Thief of Broken Hearts (The Sons of Eliza Bryant Book 1)

by Louisa Cornell

Josiah Thomas turned his head and spat onto the packed dirt of the farmyard. “Missed him, Your Grace. Damned shame, that.”

  The disadvantage to firing one of Manton’s double-barrel percussion fowling pieces was the dust and debris it stirred up when one took a shot at a man who deserved it. The advantage was not having to take the time to reload before the second shot. Once one had a clear line to the target.

  “I didn’t miss, Josiah.” Rhiannon Harvey de Waryn, Duchess of Pendeen, snugged the butt of the long gun into her shoulder and blinked her target into focus past the mixed cloud of gunpower and flying dirt. “I was giving him a chance to run.”

  A chorus of guffaws and jeers erupted from her mines manager and the grooms and footmen who’d accompanied her on the long ride from Gorffwys Ddraig, the seat of the Pendeen duchy, to the Wilson tenant farm at the far end of the estate. The corner of Rhiannon’s mouth kicked up even as a sprinkling of sweat popped out on her upper lip. She steadied her grip on the Manton and inhaled slightly. Her palms remained dry and her hands steady. Thank God for small mercies. At a mere four inches over five feet tall, with a slender frame she despised for its lack of curves, wit and poise and her tenacious grip on calm were often all that kept her on her feet.

  “She’s a right’un, is our duchess.”

  “I’d do as she says, lad. Her Grace don’t miss, ‘specially when she’s vexed.”

  “S-she’s mad is what s-she is.” Robert Wilson windmilled his skinny arms to dispel the last of the smoke encircling his florid face. “Captain Randolph is the steward here, Josiah Thomas, not you. T-take your arse back to the mines and t-take her with you. S-she has no right to shoot at me on my own p-property.”

  Neither lowering the gun nor altering her aim, Rhiannon took a step toward the spluttering excuse for a farmer. He backed up and tried to hide behind his wife. The care-worn woman with the black eye and split lip shifted the babe on her hip and pushed her husband away with her splinted arm.

  “It isn’t your property, is it, Robert? And it isn’t Captain Randolph’s.” Rhiannon took another step and heard her men close ranks behind her. “It’s mine. And I’ll have no wife beaters here. You have fifteen minutes to clear out.” She thumbed back the hammer of the unspent barrel. She tried not to see his wife’s battered face, the wide-eyed stares of the brood of children—barefoot in ragged clothes—huddled behind their mother. The heat of unspoken fury swept up her body—most of it directed at the loud-mouthed drunkard gaping at her like a fish landed on a riverbank. Most of it.

  “She’s mine to beat.”

  “Not anymore.” Rhiannon blew the hair from her eyes. “Fourteen minutes.”

  “Who will work this land? Who will look after my family if you banish me?”

  “The same person who always has.” She glanced at the gangly youth of some fifteen odd years who stared at his father with the placid contempt born of a lifetime of abuse. “Agreed, Young Bob?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the boy said softly as he stepped in front of his mother. He raised his chin a notch. “Agreed.” Rhiannon fought the urge to smile. Young lads who had just become men did not brook tender emotions, no matter how richly deserved. She knew this from bitter experience. With a solemn nod, she turned her attention back to his infuriated sire.

  “You have no right to take a man’s wife. His children. Duchess or not. A man has rights.” Fists clenched and half-raised, Wilson started forward. Rhiannon lowered her aim to the man’s crotch as she heard the men at her back shout and scramble, prepared to intervene.

  “I doubt anyone here sees the least thing in you that even hints at a man.” Rhiannon met her target halfway, close enough to press the end of the Manton to his filthy, torn wool breeches. Her mind screamed “Danger!” but she refused to blink. Seventeen years as de facto mistress of this estate, seven years as the sole authority over the largest duchy in three counties, had taught her the power of a fearless demeanor. Even when circumstances had her shaking in her half boots. “One more step and I’ll geld you and remove all doubt.”

  Even the chickens scratching in vain at the impregnable dirt ceased their futile search for food. This close to the sea, yet not a breeze stirred the summer heat. Rhiannon’s cotton stockings stuck to her legs. The weight of her kerseymere skirts dragged at her waist. Her tightly braided hair, coiled on top and at the back of her head, threatened to slip its pins. Half a dozen lines of icy sweat meandered down her back. The men behind her shifted a bit. It had taken time and determination for her to train them to trust her to command a situation until she asked for their help. She took great pride in their scarcely reined patience, palpable, at this point.

  “You’ll get yours, bitch,” Wilson growled, so only she might hear. The quake to his voice and the widening of his eyes belied his faith in those words.

  “Perhaps I will, but as I’m the bitch with the gun, I won’t be getting it from you.” With a confidence ready to flee over the distant cliffs at any moment, Rhiannon lowered the Manton, showed him her back, and walked away. “Your lease is terminated, Robert Wilson,” she tossed over her shoulder. “John, Jack, escort this vermin off the estate. If he steps onto any Pendeen-held property, he’s to be shot on sight.”

  Two tall, broad footmen dressed in simple black and white livery strode past Rhiannon. She turned when she reached Josiah’s side and watched as they hooked Wilson beneath the arms and dragged him kicking and cursing to the empty hay wagon at the edge of the farmyard. They had him trussed and thrown into the wagon bed in a thrice. With a brief bow to Rhiannon, John and Jack hopped onto the back next to their prisoner. A short whistle from the wizened gnome of a driver set the team of draft horses in the traces into motion.

  “I don’t like it, Your Grace.” Josiah stared after the wagon, his hand combing the wiry curls of his silver-grey beard.

  “Which part?” Rhiannon handed the Manton off to one of the grooms and stepped into the hands of another as he helped her mount Selene. None too soon, either. Her legs, weak and wavy as water, had threatened to give way from the moment she’d fired that first shot. From atop her mare, the earth solidified beneath her. “The part where I threatened to shoot him or the part where he called me a bitch?”

  “He what?” Josiah snatched the Manton from the groom and started after the wagon.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake.” Rhiannon urged her mare forward and plucked the gun from her mines manager’s hands. “He’s not the first man to call me a bitch. I daresay, he won’t be the last.”

  Her father’s faithful steward and friend, Josiah Thomas, had known her from infancy. He’d watched over her the nearly thirty-one years of her life, especially since her father’s death. He was protective of the girl she’d been. He was ferociously so of the duchess she’d become. Looking out for him settled her nerves and allowed her a moment to gather her wits. A moment she sorely needed.

  “You’re a lady,” the young groom observed as he came to check the security of her boot in the stirrup. “The Duchess of Pendeen. He has no right to call you anything at all, ‘cept Your Grace.”

  “Even this lad knows what’s proper,” Josiah grumbled as he alternated his gaze between the Manton in the crook of her arm and the wagon disappearing up the road.

  “Yes, well,” Rhiannon adjusted her skirts over the pommel of her sidesaddle and took up the reins the groom handed her. “I didn’t threaten to shoot the lad’s tarrywags off, did I?”

  The young groom grinned. “No, Your Grace. And I thank you.”

  She handed him the Manton. “Reload it and bring it along. And don’t let Mr. Thomas near it, lest he decide to reopen season on some portion of Robert Wilson’s anatomy.”

  At Josiah’s signal, another groom stepped in and began to inspect the girth and bridle on Rhiannon’s horse. The lad checked and rechecked every strap and buckle. After several minutes of such nonsense, Rhiannon had had enough.

  “That will do, Davy. In spite of Mr. Thomas’s nanny tendencies, I am perfectly capable of s
itting a horse.”

  “Not even you can sit a horse when the tack has been cut,” Josiah declared as he waved Davy away and took over the inspection himself.

  “It wasn’t cut. It was an accident, a simple accident.” Rhiannon told herself so every day. She had to.

  “As you say, Your Grace.” Josiah spat, jammed his hat on his head, and crossed the yard to mount his horse.

  She urged her horse toward Mrs. Wilson and her children.

  “Should have killed him.” Young Bob stared at his mother’s injuries. He twisted a threadbare cap in his hands. “I wish you had.” His voice fell to a husky whisper and his eyes shone with unshed tears. “I wish I had.”

  “If I had, I’d have to make an appointment with the magistrate, a dull old stick of a man who would natter at me for hours. If you had, you’d have to make an appointment with the rope. Quicker and far less dull, but still a bother.” She met his gaze and held it. “Your father isn’t worth all that trouble. Don’t you agree?”

  He dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Meg,” she addressed the pale woman who gazed up the now empty road as if to make certain the source of her torment was truly gone. “You make a list of what you need in the way of repairs and supplies. I’ll have them sent down from Gorffwys Ddraig.” Rhiannon studied the half dozen children peering past their mother and elder brother. “And some food.”

  “We’ve no money to pay for it, Your Grace.” Meg pushed the greying blonde hair away from her eyes. “Had no money for nigh on these six months.”

  Rhiannon patted Selene’s neck to settle the mare’s nervous dancing in place. “We’ll settle it after the harvest.” A wordless communication passed between them. The woman was no older than herself, though she looked at least ten years her senior. Dressed in over-mended clothes, wearing the marks of her husband’s brutality, Meg Wilson still had her pride. The Duchess of Pendeen knew all too well, sometimes pride alone kept a woman going when life took everything else away. When men took everything else away.

  “Come up to Gorffwys Ddraig tomorrow, lad.” Josiah drew his horse to a halt next to the wiry child so rudely thrust into manhood. “We’ll make a plan to right this farm and see you through the winter.”

  Young Bob tugged his forelock and nodded.

  In a dusty clatter of hooves and jingling tack, Rhiannon and her men put the Wilson farm behind them. They’d reached the main road and ridden over halfway across Pendeen’s vast holdings before anyone spoke again.

  “Did those lamps from Mr. Davy’s arrive?” Rhiannon refused to dwell on the events of the past hour. It didn’t do to chew the same meat twice. She’d had a problem. She’d dispatched it to her satisfaction. Time to move on to the next. And there was always a next. In fact, there was one very big next. She’d had no luck in sweeping it from her mind, either.

  “They did.” Josiah urged his gelding to keep pace with Selene. The towering gorse hedges on either side of the road blocked the sudden gusts that pushed in from the sea. The sky portended a coming storm, still far enough off for them to make it to Gorffwys Ddraig so long as they didn’t dawdle. “The miners don’t fancy them.”

  “I don’t fancy digging men out after another explosion. I’ve studied his design. It’s sound. He sent the lamps to be tested and that’s what we’re going to do.” The walls of gorse subsided into walls of stone, walls low enough to reveal the hills on either side of the road dotted with grazing sheep. Spring lambs, nearly half-grown now, leapt and butted each other amongst the rocks and grass of the pastures. Rhiannon smiled at their play.

  “Sent them at no charge?”

  “Of course.”

  Josiah snorted. “You are your father’s daughter.”

  Rhiannon laughed. She and her father had their troubles when he was alive, but she’d truly mourned his death. At least, he had stayed. Even when she’d wished him gone, he’d stayed. The passage of time made it easier to remember his good qualities, and as for the bad… Well, dead loved ones didn’t make mistakes. Neither did absent ones. When they stayed absent. Now was not the time to revisit that particular mistake.

  “He’ll be trouble, Your Grace.”

  Rhiannon started. “Who, Josiah?”

  “Wilson. He’ll not let his banishment stand. He’ll be back.”

  “Perhaps.” Rhiannon suppressed a sigh of relief. She coaxed her mare into a trot as they turned into the open gates at the head of the drive to Pendeen’s sprawling ancestral pile. The rampant Pendeen dragons, poised in carved defiance on either side of the main gates, appeared nearly alive in the dappled sunlight. The trees in full leaf on either side blocked the light fading in the wake of the coming rain. It made for a long, cool ride—one fraught with memory, of dreams and nightmares. Yet, even with the things she’d rather forget, she loved this place, her home. The land, the village, the tenant farms, the mines and fields and pastures. The people. And the magnificent house coming into view as they topped the hill. She loved it all because it was hers. It was what she had made it and no man could take that from her. Not even the one man she’d hoped would at least try. If wishes were horses…

  “No perhaps to it, Your Grace. Vermin like him tends to creep back in when you least expect it.” Josiah reined in his horse beside hers. The horses behind them stopped, as well.

  She always paused here, at the crest of the drive, to drink in the sight of the ornate finial-topped turrets and ranks of lancet windows set into the bowed arches across the façade of Gorffwys Ddraig, Dragon’s Rest, the home of the Dukes of Pendeen for over six hundred years. Manicured lawns rolled down to meet lush gardens set before the house in a studied chaos that gave the appearance of barely trained wilderness. A wall of yew trees, planted by the de Waryn family’s Norman ancestors, stood at the edge of a ha-ha, blocking Gorffwys Ddraig from view until the last minute. The house itself, crafted of stone in hues of dun yellow and marbled white, sprawled across the shallow valley in an eerie array of castellated walls, covered walkways, and expansive parapets.

  As a child, Rhiannon was frightened by the monstrous combination of medieval castle and gothic cathedral that was Gorffwys Ddraig. The one time she’d sought to explore it alone she’d become hopelessly lost. That night had not ended well. For anyone. At fourteen still very much a child, she’d become the mistress of the de Waryn family seat, and for the last seventeen years she’d had nothing but time to learn the house’s many secrets. She’d claimed every part of it, swept away the darkness and replaced it with light. Nos defendere nostra was the de Waryn family motto. We defend our own. She lived her life by it, even if no other de Waryn chose to do so.

  “We’ve never had trouble ridding ourselves of vermin before, Josiah. I don’t intend to start now.” Rhiannon pressed her heel to Selene’s side and shifted her weight back in the sidesaddle as they started down the drive. They cleared the shade of the trees and turned toward the cobblestoned carriageway that led to the covered front portico.

  “Even if it comes in a regiment of carriages?”

  “What are you…” Rhiannon had been so caught up in the web of remembrance woven into the very walls of Gorffwys Ddraig, she had not seen the four crested carriages and baggage wagon lined up before the front doors of the house. Until it was too late.

  He’d done it.

  He’d actually done the one thing he’d vowed never in his life to do.

  Damn him.

  “Give me the gun, Dickie.” She thrust her hand back toward the groom to whom she’d handed over the Manton.

  He’d no sooner placed it in her hand than Josiah made a grab for it. “Shooting Wilson is one thing, Your Grace. Shooting a peer of the realm is something else entirely.”

  “Depends on the peer.” She tugged the fowling piece free and whistled Selene into a canter down the carriageway. Rhiannon ignored the startled shouts and clattering hooves that set Josiah and the others in pursuit. Footmen in two different sets of livery scattered out of the portico to a
void being run down. Fortunately, Tall William, one of her footmen, came down the steps in time to catch her as she slid from her sidesaddle. “Where is he?”

  “Your Grace?” The footman frowned in confusion as he handed Selene off to a waiting stable boy. Swarming around them, under the direction of a sparrow of a man dressed in immaculate black, servants in blue and gold livery carted trunks and boxes from the carriages and wagon into the house. Josiah and the rest of her men rode under the portico, adding to the noise and chaos.

  “Think before you go in there, Your Grace,” Josiah warned as he swung off his gelding and pushed through the crowd of horses and servants.

  Rhiannon snorted and marched through the open double doors. She’d done nothing but think since the night he’d fled Cornwall like a thief in the night. Their wedding night.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Grace.” Vaughn, who had been the butler at Pendeen long before the old duke’s death, hurried across the entrance hall. “I didn’t know what to do with…” His voice dropped even as he jerked his head in the direction of the first-floor landing, “Him.”

  “Good afternoon, Your Grace,” said the very last man she ever expected to return to Cornwall. He deigned to offer her a brief inclination of his head.

  With her hand on her hip and the Manton in the crook of her other arm, Rhiannon tilted her head up toward the sound of that voice. That voice. The tall man in the black Hessians, buff-colored buckskin breeches, and dark blue hunting jacket was unknown to her—save for the green eyes, the cleft in his chin, the dark mahogany hair still prone to curl at his nape, and that deep, starless night of a damned voice. She cleared her features of all expression and narrowed her eyes, all in aid of quieting the eruption of emotion roiling through her.

  “What are you doing here, Dymi?” She bit back a curse at the husky catch in her throat.

  A touch of condescending amusement crossed the sharp edges of his face. He rested his hand on the marble balustrade. “You wouldn’t come to London for duke season, so I’ve brought duke season to you.” His lips curled in a stoic half-smile. “You’re welcome.”