“Lady Porter, in fact.” Good God, was that pride in her tone? Still, in the end, was she proud to be his distant and rejected wife?
“Well.” Dade shifted uncomfortably. “According to him—”
She shot him a look that completely lacked patience. “It isn’t some tale he made up. I found the documents, the honors, the medals, the letter of knighthood from the Prince Regent.” Signed “Geo.” “He has too many memories bound up in it, that’s all.”
Dade’s gaze widened. “Then the scars—”
“Every one earned in service to the Crown.”
Dade pursed his lips and nodded. “The war. I should have realized…”
“You didn’t want to.” Callie looked out the window. “You wanted to paint him a beast for compromising me, for staining your honor.” Uttering a dark laugh, she shook her head. “I think it’s high time you realized that I wasn’t precisely fighting him off.”
Dade looked away. “You’re my sister. I am responsible for you.”
“Actually, since he was my eldest male relative on the premises, I think Papa was the one responsible for me.”
Dade didn’t quite roll his eyes. Quite. “Well, but…”
Callie hadn’t the will or desire to be patient with Dade’s bigotry any longer. “You weren’t interested in him at all, other than to wave a pistol at him. You knew nothing at all about the man behind the scars.”
“A point I made when you proposed to stay with him.”
“You’ve made of him an enemy, and because of your ridiculous male posturing, I am shot, Attie is devastated, and Ren … Ren is gone forever.”
Dade looked down. “I didn’t know you blamed me so entirely.”
Callie let out a breath, fighting against the urge to weep for the deepening void in her chest where her heart once beat. “Dade, you are not my father. You are not anyone’s father. You are just a man, hardly older than myself, with too many responsibilities and not enough nerve to throw them back upon the shoulders to which they belong.” She gazed ahead at the empty road their parents’ carriage had taken before them. “Why should Papa take responsibility, when he doesn’t have to? Why should Mama bother to take note of Attie’s confusion or Ellie’s vanity”—or my desperation!—“when I have borne the weight of it for her all these years?”
“It isn’t as though they will ever change,” Dade said tightly. “Not at their age.”
Callie closed her eyes and leaned carefully back onto the tufted cushions. “How will we know … unless we step away from the task ourselves?”
“Nevertheless,” Dade went on, his tone stubborn. “It is good that you return with us. You belong with your family.”
“Until the day I die? Am I to have nothing of my own? And what of you, Dade? Have you sentenced yourself to life without parole, as well, or have you decided that is to be my fate alone?”
He was silent then. Callie lapsed back into her unhappy thoughts, trying very hard not to let the memories wash over her. It was too painful to have thoughts of that girl, too wrenching to remember the passion and the joy—and to know that, for Ren at least, it had not been made of love.
Chapter 38
Ren was not long upon the lane when he saw ahead of him a trim little pony cart lacquered in deep green with shining brasses, pulled by a pair of perfectly matched ebony ponies.
He pulled up his mount and gazed at the driver with loathing. “You.”
Button gazed levelly back. “I’ve been waiting for you. I believe we have matters to discuss.”
“I want nothing to do with the lot of you,” Ren said with a snarl. “You couldn’t allow me to have a single moment of my own. I would be careful if I were you.”
“Nonetheless, there is more here than you realize.”
Ren fought back the urge to dismember and reassemble. Callie wouldn’t want him to harm Button. Then again, Callie was gone. “You joined after my time, so you don’t know. I was like you once. I believed. And then I found myself stabbed in the back, quite literally, by the very brotherhood I so cherished. So step carefully, little man. They can be brutal to those who love them best.” He kicked his mount onward at a trot.
“It wasn’t the Liars who tried to harm her!”
It was a lie, of course. That was what the Liars did best, wasn’t it? Still, Ren halted and reined his mount to face the pony cart. “Explain.”
“I mean that it was not we who broke the ladder and jammed shut the cellar and shot her mount from beneath her. I came here at the behest of a dear friend. The others came for the ball, and to be sure you were not being hoodwinked by a seductress.”
Ren narrowed his eyes. “Kurt was here all along. I spotted him myself.”
Button smiled. “Then he wanted you to see him.”
“Firstly, there have been three attempts on her life—not to mention other mischief against her.” Ren walked his mount back slowly. “Secondly, I have no quarrel with anyone here in Amberdell. Thirdly, the Liars’ foremost assassin showed up to cook for my wife’s ball. You expect me to believe that the Liars had nothing to do with all this?”
Button lifted his chin and matched Ren’s gaze, most definitely damaging Ren’s ability to loom. “Believe your own knowledge, then,” Button said. “When has anyone ever escaped three attempts at assassination by the Liars Club?”
Oh, God. It was so obvious. Ren felt the fool for not realizing it before. If Kurt had truly been assigned to dispose of Callie, she would not have lived out the day. “But … if not the Liars, then who?”
Button regarded him with friendly pity. “Who stands to gain if you die alone?”
Who, indeed? Ren’s gut went cold. Without another word, he turned his mount toward Springdell and answers.
* * *
Betrice folded her gray silk gown carefully in fresh rice paper and laid it to store in her best trunk. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine that it was a fine Lementeur gown …
Not for her the fine style and exquisite fit of such a gown.
Which was no more than she deserved.
Callie was gone. Henry had told her over breakfast that he’d helped Lawrence fit out a carriage specifically to carry Callie away.
Permanently.
Betrice shut the trunk carefully. She didn’t have many fine things, but this pretty enameled dress box had once belonged to the former lady of Amberdell, and had been a gift from her to Betrice’s mother.
From Amberdell comes everything worthy.
And from Springdell comes nothing but lies and trickery.
Perhaps it was guilt from ruining the ball, or fear that Lawrence would take the doctor’s words to heart and search for the culprit among the local people, but Betrice had decided in the early hours of the morning that she was done.
It was over in any event. Callie, though gone, would be the lady of Amberdell until the day she died. Lawrence meant to run the estate himself, as he’d informed Henry this morning—although Henry was supposed to keep that fact to himself for some reason that Lawrence refused to explain.
There was nothing for Betrice to aim for, no target to shoot, no mischief to do that would change that. Although for her entire life she had played by the rules—the endless, suffocating rules of ladylike behavior—it was a ridiculous quiz of a girl who took the seat out from under her.
In retrospect, Betrice was quite appalled at the lengths she’d gone to in her obsession. Pushing over Callie’s ladder and then ducking back around the corner of the house—that had been the impulse of a moment. Shutting the cellar door and wedging the chunk of wood to keep it closed had been no more than a childish prank, the sort of thing village boys did to their friends.
Lending the skittish Lucy had been worse and fiddling the truth about her riderless return yet more so.
Pulling the brass linchpin—that had been truly appalling. Yet how could she have known the thing’s death spiral would be truly dangerous? She’d thought it simply wouldn’t work, that the guests—who up
until that point had thought the new lady of Amberdell was dipped in gold!—would go home remembering the disappointment instead of the triumph.
That Callie’s own family was also working against her—that the illness given the village and the shooting on the hillside were caused by a twelve-year-old girl had given Betrice the most pause of all. Was that what she herself had become in her envy? A dangerous child?
Well, no more. No more plotting or scheming. Yet, she did not think she would revert to her old ways, either. Sometimes, just once in a while, mind you, she might actually give in to a natural laugh.
She put away the gown trunk and went to the kitchen to prepare a hearty luncheon for Henry. He could easily eat the same meals as the laborers, but Betrice had always liked to keep up appearances. The master should not rub elbows too consistently with the dependents.
As she reached high up to lift a cheese down from a shelf in the larder, she heard a heavy tread behind her.
“Could you fetch this cheese, dear?”
Thick fingers reached past hers, wrapping around the heavy cheese and lifting it in one hand.
It was not her husband’s hand.
Betrice gasped and whirled to find herself cornered in the larder by the massive form of Unwin.
“Oh! What are you doing in my house? Get out—please.”
He loomed over her, his wide shoulders clad in rough linen blocking her view of anything else. Betrice swallowed and forced a cool smile. “A gentleman would call properly,” she admonished him evenly.
“Like your husband? Like that ugly Sir Lawrence? You might’ve noticed, I ain’t like them.”
Betrice tried to sidle around him. “Unwin, this is inappropriate. You cannot invade my house—”
Her progress was halted by his wide hand wrapping about her upper arm. The breath hissed out between her teeth at the tightness of his grip.
“I did it. I got her to leave. I did it for you.”
She stared up at him. “You shot her horse out from under her that day by the river, didn’t you?”
He smiled. “She fell like a sack of potatoes. I thought she might be dead.” He laughed darkly.
Dead. She pushed at him, at his great immovable chest, at his hand like an iron around her arm. “Unwin, stop. It’s over. She’s gone … and anyway, it’s too late. He cannot have the marriage annulled. They’ve consummated their union. She might be carrying his heir even now—”
He went very still. Betrice panicked. What had she said? What—
Oh, no. “No!”
His gaze was thoughtful. “I’m thinkin’ you had the right idea, tryin’ to rid us of that woman. She made everyone sick, and she took your rightful place—just like Henry took mine.”
Betrice blinked. “What? Henry is my husband!”
Unwin moved in closer until Betrice could smell the sweat on him and the scent of horses. His eyes, a cool, pale blue, held a light of something she only now realized was the lunacy of obsession.
She hadn’t seen it. She’d only thought of her own injured pride, her own dismay at the arrival of the new lady of Amberdell and the loss of all her secret dreams. She’d basked in Unwin’s regard and told herself that she was doing nothing improper, that merely confiding in a friend was not betrayal—
And she’d completely missed the fact that Unwin had fixed his gaze on her—the fact that, apparently, he’d never taken his eyes off her all these years.
A man who did that, a man who continued to dream of a woman so far out of his reach, was a man living in a mad world of his very own.
A man who wished to take her husband’s place.
“She’s on the road back to where she come from,” he said thoughtfully. Betrice could almost hear the mad gears clicking away in his tainted mind. He smiled sweetly at her, insanity alight in his gaze. “There, you see? It’s not too late at all.”
* * *
Ren halted his mount before the wide, welcoming doors of the Springdell farmhouse and leaped easily to the ground. He had questions for Henry, by God—
There, in the soft soil just before his boots, was the hoofprint of a very large horse.
A very large horse with a crack in its right fore.
Something is not right here.
He let himself in, for Springdell had a dearth of staff. Normally, he’d call out, hat in hand like any visitor, but today his business was too pressing for such niceties. He strode into the parlor in search of Henry, and found Betrice instead, standing at the window, twisting her hands into knots.
She started at his entrance, her hands flying to her throat. “L—Lawrence!”
It was all there in her face, quite frankly. She stood pale and shaking, riddled with guilt and self-loathing. As expert as he was in such things, he knew immediately.
She swallowed and took a step forward, though he knew he frightened her at the best of times.
“L-Lawrence, I think I ought to tell you something…”
Chapter 39
Ren had never ridden so hard nor so recklessly in his life. His horse, relatively fresh yet, devoured the road with the long strides of a Thoroughbred.
The carriage had been moving slowly due to Callie’s injuries. The mathematics unfolded in his head, a remnant of training he’d not even known he’d retained.
Everything I have gained back, I would happily expend in defense of her.
If Unwin had left when Betrice claimed, he ought to have caught the party somewhere just ahead.
He topped a hill and saw the Amberdell carriage pulled half into the ditch, the horses taking the opportunity to graze in the high spring grass.
One man lay in the middle of the road. Ren dismounted and knelt beside him. The driver was unconscious, but breathing easily. Ren could only find a single lump on his skull.
Downed with one blow. Useless sod. Then again, the man had not been hired as bodyguard.
Rising, Ren cast about for some sign of Dade. He found Callie’s brother draped across the traces, just behind the team’s hindquarters. He pulled Dade free, half carrying him to the grassy road bank.
Upon swift examination, Ren found that Dade had made somewhat better account of himself than the hapless driver. Dade had numerous bruises on his face and his own knuckles were like raw meat.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recalled being struck down by those very fists not so long ago. Dade knew how to hurt a fellow, all right. Good for him.
It took a few precious moments to rouse him, but Ren knew that Callie would want her brother seen to, no matter what, so he gritted his teeth against the panic and slapped Dade back into consciousness with gentle patience.
Dade opened his eyes at last. To his credit, his first thought was of his sister. “Porter, the bastard took her!”
Ren nodded grimly. “I know. Can I leave you here to see to the driver? I need to—”
“Go!” Dade sat up and waved him on urgently, holding his aching head together with his other hand. “I only wish I knew which way he’s headed.”
Ren looked down at the hoofprints in the soft mud of the road. “I do.”
* * *
Powerful hoofbeats thundered down the road. A man planting his crops nearly a mile away lifted his head with a frown, wondering where anyone would need to go in such a desperate hurry.
Ren bent low over his mount’s neck, the reins easy yet urgent, his heels spurring the horse on whenever its pace began to slow even slightly.
He might not be the man he used to be, but he could still ride with the best of them.
Callie had given him that.
Along with everything else he valued.
Was she frightened? She must be—even she wasn’t insane enough to mistake the danger she was in. He couldn’t think about what Unwin might do to her. God, even being thrown onto the back of a horse must be agonizing for her!
Ren shoved his fears down deep and urged the horse faster.
* * *
Callie tried to keep her balance on th
e back of the plow-horse. She truly did not wish to clutch at the man riding before her, but the big horse’s gait was rough and it was all she could do to keep from being bounced off onto the hard road.
Oh, just fall. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve taken a spill.
But it was a long way down. Her legs had long ago gone numb. She would not be able to catch herself, land properly. No, she would thud to the earth like a sack of flour. An image of her insides bursting out and coating all and sundry in brick-red dust crossed her mind.
Attie would understand the joke. Callie didn’t bother relaying her slightly insane thoughts to her captor.
Then again, it might make him fear her … if he weren’t quite so big, or quite so angry, or quite so certain that something was all her fault.
Of course, lately it seemed like everything was.
Don’t waste time on melancholy! Think!
Well, why shouldn’t she be melancholy? She was going to die soon, wasn’t she? Another jolting bounce made her injured back spasm with agony, stealing her breath, sending lightning bolts of pain through her entire body.
If she could spare a hand to press to her lower spine, she knew she would find her gown wet with blood. The idiot’s rough handling had opened her wound.
That doctor is going to be quite upset when I die despite his fine work.
Dizziness swept her, followed by a wave of fear. Perhaps it was more blood … than she’d thought.
No, stay angry.
By God, if he didn’t kill her soon she was going to take matters into her own hands!
He was mad, that was all. A strange madman had assaulted the carriage for absolutely no reason, possibly killing the hired driver and most definitely injuring Dade, and had thrown her across the back of his twice-damned horse—well, she supposed it wasn’t the blasted horse’s fault, but still!—and galloped away across the countryside!
Mad, definitely.
Dade would follow—except that he’d lain limp and still until she could see him no more in her desperate gaze. Papa and Lysander and Orion and the twins—no, they’d not even realize something was wrong until she and Dade failed to arrive at the prearranged stop this evening.
When She Said I Do Page 33
