CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

 

As August cooled into September, the glen’s leafy green took on hints of bronze and gold. Rain came more often, and with it came new shades of wispy gray. The gray matched Sabella’s mood.

He’d been gone for two weeks. Two endlessly long weeks. According to his last letter, he’d be gone for a third at least.

She wrote her husband every day, and he wrote her just as often, but it wasn’t the same as his scent or his heat or his arms holding her. She distracted herself by organizing the household staff they’d hired before his departure—three maids, two footmen, and a curious number of strapping men to help Gavin maintain the grounds.

On evenings when Rannoch and Magdalene didn’t visit, Sabella ventured into the village to dine at Joan’s tavern. Somehow, cookery wasn’t as enjoyable without the reward of watching Alexander eat, and she’d largely lost her appetite.

Today, she set a small bucket of fish scraps on the ground beside her replanted rosebush and began digging a small trench on either side. She’d positioned the shrub in the sunniest corner of her walled garden, hoping to give it the best possible chance to root properly before the growing season ended.

The temporary wooden gate opened, and one of the new maids entered with a watering can. “Gavin and the lads are unloadin’ the new gate now, Mrs. MacPherson. Och, ’tis a braw piece. I think ye’ll be pleased.”

Sabella smiled and wiped her forehead with her wrist. “Splendid. Thank you, Effie.” The cheerful young lass had unusual strength for such a small frame. Initially, Sabella had thought her too bonnie with her cinnamon hair and wide-set eyes. But during the interviews for employment, she’d questioned all the maids at great length about their personal attachments. Effie was in love with a lad from Aberdeen and saw Alexander as “too auld for the likes of me.”

As Sabella deposited her fish scraps and refilled the trenches, the girl watered two new rosebushes Sabella had started from cuttings. Minutes later, a sweaty Gavin entered with a broad grin. “It’s a grand sight, Mrs. MacPherson. Some of Adam’s finest work. Care to see it?”

She gave Effie the shovel and bucket then followed Gavin out to the wagon parked in the front drive. Alexander hadn’t let her see his sketched design before he’d given it to Adam MacDonnell. The wrought-iron double gate’s arched top depicted a pair of swans that would kiss each time the gates closed. The swans were flanked by a pair of outward-facing crows that seemed to be standing guard. Beneath the birds, a stag’s antlered head sprawled amidst latticework, as if the beastie would be forever barred from entry.

Sabella’s smile deepened. That red pest’s head would split down the center each time the gate opened.

Along the bottom half, the gate’s swirling design paid tribute to the four seasons of roses. Two urns sprouted a profusion of vines and hips for winter, buds for spring, blooms for summer, and falling leaves for autumn. She fingered her rose pendant, noting how closely several of the blooms resembled the carving. The gate truly was a masterpiece.

Her longing for Alexander intensified until it hurt to breathe. She settled a hand over her heart to contain it. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and kiss every inch of his face, to thank him for taking such care in his design, for building her garden walls and showing her how attentive he was, even if he didn’t always tell her what he was thinking.

How she loved him. So much that it pained her.

“Och, lassie! Have ye forgiven him already?”

Sabella turned to see Mrs. MacBean approaching on Bill the Donkey. Stepping aside so Gavin and the lads could carry the gate to the garden, she shaded her eyes and frowned at the old woman wearing a floppy hat and a leather apron. “Forgiven whom?”

A flare of alarm and a wary blink. “Nobody. Forget I mentioned it.” She slid off the back of the donkey with a whuff. Withdrawing a small bottle from her pouch, she thrust it into Sabella’s hands. “This is for the sickly stomach. Two drops in yer mornin’ tea should do.”

“This is for nausea.”

“Aye. Now, where did I put that stone?”

“I’m not nauseated.”

“Not yet. Ah, there ye are.” She produced a pewter pebble carved with some kind of rune. “They like to hide things. Gives ’em a wee laugh. I dinnae mind too much, so long as the mischief doesnae go on too long.” She placed the pebble in Sabella’s hand. The mark looked like a Y with an overgrown stem. “Keep it with ye. Between yer bosoms is best.”

“Between my …” Sabella shook her head. “Am I meant to sew it into my stays?”

Mrs. MacBean shrugged. “If ye like. There’s another place ye can carry it, but I dinnae recommend insertion. That’s how I lost Mr. Brodie’s ring. The poor man searched for hours and never found it.”

It took a moment to puzzle that one through. Face heating, Sabella invited her to stay for tea, but Mrs. MacBean had more deliveries to make. She remounted Bill with a final reminder, “That’s strong protection, lass. Keep it with ye at all times. Dinnae forget.”

Sabella watched her ride away, thumbing the smooth pewter, which warmed to her touch. The old woman might be mad. But some of the things she’d said sounded less like senility and more like sight.

She traced the whorls of her pendant, which had needed fire to reveal its true beauty. Now, Sabella couldn’t imagine herself without it. Had the old woman carved the pendant knowing what it would become? Or was it simply a fortunate accident?

Annie believed Mrs. MacBean had otherworldly abilities. She’d also suggested the glen itself was rife with magic, as it “lay at the juncture between realms.” Sabella didn’t know anything about magic or realms or sight, but it certainly wouldn’t harm anything to stitch a wee pocket into her stays.

Fetching her sewing supplies from the basket in the corner of her dressing room, she quickly fashioned a linen pocket along the center busk then sewed the pewter stone inside. It nestled comfortably between her bosoms, well below the level of her pendant. Nodding her satisfaction, she redressed in Alexander’s shirt and the russet plaid she wore on days when she missed him so much that she couldn’t bear it. Today was one of those days.

Just as she tucked her last fold into place, a drop of water landed on her hand. She glanced up with a frown. Water wicked in a large circle along the ceiling, with large drops forming at the center.

“Drat and blast,” she muttered. “The cisterns.”

Quickly summoning one of the new footmen—a sturdy young man named Clyde—she dashed up the rear staircase to the attic. The door was locked, but she hadn’t yet hired a housekeeper, so she kept a skeleton key on a small loop attached to her waist. The moment she opened the door, she knew she wasn’t going to like what she saw.

Water puddled nearly an inch deep beneath the farthest cistern, which lay just above their dressing room.

“Fetch the maids,” she ordered Clyde. “Tell them to bring towels, mops, and several buckets. Send one of the lads to inform Adam MacDonnell one of the cisterns requires repair at once. He’ll likely be at the distillery this time of day.”

“Aye, Mrs. MacPherson.”

Splashing through the dusty pool, Sabella felt along the piping then along the large wooden tank for obvious leaks. Her hems were soaked, but she didn’t care. A leak like this could do costly damage to her ceiling, her floors, her walls. The sooner it stopped, the better.

She rounded to the rear of the cistern. There, she found the source of the leak in a seam between two staves near the floor. Looking around for anything to stanch the flow, she spotted a canvas sheet covering a waist-high stack of crates. She dragged the cloth free, wadding and stuffing it against the seeping seam. For now, it was the best she could do. Straightening with a curse, she lifted her hems and stomped away from the puddling mess.

That was when she spotted them—green leather and brass, stacked three high in the farthest corner. They weren’t crates. They were trunks.

Her trunks.

The attic shrank while the trunks grew in her vision. Midday light wavered through dust motes. Water dripped, dripped, dripped.

Green leather and brass. Here beneath canvas. The canvas was dusty, so the trunks had to have sat here a long time. Weeks, perhaps months.

The air thinned. Her bones tightened, squeezing and squeezing.

Carefully lifting the lid on the nearest trunk, she felt as if her ribs were breaking again. There, atop her favorite silk pelisse, lay her mother’s emerald necklace.

She covered a sob with trembling, callused fingers.

While she scrubbed his floors and burned his dinner and washed his linens, her three green trunks sat here in the attic. All her money, the letters from Annie, her mother’s jewels, even the red silk peignoir and nightdress she’d purchased secretly in Paris.

The squeezing pressure tightened into unbearable pain. That pain should have crushed her. At first, it did. Then something strange happened. The pain became a burning. The burning expanded, pushing back against her bones.

She stared down at her mother’s necklace, the one she should have worn on her wedding day, and the burning exploded.

Only then did she identify what it was: rage.

Rage for the woman she’d been when she’d arrived in the glen. Rage for the woman she’d become while she was here.

Rage at the man who’d betrayed them both.

 

 

Seventeen days. That was how long Alexander had gone without his Duchess. It felt like seventeen centuries.

As he dismounted outside his family’s Buccleuch Street townhouse in Edinburgh, he felt every bit of seventeen centuries old. His head ached from lack of sleep. His bones ached from riding around the city hunting down Cromartie’s old contacts. And everything else ached because Sabella hadn’t written him for the past three days.

God, he was pitiful.

He handed his horse to a stable lad and entered through the kitchen. The house was dead quiet this time of night. Running a hand through his hair, he noticed the housekeeper had left a small tray of food and tea. Peculiar. She never did that.

With a shrug, he carried the tray upstairs to his bedchamber. He’d just stripped off his shirt and begun washing his face and hands when he heard a soft, silken swish behind him.

Instantly, he swiped the razor from the washstand and spun to face the door. His heart kicked like an enraged bull. His cock shot to full hardness within seconds. Did exhaustion cause visions?

“Sabella?”

She couldn’t be real. But she moved into the light of the lantern, and he recognized her blue silk gown.

The one from her trunk.

His blood went as icy as her expression. “Bluidy, everlasting hell. How did ye get here?”

“The mail coach. Turns out I had sufficient fare after all.”

The chill sank deeper. “Ye came alone?” He was going to gut Rannoch. “Ye should have waited for me to return.”

“We had a leak, husband,” she said softly. “It made quite a mess, I’m afraid.”

He’d never seen his bonnie wife this cold. For a moment, her eyes reminded him of her brother. “Ye’re angry.” He set down the razor and held up his hands. “I should have told ye about the trunks.”

“You should have returned them to me.”

Inside, he debated how much more damage he might do by telling her the full truth. This was new territory. One wrong step, and he could lose her. “Had I done that, ye’d have left the glen and never returned. Ye’d be in London or Paris now, hostin’ soirees for some soft-handed lord.”

“That was my choice to make,” she snapped. “Not yours.”

“I couldnae let ye make the wrong one.”

She moved deeper into the light, revealing cheeks flushed with fury. She wasn’t wearing her pendant. Instead, she wore her mother’s emerald necklace. Her eyes flashed a similar green. “Arrogant blackguard! Was this your revenge? To deprive me of every precious memory I have? To humiliate me and leave me with nothing!”

“Wasnae revenge.” He took a step toward her, but she backed away with a warning hand raised. His gut twisted with desperation. “I needed to keep ye.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Did you pay the McCabes to rob me?”

“Nah. But I did repay their thievery in full once I tracked them down.”

Her delicate brow flickered into a wary frown. “D-did you … kill them?”

“They likely wish I had. Australia is an unforgivin’ place.”

“Australia.”

“An old friend from the regiment manages a hulk for convicts awaiting transportation. I asked him to offer them his finest accommodations.” He smiled. “A shame. Fourteen years’ hard labor at their age might as well be a death sentence.”

Her throat rippled on a swallow. “Rather a grim fate.”

“Nobody robs my woman without payin’ the price.”

“I wasn’t yours. Not then.”

Again, he considered withholding the truth. But she’d likely realize it eventually. “Aye. Ye were.”

She shivered, her nipples hardening visibly beneath her silk.

Perhaps all wasn’t lost, he thought. Perhaps she’d forgive him more readily than he’d assumed. Perhaps her desire was the key. He reached for her.

“Touch me, and I shall carve you up like venison, you deceitful, ruthless bastard!”

On second thought, forgiveness might be a wee bit optimistic.

“I will never forgive you for this.”

More than a wee bit, then. “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“You’re not sorry! I can see it in your face.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. She wasn’t wrong.

Her eyes roamed to his naked chest and locked on the medallion Mrs. MacBean had given him. “Who gave you that?” she snapped. “Some woman, I’d wager.”

He glanced down. “A woman, aye.”

Her wrath grew tenfold. “I knew it. You’ve had your revenge on me. Now, you’ve found some other harlot—”

“’Twas Mrs. MacBean.” He flipped the medallion over to show her the rune. “See? Naught but a wee bit of magical nonsense.”

As her fury ebbed slightly, her brow crumpled. Great, heaving breaths shuddered her slender frame. Leaf-green eyes shimmered.

“I would have stayed,” she whispered. “Every piece of me has been yours from the first. I would have given you everything—anything—if you’d simply asked. Instead, you trapped me. Stole from me. Lied to me.”

Here it was. The fullness of the wound he’d dealt her. The sight of her tears sliced him open. He reached for her again, and she backed away, covering a sob. “Let me hold ye,” he growled. “Please. God, please, lass.”

She shook her head and quietly wept. “How am I to trust you?”

“Duchess.”

“You hate me. That’s why it was so easy for you to lie—”

“I wanted to hate ye.” Confessing the truth might be the only way to reverse the widening chasm between them. It went hard against his grain. But it was the one thing he hadn’t tried. “There are things ye dinnae ken, Sabella. Reasons why it didnae matter that ye were Lockhart’s sister or Munro’s mistress.”

She swayed and braced a hand against the doorframe. “I was never his mistress.”

“I ken that now.” Her pain drew him closer. Closer. He scented roses, her skin. When he was close enough, he lowered his head. “Ye cannae imagine the torment of believin’ he’d had ye first.”

She jolted. Shook. “Why should it matter?”

“It shouldnae. If ye were some other lass, I wouldnae give two shites.” He rested a hand on the door beside hers. “But ye’re not another lass. Ye’re mine.”

Her breathing shallowed. Her gaze fixed on his medallion. “Do you understand how little sense that makes? You didn’t even know me before I—”

“We’d never spoken, but I watched ye.” Damn. He probably shouldn’t have revealed that.

“Watched me where? Why?”

He explained that, the previous December while they were hunting for Lockhart, Broderick had asked him to keep watch on her brother’s house for signs of the man. Along the way, he’d observed her patterns—the lack of appetite, the careful elegance, the seclusion with only her maid for company. Her fragility had driven him to distraction. He hadn’t wanted to feel anything for her, let alone obsessive desire and the driving need to protect.

“Kenneth wasn’t in residence,” she said with a troubled frown. “If he’d caught you watching me, he would have killed you.”

“A risk, aye.” For a moment, he considered keeping the rest from her. But lying and hiding who he really was had wounded her deeply. He could see that now.

“There was more to it than surveillance,” he confided. “It’s a bit of what ye told me at the ball—a sense of recognition. Runs in the blood, ye might say.” He smiled faintly. “Da decided my mam should be his wife an hour after they met. Same thing happened with Annie’s mother. ’Twas the same for Broderick with Kate, and Campbell with Clarissa.” He inched closer, inhaling deep. God, it had been centuries since he’d last kissed her. “We MacPhersons have strong instincts, even if we sometimes deny them. When we find what belongs to us, we ken it straight away.” He held still as she traced a fingertip over his medallion. “I fought it for months, lass. Months. Hated ye for what yer brother did, hated ye for throwin’ yerself between us. Hated ye for Munro. Then, one summer night, ye fell into my hands like a ripe peach jostled from heaven’s orchard. So, I claimed ye.”

Her hand fell away. “You used my desperation against me.”

“Aye.”

“You manipulated me into thinking it was my idea to stay.”

“Aye.”

“When did you retrieve my trunks, Alexander?”

He hesitated. “The day after ye arrived in the glen.”

Her eyes slid closed. Pain drew a deep furrow. “I told you how much I longed for what my mother had left me, how much I missed those few precious things. Yet even after we were wed, you hid them from me.”

This was why. He’d known how it would wound her. He’d feared it would drive her away. And now, he watched helplessly while his worst fears came to pass.

She retreated through the doorway into the bedchamber. Crossing to the bed, she stood with her back turned, her delicate shoulders straight. “You once accused me of seeking a gilded cage,” she said softly. “I didn’t seek it. I was born inside it. Kenneth kept me there, ensuring I never learned to fly properly. He convinced me I had no feathers, no wings. That I wouldn’t survive outside his reach. When he d-died, I wanted to die, too.” The slender arms beneath blue silk rippled as she wrung her hands. “So many times, I thought how easy it would be to disappear. No more cage. No more pain.”

His soul roared a denial. “Ye must never contemplate such a thing. Never. Do ye hear me, Sabella? Never.”

She glanced down at the wine-red coverlet, her long nape exposed and vulnerable. “I am not a bauble or a bird, Alexander. I am not a possession to be claimed.” Finally, she turned to face him, her lovely cheeks wet and her dignity blazing bright. “I am a woman with a mind and a heart.” She held up her hands. “These can work wonders.” She flattened them between her bosoms, one atop the other just beneath her mother’s emeralds. “This can love boundlessly.” Her arms slipped to her sides as her eyes overflowed. “But not from inside a cage.”

Her quiet grief tore him open. “Dinnae compare me to yer brother,” he rasped. “I’m a blackhearted bastard, but I wouldnae cage ye.”

“No, merely corner me into dependency then ensure I had no better option. You’re a superb hunter, husband. When the trap closed, I scarcely felt a thing.”

God, she was killing him. “What do ye want me to say? Whatever it is, lass, just tell me. I’ll say it.”

She shook her head, her hands spreading in a helpless gesture. Moving to the bedchamber door, she turned back briefly to answer, “Nothing. What you’ve done speaks well enough for itself.”