The Bridegroom (35 page)

“I am fine, Papa,” she managed at last.

“I will kill him,” her father said.

He leapt up from the ground and headed for Carlisle, who had just arrived in the glen, vaulted down from his horse, and was running toward where she lay on the ground, apparently oblivious to her father’s lethal intent.

Reggie knew she had to do something immediately, or disaster would result. “Papa!” she cried. “No!”

Her cry alerted Carlisle to her father’s attack and put
him on guard, but the two men stood bristling a foot away from each other.

“I want to see my wife.”

“You’ve done enough harm today.”

Reggie clambered to her feet and slid into the narrow space between them, a flat palm against each man’s chest to ensure they did not move a step closer. “Stop it, both of you!” she ordered.

She angled her chin up toward her father and said, “You can see Carlisle has no weapon. Someone else must have taken that shot at me. Ask yourself who could want to harm both you and my husband? Who has a motive to want you separated from those you love most and to want Carlisle blamed for it? What common enemy do you both have, Papa? Think!”

Her father frowned. “It cannot be Cedric Ambleside.”

Reggie turned to her husband. “And you must long since have realized, my lord, since we both know you are innocent, that some evil force must be at work, the same force that set you and my father at odds twelve years ago.”

“Cedric Ambleside,” Carlisle said.

“Can the two of you not find some common ground on which to fight your common enemy?” Reggie asked. “For my sake?”

“Ambleside is a ghost,” her father said. He started to speak, stopped himself, then said, “It cannot be Ambleside.”

“But who else could it be?” Reggie said.

She saw her father glance sideways at Carlisle. “No, Papa. It is not my husband.”

“How do you know?” her father demanded. “He was out of sight in the trees when the shot was fired. Perhaps he set aside his weapon before he rode into the glen.”

“You never believed the truth twelve years ago, when it was right before your eyes,” Carlisle snarled back. “Why should I expect you to see it now?”

“Clay, please!”

“Come with me, Reggie,” he said. “I have heard enough. I am through here.”

“No, Clay. I—”

“Either come with me now, or I am done with you,” he said.

“I cannot choose between the two of you,” she said. “Please stay and make peace with my father.”

“He does not want peace!” Carlisle snapped.

“Papa, tell him you are willing to forgive and forget—”

“I have done nothing for which I must be forgiven,” Carlisle interrupted angrily. He turned to Blackthorne. “And I will never forget the harm you have done me and mine.”

“Then why did you marry my daughter?” the duke demanded.

“To destroy the thing you loved most,” Carlisle raged back.

Reggie felt as though she had been stabbed in the heart. “Clay, please—”

“Your father can have you,” Carlisle said, shoving her toward the duke. “I will come for my child when it
is born.” He strode to his horse, mounted, and rode away without another word.

Reggie felt the sting in her nose and blinked hard to clear her blurring vision.

She felt her father’s hand on her shoulder. “Go after him, child. I would rather you stay with him than have your child torn from your arms. That is a wound no parent should have to bear.”

Reggie hugged her father as much to comfort him as to comfort herself. “If he cannot forgive you, he does not truly love me,” she said. “But there is something I must do before I leave him.”

“What is that?” her father asked.

“Let in some light,” she said. “To chase away the shadows.”

Her father had ridden halfway home with her before they encountered MacTavish, who escorted her the rest of the way. Reggie was starving by the time she arrived back at the castle. She did not search for Carlisle. She did not wish to see him. She stuffed down one of Cook’s cherry tarts on her way through the kitchen, where she collected George and Terrence.

“We will need that ladder you used to hang the Countess of Carlisle’s picture in the library, Terrence,” she said. “Would you get it please, and bring it outside.”

“Yes, milady,” Terrence said.

“What do you think would be best to use to cut that ivy away from the windows?” she asked George as she headed out the kitchen door with him.

“A pair of garden shears, milady.”

“Do we have such a thing?”

George scratched his head. “I saw a small shed near the barn. Perhaps I might find something there.”

“Will you please go look now?”

Within an hour of Carlisle’s ultimatum to Reggie, Terrence was holding the ladder braced against the outside of the castle near the ivy that covered Carlisle’s bedroom window, while George clung to the third rung from the top, pruning away the thick ivy in a neat square.

Reggie was standing nearby, watching the sun sparkle off a speck of newly revealed windowpane, when a boy of nine or ten appeared at her side.

He glanced up, shading his eyes with his hand. “Is that my papa?”

“Who is your papa?” Reggie asked.

“George Dunswell, milady.”

“Then that is your papa,” Reggie confirmed.

“Ma says he’s to come right away,” the boy said. “She’s havin’ the baby, but it isna comin’ right, and she needs the doctor.”

“Terrence, would you please call George down and tell him it is his wife’s time, and she needs him to go for the doctor?”

Reggie wondered if she should go with the boy and see if she could help Mrs. Dunswell. She knew nothing about childbirth, but she could at least entertain the other children and keep them out of the way.

Moments later, George was on the ground. He was so excited he handed Reggie the shears and said, “Dinna fash yerself, milady. Sadie says it isna comin’ right every
time, and every time, out pops another bairn, as easy as ye please.”

Reggie was flustered by his frank talk, but relieved that Mrs. Dunswell was apparently in no real danger. “Would you like me to come—”

She had no trouble reading George’s face, though he had more difficulty explaining in words, stopping and starting and stuttering, that a great lady in the house would only make his wife anxious, and besides, her sister was staying with them and could manage the children.

“Very well, George. I will remain here,” she said at last, to cut him off.

When George and his son were gone, she was disappointed to realize it would not be possible after all to clear the windows of ivy this afternoon. But she could not spend another day at Castle Carlisle.

She opened and closed the shears once. That was not so hard. She looked up at the window, judging the distance. She had climbed trees taller than that. And she and Becky had not once, but twice, tied sheets together and descended from a window at least that high.

“Will you hold the ladder for me, Terrence,” she said.

“You are not going up there, are you, milady?” Terrence said.

“Why not?” Reggie said. “Everyone else is busy with another chore, and I cannot bear to leave the house in gloom another day. I want Lord Carlisle to see the sun rise tomorrow morning.”

“Why not let me—”

“I would be little help if the ladder began to tip under you, Terrence. While you will be here to catch me if I fall.”

Terrence gave her a dubious look. “Perhaps Lord Carlisle—”

Reggie gave Terrence her most charming smile. If he went to Carlisle, she would never be allowed to finish what George had started. “Lord Carlisle will be grateful to see the work is done.” Or maybe not. But by then it would be too late. She started up the ladder, afraid that if she waited, Terrence might betray her as MacTavish had and search out Carlisle after all.

It was not until Reggie had reached the third rung from the top, where she had seen George stand, that she realized the difference between standing on the solid branch of an oak and standing on the narrow rung of a rickety ladder. It was necessary to use both hands to manipulate the shears, and every time she leaned over, the ladder swayed beneath her weight.

“Hold tight, Terrence,” she called down to him.

“I will, milady,” Terrence promised.

It was harder work than Reggie had thought it would be. The awkward way she was forced to bend made her shoulders ache. And her hands began to blister under George’s too-large leather gloves. A large horsefly kept buzzing around her head. She had swiped at it often enough to know it was not going to leave her alone, so she was trying to ignore it.

Reggie had almost the entire window cleared and was working on the farthest corner, stretching her whole
body across the window to reach the last of the ivy, when the horsefly settled on her nose.

And bit her.

She yelped and jerked upright. At the same time, the ladder seemed to rock beneath her feet. She struggled to retain her perch but was overbalanced by the heavy shears, which not only pulled her body forward, but also occupied both hands, making it impossible for her to grab on to the ladder. She finally dropped the shears and reached for the ladder, but it was too late.

Reggie’s arms flailed in vain, as she felt herself plummeting toward the ground.

Reggie s terror was so great, it stopped her breath in her chest, so she could not even scream. She fell silently, arms and legs scrabbling for purchase in the insubstantial air. Until today, she had never imagined what it might be like to die, that prospect had seemed so far in the future. In the few seconds Reggie had left, she thought of Clay, wishing she did not have to leave him so wounded. And of Becky, who was the other half of her. And of Papa—

She got no further than picturing him in her mind before she struck something solid. If Reggie had thought at all of the pain she would have to endure when she landed, it had been to have a brief hope that she would die instantly. It was immediately apparent that her wish was not to be granted. On the other hand, her landing was much less violent than she had anticipated.

She had forgotten entirely about the unkempt boxwood hedge that surrounded the castle. Because the
hedge was so high, she had not plunged the entire way to the ground. The soft leaves and new growth gave way, breaking her fall, but she quickly encountered more substantial limbs that gouged her back and buttocks. Those same boxwood limbs crackled and popped and finally broke away under her weight. And she found herself once again diving through the air.

The second drop was much shorter, and Reggie managed at the last second to stick out her right hand to keep her head from hitting the ground first. Her hand eventually collapsed under the weight of her body, and her right shoulder bore the brunt of her tumbling fall. What little air was left in her lungs was crushed out by the force of her landing.

She lay dazed, breathless, feeling the sting of the salty sea air on dozens of cuts and pricks made in her flesh by hardy Scottish thistles, but very grateful to be alive.

“Reggie?”

Reggie recognized Carlisle’s voice, but it took too much effort to open her eyes. There was no air in her lungs to speak, and breathing, she realized when she tried it, hurt. In fact, moving at all was out of the question.

“You little fool,” she heard him mutter, though he sounded more tender than irate. Of course, the hope that he would not be angry with her did not last long.

“Damned stubborn, willful woman!” he swore. And then, “Bloody, bloody hell!”

By then she had taken a few careful, shallow breaths, so there was enough air in her lungs to cry out in agony when he tried to lift her.

“I’m sorry, love,” he murmured in her ear, as he gently slid his hands under her, curled her body against his own, and stood up. “Those cuts need to be tended, and lord knows whether you have any broken bones.”

She bit back a moan as he shifted her in his arms and started walking. Her right wrist and shoulder hurt worst, but her back and buttocks ached, and it seemed that every place her skin came in contact with his, he rubbed against a tear in her flesh.

“Terrence says you hit the hedge first, or you would not be alive to hurt so much,” he said. “Wake up, Reggie,” he ordered in a voice that demanded obedience. And then, more urgently but more quietly, “Open your eyes, Reggie, please.”

Her eyelashes flickered open, but the sun was too bright, and she closed them again. “Clay,” she murmured.

“Yes, love,” he said.

“My shoulder hurts.”

“I suspect it does. What were you doing up on a ladder, Reggie? Don’t waste the breath to answer. I can see for myself my bedroom window is clear of ivy. But we have servants to do that sort of work.”

“The baby,” she murmured.

“You should have thought of the baby sooner. I cannot believe you were climbing a ladder in your condition! Are you mad, woman?”

She was trying to tell him that George’s wife was having a baby, and that was why she had gone up the ladder herself. But she was so cold and so very tired, and it took entirely too much effort to explain. And he was
right. She should have been more careful. But it had been so important to let in the light. More important than anything.…