“Yes.”

“From five years ago.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Jason. Tell me what happened. I think it’s time, don’t you?”

When he remained silent, she leaned down and kissed the puckered scar. “The pain you must have endured. I am so very sorry.”

He felt a catch in his throat, felt a shot of pain so black, so very real, for a moment he couldn’t breathe. So long ago that pain, but he still felt it, felt the utter helplessness, and he knew it was payment owed for his appalling judgment. She must have seen that pain in his eyes because she kissed him, kept touching him, nibbling here and there until the pain receded. He wondered how she could ease him so quickly, so absolutely. He said, “She was going to kill my father. I couldn’t allow her to do that.”

“No,” she said, kissing him again and again, his throat, his chin, his mouth, “of course you couldn’t, no more than I could allow someone to kill my father, not if I could stop it.”

“She aimed at his heart. My father is about an inch taller than I am. He would have died instantly. That blessed inch saved my life.”

Her eyes closed though she could still see him throwing himself in front of his father, the bullet tearing into his flesh. She felt such intense, vicious hatred for this long-dead woman, that for an instant she knew what it was like to wish death upon another. It was a pity this woman was already dead and beyond her.

“I don’t understand. Why did she want to kill your father?”

He reached up his hand and pulled her hair back. He saw fury in her eyes, making them nearly black, and wondered at it. How could she feel so deeply over something that had happened so long ago, long before she’d known him? It was right and just that he remember, that he burrow into the leaching pain as he would a familiar old shirt. Perhaps he shouldn’t remember it with such stark clarity, but he did. “Her name was Judith and I was her cat’s paw. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that reeled me in, it was her wit, her ability to surprise me, to make me laugh and shake my head at the same time. I wanted to marry her. I never saw her treachery until it was too late. I was a bloody fool.”

“Tell me,” she said, and sat back on her haunches, white and naked, her hair long and loose, falling over her shoulders to veil her breasts, her hands open on her thighs. “Tell me,” she said again.

Jason didn’t want to call up the memory that was still so hot and stone-hard inside him. He didn’t want her to know the damnable details of what he’d done, he didn’t want her to realize what a fool he’d been, to see the pathetic young man who’d very nearly destroyed his own family, but words came out of his mouth even as he shook his head. “It was all about the greed of three evil people, three people with absolutely no conscience. My father was caught in this storm’s eye.” He told her about Annabelle Trelawny, a woman who had fooled them all, including Hollis, about how James had nearly died as well. “He managed to kill Judith’s brother, Louis, but it was so close, Hallie.” He rubbed his shoulder, feeling again the instant the bullet had struck him, hurling him back against his father. “Corrie killed both women,” he said. “Saying it now, it doesn’t seem possible, but she did it, she first shot Judith, then Annabelle Trelawny, to save Hollis. I can remember the sounds of the bullets, and I thought how very loud they were, and I knew one of them had struck me, and I thought it very odd since I felt numb. Apart from it, really. I remember my father pressing his palm against the wound in my shoulder, remember him yelling at me, and I was so relieved he was all right. Then I remember thinking that with my luck the bullet could so easily have torn through me and still killed him, but that didn’t happen. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry for all the devastation I’d caused, but I couldn’t, the words wouldn’t come, and then, well, then I couldn’t do anything.”

“You nearly died,” Hallie said. She was stroking her fingers over his shoulder, lightly touching the scar.

“But I didn’t. My family was there, they were always there, and when I finally opened my eyes, they were so happy and relieved, told me over and over that I would be all right, that I would live. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. All those forgiving, beloved faces, the worry and love for me etched deep, the fear that I would die.”

“You couldn’t bear it because the blame was yours.”

“Yes, it was mine, no one else’s.”

“Tell me again how it was all your fault.”

“If I hadn’t been such a fool, so blind and full of my own conceit and invincibility, Judith wouldn’t have been able to draw me in, to make me her dupe. She wouldn’t have won.”

“You say she won? How could she have won, Jason? She’s dead. You’re not dead, your father’s not dead, James isn’t dead.”

“No thanks to me. They wanted our deaths, Hallie. They wanted the actual doing of it. Worst of all, they wanted the benefit from it. They were monstrous evil. Judith’s brother had knocked James out and tied him up. Thank God James is so strong and so smart, but still, it was too close. He could have died so easily.”

“He didn’t. He saved himself just as you saved your father.”

Before he could speak again, she leaned down and kissed his mouth lightly, her palm over his heart. The beat was solid, steady, not fast now with need. “Your father,” she said thoughtfully, her brow furrowed, “he must have hated that you, his son, saved him.”

“Yes, he did. He told me he was the father, it was he who should protect his son. He was angry that I leaped in front of him.”

“That surprises you?”

“No. He’s my father. He tried to excuse what I’d allowed Judith to do to me, said if I wanted to apportion blame so badly, then give them all their share.” Jason fell silent, aware of her palm now covering the bullet scar, but beneath her palm the damnable pain was still there, pulsing strong and hot. “He said what I would say had I been the father.”

“Of course. He was also right.”

“You weren’t there, Hallie. You don’t know what really went on.”

“Has your father ever lied to you?”

“Of course not, but this is much different. He wouldn’t see this as a lie, he’d see it-”

“As what?”

“As something he’d fight to believe since I was his son and he loved me.”

“Do you love your father, Jason?”

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to an inch from his face. “Why would you ask something so stupid as that?”

She kissed his mouth lightly, then pulled back a little. “Because you obviously didn’t believe him when he told you that you weren’t to blame. How can you love someone when you believe they’re lying to you?”

“It wasn’t like that. He tried to justify it, tried to excuse what I did-”

“This is quite remarkable.”

“What is, damn you?”

“You’ve wallowed in guilt for nearly five long years. You’ve managed to keep that wound raw and bleeding, always there at the edge of your mind so you won’t forget to hate yourself. You’ve nourished this constant companion of yours, kept it strong and in control for so very long. That is great dedication on your part, Jason. I imagine you would probably feel incomplete without it there, poking you, reminding you what an abominable excuse of a man you are.

“Your father must feel that he’s failed you. Actually, I suppose he did fail you. Like I said, it’s obvious you didn’t believe him, did you? Didn’t believe his word that you weren’t to blame? Hmm, all this flailing about over long-ago evil and endless bloody guilt, it’s made me quite thirsty. Would you like some warm milk? I understand it’s Mother’s antidote for depressed spirits. My father always rolls his eyes and says brandy is the only drink to realign the humors. Or would you prefer your spirits to remain depressed?”

“It was you who brought all this up, Hallie, you who demanded to know what happened. My spirits aren’t depressed, dammit.”