He’d lost his mind.
For real this time. Noah might have found that funny had his life not been crumbling under him.
He swung the ax down harder than was necessary, and another log split beneath the blade, the pieces sent flying from the force. He left them where they lay, among a hundred similar pieces, and seized another log, setting it up on the wide stump. He swung the ax again, and his muscles screamed in protest, but he ignored the pain. Embraced it, even. He needed something mindless, something to drive out whatever madness had gripped him since he had pulled a beautiful woman from the River Leen.
He’d gone down to the barn this morning, certain he had a firm grip on what he needed to do, determined that he would see Elise DeVries safely away from his farm. Away from him. Except…except somehow he’d found himself kissing her again. And not just kissing her. Wanting her with an intensity that defied reason. Ignoring everything that had brought her into his life in the first place.
I don’t understand what you do to me.
He’d blurted out that truth while his mind was still sluggish and drugged with lust. She was like an addiction, something that he was powerless to resist, even though he understood just how dangerous she was. He’d never experienced anything like it before, and it disturbed him beyond words.
Thwack. Another log fell victim to his blade.
Even now he could feel his blood heat and his groin tighten just thinking of her. Thinking of her lush curves, her clever mouth, the way she seemed to know how to touch him exactly as he wished to be touched. She was not shy, nor was there a trace of coyness or guile. She was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and it aroused him to no end.
And then there were her words that he had tried not dwell on.
I am with you, not against you.
Well, she wasn’t, really, was she? Her very presence threatened everything he had built.
Yet deep down, had Noah truly believed that his past would stay buried forever? Had he really expected that no one would ever recognize him? He’d been told from an early age that he was the spitting image of his father. It was likely that time had only amplified the likeness, and there was probably a good amount of luck involved in the fact that no one had ever recognized him. Or, at the very least, questioned his origins. Yes, he might avoid busy coaching inns where travelers from London were likely to congregate, but unless he was to become a total recluse, it would be impossible to avoid strangers completely.
When Noah had left London for good, he’d not given much thought to the distant future, other than his wish to stay invisible and remain reasonably close to Abigail so that he might watch over her undetected. Once he’d settled here, days had turned into weeks and then months and then years, and Noah had allowed time to create an illusion of safety.
But it had been just that, really. An illusion. And perhaps he should be thankful it was Elise DeVries who had shown up on his doorstep and not a Runner or a magistrate. Which didn’t mean he was going anywhere near London. No matter what sort of tale she spun.
“You expecting winter early?” Mrs. Pritchard was standing near the corner of the house, her hands on her ample hips, surveying the carnage around him that had once been a neat stack of logs waiting to be split.
Noah yanked another log from the dwindling pile and set it on the stump. Sweat was running into his eyes, and his shirt was plastered to his body.
Thwack.
“Needs to be done sooner or later,” he mumbled. “Wood’ll dry faster this way.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Her skepticism was loud and clear.
Noah avoided looking at his housekeeper. Instead he reached for yet another log and heaved it onto the stump. He gazed down at the rings just visible in the stump where a long saw had severed the trunk. They circled around and around, getting smaller and smaller the closer they got to the center. Just like his thoughts, piling into indecipherable circles, leading nowhere logical.
“I have a sister,” he said abruptly, leaning on the handle of the ax and staring down at the gouges and slashes that covered the top of the stump. He had no idea why he’d said that. Except that Abigail had been his only regret. It was strange, how much he still missed someone who had been gone for so long. And speaking about her out loud suddenly made her seem closer.
“You do?” He could hear the surprise in his housekeeper’s voice.
“She lives in Derby. With her husband and her children.”
“You’re an uncle.” Now Mrs. Pritchard sounded delighted.
“Yes.” It struck Noah that he had never really thought about it like that. That he had never really considered what Abigail’s children would be like. If they would be gentle and generous in the same way she had been as a child. Another layer of guilt settled over him like dark coal dust. Noah had spent so much time focusing on his own life, on maintaining and protecting his new, perfect reality, that he had given very little thought to the reality of hers, save the thought that she was content. “She needs my help. My sister, that is.”
“So when are you leaving?”
Noah glanced up. “What makes you think I’m leaving?”
Mrs. Pritchard frowned. “She’s your sister.”
“I haven’t seen her in a very long time.”
“So?” His housekeeper was starting to sound like Elise.
“She wants me to come to London.”
Mrs. Pritchard’s frown deepened. “If you’re worried about the farm, you don’t need to be. I’m here, and the Carters’ youngest two boys are always looking for work. They were an excellent help last year at harvest.”
“I wasn’t worried about the farm.” The farm was the last thing he was concerned about.
“Then what are you worried about?”
Everything else. But nothing he could tell Mrs. Pritchard. Nothing that would take away the damned guilt that had been building since the moment Elise had uttered the words Abigail needs you.
“She’s your sister,” his housekeeper repeated firmly, piling more guilt onto the already substantial pile. “You do what you need to do. Nothing else really matters.”
“It’s not quite that simple.”
“Only if you choose to make it complicated.”
Noah sneered to himself silently. He hadn’t chosen anything. Complicated had been chosen for him. Complicated had been set in motion the day his parents had arranged to have him smuggled from their house in a carriage with bars. “Maybe,” he said, if only so he didn’t have to argue. He pulled the ax off the stump and raised it over his head.
“Has your sister ever helped you when you’ve needed it?”
Thunk. The ax glanced off the log awkwardly, and the wood thudded to the ground. Memories of a defiant girl in pigtails and pinafores leaped to his mind. Abigail had been his biggest champion and his most valiant defender. At least until he had grown big enough to fight his own battles. And then she’d taught him how to fight smart and fight dirty.
Noah kicked the fallen log to the side and jammed the blade of the ax into the stump again in frustration.
“Does this—whatever involves your sister—have something to do with Miss DeVries?” his housekeeper asked.
“Yes. No. Sort of.” He mopped his face with his sleeve, not even knowing where to begin if he had to offer a further explanation.
“I think you need to tell me exactly what is going on.”
“What do you mean?” It was a pathetic attempt to stall.
“Do you think me a complete bottle-head, Mr. Lawson?” Mrs. Pritchard asked, though there was no venom in her words.
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Of course not.”
“I have been with you now for ten years, Mr. Lawson. Ten years, and in those ten years, I have never heard you mention a sister. Or a mother, or a father. Or a childhood home, for that matter. Did you think that I never noticed? Never wondered?”
“But you never asked.”
“Because it never mattered. Until now, it would seem.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Yes, so you keep saying. And now you’re out here chopping wood like a man possessed, avoiding Miss DeVries and more likely to give yourself an apoplexy than resolve whatever it is that needs resolving.”
Noah ran his hands through his sweat-soaked hair. “I’ve tried talking to El— Miss DeVries. She refuses to listen to reason.” That, and he seemed unable to keep his hands off her. Which was a whole different kettle of unreasonable. And unacceptable. “She’ll be returning to London shortly.” Alone.
Mrs. Pritchard crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Is she in danger? Your sister?”
Noah shook his head. If he believed that, he’d be halfway to London already and damn the consequences. “No. She’s fine.”
“Are you in some sort of danger?”
“What? Why would you think that?” Noah stared at Mrs. Pritchard.
“Miss DeVries asked me if I had noticed anything odd lately.” There was a worried frown on her face now. “She wanted to know if there had been any strangers stopping by, anyone asking questions about you or another man named Noah. Anyone I might have noticed in town who wasn’t known, or that another local may have remarked upon.”
“When did she ask you this?”
“This morning. When she was making jam.”
“What?” He wasn’t sure what bothered him more—that Elise had alarmed his housekeeper with her ridiculous stories or that she seemed to have absolutely no intention of leaving. “Where is she now?” he demanded.
Mrs. Pritchard shrugged. “I don’t know. But she changed back into that awful shirt and trousers that had been drying in her room and left.”
“Left for where?”
Mrs. Pritchard’s frown had turned into a scowl. “I don’t know, Mr. Lawson. I wasn’t the one giving her roses in the garden last night and ignoring her the next day.”
* * *
Noah shoved his way into the darkened interior of the barn, letting his eyes adjust to the light. In the corner Elise’s pack still rested on the floor where he had deposited it earlier. A bizarre mixture of relief and annoyance washed through him. His eyes scanned the wall, and he noticed that her gelding’s bridle was still hanging from its hook, along with its saddle.
Wherever she had gone, she hadn’t gone far. His eyes turned back to where her pack lay. The heavy buckles gleamed dully in the light, peeking out from under an oiled cloth. He froze. Her rifle was missing.
Where the hell could the woman have gone?
He stalked out to the rear of the barn, allowing his eyes to roam over the pastures where they rolled down toward the trees. In the distance a movement caught his eye—a familiar waving tail and a lopsided gait. The dog lifted his head and sniffed the air and then, with a bark, disappeared into the trees. What the hell was Square doing down by the river?
Was that where Elise had gone? Had she gotten it in her head to go hunting after she had made jam and milked his cows? It wouldn’t surprise him, but bloody hell, this had to stop. Before he could reconsider, he was striding toward the thick ridge of trees. Whatever the woman was doing, it wasn’t anything good. He needed her on her horse and down the road back to London, not roaming about his property and threatening his sanity.
He reached the edge of the trees and paused. The wind was up today, and the leaves danced above his head, the branches of the hawthorns and birches rattling and swaying. He entered the forest, and as he went deeper, the sound became muted, the larger, thicker oaks spreading their limbs to provide a thick canopy above. He followed one of the many deer trails that wound its way through the trees in the direction of the river, but there was no sign of Elise. No sign of Square either. He pressed on.
The sunlight here was shut out, the forest darkened and cool, though none of this bothered Noah. He came here often just to stand in the peace and the silence. The branches were thick, the ancient trunks twisted and gnarled, and the very air itself whispered of the magic and legends that abounded in these forests. But today the forest was silent.
Too silent.
Something was out of place.
Very slowly Noah drew his hunting knife from its sheath at his waist.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
Noah spun, every muscle in his body tensing, his knife coming up in an instinctive arc.
Elise was standing not three feet from him, her eyes flitting over his knife briefly before coming back to his face. “That knife will be useless if they have pistols.”
She was indeed dressed again in her shirt and trousers, a faded and worn blue coat of some military origin buttoned up over her torso. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and covered entirely by a battered cap. There was a collection of pouches strapped to her waist and across her chest, and her rifle was cradled in the crook of her arm. Had he not heard her speak, he would have dismissed her as a young soldier. He barely recognized her. And she looked nothing like the woman who had been bent over a milk bucket this morning. A woman who had looked at him with desire and then kissed him senseless in the middle of a lane. This Elise looked hard and remote and…dangerous.
“Where the hell did you come from?” he demanded, if only to cover the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.
Elise glanced pointedly up at the limbs of a massive oak above them.
Noah forced himself to take a deep breath and impaled her with a stare. “And just what the hell did you think you were doing?” he growled through clenched teeth. “Swinging through the trees trying to find your inner Robin Hood?”
Elise gestured to the forest around them. “Reconnaissance.”
“You can’t be serious.” He forced his eyes to remain on her and not dart away to examine his surroundings. He would not acknowledge the absurdity of such a notion. He could not—would not buy whatever blarney she was still trying to sell.
Elise only gazed at him, her hazel eyes like darkened caramel in the shadows of the forest. “I could have slit your throat. Or shot you. You need to be more careful.”
Noah let his irritation show. “First, I’m not sure why I need to say this again, but I am perfectly capable of looking after myself. Second, you need to stop suggesting otherwise. Not only is it alarming my housekeeper, your continued suggestions that I am helpless are damn insulting. Any other man might demand pistols at dawn.”
“And any other man would lose.” The rifle remained steady in her hands. “And I never said you were helpless.”
“Are you always this arrogant?”
“I prefer proficient. And for the record, duels are asinine. There are always witnesses, the terrain and conditions are not always optimal, and most dueling pistols are unreliable. Both in accuracy and performance. There are much better ways to deal with such situations. I can offer a selection of other options if you find yourself in such circumstances in the future.” The last was delivered with such cool detachment that a small shiver chased itself down Noah’s spine.
“What, like knives and chains?” he asked carelessly, trying to mask his sudden disquiet. He didn’t want to imagine what “other options” might entail, nor did he want to acknowledge that a future with both of them in it existed.
“Not quite what I had in mind.” She assessed him for a long moment. “You’re familiar with street fighting.” It was a statement more than a question. Her eyes flickered over the knife in his hand again. “You are most comfortable with a blade in close quarters. And I suspect you are very…proficient.” Again a statement, and this one seemed to please her.
Noah opened his mouth to answer but discovered he couldn’t find anything to say. There was nothing pleasing about the memory of the acid taste of fear in his mouth, the burn of blood on his hands and arms, the metallic scent of death. There was nothing pleasing about his proficiency with a knife. There was nothing pleasing about killing. Even if it meant that you got to live.
Noah felt his jaw clench. “We’re not having this discussion.” He sheathed his knife deliberately and turned on his heel, heading back along the path toward the house and weaving his way through the thick foliage. “And another thing,” he tossed back over his shoulder, trying to affect a sangfroid he didn’t feel, “I want you to stay out of my kitchen.” He shoved a branch out of his way and waited for the rebuttal that was sure to come.
Except it never came. Instead all he heard behind him was the chattering of a squirrel and the trilling call of an unseen bird. He stopped and turned but saw…nothing. It was as if Elise had vanished into thin air. He glanced up at the branches over his head, but nothing moved save the occasional leaf.
“Elise?” he said into the space around him, feeling foolish and not a little unnerved.
“I’ll stay out of your kitchen if you stay out of this forest. It’s unsafe. At least for now.”
Noah nearly came out of his skin. He whirled and found Elise standing on the path, only somehow she’d gotten ahead of him. “Bloody hell,” he swore, “stop sneaking up on me like that.” She was like a damn phantom in this damn forest.
“Better me than someone else. I’m trying to ensure that, when you return to London, it is not in a pine box. You are of no use to me or your sister in a pine box.”
Noah threw up his hands.
“Your cousin has hired—”
“My cousin wouldn’t know how to hire a footman, much less an assassin,” Noah snapped at her.
“And how do you know that? When was the last time you spoke with your cousin?” Elise gazed at him impassively. “Was that before or after he grew up and gambled away whatever money he had? Was that before or after he found himself in debt to a number of men who are long on memory and short on patience?”
That Francis would have lost money gambling wasn’t surprising. He had never been overly clever as a boy. Though he’d made up for that with sheer meanness. He’d been the type that had taken pleasure in pulling the wings off butterflies and poking the eyes from frogs. But to go to the lengths that she was suggesting…Noah scowled. “That is not the point. Francis was always cruel but—”
“But now he is no longer a child. Now he is desperate. And desperate men are dangerous men.”
“Tell me exactly how you came to be in possession of such information. That Francis Ellery hired men to assassinate me.”
Elise’s face shuttered. “That doesn’t matter—”
Noah barked a rude laugh. “I thought so.”
“Are you insinuating I’m making this up?” Elise asked, color staining her cheeks.
“Have you met these men?” he asked.
“Who?”
“These so-called assassins who are hot on my trail?”
Elise’s mouth tightened. “No.”
“Know their names? How much they were paid?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing. You have nothing.”
Her beautiful eyes narrowed into slits. “I have far from nothing. I have the Duke of Ashland standing in front of me—”
“I. Don’t. Want. The. Title.” He bit off each word.
“I don’t really care if you aspire to be a pauper or the bloody king of England when it comes down to it, Your Grace.” There was a razor edge to her voice that was not lost on him. “But I do care if you get your fool self killed because of it. And I care that you have a sister and a mother who need your help. My job is to make sure they get it one way or another.”
The guilt that had been simmering for too long, stirred by dark memories of fear and death, bubbled over, turning into anger. “If I thought Abigail was in any sort of danger, there is no force on this earth that could stop me from getting to her. But she’s not.”
“The same cannot be said for your mother.”
Noah turned away, every muscle in his body tense, an icy cold settling through his bones. It was wrong, he knew, to feel so much hatred and resentment toward someone after so long. A better man would have forgiven his mother for her betrayal and abandonment. A better man would have forgiven or, at the very least, tried to forget the consequences of that abandonment. But he had been unable to do either. He was not a better man. “That is not my affair,” he hissed.
“You are not a man who allows others to suffer.” Elise’s voice had risen.
Noah’s head jerked around. “You don’t know me, Miss DeVries. You have no idea what I would or would not do.”
“I know—”
“You…nothing…you know nothing.” His blood was surging through him, emotion making it difficult to think, difficult to breathe.
“I know enough to know you would not leave your mother in Bedlam.”
“That’s where she left me when I was ten!”
A silence fell hard on the end of those words. A silence that breathed with the forest around him, echoed in the canopy of silvered leaves overhead.
At his sides Noah’s hands were clenched into fists, yet the regret he had expected to follow that confession did not come. In fact there was an immeasurable, if inexplicable, sense of relief. His admission, his release of that secret to this woman had been reckless and rash and utterly unfathomable. He could not begin to explain why he had told Elise DeVries something that not even John Barr knew. Perhaps because she already held so many of his secrets. Perhaps the admission was like a crack in a dam where a steady trickle of truth had eroded the edges until veracity burst through all the lies and secrets, leaving him exposed. Perhaps it was an unacknowledged need to have another soul on this earth to whom he might reveal his true self. But whatever the reason, standing here, with only the trees to witness his folly, Noah wasn’t sorry.
Presently he became aware that Elise hadn’t spoken. He met her eyes, only to find them watching him, betraying no emotion. No horror, no disgust, and, most telling, no surprise.
“You already knew that.” His words were barely a whisper.
She tipped her head as if considering her answer. “Yes. I think I did.”
“I…you…” Noah had no idea what to say to that. “You think? Did Abigail tell you that?” he managed.
“Abigail doesn’t know.”
“Thank God,” he mumbled.
“No one knows where you disappeared to. Only that you vanished as a child and, until very recently, were presumed dead.”
“I almost died in that place,” he said, feeling a little numb. “A number of times.” And there had been even more times he’d wished for death. Prayed for it. Begged for it.
Elise set her rifle down and leaned it against a tree. She stepped closer, so that she was directly in front of him. She put a hand on his chest, directly over his heart, where it beat steadily. “But you’re not.”
Noah dropped his head. “I’m not dead? Or I’m not a lunatic?”
“Well, the former is rather obvious. As for the latter…are you?”
“Am I what?”
“A lunatic?”
“No,” he spluttered.
“Good. I’m so very glad we got that sorted out.” Elise sounded as if she was smiling, but he was a little afraid to look at her.
It was exactly what she’d done on the road when he’d blurted out his first confession. His admission that he got his words mixed up. Somehow she’d reduced it from something looming and horrific to something…less. Something that simply was. A part of his past, a part of him that deserved no more or less attention than any other part.
She raised her other hand and placed it against his chest. He could feel the heat from her touch permeate the cold that had settled into his bones earlier. It was everything he could do not to simply draw her into his arms and bury his head in the softness of her neck and let her strength chase away all his ghosts.
And on the heels of that came a wash of embarrassment. When had he become so maudlin? So weak? Since when did he need a woman to find courage and to stand firm? And a woman who had her own agenda at that? “I don’t want your pity,” he mumbled, trying to reassert whatever dignity he still had left. There could not be a repeat performance of the debacle in the lane this morning, when he had allowed the base demands of his body to obliterate all his resolutions and intentions and good sense.
“No, I never expected you would,” she replied. Her hands suddenly slid up and caught his face when he would have pulled away.
He froze before raising his eyes to hers. She was gazing at him in that level, intense way she had, as if she were peering past his exterior and reading his soul.
“You have the corner on my aggravation and frustration at the moment, if I’m being honest,” she said, though she said it with a small smile. “Though that is simply because you’re making my job somewhat arduous and we are not yet on the road to London.” She paused. “But you will never have my pity. A survivor is not a man to be pitied. He is a man to be respected.”
Something in Noah’s chest lurched. With sudden clarity he realized he wanted this woman’s respect with a force that he wasn’t prepared for. It was one thing to know that she desired him on a physical level. It was something deeper, something so much more significant, to know he held her regard.
“I can’t go back to London,” he said, needing her to understand more than he had ever needed anything.
She didn’t argue or remind him about Abigail or his title or any of the things she’d presented to him already. “Why?” Her hands still rested against the sides of his face.
“I…killed.”
“Ah.” She didn’t flinch or recoil. There was no gasp of dismay, no shadow of trepidation. Though by now Noah should have known better. “Tell me,” was all she said.
He stepped away from her then, afraid that, if he remained where he was, he would give in to the urge to simply kiss her and use that as an excuse to stay this conversation.
“I was in Bedlam for five years,” he said, trying to keep the facts separate from the emotion that was twisted through them. “From the time I was ten until I was fifteen.” He pulled a leaf off a bush and traced the tiny lines on its emerald surface with his fingers. “My father told the men who came for me that I was the gardener’s son, and I was committed under a false name. Presumably to spare the dignity of our family until such time that my faculties of speech could be fully restored.”
“What happened when you were fifteen?” Elise asked, and he was reminded of just how perceptive she was.
“We escaped.”
“We?”
Noah forced himself to speak evenly. “A boy, Joshua, the same age as me, who was committed before I arrived. Often, throughout the years, they would keep us chained together. Part of our individual recoveries, we were assured by the mad-doctors and the keepers, though Joshua had no trouble with speech. The night we escaped, we were such—chained together. One of the keepers on our ward had taken a fancy to Joshua. Abused him often in a manner I will not detail further. Fully intended to do the same on this particular night, regardless of the fact that we were shackled together. Because we were shackled together. The man told me to watch. He told me I might learn something before it was my turn. He never got the chance.” Noah realized he had shredded the leaf in his hands and he let the pieces fall, watching them flutter over the toes of his boots. “Along with the keys, the bastard carried a knife at his belt. I waited until he was…distracted. And then I was quicker than he.” He dropped his head. “And I can’t be sorry for it. I’d do it again.”
Elise was watching him silently, her eyes shadowed by her cap and completely unreadable.
“There were others. After I escaped. I lived on the streets of London for three years, and there were those who would have seen me gutted if only for the clothes on my back.” He dropped his head. “I was quicker than they as well.”
A quiet settled and stretched on, the wind whistling through the braches overhead before subsiding again. A raven cawed loudly before it too fell silent.
“I am no use to Abigail if I am arrested for murder upon my return,” Noah said, if only to break the stillness.
Elise tipped her head but still remained mute.
“Say something,” Noah demanded.
“Why are you glad that Abigail is ignorant of what happened to you as a child?”
“What?” That wasn’t what he had been expecting. He’d been expecting platitudes, reassurances that he’d done what was necessary, appeals to ignore any lingering guilt. All things that Joshua had continually intoned in the months after their escape.
“Do you not think Abigail is strong enough to handle the truth?”
Noah blinked. “My sister is one of the strongest people I know.”
“Then why keep her in ignorance?”
“Because I do not wish her to know what I did. What I became.” That sort of darkness was his burden, not hers.
“What you became,” Elise said, “is the man you were always meant to be. Every tragedy, every joy, every achievement and every failure has made you the man who stands before me now. You can’t hide from him forever.”
“I…” Noah trailed off helplessly.
“This is why you haven’t seen or spoken to your sister? Why you’ve hidden on a farm in Nottingham?”
“Yes.”
Elise shook her head before looking up at him intently. “Your parents abandoned the Duke of Ashland when he was ten years old, because they incorrectly believed him to be incapable. Incapable of one day embracing the power and wealth and responsibilities and all the good that might come of those things when that child grew into a man. Do not allow Noah Lawson to do the same. Come with me to London. Your sister deserves to know the man you’ve become.”
“Did you not hear me?” Noah finally found his voice. “I’ll be arrested.” He hated how defensive he sounded.
“You will not be arrested. Thanks to your parents’ vanity, or desperation, or both, Noah Ellery did not exist in Bedlam. Further, the old building and most of its records no longer exist. If you desire to return to London as the Duke of Ashland, I can provide you with a fully plausible explanation for your lengthy absence, complete with any required paperwork and evidence.”
Noah stared at her.
“Chegarre and Associates is a firm with far-reaching resources, Your Grace,” Elise told him. “I would suggest that you use them.”
Noah’s fingers curled into fists, a faint sense of unreality encroaching on this entire conversation. “Has nothing I’ve told you disturbed you?” he asked roughly. “Does the fact that I am a killer not give you pause?”
For the first time, Elise looked away, her composure slipping ever so slightly, a shadow of what looked like grief passing over her features. “No.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I understand that what you had to do is not who you are.”
She was standing stiffly, and with a dawning comprehension, Noah realized that the soldier’s clothing was not a disguise. The rifle she carried was not a theater prop. No more than the haunted look that had crossed her face was fabricated. This soldier standing before him was part of who she was. “You know what it’s like. To kill.”
“Yes.” It was barely audible.
“You were a rifleman.” It wasn’t unheard of. Noah had heard tales from Waterloo of women who had followed their men into battle and fought at their side. He couldn’t imagine that the colonial armies were any different.
“No. I was a tracker, meant to locate American troops and guns and report their movements and numbers.” She was studying the forest, and Noah recalled exactly how easily she had vanished through such terrain. “I too did whatever was necessary so that I might live to see the next sunrise.”
She was paler than he had ever seen her, her eyes fixed inwardly on something that only she could see. But in her voice he could hear the same note of despair and desolation that was so familiar to him. She understood what it was like to be forced into situations where there were only two outcomes. Kill or be killed.
Noah moved then, coming to stand before her, his fingers cupping her jaw, and without thinking about what he was doing, he kissed her.
It was a brief, gentle kiss, one that simply offered the things that she had already offered him. Understanding. Strength. Compassion. He felt some of the stiffness drain from her body, and he dropped his hands, gathering her close to him. She let herself be drawn into his embrace.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Because you were looking back,” he whispered, resting his forehead against hers.
“You sound like my brother.”
“Smart man.”
“He has his moments.” They were silent for a long minute.
“Why did you fight?” Noah asked into the silence.
“Why are you in Nottingham?” She answered his question with her own.
“Because I couldn’t leave Abigail. I needed to know she was safe.”
Elise pulled away from him then. “And I couldn’t—wouldn’t leave my brothers. They were my entire world.” Elise ran her fingers down the barrel of the rifle that still rested against a tree trunk. “This Baker rifle belonged to Jonathon. My oldest brother. But I was always better with it than he.” She smiled sadly. “Our venison stores for winter made it hard for him to argue the fact, though it didn’t stop him from trying.”
“You miss him.”
“Every day.” She raised her eyes to his. “Like you miss your sister. But unlike my brother, Abigail is still here to see. To touch, to talk to—” Elise stopped abruptly, her entire body stilling.
Noah frowned, before he became aware of the sound of Square barking in the distance.
“Does your dog usually bark like that?” Elise asked, picking up her rifle.
“When we’ve visitors.” Noah didn’t like the unease that rooted within him. Bloody hell, but Elise had him jumping at shadows.
Elise was already moving, slipping through the trees and the thick foliage. Noah followed, nearly crashing into Elise’s back as she stopped abruptly near the edge of the wood. He peered over her shoulder, feeling ridiculous, and even more so when a wagon pulled up in front of his house and Sarah was helped down by her husband. At their feet Square bounced happily and was rewarded with a rub from John.
“It’s John and Sarah, for God’s sake,” Noah grumbled. He watched as Sarah carefully lifted a bundle of green fabric out of the back of the wagon and headed toward the house, raising a hand in greeting as Mrs. Pritchard opened the front door.
“Sarah looks pretty,” Elise commented by his side.
For the first time, Noah noticed that Sarah was indeed dressed up, in a gown of pale blue. Beside her John had on neat breeches and a coat Noah had never seen before. They looked as if they were going to—
“Bloody hell.” Noah ran a hand through his hair.
“What’s wrong?” Elise turned to look at him in concern.
“They’re here to pick us up. For the picnic.”
Elise blinked at him.
“The one they invited you to after you plucked Andrew out of the river. The one you agreed to attend as their guest of honor.”
“Ah.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I had forgotten.”
“Will you come?”
She hesitated. “Is it necessary for you to attend this picnic?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Attending will leave you exposed. There will be crowds.”
Noah marshaled his patience. “The crowds that you mention are made up of neighbors. Friends. People who know me. Though I can make excuses on your behalf.”
“Absolutely not. If you are going, then I must as well.”
“You must?” Noah raised his brows.
“Yes.”
“As what? My bodyguard?”
“If you insist on calling it that.”
“For the love of—” Noah ran his hands through his hair. “We’ve been over this. Even if I believed that there were assassins on my trail, I do not need you hovering over me.”
“I won’t hover. In fact, you won’t even know I’m there. I’ll channel my inner Robin Hood.”
“That’s absurd. I know these people. There will be no assassins at the picnic.” He let sarcasm creep into the last.
Elise shrugged. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
He tried to be irritated, but something in the way she said it made him feel warm inside. It made him want to kiss her all over again. He cleared his throat. “Fine. Then you will attend the picnic with me like a regular human being. You will not hover. You will be a gracious guest of Sarah Barr’s. And you will not bring your rifle.”
“Yes to the first three. But I’m bringing my rifle.” Her jaw was set.
“Tell me you’re jesting.”
“Does it look like I am? I need to be sure I can keep you safe.”
“So what? You’re going to walk around with a loaded rifle and point it at everyone until I give you some sort of secret signal that they are a friend?”
Elise flushed. “If I have to.”
“You do not need a damn rifle at a damn picnic.”
“Fine. I’ll leave it hidden in the wagon if that sounds better.”
“No, it doesn’t sound better. It still sounds crazy.” He laughed without humor. “And I would know, wouldn’t I?”
Elise’s lips thinned, and she looked away. “I don’t like fighting you,” she said suddenly. “I wish you would trust me.”
“Trust you?” Noah felt his forehead wrinkle. “You are the warden to my darkest secrets. You know more about my past than any other person. I have no choice but to trust you.”
Elise shook her head and met his eyes again. “You’ve confided in me, and for that I am grateful. Honored. And there will never come a time when I betray that confidence. But trust is very much a choice. And if you truly trusted me, we would not be having this argument.”
It was Noah’s turn to look away.
“You’re wanted, Noah. Needed. Loved. Not just for what you have the potential to do, but simply because of who you are.” The steel was back in Elise’s voice. “Your sister believes in you. She always has, and I think you know that.”
Noah didn’t give a damn about Francis Ellery or his debts or whatever designs he had on the Ashland fortune, though it angered him that he had drawn Abigail into his greed-driven machinations. But Elise was partly right. For the first time, Abigail needed her brother more than he had ever needed her. At the very least, she needed to know she wasn’t alone. And as for his mother…Noah closed his eyes. Every time he tried to find the forgiveness he knew he should possess, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the curtain at the window dropping as she turned away from a terrified child.
He suddenly felt the brush of Elise’s lips over his and his eyes snapped open. “Don’t look back, Noah Ellery. Because I believe in you too. And when you understand that, then you’ll trust me.”
Noah stared at her, a tiny ember of impossible hope igniting and struggling to cast light into the dark pit that was his past.