Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson
{ Chapter 23 }
Talen stared at the teacup in Ness’s hand.
She’d taken it to be polite, of course, but her hand had hung there, in the air, halfway to her mouth for the last ten minutes as the dowager countess bustled about the drawing room doing what, he couldn’t quite place.
Closing doors. Rifling through drawers. Pulling out papers. Disappearing into an adjacent room for a moment, then returning with what looked to be a frame under a white cloth that she leaned against the wall beside the side door of the room. Scurrying out into the main hallway, her steps echoing down the corridor only to return minutes later, a flush spotting her wrinkled neck.
For the wear of time on the dowager countess’s face, she moved about the room swiftly, her robust form spry from one task to the next.
Ness’s hand had eventually failed, setting the teacup back down onto the saucer without taking a sip.
Finally, the dowager sat across from him and Ness at the round card table where she’d had tea brought in and settled them.
The dowager’s hands were empty now and she poured a cup of tea for herself. For long moments that stretched the silence, her bare fingers skittered to and from the edge of the saucer under the cup, about to pick it up, then thinking the better of it. Again and again.
Just drink the damn tea.
Maddening, the whole of it, for how little she’d said once they’d arrived at the house. A house that manifested no memories for him upon entering.
He cleared his throat. “May we come straight to it, my lady? You believe you know me. Correct?” Direct, but they could waste the whole day watching this woman fiddle about. He could be back at the coaching inn right now with Ness in his bed, enjoying her naked body on top of his. The preferable option, since they were going to be stuck in the area for another day waiting for the roads to become passable.
The whole of this was a mistake.
The dowager finally committed to the tea and picked up her cup and saucer, taking an elongated sip, her look bouncing between him and Ness. “I do know you. I cannot deny it. What have you remembered?”
“I can be blunt?”
“Please, it would make the whole of this easier.”
His lips pulled back tightly, not sure his flavor of bluntness was appropriate for the woman, but then he forged forth, discarding the thought of delicacy. What happened to his parents, to him, was brutal and he wouldn’t sweep over the truth of it.
“I remember my father being shot and my mother murdered in front of me after hours of watching her be tortured. I remember being beaten to near unconsciousness and then choked until I left this world. That is what I remember.”
The dowager winced, her teacup clattering on her saucer as she dropped it onto the table, brown liquid bouncing and sloshing to splatter onto the inlaid wood. Her hand went onto her chest and she took several long breaths, appearing to get her composure only slightly back. “I feared that. What else?”
“Nothing. Nothing before that. Nothing after.”
Her brow wrinkled, half of it disappearing under the turquoise turban. “Nothing after? But you are here, before me. Where have you been?”
“I woke up on a Royal Navy warship thirteen years ago. I lived at sea for seven years. London for the last six years. A sailor named me, for I had no name I could recall. Talen Blackstone. That is my name. All of that, I remember.”
Her head bobbed up and down, her turban slipping slightly forward as her fingers pressed into her chest. “But…you don’t remember me, sweet lad?”
The nerves along the back of his neck spiked at the term of endearment. He was the farthest thing from a sweet lad. “No.”
“I saved you.”
His head angled down, his glare slicing into her. “You what?”
“I saved you.” She puffed an exhale, her weathered brown eyes darkening with memories. “They were choking you, those awful, awful men and you—you look so much like my Clayborne and I had to stop them. I was too late for your mother, for your father, but you…you I had to save.”
“Who in the hell did you save me from?” The words barked out, harsh and loud, and Ness reached out and set her hand on his thigh, squeezing his leg.
Calm.
She wanted him calm when there was no margin for calm after what the woman had just told him.
The dowager knew. Knew exactly who had killed his parents. Who he now had to hunt down and slit from throat to gut.
The dowager blanched, cowering across the table from him and it took her a moment to speak, her stare on the table between them, her finger tracing a line beside the spilled tea.
“I must first start with who I am. I am your aunt, married to your Uncle Fredrick, the younger brother of your father. There were three boys, and the eldest, Walter, was dying of consumption during the summer that your parents died. Your father was the second son. And your grandfather, the earl, had just died the spring before.”
Her eyes darted up to him, then slid back down to the table. “My husband was convinced…well, he believed your father, Thomas, was insane, that the loss of his leg in the war had made his mind mad. Fredrick believed that Thomas wasn’t fit to hold the title should Walter die. They argued about it endlessly that summer, the three brothers.”
“My father lost his leg in Boney’s war?”
“He did. He was highly decorated—a hero—but he saw a lot of death. That death—what he endured—your mother always said it changed him. Changed him drastically.”
“You’re saying my father had gone mad?”
Her shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Whenever your mother said anything to me, it was short and whispered, behind closed doors. And my husband had his own opinions of the fitness of your father’s mind that were much…stronger.”
Talen had to look away from her. Had to take a steeling breath.
He didn’t want to hear any of this. None of it. This was a story about another family. Another life. Not his life. Not his parents.
He stared out the window at the view along the east side of the estate. A wide, open-air pavilion sat along a rectangular pond, stretching the entire length of it. Bloody opulent.
“What did your husband do?” He couldn’t look back to the dowager.
“Something I didn’t think him capable of. But he had become obsessed with saving the earldom, saving it from madness, saving it from anything that would taint the gild of it. But beyond that, I think it went deeper with him. Your mother and father and you—you three were happy in each other’s company. A happiness that had always eluded him…us. I know he envied it. It festered within him and only added fuel onto his obsession to save the estate from ruin.”
“He was third son, it wasn’t his concern.” Talen’s words were wooden, the rasp in his voice more pronounced than usual.
“No, but that didn’t deter my husband. I tried to stop him—to talk reason to him, but I could not sway him from his obsession. He was determined that he was the only one that could save the earldom.” The dowager’s lips pursed, a deep frown setting on her face as she paused. “He hated being under his brothers’ thumbs—Walter, Thomas. He’d had a lifetime of it. He tried to hide how it ate away at his soul. But then one day…he just broke…his mind broke so fully and I found out too late what he had set into motion.”
“You’re saying my uncle did this? To my parents? To me?” Talen’s words came out slow, measured, regaining all the indifference he’d mastered at the Alabaster when dealing with the scummiest vermin.
She gave an exhausted nod. “He lured the three of you to that cottage where men he had hired were waiting.” Her fingers went up to her mouth, tapping her lips against her own horrified words. “I am so sorry that I found out too late—too late to stop him. Too late to save your father. Too late to save your mother. But you. You were determined to live, so I got you out of the cottage.”
His glare skewered her. “He murdered my parents?”
Her face whitened to ash as her hand dropped to her throat. She nodded.
“And you saved me?”
“Except I was a failure. I was too late. Too late to stop any of it. Fredrick had come in with blood on his waistcoat and by the time I found you—them—one of those vile, vile men was choking you. You. A boy. A mere child. I threw myself at him, shoving him off you, threatening them—they knew I was Fredrick’s wife. And I got you out of there. Out of that cottage. But I was afraid my husband wouldn’t stop at your parents’ deaths. He wanted your life as well. My fear for you was so great that I whisked you to the port in Whitehaven and paid a doctor aboard a departing ship to take care of you. It was all I could think to do.”
“Why would you send me away? Why not keep me safe?”
Her head tilted to the side, the turban slipping along her left ear. “I didn’t have that power, Talen. Your own father couldn’t keep you safe, so what could I have done? I couldn’t risk your life by keeping you near and within my husband’s reach. The ship was the only option—I had to send you into exile.”
Thundering rage beat in his chest, fighting to explode, but Talen tamped down on it, his words pinched. “What happened to your husband?”
“He died nine years ago.”
Ness gasped next to him. A gasp not in surprise, but in pain.
His look shot to her, searching her face and then he glanced downward. Her hand was still on his thigh, but he’d grabbed it without even realizing it.
He’d been crushing it. Was crushing it still.
His hand instantly released her delicate bones, his knuckles cracking for the strain they’d been under. Bloody hell, he hadn’t broken her hand, had he?
His stare jumped up to her face, panicked. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. Scare her.
She held his stare for a long second, hiding pain, he could see. But then she simply flipped her hand over on his thigh, her palm and fingers wrapping up around his knuckles, not letting his hand go. Weak, but holding on.
“Please, you must stay here at Washburn until my son arrives.” The dowager drew his attention back to her. “He is due within the next two days and there is much that we must…consider and resolve.”
Talen instantly shook his head. “No. We have to make it to Scotland. Stopping here at the estate wasn’t even part of our plan. It was only the rain that held us in the area.”
Her head jerked back. “Scotland? Whatever for?”
“Mrs. Docherty and I are to marry.”
“An elopement?” Shock widened her eyes for a second, quickly being replaced with a smile. “How wonderful. Yet please, my son should only be a day, two at the most. But more importantly, this matter is most urgent for you. You do want to marry under your proper name, do you not?”
His right eyebrow cocked. “My proper name? Talen Blackstone.”
“No, no. You must marry under your real name. Conner Burton—wait—Conner Josiah Bron…Bar…No, I don’t recall the full of it. There are at least two more names in your full Christian name. It was so long ago. You will want all of those for the marriage to make it proper. I have all the names in the family bible, but it is not here. It is at the dower house a half day’s ride away. I’ll go to fetch it tomorrow.” She jumped up from the table, going to the wall by the side door and picking up the large frame with a sheet over it that leaned against the wall.
Walking back to the table, she tugged the sheet off and dropped it to the floor, then turned the painting toward Talen. “Please, just look. I wanted you to see this, see them. See you.”
The portrait held three figures. A brown-haired man in a red uniform standing behind a seated woman—a beautiful woman with blond hair, striking blue eyes, the slightest smile on her face and dressed in a resplendent peach gown that flowed down and to the width of the portrait. Poised just in front of her, a little boy with dark blond hair in a blue skeleton suit, maybe six or seven and staring stoically at the artist.
A boy with his very features. Nose and cheeks and jawline that matched his father’s. Eyes that matched his mother’s. Hair the color between the two.
The air disappeared from his lungs, leaving him weightless, groundless for several seconds.
“Please, just stay here at Washburn for a few days,” the dowager said. “You do not belong in a coaching inn. You belong here. Stay and learn what you can, maybe remember who you are and then you can go into the marriage with the blessing of the family behind you. It is a miracle that you have returned to us.” Her words paused, sudden tears in her eyes. “A true miracle.”
With a deep breath she set the portrait down on the chair she had been occupying and her look shifted to Ness. “If I remember correctly, Mrs. Docherty—Nessia—you were such a sweet child. You were Harriet’s favorite playmate as I recall. I’m sure you will make Conner a fine bride if you are as delightful as you once were. Please, can the elopement wait not but a few mere days?”
Her eyebrows lifted as her look went back and forth between Talen and Ness.
Ness squeezed his hand and he looked to her. She gave him a slight nod.
He hated the thought of it—of staying here.
Not when he could be headed north and making Ness his wife. Making certain she was protected. Though his given name would be important to that end, he loathed to admit.
“It is just a few days, Talen,” Ness said softly. Not imploring or demanding, just letting him know it was right by her.
His head heavy, he nodded. “We can stay. Two days is all we can afford.”