At last the butler announced another arrival.
Trick followed Garrick to the door. “Sir Harold,” Garrick said, finding Pendregast on the other side. “Have you forgotten something?”
“I’m afraid so,” Pendregast said as a balding man with a scar across his cheek stepped from around the corner. “The sheriff.”
SEVENTY-THREE
“KENDRA! CAIT! Open up!”
Kendra scurried into the far corner of her old bedchamber while Caithren made her way to the door and opened it a crack. “Your sister doesn’t want to talk to you,” she told Jason. “Or Ford, either.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Tell her it’s dinnertime, and we’ve strawberry tarts for dessert.”
Trust a man to think food would solve his problems, Kendra thought. Most especially a Chase man. Well, he wasn’t going to coax her by tempting her sweet tooth. “Tell him I’m not hungry,” she called to Cait. “Tell him I’m not going to eat until the absurd marriage he arranged is annulled.”
“She’s not hungry,” Cait started. “She’s—”
“Forget it.” Jason stuck his boot in the doorway when Caithren would have shut it. “Tell her I’ll be here when she’s ready to talk. Tell her that until then she can starve for all I care. Tell her Cook is baking cherry pie for supper.” He paused for a breath. “Are you coming down for dinner, then?”
“Nay. I believe I’ll stay here with Kendra.”
“Women.” Following the single terse word, Kendra heard his boots stomp down the corridor.
Cait closed the door. “Cherry pie later, Kendra.”
“Oh, my. I suppose I’ll have to save some room.” She went back to her dressing table, where a veritable feast was laid out, smuggled in by Cait’s loyal maid, Dulcie. Sitting down, she stabbed her spoon into her second strawberry tart. “I believe I’ll skip the sallet and asparagus, then.”
“You didn’t mean that about an annulment, did you?”
“I’m not sure what I meant.” She knew she and Trick had come too far to go back to their old lives, but she was too furious at his deceptions to think straight. “If I were you, Cait, I wouldn’t believe a word I said right now.”
Not about Trick and not about her brothers, either. After all she’d been through in Scotland, coming to love Trick and deciding her brothers had been right after all, her blaming them made no sense.
But then, her emotions rarely did.
Cait took a bite of roast beef. “Your anger certainly hasn’t affected your appetite. For sweets, anyway.”
“Nothing ever does.” Kendra licked strawberry juice off her lips, looking at Trick’s amber bracelet where it lay on the table’s marble surface. Her wrist felt empty without it.
Her heart felt empty without him.
She turned to Cait. “Have you ever been this angry at Jason?”
“Don’t ask. There have been times, especially when we first met, when I’d have been happy to see the back of him forever. But we always worked it out.”
“But you never suspected he was unfaithful.”
“Nay, never that. I know him well enough to feel certain that hasn’t happened.”
“I thought I was coming to know Trick, too.”
No wonder Eros, the God of Love, was often portrayed wearing a blindfold. Love was truly blind.
“There could be another explanation, Kendra. Although I remember a time you wouldn’t have cared if he cheated.” Cait sipped from her cup of wine, regarding her over the rim. “Things have improved for you, then?”
“Things?”
“You know…in the bedchamber.” Kendra felt her face heat, and Caithren laughed. “I can see that they have.”
She couldn’t stand to think about that now, let alone talk about it—not when she wondered if she’d ever feel that close to Trick again. “How was your visit home?” she asked Cait instead. “Is Cameron doing well? And Clarice and little Mary?”
Cait grinned. “Clarice is with child, too. And Cameron walks around all day with a smile on his face.”
“I can imagine.” Would she ever have children now? It was clear enough Trick would never be the sort of devoted husband she’d dreamed of all her life, but could she learn to live with less? Could she accept only that part of him he was capable of giving? “I’m so happy for them—”
A knock on the door interrupted, and Cait went to answer.
“Are you finished, my lady?” Soft-spoken, her maid entered and began gathering dishes. She refilled their cups with the dregs of a bottle of wine, then flashed a sunny smile full of small, even teeth. “Would you like another bottle now, milady? I can ask John to fetch one from the cellars.” John Foster was one of Cainewood’s footmen and Dulcie’s latest amour.
“Thank you, that would be nice.” Cait set a decimated tart on the tray. “How is Foster today, Dulcie?”
“Oh, fine, milady. He’s had a half-day off and been into the village to visit with his mother. Would you know, he came back with interesting news.”
Kendra drained her cup. She hoped this Foster fellow would fetch a new bottle soon. She needed more wine if she was going to decide whether to give up on the love of her life. “What news is that?”
“Word has it that the Black Highwayman has been caught and arrested at last. Hauled off to London this very day to be tried.”
“Tried?” Kendra’s cup clunked to the marble-topped dressing table. “When will he be tried?”
Dulcie’s gray eyes filled with confusion. “Monday, your grace. Say…are you all right?”
SEVENTY-FOUR
KENDRA WOKE IN her old bed at Cainewood with two of her brothers hanging over her. She blinked at the mint-green canopy above their heads, wondering how she’d come to be here.
Had she fainted? She’d never fainted before in her life. Trick would pay for this.
Then she remembered, and an aching hollowness opened in her heart.
Trick wouldn’t pay for this. Trick would be dead.
She struggled to sit, glancing around to make sure no one but family was in the chamber. “Did you hear?” she asked, her vow of silence forgotten.
Her brothers, after all, were not the villains in this tragedy, no
