Chapter 26

L ate that same afternoon, atop a knoll in one of Hyde Park's less frequented corners, a tall, elegant young man in somewhat foreign dress sat lounging at the base of a statue of King George II. He stretched his great long legs before him and leaned back against the sovereign's bronze foot, lacing his fingers over his own satin-vested belly.

He'd pulled the gilt-embroidered collar of his coat up, warding off the mist that waited for night to come before completing its metamorphosis into one of London's legendary fogs. He'd tipped his tricorn hat low on his brow and directed his attention to two gentlemen currently pacing off from each other a short ways below his vantage point.

As he waited, another figure approached on horseback, a slender, lithe figure in a shabby coat and hat, black gauntlets, and black, well-worn riding boots. The foreign-appearing gentleman glanced up, noting the fine piece of horseflesh the man rode, and then returned his regard to the duelists currently shedding their coats.

"Which one is Donne?" the newcomer asked, peering into the mist at the phantomlike figures below.

"The taller fellow on the right," the large young man replied.

"My thanks." The slender, shabby gentleman dismounted and tethered his horse to George's outstretched hand, and took a seat on the opposite corner of the marble base, leaning forward, his arms resting on his knees.

"You have business with Donne?" the elegant young man asked after a moment, when it became clear that some sort of delay involving one of the duelists' pistols was going to go on rather long.

"Hm," the other man rejoined. "I hear this Frenchman, Pierpont, is an excellent shot. It would make things decidedly simpler if he wins, but if not, I intend to challenge Donne."

"Thank God," the other man breathed, bringing the newcomer's head swinging around in surprise. "Because—" He stopped because in turning to thank his benefactor, he found himself gazing into a most familiar and roughly handsome face.

For a long moment the two men regarded each other in silence. Finally a crooked grin curved the long, mobile mouth of the slender, shabby gentleman.

"Well, Raine?" he said.

An answering smile was born on the rough, chiseled features of the other. "Well, Ash?"

Ashton Merrick rose to his feet, strode to where his brother sat, and pulled him up and into a warm embrace. Raine returned it with one equally as warm. They then proceeded to pound each other affectionately on the back.

"Damn me, it's good to see you!" Raine said.

"Aye," Ash said, grinning as he held his brother from him at arm's length, his gaze traveling over his tall, elegant figure. " 'Tis grand to see you, too, Raine. 'Tis been too many years. Far too many. Since France.

"Letters are all very well and fine, but they can't …" For a moment emotion stopped Ash's voice, but he mastered himself and grinned. "They can't begin to describe the horrors you've allowed your tailor."

Raine laughed, a rich infectious sound, and cast a telling glance over the disreputable coat covering Ash's lean, elegant frame. "At least I have a tailor."

Ash answered with his own laugh. "Well, I'm but a humble horse-breeder, not some lofty consul to Italian princes. Besides, I came in a hurry."

"Aye." Raine sobered, his smile fading. "Why are you here?"

"A month back I received a letter from a man named James Barton—a friend of Fia's. Or so he claimed and so he must have been, because he warned me that Fia had become embroiled in some sort of situation with Carr and Thomas Donne. I know—I knew Thomas Donne. I came forthwith and arrived yesterday, only to discover Fia's name being bandied about in the coarsest manner. Because of Donne." His mouth flattened. "I followed his trail here."

Raine nodded. "You arrived yesterday? I, also. And I followed a similar route, coming at the urgings of this man Barton. I could do no less. I have always felt that I abandoned Fia when I left England. I could not do so twice."

"I understand," Ash responded grimly. "I have always felt that I betrayed you in not ransoming you from that French hellhole. After Rhiannon and I learned you had escaped, I tried for a long time to discover your whereabouts, but by then the war had closed what channels were open between England and France.

"I swear to you, I never did know you'd been recaptured. Not until your letter arrived telling me your story." Ash braced his hand on his brother's shoulder, his gaze level and somber. "Forgive me."

Raine smiled awkwardly. "There's nothing to forgive. If you had rescued me, my Favor wouldn't have had the pleasure and I would never have …" He shook his head ruefully. "As hard as it is to admit, I'd have stayed another decade in that place to ensure that things had turned out the way they have."

"Good—"

The sound of a pistol blast shattered their reunion.

Both men swung around. A thin wisp of smoke issued from Pierpont's pistol. Thomas Donne stood with his pistol still hanging at his side.

"Mon dieu!" shouted Pierpont as they watched. "If you mean to fire, by all that's holy, do so!"

Calmly, Thomas raised his arm and aimed. Nothing moved. No sound stirred the still, damp air.

"Damn, he's a cool one," Raine muttered.

"Aye," Ash returned, "he always was."

"Will you issue a public apology to Lady Fia?" Donne suddenly asked in a clear voice as cold as an arctic blast.

For a long moment Pierpont said nothing, and then in a voice choked with emotion, "Oui! Je suis d'accord!"

Thomas lowered his gun. Even at this distance, they could hear Pierpont's sigh of relief. The Frenchman hastened up the knoll toward the brothers, his second hurrying after him. When he reached them, he cast a quick look behind him, his face grim.

"Rethink your vanity, my friends," he advised tersely. "I tell you honestly, I am accounted a brave man, and I've faced many on the field of honor, but I've never faced a man like that."

"Really?" Ash said. "How so?"

"You look into his eyes and there is nothing. And a man who has nothing to protect, monsieur, is a very dangerous man indeed." He struggled to recoup his pride. "Besides, I was drunk when I made those unfortunate remarks about the Lady Fia. I am a gentleman. It is not for my own safety that I cede the contest, you understand, but for the lady's honor."

"It is certainly healthy to realize one's mistakes in time," Raine said, a warning edging his smile.

Pierpont eyed him cautiously. "Ah, yes. Well, er … Good luck to you."

As soon as he'd gone, Raine turned to his brother and bowed, his face grim. "After you."

Ash's mouth twined with distaste. "You were here first."

"Aye. But my wife has spoken fondly of Donne and I am loath to hurt her."

"But at one time he was my friend, and even if he was playacting, his imitation was better than any reality I'd known, or have since. At least until the end."

"How many children do you have, Ash?" Raine asked.

"Ah, yes. There's that, too." Ash nodded in understanding. "He's a formidable opponent, isn't he? And in answer, I've but one to your three." With a sigh he turned and walked down the little knoll.

If Thomas was surprised to see the friend he'd once betrayed, he gave scant indication. Other than a slow curl of his lip and an elegant bow such as he once used in London's drawing rooms, he displayed no emotion.

"I can't kill you, Ash," Thomas said after hearing Ash's cool challenge. "Besides being Fia's brother, you are entirely in the right in calling me out."

"And I'd rather not kill you," Ash said. "But you've rather done a job of destroying my sister's honor—however close she'd already come to achieving that herself, which, from what I hear, was very close indeed."

"Watch your tongue," Thomas cautioned harshly. He looked down at the pair of dueling pistols Johnston silently offered him and waved them away. "Your forte, as I recall, is blades. Bring us swords, please."

As Johnston hurried to get the épées, Ash shrugged out of his coat. "Damned if I like this, Thomas. Has it occurred to you to marry the girl?"

"It had occurred to me," Thomas replied stiffly.

"She's a very pretty thing, I recall. And while I realize she might not be one's first choice for a wife, from her letters I suspect there are depths to her well worth—"

"Go to hell, Merrick!" Thomas shouted. The violence in his sudden outburst startled Ash to such an extent that he stopped in the midst of experimentally swinging the épée he'd chosen and regarded his opponent with dawning incredulity.

"Begads! You offered and she declined," he breathed in fascinated tones.

Thomas did not reply. Instead he gave Ash a cursory salute. "En garde!"

With no recourse but to defend Fia's honor, Ash returned the salute, and both men engaged. They fought in silence, Ash on the attack, Thomas proficiently parrying his thrusts. Both men's increasingly harsh breath condensed in the chill air, the dew glistening on their hair as the wet grass beneath their feet grew slick.

Some minutes passed before Ash realized that Thomas fought from an entirely defensive posture, taking no advantage of his lunges to riposte . The fleche he performed met no stop-thrust or counterattack, merely mechanical blocking. Oh, Thomas masked his intent, but most of the exploratory finesses Ash attempted met with success. Twice he'd pierced Thomas's defense, drawing blood first from his shoulder and then from his wrist. With the realization of what Thomas hoped to achieve, anger flowed through Ash's lean body.

He was being set up as Thomas's executioner.

Furiously he drove inside, determined to hammer Thomas's hand guard with as much force as possible, striking the blade from the bastard's hand. Then … they would have a little talk.

Thomas countered perfunctorily, his apathy further inciting Ash's ire. Ash ground his teeth together, dodging beneath a slapdash lunge and—

"No!" A woman's voice rang in the mist-drenched silence. "No!"

Both men lowered their weapons and turned. A slight feminine figure raced down the knoll, her petticoats swirling about her feet, her black ringlets rippling behind her. In a trice she was down the hill and pitching herself at Donne's rigid figure, wrapping her slender bare arms around his torso and pressing her head against his chest.

"No!" She turned to Ash. "Stop this. I could not bear it were either of you to cause the death of the other."

It was Fia. Ash stared at her in disbelief. Perfect, composed, suave Fia. She'd not dressed completely, her gown was loosened, her hair a tumbled tangle, and her feet—By God! Her feet were bare.

"Go home, Fia," Ash heard Thomas say. He'd made no move to touch Fia; his hands remained at his sides, the épée's point buried in the ground.

"No. Not until you stop this," Fia said, and to Ash, "You can't hurt him because of what he did, what he tried to do, so many years ago, Ash. He had cause. Just cause. He isn't Thomas Donne. He's Thomas McClairen. And he's bought McClairen's Isle and he's deeded it to you!"

Ash looked up at Thomas's impassive face. "Is this true?"

"What difference does it make?"

"A bold bit of difference, I'd say," came a furious rejoinder as Raine Merrick strode toward them through the thickening fog. "Because if old Ash here hadn't succeeded in killing you, I was going to have a go. And my wife, who will have much explaining to do when I return home"—his face was dusky with emotion—"might have had a few things to say about my killing her brother, you damned heathen Scot!"

"I don't suppose she would be any more pleased if I killed her husband," Thomas returned coldly, and would have stepped forward to meet Raine but for the fact that Fia held him so tightly, so tenaciously that he could not move without hurting her. He grasped her arms, determined to pull himself free, but when his efforts caused her to flinch, he gave up, the anger in his face turning to agonized frustration.

"Ah, little sister," Raine said softly. "How good of you to join us."

"Don't speak to her in that fashion," Thomas said. "Can't you see how this is hurting her?"

Both brothers looked at Fia. Ash frowned. Fia's ravishingly beautiful face was as smooth and unreadable as ever. If Thomas thought he read something in that enigmatic—

Ash tossed down his sword, wheeled around, and grabbed his larger, younger brother by the arm. "We're going now," he said loudly. "And you needn't fear we'll return to finish this nonsense."

"But Fia's honor!" protested Raine.

"Is already being well tended, you ass," Ash hissed as he half dragged Raine behind him.

Silence descended on the couple standing in a parody of a lovers' embrace.

"Please, Fia." His voice was thick with pleading. "Don't interfere like this again."

"I'll interfere every single time you put yourself in danger. Every time," she declared hotly.

His big, taut body trembled against her.

"Then what am I to do?" he asked faintly, in a voice unlike any Fia had ever heard from him. "You will not renounce me and you will not have me," he said. "And I find I must have one or the other."

She smiled softly at that, at the gruff insistence in his voice, at the hard, uncompromising slant of his brows. He'd wrested victory from enslavement, found and brought home his Scottish clan, and fought to regain their island; he'd never known lasting defeat.

But it was possible to live with it. It had to be.

"No," she said quietly. "You have only to turn away from this place and leave. I know it will hurt you to feel that you abandoned me, but you haven't. I forgive you for abducting me. Do you need society to forgive you as well? I wouldn't have thought so."

"You know that's not what I want," he said.

"Then it's society's absolution of me you seek, and there's no reason to do so, because I do not care for society's approval or condemnation. See? Once again your suit is unwarranted."

"But you will," he said tensely. "Someday you will want a home and family of your own and a man to share it."

How could she reply? Tell him that she would never want anyone but him?

"I know, Fia," he said slowly, his voice low and resonant, "that you think yourself lesser than others and I know I did that to you. I would cut my heart from my chest if it would take back my words."

She put her fingers over his lips, but he drew them away, holding them tightly in his fist.

"You never acted on any hateful thought or impulse. You married a rich man and when he died you loved his children so much that you were willing to sacrifice your future for them.

"You found the means to set yourself forever free of a monster and you gave it up, had given it up before I ever said a word. I know about the letters, Fia. Swan told Johnston, who told me. Just as I know you would never have used them to procure your own freedom."

"I might have," she denied.

"No." His gaze was clear, focused, absolutely certain. "You never acted on the darker impulses, but I did. I purposefully played the part of friend to your brother and then used that friendship to hurt him," he said, his voice ragged and low. "Yet you forgave me. You never even challenged me with it. Being Carr's daughter does not diminish who you are, Fia, it only testifies to how extraordinary you are."

She caught back a sob. She had never dared think of being Carr's daughter as anything other than a stigma, a poison that she carried. He couldn't mean it.

"It's easy to be good, Fia, if you are never tempted."

"I am no saint, Thomas."

She could not lift her gaze; her hands remained folded at her waist, her fingers curling round one another. She stared at his boots, vaguely aware that the wet grass had soaked them through, and then that her own feet were wet and cold.

"Please, Fia. I love you." His eyes were afire. "Do you love me?"

"Yes," she exclaimed, surprised into honesty by the stunning realization that he'd not known.

"Then be my wife!"

"Oh, Thomas, however you look at it, whatever you hope to see in it, I am still Carr's daughter." There it was, the inescapable truth, and yet it never had felt so much true as inescapable. She did not wait for his reply, for there was no reply to such an unassailable fact. She turned, forcing her numb legs to move, her gaze fixed unseeingly on the blank empty fog that surrounded her.

"Fia."

She kept walking.

"Fia!"

A few more steps and she would be lost in the soft, cool, faceless void.

"For God's sake, Fia. Please." His voice broke on the last words, bringing her spinning around. Pain and sleeplessness and hunger had taken its toll, but it was she ultimately who'd accomplished what no sadistic gaoler, no harsh transport ship's galley guard, no bond-master's whip had accomplished; she'd broken the spirit holding that great, tall body defiantly straight. He was on one knee, one palm flat against the earth, his head bowed as though he'd taken a blow.

He looked up. His eyes were like stones, and she hated herself for hurting him.

"What can I do, Fia? I swear to you that Carr's blood in you is no curse. I would give you my heart's blood, but you will not let me."

She approached him slowly, more fearful than she'd ever been of anything in her life, a small tentative hope unfurling its fragile wings. His ravaged gaze scoured her face, and what he read there ignited a fierce light to his dimmed eyes. He pushed himself to his feet and waited for her.

"Thomas, don't you know who I am?"

But this time Thomas answered with poignant certainty. "Why, you are yourself, Fia. No more, no less, and that is what you have always been and always will be. My love, my life, more than I ever dreamed was possible, and far more than I will ever be able to surrender. So either bury this blade in me, Fia, or be mine. Forever."

The tears started in her eyes and they would not stop; they fell from her gem-colored eyes and coursed unimpeded down her cheeks, wetting her lips and dropping from her chin.

Blinded, she reached out, stumbled, and before she'd taken her second step she was in his arms, his embrace like steel bands, his heart thundering against hers, and he was kissing her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids, her temples, and her mouth.

"Forever," she vowed.