But she took his arm just the same and allowed him to lead her to his office. Barnaby had been sleeping by Jasper’s desk, snoring like a drunken sailor. As they crossed the threshold, he woke, yawned, and rose to greet them. To Caro, he offered a sniff and a lick of her hand, as if to tell her he remembered what had happened several hours before. She scratched the dog’s head and swallowed down a lump rising in her throat.
“Too soft, this hound of mine,” Jasper muttered, shaking his head as he crossed to the sideboard where he kept an array of spirits.
“He is a sweet lad,” Caro said, gazing into Barnaby’s wide, brown eyes.
Barnaby sneezed, then made a whining sound before sitting on her feet.
“He’s worried about you,” Jasper observed, pouring them some wine and returning to her, holding out a glass in offering. “He ain’t the only one.”
“I am perfectly fine,” she lied, then raised the Madeira to her lips, swallowing the cool, rich liquid and wishing it could wash away her pain.
“You’re swilling your wine like a toss pot.”
So she was. But damn him for noticing.
This mess was all his making, curse it.
Her anger toward him and his forced secrets returned, replacing the sadness. “This is all your bloody fault, Jasper. If you had allowed me to tell him who he was weeks ago, he never would have found out in this way.”
Jasper raised his glass in a mocking salute. “I was meant to be the fucking hero of this tale, believe it or not. One bloody favor, and have a look at what happens. A ham-fisted Winter puppy blackens my eye after he’s been bedding my sister.”
She winced at the anger in her brother’s voice. “He hasn’t been bedding me, and he’s hardly a puppy.”
“Acts like one, and if he ain’t bedding you, how’d you get that love bite on your damned neck, and what was he doing with you this morning?”
She drank some more wine, delaying the inevitable. “It was one night only.”
Her cheeks were on fire. Never had she imagined having to engage in such a discussion with her brother. Her utter mortification was complete.
“Satan’s teeth,” Jasper growled. “They’re going to pay for this, the lot of them.”
“Please do not strike up another war with the Winters over what happened between myself and Gavin,” she begged, despising the thought.
Suttons and Winters had been competitors and mortal enemies for years until recent developments and the need to work together had forced them to find common ground. She had no wish to be the cause of a return to hostilities.
“No.” Her brother shook his head, his jaw going hard. “Nothing you say will change what needs to be done. They are the reason I kept him under this roof for so long. They are the ones who asked me to keep his presence here quiet. This is how I am repaid for going to them the moment I discovered you had found Gavin Winter’s sorry arse in the alley.”
She frowned at her brother, confusion settling over her. “You went to the Winters and told them we’d found Gavin?”
“Aye. More fool I am.” Jasper raked his fingers through his dark hair, then drained the last of his wine. “I should have demanded a ransom. Instead, like a bloody dupe, I agreed to their plan.”
Her heart was pounding harder now, her mind beginning to make sense of her brother’s furious rants. “What was their plan?”
“To keep ’im here until they could get to the bottom of who’d tried to crash ’im.”
In his outrage, Jasper was once more dropping thehand speaking flash. “They knew for certain that someone was trying to kill him? That what happened to Gavin was not the work of footpads or some other bad sort?”
“Aye. Apparently another of the Winters, Demon, took a lick on the head not long before Gavin nearly cocked up his toes.”
Icy fear laced through her heart. She had suspected as much, but somehow, hearing Jasper give credence to her suspicions made the idea of someone attempting to kill Gavin far more real than it had been before. And now, he was no longer protected. No one had known he was alive, but soon, everyone would. Including the person or people who wanted him dead.
“Why did you not tell me the truth?” she demanded. “You never spoke a word of this before. If I had known—”
“If you had known,” Jasper interrupted, “it may have put you in danger as well. Or any of the rest of us. I did what I thought best, and so did they.”
“You made me lie to him,” she shouted.
Barnaby rose from his place on her feet and made an agitated turn about the room.
