“So, he has spoken of me.”
“Indeed.”
“What he has said cannot have been kind.”
“We lived together, my lady, in the cruelest of conditions. In London, good Queen Victoria has created a reign of chastity and propriety, but in her search for goodness, she overlooks the horror of the tenements, of the poor—and once a man is condemned, by fair means or foul, his fate is hell on earth. You are aware, I imagine, that David was taken aboard a ship and sent to hard labor camps. I have fought rigging with him in thefiercest storms. I have broken rock at his side. I have seen him do the labor for others to keep whips of sadistic guards off their backs—in fact, my lady, it was in fighting for me that he finally won our freedom. I was very nearly killed. I don’t think that David intended to kill the guard. In the fighting, the guard’s neck was broken. We freed ourselves and a number of the others and escaped. I tell you this just in case you don’t understand what his past five years have been.
“You must bear in mind that obviously, over such an amount of time, a man would brood. And his anger would fester hard within his soul.”
“But I’m not guilty of all that he thinks,” Shawna protested. “Surely, he knows that now. I don’t know exactly what he’s told you, but I only meant to save my cousin?—’’
“Ah, well, lass, the best of intentions do not always serve us well!”
Shawna pulled up her legs, resting her chin upon her knees.
She knew what had happened, aye. David didn’t speak much of it. Maybe there wasn’t much to tell. He had served a convict’s hard time. In chains. She understood that. She thought she understood that. But she couldn’t know what it had been like for him, day after day, days becoming months, months becoming years.
All of that time.
Waiting to come back.
The thought of revenge a life force like air to breathe.
She shivered. She still wanted to see Danny. To hold him. To keep him safe. To make up for all the lost years.
She couldn’t begin to imagine anything as cruel as what David was doing to her now. Telling her that her son lived and then taking him away. Maybe she couldn’t clearly imagine or understand all that David had been through.
But he couldn’t imagine or understand what it had been like for her. Awaking to find herself alive, yet next to a corpse she believed to be the man she had loved. Then discovering that she was going to have a child. The months of living, of dreaming, of waiting, planning, not knowing what to do, knowing only that the child would be some small precious memory of him…
The hours of labor only to be given a pathetically misshapen bundle that was dead.
Danny had been special from the time she had first seen him. Oh god, if she had only realized…
What had gone on in the past?
Would it ever matter? He’d wanted the boy taken away from anyone with the name MacGinnis. What did he intend? Surely, he could not mean to keep the child from her forever.
If they were to live long enough to have a forever.
How had the Andersons ever come into possession of her son?
She had to know. She leaped up suddenly. “I—have to go out.”
McGregor arched a brow to her.
“I cannot let you go anywhere.”
“But I must!” she exclaimed, staring at him. It was incredible. He would stop her. Whatever it took, he would stop her.
Unless she could devise a means of escape. She had to escape this room, no matter how rude or cruel a ruse she must devise.
“Why, you ugly, wretched little bastard!” she cried to him, wincing inwardly as she did so. He had been kind to her. No matter what David had said regarding her, he had been kind to her.
But she had no choice now. She had to get out—and demand the truth from the Andersons. Somewhere, there had to be a defense for her.
“Lady MacGinnis?—”
“Oh, I don’t expect you to understand!” she cried to him. “But I can’t bear your presence a moment longer. Keep me prisoner—but get away from me while you obey your master’s bidding.”