Heir to Edenbrooke

by Julianne Donaldson

  I made a sudden decision. I smiled so convincingly that I almost fooled myself. I said kindly, “You know this is your home, Mother, and you have the right to invite here whomever you choose.”

  She smiled with relief. “I am so glad to hear you say that.”

  A shard of guilt stabbed my conscience but did not deter me from my course.

  As the sun dipped below the horizon and the grey sky turned first to iron and then to charcoal, I threw a hastily packed bag into my phaeton, ordered the servants to say nothing of my departure to my mother, and whipped the horses into a gallop. I raced away from my home and everything it contained, with no plan of where to go. I knew only that I felt as if the devil himself was chasing me and if I did not run, he would devour me, heart, mind, and soul.

  ***

  Nearly an hour later I was clipping along at a great pace, running away from fate and feeling for the first time in years as if I had finally taken control of my life. The moon was full but hid itself frequently behind the thick clouds that blanketed the sky and threatened rain. Suddenly the phaeton lurched to one side as the right rear wheel flew off its axle. Without warning the reins were ripped from my hands, and I was airborne. I landed hard on my side, the breath knocked out of me, and bounced twice before a hedge stopped my momentum. I lay there, stunned, fighting to draw in a breath for an agonizing moment, until finally my lungs worked again. I rolled onto my back and assessed my injuries. Bruised ribs and shoulders, definitely, but as I sat up and moved around, I did not think I had broken anything.

  My horses were nearby, whinnying with nervousness but unable to bolt because the axle of the phaeton was buried in mud at the edge of the road. The wheel lay behind me in a ditch. I dragged myself to my feet, brushed off my clothes, and walked to my broken phaeton and spooked horses. I spoke to them calmly as I unhitched them and then carefully walked them down the road a short distance. One of them was favoring his left foreleg, and the other shied away when I ran my hands down his right hind leg. I swore and then turned my attention to my disabled phaeton, baffled by its state. It had been in pristine condition. There was no conceivable reason for the wheel to come off as it had. Even if my horses were not injured, there was nothing I could do to fix the phaeton, not without tools and not in this light. I was stranded.

  I took the horses by their traces and led them to a tall oak tree just beyond the road in the middle of a field. It was tall enough and broad enough that it would shelter them if it rained. I tied them to it and then started walking down the road.

  An owl hooted somewhere nearby, as if commenting with mirth on my circumstances. “Yes, laugh at me, you dark messenger of fate,” I muttered. “Laugh at my attempts to free myself. Laugh at the futility of my efforts.”

  As if he had heard and understood, the owl responded with a loud screech that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The night suddenly turned pitch black, and I looked up to see thick rain clouds obscuring the moon. Let it come, I thought, daring fate to make this night worse. The rain came at once, as if in answer to my dare, in a cold drizzle.

  ***

  I welcomed the cold and wished for it to numb me all the way to my heart so that I would not have to feel this overwhelming bitterness and frustration. I had never run from a battle. I had never deserted my post. And yet I had run from home like a coward, and I did not understand this great folly within myself. I only knew that I was ready to break apart and that I had never in my life been so lost, or so lonely, or so full of bitterness and resentment.

  The road was empty. I had no idea where I was going or if I would find anyone to help me on my way. I just walked and cursed fate and wallowed in the greatest degree of self-pity I had ever indulged in.

  ***

  I walked for miles. Hours. My feet had become soft in the past few years of luxury. They no longer had the toughness they’d had when I was a soldier. “You have grown soft, Major,” I chastised myself after my second hour of walking. Too many days doing nothing but dancing attendance on entitled ladies had made me weak. The longer I walked, the more I felt the bruises and soreness from my fall from the phaeton. The rain had, thankfully, been short-lived, though I was still damp and cold.

  When I finally saw the light in the distance, it was the most welcome sight I could imagine. The Rose and Crown was a small inn, but it would have what I needed—a boy who would take a message to my coachman at Edenbrooke to fetch the injured horses and care for them, some warm food, a fire, and a horse who could get me back on my road to escape. I still had no plan for where to go. I knew only that I had to get farther away from Edenbrooke and everything that awaited me there. Especially the Misses Daventry.

  The dining room of the inn was empty except for a stout, balding man who was wiping down a table when I walked in. He looked up with a sharp, appraising gleam in his eye and asked, “What can I do for you, m’lord?”

  I was too weary to be overly polite. “I need a horse, some food to take with me, and a messenger boy, if you have one to spare. As quickly as possible.”

  He nodded briskly. “Right away, m’lord.” He put his fingers to his lips and let out a shrill whistle. A moment later a boy came running. “Go get the best horse saddled,” the innkeeper told him, and the boy ran out the front door. The innkeeper passed through a door into the kitchen, leaving me waiting in the empty dining room. I leaned against the bar and tried to fight off an almost overwhelming sense of weariness and discouragement.

  Fate had dealt me a blow, but I could recover, I told myself. I could take this horse and ride far away and somehow escape the life I never asked for. Just for a time. I would go back eventually, and I would do my duty to my family. But just for a time I would escape it and find some solace somewhere. I didn’t know how I would find it. I knew only that I had to do something different or I would never find myself again. I didn’t know how to laugh anymore. I hardly knew what a true smile felt like. I closed my eyes and willed myself to hope, but inside I was numb.

  Suddenly the door to the inn slammed open, causing me to jump. I turned and saw a young lady enter. She caught my eye, strode quickly across the room toward me, and said, “I need help in the yard. At once.”

  I stared at her, speechless. She looked disheveled, but she was clearly a young lady of quality. Who was she, and how had she found me here? This damsel in distress ploy had become an epidemic. Now they were chasing me down at inns?

  My mask of arrogance slipped over me instinctively, and I found it was even easier to wear with the numbness and despair that filled my heart. I looked her over with a sense of cold detachment.

  “I am afraid you have mistaken my identity,” I said, vaguely surprised at how rude I sounded. “I believe you will find the innkeeper in the kitchen.”

  In the dim light of the inn I saw her cheeks turn red and her eyes light up with either pride or humiliation, I could not tell which. Then she lifted her chin, and her countenance was sharp with disdain as she said to me in a haughty voice, “Pardon me. I was under the impression that I was addressing a gentleman. I can see that I was, as you said, mistaken.”

  I reared back at the force of her words.

  She turned to the open doorway behind the bar and shouted, “Hello! Innkeeper!”

  The innkeeper appeared, wiping his hands on his shirt. She repeated, “I need help in the yard at once!”

  Now I heard the urgency in her voice. Now I saw the stain of blood on her hands. Now I saw the fear in her young face.

  Evidently the innkeeper did as well, for he hurried after her, and I stood there frozen, feeling as if I had just been thrown from the phaeton again, unable to catch my breath, my head spinning, my world turned upside down.

  The innkeeper came back in, carrying a wounded man. The young lady followed him, supporting another girl who looked pale and stricken. The lady cast a quick glance in my direction before turning to the stairs and disappearing.

  And I could do nothing but stand there while her perfectly aimed, exqu
isitely delivered insult ran through my mind, over and over. I had not been so thoroughly put in my place since my early days as a soldier.

  Her insult was like a sharp-toothed beast that tore through my numbness. It ravaged my mask and revealed the most vulnerable part of me. It clawed at my heart. Then it held up a mirror to show me what I had become underneath the façade I had been wearing. It showed me an image of my brother Charles.

  I gripped the wood bar, leaning heavily against it. No. I was not Charles. I was not like him. I had sworn never to be like him. The way I had just spoken to her—the arrogance, the dismissal, the impatience—it was all part of the act, part of who I had to be because of what I had inherited, because of how I had been hunted and chased and harassed. But it wasn’t me. That man—that arrogant, rude, dismissive man who had just refused to help a lady in need—that was not me. That was the charade I played. That was Sir Philip. Not Philip. Not Major Wyndham. How I had acted was not indicative of my heart.

  But through my denial came my father’s voice. It came softly and quietly, as if through a curtain—a thin veil separating the living from the dead. From a long-forgotten memory, his voice whispered in my ear, “But what is the heart of a man, if not his actions? His words? The way he interacts with the world around him? That is the measure of a man. That is why a gentleman should always be polite, helpful and respectful, honorable and true. A gentleman is held to a higher standard in the world because he has been given so much. It is a gentleman’s duty in life to improve the world around him, to make it a better place because of his influence.”

  Revelation struck shame into my heart. I saw myself as I had seen Charles—disdainful, arrogant, and selfish. I had become everything I had sworn never to become. I reeled from the shock of the revelation, my thoughts scattered, my heart pounding with a sudden life and a dread and a stunned grief, knowing that if my father had seen me here tonight he would have been ashamed to call me his son.

  The perfect insult repeated itself, over and over, in my mind. “I was under the impression that I was addressing a gentleman. I can see that I was, as you said, mistaken.”

  I was so absorbed with the realization of my fall from grace (for what is a gentleman, if not grace personified?) that I paid no attention to the commotion around me until a woman came hurrying up to me. She was a rough, harassed-looking, large woman who spoke with authority (clearly the innkeeper’s wife) when she said, “If you’re still in a hurry, m’lord, I can give you a meat pie to eat on your way. As you can see, we have our hands full here tonight. But my boy has saddled your horse, and it’s waiting out front for you. And he can take a message for you after he comes back from fetching the doctor.”

  I glanced up the stairs toward where the young lady had gone. The young lady of the perfect insult. The ravaging set-down. The young lady who had ripped away my mask and shown me who I had become. And without understanding why, I knew that I could not leave without seeing her again.

  “Thank you, but I think I will stay and see if I can be of assistance.”

  She shrugged as if to say, “Whatever suits your fancy,” and hurried off.

  I walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up in time to see the young lady sit down hard on a step, close her eyes, and stretch her hand out to the wall. I raced up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time, my heart beating as hard as if I were in battle again, and reached for her, grasping her arm above the elbow.

  Her eyes flew open. They stayed open just long enough to look at me with steely disdain, and then she squeezed them shut again.

  “I think you’re about to faint,” I said, noting the slight swaying of her body.

  She weakly shook her head and whispered, “I don’t faint.”

  I had no time to argue with her obvious stubbornness, for in the next instant her body went limp, and she slumped toward me. I caught her against my chest, then slid one arm around her back and the other under her legs, and carried her carefully down the narrow staircase. She was a slender, almost fragile thing in my arms, and I felt a strange sense of protectiveness toward this girl I did not even know.

  I shifted her in my arms to open the door to the parlor, where a fire blazed. A long, cushioned bench was set against one wall. I carefully laid the young lady onto the bench, moving a cushion so it would rest under her head. Before I eased my arm out from behind her shoulders, I looked down into her face, seeing it in true light for the first time. Something I could not name stirred within my mind. There was something familiar about her face, but it was altogether new at the same time. It was the opposite of how I had felt when looking at Edenbrooke earlier. Instead of a home feeling strangely foreign, this foreign face seemed somehow like a bit of home.

  Footsteps sounded behind me. I slipped my arm from beneath her shoulders as the innkeeper’s wife lumbered into the room and said in her harsh voice, “Oh, she fainted, did she? I thought she might. Well, I’ll keep an eye on her until she comes to. Doctor’s upstairs now.”

  I felt reluctant to leave the lady of the perfect insult while she lay there, still and vulnerable, her skin pale as moonlight, but I felt duty-bound to check on the injured man.

  The innkeeper and doctor both looked up as I walked into the bedroom. Dr. Nutley was an old friend of our family’s and peered at me over his spectacles. “Sir Philip? What do you here?”

  “I stopped here when I had an accident with my phaeton.” I nodded at the wounded man. “How does he look?”

  “See for yourself,” he said, moving back and holding the candle close to the man’s shoulder so that I could look more closely

  It was a clean shot, high on the shoulder, with no chance of hitting anything important like lungs or heart. The doctor had his pliers ready and was about to dig the bullet out of the muscle. My own shoulder ached in memory.

  “It looks good,” I said. “Only a risk of infection, really, to worry about.”

  Doctor Nutley gave me a quick look of approval and held out the pliers. “Would you care to do the honors?”

  I held up both hands, shaking my head. “No, I thank you. Too many memories.”

  I stayed long enough to watch him successfully remove the bullet and then asked him to wait on me when he was finished treating the patient. When I walked back downstairs to the parlor, the table was spread with food, but the young lady was still lying senseless on the bench. The innkeeper’s wife stood nearby, sucking her teeth and muttering something that sounded like, “I have too much to do to stand around here waiting for this fine lady to wake up.”

  At her words a small gasp sounded, and the woman said in her abrasive voice, “Well? Are you finally coming to? I thought you were going to faint, and sure enough, you did.” I moved to cross the room to help the young lady sit up, but the innkeeper’s wife, quick with impatience, beat me to it, grabbing the young lady by the arms and dragging her to her feet. She propelled her to the table, and said, “Sit down and eat.”

  Then the innkeeper’s wife glanced up, and, seeming to notice me for the first time, asked, “Is there anything else, sir?”

  “No, thank you,” I answered, hardly noticing when she left the room, distracted as I was by the way the lady pressed both hands to her forehead and leaned against the table. She still looked much too pale, and for the first time it struck me that she might have been injured as well—that the blood I had seen on her arms could have been her own. Concerned that she might faint again or need attention from the doctor, I stepped toward her. “Are you hurt?”

  She looked at me in quiet appraisal. I felt exposed, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t felt in years. She had ravaged my mask. She had stripped all pretense from me. She had held up a mirror to my heart and shown me how far I had strayed from the man I had hoped to be. All she said was no, in a quiet, scratchy voice. Then she looked away, completely dismissing me. I felt invisible as I stood there and watched her eyes drift around the table and stop at the full glass at her elbow. She picked it up and drank from it, reached for a s
erving dish, and began to put food on her plate.

  For the first time in five years, I stood on uncertain ground with a young woman. Before tonight, I would never have questioned whether a young lady desired my company or not. But I knew as well as I knew anything about my world that this young lady was not like every other young lady I had met since inheriting Edenbrooke. And I wanted very much to stay in this room and learn something about her.

  So I walked to the table, stood behind the chair opposite hers, and asked, “Do you mind if I join you?”

  Her eyes lifted to mine again, but I could not decipher their expression beyond the ache of weariness. After a long moment, she nodded her head almost imperceptibly and looked back down at her plate. I noticed then the closed door to the room and opened it slightly before sitting down across from her. My appetite had left me. I could think of little besides her insult. .

  She ate a few bites, glancing at me quickly now and then, but did not say a word. I sat there, likewise silent, and grappled with myself. I was the most eligible bachelor of the Season. Young ladies had been throwing themselves at me—even literally—every evening for the past three months, and I resented it. Now I did not know how to make this one young lady look at me and talk to me and give me a chance to know her.

  After several minutes of silence, of my watching her eat while she pointedly ignored me, I was ready to take myself outside and whip myself for my stupidity. Speak, man! Say something to her! I lifted my eyes to do just that and found her eyes upon me. It was an appraising gaze again. She was taking my measure, and I was uncertain of myself again as her insult ran through my mind, like a hound chasing me round and round a tree. Her eyes were a color I couldn’t describe—steel blue and green mixed together, clear and beautiful in an uncommon way. I had barely registered their color when her eyes lit up with anger, and she dropped her gaze. Her cheeks bloomed suddenly with color, washing her face in a delicate rosy hue.

  She looked up from under her dark lashes and said to me, “Thank you for the meal, sir.”