Aching for Always (36 page)

She was watching him from her perch in the churchyard, and he damned her for it—and for bringing him
here—she the daughter of the man who had slaughtered his brother like a Christmas pig. He could still smell the fetid blood and hear the buzz of flies and his own harrowing sobs.

He thrust himself to his feet, his chest girdled in pain.

I have failed you, Bart. In the worst way possible. But Maggie's daughter lives. You must see I cannot hurt her. I saved her that day. And even if she weds the man who profits from Brand's terrible crime, you must see my hands are tied.

The steel tightened around his chest until each breath was like the plunge of a dagger.

He hated that she lived, hated that she warmed Reynolds's bed, hated that she had her mother's eyes, hated that her existence kept him from holding Bart's knife to Reynolds's throat and making him confess the extent of his crimes.

But she would not keep him from reversing Brand's ill-gotten fortune. If Joss had found such unbounded happiness with Reynolds, their love could bloody well survive the absence of wealth. Hugh would find that map, get it to the Lord Keeper and ensure Brand Industries was wiped from the face of history forever.

He marched down the rise and past a startled Joss. “Get in the carriage,” he said. “We've dallied here enough.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
 

She felt his silence like a blow and wondered what she had done to offend him. The carriage hurtled along the road at an alarming rate—Hugh had ordered the driver to make up the lost time—and she clung to her seat for support.

“Where are the maps?” he demanded. “Take them out.”

She bristled at the tone. “I don't think we'll be able to do much with them here.” She could barely hold herself upright.

“Nonetheless.” He flicked his wrist as if he were Emperor Commodus in
Gladiator.

“You do realize I'm not a servant. I have been helping you mostly of my own accord.”

He held out his hand. “The maps. Please.”

The “Please” fell considerably short of polite. “Perhaps it would be easier just to manhandle them out of my possession, like you did with the key to the map room?”

His hand remained in place, though the look in his eyes suggested they could easily reach that eventuality.
With a sigh, she collected the tube from the floor. She removed the London map, Fiona's Edinburgh map and, with a begrudging jerk, the color photocopy of the Manchester map. She capped the tube, careful not to reveal the archival copy of the East Fenwick map, reminding herself she owed Hugh nothing.

His eyes widened when he saw the Manchester one. “But how . . .?”

“There are things called computers. They can store copies. It turns out someone—not me—made one a long time ago. I printed them when I was in the office yesterday, before I ran into you on the street.”

He looked at the case, then at her. “You didn't tell me.”

The accusation was clear. She had known for at least a day and had not shared it with him.

She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. She'd expected him to be grateful, but he was playing the betrayal card again.

“No,” she admitted. “I didn't.”

She expected a harangue but didn't get it. She would have preferred a harangue, she thought, to the look of hurt surprise he wore. He took the maps from her hand and spread them on his lap, burying his gaze in the paper. “There's no excerpt from the
Aeneid.
”

“No. The excerpt must have been added after this copy was made. I don't know why.”

“But the cartouche is the same?”

“Yes, almost exactly, which was very unlike my mother. But you can see it's all there, just like in the other two: the sheep, the tower, the wild boar that's the symbol of the O'Malley family, the hunting dog with
bared teeth, the hawk—” She gasped. “The hawk. Hugh Hawksmoor. That's you.” The boar gazed happily into the sky at the circling hawk. Joss felt her world shift. It was as if everything she had ever known about her mother had been turned on its head. “Was my mother in love with you?”

“Not me. At least not the way you think.” His finger traced the wheeling hawk. “If the boar is your mother, then the hawk is my brother.”

“Your brother . . . who was murdered?”

“Aye.” He did not raise his eyes from the map.

“But how . . .? How did they . . .?”

“They met on my brother's ship. He, too, was a navy captain—a far better one than me. He was thirty then and your mother about two and twenty. Your father was brutal to her. I told you that. My brother was not.”

“You were there.” The realization shocked Joss, but it shouldn't have. Hugh had hinted that he'd known her parents.

He nodded. “And so were you.”

Joss felt a dizzying wave pass over her. “
I
was there?”

“Your father was in the past for several years. He met your mother there. I don't know how, but her mapmaking had something to do with it. He wooed her, won her and married her. And given the fact you were a tiny child of one or two as we sailed for the islet—”

“
I
was with you? With my father? With the East Fenwick map?”

“Aye, Joss. And your mother and my brother. You were born there, I think.”

She was astounded. She wasn't just an accessory after
the fact to this time travel. She had been there, witnessing the whole thing. And Hugh as well!

“How old were you?”

“I am thirty now.”

And she was twenty-two, which meant . . .

“You were ten!” she cried. “It was right before your poor brother was murdered.”

Hugh felt the conflagration rage within him—the fiery anger over his brother, the suffocating guilt of not being able to avenge him and the cooler, steadier flame that burned in his heart for Joss. But at the moment it was the steadier flame that gave him pain. However
he
might have acted, he had come to believe that Joss was incapable of deceit. She had fought him every step of the way—which was only honorable and right—but she had fought him openly. That she had hidden the map pained him more than he could say.

“I . . . Aye, it was near that very time.” He stared at the map, unseeing.

He also grieved for Joss; to hear such a story about her parents and to discover so much had been hidden from her for so long would be painful. Indeed, he could feel her shock even if he did not wish to meet her eyes. But she had chided him for hiding information about her mother, and he was determined to respect her wishes.

“You will pardon my distraction,” he said. “My brother is very much in my mind at present.”

She stared at Hugh's profile, confused. His brother had loved her mother. Had they made love? Had her mother
been an adulterer? Had her father known or suspected? And had Hugh thought the relationship between his brother and her mother a good thing or bad? She knew Bart had been Hugh's guardian and that after Bart was dead, Hugh's life took a turn for the worse—how could it not for a parentless young boy? And unlike her mother, Bart hadn't just died, he'd been murdered.

A terrible fear uncoiled in her.

“Did my mother leave my father for your brother?”

Hugh stole a glance at her and returned to the map with a long, quiet sigh. “Aye.”

Her lungs stopped. In one long, horrible second she saw everything exactly as it must have happened. Her father had murdered Bart. She was certain of it, absolutely certain. It explained Hugh's anger and her mother's enduring sadness—a sadness Joss had worked so hard and so unsuccessfully to lift. And Joss loved her father, even knowing what she knew, but it broke her heart to think that his unrelenting need for power and control could have led him to such an act. She couldn't deny it, couldn't say it wasn't in his character, and while she wished it weren't true—though that was like wishing the sun wasn't in the sky—she wished she had known the truth a long time ago, so she could have helped him atone for what he had done.

She wrapped her arms around her sides and began to mourn the father she had never known.

Hugh studied the map, though he barely saw what he looked at. He could feel the pain in her silence. How hor
rible it must be to discover your mother had left your father.

“Look at the border here.” He pointed to the cartouche's edge, hoping to distract her. “It has the same markings, though the dashes and lines and Vs and arcs seem to occur in different places, do you see?”

Her shadow fell across the map and a trembling finger traced the place he indicated. Then a large drop hit the paper and spattered in a circle.

She was crying!

His looked at her and his heart nearly broke. “Joss, what is it?”

“My father,” she said in a choked voice, while two more tears striped her cheeks. “He murdered your brother, didn't he?”

Hugh pulled her into his arms, heedless of the maps, and her body hitched as he held her. He had no right to keep the truth from her, though he wished he was not the one who would have to say the words.

“Aye. I'm sorry, Joss.”

“Sorry for
me
?” Her muffled voice rose from his chest. “Oh, Hugh, I'm so sorry for
you
.”

He pulled a handkerchief from his coat and put it in her hands.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“'Twas a long time ago.” He patted her back, unwilling to deepen her despair.

“Tell me,” she said. “Please.”

“I came home from a day playing in the fields and found his body lying in the dining room. Shot.”

“Oh, Hugh.”

“I knew when I walked up something was wrong. The cottage seemed empty, lifeless—and 'twas never like that when you and Maggie were there.”

She pulled back, cheeks wet, to look at him, amazed. “We
lived
with you?”

“You did. In Ashdown Forest. 'Twas the happiest year of my life. I loved Maggie as a mother. And I loved you, too.”

She fell back against him, and he hugged her as if she might disappear.

“I knew he must have taken you back with him.” He did not add that at first he'd feared they might both be dead. “I knew you were sad to leave me because you left a book Maggie had made for you. 'Twas one you loved to hear. When she was too busy to read it to you, I did. You made me tell you once it was my favorite, though it wasn't—I loved the tales from
The Odyssey
she told—but 'twas the only way to make you stop asking. You left it under my pillow. I found it that night.

“
The Tale of the Beautiful Mapmaker
?”

Hugh nodded.

“I have the barest memory of that book.” She touched her heart, incredulous.

“I only know it was your father,” Hugh went on, anticipating the obvious next question and hoping to save her from having to ask it, “because I was there on the islet when he returned to Pittsburgh the first time, map in hand.” Hugh would die before he would tell her Brand had been willing to abandon his daughter in order to ensure his wife would return with him to Pittsburgh. “Your mother said she was staying with Bart, that your father
could take his map and make a life for himself without her and you. She would not be a part of it.” That was as close to the truth as he would get, and it was close enough. “Your father told Bart he would come back and find him and kill him.”

She lay perfectly still against his chest. “But it could have been someone else?”

“Aye,” he lied. “It could have been.”

“But it wasn't.”

She began to cry again. He held her like this for a mile or more. It was a moment he could never have imagined—comforting the daughter of his brother's murderer and wishing for the first time the awful act had never happened, not for his own happiness, but to save someone else's. It was as if he could breathe again after a long time underwater. He opened his lungs and savored the sweet, fresh air.

She sat up and wiped her face. “Thank you for telling me. I'm sure it must have been awful.”

He took her hand. “'Tis awful for both of us. I wish it had been otherwise.”

All at once she started. “Hugh, if this map will change what occurred, will your brother be alive?”

How he hated to answer this question, for both their sakes. “No,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “The map will change everything from 1706 onward. My brother was killed in 1685.”

“Oh, Hugh, I'm sorry. Did you think that perhaps it might?”

“Aye. Once.”

She squeezed his hand, then blew her nose and at
tempted to regain her composure. “I have something for you.” She found the case where it had fallen and uncapped the lid. Wordlessly, she withdrew another wide sheet of paper and unrolled it.

His heart began to pound. It was the map of East Fenwick, the one that would restore each parcel of land to the rightful families. “You found it.”