“I didn’t die.”
Alec Carrick waited.
Jason said, “It’s been over a long time, yet when I close my eyes it seems just a moment ago. I was responsible for the near-murder of my father and brother.”
“How can that be?”
Jason shrugged. “It was a bad time. Know that I was the one responsible for it.”
Alec let it go. “I repeat, Jason, what do you think of my daughter?”
Jason looked out of the paddock, listened to Henry’s low, soft voice as he spoke to Piccola, who was lightly tapping one hoof against the ground. Moonlight washed over the two of them, made the white paddock fence look like a painting. “This is my home. When I first saw Lyon’s Gate, I knew it would be mine, that I would live my life here and race and breed horses.”
“My daughter felt the same way.”
“Yes, I came to realize that. I will tell you that my family, because they love me, tried to get rid of her, but she never faltered. Thus we have this partnership of sorts. It has been difficult, I won’t lie to you, my lord. Your daughter is lovely, she is bright, she works until she’s cross-eyed, and she can walk into a room of people and bring laughter or create chaos. We have yelled at each other, nearly come to blows, all in the past two months, including the day I first saw her. Both of us have learned to bend a bit. Did you know that Lord Renfrew was in the neighborhood?”
“That ass? Did she hurt him?”
“It was close, but she decided to laugh instead, at how stupid she’d been. Do you know what really angered her? Evidently, in addition to bedding another woman during their betrothal, the buffoon lied to her about his age.”
Alec Carrick threw back his head and laughed at the moon. Piccola raised her head and whinnied. She broke away from Henry and began to dance around the paddock, coming nearer and nearer to where Jason and Hallie’s father stood, booted feet on the wooden railing. Her eyes never left the baron’s face.
Jason said, “I hadn’t realized Piccola liked laughter so much.”
Alec said slowly, smiling toward Piccola, “After she found out about Renfrew, my daughter told me she never intended to marry. She said she didn’t have good judgment in selecting gentlemen. I reminded her that she was only eighteen years old, and what could she expect in the way of seeing behind the masks people wear?”
“You’re never smarter in your life than when you’re eighteen,” Jason said.
“I assume you’re right. It’s been too long for me to remember. Now, so you’ll know how serious she was, Hallie wanted to make a blood oath with one of her brothers that she would never wed. Her brother was eleven years old and would do anything she said. I put a stop to it before she could cut her palm with a knife.
“After turning down a good half dozen gentlemen, four of the six quite satisfactory, I believed her.”
“Hallie and I suffer from the same bad judgment in potential mates.”
“I see. I think it’s time you told me a bit of what happened, Jason.”
Jason saw no hope for it. He said slowly, “Unlike Lord Renfrew, this very smart and beautiful young lady did nothing so paltry as lie about her age. She was a monster and I never saw it. As a result of my poor judgment, she nearly killed my father, and her brother nearly killed my twin.
“The fact is, I am not good husband material, my lord, because I can’t imagine ever trusting a female again in my life. I couldn’t give a wife what she’d deserve. I couldn’t make her happy.”
“Because of this lack you see in yourself.”
Jason nodded. “It’s there and it’s deep, part of me now, and a wife would come to resent me, even hate me.”
Baron Sherard said nothing more. He patted Piccola’s nose, remembering how she’d struggled to stand after her mother had finally birthed her six years before at Carrick Grange. He watched her prance about in the paddock beneath the moonlight. He smiled. Youth, he thought, was always such a serious business. There was a lot to think about. He wondered what the earl and countess of Northcliffe thought of his daughter. Had they known what would very probably happen if two young, healthy people were put together like this?
Jason was lying on his back, his head pillowed on his arms, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. Moonlight poured through the open window. The air was still and sweet. Sleep was a million miles away.
He watched the doorknob turn slowly. In an instant, his body was poised to fight. The door opened quietly.
A halo of candlelight appeared. “Jason? Are you asleep?”
“It’s after midnight. Of course I’m asleep, you twit. What do you want, Hallie? Don’t you take another step. You will not come in here, not with your father sleeping twenty feet down the corridor. Go away.”
She slipped through and quietly closed the door. “When I was little, I practiced walking on cat feet since I excelled at eavesdropping. The only person who would ever hear me was my stepmother. She told me it was a good skill to develop but I must promise not to use it on her. I never did.”
“I heard you. Go away.”
“Jason, I’m not going to jump you again,” she said, and she sounded both mortified and excited. She tossed her hair behind her, long thick hair, which he had no intention of thinking about, how it would feel rubbing against his cheek, a curtain over his belly.
“Stay there, Hallie. I have no nightshirt on.”
“Really? You don’t sleep in a nightshirt? Yes, I remember Corrie saying something about that. Do you know the moon is flooding through that window, Jason? If I come only five steps closer, I’ll be able—”
“If you come one step closer, I’ll personally throw you out that window. It’s a nice drop to the ground.”
“All right, all right, I’ll not move from this spot. Tell me, did my father try to break your arm?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Do you know what my father is thinking? He wouldn’t tell me a thing, patted my cheek, bid me good night, and walked away. And here I’ve known him all my life.”
“I saw you slide your right foot forward. Step back, Hallie.”
She took a very small step back. He saw she was barefoot. “If my father didn’t hit you, then I know what he wants, Jason, but believe me, you don’t have to agree. What happened was my fault, I’ve told him so a good dozen times. He says nothing, only looks patient. I wish he would believe that no one could possibly know. It’s as if it simply never happened. Poof, it’s gone.”
Jason sighed. “Nothing’s gone. He’s your father. That makes all the difference in the world. I don’t think there’s going to be any choice here, Hallie.” He gave a short laugh. “At least our questionable partnership will be over.”
“No, don’t say it. I wanted to apologize to you for what I did, though I don’t remember thinking anything at all while I was doing it.”
“Usually it’s gentlemen who lose their wits and can think only of getting a woman flat on her back.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far,” she said. “I mean, your shirt was off and that gave me quite a lot to think about. When my hand made that very brief foray down your chest, well, perhaps I did think that getting you out of your trousers might be a very nice thing.” She paused, took a sideways step. “You’re out of your britches now.”
He sat up.
She stared at him.
He pulled the sheet around him, then a blanket up over his shoulders, pulling it together over his chest, like a shawl.
Alec Carrick said from the doorway, “Hallie, I cannot believe you are here. Have you no sense at all?”
“Is that you, Papa? Oh dear, I believe it is. I’m not touching him. See, I’m at least seven feet away from his bed.”
“Did you count the bloody feet?”
“Well, yes, perhaps I did, and how fast it would take me to cover those feet if I ran. Papa, I’m only here to make Jason tell me what you said to him. See, he’s all covered up. He’s safe.”
Alec Carrick laughed, couldn’t help himself. “
You’re going to chase him out of his own house if you’re not careful, Hallie.”
“He’s been chasing himself away lately,” she said to her father. “We’d be speaking, then he’d up and leave and not come back until dawn. I know it was dawn the other night because I was nearly awake, and so I told him.”
“I see,” Alec Carrick said. “How often does Jason simply leave like that?”
“He’s left a good half dozen times. Never a warning, he ups and leaves.”
Jason wanted to dump her into the horse trough. “My lord, nothing would have happened here, nothing at all.”
“I believe you. So you left, did you? How long do you think you could have kept that up, Jason?”
Jason felt like a fool. He was lying naked in bed—his bed—minding his own business, and she tracked him down, and now her father was looking at him with a good deal of understanding and determination. He said slowly, “Perhaps we could speak in the morning, sir? Make decisions, settlements, that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” Alec said. “That would be fine.” He took his daughter’s hand and dragged her from Jason’s bedchamber.
“Wait! What is going on here? What do you mean, decisions? Listen, just because Jason leaves the house a lot, you want to talk about settlements? No, I won’t do it. I don’t wish to marry, I’ve told you that again and again, Papa. Look at Lord Renfrew. I shudder to think of him. Can you begin to imagine what his children would have been like? Papa, I won’t do this! Didn’t Jason tell you he didn’t want to wed either? He was really hurt, Papa, burned to his feet, not singed like I was. This can’t happen.”
Alec Carrick quietly closed the bedchamber door.
Jason, wide awake, knowing he was facing his doom and seeing no hope for it, jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and within five minutes, was riding Dodger away from Lyon’s Gate. Hallie sat at her window and wondered again where he was going.
CHAPTER 31
Corrie was dreaming about the day she finally gave her grandmother-in-law her comeuppance, a loud, thoroughly satisfactory comeuppance it was. In her dream she was standing there, her hands on her hips, staring down the old besom, who, for the very first time in her life, had nothing to say. Something skittered along the back of her brain. The dream folded itself away in an instant. Something skittered again.
Corrie’s eyes flew open. She’d heard something that didn’t belong in her bedchamber. What was it? She saw a shadow in the window. Oh God, someone was trying to get in. James grunted in his sleep as she eased out of bed. She saw another movement. She grabbed the poker from the fireplace and yelled as she ran toward the window, “Bloody hell! A woman lets her guard down, even dreams a lovely dream, and look what happens—a bloody man is climbing into her bedchamber, uninvited. Come in and make it fast else I’ll clout your head!”
James jerked awake. “Corrie, what the devil is wrong?”
“Shush, Corrie, it’s just me, Jason. Don’t crack my head open with that damned thing.”
Corrie lowered the poker, her heart still pounding wildly. “Jason? It’s you? We have doors. What are you doing coming in through our window?”
“I want to speak to James. I didn’t want to wake the household.”
Corrie helped Jason into the bedchamber, and tossed her husband his dressing gown. She stood back, eyeing her brother-in-law. “What’s happened, Jason?”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “Listen, Corrie, I don’t mean to be rude, but I really need to speak with James.”
“But you haven’t told me anything—”
James studied his brother’s shadowed face, his look of desperation. He felt horrible alarm.
“Sweetheart, Jason and I will go down to the estate room. Get back into bed.”
With James carrying one lit candle, the twins made their way down the wide staircase, down the long corridor, to the eastern side of the house, and into the estate room. James poured them each a brandy.
Jason took a sip and set his glass down. “Hallie’s father is at Lyon’s Gate.”
James said, “Yes, he visited with us here first, said he wanted to surprise Hallie. He’s very charming, and a man I’ll wager has few go against him.”
“He certainly did surprise his daughter. And me. He came into the stable and saw his daughter all over me. I’d taken off my shirt to work.”
“Ah, well, that’s that, isn’t it? When is the wedding to be?”
“Probably as soon as the baron can manage it. We did nothing, James. I, in particular—”
“You’re saying Hallie attacked you? Just because you didn’t have your shirt on? I thought she barely liked you—”
“Dammit, James, she doesn’t have a clue about sex and she wants it. She wants me.”
“And you? Do you like her?”
“Most of the time. If I like her too much, I simply leave, and visit the three charming ladies I know in Eastbourne.”
“That could exhaust a man’s resources, all those nights spent away from home.”
“You know better than that. She’s so bright, James, and stubborn.”
James said, “Father thinks she’s got grit and backbone, said she’s the image of her father, who is very handsome indeed.”
“What does how you look have to say to anything? What’s important is what you’re made of inside. Well, yes, sometimes I look at her and I ache. I want to touch her hair, maybe wallow in it, there’s so much of it and it’s this marvelous mixture of shades, from the lightest blond to a rich wheat color.”
James marveled at his brother. He didn’t appear to realize what was coming out of his mouth. He sipped at his brandy, leaned his hip against the mahogany desk.
“She makes me laugh, James. She makes me feel important—no, it’s more than that. She makes me feel that what I do is important.” Jason paused, took a sip of brandy. “She makes me feel like I have value.”
“You do. You always have.”
Jason shook his head, began to pace the estate room. “A man who’s a blind idiot can’t have much value,” he said over his shoulder.
“She makes you feel important to her.”
“Yes. Then that fool Lord Renfrew comes back and I truly wanted to kill him for her, but then, James, it was all so funny, particularly the way she looks at him now, that it was all I could do not to laugh. Do you know the idiot lied to her about his age?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Hallie laughs at him too now?”
“For the most part. I’ve determined to keep her from all weapons when he’s anywhere near, though. Then Charles Grandison came over to plead Renfrew’s case. Kept asking her to call him Charles, and she kept saying no.”
“Ah, Jason, it sounds to me like you’re a happy man.”
“No, certainly not, at least not in the way you’re thinking. It’s just that I’m where I’m supposed to be and doing what I want to do. I don’t wish to wed, James, and neither does Hallie. Renfrew stomped her into the dirt.”
“Well, Judith burned you to your soul. It seems to me the two of you will do well together.”
“No, I’d be no good for a woman, no good at all. There’s nothing deep inside me. I’m empty there. Lust is something a man must bear. But the sort of sharing you and Corrie have, it’s impossible for me, James.”
“Well then, perhaps it’s impossible for Hallie as well.”
Jason paused in his pacing. He gave his twin a sharp look. “No, it’s not impossible for her. Lord Renfrew was a dolt, a greedy man, but there’s no evil in him, not like there was in Judith.”
“Judith’s been dead for five years, Jason. You can’t continue to let her control your life. Don’t give her that sort of power.”
“If she’d murdered Father, if her damned brother had murdered you, then what would you expect me to think?”
“It was you who saved Father’s life, you who nearly died, and I survived. It’s long in the past. It’s over.”
“I don’t want to marry her. She deserves a man who c
an give her more than I can. Damn, but she does say the funniest things, words just pop out of her mouth and you want to hold your belly you’re laughing so hard. You should have seen how she was arranging our furniture—the sofa facing the window. What the hell am I to do?”
Jason slammed out of the estate room through the French doors that gave onto the garden, leaving his brother to stare after him, tapping his fingertips thoughtfully on the desktop.
His father said quietly from the doorway, “We will see, James. You did well.”
“He is so very hurt, like there’s this deep wound that won’t heal.”
“He won’t let it heal,” Douglas said. “I think he’s so used to the pain, to the infernal guilt, that he would feel bereft without it.”
James handed his father a snifter of brandy.
The earl said thoughtfully as he swirled the brandy about, “I think the day you and Jason met Hallie Carrick at Lyon’s Gate was the day that might bring your brother back to you, and my son back to me.”
Late the following morning, Hallie paused outside the drawing room door when she heard a familiar female voice say, “I had it from my own maid, Angela, and a maid always knows exactly what’s true and what isn’t. She had it from her cousin who’s a stable lad here. It’s true, and I can tell from the look on your face that you know it’s true. Oh dear me, dear me.”
“Nonsense. Would you care for some tea?”
Lady Grimsby said, “No, I want to know what you’re going to do about this, Angela. You’re her chaperone. This has got to stop.”
Angela said, “Have a nice cup of oolong.”
Hallie stood nailed to the spot. Angela had been right, things like this oozed through cracks in the wall.
Hallie heard the rattle of teacups. Then silence, then Lady Grimsby said, her voice now louder, “I have a solution that should please everyone. It’s said that Jason Sherbrooke will never wed. And that leaves Hallie with a reputation in ruins.” She drew a deep breath. “My dear Elgin. He’s the answer.”
“Lord Renfrew? You don’t mean the dishonorable fellow who—”
“No, no, don’t say it, Angela. Elgin has changed, both Lord Grimsby and I agree on that. Charles also insists he’s changed. Elgin loves Hallie. He would make her a fine husband.”