places where David’s fists had struck him. And when she finished, she lifted her head, smiling at him again. Still he didn’t move.
She would understand what he dreaded. She was probably preparing herself as well, determined to hide whatever shock she might feel when he removed the rest of his clothes.
“I’ve played valet for my father on more occasions than I care to remember,” she said. “Would you like me to help you with your boots?”
Her tone was commonplace, deliberately lightened from what had been in it when she knelt by the fire. He took a breath, wondering if her courage would be enough. If his would.
“Sarah,” he said softly. And nothing else.
His lips had flattened, compressed so that all the things he wanted to say to her could not escape. And he would never be able to say them, he knew, not unless they got past this. Past his fear. Past her horror. Or her pity.
“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “I’m not like Drew.”
Justin tilted his head, questioning the non sequitur.
“I’m not fascinated by the bits and pieces of you that are missing. I confess I find myself far more interested...” She hesitated, her chin lifting a little before she finished, “Far more interested in the bits and pieces that aren’t.”
She was trying to put him at ease. To tell him that it didn’t matter. He acknowledged the kindness, but still, the words didn’t destroy his sense of dread. Perhaps nothing could.
“And which bits and pieces are those?” he made himself ask, carefully controlling his voice, his tone as light as hers.
Gayle Wilson Page 23