Realm 05 - A Touch of Mercy

by Regina Jeffers

  Instead of claiming a wife, after the attack, he had spent a month recuperating at Thorn Hall under the care of Brantley Fowler’s personal physician. Every time he thought of the duke’s attempt at charity Aidan smiled. “At least, Fowler keeps an excellent wine cellar,” he had told Kerrington upon his arrival at Linton Park.

  As he waited on the main entrance steps for Godown’s coach to maneuver the rough road leading to the manor, Aidan thought of those few brief encounters in London, which had assured him, it was time to return to Cheshire.

  At Lord Graham’s ball, he and Godown had shared cheroots on the balcony. They had played their parts in bringing Sir Carter Lowery’s older brother, Lawrence, to toe the line. The future Baron Blakehell had made a very public proposal of marriage to an American girl named Arabella Tilney. It had been quite the spectacle with Lawrence Lowery dropping to a knee before the girl on a crowded dance floor. Sir Carter had orchestrated the events, and his friend was more than pleased with the outcome.

  “A bit dramatic,” Aidan had observed when he and Godown had secured the privacy of a shadowed corner of the balcony. “Shoot me if I act so foolishly.”

  Godown’s eyebrow had risen in a taunt. “You are not a believer in love? When came the change?”

  His friend’s words had stung more than Aidan cared to reveal. He stiffened, totally unprepared for the marquis’s question. Among his Realm associates, Aidan was known to wear his heart on his sleeve. It seemed he had continually looked for love where none could be found. As he had purposely stared off in the darkness to compose his thoughts, he announced, “Maybe once. A long time ago.” Had he meant to convince the marquis or himself? He had followed his declaration with a smile: Feigned frivolity. Such gestures had become his shield against the loneliness. “Of course, that was before Thornhill invited me to Kent.” The deflection had worked its magic. Any curiosity the marquis held evaporated. “You cannot fathom the number of times I stumbled upon the duke and duchess in an intimate embrace. I swear, Godown, it is enough to make one wish for blindness. Has the man never heard of a locked door?”

  The marquis laughed lightly. Aidan understood perfectly: Godown and Thornhill held a healthy competition waged privately in the most devious ways. He was relieved Godown had dropped the subject of Aidan’s personal life being in disarray. “At least, the duke’s lack of propriety has sped your recovery.”

  Aidan had shrugged noncommittally. His devils were his own, and some things were best left unsaid. “Not completely, but the physician has assured me my memory will return.” It was at that moment Aidan had realized he must return to Lexington Arms to set his life aright. If he did not know his past, how could he find a future? So despite having received an invitation to return to Thorn Hall for Christmastide, Aidan had chosen to accept the one from Lord Worthing. After all, Derbyshire was so much closer to Cheshire than was Kent. “Do you suppose either of us will ever find what the others have?” he had ventured when his conversation with the marquis had lulled. Aidan had longed for the peace of family since the day the headmaster had unceremoniously announced his mother’s passing.

  Not surprisingly, the marquis had possessed no more of an answer than had he, and in some ways that particular fact had comforted Aidan. To know he was not the only one to have dodged when he should have run straight into love’s embrace eased his pain.

  “Unfortunately, I have no time for pursuing love,” Godown had confessed. “I must marry soon, but it will only be from duty, not from affection.” Three of the seven with whom Aidan had served had married for love, and although he celebrated his friends’ marriages, with each, he had seen his own prospects dim. How could God grant all seven true happiness?

  “Where is your mind, Lexford?” Worthing asked as Godown’s carriage rolled to a halt.

  Aidan gave himself a mental shake. “Just wondering how I might extricate Mr. Hill from Linton Park now that my man has known Lady Worthing’s maid’s heart.”

  Worthing chuckled. “I suspect with Hill’s growing ardor, I must soon employ another lady’s maid for my wife.”

  As Lord Worthing stepped away to greet the marquis, Aidan murmured, “Even my servant has found true regard. Yet, Lady Love does not look kindly on me.”

  “Ah, Godown. It is you.” Worthing called as he descended the steps. “When word came from the gatehouse of your arrival, I thought Ole Taylor had lost his reason.” The marquis nodded to Aidan, but his friend appeared nervous, a characteristic rarely associated with Gabriel Crowden.

  Aidan descended the steps to greet the man. “You do realize this is Advent Sunday?”

  Crowden’s lips twitched in mock amusement. “I told John Coachman to travel the back roads. I had to escape Lord Brant’s house party. I will explain in more detail later.”

  Aidan’s heart clenched. Only moments before, he had assumed Crowden would know failure in marriage, but something of the marquis’s stature spoke of anticipation. Resignation had left Lord Godown’s shoulders to be replaced by eagerness. Not nerves, after all, Aidan thought.

  “Let us go inside.” Worthing gestured to the still open door. “Out of the cold.”

  When Crowden paused awkwardly, Aidan knew everything had changed for his friend. “I have someone with me,” the marquis said matter-of-factly.

  Aidan stifled the sigh of regret. Instead, he plastered a smile upon his lips. Good-naturedly, he slapped Crowden on the back. “You sly fox. You and Miss Haverty have decided to elope, and you require our assistance to outrun the lady’s relatives.” Something inside him cracked. Of course, he was aware the marquis meant to marry Miss Alice Haverty, but Crowden’s marriage was not one of true regard. His friend had said as much in London. It was meant simply to save the man’s title. Yet, an undeniable peacefulness had lodged itself squarely upon the marquis’s countenance. Had Crowden found love with Miss Haverty? Aidan could not imagine how it was so. Personally, he had found the girl an insipid twit, but an elopement would speak of passion.

  Crowden halted Aidan’s steps. “It is not what you think, Lexford,” the marquis cautioned.

  Aidan wished to scream that none of them knew what he thought. They had never known what he thought–only what he allowed them to see. Shepherd and the Realm saw him as a man who could make others believe he wished to be their truest acquaintance. That was the role he had played in saving Eleanor Fowler from Louis Levering. The amiable friend. Yet, that was certainly not he. They knew nothing of his deepest fears and longings. Hell! Even he possessed no idea who he once had been. Lachlan Charters’ blow had scrambled his emotions, along with his mind.

  Turning to the carriage, Crowden extended his hand into the darkness. “Come, my Dear, we have explanations to make.” The marquis delivered a hard stare to Aidan and Worthing, daring either man to comment on the marquis’s companion, the former governess Grace Nelson.

  Aidan understood immediately. Despite the evidence, which spoke of Miss Nelson’s involvement in several attempts on the marquis’s life, Crowden held a strong affection for the woman. The peaceful countenance, Aidan considered. Crowden loves the woman. He may not realize it, but he does. The thought saddened Aidan. He would wish his friend well, but if what he expected proved true, then the odds against his own happiness had increased exponentially.

  “Worthing. Lexford. You previously hold Miss Nelson’s acquaintance.”

  Worthing found his voice first. The viscount bowed stiffly. “Of course, Miss Nelson, welcome to Linton Park.”

  To assure them of what Aidan instinctively knew, Godown announce, “Miss Nelson has agreed to make me the happiest of men. We had hoped Linworth’s offer of Linton Chapel might extend to our joining.”

  *

  Dutifully, Aidan had sat with Worthing and Crowden after Lady Worthing had taken Miss Nelson under her care. He had even argued the point that the marquis should not consider marrying a woman who they suspected of extensive duplicity, but Aidan had known the futility of such reasoning. He had wasted his voice
. Every gesture. Every facial expression said the marquis’s heart was engaged.

  Later that evening when he had escaped the loving couple, Aidan had sneaked from the house and had made his way to the folly overlooking the first of the lakes on Linworth’s property. The conversation between Lord and Lady Worthing, Lord Godown, Miss Nelson, and the Countess of Linworth had naturally turned to the wedding, and for the first time ever Aidan suddenly felt uncomfortable with his friends. Stepping inside the structure, he sat upon the cold cement bench. Instinctively, he pulled his great coat closer about him and donned his gloves. The December chill crept into his bones, but Aidan never considered returning to the warmth of his chambers. He required time to decide what was best for his future, and a deep cold matched his heart.

  “God! What a quagmire!” he groaned aloud. He scrubbed his face with his hands to clear his thinking–a gesture of which he had become more aware of late.

  Physically, he was strong enough to resume his duties as Viscount Lexford of Lexington Arms, Cheshire, but mentally and emotionally, Aidan was less certain of his success. His injury had, literally, shaken him to his core. Until that incident, he had thought himself well aware of his role in life. He was the dutiful second son of Viscount Arlen Kimbolt, Lord Lexford. He had abandoned the woman he loved when his father had pressed him to do so, and he had returned to Cheshire to marry a woman who did not love him, again at his father’s insistence. “Ironic that both women were one in the same,” he reasoned.

  Aidan braced his arms on his knees and dropped his head into his hands. His temples throbbed with the pain of remembering. “Susan,” he whispered her name into the night. “Why?” From the day he woke from his injury in a room with Lady Worthing as his caretaker, Aidan had repeated his wife’s name and the question of why she had chosen his brother over him at least a thousand times. When Susan had been alive, he had never had the courage to ask her. “She was so overcome by Andrew’s death, I could not drag an answer from her.” Now, she was gone, and no opportunities remained.

  He rubbed his temples roughly, making tight circles with his fingers. “The bastard died in defense of another woman, for Christ’s sake,” Aidan protested. “I would have never deserted you. Could you not have seen that?” he asked his wife’s image.

  “Damn her!” He leaned his head against one of the white washed columns and closed his eyes. “We were doomed from the beginning,” he murmured to the stillness. “How could we make a marriage from the shambles of Andrew’s insensibilities?” Yet, there were no answers to be had in the night’s stillness.

  He had placed his heart and soul into making the former Susan Rhodes happy, but his brother’s ghost had replaced the easy closeness he and Susan had once shared. Susan recoiled from his every gesture of tenderness. Where she had once readily sought his embrace, after their marriage, his wife had avoided him. They coexisted in Lexington Arm’s many passages and rooms. Living as strangers.

  “Even with all the chaos between us, I never wanted you to follow Andrew,” he said as his throat tightened. “We could have found a means to come together. We were friends once. I would have given you and the child my devotion.”

  Aidan could see her. See Susan swaying from side to side. Her arms wrapped about her waist, and her eyes closed dreamily upon the world. Could she see the flames grow higher. See his feeble attempts to save her. “Forgive me,” he whispered as tears formed behind his lids.

  “You require assistance, my Lord?”

  Aidan opened his eyes to find Lucifer Hill standing in the folly’s opening. “Do I appear in distress?” he said with a bit more sarcasm than he intended. “I no longer require a nurse maid, Mr. Hill.”

  His man of all jobs frowned. “Considering you have been sitting on a cold bench for nigh onto two hours, you will likely be requiring some sort of nurse. If you wish to sleep in the cold, permiy me to fetch you a blanket or two.”

  Aidan unfurled his stiff legs. “No need to be practical. I will seek my bed.” He rotated his shoulders and neck. “Despite the poor conditions, the sleep was restorative.”

  “Lord Worthing noted your unusual mood. Asked me to check on you,” Hill confessed.

  “Inform the viscount I am well. The physician has allowed me to return to my duties.” He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Everyone thought him an invalid.

  Hill nodded. “But your heart has not.”

  Aidan hated how well the man knew him. “On the contrary,” he said despite Hill’s scowl. “I have been considering how long I have been removed from Lexington Arms.”

  “You mean to return to Cheshire?”

  Aidan stepped around Hill. “There is nothing for me at Thorn Hall nor at Linton Park,” he asserted baldly.

  “Nothing but the best friends you have ever known,” Hill countered.

  Aidan turned to stare hard at the man he had rescued from a trumped-up execution. He said earnestly, “The best friends a man can have, along with their ladies.” He emphasized the last four words to make his point. “Men who take roots no longer have time for those who fly free as an autumn leaf.”

  Hill shook his head in disapproval. “You know that is not true. Those men would lay down their lives for you.”

  Aidan shrugged his answer. How did one argue against the truth? “I need to refill the holes in my memory, and I must start from the beginning. From my home. From Lexington Arms.”

  Hill nodded his understanding. “When do we leave?”

  Aidan noted the sad resignation on Hill’s countenance. “You may remain with Lord Worthing if you wish.”

  Hill’s lips formed a tight line. “I promised you ten years of service, and three years remain.”

  “It is not necessary…”

  Hill interrupted Aidan’s release. “A man’s pride is necessary, Your Lordship,” he said flatly.

  “And what of Hannah?” Aidan protested.

  Hill smiled easily. “Hannah is a good girl. She will wait for my time to pass. We have spoken on it.” He started off toward the house, and Aidan fell in step beside his friend. “I ask again when we leave.”

  Aidan sighed deeply. “I was thinking after Lord Godown’s nuptials. At week’s end.”

  “I will see to the arrangements. Leave the details to me, Sir.”

  *

  She wished she had known her sister Grace had planned her escape from Foresthill Hall. If so, Mercy Nelson would have begged Grace to permit Mercy to accompany her. Instead, it had taken Mercy until the early days of November before she had made her own exit from her brother’s household.

  She did not know how long she had traveled the roads of the western midlands. Some five weeks. Possibly six. Mercy had long since given up counting the days. When she had sneaked from her brother’s house in the dead of night, Mercy had thought to be in London by now. Had thought she would have found gainful employment. Likely, she would have if she had not accepted the aid of the Foyles. Mr. and Mrs. Foyle, if that had truly been their names, had offered Mercy a ride in their wagon and a place to spend the night, an offer, which had filled Mercy with genuine hope for the future. “I was such a simpleton,” she groaned as she rolled straw into a tight bundle and laced one of her hair ribbons about it to make a pillow of sorts. Her time on the road had taught her several hard lessons.

  First, the Foyles had dashed her dreams when they had bound her with a rope and had stolen her purse, as well as the locket her mother had given Mercy on her tenth birthday. The memory of her assailants’ laughter as they rode away into the dusk still haunted Mercy. “If God is just, some day we shall meet again, and it shall be my turn to laugh,” she declared.

  She had also learned when to beg a bite to eat and when to seek out what she could find in the fields and orchards. Even when she was hungry, Mercy had refused to steal from those who barely scraped by. She knew from the way her dress hung loosely upon her frame that she had lost more weight than she had thought possible. A result of too many missed meals. Yet, as a genteel woman, she k
new the value of charity, and she would not take from those with less than she.

  “Less than me,” she said with an ironic chuckle. Mercy wrapped her cloak about her. She had found a deserted barn, one which would likely fall down about her head, but one which was dry and relatively safe from others on the road. Since the famine of 1816, more and more of the populace had taken to the road–to look for a brighter future. Of course, Mercy had been blindly ignorant of that particular fact when she had set out from Lancashire. Even with the poverty she had observed among her brother’s poorest tenants, Mercy had never considered how widespread the unemployment in England had grown.

  “Men be lookin’ fer work everywhere,” a soldier, who had lost his legs in the war, had told her when she had accepted a wedge of dark bread from the man.

  Mercy had kept her eyes downcast but wary; yet, she had had no reason for concern. Mr. Peet had offered his protection from several unscrupulous-looking beggars, who had meant to steal the soldier’s meager meal. Mr. Peet, however, had met their plans with one of his own making. The man flashed a gun, which sent his assailants looking for another victim. Having witnessed their ready retreat, Mercy had spent a good portion of the day with Peet, who, obviously, relished her company. He had gallantly kissed her gloved hand in parting when she decided it was best if she covered more miles before nightfall.

  After her error in judgment with the Foyles, Mercy had made a conscious decision to travel the back roads. In doing so, she had found less offers of assistance, but she had felt safer.

  Some days as she trudged the dusty shire roads, Mercy chided herself for her naïveté. She had thought this a great adventure. After all, although Grace had served as a governess, her sister had met dukes and earls. Grace had even attended a party hosted by the Prince Regent, but there was nothing “great” about the drudgery Mercy had encountered. Yet, even on her worst day, she had never considered returning to Foresthill Hall. All that awaited her under her brother’s roof was a fate worse than the one her sister Grace had known. The thought of her poor sister dead upon the road to London brought a profound grief to Mercy’s heart.