by Jane Lark
His calves gripped the horse as he lifted his body and pushed his weight down into his heels, telling the stallion to canter.
Charlie bounced about on the saddle, indecorously, but she was safe enough, his arms were about her and his body behind her. She did not try to speak either. If she had done he would have told her to be quiet anyway.
When he reached John’s he did not ride before the house but rode the horse and Charlie towards the stables. But for goodness sake he had to speak to her at some point and if he lost his control and shouted at her in the house John would hear of it from his servants and he did not want John to think badly of her. He had desperately wanted his family to learn to like her—and then she had done this!
Damn.
He turned the horse off the drive.
Charlie tried to twist and look back, but the horse’s movement was bouncing her about too much.
He drew the horse to a halt in the area beside the stables, but with enough distance that they would not be heard and in a position where they might not be seen from any windows in the house or the stable block.
He wrapped an arm about her waist. ‘Move your leg across.’ She pulled her skirt and petticoats up out of the way, her rolled cloak clutched to her chest in her other hand. Then lifted her leg over.
He continued holding her waist and half-lowered her to the ground before letting her drop. ‘Do not run,’ he ordered.
She stood looking up at him, her cloak—his pistol and purse—and perhaps Katherine’s jewellery—now clasped tight against her chest with both hands.
He swung his leg over, then dropped to the ground.
The anger in his chest was a volcano waiting to explode. He did not understand. If she took a step wrong it would erupt at her with fire, flames and rivers of molten lava. He walked the stallion to one of the carefully positioned to look informal trees, and tied the reins to a branch, fighting the temper inside him.
What was he to do about this?
He’d lost his regiment—lost his position—he might have been angry at his father and John but he had no wish to lose his family too. He could not stand to be put in a position where there was a need to decide permanently between her and them. Half of him did not care for whatever reason she would give him. No reason felt that it would be good enough. Why had she not come to him if she was in trouble, instead of running? He had helped her, believed in her and… Another word hovered at the back of his mind like a wasp waiting to sting. Love. He had fallen in love with her, and she had done this!
Why?
Because she had lied and he had been used… The words were there as doubt inside him. Because she had run and raised them. But they simply did not fit with the woman he’d come to know. Then why?
She was watching him.
‘Why did you leave?’
She did not speak. It was a wrong step. His volcano spewed out its lava. ‘How dare you? You have made me look a fool! I was defending you before my father! Who was the man you spoke to?’ Each sentence was shouted at her as he took step after step towards her, until he was a foot in front of her, glaring at her. ‘Did you steal Katherine’s jewellery to give it to that man? If you needed money for some reason, why instead did you not come and tell me?’
Her back had stiffened and her chin was high in the posture he imagined would have been her armour on the day she had gone back to Hillier at the age of only fifteen.
The thought shook the anger from him as if someone had grabbed at his shoulders. Damn it. He saw the image of her the night she had come to him for help. ‘Please, tell me who the man was, Charlie? And why, instead of waiting to speak with me you took my pistol, my money and Katherine’s jewellery and ran away?’
She breathed out, but did not relax her posture at all. ‘It was my brother.’
‘I heard he said he was your brother…’ Perhaps his tone implied disbelief, but how could he just trust her now? She had made herself un-trustworthy.
‘He was my brother.’
‘And he asked you for something. Money?’
She shook her head, but her blush told him she was lying. ‘Charlie. He asked you for something and you cannot have been happy because you were seen slapping him and he was seen detaining you… I am not a fool. Do not treat me as one. Tell me the truth.’
Her eyes stared at him, in an odd way. It was not challenge in her eyes, but— ‘He asked me to go back.’
‘Go back where?’ No. Even as he spoke, he heard the answer in his head. Hillier’s. Why?
‘To Mark.’
‘Why would he ask that of you? Was it not your brother?’ He did not understand.
‘It was my brother; I told you.’
The words stunned him. Her brother was a cold-hearted bastard. It had been one thing not to do enough before, when they had both been young. But now… To ask her to go back. Why?
He cupped her elbow in a gesture that must tell her how much he cared, no matter that he’d shouted.
Why had she not waited to speak to him? Did she not trust him? He had done nothing to deserve a lack of trust from her. She had gone to him in Brighton and he had helped her. Yet now there had been another option, the jewellery she could sell… He’d thought she cared for him too, though. But they’d never spoken of feelings. They both had hearts encrusted in stone, hearts that needed to be protected and hidden from the truth, talk of feelings had not been wise. ‘Why? Charlie, I do not understand.’
‘Mark is going to throw them out of the house: my mother, sister, Rodney, his wife and his child or…’ her voice softened and she no longer looked into his eyes but to the right of him.
‘Or…’
Her gaze came back to his. ‘He wants my twelve-year-old sister to take my place.’
‘God!’ The anger charged into his blood again. ‘Why did you not wait to tell me? Did you think I would not help?’
‘How can you help me? I want to give him the five hundred pounds. I want to pay him to leave me and Ginny alone.’ The defiance that had been in her body now resounded in her voice.
‘And you took my pistol.’
‘Because if he does not agree and he tries to make me stay, then I will shoot him.’ Tears caught the light and sparkled in her eyes.
His hand lifted and braced her cheek. ‘You should have waited until I came home. You should trust me.’
‘I wanted to ask Katherine. I thought a duchess… she must undertake charitable acts… but I did not know how to begin—’
‘Then you saw her jewellery and so you took it.’
‘I did not plan to.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I need to give him money.’
‘That is not the only answer. Let me deal with it.’
‘But what about my sister?’
‘I will manage it. But for today let me take you back to the house. You are upset and it is late. Tomorrow I will travel to Brighton.’
‘I need to help Ginny, it cannot wait. I need to go. She will not know you.’
‘You are overwrought and anxious. I told you, I will travel tomorrow. But today let me take care of you. Tomorrow will be soon enough. I promise. Hillier must know your brother has come to you and is trying to raise the money. I will go to Brighton and stop him from hurting your sister.’ He held one of her hands.
Her large eyes stared at him.
‘Charlie, promise me you will leave this to me.’
She nodded slightly. Her fingers still clutching her cloak.
‘I will walk you back.’ He untied the horse and then walked both Charlie and the horse back to the stables. Ash was there, not within a stable but in the courtyard. She ran towards them, barking with excitement.
Curse what John thought about a dog in his house. Ash was a part of Harry’s family.
A groom took the stallion. Harry tapped his thigh, telling Ash to come to heel.
In the hall he told one of the maids to have laudanum, tea and sandwiches taken up to his room. Charlie could not have e
aten since breakfast.
When they reached the room, he took Charlie’s precious bundle of stolen items from her and put it aside, then made her sit in a chair. Ash sat beside her.
Harry sat on the bed. ‘We are even. I do not like your brother as you do not like John. He had no right to come here and tell you that. It was cruel.’
‘But if he had not come, I would not know that Ginny is in danger.’
‘But he should have resolved it without coming to you.’ Her brother was her sister’s guardian. No man he knew would even contemplate letting his sister be taken in such a circumstance. They would do whatever it took. But then every man he knew had the financial resources to fight with. But she had said her brother was a blacksmith now, hadn’t she? He was not without the ability to simply move to another village.
A knock struck the door. Harry rose. He took the tray from the maid, then set the tray on the bed and removed the plate of dainty sandwiches. ‘Here. Eat. You must be hungry. I’ll pour you tea too. But after you have eaten you are to take the laudanum and sleep.’ Perhaps he was being too directive and yet there was a need screaming in him to keep her safe. God, so much had become tangled up in his mind today—past and present. Peace and war. Death and life. He felt quite sick.
He watched her eat and drink as he ate a little himself. Her hands trembled the entire time.
He believed that had she reached Brighton with his pistol in her possession and worked out how to use it, she would very likely have shot at Hillier. He doubted Hillier would have let her walk away again. Then she would have been hung.
For seven years, though, she had lain in a bed with Hillier, shutting off the hatred and hurt from her heart.
He did not want her anywhere near Hillier’s. He wanted her safe here and that man out of her mind. That was what she needed. Tomorrow, when he had had chance to right things with his family he would feel happier leaving her here in their care. But today he only wanted to give her some escape.
He helped her undress down to her chemise and drawers and then gave her the dose of laudanum to drink.
‘I don’t want it, Harry.’
‘Take it. It will calm your nerves and help you settle, that is all.’ God, there had been times in the Crimea when his men had needed such a potion of comfort, but there had been no medicines to ease their misery. He could ease Charlie’s pain with the drug.
She drank from the small bottle, then set it down on the cabinet beside the bed and lay down. Her eyes looked at him as he sat in a chair watching her.
‘I will stay until you fall asleep, but when you wake, if I am not here, do not worry. I am going downstairs to plan my journey to Brighton. Trust me, remember I have made a promise and I will keep it.’
She bit her lip, giving him no verbal response, as she continued to look at him.
What was in her mind?
He’d given her the laudanum because there must be images in her head. Like war, there would be flashes of memory, visual and sensory recall. He knew they were there in her head because the state of this room had expressed panic and those memories had made her take his pistol.
Her head rested on the pillow as they looked at one another for a long while, without talking.
He ought to ask what was in her thoughts. He had told her once that she could talk to him about her past and yet today he was a coward. He did not really want to see the things she would remember any more than she would want to see his memories.
Her eyelids looked heavier as they closed and opened and then they finally closed as the laudanum took effect.
‘I wish you would go now,’ she whispered before she fell asleep.
Harry waited for a moment, so that he would not disturb her. But then he rose, walked across the room to her makeshift parcel and unwrapped it. Everything he’d expected to see wrapped up in her cloak was there. He breathed out. Then looked at his sword. He walked over and picked it up. He wanted to trust her and yet he knew how confused a mind could become when it was in the grasp of traumatic memory.
He left the room with his sword, pistol, purse and Katherine’s jewellery.
Chapter 12
As Harry walked down the stairs, Katherine’s jewellery was clasped in his left hand and the scabbard containing his sword was gripped in his right, while the barrel of his pistol was down the back of his trousers and his purse weighted down his coat pocket.
Lord. He’d never imagined that he would feel so ashamed before John, but there was nothing to do other than accept and face this. Yet the pain in his heart at the thought that Charlie would choose theft over trusting him, and that John would know it… It embarrassed him. This was his fault. Some error he had made in his dealings with Charlie. What?
What had he done wrong?
A confused feeling of guilt was setting his mind into a downward, uncontrollable spin into darkness. Into a darkness where the battlefield of ghostly cannon and rifle fire awaited him.
He breathed slowly, pushing away the sounds and emotions.
It was the time of day when everyone dressed for dinner. He hoped John and Katherine would be in their room, alone, so that he might manage this privately.
He lifted the sword and tapped on the door with its hilt.
The door opened.
‘John.’
John held the door wide, but stood in a way that barred the entrance. But his rooms were probably the only space John had in which he need not be a duke, just a man. Harry would have set up a barrier too.
‘Harry.’ John stood in his evening shirt and trousers, with his neckcloth hanging loose, as though he had been just about to tie it.
‘Here.’ Harry held out the jewels, opening his palm.
‘God.’ John stepped back and let go of the door, not taking the jewels but, by his movement, encouraging Harry to go in.
Harry did so. John shut the door behind him.
There were no servants in the sitting room. John took the muddled jewellery from Harry’s hand. ‘She had them, then,’ he stated the obvious as he put them on a table. When John turned he met Harry’s gaze and asked, ‘Why?’ But without accusation.
‘She believed she might pay for her freedom with them.’
‘Her freedom…’
‘Hillier does not want to let her go. Her brother called here to beg her to go back. Hillier has threatened her family as his threats towards me did not work.’
‘Good God.’ John had paled again in that odd reaction he had to Charlie.
‘Stop judging her, John. This was not her fault. He tricked her into sharing his bed when she was fourteen. It was rape. But then she was rejected by her entire village and her family were starved to the point she chose to go to him, the man who had assaulted her, so that her little sister would be fed and her mother and brother happy. She spent seven years with him. Please be kind to her.’
‘Of course we will be kind to her.’ Harry looked across to see that Kathrine had come out of the bedchamber and was standing at the open door. He had not even considered who might be in there. His mind was failing.
‘You should not have heard that.’
‘She knows more than you do,’ John said on a low breath. He had been cryptic from the moment Harry had brought Charlie here, it was becoming annoying.
‘What do I not know?’ He had experienced the carnage of a battlefield and the casualties of war. He knew about a dark side of life that his pious brother had never journeyed into.
John shook his hand and did not answer, then turned to take the jewellery over to the safe.
This was a sorry, pathetic day.
John opened the safe and put the jewellery inside it.
‘Hillier is threatening to throw her family out of their home,’ Harry continued. ‘He owns the house they live in, or he has threatened to take Charlie’s twelve-year-old sister in Charlie’s place. Charlie is desperate to end this.’
‘Why did she not ask me for help?’ Katherine enquired, walking further into the room. She was
dressed for dinner.
‘She came here to do so, but did not have the courage. Then she saw the jewellery and she was desperate, Katherine. I’m sorry, she just took it.’
‘Tell her she need not feel sorry, nor guilty, I understand and she is forgiven.’
Harry nodded.
‘And her family may come here. I will find a cottage on one of my estates. They may choose which. But wherever they go I shall make certain that Hillier cannot find them.’ John said Hillier’s name as though he knew the man. He could not, though. Hillier would not mix in the circles that a duke did. ‘She has no need to worry. Tell her that too. Shall I send someone to fetch her family tonight?’
Lord. Harry walked forward with a sudden surge of emotion, lifted his arms and wrapped them about John, his sword pressing against John’s back. Harry had been trained for battle, he had survived battle, he had not been trained to manage this. ‘Thank you.’
John held him too. ‘You are not alone, little brother. You must never think you are.’
He had felt that it was so when he had joined his family last time. But no, even with all the nasty words of guilt in his head and all the memories his moralistic family would abhor, he knew he was not alone. Different from them now. But never alone.
John let him go and his hand slipped across Harry’s back, touching the handle of his pistol, which protruded from the waistband of his trousers beneath his coat. ‘You are well armed. Did you expect to be accosted on your way downstairs with Katherine’s jewellery.’
Harry smirked at John’s humour. ‘Charlie had taken my pistol with her and in her current state of mind I do not trust her within reach of a weapon.’ Harry breathed in, ‘and nor do I trust myself. I want to ride to Brighton now and kill the man.’
‘I wish that we could do it,’ John answered.
‘What?’
‘I said I would gladly join you in the exploit, but I do not fancy hanging within the year and nor do I want to lose my brother. Give me your weapons.’ John held out a hand.
Harry laid the scabbard containing his sword on to John’s palm. Then John held out his other hand as Harry lifted the pistol out of the back of his trousers. He handed it over and breathed out. ‘Will you keep my purse in your rooms too? I do not trust her with money either. She might decide to make another run for Brighton.’ Because nor does she trust me.