Chapter Thirty-Eight

A scream ripped from Honoria's throat as she saw Oscar's limp body floating on the surface.

Her mind flashed back to her brother, to the way his hair undulated in a fan of silken tendrils on the surface. Sheer panic

assailed her.

The unthinkable terror had her staggering into the lake. She didn't even feel the cold of the water seeping into her shoes,

saturating her stockings and skirts. With every step, she fought against the constraints of the damp muslin twisting around

her legs and then her hips, her waist, her breasts.

Only one thought was in her mind: Get to him.

She clawed at the water, trying to keep her head up, stretching out her arms, her neck. The reeds tangled around her skirt,

slowing her down. But she kept plodding forward, her soles slipping through the insubstantial silt.

Then the water touched her lips. But she was almost there. Almost to the ripple of white fabric of his sleeve. If she could

just... reach... a bit... farther.

She slipped under, water filling her nostrils. She swiped frantically at the lake, the air, eyes wide as she saw the sky through

a film, the wavering sun and dissolving clouds growing dimmer as her feet scrambled beneath her.

Then, at last, the slap of her hand connected with something solid.

She didn't know how she managed it, but somehow she gripped the fabric of his shirt in her fist, then clawed her way to the shore.

Dragging him with her, she crawled up to the edge of the embankment and rolled him over, scrambling up to tap him on the cheek.

"Oscar. Oscar, wake up now." She kissed him, smoothing the hair away from his brow, his lashes spiked as they rested against

his cheeks, his lips faintly tinged with blue.

"No. I won't have it." She shook her head. Her hands balled into fists as a sudden surge of rage filled her. "You cannot do

this to me, you... you... blackguard! How dare you make me fall in love with you! I hate you! I hate you so much!" She

pummeled his chest with her fist. "I'm not going to let you get away with it! You're going to wake up right this instant.

Do you hear me?"

"Daughter," she heard her father say, heard the pity in his voice.

"Don't touch him... don't touch him! He's mine. He's all that I have in this world." When she felt her father's hand on

her shoulder, she shrugged him off and shoved at Oscar. Hard. And when that didn't feel brutal enough, she shoved at him again.

"Listen to me, you scoundrel. We're going to start a new game, you and I! You are going to marry me. Do you hear that? And

this time, I'm going to die first! Let's see how you like it... being left... all... alone."

Sobs racked her body, her pummeling fists pitifully feeble. And then she collapsed, knowing that she had no more time left.

That they were out of time.

"Pitiful excuse for a proposal, Signore."

The voice that rasped in her ear was impossible. She must have been hearing things. And yet, somehow it had broken through

the sound of her own sobs.

She was nearly certain that something had broken inside her. That she'd gone mad. That she would hear his voice in side her mind for the rest of her life as she rambled around the attics of Hartley Hall.

"Shh..." he whispered before he coughed. Though why a specter skuttling about in her brain would need to cough, she didn't

know. Then again, she was new to madness. So what did she know about it at all?

It wasn't until she felt cold lips against her temple, her cheek, a shaky hand smoothing away the tangle of hair from her

face, that she realized she hadn't gone insane.

Or, if she had, she welcomed this vein of it. Welcomed the poison that leached into her brain. Welcomed the burn that woke

her blood and opened her eyes to see the color of storms in his and the blue gone from his lips.

"Oscar!"

His name was a cry of relief and pure joy. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she felt her heart lift when he crushed her

in his embrace. But she didn't mind. Anything less wouldn't be enough.

He coughed again. Then another inhale, and she knew in that moment the rest of her life would be spent joyously living breath

by breath. His breath and hers.

"You're not dying first," he said as she blinked a half-dozen times to ensure she wasn't dreaming... or mad. But the warmth

of his palm felt real as he cradled her face. "For if you do, I will drag you back from Death's clutches as you have done

to me. And I promise you, I would drag you back to me time and time again until I win, and we are both centenarians, wrapped

in each other's arms as we drift off toward our eternal sleep."

A laugh and the salt of happy tears clogged her throat. "Then, how will you know you've won, foolish man? Perhaps that's precisely

what—"

A distant voice, hard and sharp, interrupted. "The impostor is down by the lake! Take him away at once!"

Until then, she'd forgotten about the real Vandemere. But panic returned in a flood as nearly a dozen men broke through the tree line.

Scrambling to her feet, she pulled Oscar's hand. "They're coming. You must go. Make haste. Before it's too late."

"What's all this about?" her father asked, confusion and alarm furrowing his brow.

"I've no time to explain. But Oscar must go."

Yet, even as she spoke, four men rushed forward, corralling them at the water's edge. More men followed close behind.

There was nowhere to run.

Oscar looked over his shoulder across the lake to where Mr. Raglan still waited by the carriage. Then he looked down at her,

and she knew what he was thinking.

"No," she pleaded. "Just run. I'll hold them off as long as I can."

He lifted a hand to her cheek, his thumb brushing away the hot tears that started to tumble over the edge again. "I wanted

to tell you. The truth is, I was starting to believe our fiction. I actually thought that I belonged here, that I'd found

a home. But my home is in your eyes, and for the rest of my life I will live there, no matter how far apart we are."

"Oscar, please. Just run. I cannot lose you again."

"Don't cry, Signore," he said as two men seized him by the shoulders. "You're fearless, remember? I want to think of you that

way."

But she wasn't. Because right in that moment, she knew she'd wasted too much time being afraid instead of living. Instead

of... loving him. And, heaven help her, she loved him.

"I love you." She wrapped her arms around him, wondering why the words seemed so simple now that everything was falling apart.

She heard his breath hitch. He struggled against the men's hold.

"Just give me one moment," he ordered them, but they refused and started to drag him away.

"Don't take him. Please, I can explain," she cried out, holding on to Oscar. Then one of the men pulled her off him. She tried to free herself, jerking against the vise grip that encircled her wrist. "No! Wait! You don't understand."

"Get your bloody hands off her!" Oscar shouted. "I'll go willingly, but leave her alone."

The moment the magistrate nodded, the man holding her wrist released her.

"No!" She tried running to Oscar, but this time her father wrapped an arm around her waist.

"Don't. You'll only make matters worse for him," Father said.

Knowing that he was right didn't stop her heart from breaking all over again. And when the men disappeared through the tree

line, she turned and buried her face against her father's chest and cried once more.

***

At home, she faced the wrath of Roxana Hartley. Which was to say there was a good deal of graceful pacing around the parlor,

while at the same time stopping to fuss over Honoria to ensure she wasn't catching a chill.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" Mother demanded as she gathered a shawl around Honoria's shoulders. Then she

went back to pacing.

"There might have been one or two small things I neglected to tell you," Honoria confessed with a sheepish shrug as her thumb

and forefinger pinched the air. Then, as both of her parents stared down at her with disapproval, she told the whole truth.

Well... mostly .

And yet, when she concluded relaying all her foibles, her parents didn't look as surprised as she anticipated. "You knew,

didn't you?"

"Not about the blackmail," her father clarified. "I'll have to speak to the lad about that. However, I did know about the disguise and that you were going about matters of business while using the moniker of Cesario."

"Didn't you wonder about the amount of your dowry?" Mother asked archly.

Honoria shook her head, a bit dumbfounded. "I thought it was a fabrication."

A tawny brow inched higher on her father's forehead. "The money is from each time a certain Signor Cesario purchased property

and stocks from me. He was rather generous, that fellow, and I'd often wondered how you managed it all. But when I was in

London with your brother, he confessed his part of it when I saw your letter to him. Now, don't be vexed with Truman. He thought

he was protecting you."

Vexed? No, indeed. She was furious! Just wait until she saw that disloyal scoundrel of a brother. She'd like to remind him

just how many secrets of his that she'd kept over the years.

"So, that's why you never questioned my plan with Ladrón? Because you were already exchanging correspondence with Truman,

and you knew that there was a warrant out for Ladrón if he should set foot on English soil again?"

He nodded.

"I just thought you were being a dutiful father," she huffed.

"I've never been that dutiful." He set his hand on his wife's shoulder. She put her hand over his. "All that money was yours. Is yours."

"So you both knew all along, and you had resigned yourselves to the fact that I was gambling to secure my own future. Alone?"

"Well..." Mother hemmed, pursing her lips. "When your sudden enthusiasm about marrying Vandemere directly followed our first discussions about Seasons and wedding trousseaus, that gave me an inkling. Then there were the letters from Vandemere... which happened to coincide with letters from your brother and came from the same ports." Mother tsked as if she'd expected a better deception from one of her children.

Honoria expelled a sigh, feeling like a failure. "If you weren't fooled, then why didn't you encourage me to abandon the idea

of Vandemere?"

"Because we knew that you thought you needed him as a crutch of sorts. A rather Shakesperean twist to your story, I should

say," Father added with a proud glint in his eye.

If a child of Conchobar Hartley were going to fall apart, they should do it with dramatic flair.

Mother sank onto the settee beside her, rearranging the shawl around her shoulders. "We didn't yet know the reason but hoped

you would come to us, in your own time. We just"—her breath hitched—"didn't know it was fear of loving someone... because

of losing Ernest. Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because we never talk about Ernest. The garden is still locked. And I thought that it was too painful for you. I didn't want

to make you sad."

Incipient tears shimmered in her mother's eyes, and she swallowed audibly. "During that time, I didn't think I would make

it. I'd lost my child, and I hadn't been here. I'd also lost the mother of my heart when my own had turned her back on me

for marrying against her dictates." She looked up at Father tenderly as he laid a hand on her shoulder, his eyes shimmering,

too. "For those reasons and others, I didn't feel fit to be a mother at all. I didn't even know that it was grief blinding

me to all that I still had. I could only see the loss all around me.

"I remember feeling so numb as I wandered through the house, listless for days, weeks. Never thinking of your father who had lost both mother and child, nor did I think of his father who had lost his wife and one of the lights of his life. I was dead inside. And it wasn't until I saw you through the window, sleeping on your brother's grave in the cold of night that I realized what I still had. And because of you, my dear one"—she took Honoria's face in her hands, pressed a kiss to her lips—"I remembered to live and to embrace each and every moment as if it were the last."

A fresh torrent of tears flooded Honoria's cheeks as she felt the welcoming warmth of her mother's embrace.

"It feels good to speak of him," she said after their handkerchiefs were damp and their eyes red but dry once more. "And you

should know, I visit the garden."

Father bent down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "And you should have realized that the hinges are well-oiled and

never creak."

"It seems as though we were all trying to protect each other." She smiled at that, then shrugged. "Had I known this before...

if I would have just listened to my heart, I might have run off to Gretna Green, and none of this would have happened. And

now I've lost him forever."

She thought of Oscar, imagining him cold and alone in a dark, dank cell.

Mother huffed and tucked a tangled curl behind her ear. "Now, that's a bit too dramatic. After all, we'll get him out of this,

and the two of you will be married."

"But didn't you hear me? He isn't the real Vandemere. And the real one is a complete arse. Though, it serves the widows right

to have to deal with the likes of him. Instead, they might have had Oscar. But they were too busy trying to prove his illegitimacy

when he'd done nothing but try to help. They even sent for the cleric of the church where he was baptized because they didn't

trust the letter Cardew had forged. But it was a very good forgery, I'm told."

Mother shook her head, confused. "They may not have trusted him in the beginning, perhaps. But surely that's changed. Besides,

the cleric from Scotland would have arrived in a matter of days."

"I believe they sent for one in Africa. Or at least, that was where the real Vandemere was born."

Her father frowned, but only went to the window to gaze out across the garden.

A shiver rolled through her as if she were still fighting her way through the water to get to Oscar. And then it hit her all

over again, and the torrent came.

She collapsed in a soggy heap onto her mother's lap. "I fell in love with a man I'll likely never see again. It's happened

just like I feared all along—once you love someone, he'll be gone forever. They've taken him away. There will be a trial.

And that horrible new Vandemere said that he planned to have Oscar h-hanged for his crimes."

"Shh... We won't let that happen, my dear."

***

Since Addlewick's magistrate had been preoccupied with the drama commencing in the village and then extraditing Ladrón into

the hands of the authorities, Oscar was being held in a cell located at the back of a barn by the magistrate from a neighboring

village.

A gelding one stall over was munching on some hay and studying him with bored wariness.

"I'm feeling a bit long in the face, as well," he said leaning against the bars and wishing he was on his way to Gretna Green.

But that was just a dream.

"Charming the horses now, lad?"

Oscar startled and turned to see Baron Hartley striding down the aisle between stalls. He felt an instant of relief at seeing

someone he'd grown to admire... until he remembered all the crimes he was guilty of, all the lies he'd told and all the

ways he'd deceived him.

"You must allow me to beg your forgiveness for all that I've done. I never meant to hurt anyone with my deception, but the truth is I was only thinking of myself from the beginning."

"And blackmailing my daughter."

He cringed and knew that he deserved to be locked away even if only for that crime. "I apologize for that, as well. If I could

start again, I would. I would live every day since I came to Addlewick all over again with only one goal in mind—to make your

daughter happy. I love her, and that is the one single truth of my entire life."

Hartley studied him, his expression inscrutable. Then, after a long moment, he thrust his hand through the iron bars. "Conchobar

Erasmus Hartley. And you are?"

"Oscar Flint," he said, gripping the offered hand. "My father is John Flintridge. He left us when I was five years old, and

I have been looking for him ever since. I am a gambler and a charlatan, masquerading as a viscount."

"I'm glad to know you, Oscar," Hartley said with a cunning smile. "Did I ever tell you that I knew your father?"