Forget Me Not (28 page)

His face fell to the curve of her neck, his hands buried in the depths of her hair, and his shoulders rolled forward… enveloping her. The surrender was evident in every fiber of his body.
Brian released one long shuddering breath, clinging to her in what could only be desperation. “Oh, Lydia,” he choked. “My lovely, perfect, Lydia. If only it were as easy as you make it sound.”

Crash!

Lydia and Brian started as one. The door exploded inward, slamming into the wall with such force a shower of plaster peppered the carpet, revealing an enraged Olivia and… Sir William.

Red hot mortification seized Lydia, and she pulled out of Brian’s arms. “How did you get in here?”

“I knew it!” Olivia shrieked, the master Skeleton key clutched in her fingers. “You see, William, I warned you this would happen.”

“Lydia, how could you?”  Her father’s gaze locked with hers, a mixture of disappointment, pain, and disbelief glistening in his eyes. “What would your mother think if she saw you now?”

She gasped. A vision of her mother laughing, hazel green eyes flashing with joy, merriment and motherly pride, flickered in her mind. No words could have cut her more deeply. For the briefest instant the surest sense of letting her parents down, failing to meet their expectations pierced Lydia, and a piece of her heart… fell. “Papa—”

“Do not bat your pretty little eyes and
Papa
me, young lady.”  Disbelief morphed to disillusionment and finally boiling rage in his eyes.

Lydia gulped. Dread thickened and solidified squarely in her middle. She glanced to Brian’s standing motionless behind her.

“General, I’m sorry,” Brian said humbly.

“You son of a bitch.”  Her father’s menacing glare locked on Brian as he took one long step into the room fists clenched, face black with rage. “To think I trusted you, Donnelly.”

Thwack
.

Her father’s meaty fist made sharp contact with Brian’s jaw. “Bloody hell.”  Brian stumbled backward, holding out a palm.

“Papa, no!”  Lydia cried, rushing forward to protect Brian, he was far too honorable to defend himself from her father’s tirade given the present circumstances. “Don’t hurt him.”

“Hurt him?”  Sir William brushed Lydia aside. “I’ll murder the bloody bastard.”

A second crushing blow slammed into the side of Brian’s head. He sprawled to the floor at Lydia’s feet. Brian groaned, wiping a smear of blood from the corner of his lip. “Sir William, please—”

“Shut the hell up, Donnelly.”  Her father drew a long bladed hunting knife from the back of his black trousers, pointing the weapon squarely on Brian’s chest.

Horrified, Lydia dropped to her knees over Brian, shielding him from further attack. “Stop this madness, please. All of this is my fault. Do not blame Brian.”

A resigned gleam lit Brian’s eye as he swept Lydia aside and dragged himself to his feet, squaring off with Sir William. “That’s not true, lass, and yer father knows it. I’m prepared to answer fer me sins.”

Lydia knew her father’s menacing expression all too well, and feared imminent disaster. Desperate, Lydia scrambled between Brian and her father. “Brian, get out of here.”

“I’m no coward, lass.”

Her father circled Brian with the patience of a cat about to pounce. The thought of him suffering further harm as a result of her was unbearable. “Now, Brian. Go. You’re making this worse. I can handle my parents.”

For half a second she thought he would refuse again, stand and face her father. Their eyes locked, regret and apology brimming in Brian’s eyes. “I’m sorry, lass,” he whispered, and, quick as lightening, ducked his head, and dashed past Olivia through the door.

“Coward,” Sir William bellowed, chasing after Brian, weapon at the ready. “Hiding behind a woman’s skirts. Get back here, Donnelly. Face me like a man.”

“Papa, don’t do this,” Lydia begged rushing forward. “You don’t want to hurt him.”

“Don’t I?” Sir William stopped outside the door, hauled his arm back and prepared to throw the knife at Brian’s rapidly departing back.

Sheer terror seared Lydia. “No!”  She threw herself into her father’s side, knocking him off balance.

The blade slipped from his hand, hurtling through the air, and slamming into the wall just above Brian’s right shoulder a split second before he disappeared around the corner.

“I cannot believe you did that!” Lydia cried, raking a horrified glare the length of her father. “What were you thinking?”

“To kill the miserable horse’s ass,” Sir William grumbled, stalking forward to yank the knife from the wall.

“Your father is saving you from yourself, Lydia,” Olivia clipped. “To be stabbed in the back is better than that Irishman deserves after dallying with the daughter of his betters.”

“His betters?”  Anger flashed through Lydia. “There is no man better than Brian Donnelly, rest assured of that. I owe my life to him.”

“Get back in your room,” Sir William barked, slashing an arm through the air.

Lydia flinched, jerking back a few steps.

Slowly her father advanced on her. Pure rage roiled beneath a too calm exterior. Olivia followed off his left flank, a superior leer adorning her face.

The breath froze in Lydia’s throat. Her father was a formidable man, she’d seen him angry—been the cause of his anger—on scores of occasions, but never before this moment had she been frightened of him.

“Mark my words, Lydia,” Sir William growled, “you are never to see that man again. If you so much as utter the name Brian Donnelly you will regret it.”

The small kernel of hope her father would insist she and Brian marry died a swift—if excruciating—death. Lydia steeled her courage and lifted her chin in open defiance. “I will not marry, Lord Northbridge.”

“The devil you say!”  A hand fluttered dramatically to Olivia’s breast. “She will ruin everything, William. Everything!  You must stop her.”

Sir William did not so much as glance at his wife. Hellfire burned in his gaze, chilling Lydia to the bone, but she refused to budge.

“I will not be a pawn for your political games any longer. I would sooner die a miserable old maid than marry the viscount.”  She looked directly into Olivia’s murderous glare.

Brutally Sir William grasped her chin, forcing her to meet his hard gaze. “You will marry Northbridge or so help me God I’ll have Donnelly deported on the next prison ship.”

She gasped, wrenching from his grasp. “You wouldn’t.”

Her father sneered. “Prison colonies are a fate worse than death, my dear. I’ve seen them. I know.”

A vision of Brian starving and beaten within an inch of his life wove hauntingly through her mind, dampening her heart and soul. Lydia pressed her palms to her forehead, shaking her head in denial.

“And what of the little brat you brought home?  What shall become of him if you choose not to marry Lord Northbridge?”

“Brandon?”  Lydia snapped to attention. “Leave him out of this. He is of no concern in this matter.”

Sir William stroked a lazy finger the length of his jaw. “London is teeming with orphanages and workhouses, placing the filthy bastard shouldn’t be any problem.”

“No, Papa!  You can’t,” she begged, grasping his arm, imploring him with her eyes. “You wouldn’t. I swore to Brandon I wouldn’t let that happen, that I would protect him.”

A bark of cruel laughter escaped her father. “Never make promises you cannot keep, Lydia. Have I taught you nothing of importance and respectability?”

“You have taught me nothing but selfishness and bitterness.”

“Then I’ve taught you the truths of life,” he said with a curt nod.

Silence lapsed, and only the drone of the rain broke the tension.

“Should you persist in refusing to marry Northbridge I can’t stop you, but...”  Sir William held up a single finger. “Bear in mind that no matter where Donnelly runs I have the means and intent to find him.”  His eyes narrowed. “There are men of my acquaintance who make Felix Keith appear mild as a milk faced governess. If you defy me Brian Donnelly is as good as a dead man, and I’ll bury your brat in an orphanage or hire him out to a sweep for pennies.”

Anguish carved a torturous path through Lydia’s soul. Never in her life had she felt more utterly helpless.

Sir William strode to the door, plucking the key she kept inside her room from the floor, and motioning Olivia to leave the room.

“Answer me one thing, Father.”

“Yes.”  He paused in the doorway without looking back at Lydia.

“When I was lost last week, did you worry for me or only the loss of the Northbridge title?”

Her father’s gaze settled hard upon her. “Believe it or not, Lydia, all I want is what’s best for you.”

“Then why have you never asked
me
what is best?”

“Do not try to leave,” he said crisply. “I’ll have guards posted outside your door until you come around to my way of thinking.”

The door closed with resounding finality. Lydia stared at the portal for a full minute, dumbfounded by all that had occurred in the last minutes, heart shattered. All her efforts to carve
a life of love and happiness had been for naught. She’d fallen flat on her face and landed in the same place she’d begun, this time sheering the already tenuous relationship with her parents. Brian was right. Every moment of happiness—no matter how brief—came with a steep price. Brian had come to her, given her one sweet memory of true love to treasure and carry with her, and now she must pay the piper. It was done. Sir William had won. The only real choice she had was to protect Brian and Brandon, those she loved. She would marry Lord Northbridge.

Lightning flashed ominously. Lydia shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

The face of her Irish knight stared up at her from the sketchbook. She knelt to lift the volume and heaved it across the room, knocking over an ancient porcelain vase in the process. “Blast it all. Can nothing go right?”  She stumbled to the broken shards, dropping to her knees to clean the mess. A sharp edge sliced the pad of her right pointer finger.

It was the final straw.

Plopping onto her bottom, she held the injured digit to her chest and sobbed.

*
             
*
             
*

The door to Brian’s meager cottage slammed with resounding finality. Breathless he slumped against the wooden slats, mentally reliving the events of the last hours. “What a miserable bastard ye are, Brian Donnelly. A miserable bastard indeed.”

His head thudded uselessly against the wall.

Grief racked Brian until a piece of his heart twisted off and died. It hurt. It more than hurt, it was excruciating, a pain of the soul. The sort of bleeding wound that no amount of rest or doctoring could heal. Dear God, but he’d ruined Lydia. Ruined her and left her to the mercy of the wolves. Never had he seen Sir William so enraged, not that Brian blamed the man, if he’d caught a man in his innocent daughter’s bed…  The word
torture
came to mind, immediately followed by
murder,
and Brian didn’t even have children.

Children!
  Brian’s heart clinched as Lydia’s words filtered through his mind,
There could already be a child…
  Miserably he scrubbed a hand through his hair, pacing the single room in overt agitation.

“I’m such a fool.”  Subconsciously Brian conjured the sight of Lydia’s naked body, flushed and rosy with passion, a heavenly glow in her amber eyes as they’d made love. God, but he loved her. She bewitched him in a way that was most certainly not natural. Tonight Lydia had bared his soul, seen every bleeding wound, and then a part of her had reached into him and begun a long overdue healing process. The girl held pure magic in the palm of her hands.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the shadowed interior of his small cottage. It seemed an age since last he stood on the creaking floorboards, truthfully a lifetime had passed in the last days, and his home felt strangely foreign. Brian sighed. Who was he kidding?  No place would ever be home without Lydia. Why had it taken him so long to see it?  Darkness pervaded every corner of the house, expounding on his misery.

He stumbled to the small wooden table beside his bed and lit a candle stub. The dim light did little to brighten his spirits as he trudged to the old trunk nestled against the foot of his wooden bed frame. He lifted the lid, the tangy scent of cedar wafting through his nostrils. Slowly he knelt, the memories he’d tucked so neatly away glaring up at him. At the top of the pile lay his old uniform, the very dress coat he’d worn the night he met Lydia. The gold buttons winked hauntingly in the candlelight. Ever so gently he peeled the red wool aside, revealing a milky white handkerchief, the initials
L.M.C.
embroidered in the corner. He lifted the delicate cloth smoothing a thumb over the silver thread.

Heaven help him, Brian’s heart nearly stopped, but the handkerchief still smelled like Lydia. After four years, three countries, and being stuffed in a cedar box her sweet lavender perfume still clung to the fabric.

A heavy sense of loss closed in on him, accompanying the sorrow. What a fool he’d been. If he hadn’t so persistently shoved Lydia away, the two of them could be in Scotland right now…