Page 88 of When the Rogue Returns
“Yes, I told him! I told him everything.”
“Even about us and Amsterdam?” Victor said, incredulous.
She nodded. “I figured he should know what he’s getting into.”
Lochlaw stepped forward. “Look here, Cale, I don’t care about what happened in the past. I know that your wife is a good person.”
“Yes, but you are not the only person in this household.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Isa said. “I don’t care if you never recover the necklace and Lady Lochlaw tries to send me to prison. I don’t care if they hang me. I have to see Amalie safe from them once and for all! Ihaveto!”
Tristan exchanged a shuttered glance with his companions as he rose. “And my friends and I mean to make sure that you do, Mrs. Cale.”
Stifling an oath, Victor made introductions all around.
As soon as he was done, Isa told the men, “Please talk some sense into my husband. He thinks he can find them on his own, but Gerhart is sure to whisk her away if he has any inkling of your involvement.” She leveled a hurt glance on Victor. “I don’t even care if you never trust me or believe me again. I can’t risk our daughter!”
And in that moment, when he saw the fear and worry in her face and realized that he’d helped to put them there, he knew: She was wrong about him. His inquisitors were wrong.Everyonewas wrong.
The problem ran far deeper than any supposed remnant of distrust of her. And he had to make her see that if they were to save Amalie.
21
“GENTLEMEN, WOULD YOUplease give me and my wife a moment alone?”
Isa caught her breath, the words filling her with dread... until she saw Victor’s eyes. He was staring at her with a melting tenderness that calmed her fears.
As soon as the other men moved into the hall, he came up to her. “You asked if what Gerhart said about me was true. And the answer is yes. They did starve and humiliate me. They told me you were using me, that you were a thief who only married me because I was the guard.”
He dragged in a harsh breath. “Apparently the jeweler, who knew Mother, had told them about my father, so they used that, too. They played on my self-doubts by pointing out that I was a nobody with a mad father, that I would never be able to give you the things you wanted, that I couldn’t take care of you. They said anything to break me down, so that I would admit you were the thief.”
Hearing her fears so clearly voiced made sobs rise in her throat. “Gerhart said that he heard you wouldn’t give me up. Why not, after all of that?”
A brilliant smile crossed his lips. “Because, my dearest, there was a part of me deep inside that screamed that they were wrong. A part of me that denied it. A part of me that trusted you when even logic said I shouldn’t.” His eyes darkened. “But after my time in gaol, I buried that part so deep I almost forgot it was there. As did you. Still, it never went away.”
He grabbed her hands. “Ten years ago, when we let Gerhart and Jacoba and the prince’s guard play on our fears about ourselves, we lost sight of the truth. That we loved each other. Deeply. Intensely. With every part of our souls. ”
She was crying now, and he reached up to brush the tears from her eyes. “Tell me, Isa. Do you still love me?”
Through her sobs, she managed to whisper, “Yes.” She did love him. She couldn’t conceive ofnotloving him.
“And I love you. More than life, more than breath. That’s why I trust you; why I know bone-deep that every word you’ve told me is true. I know it the same way I know that you regret the past, that you never betrayed me... that you would die to keep our daughter safe.” He laid her hands against his chest. “I know it in here. Your good character resonates deep in my heart.”
He loved her—he truly did! And he believed in her. The past truly was the past.
“Whatreallykept us apart for so long, what we both forgot,” he went on, “is that we are stronger together. Separately, we remember our weaknesses and our self-doubts and we falter.” He clutched her hands tightly. “Don’t you see, my love? Gerhart said those things to make you doubt yourself, to make you worry about my trusting you. Jacoba mentioned our daughter so I would get angry at you and doubt my budding trust of you.”
As he spoke, her vision of the past shifted. Like a jeweler cleaving a gem, Jacoba had known just where to score the stone so she could crack it with one blow. She’d known how to play on Isa’s fears—and Victor’s. And they’d let those fears drive them apart.
“Even my inquisitors knew just where to stick the knife to make me falter,” Victor was saying. “They didn’t have to lift one hand to me. All they had to do was appeal to the part of me that didn’t feel good enough for you—the part that was ashamed of my parents and my childhood and worried about my ability to care for you.”
His voice turned fierce. “But they couldn’t touch the part of me that loved you. And Jacoba and Gerhart couldn’t touch the part of you that lovedme. So we can’t let them touch it now. We have to hold firm to what we know, what we believe: that together we can save our daughter. That we are good, strong people who can do anything we put our minds to.”
Lifting her hands to his lips, he kissed them softly. “That our love for each other is the rock upon which everything depends. As long as we cling to that rock, they cannot drown us, no matter how hard they try. As long as we cling to that rock, wewillsave Amalie.”
“Oh, Victor,” she whispered. “Wehaveto save her. I don’t know if even our love could survive the loss ofher.”
“Our love can survive anything,” he vowed. “But let’s make sure that it doesn’t have to survive that, shall we?”
