That was the crux of it. She’d kept secrets from him the whole while.
“I was afraid of what you’d think of me, damn it!” she cried.
The irony was painful. He’d been afraid of the same thing—what she would think of him if he told her about his past.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I hoped I could make it all go away, and you’d never have to know what they were plotting. Never have to know that my family considered thievery an acceptable choice.”
“You were protecting them.”
“No.” She scrubbed her face. “Yes. I don’t know.” She cast him an imploring glance. “I created that parure before you even started courting me. I’d always helped Papa craft the imitation jewels to adorn his clocks, and I was good at it. They made it sound so simple—I would fashion the fake, then they could sell it and make enough money to lighten our troubles. That’s what Gerhart said.”
“And you went along with whatever he said,” he grumbled, remembering how her sister and brother-in-law had treated her.
She faced him, taking a belligerent stance. “Jacoba and I owed Gerhart our very lives. You don’t know what things were like for us after Papa died. No one would frequent a clock shop owned by two girls, and Papa hadn’t left us much money. Then Gerhart married Jacoba and gave us both a home. If not for him—”
“You and I would have had these ten years together. So don’t make excuses for him,” Victor said in a hard tone.
All the starch went out of her spine. “I’m not,” she whispered. “I’m making excuses for me. For why I agreed to make the parure in the first place.”
He saw the guilt on her face before she pivoted away, and it tore at him. He caught her arm to turn her toward him. When she just stared down at the floor, it drove a stake through his heart.
“That isn’t entirely your fault,” he said hoarsely. “Gerhart played on your feelings of indebtedness. What you don’t seem to understand is that he didn’t marry Jacoba and take you in out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because he saw that he could use both of you to his own advantage. I always thought so.”
She still wouldn’t look at him. “You never said that.”
“No, and I should have. It was just . . . I was coming into a new family, and I didn’t want to create trouble between you and them.” He brushed a strand of her hair out of her face. “And you seemed to think well of them.”
“I loved my sister,” she said fervently. “She was the only mother I ever knew. And I was grateful for what Gerhart had done. I owed him the clothes on my back, the food in my belly—”
“For the first few years after your father died, perhaps,” Victor said, his temper flaring. “But after that, Gerhart got what he wanted out of you. He sent you out to work at the jeweler’s when you were only fifteen. When I met you, you were already earning an excellent income while he played cards with his friends in the shop, letting it run into the ground. You did more than your part in supporting those two.”
“Not according to them,” she said in a dead voice. “According to him and my sister, I was an ungrateful little whiner who couldn’t see how lucky I was to have them looking after me. And I believed them!” Her tone grew anguished. “I never guessed that she would ever be so . . . cruel as to drug me and tell me the lies she did that night. How could she have betrayed me so? How could I have let her?”
She finally lifted her gaze to his. “I regret that more than you can imagine.” Her breath came in tortured gasps now, as if she fought tears. “I regret that I was such a stupid little . . . mouse of a girl . . . that I never even saw—”
“Shh,” he murmured and pulled her into his arms. “Shh, lieveke.”
The endearment seemed to do something to her, for she tensed in his arms. “I’m so sorry. So . . . very . . . sorry . . .”
If she’d been weeping and protesting her innocence, he might have kept his heart hardened against her. But when she was blaming herself and struggling not to cry, he couldn’t take it. He’d always been a softhearted dolt when it came to her, and apparently that hadn’t changed.
Later he would make her tell him what she and her family had done with the jewels, why she’d come here alone. But for now, he needed to comfort her. To hold her.
To kiss her.
The moment his lips met hers, she froze. Then, like snow in sunshine, she melted, her mouth just as sweet as he remembered, soft and giving and warm. While he was kissing her, he could forget the past, forget why they’d been torn apart, forget that he’d come here for vengeance and justice. He could lose himself in her and pretend that nothing had changed between them.
She jerked back, her eyes dark and startled, her lips trembling. “Wait—I have questions, and I know that you must have some, too.”
“Not yet. Not now.” He dragged her fully against him. “Let me have this first.”
He kissed her again. And again and again, savoring the mouth he’d forgotten he’d missed, smelling the violet water in her hair. It was like sinking into a hot bath after a long day.
Except that instead of relaxing him, it drove him into a frenzy. Every inch of him was already hard for her, and she made it even worse by arching up against him, grabbing his head in her hands and kissing him back, feeding on his mouth as he was feeding on hers. She still wanted him, too.
She was his. Still his.
“Oh, Victor,” she whispered against his lips, “we shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?” He backed her toward the settee. “We’re married.”
“Yes, but . . . I’m not the same woman you knew.”
“You look the same.” He sat down on the settee and dragged her onto his lap so he could brand her neck and her shoulder and her throat with hot kisses. “You taste the same.” He cupped her breast, reveling in the moan she gave before she leaned into his hand. “You feel the same.”
When her nipple tightened beneath his caress, he realized that there were no enhancements in her riding habit to make her breasts seem bigger. “Well, mostly the same.” He stroked her other breast, too. “These are a bit larger than I remember. However did you manage that?”
Her eyes shot to him, looking startled, even frightened. “What do you mean?”
“I’m teasing you, that’s all,” he murmured, not wanting her to withdraw from him again.
“Oh.” She dropped her gaze to where his hands fondled her shamelessly. “Well . . . I . . . I was young when we parted. I guess I grew a bit.”
“Trust me,” he said as he kneaded her breasts, enjoying the feel of them and the way her cheeks flushed, “I’m not complaining.”
“What man ever would?” she said dryly.
He laughed. It wasn’t something the old Isa would have said. “True. And you’re right—you aren’t the same woman. But I’m not the same man, either.”
Sadness spread over her face. “No, you’re not.” She seized his hands as her eyes met his. “There was always a darkness in you, and I accepted that because I knew it came from your service in the war. But you were never hard, as you are now. What happened to make you so hard?”
He stiffened. “My wife deserted me, that’s what happened. I was left to pick up the pieces and be accused of—”
When her expression turned troubled, he could have bitten off his tongue. Right now he wanted her in his bed. He didn’t want to dredge through the past.
“Accused of what?” she whispered. “If you didn’t leave Amsterdam the way Jacoba and Gerhart said, then you must have been around when they found the imitations at the palace.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He tried to pull her close for another kiss, but she twisted free and left his lap to stand staring down at him.
“Tell me what happened,” she said firmly. “I need to know.”
“Why?” he snapped. “So you can be sure that I kept your secret? That no one is searching for you and your family?” When she recoiled, he rose from the settee with a curse. “I’m sorry, Isa
. I didn’t mean that.”
She held her ground, though he towered over her. “I think you did. But I suppose you have good reason.” She lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. “Please, Victor, I have to know what they did to you. Did they blame you for the theft? Or did you leave before they could? You said you went to Antwerp.”
“After my life had been destroyed.” Shoving her hand away, he stalked past her to the fireplace. “Since no one was ever going to hire me in Amsterdam again, I had to try to find work elsewhere.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes, damn you!” he growled, whirling on her. “Because of you.”
9
ISA WENT COLD. “So it’s my fault you’ve become such a hard man,” she whispered. “You blame me for what happened to you.” How could he not? She’d let Jacoba and Gerhart convince her that he would do something entirely contrary to his nature.
And he’d had ten years in which to curse her name, ten years to turn into the bitter man who faced her now.
“I did blame you. But now I don’t know what to think, who to blame.”
At least he was as confused as she was. “Do you think I’m lying about not being directly involved in the theft?”
“Of course not.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “It’s just . . . Damn it, I don’t understand how you could have trusted them! How you could have thought, even for one moment, that I would help them steal something?”
“You thought the same thing of me. How is that any different?”
“But I didn’t believe it,” he said fiercely. “Not at first.”
She swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
“Since there was no evidence for a week that anything had been stolen, I thought you’d left me and that was all. Out of embarrassment, I kept quiet about the reason for your disappearance. I told the jeweler that you and your family had gone to Brussels to take care of an ill relative.”
He clenched his fists at his sides. “I couldn’t accept that you’d deserted me. I thought—I hoped—you might still return. I would have gone to look for you, but aside from the fact that I didn’t know where to look, and had no money for the search, there was the problem of my position. The jeweler had kindly allowed me to stay on—so I didn’t dare risk that, when I thought the entire reason for your leaving me was my lack of a post.”
“Oh, Victor . . .” she murmured, regret stabbing her yet again.
Ignoring her sympathy, he glanced away. “Besides, your family had supposedly gone to look for you, and I was certain that they would convince you to do your duty by your husband.” He muttered a curse. “I should have known better. They’d left no address, no way to reach them. The whole thing had the markings of a nefarious scheme. But they’d also left their furnishings behind in their house, so I assumed that they would return eventually.”
“It was all mortgaged to the hilt, even the furniture,” she admitted sheepishly.
“Yes, I found that out later, when the creditors came looking for your family and thought I might know where they’d gone.” His jaw went taut. “They weren’t the only ones.”
Her heart began to pound as the ramifications of that sank in. “Because the imitations had been discovered.”
His gaze was bleak and accusing. “Yes.”
“So they did blame you.”
“What do you think?” he snapped, echoing her earlier words. “I was the guard. Either I or the jeweler was in charge of the diamonds until they were taken to the palace. And I’d never told anyone that I’d left the shop briefly in Jacoba’s care. I’d had no reason to; I thought it was a private matter between my wife and me. So I became the main suspect—the one they were convinced had made the switch and kept the real jewels.”
“Oh, Lord, no.” She ached over how that must have mortified a proud man like him. “But once you told them about Jacoba, surely they shifted the blame to her.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Perhaps they would have, if I’d told them. But I didn’t.”
“Why in heaven’s name not?”
“Because it would also have shifted the blame to you, since all three of you were missing. And you were my wife. They believed you to be under my control. If there was any suspicion that you’d stolen the jewels, then it would become my responsibility, too.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Perhaps not, but the law is rarely fair.” He threaded his fingers through his hair. “In any case, I would have seemed even more culpable if I’d admitted that I’d left Jacoba alone in the shop at night. And that would have led to questions about why I’d done so, and the truth would have come out about your leaving me, which would have led them to think there was some plot afoot . . .”
His gaze fixed on her. “I couldn’t risk it. Especially since I wasn’t sure that you’d stolen anything. I was still praying that the three of you would return to defend yourselves. It didn’t make sense to risk my life—or yours, for that matter—on my uncertain suspicions, when I knew the authorities couldn’t prove anything.”
“So you covered up Jacoba’s involvement?” she said incredulously. “And mine?”
A steely note entered his voice. “I did what I had to, to save myself. I told them the same lie about your going to visit a sick relative in Brussels. I knew they had no evidence linking me to the crime. They searched our apartment, the Hendrix house, and your father’s shop and found nothing—no tools for creating false diamonds, no money, nothing to incriminate any of us.”
“Jacoba took all of that with us,” she said quietly.
“Of course. And without evidence, and the real diamonds, they couldn’t very well prosecute anyone—not when there was still the possibility that someone had broken into the palace to make the switch. I figured it was better to be taken for a dupe than for a complicit dupe. Holding firm and pretending ignorance when they questioned me was the only way to save myself.”
“And us.”
He dragged in a heavy breath. “Yes.”
In all her wondering about what had happened to him, she’d never imagined that he’d been fending off authorities who’d tried to blame him for the theft. No wonder he’d looked fit to throttle her when he’d first seen her. “And they believed you.”
“Eventually.” There was a wealth of bitterness in that word.
“What did they do to you? Did they put you in gaol?”
The ache in her voice must have registered, for he got a lost look on his face that sent a dagger to her heart.
Then his eyes iced over. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s in the past.”
“Clearly not, given the things you’ve said.”
He walked up to snag her about the waist. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” she said, straining away from him. “I have to know what my actions wrought.”
He leaned close to nuzzle her hair. “Your actions wrought nothing. You’ve made it clear that your family was responsible, not you.”
She could tell from the edge in his voice that he still didn’t quite believe that. Neither did she, entirely. “But I let them use me. Use us. I believed them when they told me you had agreed to help them. Meanwhile, you—” A sob choked her. She clasped his head between her hands, forced him to look into her eyes. “Meanwhile, you were what? I can’t know how much I have to make amends for if I don’t know what happened.”
He stared at her a long moment, features rigid, breath coming fierce and fast. Then his breathing slowed, and something more frightening than anger sparked in his gaze. “You want to make amends?” he said in a harsh rasp as he moved her hands to his neck before gripping her waist. “Then share my bed. Tonight. Now. Prove to me that my memories of our marriage aren’t false. That you really did care for me once.”
The dark glitter in his eyes told her he was serious.
So did the terrifying thrill along her spine. And the idea of being with him again sent a yearning through her that made her belly tighten and h
er throat go dry.
“Making love never solves anything,” she protested weakly.
A smile ghosted over his lips before he bent to rake kisses along her ear, her cheek, her throat. “It always worked for us.” Then he paused, and his hands tensed on her waist. “But perhaps it didn’t work quite so well for you and some other man.”
“There’s been no other man in my bed since you,” she admitted.
He let out a long breath. Then dragged in another. “Right. And your ‘Rupert’ is just a friend,” he growled, a distinct note of jealousy in his voice.
She jerked back to eye him askance. “You’ve met Rupert. You’ve seen us together. Do you really believe there’s more than friendship between us?”
He gazed steadily at her. “Angus Gordon says you’re in love with the fool.”
“Mr. Gordon wants me and Rupert to be in love. But it’s wishful thinking on his part, nothing more. He assumes that I’m free, which we both know isn’t the case.” She forced a smile. “Even if I were, can you imagine me as a baroness? It’s absurd.”
He didn’t laugh. “Not absurd at all,” he said solemnly. “You’d make a splendid baroness. Just not for a boy like Lochlaw.” His gaze scoured her, rousing heat in whatever part it touched. “You belong in a man’s bed, not a boy’s. You belong in my bed.”
“Vic—”
He cut her off with a devouring kiss that shook all her defenses.
She couldn’t fight him. She was engulfed by the essence of him—scent, taste, heat. It fogged her mind, destroyed her good judgment.
He gripped her arms, lifting her up on tiptoes for hot, ravenous kisses that stoked her own need, and she slung her arms about his neck to keep from teetering. She’d forgotten how strong he was, how much she used to love the very size of him. She’d forgotten how he dwarfed her with his height and broad shoulders and powerful chest.
When the Rogue Returns Page 11
