32. Chapter 32

Callum lifted her down from his horse, her bare legs sliding against the hard ridges of his stomach. With just his coat on, the front of his torso was bare, the cords of muscles tightening as her thighs brushed against his skin.

He'd graciously layered her under his lawn shirt, waistcoat and overcoat, as her dress was both sopping wet and ripped to shreds. He'd donned his coat alone, open at the front on the ride back, so her body was as close to his heat as possible. It had chased off the chill during the ride, but now that they were back at the manor, she realized how very naked the lower half of her was.

He set her onto her bare feet, keeping his hands circled around her waist. "You go on in." He motioned with his head to Springfell's west facing door next to them. "I need to stop by the stables first to see if Thomas made it back already with that miserable heap of dung that had you captive. I have some questions that need answers."

She nodded, looking over her shoulder down the hill to the stables. "How did you even manage to find me today?"

"My men from the Guardians had captured one of the ruffians that had abducted you weeks ago. Thomas had him secured in the Ravenstone undercrofts, so after informing Thomas that I was marrying you, we went down to interrogate him together."

She couldn't stop a cringe from rolling across her face. As much as she loved Callum's gentle hands on her skin, she imagined those very same hands could do unspeakable damage to a body. "What did you find out?"

"We didn't get from him who'd hired him—the ass didn't even know. His cousin pulled him into the job. But he did know that his cousin and the other two men were about to take you again, and he knew where they were supposed to bring you. That's how we knew where to find you in that gamekeeper's cottage. Which was fortunate, but we still don't know who hired them. And this is not done until I find the bastard that hired them—find out why."

She nodded, her forehead dropping forward and landing on the slice of his bare chest showing between the lapels of his coat. Her lips pressed into his skin. "Thank you for finding me, for coming after me."

He kissed the top of her head. "To the ends of the earth, Nem."

She tilted her head back. "Do you want your shirt back? I can quickly peel it off."

"No. It would just get ruined with the blood I'm about to spill."

She shuddered, but nodded.

Callum was going to do what he was going to do and she wasn't about to ask him to be anything other than what he was. And that was her protector, through and through. "I'll sneak in and get up to my room, change, and then arrange for a bath for you to be readied."

He gave her a quick kiss and released her, then tugged on the reins of the horse, walking it down to the stables.

Nemity slipped into the house, closing the door quietly so none of the servants heard her. She paused with her hand on the door, listening. Echoes of Georgette and Jacob reached her—they were muffled and far away—probably in the library or study, if she had to guess. She darted toward the servants' staircase to get to her room and a change of clothes before any of the staff or the children saw her with her bare legs peeking out from under Callum's overcoat.

Moving quickly through the house in her bare feet as quietly as she could, she slid into her room, turning to close the door behind her.

Success.

The door had no sooner closed when a chill snaked down her spine.

Something wasn't right.

Slowly, her fingers wide at her sides, she spun around.

Her room was in shambles.

Drawers pulled out of the chest and overturned on the floor, her garments scattered about. Her bed ripped apart, stuffing loose and the mattress askew on the bed frame. Papers all across the floor from her secretary against the far wall, with part of the wood splintered on the center drawer.

Utter chaos.

She walked to the middle of the room, looking around, her mind whirling.

Rustling.

Rustling coming from her dressing room.

Just as she started to take a step back toward the door to escape, Charley walked past the doorway in her dressing room, moving from left to right. He didn't see her.

Her hand flat on her chest, she walked over to her dressing room. "Charley. You scared me half to my grave. What happened in here?"

He jumped, spinning half toward her. "How did you get out?"

Her brow furrowed. "Get out? Get out of what?"

He shook his head, scratching at the side of his face. "Nothing. It's of no bother."

"No bother? You must have seen my room—what happened in here? Have you been?—"

She froze.

What was in Charley's hand?

Mostly hidden behind his leg. Just the corner peeked out, but she would recognize the tooled leather cover anywhere. The distinctive rounded edge of it. How the floral pattern in the leather had worn, turning the leather into soft fuzz in places.

Her gaze lifted to his face. "Wait. What do you have in your hand?"

"Nothing." He half smiled, surprise on his face as he angled his arm to fully hide his hand and the journal, and he walked toward her, his movements forcing her to back up into the main chamber. "What I want to know is why in the world you think traipsing about in a man's shirt and overcoat with your legs half bare is at all appropriate. You know that I usually look upon your exploits with good cheer, Nemity, but even this is beyond my forgiving sense of propriety."

She glanced down at her bare legs, then looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. "Charley, how do you know about my mother's journal?"

His eyebrows lifted in confusion, then he pulled his hand free and looked down at it. "Oh, you mean this thing? It was your mother's journal?"

"It is."

"I saw your room torn apart like this and I was looking around, making sure no one was still in here." His free hand swung around him. "I don't know how this happened—I never heard anything out of the ordinary last night. I stayed up until near dawn, as I was worried about you not returning—I even sent Mr. Youngstrom out looking for you—but then I fell asleep down in the study. I just woke, and came up here to see if you'd arrived home and retired without waking me."

"Well, I'm here now." She advanced on him, her arm stretching out to grab the journal from him. "Give me the journal, Charley."

He jerked a step away from her, holding the journal out of her reach.

"Charley." She lunged forward to grab it and he twisted it away from her.

Lifting it far beyond her reach, words hissed from him. "I need it."

Bloody hell.

It hit her, quite clearly, in that second. All of it in one blinding, horrifying flash of light.

She stumbled backward, sinking down onto the arm of the wingback chair by the fireplace, her stare on the papers strewn about Charley's dark boots.

"You." A strangled whisper from her throat. "It was you."

"What do you mean, Pip? Me what?"

Her dazed look lifted to him. "Put the journal down, Charley."

He stilled, staring down at her. "What?"

Her voice solidified into iron, her glare slicing through him. "I said, put the journal down."

"Whatever you are thinking, Nemity, you are thinking wrong." His head shook, his fingers still clutching the journal. "You know me, you?—"

She heaved a breath, still not able to recognize what was in her head as the truth. This was Charley. Charley.

Still, she forced words out, her eyes going to pinpricks on him. "How long did your affair with my mother go on?"

At that, his head snapped back, his face blanching. "What?"

She'd never seen him look guiltier.

Anger coursing through her veins, she shoved herself up from the chair, advancing on him. "I said, how long did your affair with my mother go on?"

"Nemity—"

"She doesn't name you in there, of course, like she named so many others, if that is what you're worried about. But it makes sense, she would have wanted to protect you." Her arm flew up at her side. "You were the one at the end. The one that wanted to marry her."

"Nemity, I—I?—"

"Don't lie to me now, Charley. Don't you dare." Her words hissed. "You owe me that. You owe me the truth."

His face fell, his shoulders drooping. His head dropped back, his eyes closing as his head shook. "You're right. It was me." His eyes opened and his look centered on her, pleading. "But you have to know, I loved her—I loved your mother desperately. I wanted to marry her. I asked a thousand times."

Nemity's stare went down to the journal he still clutched in his left hand, the leather binding bending, his knuckles white for how hard he clutched it. "She wouldn't have you. That is the crux of it, isn't it?"

"No. She wouldn't." He heaved a sigh. "Though she loved me as well, you should know that. She loved me enough to want me to marry someone young—to have children, have a family."

"But you wouldn't give her up."

Tears welled in his eyes as his top lip lifted in a twitch. "I couldn't."

"Did you kill her Charley?" Rage rolled and folded into a hard, throbbing ball in her stomach. "That day she came back here before me? Did you kill her? You'd already left London before us and she was sad that day—sad and she wouldn't tell me why. She just wanted to be alone. It was why she travelled up here by herself. Oh, hell…" She choked out a garbled chuckle, her eyes closing as her hand lifted to rub across her brow. "Or did she come here by herself because she knew you were meeting her? You were here, weren't you?"

Silence.

She opened her eyes, staring at him.

Guilt seeped from his eyes as his head slowly shook. His body clearly wanting to deny what his mind knew was truth.

"Nemity, are you in—" Behind her, Callum had opened the door and stepped into the room, his words dropping off the moment he saw the room in shambles and her face. "What the hell?"

In a blinding blink, Charley dropped the journal, grabbed her arm, and twisted her hard into his body.

The cold steel of a dagger pressed long across her neck.

Where in the bloody hell had Charley gotten a dagger from? Why did he have one on his body when he never did? Charley didn't have a shred of violence in him.

Except…except…except…

Her mother.

The last desperate excuses rolling through her mind trying to protect Charley—to reason out what was happening right now—dissolved. Washed away with the fury flooding her.

Charley killed her mother. She knew it in her bones. Charley had killed her.

Callum threw his hands up, cautious, trying to calm Charley. "Charley, what are you doing? This isn't you. You have a fucking blade against Nemity's throat. Nemity—you adore Nemity. You don't want to hurt her."

"I'm leaving here, Cal. You can't stop me—you won't." He screamed the words.

Frozen still when Charley had grabbed her, panic now seared into all of Nemity's muscles, demanding she do something—anything—to get out of Charley's grip. Her body coiled, ready to slam an elbow into his face to break out of his grip. But then her eyes locked onto Callum's and he glanced at her.

Calm. Calm. Calm.

He didn't need to say it. She could read it in his eyes.

Charley's head dropped, his voice snarling in her ear. "Nemity, you don't want this blade to slip, do you?"

She couldn't answer, couldn't move.

"I assume your silence means agreement. We are bending, you and I, and you are going to pick up the journal."

His knees cut into the back of her legs, forcing her to bend, her torso remaining upright and tight against him. Unable to look down for the knife at her throat, her left fingers tapped along the floor, hitting clothing, paper, and there, the leather. The smoothness of the worn embossed leather familiar under her fingers. She picked it up.

"Good, now stand."

Her legs stiff, Charley more pulled her up than her standing on her own.

"Move out of the way, Cal." The blade pressed harder against her neck.

Callum's hands lifted high beside his head. "I'm moving. Moving. Don't hurt her." The debris of the room shifting about his feet, Callum shuffled off to the side, leaving a clear pathway to the door.

"Move, Nemity," Charley barked.

Her feet didn't pick up.

"I said, move," Charley shouted in her ear and he started to drag her toward the door.

He spun them as they passed Callum, moving sideways, then backward so he could watch Callum as he stepped out of her room and into the hallway.

Farther down the hall. Toward the center of the railing that was open down to the foyer between the two staircases.

His hands still up in the air on either side of his head, Callum crept along behind them, keeping a distance, his stare locked onto Charley.

Charley made sure to keep her in between them. Made sure that the blade on her neck didn't slip away from being able to deliver instant death.

"You aren't going to make it far, Charley. Just let Nemity go." For how calm Callum's voice was, she could hear the restrained growl vibrating in his words.

"No." Charley shifted, exasperated, behind her. "I am leaving here and you are letting me." More steps backward.

Callum shook his head. "There is nowhere to go, Charley."

"There are a thousand places to go."

Callum's lips pulled to a tight line. "No. Anywhere you go, I will hunt you down."

"You won't be able to find me," Charley roared, spit flying from his mouth and landing on her cheek.

Callum's look went impossibly hard, his voice granite. "Then you don't know me."

"Charley, please, please. Just let me go," Nemity pleaded, hoping her voice would calm him. "You can have the journal. It's yours. Please. I don't want you hurt."

"You don't want me hurt?" His caustic laugh rang eerie into the air. "You're the whole damn reason she hurt me."

"What?" The word whispered out of her mouth because the blade had pressed down hard against her windpipe and she couldn't afford real words.

His mouth went onto her ear, his words hot and furious. "She wouldn't marry me because of you, Nemity."

His hands still high in the air, Callum's fingers clenched. "Let Nemity go—she didn't do anything to you."

"She did everything to me." His feet stopped moving backward, his lips moving away from her ear as his voice got louder. "Nemity was the whole damn reason she wouldn't marry me. She said she couldn't afford the scandal, couldn't afford to ruin Nemity's future so she tossed me aside. Tossed me aside like I was used rubbish. Just like all the others in the journal. She used me and threw me away. I loved her and tried to make her see reason, tried to make her love me, but she refused me. I tried, but she…"

He cut himself off, the raw howl of a wounded animal erupting from his mouth.

Nemity's nostrils flared, her stare on Callum, but he wasn't looking at her. He refused to take his eyes off of Charley, ready to lunge at the first opportunity. But there were no opportunities.

Shit.

Callum wasn't going to make a move with the blade this precarious on her neck. She had to do something before Charley got her down to the stables and onto a horse.

"You're wrong, Charley, wrong," she whispered the words. "So wrong. She did love you. It was in the journal, how much she loved you."

"What?" His chin bumped into her head as he looked down at the journal in her hand.

All Callum needed.

He lunged forward, crashing into their bodies and knocking both her and Charley over the staircase railing.

She went flying as both of Charley's arms flung out, dropping away from her.

Weightless in the air.

Falling. Falling.

Then a sudden hand around her calf. Slipping against her skin. No grip.

Fingers clamped around her ankle and she jerked to a brutal stop, swinging hard in the air. Dangling, the full weight of her body crashed into the wall just below the railing.

Then the thud far below her.

Upside down. Hanging over the long drop.

Charley below her.

Callum above her.

She craned her neck, looking upward.

All of the muscles along his neck and in his face were strained. "I got you. Nem. I got you."

He started to pull her up, but all she could concentrate on were his silver eyes, reflecting the world around him, a burst of light at the top of his irises guiding her home.