by Wilde, Tanya
The count chuckled, pulling him from the memory. “You could not have chosen a woman with fewer brothers?”
“There was never any choice,” Drew drawled. “Only ever her.”
“You Murrays have a way of falling in love at birth,” Lachlan spat.
“Is that an insult?” Drew looked over to the count. “I think he meant that as an insult.”
The count nodded. “Then, do you answer their questions, or do we fight through them?”
Lachlan and Kieran scoffed.
Hugh and Duncan shared a concerned look.
Gregor folded his arms over his chest.
Roxburgh lifted a single eyebrow.
The beat of silence extended. “Enough,” Roxburgh finally growled when the tension became a bit ridiculous. “Explain yourself, Murray. And don’t leave out any detail, however small.”
Drew couldn’t help himself. He smiled. Much like the count had grinned earlier, only more threatening. Years of boxing had honed Drew’s skill at reading an opponent. He scanned the room.
Six brothers had beaten him the day of the funeral. Three of them were in this room. Two more had accompanied Isla out. The final one presently in London. Duncan and Hugh would try and hold them back should a fight break out, just as they had that day. The two by the door made it clear they’d like another fight. Gregor would not intervene on either count. That left Roxburgh. Duke or not, Adair had always been a wild card. In your corner, he had your back. As your opponent, he went straight for the throat.
His gaze flicked from Kieran to Lachlan. They were too desperate to pummel him—it would influence Adair.
Simply put, Drew wasn’t leaving this room without a fight.
“I will answer your questions,” he drawled, grin widening. “But first tell me this: just how small is the smallest detail?”
ISLA’S EYES FLICKED to the door for the hundredth time. And for a hundredth time, he did not walk through it. Yet as badly as she wanted him to step over that threshold, she equally hoped to never lay eyes on him again. She wanted to leap into his embrace, she also wanted to run away as far as the road could take her.
Drew Murray.
She shut her eyes as if that alone could block out the image of his face and the naked vulnerability that had sculpted the small creases of his features when she had turned her back and strode out of the room an hour ago. She swallowed a sob of panic, ruthlessly pushing it back down into whatever shadows it had emerged from. The shock, the bolt of lightning to her belly, could not be bandaged with a look of torment.
Could it be dressed at all?
Her lashes lifted as she glanced at Eliza and Mrs. Cooper. Then flicked beyond them to see the maid sashaying to and fro and Mr. Shelby and Lady Amanda once again in the throes of love, their heads bent together as they whispered what she presumed were promises of eternal love.
She was forever changed by this peculiar little inn. Forever changed by its occupants.
Isla circled her fingers around her tankard of ale.
“Dammit, lass, you have drunk four servings of that vile stuff already,” Callum muttered. “Adair is going to kill us for letting you even have one.”
“Leave the girl alone,” Mrs. Cooper admonished. “You have put her through enough.”
“We have put her through enough?” Boyd sputtered.
“She ran away from you, did she not?” Mrs. Cooper challenged.
Isla nodded in agreement.
Eliza gasped. “I say, is that Mr. Ross not wearing an eye patch?”
Isla jerked her head to the doors. Her heart began to beat a little faster.
Sure enough, the rest of her brothers, coats and shirts in disarray, entered the dining room; their faces bruised, blood coating each one of their lips. Behind them came the count, sporting a bruised eye, and Drew, oh Drew, with his hair disheveled, but otherwise no worse for wear, following last. Her eyes trailed anxiously over him from top to bottom, not missing the popped button of his shirt nor the slight tear in his breeches before she realized she was not supposed to care. She quickly averted her gaze.
Of course, the ale in her blood demanded satisfaction.
She just wasn’t sure from whom.
Boyd and Callum jumped to their feet. “What the bloody hell happened?”
“Settle down,” Adair said, his gaze sliding to Isla. “It’s over.”
The finality in his tone caused a rush of dizziness to flow through her already-ale-laced blood. Isla slowly rose from her chair.
“Over,” she said deadpan. “Done.” She cocked her head. “Never to be spoken of again.” She pointed a finger at Adair. “That is your method, right, brother?”
“Lass,” Boyd warned, infusing a note of steel into his voice. He reached out to steady her when she swayed slightly.
Isla swatted his hand away. “This is the perfect time.”
“Nay, it’s really not,” Callum growled.
“I disagree.” Isla glared at him, at all her brothers. “If this is to be my last night, if this is to be over, then I shall spend it enjoying myself.”
“How much have you had to drink?” Adair asked, nodding at the tankards scattered across the table.
“Four, brother,” Isla declared. She saluted her brothers. “It’s a slow night.”
Behind Adair, her kin stood owl-eyed, their mouths dropping open one by one. She gave a satisfied nod, finding their blatant shock a marvelous addition to the situation.
“How many brothers do you have?” Eliza murmured in awe. “And are they all unattached?”
Isla glanced at her friend and back at Adair. “Low and behold, Eliza, the Duke of Roxburgh, unattached and in want of a wife.” She pointed at each of her brothers with her tankard. “Aye, all eight are unattached.”
She chanced a glance at Drew.
No leather patch. No pretense.
Just his blue eyes burrowing right into her soul.
“Tell me, brother duke,” Isla asked, her gaze slipping to him once more. “Have you ever stared into flashing eyes? I have.” Her tankard lifted a notch. “You have such eyes.” She sliced her tankard to the count. “You have such eyes.” Her tankard slanted to Drew. “And you. You have such eyes. But yours don’t probe and observe. Nay, yours steal pieces of me, tiny slivers each time you glance at me, each straight from my soul.”
“Isla,” Callum implored.
She swatted Callum’s outstretched hand away. “I’ve said my piece, brother.” She turned to the count. “You know the truth, Count. Pray share your opinion.” She pointed to herself. “I know the truth.” She paused. “I know the truth now.”
The count inclined his head. “The truth, mademoiselle, has a thousand faces. We decide what truth we wear.”
“The truth,” Eliza chimed in, so suddenly that all eyes jerked to her, “is that I count ten grim faces and too many sharp-tongued men standing shoulder to shoulder.” She shooed them with the motion of her wrist. “Disperse.”
Mrs. Cooper chuckled.
“Isla,” Adair began, but she stopped him with a finger.
“Eliza is right, Adair.” Isla saluted the woman and then turned back to her brother. Copper keys chimed in her head, signaling imprisonment in a tall tower for her brothers would certainly lock her away after tonight. And yet, she wanted to laugh. In his face. Belly laughter. For reasons he could never comprehend. Not in a thousand years. Not until he had loved.
Adair’s lips thinned. “This is unaccepta—”
Mrs. Cooper’s tankard slammed down on the table. “Leave the poor girl alone, Duke.”
Adair grimaced. “I beg your pardon, mada—”
Mr. Donnelly burst into the dining room, naked as the day he was born.
“Fire!”
Chapter 20
Drew took the winding steps leading to the third floor two at a time. Damn Adair MacCallan to hell and back. First, the man had taunted him, then questioned him for bloody hours, asking things that could have been answered in an hour�
�half if Drew had been able to get to the point—had every bloody MacCallan there not voiced his opinion on every response he gave.
His breath still caught at the vision of her whisky-colored eyes; the pain in them had been hard to take. She had tried but failed to hide her hurt behind false bravado. Drew could tell. Isla had never been one to hide her feelings. It was one of the traits he loved about her—she always wore her heart on her sleeve.
And he had hurt her. Badly.
Drew refused to lose her. She was the one who gave him the strength to battle all the long-suffering pain and guilt that fought inside him with every breath he took. She alone had calmed the stormy waves of self-loathing.
He rapped on her door.
“Whoever it is, go away.”
“Isla, lass, can we talk?”
Hiccup.
Drew shut his eyes and placed his hand on the door. Of course she did not. She must hate him. “Very well, lass. I will talk, and you need only listen. If you still don’t wish to see me after, then I will go.”
Silence.
Drew nodded and lowered himself to sit on the floor, his back against the door. “After Ewan’s death, I couldn’t face the world. It hurt so much I could scarcely breathe at times. It was almost like death, but not quite, for death ends. The pain I felt went on forever.”
Drew dragged both hands over his face.
“The memory of that day is as vivid as the fight itself. I can still smell the sweat, the scent of copper blood as fist hit flesh, the sound of the folks cheering from the sideline. I can still feel each blow to my body, the pain shooting up my knuckles—the taste of bile at the sight of my best friend going down after that final blow. There is no escaping that day, Isla. It will live in me for as long as I do.”
He rested the back of his head against the door and sighed.
“I woke up each day—faced each day—by holding on to a dream, the dream that one day, somehow, it wouldn’t hurt as much. Each time I thought I would drown, suffocate in my memories, the image of your smile dawned in my mind, and the world looked a little brighter. I missed you so much. But your family had broken ties with ours, and I didn’t have the patience to wait them out. I had to be near you.”
Drew shut his eyes against the memories of those days.
“At first it was torture, living among your family, feeling the same pain in them that lived in me. Worse, even, because Ewan was not my brother. But with time, working hard labor, helping your family any way I could, it got better. And, of course, there was you.”
Drew swallowed. “Happy memories, even the sweetest ones, fade. They fade more quickly than you may think. That is not how it is with the worst memories. They haunt and plunder, never leaving, never fading. You cannot look back to good memories to banish them. The only way to fight them is with new sweet memories, and even then, they are never far. The way you looked at me earlier, like I broke your heart and would never be able to fix it again, that memory, like the memory of my fight with your brother—it will forever be a stain on my soul.”
Hiccup.
“I want to be with you, Isla, near you even if it means nothing more than to breathe the same air.”
He massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to find words.
“Since you were a wee bairn, I’ve loved you. I can’t give you a thousand reasons why. Or I suppose I can,” Drew paused. “I can tell you your eyes remind me of those golden particles you find floating in whisky if you look closely enough. I can tell you your smile sets a thousand galaxies alight in my soul. I can tell you your hair burns as brightly as one hundred sunsets.”
Drew inhaled a shaky breath. “But these reasons will not soothe your disappointed heart. They are just words, after all. But what I feel for you—no reason matters more than that.”
Hiccup.
Drew sighed.
“I did not know how long I would be in disguise around you, but I was prepared for it to be the rest of my life. The reason for that is due to the second worst day of my life—the day I was dragged from Ewan’s funeral and told that I could never see you again.”
He gave a shaky laugh.
“After Ewan’s death, after a month spent wallowing in grief and self-loathing, I was forced to come to an unbearable conclusion. You had been ripped away from my life as surely as Ewan had been ripped away from this world.”
He shut his eyes.
“Facing the prospect of never hearing your soft laughter, never bearing witness to the humor in your eyes, wasn’t a thought I wished to consider.”
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He blinked them away.
“It sparked something wild in me, and I formed an even crazier plan to keep you in my life, even if it meant living a life of servitude. I told myself I deserved it, deserved to atone for my sins for the rest of my life.”
He sighed. “When it comes to you, my only difficulty has always been keeping my distance.”
Hiccup.
“I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I am asking for it anyway.”
“The scar on your face, your nose—did my brothers do that to you?”
“Lass . . .”
“Tell me.”
Drew sighed. “Aye, I did not leave the funeral silently.”
“I didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“I waited for your family to finish paying their respects. Six of your brothers didn’t leave, though.”
“Patrick didn’t have a scar.”
“I didn’t leave silently then, either.”
Silence stretched between them.
“We are returning home in the morning.”
His gut twisted into a knot. Not from fear, but dread.
“Is that what you want, lass?” he finally asked. “To return home?”
Nerves formed a bitter lump in his throat. How could he get through to her? Could he even get through to her?
Tense and on edge, he waited for her to say something, do something. Open the door. Change her mind. Give him another chance. But Drew was keenly aware that he might have squandered all his chances. There might be none left.
Was this truly the end of their story?
ISLA FLATTENED HER palm on the door. Drew was on the other side. He was killing her, slowly chipping away at the wall she’d erected in the common room—a rather hastily assembled wall. She imagined his face, so bright and vivid, as though he were standing in front of her and not barricaded behind that wall, like he had been, in a more metaphorical sense, for so long. She needed this barrier. If she allowed herself to look into his eyes, she’d break; she just knew it. In her mind, envisioning him on his knees, she could fight. She could not fight against the man himself.
She was powerless.
And she was angry at him for it. But not as furious as she was at her brothers for beating a man when he had already hit rock-bottom. The worst part was that, knowing Drew, she was certain he must have believed he deserved it. Her brothers had better be prepared—Isla would give them hell for what they’d done.
“Can we not talk about this? Not even for a moment?”
She shook her head. That moment would cost her soul. Admittedly, that might be a bit theatrical—perhaps it was the ale speaking—but it sure felt that way. Funnily enough, what angered Isla the most was not the measures he had taken to disguise himself. It wasn’t even that he hadn’t revealed his identity. She understood that to some degree. At the very least, she could relate to his actions. She could even forgive him for leaving as Patrick Moray and returning as Neill Ross.
But he had deceived her all this time, made her believe he had abandoned her. How many blows did he expect her heart to take?
“Are you going to make me break down the door, lass?” he murmured. “If you do not at least acknowledge you’ve heard me, I might think you’ve been abruptly snatched away by a ghost.”
Isla sighed. He would do it, too. He’d sleep in front of her door if that was what it took. Drew Murray was bullheade
d that way. She lowered her head to rest it against her knees.
“Ask me anything, love,” he whispered through the door. “Or say anything. Just don’t leave before you do.”
This was the hardest part—sorting through all the questions and confusion to ask the one question that could answer them all. Hugh had promised to take her home at the break of dawn, snow or no snow. Storm or no storm.
Speaking of her brother, Isla did have one question.
“Why are my brothers allowing you to harass me?”
A lengthy pause.
“That’s the question you want answered?”
“Nay,” she murmured. “But I’m contemplating who to murder first.”
She heard a soft curse. “Roxburgh gave me one opportunity to explain myself to you. If you don’t open the door, lass, they won’t allow me another one.”
Isla let out a shaky breath and shut her eyes. She had approached Hugh for this reason. He was the only brother who did not boss her around or spew ultimatums. What happened with her and Drew was between them, not the rest of the world, not her brothers.
“You must have one question, at least?” His soft, tender voice came through the door.
There were so many, but only one might bring the turmoil inside her to a close. “How do I know what’s real and what isn’t?” Her heart pounded as she asked.
“I am real. You are real.”
“What of Patrick? What of Mr. Ross? You are those men too?”
“They were real, lass. Their hopes and dreams are my hopes and dreams. There is nothing false beyond the spectacles and eye patch. Everything else is . . .” A soft sigh. “Surmountable.”
“If everything is so surmountable, Drew, you should have told me all this the moment you knew I never blamed you for my brother’s death.”
“By then I thought it too late.”
“But you planned on telling me today?”
“I planned on telling you the moment you got on Handsome’s back at MacCallan Castle.”
Isla nodded. She’d surmised as much.
“I am a woman now, Drew, not the girl you abandoned.”
