Highland Bachelor 02 - This Laird of Mine (20 page)

The two words echoed in her mind as she blended the paint.

Not enough
.

T
he following morning, Fin entered the drawing room, where Jules was standing, staring at empty space. “Milord,” Fin interrupted.

Jules turned toward the door, expecting to have to reassure his worried steward, when he saw an unexpected sight. “Peter Kirkwood?”

“Good morning, milord,” the older man said, making a small bow before coming into the room.

Jules frowned as anticipation edged with worry. “What brings you to Kildare Manor?” Jules waved him toward a seat on the settee.

“A startling discovery I felt you should know,” he replied, settling into the cushions. His voice was quiet and even, but there was an undercurrent to his words.

Jules remained standing as the unknown tightened his chest and made it hard to breathe. “Is it Claire?” he blurted out, needing to put words to the fear that was always there, taunting him. Had leaving her alone with David been the appropriate action?

“Nay, milord. I have uncovered new information about your father’s last days.”

The revelation startled Jules. “Go on.”

Kirkwood leaned forward. “I could not leave things the way we did in Edinburgh. I decided to take things upon myself to dig deeper, to understand your father’s motives for bribing Grayson to do something that was so beyond his character.”

Jules raised a brow. “What did you discover?”

“In Grayson’s notes, I discovered that your father did not pay the ransom to release you from gaol, but that he paid the warden to keep you incarcerated.”

Jules strode across the chamber, no longer able to stand still. He paced back and forth. “He kept me in? Why? Did he hate me that much?”

He had not realized he had spoken aloud until Kirkwood answered. “I think it is quite the opposite. I went to the warden and spoke with him. He said your father was worried the last time he went to the gaol to make a payment. He had no idea you had been released the week before. The news brought him to his knees, the warden said. When he asked Lord Kildare what was wrong, he said he could not let her get to you. Do his words mean anything to you?’

“Yes, they mean everything.” What Agatha had told him was true.

“There’s more.” Kirkwood interrupted. “From the financial trail your father left behind, it appears that he sold everything in the manor a few weeks after that encounter, and that was the money he used to pay Grayson to arrange your marriage to a Miss Claire Elliot.”

Jules stopped his pacing as a realization he could no longer avoid crashed over him. His father had cared, at least in the end, what happened to him. “It still doesn’t make sense as to why he did what he did.”

“From what I could discover, he seemed determined to find you a bride. I talked with several carriage drivers who said they escorted your father around town as he sought out women with the name Claire who were single, available, and somewhat down on their own luck.”

“He chose my bride?” Jules echoed his previous sentiment, still not quite believing the words.

Kirkwood nodded. “It appears your father’s last act upon this earth was to make certain his younger son would have a future, and if I might add my own sen
timent, a reason to live.”

A reason to live
.

Jules smiled. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the proof of a father’s love, or knowing that his father had chosen a woman for him based entirely upon her name, or both.

Claire had given him a reason to live. She had helped him settle into his role as laird. Such a thing would have been unbearable without her. She was his life, his heart, his soul. And he suddenly wondered why he’d felt it necessary to keep her at arm’s length, because without her he was barely alive.

At Jules’s continued silence, Kirkwood rose. “I hope the information is reassuring, if not somewhat inspiring.”

Jules nodded. “Inspiring, yes.”

The older man nodded. “I will continue to investigate and let you know if I discover anything further.”

His enthusiastic tone made Jules smile all the more. “You seem to enjoy these forays into investigation.”

Kirkwood nodded. “After a lifetime of papers and law, your queries have lent some spice to my rather mundane existence, milord.”

“Thank you, Kirkwood,” Jules said with a nod of his head. “Your efforts have been extraordinary.”

Now it was up to him to do something with that information.

Later that afternoon, Jules finally found the nerve to walk the short distance from the manor house to the family crypt where his father, mother, and brother were buried.

Jules entered the chamber. He held his lantern in front of him. The light cast leaping shadows on the pinkish-gray marble walls and shimmered off the effigies of his kin. His mother’s grave was dusty. With his hand he cleaned it off, revealing the image of the woman he remembered—a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, and kind eyes. Even set in stone, her eyes still held that softness he had once felt gaze upon him in life.

Beside her was the image of his father. His father’s likeness stared up at him. His face had held an expression of pride and a warmth Jules never witnessed again after his mother’s death. Had death brought him the peace he had searched for all those years? Jules hoped so. As he continued to study his father’s features, other questions crowded his thoughts. Had his father truly loved him? Had he kept Jules in gaol as a means of protecting him from the monster who had latched herself to their family? Had his father really known Agatha was still alive?

Jules’s thumb caressed his father’s brow. “For whatever happened between us, for all the unspoken words, and the words that were spoken in anger, I apologize. I had no idea what kind of monster had entered our lives. I should have talked to you. I should have trusted you. I should have done so many things. For that, and for your untimely death, I apologize.”

His own spirit lightened at the admission of his own failings. His father might never hear the words, but at least Jules knew he had finally said them.

He would never know the truth about his father’s actions or inaction toward the end of his life, but he wanted to believe that the man had actually loved him and tried to protect him instead of shutting him out and leaving him in that hellhole for dead.

Jules slid his gaze to the right, to the effigy next to his father’s. The heavy lid sat slightly askew, as though it had been moved then shifted back into place. She’d tricked them all, staging her own death and then having assistance in her resurrection from her tomb and this crypt.

For a heartbeat he wondered if that kind of evil could ever die. She was still out there, still a threat. She had robbed him of his freedom for over a year, and now she was robbing him of his happiness.

It was then that the realization hit him. That was exactly what Agatha wanted. She wanted him to be miserable without Claire. She had ruined the lives of his father and brother, and now he was allowing her to do the same to him. Jules’s eyes ached with unshed tears while his chest filled with hope. He had turned his own home into a prison, instead of rotting away in one.

But what was he to do about it? He returned his gaze to the images of his mother and father. “What do I do?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, but hoping that one would be provided all the same.

Encouraged and defeated at the same time, Jules returned to the manor, where he prowled the hallways and paced the drawing room, searching for an answer. It wasn’t until late afternoon that an answer was provided in the form of another visitor.

“Milord.” Fin cleared his throat as he entered the drawing room, stopping Jules’s trek across the newly restored carpet for the hundredth time. “There is someone to see you.”

Jules’s heart hammered with a mixture of hope and dread as Fin stepped back and Penelope entered the room.

She bowed. “Lord Kildare.”

“Penelope, what a surprise,” Jules said coming forward and taking her uninjured hand in his. “How did you get here?”

“’Tis only a short walk from where I am staying.”

“The exercise agrees with you. You look well.” Color had returned to her cheeks. She wore a pink glove on her injured hand that matched the color of her dress.

She blushed and pulled her hand from his. “’Tis the country air.”

He studied her face, then lower, his gaze moving to her missing finger. “Does it still pain you?” he asked.

She shrugged and looked away. “At times. Sometimes I feel as though my finger is still there, even though I know it is not. I feel sensations. I know it sounds strange . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Not at all,” Jules said, bringing his gaze back to hers. “I have heard it said from others who lost limbs in battle. The phenomenon is quite normal.”

Penelope gripped her hand, held it gently against her chest. “I was not in a battle.”

“Yes,” he said tenderly, “you were. A battle of the worst kind because it doesn’t make sense at all what happened to you.”

She gave him a partial smile. “Thank you for saying so. I often wonder if this is just punishment for some horrible sin I commit—”

“You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me?” Jules interrupted, his anger rising that the young woman even considered that she was at fault for Agatha’s maniacal actions. “You were innocent. And I hope you will realize that someday soon.”

“I am trying.”

“Good,” he said softly, then regarded her curiously. “Might I ask what brings you to Argyll? And more particularly, my house?”

She laughed. “Yes, it must seem rather strange that I show up out of the blue. But in reality I have been here for two weeks.”

He frowned. “Two weeks? Who? Where?”

“All of us,” she said, emphasizing the first word, “are staying at Lady Davison’s while Claire works on a commissioned ceiling.”

“Claire is here?” Just the sound of her name brought a tightness to his chest and an image of her to his mind—her wide golden eyes staring up at him, the wind tugging at the loose strands of her copper hair. He missed her with every fiber of his being.

“She’s made mistakes,” Penelope said. “But then, everyone makes mistakes. If we are not making mistakes, then we aren’t really living, wouldn’t you say?” She looked up at him expectantly.

The thought haunted him, tormented him, surprised him. “I can only agree.”

“Then wouldn’t you say if someone made a mistake, like Claire perhaps, that they might deserve a second chance at making things right?”

With an effort he ignored the leap of hope that flared to life inside him. It was unfair to put her in that kind of danger. She deserved someone who could give her a normal life. She deserved someone who would not bring death and pain into every day of their lives. Not someone like him.

At his silence Penelope continued. “She hasn’t been the same since you left. She never smiles. Her paintings are all in grays and greens. She never sleeps. She hardly eats. She’s slowly killing herself.”

“She would be in danger if I went anywhere near her.” He was surprised to hear how hoarse his voice was, how rough.

“She’s in danger now of slowly fading away.”

She never smiles?
It was her smile that had made him ache for all the things he never knew he wanted. All his life he had wanted someone to look at him and see not an empty shell but the person he had always wanted to be. When he was younger, he’d thought that person was Jane. But Jane never looked at him the way Claire did.

Claire
.

He thought of how it felt to lie in her arms, to have her press her cheek against his chest, to hear her heart beat next to his own. When Claire looked at him, she saw him for who he really was. When she kissed him with a light, breezy touch, she stamped his soul more deeply than their lovemaking had. With Claire, his loneliness fell away, replaced by a sense of wonder. His heart swelled at the memories.

Agatha.

The reminder of the ever-present danger did not have the power it usually held over him. Yes, the woman was still a threat. She would come for him, for them. It was only a matter of time. But would it be better to spend that time apart and miserable, or together, trying to recapture something that had changed them both?

His heart seemed to stop for a moment, then picked up speed. He knew which option he preferred.

“Where is Claire?”

J
ules entered the Davisons’ ballroom silently. His gaze immediately went to Claire. She stood on a ladder, her head tilted back, facing the ceiling, a paintbrush in her hand.

He said nothing, made no sound, and yet she stopped as if sensing a presence and looked toward the door. He started toward her, all the while trying to discern the expression on her face. Did she look happy to see him?

In the long, lonely nights without her at his side, he had rehearsed so many speeches—all the things he’d longed to say. Yet not one word he had practiced came to him now as he watched her slowly descend the ladder.

Left without a place to start, he took the only course available to him and tipped his head back to study the painting she was creating on the ceiling of Brightwood Hall. It was of the heavens parting to reveal a burst of bright light, surrounded by a host of angels. “An interesting scene for a ballroom,” he replied, not knowing what else to say to his wife.

“It’s what Lady Davison wanted,” she said with a shrug. “I do not always have the freedom to choose what I paint.”

The sound of her voice was like music to his ears. Had anything ever sounded so sweet? “You can paint whatever you like at Kildare Manor.”

He looked back at her, saw the shock on her face, and knew he had to proceed now or lose the moment. “You look well,” he said coming close enough to her to take the paintbrush from her hands. He set it on the closest wrung of the ladder behind her, then took her hands in his. The scent of paint and turpentine did not hide the fragrance he had come to know and love—the scent of lavender that always reminded him of her.

“I have been better,” she said nervously, her expression one of fear mixed with hope. “And you?”

He gently clutched her hands, praying the subtle pressure communicated what he was finding difficult to say. “Fine, if you take into account that I have been half dead for the past three and a half weeks.”

It took her a moment to comprehend what he was saying, and when she did, tears filled her eyes.

“I’ve been working hard at the manor. The tenants are back, and with what money I had left from selling my mother’s ring, I was able to purchase seed for the crops. If we can just hold on until next fall, our finances will be much better. I hope that you will take that into consideration when I ask you to come home with me.”

Tears shimmered in her glorious golden eyes, as did joy and relief. One tear broke free to roll down her cheek. “The money never mattered to me. It still doesn’t. As I got to know the laird of Kildare Manor, I wanted a different outcome from the one I’d been sent to obtain.”

His breath caught as he dared to hope. “What was that?”

“You. True love. A real family.” She dropped one of his hands and reached inside the bodice of her gown to pull out a gold chain that held her locket as well as another object. On that chain dangled his mother’s ring.

“How? Where?”

“I saw it in a store window in Edinburgh, and I realized what you had done in order to keep the estate afloat. I know how much this ring meant to you, as the only reminder you had of your mother. And as the only reminder I had of you, I bought it back.”

He frowned as he reached out and fingered the metal that still possessed the warmth of Claire’s body. “How did you get the money to buy it back?”

Releasing his other hand, she slipped the chain over her head and placed the ring, the locket, and chain in his hand. “I hired myself out as a painter, and since I did not intend to ever go back to Edinburgh, I moved us out of my studio.”

With a raw ache in his voice he said, “That studio was your livelihood, your life.”

She shook her head. “Something else took its place not too long ago as the center of my world.”

He hid a smile as he unhooked the chain and slipped the ring off. The rubies caught the light, sparkled as though they had suddenly come back to life. He took her left hand in his. “I know I have no right to ask you this, not after everything I put you through, but you would make me the happiest man in the world if you would take a second chance with me. You as you. Me as me. No secrets. No ulterior motives. What do you think?”

Tears spilled onto her cheeks. She nodded. “It is an honor to meet you, Lord Kildare,” she said, her voice rough with tears.

“This question is long overdue, but Claire Elliot MacIntyre, it would mean the world to me if you would wear this ring as a sign of my love and be my wife.”

“I already am your wife.”

“Then let me marry you again, and be by your side as we take our vows. No proxy. Only me. Will you do it, Claire?”

“Yes, Jules, I will marry you again and live the rest of my days in your company because without you, the sun does not shine.”

Moved by her tears, Jules slipped the ring on her finger and pulled her against his chest. He did not feel so empty anymore. Nay, his soul felt full to overflowing with love and joy.

“I will need a lifetime to make up for all the pain I’ve caused you,” Jules spoke the words in his heart. “I am so sorry for my hurtful words the last time we were together. I did not mean—”

She kissed him, cutting off his words. “Don’t torture yourself,” she said several moments later. “We hurt each other. And that is in the past. Second chances mean a fresh start. There are no ghosts of the past to haunt us any longer. It’s just you and me and the girls—” She pulled back suddenly as her eyes filled with concern. “The girls. I cannot abandon them.”

He smiled and cupped her face between his palms, wiping her tears away with his thumbs. “The girls are already on their way back to our home,” he whispered, his voice raw with his own unshed tears. “I do not want just a wife, Claire, I want a family. That includes the girls.”

Fresh tears glistened in her eyes. “How did you know we were here?”

“Penelope.”

“Remind me to thank her later,” Claire said as she valiantly tried to hold back her tears.

“Much later,” Jules said with a smile as he gathered Claire to him. He bent to kiss her.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked, stalling his movements.

His eyes widened as he stopped midway to her lips. “Now?”

She nodded as determination flared in her golden eyes.

He released a frustrated sigh. “Anything for you, my dear. What would you like to know?”

She hesitated for a heartbeat then said, “I want to know what happened between you and Agatha, but only if it will not hurt you to disclose that secret.”

“I have no secrets where you are concerned. Not anymore.” Jules threaded his fingers through hers. “Agatha demanded my father bring me home from the Lennoxes. She did so under the pretense that she wanted us all to be a family.” He could feel his lips twist into a bitter smile. “She did not want a family.”

Claire looked at him, her brow furrowed. “What did she want?”

“Agatha came to my bed two days after I returned. I turned her away. She came again the next night, and I did the same. She begged, she pleaded, she teased. She knew exactly what she was doing to me, the torment she caused. She kept at it every night for weeks, months, then years.” He shook his head at the unpleasant memory. “I would not cuckold my father.”

“No one around you knew the truth?”

He shrugged. “No one saw what Agatha did not want them to see, but the servants all knew I was angry with her. They could see my hatred, and that only fed into the lies she told them about me.”

“That must have been very hard for a young man to be so alone with such a big secret weighing on him,” she said with sympathy instead of the repulsion he had feared.

“One day I told Agatha I’d had enough. The torment would stop or I would go to my father and tell him what she was.” He could feel one corner of his lips lift in a twisted smile. “She wasn’t pleased.”

“What did she do?”

“The next day she was found dead. I know now she’d arranged everything to look like I’d poisoned her. She played upon the anger I felt for her and pitted the servants against me. Without proof otherwise, I was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. But Jane changed that outcome.”

She shivered and held his hand more tightly. “How?”

“Because I could no longer look at my father without wanting to harm myself, I left Kildare Manor that night. I rode all night to reach Bellhaven Castle, Jane’s home. She testified that I could have been nowhere near my own home when the murder took place.”

“Then why did they charge you at all?” Claire asked.

“Because shortly before I left for Bellhaven, I had purchased poison. I had intended to kill her. For that, I was sentenced to time in gaol until someone could pay my ransom. I deserved what punishment I was dealt, because if I had stayed at Kildare Manor that night, I would have killed her.”

“Thinking of something and doing it are two very different things.” Claire looked at him in astonishment. “Your father brought that woman into your household and let her hurt you. If anyone is to blame, besides that monster who pretended to be your mother, it was your father for closing his eyes to what was before him.”

He nodded his agreement. “I came to that same conclusion this morning. And despite it all, I forgave my father. Just like the two of us, he made mistakes. If I was ever going to move forward with my life, I had to let go of the anger I felt toward him, and even toward Agatha.”

His brow furrowed as he held Claire’s hands. “You’re trembling.”

“I’m not as forgiving, I fear. I don’t like what that woman did to you.” Her voice was raw. “She hurt you. She can hurt you still.”

He shook his head. “No, Claire, she can’t, because I won’t let her, and neither will you.” With his thumbs, he rubbed her palms until her trembling stopped and another emotion fired in her eyes. He pulled Claire to him and bent his head. He stopped just before their lips met, waited a heartbeat so that she could sense his hunger. “That game with Agatha is over, and we’ve won. She cannot steal what we have found again this day. True happiness has no end.”

He closed the gap between them, pressing soft kisses to her lips, kisses that hinted at the passion he held in check, kisses filled with promise for the future. He teased her lips until he felt her relax in his arms, until her nerves were as taut as his own, and until she was as desperate to return to the paradise only the two of them could enter.

Her eyes on his, she drew back, caught his hand in her own, and led him from the room. She led him up the stairs to the bedchamber she occupied at Brightwood Hall. “I cannot wait until we return to Kildare Manor,” she said, her voice rough with passion.

He shut the door and pulled her into his arms. The place did not matter. She was all that mattered. “Neither can I.” Light from the late afternoon sun shone through the window, illuminating the chamber in hues of pale gold.

She met his gaze in the pale light, and he felt rather than saw her desire flare. He took a moment to savor the sensation. Raising both hands, he framed her face, tipped it up to his. He looked down for one long moment, searching those lovely eyes, then bent his head to kiss her.

Claire knew the moment his lips touched hers that this was a new beginning. While Jules deepened his kiss, his hands moved to the ties of her paint-splattered dress, and slowly he slipped the garment from her shoulders, down her hips, until finally it pooled about her ankles.

Time seemed to slow as he lifted her in his arms and carried her the short distance to the bed. Gently, he set her there, then bent to remove his boots. He dispensed with his waistcoat and breeches, setting them aside, then, as if the slowness of his other motions cost him his restraint, he yanked at his shirt, loosening his cuffs as he slipped beside her on the bed in his full naked glory. He reached for her, wrapped her in his arms, and instead of acting on his passion, he simply held her. “I promise you, Claire,” he whispered against her ear, “no one will ever hurt you again, especially me.”

She pressed her cheek to his, and drew in the scent of mint and man. She closed her eyes, savoring the sensation of his body as it warmed her own. “That is not something you can promise and keep.” She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “We will hurt each other. It is part of trusting each other with our lives. We’ll make mistakes, but we’ll learn from them.”

“Ever the wise one.” A hint of a smile came to his lips. “Then let me promise that if I do hurt you, I will make it up to you with my lips.” He kissed her temple, her cheek, the tip of her nose, until finally he kissed her lips. The kiss was gentle, patient, as though he waited for a response. When she gave it to him, he coaxed her into more until her body melted against his. He kissed her longingly. Hungrily. Yet his hunger was restrained as he let her taste his wanting. Holding back, he gave to her without taking.

When the tide of her longing matched his own, he broke the kiss, his voice rough with need as he whispered, “With my heart.” His gaze never leaving hers, he brought his hand down to cover her chest above her heart where that organ fluttered beneath his touch. “And with my body.”

Jules wove what he felt for her into each gentle caress as his hands sculpted to her back, her hips, her thighs. He let her feel his need of her in each slow kiss, each press of his hand against her heated flesh. He continued his assault with a slow, steady stroke, creating his own masterpiece with her as his muse.