by Elisa Braden
No small effort. After four days without Annabelle, he wanted to break things, not build them.
He glanced up when the door to Colby’s workshop opened. A surprise sauntered inside. “Huxley,” he muttered before turning back to his project. “What brings you here?”
Slow steps carried him deeper into the workshop’s gloom. “Brought you something.” A small, flat, leather-covered box appeared on the workbench beside Robert’s elbow.
“What is it?”
“Everything you missed.”
Robert frowned at his old friend. Huxley looked weary, his usual polish missing. “I don’t understand.”
A small smile lifted one corner of Hux’s mouth. “No. You never did.” Huxley patted the box. “Perhaps now you will.”
Robert set aside his hammer and folded his arms, turning to lean against the workbench. “I will marry Annabelle. She’s already agreed the wedding will occur as soon as your family arrives.”
“She told me.”
“We will be brothers, Hux.”
“We always were.”
Clenching his teeth, Robert dropped his gaze to the leather box. “What’s in it?”
“Letters.”
His gut went cold. “I’ve already realized the pain I caused her.”
Weary hazel eyes caught his. “Just read them. Call it a reassurance. I need to know you understand. I need to know I will never have cause to piece her back together again.”
For a moment, Robert considered keeping quiet. He’d never been good with words, and articulating his feelings for Annabelle—particularly to her brother—was impossible on the best day. But John Huxley was also his best friend, the one who’d drawn him into the Huxley family in the first place. So, for his sake, Robert tried.
He leaned across the workbench and retrieved his cane. “Walk with me.”
Hux nodded and followed him outside. The workshop was a small building connected along one side to the stables. Robert led the way past the yard then out beyond the gardens to a field several hundred yards away. As they topped a small rise, Robert halted and turned back toward Rivermore Abbey.
“Look there,” Robert said. “What do you see?”
Hux shot him a questioning glance. “Is this a jest? As I’ve said for years, a pint of ale tells better jokes than you do, Con.”
“Just tell me what you see.”
Bracing his hands on his hips, Huxley scanned the vista before them. “A great pile.”
“And?”
“Fences. Fields. Gardens. Woodlands.”
“All in good condition, yes?”
“Exceptional. You’ve worked miracles with the place. If this is about your finances, I’ve little doubt you’ll keep Annabelle quite comfortably—”
Robert shook his head. “Now you’re the one who doesn’t understand.”
Hux’s face hardened. “Then, explain.”
“I wanted to die,” he said. “The surgeon wanted to take my leg. But I wanted to die.”
“Anybody would. You’d broken bones. You were in a lot of pain.”
“No. Bodily pain was nothing. I’d lost the only thing that mattered, Hux. The only thing that made this life worth enduring.”
Frowning, Hux’s eyes sharpened upon him. “Annabelle?”
Robert nodded. “It wasn’t … like it is now, of course. But you’d have found it strange if you knew how much I loved her. She was my joy.”
“Very well. You loved her.” Hux glanced toward the abbey. “What has that to do with—”
“Grandfather knew. He knew what I’d given up. He knew why I was languishing.”
“Con, I—”
“So, he gave me a job. I put everything I had into it. Every bit of care I would have given her.”
For a long while, Huxley stared at him. Hazel eyes assessed and probed. Finally, he asked, “Why did you never let me mention her name?”
Robert swallowed before answering. “Hearing about her was torment. A reminder of what I’d lost.”
Huxley lifted his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “You should have told me.”
“Our connection was impossible to explain. Stronger than friendship. Too innocent to be infatuation. At least, until recently.”
Hux held up a hand. “Let us not delve any further, hmm? I just finished breakfast.”
Briefly, Robert smiled. “I need her, Hux.” He took a deep breath and shifted his gaze to the woodlands beyond Rivermore. “Rest assured, I would sooner carve out my own heart than break hers.”
“Well, you’re right about one thing,” Huxley replied. “I don’t understand this mad connection the two of you share. But neither do I doubt it. Annabelle has spent the past four days filling my ears with similar sentiments. The nausea has yet to abate.”
Robert chuckled and settled a hand on Hux’s shoulder. “One day, you’ll find a woman who makes madness a pleasure. When that day comes, I shall take great satisfaction in mocking your prior ignorance.”
His friend released a disgusted grunt. “Good God, I pray you’re wrong. I’m a wanderer, Con. All this deathless devotion twaddle sounds appalling.”
As Robert started back toward the workshop, he reminded his friend, “You’ll need an heir sooner or later.”
“Later will do nicely.”
They were halfway across the field when an insect buzzed loudly next to Robert’s ear.
Ten yards ahead, mud flew upward.
Then, he heard the echoing crack.
“Down, Con! Get down!”
Easier said than done. Heart racing and blood boiling, he put all his weight on his left leg and dropped into a crouch. Forcing his right leg to bend, he turned in place. Huxley crouched a few feet away, scanning the woods behind them.
Robert cursed.
“Did you fail to pay your gamekeeper, perchance?” Huxley gritted.
“Colby is Rivermore’s gamekeeper. And no.”
“We’ve about twenty seconds before the devil finishes reloading. Assuming he doesn’t have a second rifle.” Hux clapped Robert’s shoulder. “Ready?”
Robert nodded. “You go left. I’ll go right.”
“You always take the right.”
“Favors my good leg.”
“Bloody hell. Ten seconds.” Hux picked up a fist-sized rock from the dirt and hurled it twenty feet away. Moments later, a thudding ping struck near the rock’s landing spot. The shot resounded like thunder. The flash had come from just inside the tree line, behind a sizable boulder. “Now!”
Hux sprang to his feet and sprinted. Robert was slower, but his blood thrummed with power, driving him into a swift, staggered lope.
Had to reach the shooter.
Had to stop him.
Had to protect everything that was his.
The pain of pushing his leg too hard uphill was a distant flicker. All his senses sharpened upon the boulder behind which a craven killer hid. His boots dug into mud, ground into grass. His cane propelled him harder.
Huxley reached the trees first, but Robert wasn’t far behind. Using the cover of trunks and underbrush, they closed in from right and left upon the shooter’s position, searching for signs of a killer fleeing—or circling back upon them. As Robert neared the boulder, he braced his back against another tree and peered around, finding nothing but brambles and hawthorn. From behind a thick beech, Hux gave a shrill whistle. It was a signal. The shooter was gone. They were both panting when Robert rounded the boulder.
Hux crouched nearby, retrieving a scrap of cloth from the ground. “Patches.”
Robert nodded. The remnants of firing what must be a Baker rifle, given the weapon’s accuracy at two hundred yards, had flown several feet from the shooter’s position. Deep footprints in the mud gouged the ground where the shooter had stood. He’d clearly used the boulder as a prop.
“We can safely rule out an accident, I think.” Hux’s tone was wry.
Robert g
azed out from the shooter’s vantage, noting how clear and wide was the view of where he and Hux had been. “My thoughts, as well.”
“What do you want to do?”
Turning away from the open field to meet his friend’s gaze, Robert’s wrath boiled up and out, hardening inside his gut. Senses sharpened by his brush with death coalesced upon a single purpose. “I want to find him.”
Satisfaction curled a corner of Hux’s mouth. “Oh, yes.”
“I want to kill him.”
“Indeed.”
“We’ll need men.”
Hux glanced around the wood. “An army of them if we’re to search Rivermore’s lands properly. Perhaps I should ride back to Clumberwood. We’ve a handful of footmen who might be useful—”
“Leave them there. But send word. They must guard Annabelle.”
Hazel eyes met his. And there, shining gold and grim, Robert saw something that stopped his heart cold.
“No,” he whispered.
“She is here, Con.”
“No.”
“She came with me.”
He went cold. Every piece and part. For the first time, fear iced his body until his teeth nearly chattered with it. “God Almighty. Where?”
“The chapel.”
It wasn’t fear that drove him to a dead sprint. Fear had flown like dross from a fired rifle. No, this was certainty.
He must get to her first. Nothing else mattered. Any other outcome was unthinkable.
He must get to her first. He forced his bad leg to move, endured distant agonies as bone and muscle warred against his will. Whatever it took—pain was nothing, she was everything.
He must get to her first. The field was gone, now, a span of several hundred yards passed in a haze of cold horror and hot urgency. The gardens were coming. The chapel was on the opposite end of the abbey, but it seemed miles away.
He must get to her first. All he knew. All that mattered.
Annabelle. His wife. His heart.
He must get to her first.
*~*~*
An hour earlier
As Annabelle stood inside the old oak doors of the ancient chapel, she breathed the scents of stone and wood and beeswax candles. For a moment, she closed her eyes and listened to the reverent hush.
This time of day, the chapel was empty. Slowly, she meandered up the center aisle, letting her fingers brush lightly along the backs of the pews. It was a small place, only seven rows on each side of the nave. But everything about it felt sacred—the timeworn stone beneath her feet, the ornate pulpit and lectern, the tapestry on the east wall. Most of all, the light. Even on a cloudy day, brilliant rainbow light shone through six stained-glass windows, casting walnut and beeswax and stone in magical hues from red to blue and back again.
Annabelle paused as she reached the front pew and gazed up at the altar. Here, she would marry Robert. Here, she would become a wife. His wife.
What once sparked uncertainty now filled her the same way light filled this chamber. Helplessly, she smiled. She could not wait to be his. The past four days had been both wondrous and agonizing. She’d missed him terribly. Ached for him. But as she’d attempted to persuade her brother to abandon his concerns over Robert’s feelings for her, crucial realizations had solidified inside her own mind.
How unfair she’d been to Robert, thinking he did not love her as much as she loved him. Ridiculous, she’d realized. Robert might not show his love in precisely the same way, but he was a different person. He’d lost his mother before the age of six. He’d been raised by the gruff Lord Mortlock, not by affectionate parents. He was a man with a man’s pride and protective instincts. And he was five years older. As Jane had observed, that age disparity had been far more significant before she’d grown to womanhood.
That he loved her as much as he did was a miracle.
She gazed up at the nearest window. It depicted a pastoral scene with a haloed shepherd carrying a lamb. Green, blue, and yellow glass transformed the light that landed on her blue muslin skirt. The next window was richer. Darker. It depicted one of the apostles, who had bronze and red in his robes.
Both windows were beautiful, but they were different.
She smiled, imagining her wedding. How real it all felt, now. She could almost smell the orange blossoms.
A cooling breeze rustled the curls at her nape just as she heard the chapel doors squeak open. She turned, and her smile grew. “My lord. How well you look today.”
Mortlock did, indeed, appear better. He was not in good health, but his pallor was less, and sharpness had returned to his eyes. She’d wager Robert’s presence had a great deal to do with the improvement.
She stood and moved to his side.
“Now, now, my dear,” he grumbled. “No need to fuss over an old man.”
“Nonsense.” She braced his elbow and helped him to the front pew. Together, they sat, and she patted his arm. “It is splendid to have your company.”
“Have you any word from your family?”
She nodded. “They’ll arrive Friday next. I should like the wedding to be the following morning, if you are amenable.”
An old hand patted hers. Blue eyes smiled. “You’ve more patience than my grandson. If he had his way, you’d be married this very hour.”
“I’ve long thought of Robert as the patient one.”
He huffed out a dry chuckle. “Ordinarily, yes. I once saw the boy stand in the middle of a brook for hours merely for the chance to catch a larger fish. Did you know he catches them with his hands?”
“Yes. He and my brother used to make a contest of it.”
“Takes patience, to be sure. And that he has in abundance. But when it comes to you, the boy might as well be on fire, so acute is his urgency.”
Speaking of fire, Annabelle’s cheeks began to burn. “Are not all young men a bit … eager in that regard?”
Mortlock shook his head. “No, no. Long before he saw you as a woman, he had trouble with distances. ’Twas always so.”
“Distances?”
Blue eyes focused on her. “Aye. Any distance from his Bumblebee was too far.” He grunted. “Time, too. The longer it went on, the worse it was.”
Perhaps Mortlock’s age had addled his memory. As Annabelle recalled, Robert had often been glad to see her, but no happier than he’d been to see John or Mama and Papa. His grandfather made it sound as though he’d sought her company specifically—as though he’d needed her as much as she’d needed him. Which could not have been true unless he’d gone to great lengths to disguise it. No, Mortlock must be misremembering.
“I can see what you’re thinking, my dear. But you’re wrong.” He tapped his temple. “Happens this is the one part of me that’s still functional.”
Puzzling at the contrast between her memories and Mortlock’s, she considered the possibility that he was right. Robert had always been the stoic sort, even as a boy. One rarely knew what was going on behind those beautiful blue eyes—apart from brooding, of course.
She gave Mortlock a considering glance. “Let’s suppose you are right.”
“Hmmph. No supposing about it.”
“That would mean after the accident, when he sent me away, he was …” Her stomach dropped into her feet. Her hands went cold, and her chest went tight. “No.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “He—he would never have—”
“Not deliberately. But neither did he wish to fight.”
She squeezed his arm. “But you made him fight. Please tell me you insisted.”
“Aye. Gave him a role here at Rivermore. He took to it rather well.”
“Yes. Yes, he did.” The tightness in her chest began to ease. She breathed through it, reminding herself Robert was strong and resilient. That both of them had endured. “I am mad for him, you know.”
Mortlock released a graveled chuckle and slanted her a grin. “That much is plain, my dear.”
“It’s a bit … frightening, sometimes. To know one’s happiness is so very reliant upon another person. The thought of losing him again …”
Silence fell between them. As trees rustled outside, rainbow light rippled and danced. Finally, Mortlock said, “Wind is a powerful force.”
She blinked, wondering if perhaps it was time for his lordship’s nap.
“It can madden the sea, turn water into an enemy. It can pull the strongest trees out by their roots. Ungoverned, wind may destroy what it touches.” Mortlock gazed up at the tapestry while light danced across his features in shades of blue and green and yellow. “But if you build a proper ship with proper sails, that same wind will take you across oceans.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite—”
He nodded toward the altar. “This is where you’ll start building. The vessel is neither you nor Robert. It is a third thing. The most important thing.” Old eyes met hers. “Construct your ship properly, and you’ll not fear the wind but welcome it.”
She blew out a breath and examined the altar, solid and plain. The tapestry, which depicted Conrad ancestors kneeling at the foot of the cross. Finally, the windows, one gentle and pastoral, the other vivid and strong. “You’re saying our marriage must be built to carry both of us.”
“Not just you. Your children, too.” Mortlock shook his head. “No room for sacrificial claptrap when you’re in the middle of the ocean, my dear. Every hand is needed. If decisions must be made, the ship is the thing.”
Gently, he patted her hand. They sat for a time while she mulled his words over in her mind. Her connection with Robert was powerful, and yes, it had the potential to do great harm. Her mistake had been failing to control her impulses. His had been sacrificing everything for her sake, including the connection itself. Both of them had let the winds whip them about willy-nilly, and heartbreak had been the result.
But they were both older now, and they could make different choices. Better ones. They could love one another just as passionately, yet this time, they would travel in the same vessel and chart their course together.