“Don’t listen to anything he tells you, Caroline! He’s a thief, a liar, and a drunk. I’m coming.” Determination echoed in his voice.
Running footsteps from behind warned her that the baron was all too close for her liking. There was bridge up ahead that spanned the narrowest part of the Serpentine. The handsome stone construction of it made it gleam almost white in the moonlight. As soon as she gained the structure, John appeared at the other end. “John!” Relief shot down her spine. “Run! Your father has a pistol.”
“Damn interfering wench.” Lord Westfield’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder. He yanked her backward, pulling her hard against his body. “I asked nicely but won’t make the same mistake again.” Annoyance rumbled through the whispered words. He pressed the nose of his pistol into her left side while holding her to him with his right arm wrapped about her middle. “Now we’ll have to do things the difficult way.”
The area was dark, for no gaslights had been installed there. It wasn’t a heavily travelled section of the park, especially at night; most people preferred the other end of the Serpentine, where it was wider and more idyllic with fountains and beautiful landscaping. Sounds of carriages rumbling along the main streets and through the park echoed in her ears.
John halted with one foot on the bridge at the opposite side. “Damn it, Father, release my wife immediately.”
“Once you’ve given me the ransom.”
Fear twisted up her spine in an effort to steal her breath. “Don’t do it. He lies. Said he’ll marry can someone kill me so you else.” Then because the events of the evening had severally taxed her strength, plus the trauma of realizing her mother was indeed dead continued to plow into her, tears welled in her eyes. They spilled onto her cheeks. Just the sight of her husband made everything better, but they were both in danger. “He thinks me insane but he’s hurting with grief.” How did her words choose what times to order themselves clear? “Wants you to marry someone else.”
How could she go on if she lost him?
“Don’t let what he says poison your mind, Caroline.” Slowly, John crept forward, step by step as if unsure of what might set his father off. “You know what’s right and what’s wrong and what is true. I would never hurt you or do anything that wasn’t what you wanted. You remember that, right?”
She concentrated on the stark white of his evening shirt and cravat, of the gloves he still wore, remembered the grin he reserved for her, the way his eyes lit whenever he saw her or the way his whispers in the dark made her feel tingly inside. “Yes.”
The baron snorted. “He’s the one who lies. Do you truly think any man in his right mind would choose to wed you, to have a life with one of your affliction?”
“John is a good man.”
“Yet you are tainted. Broken.” There was no mirth in the man’s laugh. “You are consigning him to a dark future.”
“No.” When she attempted to squirm away from the baron, he tightened his grip and dug the nose of the pistol harder into her side.
“Caroline!”
A whimper escaped her. “John!” She threw a panicked glance his direction. “I don’t want to die. My is dead mother. I don’t want that also.”
“I know, sweeting. We shall talk about it in a bit.”
Then she understood the baron’s motivation as she began to realize that her own anger wasn’t merely that; it was grief—for her wasted life, the stolen time, the lack of understanding, the deaths of her parents that she couldn’t yet process. “I am… sad,” she told John, temporarily ignoring his father. “Feel that is what I do.” And the baron missed his dead wife—John’s mother. Perhaps he mourned for the life he once had as well.
We are not that different at all.
“That makes sense, and I want to hear more about that after this.” He nodded, but his expression remained wary. “I won’t let you die. That’s a promise.” His tones were soft, soothing. The sound of the constantly moving water nearly snatched them away.
Forever the dashing hero.
Lord Westfield scoffed. “You make me ill. What sort of man encourages and grows a sensitive side?”
“The kind of man who has seen a lifetime of violence and death during that travesty of a war and wants no more of that.” Even from a distance, the hard clench of his jaw was evident. “Or perhaps the sort of man who was abused as a child—both physically and emotionally—by someone who knew better but did it anyway because it was the easy choice, the only choice he knew… a man who only wanted praise and love from his father.”
“Bah. You understand nothing of what drove me back then. You know nothing of it now.” Yet there was a faint note of fear in those words.
Why?
“It matters not.” John took another few steps forward. “There was no effort made by you to apologize, to reconcile, or to even explain. You chose instead to destroy yourself and the title so there’s hardly anything left of both. It will take generations to repair what you’ve done, and that’s the worst crime, for that means time I’ll have to take away from the things I adore the most. It will harm any children Caroline and I might have.”
Her heart squeezed. Did he want that with her?
The baron’s body went taut. “Why the hell couldn’t you have paid attention to the things I enjoyed? Why couldn’t you have been a real son?”
John snorted. “When did you give me that choice?”
As his grip went slack for a few seconds, Caroline attempted to dart away, but the baron was quick even if he was distracted. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her backward.
Pain exploded along her scalp. “Please. Let me go. Talk to John.”
“No. This interlude has gone on long enough as it is.” He pulled tighter, grinning when she whimpered, and tears coursed down her cheeks. “Where is my ransom money, boy? That’s my immediate concern. If you don’t show it to me within the next few minutes, I swear I’ll put a hole through this worthless woman you call wife. And then I’ll come after you. My creditors won’t care regardless.”
Oh, John, please be careful, and if you can’t, please walk away so that you can be clear of this desperate, sad man.