Aching for Always (46 page)

“Which is what?”

“A warning that what you see isn't what you get.”

He smiled. “It makes sense, but knowing that doesn't seem to help us unless we know what the what is. It could be the map itself, a symbol in the map, someone involved in the quest.” He touched her nose. “Maybe your mother just wanted to ensure you had a reason to study Latin.”

They heard the sound of violins coming from somewhere in the house.

She looked at him, confused.

“Dinner, milady. The party is about to begin.” He slid from the bed and pulled on his breeks.

“What? Now?”

He pulled back the drapes an inch or two to gaze at the evening shadows in the garden. “Aye, we cannot lie abed all day. At some point, we shall have to thank the man who has generously provided the setting for our happy adventures here.”

Dinner? It hardly seemed possible. She grabbed the timepiece off the nightstand and popped open the cover. But before she could even register the time on the clock-face, the words inscribed on the inside cover struck her like ice water.

Hugh turned. His face fell when he saw her. “Oh, Joss, no!”

“What does this mean, ‘His blood for yours. A brother's promise'?” She felt as if air were stuck in her lungs, and had trouble keeping the words in focus.

“I-I—”

“
Whose
blood, Hugh?
Whose?
”

“I was a young man then,” he said weakly, “and foolish.”

“When you came to that alley the first time, what did you want?”

“Joss . . .”

A siren rang in her head. She'd been so stupid, so ready to believe. She felt like an idiot for not having seen this before now. “What did you want?”

Their gazes held in an embrace of righteous anger and sorrow. At last he said, “I wanted to find Bart's murderer.”

“Whom you knew to be my father?”

His shirt hung loosely in his hand, as if he'd forgotten its purpose. “Aye.”

“So that you could trade his blood for Bart's?”

He sighed and nodded.

“So that you could kill him?”

“Aye. But he was already dead.”

“And was that the end of your hunger for vengeance?”

He gazed at the floor, silent.

“Tell me, Hugh. At least be man enough to tell me that.”

A tremor ran over him, as if he had been slipped into a suit of armor. When he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, she barely recognized him. “No,” he said, “'twas not the end. I settled on destroying you—that is, until I found out you were Maggie Brand's daughter, and then I settled on destroying Reynolds, the heir to the ill-gotten gains from your father's abominable crime.”

And nothing could have destroyed Rogan more eas
ily than his fiancée's betrayal. She had served willingly as the dagger of revenge in Hugh's black quest. Had Hugh actually planned on marrying her? Of course he had. No betrayal is complete without the total destruction of one's enemy. Hugh had seduced her, torn her from her friends and would steal her forever from Rogan's world as surely as Zeus had abducted Europa.

“Leave me,” she said, and flung the timepiece onto the bed.

A terrible sadness appeared in his eyes, then it was gone, replaced by something awful and determined. “I cannot. He is here.”

“Rogan?” she asked, shocked.

Hugh nodded.

“Where?” She hoped her seeming eagerness pained Hugh as much as he had pained her. The truth was, she wasn't sure if she cared if Rogan was there or not, but she knew she was about to cry and she would die before she'd do it in front of Hugh.

“I do not know, milady. But he's here, in 1706, and he is a danger, perhaps to you. He's the one who shot me.”

She gasped, but knew in an instant that had to be the truth. She hated that she'd been lied to, hated that her instincts about Rogan had been correct, hated that Hugh was the one to make her see this.

“You're a liar! I wouldn't believe you if you said the moon was round. Get out!” she cried.
“Get out!”

She buried her face in her hands while he dressed, and the last thing she heard before the sound of the French doors opening and closing was a long sigh and the rustle of bedsheets as he swept the timepiece into his hand.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-TWO
 

Hugh stepped into the gloomy twilight, his world in pieces at his feet. She was right, he thought as he stumbled blindly away from the house. He had come to her world with the sole purpose of destroying what she held dear. How could he have expected that sin to be borne away like smoke from a doused fire just because they had fallen in love?

He had lived a life of anger and cold-blooded determination, and now he had lost his only chance for happiness. The punishment was just, but that did not make the coup de grâce any less painful.

He found himself in a thick copse of oaks, though how he had gotten there he could not say. He felt the darkness envelop him, and he wanted to be lost; but just as the last bits of light disappeared, the call of duty stopped him. He couldn't abandon her. Not when Rogan prowled the land. Even if she did not wish to see him, Hugh must stay where he could see
her.
He turned as if pulled by a powerful magnet and in the distance found the French doors, still lit by the lamp that had shone on their lovemaking.

He had just settled against a gnarled trunk when an arm as strong as iron bent around his throat and the cold steel of a knife pierced his shirt.

Joss cried silently, curled into a ball on a bed still alive with the perfume of their joining. How fleeting her joy had been. She'd thrown herself into Hugh's arms, trusting those wry green-gray eyes and that warm, hungry mouth. She'd saved herself this long, and for what? A man whose lies were as numerous as his charms. All that was left for her was to slink back to Pittsburgh, a place she should never have left, and pick up the pieces of her company, if indeed there would be any left without Rogan's help.

There was a knock at the hallway door. She ignored it, but it came again, more urgently.

“Captain Hawksmoor?” said a young footman. “There is a visitor here who insists—”

“Dammit, Hugh!” a louder voice called. “Open the door if you're in there!”

There was no mistaking Nathaniel's voice and he sounded desperate. Joss slipped a blanket over her shoulders and opened the door. Nathaniel's face was awash in excitement.

“I beg your pardon, m'um,” the footman said, horrified at having roused a woman from the bed of one of his master's guests. “The man here claimed an acquaintance—”

“That's fine,” Joss said. “I know him.” She gestured Nathaniel in, closing the door on the young footman with an apologetic
click
. Nathaniel's eyes flickered over the blanket and the chemise beneath but his face betrayed
nothing—nothing, that is, except the thrill of apparent news. His hands were stuffed furtively in his pockets.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Is Hugh about?” He kept his eyes from the tousled bedsheets.

“No. He went that way, if you'd like to look for him.” She pointed to the French doors.

Her tone lessened the look of happiness on his face, but not enough to keep him from pulling his hands free and dumping two handfuls of gold coins on the bedside table.

“Gold,” he whispered. “And there's more where that came from.”

The coins gleamed in the candlelight like a heavenly visitation. There were coins of every type, small and large, highly engraved and plain, new and tinged with the dirt of ages past.

“Where? How?” she asked, mesmerized.

“There's a share for you, too,” he said happily. “'Twas your map, after all—or should I say, your
maps
.”

She looked at him strangely. “My maps?”

“Done by your mother. You put them together and the marks made words, do you remember? ‘An arrow for the fire, a warrin' man's tower / Safe may you find it, a reluctant bride's dower'?”

She nodded, still not understanding.

“The map showed a pele tower,” he said.

“The cartouche, yes. They were each the same.”

“But it wasn't a pele tower. 'Twas a warrener's lodge,” he said triumphantly. “W-A-R-R-E-N-E-R. Do you see? ‘A warrin' man's tower.'”

“A warrener's lodge?”

“'Tis a place where a gentleman's warrener lives, the man who protects the rabbits on his estate. I recognized the lodge. 'Tis square, not round. I lived in Cambridgeshire as a lad, and when I saw that tower in the map”—he pulled the papers from his pocket and unfolded them—“something tickled my memory.”

“But the gold . . .?”

“‘A reluctant bride's dower'!” He clapped his hands. “It's too lovely! Your mother's verse led me there. I wasn't sure, of course. The notion came to me in the carriage. That's when I remembered I'd played near such a tower in my boyhood. It wasn't until I found the dilapidated old thing again that I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“The bricks over the hearth. They are placed in an arrow pattern.”

She looked at him, and he grinned.

“‘An arrow for the fire,'” she repeated excitedly, her mother's riddle finally untangling.

“Aye, milady! And ‘Safe may you find it.' There were safes! Dozens of them! Between the inner walls and outer ones! Filled with gold! More than we could carry! It will take a wagon and four strong horses!”

Then it hit her—the beauty of her mother's story! This was the gold from the man who came to the mapmaker to make a map to remind him where he'd hidden his treasure; the man who never collected the maps because he didn't need them to win the hand of the woman he loved; the man who told her mother the gold was hers!

“Of course, we'll have to do the moving by night. I don't know the man who owns the land now, but I doubt—”

“The gold doesn't belong to him.”

“Pardon?” It was Nathaniel's turn to be surprised.

“It belongs to me—well, all of us. Fiona can buy her grandfather out of prison, help her people.” Joss felt a wave of relief she wouldn't have expected. She couldn't restore Fiona's lands to her family or bring back Hugh's brother, but perhaps, in some small way, the gold would help atone for what her father had done.

Then she saw the flash of worry on Nathaniel's face.

“Where's Fiona?” he asked.

“With you, isn't she?”

He shook his head, and she could see his worry grow. “Well, perhaps she's with—” Then he stopped himself.

“Hugh?”

“Aye.”

“She might be. I haven't seen her.”

“She disappeared in Cambridge. I told her not to come to the estate here.”

“One can hardly count on Fiona to obey those sorts of commands, though, I'm sure.” She smiled, hoping to relieve his concern.

“You have spoken the God's honest truth there, lass.”

“What made you follow us?'

“Pardon?”

“You said the notion concerning the warrener's lodge came to you in the carriage. Why were you coming to Cambridgeshire?”

An air of guardedness came over him, and she knew the answer.
Rogan.

“Seemed wiser to keep you close,” he said obscurely, and turned his face.

“Shouldn't you find Hugh?” She pointed again to the doors.

Nathaniel' eyes swept over the chemise again and he shook his head. “I think,” he said carefully, “I will not interrupt. You may tell him the news yourself, lass. I will be in the inn down the road if I'm wanted.” He put a hand on the hallway door.

“Will you take your gold?” she said.

“It's been lucky for me,” he said. “I should like to think it might be the same for you.”

The door closed, and she touched the pile of coins absently. She supposed she ought to try to sneak back to her room. There she would wait for Hugh so that they might begin the excruciating process of traveling to Portsmouth, posting themselves on a ship that could take them to Mr. Roark, who could in turn take her to the islet so that she might enter the cave for the very last time. It would be a long, long way to go in silence.

The French doors creaked. She turned.

“Hello, Joss.”

It was Rogan, standing there with the same charming smile he might have worn if he had run into her on the elevator. He was wearing a suit of clothes from 1706. How he might have gotten it, she couldn't guess. She was so shocked, she didn't know what to do or say. “Rogan.”

“A lot's changed since we last saw each other, I guess.” He gave her a regretful smile. “I saw you kiss him outside Dollar Bank. I had to follow.”

Was this a man who would shoot another in cold blood? Her instincts were confused. Part of her saw the possibility, but another part of her saw the man who had
stood outside her father's hospital, waiting for her with flowers in his hand.