She swallowed. Gerald talked! That worm! He must have told Colin or William and here they were to warn him. “Are you going to shout?”
“I might.” More growling as he dragged her away.
“Before you say anything, I would like to speak.” She had plenty to say. Things she needed to say.
“You won’t charm me,” he vowed, reaching the tree line of the woods where John deVille had fled last night.
“I do not intend to charm you,” she let him know, yanking her arm away. “I just want to tell you things I should have told you before.”
“Oh? Like you acknowledging that you told Gerald he had to set my prisoner free, right? Thieves stick together. I know all the clichés.”
He looked and sounded so disgusted by her that she wanted to look away, but his gaze held hers still. “Aye, that is what I did, and I must live with the knowledge that my dearest Rosie…” a short sob escaped her, “is now a widow because of me.”
His hard expression didn’t change. Then again, she did notice the slightest crease in his brow. He fought not to pity her.
“Why did you do it?”
“You already know. I’m sure Gerald told them.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“There’s a code, Michael. I don’t want to be the one to break it. If a thief is in trouble, we help.”
“Whose code is it?” he put to her. “Preston’s?”
“It existed long before Preston.”
“Is he involved in all this? Is that why your father doesn’t like him? Because he’s a thief, too. Maybe he taught you.”
“Michael, I—”
“Is he the leader, Charlotte? The one everyone is so afraid of?”
It was much harder to betray Preston than she thought. “I won’t—”
His eyes opened wider and sparked like deep topaz instead of blue. What? How? But instead of being afraid of him, her blood seared hot through her veins. “Did you really expect me to go against the one I had been loyal to almost all my life? I didn’t have a friend until I was eleven, Michael. No one my own age or close until I met him. He wanted us to look out for each other and that was what I did. What I thought was the right thing to do. I was wrong.”
“So you defied my wishes, mydutyand returned to the mill that night. Yeah, I know the whole story.”
“You know also what happened last night,” she said, tightening her jaw to keep from crying. “You know now that regardless of everything else, ’tis my fault Warren is dead. I can never forgive myself for that. Do you understand, Michael? It will destroy me. ’Tis already doing so.”
“You can’t let it,” he told her woodenly. “You can’t live with regrets.”
“Is that what you do?”
“I did. I plan on starting fresh here.”
“With me?”
He stepped away from her as if she carried a sickness. “That was the plan, Charlotte. But things must change. Are you in love with Preston?”
She almost blurted out no, she wasn’t, but she didn’t take her heart lightly. Michael and Preston deserved for her to examine what she felt. Thankfully, she had been doing that slowly with Preston for the last few months and he was coming up short.
“In truth, I only know one thing for certain, Michael. I have fallen in love with you.”
She’d never poured herself out to anyone, not even to Preston or Rosie. Not really. She always kept part of herself back because if one’s parents could not be trusted, how could anyone else be?
But she’d shared her body with Michael—and she hoped to do so again. If she was going to share her life with him—and she hoped she was, she wanted to share her heart with him, as well.
