Chapter 15 #2
He didn’t want Genevieve to think he was planning to spend the rest of his life living off of her charity.
But if he was honest with himself, part of him desperately wanted to stay.
Of course he disliked being told what to do all the time, and he hated peeling bloody potatoes and chopping up stinking fish and washing dishes, and it chafed not being allowed to just come and go as he pleased.
Furthermore, he would never understand Genevieve’s maddening obsession with bathing and manners and such.
But despite these things, he found he actually liked living with this odd family of thieves and outcasts.
For the first time in his life, he felt accepted for exactly who he was—and more, he actually felt wanted.
Most of all, there was Charlotte. A terrible sense of helpless rage filled him every time he watched her limp awkwardly across the room, or prop her leg up and try to rub away some of the pain that plagued her constantly.
He could not bear the thought of leaving her—not yet, anyway.
Charlotte needed him to watch out for her.
“I’ll stay for two years, the length of my sentence.
That way you won’t be gettin’ into any trouble with the governor when I leave.
” He had not forgotten how anxious the children had been when he had told them he was going to Glasgow.
“As long as you think I can be some help.” He wanted to make it clear that he intended to earn his keep.
So great was Genevieve’s relief, she wrapped her arms around him, embracing him in a long, fierce hug.
Jack froze, uncertain how to respond. She smelled sweetly crisp and clean to him, like a rain-soaked field of grass, and utterly different from his filmy remembrances of his mother, which now reminded him of cheap perfume and ripe wool.
He closed his eyes and leaned into her, just a little, feeling strangely childlike as she held him.
It was as if the years suddenly melted away and he was a little boy clinging to his mother, tearfully begging her not to leave him.
But Genevieve was not leaving him. A tentative gust of happiness filtered through him, so new and unfamiliar, he scarcely knew what it was. She was asking him not to leave her.
He raised his arms and draped them around her, awkwardly returning her embrace.
“Thanks, Genevieve,” he whispered fiercely, “for takin’ me out of prison and bringin’ me here.”
He dropped his arms and cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed by his emotionalism. “’Night,” he said, casting a cursory glance in Haydon’s direction as he sauntered out of the drawing room.
“Good night, Jack,” Genevieve returned, smiling as she closed the doors.
Haydon rose from the sofa and went to the fire, suddenly ill at ease now that he and Genevieve were finally alone.
He grasped the poker and jabbed at the logs piled in the hearth, which were burning satisfactorily and in no need of adjustment whatsoever.
He then carefully selected another piece of wood and added it to the pyre, watching as the flames licked ravenously against the dry wood.
Uncertain what to do next, he braced one arm against the mantel and stared at the blaze, feeling hopelessly lost.
Just as abruptly as his life had been stripped from him, so it had unexpectedly been restored.
He was the marquess of Redmond once again, a free man with a clear name, other than the distinction of his sordid past and the freshly minted scandal of his recent troubles.
That would provide fodder for the gossipmongers for years to come—or at least until some other deliciously shocking event came along to eclipse it.
His legacy was as seamy and despicable as his father had once predicted it would be, although the old bastard had never imagined that Haydon would actually bear the Redmond title while he was dragging his family’s name through the mire.
Haydon had never given a damn about his reputation or the sanctity of his family pedigree.
But neither had he ever imagined himself caring about a woman with the relentlessly moral spirit of Genevieve MacPhail.
Hers was not the kind of morality that took pious delight in judging the rest of the world according to the narrow dictates of religion and the law, the way people like Governor Thomson’s wife and Constable Drummond did.
No, what Genevieve lived by was an inherent morality of gentle compassion and selflessness.
From the moment she so willingly sacrificed both her position in society and any hope of a life of ease as the wife of the earl of Linton, pompous ass though Charles may be, she had detached herself from the rarefied world of privilege and acceptance that she had always known.
All for the sake of rescuing a dead maid’s bastard, which any other gently bred woman in her position would have been satisfied to see quietly sent off to an orphanage to languish a while and then die.
But Genevieve was not like any other woman, he realized, feeling awed and humbled by her.
There was a magnificent brilliance to her that defied analysis, like the silvery flare of a faraway star.
At the youthful age of eighteen she had elected to leap from the path of familiarity and comfort that had been laid before her and fight to survive on her own, not because she wanted to, but because there was a helpless child who needed her.
She had promptly been discarded by the man who had vowed to make her his wife, and rejected by the very society that had once celebrated her for being so young and lovely and charming.
What that society could not accept was that she was also profoundly ethical and caring and humane, and these attributes could not be stifled beneath lavish homes and expensive jewels and shallow gestures of carefully calculated generosity.
Instead of being revered for her selflessness and determination, she had been ostracized and called mad, as if it were unfathomable that a young, eminently desirable woman might choose to save a bastard child’s life over becoming a pampered wife and countess.
And then, because her tender spirit found true joy in helping children, who were surely the most vulnerable members of society, she had gone on to rescue five more.
Not because she felt driven by a sanctimonious need to please God, or to earn a better place in heaven, or to feel morally superior to the rest of the world.
Genevieve helped others because within her breast beat a noble and caring heart, which rendered her incapable of walking away from the pain of someone else’s suffering.
Even a brutal, condemned murderer on the eve of his execution.
He had always known that he was unworthy of her.
He who had so casually destroyed the lives of not one, but now two people, each ending in a self-inflicted death.
But he had never imagined coming to love her so deeply that he would have gladly given up anything and everything for the sole privilege of being the man with whom she shared her life.
What he could not do, no matter how much he wished it, was escape the ugly black stains upon his soul.
They would torment him forever—the memory of an innocent child’s suffering and a betrayed father’s unbearable anguish.
How could a woman like Genevieve, who had devoted her life to easing the misery of others, accept a callow, selfish bastard like him as her husband and the father to her precious children?
Genevieve watched Haydon uneasily, dreading whatever it was that he was struggling to tell her.
Caught in the vortex of events that had consumed her so absolutely during the last two days, she had not permitted herself to consider what was to become of them.
But seeing Haydon standing rigid before the fire, his expression twisted with a mixture of guilt and remorse, she knew what he was about to say.
“You’re leaving,” she concluded dully.
He nodded, not turning to look at her. “Tomorrow morning. I’m taking Vincent’s casket by coach to Oban. From there, I’ve arranged for a ship to sail us north to Inverness.” His voice was hollow as he finished, “I want to ensure that he is buried next to Emmaline.”
Of course. His title had been restored and his name was cleared.
What had she thought he would do? Genevieve wondered.
Had she actually thought he might stay with her and—what?
Marry her? An outcast spinster living in a shabby old debt-ridden house with her eccentric brood of aged thieves and semi-rehabilitated urchins?
The idea was ludicrous—she could see that now as plainly as anyone.
Something within her began to crack, like a thin sheet of ice beneath the crushing wheel of a carriage.
She gripped the threadbare arm of the sofa, fighting to maintain some semblance of dignity.
The gold ring that Haydon had given her in Glasgow gleamed against her finger, a mocking reminder of their charade as husband and wife.
For one sweet, shimmering moment she had foolishly allowed herself to forget that it was all a pretense.
Somewhere between the nights of feeling his heart pound against her as they joined their bodies and their souls, and the agony of believing she had lost him forever, she had forgotten that they were not truly wedded.
But they were not, and they never would be.
It was as simple, and as heartbreaking, as that.
She plumbed the depths of her composure, fighting to shield her feelings from him. Realizing how terribly difficult the task of taking Vincent’s body back would be for him, she found the poise to comment quietly, “I’m certain Vincent would have appreciated your concern for him, Haydon.”