Chapter Thirty-Eight. Love Like the Tide
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Love Like the Tide
RUAN was upstairs, exactly as promised. My ear throbbed, but it didn’t matter.
Not when I’d found him. He was alive. Granted, he wasn’t conscious, but he was safe and whole and I had never been more relieved in my life.
Reaver had bundled Leona out of the house and to the hospital along with Jack, leaving Ruan and me alone on the upper floor.
The scarred man—“the captain,” as Jack kept calling him—had a half dozen men downstairs searching through Laurent’s collection, presumably for any other stolen goods.
Laurent had placed Ruan upon an old iron bed, bound at his wrists and ankles to the rails with nineteenth-century neckcloths. I hurried to his side, heedless of the blood that splattered my cream- colored dress, and stroked his cheek with the back of my hand.
I’d actually done it.
I’d saved them both, found Julius Harker’s killer, and—aside from an aching head and likely a burst eardrum—I had seen it through.
Ruan wore clean pajamas two sizes too small. Bathed and washed with an unfamiliar lemony soap. When I last saw him, he’d still been fast asleep, bearing the dark shadow of night on his cheek, but now he was clean-shaven, his hair washed and combed.
Laurent had tended him and placed him in another man’s pajamas like a human doll. A piece of his collection dressed in moth-eaten clothes.
I ran my palm against the smooth skin of his jaw, eyes pricking with tears.
He knew what I was.
That’s what Ruan said. Laurent confirmed the same downstairs. Good God, I would shoot him again if I could—and this time I’d aim for something other than a shoulder. He deserved more than that for what he’d done to Ruan. The betrayal. The irreparable harm.
I pressed a chaste kiss to Ruan’s lips and rested my cheek against his shoulder, waiting impatiently for him to wake.
Surely whatever Laurent had injected him with would wear off as it had with Leona.
The bells of Christ Church Cathedral began to ring out in the snowy night, breaking the silence and announcing Christmas Day.
Others around town began to join them. One by one, as if prompted.
You’re all right, my little love … you’re all right … My mother’s voice echoed from somewhere in the back of my mind—over the throbbing in my ear, even over the thunder of my own pulse. The last thread of my strength failed, and I collapsed, boneless and sobbing softly.
Ruan shifted, grumbling as he opened his eyes, and looked at me. Confusion clouded his expression as he studied my filthy face. His gaze lingered on the trail of blood-tinged fluid that came from my ear, staining the shoulder of my dress.
He shifted, tugging against the neckcloths tying him to the bed. “Ruby…”
I wiped my damp nose on my sleeve and sniffled, scrambling to sit upright. “I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth, weighing his words carefully. “I am grateful for your apology. But why are you weeping and why … why exactly am I tied to this bed?”
I’d not even thought to free him earlier, so inordinately grateful he was alive.
I began to ramble, words bursting out of me as I explained what had happened between the time I crept out of the house at dawn and my finding him here.
How Laurent had kidnapped both Leona and him.
How Reaver mistakenly believed I was in league with Laurent.
How Jack, the young constable, was evidently working for the government alongside Reaver.
“That is all that happened?” he asked slowly, his gaze fixed upon the bit of ash that fell from my hair to the clean sheets of the bed. Perhaps I forgot to mention the exploding canal boat.
“All? I rather think I’ve done quite a lot in the last dozen hours.”
His expression grew sober. “So, it’s over then.”
“It is. I am sorry. I am so utterly sorry.”
He furrowed his brow. “Sorry for what?”
All of it? “Laurent was your mentor. Your friend’s father. And he … he turned out to be—”
“A monster,” Ruan finished, voice grave. “I may grieve for the pain he caused us, but never apologize to me, Ruby Vaughn, for something you did not do.”
I wiped the remaining moisture from my face with my sleeve, annoyed that I had turned into a watering pot.
If a girl cannot cry after rescuing the one she loves from a murderer, then when can she weep?
Ruan startled as if he’d been stung by a bee. Eyes wide. “You love me?”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, after he’d so clearly heard my riotous thoughts.
I slid to the foot of the bed and began struggling with the neckcloth holding his left ankle, making use of my hands.
The sooner we could leave this house, the sooner I could reassure myself he was safe.
“Of course I do, you daft man. Though it is rather inconvenient that you heard that. I was hoping to manage some grand romantic gesture, perhaps some groveling involved after that abysmal letter I wrote you.”
He let out a low throaty laugh, pulling against the remaining cloth bindings.
“Stop moving, you’re making the knot tighter.
But yes, if you must know. I’m afraid I do love you.
” I pulled at the stubborn fabric at his ankle that he’d only managed to make harder for me to unravel.
“It scares me to death, and I still am not convinced that you will not wake up tomorrow and realize this was an utter mistake, but—”
“You love me.”
I nodded solemnly as I finished freeing one of his legs, before moving to the next.
My fingers trembled as I brushed the exposed skin of his foot, making quick work of the second restraint, fixating on my own hands rather than looking up into his dear face.
“I am utterly terrified. I love you and I do not trust it. The very thought that one day you might change your mind—or worse, me watching you die … I could not bear it.”
“Oh, Ruby…” Ruan’s voice broke as he muttered something to himself in Cornish.
I slid up the bed, leaning over him as I worked at the ties on his remaining wrist. He leaned up, brushing an awkward kiss against the stained cotton lace covering my collarbone, the only part of me he could reach in our current predicament.
“Gods, do I love you, woman.” He let out a dark laugh, his free hand reaching up to cup my cheek.
“My life is nothing but chaos and danger and yet I would not trade a second of it for a peaceful life. You are a tempest, as I told you that afternoon in Cornwall after we solved our first murder together. Violent and angry and beautiful, and I would not have you any other way.”
Only Ruan Kivell would speak of murder in the same breath as love, and I would not change him either.
My throat constricted as I leaned down, taking his lips in a kiss that quickly grew out of control, and I was not certain in that moment if the salt I tasted was from his tears or my own.
Nor did it matter. At long last, he broke the kiss with a groan. “Ruby?”
Dazed, I sat up, half concerned I’d hurt him. “What is it?”
He wet his lips, eyes dark. “Would you mind untying me the rest of the way so we can go home, take a bath, and finish this thing in a proper bed like civilized folk?”
I wiped at my cheeks with both hands, swallowing down a laugh. “I think I’d like that very much.”