* * * *
Lucan met his gaze without wavering. “Not the entiretime,” he said.
And even though Padraig had recognized the idea as truth as soon as it had entered his mind, hearing Lucan confirm it was like a blade to his heart.
“I trusted you,” Padraig said with a disbelieving wince. “I came all this way—I trusted you both.”
“You can still trust us,” Beryl—nay,Iris—said, stepping toward him with a hand out, as if to touch him, comfort him.
Padraig backed out of her reach and looked to Lucan once more. “That’s why you were searching out my father’s other children,” he realized aloud. “My brothers. Nae so you could give them the opportunity to clear Tommy’s name, but to make sure there would be nae nasty surprises to reclaiming your own estate. You wanted my father out of the way just as much asHargrave did.”
“That’s not at all true, Padraig,” Lucan argued. “I don’t believe Thomas committed any of the crimes he was accused of. Not one. Upon my honor, it is my intention to present my evidence to the king to exonerate your father.”
“And, lucky for you, here’s poor, dumb Padraig, who has a legal right to Darlyrede. Your golden goose, am I?”
“Padraig, please.” Iris stepped toward him yet again, her beautiful face splotchy withunshed tears.
But Padraig fought the pull of her, knowing it was all a lie. Everything shesaid was a lie.
“I was happy,” Padraig insisted. “Me mam and da—we didna have two pennies to press together, but we had each other, and we were happy. Now look at us all,” he demanded. “Me da is again being chased across the land, a price on his head. Me mam’s dead. I’ve been shot, brained, had me food poisoned, been humiliated, led to believe I had the loyalty and affection of friends who, in truth, only wanted me for what I could gain them.You used me,” he repeated.
He looked between them several times, ignoring the silent tear that raced in a silvery line down Iris’s cheek.
“To hell with ye both,” he sneered and then turned away, stalking to the door. He threw the bolt and flung open the door, sending it crashing into the stone wall, and then strode across the courtyard toward the doorway that led to the corridor just outsidethe great hall.
I’ve never lied about how Ifeel about you.
He ignored the memory of her words. Everything she’d ever done, said, was suspect now. Lucan too. He thought of the lives they’d ruined with their spying and treachery as he strode through the wide entry chamber into which he’d fought his way that first night at Darlyrede, and he paused in the center of it, paying no heed to the nobles, the servants who stopped what they were doing to stare openly as Padraig, in his dirty, bloody clothes, looked about the tall,paneled walls.
Portraits. All these people he had never even known existed before Lucan Montague had arrived on Caedmaray. He walked up to the largest one, a painting of a hopelessly pale and despairing-looking girl, her faded blond hair and translucent skin seeming to blend in with the ivory cloth of the backdrop draped in long, graceful swags behind her. Her blue eyes seemed to see nothing, her thin, pale mouth turned down. Her right hand was laid upon the back of a gilded chair, her left hand clutching a single, pale lily, held down against her thigh as if she had not even the strength to pose with a proper bouquet. Indeed, she did look defeated for one so young.
The last portrait of Lady Euphemia Hargrave…she was ten and five…
And now she was dead.
Padraig turned away toward the hall, where he could hear Vaughn Hargrave shouting at his first in command.
“Then you shall go back and search again!” the nobleman insisted, standing before the hearth while the kindly Lord Hood leaned heavily on the lord’s table nearby. “Do you not understand? They have killed Lord Paget! If you come back without at least one of them,I will kill you myself!”
The man-at-arms was stony-faced through this tirade. He gave Hargrave a stiff bow. “As you wish, my lord.” He turned and strode past Padraig without a glance.
“Oh, now what do you want?” Hargrave sneered in exasperation. “I’ve enough to dealwith without—”
“I’ve come to tell you I’m leaving,” Padraig interrupted.
Hargrave stilled, looked at Padraig suspiciously out of the corner of hiseye. “Leaving?”
“Aye. Leaving Darlyrede House. You can have the lot of it. Idoona want it.”
“Is that so?” Hargrave said in a tone of surprised interest. “Did you hear that, Edwin?” he said to the slouching lord who had raised his head to fix Padraig with a look of unabashed surprise. “Proved too much for you, after all, I suppose. I thought it might. It takes a strong man to keep Darlyrede in check. Your father was never that man, and neither are you.Weak.Stock,” Hargrave enunciated. “And speaking of weak stock, are you taking your friend Montague with you?”
“He’s nae my friend,” Padraig said, feeling a pinch in his chest at the words. “But I think you knew thatlong before I.”
“Ah,” Hargrave mused. “Yes, I suppose I did. It seems that everyone in my house is at last coming totheir senses.”
Padraig steeled himself for the request he was about to make. “I’d have a horse for the journey.”
Lord Hargrave’s eyes widened again. “By all means, take two, if only that I should be ridof you sooner.”
