Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 03]

by If You Deceive

  He reached out his hand and rasped, “You doona have to marry me, Sarah….”

  “Kavanagh,” MacReedy the elder said, nodding at him once, respectfully—as he should.

  In return, Ethan cast the man the menacing expression he deserved. MacReedy and his son walked on.

  When the barmaid finally sauntered over to Ethan’s table, she averted her eyes, no doubt thinking that with eye contact, he would proposition her. After all, a man with a face like his would have to be paying for it.

  He was sick of the furtive looks or horrified glances women always cast him. What he wouldn’t give for a woman to look him full in the face and address the fact that he was scarred, maybe even say, “How did you receive such an injury?” He would never reveal the truth, of course, but he wanted to experience what it would be like simply to have the subject on the table for once.

  Without facing him, the barmaid asked him what he wanted to drink or eat. He declined curtly, though he was tempted to snap, “As if I’d have you. Just five nights ago, I took a woman who would shame you.”

  And there his thoughts turned to Madeleine yet again—Madeleine Van Rowen. Ethan had barely hidden his amazement when Quin had revealed the girl’s identity, though the connection wasn’t improbable. The Weylands had a family seat near Iveley Hall, the former Van Rowen manor—which Ethan had seized at Van Rowen’s death. It made sense that upper-class families like theirs in the same county would associate.

  Yet Ethan could scarcely believe he’d slept with the girl, the Maddy referred to on that night—the one mention that had turned the tide of Ethan’s fate, putting Van Rowen in a fury.

  Learning Madeleine’s identity had made Ethan reevaluate the entire night of the masquerade. The morning after, he’d practically convinced himself that she’d been innocent of any deceit. He’d only recognized how truly devious she’d been, how arrogant, when he’d discovered that she was the child of two of the most vile people he had ever imagined.

  Ethan had always heard that those in desperate situations behaved in unpredictable ways. This had not been so for the Van Rowens. They had been so easily manipulated that Ethan’s revenge hadn’t satisfied whatsoever.

  Van Rowen had already been in financial straits. He’d leveraged all his lands and investments to pay for his much younger wife’s jewels and silks, frantic to keep her happy.

  Working insidiously, Ethan had bought up the man’s loans, forcing himself to act slowly, though he’d burned to make them pay. He had never let them know he’d been the catalyst for their ruin, and they’d never suspected a young Scot could destroy a powerful English landholder.

  So many accused Ethan of being unfeeling. In truth, he felt too strongly—always had—and Ethan’s hatred for the Van Rowens had boiled over into every aspect of his life. He’d tried to let the revenge go when he’d won—when Van Rowen and Brymer had been killed, and Sylvie left penniless.

  Ethan had thought his work had dulled some of the rage, but his encounter with Madeleine made him realize the same fury still simmered.

  Now he knew why her accent was tinged with French. The final report he’d received on Sylvie and her daughter several years ago had had them living in a Parisian slum called La Marais.

  Some digging had uncovered that Sylvie had actually hailed from that place, and Ethan had been gratified to learn that she’d fled back there. She deserved to root about a slum, and any spawn of hers and Van Rowen’s could keep her evil, deceitful arse company in misery, as far as Ethan had been concerned.

  Instead, the widowed Sylvie had married a rich Parisian; Quin’s current address for Madeleine was in the well-heeled parish of St. Roch. If Sylvie lived there now and could clothe her daughter in such an affluent way, teaching her airs, then obviously she hadn’t been punished enough.

  The woman had brazenly dispatched her daughter to England to secure Quin while enjoying a backup proposal from the aging Count Le Daex, a man so rich that his wealth outstripped even Ethan’s. The thought of Sylvie benefiting from a match like that sickened Ethan.

  Worse was the idea of Le Daex enjoying young Madeleine. Ethan’s hands clenched.

  He exhaled a breath and forced himself to relax. Before he’d left, Ethan had thought it imperative that Le Daex discover what his fiancée had been doing behind his back in London on a particularly wild night.

  Insidious dealings—Ethan excelled at them, and he happened to have many contacts in Paris.

  There’d be no rich count for the grasping Van Rowens.

  And yet, despite knowing what blood ran through Madeleine’s veins, Ethan’s desire for her refused to wane. If anything, it grew worse each day. Filled with conflicting thoughts, he was uncertain what his next move should be.

  Damn it, he needed to focus—he could decide what to do about her later. He rose from the table, stepping out a side door into the night air.

  When two passing boys froze at the sight of his face, he scowled, making them run.

  Madeleine would react the same way.

  Movement from the corner of his eye drew his gaze up—

  Davis Grey stood on a balcony across the street, his gaunt face creased into a smile, his brows raised, no doubt dumbfounded by Ethan’s uncommon carelessness. The man’s pistol was already drawn and cocked.

  What the hell have I done…? Rage consumed Ethan as he snatched his own pistol and fired.

  Too late. Pain exploded in Ethan’s chest, the bullet driving home.

  Eleven

  “I’m doomed,” Maddy whispered to herself as she wandered La Marais in the dark in a silk ball gown.

  Oh, what was she thinking? She was always doomed in varying degrees. Why had she ever thought she would get a concession from fate? One bloody bit of luck?

  “I’m more doomed than usual,” she amended. Toumard’s pair lay in wait in the alley beside her building, forcing her to roam the streets until they gave up. She was in debt, with no prospects to pay them, and the one thing she’d possessed of value—her virtue—had been wasted with a laughable return.

  And now she would pay for that wild, reckless night.

  Because the count had heard from a contact in London, who’d heard from another, that his prospective bride had been free with herself, running with a fast crowd in London. The hypocrite! He’d demanded an examination to determine if she was still a virgin or possibly carrying another man’s babe, as if these were the medieval times the ancient count had likely grown up in.

  Maddy hadn’t even known that people actually did that anymore. She’d been tempted to huff and whine, “But I was wearing my chastity belt!” Instead, she’d blankly refused his demand—trying to sound outraged, instead of baffled at the timing—and he’d withdrawn his proposal.

  Refused by the count. He might as well have slapped her.

  Worse, she’d allowed it to happen. She’d managed men for years and knew dozens of ways she could have finessed the situation, ways to wriggle and finagle to get what she wanted. She could cry at the drop of a hat and could have acted overwrought at his capriciousness. If that tactic hadn’t worked, she could have adopted a seductive demeanor, or simply made sure she was examined by a bribable physician. And yet…

  She hadn’t.

  Did I do anything today to leave myself vulnerable?

  A bit.

  As though she’d been outside her own body, she’d heard the words spilling from her lips: “I never wanted to marry you anyway! And your wig smells fusty.”

  She’d burned her ships. Why? She was never so foolish—except with the Scot.

  Maddy should never have gone to England. Returning to her native land after such a long exile had made her miss it even more. She had been arrogant and rash there, and apparently she hadn’t left those traits behind.

  “Oh, please, just one crumb of fortune!” she whispered urgently to the sky. As if in answering jest, she spied thunderclouds swelling, obscuring the stars. Where would she go if it rained? Not all drunks on stoops were as pass
ive as her building’s collection. They could be ferociously territorial.

  The air was thick and damp, presaging the storm. Maddy hated storms. Every tragedy in her life had been accompanied by thunderclaps and pounding rain.

  The morning her father’s second had come to report his death in a duel, lightning had punctuated the man’s words. The day of her father’s funeral, rain had spilled in torrents. When Maddy and her mother had returned from burying him, they’d been turned away, their home of Iveley Hall having been seized by creditors while they’d been gone.

  Though one ring or brooch could have kept them for years, it was considered in poor taste to wear jewelry to a funeral, so they’d fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. As they’d ridden away, Maddy had looked back at the manor through the rain-streaked window of the coach and known she would never find a way to return home….

  The fire that had nearly taken her life when she was eleven had raged, whipped to a frenzy by the fierce winds of a storm, yet barely dampened by the scattered bouts of rain. Maddy had been trapped inside the small apartment she and her mother shared several floors up. She’d been convinced she would die even before a burning beam had fallen on her and fractured her arm.

  When she’d finally battled her way through the flames to reach the window, Maddy had blinked against the smoke, gaping in incomprehension down at the street.

  Her mother—obviously one of the first ones out—stood outside.

  In that moment of flames and terror, Maddy had thought, I’m as good as alone.

  To this day, she had nightmares filled with fire that always ended in that gut-wrenching recognition….

  Maddy jerked, startled, when the sky opened up. As the rain poured, she ran beneath the closest cover, a chestnut tree.

  And laughed until she wept when the leaves began to fall on her in clumps.

  Clawing the cobblestones in pain, Ethan lay in a pool of his own blood funneling from his upper chest. He cracked open his eyes, realizing he’d released his hold on his pistol when he’d fallen. As he listened for Grey’s approach, he heard people filing out from the front of the tavern.

  Gritting his teeth, Ethan swept his hand to the side until he brushed his gun. Stretching his arm, his very fingers, he glanced his fingertips off the handle, spinning it—

  Too late. He looked up to find that Grey had a bead on him, gun raised. As Grey approached Ethan, his demeanor was as pleasant as ever. With his free hand, Grey poked his finger through a still-smoking hole in his shirt and jacket, and grinned. Ethan’s bullet had only hit a deceptive billow in the man’s bagging clothes.

  “And people said you were better than I?” Grey said.

  I was for ten years…. Ethan tasted blood in his mouth and knew he was about to die, even if Grey didn’t plug another bullet into him. “Hugh will destroy you,” Ethan said, choking out the words.

  Grey shrugged. “So everyone keeps assuring me. And yet, I’d always believed it would be you.”

  The tavern’s nearby side door creaked open, and noise and dim light spilled out into the alley. Grey glanced up, then faced Ethan once more, furtively stowing his pistol. “That’s a kill shot, old friend, and we both know it.” He cast Ethan his disconcertingly sympathetic smile. “You had to have been thinking about a woman earlier with an expression like that.” He turned to lope away, saying over his shoulder, “I hope she was worth it.”

  Ethan rolled to his side for his gun, biting back an agonized yell, but Grey had already disappeared.

  Though Ethan couldn’t see who’d exited the tavern out the side door, he could hear them.

  Grimacing to the clouded night sky above, Ethan listened as the MacReedys sodding debated whether to help him or not: “I’ll no’ get dragged into trouble.”; “We do owe him.”; “He’s turned into a blackguard.”; “Think he might’ve deserved the shot?”

  “Warn my brother,” Ethan grated to them, blood spilling from his mouth, but they ignored him. His body was beginning to shudder with cold. “Listen to me….” They didn’t.

  He had failed Hugh utterly. Never had Ethan been so careless, walking into the street without even a cursory scan of the vantages surrounding him. He was dying, and he had only two thoughts—getting a warning to his brother…and the fact that he’d never get to see that damned little witch again.

  Ethan perceived hands under his arms, and braced for the pain as they lifted him, but he still blacked out….

  He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious, but when he came to, he was in a bed, with a shaky-handed surgeon removing the bullet while others held Ethan down. He roared with agony as the man plucked metal and charred cloth from the wound then splashed whisky into it.

  Before he began stitching, the doctor tossed back half the bottle down his own throat. “I did what I could,” he said when he finished.

  “Will he live?” the MacReedy whelp asked.

  In and out of consciousness, Ethan caught the doctor’s parting words: “Let’s put it this way. If he recovers from a wound like that and the fever to follow…I’ll quit drinking.”

  Twelve

  “I’m beginning to wonder if anyone has even noticed the blackguard’s missing,” MacReedy the elder said. “It’s possible no one’s coming for him.”

  “Aye,” the whelp replied in a distracted tone.

  “Bugger off, you weak-kneed old bastard,” Ethan growled, ready to claw at the gaudily papered walls after five weeks of being trapped in the MacReedys ’lodge. “You think I canna hear you?”

  He could. Every day as he lay bedridden, slowly recuperating, Ethan could hear the sounds of their leisure—the fan of cards shuffled, or the taps as MacReedy emptied his pipe or their dominoes connected.

  Tap…tap…tap…all bloody day long, until Ethan thought he’d go mad.

  Why has no one come for me? He felt like an unwanted dog tied to a tree, then forgotten.

  “Go to hell, MacCarrick!” the whelp replied.

  “Where do you bloody think I am?” Clenching his fists in the blanket, he surveyed “his” room. Most closets boasted more space. “You’re brave now, but by God, when I’m on my feet again, I’m going to make you eat your goddamned teeth.”

  A few moments later, MacReedy the elder stepped into Ethan’s small room, eyes grave. “Son, I’m no’ going to talk to you about that language again.” The first time had been after Mrs. MacReedy’s ill-fated attempt to read psalms to Ethan—he had declined in language so foul he’d thought he’d heard something burst in her brain before she’d skittered from the room and fainted. “Debt or no’, I’ll be tossing you out,” MacReedy said calmly before stepping out once more.

  The debt. Always back to the debt with this family. They knew they owed Ethan because he had delivered the completely unbelievable lie that Sarah had slipped instead of jumped, ensuring that she would have no suicide stigma and would receive a Catholic burial. Ethan had also ensured that he would be shadowed for more than a decade by rumors of his pushing her to her death.

  MacReedy knew Ethan hadn’t lied to protect Sarah’s memory for her family; in fact, Ethan blamed them for forcing her into the marriage. And he’d been sure to let them know it every time he encountered them, which fortunately hadn’t been often.

  Yet now Ethan was trapped in their home.

  When he’d awakened from two weeks of delirium, he’d immediately tried to rise, frantic to leave this place and find out what his careless actions had wrought. Was his brother safe? Had Grey gotten him, too?

  Ethan had promptly ripped open his wound and blacked out. The consequent stitch repair by the shaky physician had earned Ethan another week’s worth of fever and guaranteed he’d been even weaker than he had been the first time he’d come to.

  Every bloody time he tried to rise and leave this place, he ripped open stitches and passed out. With his height and the size of the cramped room, he invariably knocked his head in the fall, making his total time trapped in bed at over a month and cou
nting.

  He’d been forced to ask MacReedy to find out if Hugh and Jane had left for Scotland. Ethan had also had to pay the whelp to wire London to report his situation.

  MacReedy the elder had learned that Hugh had indeed left the lake house the very night Ethan had been shot. At least there’d been one good thing about Ethan catching that bullet—Grey’s waiting to kill Ethan had allowed Hugh to begin his journey north into the Highlands, putting Hugh firmly in his element.

  Ethan was confident that his brother was safe for the time being. The problem was that Hugh would be holed up on Court’s estate in utter seclusion with the woman he wanted more than anything on this earth—now his temporary wife. At worst, the curse was real, and Hugh would be risking her death and torment. At best, Hugh was still secretly an assassin, massive and stony and awkward around people, such an unfitting match for the celebrated beauty, who loved to socialize.

  Not to mention that Hugh took his orders to kill from Jane’s own father….

  But in the condition Ethan was in, there was nothing he could do to help his brother. The inaction ate at him. He burned with urgency. With nothing to do but think, he stewed, alternately dwelling on his failure and on Madeleine.

  Though Ethan had ruined her chances with Le Daex, Ethan couldn’t say that she wouldn’t find another after so many weeks had passed. She was tempting, and if she was provided with a large enough dowry, a man could be moved to overlook her lack of virtue.

  Ethan had shown mercy to Grey and look what had happened. He would not make the same mistake twice by allowing Sylvie to go unscathed.

  When he was finished with Grey, Ethan would lure Madeleine away from Sylvie back to one of his more obscure estates, with an offer of security in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Or, if she proved stubborn, he was not above promising marriage, with no intention of going through with it.

  He wondered if her parents had warned her about a scarred, black-haired Scot, but he doubted it. Sylvie lacked the imagination to make the connection. Van Rowen had been eaten with shame and guilt over the incident and likely wouldn’t have spoken of it before his death six months later.