Page 79 of A Virgin for the Icy Highlander
“What is goin’ on, Oscar?” Hunter asked, feeling as ifhemight like a tonic to clear his foggy head.
He should have been elated that his daughter was safely home—and he was—but it had been somewhat tempered by the quarreling. Still, as much as it irked him, he knew better than to defy his aunt’s orders. If she thought Ellie needed peace and quiet for her recovery, she was probably right. Not that he was happy about it.
“Where did ye find me daughter?” he pressed, when Oscar didn’t answer his first question.
With a weary breath, Oscar began to tell a terrible tale of a headstrong bride who had gone after a missing child. It was a bewildering, confusing story, with the kind of ending that offered little comfort, for only the child had made it back to where she belonged.
“Where is me bride, then?” Hunter hissed. His fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms.
Oscar dragged a chair out from under the feasting table and sat down with a thump. “She left, Hunter. Like I said, she left.” He tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I didnae want to leave her with him, but… I asked her many times if it was what she wanted, and she said it was.
“She told me she loved the man and had been waitin’ for him for three years, but thought he didnae love her anymore. Turns out he did, and he came back for her. She said to tell ye that she’s goin’ back to England with him, where she belongs; that she made a mistake, and that she was sorry for wastin’ yer time.”
Hunter took a seat before his legs stopped holding him up. “And ye believe she meant it all?”
“I dinnae ken, Hunter. Aye and nay. It’s… hard to explain.” Oscar rocked forward, hunching over. “At first, it seemedlike she was sacrificin’ herself for Ellie, considerin’ the bastard had a pistol and all. But then she said all those things, and she wasnaeunconvincing. Honestly, I still cannae believe she was right—that Ellie was at that school.”
Hunter took a few slow breaths, knowing that if he let his anger take control, he would smash the Great Hall to pieces. If he did, he’d still be none the wiser about why Grace had done this, and why this unknown viper of an Englishman had taken his daughter as bait.
“Did Grace seem like she kenned who’d be waitin’ for her there?” he asked as evenly as he could.
Oscar pursed his lips in thought, squinting his eyes as if it might help him to remember better. “Nay, I dinnae think so. She had that note she found in Ellie’s chambers, but she thought her braither had written it. She thought he was lurin’ her out in order to take her back to England.”
“Why would she think that?”
Oscar scratched his temple. “So their faither wouldnae lose his mind about her marryin’ ye. Her braither had heard about the weddin’, ye see, though I dinnae care to hear how. It’s why she asked me to come with her—to scare her braither, I suppose.”
“Why did she nae ask me?” Hunter asked, fighting the urge to put his fist through the solid oak table.
“Hunter, ye werenae here,” Oscar replied bluntly. “She would have asked ye—said as much, in fact—if ye had. But ye were out searchin’, as ye should have been.”
Or she kenned that she might be tempted to return to London, and didnae want me there because she kenned I wouldnae let her leave…
Despite what had happened afterward, Hunter hadn’t forgotten what he said to her at the bridge. He’d warned her that he was dangerous, that she should be afraid, that he might ruin hertoo if she didn’t leave while she still had the chance. Maybe she hadn’t thought he was serious until Ellie had gone missing. All his words must have seemed a lot more real in the wake of something like that.
Maybe she’d started having doubts the moment Hunter had assumed that Trevor was to blame for the kidnapping, and seeing that note from her brother had presented an opportunity.
And when she realized it was an old flame instead, she seized the chance for a safer life.
After all, she hadn’t been there to hear what Trevor had said at the inn about wanting peace.
“Did he give a name?” Hunter asked.
Oscar nodded. “John Fitzwilliam, Earl of Huston.”
“Was his nose broken?”
“I didnae look closely enough,” Oscar replied, raising an eyebrow. “Ye dinnae think that… Nay, it couldnae be. She wouldnae have gone willingly if it werehim, would she?”
Hunter closed his eyes, remembering what she had mentioned about the man whose nose she had broken.
“I had a perfectly good reason for it—not that it mattered. I was sent away… even though hewas the one being vile. That is the short version of how I found myself at the Horndean School for Ladies.”
He wished fervently that he had asked for the long version, so he might be surer of the offender’s crime against her, so he could know, without doubt, if that man and John Fitzwilliam, Earl of Huston, were one and the same.
“Remind me of what she told ye to tell me,” he urged. “Start at the beginning again.”
Oscar puffed out a breath. “She told me she loved the man and had been waitin’ for him for three years, but?—”
