When the Rogue Returns (24 page)

“Yes,” Isa said. “And the woman who just left here is indeed my sister. I will tell you everything later, but for now, all you need to know is that my sister separated me from my husband years ago. And probably means to do it again, if she can.”

Betsy’s shocked expression gave way to one of anger. “Does she, now?” she snapped. “Well, then, we’ll just see about that! I’ll follow her myself if I have to.”

“No, let Rob do it,” Victor put in. “He’s less likely to be noticed.”

Betsy took his measure in one swift glance. “Very well, sir.” She marched off like Joan of Arc hunting down her first Englishman.

The door shut behind her, and the hall fell eerily silent. Isa faced him then, her cheeks as pale as death, and he all but forgot about Jacoba. He had a child. A
child.

He stared her down. “I take it that your sister told the truth about my . . . my . . . Devil take it, I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl!”

“You have a daughter.” She drew a ragged breath. “She’s nine years old, and her name is Amalie.”

His gut twisted into a knot. “Your dainty-footed ‘servant’ Amalie?”

Eyes darkening, she nodded.

Fury roiled up in him like smoke billowing out of an inferno. “When the hell did you intend to tell me?”

She flinched. “I was about to when Jacoba showed up. You may recall that I said I had something important
to relate, before we could go any further in our plans.”

“That’s the understatement of the decade,” he snapped.

He raked his fingers through his hair. He had a child. A
daughter,
for God’s sake. And Isa had kept it secret from him all these years.

Something suddenly occurred to him. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me know where you live. Because you were afraid I would find out about her.”

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “You had already questioned my fellow shopkeepers about me. Fortunately, I always kept my daughter’s existence fairly private, so they didn’t know about her. But I knew if you questioned my neighbors here, you would learn the truth.”

Fighting for calm, he scanned the hall and glanced up the stairs. “So where is she?”

“She’s away at school right now. There’s no school for girls in Edinburgh, so I had to enroll her in one just across the border in England. That’s where I was for the past two days—taking her to school. The term began yesterday.”

So his daughter had actually been in town the day he’d arrived. And Isa had hidden her from him!

“I want to see her,” he bit out.

“You can’t,” Isa said.

That sent him over the edge. “The hell I can’t! She’s my daughter!”

“Do you want to keep her safe?” she cried. “Because if you do, you have to leave her alone as long as Jacoba and Gerhart are loose in Edinburgh.”

That gave him pause. “Damn it, Isa—”

“I know. It’s not what you want. It’s not what I want, either.” She took several steadying breaths. “But until we can deal with them, it’s safer for her if they don’t know where she is.”

A sudden terror for the girl he’d never even met engulfed him. “How can you be sure they don’t already know?”

“Jacoba called her ‘your child.’ Wouldn’t she have said ‘your daughter’ if she’d known?”

He gritted his teeth even as he acknowledged her logic. “I suppose.”

“Besides, she said she followed me out here last night. That was after Amalie had gone off to school, so she wouldn’t have seen her. No one in town knew about Amalie. And Mr. Gordon certainly wouldn’t have mentioned her to a stranger—not without telling me.”

Mr. Gordon
was
quite a determined advocate for Isa and obviously more than capable of protecting her privacy.

Isa softened her tone. “You know that if we go running to England just so you can see her, they’ll follow us. And I don’t trust them within a mile of her. I don’t think they’d hurt her, but . . . but I don’t want her to know them. Do you?”

“Not if I can help it,” he growled. “But I can keep them off our trail.”

“As you did in coming to Edinburgh?”

He muttered a curse. She
would
bring that up.

“It’s safer this way,” she said. “You know it is. Besides, it’s better for her to stay where she is until we decide what to do about our marriage, and how to handle Gerhart and Jacoba. After everything is settled, we can tell her our plans.”

He considered that a moment. “So where
is
this school of hers?”

“I’m not telling you,” she said softly. “Not until I’m sure you won’t go running off there and lead them to her.”

That roused his temper all over again. “Damn it, Isa, you can trust me not to do anything that might hurt her.”

Just then Betsy came in, frowning as she overheard his cursing. “Rob says he’ll stick to the woman like a barnacle, he will.”

“Good,” Victor clipped out, his eyes still on Isa’s ashen face. “Thank you, Betsy.”

When the servant nodded and then looked expectantly at her mistress, Isa said, “Forgive me, Betsy, but my husband just found out that he is a father, so he and I have a few matters to discuss.”

To say the least.

“Oh, Lord, that’s right!” Betsy cried. “Poor little Amalie! She thinks her da is dead. She’ll be so happy to hear she’s got a father.”

Isa swallowed. “I certainly hope so.”

So did he.

“You’re a lucky man, sir,” Betsy said earnestly. “That girl is a dear, has been since she was a wee thing. Rather rambunctious, if I do say so myself, but clever as can be. She’ll make you right proud of her.”

Regret roiled in his belly. Even the servant knew more about his daughter than he did. He was never going to get those years back, never going to see her as a baby. He would be a stranger to her.

It made him want to throttle Jacoba and Gerhart. How dare they steal his chance to see his daughter grow up? How
dare
they?

With a worried glance at him, Isa said, “We’ll be in the parlor if you need us, Betsy. But for now we really need to be alone.”

“Of course, madam, of course. I’ll just go make sure dinner stays warm for you.”

His mind racing, Victor followed Isa as she headed back into the parlor.

She closed the door, then faced him warily. “I know you must have questions—”

“Oh yes, wife of mine, a great many.” He scowled. “Like why the hell didn’t you tell me about my daughter when I first got here?”

She tipped up her chin. “At that point, I thought you were a thief, remember? I wasn’t about to let you anywhere near her. In my mind, you were as bad as Jacoba and Gerhart.”

And he would make them pay for that. Thanks to them, his daughter had been fatherless for nine bloody years! They’d stolen those from Amalie, too.

Amalie. He had a daughter named Amalie. How would he get used to that?

“Everything I’ve done has been to protect her, to save her,” Isa whispered. “I came here so she would be as far away from my family as I could manage. I kept the truth from you so you wouldn’t be able to corrupt my child—”

“
Our
child!” he cried.

“Whom I raised alone!” With a shuddering breath, she turned to pace the room. “Try to put yourself in my place, if you can. I was carrying your child, and I thought you had abandoned me for the illicit riches my family had paid you off with. When Mr. Gordon took pity on me and hired me, Amalie was the only thing that kept me going through the pain of . . . of your abandonment.”

“The abandonment that I did
not
instigate,” he said in a hollow voice.

“I know.” She faced him again. “But I didn’t know that when you came here. All I knew was that you had left us to fend for ourselves, and now you thought to step back into our lives as if nothing had happened. Except that I also knew that English law always awards custody of a child to the father. So does Dutch law.”

Her breath came in hard gasps. “I couldn’t risk the possibility that you would try to take her from me. Not when I thought you were a thief. Surely you can understand that.”

He supposed he should be glad that she was such a
fierce protector of their daughter, but resentment of all that he’d lost still beat a bitter tattoo in his veins.

So did the words of his inquisitors all those years ago.
Your wife is no fool. Why would she trust a bumbling oaf like you to take care of her?

He thrust the memory back with a curse. “What about
after
you knew I wasn’t a thief? Last night, you didn’t say a word about her. And today, when Lochlaw mentioned her—”

“I had to be certain that you weren’t here for vengeance, don’t you
see
? Because taking my daughter—our daughter—would be the best revenge you could ever visit upon me.”

Pain made it hard for him to breathe. “You thought me capable of that?” he choked out through a throat gone raw. He strode up to her. “You truly believed I could rip our child from the only home she’s known, out of some desire to strike at you?”

“I didn’t want to think it. But I hardly knew you anymore. When you first came here, you were so angry. And you had good reason. You still do. I took your child from you. My family took your reputation from you, and who knows what else. Any man would want revenge after that.”

He hated that he perfectly understood her reasoning. “Not against
you
,” he protested. “Am I angry that I lost ten years with you, and nearly that many with our daughter? Yes. Am I furious that it was because of your family’s greed? Certainly. But not at you.”

“But I’m the one who trusted them. I’m the one who chose to believe my family when I should have believed in my husband. I know you blame me for that, as well you should. My only defense is that I barely knew you then.”

“And I barely knew you. Otherwise, I would have realized at once that you could never have deserted me. So we were both at fault in how we handled their lies. But now that ten years have passed—”

“I know you even less now!” she cried. “Can you blame me for being cautious when you’re practically a stranger to me?”

“Is that the real reason you won’t bring me to my daughter?” he ground out. “Because you don’t trust me to be a good father to her?”

“Of course not. I just want to protect her from Jacoba and Gerhart.” Her gaze met his, softly pleading. “But you must give me time to ease her into it. Please, Victor.”

He stared at her, his heart thundering in his chest. “I can wait until we root out Gerhart. But know this, Isa: I want my family back. You
and
her. You told Jacoba that you and I are together now. I hope you meant it.”

“I do.” Her gaze softened. “I want you back, too. You cannot know how much.”

At the look of hope on her face, his throat tightened. “You called me a stranger. But I’m the same man I was then—the husband who could never hurt you, the
lover who never forgot you. Not for one second. You can trust me,
lieveke
.”

When her breath quickened and her eyes filled with longing, he murmured huskily, “So you know me better than you think.”

Then he covered her mouth with his.

L
OOPING HER ARMS
about Victor’s neck, Isa lost herself in his kiss. In this, at least, he wasn’t a stranger to her. He could always make her burn, always make her desire him. She’d spent half the day reliving every velvet touch and hot caress from last night, wanting him all over again.

But was such volatile passion good for a marriage? Or as dangerous as cheese in a trap to a mouse?

He broke the kiss to murmur, “I know
you
better than you think, too.” His hands roamed her, untying and unbuttoning and unfastening. He nuzzled her ear, then breathed deeply. “I know that you rinse your hair in violet water, and prefer satin to silk.”

She couldn’t believe he remembered that. “That’s because satin is shiny,” she whispered. “Like diamonds.”

“Or stars.” His hand skimmed her cheek. “You used to know all the constellations.”

“I still do.” She caught his hand to press a kiss to his palm. “And you used to know the name of every regi
ment that fought at Waterloo. I remember your reciting them for me.”

His eyes darkened. “Now,
that
is something I prefer to forget.” He drew off her gloves, then lifted one of her hands so he could run his tongue along her index finger. “I would much rather remember how you licked your fingers whenever you finished pressing the almond paste into the
banketstaaf
.”

She blushed. “I would rather you
didn’t
remember that. I was very unrefined.”

“You were refined enough for me. I miss your
banketstaaf
. I hope you’ll make some for me soon.” A teasing note entered his voice. “But don’t make your tea. You used to put far too much honey in it.” Catching her by the hand, he pulled her toward the sofa.

“That’s because you didn’t like tea. You always preferred coffee, black and very strong.”

“Ah, you remember that, do you?” he said with a grin. “It was a taste I acquired in Spain as a lad.”

She gaped at him. “I didn’t know
that
!”