‘Yes! And plenty of ropes and strong-backed grooms. The less he aggravates the injury now, the greater the chance is of it recovering.’
Grateful to have something to do rather than consider the bitter ramifications of her actions, she pulled up the skirts of the ridiculous riding habit she had worn solely for him and made no attempt to look ladylike as she heaved herself astride Gray’s horse and then nudged the animal to a gallop.
* * *
The next two hours passed by in a blur, most of which was spent with Thea pacing and wringing her hands as Gray took charge. He coaxed Archimedes into the cart, secured him and rode in it with him for the entire painfully slow journey back to ensure her horse wasn’t jolted. Then he took over her uncle’s stables after the stable master suggested shooting the poor thing there and then, instead issuing rapid and succinct orders to the staff about the way he wanted the treatment to proceed.
Her horse’s damaged leg was bathed in ice, then loosely wrapped in a poultice. Most ingeniously of all, he had lashed ropes over the ceiling beams tied to a hammock affair beneath Archimedes’s stomach to support his weight and prevent him moving around. By the time it was all done, the sweet old boy was as comfortable and content in his stall as could be expected and well enough to munch on the carrots she had brought him by way of an apology—as if she could apologise for being so careless with his well-being. Now, alone in the garden, she sensed Gray come alongside her. One glance proved his expression was grave.
‘Will he recover?’
‘It’s hard to say at this stage. The next few days will be crucial, but we’ll have a better idea once the swelling starts to go down in a day or two. Then we can strap him up. Hopefully his lameness is temporary—as it so often is.’
‘And what if the swelling doesn’t...?’ He silenced her by gently placing his index finger on her lips.
‘Don’t think like that, Thea. Don’t think too far ahead. It serves no purpose. There are too many variables and all of them out of our control. He is calm and the fact that he is eating tells me that the pain is not unbearable. That is a huge positive and I find it’s much more beneficial to focus on the positives than indulge in the what ifs. I will personally check on him daily and ensure that every possible thing can be done to see your horse back on all four of his feet again. Let’s take this a day at a time.’
She nodded, too choked to say anything, and powerless to stop the tears she had been stalwartly holding back from falling. The guilt and shame was eating her from the inside and had been for hours. How many times did someone she loved have to get hurt because of her inability to control her own selfish desires? Thanks to her stubborn selfishness, her father was dead and her uncle nearly so. Because of her selfish desire to spend more illicit time with Gray, Archimedes was put in danger. Impetuous Thea was a menace.
‘Don’t cry, Thea.’ He looked extremely ill at ease with her uncontrolled and noisy bout of emotion, but she couldn’t seem to stop. ‘Please don’t cry.’
‘Th-this is all my f-fault. I should never have taken him out this morning. It was a selfish thing to do.’
‘Selfish? Of course it wasn’t.’ His thumb gently brushed one tear away. ‘It was the fault of the blithering idiot who fired that gun.’
‘You d-don’t understand...’ How could she explain it, when she knew to any rational person it would sound like nonsense? He wrapped his strong arms around her and she wept against his chest, grateful he was there and wishing he wasn’t. ‘I could have p-prevented this.’
* * *
She was apparently inconsolable, which affected him just as much as her horse’s injury clearly affected her. In the absence of any clue as to how to make her stop crying, all Gray could do was hold her tight. A huge mistake. The second he took her in his arms, it played havoc with his emotions.
There was something unsettling about holding this indomitable woman when she was so distraught and he was powerless to stop it. For some reason she was intent on blaming herself for what happened and no amount of reasoning with her appeared to be able to change that. As in all things, there was nothing quiet and sedate about the way she expressed her grief. Each shuddering sob seemed to have the power to hurt his heart, while the front of his shirt was now completely soaked through.
A few minutes previously, Viscount Gislingham had appeared at the French doors, taken one horrified look at the dreadful state of Thea and retreated, stunned, back inside, shaking his head, leaving Gray to bear the brunt of his niece’s breakdown all alone. The only weapons he had in his poorly stocked arsenal were the unwavering support of his arms as he held her and the odd platitude mumbled near her ear. The whole experience left him wrung out like an old dish rag and riddled with guilt that he couldn’t do any more. But he wanted to. He’d move heaven and earth to ease her pain.
‘It will be all right, Thea—I promise.’ What was he saying? He was in no position to promise. Gray really had no idea if his common-sense treatments would work. His knowledge was rusty. He’d had no real cause to use it in the last decade and had long ago given up keeping up with the new ideas of the equine world. Although he was sure he’d read or heard mention of some fellow suspending a horse from the ceiling before and if a cooling poultice worked on a human sprain, it stood to reason it might work on other animals. The truth was, he might well have made no difference to poor Archimedes’s situation whatsoever. He kissed the top of her head and buried his nose in her curls. She finally tilted her face up to look at him, her eyes so sad. ‘I’ll make this right, Thea. You can trust me.’ He saw hope kindle then. Hope and belief in him that was both humbling and made him feel ten feet tall. Of its own accord, his head began to lower, intent on kissing away all her pain...
‘Oh, my dear! Oh, my dear!’ The Viscountess suddenly burst through the French doors, still wearing her bonnet and travelling clothes. ‘I have just heard what happened. Poor Archimedes! And poor you!’ The older woman rushed over and began to fuss around Thea, dragging her out of his arms and back towards the house, leaving Gray no choice but to impotently follow, ridiculously aggrieved to have been usurped in Thea’s moment of need. ‘I am sure he will recover, dearest. I know how much you love him.’
Back in the parlour, as a pale Thea quietly wept against her aunt’s shoulder, Gislingham tapped Gray on the arm and gestured beyond the door, then limped out. Gray was glad to escape. Not because of Thea’s tears—but because he wanted to be the only one who consoled her. Worrying and dangerous ground indeed. ‘What happened?’
Gray told him every detail and watched the man bristle. ‘Blasted Purbeck! The fool shoots off his gun at all hours with scant regard for his neighbours. We’ve had words about it before. A few years ago, back before this happened.’ He pointed to his ravaged body. ‘He came within a hair’s breadth of killing me! He was shooting pheasants or grouse or something well out of season, and his bullet went clean through my hat. It took every ounce of my restraint not to punch the blighter on the nose. Now poor Thea’s horse is injured! And for what? All so the idiot can brag to whichever lamentable soul he has forced to dine with him that he is so manly he killed the dinner himself! I’ve never understood it. The sight of blood has always made me queasy and I couldn’t eat a thing I’d watched choke on its dying breath.’
But sleep soundly knowing men have been murdered at your word? Gray bit back the angry, incredulous retort and tried to push his understandable prejudices to one side. Not for King and country this time, but for Thea. His friend... The friend his arms still longed to hold. The same friend who was currently making his heart ache in a way that did not feel at all like simple friendship. If anything, it felt alarmingly like...affection. Perhaps more than that. A knot of emotion formed in his throat. Fear and realisation. He was in too deep—but knew he couldn’t back away and that had precious little to do with his mission and everything to do with her.
‘Tell me plain, young man, so I can prepare. Does the nag
stand a fighting chance or are we merely prolonging the inevitable?’
‘I think it’s just a sprain. Perhaps a bad one. But if I’m right he might recover.’ Seeing her so distraught, he’d nurse the beast day and night for a month if he had to. Whatever it took to make her smile again. What was that about?
‘I hope you are right.’ The Viscount clumsily lowered himself on to an ottoman by the wall, suddenly looking old and frail. ‘Archimedes was her father’s horse. Her last link to him bar me. I can only assume that is part of the reason she is so upset. She lost her father young. A carriage accident. Such a tragedy. Maybe this has churned that all up?’ There was a chance. Her grief was that raw. ‘She had nightmares for months afterwards and thoroughly blamed herself.’
‘Why?’
‘They argued that day. Something which was a frequent occurrence because they were both as headstrong as each other, but which always quickly blew over. He’d lay down the law, she’d rebel and then he’d despair of her wilful nature when she refused to comply. But once they had both cooled off, they would both apologise. My brother and my niece both had twin fiery tempers that matched their fiery hair. Tempers that burned hot instantly, then cooled just as quickly. Except that day, he stormed out in anger and they never got to make it up. She used to dwell on that a great deal, no matter how much I tried to tell her my brother wouldn’t have cared. He adored his daughter and, like me, royally spoiled her rotten. But she forgot that in the midst of her grief. I suppose it’s easier to focus on the negatives than remember the positives. To lose Archimedes through tragedy...well, that would be a bitter blow indeed.’
As Gray digested that, he realised it was entirely plausible. Those fragile links to the past mattered. He doubted he’d ever set foot in Wales again for exactly that reason. Wales, his mother, Cecily and the hornet’s nest his life had quickly turned into were all inextricably linked to that place.
The butler approached on silent feet and coughed politely. ‘The post has finally arrived, my lord. Did you want it now?’ On the silver salver in his hand was one letter. A letter written in the same, elegant, sloping hands as the ones tied with ribbon locked in the Viscount’s desk.
The older man glanced at it and sighed in relief. ‘Put it in my study, thank you. I shall read it later.’ Just as Gray would read the few he had pilfered from that same study a few hours ago at his earliest possible convenience. In an hour or three. Once he was sure Thea was all right.
Chapter Sixteen
They were love letters. Beautifully written. Poignant and filled with all the angst and longing of a love that wasn’t allowed to be, yet managed to survive regardless. The earliest ones were over twenty years old and intimate. The author of the letters described her joy at Gislingham’s tenderness alongside the emotional fulfilment the intimacy had created.
I suspected you were the one. Now I know it. I refuse to feel guilty for loving you.
A few years on and the situation appeared hopeless.
I know you are married and that I must be part of your past, but I think of you every single day and what we might have had and curse fate for introducing us to each other too late to change things.
In his haste to grab a decent sample, Gray had missed a decade’s worth of the doomed story of the star-crossed lovers, but the next letter had a wholly different tone. Chatty and filled with gossip. Family stories about her mother, her brother and her new nephew.
Such an adorable cherub with eyes almost as dark as your Thea’s.
This was a relationship where everything was shared. Almost as if out of their initial passion, they had found a way to be friends. Yet the final paragraph discussed a stolen weekend by the sea where they had been free to be solely with one another.
You are my everything. Tonight I shall lie on my pillow and blow you a thousand kisses. Make sure you catch them.
By the date, he was sure Gislingham had remarried by that time. All their intelligence suggested he had walked Caroline down the aisle within a year of his first wife’s death. Had he and his true love not reconnected before then? Was she also married? It seemed a great shame that these two people were clearly meant to be together, but, like ships passing in the night, never came quite close enough. He wished he had taken more of the letters to know the full picture, but was also glad he hadn’t. The Gislingham on the page was too likeable. Too much like the old man who had fretted about his niece yesterday and who loved to laugh.
The accounts Gray had taken from the Viscount’s desk were also surprising and thankfully thorough enough that Gray had no cause to break into Thea’s bedchamber. Her fortune was quite staggering and diligently managed. She did have stocks in ships—but a totally legitimate fleet. You couldn’t work hand in glove with the Excise Men and not know which companies were above board and which worked hard to appear to be. These were owned by Quakers and, famously, not only diligently paid all their levies and tariffs, but also eschewed transporting any items which had links with slavery. She also had shares in a successful pottery, several banks and a publishing house. None of which seemed even slightly dubious.
More curious were Gislingham’s private investments. He had a similar portfolio to Thea, but a quarter of its size. He was a wealthy man to be sure, but the majority of his money-making efforts—on paper, at least—appeared to be on her behalf. Almost as if he really was securing her future after he was gone, but was perfectly content to live comfortably within his means himself.
Completely incongruous with the man Gray suspected Gislingham to be—and more like the devoted, loving man in these letters. Unless those accounts were all the clever ruse of a genius who had known that someone would one day come looking and had constructed a legitimate façade which he hid behind. The Boss wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep any evidence of his criminal dealings at home. But were these love letters faked, too? He glanced back down at the one in his hand and cast it aside. The private emotions spilling on to every neatly written page made him feel ashamed to read them. Voyeuristic, even. Perhaps because he knew what it felt like to love deeply and then to lose it.
Unlike the Viscount’s, every heartfelt letter he had sent to Cecily before her marriage had been returned unopened. Something he was glad of now. She had ripped his young heart from his chest and trampled it. That was enough. She didn’t need to know exactly how much her betrayal had hurt him or how much he had wanted her back. The same day she married his brother in Wales, Gray had stepped on a merchant ship in Bristol bound for the Orient, strangely embracing the weeks of horrendous seasickness because it numbed the pain in his heart. Then he had banished her from his thoughts until he had arrived here in Suffolk, knowing the mere memory of her face, her voice and their shared childhood would stir it all up afresh.
Except it was different. Time had taken the sting out of the memories. He had to concentrate hard to conjure an image of Cecily. That face he had adored was hazy and blurred. He couldn’t hear her voice any more. Didn’t feel that sharp pain in his ribs when he pondered what might have been, because for some reason it no longer mattered—because she no longer mattered.
Why that was, he wasn’t inclined to examine—suffice it to say that it was an entirely different woman who consumed his thoughts now. And as he approached the stables at Gislingham Hall, he felt his blood fizz with excitement at the prospect of seeing her. Another thing best not examined. He was here for Archimedes and to catch The Boss. Those were the only two tangibles he would focus on in a swirling sea of variables and he would cling to both like a piece of driftwood in a storm.
The big horse was munching hay, apparently quite content to have the ceiling bear most of his weight and not the least bit bothered by the peculiar harness supporting his belly. Without asking permission from the stable hands, he made a huge fuss of the brute, then crouched down to unwrap the poultice from his fetlock. Last night, to give his mind something else to do rather than worry about how
badly Thea had taken the injury, Gray had visited the stable again late and reapplied a fresh one. Now the joint was still swollen, but less so. He was able to run his hands over all of it without Archimedes flinching once. A very encouraging sign.
Seeing as his unlikely treatment appeared to be working, Gray repeated it, bathing the leg in ice, then wrapping it in another cooling poultice, then took himself off to report the progress to Thea.
* * *
‘She’s gone off to lick her wounds.’ The Viscount had insisted Gray eat breakfast with him in his private sitting room. ‘Came down this morning apologising for carrying on, checked on Archimedes and I haven’t seen her since. She does that, does Thea. She’s one to mull by nature. Ponders everything far too long and then pretends to everyone she is fine and dandy, when we all know she isn’t. She’s always been the same. I never quite know what’s going on inside her head.’
‘Was she the same when her father died?’
‘Worse. Bottled it all up inside. It took more than a year to see smatterings of the old Thea return.’ He chewed thoughtfully on his bacon. ‘Heartbreaking.’
‘What happened?’ Because all the King’s Elite intelligence had focused on Gislingham’s past, Thea’s was a grey area. He watched the older man slump a little in his chair at the memory, then felt guilty for dragging it up. ‘It’s really none of my business. I’m sorry.’
‘No... You of all people should probably know.’ What did that mean? ‘They were staying here. They always came down from Cambridge to rusticate here over the summer. It’s a short journey back and my brother would sometimes return to attend to whatever business he had to attend to. They’d argued. I told you that. Over something nonsensical, as was their wont, and he’d stomped out, muttering about being cursed with the most wilful daughter any man had ever been cursed with while she haired up the stairs like a banshee and slammed her bedchamber door. An hour later, the constable came. The brake on his gig had failed as he’d tried to avoid something in the road. I can’t say I know exactly what happened that dreadful morning, suffice it to say his gig overturned and his neck was broken.’
The Disgraceful Lord Gray Page 18