Brig shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But if you’ll do as I want, I’ll tell you what it says.”
Lydia hesitated, looking from Brig to the letter and back to Brig again. She cared far less about the letter than she did about the gun, but nothing was served if Brig should realize it. Moving with obvious reluctance and fear that was not entirely feigned, Lydia went to the four-poster and sat down on the very edge of the bed. “You took the letter from the coach,” she said.
His tawny eyebrows lifted. “You knew?”
“Nathan suspected. I wasn’t as certain.”
“You should have trusted him. He knows me better than anyone. It was difficult to hit on something that would draw him away from Ballaburn without making him suspicious at the outset. The fire worked well.”
A blessed numbness settled over Lydia. It touched her heart first, which thudded with a dull, steady beat, then her eyes, where there were no tears to blink back. The ache in her throat disappeared as the heavy lethargy spread to her arms and legs and finally her head, weighing her down so that it seemed impossible to move or even want to. It was hard to remember that she wanted the gun. “You’ve always used Nathan to get what you want. Even when you were boys.”
“He told you how we came to be here, did he?” He laughed shortly, shaking his head at the memory. “Poor Nath. He wasn’t so wise then. He never would have agreed to set out on this adventure if I hadn’t forced it.”
“So you killed that woman in London.”
“One whore more or less doesn’t matter. No one mourned the passing of my mother when she took her own life—including me. She left me to make my own way when I was eight. I found her, you know. Her wrists still had ropes on them. I was much older before I realized her last lover had tied her to the bed before he used her. She didn’t bother to take them off before she slashed her wrists.”
Thinking of the twisted manner in which Brig later honored his mother’s memory, Lydia shivered. “You allowed Nathan to take the blame for what you did.”
“More than that, actually,” he said without remorse. “I made certain he was arrested. Put the evidence in his shoe that placed him at the whore’s home the night of her death. The truth is, I never meant the whore to die. She came upon me as I was looking over her property. She thought I was a beggar and invited me inside. I didn’t want or need her pity.”
“So you killed her.”
For a brief moment a look of helplessness passed across Brig’s face. “It just happened.”
“Oh, God,” Lydia moaned softly.
Brig blinked suddenly and the small action seemed to jerk him into the present. “It wasn’t like that with the others,” he said. “I got better at it. No one’s ever known the other suicides were murders.”
“Nathan knew.”
“But he couldn’t say anything, could he? Not with his past.” He held up the letter. “It’s important you hear this from me, Lydia. Samuel writes about it, of course, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Your mother killed herself.”
The numbness Lydia felt everywhere finally extended itself to her brain. She fainted.
Irish was sweating hardby the time he pulled himself back into his chair. His skin was cold and the gray pallor of his face had deepened. Wheeling himself around the desk, he searched for the gun Brig had tossed and found it on the chair. His hands trembled as he picked it up and checked to be certain it was still loaded. Wiping his brow with his forearm, Irish pushed himself to the staircase, feeling each breath he took as a heavy burning in his chest. At the bottom of the stairs he paused and looked up. The steps rose above him as the face of a mountain might to an able-bodied man. Tucking the gun in his trousers at the small of his back, Irish reached for the newel post and raised himself out of the chair. Using the banister rails and the steps themselves, he began the ascent with his hands and arms, dragging his useless legs behind him.
Lydia was onlyunconscious a few minutes, but it was long enough for Brigham to secure her wrists to the posts at the head of the bed. Her initial struggle merely tightened the scarves that had been used to bind her. Her eyes settled on the gun lying on the bedside table, completely out of her reach now.
Brig leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs. “I know it’s a shock,” he said quietly. “That’s why I wanted to be with you when you heard.”
Lydia tried to sit up. Her bonds prevented her. “You killed her.”
“Samuel wrote it was suicide. Perhaps she missed me. I think you suspected Madeline and I were lovers. Apparently she killed herself shortly after my departure. I was sorry to learn of it.”
Tears gathered in Lydia’s eyes now and Brigham’s face blurred. Her hands curled into fists.
“You’re probably wishing you had killed me at the Silver Lady,” Brig said. “That’s understandable. It’s difficult to know what’s to be done about you, though. I’m not usually indecisive. For instance, it was not hard at all to know what to do about George Campbell.” Lydia’s short gasp told him that she understood. “Your father didn’t completely trust me, I think. He sent George with me to bring you back to Frisco.” His palms turned upward in a gesture of mock helplessness. “There was an accident during the voyage.”
He stood and went to the bed, sitting down near Lydia’s waist. For the longest time he didn’t touch her, simply studying her features instead. “You have such an odd little face,” he said. “So plain sometimes, almost beautiful others. But your eyes…your eyes are always magnificent. When you look at me as you’re doing now, I don’t think I mind at all that you hate me.” He lifted one hand and grazed her cheek with the back of it. “Madeline had skin like this. Soft and pure. She was a whore, though. You knew that about her, didn’t you?”
Staring back at him, refusing to look away, Lydia said nothing.
“I’d kill you now if I thought I could get away with it,” he said. “But everyone for hundreds of miles knows about Mad Irish, his wager, and his bloody will. I can’t have anything if I’m not married to you.”
Lydia’s mouth was too dry to spit. She told him to go to hell instead.
“Irish’s life hangs in the balance,” he said. “Think about that. He’s the last person whose life you can save. You couldn’t help George or your mother or Nathan, but you can help Irish. I have nothing to lose, you see. If you don’t marry me, I can’t have Ballaburn. It doesn’t matter to me then whether Irish dies now of a new wound or later of an old one. I think, though, that it matters to you.”
