since I'm already here, I plan to make you pay for selling me out to Hugh and Ethan.'
Her shoulders slumped. 'They wanted to help you.'
'Helpme?' He remembered Hugh in a terrible rage, his bone-crushing blows raining down so quickly that Grey hadn't had a chance in hell of defending himself. Then the two brothers had forced Grey into a murky basement where his muscles had curled and tightened, until he'd screamed with pain. For day after day, he'd suffered hallucinations in the dark, interrupted only by his vomiting.
Even now, shadows passed before him as he remembered how those haunting faces with their glassy, sightless eyes had descended on him. He hadn't been able to escape them. Because of her duplicity.
'I only told them because I wanted you back with me,' she cried. 'I wanted you to get well.'
'You wanted me to get well, or you wanted to ingratiate yourself into the bed of a strapping young Highlander?'
She looked away. 'What are you going to do to him?'
Grey spotted a bottle of scotch—fitting, he thought—beside her bed. He helped himself to a glass. 'Take away what's most precious to him.'
'The girl is innocent in all this.'
He nodded. 'Which is lamentable, but, in the end, incidental.'
'Hugh will die before he lets you hurt his woman.'
Grey sipped, savoring. 'So I'll likely kill him within minutes of Jane.'
'His brothers would hunt you to the ends of the earth.'
He shrugged. 'Ethan's already on my trail. With all the subtlety of a charging bull.' That was how Ethan had always operated. No sneakiness, just annihilating his enemies with relentless pursuit. He would wear them down until they got sloppy—or grew too wearied of looking over their shoulders expecting to find his gruesome, scarred visage in the night.
Ethan was incredibly effective in his occupation, a legend of sorts. Not famed like Grey, of course. 'He nearly found me three nights ago. Apparently, he somehow knew about my London loft,' he said in a chiding tone. That was his Lysette, selling out to the highest bidder. Not a drop of loyalty.
Luckily, Grey knew all of Ethan's hideaways and properties as well.
'I didn't tell anyone about it'—she shook her head, her blonde tresses dancing about her pale shoulders—'I swear it.'
Deciding that she was actually being truthful, he said, 'Don't worry, I believe you. I can admit that Ethan's good.' If information was as valuable as coin, then Ethan had amassed a fortune from others like them who secretly worked in service to the Crown—outside the law. 'And I realize now that he must have been keeping tabs on me ever since he deigned to free me from his basement.' Grey's fist tightened on his knife handle.
Lysette saw it and flinched.
'I'll take care of Ethan, though his life's so bloody miserable, it's almost not sporting to relieve him of it.' Which would be more cruel, to make him live or to kill him? Didn't he himself have an affinity with Ethan? Ethan was a man who had nothing left to lose. Wasn't there power in that?
'And Courtland?' Lysette asked softly. 'Do you think he won't seek retribution for the rest of his life, if it takes that long?'
'Lysette, I'd be more worried about your own survival right now.' He gave her his most affable grin. 'Or you can just relax and accept what's inevitable.' He would finally sever her from his life…slowly.
That got a fine Gallic rise out of his little Lysette. Her tears stopped, and her eyes narrowed. 'Hugh's going to win. And I just wish I could be around to see it.'
Grey threw his glass to the floor and lunged across the bed. 'I try to avoid allowing last words.' He grabbed her chin, skimming the knife up her body. 'And I don't normally tolerate last-minute confessions, but I'll make an exception for you.'
Hatred burned in her expression. 'My last words? You'll lose—because Hugh hasalways been better than you. Faster, stronger. Even before your affliction you were a pathetic shot—'
The knife flashed and blood sprayed over him.
'You clever girl,' Grey said wonderingly with a cluck of his tongue. 'You got me to do it quick.'
Chapter Twenty-one
Jane slammed the door on Hugh hard enough to make him grit his teeth just before the impact. The pictures on the walls were still rattling when she locked it behind her.
After two days trapped at Ros Creag, the MacCarricks' depressing lakeside manor, with Hugh's curt surliness as company, she was ready to march up to Grey and say, 'Do your worst. I defy you.'
The only reason she hadn't hied herself off to a cousin's estate was that members of her family were due to arrive at Vinelands any day now. Not that Hugh knew that. 'At this season, there will no' be many around,' he'd said, defending his decision to take her here. But her family sought out the quiet fall season when there weren'tmany around , since it was the only time they could be themselves….
'Jane, I've warned you about locking the door,' Hugh grated outside her room. 'Open it, or this time I'll break the goddamned thing down.'
'As you said yesterday—'
The door burst open.
She gaped, as much from the wildly swinging door and splintered doorframe as from Hugh's lethally calm demeanor—he wasn't even out of breath.
'I'll be damned if I can figure out why you've been angry,' he said. 'But I've about had enough of this.'
'As have I!'
'You know, I always wondered what it'd be like to live with y—with a woman.'
'And?'
'It's a wee bit like hell, with your carrying on.'
'What do you construe as carrying on?' she asked, indignant. 'When I avoid you because you've cut me off at every attempt I've made to start a conversation? Why would Iwant to be around you when talking to you is like pulling teeth?'
'And how's that?'
'I asked you why your brothers haven't married, and you snapped, 'Drop the subject.' I asked you why none of you have any children, and you said, 'Enough of this.' I asked you if you've ever considered adding a trellis and a rose arbor,anything to soften the grimness of this place, and you just walked out of the room! I've never met a surlier man.'
'If I am, it's because you've ignored everything I've asked of you.'
'Like what?'
'I asked you to avoid the windows, yet I continue to catch you in the window seat in the upstairs parlor, staring out at Vinelands. I've asked you to pick up things in your room, and you tell me it's your 'horizontal system' and that if I canna discern it then I must be stupid.'
Everybody who knew Jane knew she was untidy—her lady's maid played solitaire and read gothic novels all day because Jane wouldn't let her straighten much—but untidy worked for Jane. Without her system, how would she ever find anything?
'And you refuse to let the maid clean up here,' Hugh finished.
'I don't wish to cause any extra work for anyone, and the servants are only here for a few hours a day. If it bothers you so terribly—and, really, Hugh, when did you get to be so exacting?—you can keep the door closed.'
'You know I canna do that.'
She sighed and trudged across the plush rugs to peer out the window. Ros Creag, which meant 'stony promontory,' was as forbidding and no-nonsense as its name, just as it had been in the past. But then, the appearance did exactly what it was meant to—it kept people away. Had this place been welcoming, the MacCarrick brothers would have been overrun with Weylands borrowing fishing gear and foodstuffs, dropping off pies….
