Chapter Twenty-Four
Georgina was still out of breath when Mal brought a linen cloth over, dipped in water from the washstand, and smoothed it over the insides of her legs with gentle precision.
She propped herself on her elbow to watch him, and he seemed to sense her amusement. “What?”
“You’re very tidy.”
He glanced at her, lifting an eyebrow. “I wanted to make sure you were comfortable.”
She felt something inside her soften. She was the first to look away, glancing out the window at the steadily deepening night.
It was odd, but sometimes the things he said embarrassed her more than all the things they’d done.
“I don’t know why you ever thought you weren’t romantic,” she said lightly.
Mal laughed and set the towel aside, and Georgina shrugged back into her dress, without bothering with the chemise and stays. Mal watched her for a moment before wrapping his kilt around himself in a haphazard fashion.
“Are you leaving so soon?”
“I don’t want my family to wonder where I am.” She looked down as she laced her bodice, a sense of unease creeping up her spine. It was the truth, but not all of the truth. She still wasn’t sure where they stood.
Physical intimacy was…rather wonderful…but unfortunately, it couldn’t answer questions that hadn’t been asked.
Suddenly, her hands were brushed aside, and Mal began to tie the laces. She glanced up, and whatever she’d been about to say died on her lips. Mal’s expression was one he’d never worn before. Hard and sad and a little angry, too.
“We’re leaving in two days.”
She felt her heart stop, stutter, start again, more weak than before. Two days? She’d thought…well, she didn’t know what she’d thought. She knew he couldn’t take Rochester’s place indefinitely. Eventually he’d be found out.
She supposed she hadn’t really been thinking about the future, at all. She’d been too caught up in the present, in Mal’s kisses and all the hot, heady things they made her feel. But in all her imaginings, since the moment he’d crashed back into her life, she hadn’t assumed their time together would be so short.
“You could come with me,” he said quietly.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t think I could,” she said, just as quiet. That tight little lump was back in her throat, making it difficult to speak.
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t leave my siblings. And you can’t go on like you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll get caught, eventually. No thief can be a thief forever. But you must know that already…you said you wanted to see your men settled. You never said what you were going to do once they were.”
She wanted him to tell her that he would stop, she wanted that more than she’d ever wanted anything, but he didn’t.
“Maybe I’ll settle down, too, eventually.” It was only partly what she wanted to hear, and the words seemed to give him pause, as though he hadn’t even considered the possibility before. “We could go anywhere in the Highlands you wanted.”
“Except here.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again.
No, he wouldn’t stay on Arden land. Not living side by side with everything he’d fought against. But she loved her family dearly, and she was already too far from Eleanor; she couldn’t imagine being separated from the rest of them as well. It would be too difficult a blow.
And for what? To watch Mal tempt fate over and over again until it killed him?
“That’s beside the point. Eventually, Mal? You were shot last time. You could have died. I don’t ever want to see you that hurt again.”
“I have the luck of the devil, lass. A bullet or two isn’t enough to stop me.”
She clenched her fists against the urge to reach out and shake him. To make him see reason.
“Everyone’s luck runs out at some point. You’re not indestructible, and if you really wanted change…” She trailed off. She knew he wasn’t going to like what she needed to say.
“What?”
“This isn’t the way to do it. You’re not changing anything, you’re just aggravating the landlords, and they only clamp down harder in response. And yes, some of them can be despicable, but that’s not always the case. The Highlands have never been very fertile, and now, with so many men returning from the war…”
“I know that,” he said. “I know it’s not a simple problem with a simple answer.”
“Then you know things will only get worse. If you truly wanted to help Highlanders, my brother knows men in the House of Lords—he could ask for favors. Maybe he could help you change laws to provide more protection for the tenants. Think of the good you could do if you worked together.”
“What makes you think I would ever let myself be beholden to an aristocrat?”
“He’s not just an aristocrat. He’s my brother.”
“He’s the earl of Arden. Christ, I’m not going to ask him for favors, and I sure as hell won’t ask him to ask other lords for favors.”
“That’s the way it’s done! That’s the way to make real change, not these petty rebellions,” she cried out, frustrated. “You’re just too proud and stubborn to acknowledge it.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “And you’re too scared to go with me.”
“I am not scared,” she said.
“Oh,” he said darkly, “you are. There’s no reason for all this armor otherwise. You love me, don’t you?”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out. It felt like her throat had seized up.
“And you have to know I love you. I tried to tell myself I came after you because I wanted answers. I tried to believe it. But that was a flimsy excuse. I wanted to see you again. That was all. I just wanted to see you. I missed you, when you left.”
Georgina’s eyes burned. “I missed you, too,” she whispered miserably. “But I don’t think…I don’t think—” Her voice broke. “If I go with you…I know how this will end.”
Mal turned away from her, and she wanted to cry out, she wanted to call his name, but she didn’t know what good it would do. Everything she’d said was true. And Mal could be so much more, he could do so much more than he thought—but he wasn’t going to accomplish anything unless he learned how to yield a little.
But she supposed neither of them had ever been very good at yielding.
He was as fierce as the land that had molded him, and maybe he was right about her, too—her strength wasn’t born, but built. A reaction to circumstances, a suit of armor that she’d needed once but didn’t know how to let go of now that she didn’t.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “In two days. I won’t come back.”
“I can’t go with you,” she said, voice raw and quiet.
“Then there’s nothing left to say.”
He walked out of his own cottage, and she flinched at the soft snick of the closing door, louder than a scream. Suddenly, her knees felt weak, and she had to brace herself against the back of a chair. Blindly, she lowered herself, pressing her face into her hands.
It felt like she’d jumped into cold water. Only a few minutes before, they’d been intimate, they’d been teasing each other. She’d been happy. Everything had unraveled so fast. And so irrevocably. The tangled threads were around her, and she didn’t know how to put them back together.
When she lifted her head, she couldn’t swallow past the sharp pain in her chest. For a frantic second, she forgot how to breathe. And then she had to bow her head, focus on drawing air in, on long exhales, until she calmed. It was only a minute or two, but it felt like an hour.
She would be all right, she told herself. She had her family and her home. She would be fine.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just lost something irreplaceable. For the very last time.
…
“You look like a corpse,” Abigail said helpfully from the front row.
Mal was sitting at his desk. After a sleepless night and no coffee, he felt like a corpse. For hours, he’d gone over their fight in his mind. He’d thought about things he could have done differently. Things he should have said.
And after going round and round and round in an unending spiral, he still hadn’t reached any firm conclusions.
Was Georgina right? Was he going about everything the wrong way because he couldn’t let go of his pride? Was he truly helping other Highlanders, or was what he did only for himself?
He’d been a soldier for years. He’d had purpose. And suddenly his world had been yanked from beneath his feet, in one fell blow—the war ended. His family was gone. He’d needed purpose when he’d returned to the Highlands, to the remnants of a broken life. He’d been half mad with grief, and stealing sheep—the planning of it, the execution—had given him a way to clear his mind. Something to focus on.
And he knew it was dangerous. He knew, like Georgina had said, that his luck would run out eventually—it was a fact that had troubled him when he thought of his men, but not when he thought of himself. If Mal died thieving, then so be it. At least it would be on his own terms—not fighting in someone else’s war, or trapped on a ship, weak from disease.
So he’d started, and he hadn’t stopped. He’d never planned to stop.
And he tried to tell himself that he gave most of the profits back. That he was doing a good thing, in the end.
But when he examined himself, and his motivations, coldly, objectively, he wasn’t sure he liked what he saw.
“Did you finish what I assigned?” he asked Abigail, after too long a moment. His head felt muddied.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Aye.”
She clearly didn’t believe him, and then, in a display that surprised him (and, if he was honest, touched him), she went to his desk, placing a square of marzipan on the corner.
“You won’t leave, will ye?” she asked.
He blinked.
“You’re the best teacher we’ve had. I’ve actually learned things since you’ve been here.”
“Any teacher could help you learn things,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “The second one, the one just before Frances and George, said I was too slow to learn figures. He didn’t even try to teach me.”
Mal’s fist clenched as unexpected fury shot through him. “He said you were too slow?”
She nodded, her cheeks a bright, painful red.
“Well. He was a right bastard, then,” Mal said. Abigail’s eyes widened. “Everyone learns at a different pace. It doesna mean you can’t learn.”
“I know that, now. And I like learning,” she said, stumbling over her words. “So it would be a shame if you left, too.” And then she stumbled over her feet, on her way back to the table, and practically plunged into her chair, looking down to hide her flushed face.
For the first time, Mal wondered about this Rochester. He might not even be a Highlander—the name certainly wasn’t Gaelic. Would he understand these students? Would he do his best to teach them, even when they struggled? Or would he, like the last teacher, simply give up on them?
When Mal left, would he be throwing them to the wolves?
But he shook his head. The fact of the matter was, he wasn’t Rochester. And he couldn’t pretend to be another person indefinitely.
“Abigail, what do your parents think of Lord and Lady Arden?”
She glanced up, her face now a rosy pink. “Oh, my ma and da like them a lot. They say they’re a lot better than the old earl. I don’t…I was young, then, you know”—Mal smiled at that—“but I think they used to worry before. They don’t worry like that anymore.”
Mal felt his heart clench, his feelings muddled.
Maybe he was fighting the wrong battle, but if that was the case, he didn’t know how to change it. He didn’t know what path to take.
Later, after lessons were done and Mal was alone in his cottage, he was still mulling things over when his thoughts were interrupted rather explosively.
From a distance, he heard the crack of what was unmistakably a gunshot.
His head jerked toward the sound, pulse kicking up in response. Cautiously, he cracked the door to peek out and was somewhat puzzled by the tableau unfolding in front of him.
A carriage had halted some distance away, a boxy black shape on the horizon. And circling it was a man on horseback.
No, it wasn’t a horse. It was a Highland pony. He recognized the stockiness of the large creature. Come to think of it, he recognized the man—the glint of light hair, the obstinate set of his shoulders.
Everything came together like a flash of light. Dread pooled in his stomach.
Mal took off across the moors, heading like an arrow toward Lachlan, who appeared to be in the act of committing highway robbery.