“Then I wish to hell it had stayed buried!” Before Emma could stop him, Jamie hurled the box to the floor.
The rotting wood gave way, splintering wide open to reveal a false bottom and sending a necklace spilling out at Jamie’s feet.
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE NECKLACE WAS A tarnished Gaelic cross on a chain of braided pewter. Even before Jamie knelt to gather it into his hand, Emma recognized it from the miniature on the lid of the box.
It was his mother’s necklace.
The necklace she had been wearing when the artist sketched her likeness. The necklace that had vanished on the night she died, ripped from her throat by the hand of her murderer.
But both the chain and the clasp of this necklace were intact, as if someone hadn’t torn it away from its wearer but tenderly removed it from her lifeless body.
Emma heard Jamie’s words echo through the room as clearly as if he had just uttered them: It was naught more than a worthless trinket.… It wouldn’t have been of value to anyone but a Sinclair.
Jamie slowly lifted his eyes to hers. It wasn’t the emotion in the arctic wasteland of those eyes that froze her soul, but the damning lack of it. Without a word, he straightened and went stalking from the chamber, the chain of the necklace dangling from his clenched fist.
Emma stood staring at the empty doorway in dumb shock for several precious seconds, then went racing after him, fearing this was one murder she might not be able to prevent.
EMMA’S THROBBING SHOULDER FORCED her to slow down on the narrow spiral stairs that wound down into the heart of the tower. When she reached the long, high-ceilinged room that must have once served as the great hall of the keep, it was to discover that the large oak door at the far end of the room was standing wide open.
She hurried across the hall, afraid she might already be too late. If Jamie reached his grandfather before she reached him, she feared he would be lost forever, not just to her but to himself.
She emerged from the gloom, blinking in the bright sunshine. As her eyes adjusted, she saw Jamie just topping a small rise to the east of the keep. She called his name but he kept walking as if he hadn’t heard her, his stride as ruthless as his countenance.
She lifted the hem of her gown and hastened after him. When she reached the top of the rise, she saw Ramsey Sinclair tilling the stony ground of the slope below with a heavy iron hoe, his snowy white mane of hair blowing in the wind.
Fearing the hoe could end up being used as a weapon, she quickened her steps.
“So are you burying more secrets, auld mon? Or perhaps some actual bodies this time?” Stopping right in front of his grandfather, Jamie lifted his fist to dangle the tarnished necklace in the man’s face.
Ramsey Sinclair didn’t even look surprised, only resigned. It was as if he had been waiting twenty-seven years for this moment to arrive and now that it finally had, it was almost a relief.
“Jamie, please,” Emma said softly, stopping a few feet from the two men.
He took his eyes off his grandfather just long enough to point a finger at her. “This is none of your concern, lass. And don’t you dare swoon! Because if you do, I’m bluidy well not going to catch you.”
Emma held her tongue. Despite Jamie’s warning, she knew that if she keeled over at that very moment his arms would be around her before she could hit the ground.
To her keen relief his grandfather moved to sink down on a rounded boulder at the edge of the garden, laying the heavy hoe aside. With his shoulders stooped beneath the weight of Jamie’s contempt, he looked every minute of his age.
“I adored yer mother, ye know,” he said, squinting up at Jamie in the sunlight. “She was all I had left after the fever killed your grandmother. It broke my heart nigh asunder when she ran away with that rogue.” He shook his head, his craggy face lined with sorrow. “I searched for months to no avail. I might have never found them until they wanted to be found if Mags hadn’t managed to get word to me that Lianna’s babe had been born. But by the time I reached the crofter’s hut, it was too late. They had already gone.”
“So you hunted them down.” Jamie’s flat words were not a question.
Anger flared in the elder Sinclair’s eyes, making them look eerily similar to his grandson’s. “How can I expect ye to understand when ye’ve ne’er had a daughter o’ yer own? My Lianna was always a good girl. And he was just another miserable greedy Hepburn used to takin’ whate’er he wanted, no matter the cost. It wasn’t the first time a Hepburn had preyed upon an innocent young lass he happened upon in the woods. Why, yer own grandmother—my sweet Alyssa—” He broke off, his voice strangled by rage and remembered anguish.
Emma closed her eyes briefly, understanding all too clearly how this legacy of hatred had been passed from generation to generation.
“I knew the young rogue had seduced my Lianna. Maybe even raped her. Made her his whore.”
“She wasn’t his whore!” Jamie thundered. “She was his wife!”
His grandfather lifted the back of one trembling hand to his mouth. “I didn’t know that then. I didn’t find the page from the weddin’ register in the pocket of his coat until after they were dead. By then, it was too late.” His voice faded to a choked whisper. “Too late for all of us.”
Emma wondered how he had borne it all these years—knowing he had murdered his daughter and her husband for a crime neither one of them had committed. No wonder his heart was finally failing beneath the crushing burden of his guilt.
The Sinclair turned his beseeching eyes back to his grandson. “I never meant to hurt her, lad. I swear it! I just wanted to bring her home. When I caught up to them in the glen, I drew my pistol, thinkin’ it might frighten that young whelp into givin’ her up without a fight. But he shouted that she was too good, too fine to spend the rest o’ her life with the likes o’ the Sinclairs. That she belonged to him now. That he would never let her go. Then everythin’ went red and all I could hear was the roarin’ in my ears as I lifted the pistol and pointed it at his heart. At the very instant I squeezed the trigger, she threw herself in front o’ him.”
Jamie pressed the fist holding the necklace to his lips as his grandfather continued. “I’ll ne’er forget the look in her eyes. The shock, the betrayal and worst of all, in those last precious seconds of her life—the pity.”
The elder Sinclair bowed his head, as if already knowing he had forever relinquished any right to his grandson’s pity. “Hepburn caught her as she fell, just sat there rockin’ back and forth with her in his arms, weepin’ like a babe. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. But all I could think was if not for him, if not for all the Hepburns who had pissed all over the Sinclairs through the centuries, my precious baby girl would still be alive. So I walked over to him and put the mouth of my pistol right between his eyes. He didn’t even fight. He just gazed up at me as if daring me—no, begging me—to pull the trigger.”
“So you did,” Jamie said bleakly.
“Aye. And there they lay. Dead in each other’s arms.” His grandfather’s jaw hardened. “I couldn’t bear the thought o’ him still touchin’ her, tryin’ to lay claim to her even in death. So I pulled them apart. Made sure he would ne’er touch her again. I was about to turn the pistol on myself when I heard it.”
“What?” Emma asked softly, well aware that both men had probably forgotten her presence. “What did you hear?”
He cocked his head as if haunted by the echo of a moment long past. “A gentle cooin’ like that of a dove. I walked over to the bushes and there ye were. They must have tucked ye away when they heard my horse approachin’.”
The look on Jamie’s face broke Emma’s heart anew. “I was there in that glen on the night they died? But you told me they’d left me with Mags.”
His grandfather shrugged. “What’s one more lie added to a thousand?” A shadow crossed his face. “For one dark moment, I was tempted to kill ye, too—to destroy the last remainin’ evidence of their love. But when
I reached down to do it, ye just looked up at me without cryin ’. Without blinkin’. Then ye grabbed my finger in yer tiny little fist and held on for dear life.” The old man turned his face to Jamie, tears of remembered wonder glazing his eyes. “In that moment, I knew ye weren’t theirs after all. Ye were mine.”
When Jamie continued to gaze down at him, his face as beautiful and merciless as an avenging angel’s, the Sinclair swiped away the tears, his hand growing ever more steady. “I didn’t want to live with what I’d done. But I knew I had no choice if I was to look after ye. So I took ye back to Mags at the crofter’s hut and swore her to silence, then returned to the glen late that night with my men so there would be witnesses when yer par—” He swallowed. “—when the bodies were found.”
Jamie’s voice was dangerously dispassionate. “And I suppose it was easy enough to blame their murders on the Hepburn. After all, he and his kin had been responsible for most of the ills around these parts for centuries.”
“Aye. That was the only part of my divilment I couldn’t bring myself to regret. At least not until now.”
Emma’s heart nearly stopped when he reached into a hidden fold of his kilt and withdrew an ancient-looking pistol with a flared muzzle. But he simply offered it to Jamie, butt forward.
“Go on, lad. Take it and do what I should have had the courage to do all those years ago.”
Jamie gazed down at the weapon in his grandfather’s hand, his eyes as cold as Emma had ever seen them. “You always told me the truth could kill you. Or it could keep you alive. I believe I’ll let you just keep on living with what you’ve done.”
His grandfather struggled to his feet, leaning heavily on the handle of the hoe. “I don’t want yer mercy, lad! I have no need of it!”
A scornful smile curved Jamie’s lips. “Oh, I haven’t any mercy where you’re concerned. There’s just no need for me to hasten your journey to hell. You’ll get there soon enough on your own.”
With his mother’s necklace still dangling from his fingers, Jamie turned his back on his grandfather. As he walked past her, Emma reached for him. But he continued on as if she wasn’t even there.
She hesitated for a moment, then turned to follow. She half expected to hear the thundering report of a pistol behind her. But when she paused at the top of the rise to glance over her shoulder, it was to discover that Jamie’s grandfather had already taken up his hoe and gone back to tilling the rocky soil.
She would have hated him as much as Jamie did in that moment but she knew he was simply doing what the Sinclairs had always done.
Surviving.
WHEN EMMA REACHED THE balcony crowning the very top of the keep, Jamie was already there, standing with his back to her and his hands gripping the wooden balustrade.
As she emerged into the sunlight, an involuntary gasp escaped her. The Highlands were sprawled below them in all of their rustic splendor. A misty veil of green draped the lower passes and glens while dazzling patches of white still crowned the highest crags. Winding streams poured down the mountainside, fattened by the melting snows and glistening silver beneath the kiss of the sun.
As an ethereal wisp of cloud drifted right past the balcony, she understood how Jamie’s grandfather might have come to fancy himself the ruler of some mighty kingdom. Why live among the mere mortals down in the foothills when one could reside among the clouds? While overlooking this breathtaking view from such a dizzying height, a man might very well fancy himself the ruler of heaven itself.
At the moment, Jamie looked more like the dark prince of some Stygian underworld where doomed souls were sent to await their punishment.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said without turning around. “You belong in bed.”
“Whose bed?” she asked softly, joining him at the balustrade. “Yours? The earl’s?”
He turned to face her, his expression so distant it sent a dark shiver of dread down her spine. “Your own bed. The one in your bedchamber in Lancashire. The one with the robin’s nest right outside your window and the family of mice living in the dining room baseboards. You belong a thousand leagues away from here—away from all the deceit and treachery… and death.”
“Away from you?”
His hesitation was so brief she might have imagined it. “Aye.” He returned his gaze to that grand sweep of moor and mountain, his profile as stern and intractable as a stranger’s. “As far away from me as the road can take you.”
“And what if I don’t choose to go?”
“You don’t have a choice. Didn’t you hear my grandfather? I come from a long line of men with a history of destroying the very thing they love the most.”
Hope surged within her, pushing the dread aside. “What are you trying to say, Jamie? That you love me? Is that what you were about to tell me before you discovered the page from the marriage register?”
She touched his sleeve but he pulled away from her. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her before, but now it was as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, much less touch her.
“What are you trying to do?” she cried, her frustration growing. “Pretend that night in the bell tower never happened?” Could he pretend she had never lain beneath him, shuddering in helpless wonder as his nimble fingers and powerful body gave her the sweetest and most devastating pleasure a man could give a woman? “Can you truly tell me that night meant nothing to you?”
He turned to look directly at her then, the indifference in his eyes even more chilling than the contempt he had shown his grandfather. “I kept my end of our bargain. You asked me to ruin you, not pledge my eternal love. If you’re well enough to travel on the morrow, I’m taking you down the mountain. Your family may very well believe you’re dead. I need to get you back to them before they leave Scotland for good.”
Emma shook her head, reeling from his curt dismissal of all they had shared. “What about the Hepburn? He might not have murdered your mother but he did try to murder me. And I’m sure he’ll be only too delighted to learn that there’s no need for him to find himself a new bride since he already has an heir.”
A grim smile canted Jamie’s lips. “Oh, you can leave the Hepburn to me. He’s no longer your concern. I’ll deal with him.”
He turned on his heel to go, then paused, frowning down at his hand as if he was surprised to find his mother’s necklace still looped through his fingers.
Emma felt her heart stutter with hope as he took her hand in his and dropped the necklace into her palm.
He lifted his gaze to hers, the regret shadowing his eyes extinguishing her fragile hope. “I tried to warn you, lass, that it was naught but a worthless trinket.” He gently folded her fingers around the necklace, then turned away.
After he had disappeared into the shadows of the stairs, Emma opened her hand to gaze down at the simple Gaelic cross.
It was a symbol of faith. A symbol of hope.
The Sinclair who had smuggled it out of the castle as he and his kinsmen were being driven from their home must have known it would inspire the dreams of the generations to come. The woman who had worn it last had refused to relinquish her own dreams. She had been willing to risk everything—her home, her father’s love… even her life—to make them come true.
Emma closed her fist around the necklace, lifting her eyes to gaze out over the rugged land she was coming to love. Jamie Sinclair was about to discover that this tarnished trinket was not so worthless after all and that he just might have found himself an adversary more ruthless and determined than the Hepburn.
Chapter Twenty-nine
AS JAMIE DESCENDED INTO the hall of the keep the next morning, the last thing he expected to hear was Emma’s merry ripple of laughter. He scowled, wondering if he was still dreaming.
But how could he be dreaming when he hadn’t even slept? When he’d spent the entire night pacing the floor and fighting the temptation to slip back into Emma’s bedchamber… and her bed? How could he be dreaming when all of his dreams had died
only a few hours ago, crushed beneath the iron fist of his grandfather’s treachery?
He reached the foot of the stairs, his mouth falling open when he saw the unexpected scene of domestic bliss.
The long table in the middle of the hall had been draped with a clean cloth. Emma was bustling around it, a tray of steaming scones balanced in her hands.
If not for the bandage peeking out from the bodice of her harebell-blue gown, one would never know she’d been shot and nearly died only a few days before. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, but drawn back from her face by two ivory combs Mags must have found somewhere. Jamie was even more riveted by the sight of his mother’s necklace fastened around the slender column of her throat.
She leaned over the table, offering fresh scones and an enchanting view of the gentle swell of her bosom to the two men seated on one of the long benches that flanked it. One of the men was Bon.
The other was Ian Hepburn.
Although his left arm was still confined by the sling, his bruised face was scrubbed clean and his sleek, dark hair was neatly secured at his nape in a leather queue, exposing the dramatic swoop of his widow’s peak. If Jamie wasn’t mistaken, he was wearing one of Jamie’s own shirts.
Spotting Jamie, he cocked a mocking eyebrow in his direction. “Good morning, Sin. Or would you prefer ‘my lord’?”
Jamie turned his disbelieving gaze on Emma. “You told him about the marriage register?”
She shrugged. “And why not? The whole world will find out you’re the earl’s heir soon enough.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Jamie retorted.
Bon tucked another plump bite of scone between his lips, rolling his eyes in pure pleasure. “Ye’re a damn sight finer cook than Mags, lass. If I can ever catch ye between fiancés, I just might swear off me bachelor ways and court ye meself.”