“Forgive me. I do not wish to insult you, merely to see you well looked after. Allow me to care for you, Svetka. The way you deserve. Far from this. Let me take you away. No one will ever find us. We’ll be safe.” He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her to the fine wool of his overcoat. Hugh’s overcoat.
Mottled with anger at his bold persistence, Svetlana shoved him away. Something wasn’t right. Sergey had never acted so out of character. “You forget yourself. Out of respect for the friendship we once held, I shall forget this distasteful notion while reminding you that I am a married woman.”
“Married to a disgraced man standing accused of murder whom you never loved. Is that what you mean?”
“How do you know about that?”
“How do I not know when you rightfully belong to me? My eyes are everywhere you are. I love you, Svetka. This is our last chance to be together or all will be ruined. Send him away and come with—” Sergey jerked backward.
Wynn stood there holding the back of Sergey’s collar. Rage thundered across his face. “I’ve a suggestion of where to send you.” He dragged Sergey outside and pinned him against the back wall of the schoolhouse. His forearm crushed against Sergey’s windpipe. “Lower than a snake’s belly, slithering into my home and trying to seduce my wife. I’ve a mind to send you straight back to the hole from whence you crawled.”
Wheezing, the whites of Sergey’s eyes bulged as his gaze skittered to Svetlana. “H-help.”
Wynn leaned forward. Sergey purpled as the full weight of Wynn’s bulk settled on him. “Pack your bags and leave the country. If I hear even a rumor of your name, I won’t waste a second in breaking your scrawny neck.”
Wynn dropped his arm and Sergey crumpled to the ground in a coughing fit. “S-so much f-for y-your oath to d-do no harm-m.”
“That oath was for humans. It said nothing about evil beasts. Go.”
Sergey grabbed at the rough stone wall and hauled himself up. Red blotched his slim face as his dark eyes bored hatred into Wynn. Shuddering, he looked to Svetlana.
Wynn blocked him. “Last warning.”
Panting, Sergey stumbled away to mount the fine gray horse and rode off. He looked back only once.
Svetlana trembled, but not from the gusting cold nor from the violent scene. Somehow through it all she’d felt utterly calm watching Wynn’s barely restrained fury come within an inch of release, knowing he exerted complete control. Nothing was going to happen without him allowing it. Seeing him for the first time since their confrontation was what sent uncertainty shaking along her nerves. The ice crackled around her heart as it yearned for his nearness, while her head shouted for fortification around its beating vulnerabilities.
Hatless as usual, his hair waved unfettered in the breeze while the richness of his brown suit set off the gold in his eyes to perfection. Eyes that took her in with that efficient manner of his where nothing remained hidden. He reached for her hand. “You’re shivering. Let’s get you inside.”
Exposed under that penetrating gaze, she angled away from his touch. It would undo her. “What are you doing here?”
His attention drifted from her face to her left ear. A hazy smile pulled at his lips. “Those are the earrings I gave you. I told you that I’d—”
“—captured a star.”
“Captured a star that had shrunk in the presence of your beauty. I also said—”
“We said many things that night.” Svetlana tugged at the curls she’d tried to cover her ears with that morning. A vain effort. Why of all her earrings could she not help herself from choosing these?
“I meant every one of them. I still do.”
Another shard of ice fractured off her heart. She imagined the pain of his duplicity seeping into the crack, hurting her all over again. “Do not avoid the question with an entanglement of emotions.”
“Loving you isn’t an entanglement. It’s a privilege.”
“Then you should not have endangered it by withholding information vital to our future.” Lies in a royal court or chandelier-graced parlor she could swat off with a flick of her glittering fan, but a lie from the man she had most trusted could not so easily be discarded.
He sighed. A weary, wordless sound that her tired soul recognized. “I wasn’t going to come today. It might’ve raised too many questions, and I didn’t want you put on the spot to answer them. Unfortunately, a summons from Glasgow forces me to crash your event.” He scowled down the road where Sergey had disappeared. “Though not a moment too late.”
She could not care less about Sergey at that moment. “The medical board?”
“Last hearing. They’ll be making a formal decision at the end. I won’t ask you to come, but I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to.”
Svetlana noticed his overnight valise strapped behind the saddle on his horse, tethered a few feet away. Her stomach dropped. “Are you leaving now?”
“It starts tomorrow morning. I think they like to let me know last minute in hopes I won’t show up.” He grinned, but it wasn’t convincing. His life’s work hung in the balance. “I know things have been strained between us of late and I take full responsibility. My pride and ambitions have hurt the people I care for most. My patients. Our tenants. You. I want to do what’s best by all of you. For us.”
She longed to hold him, to tell him she needed him and that she believed justice was on his side. Not because he was a surgeon or a duke, but because her life was incomplete without him. His words rocked against her anger, but pride bolstered her defenses and sealed off the confession.
“I believe you, but what has fractured between us cannot be mended so easily.”
“But it can be mended. Tell me it can, please.”
“I-I wish I could be certain.”
“At least it’s not a no.”
He kissed her gently on the cheek, no more than a whisper of saddened regrets, and then he was gone. Svetlana stood in the schoolyard long after, impervious to the cold air. An ache swirled inside where her heart hung heavy in her chest like a broken pendulum.
Chapter 30
Svetlana padded along the corridor, the stone floor cold beneath her satin slippers. All of Thornhill was fast asleep as she found uncertainties troubling her mind after having received a reply from Mrs. Roscoe along with a sealed report from St. Matthew’s. She would need to send it by special messenger to Glasgow first thing in the morning if it was to have any hope of reaching Wynn’s trial in time.
Steering clear of the Grand Hall and its ghostly memories of dancing in Wynn’s arms, she wandered into the far back reaches of the house where the floors and walls turned into a more contemporary wood style. Contemporary, at least, in comparison to the hodge-podge sixteenth- and seventeenth-century parts of the castle.
Descending a short flight of stairs, she followed the scent of baking bread to the kitchen. A large, rectangular room, its brick walls were warmed by cream paint and shining copper pots hanging from an iron rack over the worn worktable. Mrs. Varjensky stood in front of the enormous hearth stirring a black pot dangling over the fire. She refused to use a proper stove, claiming the old ways were better. Purer with no modern vapors to taint the food.
“No sleep?” the old woman said without turning around.
“Nyet.”
“Sit. Sit.”
Svetlana perched on the only wooden stool next to the table. Apparently not much sitting was done in a kitchen. Bits of floured dough spotted the counter. “Midnight baking?”