The feeble cry brought Hannah’s head up. She turned to look toward the sofa. The voice was Isabel’s. Relieved beyond measure for this one blessing, but still numb from her grief, Hannah scooted out from under her husband. And froze. Blood. Everywhere. On her hands. Her clothes. Just like Mama and Papa. Hannah shook her head. No. No more blood. Please.
“Hannah? Are you … unharmed? Can you … help me … get this horrid … old bitch … off me?”
Standing at the cliff edge of sanity, Hannah laughed at Isabel’s words and her angry grunts of effort. One word of sympathy, one word of pity from Isabel probably would have sent Hannah leaping over that precipice into madness. As it was, though, the older woman’s feistiness set Hannah’s feet in motion. And away from the edge. “I’m coming, Isabel. Hold on.”
After no more than three steps in Isabel’s direction, Hannah was staggered and spun when someone ran past her, hitting her legs, knocking her sideways. An involuntary cry escaped her as she whirled away from the passing body’s momentum. Spreading her arms and legs to steady herself, stumbling to the sofa, Hannah clutched its upholstered spine with one hand and slipped her other hand into her pocket. Empty. No gun. Then she remembered—she’d thrown it out the window.
Forgetting about guns, forgetting about her own bruised and dizzy self, refusing to lose anyone else dear to her, Hannah grimaced in hatred as she whipped around and flung herself—to a standing halt. Her eyes flew open wide as she put her hands to her mouth. Then, joyfully, tearfully, she went to Isabel—and helped Esmerelda pull Patience’s dead weight off her mistress.
Once their joint mission was accomplished, Hannah assisted Isabel in sitting up. She then beamed at the mastiff, noting the wound that grazed the dog’s powerful shoulder, noting the matted blood in the tan fur, and the intelligent intensity in the dog’s brown eyes. “Poor Essie,” she whispered, her throat clogged with emotion. “Were you out there hurting and licking your wound all this time?”
Esmerelda inclined her head regally. Hannah’s hand went to her heart in recognition of the mastiff’s newfound majesty. Until the dog pricked her ears up, flopped her slobbering mouth open in a wide grin, and lolled her tongue out to the side.
That sight burst Hannah into real tears. Isabel clutched at her sleeve. Hannah dragged her other sleeve across her eyes and focused on the woman. The grande dame’s white hair was as rumpled as her clothing and her mood. “Stupid old woman, thinking she can shoot my grandson. Hannah, dear, where is Slade?”
Hannah couldn’t answer her. Not with words. Her chin quivered, her eyelids blinked rapidly, and she looked down, shaking her head.
Isabel became deathly quiet. She reached out a trembling hand and ran her fingers through the drying blood that coated Hannah’s shirt. She wiped it on her own skirt and then put her blue-veined, wrinkled hand up to Hannah’s cheek, pulling back a hand covered with the same red. “This isn’t … this isn’t”—she felt of her own fingers, smoothing them together in tiny circles—“yours?”
Hannah shook her head no.
“Oh, dear God.” Isabel’s voice held a death-knell quality to it.
Esmerelda nosed Hannah’s shoulder and whined. Hannah clutched at the huge dog, hugging her fiercely, burying her face in the warm fur. For once in her life, Esmerelda sat still for such familiarity, even licking at and nosing Hannah’s shoulder.
“Slade!” Isabel suddenly cried out.
Hannah heard her, but couldn’t seem to raise her head to comfort his grandmother. She heard too Esmerelda’s tail thumping on the carpet. Then, strong hands clasped her arms and turned her, sobbing and crying, to hold her against a warm chest. Hannah took a gasping, lurching breath and clung to this new comfort, this new and broad and masculine-scented chest … that was very familiar … in feel and texture … and breadth.
Hannah jerked back, opening her eyes, and very nearly lost consciousness, so great was her shock. “Slade.” The word was a whisper. A wondrous, disbelieving, thank-you-God whisper. “Slade,” she repeated, just above a whisper. “Slade.” This time, aloud. She raised a trembling hand to touch the cheek of the only man in the entire world she would ever love. “Oh, Slade. You’re not dead?”
He chuckled—the most beautiful sound in the whole world—and shook his bleeding head. “No. But if you’d like to try, the line is shorter now.”
* * *
The swirling crowd, glittering in their finery, moved as if one body to the music that swelled and violined throughout Woodbridge Pond a little over a week later. Their Brahmin bellies full of the wonderful bounty of Isabel’s repast, the toasts to the somewhat subdued newlyweds drunk, the horror and scandal behind them, Boston’s best danced and laughed and flirted and gossiped.
Off in one corner of the large ballroom stood the honorees and their two best friends.
“Oh, come now, Slade. You can’t just stop at the point where you’re still at Cloister Point and have just let Hannah know you’re alive. Isabel and her gray-haired staff have kept everyone away. So you must tell all. Now, I know you’re both lying to make yourselves look good, but what happened next?”
Hannah, tucked against Slade’s side, his arm possessively around her waist, laughed when he did and then took up the tale herself. “All right, Dudley. Just then, just as Slade held me in his arms and asked me if I’d like a chance at shooting him, in burst every single one of his men—armed to the teeth, and totally unneeded at that point.”
“Oh, Hannah, you’re so brave. I would have been absolutely rigid with fear. I’ve never even lifted a gun.”
Hannah smiled at Constance’s widened blue eyes and then turned her face up to Slade’s. “I was frightened,” she answered, warming at his wink. She looked back at Constance and Dudley. “Out West, it’s know how to shoot, or die. Still, I couldn’t believe how lucky we’d been. Patience’s aim was knocked off by Isabel, and Slade was only grazed and knocked unconscious.”
“Like Esmerelda,” Dudley supplied.
Hannah nodded at him, feeling Slade’s warm, possessive hand through the thin fabric of her teal-blue velvet ballgown. She almost giggled at the memory of him upstairs earlier with her and again tossing her corset out into the hallway, telling her she didn’t need the damned thing. All her bustles had quickly followed.
“Now, tell me, old man,” Dudley addressed Slade, “how did all this sort out? Who did what to whom? And why?”
Hannah lowered her gaze to her hands. The chandelier’s lights caught her diamond and flashed blinding sparkles over them all. She never had remembered to send for a jeweler to cut the darned ring off. And she never would—not even after she left Boston. Not even after she left Slade. Afraid her sadness would translate to tears she didn’t want to explain, Hannah forced herself to listen to Slade’s answers to Dudley’s question.
“… and then it turns up in Patience’s room—the evidence we’ve needed all along. Temple found it tucked under her pillow when we searched the house. That woman actually kept a detailed journal of every act of hers and Cyrus’s. Unbelievable. She wrote everything down—and worded it so that guilt was deflected to me. If you read that thing, you’d swear I killed Hamilton, Evelyn, Ardis, and Catherine. Not to mention the Hills—that couple I had taking care of Olivia’s mother and baby—and Olivia’s mother. And apparently I paid to have Hannah and Cates run over by the wagon.”
A sudden dizziness threatened to send Hannah to the floor. The cloying scents in the close, crowded room roiled her stomach. But so had everything else for the past several days. Suddenly she felt hot and nauseous. And just as suddenly she felt sorry for having finally told Slade she wasn’t really carrying his child. Because she was. But he’d never let her leave if he even suspected the truth. And so, another lie. Still, she tugged at Slade’s sleeve, capturing his attention. “Slade, I’ve got to get some air and sit down.”
Instantly, he had her elbow and nodded to indicate their concerned friends should follow them. Hannah allowed Slade to thread them through the congratulatory crowd, make their apologies, and then lead the foursome down the long hall to the music room. Hannah gratefully lay back on the fainting couch, thanked Constance for fanning her, and listened to the sound of Slade’s steady footsteps as he strode to the window, opening it to allow cool air in.
Constance hovered over Hannah. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid this ball is taxing your strength. And so soon after everything you’ve been through.” She turned to smack at Dudley’s arm. “And you with all your questions.”
“What did I do?” Dudley’s injured expression, as he rubbed his arm, brought a smile to Hannah’s face.
“I’m fine, Constance, really. And I don’t mind talking about events.” She struggled to sit up. “Really, I—”
“Lie back down.” Slade deposited two chairs on the hardwood floor and clamped a hand on her bare shoulder, holding her prone. “And stay there.” He turned to Dudley. “Ames, you and Constance sit here.”
Dudley turned to his fiancée, whispering as loudly as possible. “Bossy old devil, isn’t he?”
Hannah put a hand over her mouth to stifle a threatening giggle. Constance did the same thing. Slade frowned mightily as he pushed Hannah’s skirt aside to sit at her feet. He turned to her, his hand familiarly on her velvet-covered calf. “Better?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak without bursting out laughing. Slade narrowed his eyes at her and then turned to Dudley. “Back to the story. Now, where were we?”
Dudley slid Constance, chair and all, up against his side and put his arm around her shoulders. “You were telling me how the Wilton-Humeses had everyone killed, including—beg your pardon, Hannah—J. C. and Catherine Lawless.”
Hannah’s mirth fled her heart. Slade sought her gaze. She nodded almost imperceptibly. He considered her a moment and then turned to his best friend. “Hannah thinks they didn’t kill her father. Just her mother.”
Dudley’s brown eyes widened. “The hell you say! Forgive my bluntness, Hannah, but didn’t you find him lying dead atop your mother?”
Hannah shut her eyes against the memory and felt Slade take her hand. Opening her eyes, she sent a grateful smile to her husband and then turned to Dudley. “Yes, I did. But Patience’s own words in her journal reveal that my father was not to be killed. She even noted that she’d told her assassins that if they killed him, she’d not pay them at all.”
Constance’s slim, elegant hand, with the plum-sized diamond adorning her finger, went to her mouth. “Oh, surely he wasn’t to be spared out of any affection she might have borne him?”
Hannah shook her head. “Hardly. She and Cyrus had a twofold plan in killing my mother. One, she would be eliminated as an heir to Ardis’s fortune. And two, they knew that killing Mama would lure Papa here. When he arrived, they were going to set up a confrontation between Papa and Slade. Based on Slade’s”—Hannah cut her gaze to him and then away—“hatred of him, they felt sure that wouldn’t be too hard to do. They were counting on Papa naming Slade as Mama’s killer before he shot him. In that event, any suspicion would be off my aunt and uncle. And with Slade dead and Mama dead, the money would be Cyrus’s alone.”
Dudley and Constance sat as still as death and stared blankly ahead. Dudley roused himself to say, “Absolutely diabolical, as well as brilliant, I’m sorry to say. But tell me this, Hannah, what steps had they taken to ensure that your father would believe Slade here was responsible?”
“Nothing more than a half-burned scrap of Wilton-Humes letterhead with my name on it.” All heads turned to Slade when he answered for Hannah.
Dudley repeated his judgment. “Diabolical.”
“As always,” Slade quipped. “There’s more that’s possibly related, but I’ll let Hannah tell you.”
When they turned to her, Hannah thought first about what she knew before she spoke. “A tiny portrait of Great-Grandmother Ardis, a replica of one hanging at Cloister Point, is possibly missing from home. Seeing the original portrait jogged my memory, so I wrote my sisters asking them to see if it’s there or not. I’m betting it’s not.” Her grim certainty settled on her features.
Constance frowned in thought. “And if it’s not, what does that mean?”
“It means whoever has it is also responsible. And is still alive and out there somewhere. I’ll find them. Wherever they are. This isn’t over.” She cut her gaze over to Slade’s black eyes and the grim line of his mouth. They’d fought about this very point. But she was going. She was.
Constance recaptured Hannah’s attention when she sat back and huffed out her breath. “Then you don’t believe that the men who killed your mother took that portrait?”
Hannah shrugged. “They could have. But I doubt it, based on their orders from Patience. If they killed Papa, they got nothing. So if they’d had to kill him, they would have taken every valuable they could carry as their payment. But the only thing missing—if indeed it is—is that portrait. So, I’m beginning to think Cyrus’s hired guns killed Mama and took off, before Papa came home. And then someone else, for some other reason, killed him.”
Over the gasps of their friends, Slade jumped in. “It makes sense. But the only thing we can’t figure is why Cyrus’s assassins, having done their deed, never returned for their payment.”
“How’s that? The assassins never came back?” Dudley burst in.
Slade met his gaze. “Never made it back, never got paid. And that’s according to Patience in her journal. She made a notation that it was just as well because she didn’t have the money to pay them and Hannah was already here with me. Two birds with one stone, as the saying goes.”
Constance shook her elegantly coiffed blond head. “Amazing. Didn’t I tell you that Patience was the one who frightened me the most? And she even shot her own husband. Hard to believe.”
The ensuing silence was broken when Dudley slapped his big hands down on his knees. “Enough unpleasantness.” He turned to Hannah, a tentative smile on his lips. “Well, then, Hannah, I suppose you and Slade here still have to produce that heir so you and your sisters can inherit.”
Constance smacked Dudley’s arm and made a cautionary noise. Hannah flinched. And did so again when she caught the look on her husband’s face.
Undaunted, Dudley turned to Slade. “By my calculations, Cloister Point is now yours, old sock. So, I’d like to propose a sale. Constance and I have been discussing buying it from you, perhaps put some happy memories in the old place. Wouldn’t we make bully neighbors? And of course, my first act will be to tear down that fence, so your children and ours can be constant nuisances at both places.”
Hannah could only frown at the wonderfully cheerful Dudley. She looked at Slade, who looked away from her, sighting on the harp across the room. Hannah looked at it, too, remembering his words comparing her to it.
But still, Dudley awaited an answer. And one didn’t appear to be forthcoming from her husband. So, she forced a smile and answered him, striving not to give away any of the undercurrents between her and Slade. “I think you and Constance would make lovely neighbors for Woodbridge Pond. I’m sure there’s some legal something or other you have to do, but … we’d be proud for you to live there.”
Constance squeezed Dudley’s large hand and then clapped her own tiny ones together. “This is the best of all endings. That hateful Patience and Cyrus are gone, you’ve found love, Dudley and I’ve found love, and best of all, you and your sisters are safe now.”
Hannah looked from Constance’s open and beaming face to Slade’s closed one. He answered before she could. “Sorry, but you’re wrong—about several things, but mostly about Hannah and her sisters being safe. Remember those trackers I told you about—the ones following the Lawless girls?”
Dudley ran a hamlike hand through his red hair. “Don’t tell me—Cyrus and Patience didn’t send them out?”
“Exactly. There’s absolutely no mention of them in her journal. So, as meticulously as she entered every other detail, we have to assume she and Cyrus had nothing to do with them. I have some information on the trackers trickling in, but not enough to name their employers.” He looked at Hannah as he finished. “You may be right. It’s more than likely that someone besides the Wilton-Humeses either killed your father or had him killed.”
Before Hannah could react, Constance humphed out her opinion in a pretty pout. “Well, I certainly hope that some lovely Western gunslinger shoots their guts out, whoever they are.”
Eyebrows raised like distress flags, Dudley pulled back from the china-doll darling by his side. “I’ve never seen this violent side of you, my dear.”
She lowered her lids coyly and batted her thick fringe of dark-blond eyelashes at him. “There are a lot of sides of me you’ve never seen, my big lovely boy.”
Dudley grabbed for her hand, held it to his heart, and then melted into a besotted liquid form at her feet. All that was left of him was his formal attire. Or so it seemed.
Hannah had an amused expression for the lovebirds, but only a shy, fleeting one for her husband. With her leaving in two days, and with Slade not liking it one bit, the strain between them was nearly overwhelming. And they still had to tell Isabel after her party. She deserved this night, at least. So Hannah sat lost in her predicament, so close and yet so far away from her husband. How would she get through the next two days?
She nearly gasped when Slade slid his hand up her calf to her knee—under her skirt. He spoke in that low, husky tone of his that told her exactly what he was thinking. “Have you no sweet words or pretty smiles for me, my love?”
Hannah had the hardest time meeting his gaze. “I wasn’t sure you—I mean, we shouldn’t—We—”
His hand clutched her knee. “We love each other. We’re married. What aren’t you sure about?”
Hannah’s heart hurt just looking at Slade’s imploring and ruggedly handsome face. “I’m not sure that … being together would make things better.”
Slade’s face contorted into a mask of barely leashed emotion. “How could they be any worse, Hannah?” His voice was a rough, ragged sound.
Hannah looked down at her lap. Slade withdrew his hand and leaned back against the wall. He closed his eyes and shook his head. Had they been alone, Hannah would have burst into tears. Or would have grabbed him to her. Or perhaps she would have done neither.
Couldn’t he understand that she had a blood oath to fulfill? She’d vowed to make the guilty ones pay. And she’d done that—but only partially, as it turned out. No, this was far from over. Now she wanted the actual shooters—Papa’s and Mama’s. And Slade knew himself that Jacey and Glory were still in danger. She couldn’t just sit here all safe and secure in Boston, as he wanted her to do.
But beyond that, she’d already admitted that Slade deserved better than her. He deserved a woman who trusted him and wouldn’t lie to him. Tears now pricked at Hannah’s eyes. She did trust him. Completely. But she was still lying to him. Oh, she’d made such a muck of her life—and of his. Taking in a deep breath, she admitted that he could never find another woman who loved him as much as she did. It wasn’t possible. And that was the most horrible part. Leaving his love.
But at least she would have his child, a beautiful part of him for her own. Hannah rested her gaze on her husband’s determined jaw and knew a moment of terror. God forbid he should ever find out her treachery on that score. She slipped her hand down her gown to rest atop her womb. Their child. Hers and Slade’s. She looked at its father, at the handsome, chiseled profile she’d see in her mind every day of her life. She loved him with every fiber of her being. She always would. But she wasn’t what he deserved.
Those pricking tears now filled her eyes. Why was life so cruel? When Slade, still leaned back against the wall, rotated his head to look at her, Hannah rapidly blinked back her tears and tried to smile at him. But her quivering chin wouldn’t permit it.
Slade smiled as if in sympathy and took her hand. He began pulling her to him. “Hannah, I know you’re going. And I know I can’t stop you. But I need you … now and forever. If I can’t have you forever, then give me now, give me tonight. And I’ll let you go without a fight. I swear it. Your life, your freedom, are your own.”
They were the most achingly beautiful words he’d ever said to her. And they broke her heart. Still, she allowed him to tug her against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Into his ear, she whispered. “Love me, Slade. Love me.”
* * *
Later that night, or closer to the next morning, Hannah lay spent, satiated, naked, and curled up against Slade’s side. Her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder. His cheek rested atop her head, his arm around her back, his hand on her hip. Hannah knew she’d never feel another such moment of supreme contentment as this one. Because she’d leave for home in two days—no, it was tomorrow already. She’d leave in one day on an early morning train.
Slade’s powerful chest rose and fell under her hand, his breathing telling her that he too was awake. She shifted to look up at his square-jawed profile. He was such a good man, a noble man. And he loved her. Hannah almost groaned. She was lower than a snake’s belly in a ditch for not telling him of their child. No matter what else might be between them, he had a right to know that. Hannah lowered her gaze from his jaw and made small circles with his chest hair and her fingertip. “Slade, there’s something I—”
“Hannah, I want you to—”
They spoke at the same time. And both laughed.
“You first,” Hannah prompted.
Slade took a deep breath. “All right. I want you to know that I don’t blame you for leaving.”
Hannah frowned at his brown, flat nipple. Never raising her head to look at his face, she swallowed back sudden tears and had to clear her throat before she could answer him. “You don’t blame me? What does that mean?”
“Well, we Garretts—except for Isabel—are a sorry lot.”
Now Hannah raised her head to stare at her husband. “I won’t listen to you talk like that. You’re not a sorry lot.”
Calm, a level expression on his face, he shook his head. “I’m not feeling sorry for myself, Hannah. I’m being truthful. I’ve been lying here thinking of the one reason you should stay and all the reasons you need to go. And the truth is—you need to go.”
“I do?” Her voice was no more than a whisper of emotion.
He nodded. “Yes, you do. I keep seeing myself threatening you, grabbing at you and handling you in a rough manner, and practically locking you away in my two homes.” He looked to a far-off point and shook his head. “I even tried to use you as a pawn in my own twisted notion of revenge. I’m a sick bastard.”
Hannah blinked back tears. “Don’t say that, Slade. You’re not.”
He finally looked at her, self-honesty blazing in his black eyes. “Yes I am. You know what my revenge was to be, Hannah? Marry you, seduce you into loving me, and then discard you, thereby destroying you. Like my mother was by my father. Admirable family trait.” He shook his head. “We Garrett men are hell on our women. I talked to Isabel after you left—no, after I made you leave here—for my brownstone. She told me the same thing that she’d told you about my father … and your mother.”
He firmed his mouth to a straight line. “You’re better off leaving. And, after thinking about it, I’m … glad there’s really no child. Because I don’t know what kind of father I’d be. My own wasn’t much of one, so God knows what I’m capable of. But along those lines—your leaving, that is—I’ve spoken with my attorneys this past week.”
Hannah stared at him for the longest time, feeling her guts churn and her heart break. He refused to meet her eyes, so she scooted across him to lay her head down over his tom-tomming heartbeat. “Do you want a divorce?”
Under her ear, Hannah felt his heart lurch into a skipping beat. “God, no. And I don’t want to hear any protests, either, but I’ve settled property, stock, and a sum of money on you, the exact sum Ardis left your mother. You may not be able to inherit because we produced no heir, but my money I can do with as I please. I know you didn’t come here for money, and you keep saying you don’t want it, but you have to take it, Hannah. For your sisters, if not for yourself.”
Hannah forced her breath out slowly through her nostrils. She—a lying, mistrustful woman—did not deserve this kind of unselfish love. And yet a part of her wanted him to convince her to stay. “Tell me your reason why I should stay.”
He shifted about, dislodging her to his side again as he stretched his long, muscular legs and hugged her to him for the briefest of seconds. “It doesn’t matter now. Besides, it’s not enough of a reason. Apparently.”
“It’s not apparent to me.” Hannah raised her head again to look at him.
He flicked his gaze to her face and then looked away. Wrapping her long hair around his hand, he smoothed the silky mitt up and down her back. He finally looked down at her and smiled. “Well, it is to me. Otherwise, your trunks wouldn’t be packed, and you wouldn’t have a train ticket home. So it doesn’t matter what my reason is, Hannah. Besides, you’re right—you need to get home to your sisters.”
Agreeing with him but certain she’d lost everything that would ever be important to her, Hannah frowned and laid her head down again on his shoulder.
“Hannah?”
“Yes?”
“What was it you started to say to me? You said there was something I should know.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could. “Nothing. It was nothing.” She remained quiet for several minutes. As did Slade. Not a sound stirred in all of Woodbridge Pond to distract her from her sad thoughts of leaving. Then, feeling the inevitable closing in around her, feeling the darkness of the room invading her heart, Hannah pulled herself up and over him. She smoothed a hand across his cheek. “Slade, will you love me again?”
His chest heaved and jerked mightily, as his stomach muscles rippled. Alarmed, Hannah gripped him tightly as he tugged her head down to rest against his neck and shoulder. If she didn’t know better, she would swear he was crying.
“Again and always, Hannah,” came his choked reply.