Lords of the Isles

by Le Veque, Kathryn

  The pain prevented him from thinking about how close he’d come to having it all.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My Dearest Drake,

  Is it silly that, when you return, I want you to court me?

  Ever Yours,

  Emmaline

  Emmaline fairly raced through Hyde Park in a manner that would have earned gasps of disapproval from Society members—if they’d been present, of course. She had sent Drake a note, claiming her picnic as the prize for their Glenarvon challenge.

  That had been a week ago. Well, six days to be precise, which to Emmaline may as well have constituted a week.

  In that time, there had been no acknowledgement, no return note, no teasing banter, no sudden appearance at a ball or musicale. Nothing. It had been as though everything she’d shared with Drake had been nothing more than a fleeting fantasy.

  Emmaline had begun to think he’d never again contact her.

  Until yesterday.

  At last, Drake had replied to her request.

  “My lady, can you please slow down?” her maid called out in a panting gasp. The sound of gravel kicking up furiously punctuated her breathless request.

  Emmaline glanced over her shoulder. A twinge of guilt hit her. She sighed and slowed her steps. The ivory drawstring bag dotted with blue beads she held in her right hand swung against her side.

  “My lady, would you like to rest soon,” Grace suggested.

  Emmaline drew to a full stop on the Serpentine Bridge, which marked the boundary between Hyde Gardens and Kensington Gardens. Her abrupt movements sent Grace stumbling against her.

  “Beg pardon, my lady.”

  Emmaline glanced down at the parchment in her hands. “Fine, fine,” Emmaline said. She studied the note.

  My Dearest Emmaline,

  Would you do me the honor of meeting me in Hyde Park at Kensington Gardens? I shall be there at five o’clock in the morning. That is if it isn’t too early.

  Yours,

  Drake

  Emmaline squinted off into the distance. A lone figure stood with his back to her and Grace. Attired entirely in black, there was something ominously dark about him.

  Emmaline turned to Grace. “Please, wait here.”

  Emmaline didn’t wait to see if Grace did as she was ordered. Instead, she hurried toward her betrothed.

  Drake stood with his back to her. His gaze trained on the indigo and pale lavender hues traipsing across the early morning sky.

  It was Sir Faithful who gave her a barking greeting. Drake’s broad frame stiffened as she approached but he didn’t so much as turn to look at her.

  She fell to her knee. “Hello, Sir Faithful. How have you been, my boy?” She rubbed the spot between his eyes and he leaned into her touch.

  “Emmaline,” Drake greeted, his tone deadened.

  Emmaline stood, her pale blue muslin day gown rustling on a wisp of wind. “Why have you not returned my notes?” She heard the edge of hurt betrayal underlining her words. “I don’t understand. One moment, you seem to enjoy my company and then you disappear. It is as though you are two people.”

  He stiffened.

  “I believed you had come to care for me,” she whispered. “Can’t you even look at me?”

  Drake spun around; his flat emerald eyes leveled her. She took a faltering step backwards, unprepared for the cold gaze he passed over her. He arched an icy, indifferent brow.

  “I really don’t have anything to say to you.” His voice was as frigid as a January freeze.

  One hand attempted to smother a gasp wrenched from inside her heart while the other dropped the bag she’d carried with her.

  It hit the gravel path with a soft thud.

  She angled her chin up and refused to be cowed. She didn’t know where she found the courage for the next words. “I’ve waited fifteen long years for you. I’m no longer a girl. I can’t continue as we are.” She held an outstretched hand towards him. “It’s breaking my heart.” The words stripped her of her remaining pride.

  He dragged a hand through his hair and cursed. It was a foul curse she’d only heard uttered by her brother once, and that had been the day their father died.

  “Emmaline, I believe you have made too much of—of,” his hand slashed the air, “this.” He motioned between them.

  “I believed you had come to care for me, Drake. Would you have me believe that you do not?” She reached for him and he flinched. A laugh that sounded half-mad to her own ears escaped her. “Have I been so wrong about us?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You can’t even have the decency to answer me that?” The words were desperate. “What game do you play? Why would you send round a note and ask me to meet you here if—?”

  There was a flash of surprise in Drake’s expression. “What note?”

  And then she knew. Her breath whistled between her teeth. “Oh God, you didn’t send it.”

  A dull, throbbing pain came from somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, a heart she was certain had already withered inside her. Her hand went to her chest. The organ continued to beat. Odd, the rhythm seemed too steady and strong for someone dying.

  She dropped to a knee and with fingers that quivered, fished an envelope from the drawstring bag. Her hands shook so badly she clumsily dropped the note. The scrap fluttered forlornly to the ground.

  Drake bent down and swiftly rescued it. He perused the note he’d been purported to have written.

  His brow furrowed while he scanned the parchment and then his eyes glazed over with a haze of fury. And she had her confirmation.

  She wanted to flee, turn on her heel and be spared this humiliation.

  Wordlessly, he stuffed the note back into its envelope and handed it back to her. On legs that trembled, she rose without assistance. Dazed eyes remained focused on her name scrawled across the thick ivory vellum, because then she didn’t have to look at the black rage in his expression.

  Emmaline was possessed of a violent urge to tear up the piece. She wanted to rail at herself for not recognizing the scrawl as similar to other notes she’d received these past weeks from Lord Sinclair. Hated herself for seeing only that which she’d wanted to see.

  “I—I allowed myself to hope.” And hope had clouded her reason.

  “Sinclair?” he asked tersely.

  Emmaline looked away.

  *

  Drake cursed.

  He would bloody murder Sinclair.

  “Why ever would he send that note?” Then it hit him with all the force of a bayonet to the gut. All along it had been Sinclair. “It all makes sense.”

  She blinked at him with soulful brown eyes. “What makes sense?”

  A cynical laugh burst from his chest. “Don’t play coy with me. You schemed with Sinclair. It was he who informed you of my whereabouts this Season.” He’d been betrayed by his closest friend and his betrothed.

  “I assure you I couldn’t manage coy if I tried,” she snapped.

  “But you could manage deceitful.”

  Her delicate palms curled into little fists at her side and he thought she might hit him which really would be no less than he deserved.

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Really, Drake? Is that how you see me? As some kind of maniacal scheming debutante?”

  An image of Sinclair and Emmaline closeted away trickled into his consciousness. He imagined them laughing while they planned to trap him. The idea of them, plotting behind his back, sent rage spiraling. He was besieged by a tumult of emotions and couldn’t sort whether it was jealousy of her closeness with Sin or anger at the good laugh they’d had behind his back.

  “What fun you must have had at my expense.” Filled with a restive energy he presented her with his back and stepped away.

  “Has it really been so awful being in my company?”

  He ran a hand across his face and swung back around. “So you enlisted Sin’s aid to ascertain my plans each evening. I understand your means of conspiring a
gainst me. Your intention was to force my hand, but Sinclair?”

  “Bah. Why can’t you believe Sin was just trying to help you because he believes we belong together?”

  He arched a brow. “I am rather surprised he accepted your appeal for support. Subterfuge is not really one of Sin’s traits.”

  Emmaline folded her arms indignantly across her chest. “But it is one of mine? My, what a low opinion you have of me. I suggest you speak to Lord Sinclair for the answers to your questions.” She tilted her chin at a mutinous little angle. “You are a beast,” she spat.

  He tipped his head in assent. “Truer words were never spoken.”

  A near hysterical hiccough of laughter burst from her lips. “Did you ever really care for me?”

  Drake studied Emmaline. The tightness around her mouth, her lips dipped down at the corners indicated that she was wavering between fury and despair. How dare she take on the role of the offended party? She had, after all, been duplicitous. He owed her no apologies.

  Yet still…when her lush red lips trembled in that forlorn way, he wanted to knock himself out for being the cause of her pain. He hated himself for hurting her, even if ultimately it would be best for Emmaline. Then all false illusions she carried of him being an honorable gentleman deserving of her love could be at last squashed.

  He closed the short distance between them with long, determined strides. Emmaline backed away. “Come Emmaline, am I to believe this plan you crafted was designed out of love for me? That it had nothing to do with your ultimate goal of marriage?”

  “How little you think of me,” she snapped and then took a bold step toward him, so only a hand of distance remained between them.

  They were toe-to-toe, breath coming fast from the force of their emotions.

  “What do you want from me?” The words wrenched from deep within him.

  “I want to be your wife,” she whispered.

  Drake looked away, unable to see the love pouring from her. God, when she said it like that, he was wont to deny her anything. She at least deserved some element of truth from him. “I am not ready to marry you.”

  Her response came out wobbly. “Why?”

  He knew how much that question cost her and just added one more thing to the list of all the reasons he hated himself.

  “I’m not ready to be a husband.”

  There it was. To him, the truth—a silent acknowledgement that he was defective and not good enough for her. She, however, would see it as nothing more than a rejection.

  “You’re not ready to be a husband? Or you’re not ready to be my husband?” He said nothing and she squared her shoulders. “I see.”

  No, Emmaline. No, you cannot possibly see. Because if you did, then you would know right now I feel as though I’m being run through, over and over with a rusty bayonet.

  Drake stared out into the horizon at the fading purple hues rolling back, as they ceded the spot to the full morning sky. “I should never have touched you.” Even if it had felt like the only thing perfect in his life.

  Emmaline laughed bitterly. “I don’t imagine many of the ladies you’ve been intimate with have heard those words from the great Lord Drake.” She reached down and rescued the forgotten bag at their feet. She thrust it into his hands. “These were yours. I wrote them, to you…for you…when you were…gone…” She fumbled about, seeming to search for the right words. “I am freeing you,” she breathed the words into existence. She jerked as if startled by her own declaration, but then resolutely met his gaze. “I am no longer your responsibility.”

  Drake’s heart thumped, once, twice, then froze. He gave his head a firm shake, in an attempt to make sense of what Emmaline had said but the loud buzzing in his ears overpowered his ability to reason.

  Perhaps he had misheard her.

  “I am freeing you,” she repeated. “I cannot do this any longer. You don’t love me. Even as I…love you. I cannot bear to be a responsibility you do not want, nor for that matter have ever wanted in your life. I want to be courted. I want someone to bring me flowers and write me poems. More than anything, I want to be loved. And do you know, Drake? I deserve to be loved.”

  Yes, she did. Except, Emmaline could walk from one corner of the earth to the next, and never find a man who cared for her as he did. It was that regard for her which allowed him to set her free, in spite of his selfish yearnings. A ball of pain lodge in Drake’s chest.

  Odd, he’d been stabbed, had taken more bullets than a living body was ever meant to take and yet the ache of losing Emmaline, was somehow greater than all those hellish wartime moments combined.

  God help him. He was a selfish fiend after all. He wasn’t ready to lose her.

  “What if I don’t want to be free?” The words ripped from a place deep within his soul, a place where the last vestige of humanity he’d returned from the war with, still resided. If Emmaline walked out of his life; she’d snuff out the sole flicker of light that existed within him.

  Emmaline gave him a sad little smile. “Come Drake, you don’t want me. You have never wanted me. Even this Season.” Her hand fluttered about. “I’ve followed you from event to event, but I’ve never really been anything more than a nuisance. So I am freeing you as much for me, as it is for you.”

  She stepped close to him. The crisp citrusy scent of lemons tickled his senses. His eyes slid closed. He would never know if it was the scent of her soap or a dash of perfume dabbed behind her ears, because she would be gone to him, and he would lose the right to know all those intimate things he yearned to know.

  Through a surreal fog, he was dimly aware of her taking his hands. She gave them a gentle squeeze and picked up her chocolate gaze to meet his. “You have had the opportunity to make at least some decisions of your own. You went to war. I’ve never had that. Let me have this. Let me have my Season.”

  Drake’s throat worked painfully. If only he could tell her the decision he’d made, his one reckless grasp at independence, had been the most horrendous mistake he had ever made. It had cost him everything: his sanity, his happiness. Her.

  “I have never said I wanted to be freed of you.”

  Why couldn’t he call forth the words to keep her?

  Because you don’t deserve her, a silent voice jeered.

  Emmaline smiled sadly. “But you never said you wanted me either.” She reached out a trembling hand to his jaw and rubbed the cleft there. “When my father died, I was devastated. I never thought I’d smile again.”

  Drake tried to slog through the the unexpected shift in conversation.

  “I waited for you, but you never came.” Emmaline swallowed, her throat working. “I still remember the chaos. There were so many cries and screams. I still cannot sort whether it was mine, Mother’s, or the maids’.” A small shudder racked her frame and she crossed her arms, as if to ward off a chill. “Countless peers came to pay their respects, but I really only wanted to see one person walk through the door.” Her lips tipped up in a sad rendition of a smile. “You were the only one I longed to see. I waited for you to come to me…but you never came.”

  Drake’s stare wandered away from her precious face as his mind tripped down a path of remembrance. In spite of how it had appeared to Emmaline, he had indeed cared about the loss she’d suffered. He had meant to go to her.

  It was that moment when he realized with certainty—he could not fight for her. The great hurt she still carried with her, a hurt she was more than entitled to, symbolized a divide that would forever keep him from being worthy of her. He had failed her too many times.

  “I am sorrier for that than you can ever know,” he said. He flinched when her soft, delicate fingers caressed his cheek.

  Hesitating just a moment, she reached up on tiptoe and placed a sweet, lingering kiss on his lips.

  It tasted like goodbye.

  Without a word, she turned on her heel, and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  My Dearest Drake,

  I have
just returned from London, where I found the most delightful straw bonnet for my gardening! I shall never be beet red again!

  Ever Yours,

  Emmaline

  Drake stood rooted to his spot. The scent of Emmaline seemed to linger and he feared if he so much as moved, he’d waft the citrus scent of her off into nothing more than a memory. He stood so still his shoulders ached.

  Time passed at an interminable crawl.

  Sir Faithful nudged him in the leg until he looked down. The loyal fellow favored Drake with a sad, accusing brown-eyed stare. “I’m a fool, Sir.”

  Sir Faithful yapped in agreement.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him. He hadn’t felt anything in the three years since he’d returned and now he should feel it all: pain, happiness, despair. He hated the swell of emotion that threatened to carry him away.

  Over the past three years Drake had constructed a wall around himself; a barrier against the outside world. In a few short months, Emmaline had taken it down brick by brick until she’d exposed him as a scared and hurt man.

  Even as he cared for Emmaline, in that moment, Drake hated her for forcing him to face the lie he’d been living. He’d tried his damnedest to bury himself in empty pursuits, whoring and gaming. And those were no longer enough and would never be enough.

  Now the only thing he longed for, craved like air he breathed, was her.

  And she was gone.

  He wanted to slam his fist into something. There was no one to release his pent up fury on…except…

  Drake turned on his heel.

  He retrieved his mount and headed to the home of the one person he could direct his wrath upon.

  When he arrived at his destination, he flung the reins to a waiting boy and threw him a sovereign and promised another when he returned. Drake strode up the townhouse steps and banged his fist on the door.

  A wide-eyed butler opened it. “My lord, I shall…”