by K L Clare
It was her thing, looking out to the sea for answers. And that’s where I found myself after driving round the countryside for a short time. I wanted to feel close to her as I sorted through my thoughts alone. The whisky warmed my blood and relaxed my impulsive judgment.
“You assured me that my wife’s secrecy was harmless, brother. You might rethink your position before I ask again.” I handed the bottle to Thomas but looked back out over the water.
“There was more to that phone call, you know,” he said before taking a swig.
“Yeah, well, you handled it.”
He leaned against his car, crossed his ankles, and took another drink. “Before we get to that, first thing’s first. I know you’re not going to blame this shit on Ellie. But if I’m wrong, and you tell me that is your plan, you should know that I’ll break your fucking nose.”
A fleeting smile crossed my lips. His instinct to protect her first in all circumstances was strong.
“I wish she had come to me with the photo, but I understand why she did not,” I said. “Elle’s just as fierce about guarding those she loves from pain as we are. She’s protecting me.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page then. Now we can relieve her of the burden.”
“No, Thomas, we’re not going to do that. She’ll continue with her investigation, and we will clear the way. She needs this. Our family means the world to her, and if she’s not permitted to contribute to its well-being, I’ll lose her. We’ll all lose her. Tell me about the call.”
Thomas nodded and took another drink from the bottle.
“The commissioner is holding Simon Parker’s younger brother on charges of international firearms trafficking. Devon is the name. Commissioner Brown spoke with Ellie this morning, and she asked to see Devon Parker. He said he told her no but promised he would interrogate Parker himself using her questions.”
Fuck.
“You can’t tell her no. She’s willful. Saying no doesn’t work. She’ll find another way to get to him, goddammit,” I said.
“The commissioner’s not going to allow any harm to come to her, and nor will I. He’ll continue to help her search for the answers behind the photo. He’s already made her that promise. But I convinced him to report everything back to me. If she’s in danger, you’ll be the first to know, but I don’t think you want to—”
“You’re absolutely right. I can’t be in a position where I’m trading lies with my wife on a daily basis. She’ll come to me with all of this when she’s ready. Let me be clear—it’s you that I trust here, not Commissioner Brown. Is there anything else I should know?”
“Well, yes. Brown thinks Director Martin is the man to shed light on the Parker family. Martin may know the meaning of the photo. And it makes sense that he would, if you think about it. Most of his adult life was spent with our father—and since we know Simon Parker had joined the Order, you should look into it from that angle.”
I nodded. Martin was already on his way to Eastridge at my insistence. I’d contacted him after leaving the house.
“I’ll bring Taylor up to speed so he can keep an eye on it as well,” Thomas added. “If he leaves her side for even a second, I’ll kill him myself.”
Kiss From a Rose
From: Ellie
To: Isobel
I learned something, and it may be the best shot I have to get answers to the questions overwhelming my mind. Your murderer, the vile man in the photo with you and Ethan, has a younger brother who still lives, and I’m going to see him. Commissioner Brown tells me that I may not see him myself. But I will. I need to look into his eyes and see his truth when he answers my questions.
You know me, Isobel. When I want something badly enough, I find a way to get it.
But there’s something else. Jess retrieved copies of your medical records for me when she and Ben were in Connecticut last week, and the documents before me confirm everything I suspected. They also break my heart.
Your suffering was real, Isobel. I held you as you cried, kissed your salty tears, cared for you when you were broken. And that was genuine pain. I feel it again now.
The records reveal that you were pregnant, that the life I believed was growing inside of you did exist for a while. But when Gran sent you away to have the baby after your husband left, you miscarried your own child.
I’m so sorry.
These are the only leads I have at this point, so I’ll follow them as far as it will take me. I can think of nothing worse than what you’ve gone through, losing a baby you were already planning a life for. But it doesn’t erase the certain betrayal that lies beneath the secret you buried, and I know that it must be uncovered, no matter the pain it causes. Your secret must be exposed. Because somehow, in the end—and I can’t think how just yet—there will be something good that Will and I can salvage from the rubble.
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, I was the girl who cut and ran whenever she sensed something might break her heart. But that’s no longer me. Not since Will came into my life. He is my salvation in a sea of devastation—the gain that God handed to me after I endured twenty-seven years of loss and pain.
That’s how I know there’s something worth fighting for at the bottom of this deep well of deception.
My family needs this one last truth set free. You know me, Isobel. . . . I’m going to set the damn thing free.
11
I lay in bed staring at the rings I’d put on Elle’s finger. Her head was nestled in a cradle where my arm and shoulder met, and her hand rested on the center of my chest. Her long, soft tresses blanketed us.
The platinum wedding band was a delicate circle of diamonds, while the engagement ring was quite ostentatious. When I had designed it, I was determined to make it unique. Elle was in no way an ordinary woman, and a small, uninspired piece of jewelry on her finger every day would never do.
I lifted her hand and kissed the richly saturated red center stone, a rare Burmese ruby.
As often as possible, I watched her sleep. She would sometimes open her eyes and tell me it was creepy, but the tender smile on her face would assure me that it made her feel safe and loved. Goddammit, I loved her so much that I was allowing her to lie to me.
One of her soft, sleepy growls vibrated in her throat as she slipped a leg between mine.
“You’re still here,” she purred.
Most mornings I was either in the gym or heading for my office before she roused. Elle was a restless sleeper, plagued by those fucking persistent nightmares. Her mind typically spun into the early morning hours before finding peace, so I could never bring myself to wake her too soon.
My brothers and I planned to skip the gym. We would get enough exercise outside in the copse when we took down trees and cut firewood for the house. Of course I could pay someone to provide the service, but it was a tradition of the Hastings men to do it together twice a year. We cut wood once before Christmas arrived and again before warmer weather returned. It was true that Elle and I were changing many of my family’s traditions as we shaped a new legacy of our own, but this was one that we agreed would still serve the family well.
It was still quite early. I kissed her on the forehead. “You can sleep longer, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”
My wife nodded, her warm cheek brushing against my chest.
These were the kind of moments she’d been showing me how to cherish. Each of her heartbeats, every single breath she inhaled and exhaled against my skin, was a gift to me.
Her lies meant nothing, and I would forgive them all. Christ, I’d already forgiven the ones she had yet to tell. Because the lies of an angel were never born of sin. Those false words—technically the omission of words—were meant to protect me from more pain.
I couldn’t help but smile into the second kiss I placed on her forehead.
No one before Elle had ever protected me.
Her lies were quite lovely.
* * *
Two hours later, I kissed Elle’s mouth one more time and climbed out of bed. She watched me get on towards the shower, her eyes drinking in the sight of my backside as I walked away from our bed. I grinned.
We had both gone back to sleep. I woke to her slight weight on top of mine and her soft, warm lips touching the scar just above my collarbone. I’d filled my hands with her arse and had forced her body tightly against mine. Our eyes had locked, and our souls had connected.
What are you doing, angel? I had asked.
You’re mine, William Hastings, and today I’m going to have you however I want you, she’d said before licking the thrumming pulse in my neck and heading south with her lips and that wicked little tongue.
When I had been close to coming, I’d shot upright, pulling my wife to her knees on my lap. She’d wrapped her arms round my neck and crushed her lips against mine.
Elle had broken our deep kiss and worked to catch her breath. Like this . . . you still have control. . . . But I want us to be just like this, Will. Then she’d kissed me again before I could counter with a single word.
In that moment, there had been nothing within me strong enough to compete with the desire to give her what she wanted. I had lifted her above my cock and guided her down on me. I’d controlled every movement of her body, pumping myself into her, angling my thrusts in the way that would make her come. I had pulled her mouth hard against mine and captured my name as we’d reached our orgasms, mine following hers. We’d fallen down onto the mattress and then to sleep.
I turned back to her now, still grinning. She was slipping into her dressing gown. “Are you joining me, baby, or do you have other plans?”
“As a matter of fact, I do want the shower to myself this morning.”
“Suit yourself. Can’t say I didn’t offer you another ride.” I winked and she grinned.
“Go on, you naughty Englishman . . . leave me to my dressing room. Don’t forget the photojournalist from Vanity Fair will be prowling around the estate today.”
Elle would come into the bathroom to use the water closet and brush her teeth—and bend over once or twice to be a tease—before losing track of time in that massive dressing room amid the clothing and shoes her stylist had delivered the evening before.
When she passed through, she mumbled to herself, her mind already focused elsewhere. I swear she muttered something about what one might wear to visit a prisoner at Scotland Yard.
Fucking bloody hell.
I shoved my hand through my wet hair. Nothing could have prepared me for that.
12
Elle and Jessica walked through the center of the meadow towards the copse where, for so many generations, my family had cultivated different species of trees and harvested them for firewood. Elle waved to me. She hadn’t noticed Lissie and Chelsea, who were on their hands and knees near the small shelter house at the far edge of the woodland.
I waved back and pointed to where the girls were playing before getting on with the task at hand. Thomas and Ben and the groundskeepers were helping me fell an enormous old beech who had done her time.
John, along with Joe Taylor, was hoisted up into one of the hornbeams, cutting back overgrowth that we would season for kindling.
A few minutes later, the beech was down, and I heard my wife’s husky laugh resonate through the brisk air. It was the joyful one that burst from her gut when she was overwhelmed with bright emotion. I tossed my headgear and gloves to the ground and sprinted along the tree line to get to her. No way in hell anything could have stopped me.
When I reached her, she was tumbling through the foliage with the girls and the four orphaned yellow lab puppies that John and I had picked up earlier that morning from the county shelter.
My brothers and I were given a similar litter of pups when we were young, and it was one of the fondest childhood memories I could recall. I wanted to give the same to Lissie.
Elle popped up into my arms and hooked her legs on my waist as I spun us round a few times. Sunlight broke through a split of trees and lightened her green eyes, turning them into a mesmerizing shade of aquamarine.
“God, what an incredibly sweet thing to do, Will,” she said before smashing her lips against mine. “You rescued them?”
“I did. We have the space and means, so it’s not a big deal. It’ll be quite a lot of fun for the girls growing up with the dogs.”
“You’re wrong. It is a big deal,” she said, then rewarded me with a more intimate kiss. The magazine photographer appeared from nowhere to capture our moment. Elle slid to her feet. Then, and as we watched the girls nurse the pups with bottled milk, she whispered in my direction, “I’m so in love with you.”
My heart was struck with a calm that I had only ever experienced once before—the day she married me—and I didn’t know what the fuck to do with it now any more than I did at that time, so I squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head. “No words, Elle,” I said against her hair.
Mrs. Bates called out from the shelter house, where she and my mother were organizing a late Continental breakfast for family and staff. “Come along, now! Hot coffee and pastries, everyone.”
“But . . . I don’t wanna leave the puppies alone,” Lissie said.
“No?” I winked and picked up the basket that we’d brought them home in, holding it low so she could reach inside. “Round them up. We’ll take them with us.”
Lissie gently placed each pup into the basket, reciting the names of her pint-sized treasures. “This one is for Chelsea. He’s small like me, but he’ll be so strong like you when he grows up.” She smiled and wrapped him in one of the blankets. “We named him Wyatt. Aunt Jess says it means he’s a little warrior.”
“That’s a great name, princess. And listen, I’m proud of you for sharing with Chelsea.”
“Thanks,” she said, beaming up at me. “She’s like my little sister, really. Oh! Guess what? Grannie said I can have hot cocoa milk with marshmallows for breakfast today!”
Christ. She looked like Ethan had when he’d lit up with excitement over a lucrative contract. Her eyes. “Well then, we better get over there before John gets after it. I’ll bet Grannie has your scrambled eggs and cheese put out as well.”
I watched Lissie skip away to the shelter house and considered the consistent emotional growth she was showing. She had been through hell, but my mother was right, Lissie was healing. She headed straight for John and challenged him with a bump of her hip.
Definitely a Hastings.
Elle came from behind and hooked her arm in mine as we walked. “Ben just ran up to the house in the Rover. He said your visitor has arrived?”
I nodded. “Randall Martin, an old friend of the family. He and my father worked together for many years and were like brothers. He’s the director general for the Security Service.”
“Security Service . . . you mean MI5?”
“Yes, the homeland’s Security Service.”
“So this good friend of the family, who was not present for Ethan’s funeral or our wedding, just shows up to say hello? Why is he here now, Will?”
“To recruit me.”
She tugged on my arm for me to stop. “What? No. You can’t.”
I set the basket on the ground and took her cheeks between my hands. “I won’t do it, Elle, I promise. But I can’t burn this bridge either. He’s an important resource that I need to retain.”
“Is it the Order—is someone coming after us again?” She clung to my wrists, anxiety passing through her hands onto my skin like a cluster of electrical pinpricks.
I kissed the tip of her cold nose. “No panicking, Elle. I’m not aware of any particular threats at this time. But I must spend some time alone with Martin this afternoon to feel it out, and after that, I’ll share with you any relevant information he discloses. You and me . . . we’ve got this, remember?”
She met my eyes and measured my words.
I needed her to agree, needed her t
o continue trusting me. “All right?”
“All right,” she repeated, the full force of her stare burning into me. “You know I trust you, Will.”
She had an unshakable belief in me that defied explanation. Her commitment was genuine, but I’d be a fool to dismiss the sharp warning she layered within each syllable.
I needed to tell her soon about my suspicions or risk losing her confidence, and I would tell her after my meeting with Martin. My word was something she counted on to see her through the aftermath of the losses she had endured. And for fuck’s sake, she was already heading for potential jeopardy with the Devon Parker situation.
“I want you to truly hear me when I say this. I learned a great lesson after you followed me to the States. It was irresponsible for me to keep you in the dark the way that I did, and what’s more, it was dangerous. I made the wrong call, risked both of our lives, but I won’t make that mistake again, Elle. We’ll make those necessary decisions together. We’re in this together.”
My beautiful, strong-willed wife relaxed and smiled. “You’re stuck with me.”
“Nothing could ever make me happier.”
13
Director Martin swallowed two fingers of whisky in one go and slid his glass across the table for a refill. “You’re sure you won’t join my team, son? You are a wealthy man. You can hire the best executives in the world to run your business while you work with me, for our nation.”
“It would mean lying to my wife every night when I came home to her, and I won’t do that. I swore to her that if she married me—”
“Goddammit, Will, it’s time. We both know you were trained for this kind of work, and the Lord knows you have skills beyond measure. After all you’ve seen, all you’ve done, you mean to tell me you would leave an opportunity like this one behind to keep the peace in your bedroom? Think of the benefits, for Ellie’s sake.”