“Mr. Stacy is dead,” she said. “You told me so. Mrs. Dalrymple told me so.”
“I said that I assumed him dead because he’d vanished from his home, and Mahindar heard a story that he’d died in Lahore. Obviously the story was wrong.”
“What about Mrs. Dalrymple? She is adamant that you murdered him.”
“Mrs. Dalrymple knows damn all,” Elliot growled.
Elliot watched Juliana try to catch her spinning emotions and make her practical nature deal with this new development. This made her the opposite of Elliot, who’d given in to letting his emotions do whatever the hell they wanted. Trying to suppress them only made him crazier.
Juliana didn’t like her emotions slipping out at all, he’d seen. She wanted order, not chaos. Elliot would have to show her one day that a little chaos wasn’t so bad a thing.
“Well,” Juliana said. “If Mr. Stacy is alive and has come to Scotland, then we must show him to Mrs. Dalrymple so she will stop putting about the preposterous story that you killed him.”
“It might not be that simple.”
“Why not? Presumably Mr. Stacy is hungry, or you’d not have left him the food. We’ll invite him to the house for a meal.”
She didn’t believe him, or at least didn’t believe in the danger. “Stacy has come to kill me. To hunt me. He hasn’t shown his face to me yet, but I know it’s him.”
“But if you have not seen him, how can you be certain?”
Elliot turned away. He ended up at the billiards table where he rolled a white ball across with his hand, unerringly striking a red. “Difficult to explain, love. Stacy and I were trackers and sharpshooters in the army. Every tracker has a style, and I recognize his. I taught him most of what he knows.”
“Do you mean like a hunter can tell what animal is in the brush from its spoor?”
He smiled at the billiards table. “Yes, but I’d rather not have to check his spoor.”
“Elliot.” Juliana came up behind him, her skirt rustling like soft leaves. “Are you certain?”
“Very certain, my love.” Elliot turned and rested his hands on her corseted waist. “I wish I weren’t.”
“Well, if you are right that he is here, at least it means you didn’t kill him.”
“Yet. I might have to.”
“No, you must call the constable and the magistrate. If you believe Mr. Stacy has come to harm you, he must be rounded up and arrested at once.”
“No,” Elliot said sternly. “The constable is a lad no older than Hamish, and Stacy would make short work of him. If I start a manhunt, Stacy will either slip the net or hurt those who get in his way. I don’t want anyone here in danger because of him. Let me do this my way.”
“By leaving him food?”
Elliot knew he had to be patient with her. Juliana didn’t understand, and he couldn’t force her to understand. “You will have to trust me.” He moved his hands under the swell of her breasts. “I’ll let him harm no one. I know what he’ll do, and I know how to coax him out.”
Juliana wet her lips. Elliot knew the thoughts she struggled through. He’d seen it in the eyes of everyone he’d spoken to since he’d escaped from his prison, including Mahindar. The painful doubt, the question—was Elliot truly mad?
Elliot was mad; he knew that. Else he’d not have the dreams, the flashbacks, the certain panic that he was still trapped inside the cell, even after all this time. He couldn’t explain that the thing he dreaded most was to wake up one morning and discover that this—what he had now—was the dream.
He was mad, yes. But not about this.
“Elliot?” Juliana’s voice held a note of uncertainty. Elliot realized he’d gone stone still, staring past her at nothing.
He said, “McGregor and I today found all the entrances to the house from the tunnels below and stopped them up.” In some cases, timber had sufficed, in others, he’d had the men screw down iron plates.
“Stacy will not get into the house,” he continued. “Whatever he and I have to settle, we’ll do out there. But you need to stay indoors, and not go out, not without me.”
Her eyes widened. “My dear Elliot, I cannot remain confined to the house. I have too much to do. I will have to go into the village for things for the fête, or perhaps to Aberdeen.”
Elliot shook his head. “Until this is resolved, send Hamish with instructions, or one of the other men.”
“And when might everything be resolved?”
“I can’t know. However long it takes me to find Stacy and face him.”
Again Juliana gave him her assessing stare, trying to cover emotion and uncertainties with practicality. “In that case, please tell him to resolve this before my fête and ball. I’ll not have him ruining my debut event at Castle McGregor.”
Elliot touched his fingers to her chin and pressed a swift kiss to her lips. “I’ll be sure to tell him.”
Juliana softened her impatient look into a smile then made to turn and leave the room. Elliot stopped her with a firm hand on her arm.
“Do not go out exploring yourself, Juliana.”
From the flash of guilt in her eyes, Elliot knew Juliana had been intending to do exactly that. He briefly wondered why the marriage ceremony bothered to contain the wife’s promise to obey her husband—he hadn’t met a woman yet who followed it.
“Pretend to believe me and stay safely indoors,” he said. He’d already told Mahindar to keep a close watch on Priti, and not to let her venture out the back door alone.
Juliana studied him, her blue eyes drawing him in, then finally said, “Very well.”
Of course, her ready capitulation, made in that soft voice, aroused his suspicions. “I mean it, lass. Whether you believe I’m insane or not, I want you safe.”
Juliana’s chin came up. “You asked me to believe you. Now I ask you to believe me. To err on the side of caution is not a bad thing. I wouldn’t wander about the land alone, in any case. What if I fell into a bog?”
Elliot suppressed a shudder, not needing that worry to go along with everything else. He didn’t fear so much what Stacy would do to him, but if anything happened to Juliana…
He’d rather go back to his horrible dark cell and the tortures there than let Juliana come to harm.
Elliot stilled at the thought. This was the first time he’d ever considered such a thing. His body and mind had been broken, but he realized on a sudden that his physical pain would be nothing to what could be done to his heart if something happened to Juliana.
He leaned to Juliana and kissed her again, savoring the heat of her against the length of his body. If Elliot lost her, if she were hurt…
He’d die.
Elliot pulled her closer, caressing the tension from the back of her neck as he deepened the kiss.
Never let her go, never lose her. They hadn’t been able to take her from him. He would let nothing take her now.
Elliot had to make himself release her. He knew Juliana wanted to get back to her organizing. She took refuge in her lists and schedules in the same way he took refuge in whiskey and in her.
Besides, keeping her here and playing out his fantasies would involve tearing the cloth on the billiards table, no doubt of that.
Elliot watched her walk away from him after she gave him one last kiss on the cheek, her small bustle swaying as she went. The driving need he felt to protect Juliana at all costs gave him several degrees of strength.
He remained staring for a long time at the door through which she’d strolled, examining this new feeling, watching the fragile spark of hope grow in the darkness like an ember gently blown to life.