Carson’s bald head poked into the study. “Boss,” he said, the deep bass of his voice resonating in the savaged room. He whistled through the gap between his front teeth as he looked around. “I heard a shot.”
Lucian pointed at Matthews, who still hadn’t moved. “Take him to the basement. Bring him water and bread and stay with him.”
Disheveled and bloodied, Harriet stood amid the debris, watching him with a blank look in her eyes. He went to her, wrapped her in his arms, and held her so close. He felt every precious breath she drew against his chest.
She came to him later, when the sky outside his chamber windows had turned a pale rose and he was stretched out on his bed, capitulating to the effects of hot whisky and crushing fatigue. She wore one of her thickly ruffled nightgowns and her red hair loose around her shoulders, and wordlessly she crept onto the mattress. She lay down beside him, so close the whole short length of her was touching him. He embraced her eagerly, enjoying the tantalizing feel of her soft weight in his arms. She smelled of warm skin and finely milled soap after her hot bath. She was still shaking, as if frozen to the bone. He made a soothing sound.
“We had a terrible row, you and I,” she said, her voice muffled by his chest.
He stroked her hair. “Under the circumstances, I call a truce.”
She burrowed into him, and he held her more tightly. There was only one way to be even closer, and she did not seem in the mood for his attentions. Well, there had been a terrible row.
“I keep thinking,” she said, the words coming haltingly, “I keep thinking: What if you had read Matthews’s ghastly note and thought I’d run away, and I would have died before I could tell you the truth?”
His shoulders shook with a quiet laugh. “Nah,” he said. “I read the note. Obviously, you hadn’t written it.”
“How would you know?” she said. “I left you before, in Drummuir.”
“I’m aware,” he muttered. The memory was a dark smudge on his mind, like something singed. His latent fear of losing his selkie had roared to life when she had begun packing.
“Matthews’s note was written flawlessly,” he said. “You can’t write straight for the life of you.”
“Oh,” she said. He stroked the dip of her waist, then her hip, sensing how her mind was roiling. “Saved by word blindness,” she finally murmured. “Who would think?”
Her breathing was still erratic, her teeth still chattering, and so he held her, comforting himself by comforting her.
“How did you know to bring your revolver?” she asked.
“The house felt strange when I arrived,” he replied. The very air had felt disturbed; he had a sense for such things. “I came to your chamber and found Aoife Byrne’s note on your vanity table. So I prepared myself.”
Her breath struck his neck in erratic little puffs. “I keep seeing him pointing the pistol at your chest,” she whispered. “I keep feeling how I felt that moment.”
He kept seeing it pointed at her head. “We’re alive, love.”
“Even so,” she said in a low tone. “I shall now forever live with the knowledge that without you in it, the world would be a strange place, and I should never be at home in it again.”
The world would have been empty.
Giving voice to her fears seemed to ease her anxious mood. She was softening against him and eventually became heavy with sleep. She didn’t wake when he undressed, nor when he returned to her side in his robe. He lay awake and watched her breathe.
He dreamed he returned to Inveraray with Harriet, and his grandmother was sitting on the bench in front of the old cottage, enjoying the sun. Her hair was gray and her face lined, just as he remembered, but when she saw him and laughed, she sounded young, a version of her he had never met in life. She looked wholly unsurprised and happy to see him, and the warm sensation of a deep peace settled in his chest. But when he made to introduce his wife, Harriet had disappeared.
Chapter 34
He woke to the pleasurable sensation of a soft hand on his hard cock and drowsy kisses trailing down the side of his neck. He was dreaming, undoubtedly. He reached for her and gave a soft grunt of surprise when his palms met bare, sleep-flushed skin. She was naked under the covers with him.
“In need of affirming life?” Lucian murmured, still finding his bearings.
“Yes,” Harriet whispered, warm and breathless against his ear. “Please affirm.” A flower-scented strand of her hair brushed over his nose.