Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1)

by Louisa Cornell

  Had she finally said something to which her mother had no response? Not likely.

  “Ah, I thought so.” The tone was brisk and sure. What she said next was less so. “Engaging a man’s physical attraction is easy. They make it so. Capturing his heart, now that is a feat.”

  “You make is sound like cleaning the Aegean stables.”

  “I suppose it is rather,” she said. “It does involve mucking out all of the refuse left there by other women, and it can get a bit messy.”

  Adelaide groaned and put her face in her hands. “This is not encouraging, Mother.” When she looked back up, it was to see an emotion seldom seen on the formidable Mrs. Formsby-Smythe’s face. Compassion.

  “A man’s heart is far more complicated than our own, dearest. One never knows what things he keeps in it and what things he throws away.”

  “Then how will I know how to win it?” Adelaide tried to ignore the desperation in her own voice. “I want him to love me.”

  “He will, sweeting.” Her mother took her hand and patted it gently. “How could he not?”

  “You have to love me. You’re my mother.”

  “No, I don’t. I know many women who do not love their children. Of course, their children are beastly.”

  “Mother, what am I to do?”

  “Simply this, Adelaide,” she said. “Find out what his heart needs in its most secret place.”

  “And then what?”

  “Fill it, my dear. Every day for the rest of his life. Fill it.”

  The last thing she expected of her mother was some sort of poet’s lines on love and marriage. What on earth did she mean?

  “But how will I know? How do I know what he needs? He’s a man. He won’t tell me. All he needs me for is to get an heir and manage his household.”

  Adelaide continued to talk, but her mother had risen and gone to the door.

  “You will discover it, Adelaide. You are a very perceptive girl.”

  Well, that wasn’t very helpful at all, was it? Trust her mother to make some cryptic remark and then follow it with a half-hearted compliment.

  “Now go to bed. It is nearly midnight.”

  Once the door clicked closed behind her mother, Adelaide fell back across the bed to ponder all that had been said. Did it change anything? What did it all mean? And how was she to discover what Marcus needed in the secret places of his heart? She glanced at the pretty little clock on the mantel.

  “Midnight? Good heavens. I’m late.”

  Chapter Eight

  “He’s the what?” Dylan Crosby’s question whipped across her face like a blast of air, but there its resemblance to a whisper ended. She clapped her woolen mitten-clad hand across his mouth and cuffed his head.

  “He’s the local magistrate, and he’s going to waddle out that door with a gun if you don’t lower your voice,” Adelaide whispered in his ear.

  Seamus Sullivan cackled softly and slapped his knee. Dylan pushed her hand away and glared at the old man. The three of them moved as one to peer around the corner of the creamery at the kennel in the distance. The long-neglected building should, by all rights, be a pile of rubble beneath the onslaught of the icy April winds. It was well past midnight and almost impossible to see, as the moon and stars were nearly obscured by a veil of clouds. If not for Adelaide’s small lantern, they might have walked right past the creamery and other outbuildings and straight to the front door of the squire’s prim little country mansion.

  “You might have told us who he was before you dragged us out to this godforsaken place on a night cold enough to freeze the hairs on my…” Dylan’s voice trailed off as Adelaide raised the lantern enough to illuminate her and the old Irishman’s amused faces.

  “It doesn’t matter who he is, Dylan,” Adelaide said in hushed tones. She started toward the ramshackle kennel and grabbed his arm to drag him with her. “His son, Dickie, keeps dogs for bear baiting. He is running a gaming scheme with the reprobate who owns the bear. Those poor dogs are half-starved, beaten, and forced to attack the bear. And Sir Delbert knows it. We have to save them.”

  “Sir Delbert, the dogs or Dickie?” Dylan muttered as Adelaide pulled open the kennel door and shoved him inside.

  Once within, they saw the extent of Dickie Finch’s cruelty. In her investigation of the man, she had seen him mercilessly beating his dogs in the street. After last week’s bear baiting, Adelaide had tapped the most reliable source on the local aristocracy possible. The ranks of the local servants made His Majesty’s intelligent corps appear mere amateurs when it came to gathering and disseminating information. The sight that greeted them in the kennel verified what she had been told.

  Young Dickie had a serious gambling habit and had lost everything, including his last two quarters’ allowance to his debtors. He’d told his father he’d come home to learn how to run the estate. In truth, he’d been tossed out of his rooms in London by his landlord months ago. His participation in the bear baiting game was simply the last in a line of efforts to come upon some quick coin.

  “I wouldn’t feed this stuff to the pigs,” Sully said as he let a few crusts of moldy bread fall from his fingers. “An’ this feed bin ain’t ’ad nobbit mice in it for months. A blind man could see that.”

  A door banged open at the front of the kennel. They jumped and turned as one. Dylan put a forefinger to his lips and pulled Adelaide behind him. He crept forward, inch by inch, and caught the door as it swung back and forth in the wind. The three of them stood, breath baited, and strained to hear… something. Adelaide slipped her hand into the copious pocket of her serviceable dress and eased out the Manton pistol she’d slipped inside before she left Winfield Abbey. She leveled it at the half-opened door and propped her thumb on the hammer.

  Dylan peered around the door into the night. After a few tense moments, his tightened shoulders dropped, and he heaved a heavy sigh. “Just the wind. We should have latched the— What the devil? Where the hell did you get that?” He strode over and snatched the Manton from her hand.

  “Filched it from Will years ago. He thinks he lost it.” Adelaide reached for her pistol. “Give that back.”

  “What do you think your brother will do when I tell him you’re running about pointing his stolen pistol at people?”

  They moved further into the dank, rancid-smelling kennel.

  “Probably the same thing he’ll do should I tell him you’re bedding the opera dancer he’s been chasing.” Adelaide sat her lantern on an upturned barrel and moved towards the area sectioned off by a series of haphazardly constructed wooden dividers.

  “You wouldn’t,” Dylan growled.

  “She would and well you know it.” Sully pulled several collars and leads from the leather satchel he had slung over his shoulder. “Best not to test her. She’s a better shot than both of us.”

  Dylan mumbled something indecipherable, and very probably rude, but he returned her pistol, which she promptly shoved back into her pocket. Trying to ignore the stomach-turning smell, she squinted into the darkness of the kennel stall. The dog inside, a rangy brindle bulldog, did not bother to raise his head. With the promise of food no doubt a memory, why would he? Cooing softly, she pulled a bit of sausage from the pocket of her coarse woolen dairymaid’s dress and offered it on her outstretched palm. The dog scrambled to his feet, sniffed it once, and then snapped it up, swallowing it in one bite. At the sound of his teeth closing on something that might be food, two more canine heads poked over the gates of their kennels.

  Exchanging a grin, Dylan and Sully took the sausages she offered and went to open the stalls that housed the two remaining dogs. Once all three were collared, leashed, and lead out into the lantern’s feeble light their poor condition was more than evident.

  Adelaide held all three leads as Dylan and Sully ran their hands over each of the dogs in turn. The poor creatures had not been fed properly in months. Dull, musty coats covered accentuated ribs, backbones, and hips. Large dogs all, their bodies sported b
ite marks, scratches, and other healed over wounds. The welts from Dickie’s riding crop still crossed their thin rumps. In spite of their mistreatment, the dogs’ tails wagged and they ran their heads under their rescuers hands in a plea for attention.

  With an expertise born of years working with animals, Sully checked each limb and tested each mouth with care. The words he muttered as he performed his inspection would have done any member of His Majesty’s navy proud. Dylan and Adelaide winced at the vehemence of one or two particularly colorful terms, but they knew well enough to leave the diminutive Irishman be when he was like this.

  “Can they make the trip, Mr. Sullivan?” Adelaide asked once he wiped his hands on a large red kerchief and stuck it in his back pocket.

  “They damned well better, beggin’ your pardon, Miss Addy. They’ll not last the month if we leave ‘em to this blighter. I wish t’master would come out with ‘is gun. A son who treats ‘is dogs like this needs a good shootin’, he does.”

  “As much as I would like to oblige you, Sully, I have to draw the line at shooting the local magistrate’s son. I don’t mind hanging for stealing his dogs, but hanging for shooting a man might harm my reputation.” Dylan winked at Adelaide and took the leads from her. “Lead on, m’lady.” He handed one of the dogs off to Sully.

  They led the dogs out of the kennel and started towards the creamery. Adelaide looked back into the decrepit building one last time. Sully’s satchel. It lay on the floor in front of the kennel stalls. She slipped inside, scurried to snatch it up, and hurried back outside to catch up with the men and dogs.

  Oh hell.

  Captured beneath the light of the moon now clear of the clouds, Dickie Finch stood, swaying slightly and arms akimbo, facing Dylan and Sully, who stood frozen in their tracks. The three dogs cowered behind her friends, as if they sensed their only protection lay with strangers. Fortunately, neither the dogs nor her fellow thieves flicked even an eye at her. Thank God for heavy woolen skirts that made not a sound as Adelaide tipped up behind the spluttering young wastrel. She slid the Manton from her pocket. The wind wafted an insulting mix of sweat, brandy, and onions into her face. Dickie had no money, but surely his father would not begrudge him a bar of soap.

  “Where the devil do you think you’re off to with my dogs?” He started for Dylan and Sully, a stream of nasty invective spilling from his mouth in slurred starts and fits. Oh, she’d had more than enough of Dickie Finch. She gripped the barrel of her pistol, ran up behind him without saying a word, and clocked the back of his greasy head with the butt as hard as she was able.

  He dropped as if he’d been shot. Adelaide stared down the barrel of her pistol to make certain it had not fired accidentally. Dickie made a feeble attempt to rise. With a huff, Adelaide struck him again. This time he stayed down.

  “Well done.” Dylan squeezed her shoulder. Goodness, when had he run over? He knelt down to check on Mr. Finch, sprawled eerily still on the ground.

  Adelaide glanced up to see Sully, his face wreathed in a wicked grin, holding the leads of the three still cowering dogs. “I’ll wager you’re ‘appy she brought her pistol now, aren’t you, your nibs?”

  “Stubble it.” Dylan rose and grabbed Adelaide’s arm. “Let’s go before he wakes up.” He grabbed the pistol from her limp hand and dragged her along in his wake.

  “Are you certain he isn’t badly hurt?” Adelaide continued to look over her shoulder as Dylan pulled her around the outbuildings and down the path away from Sir Delbert’s home and yet to move son.

  “I’m only grateful you didn’t shoot him. And even more grateful I didn’t have to either.” He took two of the leads from Sully and handed one to Addy as they hurried through an orchard.

  “I daresay shooting a magistrate’s son might improve your reputation, Dylan. It would pale in comparison to some of your other exploits,” Adelaide said as they led the dogs across the squire’s fallow field and up the adjacent hill. Once down the other side of the hill, it was only a little way to the main road into the village.

  “Might I remind you the great majority of my exploits are committed in the company of you two paragons? What does that say of your reputations?”

  “Never ‘ad one,” Sully said cheerfully. He clucked encouragingly to the dog he led.

  “My brothers and Clementine have enough reputation between them to make mine and yours pale in comparison. Come along, pet. Almost there.” The smell of sausages in her pocket made leading their charges relatively easy.

  “I doubt if Clemmie or even one of your brothers has ever bashed a magistrate’s son unconscious with the butt of a pistol whilst stealing his dogs.”

  A twinge of guilt rippled through her. “Dylan, are you certain we should have left him there all alone? He may be badly hurt.”

  Dylan stopped so short Adelaide stumbled into him. “For God’s sake, Addy, we have stolen the man’s property and attacked him. Do you really want to go back and sit with him until help arrives?”

  Adelaide untangled the dog’s lead and grabbed her pistol from Dylan. “Of course not. After what he has put these dogs through I hope he awakens with a headache the size of Prinny’s—”

  “Trust me. If the smell of his breath is any indication he was well on his way to that before you hit him. He was breathing perfectly fine when I checked to make certain you hadn’t killed him, Bodica. Nearly knocked me down.” He gave her the conspiratorial grin he’d given her since they were children stealing mince pies from Cook’s window sill. The one that made her feel safe and happy. Marcus’s grin had a different effect entirely. Good Lord, he must never find out the mischief she and Dylan had been up to tonight. The vein at his temple would burst entirely.

  In short order, they arrived at a clearing at the side of the road. Adelaide took the leads of all three dogs again, whilst Dylan and Sully pulled bundles of brush off a peculiar looking conveyance. It had the shape of a gypsy wagon, but was longer and lower to the ground. Adelaide counted at least four sets of wheels under the sturdy, covered vehicle. Four muscled draft horses stood in the traces. Dylan and Sully’s mounts as well as Adelaide’s borrowed horse were tied behind.

  “You did it,” Adelaide cried. She clapped her hands like a gleeful child. “You built Wessex’s horse wagon.”

  “Actually, Wessex built it,” Dylan explained as he and Sully opened the wide back door which also served as a ramp. “He gave us the loan of it when I told him we were coming to Yorkshire to fetch some animals.”

  You didn’t tell him…” Adelaide looked over her shoulder at the fields and woods of Sir Delbert’s estate. All was dark and quiet.

  “That we come ’ere to nick ’em off the squire?” Sully asked. “Course not. I ’spect he knows though. ’is lordship ain’t no dummy, no matter what the gentry say.”

  “Any man who could design this lovely thing is certainly no dummy, Sully. You are absolutely right.” Adelaide and Dylan set about leading the three dogs up the ramp and securing their leads in the rings set into its sides for just that purpose. “How is he, Dylan? Really.”

  Dylan loved his older brother dearly. He’d never say so, but she knew he did. However, he seldom discussed him, even with Adelaide, and he saw him even less. Never at the family estate his brother now ruled as the Earl of Wessex. He moved across the wooden floor of the wagon, giving his every attention to securing the dogs and making them comfortable.

  “Wessex is always the same, Addy-girl. His unchanging demeanor is like the Northern Star and just as constant.” He clasped her hand to help her from the back of the horse wagon. Sully took one side of the ramp and Dylan the other. They lifted it into position and fastened it closed. “And I daresay, after so many broken down dogs have found their way to Wicken End, Wessex knows far more about our little operation than he lets on. He never visits there, but he corresponds with Wickenshire’s chatelaine quite frequently.”

  “You are right, Dylan. He loves animals so, I am certain he approves.” She walked to the front of
the wagon where Sully had climbed up onto the box seat and taken the reins. “How long will it take you to reach Lancashire?”

  “Perhaps a week, a fortnight at most. We will go slowly and stick to the back roads.”

  Adelaide stiffened slightly when Dylan took her hand and began running his finger over the wool glove covering the Winfield betrothal ring. She was not ready to tell him of her forthcoming, very forthcoming marriage. She could not say why.

  “When will you be returning to Smythe Hall?”

  “I am not certain,” she said as she pulled her hand free, and stuck it in her pocket. “We may stay on a while yet.”

  “How long does it take to pay a condolence call these days?” The tone of suspicion that crept into his voice sent warning cries echoing through her head. She could lie to her parents, to her brothers, to Clemmie, and most everyone she knew. Lying to Dylan was a different kettle of fish. After all, they’d practiced on each other for years.

  “My parents and the dowager have been friends since before the duchess married. She is enjoying their company immensely and Marcus wishes us to stay for her sake.”

  “Marcus, eh?”

  Ignoring his sly grin and gimlet eye, Adelaide pushed him towards the wagon. “Shouldn’t you be going? You can put several miles between you and Sir Delbert before sunrise.”

  A noncommittal grunt was his reply as he boosted her up onto the petite mare she had ridden to meet them. With a jaunty wave, Adelaide set off up the road toward Winfield Abbey. She listened intently as the crunch of the horse wagon’s wheels let her know Sully and Dylan were on their way. She turned one last time to peer into the darkness towards Sir Delbert’s property. She wanted desperately to make certain the man’s useless lump of a son had been discovered and brought indoors. Not worth the risk. With a tap of her heels, she urged her horse into a canter and cut across the fields toward the border of Marcus’s estate. It would not do for the future Duchess of Selridge to be caught riding the moors at night.