by Laura Martin
He’d got one. When Joe was seven years old, Esmeralda Viella came into their lives. She healed what was broken in both of their hearts. When she and Pa added Roselina to the family, life became complete again.
‘I could use some help, if you are able to influence anything here below.’
He listened for a moment, but nothing happened to make him think she was able.
‘I need to find a husband for Roselina. You might know that she is my sister.’ Again, no breeze, no odd turning of a leaf, gave hint of what she did or did not know of this conversation. ‘My stepmother has given me the task of finding her a suitable fellow. She’s set on her daughter making a society marriage.’
Ma had worked towards this goal for the better part of two years. She had even hired an instructor to teach Roselina proper deportment and current fashion.
His sister took to the training well, but Joe wasn’t sure if she went along with the tutelage because she wanted to be a ‘lady’ or if she longed for a bit of adventure.
In her eighteen years on the ranch she had seen little of gentle society. Parties were few and far between. If Joe made a guess, his sister was looking for fun more than marriage.
For all that Ma had told him not to bring her home without a title, he was not sure this was anything he had control over.
He could not help but wonder why Ma would want this. If his sister did marry a British fellow, she probably would not come home.
The thought made him hope he did not succeed in finding her a husband.
He might not, especially once they made the trip north to the Lake District. He wasn’t sure how many eligible nobles would come calling at Haversmere. Wasn’t London the place they looked for brides?
For all that he had never been to Haversmere, he understood the area to be sparsely inhabited, with more sheep than folks.
Sir Bristle had never seen a sheep. Joe couldn’t help but wonder how he would react to seeing a critter as woolly as he was.
All of sudden the dog stood up, cocked his big head, ears twitching.
‘What is it, boy?’ Joe came to his feet, glancing about.
The dog took this stance when there was something he felt Joe needed to attend to. More often than not it was a straying calf. Once it had been a lost kitten, but once it had been Roselina, so Joe always paid attention to the dog’s message.
‘Take me to it.’
With a woof the dog set off at a trot. Joe dashed after him, back to the main path, then down a narrower one that twisted half-a-dozen times. The further down it he went the darker it got. This part of the cemetery appeared to be neglected and densely overgrown with vegetation.
‘Good boy,’ he said to the dog.
It was always amazing to Joe that Sir Bristle was able to hear a sound from so far away and find his way to it.
After five minutes of twists and turns, the dog stopped, sniffed the ground, then disappeared behind a chipped and mossy tomb.
‘Wolf!’ a young, high-pitched voice screeched.
On a dash, Joe rounded the grave. A young boy crouched on the ground, his face buried in his arms while he wept in apparent terror of the beast sniffing his shoulder.
‘Howdy, son,’ he said. ‘Get yourself lost?’
The boy looked up. His tear-streaked face broke into a wide grin.
* * *
‘And so, last autumn was an adventure since our brother did turn out to be the Abductor. But, of course, he was not the fiend people believed him to be.’ Olivia glanced up from her story to make sure Victor was still hunting for bugs under damp stones. ‘Victor? Come out where I can see you. As you can expect, Heath was arrested when his wife accidentally—Victor?’
He ought to have answered by now. What on earth was she to do with him? It was one thing for him to wander off at the town house, but quite another out here where—‘Victor!’
She sprang up from the bench, spun about looking left, then right. Was it her imagination that the fog had grown even thicker while she spoke to Oliver?
It was not! How could she have failed to notice the change? Worse, how could she have failed to hear her son sneak away?
What a thoughtless, inattentive mother she was! She knew her son’s proclivity to hide and she had let down her guard.
He had sneaked off to find a cowboy. She would bet her life on it. But who might he have come across instead?
‘Victor!’
She dashed along the path, trying to stave off the panic constricting her chest. So many smaller paths led off from this central one. Which could he have taken?
Was he still in the cemetery or had someone carried him off? How was she to go on if he had been...?
No! She could not think it.
Her sweet, precious boy—she would give anything to see him run from the tombs, laughing at the grand trick he had played.
Winded, she stopped, braced her hands on her thighs and tried to catch her breath.
Fog was supposed to lift as the morning wore on, but today it only grew worse. She could see no more than fifteen feet in any direction.
Anxiety made her sick to her stomach—lightheaded and half-faint. She would not crumple! She could not. She was a mother, not an inexperienced girl. Her child depended upon her.
The sound of shoes crunching the path brought her upright.
These were not Victor’s light, quick steps. The footfalls coming towards her hit the ground boldly and with long, purposeful strides.
There were other steps as well. They sounded like something having four feet—or possibly paws—large ones, and whatever they belonged to panted heavily.
She ought to run away, hide until the possible danger passed. Of course she could not. There was but one thing to be done. For Victor’s sake she must stand her ground.
A dark-looking figure began to emerge, the fog swirling and receding about it. Second by second the silhouette of a man became more defined, beside him trotted some sort of large beast—a canine of some sort.
She readied her legs to leap, her arms to flay in defence of her child in the event the man had captured him.
The closer the man strode, the clearer his image became. And there was Victor, perched in the crook of his arm.
‘Look, Mother! I found a cowboy and he isn’t even dead.’
Copyright © 2020 by Carol Arens
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ISBN: 9781488065736
Her Best Friend, the Duke
Copyright © 2020 by Laura Martin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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