Tavis coughed and wheezed, then finally settled.
With his hands pulsing to fight, Jahleel looked back at the door. He needed to escape and eased to the door. “You lied. You connived. You manipulated her—”
“Loved her. Don’t forget that.”
Was it a sin to kill a dying man? If he took the pillow and just held it on the fool’s face, would anyone . . . ? Oh, Lord, what was he thinking? “Bye.”
“Bet you can’t win her back. And she won’t believe the truth. She’ll hate you more.”
“I’m leaving. You’ve said your piece. This time you can’t fix it.”
Tavis’s head fell back. “Damn. Tell . . . come back. Now.”
Jahleel flung open the door and ushered everyone inside.
The weeping became loud.
“It’s . . . all right,” Tavis said. “I’ve mended ways . . . We’ll keep our oath, the one said on our fathers’ lives.”
“But your father’s still alive,” Lydia said. “He refuses to come here because you married a Blackamoor woman.”
The prejudice, the lies—it all made everything in Jahleel become fire.
“Metaphor, little sis. Jahleel. Bet . . . five pounds you can’t love ’em like I . . .”
Tavis lay still.
The doctor moved to the bed and gripped the lying fool’s wrist, then he put an ear to his chest. “Tavis Palmers, the Viscount Hampton, is now with the Lord.”
No, he wasn’t.
That blasted man was in Hades. Tavis was there now, lying to the devil, betting for spots with shade. Jahleel was sure of it.
Sitting by the bed, Katherine cried. Her sobbing sounded of pure pain. It was the most heart-wrenching thing he’d heard since his sister.
Jahleel drowned again. Katherine didn’t have to look his way. Her powers had grown or he was still weak . . . still in love.
No.
When she finally looked at him, she said, “Thank you for coming.”
Dismissed. The fire in her eyes was pure hatred. To talk of the secrets Tavis disclosed would seem opportunistic and cruel.
And what of Jahleel’s feelings, the years he’d felt used and discarded by a callous harpy who claimed his soul in secret while seeking a respectable title in public? Did he not think until this very moment that Katherine was an opportunist or a thrill huntress, that she was anyone but a woman who loved as deeply as Jahleel?
He had to go, for he didn’t know what to do with anything Tavis had disclosed. Before he could back away, the physician rubbed his fingers together, asking for an absent coin.
Oh . . . who knew what Tavis told him.
The duke nodded.
Poor Katherine and the girls couldn’t be hounded by a doctor turned bill collector. “In the hall, sir. I’ll take care of it.”
Before he could follow the man, Georgina and Scarlett wedged into Jahleel’s arms.
Then Lydia clamped again to his leg. He couldn’t escape.
Yet holding them, helping them in this moment felt right.
