When She Said I Do (40 page)

She listened as Ren told her a ridiculous story about Attie and a musket and a sheep shit—er, no, it was a shed. A sheep shed. She wouldn’t have believed it at all—except it sounded precisely like something Attie would do. Furthermore, she’d never known Ren to exaggerate. That, apparently, was strictly a Worthington trait.

“So it was you who found her?”

Ren smoothed her grip on his hand. “It wasn’t terribly hard. I just had to imagine where I would go if I were a short, female, homicidal maniac.”

But Callie shushed him. “You found her and you made her come back? No one can make Attie do anything. Not without firepower.”

Ren kissed her forehead. “Callie, I didn’t stuff her in a sack and throw it over the back of my saddle, if that’s what you’re asking. In fact, I didn’t bring her back. She left me there in the pasture without my horse. It would have been a bloody long walk home if Dade hadn’t come back for me.”

Callie smiled. “You and Dade are getting on, then?”

“Hmm. We’ve agreed upon a mutually distant détente. I still think he’s an obnoxious prig, but having met the twins, I find myself sympathizing.”

Callie snuggled her face into his palm. She was feeling deliciously warm. “Cas and Poll are so creative,” she said dreamily. “Raising those two fiends was a bloody nightmare.”

“You should sleep.” He made as if to stand.

“No.” She grabbed his hand tightly. “Talk to me. It helps.”

“You should rest, Callie.”

She glared at him. “One pearl, one command.” She cast a glance at the little bowl on the dressing table. Six left.

His expression quizzically amused, he settled back into his seat. “Command?”

“Question,” she amended. “Six pearls, six questions.”

“Then will you rest?”

“Absolutely.” She rather thought she wasn’t to have much choice in the matter. The laudanum had seeped into her very bones, rendering them deliciously limp.

“Question number one. Who is that Simon fellow?”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “I cannot say.”

“Then I shall begin for you.” Callie raised a brow and recited the facts already known to her. “He is Sir Simon Raines. He found you and sent you to Amberdell, wounded and scarred, so obviously he feels some responsibility for that. His wife is Agatha Raines, who is quite concerned about my intentions toward Mr. Button.”

Ren’s lips twisted. “Button? Hmm.”

“Sir Simon brought the Royal Handful along to the ball—”

Ren frowned. “The who?”

“Didn’t you notice them? The big man, like a Viking, and those two blond beauties—Sir Simon, of course—and that hawk-faced man.”

Ren drew back. “I’d heard stories … but—”

“And I’m beginning to think some of the hired staff weren’t really servants,” Callie went on. “They didn’t seem the slightest bit taken aback by a flaming hell-bird in the center of the ballroom. Then again, Mama always says that ex-soldiers make the best butlers. Trial by fire, she claims.”

Ren blinked. She’d put all the clues together, clues he’d been too self-involved to notice until it was almost too late.

“And I know I’ve seen that big cook somewhere before … but I fear my mind is fuzzing over…”

Ren put his hand over hers. “Callie, stop.” What she’d deduced on her own could endanger her life! If she kept on with her questions, if the wrong party overheard—

So he told her. All of it, from the beginning when he’d been recruited at a gaming hell by an old schoolmate who knew his family was gone. The training, the missions—not the specifics, of course—the feeling of being part of something larger than himself, something important.

And then, the betrayal. His covert alias had been revealed by someone in the club, his life traded for money, along with the lives of many others. He’d been attacked, been left for dead, his life as he knew it gone forever.

She listened with hazel eyes wide and filled with pain for him. “But … they could not have all betrayed you? Why do you hate them so?”

He laughed shortly, a rusty, despairing sound. “I don’t hate them.”

She drew back to stare at him. “Oh, my heavens. You love them! You miss them!”

A shudder went through him. “I loved them once. I cannot trust them now. I miss them. I miss myself. I lost everything that night on the docks. When I see them—” He halted, his voice too tight to continue.

“When you see them, you see young Ren Porter, whole and strong?”

He closed his eyes and bent his forehead to hers. “No, I don’t see my former self. I see a hole where my former self used to be. That Ren is long dead.”

She was silent for a long while—an event unusual enough to drag his attention from his own thoughts. “What are you thinking?” It was bound to be something interesting, at the very least.

“I’m wondering what that maze behind the house used to look like. Those boxwoods are very old.”

Plants again. It must be the laudanum. Ren let out a laughing sigh. “They were kept in perfect precision in my old cousin’s day. This park was a showplace, I think. People would come from far away for a tour of the grounds and my cousin was always proud to show it off. To me, it was a playground for a brief summer in my boyhood. I set out to solve the maze the moment I stepped from the coach. It took me weeks to memorize it. I can still remember the way, even now.”

“It’s a classic design, quite possibly a Batty Langley original from the mid-eighteenth century, for the boxwoods certainly look old enough.” She brought her faraway gaze down and met his eyes with a smile. “And your younger self is not dead. You remember that maze as if you’d solved it yesterday.”

“I remember everything, Callie.” Ren brought her carefully into the circle of his arms. “At first I thought they were just nightmares. Then the shards and splinters of images began to mean something, began to knit themselves up into sense. I’ve lived here in the dark long enough to dream them again, awake and panicked and fighting for breath as I remember every single agonizing moment of being murdered.”

She snuggled closer. “Almost murdered.”

“Yes. Almost murdered.”

“So tell me. Tell me every single agonizing moment. Say it out loud.”

“No.”

“It might help.” She tilted her head to look up into his face. “I mean it, Ren. You know how it is when you tell an anecdote too many times? The first time you tell it, it is a strong memory and you seem to live it again, but then, after a while, what you remember more is the telling of it. The true memory steps back, further back every time, until you’re telling a memory of a memory of a memory. It becomes simply a story.”

“No.”

“But why?”

“Because it is not a story for a lady’s ears. Because it is past midnight. And because you are wounded and need your rest.”

“But what of those men? What if they’re still there in the village?”

His arms tightened. “I can face them if you stay by my side.”

Her hands slid beneath his waistcoat. “I shall stay as if glued.” Then she sighed. “I do like to touch you. Especially your bottom.”

She blinked slowly at his low bark of laughter. “Did I just say that out loud?”

“Yes, you did. I shall treasure it forever.”

She didn’t mind the amusement in his voice. She liked making him laugh.

“I like laughing with you.”

She’d like to make him laugh forever. Make him laugh, make him moan, make him roar out his orgasm whilst she sucked his cock—

“Callie, you’re talking in your sleep. I’d allow it, but your mother is due to take over my watch.”

Mama wouldn’t mind talking about orgasms.

“Well, I should mind it, very much. Why don’t you think about something else?”

She liked thinking about Ren. Dear, sad, strong Ren. She loved him so.

But Ren didn’t love her. He didn’t believe in her at all. He thought she would leave him and she wouldn’t, not ever. Not for anything or anyone. It broke her heart that he couldn’t believe.

She wept softly in her sleep, warm tears dropping into Ren’s palm.

She would never be able to make him believe.

A tender kiss upon her brow.
I believe, Callie. I can be a bit thick, but finally, I believe.

And I vow, you shall never again be harmed because of me.

*   *   *

He’d lived a life of danger once, surviving on instinct and shrewdness. Since Callie had awoken him, he could feel it once more. It was a tickle on the back of his neck. It was a twitch between his shoulder blades.

It was a shattered ladder, a locked cellar door, a maddened horse.

Someone meant them harm.

*   *   *

The next morning, Ren found Dade in the stables, currying the elderly carriage horses and wearing a flowing lacy shirt from another century. Dade glanced at him ruefully. “I found in it one of the bedchambers. We didn’t take time to pack when Attie was missing. I haven’t anything else.”

“Shut up and listen.”

Dade drew back in resentment, but Ren had no time for brotherly camaraderie.

“I need you to take Callie away. Tomorrow. I’d have you go today, but I don’t think she should be moved again so soon. All of you, tomorrow. Get away from here.”

Dade stared at him. “Now, see here, Porter, what are you saying?”

Ren pushed Dade in the chest with both hands. “Listen to me! There have been several attempts on her life.”

Dade drew a breath. “Bloody hell.”

“The first came only a day after we wed…” The swift recounting didn’t take long, but as he heard the facts about each incident leave his lips, Ren cursed himself for not believing sooner—and for needing Callie so badly that he kept her, even after he believed.

“I cannot endanger her any further. This place where you stayed the night—”

“Wincombes’. It’s about twenty miles southeast on the road to London.”

“Twenty miles should be far enough.” Ren rubbed his face. Was it? How far-reaching was this vendetta? If it came from Ren’s past, there was no place on earth that was secure. He blinked himself back to the conversation. “It will have to do. She shouldn’t travel any farther.”

Dade frowned. “She shouldn’t travel at all! Why didn’t you send her home a week ago?”

Ren ignored his question. “Do you agree? Will you take her away tomorrow?”

Dade gazed at him for a long moment. “Yes, I’ll take her. If she’ll go. I’ve tried to make her leave you again and again. She’s even more stubborn than Attie. She’s just quieter with it.”

Ren looked down at his hands. The blood was long washed away. He could still feel it, hot and flowing. “Oh, she’ll go.” He turned his back on Dade and strode away. Every hour that passed was one where the assailant might muster another attack.

It was time to break Callie’s heart.

Chapter 36

Ren paused outside the door of Callie’s bedchamber, steeling his resolve, using it to make a cage around the pain in his chest.

It wasn’t as though she’d ever been meant to stay.

Liar. All you ever wanted was for her to stay. From the first moment that you found her half naked and draped in jewels, you wanted her to haunt your nights forever.

Well, he could certainly consider that mission accomplished.

When he entered her bedchamber with a swift knock, she turned her smile to him. He hadn’t expected to find her sitting up in bed, gazing at the open window, breathing deeply of the rich spring air. Though she was pale and he could see the shadows beneath her eyes, she looked much like Callie of old, thrilled beyond measure by the smallest of things.

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

He almost smiled. He didn’t. “What is wonderful?”

She turned back to the window and closed her eyes, lifting her face into the perfect breeze. “Everything.”

You are wonderful. You are everything.

It wouldn’t do to confess to her now. Not now when he most needed her to go. He had to hurt her hard. It had always been his special ability, in covert operations, his instinctive understanding of people, his ability to read them.

Now he would use his best weapon on her, to annihilate her love, to save her life.

“I suppose it is.”

At his tense tone, she opened her eyes and turned her head to gaze at him quizzically. “Has something angered you?”

I’m angry, all right. I hate the world at the moment, the world and all in it who would act against us, ruining our happiness, risking your life, murdering our future.

He gazed at her calmly. “My dear, it is time for you to go.”

He could see the shock wash over her face. If it were possible to be paler, she would have gone entirely transparent.

“Calliope, I’ll admit that we’ve had a lovely time together, but now that I’m no longer at death’s door, there are many things I need to see to.”

She reached blindly, gesturing at the vast dell that lay outside the window. “The estate? True, there is a great deal that we—”

“Not Amberdell. I’m handing stewardship over to Henry,” Ren said curtly. “This was a good enough place when I was ill, but now that I’m gaining back my health, I hardly wish to molder away here any longer.”

“I suppose I can understand that.” She cast a last longing glance at the Cotswold countryside and then swallowed, turning resolutely away. “Very well. Where are we going?”

“Not we, I’m afraid. I. I’m being recalled to duty.” He lifted his chin. “I’m returning to the work I did before I was injured.”

She frowned. “Returning … to become a spy?”

“Yes.” He nodded shortly. “I’d prefer if you keep that little fact to yourself, of course.”

She blinked. “But … doesn’t that mean London?”

Ren shrugged. “I go where I am sent. Perhaps England, or France or Portugal. Perhaps Russia.”

She leaned back upon her pillows shakily. “Russia? That’s rather far.”

Ren allowed a note of eagerness to enter his voice. “The farther the better. I cannot wait to leave this dismal place behind me. I feel as though I’ve been in prison. Now I am free, thanks to you.” Ren took a deep breath and strode restlessly to the window, shutting it with a slam and whisking the curtains across it. “That’s enough of that chill. I’ll build up the fire for you, shall I?”