He became so lost in his thoughts he scarcely noticed in which direction they rode, but at last a shout from Amelia roused him.
“Denny! There’s the cottage.” Amelia pointed at the small stone gamekeeper’s cottage standing on the edge of the estate. “We’re here.”
Here. Lindenhurst. He hadn’t been back for more than ten years, but as Cam stared at the cottage, every moment of the time he’d spent in that cramped place rushed back at him as if no time had passed at all.
He shivered, remembering. The walls, always damp to the touch, even in the summer, and the floors, always freezing under his feet. Four long years he’d lived there, and in that time he’d never been warm. Not once.
Amelia had been born in that cottage. His mother had died there.
All at once he wasn’t a man anymore, but a fatherless nine-year old boy.
“Cam?” Eleanor drew her horse alongside his. “Cam?”
He turned to look at her, but he didn’t see her. He saw his Uncle Reggie, four years after his father had died, telling his mother she was a disgrace to her dead husband’s name. He saw his Aunt Mary, tears on her cheeks, her hand over her mouth, holding in her sobs as his uncle told Sarah West they couldn’t live in the manor house anymore—that she and Cam would have to go and live in the cottage now.
He saw Hart Sutherland leaving his mother’s tiny bedchamber in the cottage, fastening his falls as he went.
He’d been thirteen when Hart Sutherland seduced his mother. Thirteen years old.
He’d been seventeen when she died. He saw her lying in a bed, the white sheets soaked with blood, clasping Amelia to her breast.
He shouldn’thave come here.
“Cam? Are you all right?” Eleanor reached toward him, hesitated, and then placed her hand on his arm.
He looked down at her pale fingers against his coat, then turned to her—tried to see her. Tried to feel the warmth of her hand upon him. Tried to feel her. Her.
He couldn’t. He could only see Uncle Reggie. Hart Sutherland. They’d taken from him. Stolen. From him and Amelia. From his mother. Now it was his turn to take.
Aneye for an eye.
Lady Eleanor’s future for Amelia’s. It was a fair trade.
Cam pulled his arm away.
“Denny, look!” Amelia trotted up the long drive that led to the estate, then turned and waved gaily to Cam. “We’re here at last!”
Chapter Sixteen
Ghosts flitted among the tall yew trees lining the main drive up to the manor house.
Amelia waved back at Cam and Eleanor one more time before she wheeled her horse around and pranced toward the house, Robyn behind her. The carriage was some distance away, but it passed onto the drive in front of them and followed the circular path that led to the front entrance, and still Cam didn’t stir from his place at the end of the drive.
No one else seemed to notice the ghosts.
Eleanor glanced toward the house and got a vague impression of a three-story manor with neat rows of windows before she turned her attention back to Cam, who continued to sit motionless atop his horse.
Only Camcould see them.
She could hear Amelia’s excited shouts even from this distance, but they were muted, and she couldn’t hear what the child said. She shaded her eyes and looked toward the house again. The commotion on the drive had attracted the attention of someone inside—a woman had emerged from the doorway, kneeled down on the wide stone steps and opened her arms.
Amelia flew into them.
Mary West.
Eleanor looked back at Cam, then rubbed her fingers against the middle of her chest to ease the ache there. This was wrong. Wrong, that he should be left at the end of the drive to stare up at his home as if he didn’t recognize it. As if he were unsure of his welcome.
She didn’t know why her chest ached, or what she was waiting for. She should ride up the drive and join her family. Leave him here to face his ghosts alone. She didn’t owe him any consideration, and judging by the way he’d just snatched his arm away from her, he didn’t want any.
