No Other Love (25 page)

Jack shot him a black look. “You are so kind.”

“Merely truthful. Obviously you are thinking the same thing yourself.”

“I was right,” Jack insisted. “I had to be. It is only—I don’t know—her face when she saw me. She couldn’t have been prepared for it, and I don’t see how she could have put on an act, not so quickly. But there was no dread in her face, no fear, as I would expect if someone that I had done that to had reappeared years later. She looked stunned and then…”

He closed his eyes, thinking of the way Nicola’s soft gray eyes had shone when she cried “You’re alive!”

“She seemed…happy,” he continued in a low voice. “And now she is so indignant, so furious….”

“I did not see her face or hear her indignation,” Perry said, “but, frankly, I have noticed little about the lady that seems treacherous. First, it is clear that she is not close to Exmoor. Everyone says that this is the first time since her sister’s marriage to the man that she has come to stay at their house. The gossip—and I hear this on the best authority, namely Lydia Hinton at the inn—is that she detests her brother-in-law and objected strenuously to her sister’s marrying him. It doesn’t seem likely that she would confide in a man she despises, much less ask him to do a favor, does it?”

Jack’s only answer was a shrug.

“Secondly,” Perry went on, ticking the points off on his fingers, “she has given no indication of being the sort of person who would betray anyone, much less the man she loved. After all, the villagers have nothing but the best things to say about her. It is my understanding that she has bound up poachers’ wounds with nary a word to Exmoor or even to Lord Buckminster, her own cousin. Thirdly, she came here to save my life—even returned all on her own and without a word to Exmoor. It would have been quite easy to have notified him and let him have someone follow the two of you right back to this house.”

“I was careful. I kept a lookout.”

“Yes, and you didn’t see anyone, did you? Because he sent no one. Because she did not tell him. Instead, she apparently made up a tissue of lies to both her sister and her aunt and put herself to a great deal of trouble just to return to make sure I pulled through. That is hardly the action of an informer.”

“It was an entirely different situation ten years ago. She was much younger.”

“And her personality was so different? Back then she was selfish and cold? Someone who lied and betrayed those who loved her? Yet now, ten years later, she has become someone warm and compassionate, a woman who devotes her time and money to helping the unfortunates of London? Who tries to save others with her skills in herbs and who does not even give an adequate description of a man who robbed her so that he can be found? Really, Jack, I don’t think it will wash. It was easy to believe what you said before I met the woman. I have known many a lady with a heart of stone, capable of the greatest treachery. But now that I have met her…”

“You have based all this on knowing her for two days?” Jack asked with sarcasm. “Most of which time you’ve been unconscious.”

“It does not take a long time if one is looking with unprejudiced eyes,” his friend pointed out.

“You think I don’t know what a good and kind woman she can be?” Jack asked, goaded. “You think I don’t know what she does for others, how she helps the lowliest people who have no claim on her? Dammit, man, why do you think I love her?
Loved
her. She has plenty of fine ideals, and she even acts on them. She was well able to dally with a stable lad. It was when it came to marrying one that she balked. That is what sent her running to Exmoor.”

Perry took a last sip of stew and waved it away. He leaned back on his pillows, regarding his friend, and after a moment said, “I imagine that it would have been enough just to tell you no. A woman who looks like Nicola Falcourt has had ample experience with turning down marriage proposals, even at seventeen. Why not write back a letter telling you that she had changed her mind? Or just not show up where you asked her to meet you? Why send Exmoor to do you in? I mean, really…one day she was kissing you, the next she was sending you to be imprisoned in the bowels of a ship?”

“She may not have known what Exmoor would do,” Jack admitted. “She may have intended only that he warn me away, but Exmoor seized the opportunity to do more.”

“She didn’t know? When he had just thrown you over a waterfall?” Perry retorted sarcastically.

“Her reputation was at stake. She was afraid that I would make a scene, that everyone would know about her relationship with me. It would have ruined her chances at a good marriage.”

“Yet she never married, even though she was so careful not to ruin her chances. And she was so concerned about her reputation that she came here alone to an outlaw’s lair to live for several days.”

“Dammit! Whose side are you on?”

“Yours,” Perry replied simply. “If you are so sure that you were right, why are you having doubts now? I like the girl, and I don’t want to see you throw everything away because you refuse to admit that you were wrong.”

“That is not why I—” Jack stopped, shaking his head. “Don’t you think I
want
to agree with you? That I wouldn’t give anything to say ‘Oh, yes, there must have been some kind of mistake’? Perhaps that is why I saw honesty in her eyes when she told me she thought I was dead—just because I want to believe that I was wrong. She is a woman who could make any man doubt reason.” He set his jaw. “But I am not a fool. I refuse to deceive myself. I will not let myself fall under her spell again—as you so obviously have—only to find my heart trampled beneath her feet another time. I went through that pain once, and there is no way I will again.”

“Then is it that you are afraid?” Perry let out a chuckle at the fire that flamed in his friend’s dark eyes at his remark. “No. Don’t take my head off. Remember, I am a poor, defenseless, bedridden—”

Jack snorted. “You are never defenseless, with the way your jaw flaps. And, yes, I am afraid. You would be, too, if it had been your heart that was torn out.”

“Perhaps I would. Unfortunately—or perhaps it is fortunately—I have never sunk so deep in love.” Perry sighed. “But, you know, if you were wrong about her ten years ago, then it isn’t a risk.”

“How could I have been?” Jack asked, a note of despair in his voice. “My grandmother wrote me back and said that she would deliver the letter to Nicola.”

“But you don’t know that she actually gave it to her.”

Jack fixed him with a cold gaze. “Are you saying that my grandmother lied about it?”

“Of course not. Don’t be a fool. But you don’t know what happened after she sent you that letter. You never heard from her again. You were seized and taken to the ship. What if something prevented her from delivering the note to Miss Falcourt? What if Nicola is right, and it was somehow intercepted by Exmoor?”

“How?”

“I don’t know!” Perry exclaimed in exasperation. “You are the stubbornest man alive. The only person who knows the truth is Exmoor, and somehow I doubt that you are going to get him to tell you. Maybe you will never know for sure. But sometimes you simply have to go on faith.”

“If that were true—if she did not get the letter…” Jack swung around and walked away, stopping at the window to stare out broodingly. “Then I was an utter fool and threw away ten years of my life.”

“It will be better to know that than to continue to be one and throw away the rest of your life.”

“She would never forgive me,” Jack said quietly. “How could she?”

“You won’t know unless you ask her.”

Jack shot his friend a dark look. “You don’t understand. She hates me now. She threatened to poison me tonight if I touched her again.”

Perry let out a bark of laughter. “I knew I liked that girl. At last, a woman you cannot charm.”

“I wouldn’t laugh so heartily if I were you,” Jack told him sourly. “She threatened to poison you, too.”

N
ICOLA REMAINED AT THE BANDITS
’
hideaway for another two days. As her patient improved, caring for him settled into the usual, rather boring routine of sitting beside his bed, coaxing him to eat and drink periodically, and giving him a few doses of medicine. She had gone through such periods many times at bedsides, of course, but always before she had had something to occupy the empty time while the patient slept. But now she had no book or needlework or even a pad to sketch on while Perry dozed, and when she was relieved by one of Jack’s men or the girl Diane, she had nothing to do in her room, either. She took a few brisk walks around the outside of the small house, but as the days were rather chilly and misty, there was little enjoyment in that.

Jack did not intrude on her, either when she was sitting with Perry or any other time. She was, she told herself, grateful for that, of course, but that, too, made the days more boring. She realized after a time that Jack was going so far as to have one of the others come in to take over in the sickroom from her, after which he would quickly relieve them, thereby avoiding running into Nicola. For some reason, the fact that he did so irritated her, even though she knew it was easier if she did not have to see him or speak to him. He was, she thought to herself, taking the cowardly way out.

In the way of all patients, Perry grew more restless and fretful as his condition improved. By the third day he felt too good to sleep three-fourths of the time as he had before, but he did not feel up to doing much more than sitting up in bed and feeding himself. His wound was healing nicely, but he complained that it itched. He grew tired of every position in which he could lie or sit, yet whenever he changed position, it made his shoulder hurt. He could not concentrate well enough to play a game of cards with Nicola, and there were no books for her to read to him.

Finally, in an effort to distract him, Nicola asked him about his life.

“Dead boring,” he told her. “Wastrel son of a good family, that sort of thing. I am sure you’ve heard a dozen tales like it.”

“But few of them wound up being highwaymen,” Nicola pointed out mildly.

Perry chuckled. “Blame that on bad companions. My father always told me they would lead to my downfall.”

“You have been friends with Jack for a long time, I take it.”

He cast her a considering look. “Yes. For years. We were impressed at the same time. Fortunately, for some reason he decided to help me, or I am sure that I would have been dead within months of being thrown on board. Gentlemen’s sons do not do well as swabbies, I’m afraid.”

He paused, then added, “We escaped together and have worked alongside each other ever since. He has yet to lead me astray.”

“I fear he has this time,” Nicola said quietly. “The Earl hates him—and he doesn’t even know who he really is. I fear if he found out, he would be even more determined to destroy Jack.”

“No doubt. Will you tell him?”

“I?” Nicola glanced at him in amazement. “Of course not. But someone is bound to see him without his mask sometime and recognize him. Many of the villagers would recognize him. They are quite curious about his identity, too. And Richard has been offering bribes for information about him. Eventually he will find him, and—” She stopped, shrugging her shoulders.

“And would you care if he were captured? Hanged?”

A shudder ran through Nicola at the thought. “Of course I would. I would hate to see any man hanged. And I know Jack. I—I once loved him. No matter how I feel about him now, I would not want him to die.”

“How do you feel about him now?”

“You are certainly full of curiosity today.”

“I am always full of curiosity. Well? How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” Nicola admitted in a low voice. “It has been so long, and I—I am angry at what he did, how he left me, how he assumed I had betrayed him. Anyway, it scarcely matters how I feel about him. He feels nothing for me except contempt and anger.”

“I doubt that that is true.”

Nicola made no reply, simply looked at her hands, clasped together in her lap.

“You know, men can be utter fools at times,” Perry said.

Nicola smiled and glanced up at him. “True enough. What brought you to that insight?”

“Sad experience, in general. But what I am talking about now is Jack. Sometimes, when you want something tremendously, when it is terribly important, that is the thing you mishandle the most. You are so anxious about it that you do exactly the wrong thing, bring about the thing that you feared.”

“You are saying that is what he did in this instance? That Gil, I mean Jack, loved me so much, he decided I had betrayed him?”

“I am saying that love can cloud one’s thinking. Make you believe things that perhaps you would not logically. Let us say that you feel unworthy of a certain woman—beneath her in station, for instance. You worry about losing her, about her seeing how little you deserve her, how foolish it is of her to love you. And when you find out that that very thing has happened, it doesn’t surprise you. You don’t question it. It is what you have feared all along. So even though you hate her for it, even though it breaks your heart, you believe it. You accept it. The fact that you have learned it from an untrustworthy person doesn’t make you doubt the information. You are filled with too much pain for that. All you can see is that what you feared would happen has indeed happened.”