After the Kiss (37 page)

Eliza slowly opened her eyes, but there was nothing to see in the dark passageway. She knew now why she was afraid of the dark. Why her father must have been disinherited. Why she had always felt, deep down, that somehow she was responsible. There had been no scandal. Only a little girl who had spilled her
grandpapa’s tobacco, and got locked in a closet and forgotten.

Eliza realized she could move in the dark. Not quickly, and not without a great deal of effort, but she could move. She felt her way across the floor to the wall, then stood up slowly and carefully, running her hands along the rough stone, looking for the latch that she knew must be there.

She could not find it.

Eliza had no choice but to move farther into the dark passageway until she found a grate—and shout at the top of her lungs for help.

M
arcus had barely absorbed Lady Lavinia’s announcement and sent her away with Griggs, when he heard a commotion in the main hallway of the Abbey. He headed for the door of the drawing room, but froze when he saw who was standing there.

Alastair Wharton, sixth Duke of Blackthorne, entered the room—wearing a kilt. He grinned at the shocked expression on Marcus’s face and said, “Well, laddie, your big brother is home. How about a fond greeting?”

Marcus felt tears sting his eyes. He quickly took the few steps to close the distance between himself and his long-lost brother. He would have shaken Alastair’s hand, except his brother pulled him close and gave him a bear’s hug. Marcus had no idea what had caused the change in Alastair—the warm greeting, the warmer hug—but he was glad for it.

He had thought Alastair would be put off by the marks on his face, but his brother acted as though they did not exist. The scars did not look so loathsome to Marcus these days, either. He no longer winced when he caught sight of himself in a looking glass. But he had thought it was only because he was
used to them. Perhaps Alastair did not see the scars, because he was not looking at the facade, but the man inside.

As Eliza had.

“Where have you been?” Marcus choked out as he slapped his brother on the back. “We were told you had drowned.”

“You know better, Marcus.”

“I said as much,” he conceded. “But why did you not come home, Alex? Where have you been?”

Alastair scowled. “A cunning lass kept me captive through trickery. I shall have my revenge,” he promised grimly. “She shall repay the debt she owes me in full. As for where I have been … seeing to my lands in Scotland.”

“Are you the mysterious Laird of Blackthorne Hall?”

“The Laird,” he said with a thick Scottish burr. “And married to its mistress.”

Marcus gaped. “You are married, Alex?”

He smiled cynically. “The witch would tell you so. I say it is for the courts to settle.”

“What witch?”

“My wife. But Katherine is not a fit topic for discussion. Where are my children, Marcus?”

“I hesitate to say.”

Alastair frowned. “I trust they are well.”

“As far as I know,” Marcus said. “I seem to have lost them.”

“Again?” Alastair said with a laugh and another ardent hug that left Marcus thinking one of his ribs might be broken. “You really must be more careful.”

Marcus could not get over the difference in the
joyful, exuberant man who stood before him and the staid, morose man who had left a year past. “You are so different, Alex. What has changed?”

“I have realized how short life can be, Marcus,” he said. “I am no longer willing to let doubts keep me from loving my children. Or let acrimony separate me from my only kin.”

Marcus smiled. “Scotland is good for you, Alex. You should go there more often.”

“Perhaps I will take the twins to see Blackthorne Hall next summer.” He smiled drolly and added, “If we can find them.”

“I believe they are somewhere in the hidden passageways within the Abbey,” Marcus said. “Of which I had no knowledge until a few minutes ago. Are you aware of them, Alex? Do you know where they start and end?”

“I ventured into them a couple of times, until I got lost and nearly did not get found. Father rescued me at a point when I was resigned to dying and warned me never to go into the tunnels again. Essentially, it was the same lecture I gave the twins several years ago—which apparently went in one ear and out the other. There is an entrance in your bedroom, Marcus. We can start there.”

Marcus was amazed to see a panel near the thronelike chair swing open. Each man carried a lantern, and Alastair warned Marcus to move slowly and watch his step in the dark.

“Don’t get separated from me,” Alastair warned. “Some of the tunnels lead to blind falls. Others to dead ends. One leads down into a dungeon.”

“A real dungeon?” Marcus asked with a laugh. “With torture devices and manacles on the wall?”

“All of that and more. I nearly died there when I was eleven. Someone else’s bones still reside there. The Ghost of Blackthorne Abbey.”

“There are no such things as ghosts.”

“Listen to the Abbey walls, Marcus. They will speak to you,” Alastair advised.

Marcus shivered. They already had. “I need to talk to you, Alex.”

“Can it wait?”

“No, it cannot,” Marcus said as he followed Alastair into the cool, dark tunnel. The depths of the Abbey seemed an apt place to confess his sins to his brother.

“I never lay with Penthia, Alex, except the time you interrupted us. I am sorry I was not strong enough to resist her entreaties. But I never put myself inside her, Alex. I was too ashamed, when I realized what I had almost done, even to beg your pardon.

“But the truth is, the twins cannot be mine. Penthia only wanted to hurt us both. You, because you discovered us together, but would not set her aside, and me, because I would not lie with her again. Reggie and Becky are your daughters, Alex, not mine.”

Alastair released a shuddering sigh. “It is good to know the truth, Marcus. But before I left, I had already made up my mind to love them no matter whose children they were. And while I was gone, I made up my mind to forgive you. I had a lesson in Scotland that taught me things are not always what they seem.”

“Thank you, Alex.” Marcus felt a sense of relief he
had not expected, and a great deal of hope that they would be friends again, as they had been long ago.

“I can see you were wounded at Waterloo, Marcus,” Alastair said, “and lost a bit of your good looks. I trust you at least saved your charm.”

Marcus smiled, amazed that he could. “Griggs kept the surgeons from cutting off my hand, but it was badly crippled until this past six weeks. I have been exercising it, and I can pick things up with it now. My charm suffered temporarily,” he said with a wry twist of his mouth, “but it is enjoying a resurgence.”

“Has the past year been difficult for you?”

“More than you know. I missed you, Alex.” Just as Marcus finished speaking, he thought he heard a voice calling to him from within the walls. “Did you hear that?”

Alastair stopped and listened. “Someone saying your name, I think.”

“It sounds like— It is! Eliza!”

“Who is Eliza?”

“Elizabeth Sheringham, now Elizabeth Wharton,” Marcus said. “My wife.”

Alastair turned and studied him for a moment in the glow from the lantern. “It seems I have been gone a great deal too long. The Beau has accepted a leg-shackle?”

“It is a long story, Alex. Suffice it to say I did
not
act honorably toward the lady, that Julian—before he was killed at Waterloo—engaged himself to her, and that after a period of mourning, she has recently become my wife.”

“Miss Sheringham did not care that your looks were spoiled?”

“No, Alex. She is only concerned that I love her.”

“Is it a love match then?” Alastair asked.

“It is on my side. It was for her, I think, in the beginning. But lately … there have been problems.”

“With women, there usually are,” Alastair said.

The voice called again, closer. “Marcus, where are you? Marcus, please, come and find me.”

“I believe you will find the lady down that passageway and to the left,” Alastair said, pointing to the place where two tunnels intersected. “I will go this way and look for the twins. When you have found your lady, retrace your steps and keep making right-hand turns. You will end up where I am heading now.”

Becky sat beside Reggie, shivering in the dark. She was cold. And scared. The fuel in the lantern had long since burned out. She did not know how many hours they had been prisoners in the dungeon. Only that her stomach was rumbling with hunger, and her tongue was swollen with thirst.

“Reggie,” she whispered, “are you awake?” She had been asking for hours with no response.

This time Reggie muttered, “My head hurts. Why is it so dark? Where are we, Becky?”

Becky sobbed with relief and squeezed Reggie’s hand, which she had been holding in the dark. “You fell from that stack of boxes and hurt your head. Do you remember?”

A pause and then, “Are we still in the dungeon?”

“Yes. The lantern burned out a while ago.”

Becky could feel Reggie trying to sit up and said, “I think you should lie still.”

“My hair is sticky with something.”

“It is blood,” Becky said. “From a cut.”

“Am I going to die?” Reggie asked tremulously.

“I … I hope not.”

“Do you think Aunt Eliza and Uncle Marcus are looking for us?” Reggie asked.

Becky nodded, realized her sister could not see her, and said, “I am sure everyone is searching. I have been yelling and yelling, but so far no one has answered.”

“Will you yell again now?” Reggie asked. “Or shall I?”

Becky thought of the headache Reggie must have, and though she was afraid to move in the dark—for fear of running into spiderwebs, and the spiders who had made them—she knew Reggie was right. She had to keep shouting for help. It was their only hope.

She had cleared a path while the lantern was still lit, and put her hands out in front of her now to be certain she did not encounter anything that might have moved of its own accord in the dark as she made her way to the door.

When she reached the wooden door, she raised her head toward the open window and yelled, “Is anyone there? We are locked in the dungeon and cannot get out. Help, someone! We are locked—”

“I can hear you, Becky.”

Father’s voice
. Becky’s nose stung, and her eyes welled with tears. Maybe she and Reggie were already dead, and they did not know it. How else could Father have responded so quickly to her cries for help? How else could he know exactly where to find them?

“We are locked in, Father,” she said in a calm
voice. Becky thought she saw a glow of light at the high window, but perhaps that was wishful thinking.

“There is a key,” the voice replied. “It is hidden in another place. I will be back shortly.”

Becky thought she heard footsteps moving away.

“Is Father really here?” Reggie asked. “I thought I must be imagining his voice in my head.”

“I could hear him, too,” Becky replied. And then, expressing her fears aloud, “Don’t you think it quite impossible that Father could be here? That he could have found us when no one else has?”

“Not at all. We have expected him to return to the Abbey anytime now. And he has finally arrived,” Reggie said.

“On the one day we are lost, and no one can find us?” Becky asked skeptically.

“What are you suggesting?”

“That perhaps we are dead, and Father’s ghost has come to take us to heaven.”

Reggie moaned deep in her throat, a keening sound. “I don’t want to die, Becky. I don’t want Father to be dead. I love him.”

Becky made her way back to Reggie as quickly as she could, took her sister’s hand in hers, and pinched it.

“Ow! Why did you do that?”

“Pinch me back,” Becky said excitedly. “Ow, not so hard! Don’t you see? It hurts!”

“Then we are not dead!”

“And Father must really be here!”

The door swung open and Father stood there, the lantern casting eerie shadows on his face and figure. Becky sat frozen where she was, still not quite certain
whether he was an apparition. He was, she realized, wearing a skirt—a kilt, she corrected, the kind Fenwick had said were worn in Scotland.

“Reggie? Becky? Are you all right?” he asked in his familiar nimbly voice.

“Reggie is hurt, Father. She fell and cut her head.”

He crossed to them hurriedly, dropping on one knee beside Reggie and setting the lamp where the circle of light lit both their faces and his.

Becky looked at his face, so somber and serious. Was this the kind father she had missed so much? Or the stern one?

“Who put this bandage on?” he asked.

“I did,” Becky said. “I tried to stop the bleeding.”

Becky watched as he lifted Reggie right into his arms and pulled her against his breast. His eyes closed as he held her tight against him. “Reggie,” he murmured, pressing his lips to her cheeks and forehead. “I am so glad you are safe.”

Then he looked into her eyes and said, “Thank you, Becky. I think your nursing may have saved your sister’s life.”

Becky felt her throat tighten. It was neither of the old fathers who had come back, she realized, but someone new. Someone wonderful.

Father’s eyes had blurred with tears. He held his hand out to her, and she laid hers in it and let him draw her close. His arm banded her waist and pulled her and Reggie snugly against him, enfolding them in a warm circle of love.

“Papa is home,” he said, his breath warm against her brow.

“I love you, Papa,” Becky whispered in his ear.

“I love you, too,” he whispered back.

Eliza was shivering, her body pressed close to the stone wall, the only solid thing she had to hang on to. She told herself over and over that she was only afraid of the dark because she had once been locked inside a dark room when she was a child.

It helped a little. But the feeling of being abandoned, the sensation that the walls were closing in and would crush her if she did not somehow escape, persisted despite all logic against it.

Eliza saw the glow from the lantern long before she could distinguish the face of the person carrying it. Somehow she knew it was Marcus. “You found me,” she said, half crying, half laughing with relief as he took the last few steps to reach her.