“What sort of happenings?” Cole tightened his grip on her. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Why am I telling you now?” Through long, damp lashes, she looked up at him, her eyes dark and still a little mistrusting. “Perhaps that is the better question.”
“Because,” he said quietly, “no matter what else you may think of me, you know in your heart that I could never hurt your children. That I would never side with James against you.
Tell me
, Jonet, that you
believe
me.”
“I . . . yes,I do,”she said quietly, then drew a long, deep breath. “And yes, if you wish it, I shall tell you everything, Cole. I will tell you just what my children’s lives have been like since their father died. But you will think me quite mad. The very worst was when someone tried to shoot Stuart.”
“Someone shot at Stuart?” Ice-cold fear shafted into Cole’s heart.
“Oh, yes!” Jonet whispered. “And it was my fault! I thought, you see, that I had taken them to a sanctuary. To Kildermore, my home! Strange things kept happening in London, and I thought we would be safe in Scotland. Now, I realize they were in danger even before we reached the castle walls.”
Cole felt his blood drain away. “I think you had best explain yourself, Jonet. Are you saying someone shot at Stuart along the way?”
“I—
no
.” Jonet shook her head as if to clear her mind. “I am not making sense, am I? The shooting came two weeks after our arrival. We were riding, the boys and I. We went inland, toward the forest, and when we reached it, Stuart asked to borrow my horse.”
“Your horse?” Cole forced a smile. “Fancies himself on the cusp of manhood, does he?”
Jonet looked up at him and smiled weakly. “Poor Stuart has grown a little weary of being forever relegated to a pony, and Heather—my old mare at home—is docile, so I agreed to switch. Within a quarter mile, the shot was fired. It came so close, it took my hat off. I was thrown at once. Thank God I had not far to fall. Only my ankle was injured.”
“Jonet,” Cole said softly, “perhaps it was a poacher. An accident. There are many relatively innocent reasons such a thing could happen.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Someone shot directly at Stuart’s bay pony—and it was only then that I remembered the damaged carriage wheel. We’d lost one not ten miles outside the village. David saw it from horseback, and said we were very lucky that the resulting accident was not worse.”
“Was the damage deliberate, then?” Cole asked, trying to ignore her use of David’s name.
Jonet lifted her shoulders in an elegant gesture of surrender. “I now think so. The smithy said it looked as though the bolt had been weakened by something other than normal wear, but at the time, I was so eager to see Kildermore, I did not properly question him.”
“Did you report it?”
“No!” she said stridently, falling wearily back against the sofa. “No, I didn’t. I hardly know whom to trust! I can scarce bear to let my children from my sight. I tell no one anything which I do not have to tell them. My husband’s family wishes me hanged for murder! And now, I’m talking to you! I really am quite mad!”
It was plain to Cole that she was fatigued to the point of near collapse. “Jonet,” he said softly, rising to his feet, “it is late. We cannot solve this dreadful problem tonight. You need your rest. Tomorrow you must ask Donaldson to find some extra men. Unemployed soldiers are begging for work, and he will know best who to hire.”
Cole could see the toll his probing had taken, in the tightness of her lovely mouth, the drawn skin of her face. “Very well,” she whispered. “I will tell him.” Hysteria again edged her voice, and he felt a wave of heated shame for having questioned her at all.
In silent invitation, he extended his hands toward her, and she took them without argument. Gently, he helped her to her feet as the blanket slithered onto the sofa. When he might safely have done so, he did not release her hands as he ought to have done. Instead he allowed himself the small pleasure of touching her for one last moment. “I am sorry for what happened between us earlier,” he finally said.
“I—I don’t know if I am sorry,” she admitted, her words but a whisper.
Cole pretended not to have heard her. “My behavior was inexcusable,” he said simply, “but I thank you for explaining to me why you have been so deeply troubled. I need to know these things, Jonet, and as long as I am here, you must always tell me.”
“Do you believe me, then?” Her voice was strained yet hopeful.
Cole drew in his breath. Briefly, he considered trying to assuage her fears once more—to convince her that she had misinterpreted what she had seen—but Jonet was not a fool. “I wish that I could say I do not believe you,” he answered. “Let us leave it at that for now. Just trust me when I say that I will do everything in my power to keep your children safe.”
“Yes.” She nodded once. “All right. And Cole—?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry that I . . . that I stabbed you.”
Cole forced a bland smile. “Oh, I’ve had worse from a badly stropped razor, Jonet.”
Mutely, she nodded, then turned her back to go.
“Jonet—?” His voice brought her spinning back around.
“Yes?”
“Did you ever love your husband?” It was not a question he had meant to ask. It burst from him, like a sharp breath after a blow to the stomach, though impelled not by force but by a deep, twisting emotion which was part grief and part foolish, frivolous hope.
In the lamplight, she shook her head once. “No.”
“I am sorry.”
“So am I.”
And then, Cole led her gently from the room, and watched as the pale fabric of Jonet’s nightrail floated through the gloom and down the darkened stairway. In the lower hall, he could hear the clock strike three, the melancholy sounds echoing off the walls and up the stairwell. Long after she had disappeared from his sight, Cole still stood. Watching. And knowing that after the strange night he had just spent with Jonet Rowland, his life would never be the same.
Dawn came all too quickly for Jonet. By seven, she found herself rushing about the kitchen, pouring tea and toasting bread. Between pulling out the thick crockery plates and scrounging about for the butter, she paused to dust off her hands and scowl darkly across the kitchen table. “That will be quite enough, Robert!” she cautioned. “Nanna says you must give Rogue just a little food every hour.”
From his position, bent solicitously over the dog, Robert looked up at her. “But Mama, he’s so hungry. Look! Look at his sad eyes! I think he’s starving to death.” Rogue responded with two weak wags of his tail.
Hands on her hips, Jonet sighed. Stuart dutifully leaned down to take up the bowl of gruel, placing it on a high shelf beside the mantel. “Mama is right, Robin,” Stuart warned. “Just remember how sick he was last night. His belly is still queasy.”
“That’s right. Now come and have your breakfast,” Jonet said, turning to place a rack of toast in the center of the well-scrubbed worktable. She looked up just as Cole came through the door, attired in his riding clothes.
Jonet drew in her breath. He stood frozen in the doorway, one broad hand set at his hip, the other holding his black leather riding crop. Memories—both erotic and embarrassing—of the preceding night flooded back. Four hours ago, she had been wrapped in his blanket, pouring out her heart to him. And just before that . . . oh,God.
How humiliating
.
For a long moment, Cole did not move. Instead, he merely watched, his gaze shifting from the boys to Jonet, obviously taking in the fact that she stood in the kitchen with an apron on. If he found it odd to discover the better part of the noble House of Mercer dining belowstairs, he gave no indication. He smiled lightly, but it was an expression more formal than she would have liked. “Good morning, ma’am,” he said in a voice so low that the boys seemed not to have heard him. “You are up very early.”
Jonet realized at once that she must look a fright. Nervously, she put up a hand to check her hair, finding the same untidy knot she had fastened so haphazardly early this morning. But the emotion she saw in Cole’s face did not appear to be disapproval at all. The unguarded look in his eyes was one of confusion, perhaps even an element of appreciation.
Or perhaps she was merely being hen-witted. “I fear that I’ve always been an early riser.” She forced a bright smile. “Have you come to join us for breakfast?”
“Cousin Cole! Cousin Cole!” Robert leapt up from his seat on the floor and rushed to his side, Stuart on his heels. “Look at Rogue! He is almost well again.”
His face shining with a rare happiness, Stuart chimed in. “Yes, he really is much better, sir. Look! Nanna made him some special food. We are to feed him a little bit every hour.”
“Ah, I am inordinately relieved,” he returned. Then, with another glance at Jonet, as if to reassure himself of his welcome, Cole stepped fully into the room.
She heightened her smile another notch, and smoothly, Cole draped a companionable arm around each boy’s shoulder, and together they strolled across the room and knelt by the hearth, scratching and petting and murmuring over the dog. How handsome—and how very grave—he looked this morning. Clearly, he was still angry with himself, and perhaps with her as well, about what had almost happened between them last night. She had not thought to come face to face with him so early on a Sunday morning, for it had seemed his habit to attend early services. Perhaps they were both afraid that a cloud of hypocrisy might follow them through the church door. Now, Jonet found that she could not bear to think about all the intimacies that had passed between them.
Good Lord, she had stripped herself naked before him, literally and figuratively. And he had wanted her, too. Rather desperately. And yet, something more than simple guilt had held him back from her. She feared it always would. Jonet watched, her mouth dry, as Cole stroked one of his long, perfect hands down Rogue’s spine. In response, the dog’s tail thumped with renewed vigor. Clearly, Cole’s touch was comforting. Inwardly, she sighed. She would never know
how
comforting—not even for the one fleeting moment she had hoped.
And Cole would not likely give her another opportunity. Driven by desire, he had succumbed to his baser instincts last night, but he was a strong man. Such a man did not often surrender to his own needs when his mind and his heart said otherwise.
His opinion of her had changed little, she feared, and she was a fool to hope that he could come to feel any strong affection for her. But could she, perhaps, salvage some element of friendship from the whole ugly mess? Certainly, there had been something deep and meaningful between them late last night, even after the passion and anger had burned to ashes all about them.
Yes, Cole
had
stayed with her, and under circumstances that would have led many a man to make an expedient escape. She had not behaved well, and she knew it. And yet Cole had seemed to understand. She looked at them again, the three heads bent so intently over Rogue’s makeshift bed by the fire. Cole and her sons looked casual and content, as if they belonged together, despite the distinct differences in their coloring and appearance.
Jonet did not wish to consider the picture of domestic bliss that thought conjured up. It wounded her in a way which she feared would hurt too much, were it to be examined too closely. And most assuredly, it was the sort of wound that a simple friendship would never assuage. But he did care deeply about her children. She was sure of it now, though she would have been hard pressed to explain why.
Through some strange twist of fate, it seemed that God had sent a decent, honest man into her life, and at a time when she had least expected to see one, too. Jonet was not sure she deserved even the friendship of such a man, but she was not a fool. She had made compromises all her life, and would gladly make another to have his friendship. Abruptly, she cleared her throat. “Boys, will you come to the table, please? And Cole, you will join us?”
Cole looked up at her, his expression inscrutable. “I did not mean to intrude, ma’am. As it happens, I merely came down after my ride to look in on the dog.” He paused to look about the room. “Where is everyone? Cook, I mean—and the staff ?”
Jonet gave him a crooked smile. “I fear you are looking at her—er, them.”
“Mama gives the staff Sunday mornings off so that everyone can go to early services,” added Stuart helpfully.
Cole snapped to soldierly attention, his eyes suddenly narrow. “Not everyone, I hope?”
“No,” admitted Jonet softly. “Donaldson and Stiles are still upstairs.”
“And we’re to have porridge and toast and bacon and boiled eggs,” added Robert, oblivious to Cole’s sudden disquiet. “And milk and tea, too. There’s plenty of food. Mama likes to cook. Sit down.” The boy resolutely dragged out an oak chair that was as heavy as he was, leaving Cole no way to graciously refuse. With obvious dismay, he stared down at his riding clothes.
Jonet gave him her warmest smile and set down a pitcher of milk in the center of the table. “You need not change, sir, to dine with us in the kitchen,” she said lightly. “And I fear you shall have little choice. You must risk my cooking, or wait until Cook returns from kirk.” She took her chair and motioned that they should do likewise.
“Then I shall gladly join you,” he agreed, and settled in next to Robert. Suddenly, Cole looked up at her, a ghost of concern passing over his expression. “You have not forgotten, ma’am, that you are to speak with Donaldson about hiring extra footmen?”
Jonet felt a sudden warmth course through her, but it was not a sensual feeling at all. “I have already done so,” she answered. “Cox has been dispatched to recruit some more of their fellow soldiers.” For the next several minutes, Jonet busied herself by pouring milk for the boys. Just as Stuart sent the toast around, Ellen darted in, almost skidding to a halt on the threshold.
“Good morning, everyone!” she said, looking at Cole with some surprise. “And how nice of you to join us, Captain Amherst.”
“Ellen!” said Jonet, leaping up to fetch another mug, “I had no idea you were up.”