Chapter 29 #2
The return to the estate felt faster, though that may have been her mind making generosity out of urgency.
Mrs. Maggie spent the journey with her umbrella across her lap and her lips fixed in the determined line she reserved for difficult weather and more difficult men.
Eloise rode beside her and kept the collector’s answer in her mind like a spark she refused to let out of sight.
By the time the house came into view, she knew they would have the upper hand with Lawrence.
Jamie met them in the study with Logan at his shoulder. He looked immediately at her face. “You found him.”
“Yes.”
She laid the details out carefully. Jonathan had spoken freely. The collector had confirmed what Lawrence owed and where the danger lay. Lawrence’s debts were not the sort one dismissed with a title or a smile. Private moneylenders. Dangerous men. The kind that followed if a man tried to vanish.
They turned to the desk and decided what came next.
Jamie would speak calmly. Two choices. Lawrence could go to the magistrate, retract the custody petition, and leave Scotland quietly.
Lawrence believed himself clever because he thought he had the upper hand.
He needed to see that the ground beneath him was less secure than he imagined.
Eloise held the thought in place while Jamie spoke it through. “We do not need him to know we know everything,” she said.
“No,” Jamie agreed.
“We only need him to believe we know enough.”
He gave a short nod.
She looked at him across the desk and felt the change in the room. He looked at her as if she were part of the conversation, not simply standing beside it. He was treating her like she was important to the situation at hand. Like I am important to him …
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
***
They brought Lawrence into the study that evening.
He entered breezily, as though he believed he was fully in control of whatever was coming. He sat and crossed one leg over the other. He looked between them with a patient, faintly amused expression, clearly awaiting favorable terms.
Jamie spoke first, and his voice was the voice of the quarterdeck. “You have two choices.”
Lawrence waited.
Jamie leaned forward slightly, both hands on the desk. “You can go to the magistrate, retract your petition, and leave Scotland tonight.”
A silence.
“Or,” Jamie said, “we can reveal your location to the man in Glasgow who has been looking for you for some months.”
The change was not dramatic, but it was immediate.
A small, terrible crack began in the fa?ade that Lawrence had been presenting to the world since the day he arrived.
The ease left his face. The practiced warmth drained away.
What remained underneath was fear. Plain, real, and stripped of all its cover.
He said nothing.
Jamie did not move. “Which will it be?”
Lawrence looked from Jamie to Eloise, and the mask was fully gone. In its place was the realization that he had run out of manipulation room.
He rose. He did not answer. He did not threaten. He simply turned toward the door and left the room with a speed that told them everything.
Logan was already on his feet. Jamie right behind him.
“The port,” Logan said.
Eloise was already moving.
Jamie stopped sharply. “You are not …”
“I know,” she said, already reaching for her coat. “I know I was told to stay.”
She was out the door before he could finish the sentence.
The harbor was cold and smelled of salt and rope. The dock road was not empty, but it felt that way. The few lanterns burning cast more shadow than light. Lawrence was already there. Moving fast. Too fast to be dignified.
Jamie and Logan came up on one side. Eloise had taken the shorter road. She arrived at the dock just as the collector stepped from the other end of the pier, flanked by two men who did not need to say anything to communicate their purpose. She stared at him in surprise.
“Forgive me, miss,” he said. “I did not mean to startle you. I followed you, hoping to figure out for myself where the man you came to my office talking about was. I guess I am glad that I did now.”
Eloise nodded. She should have been more frightened by the men following her all the way back home than she was. But those men clearly had no interest in bothering her. All they wanted was Lawrence. And she was too happy to stand aside and let them have him.
Lawrence stopped.
He was cornered between the water and the men, and she saw how quickly he realized it as his eyes widened.
Eloise did not move. She had not planned to be there.
She had planned to stay, and she had not, and the night air was cold on her face, and the lantern light barely reached the end of the dock, and Lawrence was looking at her with desperation born of dashed calculation.
He moved quickly. She did not expect how quickly.
He grabbed her. One arm around her from behind.
The other hand producing the pistol no one had known he carried.
It was at her temple before Jamie could reach her.
The dock went absolutely still.
Lawrence’s breathing was uneven. Eloise could hear it close to her ear, harsh and rapid.
She did not struggle. She had enough sense for that.
Jamie stood five feet away, absolutely motionless.
The collector stopped. His men stopped. Logan’s hand had gone to his own coat but he had not moved.
Lawrence said something. She barely heard it. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the water beneath the dock.
Jamie looked at her.
Just at her.
Not at Lawrence, not at the pistol, not at the collector. Only at her face, as if the rest of the harbor had ceased to exist.
A gunshot cracked across the water.