Jamie settled himself before the chessboard. “Were you about to take my queen, or did I imagine that gleam in your eye?”
Alec strode to the sideboard, poured himself a brandy, his emotions in turmoil. “I’m afraid I’ve lost interest in the game. My God, he’s here!”
Jamie chuckled. “Lovely. You forfeit. I win.”
Chapter 28
Bethie lay on the bed and wept, feeling as if her heart were being trampled. The pain of it astonished her.
Nicholas. Nicholas. It wasn’t only that he had deceived her. He had refused to tell her the whole truth when she had asked him for it. She had all but begged him to explain, and he had walked away rather than trust her with his secrets. And what truth he had shared meant they could never be together, not as husband and wife.
Voices drifted into her memory as if out of a mist.
“You are heir to your father’s estate. I’m certain he would have preferred you to make a dynastic match and marry a woman of your own class, not the daughter of Scottish rustics, no matter how lovely and pleasant she might be.”
“You go too far, Écuyer.”
“Perhaps. But bad blood will out, as they say.”
As much as she hated to agree with Captain Écuyer about anything, he was right. Nicholas’s father was English gentry, a man of property. He would want his heir to marry a woman of good family, a woman who could advance his family’s connections and fortune, not the daughter of Ulster redemptioners, a woman whose parents lived in filth, a woman with shameful secrets in her past.
Bad blood will out.
If only she didn’t love him, it would make things so much easier. She would be able to nurse her anger, turn her back on him, start a new life here in Philadelphia without sparing a thought for him. But shedidlove him. With all that she was and ever would be, she loved him. And she knew she would spend every day of the rest of her life missing him, wanting him, longing for him.
Already she longed for him. Where had he gone? Had he taken a room for himself down the hall? Had he left the inn, gone to walk the city streets? Was he downstairs conversing with those well-dressed gentleman she’d seen earlier today?
She tried to imagine him dressed like that—all lace, powdered wigs, and velvet—and could not. The Nicholas she knew wore buckskin and linsey-woolsey. He bathed in icy rivers, rode bareback, moved through the trees like a ghost. He could kill without hesitation, but he was also gentler than any man she’d ever known.
Aye, she loved him. But she might as well have fallen in love with the moon. He was beyond her, and if he lacked the sense to see it, she did not. As a trapper, he would have found a good and devoted wife in her. As the son of gentry, he could only find regret and shame.
She sat, wiped the tears from her face, removed her gown, feeling oddly detached from her own actions, as if some other force were making her body move, for certainly she lacked the will. She crossed the room in her shift, checked on Isabelle, ran her hand over her daughter’s downy head. She had just turned back toward the bed, when someone jiggled the door handle.
Nicholas’s angry voice came from the other side. “Bethie, open the door.”
Fury warring with relief, Bethie walked to the door, hesitated. It would only make things harder on her if she shared her bed with him again. But she could almost feel him through the door, and she wanted nothing more than to touch him again, to kiss him, to feel him beside her, even if it was for just one night.
“Either open the door, or I’ll break it down!”
“You wouldna do that.”
“Try me!”
Bethie quickly turned the key, stepped back as the door opened.
Nicholas strode in, locked the door behind him. His eyes glittered with rage and some dark emotion she did not understand. She could feel the tension in him, the anger. She could smell the drink on his breath. Her pulse quickened. Instinctively, she moved away from him.
“For God’s sake, Bethie! I’m not going to hurt you! Surely you know that by now!” He glared at her, walked right past her to the window, stared out into the darkness. “You asked me to tell you the truth, so I’m going to tell you. But you’re going to have to listen to it, and it won’t be easy.”
Bethie sat on the bed, waited, chilled by his warning, the coldness of his voice.
For a long while he said nothing. When at last he spoke, his voice was flat, almost empty of emotion. “We were attacked at night—a Wyandot war party. We repulsed them quickly. Two young soldiers, boys I’d taken under my wing, gave chase as the warriors fled. Their names were... Eben and Josiah.”
She saw him shut his eyes, as if it hurt to speak their names.
“I knew they were about to be ambushed, taken captive. I shouted for them to stop, but they either couldn’t hear me or didn’t listen. Before I could reach them, they’d been overcome. I thought I could free them... but I was taken, too.”
Nicholas felt the brandy in his stomach churn as he told Bethie how they’d been brought north to the Wyandot village, how he’d known they would be sacrificed, how he’d warned Eben and Josiah, but they’d chosen not to believe him. He told her how the Wyandot had promised to adopt them, had feasted with them as honored guests, had offered them sexual delights. And for the first time in six years, he spoke Lyda’s name aloud.
