The Rogue's Return (3 page)

“He . . . shot himself.” She was still breathing hard, a hand on her side. “He heard about the duel. . . . Wanted to fight in your place. A pistol. Something went wrong.”

“Old fool.” Simon wanted to howl it. Damn it all to Hades!

He could hardly pick out his horse from the others because tears were blurring his vision. Isaiah couldn't be dying. He turned to glare at Jane, loathing the bearer of bad news, but he couldn't abandon her here. “Can you ride behind?”

She looked up at the horse. “I never have.” But then she firmly added, “Of course.”

He mounted and then helped her up behind him. With a struggle, she got a leg over to sit astride, not seeming to care that she was showing her knees. But then, she'd not cared about that as she ran across the field to stop the duel.

What had happened to the quiet nun?

He felt her hesitation before she put her arms around him, but when she did, she held on tight. Once she was secure he urged the horse to speed toward the town. They'd be there in minutes, but had Jane run all the way, skirts up, hair down?

And why her? Why had she brought the news?

He felt as if his entire world had been shaken up and spilled in pieces. Was the duel over? Was he shot and
hallucinating? But everything—sharp air, pounding hooves, arms clutching—was absolutely real.

He drew up in front of Trewitt House, swung off, and helped Jane down. Abandoning the horse to the gathering crowd, he ran into the building, only realizing as they entered that he was hand in hand with her.

He let her go.

There were people inside the house, too—probably anyone who thought they had an excuse to get close to the drama—so he had to push his way through. As he was recognized, a way parted and he was soon in Isaiah's office. It stank of blood.

His friend lay on the floor, perhaps where he'd been found, his head on a pillow, his rawboned body covered by a blood-drenched blanket. The wound was clearly somewhere in the lower torso, and that demolished hope. No one survived a belly wound.

Dr. Baldwin, Isaiah's neighbor and friend, was kneeling by his side. He looked up and shook his head before Simon could ask the hopeless question. Simon fell to his knees on the other side. Isaiah was conscious but his eyes looked glazed.

“I've given him opium,” Baldwin said quietly. “It's all I can do. Blood loss will get him soon and it'll be a mercy.”

Simon knew about belly wounds, how they could take days to bring an excruciating death from infection. He took his friend's big hand; the hand of a sea carpenter, trapper, and adventurer that hadn't been softened by a decade as a merchant.

“I'm very angry with you,” he said.

“Angry with you. My fight. Dying now,” he added without apparent concern. Opium could be a blessing. But then he frowned. “Need to take care of Jane.”

Simon squeezed his hand. “I'll do that. Don't worry.”

“Marry her?”

Simon's mind froze.

“No!” Jane knelt beside the doctor. “Uncle Isaiah—”

“Got no one,” Isaiah said, his eyes on Simon and obviously staying open only with effort. “And this trouble . . . can't die easy, Simon.”

It was pure blackmail. Isaiah Trewitt had always gone after what he wanted, using every weapon, legal and illegal, and a drift toward an opium-veiled death hadn't changed that. Simon knew that if he debated and delayed Isaiah might die before he made the promise, but what sort of gratitude was that to a man whose guidance had probably saved Simon's life many times over?

“Of course.” For the listeners he added, “Jane and I were intending to ask your blessing anyway.”

He flashed her a look, commanding that she not argue. Her eyes were huge and dark with shock, but then she lowered her head to look at her uncle. Tears leaked down her cheeks to splash darkly on her gray bodice. Her hair trailed loose around her and she still wore her dark blue cloak.

She resembled a mourning Madonna.

Painted by Raphael, perhaps.

“Now.”

Simon jerked out of tangled thoughts and met Isaiah's eyes. They were attempting a ferocious glare but looked only piteous.

“Now, Simon. Want . . . want to witness it.” His eyelids conquered his will and closed, but he whispered again, “Now.”

Simon stood and gestured for Baldwin to step aside with him. People moved courteously away, though he was sure they were stretching their ears. Someone put a cup of hot tea into his hands and he was deeply grateful, especially when he tasted the sugar and brandy in it.

“How long?” he asked.

“Hard to say. Even with blood loss, willpower can hold a man to life for an astonishing length of time. Is McArthur dead then?”

“She stopped it.” Simon glanced back at Jane, who still knelt. “Why was she sent?”

“Good God, of course she wasn't, but the men were dithering. Shouldn't interfere with an affair of honor. He'd probably be dead before you got here. That sort of thing. She just took off.”

Jane had always retreated into the background, but what sort of woman was she really? Simon hadn't bothered much about it before. But now, when she was to be his wife? A wife he'd have to take home to Brideswell, God help him.

McArthur's words came back like vomit rising in the throat. What did any of them really know about Jane Otterburn? What, even, did Isaiah know? He'd left England at sixteen and returned only once, when Jane had been an infant. All the rest had been from letters.

Simon pushed such poisoned thoughts away. Here, Jane had been nothing but industrious and virtuous, and Isaiah was correct that she'd be alone in the world. Her father had died years ago, her mother last year. If there was any closeness with either family apart from Isaiah, he didn't know of it. At only eighteen she'd be alone in a frontier world still new to her.

But he didn't love Jane Otterburn.

What a time to realize that he had a romantic view of marriage. That he'd been waiting for some blinding attraction to one special person, for the delirious love of the poets.

And could Jane fit into his world? She certainly wasn't of it.

Isaiah's parents had worked their way up from farm laborers to shopkeepers. They'd had their children taught trades—a carpenter, a butcher, and a seamstress. Martha Otterburn had done very well for herself in marrying a schoolmaster, and her daughter had been raised a lady, but when widowed, Martha had had to keep a small haberdasher's shop to support her family.

He'd be marrying a shopkeeper's daughter.

He looked at the dying man again and saw a slit of filmy eye. Isaiah was doing his best to command him. With an internal shrug Simon surrendered. At least this would save him from the parade of suitable young ladies who apparently waited for him back home. His mother wrote of a new one in every letter.

You must remember Alicia Pugh-Mattingly, dearest. Such a pretty girl she's become, and with the sweetest nature. Plays the harp beautifully. With twenty thousand as her portion, too. If you come home quickly . . .

What would his mother make of penniless, Puritan Jane Otterburn?

He looked around the room and approached the first man he recognized. “Could I bother you to find Reverend Strachan, Mason?”

The plump man nodded and hurried out.

Norton entered and came over.

“How do things stand?” Simon asked him.

“McArthur blustered, but his friends persuaded him to act like a gentleman. He'll want a rematch.”

“He shall have it. You are in time for my wedding.”

“Wedding?”

For Jane's sake he must express his doubts to no one. “Miss Otterburn and I have been planning to wed, and Trewitt wishes to see it done before he dies. It'll be irregular but things often are here.”

Norton's brows twitched. Was he, too, thinking what a mismatch this was? He came from a cadet branch of the aristocratic Peel family, and his brother had been at Harrow School with Simon.

Simon drained the brandied tea, trying to pull his mind into order, make decisions, make plans. It was like trying to catch water. He looked at Jane and was struck again by the stunning beauty of her wavy red-gold hair.

Then he recognized hair recently unplaited.

As the only other person in the main house, she would have been the one to hear the shot, probably as she was loosing her hair from a nighttime plait. She must have found Isaiah, poor girl. Probably some of the dark spots on her gown were blood. By rights she should be lying down with female attendants and a soothing draft.

As if feeling his gaze on her, she looked at him, eyes glistening with tears. Freckles stood boldly on her cheeks because her naturally pale skin was as white as the linen ruffle at her neck.

His protective instincts took over. And really, they had no choice. If he didn't go through with the marriage now, it would be seen as a rejection of her and thus confirmation of McArthur's slander. Then there was his impulsive lie about a prior arrangement. He'd meant well, but that cut off escape.

If it must be done, it should be done well. He went to her. “We need to talk, my love.”

He raised her and led her from the room. Again people parted, but avidly, as if sucking up every detail. That was another problem. York was as bad about gossip as any small English town. Worse, in fact. The isolation here magnified everything, and the magnified gossip traveled.

York was less than thirty years old, so everyone had ties elsewhere. Many, military and civilian alike, were recently come from Britain. Letters home might take months, but they left weekly. By the time Simon arrived back in England with his bride, everything that happened here today would be there to greet them.

He took her into the parlor at the back of the house but was instantly frozen by the familiar smell of snuff, tobacco, and leather. In this comfortable, worn room Isaiah had delighted to host his friends, drinking claret, port, and brandy, playing cards, backgammon, or sometimes his favorite old game, dominoes.

Simon had come here to talk over their situation, but
however it happened he and Jane moved into each other's arms, silently comforting and being comforted. Her hair flowed over and under his hands, and she smelled of blood and herbs. She must use herbs in her soap or creams as well as in potpourri and polish. How did that fit with her sober clothes and reserved manner? Marriage should provide answers, and he wouldn't object to a sweet-smelling house—or a sweet-smelling wife.

Or a soft, warm, sweetly curved one. He held her a little closer.

She tensed and then eased apart. “Simon, we can't do this.”

“I see no choice.”

“Uncle Isaiah can't last long—” She covered her mouth with a hand. “I don't mean it that way. But it's not fair to trap you into this!”

“I don't mind.” How inadequate. He sought better words. “It's time I wed, Jane. I'm twenty-five and my mother nags me in every letter.”

“Of
course
she wants you to marry, but to marry someone suitable! Not”—she seemed to have to gather herself to say the words—“not a girl who served in a shop.”

“Hardly that.”

“Exactly that. My mother kept a shop and I helped there.”

He hadn't known that she'd actually worked in the shop. He tried to tell himself that he minded only because his family and circle would mind, but it bothered him, too.

“Your father belonged to a good family.”

“Minor Scottish gentry with very little money attached. And the Trewitts were farm laborers before they became shopkeepers.”

She was throwing these things like missiles to drive him off and they might have worked if they had any choice. Gads, his mother would have a fit.

“Isaiah isn't ashamed of his background. He's proud of what he's made of himself and so should you be.”

“Made?” She stared at him. “What do you mean? I've made nothing of myself.”

She was distraught and it wasn't surprising. He was an idiot for attempting rational conversation, but then he was distraught, too. Or numb. Yes, that was it. Somehow he'd erected a wall between himself and reality, but it was a wall of sand, already crumbling under the pressure of grief behind it.

“Unless you're willing to refuse Isaiah,” he said, “we must marry. I promise to be a good husband and I have no doubt that you will be a good wife.”

She looked up at him, those blue eyes huge and stark. “What does that mean? Good.”

Why the devil press him on a word? “I will be kind, dependable, and faithful. You may define your goodness as you wish.”

She flinched at his sharp tone. “I'm sorry. You're being kind, dependable, and faithful now. Faithful to Uncle Isaiah. But is it really worth shackling yourself in this way to satisfy his whim before he dies?”

A good question, but Simon meant it when he said, “Yes.”