Scandal in the Night (38 page)

The very idea brought her chin up sharpish. “I never jilted him. I rejected him out of hand.”

“Good to know.” He smiled at her. That smile that promised to reward her for her discernment. The blasted smile that was designed to take her mind from guns and assassins and every other thing that didn’t involve the dazzle of his mouth mere inches from hers. “You have very good taste.”

“You can’t charm me into doing your bidding, Thomas. Did you mean to just leave here without me—or anyone else—being the wiser?”

“Yes, actually. That was my plan. It still is. I would like to start my hunt without anyone the wiser, as you said, without raising any large red flag that says, ‘Look at me. I’m riding forth.’ Stealth is my objective here, Cat—much can be accomplished by stealth.” He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned in to place a kiss on her forehead. “But I can see I also have to stop you from doing some kind of a runner. Though I will have to admit,” he added with more of that roguish charm, “you are rather good at it.”

Doing a runner.
She’d only ever thought of it as staying alive. But she couldn’t tell if he was being droll, in an effort to be charming and amusing, or to intimidate her into doing his bidding.

Either way, there was no point in evasion—the advantage was all to him, with his piercing green gaze and his intelligent, devious spy’s mind. “I’ve had experience. And if I go—as, I told Lady Jeffrey from the beginning, I ought—then he will follow. If I fly my red flag that says, ‘Look at me, I’m doing a
runner,
’ then Birkstead will follow. And the danger will be removed from Wimbourne.”

His eyes narrowed, and his brow creased, as if he were seriously considering the feasibility of such a plan. Her breath lightened for the barest fraction of a moment, before he dashed her hopes. “No.” He shook his head again, stubborn and determined, and thoroughly convinced he had the right of it. “I won’t use you as bait. And it’s best to have him on our territory, where we have men and materiel, and can have contingency plans.”

She closed her eyes to the sight of him—long and lean and earnest. So bloody, bloody earnest. “And what is your contingency plan if you are killed?”

“I won’t be. It will take a lot more than an invalid of a former lieutenant with bad aim to do away with me.”

She wanted to stamp her feet, or punch him in the chest to make him understand how dire the situation was. How easy it was for someone as amoral as Birkstead to kill. “Don’t underestimate him, Thomas. All he needs is one lucky shot.”

“A man makes his own luck, and he hasn’t been lucky so far.” He shook his head again, unconvinced. “You still don’t trust me to take care of you, to protect you. To protect them all.” He shot a glance to encompass the house. “But I will. I swear to you, I will.”

It would have been easier if he hadn’t started to be so kind. The heat which had started behind her eyes began to seep down into her bones, making her ache with the longing.

“Oh, Thomas. Is that why you’re doing this? To prove your love to me? I would much rather you didn’t. You and they”—she threw an arm in the direction of the house, too—“are all I have left, all I have of family, or love, in this world. How can I let either of you be jeopardized? How can you expect me to?” It hurt to speak—the heat of unshed tears closed up her throat—but she had to say it. She had to try. “If you loved me, you would come away with me. Now. Before another shot is fired in anger.”

Even in the face of such a plea, he did not hesitate. “Cat. That won’t stop the reckoning—it will only postpone it. And I will not let
you,
or my brother’s family, or my father’s family, be jeopardized. It took me over two years of looking before I found you again, Cat, and I mean what I said. I mean not to let you go. Never to let you run, or be forced to run. I won’t let you be forced to disappear on me again.”

She turned away from his perceptive gaze, afraid he would see beyond the surface fear. Afraid he would ask her why, why it was
easier
for her to run than to stay. Because he kept getting nearer and nearer to the heart of the matter.

“You can’t just run away from the past, or from your troubles. Believe me, Cat, I have tried. Everywhere you go, the same thoughts will be there in your head, reminding you of what—and who—you’ve left behind. If we face these troubles now, together, there is no need for you to leave.”

Oh, Lord, yes. That was why there was
every
need. “You don’t understand.” Not in the least. Those thoughts he dismissed too easily, those
reminders,
were all that she had, and she’d learned to live with them fairly peaceably. But the point was, she was alive and free and able to remember, if she chose. She wasn’t running away from the past so much as she was running away from the present, from the threat that was all too real.

“I mean to end this, Cat. One way or another.”

“But the
other!
What if he kills you? What if he kills more people in an effort to get to me? Why do you persist in this need for a confrontation, for a fight, when what would be best for everyone—for you and your brother and his family—is for me to go, and to let Birkstead know that I’ve gone? Why not at least draw him away from here first, so that Wimbourne is safe?”

“They will be protected. You will be protected. Here.” It was a simple statement—an ultimatum.

Catriona’s hand insinuated itself into his lapels, holding him tight, determined not to let him go. Determined to try everything within her power. “Do listen to yourself, Thomas. Please. You’re the one who said I was rather good at doing a runner. You said I was clever. I did manage to make it all the way across the globe by myself. Twice.”

He looked wryly displeased to be reminded. “You said the begum helped you.”

“Helped. But it was not as if she left the
zenana
to escort me out of India, was it? I did manage that part all by myself. I assure you, I can take care of myself.”

“One experience does not make you prepared to face what is out there, Cat. You have no idea—”

“I have every idea. I listened to him threaten me, and threaten to kill Alice, Thomas. I survived him coming after us. And I have seen worse still. I didn’t spring into being like some goddess from the head of Zeus, or rise out of the sea on a clamshell, the moment you decided to notice me in India, Thomas. My experience of the world is broader than you might think. I can take care of myself.” If nothing else was true, this was.

“Still carrying that stick around, are you?”

She felt the weight of the gun in the pocket she’d sewn into her quilted petticoat. “Yes, but I wish to God I weren’t. I wish there were no need. And if I left, there would be no need for anyone to be walking around Wimbourne with a gun at every gate.”

“There is a need,” he disagreed firmly, “as long as Birkstead is on the loose. Do you think he’s not going to come back here and finish what he started, no matter where you are? You are protected now, with people who love you and who believe you. He knows that. He knows you will have told us your tale. That’s why I want you to go back inside and—”

“No. You’re not listening to me. If I leave, he will think that I didn’t tell you. I never have before. I—”

“Cat.” He laid his finger across her lips. “You can’t change my mind.”

“What if I tell you I won’t marry you if you go through with this? That if you want me, you’ll have to come with me.”

She had whispered the words, but she might as well have shouted them. It seemed as if everything around her stopped and stood still, waiting and listening for his answer. Her own heart was pounding in her ears.

He was still, too, almost holding his breath as he weighed her words. And she would have spoken, would have said something more to tip the precarious scales in her favor, but he whispered, “Hush.” And she felt the brush of his determined sigh. “Cat—”

“Please, Thomas. Please.” She didn’t care if she had to beg. Nothing mattered but that he, and his family—the family she had come to love as well and as deeply as any she had ever had—were safe. “If you love me, and you want to marry me, you will come back into the house with me, and you will help me plan how best to leave.”

He took her face in his hands, and rested his forehead against hers. “And to think I admired the steel in your spine. I think you’d rather I had dragged you across the Hindu Kush as a browned horse trader.” His tone was exasperated, but not angry, as if she amused him even as she infuriated him. “Is that it?” he murmured. “Now that I’m a proper Englishman, and not dark, forbidden fruit, you’re not so interested in doing my bidding? And forgive me if I point out,” he added in a lower voice, “that you were interested enough in my bidding yesterday, when you let me lick—”

“Thomas!” Catriona could feel her face flame to the roots of her hair. “You’re being purposely obtuse. Your Englishness has nothing to do with it.”

He was smiling again, kissing the corner of her eyes. “Am I? I suppose it’s nice to know you’re rejecting me for myself, and not because of my regrettable lineage.”

His kisses were bittersweet joy—a pleasure she could not allow herself. “Your lineage, Thomas, was never,
ever
in question. Not as yourself, and not as Tanvir Singh. I loved you for
yourself
!” Her voice was growing thin, throttled down to nothing by the heat in her throat.

“Ah.” Everything about him grew quiet, as if her words had drawn all the teasing bedevilment out of his tone. “Good to know.”

And then, very carefully, he brushed his thumb across her lips. Slowly, carefully. And then he kissed her. Very, very carefully.

His lips were taut, and tasted bittersweet like summer hay, and everything, everything she had longed for and dreamed of and thought she had lost forever. And she was drawn back into him, as if he were the bright star at the center of her universe. As if he were life itself.

“Ahem.” There was an overloud clearing of throats, and then someone said, “Miss? Thought I heard voices out here. Are you needing some assistance, miss? Is this fellow bothering you?”

“No,” Thomas Jellicoe said, and tried to keep kissing her.

But she was extricating herself from his arms, and hoping the fresh morning breeze would help cool her flaming cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Farrell.” She chanced a glance at Wimbourne’s stable master. “I appreciate your concern. But there’s no need. This is Mr. Jell—”

“By God in all the heavens.” The largest man Cat had ever seen stepped forward out of the murk behind the stable master. “Is that you, Master Thomas?”

“Broad Ham? My God, Broad Ham.” Thomas’s answer was all for the huge coachman stepping out from the middle of the aisle of stalls. “Ham. How’ve you been keeping?” Thomas gripped the man’s meaty paw, and was enveloped in an enormous, back-pounding embrace. “My God, man, you haven’t aged a day.”

“That’s clean living, that is,” the man called Broad Ham answered equably. “They said you was back from the other end of the world at last, but all I had to vouch for it was that by-God mare that they said you’d brought—”

“Mare?” A burst of something painful and potentially destructive—like hope—cartwheeled through her chest. Her voice struggled out of her mouth. “What mare?”

Thomas gave her Tanvir Singh’s smile—that white, roguish slash of teeth that curved up one side of his face like a scimitar. “In the midst of everything else, I’d forgotten I’ve a present for you. Just along there.” He pointed into the shadows beyond, behind the large man planted like an oak tree in her way. “Have a look.”

Her feet were already moving, dodging around the men—the grooms and lads who shrank back, out of her way—running, her boots echoing on the cobbles. Looking back and forth, first left, then right. A gray. Another gray. A bay carriage horse. A midnight black—

There she was. But the vision was blurred by the fresh heat burning her eyes. She dashed the weakness away. “Puithar. Puithar.”

The mare had her head out over the door, waiting. Waiting patiently for Catriona to come and throw herself against the majestic animal’s neck. Accepting Catriona’s teary tribute as her due.

Catriona couldn’t draw breath. She was fighting for each particle of air, fighting to breathe in and out around the shallow hiccups and sighs that she couldn’t control. She had to close her eyes against the hot sting of tears, and she pressed herself into the warm comfort of her animal’s neck. “I thought you were gone. I thought I’d never—”

Puithar nickered, low and understanding, and rubbed her nose against Cat’s hair, as if she, too, needed a moment to confirm the identity of her own true love. As if she, too, were as deeply affected by the arrival of the person who meant so much to her.

But of course, it was nothing but foolishness, to think of the mare as hers. The mare was Tanvir Singh’s. She always had been. And now that Tanvir Singh had become Mr. Thomas Jellicoe, she belonged to him, and not to Catriona.

She would have pulled back, and stepped away, but a hand came to rest against her back, holding her in place, keeping her gently supported against the bottom half of the split stall door.

“She’s missed you, too, you know. Treats me as if I’m second best, no matter how many Kashmiri apples I feed her.”

She let Thomas talk nonsense, while she once again fought to put herself to rights. Damn him for acting so kind. Of course he had kept her. Of course. “She likes the Gaelic.”

“Yes, I imagine she does. I’d like to hear it sometime as well,” he added in a low tone meant for her ears alone.

“Then don’t leave me,” she returned in the same whisper.

He heard her, because his hand flexed against the small of her back. But because he could not give her the answer she wanted, he gave her silence instead.

Which she exhausted on the mare. “Puithar,” Catriona crooned as she pulled back to stroke down the velvet muzzle. “You gorgeous creature. You’re too thin.”

“She didn’t like sailing. And for that matter,” Thomas murmured, “neither did I. And I have plans for my recuperation.”

“Damnedest-looking mare I ever did see,” the man called Broad Ham said from somewhere behind Catriona, saving her from having to make an answer. “But you always had an eye for the horses, Master Thomas. How’s your driving?”