The only bright note in the next week was the letter that arrived from Mr. Tomlinson. Two letters, actually, one to Regina and one to Jonathon. Hers was effusive in its praise of her care of his daughter and went a long way toward relieving her guilt. She still believed that she could have prevented their capture by keeping the girls more closely under her wing, but knowing their parents didn't blame her was balm to her battered emotions. He passed on expressions of gratitude from Pamela's parents, and a message from both girls. "They say they'll write you soon. Both of them are still talking about what a grand adventure they had."
Thoughtfully she folded the two sheets of monogrammed stationery and slipped them into her lettercase. I suppose it does seem like a grand adventure, now that they are safely home. They simply had no idea of the danger they were in.
"Good God!"
She turned to see Jonathon sitting at his desk, an expression of amazement on his face.
"What?"
He handed her his letter from Mr. Tomlinson. "Second paragraph." There was strain in his voice.
Again she had trouble deciphering the back-slanting script. But the words "ten thousand dollars" stood out clearly. She went back to the beginning of the paragraph and read more carefully.
"He's giving you--"
"The Coalition. Yes. Ten thousand dollars. And a promise to find others willing to support our fight against white slavers." Leaning back in his chair, Jonathon swiped one hand across his mouth. "Regina, that's going to make a tremendous difference. What a generous contribution."
"I daresay he's quite fond of his daughter," she said, impressed and determined to look past Mr. Tomlinson's pomposity and bluster in the future.
"And of you. He credits you with the fact that he still has a daughter in good health and spirits. The fact that those girls came through this whole experience with both their virtue and their spirits intact is to your credit."
"Pooh. I did little enough. Peter and his men were the real heroes." Still, there was a warm glow of satisfaction somewhere in her middle. She had managed to keep the girls from giving way to despair, and that had been no small task when she was so close to it herself.
* * * *
A week after his surgery, Gabe still wouldn't see her. And he still insisted on going to Italy. He had requested that Jonathon find and hire a doctor to accompany him and remain with him until his stump was fully healed.
"You can't let him go yet. Who will take care of him?"
Regina, he has servants. A full staff, unless I'm mistaken. I've never been to Castello di Re, but Rob...one of our agents spent a few weeks there last year. He told me he was treated like royalty. Wouldn't have had to lift a finger if he'd chosen to be so idle."
She strode across the room and stood in front of the shelves opposite the windows. At eye level, the books were bound in dark blue leather, with titles in gold. And in Greek, if she wasn't mistaken. "How many languages does Gabe speak?"
"I beg your pardon?"
She turned to face Jonathon, whose brows were still drawn together in the slight frown he'd worn ever since she'd entered the library. "How many languages does Gabe speak? European languages, I mean? Besides Italian?"
"Hmph. I don't know. His French isn't good, He may speak German, but again, probably not well. But he could pass for an Athenian or a Turk. I know he's fluent in Farsi, and perhaps in Hindi. Most of his work has been well east of here. Why?"
"Just curious. When we were children, he picked up the Indian languages faster than anyone. Pa and Uncle William always took him along on their trading trips." She returned to the chair across the desk from him. Instead of seating herself, she leaned on its back. "Jonathon, are you sure Gabe is no longer likely to..."
She didn't need to continue, for his face told her he'd asked himself the same question.
He swept both hands across his face, as if wiping away a veil covering his eyes. "He...could. I want to believe he will not."
"Then it is up to us to make sure he does not. What can we do? What can we offer him to make life worth living?"
"You said you and he--"
"Not any more. I don't think he'll soon forgive me for insisting that his parents be notified. I think he's convinced himself that his body would have conquered the infection if it had been given a chance."
"And he was willing to bet his life on that belief."
She let her chin slowly drop in a semblance of a nod. "Gabe was only severely injured once as a child. The rest of us who grew up in Cherry Vale bear scars from clashes with half-tame livestock and wild animals or from encounters with assorted sharp or abrasive objects. My brother Merlin has been in blind in one eye since he was fourteen. I don't know how many times Aunt Flower stitched one of us up, or set a bone. But the only time Gabe was ever injured, he was little more than a baby. He fell off the shed roof and broke a leg." She closed her eyes, trying to remember what she'd heard. "His right leg, I think. The same one--"
"The same one that was shot. The same one Heureaux's goons smashed."
"I don't know that matters so much as the fact that he never learned to deal with injury or illness. When a passing trapper brought measles to Cherry Vale, Gabe somehow didn't catch them. The rest of us spent the first year we were in civilization sick, because we'd never been exposed to all the nasty little ailments most children outgrow by the time they're ten or twelve. All except Gabe. Again, he seemed to be charmed, because he never caught the sniffles, never contracted mumps, never got laid flat with influenza. I'll bet if you were ask him, he'd claim to have never been sick a day in his life."
"If he'd speak to me at all." Jonathon tossed the pipe he'd been playing with but had never lit on to the desk, where it skittered across and fell onto the thick oriental rug, scattering tobacco widely. "I wish--"
A discrete knock at the door had them both turning toward it.
"Enter," Jonathon called.
"The mail has arrived, m'lord." The silver salver the servant held was piled high with envelopes, some of them well stuffed.
"Put it on the desk, Egbert. Thank you."
When they were alone again, Regina said, "I suppose we can't simply incarcerate him here."
He replied with a short, cynical chuckle. "Oh, yes, we could. It might even work, until he suborns one of my servants or gets his hands on a pair of crutches. Gabe is not one who listens to NO."
* * * *
"You'll find me a difficult patient, Doctor Ferguson, if you expect me to behave as an invalid."
"Frankly, Mr. King, I would find someone who chose to behave as an invalid a difficult patient. You I expect to be a trying patient, because you will continually attempt to do more than you should."
Gabe couldn't stop the twitching of his lips. It was the first time he'd felt the merest twinge of amusement since... Since when? How long has it been since I've felt like laughing?
Unbidden a face swam into his memory, a smiling face, surrounded by tangled hair the color of a summer dawn, eyes the shade of a desert sky in spring.
A face belonging to the only person in England he'd trusted to follow his wishes. To protect him from the butchers.
The face of betrayal.
"When can we leave?"
Dr. Ferguson removed his pince-nez and rubbed his eyes. "I'd like to give you another week's practice with the crutches before risking the uncertain footing on a railcar, let alone on a boat. What say you to Wednesday week?"
"I say it won't come soon enough." He was sure he would manage the crutches if they left tomorrow, but he'd be trying Dr. Ferguson's patience soon enough. "Choose your battles," his papa always said. "That way you have a better chance of winnin' the ones you fights."
As soon as they were in Italy, he was going to war.
* * * *
"Are you going see him off?"
Regina couldn't resist giving Jonathon an are you insane? look. "Of course not. He thinks I'm already on my way home." Gabe had become so incensed at the idea of her staying in England in hopes of seeing him, of convincing him to return to America with her, that Peter had assured him she was all but on her way out the door.
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten. Regina, are you certain...?"
She went to the window, twitched the drapery aside, Even though she knew she couldn't see the wide front steps or the curving drive that led away from the manor house, she still hungered for one last glimpse. "I've come to accept that he'll be better off in Italy. There won't be reminders...at least not of those of us who contributed to his situation. In time... In time he will heal."
She hoped so, at least. A few days ago she had recalled something her father had said to her just-older brother. The memory had given her hope for Gabe. If only he had the same strength Merlin did.
Pa might not have known she was tucked into the corner of the library at the big house in Boise, but even if he had, she was sure he wouldn't have minded her hearing what he'd said...
"A man does what he has to do," Emmet Lachlan had told his son, who was still recovering from life-threatening wounds. "No matter what it costs him, he does it. And he lives with the consequences."
"It was just a lamb, Pa."
"And you could have let the cat have it. Trouble is, who's to say what she might have taken next, once she got the idea that pickings were good in the vale. Would you have risked Rhys? Or Iris? "She's not much bigger than a lamb."
"Pa! 'Course not. But who's to say--"
"A body never knows," Emmet said. "All you can do is make your choice with what you know, what you see. That cat was after a lamb, and that lamb was ours. You fought her off, and next year your ma will sew you a shirt with wool from that sheep."
"I won't wear it."
"Come winter you might be glad you have it."
"Come winter I won't be able to see but half of it."
"Merlin, are you blind?"
"No. No sir, I ain't. But I'm half blind."
"No, son, you're not. Blind is one of those things you are or you aren't. As long as you can see, you are not blind. Maybe you can't see as well or as wide as you used to, but you can, by God, see. You can still shoot, and you can still farm, and someday, God willing, you can still love a woman."
Regina had stifled the sobs that rose in her throat then, because it wasn't often she saw her Pa weep. But when he'd put his arms around Merlin and her brother had hugged Pa for all he was worth, there had been tears on Emmet Lachlan's cheeks, too.
Was having only one leg different from having one eye? Could a man be half-crippled, or was it like blind? He was either crippled or he wasn't.
Merlin and Gabe had been close, once. Maybe she should write to her brother and ask his advice.
No matter what Merlin told her, she knew what she must do. She must ask Gabe if he was crippled.
Could he still shoot, still serve the Coalition's cause, still love a woman?
Did anyone ask him?
If they haven't, I will.
When Jonathon came back in from seeing Gabe off, she said, "Where can I find a tutor in Italian?"
As she told him her idea, he began to grin. When she finished, he laughed aloud.
For the first time since she'd been snatched off a Parisian street, Regina felt as if the future held promise.