“I see no need for that,” Osborne said, his eyes without regret, perhaps even amused at the sentimentality that had prompted that proposal. “Since he is now no longer my son.”
“Mr. Samuels is waiting in the parlor,” Justin said. “I thought it better if he were not party to our negotiations.”
“Then I hope you won’t mind if I bid you good-day, my lord. It’s a long journey, and as I’m sure you can understand, I’m eager to begin it.” His eyes left Justin’s face and sought Sarah’s. “I always thought you were an extraordinary woman,” he said softly, “I didn’t really understand exactly how extraordinary until today.”
For a moment the undeniable charm was back in place, both in Osborne’s eyes and in his voice, deep and touched with the lilting cadence of his homeland.
“I believe you’ve forgotten something,” Justin said, fighting a surge of jealousy that was patently ridiculous, considering what had happened between Sarah and him last night.
“Ah, yes,” Osborne said, Smiling, he fished in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper. He held it out to the earl.
“Sarah,” Justin said quietly. When she looked at him, he nodded at the document. “Would you verify that this is the paper you signed, please.”
She hesitated a moment, and then her fingers closed around the single sheet. Both men watched as she opened it. “This is what I signed,” she said, her eyes coming up to meet her husband’s.
“And there was only one?” he asked.
“There was only one,” she agreed softly.
“Then you may throw it into the fire,” Wynfield directed.
Sarah didn’t obey him. She held his eyes as the silence built around them until David Osborne finally broke it.
“And perhaps you have married a man extraordinary enough to deserve you,” he said softly. “I’ll wait for you in the parlor, my lord.” He turned on his heel and crossed the room to the door, leaving another, somehow different silence behind him.
“Why?” Sarah asked when he was gone, the paper in her hand still held out to her husband.
“Because it doesn’t matter,” Justin said.
“You gave away your heritage for a child—” Her voice broke suddenly, but she swallowed the emotion and continued, “For a child who can mean nothing to you. Who is not your son. Who is not even my son. You know that now, and yet...you don’t even want to know who he is?”
“I know who he is,” Justin said simply. “He is your son. And he is mine, Sarah. And whatever the secret of his birth, you may take it with you to the grave, for all I care.”
Her eyes held his a long time, and then Sarah walked to the fire and laid the document her husband had given his fortune to buy, the document that would forever have cleared her own name of scandal, on the blaze. It had already begun to blacken and smoke when they heard the first shouts, distant and indistinct, until two familiar words rang clearly. “Whoreson bastard!”
“Drew,” Sarah said, already running for the door through which David Osborne had just disappeared.
“1 knew you were hiding him,” Brynmoor accused, his dark eyes, full of savage cunning, swinging briefly to Sarah’s when she ran into the parlor.
Her eyes circled the room, looking frantically for Drew. Mr. Samuels cowered against the wall beside the fireplace, but the marquess was paying him no attention. His entire focus was on the only other person in the room. The man. who had besmirched his youngest daughter’s honor more than five years before.
The point of the foil the old man held was pressed against Osborne’s throat, a trickle of blood already running onto the white cravat. David didn’t move. Only his eyes had reacted to Sarah’s entrance. They pleaded for her help.
She heard Justin enter the room a few seconds behind her. She had outrun him, of course, and thankfully realized she was between him and her father. Between Justin and the threat of the rapier. She remembered how skillfully Bryiunoor had used the cane against her, just as if he had forgotten nothing his fencing master had taught him as a youth.
“Papa,” she said, working hard to control her quivering voice, trying to make it calm and reassuring. By now she understood that David was what had set off his Christmastime rage as well. Osborne, whom he must have seen on the estate, was the “whoreson bastard” her father had been looking for, and not Drew.
“I have him, Mellie. He won’t ever hurt you again. Or any other innocent woman,” Brynmoor said. His voice was triumphant. The insult apparently still rankled within the chaos of his madness when he remembered nothing else, not even her name.
“It’s Sarah, Papa,” she said softly. “That man never hurt me. You are mistaken. You’ve made a terrible mistake.”
She took a step nearer. The floor creaked under her weight, and Osborne’s eyes stretched wide with fright. The trickle of blood suddenly increased, running in a thick rivulet into the knot of lawn at his throat.
“Don’t,” Justin ordered from behind her.
Sarah had already stopped, aware now that anything that upset her father could result in David’s death. She had never believed Brynmoor would be capable of hurting anyone, not even in the depths of his most insane rages. Now it seemed she must face the reality that she had been wrong.
“I will take him off your hands, sir,” Justin said, pitching his voice loudly enough to carry across the room. It rang with an authority he had learned on some distant battlefield, she supposed. And he moved confidently nearer as he talked. “The magistrate will have to be called for, of course. I can lock him in the pantry until he arrives.”
“I don’t know you,” Brynmoor said. His gaze traveled back and forth between the earl and Osborne.
“I’m Wynfield,” Justin said. “I’ve come to help you.” His voice was calm, but decisive. Bymmoor seemed confused by his certainty, his eyes flicking between his victim and Wynfield. “If you’ll give me the sword, sir, I shall take him off your hands,” Justin said again.
He was near enough to touch the marquess, and still, unbelievingly, the old man had not made the final thrust with the rapier. Sarah wanted to close her eyes, to shut out the image, but she couldn’t. As horrified as she was by what was happening, she was more terrified by what might occur. It was possible that Brynmoor, enraged over his interference, might direct the sword at Justin instead.
“Give me the sword,” Justin commapded.
“Take it from him,” Osborne begged.
It was a mistake. It refocused the old man’s attention on him and on his grievance. “The whoreson can speak,” Brynmoor said maliciously. “What words did you speak to my daughter, jackal? My sweet daughter that you made your whore. What words did you use to trick her from her father’s house?” Osborne’s face was without color, the tip of the rapier lost in the crimson swell of blood. “She’s dead, you know,” the old man whispered. “I buried your harlot. Buried her where you’ll never find her.”
“I never—”
Those two words were as far as Osborne got. The pressure against his throat suddenly eased as the marquess pulled back his elbow, withdrawing the sword for a final, obviously fatal thrust. Justin lunged, arms extended. He wrapped them around the marquess, throwing his full weight against the old man.
They both fell, the point of Brynmoor’s rapier leaving a thread of crimson all across Osborne’s neck. A shallow thread, judging by how quickly Osborne leaped away from the wall, both hands clutching his throat.
Brynmoor’s enraged curses filled the room. Somehow in his fury he managed to break Justin’s hold, jumping to his feet with the alacrity of a far younger man. He slashed downward at the earl, who was still on the floor, the sword making a hissing sound before it struck, and Sarah’s heart stopped. Then, eyes murderous and face purpled with engorged blood, he turned to find his original victim.
Belatedly; Osborne realized his danger. He tried to climb over the sofa that stood between him and the door. The marquess of Brynmoor drew back his foil, in preparation this time for plunging it
into the back of his fleeing victim. Before he could complete the move, however, Justin was there.
He grabbed at the old man’s coat, all he could reach in time, jerking him backward so that the sword missed its mark. Brynmoor whirled, bringing the rapier around with him. He hit the earl in the face with the metal guard. Justin staggered back, losing his balance. Both hands on the hilt now, the marquess raised his sword high above his head, preparing to bring the point of it down on the defenseless man at his feet.
“Papa,” Sarah screamed, her voice echoing against the walls.
It halted the movement of the marquess’s hands. They hesitated at the apex, his eyes finding hers. Suddenly, they widened, a circle of white around the Spenser blue. His mouth opened and then closed spasmodically, like a dying fish. His hands relaxed their grip on the sword, which fell, tip briefly embedding itself in the thick Oriental carpet, before it toppled.
Brynmoor clutched at his temples. Eyes closed now, his face distorted into a mask of agony, the old man slipped to his knees, and then, like a felled tree, slumped forward onto the rug, one thin, liver-spotted hand coming to rest beside his rapier.
Epilogue
When Justin opened his eyes, Drew was standing beside the bed watching him. Despite the burning pain in the arm Brynmoor had slashed from elbow to shoulder, the earl reached out his hand, palm up, to the little boy.
Small fingers slipped into his, and Justin squeezed them tightly. It seemed almost too hard to do any more than that. Certainly too difficult to formulate the right things to say.
“I’m supposed to tell Sarah when you’re awake,” Drew said.
Justin nodded, fighting the urge to close his eyes again and drift into that peaceful world halfway between waking and sleeping, which he had occupied since the surgeon had bled him. He had never been able to understand why, when one had already lost a great deal of blood, the surgeons wanted to let more. He vaguely remembered being assured that he’d rest easier. And perhaps that was even true. It seemed he’d done nothing but rest since he’d stopped Brynmoor from skewering Osborne.
“Sarah says you aren’t going to die,” Drew said. “Do you think that’s true?”
Justin managed a laugh, his fingers again tightening reassuringly over the small ones enclosed in his. “Very true,” he said. “I’m not so easily gotten rid of.”
“You’ve been wounded much worse than this,” Drew said hopefully, “and you didn’t die then.”
A rote repetition of what Sarah had said to him, Justin imagined, repeated like a talisman. Exactly as Drew had done with her assurances about his grandfather.
“I’m not going to die,” the earl said softly. “I swear to you I’m not, Drew. We have some riding lessons to catch up on,” he added, and was rewarded with a slight relaxation of the fear that clouded the blue eyes.
“I’ll go get Sarah,” the child said. “Don’t go away.”
Without waiting for an answer, he released Justin’s hand and ran from the room. Despite Drew’s admonition, the earl’s eyelids drifted downward again. He lifted them a couple of times, looking toward the door, but they were far too heavy for him to stay awake until, Sarah arrived.
He wasn’t sure how long he had slept when he opened his eyes again, but the light had faded and the shadows had lengthened, hiding the corners of the room. He turned his head restlessly on the pillow and found Sarah reading in a chair she had pulled up beside his bed. Without speaking, he simply watched her for a long time, thinking about the wasted years that lay behind them. And about all those, of such promise now, that lay ahead.
She turned her head finally, and when she realized he was awake, she smiled at him. Just as he had done earlier with Drew, she offered him her hand. He took it and brought it to his mouth to press a kiss against her fingers.
“Where’s Drew?” he asked.
“Having his supper, but you should expect another visit before bedtime. He’s convinced he’s going to lose you, too.”
“Too?” Justin questioned.
“David left this afternoon,” Sarah said.
There was something in her voice he didn’t understand. Some hint of...regret? Because Drew was upset? Osborne’s departure was, however, what they both had wanted. David had given up all claim to Drew and was permanently out of their lives, no longer a threat. Nor, of course, was Brynmoor. No longer a threat to anyone.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said.
“Maybe...maybe it’s better this way. Maybe Drew was right to be afraid of him.”
“I don’t think he would have hurt Drew. I think that somehow, all these years, he never forgot what Osborne had done to Amelia.”
“You know,” she said softly.
“That Drew is Mellie’s son?” Justin said. “I know.”
The old man had said enough to make that obvious. Justin didn’t understand everything, of course, but there was no doubt in his mind about the essential part of the mystery. Or about why Sarah had done what she had done. After all, she had always protected Amelia, at least since their mother’s death.
The long silence stretched between them, but there was no discomfort about it. It seemed instead that after a tiring and dangerous voyage they were at peace. Together at last, all the things that had held them apart of no importance. The room was almost dark when Sarah finally spoke again.
“I have something for you,” she said.
“For me?”
“A belated Christmas present, I suppose. I never gave you one.”
Justin smiled. “I never expected you to.”
“I know,” she whispered, “but... These aren’t your mother’s pearls, not nearly so valuable, but I think you will like to have them, all the same.” She reached to light the lamp beside the bed.
“Should we wait for Drew?” he asked, trying to think what Sarah might want to give him. Something of Brynmoor’s, perhaps? That would somehow even seem fitting.
“I think this might be better with just the two of us. Later on...” She hesitated, her eyes on his again. “Later on, I’ll tell Drew. I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain everything to him. I’m not sure I even understand it all, but...I don’t believe many little boys are lucky enough to have so many people who love them.”
She picked up a packet that was lying in her lap and placed it on the bed near his hand.
“What’s this?” Justin asked.
He touched the paper on top of the stack, and then he opened it, his fingers trembling weakly over that simple task. When he had, he realized it was the document Osborne had signed renouncing his parentage of Drew. Justin’s eyes lifted to Sarah’s, questioning.
“Look at the rest of them,” she said.
He laid the first sheet aside and opened the second. And for a moment, his brain couldn’t seem to comprehend what he was seeing. “This is the deed to the Park,” he said, his eyes lifting again to Sarah’s face.
“And the last is the one to the town house,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” Justin said, his eyes falling again to the papers that represented his entire heritage, all that was left of his family.
“He said it was the only noble thing he’d ever done in his life. And he didn’t want you to spoil it by trying to send them after him. If you are really determined to give them away...” Her voice broke, and Justin looked up to find that her eyes were awash with tears. “If you are really determined, he said you could give them to Drew.”
“Why?” Justin asked again, mentally reviewing all he had thought he knew about the character of David Osborne.
“Maybe because of what you did today. You put your own life at risk to save his, even after what he had done. Maybe he finally realized...” She hesitated again, and when she went on, it was to say something different. “He said you were an extraordinary man. And you are. A far better man than David could ever be. A better father for Drew. Maybe...maybe he was wise enough to realize that.”
“You think he’s gone for good?
”
“There’s no reason for him to come back. There are no claims he can make against the estate. No way he can hurt us.”
“And Drew?”
“His father has gone to India, which is a very long way away,” she said, smiling at Justin, as she recited his own words. “And perhaps someday when Drew is a grown man—”
The door opened, and they both looked up to see Drew peering around it. “May I come in?” he asked.
“I should be very unhappy if you didn’t,” Justin said. “I’ve been wanting to see you.”
“And I have been wanting to see you,” Drew said, walking across the room to stand shyly beside Sarah’s chair. His eyes carefully examined Justin’s face, and then he took a deep breath.
“Still here,” the earl said softly, reading quite accurately the relief in those blue eyes. “I promised you I would be.”
Drew leaned against the bed, laying his crossed forearms on the high mattress and putting his chin on the top one. “Do you want me to tell you a story?” he asked.
Justin controlled the urge to smile, his eyes meeting Sarah’s above the small, curly head. “I should like that very much.”
“A once-upon-a-time story or a real one?” Drew asked.
“I’m not sure,” the earl said truthfully. “Which is the better kind?”
“I like them both,” Drew said. “They both end happily ever after.”
“How every good story should end, I think,” Justin said.
“My father told me some stories about India. Would you like to hear one of those?”
“If you’d like to tell it.”
Drew hesitated, and then he drew another breath and released it all at once, almost a sigh. “I don’t think he will be back for a very long time,” he said softly. “Perhaps not even until I am a grown man.”
“You may be right,” Justin said. “After all, it’s a very long way to India.”
“Do you suppose...” Drew began, and then he paused, his eyes seeking Sarah’s. “If it’s not a Christmas present,” he asked, “then can you tell the other person what you really want?”
Gayle Wilson Page 26