Chapter 53
Rathe Bragg sat on the edge of the big, four-postered bed in his and Grace’s silk-walled bedroom, shirtless. His thickly muscled torso gleamed in the gentle gas lighting from the chandelier. Now his expression was amazed, even stunned. “Nick’s mistress! Grace! Nicole is my niece!”
Grace was pacing in a filmy nightgown and robe, one of the many intimate gifts her husband constantly bought her, her long, magnificent red hair loose and cascading to her hips. “Poor Jane!” she cried. “Do you think your brother really asked her to be his mistress when Patricia came back?”
Rathe grimaced. “It’s certainly possible. And knowing Nick, with Nicole involved it’s even likely. He would want to see mother and daughter frequently, I think. I can’t believe this!”
Grace sat down hard next to him. “What are we going to do?”
Normally, Rathe firmly opposed his wife’s schemes, for she was, he had to admit (fondly), a fervent busybody once aroused to a cause. This occasion seemed to warrant some interference, however. “So she’s carrying Nick’s child,” he mused, “and she loves him.”
“I didn’t tell her he is on his way here,” Grace said intensely. “Should we tell her that Nick is coming?”
“I wonder if he’s bringing Patricia,” Rathe responded obliquely. “He didn’t say in the telegram —but we’ll find out soon enough. I imagine he should be here any day.”
Grace abruptly rose to pace again, like a restless tigress. “Rathe! I feel guilty knowing Nick is on his way and not telling Jane! She has already suffered so!”
Rathe got up and went to her, clasping her shoulders and pulling her back against his chest. He held her there, kissing her neck.
“Darling, if she knows he’s coming she’ll run away.
Let’s let nature take its course. They need to resolve their affair one way or another.
Jane’s running away left it open. Maybe she even wants Nick to chase after her.
And Nick certainly has the right to know about the child. ”
“What if she decides to marry Lindley?” Grace asked, twisting to face him.
“That’s her right,” Rathe said simply. “After all, Nick is married.” He grimaced and cursed graphically. “God, I can’t believe that bitch is alive! Too bad!”
“Rathe!”
“She made my brother miserable and you know it,” Rathe said vehemently. “She nearly destroyed him! What if he’d been convicted of her murder?” Then he looked intently at his wife. “I don’t think this is a coincidence, Grace, do you?”
She regarded him levelly. “I was wondering the same thing. Jane appears here, and Nick is on his way—when he’s never been back to America since he took up his inheritance at Dragmore.”
“He’s coming after her,” Rathe said firmly, and their gazes locked in understanding.
Grace wrapped her arms around her husband’s waist. “Maybe he loves her,” she said softly. “Maybe you’re right. He is chasing her—and she wants him to, even if she doesn’t know it consciously.”
“Maybe he does,” Rathe returned. “If he didn’t, would he run after her like this?”
Suddenly they smiled at each other, understanding exactly what the other was thinking— that they were doing the right thing in not telling Jane that Nick was coming and in bringing the two together. “Oh, we’re terrible!” Grace said.
“We?” Rathe protested, but his dimples were deep. “This is your scheme, I’m just an innocent accomplice.”
“Darling, the terms are a contradiction.”
“You are a contradiction,” he murmured, kissing her. “So smart, and so beautiful.”
“And you,” she said throatily, kissing him back, “are unrepentant. Haven’t I reformed you yet?”
“Keep trying,” he managed to gasp.
The divorce would be final when he returned.
It was a happy thought in an otherwise grim day.
The Earl of Dragmore stared out the window of the rented hansom at First Avenue.
It was a rough ride, due to the cobbled street.
He barely noted how New York had grown in the ten years since he’d left the States, he was too preoccupied.
He and Chad had just arrived on a passenger ship and were on their way directly to his brother’s home on Riverside Drive.
He intended to scour every hotel until he found them.
He still could not believe she had left with his best friend—he still prayed, desperately, for a reasonable explanation.
He knew, or he thought he did, that Jane cared about him.
No woman could be such a superb actress, could she?
He winced at his thought, because Jane was an actress, and he had forced her into marriage with him.
What they had shared was good sex, nothing more.
Instantly he corrected himself. They had shared a grand passion, one he certainly had never experienced with any other woman before.
And then he remembered her reading to Chad and Nicole in her sitting room, their outing in Hyde Park, boating on the lake. He remembered their breakfasts, Nicole dominating with her outlandish temper, and he remembered dancing until dawn. They had shared more than even a grand passion.
And even though she had left him, again, lied to him and left him, run away with his best friend, stolen his daughter—he still wanted her.
He still loved her.
Of course, if she was Lindley’s mistress he would kill him, and he hoped then he would be so disgusted he would no longer want Jane. Anger vied with need, and the result was a coiled, confused desperation.
As soon as he had discovered that Jane had fled, he had hastened to Robert Gordon’s, expecting to find her there. Gordon had informed him that Jane had left for America. The earl had been shocked.
“She loves you very much,” Gordon had said bluntly. “And Patricia’s return has killed her.”
Was it true? Did she really love him?
His plans to follow her were delayed because he decided to take Chad for that long-overdue visit to meet his grandparents. Soon he found out that Lindley had also gone to America, on business. The coincidence was impossible, and he was enraged. Gordon confirmed that they had gone together.
“Is she fucking him?” the earl had shouted, at that moment wanting to kill them both.
“I told you, she loves you!” Gordon was hot to defend Jane. “Lindley has always been her friend, even if he is in love with her himself. But Jane is not that type of woman, and if you don’t know it, you should!”
He did know it, didn’t he? She had given herself to him when she was seventeen and had not given herself to another man in the years since. Until perhaps now, in anger and in hurt …
He could not bear the thought. And as much as he felt he could kill if this was the case, another side of him, the dark desperate side, would forgive her anything if only she would return to him.
His brother’s home was a red brick mansion set high on a hill, surrounded by brick walls topped with a wrought-iron curtain.
Nick smiled wryly as the cab turned through the open gates.
Rathe had certainly done well for himself, he mused, not just a little bit surprised.
His brother had always said he was doing rather well in his business affairs, which consisted of many diverse investments across America, but Nick had had no idea that he had done this well.
Tall, stately pines from upstate, undoubtedly, graced the long sweeping drive.
Beside him, Chad was bouncing in his seat with uncontained excitement.
Nick reached out to touch him, his own heart starting to thud.
It had been just a couple of years since he’d seen Rathe, but even that was too long.
This thought led to another. If two years was too long to be apart from his brother, how about the more than ten that had passed since he’d seen his parents?
He felt a surge of old anguish, but it was duller now, the old hurt and betrayal having recently faded.
Because of Jane. He knew he was doing the right thing in returning to America.
First he would find Jane and settle matters between them.
He was not going to Texas without her. And then he would take Chad west, to the ranch that was just as much his heritage as Drag-more.
To see his grandparents, his grandfather.
And it was because of Jane. He knew that a year ago he wouldn’t have even considered a trip to Texas.
A year ago had been before Jane. Before she’d given him her love and warmth and incredible courage, before she’d reminded him, shown him, what love meant, what a family meant.
Now it was almost hard to believe that he’d put off this trip, this resolution with his parents, with his father, for so long.
But in a way he understood. Before Jane, nothing had really mattered.
She had changed all that; she had changed his life.
The hansom stopped by the immense, flat tiers of pink granite steps leading up to the imposing teakwood front doors of the mansion.
Nick paid and thanked the cabbie, and stepped out after his son.
At that precise moment, Rathe came through the front doors, beaming and dimpled, his blue eyes dancing.
Behind him, Nick saw a beautiful tall redhead, obviously his wife.
“Nick!”
The earl smiled a genuine smile, revealing his own dimples, so like his brother’s. The two men embraced, clinging for just a moment, then drew apart, embarrassed. The earl was blushing slightly. “God, it’s good to see you,” he said, smacking Rathe’s shoulder.
Rathe punched him back. “My brother, the earl! And who’s this? No—this can’t be Chad? You said he was only six!”
“Seven!” Chad cried, grinning. “Are you my Uncle Rathe?”
“You bet!” Rathe swung him up into his arms and Chad squealed. “Want a ride, champ?” he asked. When Chad responded enthusiastically, he set him on his broad shoulders. “Nick, this is my wife, Grace.”
Grace smiled with genuine warmth as Nick kissed her hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said softly.
Nick studied her openly. “I’m so glad my hell-raising brother finally found his match,” he said at last.
Grace grinned; Rathe groaned. “You don’t know the half of it!” he exclaimed. “How was your trip? Nick, we have some company, I hope you won’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Nick said easily, following his brother with his son on his shoulders into the house. His attention, however, was caught by Grace, who had given Rathe a warning look, her own gaze worried.
“It’s someone you know,” Rathe continued easily, swinging Chad to the ground in the doorway of a small, intimate parlor and taking his hand.
Nick’s smile died as he glanced past his brother. His heart actually stopped in midbeat, and he stared, stunned.
Jane, impossibly beautiful and impossibly pale, sat alone on the sofa and stared back, equally shocked.