A smile lifted the side of her face, a small semblance of the easiness that used to exist between them surfacing. “You didn’t hide it that well, Hunter.”
The grin on his face faded as he looked back to the fire, poking at the cracked edge of a log. His voice dipped low. “Why did you not tell me, Bridget?”
“My name?”
“I searched—I searched for more than two years for you. I was consumed with it.” He pinned her with his dark grey eyes. “And you were here in London. All I needed was your name and I could have found you. I had told you I loved you in Spain, but you couldn’t even give me that one damn thing—who you truly were.”
Her hands tightened around the tumbler and she took a sip of brandy. “I wasn’t lying before when I said I was going to tell you my real name, Hunter. I had set to do it on that day you disappeared. That was the day I was going to tell you my name. I walked into the hospital that day with only one thing on my mind, and that was to tell you.”
He straightened, the fire iron hanging beside his leg from his hand. “You were?”
“Yes.” Her eyes dipped to the flames of the fire. “It was warm that day—do you remember? The sun was out after days of rain and dreariness, and I woke that day and I knew. I knew I had to tell you because it was sunny and I had such hope that day—anything was possible. The horror of losing my father had lessened and every single step I took toward the hospital was right, was happy, because I truly knew what was in my heart.” Her stomach tightened into a hard, painful rock, and she had to make herself look at him. “I was going to tell you I loved you, Hunter. Tell you my name. To tell you yes. Yes to everything and anything you wanted.”
She stopped to gulp another sip of the brandy as her heart pounded, ripping open just as raw as it had on that day three years ago. “My heart was so full—everything was so full. And then they told me you were gone. You had abandoned me. And it all disappeared. Everywhere that had been full just turned into emptiness. A desert. Everything turned into a land of waste.”
“Bridget—”
“So don’t tell me that I couldn’t give you that, Hunter.” Her voice turned hard. “I was ready. Ready to give you everything. My heart. My body. My life. But you abandoned me.”
His look drilled into her for long breaths. Long breaths where she took his scrutiny and returned her own.
He sighed, the hard lines on his face softening. “We were both at fault. We were both at the mercy of the fates that were determined to part us.”
She drew in a deep breath, steadying her heartbeat as a sigh lodged in her chest. “So why have the fates entwined our paths once again?”
He shrugged. “Why does anything happen, Bridget?”
Why indeed? What did she expect him to say? That they were destined to be together? That fate had no choice but to cross their paths once more?
Whereas he had known she was alive, somewhere, and had at some point come to peace with the fact that she was not his to love—Bridget had never stopped loving him. As much as it stung her pride, she had to admit that to herself. Even though he abandoned her, even though she had thought him dead. He had crushed her heart, but she would always love him.
She unclenched her right hand from the tumbler of brandy and set it on top of the bandages on her side, pressing to see if blood was still flowing, still collecting on the cloth.
“Don’t poke at it.”
She looked up at Hunter.
He pointed with his forefinger to her bandages. “Don’t poke at it. You must have yelled that at me ten thousand times in Spain.”
“You had to hear it ten thousand times in order to stop.”
“Is it still your favorite saying?”
She chuckled and the motion sent her side into spasms. “Maybe. At the hospital they would probably tell you yes.” Her fingers moved along the bandages and she looked down at her side. No continued bleeding. A small favor. She glanced at Hunter. “Your cousin, Aldair, did he make it down the back of the building without further injury?”
“Yes. He is being taken care of. And he’s not my cousin.”
“He’s not?”
“No. Aldair is a fellow guard at the Revelry’s Tempest. He was my responsibility and I lost him on the street last night, which was why I was attempting to find him. I didn’t imagine he had gotten tangled with Bournestein.”
“Hunter, if Aldair was there at the hospital being held on that floor with the guard—it is troublesome. It means that he owes Bournestein something—or Bournestein is holding him for some reason—and those usually aren’t good reasons.”
“I know that, Bridget. Which was exactly why I lied to Bournestein about searching for my cousin. He doesn’t need to know who I am or who I work for.” He turned fully toward her. “What is that hospital, Bridget? How did that come to be?”
“Cranesbill Hospital? I named it that because the bloody cranesbill was my mother’s favorite flower, and it was what my father had always planned to call it.” She settled her hands around the glass again. “The hospital was my father’s dream—that was the building he had bought for it before we left for the war. It was what he had envisioned—all he truly wanted in life. To open a hospital like that in the most dire of areas, to help the most dire of souls. God gave him hands to heal, and he was going to use them on the most unfortunate. That is what he had planned. He had created a comfortable life for us from his practice and as a professor at Guy’s Hospital. But that hospital he wanted to open was where he was going to spend the rest of his life—helping those most in need.”
She paused and took a small sip of brandy. “But then the war happened and he died in Spain, so he never saw it realized.”
“But you did? You made it happen?”
“I did. I had to.”
He offered one nod, turning back to the fire to poke at the top log with the iron. Sparks sprayed, alive and erratic. His look stayed on the flames. “Why is Bournestein involved with your hospital?”
She bit the inside of her lip.
His dark gaze swung to her, his unanswered question heavy between them.
“Why are you asking, Hunter?”
“Bournestein is a wretched being, Bridget. But I imagine you already know that.”
“He is also extremely generous with the hospital.”
“As long as he gets the assistance from you and your surgeons and physicians to keep his knaves healthy and terrorizing the streets?”
Bridget stifled a sigh. “We—the hospital—would not survive in that area without him.”
Hunter’s dark eyes cut into her. “What else does he get for his generosity?”
Insinuation hung from his words, dripping bitterness.
The hairs along the back of her neck spiked, the heat of indignation snaking around her throat. Her eyes narrowed at him. “Tell me you did not just ask me what I think you did, Hunter.”
“You can’t work for Bournestein, Bridget.” His fingers curled tightly around the fire iron, his knuckles turning white.
She straightened in the chair, her breath seething. “First, Hunter, I don’t work for Bournestein. And second, you don’t get to have an opinion on that.”
His jaw flexing, his mouth opened, fury creasing his brow. But then his lips clamped shut and he abruptly turned from her and walked toward the door, fire iron still clutched in his hand. “I need to get you tea, Bridget, so you can get your strength back about you.”
He left the room, his boot heels clomping down the hall, then the stairs.
Her teeth still gritted, grinding with each breath, Bridget stared at the open doorway, his words echoing in her head.
How could he ask her that?
She had lied to him years ago about her name, yes. But to think her a Bournestein whore? To think so little of who she was as a person? He had claimed he loved her—but had he ever respected her?
And she had loved him. Loved him to the bottom of her soul.
She had this wrong. So very wrong. Hun
ter had appeared and she wanted him—wanted him like he once was.
But he wasn’t that man she once knew. Not anymore.
Lifting the tumbler to her lips, she swallowed the last of the brandy and leaned forward to set the glass on the floor.
Her fingers trembling, she flipped through the mounds of clothing crumpled about her lap, quickly slipping all of the layers on as gently as she could over the bandages. She could only attach together half of her buttons on her back, but no matter.
With a deep breath to fortify her legs, she stood.
Solid. They were solid.
Not that she could afford them to be anything but solid.
On her toes, she moved to the doorway, along the hall, and down the stairs.
She slipped out the front of the house into the night, leaving the door slightly ajar. She wasn’t about to chance Hunter hearing the latch click closed.
{ Chapter 6 }
He shouldn’t have asked her.
Hunter damn well knew the answer. Bridget would never—never—lower herself to an indecent dalliance with a man such as Bournestein.
But the question had slipped out of his mouth uncontrollably, his damn jealousy rearing.
He had managed to keep it in check all those years ago—the weeks at the hospital as he recovered, watching every soldier under Bridget’s deft hands look up at her with adoration. With suggestions. With promises. All those men had wanted her.
But he—he’d had her. She was his, as long as he managed to keep his blasted jealousy in check.
For as hard as it was to see her talking and laughing with all those other soldiers, he had trusted her, trusted in who she was as a person.
But now he questioned everything. And because of it, he had cracked.
Blame it on the years he spent imagining her with another man. With a babe on her hip. With gaiety on her lips that he did not put there. He had swum to the bottom of far too many brandy bottles in effort to kill those imaginations—but then he would inevitably pass out, dreams of her naked under another man’s hands haunting his mind.
Damn his jealousy.
Damn that she had ever lied to him. Damn that he had finally pieced enough of his life back together that he could make it through a day without thinking of her every minute—without his imagination torturing him. Damn that she had appeared out of nowhere.
Damn her.
Damn him.
Her sneaking out of his house in the middle of the night had indicated how very poorly he had bungled the situation.
He should have had control.
Even if he was still reeling at the fact that he had found her—after all this time, he had finally found her. And she was just as he had last known her. Her wide green eyes with their commanding mixture of intelligence and compassion. The way her head tilted down slightly when she gazed up at him through her dark lashes. How she looked at him with her full attention—always seeking to understand, to listen to him. The smattering of tiny freckles along the straight bridge of her delicate nose. Her full lips.
She looked the same, but he didn’t know if she was the same—didn’t know what was or wasn’t a lie of their past.
None of that excused his question about Bournestein.
He had seen it in her face after he said the words. Saw the horrification. Saw the indignation. Saw the scorn.
And he deserved all of it.
“What has you staring into the abyss?”
Hunter’s head swiveled as Logan moved into the guard’s room at the Revelry’s Tempest. The rest of the guards were already at their posts for the evening, as he could hear the clunking from above of guests arriving.
How long had he been holding a full tumbler of brandy, standing and staring at the coals in the stone fireplace?
Hunter took a sip from his glass as he turned from the fire, looking to Logan. “How is Aldair?”
“He’ll live.” Logan took a slab of beef from one of the platters in the middle of the large, rough-hewn table that centered the guard’s room and plopped it onto an empty plate. He cut the meat as he talked. “The surgeon finished with him a few hours ago. He owes his life to you and that charming friend of yours.”
Hunter’s mouth set to a terse line and he nodded.
Standing as he ate, Logan popped a chunk of beef into his mouth as he watched Hunter. “When she arrived here I thought she was a jilted lover you had swept to the side.”
“Why would you think that?”
“A pretty woman like that, insistently demanding to see you.” He pointed with his fork at Hunter. “I thought she was to report she carried your babe and was set to trap you into holy matrimony.”
A wry chuckle escaped Hunter’s lips. “No. That she is not.”
“Who is she? Why did her voice sound familiar?” Logan popped another bite of beef into his mouth.
“Someone from the past.”
“And?”
Hunter considered Logan for a long moment. He wanted to keep Bridget’s existence to himself—keep her to him and him alone. But that was his jealousy rearing again. Whether Hunter had wanted it or not, Logan had watched over him since the war and had as much right as anyone to know who she was. “She was the daughter of the man that saved your life in Spain.”
Logan’s jaw dropped. “Eliza?”
Hunter nodded.
Logan’s fork clattered to the plate. “That was her? The one you pushed from the window?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember much of those days—but her voice—I never saw her.” Logan sank heavy, sitting onto one of the wooden chairs that surrounded the table. “I thought I recognized her voice when she appeared here—but it was as though it was from a dream and I couldn’t place it.” He shook his head, his eyes wide. “Unbelievable. Her father saved me, but her voice—it was the one thing that held me to this earth. I owe her my life.”
“As do I.”
Logan looked up to him. “But she’s more to you?”
Hunter shrugged. “Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“For a start, Eliza is not her name. It was fake.”
Logan’s brows drew together in consideration. “Fake to protect her?”
Hunter nodded.
“Her father never should have taken her with him into the war.” The words spat out of Logan’s mouth, almost vicious.
A flash of pure fury that Hunter had never witnessed in his friend before. Logan didn’t get angry. Ever.
Catching himself with a slight shake, Logan paused, drawing a deep breath and then his voice settled into its usual even cadence. “But lying about her name makes sense. I would do the same. Make her lie. Make her offer so very little to the soldiers that there would be no way she could get hurt.”
“Just because it’s rational, doesn’t make it right.”
Logan shrugged. “It depends on the vantage point of the person involved, I presume.” He picked up his fork and jabbed a chunk of beef onto the tips. “What is her business with Bournestein?”
“She runs her father’s hospital in Bournestein’s territory.” Hunter took a sip of the brandy in his hand. “I am not sure what, exactly, their relationship consists of—the conversation did not get that far.”
“She actually works in that hospital in St. Giles?”
“She owns and runs it, yes.”
Logan’s brow creased. “How deep is she in with Bournestein?”
“I suspect far too deep, but I don’t know.”
“But you are going to find out?”
Hunter heaved a sigh. For all Logan knew of his life, Hunter wasn’t about to admit to being an arse to the woman that saved both of their lives. “I haven’t decided if I should yet—if I even can.”
“Why not?”
Hunter shrugged.
Logan chewed on beef, staring at Hunter. He swallowed. “She was the one, wasn’t she?”
“The one?”
“The reason you were splayed out, f
ighting anything and everything that was coming your way in that tavern a year ago when I found you.” Logan finished cutting his meat apart. “I never asked, and you never said, but a man doesn’t usually hate the world like that unless a woman is involved. So was she the one?”
“Yes.”
Logan nodded. “Then it seems simple, my friend. If she was the reason for that, then she is also the reason you’re going to find out how deep she’s in with Bournestein.”
Hunter took a step forward to set his glass on the table. He didn’t know where Bridget’s lies started and stopped, so part of him resisted what Logan said. But the man was only pointing out what Hunter knew he would eventually do. He sighed. “Yes, that part seems inevitable.”
Logan gave a nod. “Good. Then you need to be careful. This is Bournestein we’re talking about. You know the man likes to burn anything that crosses him. I will be at the ready should you need assist.”
Hunter’s mouth went terse. “Thank you.”
Logan stood up from the table, moving to leave, but then he paused at the doorway. “You don’t look thrilled at the prospect of involving yourself with her again.”
“I’m not.”
Logan’s bottom lip jutted up, and he glanced at the fireplace and then back to Hunter. “If you love her—which I suspect you do by your face—if she was worth all that you suffered, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t be pushing past me to go after her.”
“I’m an arse.”
Logan chuckled. “Yes. But when has that ever stopped you?” He rapped his knuckles on the wood of the doorframe. “I can only imagine what you did, Crawford, but if she is the one, then she’ll forgive the ass in you.”
“You talk as if you know what it is to have found the one you were meant to love.”
A somber half-smile lifted the corner of Logan’s mouth. “Love is simple. It’s what happens after it that is hard.”
~~~
“I cannot imagine what you are thinking, Mr. Bournestein.” Bridget stared at the orange lapel of Bournestein’s purple overcoat. For as many times as she’d seen the monstrosity of cloth, she still could not stop herself from staring at it every time Bournestein was in front of her.
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