The Wild One

by Danelle Harmon

Chapter 4

  My niece!

  But at that very moment Perry whipped up the team, sending them charging through Blackheath's great gates and down the long drive of crushed stone at breakneck speed. Further conversation was impossible. Just outside the broken window Chilcot now galloped alongside, his coattails flying. "Hold on, Gareth!" he shouted. "Almost there now!"

  Gareth closed his eyes and held the baby, letting his head rock and sway on Juliet Paige's lap. He was still grinning; he couldn't help it. The girl probably thought him insane. But armed with what she'd just told him, he had no intention of succumbing to the blissful lure of unconsciousness — or whatever lay beyond it. There was no way in hell he was going to die. Oh, no. He wouldn't miss the impending events for the world....

  Or the look on Lucien's face when he learned that the virtuous, never-do-anything-wrong Charles had sired a bastard babe.

  Looking up, Gareth could just see the outline of Juliet's jaw, her firm, determined chin and the sweet curve of one cheek. He knew the moment she caught her first glimpse of the castle for her eyes grew huge, and she leaned close to the window for a better look, giving him a better chance to furtively study her. Ah, yes. She was a lovely creature, just as Charles had described. Her skin was as white as snowdrops and set off by dark, upswept hair. Her face was enchanting, with a delicate nose and fine, dark eyes set beneath daintily arched brows. Physically, she was diminutive and graceful — yet despite her small size, there was something about her that conveyed courage, resilience, and fortitude. It was easy to see why his brother had fallen for her. But where was the joie de vivre, the innocent naiveté that Charles had so praised? This woman seemed older than her years, as though her spirit had been crushed beneath the weight of sorrow and hardship.

  By God, if he lived, he'd remedy that. She was far too young — and pretty — to embrace age before its time!

  He closed his eyes, content to let his head sway in her lap, content to feel her tightening up the curve of her arm so that he wasn't jostled so. To think that she, Charles's betrothed, was here in England. And to think that this infant whose tiny body was so near to his, whose heart beat so close to his own, was his brother's little girl....

  "Whoa!" Perry was pulling the team up. "Whoa there!"

  Juliet put her arms around Lord Gareth so that they all wouldn't spill from the seat with the sudden, jolting halt. The coach hadn't even come to a stop before his friends were wrenching the door open. Gusts of rain and wind swept in and Juliet, hastily picking up Charlotte, felt him tense as they leaped inside, sliding their hands beneath his body and trying not to jostle him too much as they lifted him from her blood-soaked skirts.

  "Here, I've got his shoulders."

  "I've got his legs."

  "Easy with him, now! Gareth? Gareth, we're going to have to move you. Bear up there, man!"

  They carried him out. Immediately, Charlotte started crying again. Her heart pounding, her hand patting the little baby's back, Juliet watched as Gareth's friends rushed him toward the great, medieval doors of Blackheath Castle. As they spirited him away, he lifted his hand to her. Whether the gesture was meant to convey a last goodbye, undying gratitude, or amusement at the sort of treatment everyone was falling over themselves to give him, she did not know.

  Feeling a bit lost, she raised herself off the seat, shaking the wrinkles out of her blood-drenched skirts and wondering if she should follow the others inside or wait in the coach for someone to come for her and Charlotte.

  But the decision was made for her. A man was there at the door, extending a hand inside to her. "Madam?"

  Perry. He had remained behind, still the cool-headed gentleman in a storm of confusion.

  Juliet smiled her thanks and, hastily bundling Charlotte up, allowed him to help them down from the coach. She stood for a moment on the drive, the rain on her face, the wind tugging at her hair and tangling her skirts around her legs. Then Perry offered his arm and escorted her toward the castle, not saying a word.

  Blackheath was much grander than Charles had described it. Juliet stared at it, awestruck, as it rose up out of the darkness before her. High above her head, twin, crenelated towers held up the night, older, it seemed, than time itself. She could just see the dim outline of a flagpole above one of them, its pennant snapping against the black and moody sky with each gust of wind. It was a magnificent palace of a place. A place that made Juliet feel daunted, lost, and very much like a creature out of its element.

  Her courage nearly faltered at the thought of facing its duke. This grand castle with its own flag so far above, the village through which they'd just come, the countryside for miles upon miles around — it all belonged to one single man, who might or might not feel like being charitable. Back in Boston, the thought of going to Blackheath to seek his help had not fazed her. But now, in the face of such imposing, intimidating magnificence, it seemed presumptuous to throw herself and Charlotte on his mercy — even though he would have been family in happier circumstances, and Charles had bade her to do just that.

  Stop being so foolish. She was here in England, with Charles's family, and she would not turn back now. But as the towering stone walls of the castle loomed closer and closer, Juliet almost wished she had never come here, never bought passage on the Loyalist-owned ship that had been part of the mass evacuation when the British had abandoned the town last month.

  Not that you were spoiled for choice, she reminded herself. Her stepfather, Zachariah, had died in January, and she'd had nowhere else to go. As a suspected Loyalist, her life had been in danger in Boston. As an unwed mother whose baby's father was rumored to be a hated British officer, she'd been scorned, snubbed, ostracized, threatened. Like it or not, she'd done what she had to do. If not for Charles, then for his daughter.

  Be strong. He would have wanted you to be.

  They were at the foot of the stone steps now. At their head, the ancient oak door through which Lord Gareth had been carried stood open, spilling light out onto the lawn. The door appeared to be some two feet thick and was banded by heavy strips of iron, each one studded with heavy bolts. Perry, obviously a frequent and welcomed visitor here, hustled her up the steps, past two liveried footmen who stood to attention on either side of the door, and into a huge medieval hall, where Juliet stood gaping up at the carved, vaulted stone ceiling that rose some two stories above her head. The room was so big that the fine house in which she and Zachariah had lived back in Boston could easily have fit within it.

  "Wait here," Perry ordered and hurried off, following the drops of blood that meandered across the polished marble floor. He tore open a set of doors at which the trail stopped and was gone.

  And Juliet was alone.