“Aye.” He took a step closer, then swayed. “I was wrong,leannan. I trusted you even if Charles didn’t, and I should have told you everything, no matter that he ordered me not to. I was wrong to think you’d never find out, and I was wrong to lie to you about what I was doing. But most of all, I was wrong to think any promise to a king, or the king himself, is more important than you. Nothing is more important than you.”
Disregarding Royal orders was considered much worse than highway robbery.Punishable by hanging, she heard herself whisper deep in a dungeon in Scotland.Punishable by hanging, drawing, quartering…
“Nothing is more important? Not even treason?”
“Nothing. I knew it—I knew it while I sat in that prison awaiting trial, wondering where you were and whether rumors had reached your ears to cause you torment. And then, when I saw you standing at that rail…”
His eyes mirrored the anguish she’d seen in them that moment.
“But by then,” he continued, “it was too late. I was too weak, too drugged.” He swayed again. “I still am, it seems. They told me I wasn’t recovered enough to come home yet, but, like you, I didn’t listen. Like you, Icouldn’tlisten, not when my love was at stake.” He risked a tiny grin, that chipped tooth peeking through a tentative smile.
It cracked her heart.
She’d been wrong, too. He’d asked her to trust him, said there were things he couldn’t tell her. But she hadn’t listened. She wanted to say she understood, but her throat closed with emotion.
She looked down to the paper in her hand, the dear words blurring through fresh tears. In his own blood, he’d tried to tell her not to worry. And he’d written a poem for her, admitting his love, promising to earn her trust, asking for forgiveness.
Poetry. He’d shared himself, just as she’d hoped for all along. His wall had finally come down.
Or maybe she’d managed to scale it.
He came forward and took the paper from her trembling hands, setting it aside.
Then he stepped right into the water.
“Your boots!” she gasped.
In the big tub, he knelt at her feet. “I own a shipping line and a warehouse stacked with imported goods from all over the world. I can buy a hundred pairs of boots.”
His voice was thick and unsteady, his amber eyes so intense they seemed to spear her to her very soul.
He reached beneath the water to take her hands in his. “Don’t you understand,leannan? I can buy almost anything—anything, that is, except your love.”
“You have it,” she whispered.
Epilogue
Six years later
KENDRA RAN DOWNAmberley’s marble front steps, then, waiting for Trick, paused and looked back at the house. She smiled at the incongruous stone lintel over the elegant double front doors—a long, decidedly inelegant rock with symbols chiseled into it: the letters KC and PC, a ship, a heart, and a date. 1668.
“What’s that?” she’d asked Trick the day she first came home from the orphanage to see it.
He’d blinked. “Do you not remember Falkland? And the marriage lintels?”
“Well, yes. But this isn’t a weaver’s cottage in Scotland—it’s a mansion in Sussex. And this house wasn’t built in 1668.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” he’d told her, pulling her closer for a kiss. “But that was the year it became a home.”
Remembering now, the same warmth filled her heart that had filled it then. She fingered the stones on her amber bracelet, knowing with a certainty that she’d never take it off again.
Trick finally sauntered out, displaying none of her own impatience.
“Hurry, Trick, or Cait’s babe will be born before we get there.”
“Slow down, orourbabe will be born too early.” Walking her over to the caleche, he smiled and ran a possessive hand over the slight bulge of her middle. “Besides, we were there already. It was you who insisted we leave everyone and return home to get the gift you forgot.”
“It wasyouwho insisted on the hour we just spent in the bedchamber.” Grinning as he climbed up beside her, she leaned to give him a quick kiss.
