He walked over, and, wordlessly, handed her a crumpled piece of paper.
Tearing her gaze from him, she unfolded it with wet, shaky hands. The five words were barely legible, thick swashes of rusty red-brown.
DON’T WORRY JUST AN ACT
Leaning close, he turned the paper over in her hands, and her heart turned over along with it. He straightened while she read the words in black ink—the writing she hadn’t been able to make out at the trial.
When love on my sweet wife’s wings
Comes to hover within my walls
If I turn it away with untruths and deceit
’Tis myself I must blame for the fall
Trust must be earned then earned again
Ere forgiveness can overcome sorrows
Yesterday’s errors wiped from the slate
May leave room for joyful tomorrows
Stone walls do not a prison make
Nor iron bars well-turned
While I bear hope, mayhap forlorn
My love will be returned
Poetry written in prison.
Reassurance written in blood.
Tears flooded her eyes, blurring her vision. Instead of her mint-green chamber, what she saw was the damp, crowded courtyard outside the open courtroom of the Old Bailey. Instead of the soft swish of water, what she heard was the jeering crowd. And she remembered Trick’s stricken face as he tried to reach her, first with words and then with this very same note—and the expression in his eyes when he failed to succeed.
“Why?” she asked, finally ready to listen. “Why all the lies?”
He stayed riveted in place. “Before I ever met you,” he said slowly, “I made a promise to King Charles. I thought that promise, to my sovereign, was more important than my wife. I was wrong. And if I’ve lost you because of that mistake, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Dear heavens, he was getting to her. Could she allow herself to feel this again? “What was this promise?”
“I was never really a highwayman. That was naught but a ruse to find some counterfeiters who were bedeviling the country’s economy, emptying the king’s purse and undermining his credibility. I was part of his scheme to uncover it.”
“Just as I guessed, only I never completed the connection.”
He nodded. “And I’d sworn not to tell a soul. I never considered that the Black Highwayman might become a wanted man. When that happened, Charles devised a plan to get rid of him, so I could live my life as the duke without anyone ever suspecting that the highwayman and I were one and the same. He arranged for the arrest and the public trial. And he had a doctor drug me to make me look ill, and that same doctor visit later and paint blue spots on my body, then declare me dead and carry me away. I suggested we use black nightshade.”
“Dwale.” The fever, the slowed breathing, the weakness, the dilated eyes. She should have realized. “It killed your mother, Trick. It could have killed you.”
“Weeks of it killed Mam, and Da recovered, after all. It was one dose. A calculated risk, and at least I knew what I was getting into.”
“It was a perfect plan,” she admitted. “Brilliant.”
“Not perfect. Because Charles still refused to let me tell you. And I was foolish enough to believe we could pull this off over a couple of days when I could give you another excuse to be gone, and you’d never find out.”
“But I did.”
“Aye.” He took a step closer, then swayed. “I was wrong, leannan. I trusted you even if Charles didn’t, and I should have told you everything, no matter that he ordered me not to. I was wrong to think you wouldn’t figure it out, and I was wrong to lie to you about what I was doing. But most of all, I was wrong to think any promise to a king, or the king himself, was more important than you. Nothing is more important than you.”
Disregarding Royal orders was considered much worse than highway robbery. Punishable by hanging, she heard herself whisper deep in a dungeon in Scotland. Punishable by hanging, drawing, quartering…
“Nothing is more important? Not even treason?”
“Nothing. I knew it—I knew it while I sat in that prison awaiting trial, wondering where you were and whether rumors had reached your ears to cause you torment. And then, when I saw you standing at that rail…”
His eyes mirrored the anguish she’d seen in them that moment.
“But by then,” he continued, “it was too late. I was too weak, too drugged.” He swayed again. “I still am, it seems. They told me I wasn’t recovered enough to come to you yet, but, like you, I didn’t listen. Like you, I couldn’t listen, not when my love was at stake.” He risked a tiny, tentative smile, that chipped tooth peeking through.
It cracked her heart.
She’d been wrong, too. He’d asked her to trust him, said there were things he couldn’t tell her. But she hadn’t listened. She wanted to say she understood, but her throat closed with emotion.
She looked down to the paper in her hand, the precious words blurring through fresh tears. In his own blood, he’d tried to tell her not to worry. And he’d written a poem for her, admitting his love, promising to earn her trust, asking for forgiveness.
Poetry. He’d shared that most secret side of himself with her, just as she’d always hoped. His wall had finally come down.
Or maybe she’d managed to scale it.
He came forward and took the paper from her trembling hands, setting it aside.
Then he stepped right into the water.
“Your boots!” she gasped.
In the big tub, he knelt at her feet. “I own a fleet and a warehouse stacked with imported goods from all over the world. I can buy a hundred pairs of boots.”
His voice was thick and unsteady, his amber eyes so intense they seemed to spear her to her very soul.
He reached beneath the water to take her hands in his. “Don’t you understand? I can buy almost anything—anything, sweet Kendra, except your
