Chapter 16
Her blackmailer went to the cottage first.
Eventually, he would reach the stables.
Unfortunately for him, Andromena was a McQuoid. She had sneaked around more times than she had curtsied.
And drawing on that same lifetime of stealth, as well as her knowledge of the property and house, Andromena waited for the right moment before slipping outside.
She kept to the shadows as she made her way toward the northern portion of the kitchens, where the walls were overgrown with ivy and vines.
Back when Aunt Beatrix was alive, she insisted all the Scots needed a safe place to hide their possessions from the English, as well as a quick path out should marauders come calling.
So, she’d had a little door built into the kitchen wall and then hidden it beneath meticulously trimmed ivy and vine.
With time’s passage and a lack of love, nature had reclaimed the stucco and wood.
But the same way fog wasn’t a magical mist that would protect her, neither was it actually a secret passageway to freedom. It was only a tiny cellar.
Andromena slipped through the concealed door and eased it shut. She strained to hear voices. The house was so quiet she thought he had left. Part of her—cowardly—wished he had. But the part of her that was tired of his cat-and-mouse game wanted it over even more.
Second-floor floorboards moaned. Shaking fingers fought through the branches as Andromena bit her lip, found the handle, and shoved.
The swollen wood held fast. No. She threw her weight against it again and again until the door gave way.
Slipping inside, she was instantly swallowed by the smell of moisture and mildew, but there, permeating it all, was a faint sweetness that pulled her back to the past, to a time when Aunt Beatrix’s once-fragrant spirits had hung on the air.
Her past tangled with her present; the echo of her long-ago giggles as she hid from Oleander.
Aunt Beatrix’s thick brogue returned, too, while she taught Andromena about the different liquors and answered the little girl’s question about why she lived in a cottage so far from Scotland.
Answers that involved fairies and legends, and not any actual answers…
Andromena blinked against the dark, pulled back into the present where she decided her future.
For weeks, she imagined this. She had dreamed of punishing him, of killing the man who threatened her family and Edgar. Tonight, it all ended—not with her enemy dead by her hands, but felled and bound.
For the first time since her nightmare began, she, not her tormentor, held the upper hand.
While he searched her childhood sanctuary and defiled the memories here, she grew more powerful over him.
The advantage of surprise belonged to her…
but the desire to kill had vanished. This man had stolen her happiness and ruined her life, but she was not him, and that eased the hammer of her pulse and the darkness that had filled her.
A darkness that only abated when Edgar had been near.
After this night, she would be free. She would not kill. Her soul would remain uncorrupted.
She had the power to end him, and in choosing not to, she—
The door burst open.
Andromena screamed. Her finger twitched on the trigger.
Her assailant jerked away.
A deep rolling boom thundered, and the world went up in a cloud of smoke.
Her head was full, her ears ringing, and she slapped her hands over them.
She felt like she was underwater in Bishop’s Pond; everything was muffled.
The acrid bite of smoke filled her nose.
Her stinging eyes could not make out anything beyond a dense cloud of white.
With the heavy cloud ebbing, and the smoke rolled back, she found him, prone; silent, unmoving.
She had killed a man.
The still hot gun trembled in her hand. With her other, Andromena caught the oak doorjamb notched with her and Oleander’s height of years ago; charting their aging, to now.
On unsteady feet, she walked to greet her felled blackmailer. She stood over him. Her legs swayed, and she closed her eyes. There wasn’t any triumph. She couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t look at what she had done. But she deserved to see what she had done.
Andromena opened her eyes.
She had killed him, after…
“No,” she whispered.
Struck dumb, she fell back on her heels and stared vacantly at the tall, towering figure in black sprawled.
The humming in her ears grew louder.
A blast, but three seconds long, damaged her mind, and the damage was immeasurable and devastating.
Andromena cocked her head. “Edgar?” she whispered.
Silence answered.
Thunk.
Shaking and numb, Andromena stared down blankly at the gun at her feet.
She flew across the kitchen and dropped to her knees.
The column of her throat moved. Stretching a trembling palm up, she caressed his beloved cheek. She traced the white specks left by embers, hating that she could not have taken his pain then—and knowing now that she would gladly take any pain meant for him.
Glassy-eyed and dazed from the smoke.
Andromena was between hell and heaven; the paradise where Edgar was beside her, and the hell of losing him. For he was here, but dead at her hands.
Andromena cried out; her anguish and sorrow tore from every corner of her body. “No. No. No. No. Nooooooooo!”
Her teeth chattered. She ripped at her hair. She would not survive this.
“Never tell me this ‘no’ is about me being here.”
Her head whipped up. Eyes stinging and blurry from tears, she blinked wildly. “Edgar?”
Through the smoke, he lay before her—breathing, alive, and staring back. It was too much. Then, he flashed a crooked grin. “Expecting another?”
She had. The tacit threat loomed between them, with only Andromena aware, but alone with Edgar, she stole even more. She basked only in his presence.
Crying out, she wrapped her arms about him and wept. Satan hadn’t sent a demon; the Lord had sent a gift. Edgar was here and alive and real, and he’d come after her, and she should be furious, but she was selfish to the core.
He crushed his lips against her temple. “Shh.” He uttered other nonsensical soothing sounds and words, but his response to her pain just deepened her sobs.
“Oh, darling.” His words came as a harsh rasp against her cheek as he stroked the back of her head. “Please, don’t cry. You know your tears break me.”
Andromena wept harder; her chest and side ached.
“I-I thought. I-I…” She could not get those terrible, awful words out.
Edgar then did something he had never done: he let her cry.
He stopped begging. He did not scold. He just held her.
He anchored her in his arms and absorbed all the fear, relief, and now joy, taking it in and joining them together in it, until her sobs eventually slowed to a shuddering halt against the steady beat of his heart.
Andromena had been so determined to protect him.
In failing to confide in him and in running away, she had put him at the greatest risk.
By not trusting him to care for himself and face the threat together, she had nearly killed him with her own hand.
“I wanted it to be you, Edgar,” she uttered softly.
There was a tender smile in his voice when he spoke: “I know.”
A quiet solemnity rested between them. He took her wrist and drew her open hand toward him, the heat of his breath a caress upon her skin.
He brought the pad of her thumb to his lips and kissed it, his tongue lightly sliding over the sensitive pad.
As she folded into him, her eyes shuttered.
She traced the beloved lines of a face she had thought never to see again.
Edgar dusted the tears from her cheeks, as he pulled them both to their feet. “You made me proud, coming armed this time.”
“I knew you would be.”
“I am not finished,” he said, with playful sternness. “Si jamais tu t’en vas encore sans moi, je te donnerai une fessée sur ton magnifique cul et je t’encha?nerai à mes c?tés.” If you ever go off without me again, I’ll spank your beautiful arse and chain you to my side.
She knew he wanted to chase away her sadness and fear.
But how close she had come to losing him still lingered in the diminishing sting of gunpowder.
“It wasn’t supposed to b-be you…” A shudder moved through her.
She closed her eyes tightly. There was no escaping.
The image kept coming, a different outcome.
Edgar with a ball through the chest; the lifeblood seeping from his vital frame and into wood planks she once played upon. His eyes forever closed.
“Stop,” he said hoarsely, because he knew her, and knew what was coming. Because they knew each other. She needed to explain how they had come to this moment. He deserved the truth. He had for a long time.
“I need you to know, all I ever wanted was to keep you safe and now—”
“Stop.”
“Listen to me, Edgar. I almost killed y-you.” Her voice caught. Oh, God. It was too much. Her stomach turning, she pushed herself off him.
Restless, she stood and paced, faster and faster, as if she could reach a speed with which she could run away from the—
The sonorous rumble of his deep chuckle drew her to an abrupt stop. She stared blankly at him as he stood—a tremble built in her body.
“Not to disappoint you, love, but I tripped over my heels and hit the floor.”
A tremble built deep within her. He was laughing. He was actually laughing about this.
Andromena flew at him. She pummeled her fists against his chest. “It is not funny!” she cried. “If anything were to happen to you, I would not survive. I would not want to.”
“Not another word!” A hiss sailed between his teeth.
Something in the intensity of his eyes penetrated. Andromena stared, wide-eyed. She waited a beat, letting her stillness linger for a split second before he spoke again. She saw something within his eyes, something she could not name, and she didn’t know whether to fear it.
Suddenly, his features spasmed. “There is no world I want any part of if you aren’t in it.”
She shook her head.