Page 44 of This Laird of Mine

She offered him a tremulous smile. “Because I am happy.” The image of Penelope came to her once more. She let her tears fall. After tonight, she would never be happy again.

With a heartbreaking smile, Jules rolled her onto her back and devoured her with his mouth, claimed her with his hands, and then his body. Claire let him ease her sorrow as she gathered up every touch, every kiss, every caress, in the hopes they would get her through the rest of her days—days that would be dark and alone.

I’ve never seen Jules look so happy,” Jane said as she watched her friend carry his new wife out of the ballroom, away from their guests.

Beside her, Nicholas looked on with a dark frown. “I only hope she doesn’t crush his soul.”

Jane startled at her husband’s uncharitable words. It was so unlike Nicholas. “Why would you say such a thing?”

His expression softened as he looked down at her. “Men who have lost everything, then find what they were missing, fall harder and faster when it is taken away.”

Jane froze as her gaze moved past her husband to the vacant doorway. “She won’t . . . will she?”

“It’s hard to tell.” Hollister stepped forward, joining the discussion with Margaret on his arm. “We know so little about Claire. What ever became of our inquiries?”

David joined their little group near the back of the room. “Claire is what she says she is, a teacher. She rents a tiny painting studio on Leith Road. She has three wards, all of whom are child prodigies, much like herself, who were orphaned early in life. Claire took them in and not only teaches them, but she is for all intents and purposes their mother.”

The information startled Jane. “Then where are those girls now if Claire is here?”

“And why didn’t she say anything about them to Jules? She—” Margaret broke off with a gasp. Her hand went to her distended abdomen. “Sometimes I believe this little one is a musician in the making. Whenever I am around music the baby dances inside of me.”

“Margaret, are you feeling well?” David asked her, his face pale with concern.

“Yes,” she said with a light laugh. “The kicking only hurts for a moment.”

“You are certain?” David insisted.

“Why do you ask, David?” Hollister brought his hand down to cover Margaret’s abdomen protectively.

David bent down and moved the edge of Margaret’s skirt out of the way to reveal a palm-sized circle of blood on the wooden floor.

Margaret gasped and leapt back, revealing two more drops of blood. “It is not me, I promise,” she said, reassuring the man at her side.

Hollister pulled her into his arms. “I’ll not take that chance. We are going to our room to lie down. I will send for the physician.”

“Sweetheart, there is really no need.”

David dipped his finger into the red droplets before him. “There is no harm in rousing the physician, because if this is not your blood, then it most definitely is someone else’s.” He stood and moved past the droplets near Margaret’s feet, following the trail of blood.

A shiver moved through Jane. Someone was hurt.

“Hollister, take Jane and Margaret with you to our chambers while I help David,” Nicholas said, with a fierce look in his eyes. “Keep them safe.”

Hollister didn’t hesitate. He gathered both women and escorted them from the room, but not before Jane saw David and her husband following the trail of blood across the floor.

The blood was fresh. David followed the trail, all his senses on alert. Images swam in his head of the pretty dark-haired girl with the striking blue eyes he had seen earlier that night, peering through the crowd, her face pale as she watched Claire and Jules dance. He didn’t know why, but something inside him had connected with the girl.

He knew that look—hopelessness mixed with fear and anger. David clenched his fists, forcing that image from his mind. There was no reason in a room full of people that the person they were looking for was the one he could not clear from his thoughts. The trail led to the far corner of the ballroom, behind where the head table resided before it was taken away to make more room for dancing and mingling. But there was nothing there, only a group of people talking.

That was when David heard a gasp of pain coming from behind one of the new tapestries that had been hung only this morning—a wedding gift from Lord and Lady Davison. He stopped before the finely woven depiction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, lifted the bulging edge, and froze.

“Merciful heavens,” Nicholas ground out beside him.

It was her. The dark-haired girl. Blood covered the front of her dusty-pink gown. She clutched her hand in the fabric of her dress as she slumped against the floor.

David knelt down beside her. Gently, he lifted her face and forced down an expletive at her bloodied lip and swollen cheek.

She turned her pale blue gaze on him. “Help me,” she whispered. “Don’t let her find me.”