What Happens in Scotland (26 page)

Chapter 29

J
AMES SQUIRMED IN
frustration beneath Patrick’s hands. It was the second time today he had sat for the man’s suturing skills, and if he never saw another needle, it would be too soon. The wound itself might not hurt, but the damned needle was causing a dozen new injuries and seemed to find, with unerring accuracy, every ready nerve beneath his skin.

“Easy now, almost done,” Patrick said, as if sensing his patient was about to turn unruly. Such intuition was no doubt a useful skill for a veterinarian to have.

In a roommate, however, it was most annoying.

In fact, the very idea of a roommate made James want to gnash his teeth in frustration. He had indulged in a good, long look around the kitchen as Patrick shaved his beard a bit too enthusiastically. Everywhere he looked, evidence of his lonely bachelor’s life taunted him. The punching bag, with a hole in one end spilling sawdust onto the floor. The unused copper pans above the equally pristine iron stove. Upstairs, he knew his sheets would smell of nothing but his own loneliness and perhaps a good whiff of terrier.

He wanted to return to Georgette and sleep with her head on his shoulder, and wake up in bedclothes that smelled of her.

The reminder of what he still needed to do to keep her safe pricked as surely as Patrick’s torment of a needle. His friend finally stepped back, regarding James with an authoritative air. “I suppose you would not listen if I told you to go lie down.”

James rose with a groan. “Not even Gemmy listens when you say that.” He hissed between his teeth, testing his ability to stand and finding it questionable. “I cannot stay. You know that.”

“Aye.” Patrick nodded. “I suppose I do. How about I come with you then?”

James eyed his friend. His first instinct, of course, was to tell him no. But he was finding himself considering a lot of things today he would never have imagined. He nodded slowly. “I would appreciate that.”

Patrick stepped over to the washbasin and washed his hands. “How are you feeling? I have something I could give you for pain, but it’s meant for horses, and I can’t vouch for what it might do to you.”

James ran a hand along his injured cheek, where the bullet had grazed his skin. On either side of the stitches, the skin there felt exposed and raw where Patrick had shaved him. A mental image of his tanned forehead contrasting with the pale white skin the beard had recently covered made him wince. “Hang how I feel. I must look ridiculous.”

Patrick dried his hands and then hefted one of the unused copper pots from its anchor on the wall. He spun it around and held the gleaming copper surface a few inches from James’s face. “ ’Tis not too bad. I’ve a feeling your bride will not mind.”

James peered at his copper-tinted image. He looked like . . . well, truth be told, he looked like hell. The row of stitches along his jaw could not be missed, and a smear of blood still stained the hair around his ears.

But more importantly, he looked like his father. When he had grown the beard eleven years ago, he had been a twenty-one-year-old youth, with rounded edges and an earnest look in his eyes. He had wanted something to hide behind, something to distinguish himself from his family.

Now he was a man, with the hard, angular planes and the beginnings of the weary, careworn lines he had glimpsed across his father’s desk this evening.

He rubbed his hand across the uninjured side of his face. “She’ll likely not recognize me.” He scarcely recognized himself, but there was something settling about seeing his face for the first time in over a decade. He
was
a Kilmartie.

And there was no shame in that.

“Kiss her, then.” Patrick shrugged. “That will set her mind to rights, soon enough.”

James could not help the chuckle that built in his chest. Kiss her, indeed. That was something he planned to do, every day for the rest of his life.

They headed toward the door together, but James pulled up short at the sight of Georgette’s corset. It was lying on the kitchen sideboard atop a cluttered pile of his books and papers. He had forgotten about that. He liked the way it looked there, a bit of feminine frippery amid his things. He tucked it up under his arm and admitted to himself he wanted to make a life with her, not just a marriage.

But first he needed to make sure she was safe.

He stepped outside, Patrick on his heels, only to see William and Cameron riding toward him through darkness. Their horses were winded, their faces grim. They pulled to a halt in front of him.

James glared up at his brother. The man had clearly located the magistrate, but that did little to settle the anger that surged through James.

William had left Georgette. Alone and unprotected.

James might have just garnered his father’s favor after eleven years of estrangement, but that did not matter in the face of this betrayal. He was bloody well going to kill his brother.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” James demanded.

“Thanking God you are alive.” William’s face dissolving into a shite-eating grin. “But good God, man, what happened to your beard?”

“Burton tried to kill me again, and you’ve left Georgette unprotected. Is the first thing you have to say to me really something about a bloody beard?”

William swore as his horse half reared. He struggled to bring his mount under control. When he finally had the animal settled again, he regarded James with a solemn expression, all trace of humor vanished. “I did not leave her, Jamie. She left
you
.”

“What?” James asked, incredulous.

“She’s gone missing. Out the window.”

“But . . . I took her shoes!” James could well believe she would climb out the window. She had proven remarkably tenacious in the brief time he had known her. But walk about without shoes? In the dark?

With Burton possibly stalking her?

His breath near froze in his lungs.

“Apparently, that did not stop her.” William’s voice was a terrible rumble. “I thought she was locked in the library, safe where you’d left her, but when I peeked in to check on her, she was gone. I rode here to tell you and intercepted Cameron along the way.”

David Cameron cleared his throat and handed something down to him. James closed his hand over the folded piece of paper with fingers gone cold.

“She found me at the Gander and gave me this for your family,” Cameron told him. “I was given the impression she was worried about you, but after speaking with William and hearing his concerns about the situation, I confess I am no longer so sure.”

Cameron’s words stubbornly pushed their way through the tangled web of James’s thoughts. He motioned for Patrick’s lantern, and his stomach churned in nervous anticipation.

He unfolded the note. Read it.

William, your brother has been shot on the road from Kilmartie to Moraig. I cannot find him, and beg your assistance with the magistrate in mounting a search.

James crumpled it in his hand. His stomach no longer felt empty. In fact, it felt boiling full. A rabid sense of betrayal snaked its way inside him and set up shop. “She knew I was shot,” he croaked. His heart did cartwheels in his chest, turning over and over and stealing what breath he had left.

How did she know he was shot if she had no role in it?

“Aye.” William nodded grimly. “She knew you were shot. She just didn’t know you survived.”

I
T PROVED EASY
enough to find her. They returned to the Gander to ask around, and the innkeeper sent James straight up. Perhaps it was the prospect of thwarting four very large, very determined men, one of whom had caused a great deal of physical damage to the property last night. Or perhaps the Gander’s proprietor held no respect for a lady who had four different men asking after her. Whatever the reason, James was waved toward the stairs without so much as a blink from the man.

The other three men followed close on his heels, the pounding of their boots an ill match to the purposeful rhythm in his head. James pushed them back with a stern hand. “I’m not inviting an audience, gentleman. I will do this alone.”

William’s eyes widened at the rebuff. “That is daft, Jamie. She already tried to kill you once, though her aim could use some honing. Would you march in and bare your chest so she has a clear target at your fool of a heart?”

James shook his head. “I can handle myself, now that I know not to trust her.”

“You can handle yourself against a man, sure enough.” Cameron’s voice poked at him like a stick. “All of Moraig knows that. But having a woman draw a knife on you is different, especially when it is a woman you care about.”

James drew in a sharp breath. He had not realized his feelings for Georgette were so bloody obvious. But emotions were irrelevant here. All that mattered was the truth, and his interrogation techniques would not be improved by onlookers. He squared his shoulders against their dissent. “I’m going alone, whether or not you approve.”

William looked ready to strangle him. Patrick, damn his eyes, just looked sympathetic. Oh, he understood their objections. He would have lodged the same argument himself had their positions been reversed. But none of them had any idea of the depth of feeling that had passed between him and Georgette in the space of only twenty-four hours. Her perfidy was something he
had
to address in private.

“Ten minutes,” James offered as a concession to the worry lining his brother’s eyes. “Come up in ten minutes if you don’t hear from me by then.”

After a long, tense moment, William nodded. “Just make sure it’s not a body we’ll be coming up to collect.”

James took the rest of the stairs two at a time. He opened the door with a silent hand. The chit had not even thought to turn the key in the lock. A dangerous mistake, that. Anyone could come in and find her the way he was doing, stretched out on the bed with only her silken hair for a blanket.

She slept, lost in some deep and twitching state of slumber. He contemplated shaking her awake, decided against a jarring hand on her shoulder. The gentlemanly side of him objected to jerking such a peaceful body from her dreams. Far kinder to do it with words.

Not that he was feeling very kindly toward her at the moment.

She had left a lamp burning low on the bedside table, and he reached over to turn the wick up. An object that looked suspiciously like his money purse snagged his attention for a half second before he set the corset down beside it. Evidence that she was involved in some way, and a possible motive as well. Had she really shot him for so paltry a sum?

His gaze returned to Georgette. She had not taken the time to pull back the bedcovers, and so James stood and stared at the length of her body a full minute before he lent his voice to the necessary process of waking her. She was so mind-numbingly beautiful that his fingers twitched to touch her.

But beauty had no place in this debate. A lioness could be beautiful, and still rip out your throat before feeding on your carcass.

He sat down on the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight but she did not stir. He drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with air and purpose. “Wake up, Georgette.”

Chapter 30

A
VOICE HISSED AT
her through terror-filled dreams, bidding her to obey in a tone that brooked no argument.
Wake up.

Georgette did not even consider ignoring such a summons.

She opened her eyes and found a stranger sitting on the bed next to her. She pushed herself up on frantic hands and scrambled backward, unsure of where she was, which bed she was in, and whose angry face scowled down at her. She felt as confused as she had on waking this morning. The circumstances, and her surroundings, were so eerily familiar she almost closed her eyes, just to see if she was dreaming.

Only one thing stopped her. The eyes. Those haunting green eyes, this time illuminated by lamplight instead of sunlight. They were the same, and yet they were different.

This time, they were not inviting her to come closer.

“James!” She swallowed her gasp of joy, ignored the dark look on his face in favor of focusing on the fact that if he could glower, he could breathe.

His expression was not surprising. He was mad at her. She had known he would be, for leaving the library in such a cowardly way, but she would address his grievance later.

For now, her heart skipped its gladness.

He was alive.

She launched herself at him, her arms wrapping themselves around whatever piece of him she could reach. How could she have fallen asleep? The last thing she remembered was promising herself she would not. She let her nose rest there in the curve between his neck and shoulder. He smelled the same, soap and old blood and warm wool and hard-ridden horse. He felt the same too, his muscles strong and tense beneath her hands as she rested her palms against his back.

But he looked like someone else entirely.

She pulled back and studied the new architecture of his skin, where once his beard had been. She cupped the smooth surface of his injured cheek with one shaking hand. “I thought you were dead,” she whispered.

“Indeed.” He did not speak in the same hushed tones her own voice offered. His tone, and the guttural way he rolled his vowels, sounded like thunder in her newly awakened head. “Does the fact I am not come as a surprise?”

It should have been a question. But the way he said it, grave and hard, made it clear he did not entertain the idea.

He blamed her. Her body began to shake. It hurt, those words, the culpability he obviously placed in her. But how could he not blame her, when she also blamed herself?

“Randolph said . . .” Georgette swallowed and shook her head against the terrifying memory. “He said . . . you were dead. I did not know what to think.”

I was so scared.
But uttering the last of it would not erase the accusing look on this man’s face. And so she chose to keep it inside, where she could nurse it, protect it.

Cherish it. Fear was an emotion she had long held of a husband, but it was not something she had ever imagined feeling
for
one.

His eyes flashed at her. “Pretty lies, Georgette. But dinna—” He seemed to catch himself, though the brogue he kept hidden made her heart stutter. “
Do not
sit there and pretend you don’t know what happened. I saw your note. My only question is, did you pull the trigger or did you set Randolph on me to do your dirty work?”

She shrank back on the bedcovers. “Neither,” she whispered.

“Did you leave the safety of Kilmartie Castle and my brother’s protection for a reason? Or did you merely fancy a bruising walk through dark woods to cap off your eventful day?”

“Neither, I tell you!” Anger reared its curious, misshapen head. She pushed against his chest, sucking in a breath as he winced in response to the press of her palm. There was scarcely an inch of him she could touch without hurting him in some way. “I left, damn you, but you left me first.”

He leaned back, giving her an inch more room in which to find air. “Where did you go?”

“I went . . .” She swallowed, not wanting to give voice to the illogical thoughts that had driven her on her ill-considered flight out the window. “I went to gather my things. At the hunter’s cottage.”

His face darkened. “Why?”

She cursed under her breath, one of Elsie’s choicest words. This, then, was James MacKenzie, solicitor. Tossing out questions, demanding answers. Thinking the worst of her.

Only she might deserve this bit that was coming.

“I was going to return to London, on the morning coach.” Her voice cracked, though she lifted her chin in defiance.

Her words scraped at James’s already raw heart. “You were leaving me? Without
shoes
?” The thought she had planned to leave him, without even a word of good-bye, hurt as much as the thought that she might have a hand in his attempted murder.

“Yes.” She straightened her shoulders. “But not without shoes. That was what I went to the cottage to fetch.”

“Why would you do something so stupid?” he demanded.

She raised a brow, a gesture at once infuriating and heart-warming. “London is a filthy place. Shoes are not optional for the journey.”

“You could have waited for my return,” he pointed out.

“It was no more than you deserved, locking me in the library, stealing my things. That is no way to treat someone you claim to care about. I would have treated you far better, had the situation been reversed.”

His already confused feelings scattered like ashes tossed into the wind. It was difficult to trust his ears, much less his instincts. “You . . .
care
about me?”

Georgette nodded, swiping at a lone tear with the back of her hand. “Clearly, I am not thinking straight.”

James leaned back, resting his hands on his thighs and staring at the lamp beside the bed. “Clearly, neither am I.” He felt as if she had picked him up and tossed him against a wall. He wanted to believe her. Desperately. But the facts were rather damning.

“How did you know where to find me?” Georgette’s voice wound its way around the cracks in his heart, honing his thoughts back to his original purpose.

“Cameron found me and showed me your note. He said he had left you here, so it was the first place we looked.” His chest felt squeezed in a too-tight belt, and the air seemed trapped in his lungs. “How did
you
know I had been shot?”

She released a long, shuddering breath. “Randolph came upon me in the cottage, brandishing a rifle. He told me he had killed you. I was terrified for you, afraid to listen to him. But then, when I found a pool of blood and your money purse along the road, I realized Randolph had been telling the truth. I found the magistrate and wrote the note to aid his search. But I did not do this thing you are accusing me of. I would
never
hurt you.”

James no longer knew what to believe. He only knew that the thought of Georgette meeting her cousin, alone and unprotected, sent his pulse into a mad gallop. “Did Burton hurt you?” His voice came out hoarse, as if someone had put a hand to his throat and squeezed.

“I am untouched,” she told him, a smile flirting about her lips. “I cannot say the same about my cousin. I took care of him.”

A noise came out of him then, something strangled and desperate. He regarded her a long, wide-eyed moment. “Christ, Georgette, you don’t do anything by halves. Where did you leave the body?” He held up a hand as she opened her mouth. “No, don’t tell me. As your solicitor, I think it’s best if I don’t know. We’ll claim you acted in self-defense, and—”

“I did not kill him,” she interrupted. “I may have knocked him in the head with a fireplace poker. Left a fearsome imprint, that bit of iron did.” She nibbled on her lower lip. “And I
may
have threatened to kill him if he harmed you.”

James looked at her, admiration breaking through the former bleak plains of his mind. It was not evidence, not anywhere close. But it was an explanation that made sense. He found himself grasping on to it as if it was flotsam and he was a drowning man. She knew he had been shot because she had confronted Randolph. There was no conspiracy on her part, no plot to kill him or blackmail his family.

She
cared
about him.

This was the truth he wanted to believe.

He ran an awkward hand through his hair and offered her a slantwise glance. “It takes a strong woman to handle herself so well.”

“Does this mean you forgive me for leaving?” Her eyes were wide. Beseeching.

“I don’t know what to think,” he told her. His eyes skipped across her face, settled in the vicinity of her mouth. The truth he wanted clicked into place as irrefutable fact.

“Actually, I do,” he clarified, the comprehension of his feelings like a warm iron held up to his skin. “I think I might love you.”

G
EORGETTE’S WORLD, WHICH
had been sliding south only minutes before, ground to a halt.

How could he
love
her? They had known each other for all of a day. She had been contrary and disheveled for most of it, two of the very things that had so vexed her first husband. How had she done such an impossible thing as to earn this man’s love?

And most important, what was she going to do about it?

She took his face between her hands and splayed her fingers over the angle of his cheekbones, taking care to avoid his injured jaw. “I love you too.” There was not the slightest hesitation in offering those words back. It did not matter if their acquaintance was counted in hours instead of months. She had known what she felt since the moment her cousin told her James was dead.

“But I don’t know if I trust you,” he said.

She was so close she could almost feel the puff of air that came from his mouth on the word “trust.” So close, his words hit her like an uppercut. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”

“Trust.” He pulled away from her touch. “That part is the hardest for me. I do not know if I can trust you, Georgette. With my heart, my life, my money purse, any of it.”

“Your money purse is sitting on the bedside table. Perhaps next time you will listen to me when I suggest it would be safer stashed in an inside pocket.” That part was easily solved. But she swallowed against the fear that rose up in her throat over the rest of it. “I suppose, on the matter of your heart, I don’t blame you for not trusting me. I am not sure I trust myself, or these feelings you conjure in me.” She stared down at the coverlet, picked at an idle threat. “Perhaps it will come. Surely trust takes longer than a day to build.”

She heard him draw a deep breath. “I would have said the same thing about love only yesterday, but here we are.”

“Where, exactly, are we?” Georgette lifted her eyes.

He held out his hand, and for a moment she thought he would take her own up. Instead, he offered her his palm, face up. “Might I have my ring back, Lady Thorold?”

Her world tumbled then, straight off the edge of reason. He wanted his ring back?

Her heart should have been pounding in her chest. Instead, it fell quiescent, as if it did not quite trust her either. She slipped the signet ring off her finger and handed it to him. He put it on his own hand. It did not spin around, loose, as it had on her own finger. He had to work it over one knuckle, and then push to seat it home.

It fit him like it was supposed to, that ring.

Like it was never meant to be hers.

Behind James’s head, the door to the room flung open. Georgette sensed the danger before she saw it, leaped to her feet, coiled and ready to run or fight or whatever was needed. Randolph, disheveled and clearly out of his head, stepped into the room.

And all she could think as he advanced on James was that he might as well kill them both.