A moving shape caught the far edge of the headlight beam, a student in a dark green slicker on the way to God knew where. Sean. The lad came up to the car, drenched, but enjoying the storm the way kids often did. The way Jared had when he was a boy, roaming out in the wildness, the crash of thunder like the long-ago battling of Celtic war gods.
Jared rolled down the window, chill rain pelting the side of his face as the boy loped up to the car.
Sean grinned, looking far less green than he’d been in the pub’s W.C. “I don’t have to ask you how the party was, Dr. Butler.” He tried to swipe rain from his eyes. “You look like Emma dragged you behind the car the whole way from London. Should have taken the advice you gave me at the pub and laid off of the whiskey.”
“Send Davey up to the tower,” Jared cut Sean off sharply.
Sean’s humor faltered as he became aware of the edge in Jared’s voice. “Davey? He and Beth were running some tests on…It’s something bad, isn’t it?”
“Just send him. Don’t let him know anything is wrong. Understand?”
“Right,” the lad agreed, but his face paled. Jared’s heart ripped at the sudden protectiveness transforming the gregarious boy’s usually carefree features. Emotion grudgingly won by the quieter Davey…and far more valuable than the hail-fellow-well-met camaraderie of the football boys. Respect. Would it remain once Sean and the other students learned the truth?
Jared pulled away from Sean and drove up to the tower, parking as close to the castle door as possible. Emma climbed out of the car as he jammed the gearshift into Park. Rain battered her, streamed down her face, soaked her hair as he turned off the ignition and got out himself.
The waves the stylists had pressed smooth with some kind of heated contraption rebelled, twisting into their natural riotous curls as she staggered toward the door.
Jared moved to steady Emma but when he tried to take her arm she yanked away as if he’d pounded on an exposed nerve and the merest touch might shatter her. She looked so small engulfed in the folds of his sweater, her eyes burning in a face white as parchment.
How many times had he climbed these stairs with her in the past weeks? Waiting to love her? Fight with her? With swords, with words? Challenging her mind, her heart, her body’s thunderous response to his?
But today the stairs were gravestone cold, the walls hopeless gray, the dream they’d woven here together torn down like the vibrant tapestries that once covered the castle walls, leaving desolation.
Jared had always sensed that this reckoning would come. The end of summer. Happiness all too fleeting. He’d just never known they would face such wanton destruction when it did.
They mounted the landing, Emma retreating to the alcove and the table where her family picture sat in its place of honor. A purple frame full of beaming McDaniels. Would their smiles ever be quite so open again, once the whole world knew secrets that should have stayed their own?
Jared’s hands clenched at the thought of Emma’s mother fielding questions about the rape. Emma herself, pounded by vultures like Feeny: How does it feel to know that you’re the child of a rapist who attacked your mother when she was sixteen years old?
Poison. Pure poison. As toxic and potentially deadly to the spirit as the poison David Harrison would be forced to swallow all too soon.
Jared grabbed the coverlet from the bed and started to wrap it around Emma’s shivering body. He swore when she tried to thrust it away. “You’re soaking wet!” he insisted, forcing her to accept the warm folds he swirled around her shoulders. “You’ll catch your death of cold. That won’t help anybody.”
She huddled on the bench, rainwater dripping from her soaked hair onto the picture in her grasp. Jared saw the hand-painted decorations start to smear, the glue dissolving, sloughing off glitter as it ran. Moisture seeped under the edge of the glass and a water spot bloomed in the photograph’s corner, damaging it the way the family it captured would soon be damaged forever.
Jared grabbed a clean T-shirt from his own stash of clothes and blotted the worst of the rain from Emma’s hair and face. She let him. Her sudden stillness terrified him more than the moments when she wouldn’t let him touch her.
Footsteps.
Jared’s muscles clenched as he recognized the galumphing rhythm all Davey’s own, accompanied by the tick-tick of claws and Captain’s enthusiastic yips as lad and dog rushed up to the tower. The terrier racketed into the room first, flinging his furry body against Jared in canine ecstasy. Jared scooped up the dog, tried to put the terrier into Emma’s arms. But Emma refused even that small comfort.
She took the animal and laid him numbly in the crate near her bed, then waited for Davey to come in.
A moment later, Davey’s lanky frame filled the door, his oiled canvas coat dripping, his eyes shining. Jared scarce recognized the boy. Davey seemed taller with his new confidence, awed by his newfound love, basking in an unexpected peace with the world that had once excluded him.
“What are you two doing back?” Davey exclaimed, obviously glad to see them. “I didn’t think you were leaving London until—” He suddenly sobered, looking from Jared to Emma and back with searching eyes. His voice sharpened with unease. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Jared clamped his hands on the lad’s shoulders, shoulders far too narrow to hold up under the burden Jared was about to shift onto them. “I’m not sure how to tell you this,” Jared began.
“Is it Mum?” Davey squeezed the words through a tight throat. “Is she sick? Was there an accident?”
“No!” Emma said.
“Your mother is fine,” Jared assured him. But she won’t be for much longer…not after the headlines run in tomorrow’s Independent Star.
The boy hitched out a breath, his eyes only a little less filled with alarm. “If it’s not Mum, then what is it? You look horrible.”
Jared struggled to find the right words, knowing all the while that there were none. But Emma beat him to it, gazing up at Davey with banished fairy eyes.
“Someone overheard us the night Jared and I found you in the trailer,” she explained.
“You two find me in the trailer a dozen times a week,” Davey protested in blatant denial. “Which night are you talking about?”
“The night we went to the pub,” Emma said. “When you told us about your father.”
Davey curled into himself, as if trying to ward off a blow. But there was no shield for the kind of sword Feeny wielded. It cut without steel and you bled where the damage couldn’t be seen with the eye, only felt in the heart.
He swallowed hard. “Who heard? It was Veronica, wasn’t it?”
Emma stiffened at the mention of the grad student’s name. Jared’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you say that?”
Davey twisted his fingers together, pacing as if the walls were closing in on him. “I passed her that night when I was running to Beth’s tent.” The kid froze, looking scared out of his wits. He turned to Jared. “Oh, God—Is Veronica going to tell Beth about my dad? They’re friends and—and maybe to warn her…”
That would be difficult enough for Davey to handle, Jared thought. But he would have welcomed it in comparison to what the boy faced now.
“It’s worse than Beth knowing,” Emma said softly.
Davey spun toward her, his voice rising in panic. “There is nothing worse than that! It’s the most awful thing that could happen!”
Christ, if the boy only knew. Jared sucked in a steadying breath. “It appears Veronica kept in contact with that reporter I had thrown off the property the first week Emma was here.”
“That Feeny jerk? Why would she do that?”
“To get me out of the way,” Emma explained flatly. “Veronica knew Jared wouldn’t tolerate the uproar of the press swarming all over the site. And she’d be paid God knows how much money for feeding him information. The problem is that, in the process, something else leaked out. How my mother was raped and…” She faltered. Jared jumped in, his rugged f
eatures stark.
“Davey, the truth about your father is going to be front-page news come tonight—if it isn’t already.”
Davey backed away, banging into Emma’s arm. The frame slipped from her rain-slick fingers. It crashed to the stone floor, glass shattering, wood miter joints jarred askew. “That’s…that’s impossible…Beth doesn’t…doesn’t…she can’t know I’m—”
“There’s still time to tell her,” Emma urged. “I’ll send you and your mother away for a while. Someplace safe until this all dies down. Anywhere you want to go. Maybe Egypt, to see the pyramids. Or Pompeii or Troy. Some ancient city you’d love and where no one will find you.”
A ragged sob tore from Davey’s throat. “You promised no one would find out!” he accused her. “I trusted you!”
“Emma had no control over what happened,” Jared started to defend her. But Emma cut in.
“I know you trusted me, Davey,” Emma said, picking up the fallen frame and pressing it against her chest. “I’d give anything to stop this. But the story about your father became big news since Feeny tied it to me.”
“What do you mean, tied it to you?”
“Veronica told him that I was…trying to comfort you when I told you about my mom. They’ll make it something ugly.”
“How do you make it any uglier than it is?”
“They’ll say I told you my story out of pity. That I…felt sorry for you. They’ll make it seem like…”
“Like you’re some kind of freaking saint, scraping the pathetic spawn of Satan out of the sewer? I’m a charity case?”
“You know that’s not true.” Emma laid the frame down on the table with trembling hands.
“Well, nobody else will!”
“Easy, lad!” Jared warned, trying to temper Davey’s panic. “Don’t forget, they’ll be blasting Emma’s story over the airwaves, too. She’s a victim here.”
“A victim?” Davey cried wildly. “She’s the star! The great famous Emma McDaniel who…who made some poor sod like me actually believe I was…worth something. Could crawl out of my father’s shadow. But I can’t. Not now. Not ever!”
“Davey, that’s not true!” Emma protested, but Jared felt the boy’s words strike her like a dagger to her chest. “I know it doesn’t seem possible that things will ever be all right again,” she said, “but we’ll get through this somehow. We don’t have any other choice.”
Davey braced himself against the table. The sun broke out, its sudden rays piercing the window and ruthlessly baring the torment in the boy’s thin face. As if Feeny’s betrayal had peeled back any scar tissue Davey had managed to grow over the wounds the murders had left in him. Every shard of agony and guilt and horror naked again, and new.
“Davey, this doesn’t change the truth—that your father’s crimes weren’t your fault.”
“Right, Emma.” Davey gave a wild laugh. “Tell yourself that if you need to!”
Emma approached him. Jared could feel how badly she wanted to hold the boy, comfort him. “Jared and I love you.”
“No one else ever will!” Davey cried. “I can’t live like this! I told you…”
Davey didn’t say the words. He didn’t have to. They thundered in Jared’s mind and Emma’s heart, filling the room with terrifying possibilities.
I can’t live like this….
A white scar gleamed in Jared’s memory.
Emma tried to enfold Davey in an embrace. He shoved her away, racing blindly toward the door. Emma lost her balance, careening against the table. Jared swore, diving toward her, but she fell, cracking her head against the corner. Davey was too distraught to notice as he fled down the stairs.
Jared caught her in his arms, a thin trickle of blood crimson against her white brow. He grabbed his damp T-shirt, put pressure on the inch-long wound, crooning words to her, his heart breaking—torn between Emma’s pain and the boy’s.
Head wounds always bled a lot, he tried to assure himself. But they healed quickly. Far more so than the kind of wound Davey had carved into his wrist in despair.
Fear surged, ice-cold, through Jared, Davey’s voice echoing from that night in the trailer.
I’d rather die than have anyone know who my father is.
No. Jared wouldn’t believe the boy could be made that hopeless again. Davey had grown stronger under Jared’s watch. He loved his work. He had a future Jared would make damned well sure was bright.
“G-go after him,” Emma tried to struggle dizzily to her feet. “We have to stop him before he…he hurts himself.”
Jared heard the car engine fire up below. Hell, had he left the keys in the ignition? No, but he’d always entrusted Davey with his spare set.
The worst of the storm had stopped, but the roads would still be slick, the curves far too dangerous for a boy half out of his mind with grieving. For the love he thought he’d lose, for the life he’d thought he built, for the mother he knew would suffer.
Jared tried to dab at Emma’s cut, torn by indecision. But Emma had clamped her hand over the cloth and was already heading for the stairs, oblivious to the lump forming on her forehead. “We have to stop him before it’s too late.”
It took too damned long to slog through the mud to the camp at the other end of the curtain wall. Then they had to find another car and rummage a set of keys from the Peg-Board in Jared’s office.
A cluster of students with worried faces spilled around them, Veronica conspicuously missing from the group as they begged to know what was wrong. Beth’s plea more heart-wrenching than any other. “Where’s Davey? Sean said something’s wrong.”
“Do you love him?” Emma demanded as she made her way around the car.
Beth gaped at her, stunned.
“Do you love him?” Emma repeated fiercely.
“Yes!”
“Now’s your chance to prove it.”
The girl stumbled back a step, her face pale with alarm as Emma slid into the seat. Jared jumped behind the wheel.
“Buckle up,” he said, doing the same one-handed as he gunned the engine. He saw Emma fumbling with the seat belt as they sped to the main road. Tires squealed. The car started to slide sideways on the pavement. He felt Emma brace herself. Jared’s muscles went rigid as he eased the steering wheel the other way to compensate, slowing down just a little as the car gradually pulled out of the slide.
Jared let a breath out. Emma didn’t even seem to care that they’d almost rolled the car.
“Which way would he go?” she prodded. “North or south?”
“I don’t know.” Jared repositioned his hands on the wheel. “He’s spent his whole life trying to get back to the castle. Not running away from it.”
But gut instinct made him turn south, toward town. Maybe Davey would go to the pub. Some whiskey—hell, Jared could use a dram or two himself. The three of them could sit at Flora’s bar and figure out some way to fight through this. He and Davey and Emma.
He sped down the road, the standing stones a blur on the rain-drenched hill, Snib’s cottage hidden in the valley below. The countryside whizzed past them, no sign of the car or boy in sight. He was questioning himself, almost ready to turn around when the road banked left.
Emma screamed as a cloud of panicked sheep flashed up before them in the middle of the road, bleating hysterically.
Jared slammed on the brakes, the car weaving madly, slamming to a halt just before he struck the animals. He laid on the horn, trying to scare the lot of them off the road, all the while cursing Snib and his bloodthirsty collies. Why the devil wasn’t he keeping his gates locked and the flock under control?
“Oh, God! The fence!” Emma’s cry jolted Jared. He looked in the direction she pointed, his gaze finding the scattered stones. Frightened sheep fled, revealing the break in the centuries-old fence, deep tire ruts dug in the turf, smoke billowing from a ditch beyond.
“Davey!” Emma screamed, and Jared knew her gaze found the wreck almost concealed by the lip of the ravine at the same seco
nd his did. Jared slammed the car into Park and flew out to the crash site, Emma in his wake.
“Stay back!” he shouted, wanting to spare her if Davey—bright, shy, earnest young Davey—lay dead.
No. Jared wouldn’t think that. He couldn’t or he’d be no use to the boy or Emma. But he’d seen wreckage like this the day Jenny died. Her plane had crashed barely a mile from the airstrip where he’d been waiting to pick her up. His gut clenched, nightmarish images pouring through him. His feet pounding as he ran toward the crash site, his lungs filling with smoke, twisted metal splashed with flame and death he couldn’t hold back….
Jared found the shattered window, peered into the car’s interior. Davey slumped against the wheel, his skin gray, drenched with blood.
Emma caught up to him just as Jared pressed his fingertips to Davey’s throat, searching desperately for some faint flutter of life.
His voice tore on a sob.
“Oh, God, no,” Emma cried. “Don’t let him be—”
“He’s alive!” Jared grabbed the handle, he and Emma struggling to wrench the door open. It gave with a teeth-grating screech, sending them both tumbling backward. Jared smacked his elbow on a stone, heard Emma’s breath whoosh out as she hit the wet earth as well. But in a heartbeat they were scrambling back to their feet.
Jared poked his head into the car, heard Emma’s gasp of horror as she saw it, too. On the side farthest away from them, Davey’s left arm twisted at a gut-churning angle, bone piercing skin. Blood flowed from the wound in a deadly stream.
“We need something to make a tourniquet,” Jared said.
“Your shirt,” Emma said, taking over putting pressure on the wound.
Jared wrestled off the garment, tore a strip from it. They worked together to tie it, thrusting a thick branch through the knot to help twist it tight as they could, praying they could exert enough force to stop the bleeding. The stream slowed but didn’t stop.
“We need help,” Jared said. “I don’t know how much blood he’s lost.” He patted his pockets, searching. “Damn it, where’s my mobile phone?”
“You tossed it on the dashboard after you offered it to me to call my mom. Even if we could find it, the thing has to be crushed to bits from the accident.”
The Wedding Dress Page 35
