Page 83 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
“I-I couldn’t breathe-couldn’t seem to die, either,” he rasped. “I don’t know how long I fought for my life. It felt like eternity. The crowd blurred before my eyes. The last thing I saw was Ewan’s face. My last thought was that, if I had to come back from hell itself, I would find a way to make him tell the truth.”
James massaged his neck. He drew in a steadying breath before he was able to speak calmly once more. “When I next regained consciousness, I was not in heaven or hell, but Dr. Glencoe’s cottage. My throat swathed in bandages, I felt like I had swallowed fire, but I was alive-if you want to call it that.
“As recompense for saving me, Glencoe insisted I take my mother and brother and go away. I was in no further danger from the law, because a man who survives hanging is generally pardoned. But the old man feared the vindictiveness of Ewan Grantham. Perhaps he feared my own black temper even more. I wanted to get at the truth of Julianna’s death, and if there wereany besides Lord Carleton who had had a hand in it, I wanted them to pay. But for my mother’s sake, and for Jason’s, I was persuaded to go. We salvaged what few belongings we could from the shop, and set sail for Canada.
“My mother was a gentle woman, Phaedra, far too gentle. Losing Julianna, the grinding days of my trial, witnessing my execution and return from the dead, having to flee our home- it was all too much for her. She fell ill on the voyage. I believed she might have recovered if she had had the will. As it was, Jason and I could do nothing but watch her slip away.”
His words trailed to silence. James turned from Phaedra to stare out the window, his story done. Her heart weighted with the sharing of his grief, the horror he had survived, it was some moments before Phaedra could speak herself.
“But now, after seven years, you have come back,” she said.
He bowed his head in ironic acknowledgment.
“Why?” she breathed, knowing the answer to her question, hoping to hear she was wrong.
“I would have thought that would be patently obvious, my dear.” He swiveled to face her, his eyes narrowed to shards of ice. “I’ve come back to learn the truth of sister’s death and to crush those responsible for destroying my family.”
“Carleton Grantham is dead. So is Ewan.”
“Aye,” James said, his soft voice chilling her. “But Sawyer Weylin is very much alive.”
Nineteen
Phaedra bolted up from her chair. “Not Sawyer Weylin,” she cried. “It is my grandfather that you threaten.”
“You have no need to remind me of that,” James said tersely.
“It is a fact that I have cursed more than once.”
She stretched out her hands to him in a gesture of appeal. “I understand your hating Ewan, wanting revenge against him, but?—”
“Ewan’s dead.” The savage regret in James’s voice caused her to recoil from him.
“So you have transferred your fury to my grandfather and perhaps to me as well.”
“No! Never would I hurt you. You must believe that. You are more a victim of Weylin’s scheming than anyone. Did he not sell you to the devil in marriage?”
“But what has my grandfather ever done to you?”
“He was part of the plot that destroyed my family. Can you not see that? He must have witnessed the fight between me and Carleton that night,” James said. “Yet he made it appear as though he stopped me in the act of murder. Weylin neverattended my trial, but he allowed Ewan to come forth and tell his lies. He very likely was the one who persuaded Ewan to testify.”
“But-but,” she faltered. “My grandfather would have had no reason to?—”
“Wouldn’t he?” James’s voice grated harsh against her ears. “If he knew all about Lord Carleton’s plans to abduct my sister, it would have been in Sawyer Weylin’s interest to silence any questions regarding her disappearance. And to do that, Weylin had to silence me.”
Phaedra opened her lips, wanting to deny it, but no sound came. She knew her grandfather to be ruthless, but he held to his own code of gruff honesty. And yet balanced against that was his obsession with raising his family into the ranks of the aristocracy, securing a title for his heirs. Would the wily old man have gone so far as to see a young girl destroyed, an innocent man hanged, if he could thus further that goal? The mere suspicion of such a thing made Phaedra sick with despair.
Yet the concern that clutched at her heart was not so much for her grandfather as it was for James. When she saw the hatred burning in his eyes, she hardly recognized the man she loved.
She touched the rigid curve of his cheek, “And this is how you’ve spent the last seven years of your life, plotting to be avenged upon a weak fool like Ewan and a gout-ridden old man?”
“No.” A bitter smile touched James’s lips.”I spent the last seven years trapping fur and getting rich, trying to bury the past as my brother did. But I am not cut from the same cloth as Jason. I could not forget, though God knows I tried.” He resumed his restless pacing as though the emotions churning inside him would not let him remain still. “The hatred I felt kept festering within me until finally Armande said?—”
“Armande?” she echoed, startled.
“My trapping partner, the most noble Marquis de Varnais. A bandy-legged little Frenchman who wouldn’t be caught dead in these satins and silks.” James gave the lace at his wrist a contemptuous flick. “He despises his title as much as your grandfather covets it.”
“So you stole his identity.”
