Chapter 12 #2
Reed smiled, but his gaze was unflinching. “I suppose we shall see. If you learn of O’Neill’s whereabouts, it is your duty as a British citizen to apprise me of it. I am certain you know that failure to do so would make you a conspirator to his crimes.”
“I shall be the first to tell you where he is,” Tyrell said, an outrageous lie.
Reed finally laughed, the sound flat and mirthless, and walked out.
Tyrell waited until he had heard the front door close. Then he kicked the door to the salon closed with all of his might and the wood cracked.
He was very grim. Sean was in dire jeopardy, but so was Eleanor.
Worse, Reed was a very dangerous adversary; Tyrell’s every instinct told him that.
IT WAS ALMOST NOON. The sky outside was graying, threatening rain.
Eleanor sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest. Sean had been gone for a few hours and she could not relax until he had safely returned.
He had left the city to take a look at the frigate that remained hovering just past the city limits, and he had said he had other affairs to conduct.
She had been afraid to ask what those affairs were. But she knew, didn’t she? He had to buy his passage to America and he also had to find an escort to take her home, never mind that she was not going to Adare now. She was not leaving Sean like this. And what about Peg?
She hugged her knees more tightly to her chest, aching with hurt. Who was this other woman who was so important to him that he dreamed of her? Had he spent the entire two years before his incarceration with her? Eleanor was so afraid. He had said he didn’t love her, but that wasn’t a relief.
She dreaded the truth but she had to know everything.
She was determined to withstand whatever it might be.
If she did not, how could she help him find his way back to the man he had once been?
However, she was prepared for a battle. Sean did not want to discuss the past four years with her. He had made that terribly clear.
Outside, the skies broke open and it began to pour.
Eleanor ran to the window to close it. As she slammed it down, she saw Sean racing up the street and she sagged against the sill in real relief. A moment later he was banging on the door. She hurried to let him in.
He came inside, soaking wet. Eleanor closed and bolted the door behind him. She turned. “Are you all right?” she began, about to ask him where he had been. But she stopped.
He had shrugged his wet shirt off, revealing his beautiful, lean torso. But as he turned to drape the shirt over a chair, she was confronted with a dozen long, snakelike white scars on his back. She gasped, realizing that he had been brutally whipped.
He whirled in surprise.
She began to shake, she was so sick. “Sean! What happened?!”
He stood still, his surprise vanishing, his eyes becoming guarded. “You already know. I was in prison.”
“They flogged you?” she cried.
He stared at her. “It doesn’t matter…it was long ago.” He turned away and she had to close her eyes, because the sight of his back hurt her so terribly. He put the shirt on the back of a chair and moved it closer to the stove.
Eleanor tried to calm herself but it was impossible. She didn’t move away from the door. “Why were you flogged?”
He was at the sink, taking a cup of water from the pail. It was a moment before he answered. “It was a test.”
“A test?”
He slowly faced her. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!” she exclaimed.
His gaze was searching, and he sighed. “Elle, it was sport for the guards…the new inmate…the traitor that would soon hang.”
She hugged herself. “There are so many scars,” she whispered.
He didn’t answer.
She bit her lip. “They picked on you, didn’t they? It wasn’t one time—they flogged you many times.”
His chest heaved. “You don’t need to know.”
She wiped the tears trickling down her face. “I do need to know, Sean.”
“What difference does it make? They’re scars.… I’ve healed.”
“Have you? Because I don’t think anything has healed except for your skin,” she said fiercely.
He turned away, leaning on the sink.
Eleanor hesitated, then allowed her heart to lead her. She walked up to him and before he could react, she slid her hand over the mass of puckered scar tissue. His back became rigid; he stiffened.
“Why did they put you in solitary confinement, Sean?” she asked softly, her hand still on his scarred back.
He didn’t move now. His breathing was labored. “I killed an inmate.”
She was shocked.
He turned abruptly and she was faced with an expanse of his strong throat. His movement caused her hand to brush his arm, and she stepped back. “You killed an inmate?” she said in disbelief.
He wet his lips. “Don’t…look at me…like that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I had to protect someone…a boy, really!” His eyes flashed. “No one else would!”
She covered her mouth with her hand, cutting off her own gasp. How much had he suffered and how much more was there to tell? How much anguish could any one man bear? “You were protecting a boy?”
His gaze glittered. “He’d been accosted…I had to stop it.”
She inhaled. She thought she understood Sean’s meaning and it was too terrible to contemplate.
“He died anyway…the boy, Brian. He died from the next assault. I didn’t understand that world…if not one bastard, there’s another.”
Eleanor turned away. She couldn’t stop crying now. She wept for some boy named Brian and she wept for Sean.
“Elle, don’t cry,” he whispered in a harsh plea.
She didn’t want to cry, so she nodded and wiped her eyes.
He caught her wrists, surprising her. “It’s over now.… That hell…it doesn’t matter.”
She didn’t refute him, because it would always matter to her.
She became aware of their proximity, his strong grasp and his wet, earthy scent.
Moisture clung to the well-defined planes of his chest, and excitement surged in her body.
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to his. Would she always feel such a powerful attraction?
And how was she going to manage it? “Sean, why were you put in solitary confinement for two years?”
He dropped her wrists and moved a step away from her.
“The warden was dismissed shortly after my confinement. The new warden was a drunk. I didn’t know then.
… I didn’t know anything until I escaped.
” He met her gaze, anguish and revulsion mingling on his face.
“I thought I would be in that black hole for the rest…of my life.”
She swallowed hard. “You mean, the second warden never knew you were there?”
He nodded. “But it was fortunate…otherwise I’d have hanged.”
She could not imagine being locked away in such a manner and not having any idea of what was happening or how long such torture would last. “Surely someone came to see you in those two years? I mean, you were fed, weren’t you—”
He cut her off. “There was a slit in the door. They fed me like a dog…the guards thought it very entertaining. The warden didn’t know I was there…
the guards knew and didn’t care.… I saw no one, Elle…
no one until the day I escaped!” His shoulders heaving, struggling with his fury, he slammed his fist into the side of the tin sink.
Eleanor flinched. “Those bastards. How did you escape?”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. The question seemed to surprise him, but oddly, his stiff body seemed to relax. “I took the warden hostage.”
“So the warden—the second one—realized your existence?”
He shook his head. “Another warden…Lord Harold.… Very sorry for the inconvenience! Came to apologize.” And Sean laughed, the sound bitter and shocking. “I was desperate.”
He was staring at the bottom of the sink. Eleanor laid her hand on his back. The skin there rippled as he shuddered. “You must have been planning what you would do the moment someone, anyone, actually came to see you.”
He turned abruptly to face her. “Yes.”
His eyes were so hard and cold that she cringed. He had been through so much and in that moment, he frightened her. But she must never be frightened of him, because she had her own mission. “Thank God it is over.”
His brows arched. “Is it?” And he walked away from her.
She now leaned against the sink, watching him. “What about the trial? Obviously you weren’t there, yet you were convicted.”
“It’s done all the time.… Surely you know that? It’s a military measure.” He pulled out the other chair and sat down. He cradled his head on his arms, as if exhausted.
She tried to think, no easy task when she wanted to take him in her arms just to hold and comfort him. “Are you certain your conviction is legal? Maybe it can be overturned.”
“Maybe.” He looked up, his eyes flat. “Probably not.”
“Sean, you’re never going to suffer like that again!”
“Don’t feel sorry for me.”
Their eyes held. How could she not feel sorry for him? She knew that if she dared to speak further, she might push him away, but she had to go on. “Is that what you dream about? Those years spent alone in the darkness and solitude of that cell?”
His face tightened.
“Sean?” She dared. “Is it Peg? Is that who you dream about?”
He leaped to his feet. “Why do you have to pry? Why?”
“I am going to help you, Sean,” she managed to say firmly. “I am going to help you forget all the horror of the past few years.”
He was incredulous. “Like hell!”
“Don’t you want your life back?” she cried. “Or is it Peg that you prefer?” And the minute the words slipped out, she regretted them.
He was furious. “You never stop…do you?”
“Don’t go. I’m sorry! I won’t pry anymore. Sean!”
But it was too late—he was already out the door.
SEAN PAUSED in the courtyard behind the cobbler’s shop, leaning against the building, closing his eyes and trying to breathe. Why did she have to pry? Did she know that her prying was like taking a sharp knife and stabbing it in his gut, then twisting it in the wound?
Peg was dead. He wasn’t going to talk about her, not ever and certainly not to Elle.