If You Dare - Cole Kresley (книги онлайн полные версии бесплатно .TXT) 📗

"Grief?" Hugh asked, as he swung from the saddle.

He nodded slowly.

"Court, I wish I could tell you it'll get better." Hugh gave him a weary look. "But it does no'."

If this wouldn't get better, if everything continued to remind him of her…

"Where's the pretty Andorran?" Groot asked the minute they entered the posting house.

"Safe at home," Hugh answered for him when Court could only scowl.

"Good to know," he said absently as his wife called him to help with guests. They had another full house. Court sank down on a bench because his leg was paining him, and thought to himself that the seat wasn't too uncomfortable. He'd sleep right here before he took the room he and Anna had shared before.

Hugh crossed to the bar and helped himself to pouring two whiskies.

"You know, Hugh, got a missive for you," Groot said, leaning in to add, "From Weyland himself."

Hugh's brows drew together and the bottle slammed to the bartop. "Now, Groot."

When Hugh ripped open and scanned the message, he went rigid and his face grew tight, the lines there deepening. The new jagged gashes on his forehead and the side of his face twisted.

"What the hell is it?" Court had witnessed Hugh once in a killing fury, and it was a memory he would never forget. The savage look on Hugh's face right now was so far beyond that—it was chilling. Court rose, then limped over to work the note from a hand clenched so hard it was white.

MacCarrick,

Jane's life is in grave danger. Come quickly.

Weyland

"We ride now," Court said as he turned for the door.

"No, Court." When he looked back, Hugh shook his head hard. "I go alone."

As if Court didn't understand what he was capable of. "I owe you a debt greater than I think you comprehend. And I'll be payin' it now."

"God damn it, Court, no. You're injured, and I'll need two horses, which means yours as well."

"Of course, but—"

Less than a minute later, Court stood outside with the wind swirling around him as he watched Hugh ride off at a reckless clip. Court was confident he'd reach her in time, and could almost pity whatever force had jeopardized Hugh's Jane. In fact, his only concern was if Hugh would be strong enough to resist his feelings for her. For Hugh's sake he hoped the shameless chit had outgrown her teasing.

Court ran a hand over the back of his neck, considering his own situation. Damn it, Hugh had been all that had gotten him out of Andorra. If his brother hadn't been there to warn and rail and commiserate with him, Court doubted he could've left. Now the temptation to return and find her was nearly overwhelming.

He watched the setting sun through a veil of darting leaves, but everything was dead to him, the colors muted. He had no plans, had no idea what he would do. He could go east with the others and ride for Otto or head north for home. He could go south….

Anna was better off without him. Established. But was she happy? Or was she as bloody miserable and bad off as he? Was she dreading her trip to Castile?

He'd given his oath to Llorente not to see her. Vowed not even to go near her.

And Llorente had proven himself a decent man. He'd presented Hugh with a fine steed for his help. To Court he'd offered a handshake, which was "much, much harder to part with."

In return Court again had given his word.

Hugh and Ethan had accepted their fates. But Court had dared to defy it for a time, and that was the only time in his life truly worth living.

He thought of the ten lines that had been seared into his mind the first day he'd seen the Leabhar, and narrowed his eyes. As the wind picked up again, rattling the trees, he turned to the south.

Court had a feeling he'd given Llorente his word as a gentleman.

Which was bloody convenient.

Autumn had arrived here on the mountain, and as regular as a clock, the meadow turned indigo with blooms. Annalia sank into the flowers to watch the sun go down—and to get away from Aleix and Olivia as they vainly tried to hide their feelings for each other. Annalia wanted to shout at them that she was enceinte, not stupid.

She plucked a bloom, then pulled the binding from her hair. Why not let it flow free? Would people talk? The way she was growing, in another month they'd have much more to talk about….

In response to the news of her condition, Aleix had wanted to kill the Highlander or drag him back here and "force him" to marry her. Another dismaying option he'd talked about was going to the family in Castile. "Should I take her there?" he'd asked Olivia. Asked Olivia!

Annalia answered again and again, "I don't want to marry anyone you'd have to force to the altar or anyone sight unseen." Besides the fact that she was still miserably in love with MacCarrick, Annalia refused to go to Castile, the very image of her mother, carrying a bastard.

Olivia's solution? Do nothing until they found MacCarrick. "His mother will tell him soon enough that Annalia is pregnant. He'll know the book is wrong, and then he will find her wherever she may be. If she is wed, he will kill the unfortunate groom for touching her and collect her regardless."

"Yet it could be months before he returns to London or receives any message from us," Aleix had pointed out. "Years, even, if he rejoins his men to the east. Her child will be a bastard in seven months if we don't get her married!" But fortunately, he'd taken her advice. Olivia usually did give good advice.

Since they'd arrived home, Olivia had settled in here, which wasn't that difficult since the people at the ranch were grateful to her for freeing Aleix. Even Vitale liked her. Annalia could only guess that he sensed a hardness in her, a fellow survivor, and respected her….

"It's getting chilly," Aleix said from behind her as he pulled a shawl over her shoulders.

Before long, the snow would come, sealing them in from the rest of the world as though in a cocoon. "I just want to watch the sun go down."

"The guards don't like you out after dark." Aleix had hired the men Ethan sent down, as they'd planned, until everything was settled in their country and around. She rarely saw them. Mostly they stayed at the foot of the mountain at the narrow passage to the plateaus. "How are you doing?" he asked.

She tried to answer lightly. "Besides being unmarried, with child, and abandoned, I'm far too splendid." She'd merely accomplished sullen, and sighed. "I believe I've topped even Mother's…peccadilloes."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Her affairs." She waved her hand as if she didn't care. "Everyone always said I looked just like her, that I was just like her."

"Affairs?" he choked out.

She faced him with a frown. "I've heard the rumors. I know she abandoned her family because of…passion."

"You think that's why Mother wasn't here?" he asked, his voice incredulous. "She had an affair with a man—a good man named Nicolas Beltran—whom she'd been in love with her entire life." When she shook her head in confusion, he continued, "They were caught eloping, and the family sent her away. It would've been as if someone had forced Mariette away from me the night before our wedding to marry an older stranger in exile. Mariette would've wanted me to come for her and nothing would've stopped me."

"But what took him so long?" she asked, becoming completely lost in the story.

"When the family was through with him, he was penniless and in ill health. He had no idea where she'd been taken, and it took him years to find her."

She gave him a bitter smile. "Yes, but when he did, she left me, her own daughter, for him. It didn't affect you as it did me. You were grown, but I was devastated."

"Annalia, she didn't go voluntarily. When Llorente found them together, he disowned her, forbidding her to come near you. Beltran took her to France, where she wrote daily to Llorente, begging him to let her see you. She journeyed here again and again, but he always intercepted her. She didn't stop trying until she died, a year later."