He only hoped Gwen would be able to forgive him for sulking during her hour of need.
It was dark when Patrick arrived at the house, where the Blackstone clan remained crammed into the main gathering room. Everyone looked exhausted, but Frederick wouldn’t let anyone leave until police officers from the mainland arrived, which probably wouldn’t be for a few more hours.
Edwin played cards on the dining table and looked bored out of his mind. “Now that Liam is gone, we’re all safe,” he muttered.
“No one is leaving,” Frederick insisted. “If any evidence remains about who was firing that gun, I won’t provide an opportunity to hide it.”
The windows were open, but it was still sweltering with all these people crammed inside. Patrick felt smothered. Gwen sat on the floor, singing to the five-year-old twins, who gaped at her like she was a goddess. He grabbed a stool to sit beside her.
“You survived intact?” he asked, his churning stomach a sick reminder that while he’d been grousing about the Blackstones at the soda counter, she could have been killed.
Gwen didn’t go out of her way to make it easy on him. She glanced at her cousin Joshua, the useless one from Yale, who was playing cards with Edwin. The younger man’s face was riddled with ugly scratches.
“Joshua’s face took a hit when a bullet exploded a tree next to him. He was very brave as he carried Poppy to safety. We’re all quite proud of him.”
Gwen wouldn’t even look at him as she continued playing with the twins. It could have been Gwen’s face that was injured by flying shrapnel. While Patrick sulked, Gwen had been alone and vulnerable.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have been here to protect you.”
“Don’t worry, I survived without you.” There was no thaw in Gwen’s frosty demeanor, but perhaps it would only take some time.
Uncle Milton came over to deliver the letter that had arrived at Smitty’s store. The envelope was on college stationery, and she flipped it open without much interest, but her shoulders sagged as she read the contents.
“Bad news?”
“The Spanish monks turned down our request to send us the old date seeds.”
“Are they the same Spanish monks who own a piece of the bank?”
She nodded. “They’re rich, so they can’t be tempted by money.”
Gwen had once told him that if she ever pursued a doctorate in botany, she wanted to use those seeds as the focus of her research. She seemed unusually disappointed, but Patrick couldn’t get worked up over old seeds. The date seeds were three hundred years old, and if it took her a few more years to get her hands on them, it wouldn’t matter. She would never tear herself away from Blackstone College long enough to pursue a doctorate anyway.
Some of the younger children dropped off to sleep, and Patrick carried them to the far side of the room, where pallets had been laid out for them. He returned to Gwen, who looked exhausted and uncomfortable as she shifted to a new position on the floor.
“Why don’t you head up to bed?” Patrick prompted. “Everyone knows you had nothing to do with this.”
Frederick’s iron-hard voice cracked across the room. “No one is to leave this room until the police arrive.”
Patrick stood. Gwen had been through a lot today, and the old ladies looked worn out and miserable. Maybe no one else had the backbone to stand up to Frederick, but Patrick did. “Under the laws of New York procedure, you can’t issue a blanket order to detain us without specific probable cause.”
“My house, my rules,” Frederick said. “I want to know who is trying to prevent Liam from rejoining the family.”
Edwin turned away from the card game to face the others. “What if the real target was Poppy all along? You have to admit, she can be annoying.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Natalia said.
Edwin bristled. “It could have been you,” he snapped. “You’ve always been jealous of Poppy and probably want to take her out before she can give birth to a male heir.”
“Edwin, you can’t possibly be as stupid as you sound right now,” Natalia said, fanning herself with a bamboo fan.
No one in the room was going to defy Frederick Blackstone, and Patrick couldn’t force them to disperse. He sighed and took a seat on the floor alongside Gwen. It was going to be a long night.
36
A small but healthy baby boy was born shortly after the doctor arrived at two o’clock in the morning. Oscar opened a bottle of champagne, but Patrick and the others wanted only to stagger to bed. Now that half a dozen police officers from the mainland had arrived, Frederick allowed everyone to return to their bedrooms while guards were posted throughout the grounds. A search of the island would begin once the sun rose, but Patrick would no longer be here. He wanted to get off this island and away from these people as soon as possible.
In the morning, the police found a recently fired varmint gun in the shed, but the only ammunition on the island was for skeet shooting. No wonder the shots had gone wild.
Oscar wanted Poppy and his newborn child in the safety of his mansion back home and ordered the Black Rose to set sail shortly after sunrise. Transporting Poppy down the long set of stairs to the boathouse was a challenge. Milton suggested that the canoe he used to fish on the nearby lagoon could be lined with blankets and used to carry her down, so Patrick found himself gingerly scooping Poppy up from her bed. He didn’t like her, but she was frightened and exhausted and had just given birth. He gently carried her to the padded canoe and lowered her inside. He and Joshua were the strongest men here, and they each held one end of the canoe as they carefully navigated the stairs to the boathouse.
Oscar carried his newborn son. He, Poppy, and the baby would be the only passengers on the first tender to the yacht because it was filled with trunks, hatboxes, and pillows for Poppy’s comfort. It would return shortly for anyone else who wished to return to Manhattan.
As soon as the tender pulled away from the dock, Patrick and Gwen were alone in the boathouse.
“I’m going back with Oscar,” she said. She set her hand on his arm, and it was trembling. “There is room on the yacht for you, if you want to join us.”
“I’ll take the ferry back later this morning,” he said, avoiding the wounded look in her eyes.
“But why?”
“I can’t be trapped alongside those people any longer. I’ll jump out of my skin.”
Her expression tightened. “And by those people, I assume you are referring to my family?”
“Yes, Gwen. I am.” He turned away to pace, his footsteps making dull thuds on the planks of the boathouse. He dragged a hand through his hair as he struggled to find the right words, but there was no way to express how he felt without hurting her. “I know you think highly of them, but I’ve had my limit. We come from different worlds, Gwen.”
“You don’t have to live in their world,” she said in exasperation. “I have a beautiful house. There’s room enough for your mother and a yard where children could play.”
“I’m not going to be a kept man, Gwen.”
“That’s ridiculous. If you won’t move into my house, then I could move to the Five Points.”