TWENTY-FIVE
THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING HIGH PERSONAL STANDARDS
THE BRIGHT SKIES ENDED with the afternoon. The weather blew in off the sea, bringing with it snow as hard as beads of glass. They pelted the windows and skittered on the roof. The darkening skies and plunging temperature sent the servants hurrying to complete their duties and retreat to belowstairs.
Kate stood by the library window and watched the surf pounding the shore. Inside, a roaring fire crackled in the hearth, warming the entire room as bright candlelight chased the shadows from even the deepest corners. Everything about Castle Parnell encouraged her to accept the staggering good fortune fate had thrown her way and forget Kit MacNeill. That she could not do so troubled her. She considered herself a practical woman.
What was she supposed to have done? She had no use for the sort of self-romanticization that left families without resources, and it was entirely impractical to pine after a Scottish soldier. Was she to ignore the lessons that in her twenty-four short years had been driven home with such exquisite emphasis? She had already lost a father and her first husband because they were soldiers.
It would be much wiser to marry the marquis and remain safe from grief and shielded from tragedy. Except… except… what was more tragic than losing someone you loved? And what difference did it make whether that loss was to death or prudence?
She quit the window with a sound of irritation and took a chair near the fire. But the book she sought to divert herself with provided no haven, and within a quarter of an hour, she gave up. All right, if she would have no peace until she had exhausted herself with thinking the unthinkable, so be it: she could not marry the marquis.
It wasn’t right, and not because she’d been Kit’s lover. Nothing she had done with Kit had been wrong. It would be wrong to lie in the arms of another. She frowned, tucking her legs beneath her.
She understood now those soldiers’ wives who never remarried after receiving word that their husbands were missing and presumably dead. When Michael had died, she had had a body to bury, and in preparing that body she had understood in a way no simple words could convey that he would never again speak to her and that his eyes would never again light upon seeing her. Not to have had that ineffable knowledge, to be sentenced to a lifetime of hateful hope, impossibly believing that someday, by some chance, some grace, one’s beloved would walk through the doors and everything would be right again, would have been unendurable.
That is what she was feeling now. Kit hadn’t asked a thing of her, had not made the slightest claim upon her, and yet he owned her very heart. Until one of them died, she did not think she would ever stop hoping that someday he would come back and tell her all the things his hands and eyes had so eloquently said.
She closed her eyes, trying to sort out this knotted skein. She had lived these three and more years wanting only to feel like herself again. How many times had she expressed that desire? And here she was, in a place so like the one she’d been raised in, among people very similar in type to the ones she’d known as a young lady, and still she didn’t feel like Katherine Nash, or even Katherine Blackburn, for that matter.
And that bade the question: Who had she become? Only in Kit MacNeill’s company and in Kit MacNeill’s arms had she felt certain of who she was. Did the person she was trying so desperately to recoup even exist anymore? And, she thought breathlessly, would she want her back?
No.
No. She liked the woman she’d become. She wouldn’t want back that gay, charming, inconsequential child who’d lived on buttercakes, the promise of fêtes, and others’ approval. She approved of herself. She wanted to be no one else.
Or with anyone else but Kit MacNeill.
There. So easy. So final. So stupid and so magnificently brilliant.
When the marquis returned, she would tell him that she appreciated his hospitality but she must leave at once, and by the by, could she impose upon him to finance her and her family to the sum of, say two hundred pounds a year? She was amazed she could laugh at herself. Amazed and delighted.
She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. Her decision made, she could not bring herself to linger. She must pack. She needed to find Kit, to tell him what she felt, what she wanted, no longer content to trust her fate to his overdeveloped sense of honor. And that meant she had a yellow rose to send. She hurried from the library, heading for the back staircase.
Not surprisingly, the halls were deserted, the servants having finished their chores. She shivered, unable to shake the feeling that she was being studied by malevolent eyes, and hurried along the empty corridors, her relief upon hearing a voice almost palpable.
It sounded like Merry. She followed the voice, feeling remiss in not having already offered the girl a shoulder to cry on if that is, indeed, what she wanted. As much as she empathized with the girl’s loss, something about the manner in which she had turned Grace’s death into a personal affront, as though Grace had died only to hurt her, repelled Kate. She’d just put her hand on the door when she heard a man’s voice, hard and angry.
“—thought I was too stupid to figure it out, didn’t you? God, how could you? I loved you!”
Kate’s hand dropped. It was Callum Lamont, the man Meg said had slit open a young revenuer.
“I swear it was Watters, Callum.” Merry’s voice, wheedling and tiny. “He made me— Ah!”
The sound of flesh hitting flesh cracked through the closed door, and Kate backed away, appalled. “He didn’t do nuthin’ but get twisted up with you, the poor bugger! You do that to a man, Merry,” Callum said hoarsely. “You twist him up until he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I never kilt a woman afore Grace Murdoch, didn’t think I could, but you talked me into it.”
“She deserved to die!” Merry’s voice was raw and venomous. Kate’s knees began to shake. Merry had orchestrated Grace’s death .
“She lied to me! She said we would always be together and that we would go to London and live like princesses. Only she—” She broke off on a sob.
She’d killed her best friend because she’d been about to abandon her. The realization horrified Kate.
“She’s the one that betrayed you, Callum. Betrayed us.” Merry had regained mastery of her voice. “I told you how I followed her and Charles that night, how I saw Charles shoot your men, Callum. Shoot them like dogs. When they came back, I confronted Grace and forced her to take me into her confidence and tell me all about the rich French yawl they’d wrecked. I told you all of it. I was honest with you.”
“I doubt you’ve ever been honest to a soul in your life, Merry Benny.”
“I was to you.” A light, nervous laugh. She thought she had won his trust again.
Kate looked around, hoping to see someone.
“If it wasn’t for me, you never would have known about the treasure, Callum.”
“How stupid do you think I am, Merry?” Callum sounded wretched, but even Kate could hear his desperate desire to believe her. “I don’t see any treasure. Do you? Or have you and Watters already got it?”
“No! I swear it. We didn’t—”
Too late she realized her mistake.
“We?” Callum’s voice was a low hiss. “What ‘we’ would that be, Merry?”
“Callum, I beg you—” There was the sound of feet running, a roar of rage, a gasp and a choked-off cry. Kate turned, knowing she must run and find someone, knowing she wouldn’t be fast enough. She would be sentencing Merry to death if she left.
“Beg all you like. It’ll do you no good. You betrayed me as surely as that bitch Grace betrayed you. Grace sent something to her cousin hidden in her trunk that told where they’d hid the treasure, didn’t she? And you knew it right from the start, only you never told me.
“No, you set me searching the coast, and if I stumbled on it, good and fine, it was a chance you were willing to take. But all the time you knew the treasure’s location was on its way to her cousin. ’Twas you, not the marquis, who wrote and asked Mrs. Blackburn to come quick and bring with her everything Grace Murdoch had sent, no matter how small it might seem. And you tore up his other letters, the ones that told the widow that Charles and his wife were murdered, because you didn’t want her canceling her trip out of fear. Then you waited.
“Well, now you got what you wanted, and I want what I deserve for doing yer dirty work, and if you live through this day, it’ll be a rare miracle. So don’t try me any more than I been tried.”
“I don’t have the treasure!” Merry cried frantically. There was a crash and a thump and Kate realized Merry had been hurled against the wall. Kate closed her eyes and willed the stupid, wretched girl to tell him what he wanted to know.
“Sure you do. And if you want to live, you’ll tell me where it is.”
“I don’t know! Grace lied!” Merry cried out. “She swore she’d sent a map to her cousin because they’d buried it in a place that was so remote they wouldn’t be able to find it without a map. Especially after they’d been gone a year or so.”
“A year?”
“Yes, because we were all going to go to London until after the smugglers—”
“Until the smugglers had been rounded up and killed?” Callum snarled.
“Yes! They were planning on having you killed and coming back later, after there would be no one left who knew about Charles’s involvement with you. But not me!” She hurried on. “Grace laughed about it when she told me and said her cousin wouldn’t know what she had when she saw it. But there wasn’t a map or anything like it. I ripped apart everything. I searched every seam, everything. Both at the inn and here. But Grace lied to me!”
Her voice was raw, nothing left in it but pure outrage because, Kate suddenly realized, if Merry let go of her outrage at the dead woman, she would be forced to confront the horror of having killed her best friend.
“If you haven’t found the gold, why are you planning on running off with Watters while me and my men were at the croft? Aye. I know all about it, Merry.”
“I didn’t want to go with him! He forced me. He said that there’s no sense in staying, we should cut our losses and run. He’s forced me from the beginning!” Merry’s voice was frantically pitched. “He said he’d tell you about us, and you wouldn’t have me anymore and no one else would either. I knew nothing about his setting a trap for you—”
“I didn’t say anything about a trap,” Callum broke in softly. “I just said we were at the croft.”
Merry howled then, a howl of impotent rage, and his answering laugh was cruel and wounded, so terribly wounded, that Kate felt a flicker of pity for him.
“There’s nothing in you but lies and deceit. I’m well shut of you. The world will be well shut of you.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Merry wailed like an angry child, and Kate could not say what she was attempting to revoke: lies, deceit, or the death she had begged this man to cause.
“You’re breaking my heart, Merry. Like I’ll break yours if you don’t tell me where that gold is.”
Her voice grew muffled, as if she’d buried her head in her arms. “I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll just kill you now, you slut.”
Dear God.
“Please!”
“Don’t waste your final few breaths, Merry. You don’t think I’ll do it, do you?” He was working himself into a fury. Kate could hear him pacing, faster and faster. “You used me. You betrayed me. Did you go direct from my bed to his? Did you?”
“No,” Merry whimpered.
Kate held her breath. In Merry’s very core, some moral rot had taken hold that nothing would ever purge. To intervene would be stupid. Reckless. She had two sisters. She owed it to them to take care of herself. To safeguard their futures by safeguarding her life. And… and… God, she needed to live to see Kit again.
The pacing stopped. “You murderous, black-hearted, conniving whore.”
Merry was unsalvageable. She wasn’t worth risking her life over— “Callum, no!”
“Stop!”
The door swung open on a scene as terrible as the one in Kate’s imagination. Callum stood over Merry who was cowering at his feet. Her arms were raised to shield herself from his blows, and her lips were swollen and bleeding. A trickle of blood flowed down her brow and dribbled on her gown. Her wide eyes swung toward the open door with the avidity of a hare seeing the snare opening. She shot to her feet and would have dashed forward, but Callum caught her, savagely wrenching her back. She cried out, and Kate jerked forward a step. The well-oiled, exquisitely hung door swung shut behind her.
“Well, if it isn’t the handsome widow. Come in, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“Let her go.”
“Her?” Callum looked down at Merry, trembling in his clasp, as if surprised to find her there. “I’m afraid I can’t oblige. She has something of mine, you see, and I’ll not be leaving here without it.” His voice flattened on the threat. “But you pose a most worrisome problem, Mrs. Blackburn.”
“Let her go and ride out now, Mr. Lamont, while you still have a chance.” Her voice was cool. Composed. Her insides were turning to jelly. “Captain Watters is due back at any time.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that. In truth, I wouldn’t mind having a word with him.”
Merry began struggling. Casually, Callum backhanded her with enough force to knock her off her feet, leaving her dangling helplessly in his clasp.
“Stop it!” Kate cried. “You’ll kill her.”
“Probably. Believe me, Mrs. Blackburn, the world will be a fairer place without this asp slithering through it.”
“You can’t kill her.”
“Oh, but I can.”
He grabbed a handful of Merry’s thick pale hair and yanked her upright. She cried out, clawing at his hand as she stumbled to her feet. “She killed your cousin, you know. Or as good as done.”
“It doesn’t matter. Let her go. Please.”
He cocked his head. “Why should you care about her?”
“I don’t. It doesn’t have anything to do with her. This is about me.”
He studied her, curious in spite of his anger.
“If I let you kill her without trying to stop you, I am not the person I think myself. I cannot let someone die without trying to prevent it.” Like her father. Her father hadn’t chosen to sacrifice himself; he’d simply done what he had to do. “Can you understand that?”
“Not a word.”
“I can’t let you kill her.”
“And how will you stop me?”
“By offering you something you want more.”
“And that would be?” His eyes slipped dubiously down her thin figure, and she found herself seized by the bizarre desire to laugh.
“Not me. The treasure.”