Chapter 21
The following morning, Fin entered the drawing room, where Jules was standing, staring at empty space. “Milord,” Fin interrupted.
Jules turned toward the door, expecting to have to reassure his worried steward, when he saw an unexpected sight. “Peter Kirkwood?”
“Good morning, milord,” the older man said, making a small bow before coming into the room.
Jules frowned as anticipation edged with worry. “What brings you to Kildare Manor?” Jules waved him toward a seat on the settee.
“A startling discovery I felt you should know,” he replied, settling into the cushions. His voice was quiet and even, but there was an undercurrent to his words.
Jules remained standing as the unknown tightened his chest and made it hard to breathe. “Is it Claire?” he blurted out, needing to put words to the fear that was always there, taunting him. Had leaving her alone with David been the appropriate action?
“Nay, milord. I have uncovered new information about your father’s last days.”
The revelation startled Jules. “Go on.”
Kirkwood leaned forward. “I could not leave things the way we did in Edinburgh. I decided to take things upon myself to dig deeper, to understand your father’s motives for bribing Grayson to do something that was so beyond his character.”
Jules raised a brow. “What did you discover?”
“In Grayson’s notes, I discovered that your father did not pay the ransom to release you from gaol, but that he paid the warden to keep you incarcerated.”
Jules strode across the chamber, no longer able to stand still. He paced back and forth. “He kept me in? Why? Did he hate me that much?”
He had not realized he had spoken aloud until Kirkwood answered.
“I think it is quite the opposite. I went to the warden and spoke with him. He said your father was worried the last time he went to the gaol to make a payment. He had no idea you had been released the week before. The news brought him to his knees, the warden said. When he asked Lord Kildare what was wrong, he said he could not let her get to you. Do his words mean anything to you?’
“Yes, they mean everything.” What Agatha had told him was true.
“There’s more.” Kirkwood interrupted. “From the financial trail your father left behind, it appears that he sold everything in the manor a few weeks after that encounter, and that was the money he used to pay Grayson to arrange your marriage to a Miss Claire Elliot.”
Jules stopped his pacing as a realization he could no longer avoid crashed over him. His father had cared, at least in the end, what happened to him. “It still doesn’t make sense as to why he did what he did.”
“From what I could discover, he seemed determined to find you a bride. I talked with several carriage drivers who said they escorted your father around town as he sought out women with the name Claire who were single, available, and somewhat down on their own luck.”
“He chose my bride?” Jules echoed his previous sentiment, still not quite believing the words.
Kirkwood nodded. “It appears your father’s last act upon this earth was to make certain his younger son would have a future, and if I might add my own sentiment, a reason to live.”
A reason to live.
Jules smiled. He wasn’t certain if it was because of the proof of a father’s love, or knowing that his father had chosen a woman for him based entirely upon her name, or both.
Claire had given him a reason to live. She had helped him settle into his role as laird.
Such a thing would have been unbearable without her.
She was his life, his heart, his soul. And he suddenly wondered why he’d felt it necessary to keep her at arm’s length, because without her he was barely alive.
At Jules’s continued silence, Kirkwood rose. “I hope the information is reassuring, if not somewhat inspiring.”
Jules nodded. “Inspiring, yes.”
The older man nodded. “I will continue to investigate and let you know if I discover anything further.”
His enthusiastic tone made Jules smile all the more. “You seem to enjoy these forays into investigation.”
Kirkwood nodded. “After a lifetime of papers and law, your queries have lent some spice to my rather mundane existence, milord.”
“Thank you, Kirkwood,” Jules said with a nod of his head. “Your efforts have been extraordinary.”
Now it was up to him to do something with that information.
Later that afternoon, Jules finally found the nerve to walk the short distance from the manor house to the family crypt where his father, mother, and brother were buried.
Jules entered the chamber. He held his lantern in front of him.
The light cast leaping shadows on the pinkish-gray marble walls and shimmered off the effigies of his kin.
His mother’s grave was dusty. With his hand he cleaned it off, revealing the image of the woman he remembered—a heart-shaped face, high cheekbones, and kind eyes.
Even set in stone, her eyes still held that softness he had once felt gaze upon him in life.
Beside her was the image of his father. His father’s likeness stared up at him.
His face had held an expression of pride and a warmth Jules never witnessed again after his mother’s death.
Had death brought him the peace he had searched for all those years?
Jules hoped so. As he continued to study his father’s features, other questions crowded his thoughts.
Had his father truly loved him? Had he kept Jules in gaol as a means of protecting him from the monster who had latched herself to their family?
Had his father really known Agatha was still alive?
Jules’s thumb caressed his father’s brow.
“For whatever happened between us, for all the unspoken words, and the words that were spoken in anger, I apologize. I had no idea what kind of monster had entered our lives. I should have talked to you. I should have trusted you. I should have done so many things. For that, and for your untimely death, I apologize.”
His own spirit lightened at the admission of his own failings. His father might never hear the words, but at least Jules knew he had finally said them.
He would never know the truth about his father’s actions or inaction toward the end of his life, but he wanted to believe that the man had actually loved him and tried to protect him instead of shutting him out and leaving him in that hellhole for dead.
Jules slid his gaze to the right, to the effigy next to his father’s. The heavy lid sat slightly askew, as though it had been moved then shifted back into place. She’d tricked them all, staging her own death and then having assistance in her resurrection from her tomb and this crypt.
For a heartbeat he wondered if that kind of evil could ever die. She was still out there, still a threat. She had robbed him of his freedom for over a year, and now she was robbing him of his happiness.
It was then that the realization hit him.
That was exactly what Agatha wanted. She wanted him to be miserable without Claire.
She had ruined the lives of his father and brother, and now he was allowing her to do the same to him.
Jules’s eyes ached with unshed tears while his chest filled with hope.
He had turned his own home into a prison, instead of rotting away in one.
But what was he to do about it? He returned his gaze to the images of his mother and father. “What do I do?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, but hoping that one would be provided all the same.
Encouraged and defeated at the same time, Jules returned to the manor, where he prowled the hallways and paced the drawing room, searching for an answer. It wasn’t until late afternoon that an answer was provided in the form of another visitor.
“Milord.” Fin cleared his throat as he entered the drawing room, stopping Jules’s trek across the newly restored carpet for the hundredth time. “There is someone to see you.”
Jules’s heart hammered with a mixture of hope and dread as Fin stepped back and Penelope entered the room.
She bowed. “Lord Kildare.”
“Penelope, what a surprise,” Jules said coming forward and taking her uninjured hand in his. “How did you get here?”
“’Tis only a short walk from where I am staying.”
“The exercise agrees with you. You look well.” Color had returned to her cheeks. She wore a pink glove on her injured hand that matched the color of her dress.
She blushed and pulled her hand from his. “’Tis the country air.”
He studied her face, then lower, his gaze moving to her missing finger. “Does it still pain you?” he asked.
She shrugged and looked away. “At times. Sometimes I feel as though my finger is still there, even though I know it is not. I feel sensations. I know it sounds strange . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Not at all,” Jules said, bringing his gaze back to hers. “I have heard it said from others who lost limbs in battle. The phenomenon is quite normal.”
Penelope gripped her hand, held it gently against her chest. “I was not in a battle.”
“Yes,” he said tenderly, “you were. A battle of the worst kind because it doesn’t make sense at all what happened to you.”
She gave him a partial smile. “Thank you for saying so. I often wonder if this is just punishment for some horrible sin I commit—”
“You did nothing wrong. Do you hear me?” Jules interrupted, his anger rising that the young woman even considered that she was at fault for Agatha’s maniacal actions. “You were innocent. And I hope you will realize that someday soon.”
“I am trying.”
“Good,” he said softly, then regarded her curiously. “Might I ask what brings you to Argyll? And more particularly, my house?”
She laughed. “Yes, it must seem rather strange that I show up out of the blue. But in reality I have been here for two weeks.”
He frowned. “Two weeks? Who? Where?”
“All of us,” she said, emphasizing the first word, “are staying at Lady Davison’s while Claire works on a commissioned ceiling.”
“Claire is here?” Just the sound of her name brought a tightness to his chest and an image of her to his mind—her wide golden eyes staring up at him, the wind tugging at the loose strands of her copper hair. He missed her with every fiber of his being.
“She’s made mistakes,” Penelope said. “But then, everyone makes mistakes. If we are not making mistakes, then we aren’t really living, wouldn’t you say?” She looked up at him expectantly.
The thought haunted him, tormented him, surprised him. “I can only agree.”
“Then wouldn’t you say if someone made a mistake, like Claire perhaps, that they might deserve a second chance at making things right?”
With an effort he ignored the leap of hope that flared to life inside him. It was unfair to put her in that kind of danger. She deserved someone who could give her a normal life. She deserved someone who would not bring death and pain into every day of their lives. Not someone like him.
At his silence Penelope continued. “She hasn’t been the same since you left. She never smiles. Her paintings are all in grays and greens. She never sleeps. She hardly eats. She’s slowly killing herself.”
“She would be in danger if I went anywhere near her.” He was surprised to hear how hoarse his voice was, how rough.
“She’s in danger now of slowly fading away.”
She never smiles? It was her smile that had made him ache for all the things he never knew he wanted.
All his life he had wanted someone to look at him and see not an empty shell but the person he had always wanted to be.
When he was younger, he’d thought that person was Jane.
But Jane never looked at him the way Claire did.
Claire.
He thought of how it felt to lie in her arms, to have her press her cheek against his chest, to hear her heart beat next to his own.
When Claire looked at him, she saw him for who he really was.
When she kissed him with a light, breezy touch, she stamped his soul more deeply than their lovemaking had.
With Claire, his loneliness fell away, replaced by a sense of wonder. His heart swelled at the memories.
Agatha.
The reminder of the ever-present danger did not have the power it usually held over him.
Yes, the woman was still a threat. She would come for him, for them.
It was only a matter of time. But would it be better to spend that time apart and miserable, or together, trying to recapture something that had changed them both?
His heart seemed to stop for a moment, then picked up speed. He knew which option he preferred.
“Where is Claire?”