4

Walking back to Gray's house, Jack had to focus hard on not staggering around the cow patties and falling face first into the mud. In fact, in his pathetic, intoxicated condition, he wasn't sure he could distinguish between the two.

He flipped his wet hair out of his eyes so he could see better in front of him. The rain had finally stopped but the road remained a sticky pool. With each step, he sank down at least four inches, the dark muck pulling at his boots.

And oh, God, his head…pounding like a drum.

He should have known better than to accept that last drink. He should have known better than to take the first one. He'd never had much use for liquor. It dulled a man's senses.

By the time he reached Gray's house, it was sufficiently dark. He stopped on the veranda to scrape the mud off the soles of his boots, and paused there, gazing at the lighted windows. He didn't want to go inside. He didn't want to do what he had to do, but the time for indecision was over. He just didn't want to get Ianto into trouble with the law….

Nearly losing his balance, he reached out to grasp the door handle, and kicked himself again for drinking all that whiskey.

He entered the dimly-lit house.

No one came to greet him.

The silence pulsated around his garbled senses.

Standing unsteadily in the foyer, he heard a chair slide out from the kitchen table.

Gray appeared.

"You're back," he said softly.

Yes. Where's Ianto?"

"He's resting. I'll get him." He made a move to go upstairs.

"No. Don't."

Gray stopped on the bottom step. "I promised him I'd wake him if…when you returned."

"I don't want you to."

Suddenly, the room began to spin and Jack stepped sideways. Gray grabbed his arm and drew his brows together. "Are you drunk?"

"No. Yes. I had a few drinks, but I'm fine."

Wearing a disapproving frown, Gray went into the parlour and lit a second lamp. "It's not like you to take a drink, Jack."

"I know, and believe me, I'm already regretting it."

The room brightened and Gray sat down on the sofa. "Ianto was upset after you left. He didn't eat any supper. He went straight upstairs to bed."

Jack leaned against the door frame and folded his arms. "Are you trying to make me feel guilty? I'm not the one who lied."

"I know, I know."

"Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Gray raked a hand through his hair. "I'm not on anyone's side. I just think Ianto needs—"

"Ianto needs? I'm your family, Gray. Me. He lied to me from the beginning and you act like I'm the one to blame here, like I'm the one who's being unreasonable."

"I don't think that."

Jack moved into the room with deliberate care, trying not to knock over the lamp on the side table as he passed it by. "Then what do you think?"

"You can't turn your back on him, Jack. He has no one."

Jack squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing sensation in his head. "No one? Did he tell you the story of his poor deceased parents?"

"Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"So you lent him your sympathetic ear, did you?"

"You're not making any sense."

Jack walked to the mantel. He leaned one elbow upon it, rested his temple on two fingers. "Gray, you don't understand."

Gray rose and gripped Jack's shoulder. "You need to get some sleep. You're a mess. And Ianto does love you."

Wincing inside, Jack stepped away from his brother. His speech was slurred. "I don't want to hear that."

"But you care about him, Jack. I know you do. You're just gun-shy."

"Damn right, I'm gun-shy. And you don't know everything, big brother. You think you know him because you've spent some time with him, but you don't. He's beautiful and he uses that to get what he wants. You're playing right into his game."

Gray backed away with a frown, retreating into the dark kitchen. "You're drunk."

"Am I?" Jack followed him.

Gray said nothing. He went to the kitchen window and pulled it closed.

"You're always taking his side," Jack went on, "like I'm the one who did everything wrong. Granted, I haven't always been easy to get along with, I'll admit that, but hell, Gray, I'm your brother. We really don't know anything about Ianto."

Gray sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Leaning both elbows on the table, he said, "I'm sorry, Jack. I just can't accept what you're saying."

"I know that because you were taken with him the moment you saw him at the Transporter station. Weren't you?"

Gray shook his head. "No. he's your mate."

Jack laughed bitterly. "Funny, you were the one trying to convince me not to marry him in the first place. You wanted me to get to know him first."

Gray leaned back in his chair. "I remember. I had a bad feeling about everything."

"And you were right. You have no idea what I learned tonight."

Gray inclined his head, curiously. "Well? Are you going to tell me?"

"I sure am."

A half hour later, Gray sat back in his chair and sighed. "Do you believe him?"

"I don't know what to believe," Jack replied. "I'm just starting to have the feeling that this marriage was never meant-to-be. I thought I was avoiding trouble by getting myself a mail-order mate. I thought it would be simpler."

"What are you going to do?"

Jack rested his forehead in his hand and squeezed his eyes shut. "I should do what any man in my position would do. But the idea of it…"

Gray looked up. "The idea of what?"

"The idea of…." He couldn't believe this was happening. "God, Gray, I do care for him. I'm practically obsessed, because I can't stop thinking about him every damn minute of the day. But that's crazy, and I can't let how I feel about him change what has to be done. I know it'll be hard, but I gotta do the right thing. I gotta protect myself, and I'm going to need your help."

Gray exhaled heavily and sat back in his chair.

.

.

.

.

.

Ianto lay awake in the darkness staring at the ceiling.

The pain in his arm had woken him an hour ago, and he'd tip-toed into the hall only to find himself alone in the house, which was odd because it was past midnight.

His mind had already created an alarming number of unpleasant scenarios.

What if Jack and Gray had gone out to find Lisant? What if something terrible had happened to them?

What if they'd reported everything to the sheriff?

Back in bed now and turning onto his side, he rested his cheek on the back of his hand. If only he could sleep through this physical pain and emotional uncertainty.

About a half hour later, Ianto heard a skipper pull up in front of the house. He leaped out of bed and hurried to the window.

They were back. A sigh of relief escaped him. He stood at the window, one hand resting on the sill.

Gray and Jack spoke for a moment.

Then Gray hopped down from the skipper and came to the door.

Jack drove off.

A sick feeling crept into Ianto's stomach. Where was he going?

He wrapped his coat around his shoulders and hurried downstairs where he met Gray in the kitchen.

"Where were you?" he asked, unable to hide his fear and desperation.

Gray laid some papers on the table, and seemed to have some trouble meeting his eyes. His tone was cool as he spoke. "You'd better sit down, Ianto."

Ianto's heart began to thump inside his chest. "Why? What happened? Where did Jack go?"

"Please sit down," Gray suggested more insistently as he pulled a chair out for him. Ianto hesitated and then slowly made his way into it. He sat there waiting while Gray flipped through the papers.

"Would you like a cup of tea before we begin?" he asked as he put on his spectacles, hooking the wires behind his ears.

"No, I don't want anything," Ianto replied, feeling confused and anxious, "except for you to tell me what's going on."

Gray folded his hands on top of the papers in front of him. "I'm afraid it's not good news."

A jolt of fear left him paralyzed.

"I'm sorry, Ianto, but Jack has decided to seek an annulment."

Everything seemed to grow dark around him as Gray's words settled into his mind.

An annulment?

Had he heard him correctly?

"He feels very strongly about it, and he hopes you'll understand." Gray took a deep breath. "He doesn't want to see you again."

Tears flooded his eyes.

He swallowed hard, trying desperately not to cry. "Did he tell you why, exactly?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that with you, Ianto, but I will say this much—it's on the basis of fraudulent misrepresentation. You may want to seek your own counsel if you wish to contest it, as I am representing Jack now."

The chill in his brother-in-law's voice wounded him deeply, for he'd always felt that Gray thought highly of him. Now it seemed as if the whole world was turning against him.

"Does he still love Gwen?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"As I said, it's not my place to discuss that with you."

But he could not back down, because this made no sense. "Did Lisant say something to him?"

Gray picked up the papers and ignored his question. "Everything's right here. You should read it over carefully. Jack has already signed it."

Staring in disbelief at what Gray held in his hands, Ianto felt a sudden burst of anger.

When he made no move to reach for the documents, Gray offered him some information. "It may come as a relief for you to know that it doesn't implicate you as a bigamist. We discussed it at great length, and he doesn't want to see you go to jail. His just wants his freedom. So we came up with a phrasing that would—"

"I don't care about that," he blurted out. "I just want to know what his reasons were. Because everything was fine this afternoon. I still believed he loved me."

Gray cleared his throat awkwardly. "It says you misrepresented yourself. That you led Jack to believe things about yourself that were not true."

He shoved his chair back and stood. "This annulment won't make me go back to Lisant if that's what Jack thinks. I'll make my own way. I want you to tell Jack that."

Gray stared at him, his face pale. "I will."

"And if Jack can walk out on me knowing how much I love him, and how much I wanted to be his mate then I welcome this annulment. If he's incapable of trusting me or of loving me then I'm better off without him." Heart racing, he turned and walked out of the kitchen, but stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

The papers.

He hadn't signed the papers….

He squeezed the railing.

Should he do it?

Should he let Jack go so easily, without a fight, or without an explanation on his part?

Ianto's anger quickly became a scalding fury.

After all they'd been through together, how could he leave him without even saying goodbye?

He'd sent his brother to do it for him.

As he stood at the base of Gray's staircase, he began to wonder if this swift death to his marriage had been inevitable from the beginning. They hadn't known a single thing about each other when they spoke their vows at the courthouse, not fifteen minutes after they'd first met.

Surely that had been madness.

Of course, Ianto knew why he had been so desperate to become someone's mate that day, to change his name and disappear into the vast Boeshane Peninsular prairie but what had driven Jack to act so imprudently?

Clearly he hadn't been in his right mind either, after the loss of his family, and then the heartbreak of his broken engagement to a woman he might very well still love. Now reality had set in, and he had come to realize that marriage to a stranger wasn't what he'd thought he wanted after all.

And as desperate and frightened as Ianto had been on his wedding day, he couldn't deny that he had been wrong to deceive Jack, and perhaps this was his comeuppance.

Fighting his grief over how it had all played out, Ianto spun on his heel, walked into the kitchen, and hastily scrolled his name.