Chapter 21 #2
Patrick left that question to his brother and concentrated on his supper.
He ate with singlemindedness, listening with half an ear to the grilling Madelyn was subjecting his brother to.
He smiled at Jamie’s stalls and outright lies, then stole looks at Madelyn to watch her as she tried to take his brother apart.
Did Jamie know much about history? What did he think of swords and swordplay? Was there any truth to the rumors of Highland magic in the forests nearby?
Jamie hedged. Madelyn pressed. Patrick looked first at his cousin Ian, then at Jamie’s minstrel Joshua. They were trying not to smile. Patrick then looked at his sister-in-law Margaret and found her watching the interplay with fascination.
He wondered what Madelyn would say if he took her aside on the morrow and gave her the answers Jamie hadn’t. Would she believe him, or would she look at him as if he’d lost his mind?
Her reaction might be all the answer he needed.
He hoped it would be a reaction he could live with.
He leaned back in his chair and reached for her hand. She looked at him, smiled, then turned back to his brother.
Aye, he would tell her. And if she could accept it, even be willing to think about accepting it, he would think of other things.
Postponing her plane ticket quite a bit longer, for one.
He finished his meal with a very light heart.
And then a banging commenced on the door.
Jamie looked up in annoyance. “Who dares this late?”
“Who knows?” Zachary said. “Are there any more turnips in that bowl? I’m turning over a new leaf with my eating habits.”
Jane handed Zachary the vegetables. “Wise choice.”
“Yeah, but I probably should have started with something less healthy, like low-fat Twinkies or something. This vegetable stuff is almost too much for me.”
“As is that banging,” Jamie said, irritated. “Zach, go get the door.”
Zach sighed. “Forever at the door. Some day I’m going to open it and find something interesting.”
“Like a maid to clean your room,” his brother Alex said.
“No, like a beautiful woman,” Zach said, rising and trudging over to the door. “One who’s heard of me and wants me for my vast architectural skills.”
“Dream on,” Alex said with a snort.
Patrick sipped his wine, then looked at Madelyn. She was staring at him thoughtfully. “Aye?” he asked.
“Just thinking.”
“Pleasant thoughts?”
She smiled. “Pleasant thoughts. Interesting, pleasant ones.” She nodded toward the door. “What does Zachary do?”
“He’s an architect,” Patrick said. “He designed Ian’s house. He’s itching to get his paws on mine as well.”
“He’s good,” she said, looking faintly surprised. “He’s into restorations, then?”
“He has a fascination with all things medieval,” Patrick said dryly. “There’s great scope for his work here in Scotland.”
“I’ll just bet there is.” She leaned over toward him. “And what about your brother?” she whispered. “What does he do, or does he just do the laird thing?”
He shrugged. “He tends to the land, sees to his tenants.” “That’s all?”
“He invests. He travels. The traveling takes a lot of time.” That was an understatement, and one Elizabeth would certainly have something to say about, but it was the truth.
“I’d like to hear about his travels.”
“And Jamie would like to blather on about them for hours, flush with your flattery, if you asked him. Perhaps after dinner, if you like. Then,” he said, pausing and looking at her, “then perhaps we should talk—”
He was interrupted.
It was, he suspected he would no doubt decide later, an interruption that would change the course of his life.
The door slammed back against the wall. Zachary managed to avoid being crushed, but just barely.
Gilbert McGhee strode inside. “Where is the murderer?”
Patrick didn’t move. He was, he had to admit, so surprised at having his father-in-law storming into his brother’s hall that all he could do was lean back and wait for events to unfold.
Jamie stood, his expression chiseled straight from granite. “What do you want?” he demanded.
“Justice,” Gilbert said.
“Justice was done,” Jamie said coldly.
“And what would you know of it?” Gilbert demanded. “Have you lost a child? Have you watched the light of your life be snuffed out by the callous actions of a murderer?”
Patrick winced at the pain in Gilbert’s voice. Whatever the truth was, there was truth enough in the man’s pain.
“I want him hanged,” Gilbert said, his chest heaving. He pointed at Patrick. “I want him to swing for what he did!”
Alex got up and casually walked to stand behind Patrick’s chair. “Maybe you don’t have all the facts.”
“My daughter’s dead,” Gilbert spat. “What other fact do I need?”
“I believe the inquest was quite thorough,” Alex said calmly.
“The facts were suppressed,” Gilbert insisted. “They didn’t say how he stole her from me.”
Or that she wed me to escape you,
Patrick added silently.
“He bribed her with clothes and trips whilst he was working for my bloody brother-in-law.”
My fault,
Patrick conceded. Clothes I bought her to prove I was good enough for her and could compete with your money. Which he hadn’t been able to, of course. Not while she’d been alive. It was only after she’d died that he had come into his inheritance.
“She was miserable,” Gilbert said, “more miserable with every day that passed.”
Patrick couldn’t disagree.
“It was all his fault,” Gilbert said—stretching out his hand and jabbing his finger toward Patrick. “I saw her before he took her off on a trip—and that too close to her delivering for any man with sense to take a woman traveling. I saw her. I saw her grief. I know the cause.”
Patrick looked at his father-in-law. He knew Lisa’s grief as well, far better than her father did. Her lover had broken with her for the last time. Patrick had taken her away to keep her from committing suicide in front of the bastard’s flat in Glasgow.
“She should have been in hospital.”
Patrick couldn’t have agreed more.
“He tried to kill her,” Gilbert said hoarsely, “with his own concoction of herbs.”
Untrue
, Patrick thought. He’d given her herbs, that he couldn’t deny.
Something to make her retch up all the sleeping pills she’d taken, but it had been too late.
He’d given her something else to try to pull her out of shock.
He’d called for the paramedics, aye, but used his own methods to try to save her until they arrived.
After finding her half dead on her bed.
“He killed his own child!” Gilbert shouted. “His child! What kind of man does that?”
Untrue as well,
Patrick thought with a sigh. Hadn’t she taunted him with that often enough? “’Tis not yours;’tis Robert’s,” she would say. “How does that please you?”
But Robert hadn’t wanted to be a father. Once he’d found out Lisa was pregnant, he hadn’t wanted to be a lover anymore, either. Patrick had watched her spend nine months trying to get Robert back.
Bloody business.
Gilbert leaned over the table so quickly, Jane had to duck out of her chair to avoid being smashed by him.
“I’ll get you,” he promised. “See if I don’t.”
“Not if we see to you first,” Ian said, rising.
He fixed Madelyn with a contemptuous stare. “How does it feel, my dear, to be sleeping with a murderer?”
Patrick rose as well. “Get out of my brother’s house.”
“I’ll kill you myself,” Gilbert promised.
“Not if we kill you first,” Ian growled.
“Touch me and I’ll sue!” Gilbert said.
Patrick walked around the table, took Gilbert by the arm, and escorted him out the door.
“You’ll regret the day you clapped eyes on her,” Gilbert said, his chest heaving.
“There isn’t a day I don’t already,” Patrick said wearily.
Gilbert gave him one final look of venomous hatred, then stumbled down the stairs and into the passenger side of a Jag.
Bentley Douglas Taylor III’s Jag.
Wonderful.
Patrick turned around to find himself facing the men of his family: Jamie, Ian, Alex, Zachary, and Joshua, all standing in a row behind him.
He’d never been more grateful for anything in his life.
He looked at the supper table.
Madelyn’s face was ashen.
He stared at her for several moments, not hearing Jamie’s words, or Alex’s, or Zach’s stubborn defending of him. All he could see was Madelyn. All he could think of was what grief his past would bring her.
A lifetime with Gilbert McGhee haunting him.
A lifetime with Gilbert McGhee hunting him.
Could he do that to her? Could he do that to the children he might have with her?
He made a decision.
It was the only one he could make.
He nodded to his kinsmen, walked over to the table, and smiled grimly at the ladies.
“Hopefully that wasn’t dessert. If you’ll excuse me?”
He didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t look at Madelyn. He merely turned and walked up the stairs to Jamie’s office. He dialed the phone.
“Aye” was the answer.
“That job tomorrow still open?”
“For you, always.”
“I’ll be there. Book Madelyn a flight home tomorrow evening, would you? First class.”
There was a long pause. “Patrick, are you sure?”
Patrick took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure of anything. “Aye,” he said. “I’m certain.”
He hung up the phone. He stood there for several minutes in silence. Nay, he wasn’t sure of anything. But the decision was made. There was no point in unmaking it now.
Besides, it never would have been possible between them. He wanted a Scot to warm his bed, not a refugee from a Swiss finishing school as Lisa had been, nor a Yank lawyer in a black suit as Madelyn was.
Madelyn would be fine.
And so would he. He would go home, barricade himself in, and wait for Gilbert to unleash the fury of hell on him.
Something Madelyn didn’t need to see.
He turned to go back downstairs only to find his brother standing at the door of the library, his arms folded over his chest, his expression dark. Patrick swore at him.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop?” he snapped.
Jamie shrugged. “Nay,” he said simply.
Patrick gestured at the phone. “I need to work.”
“You need to flee, more like.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Oh, aye,” Jamie said placidly. “I can.”
“You know nothing of my life.”
Jamie straightened. The expression on his face might have made Patrick quail, but he was a grown man now and beyond all that.
Besides, Jamie’s dungeon had been filled in a very long time ago.
“And you know nothing of mine,” Jamie said. “I’ve killed, in defense and in anger. Do you think I don’t bear the stain of that on my hands?”
“But—”
“You lost Lisa through her own foolishness, not yours.”
“How do you know?” Patrick demanded. “How do you know I wasn’t the one to give her what she took to end her life and my child’s?”
“If it was your child—”
“Are you finished?” Patrick demanded. “Finished with business you know nothing of?”
Jamie stepped aside. “Go then,” he said. “Go and ruin your life.”
“I’ll hardly do that,” Patrick said with a snort. “Madelyn was a diversion. Something to pass the time with. I was never serious about her.”
Jamie remained silent. That in itself was something, but Patrick suspected it wouldn’t last long.
Well, it would last long enough for Jamie to pull out several of his bloody books and pore through them.
He could hardly wait to find out what sort of emotional ailment his brother would diagnose him with.
He paused at the head of the stairs. It was the best thing he could do. The kindest thing. The best thing for her.
He couldn’t drag her through the morass of his life.
He couldn’t.
He put his shoulders back and walked down the stairs, his mind firm, his purpose fixed.