He was not foolish enough to believe that the silence meant anything. His pursuer’s horse could simply be stuck in the mud, trudging slowly through it to avoid his steed rolling an ankle.
Gradually, the sludgy ground gave way to a smoother road, but Edward did not want to risk exposure on the open road any longer. Gripping the reins, he turned Silver into the nearby woods and edged his steed through the snatching undergrowth. A crack behind him startled the beast, prompting it to take off at a sudden pace. He lurched and did everything he could to keep his seat, but the horse would not be brought back under control.
“Slowly!” he hissed, but the whites of the horse’s eyes were showing. It whinnied and galloped through the shadowed trees.
He was instantly reminded of a similar incident, five years ago, when he had lost his beloved sister to this very kind of event. An image of her cold, dead body surged into his mind unbidden, and sudden tears sprang to his eyes.
In all the years since, he had never been allowed to forget his part in her death. He had not been directly responsible for the accident that took her life, but he had not been able to stop it. In the eyes of his father and grandfather, God rest their souls, he had been wholly responsible for her loss. That guilt had plagued him ever since and would not be dispelled.
Edward fought to regain control of his horse, but the beast would not listen to instruction. He knew his pursuer could be anywhere in the shadows, waiting for him to stumble, but what could he do? He could not urge Silver to calm down.
From the darkness, something lashed at his throat and caught him full in the chest. He was moving so fast that he barely had time to grasp for the reins before the low-hanging branch swiped him out of the saddle. He hit the ground with such a bone-shaking thud that the world began to spin. His head smacked into something hard, sending a spike of pain through his skull.
As he tried to rise, he fought to keep hold of consciousness. A second later, as he fell back into the undergrowth, he heard a second set of hooves pass close by, charging after a spooked Silver.
The beat of the hooves did not stop, making him realize they did not know he had been unseated from his horse. Whoever they were, they would follow Silver until they saw that the beast no longer had a rider.
He struggled to get up, but searing pain kept him fixed to the cold, wet undergrowth. His eyelids grew heavy, blocking out the faint glow of the crescent moon above. He tried to keep his gaze on the stars, but the deep shadows of oblivion approached with an oily stealth. He blinked twice, but could not clear the dark haze that filled his line of sight.
When he could no longer steady himself, he slipped into unconsciousness. He sank into the darkness, certain he would not wake again.
This was it. He bemoaned that this was the end of days for him.
At eight-and-twenty, his life was over.
Chapter 2
“Is that…is that a man?”
Fiona cowered behind Mrs. Benton, the cook. She was Mrs. Benton’s latest assistant, and they’d come out to forage for mushrooms for the evening meal. It was pure chance that they had stumbled across a body at the edge of the neighboring woodland; the male body splayed out between the trunks of two horse chestnut trees.
“Keep your distance,” Mrs. Benton warned. “He might be a highwayman, come to attack us unawares. Sneaky devils.”
Fiona peered at him. “He’s not moving, Mrs. Benton.”
“That don’t mean he has good intentions. You’d do well to learn that now, before it finds you in hot water.”
“Maybe he needs help. He doesn’t look too good.”
Mrs. Benton frowned. “Mayhap you’re right, but you’re not to go getting involved. Leave it to me. I’ll soon brain the chap with me basket, if he should try ought funny.”
The plump, older woman stepped forward and poked the body with her foot. The man groaned out loud. His eyes fluttered, but they did not open. Spurred on, Mrs. Benton poked him again, eliciting the same response.
“You. Wake up.” She knelt and prodded him in the ribs.
He opened his eyes fully this time. “Where…am I?” he wheezed.
“Mind yer own business.”
“Who…are you?” He eyed the two women curiously.
“I could ask you the same thing.” Mrs. Benton folded her arms across her ample bosom and narrowed her eyes at him. She did not like strangers at the best of times but finding one on the border of Greenwick Abbey was infinitely more unsettling.
His Grace would not be happy to discover an unwanted intruder in the grounds, for he suffered from intense paranoia regarding the safety of his family. It was borne from an uncomfortable history that had trailed the family throughout the years. She remembered the unfortunate unpleasantness between the late Duke of Greenwick and the man named Francis Godwin as if it were yesterday.
The man shook his head. “I…I do not remember.” He touched the back of his head, leaving a red streak across his pale palm. Mrs. Benton reeled back in fright, her edges softening at the sight of the man in pain.
Intrigued, Fiona asked, “You can’t remember who you are?”
“It is on the tip of my tongue, but I cannot recollect. My apologies for startling you. I do not know how I came to be here.” He glanced around, a foggy expression in his eyes. Mrs. Benton had seen the fogginess once before, in her husband’s eyes after he had taken a nasty tumble from the roof of a house he was thatching. His memory had returned soon enough, but she recognized the confusion in this young man.
“Do you know your name?” Mrs. Benton asked.
He frowned, deep in thought. “Edmund or Edward, I believe.”
“Should we take him back to the house and send for the physician?” Fiona whispered.
“I think not. We ought to leave him here until he regains his memory.” Mrs. Benton rested her hands on her hips.
“But he’s clearly injured, Mrs. Benton. Maybe we should take him back, so the Duke can decide what to do with him?”
Mrs. Benton momentarily hesitated. “Well then, Edmund or Edward, let’s see what His Grace says, shall we? It looks as if you’ve taken a bad knock to the head, though I’ll whack you if you step out of line.” She reached out her hand to help the young man up. He winced as he got to his feet, holding onto his head as if his hand were the only thing holding it together.
“I really am sorry for alarming you, Ladies.” He cast a pained smile in their direction.
“You ought to worry about yourself right now,” Mrs. Benton replied. “Your memory will come back to you, worry not. Did you have a horse with you, or did you walk here? Can you recall anything?”
His face took on a strained look. “I think I had a horse, but I imagine it is long gone. I do not know why I was headed in this direction. Indeed, I do not recognize anything.”
“Never mind that, you’ll remember soon enough.” Mrs. Benton took him by the arm and led him across the vast lawn that led up to the fine exterior of Greenwick Abbey. It was a fair walk, and she doubted his ability to make the journey, but she was stronger than she looked; if he needed to be carried, she’d be only too happy to oblige.
It was hard to gauge the young man’s heritage, for though he spoke with a clipped voice, his clothes were torn and covered in a thick layer of dirt and grime. His hair was unkempt, his face streaked with mud and spatters of blood, and he did not seem to know a thing about himself. He could not even properly remember his name, though Mrs. Benton thought he looked more like an Edward than an Edmund.
“Where are you taking me?” the young man asked.
“To see His Grace, the Duke of Greenwick. He can decide your fate.” Mrs. Benton gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. Although His Grace was an anxious, paranoid sort of gentleman, he had a kind spirit. He was unlikely to turn a young man away, especially one in such dire need of assistance.
* * *
George Bradford, the Duke of Greenwick, stared at the young man, who had lapsed into unconsciousness on the settee in the
drawing room.
Mrs. Benton and Fiona, her assistant, had brought him from the woodland and deposited him there. A fire raged in the grate, casting warmth on the unconscious man, but George felt only a chill when he observed the man.
However, he had no clue what he was supposed to do with such a stranger. He feared for the safety of his lands and the protection of his three precious daughters. He had no son to defend his title, but he did not want any uppity son of this fellow and that fellow to come a-calling for his daughters. That had been instilled in him from a very young age, especially considering the troubled past that had plagued his grandfather.
You can never be too safe.
That was what his father had taught him, and his mother had always highlighted the importance of keeping the ladies in his family protected from any who might do them harm. There had not been any continued unpleasantness between the Greenwicks and the Summerhills, not directly, but there were always saucy looks and bitter exchanges of words whenever their paths crossed in London.
George took a small vial of smelling salts and wafted them beneath the stranger’s nostrils. They widened, the young fellow jolted awake. He glanced around the room, an expression of utter bafflement written across his features.
“Where am I?” he gasped.
“You are in the drawing room of Greenwick Abbey, and I am George Bradford, the Duke of Greenwick.” He sat beside the young man and pocketed the smelling salts. “Now, the true question is, who are you?”
The young man frowned. “Edward…I think my name is Edward.”
“You do not remember?”
The young man shook his head. “I am trying, Your Grace.”
“You speak well. Are you of noble peerage?”
“I cannot recall, Your Grace.”
George tutted. “Well, that will not do. Do you remember how you came to be in my grounds?”
“I cannot, Your Grace.”
“The physician has been sent for, and he will further investigate your current well-being. However, it would appear you have taken a rather serious hit to the back of your head. That could well be why you do not remember anything. I trust your memory will return.”
The young man nodded. “I pray that it does, Your Grace.”
“Until then, it is clear that you cannot be allowed to fend for yourself in such a state as this. I suppose you must remain here.”
The young man stumbled over his words. “That is very kind, Your Grace.”
“However, if you are to remain here, we must find a suitable employ for you. Naturally, there will be a period of rest, in which you may well recover your memory. If you do not, then you cannot be allowed to sit idle. Tell me, do you know if you have any particular skills?” George waited patiently for the young man to answer, though even the slightest response seemed to take much of his energy.
“I think I am good with horses…but I cannot be sure.”
George looked at the man, noticing his smooth hands. He did not look like one who was used to physical labor. “You might care to work with them, do you think?”
“Yes…yes, I might be of some use, if you have any employ you might offer me?”
George smiled. “Excellent, then perhaps it might be best if you were to earn your keep in the stables, as a stable boy. Just until your memories return. Would that suit?” He did not care to force this stranger into an unseemly occupation, but the fellow seemed eager enough.
“I think it would, Your Grace.”
“And you are sure you cannot remember a thing?”
The young man shook his head. “Nothing, Your Grace.”
George tapped the side of his chin in thought. “Very well. You should remain here until Doctor Bartlett arrives, so he may fully examine you. I have sent for some tea things to be brought to us, so you may recover some of your strength.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
The Duke rose and moved to the opposite settee, where he sat with one leg balanced across his other. The young man continued to glance around in complete confusion, blinking slowly at the flickering flames of the fire.
The presence of this man perturbed George more than he dared to admit, for there was a familiarity to the gentleman’s face that he could not quite put his finger on. He had handsome features and a dopey sort of smile that young ladies adored, but he vowed that this particular young man would not get within a few yards of his own daughters.
George would keep an eye on this fellow, in case this entire episode of amnesia revealed itself to be an elaborate ruse. An ordinary man would not suspect such a thing, but George was no ordinary man. He lived and breathed conspiracy, always fearing that someone might come to upset the applecart of his beloved family.
He had not always been that way, even though some modicum of it had been instilled in him by those who had come before him. No, it had been the arrival of his firstborn, Caroline, that had brought his paranoia to the surface. Charged with the care of such a small, vulnerable creature, all those fears had morphed into something beyond his control—a terror that his children would come into some danger he could not defeat.
Now, a strange, unknown individual had walked into Greenwick Abbey, disrupting the tight running of his proverbial ship. If the young man overstepped his bounds, even by one foot, George would not be so benevolent again. Indeed, he was surprised by his own generosity, for he ordinarily vetted his servants to within an inch of their lives. He did not know why he had allowed this young man to remain.
Perhaps I feel sorry for him. It is no easy thing to lose one’s memory.
He had watched his mother, the late Duchess, endure painful years of slowly forgetting everything she knew and loved. One day, he had walked into the library to greet her, and she had not even recognized him.
It had pained his father, too, for she could not remember him in his aged state. She loved a man by the name of Percy Bradford, but to her, he was a much younger man, not the wrinkled imposter who stood before her.
He remembered her babbling of a great trauma, and how his father had burst through the door to her rescue. She would retell the same stories over and over and beg for the man who had saved her that day. George’s father had gone to her, to try and calm her, but she only wept, for she did not know him.
And when she looked into a mirror, she screamed, for she did not know herself, either. The older woman in the looking glass was not the woman she expected, and her wails of confusion had been heard throughout the halls of Greenwick Abbey.
That must be why.
He attempted to convince himself, though he still felt a grip of concern that this young man had come to cause them harm. One thing was for certain—if the young man threatened his daughters in any way, George vowed to come down upon the young man like a guillotine.
From that, there would be no mercy and no escape.
Chapter 3
“Who is this stranger that the house cannot stop wagging their tongues over?” Lydia Bradford, the Duke of Greenwick’s middle daughter, asked. She leant against the doorway of the library, whilst her mother read by the fire. She had heard the first whisperings of the stranger’s arrival two days ago, though she had only just mustered the courage to discover more.
It had been a long while since anything exciting had happened at Greenwick Abbey, and Lydia was quick to learn of any and all gossip that found its way into the house.
She longed for adventure and excitement, but she had been brought up in the wrong household. Here in the Hertfordshire countryside, she was far removed from any sort of thrilling event. She did not much care for balls and soirées, for the ones held in the nearby stately homes were always somber affairs, designed solely for the art of matchmaking. Indeed, she much preferred the freedom of riding her horse through the woods and burying herself in a good book.
“You are not to go near him,” the Duchess, Annabelle Bradford, replied, without looking up from her book.
“Is it true that the cook found him naked amongs
t the trees?” The idea thrilled Lydia to the core.
At two-and-twenty, she had learned of the world through the books she read beneath the covers at night. The tantalizing, titillating tales of Udolpho, and the forbidden Grecian myths of Phryne and Myrrha, and the poems of Sappho. They spoke freely of intercourse, in a way that would have prompted her mother to shriek in disgust, though Lydia indulged in them with aplomb, delighting in the lurid description therein. After all, there was little else to keep her occupied within the confines of Greenwick Abbey.
Her father allowed his daughters little freedom, aside from her weekly rides out into the woodland. Even then, she was watched from the house by her father’s trusted servants and she was never permitted to go further than the border of the grounds. Still, it was her one joy in an otherwise dull existence.
Her mother cast a withering look in her direction. “Of course, he was not found naked, Lydia. What on earth has got into you? I worry for your mind sometimes, for it is so often inappropriate. Indeed, I wonder if I should ask Doctor Bartlett to take a look at you, for you concern me greatly.”
Lydia pouted. “That is what the maids were saying, Mother.”
“Well, they ought not to be spreading such vulgar gossip, for it is not true. He was discovered fully clothed and has been set to work by your father.”
“Where?”
“That is none of your concern.” Her mother folded her book in her lap. “It is fortunate that you should come to find me on this fine afternoon, for I thought it due time we discussed your situation.”
Lydia arched an eyebrow. “My situation? I was not aware I had one.”
“Do not be obtuse, Lydia. You know perfectly well what I am referring to. I know your father would see you remain a spinster for the rest of your days, but I am disinclined to agree. As he has no son, we must find you an excellent gentleman so that your future may be assured.”
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