Katherine O’Neal (35 page)

“Until I came along,” she whispered.

“Until you came along. I knew who you were,
naturally. I knew you’d been trailing me across two continents. And
I vowed not to let you take the Van Slyke money without a
fight.”

She stared at him. “Let me get this straight.
You were protecting the Van Slykes from
me
?”

“Naturally. What did you think I was
doing?”

Suddenly, she began to laugh. “I was
protecting them from
you!
”

He smiled then. “It seems there have been
some serious misunderstandings all around. Have you a suggestion as
to how we might set things right?”

His eyes, so tormented moments ago, softened
tenderly as he looked into hers. She stretched up and kissed him.
“Thank you for telling me. I knew there were depths to you I hadn’t
begun to explore, but I had no idea you were so—”

“So what?”

“So wonderful.”

He grinned. “I’m delighted you think so.”

“Only—” She hesitated.

“What, Princess?”

“Must I worry? About Pilar, I mean?”

“That I pine for her and the child?”

“Yes.”

He was quiet. “I think a part of me grieves
for them still,” he began. “Just as a part of you grieves for your
child. I spent years in self-recrimination, thinking I could have
done something to prevent her death. But if you’re asking me if my
loving Pilar affects the way I feel for you...”

“That is exactly what I’m asking.”

He took her face in both hands. “Ah,
sweetheart, you’re the first happy thing that’s happened to me
since.”

She felt surrounded by a lovely warmth as she
went into his arms, as if she were snuggling into a soft blanket on
a bitter-cold day. She didn’t want to spoil what they’d found. She
wanted to cherish this feeling of acceptance, of love. But she
believed she had to say something. If they were ever truly going to
trust each other, she had to bring it out in the open once and for
all. “If only all my questions could be answered so readily,” she
murmured.

It was a moment before he spoke. She felt the
muscles in his arms tense and knew she was treading dangerous
waters. But she couldn’t stop now. Something compelled her to seek
the truth.

“Questions,” he asked, “or doubts?”

“Doubts.” Her voice was barely audible.

“What doubts, Princess?”

She swallowed hard. “Mace, have you ever
considered that it may have been Lance who betrayed you? Who told
the soldiers where you were? Who was responsible for the death of
your child and the woman you loved?”

He stiffened as if she’d thrust a knife into
his back. “Never!” He shoved her away from him.

She was startled by his stubbornness. “How
can you know for sure? You knew he was alive. Failure as a bluff
man that he was, it couldn’t have pleased him that you were
abandoning the con. I should imagine he came to think of you as his
bread and butter. Tell me, what did he say when you told him you
were giving up the life to fight with a band of idealistic
revolutionaries?”

He refused to answer.

“Mace, remember the night I gave you that
tarot reading? Remember my confusion? The cards told me Lance was
responsible for the loss of your child. I thought I had to be
mistaken.”

“Fortune-telling,” he scoffed.

“Then you tell me,” she persisted. “Who else
could it have been? Who coveted you enough to want to keep you with
him? Who needed you to cover his messy mistakes? Who would have
felt the most threatened by Pilar?”

“I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”

“Because you don’t want to?” she asked
quietly.

“Because I know he wouldn’t do it. You don’t
know him the way I do. You don’t know what he did for me.”

It was torture, asking him. She didn’t care
what Lance had suffered. She didn’t care what had made him the
monster he was. But she
did
care about Mace. “Tell me.” When
he turned and gave her a questioning look, she went to him and
gently touched his arm. “I love you, Mace. I need to know
everything, if we have any hope at all of—”

“Very well. It happened in London, when we
were quite young. I was teaching Lance to pick pockets. I saw a man
and thought I recognized him as someone likely to have enough cash
to make it worthwhile. I sent Lance out to pick his pocket. It
turned out the man was the high inspector—the toughest constable in
London. A man famous for his cruelty. The one man you’d never want
to get caught by. And I sent my kid brother out to pick his
pocket.”

He began to pace again, filling the cabin
with his size. “It was a two-man deal. I was to bump into him, and
Lance was to pick his pocket while he was distracted. But of course
the inspector knew at once what was happening. I recognized that
fact and took off, but Lance was always slow on the uptake. The
inspector hauled him off to the police station. I followed and
listened from outside the window.”

He raked a hand across his jaw. Saranda said
nothing. She was afraid if she said anything that he’d stop
talking.

“They began to beat him, badgering him
between blows. ‘Tell me who put you up to it,’ they kept saying. I
pressed myself against the wall and willed Lance to use his head.
Remember what I taught you, I reminded him. Tell them anything.
Flam them, for Chrissake.
But Lance was so stubborn, he
wouldn’t tell them anything. Even when they promised to let him
go.”

By now, he couldn’t stand still. He stalked
about the cabin like a caged tiger. Still, Saranda listened.

“They beat him for
hours
. I kept
thinking I should turn myself in, but I knew it wouldn’t do any
good. They were lying when they said they’d let Lance go. As long
as I was on the outside, I had a chance of getting him out. If I
joined him— I don’t know. Maybe I should have given myself up.”

“You know better than that.”

“I thought I did. But when I finally saw him,
I couldn’t help wishing I had. They beat him till he was nearly
dead. This belligerent runt who wouldn’t give in. The next day,
they tossed him out in the gutter like so much rubbish. His eye was
half out of its socket and nearly blind. Some of his teeth were
missing. I could barely recognize his face, it was so—”

He stopped, his voice choked up. Then he went
on. “I took him to the physician and had his eye sewn back, but he
was never the same.” He turned and looked at her. “You have to
understand. He did that for me. To protect me. Can’t you see how
touched I was by that? He would have died rather than see me hurt.
If you could have seen him at that moment—such devotion—he was so
beaten, so heroic... I never got over the courage he’d shown. In
spite of the fact that he was so pathetic and untalented as a flam
man, he refused to give in. It was the bravest thing I’d ever seen
in my life.”

“Much like your feelings later for
Pilar.”

He hadn’t thought of that—she could see it in
the startled flicker of his eyes. “Perhaps. I didn’t think anyone
in my whole family had the courage to do anything so noble and
unselfish. I’m not sure I ever would have. Right then and there, as
I waited for the doctor to tell me if he’d live or die, I made a
sacred vow. I vowed to protect Lance for the rest of his life.”

“Is that why you broke him out of prison
after he killed the American?”

“Of course. I meant to rescue my parents as
well, but I wasn’t in time. But at least I’d saved Lance. I
couldn’t bear to think of anything happening to him. I could never
again look at him without recalling what he’d done for me—the look
of worship in his one good eye even as he lay hurt and dying. I
can’t ever look at that eye without remembering his awful beating,
and why he took it.”

“I see,” she said softly. “But, Mace, even
the worst people are capable of great moments.”

The look he gave her was racked with pain,
his torn loyalties obvious. “I tell you, I can’t even think of him
without remembering. I’m not stupid. I know it’s mostly illusion. I
know he’s done some terrible things, things I could never
understand. But there’s goodness in him, Saranda. I know it because
I’ve seen it firsthand.”

“It may be
in
him, but it’s buried
deep, in a hundred deceptions. He’s far more cruel than he is kind.
And I know that because
I've
seen it firsthand. He may have
saved your life, but he ruined mine,” she finished, her words
devastating to him.

“You know if we’re to have a future, we must
put Lance behind us.”

“I don’t know how to do that. Not when you
refuse to see the truth.”

“What truth is that, Princess?” he asked
wearily.

“That Lance is the demon of both of us. Until
you realize that, there’s no hope.”

He took her arms in his hands and held her so
tightly, she trembled. “Don’t say that, dammit. You’re the first
hope I’ve had in longer than I can remember.”

“Don’t you think I want to believe it? But
you have to understand me, Mace. You can’t look at his face without
remembering what he did for you? Well, I can’t look at
you
without recalling what he did to
me
. I know what it’s like
to live your life consumed by guilt because of what Lance Blackwood
did. But how do you expect me to separate the two of you, when you
can’t even separate yourselves?”

“So it’s Lance that stands between us,” he
said quietly.

“You know it is.”

“You can’t forget what he’s done.”

“Would you expect that I could?”

“You can’t make love to me without thinking
of him.”

She dropped her head, avoiding his eyes.

“You can’t even look me in the face without
seeing
his
face. Is that it?”

“Yes. I keep seeing him laughing at me as he
hurt me. Seeing that awful glint in his eye. Like a rabid dog,
tearing at my throat. Not caring what I was feeling, just taking
his pleasure—if in his sick mind he even called it that—at my
expense. You have that happen to you, then tell me you could look
at the madman’s brother and not remember.”

“Yet you have little trouble looking at me at
other times.”

She didn’t understand him.

“Times other than those when you’re—aroused
by my presence?”

She hadn’t ever realized it, but it was true.
“You’re right.”

He came closer. “So it’s my touching you that
causes this confusion.”

“I’m hardly confused.”

“What would you call it when a woman looks at
a man who loves her and sees his brother instead?”

“Hopeless.”

“Hopeless is not a word in my vocabulary.
Not, that is, since meeting you.”

“Do I inspire you then?” she asked, unable to
resist a coy tilt of her head.

“You—inspire me in a number of ways.” His
voice, now hushed, sent chills up her spine. He moved closer still,
used his hands to part the curtain of her silvery hair, slipped
them beneath to grasp the sides of her neck. His touch was magic.
Instantly, she felt the familiar wanting that had made her weak
from the first. The effect on her no other man had ever had. She
never ceased to marvel at the spontaneous leap of her flesh beneath
his hands, at the responding vault of her heart within her breast.
Her breath caught like a trapped butterfly in her throat. Yet when
she raised her lashes and looked up at him, once again she saw
Lance Blackwood’s cursed face.

On the verge of tears, she turned her head
away.

“I see,” he said quietly, and dropped his
hands.

She felt desperately alone when he stepped
aside, adrift like a buoy in a restless sea. She wanted him with an
inconsolable longing. Yet—

What was the use? Why go over it again? And
again... and again...

“But you do want me?” he asked thoughtfully,
sounding more like a scientist in the midst of an experiment than a
man rejected.

“That’s the worst of it. If I didn’t want
you, we wouldn’t have a problem. Or—if I didn’t love you,” she
whispered.

He raised a derisive brow. “It’s your love
for me that keeps you from my bed?”

“Maybe I always loved you. God knows, I
didn’t want to. There was a time when I didn’t realize my feelings
for you, so it was easy. You were a mark—nothing more, nothing
less. I set my sights on you, and I was quite willing, thank you,
to do whatever was necessary to bring you to your knees.”

“Would that help? Were I to drop to my
knees?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t want you
cowering before me. Do you think I relish your fear of my refusal?
The very thing that attracted me in the first place was the sort of
man you are. A man who boldly took what he wanted. A man clever
enough to outwit anyone in the room. Sly enough to fool them all.
You see, I’m completely enamored of the confidence man in you. In
spite of my father’s wishes that I marry outside the profession, I
can’t help thrilling at your exploits. You’re—everything my father
didn’t want for me.”

“I’m everything you loved about your father.
And more.”

“Quite an assumption, that you’re more than
my father at anything.”

“I’m assuming your feelings for me aren’t
daughterly in nature.”

She blushed. “Not exactly.”

“So, you despise the fact that I’m a
confidence man, yet that’s also what you love about me. Do I have
it straight?”

“I despise the fact that you’re a
Blackwood!
Nothing more.”

“Ah, so we’re back to that. But you were
saying? Something about loving me and the problems that
entails.”

“When I didn’t love you, I could close my
eyes and sleep with you for the sense of control it gave me. It’s
always been that way. Once I’d been—manhandled—by your brother, I
used the enticement of my body as a way of controlling men. Vowing
never to get myself into a position of weakness again. So I gritted
my teeth and made my
partners
weak with wanting
me.
”