Chapter 28 #4
Lochranza also sprang to her feet. ‘Yes, Ethan. It is. And this is our seal on the matter.’ She tapped the red mark that was slowly fading on her cheek.
Ethan winced at being reminded of what he had done.
Lochranza continued with her diatribe, anger, frustration, and disappointment throbbing in every word. ‘You are a pig-headed fool, Ethan MacKinnon, and will continue living as a pig-headed fool until the end of your days! Pity the woman who does marry you!’
His regrets under control, he pierced her with the most frightening look. ‘Madam, if you insist on going to Jamaica, you will be putting yourself in grave danger. Your relatives will not take kindly to you interfering in what they regard as their business and theirs alone.’
This was nothing to do with their falling out and pulled her up sharply. It was the first time he’d really given inclination that he knew anything about her family.
She might have quizzed him more fully about what he knew, but it was too late. She was leaving Glen Dirk. Leaving him.
In her mind, visions and dreams that had plagued her for years, seemingly without any real reason, had now become clear.
She wanted to see these people, place flowers on the grave of the woman she now remembered as her nursemaid and the most important person of her formative years.
And then there was the book, the one full of drawings depicting recipes for medicines, drawn by a woman who could not read or write.
She owed her own skill to that old woman.
The least she could do was to go back and confront those responsible for her death – whoever they might be.
She considered stating this all over again in a bid to remind Ethan why she wanted to go back – despite the danger. Perhaps if he hadn’t forced himself upon her, she might have done so. Her pride – and her hurt – prevented her.
She headed for the door. The pink flush staining her features was of anger, not embarrassment. Her anger threatened to boil over.
‘Ethan MacKinnon. I will never forgive you,’ she said before leaving the room. ‘Never.’
* * *
Ethan stood with his hands braced over the back of the dining chair, desperately wishing he hadn’t been drinking that night, had not lost his temper and had not been so overcome with desire, jealousy and deep-rooted anger.
Seeing her lying there like that, helpless, half dressed…
suddenly he’d seen her through the eyes of another man, not himself.
Jealousy had reigned over everything, fuelling him into ravishing her because he wanted her submission despite it being her proud independence that had attracted him in the first place.
If he could have rewound the hands of time, he would gladly have done so.
We have to live with our mistakes, he told himself, and you sure as hell are going to have to live with yours! There was no going back.
Later, in the quiet seclusion of his study with only his thoughts and a glass of claret for company, he revisited his actions.
The whole matter was like juggling with three glass balls, one of which had jagged edges that were cutting his palm.
The jagged ball in this case was Lord Alexander Kildare, Lochranza’s uncle.
The key to everything she was and ever had been was in Jamaica.
The truth would shock her to the core of her being, but there was nothing further he could do about that – only hope and pray that in time she would forgive him for what he had done.
In time, he might also forgive her for aiding his daughter’s escape.
He’d had such plans for that girl. But that was all destroyed now and Lochranza didn’t even realise the part she had played in it.
* * *
Leaving the next day didn’t happen. She needed a ship and someone she could trust. If she had to wait for O’Neill to arrange something, then so be it.
A week of pacing her room, packing and repacking went by, notes written in the back of Mama Molly’s battered journal, a letter to Lord Alexander outlining the fierce independence of her would-be husband.
‘I believe his loyalty is entirely to the colony. England is no more.’
She read the words out loud. Ethan had jettisoned his aristocratic background. In Lord Alexander’s eyes, and the king he had once counted as a friend, they would now view him as a traitor. If push came to shove, he would side with the American colony and thus would be regarded as a traitor.
Lochranza harboured a small guilt of her own. She was betraying him. Could she go through with it?
Her jaw tightened when she thought of his taking her by force. He’d raped her. She might never forgive him.
It was a week or so later when Captain Crabbe arrived, sent to her by Captain O’Neill.
He looked as dashingly unrespectable as before. She wouldn’t say that of course. No words of flattery whatsoever.
He asked her why she was sailing away without her husband.
‘I want to revisit my past.’
She didn’t explain that over time her memory – one horrific memory in particular – had gradually returned, explained in the letter she’d sent to O’Neill.
The luxurious life she’d led back at Cleveland Court was all down to one person.
Mama Molly. Whoever was responsible for her death should pay and she was desperate to know.