His Californian Countess (16 page)

It was a warm day, but she was chilled to the bone. Numb, too. She felt as if her insides had been hollowed out. She wanted to go back to their room and pull the covers over her head. If only she’d stayed there nursing her hurt and hadn’t gone looking for him. She had hoped seeing him could help her make the best of it. Except he’d wound up making it hurt so much more.

Looking at him was painful, so she sat with her hands limp in her lap and stared straight ahead. “I wish I could believe you. I want so desperately to believe you. But all I am to you is a bought-and-paid-for whore and a brood mare for your heir.”

He was on his knees, taking her hands in his in the next instant. “My God, you cannot think that! I adore you. I have been trying to show you how very much I
do
love you.” His eyes widened and he shook his head. “I couldn’t say it. I wasn’t even sure I knew what it meant. So how could I say it? It was as if my heart was held prisoner.”

He raised his hand as if to touch her hair, but he must have seen her flinch because he dropped his hand back to cover hers. She wanted him to let go, but perversely took some small comfort in his touch.

“You don’t know what love has been for me,” he went on. “You cannot know how it was to wake one day and suddenly learn I was alone in the world. My last words to my father the night before were how much I loved him. He said he loved me, too. Then he sent me to bed and sat down behind his desk and blew his brains out.

“Iris pretended great love for me. But then she told me all she’d loved was the title that came with marriage to me.”

She pulled her hands from his and slid to the side.
How did he think she felt after screaming her love with only silence in answer? If he touched her again, she’d fall apart more completely than she already had.

“Then why were you so suddenly able to say it now?” she asked, her voice sounding as hollow as her chest felt.

He reached for her again and she gave a small cry of distress and he pulled back, his hand motionless, extended toward her, anguish on his face. She turned her head and stared at the distant spire of a church.

He sat next to her again. “I don’t know why I could finally say it now. Perhaps because I cannot let you think so little of yourself, Pixie.”

Amber stood, feeling at the edge of sanity. “Don’t call me that! I wish I were magical. I’d cast a spell. I’d make you love me. Or make myself believe what you say now. But I’m not and I cannot! I might have been able to fool myself into believing you if only you’d told me this morning. I really think I could have.”

“Believe it. Believe in me,” he pleaded.

She shook her head. “How can I believe you when nearly the first thing you did after we arrived in the city was to institute a search for Helena?”

“I explained. I’d have told you, but it didn’t seem that important.”

She stepped back a step. “It was important enough that you hired that awful Pinkerton Agency to look for her. If only you hadn’t called her name that first time we made love. Did you know that you had? You thought you’d married
her.
By the time you knew whom it was you really had married, it was too late. And you weren’t happy about it, were you? You were furious.

“When you talked to me about trying to make our
marriage work, you as much as admitted the truth. You’re stuck with me. You needed me to produce an heir. I was only going to be a governess. Why not be a countess and have fine things and children of my own? Except every day I wear her clothes and I know you wish I was her.”

She turned and fled. Half-blinded by the tears that wouldn’t stop, Amber lifted her skirts, careful not to trip again. Angry and hurt though she was, she’d never risk her child. Jamie’s child. She ran past Mimm and some others in the kitchen, and took the back stairs to their room.

Perhaps it was childish, but she locked each of the doors leading into their room. She didn’t want any more explanations, denials or lies. All she wanted was to close her eyes and forget.

The locks weren’t necessary, though. This time Jamie didn’t follow.

J
amie sat in the gazebo hunched forward, forearms braced on his thighs, hands hanging uselessly between his knees. His mind spun. They didn’t fight often. Only twice so far. But their battles were certainly epic.

And both times the fault had been his, the explosion hers.

Last time it had been bad enough when the argument was about anger and temper and injured pride with only a small amount of hurt on her side. And lots of temper.

For him it had been about leftover confusion from having been ill for so long. Unaware, he’d let Iris and Oswald’s poison slip into his mind. And he’d let it overflow onto her. He’d known that.

But it was worse than he’d thought. Now he knew why that argument had cast such an indestructible shadow upon everything.

He’d called her Helena.

When compounded with his stupid, blind suspicions that morning, he’d managed to pump the poison of his past into their entire relationship.

If cutting out his tongue would help heal her, he might consider it, but he knew why she’d refused to look at him for most of their discourse. She loved him, and seeing him hurting hurt her.

She’d said her piece and now all he could do was tell her how important she was at every possible moment and show her in every possible way.

Because this last argument had been about heartbreak and betrayal. And it was all his fault for not conquering his demons before now—for not letting Amber’s love heal him. For once again letting his father’s desertion, Oswald’s cruelty and Iris’s venom poison his life.

He’d come to this country to leave all three behind, but apparently he’d packed the demons and brought them along as surely as he’d packed his clothes and personal possessions.

Why hadn’t he tried harder to understand what he felt? To say what he felt? When he’d seen her need for the words, why had he kept his heart locked away?

They
hadn’t held the key.

He
had.

And all he’d had to do was trust Amber and give her what she needed. All he’d had to do was hand her the key. She already had his heart. What could he possibly have lost?

Now it might be too late.

“Talk to me,” Mimm demanded, suddenly standing over him.

He hadn’t heard her approach, but he shouldn’t be surprised. She’d always been there to cushion his fall. He didn’t move. Didn’t look up. He didn’t deserve her comfort. “I don’t think I’ve ever said this to you, Mimm, but…get the hell away.”

“Oh, no, me boyo. I’ll do no such thing. I’m not standin’ here for you this time, but for that poor mite whose heart you’ve apparently tromped on. What did you do? When finally you have a whole lovely life ahead of you, what did you do?”

He looked up. Swallowed. “Nothing. It’s very easy to do nothing, you know. You merely pretend it’s all right to take without giving back. You let the dead influence you more than the living. And you let them and your childhood monsters prey on your mind so they can surface in the stupidest of ways.

“And somehow when you’ve fooled yourself into thinking everything is fine, you find you’ve destroyed the very thing you cherish most in the world.”

“No, I don’t see, at all. But you’re seein’ it pretty clearly from how it sounds. So go fix it. Before you lose her completely, find a way to fix it. She still loves you or she wouldn’t have been cryin’ her heart out when she ran past me. Now would she?”

Then the quiet pad of her footsteps took her away. And he was all alone with his ghosts and demons. He had to find a way to banish them. He stood and walked toward the house, but skirted it and left by the front-garden gate. Looking up at the house that had held such promise only that morning hurt. He looked away.

And started walking. He walked up hill and down and did so for what seemed like miles, occasionally turning, not paying much attention to his surroundings. Thinking and trying to untangle his heart from his mind.

His love from his anger.

Angry though he still was with his father for taking the coward’s way out of his grief, he’d loved the man. As far as Jamie could remember, his da had never had
an unkind word for him. They’d breakfasted together each day no matter how many pressing matters were lined up for his father to tend to that day. And each night he’d taken time to read to him before sending him back to the nursery and Mimm.

Jamie supposed he’d loved his Aunt Deirdre, Alex’s mother. She’d died in a fall about a year after they’d come to live at Adair. She’d been kind and had insisted Mimm stay on because she’d been a constant in Jamie’s life. Her only fault was that she’d been cowed by her husband’s rages. Oswald had been her misfortune, too. And Jamie had grieved her loss along with Alex.

Alex. How he missed his cousin. Though five years Jamie’s senior, he’d made time for his younger cousin and had taken the brunt of more than one scrape for him. He’d visited him at school so often it seemed he spent more time on the road than in London at the town house. Sunny and charming, Alex had been his light for many years. Until Iris.

Iris. Jamie couldn’t even say he hated her. That would allow her too much continued significance in his life. Besides, she had given him sweet Meara. So why had he given her vitriolic words so much power over him?

Stupidity again.

Which left Oswald. He’d banished the bastard from his home almost the moment he’d reached his majority. He’d not laid eyes on him in over seven years. So why should he have allowed that spawn of Satan to hold sway over him? Why had he not worked to banish him from his heart and mind?

Stupidity…
again!

Well, it was done. It was over.
I will not destroy myself and those I love to please him.

Or because of the rest of them.

Jamie looked up then from putting one foot before the other. The day had all but gone. The sun was but a glow behind the surrounding buildings. San Francisco was a wonder. Not one building next to another had the same architecture. It looked like any and all the ancient cities of Europe with as many styles of buildings as it had languages. Someone not knowing it was a city not yet thirty years old would have thought it had been around centuries.

To his left a small older man struggled to drag a sign inside his shop. With the winds that often swept the streets any independent A-frame signs had to be quite sturdy or spend its day blowing over. “Here, let me help you with that,” Jamie said and grasped the sign at the top. “It’s quite heavy as I suspected,” he said, though it was really just unwieldy.

“Oh, thank you, kind sir,” the shopkeeper said with a heavy Italian accent in his voice. As they wrestled the sign inside the little shop, he went on. “Son, go home. Noon. A grandson born today.” Gesturing with his hands and smiling broadly he went on, “
Buon
…a good thing, no? Four generation make…good tradition.” He did a good deal of talking with those active hands. “Papa teach me. I teach son. Now grandson.” He happily smacked his busy hands together in celebration. “Good day, no?
Buon.
” He gave Jamie a nodding grin.

Jamie smiled for the first time since looking up and seeing Amber standing in his office, anguish in her eyes. “Congratulations. My wife told me a few days ago that we’re to have a child. Much as I understand your wish for another partner, I confess to hoping for a little
girl with my wife’s golden curls and brown eyes. Succession be damned.”

The old man’s brows shot toward his nonexistent hairline. “So good to see young love.” He gave a rusty chuckle and swept his arm gesturing around the shop. “Good for business. Eh?”

Jamie looked around. It was a jewelry shop he’d wandered into and the man had a right to be proud of his work. The pieces displayed were clever and thoughtful. Well made and quite lovely with intricate and often puzzling designs.

Before he considered the absurdity of buying Amber a memento of his meandering, brooding walk, his eyes fell on a clever piece. It was a silver heart, daintily filigreed, sharing a velvet cord with a key. The tiny key was also filigreed. The jeweler explained, the key actually unlocked the heart, which revealed the piece as a locket that unfolded to hold several picture frames meant for tiny miniatures.

Jamie didn’t think twice. It was as if it had been designed as a gift for the woman who had indeed unlocked his heart. And would always hold the key.

He hoped she would believe the sentiment and accept it as a token toward making up for his monumental stupidity.

He hoped and prayed she would.

Darkness fell while the jeweler gave the special piece one last polish. Jamie stepped out into the night and had just tucked the box in his pocket when a flash in the growing darkness caught his attention. Instinctively, he flinched away. Something whizzed by his ear and crashed down hard on his shoulder. His arm went instantly numb as he dove away, hitting the
ground hard, scraping his jaw on the side of the building. A man came out of the darkness, a long object in his hand, and jumped after Jamie. Jamie managed to roll away from the wall he’d hit and avoided being hit again. In the next thud of his heart, a near-deafening boom rent the air. A belaying pin dropped next to him with a mild clatter. The man, who’d apparently planned to bash his head in with the thing, shrieked, grabbed his arm and staggered backward into the alley next to the shop. In the next instant he had turned and fled.

The stooped little jeweler had paid him back for his help with the sign and his purchase and then some. He’d saved Jamie’s life.

“You all right, sir?
Il bastardo!
” he shouted after the attacker whose footsteps receded in the alley. “Thank God. My son load the gun—worried for me here alone.”

Jamie struggled to his feet as several sets of pounding footsteps came toward them. The police. Too little. Too late. The thug had gotten away.

He let the older man talk while he thought about how odd it was that the man had attacked him. The police speculated that he’d looked like a wealthy plum, ripe for the picking. That theory seemed to Jamie to be problematical. To assume this had been a random attack over money made little sense. There was, after all, a shop full of gold and silver just on the other side of the window. And it had been clear the old man was closing. A few more minutes, one broken window later and he’d have been able to scavenge the cases of a small fortune.

No. It had felt more personal. So why him?

Jamie was truly afraid to speculate.

Amber heard a knock on her bedroom door. She’d been reclining on the chaise longue since before it had gone dark and still had no inclination to move. Or to talk to anyone.

“My lady, it’s sorry I am to disturb you. I’m in a real pickle,” Mimm called softly through the door. “I don’t know what to do. I’m needin’ your help. This is serious or I’d never disturb you.”

Mimm sounded quite worried. Goodness, was something wrong with Meara? This was a day that would go down as one of her more difficult to get through. Amber stood and carefully made her way through the darkness to the door and opened it.

“What is it?”

“Jamie went walkin’ hours ago and hasn’t returned. And now his devil of a cousin has caught up with us, he has. He’s pacin’ the front parlor. I’ve put Meara in her room with strict orders to stay put, but ’tis only a matter of time before she revolts. She’s missin’ Jamie and wantin’ you, as well.”

Mimm stepped into the room, holding a lamp. She held it up and shook her head. “Oh, lovie, you can’t meet this one with tears in evidence. Help me handle him. No matter how angry and…and…whatever it is you’re feelin’ toward Jamie, this is serious. Lily’s here to help you get ready. Will you come down?”

Seeing Mimm all at sixes and sevens, Amber didn’t have the heart to refuse. She nodded and walked into the dressing room behind Mimm. Mimm set the lamp down, unlocked the back hall door, and then bustled around, lighting all the lamps and gas sconces.

“Come, lay yourself down on the bed, my lady,” Lily
ordered, a large glass in her hand. “I’ve got some nice cool milk, here. It’ll fix you up quick.”

“Lily, I hate milk. I honestly don’t know if I could keep it down.”

Lily chuckled. “It’s for your eyes, my lady. Just put your head back and relax for a few minutes. Pads of nice cool milk. My ma taught me this. Works every time.”

It did feel good. What felt the best were these two women huddling over her trying to soothe her. She shouldn’t have locked them out. She should probably not have done most of what she’d done that day.

She’d been so angry. So hurt.

“I’ll make sure your dress is all set,” Lily said.

The resentment began to stir in her again. “What’s wrong with this one?” she demanded. “Even Jamie claims to like it.”

From somewhere in the room Mimm said, “Not a thing is wrong with it. ’Tis a lovely frock.”

“Then why did Lily leave it in the trunk? I could only assume it wasn’t good enough for his wife.”

Lily gasped. “No, ma’am. I didn’t have the time to finish the unpacking. You and Lord Adair arrived home so I left it for later so you could have your privacy while he showed you your rooms. He told us to leave for the day.”

Amber felt like a fool. Because the trunks had been going ahead of them early in the morning, Lily had packed mostly everything the night before and in no particular order. Many of her things had never been unpacked at the Palace, which put them at the bottom already. Amber had pointed to the new plum ensemble as what she’d wear the next morning. “I’m so sorry for misjudging you, Lily.”

“Not to worry, my lady. This is a new life you’ve stepped into. We’re all bound to put a foot wrong once in a while,” Lily assured her. “Missus Trimble and me will have you fixed up in no time.

“An’ you’ll show that struttin’ prig in the parlor a thing or two when you walk in and take charge,” Mimm put in, then lifted the cloth from Amber’s face. “Right as rain. Now let’s be gettin’ you up and dressed. That pretty face and keen mind’ll knock him flat on his skinny arse—!”

“Mimm! I don’t want to embarrass Jamie again today. I’m not at all sure what you expect me to say to his cousin after you lied to him and gave him the slip in New Jersey.”