Lydia’s lips parted around a small gasp. She forgot Brig’s presence for the moment. “You did?”
Irish nodded. “The night you went out to Lion’s Ridge after Nathan.”
“But you never said. I thought—”
“I wanted to be sure.”
Brig jabbed at Lydia, infuriated that he was no longer at the center of their thoughts. “I’ll have a look myself, if you don’t mind. Put the box down.” When Irish had moved out of the way, Brig pushed Lydia over to the table and sifted through the contents. Skimming the will that remained, he understood his worst fears had been realized. Everything would be Nathan’s.
“I’m not entirely surprised,” he said. “Father Colgan told me how taken you were with Lydia. It stood to reason that you’d be set on giving the land to Nathan, if you haven’t been set on it all along. I had hopes their marriage might come to nothing, but apparently there is to be no divorce. The question that had been plaguing me was how to get Ballaburn?”
Irish slowly wheeled back to his desk, trying not to look purposeful about it. “There’s no will, I told you. You’ve seen for yourself that there isn’t.”
“You’ll have to write another then, won’t you?” Brigham followed Irish’s progress around the desk. When Irish was situated directly behind it, Brig said, “Put your hands flat on the top. That’s it. Lydia, sit down.” When he had compliance he went to the desk, found Irish’s revolver, and tucked it in his trousers. “Did you think I would forget? Your actions are almost laughably predictable, Irish. I thought you might be waiting for me, and you were. With you and Lydia alone here it was the opportunity I had been waiting for, the one I created.” Without turning his back on Irish, he went back to Lydia and seated himself casually on the arm of her chair. His gun rested comfortably on his thigh. “You need to start writing, Irish. The exact terms as before, then no one need know you got rid of the original. Do it, and I’ll let you live out your days here naturally. More, I might add, than you were willing to offer me.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll—”
Lydia’s glazed, grief-stricken eyes met Irish’s. “Write whatever he wants, Irish,” she said dully.
Brig smiled. “Your daughter has good sense. Listen to her.”
Irish stared at his daughter and felt her pain more deeply than he felt his own. There was no accusation in her eyes, no reminder that they had come to this pass because of his wager, yet Irish could not have felt more responsible for Nathan’s murder if he had pulled the trigger himself. Several long, silent minutes passed. Irish’s shoulders slumped at the moment of his decision. He found paper, a pen, and began writing. When he was done he pushed the document across the desk toward Brigham.
“There should only have ever been one of these,” Brig said as he examined it. “The day you drew up two, you made the price of owning Ballaburn Nathan’s life. I’d hoped to win the wager and make killing him unnecessary, but it wasn’t to be. Don’t think I’m not mourning his death.”
A cry was wrenched from Lydia as she came to her feet. “You bastard! Don’t you dare speak of mourning him! You had no feelings for Nathan when he was alive and surely none for him now that he’s dead! You’ve always used Nathan to serve your own ends! You think Ballaburn is yours? Well, you’re welcome to it, Brig, but you can’t make me marry you.”
“Can’t I?” he asked. He raised his gun and leveled it at Irish’s head. “Don’t think I won’t do it. There’re people enough at Ballaburn who’d believe Irish would blow out his own brains. That’s the kind of pain he’s been in since the bushrangers put him in that chair.”
Suddenly Lydia knew the truth. It was so clear to her in that moment she wondered why she hadn’t known, or at least suspected, long ago. “It was never bushrangers,” she said. “It was you. You’re the one who put Irish in that chair.”
Irish saw the truth of it in Brigham’s face and in the reflexive jerk of his head that he could not control. “You bloody whoreson!” Irish’s hands gripped the arms of his chair and he raised himself up, pain twisting his features. “I’ll kill you myself!” Forgetting his infirmity, one of Irish’s arms shot out to wrest the gun from Brig. Immediately he fell backward against the chair. It began to roll away from him and before he could steady it or himself, Irish collapsed helplessly on the floor.
While Brig made no move toward Irish, Lydia ran for him, skirting the desk and dropping to her knees beside him. There were tears in his eyes, more humiliation than pain, and Lydia realized that Brig had broken the proud spirit that was Irish.
“Get away from him,” Brig told Lydia. “Leave him. He needs to remember how helpless he’s really been all these years. Even before he was a cripple in body he needed others to do his work for him. He couldn’t have found you without me, Lydia. I was the one he meant to send in the beginning and I should have gone alone.” He gestured to Lydia to move aside again, waving his gun at her this time. When she didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, Brig leaned forward, grabbed her forearm, and forcibly dragged her toward him. She tripped, the toe of her shoe catching Irish in the thigh as she was pulled across his body. Wincing at the thought of causing him more pain, Lydia struggled with Brigham as she tried to attend to her father again.
Brig hauled her against him, securing her with one arm held tightly beneath her breasts and making it difficult for her to draw a breath. His gun was once more leveled at Irish. “See?” he asked, kicking Irish hard in the thigh. “It doesn’t hurt him at all there.” He kicked him again, this time in the side just above his waist. “He can feel that. Can’t you, Irish?”
Lydia jammed her elbow into Brigham’s middle and heard him suck in his breath. “And you can feel that!” She struck him again before he could recover.
“Bitch!” He pushed Lydia away from him so that she fell against the desk. He removed the gun that was wedged between his trousers and his abdomen before it jabbed at him a third time or fired accidentally. He tossed it away, saw it land harmlessly on the deep leather armchair, and hauled Lydia back in his arms. “Let’s discuss our wedding plans upstairs, shall we?”
Cursing, Irish pushed himself to a sitting position. “Don’t you touch her, Brig!”
One corner of Brig’s mouth lifted in a parody of a pitying smile. “Or what, Irish?” He waited for a reply and when none came, he laughed softly and prodded Lydia out of the room at gunpoint.
He was still smiling when he forced Lydia into his old room at Ballaburn. He didn’t bother to shut the door, believing the threat from his gun was enough to keep Lydia precisely where he wanted her. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be comfortable,” he said, pointing toward the bed.
“Go to hell.”
“I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn me,” he said. “You haven’t heard half of what I want to say to you.”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”
“Don’t you?” He reached in his vest pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I was going to read this to you, but then...” He shrugged, starting to put the letter back.
Even at the distance she stood from Brig, Lydia recognized her father’s handwriting on the envelope. The letter was addressed to her. “That’s mine,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give it to me.”
