“I didn’t kill her!” He raked a shaking hand through his hair. He couldn’t think properly. Something very bad was happening. Rose thought he’d killed Gillian. A tight, icy ball of dread formed in his gut, and it worked its way upward, constricting his chest and throat. “Bloody Christ, Rose—I did not murder my wife!”
“Liar,” she hissed. “You think because you’re an earl you can get away with this? You can’t just collect murdered wives and servants. Why, I’ll—”
“Rose, listen to me.” Nicholas thought for certain that he was going mad. He’d walked into some horrible nightmare that kept getting more and more macabre. Rose opened her mouth to spit more venom at him. He grabbed her arm and shook her.“Listen to me!”
Evan’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Leave off, my lord. She’s distraught.”
She’s distraught? Nicholas was distraught. He released her abruptly. She dropped to the cobblestone path, buried her face in her hands, and began to weep.
“Rose.”He said her name plaintively, wanting her to stop her weeping becausedamn it!Gillian was not dead. She couldn’t be. Slowly, like a cut tree, Rosetipped forward until her forehead touched the stones, sobbing her sister’s name.
Dead, dead.Everyone stared at him as if he were a fiend bent on further mayhem. Even Evan had a wary look in his eyes. They all believed he’d tossed another wife to her death.
He put his hands to his face. “This cannot be happening.” He raked his hands savagely through his hair, wanting to rip it out if he thought it would do any good. He backed away, back to the cliff path, and resumed his desperate search.
The sun rose, burning off the fog and clearly illuminating the path. But the light revealed no clues about what had happened to Gillian. Nor could Nicholas find a trace of the servant who’d come to him about Gillian, the one who’d said he’d beensent.Sent by whom? When Nicholas had described the servant to Evan and others, everyone had denied seeing him, or even knowing who he was. They’d all looked at Nicholas as if he’d been lying. As if they’d known some truth about him—that there was no servant, that he’d followed his wife into the garden, then thrown her from a cliff.
He loved her! He wanted to rage it at them, beat it into their heads so they stopped staring at him like a dangerous madman. Why would he murder the best thing in his miserable life? It made no sense. Couldn’t they see that?
He scoured the entire castle before finally giving the order for the men to go below. To look for her on theground. It felt like an admission of defeat. His chest was an empty void. Dead.
He walked blindly to his chambers and sank into the chair behind his desk. He stared at the documents that he’d been working his way through before his life unraveled. Again. None of it mattered. He’d vowed to protect her, and she’d not even lasted a month in his care.
He sat that way for a very long time. Unmoving, staring blankly at his desk, a hollow bark echoing in his ears. As if the world had stopped and he did not want it to start again.
Evan appeared in the doorway. “My lord, they didn’t find her below . . . but she could have fallen in the river, so there would be no body.”
When Catriona had fallen they’d done the same for a time, searching the castle and the base of the mountain, waiting for a body to wash up somewhere. He’d sent men to follow the river, looking, but they’d never found her—only her cloak, caught in the brambles on the cliff path, the clasp broken, ripped from her throat as she’d fallen.
“Send some men downriver,” he heard himself say.
Evan gave the order but didn’t leave. Nicholas wanted him to go away, but he couldn’t find the energy to speak. His throat hurt. Everything hurt. He felt as if someone had rammed a lance into his chest. He could barely breath without pain wrenching through him, and he feared that at any moment he would disintegrate.
“There’s a party at the gate,” Evan said.
Nicholas dimly remembered one of his men informinghim of their approach more than an hour ago. “Who is it?”
“The countess’s sister, Isobel Kilpatrick and her husband.”
And he’d thought matters couldn’t possibly get worse.
“Let them in,” he said.
Again Evan gave the order but didn’t leave. What else? Nicholas refused to look at the knight.
Evan came into Nicholas’s privy chamber and closed the door. He crossed to the whisky decanter on the cabinet. Nicholas watched with a sense of detachment as Evan poured a cup of whisky and brought it to him.
“Here, my lord, methinks you need this.”
Nicholas slapped the cup out of Evan’s hand. The knight jerked back. The cup clattered to the floor, spraying whisky everywhere.
“You think a drink will make this better?”
“No, my lord.” Evan’s stone mask was in place.
Nicholas dropped his head into his hands. Nothing would make this better. Nothing.
“Go away.”
