The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (33 page)

“We have always had honesty between us,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “Always. That’s been a gift we had, Ewan, and you can call it a gift from God if you wish. I don’t want things to be different now, at the end. So don’t say you love me. You don’t. You’ve desired me, and that’s a different thing from love.”

“I don’t—”

She cut him off. “I’ll tell you what love is,” she said fiercely. “Someone who loves another person does not blame her for trying to save herself from rape. Perhaps he even tries to save her himself. Black Haggis had the right of it, perhaps. You would have watched me be carried off rather than shoot one of those men, wouldn’t you?”

He stared at her. “I did shoot one of those men.”

“Only when I gave you the gun,” she said. “Only then, Ewan.” There was no scorn in her voice, nor in her heart. Only a sadness so great that she felt as if it swallowed up the world and everything in it. “You didn’t care enough to put me before your principles, and that’s where the pain of it is now. I forced you to defend me by giving you that pistol.”

“I’m sorry if you felt I was ineffective in defending you,” he said. “I was trying to think how we could get out of the situation without injury. I was thinking of you, every moment.”

“I don’t care what you were thinking,” she cried. “I only care that you don’t really love me. You loved Rosy, and it breaks my heart that it was your bullet that killed her. Because
I
love you. You mistook desire for love, not having experienced the first for ten years. And, oh God, if you wish you’d never seen me, Ewan, ’tis only the same as I feel for you. I wish you had never come to England.”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he said.

“So am I.”

And then she left.

Ewan sat down at his desk and took a deep breath. For a moment he heard Annabel’s cry of fear in his ears, and felt a flash of agony so acute that he almost doubled
over. But then the numbness came back. It wasn’t the same as what he felt before . . . before, when he was one of God’s creatures.

But it was better than torment.

Tess was checking the dressing on Annabel’s arm. The burn was glaring red but healing well. “I’m worried that you’re going to lose some movement in your elbow,” she said, fussing with the new wrappings. “It’s healing beautifully, but scars may impede your ability to bend that arm.”

“I don’t care,” Annabel said, adjusting the sheet around her waist. She was so tired that she could hardly imagine traveling, but it had to be done. “I’ve told my maid to start packing my things. I’d like to leave tomorrow. Would you mind coming with me?”

Tess’s hands froze in the middle of wrapping. “What did you say?”

“I’m leaving Ewan. You had said that when I was tired of Scotland, I could come live with you, or in one of Lucius’s houses. I’m tired of Scotland.” She had told Tess what happened in the cottage, and what Ewan had said. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her that he wanted her to go.

“You can’t mean this. A terrible thing has happened to him. You can’t leave Ewan in such a grieving state, Annabel! It wouldn’t be right.”

It spilled from her mouth anyway. “He wants me to leave. It will never be the same between us.”

The door opened and Imogen walked into the room. With the ease of years of practice, she looked quickly between Tess and Annabel and said, “What?”

“Annabel says she wants to return to London,” Tess said, when Annabel didn’t answer.

Imogen turned to Annabel. “Why?”

“Our marriage is over,” Annabel said woodenly. “Over.”

“Why?”

“Can’t you simply trust me?” Annabel could hear her voice rising. “Must you hear every pitiful detail? He asked me to leave!”

Imogen’s eyes narrowed. “Never.”

Annabel stared back at her. “I was there.”

“I just—” Imogen was obviously dumbfounded. “I don’t mean to question what you’re saying. I simply can’t believe it. That man is so in love with you—”

“No, he’s not,” Annabel interrupted.

Imogen looked as if she were about to contradict her, so Annabel kept right on going. “He lusted after me. That’s all. And it’s a quite different emotion from love.”

“I don’t agree with your assessment.”

Annabel felt a surge of anger. Tears were beginning to spill from her eyes from the pure humiliation of it. “What do you want me to do?” she cried. “Spell out what he said? He wants me to go! Before Rosy was killed,
before
, he wanted me. But now he doesn’t. He sleeps on the third floor. He can’t bear the idea of having me about him.”

“That’s not lack of love,” Imogen said slowly. “I’m not sure—”

“How would you know!” Annabel cried at her.

“I could see it on his face. And he did say that he loved you at the table,” Imogen said.

“Just as you said that you loved your husband,” Annabel said, driven beyond herself. “But did you truly love Maitland, Imogen? How well did you know him? How long do you think that love would have lasted in the face of a tragedy?” Annabel could
feel sobs tearing up into her chest. “If something horrible happened, would you have turned to him—or to us? Because Ewan wants nothing to do with me now.”

Imogen looked as if she had been struck in the face.

Tess handed Annabel a handkerchief. “I don’t think the comparison is a worthy one,” she said, obviously trying to keep the peace.

But Imogen took a deep breath. “I can see what she means.”

Annabel looked at her, gulping for air.

“If I had accidentally killed one of my own sisters, where would I have turned?” She looked at Annabel and Tess. “To my remaining sisters or to my husband?”

“I would have turned to Ewan,” Annabel said, her voice catching. “I would have . . . but he—he doesn’t want me. He says he’s lost his soul because he killed Rosy. He says I shouldn’t have given him the pistol.”

“
Bastard!
” Tess said. It was the first time Annabel had ever heard her use such a word.

“We love you,” Imogen said, winding an arm around Annabel’s shoulders.

Tess wrapped the bandage tightly, pinning it in place. “We’ll be packed by nightfall,” she said, dropping a kiss on her sister’s head.

Annabel swallowed back her tears and curled into a ball. “I think I’ll try to go back to sleep,” she said.

“She sleeps all the time,” Tess said a moment later to Rafe, whom she encountered in the corridor. “Why does she sleep so much?”

“It was a harrowing experience. Perhaps this is her way of healing. What does Ardmore make of it?”

“I don’t believe they are speaking,” Tess said, leading him down the hallway. “He’s been sleeping on the third floor, you know. Annabel wants to leave tomorrow. She wants us all to return to London.”

“
Leave?
”

“Yes. Leave. And much though I regret to say this, I think perhaps she’s right, Rafe.”

“Leave! Has she told her husband?”

“Apparently he told her to go.” She caught Rafe’s arm as he headed toward Ewan’s study, murder in his eyes. “Don’t, Rafe. We have to think of Annabel now. Let’s get her out of here, as soon as possible. Perhaps she’ll heal better away from Scotland.”

Rafe stopped and dragged a hand through his hair. “I should have burned down the office of the
Bell’s Weekly Messenger
when I had a chance.”

Imogen came running down the stairs, Mayne behind her. “How are you feeling, Rafe?”

Tess frowned at Rafe. “Are you not well?”

He snorted. “I’m just fine.”

“He’s given up liquor,” Imogen said. “I’m fully expecting him to be dead by nightfall, but he’s still standing at the moment.”

“When did you do that?” Tess asked, startled.

“This morning,” Rafe growled. “That damn Father Armailhac talked me into it with his blather about how I was in servitude to brandy.”

“He’s right,” Imogen said.

“Mind your own business,” he growled at her.

Mayne took Imogen’s arm. “We’ll just—”

But Tess interrupted him. “We’re leaving tomorrow morning, Mayne. Annabel will return with us to London.”

Mayne raised an eyebrow. “An unexpected development.” He glanced at Rafe. “Yet I think I’ll stay for a time with Rafe.”

“With Rafe? What do you mean? Rafe is coming with us.” Tess looked between Rafe and Mayne.

“He may not be feeling quite himself tomorrow morning,” Mayne said quietly.

“You’re making altogether too much of this,” Rafe blustered. “I’ll be as fit as a daisy in the morning. No headache!”

“That’ll be the first morning in years,” Imogen agreed. “Actually, if you can take care of Annabel, Tess, I think perhaps I shall stay a few days as well. I will join you in a week.”

Tess looked from one to the other. “What?”

“If I stay, I might actually be able to talk Mayne into showing me some proper attention.”

Rafe glared at her.

“Or not,” Mayne said, taking her arm. “Shall we go for that walk now?”

Imogen let herself be drawn away, but she threw a look over her shoulder. “Just let me know when you need your fevered brow soothed by a woman’s touch, Rafe.”

“I don’t know why she’s so rude to you,” Tess told him. “I’m sure she’s as glad as I am that you’re giving up drinking.”

“You’re all making entirely too much out of this,” he said. “I shall miss the whiskey, but I don’t expect to run a fever. I like the flavor, that’s all.”

“She’s just funning,” Tess said soothingly. “I should start packing.”

“I can’t believe Annabel is leaving her husband,” Rafe said gloomily. “That’s two of my wards who left the house only to reappear like homing pigeons a month later. I must be doing something wrong.”

Tess reached up and ruffled his head. “We like you too much.”

“I suppose you’re my success story. You’re not thinking of leaving Felton, are you?”

Tess grinned.

“Don’t tell me,” Rafe grumbled. “I can’t stand the sentiment of it all.”

Ewan paid his wife a silent farewell, creeping into their bedchamber in the middle of the night.

Annabel lay on her side, curled into a ball, her face tight and anxious in her sleep. Her left arm was stretched on top of the covers, held straight by the great many bandages wound around her elbow. He almost touched it, but then he thought she might be afraid and scream, and he drew back his hand.

He couldn’t help thinking of how she slept before all this happened, all loose-limbed and sprawled across the bed. Now she curled like a hedgehog trying to defend herself.

The guilt he felt was like a blow to the chest. During the attack in the cottage, he had been thinking as fast as he could, planning to strike the moment he had a chance . . .

But Annabel had taken matters into her own hands and saved herself. If he hadn’t already felt self-loathing for killing Rosy, that realization would have brought him to his knees with the strength of his self-hatred.

His wife would be better without him. She always planned for infidelity anyway. He turned to go and started.

There, in the corner of the room, sat Tess, staring at him with unforgiving eyes. She slowly rose to her feet. “We are leaving tomorrow morning,” she told him.

He nodded. “I know.”

“I just want to say that I think you are the most craven, revolting man in all Scotland,” she said, her voice shaking. “How can you leave her to deal with the effects of those men? Do you know that she only sleeps for two to three hours at a stretch? That she dreams of being touched and wakes screaming?”

His mouth seemed to have turned dry as a desert and he couldn’t shape a word.

“No, how would you know?” she said bitingly. “You’ve been off nurturing your asinine little soul. Annabel told us all about it: how you blame her for handing you the pistol. How you stood there and would have watched her taken off into the mountains, to be ravished by four men likely until they killed her. Aye, she told us all about you. How they touched her, and you did nothing, didn’t even watch.”

Tess walked toward him a step, her eyes as wild as any mother wolf defending her cubs. “And I’m telling you right now, Ardmore, that if you ever come near my sister again, I will not hesitate to take up a pistol and shoot you. Without a thought for my soul, other than the certitude that God would thank me for taking you off this earth. You’ve destroyed her, destroyed one of the most loving people on this earth, and all out of your
own damned selfish concern for your
soul
.” She turned and opened the door. “Take your soul and I hope it rots within you!”

Ewan looked back once at Annabel. She lay on the bed like a dream he had once, a sweetness never truly his own.

Already he felt as if his life with her was like one of those dreams that one can hardly remember, a dream in which days pass, but later, when awake, all one can remember is some flickering sparks, a few memories faint and cold on the horizon.

“I shan’t bother her,” he said to Tess.

“I have no expectation that you will,” she said. “You’ll be too busy licking your invisible wounds. My husband will be in touch with you about Annabel’s support. She would not want to be beholden on me, and I will have her supported in the manner which a countess deserves!”

“I’ll send anything she wants.”

Tess’s mouth turned down. “You’re a fool,” she said. “The only thing she wants you could never give her.”

Ewan’s eyes were burning. They’d been burning ever since the funeral. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right.”

He sat up all night in his study, watching with dispassionate interest as the light crept into the room, then across the floor. With every inch the time came nearer for Annabel to leave. When there was a scratch at the door, his head swung up, but it was Gregory.

He came over and sat on Ewan’s lap, for all the world as if he wasn’t eleven and nearly a man in height, but just as he had when he was small.

Ewan’s arms tightened around his thin body. It was hard to imagine that Gregory had been a wee child. Rosy’s child.

“Can’t you stop her from leaving?” Gregory asked.

Ewan shook his head against Gregory’s hair. “I can’t.”

“Just—just ask her.”

Ewan took a deep breath. “I failed her, Gregory. I can’t ask her to stay. Annabel is right to leave me.”

“But she
loves
you,” he said. “And Father Armailhac says that love—”

“Father Armailhac knows nothing of men and women,” Ewan said. “She won’t stay, Gregory.” Suddenly he had a thought. “Would you like to go with her?”

“No!”

But Ewan thought he felt in his bones Gregory’s instinctive wish to go, to leave this gloomy house where his mother had lived. He reached behind him and rang the bell. “I’ll speak to Rafe about it. I’m sure he would be happy to have you. You’ll be company for Josie in the carriage.”

“But Rafe is staying,” Gregory said.

“Staying? What the devil is that about?” For a moment Ewan had a wild thought that Rafe meant to challenge him to a duel, once the family was out of the way. He would delope, shoot into the sky . . .

“Father Armailhac talked him into giving up the whiskey,” Gregory said, with the indifference of an adolescent. “Rafe says he’ll try it. So that’s one person who’s staying. Actually, I think the Earl of Mayne is staying with him.”

Mac appeared at the door. “Would you ask Mr. Felton if he would join me for a moment?” Ewan asked.

Mac nodded and disappeared.

“I don’t want to go,” Gregory said, but his tone was uncertain. “I should stay here with you and Father Armailhac and—”

“I’ve neglected you. I’ve kept you here up in the woods when you should be amongst other people.”

“No, you haven’t!” Gregory protested.

“How do you feel about your mother’s death?” Ewan asked, tightening his arms around the lanky body in his lap.

“Sad,” Gregory said awkwardly, “I mean, she wasn’t much of a mum, really, but she was sweet, and I think she loved me, in her own way.”

“She did,” Ewan said. “She truly did, in her own way.”

“She scared me sometimes, though. Father Armailhac says she’s much happier now.”

Ewan nodded. “I think he’s right. I’ll miss you.”

Gregory leaned against him. “I’ll just stay a few weeks, how’s that? Just to see England. Josie makes it sound so interesting.”

“Of course,” Ewan said, knowing that Gregory wouldn’t want to come home for months, if ever.

“Perhaps I could talk Annabel into coming back.”

“No,” Ewan said. “Promise me you won’t do that.”

There was the sound of approaching footsteps. Gregory toppled off Ewan’s lap, not wanting to be caught in Ewan’s embrace like a babe in arms.

Ewan stood up. “Promise me, Gregory?”

“All right,” he said reluctantly. “I won’t say anything to Annabel.”

Tess’s husband looked at Ewan with the same calm, thoughtful expression that he always had. From him there was none of the livid hatred that his wife showed the previous night. He quietly agreed that of course Gregory could make a stay with them, as long as he wished.

“I adopted Rosy as my sister some years ago,” Ewan told him. “So Gregory is my nephew.”

“I fully understand.”

Felton bowed; Ewan bowed. Gregory gave Ewan a hasty hug and dashed out of the room to talk to Mac.

Ewan sat down again and watched specks of dust revolve in the sunlight striking his desk.

A few hours later all the noise in the courtyard had died down. The sunlight had moved toward the very edge of his desk and was beginning to fall on the rug, a rug his parents brought back from their wedding trip.

Ewan watched the light move as if his life depended on it.

And then, after a long while, the sunshine faded and grew dim, died into itself and disappeared.