Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123)

by Coulter, Catherine

  Jason stood there watching Lorry slow Dodger. He watched him pat his neck continuously, just as Jason had taught him, holding him firm with his knees, holding his right arm, the blood oozing out between his fingers.

  “Oh God, he’s been shot,” Hallie said blankly. “I didn’t see. Oh, blessed hell. Jason, who would have shot at Dodger?”

  It was then that the rest of the spectators realized that Dodger’s jockey had a bullet through his arm. There was a chorus of outrage, and of curses.

  Jason said, “Someone who wanted to win badly. Everyone is upset about this now, but truth be told, it won’t change anything. You know what, Hallie, I’m thinking the owner who hired the first man to shoot also hired the second. And we’ve got him. We’ll see if Henry and Quincy and our other men can find the man who shot Lorry.” Excitement pounded through him. Dodger had won and Lorry appeared to be all right.

  As it turned out, the bullet had barely nicked him, but Jason knew it must hurt badly. He and Hallie stood over Lorry as the physician bound him up. After thanking the doctor, Jason and Hallie turned to find themselves surrounded by a dozen excited Sherbrookes, laughing all of them and slapping both Hallie and Jason on the back. Jason realized, as he looked into all those beloved faces, that they were all so very happy he’d won because they still saw him as the wounded man who might bolt again. Fact was, Jason thought, hugging his aunt Mary Rose close, he hadn’t thought about that horrible day for a while now, perhaps nearly a month. He looked over at Hallie, laughing with his uncle Tysen. She was enjoying herself immensely, but he saw her looking around whenever she thought she could get away with it.

  She was looking for him. He was suddenly filled with warmth and a soft sort of pleasure that made his chest two inches wider. Jason turned, grinning, at a tug on his sleeve. It was Henry. “Master Jason, we’ve got the blighter over there by Dodger’s wagon. The second blighter, the one wot shot Lorry, I’m sorry to say he got away.”

  “We’ll find out all we need to know from the first one, Henry.” He went over and grabbed his wife. “We have some business to attend to, Uncle Tysen. Excuse us for a moment.”

  “Well, at least Henry got the first villain,” Hallie said. “I want to question this fellow myself, I want to grind him into the dirt. How could he do that? As for that other fellow—to shoot a jockey, it’s disgraceful. Jason?”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me that no one tried with Charles Grandison because of the consequences. Lorry kicked Ganymede’s jockey off his back.”

  “I don’t think Charles is going to say anything since his jockey tried to take Lorry down first. Charles should have realized I’d teach Lorry to fight as dirty as needed.”

  “If Charles does try anything, I’ll have something to say to him. Now, Jason, I want to beat Charles’s consequences.”

  Jason hugged her, felt her heart against his chest. “Yes, we will. Ah good, James is bragging on Dodger like the proud papa. He’ll keep everything under control whilst we deal with this idiot.”

  The idiot was young, that was Hallie’s first thought, his clothes filthy, as if he’d slept in this field for a good two days before the race. Probably searching for the best spot from which to shoot, she thought, her hand clenching at her side. He was sitting on the ground, his back against the right rear wheel of Dodger’s traveling coach. Henry stood on one side of him, Quincy and Horace on the other.

  Hallie stood over him, hands on hips. “Your boots are a disgrace,” she said, and kicked his right foot.

  He looked up at her, eyes widened. “Aren’t ye a purty little thing, missus, all that lovely hair on yer head, sweet breath flowing over me, each word ye speak like bells chiming beautiful music. I appreciates beauty, so the beauty should appreciate me, don’t ye think?”

  “No.”

  “Now yer’re saying ye don’t like me boots?” He gave her a young man’s cocky grin. “Ye want to polish ’em all up fer me?”

  “No, I’m going to have your boots pulled off and you’re going to walk over a bed of nails. Hot nails. What do you think of that?”

  “Ye’re a young lady, I seen ye wi’ that fella over there. Now me, missus, I could show ye some real fun iffen ye’d—”

  “Are you mad, you moron? Look at that fella over there.”

  He looked. “Well, meybe not,” he allowed. “I don’t knows why I’m here. These bully boys grabbed me where I was taking me nap and—”

  Jason said, “What’s your name?”

  “I done forgit,” he said and spat. “I demands ye lets me go. I didn’t do nuthin’, I’m just ’ere to see all the swells.”

  “Nice gun you’ve got here,” Hallie said. “Are you utterly stupid? Look at how dirty you’ve let it become. I’ll bet you Mr. Blaystock gave it to you all clean and primed, and yet—”

  “No, tweren’t like that a’tal. I—”

  “Mr. Blaystock gave you a dirty gun? He expected you to shoot a horse or a jockey with a dirty gun?”

  “No, ’e—well, stick me thumb in me nose. I don’t know wot ye’re jawin’ about. Smart mouth on yer, missus, enough to make a man scurry to ’ide ’is privates. Listen to me, little girl, I don’t know no Mr. Blaystock. Who is this fancy cove?”

  “You were going to shoot at one of the horses,” Jason said. “Were you aiming at any one in particular?”

  “Dunno nuthin’ about it.”

  Hallie went down on her knees beside the young man and grabbed his dirty shirt collar in her hand. “You listen to me, you miserable varmint, my husband is going to send you to Botany Bay. Do you know what that is? It’s a place halfway around the world that’s filled with strange bugs who burrow inside your ear while you’re sleeping and suck the blood out of your head—if you survive your voyage there. Did you know the sun is so hot over there that you’ll explode after a while? That is, if the bugs don’t drain you first.”

  The young man had clearly heard of Botany Bay, and chewed his lips frantically. “I ain’t got that much blood in me ’ead to start with. No, no, missus, ye can’t send me there, ye can’t.”

  Jason snapped his fingers. “You’ll be gone by Friday.”

  “Think of that sun burning through the top of your bloodless head. It will shrivel right up.”

  “I thought ye said I’d explode.”

  “One or the other. It depends on the bugs. Now, which horse did Mr. Blaylock want you to shoot?”

  “Jest the jockey, not the racer. Ye only has the one jockey, it’d put ye right out o’ business.”

  “What is your name?”

  He gave Hallie a sour look, shook his head.

  She said, “Botany Bay. Friday.”

  “I’m William Donald Kindred, the proud fruit of me pa’s loins, now filled with gin, not seed. I ain’t niver done nuthin’ like this, but ye see, me ma is real sick, me little brother too, an’—”

  “You will remain with us until I have verified that you are who you say you are, Mr. Kindred,” Jason said.

  “I don’t want to go to Botany Bay! Don’t put me name on no bill of ladin’. Don’t ye send me to the bugs!”

  Hallie said, “Then you’d best be a very cooperative prisoner from this moment on, don’t you think? For goodness’ sake, polish those filthy boots.”

  Jason took her hand, kissed her fingers, saw she was looking at his mouth, and smiled at her. “That was well done, Hallie. An excellent questioning technique. Mr. Blaystock, huh?”

  “I saw my father do that once, worked like a charm. Hmm.” She frowned, tapped a lovely shod foot.

  Jason said, “What is it? You guessed right.”

  “I know him,” Hallie said finally, looking back at the man who was now standing, his hands tied behind him, Horace’s big hand around his arm. “Yes, I’m sure of it now.”

  Jason waited, didn’t say a thing.

  “I saw him hold Lord Grimsby’s horse once when I was in Eastbourne, in front of Mountbank’s Stable off High Street.”

  “Lord Grims
by,” Jason repeated. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Lord Grimsby had just spoken a few words to his wife, and was off to a tavern, once she was out of sight. I heard him yell something to this man. I’m sure it was our Mr. Kindred.”

  “So,” Jason said, looking at the man now walking between Henry, Quincy, and Horace. “He’s not stupid, our dirty young man with his seedy-looking boots. He realized very quickly he could shift the blame onto Mr. Blaystock. He was quite smooth. Interesting.”

  “Yes, it is. What are we going to do, Jason?”

  Jason smiled down at her, saw her tongue slide over her bottom lip, sighed deep in his throat, kissed her hard, and stepped away from her. “What I’m going to do is try to keep my hands off you until we’re home. Er, Hallie, I meant to ask you, do you really want that chair to be at the foot of the bed?”

  “You’re right. My gowns never land on the chair. I know, I’ll move the chair in front of the armoire. It faces the window and such a lovely view it is, don’t you agree?”

  Jason stared down at her, fascinated and appalled.

  “I’m joking, Jason. I’m joking.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “This one is too close.” Hallie kissed the long thin scar high on the inside of his left thigh.

  “Yes, much too close,” Jason said, and tried not to think of her mouth caressing that scar he always noticed when he was bathing because it had been too close, of her palm now lying flat on his belly, fingers splayed. He was trying his best not to shudder like a palsied man. He said only, “Hallie.” Odd how whispering her name in moments like this flowed so steadily through him now, warm and strong. He said her name again because it felt so good, because her breath was warm against his flesh.

  She looked up the length of his body to his beautiful face, stretched up to kiss his belly, then looked at his face again. “Not long ago I would have been alarmed that I was causing you distress. But not now.” She lowered her head, kissed the scar again, her touch so light he wanted to cry. “How did it happen?”

  “What? Oh, the cut on my leg. James managed to get under my guard, poked his wooden sword into my belly, and I toppled backward over a log. A small and unfortunately very sharp branch was sticking up, and it tore right through my britches and got me.”

  “Were you old enough to be mortified when your mother wanted to take care of you?”

  “Oh yes, but my father saved me, bless him for all time, cleaned me up himself.” And he said her name again. “Hallie.”

  She traced the thin scar over his right hipbone, the result of being thrown off his pony when he was six years old, he told her. Jason believed it was all over for him when she licked that scar, her fingers curling around him now, and he, quite simply, wanted to drum his heels against the mattress, and die. Thank God he wasn’t eighteen and still had a modicum of control over himself. Hallie, however, was orderly. She wasn’t to be hurried. After an eternity, she reached his chest. She was on her knees leaning over him, her hair loose, veiling her face, her fingers moving to the scar high on his shoulder. She lightly traced it. “This is the bullet wound.”

  “Yes.”

  “From five years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Jason. Tell me what happened. I think it’s time, don’t you?”

  When he remained silent, she leaned down and kissed the puckered scar. “The pain you must have endured. I am so very sorry.”

  He felt a catch in his throat, felt a shot of pain so black, so very real, for a moment he couldn’t breathe. So long ago that pain, but he still felt it, felt the utter helplessness, and he knew it was payment owed for his appalling judgment. She must have seen that pain in his eyes because she kissed him, kept touching him, nibbling here and there until the pain receded. He wondered how she could ease him so quickly, so absolutely. He said, “She was going to kill my father. I couldn’t allow her to do that.”

  “No,” she said, kissing him again and again, his throat, his chin, his mouth, “of course you couldn’t, no more than I could allow someone to kill my father, not if I could stop it.”

  “She aimed at his heart. My father is about an inch taller than I am. He would have died instantly. That blessed inch saved my life.”

  Her eyes closed though she could still see him throwing himself in front of his father, the bullet tearing into his flesh. She felt such intense, vicious hatred for this long-dead woman, that for an instant she knew what it was like to wish death upon another. It was a pity this woman was already dead and beyond her.

  “I don’t understand. Why did she want to kill your father?”

  He reached up his hand and pulled her hair back. He saw fury in her eyes, making them nearly black, and wondered at it. How could she feel so deeply over something that had happened so long ago, long before she’d known him? It was right and just that he remember, that he burrow into the leaching pain as he would a familiar old shirt. Perhaps he shouldn’t remember it with such stark clarity, but he did. “Her name was Judith and I was her cat’s paw. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that reeled me in, it was her wit, her ability to surprise me, to make me laugh and shake my head at the same time. I wanted to marry her. I never saw her treachery until it was too late. I was a bloody fool.”

  “Tell me,” she said, and sat back on her haunches, white and naked, her hair long and loose, falling over her shoulders to veil her breasts, her hands open on her thighs. “Tell me,” she said again.

  Jason didn’t want to call up the memory that was still so hot and stone-hard inside him. He didn’t want her to know the damnable details of what he’d done, he didn’t want her to realize what a fool he’d been, to see the pathetic young man who’d very nearly destroyed his own family, but words came out of his mouth even as he shook his head. “It was all about the greed of three evil people, three people with absolutely no conscience. My father was caught in this storm’s eye.” He told her about Annabelle Trelawny, a woman who had fooled them all, including Hollis, about how James had nearly died as well. “He managed to kill Judith’s brother, Louis, but it was so close, Hallie.” He rubbed his shoulder, feeling again the instant the bullet had struck him, hurling him back against his father. “Corrie killed both women,” he said. “Saying it now, it doesn’t seem possible, but she did it, she first shot Judith, then Annabelle Trelawny, to save Hollis. I can remember the sounds of the bullets, and I thought how very loud they were, and I knew one of them had struck me, and I thought it very odd since I felt numb. Apart from it, really. I remember my father pressing his palm against the wound in my shoulder, remember him yelling at me, and I was so relieved he was all right. Then I remember thinking that with my luck the bullet could so easily have torn through me and still killed him, but that didn’t happen. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry for all the devastation I’d caused, but I couldn’t, the words wouldn’t come, and then, well, then I couldn’t do anything.”

  “You nearly died,” Hallie said. She was stroking her fingers over his shoulder, lightly touching the scar.

  “But I didn’t. My family was there, they were always there, and when I finally opened my eyes, they were so happy and relieved, told me over and over that I would be all right, that I would live. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. All those forgiving, beloved faces, the worry and love for me etched deep, the fear that I would die.”

  “You couldn’t bear it because the blame was yours.”

  “Yes, it was mine, no one else’s.”

  “Tell me again how it was all your fault.”

  “If I hadn’t been such a fool, so blind and full of my own conceit and invincibility, Judith wouldn’t have been able to draw me in, to make me her dupe. She wouldn’t have won.”

  “You say she won? How could she have won, Jason? She’s dead. You’re not dead, your father’s not dead, James isn’t dead.”

  “No thanks to me. They wanted our deaths, Hallie. They wanted the actual doing of it. Worst of all, they wanted the benefit from it. They were m
onstrous evil. Judith’s brother had knocked James out and tied him up. Thank God James is so strong and so smart, but still, it was too close. He could have died so easily.”

  “He didn’t. He saved himself just as you saved your father.”

  Before he could speak again, she leaned down and kissed his mouth lightly, her palm over his heart. The beat was solid, steady, not fast now with need. “Your father,” she said thoughtfully, her brow furrowed, “he must have hated that you, his son, saved him.”

  “Yes, he did. He told me he was the father, it was he who should protect his son. He was angry that I leaped in front of him.”

  “That surprises you?”

  “No. He’s my father. He tried to excuse what I’d allowed Judith to do to me, said if I wanted to apportion blame so badly, then give them all their share.” Jason fell silent, aware of her palm now covering the bullet scar, but beneath her palm the damnable pain was still there, pulsing strong and hot. “He said what I would say had I been the father.”

  “Of course. He was also right.”

  “You weren’t there, Hallie. You don’t know what really went on.”

  “Has your father ever lied to you?”

  “Of course not, but this is much different. He wouldn’t see this as a lie, he’d see it—”

  “As what?”

  “As something he’d fight to believe since I was his son and he loved me.”

  “Do you love your father, Jason?”

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to an inch from his face. “Why would you ask something so stupid as that?”

  She kissed his mouth lightly, then pulled back a little. “Because you obviously didn’t believe him when he told you that you weren’t to blame. How can you love someone when you believe they’re lying to you?”

  “It wasn’t like that. He tried to justify it, tried to excuse what I did—”

  “This is quite remarkable.”

  “What is, damn you?”

  “You’ve wallowed in guilt for nearly five long years. You’ve managed to keep that wound raw and bleeding, always there at the edge of your mind so you won’t forget to hate yourself. You’ve nourished this constant companion of yours, kept it strong and in control for so very long. That is great dedication on your part, Jason. I imagine you would probably feel incomplete without it there, poking you, reminding you what an abominable excuse of a man you are.