Borrowed Dreams (Scottish Dream Trilogy) (41 page)

“A wise man, you say?”

“Yes. My husband. The terribly wise
Lord Aytoun. Have you heard of him?”

“Oh, yes. The Lord of Scandal.” 

She leaned against him and traced
the hard lines around his mouth with the tip of one finger. “I don’t want any
secrets between us, Lyon. I don’t want anything left unsaid. No assumptions or
misunderstandings. Only the truth.”

“Truscott told you about Emma.”

“And your brothers’ relationship
with her,” she said quietly. “There was so much that I didn’t know, and there
is still so much about me and my past that you don’t know, either. And today, after I left the village and rode down along the riverbank, I ran into so many people
who have been pushed out of their homes. Families that have nearly lost hope. And I thought of the two of us and how we have been given a second chance at happiness, and how
much I wanted to succeed in that.”

Millicent let her hopes rise when Lyon’s arm tightened around her. She tucked her head under his chin.

“Being down there also made me
realize that now Emma was no longer the supernatural creature that I had
imagined her to be. Now, knowing more about her, I realized that she was simply
a woman made of flesh and blood—a human being with all the strengths and
failings that all of us have. Knowing that, I realized I could survive this
road and perhaps even make a difference as I travel along on it. But at the same time, I recognized how important it was for me to tell you everything I could
about myself, too.” 

The feel of his arm around her gave
Millicent the strength she needed to continue.

“I was practically given to
Wentworth at the age of twenty three for the lack of a better marriage offer.
My uncle, who had been my guardian, was too terrified of the embarrassment and
the expense of having a spinster on his hands forever. So I had to go. It
mattered naught by then who it was to be, no matter how bad the man’s
reputation or character.” She let out a shaky breath, resolved to keep nothing
back. “I remained married to him for five years, though I still find it a
miracle that I survived that long. To my husband, I was just a bit of property,
like his land, his sugar holdings, his African workers, his horses and dogs and
sheep and cattle. And he saw it as his right to abuse us and to cut us down as
he wished.”

Millicent felt the tension in Lyon’s body as his anger grew, but she continued to talk. “During those years—when I was at
Melbury Hall and not trying to hide from him in London—I formed a bond, of
sorts, with many of the black workers that Wentworth held as slaves. During
this time I also had the good fortune of becoming friends with Reverend and
Mrs. Trimble and with Mr. Cunningham, the schoolteacher at Knebworth Village. These good people, with the support of our neighbor Lord Stanmore, were
trying to improve the conditions at Melbury Hall that the slaves there were
forced to endure.”

She pushed away from Lyon’s chest and tried to force down the lump that was growing in her throat. “Although
Wentworth had nothing to fear, my friendship with Mr. Cunningham became a very
sore subject with him.  He refused to see that the man’s compassion was his
reason for visiting Melbury Hall.

He preferred to believe that we
were lovers. We were
not
, though I think Mr. Cunningham at the end
confused his compassion for me with love.”

“Millicent—”

“There is more I need to tell you
about Cunningham, but let me first tell you something else. Wentworth believed
that it was his right as master to use me as he saw fit. In short,
I found myself with child. He used to say that it was his
right
‘t
o touch as I like and to punish as I
see fit.’ He preferred to punish, and he beat me once so severely during that
time that
I was confined to bed for weeks. I also lost the child.”

She shook her head when he tried to
pull her back into his arms.

“Let me finish. I need to tell you
all of it.” She blinked back her tears. “After losing that baby, I was lost in
my own grief for months. At the same time I knew that I was wearing out my
value to Wentworth. It was only a matter of time before he would kill me. He
had done it before.”

She looked up into Lyon’s face. His fury was barely restrained.

“Wentworth’s first wife’s family
owned a number of plantations in Jamaica. That is where he made a small
fortune, but just before he decided to move back to England, she
died…mysteriously. Wentworth told me, during a moment of drunken boasting, that
she
had worn out her value.”

Millicent moved her hand over Lyon’s fisted fingers. “Then came the summer before last. I accidentally met an old school
friend at Knebworth Village. It was Rebecca. She had been in the American
colonies for ten years.” 

Millicent recalled those days of
meeting secretly with Rebecca in the Grove or at the church in the village.

“She helped me realize I had to
find a way out of that marriage, before I ended up like Wentworth’s first wife.
We even went as far as planning an escape to Philadelphia or somewhere in the
colonies. But then one day, before we could put our plan into action, Wentworth
flew into a rage when Lord Stanmore took away one of the slave children who had
been severely abused by the bailiff. After that, everything broke loose at
once.”

“You are shivering.” Lyon’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, and he drew her against his side. Millicent forced
herself to go on.

“It was June. We had hidden Violet
in the Grove to protect her from Wentworth and his lechery. I sent Jonah to the
village one night to ask Mr. Cunningham to come at dawn to take Violet away. And he did. But Wentworth and his bailiff, a brute named Mickleby, appeared and claimed that it
was I who was running away with the schoolteacher that morning. Wentworth shot
and killed Mr. Cunningham that morning.” 

Lyon’s hand gently caressed her. “And Wentworth was killed by Stanmore?” 

That was the public explanation,
but Millicent wanted him to know the truth. “After killing Cunningham, Wentworth
went berserk. He wanted to murder everyone who mattered to me…before killing
me. He decided to start with Jonah.” She held Lyon’s hand and looked up into
his face. “No one knows this, but Moses killed Wentworth that morning. Stanmore
arrived just in time to save Moses’s life. To save Moses from having to face
the law for killing a white man, and to spare me the scandal that might follow,
Stanmore took responsibility for all of it. How much he told the magistrate of
what really happened I don’t know, but there were never any questions asked
later on.”

“I knew I liked Stanmore, but what
about the bailiff?”

“As he prepared to kill Moses, he
died by Stanmore’s sword.”

“Who else knows this?” Lyon asked, concerned.

“Only the few Africans who were in
the Grove that morning. And Rebecca and Stanmore. And I believe Violet learned
of it later from one of the women who had been hiding her in the Grove.” She
held his hand. “You are worried.”

“For Moses’s life,” he said
solemnly. “If the truth of that day ever reaches the wrong ears, his life will
be worth nothing.”

“But no one will know,” she said,
determined. “Wentworth would have slain many people, that morning including me,
if it were not for Moses’s bravery. He saved my life. You know him. How gentle
he is. And no one who was there would ever betray him.”

****

Shadows flickered on the walls of
the servants’ hall, and Gibbs sat before the fire, staring into the dying
flames. The house was quiet, the doors secured, and Moses was on his watch
rounds, but the Highlander could not shake the feeling that was haunting him.

A memory kept nagging at him. A
memory of his childhood.

He was only about five, but even
then he knew that something momentous was happening. Something that would
change his world. He and his mother and sister were sitting before the fire in
their cottage on the hillside.  His father and older brothers had gone off a
few week earlier to join Bonny Prince Charlie in his fight against the Hanovers. As they waited that night, they heard the keening cries of the women in the glen,
and he knew his father and brothers were not coming back.

This same feeling was haunting him
now, and Gibbs did not like it at all.

Mary Page glided into the hall like
an angel, guarding her bit of paradise. She was growing fond of him, he could
tell. And for the first time in his life, the feeling was mutual.

“Come sit with me, Mrs. Page. Ye
have been on your feet this entire day.”

She snuffed a guttering candle and
adjusted a stack of plates on the table before coming and taking the seat
beside him. Her eyes were warm when they swept over his face. “You look as
troubled as I feel, Mr. Gibbs.”

He reached for her hand and she let
him entwine his fingers with hers. “Tell me what is bothering ye, Mary.” 

“I don’t know what is happening,
but something is wrong. And I am not imagining this. The entire household is
feeling it.” She looked about the empty hall. “Violet didn’t take a single meal
today, and I saw her looking out the windows at the road a dozen times, if I
saw her do it once. Ohenewaa has been keeping to her room, and every time I
passed by her door, I could hear her chanting her African songs. And then one of the serving maids said she thought she saw Ned Cranch in the shadow of the
woods, peering up at the house with an ax in his hand.”

“That sounds a wee bit far-fetched,
Mary. The stonemason not only left his job here; he has also emptied his room
at the inn.”

“Now, what do you think happened to
him?”

“Maybe he got word that his wife
had a bairn. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t come around to get paid
for the work he’d done. Perhaps he’s planning on coming back, though I do not
know why he went off without telling us.”

“You see, Mr. Gibbs?” Mary looked him in the eye. “Everyone is behaving strangely, and there is just no explaining
it.”

He ran his finger gently over the
palm of her hand. “Ye know all this imagining could be the result of having
Lord and Lady Aytoun away. From what ye told me yourself, the mistress is not
one to spend time away from Melbury Hall. And ‘tis ten years since I’ve been
separated from his lordship.”

“Do you really think that is all
‘tis, Mr. Gibbs? Do you think we are worrying about nothing?”

The way Mary’s large eyes were
watching the movement of his finger, the innocent way the blush had crept up
her cheeks, Gibbs couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and pressing a kiss
onto her forehead.

“I don’t know, Mary. But I can tell ye I feel better having ye beside me.”

“The same goes for me, Angus,” she said in a small voice, moving closer to his side.

As the two sat and stared into the
fire, though, their feeling of foreboding was not easily shaken.

****

“I did not mean to worry you so
with what I told you earlier about Wentworth’s death,” Millicent whispered
against Lyon’s ear, curling an arm around his chest. “I am sorry. Now you
cannot sleep, can you?”

His head turned toward her on the
pillow. “That is not what is keeping me awake. I have been thinking of what
Truscott told you about Emma.”

“It was wrong of me to ask him to take
me there. I should have waited until you were ready to—”

“No. I am glad you went. And I am relieved that you know as much as you do about her.” His hand gently caressed her hair
and her face. “What has been keeping me awake is the fact that I should tell
you the rest of it—of what happened that day.”

Until this moment Millicent hadn’t
realized that how mixed her feelings were. The possibility of Lyon's somehow
being responsible for Emma’s death was a plausible reason for his melancholy
after the accident. But she had never wanted to believe it.

Millicent looked beyond her husband
and the bed at the half-light of the bedchamber. The flames were burning low in
the fireplace. Despite the shadows lurking all around them, she thought, she
trusted this man. How fortunate they were to have each other.

“Will you tell me?”

Lyon took hold of her hand and
stared up at the ceiling. “We fought. We always fought. Everything about Emma
and me was a mistake from the very beginning. We were ten years apart, but it
may as well have been a hundred. We did not understand each other. We did not
speak the same language. Could not comprehend the other’s needs. And this was no one’s fault but mine. I always thought I knew what she wanted. I had watched her
grow up. I had watched her liveliness and beauty bloom. I thought she wanted
only me.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Arrogance leads us to make many mistakes.
She didn’t want me. She wanted Baronsford. And I was completely blind to it.”

Millicent wished she could somehow
make this easier for him, but she could not think of a way.

“What Truscott told you about our
problems was all true. When she became unreasonable, I only became worse. When
she withdrew, I became suspicious. As a result, we spent most of our marriage
apart. When she was in London or Bath or Bristol, I made sure I was at Baronsford. When she came here with her friends, I would spend the time in the Highlands. And as great a fool as I was, despite all of our difficulties, our mockery of marriage remained
tolerable so long as Emma would not disgrace us publicly.”

Lyon’s gaze turned to Millicent. “Because of Emma, my brothers began to hate me. Pierce and David and I grew further and further
apart. But that wasn’t enough, so she began to hint at affairs. And then she would question my honor. My manhood. And she would expect me to act on it.”

“And you did.”

“I was a fool. I think she hoped I
would die in one of those duels. Instead, even greater fools than I had to
die.”