“I— But if people knew…”
“Not everyone needs to know,” he said quietly. “But more than me and Gareth and Jenny. Some of your friends. Your parents.”
She sucked in a breath. “But my father— He’ll—”
She’d had a thousand reasons to keep silent about what she’d done, and they all bombarded her now. He’d take work from her. He’d dismiss what she’d done.
But, no. He couldn’t do that any longer. If Ned approved, her father couldn’t change a thing. And so Kate examined the worst possibility of all—if he knew that she wasn’t the fragile daughter he believed her to be, he might not care for her any longer.
“Whatever it is you fear,” he said gently, “take it and toss it away.”
She drew in a shaky breath.
“I mean that literally,” he said. “Because you’re holding my fears, too—that pistol and I have been through a great deal together. Throw it as far as you can.”
The gun felt heavier in her hands. She looked up at Ned once more, and then slowly hefted the weapon. It seemed too weighty to just toss away, and yet too light to contain all her fears. Still, she heaved it.
It flew in a sailing arc over the water. For one brief second, it caught the morning sun. It glinted. And then the waters closed around it with a splash.
She felt immensely lighter.
“Now,” Ned said, “you have someplace to bring the women who need your help, which is rather better than a shepherd’s cottage. I thought you might show your parents the house, when they come down to London next Season.”
Kate swallowed. She turned around in a slow circle, looking at the house with new eyes. It was no manor house, but it was large enough for the purpose. It was not just a house; it was a statement of hope. It was a promise that he would not turn away in disgust if she proved strong. It was an invitation for her to let the people she cared about see how brilliantly she could shine.
“You know,” Ned said, “once they get over their surprise, they’ll be proud. I promise.”
“How did you know?” she asked, her voice shaky. “How did you know what I wanted, before I even wanted it?”
“That’s easy,” he said, sliding his arms about her. “It’s because I love you.”
Epilogue
Six months later
AFTER A LONG WINTER, the trees were finally sporting apple-green leaves. The dark mulch of the fields was broken up by new growth snaking up through the soil. After an arduous fight in Chancery, one that had been as short as it was only by dint of the pressure applied by the Marquess of Blakely, Louisa had finally won. As if to make up for those months of worry, spring had burst upon the scene.
As painful as those months had been, they had been bearable for Kate because Ned had been with her. Kate was walking outside, arm-in-arm with her husband, and smiling. Twenty yards distant—just outside the paddock where Champion had once resided—Jenny and Louisa sat on a rug. Beside them, their children played. With the coming of spring, Jeremy had suddenly decided it was time to scoot in earnest. Jenny’s daughter, the older, larger, much more vocal Rosa, was delighted to have a new playmate, one who would undoubtedly do her bidding.
“Did I ever tell you,” Ned mused, “how Champion saved me on the night I broke my leg?”
“No. How?”
“I was clinging to the fence rail, sure I couldn’t take another step forward without falling on my face. I had convinced myself it was impossible for me to move. Then, Champion being Champion, he charged.”
“What? Is that why you had him sent away?”
Ned smiled. “Yes, although not for the reason you imagine. You see, I thought I couldn’t have walked any farther, but as I wanted to live, I discovered I could move. It was a good thing to know.”
He paused and plucked a dandelion from the grass. “I wanted him to improve because I wanted to believe anything could happen—that if Champion could redeem himself, so could I. But what I really needed to do was realize that I was already saved. And what Champion truly needed was not the weight of my expectations, but someone who would give him no chores, have no expectations of him except that he eat hay.” Ned smiled at Kate. “From what I’ve heard from the vicar we pensioned off a few years ago, being around a pair of old nanny goats—no other horses, no threatening humans—has been good for Champion.”
Only her husband would worry about the comfort of a horse that had threatened him. Kate smiled. “Aren’t you a little disappointed, to have tamed all your dragons? Whatever will you do with your afternoons?”
He smiled, and his arm came around Kate’s waist, pulling her close. “A confession,” he whispered in her ear. “With you beside me, all dragons are tame.”
“You don’t feel that you need a struggle, that you need something to prove yourself?”
He shrugged. Kate knew there were still moments when he’d resorted to sheer physical exercise to regulate some of his emotions. There had been a month in the middle of winter when she’d come to understand precisely what he’d meant when he’d described his bouts with darkness. But they had both known that it was a finite thing, that it would leave. And it hadn’t been as bad as Kate had feared.
“I think,” Ned said quietly, “I’ve come to the point where I trust myself enough not to need the proof. I see no need to seek out another challenge.”
“Oh.” Kate suppressed a small, secret smile, and let only a note of timorous wistfulness creep into her voice. The ground was soft under her feet, and she waited until they were out from under the limbs of the trees before continuing. “That’s too bad.”
“Are you trying to rid yourself of me?” He was joking, by that tone. “Send me off to China again? Or India?”
“Oh, no. That would be very inconvenient. You see, I was thinking that in another…oh, seven months, I’ll be presenting you with a very lovely challenge indeed. I was rather hoping you would want this one.”
Ned stopped dead and turned to her. A low smile lit his face. “Ah,” he said, a hint of a quaver in his voice. For a moment, he didn’t say anything more. But their arms were linked, and Kate could feel a tremor run through him. She’d felt the same way once she’d realized she was expecting. Fear. Exultation. And one silent scream, halfway between “I’m not ready!” and “It’s about time.”
Ned looked off into the distance and coughed before turning back to her. “We ought to name her Iphigenia.”
“Isn’t that overly formal?”
“Iphigenia,” he repeated, as if the name were the most reasonable one in the world. “We could call her ‘Figgy’ for short.”
Kate choked on her laughter, relieved that he wasn’t serious. “She would hate us forever.”
“Yes, well. You’re the one who insisted we needed to add difficulty to our life. How better to accomplish that than to guarantee from the start that our daughter can’t even pronounce her own name?”
“Ned, if you name our daughter Iphigenia, I will…I will…”
“You,” Ned said with an assured sparkle in his eye, “will love me just as much as ever. But maybe you are right. How’s Hatshepsut?”
“Hatshepwhat?”
“Egyptian is all the rage right now. No?”
“Decidedly not.” Kate smiled at him. “Try again.”
“Vertiline? Permelia?”
“Where are you getting these names? Why is it that they all seem to have eighteen syllables?”
“I know the one. Obraya.”
“That is not a name.”
He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Can you be sure?”
“Goose.”
He frowned. “Well, at least that one’s short, but I think she won’t appreciate the connotations. Isn’t that a little pejorative?”
Kate burst into laughter. “Stop. You have to stop.” When she finally was able to breathe again, she shook her head at him. “What’s wrong with your mother’s name? Have you some objection to Lily?”
“I suppose not,” Ned sa
id. “This is why I love you. Always practical.” He reached out and took her waist and drew her closer.
No. Not always. Not when he held her this close, not when his lips brushed her cheek once, her jaw a second time.
“And what if it’s a boy?” Kate asked.
He leaned over to brush a third kiss on her forehead. “Then, my love, he is really going to hate being called Lily.”
Thank you!
Thanks for reading The Carhart Series. I hope you enjoyed it!
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The Duchess War is the first full-length book in my newest series. If you’d like to read an excerpt from that book, please turn the page.
Excerpt: The Duchess War
Leicester, November, 1863
ROBERT BLAISDELL, THE NINTH DUKE OF CLERMONT, was not hiding.
True, he’d retreated to the upstairs library of the old Guildhall, far enough from the crowd below that the noise of the ensemble had faded to a distant rumble. True, nobody else was about. Also true: He stood behind thick curtains of blue-gray velvet, which shielded him from view. And he’d had to move the heavy davenport of brown-buttoned leather to get there.
But he’d done all that not to hide himself, but because—and this was a key point in his rather specious train of logic—in this centuries-old structure of plaster and timberwork, only one of the panes in the windows opened, and that happened to be the one secreted behind the sofa.
So here he stood, cigarillo in hand, the smoke trailing out into the chilly autumn air. He wasn’t hiding; it was simply a matter of preserving the aging books from fumes.
He might even have believed himself, if only he smoked.
Still, through the wavy panes of aging glass, he could make out the darkened stone of the church directly across the way. Lamplight cast unmoving shadows on the pavement below. A pile of handbills had once been stacked against the doors, but an autumn breeze had picked them up and scattered them down the street, driving them into puddles.
He was making a mess. A goddamned glorious mess. He smiled and tapped the end of his untouched cigarillo against the window opening, sending ashes twirling to the paving stones below.
The quiet creak of a door opening startled him. He turned from the window at the corresponding scritch of floorboards. Someone had come up the stairs and entered the adjoining room. The footsteps were light—a woman’s, perhaps, or a child’s. They were also curiously hesitant. Most people who made their way to the library in the midst of a musicale had a reason to do so. A clandestine meeting, perhaps, or a search for a missing family member.
From his vantage point behind the curtains, Robert could only see a small slice of the library. Whoever it was drew closer, walking hesitantly. She was out of sight—somehow he was sure that she was a woman—but he could hear the soft, prowling fall of her feet, pausing every so often as if to examine the surroundings.
She didn’t call out a name or make a determined search. It didn’t sound as if she were looking for a hidden lover. Instead, her footsteps circled the perimeter of the room.
It took Robert half a minute to realize that he’d waited too long to announce himself. “Aha!” he could imagine himself proclaiming, springing out from behind the curtains. “I was admiring the plaster. Very evenly laid back there, did you know?”
She would think he was mad. And so far, nobody yet had come to that conclusion. So instead of speaking, he dropped his cigarillo out the window. It tumbled end over end, orange tip glowing, until it landed in a puddle and extinguished itself.
All he could see of the room was a half-shelf of books, the back of the sofa, and a table next to it on which a chess set had been laid out. The game was in progress; from what little he remembered of the rules, black was winning. Whoever it was drew nearer, and Robert shrank back against the window.
She crossed into his field of vision.
She wasn’t one of the young ladies he’d met in the crowded hall earlier. Those had all been beauties, hoping to catch his eye. And she—whoever she was—was not a beauty. Her dark hair was swept into a no-nonsense knot at the back of her neck. Her lips were thin and her nose was sharp and a bit on the long side. She was dressed in a dark blue gown trimmed in ivory—no lace, no ribbons, just simple fabric. Even the cut of her gown bordered on the severe side: waist pulled in so tightly he wondered how she could breathe, sleeves marching from her shoulders to her wrists without an inch of excess fabric to soften the picture.
She didn’t see Robert standing behind the curtain. She had set her head to one side and was eyeing the chess set the way a member of the Temperance League might look at a cask of brandy: as if it were an evil to be stamped out with prayer and song—and failing that, with martial law.
She took one halting step forward, then another. Then, she reached into the silk bag that hung around her wrist and retrieved a pair of spectacles.
Glasses should have made her look more severe. But as soon as she put them on, her gaze softened.
He’d read her wrongly. Her eyes hadn’t been narrowed in scorn; she’d been squinting. It hadn’t been severity he saw in her gaze but something else entirely—something he couldn’t quite make out. She reached out and picked up a black knight, turning it around, over and over. He could see nothing about the pieces that would merit such careful attention. They were solid wood, carved with indifferent skill. Still, she studied it, her eyes wide and luminous.
Then, inexplicably, she raised it to her lips and kissed it.
Robert watched in frozen silence. It almost felt as if he were interrupting a tryst between a woman and her lover. This was a lady who had secrets, and she didn’t want to share them.
The door in the far room creaked as it opened once more.
The woman’s eyes grew wide and wild. She looked about frantically and dove over the davenport in her haste to hide, landing in an ignominious heap two feet away from him. She didn’t see Robert even then; she curled into a ball, yanking her skirts behind the leather barrier of the sofa, breathing in shallow little gulps.
Good thing he’d moved the davenport back half a foot earlier. She never would have fit the great mass of her skirts behind it otherwise.
Her fist was still clenched around the chess piece; she shoved the knight violently under the sofa.
This time, a heavier pair of footfalls entered the room.
“Minnie?” said a man’s voice. “Miss Pursling? Are you here?”
Her nose scrunched and she pushed back against the wall. She made no answer.
“Gad, man.” Another voice that Robert didn’t recognize—young and slightly slurred with drink. “I don’t envy you that one.”
“Don’t speak ill of my almost-betrothed,” the first voice said. “You know she’s perfect for me.”
“That timid little rodent?”
“She’ll keep a good home. She’ll see to my comfort. She’ll manage the children, and she won’t complain about my mistresses.” There was a creak of hinges—the unmistakable sound of someone opening one of the glass doors that protected the bookshelves.
“What are you doing, Gardley?” the drunk man asked. “Looking for her among the German volumes? I don’t think she’d fit.” That came with an ugly laugh.
Gardley. That couldn’t be the eld
er Mr. Gardley, owner of a distillery—not by the youth in that voice. This must be Mr. Gardley the younger. Robert had seen him from afar—an unremarkable fellow of medium height, medium-brown hair, and features that reminded him faintly of five other people.
“On the contrary,” young Gardley said. “I think she’ll fit quite well. As wives go, Miss Pursling will be just like these books. When I wish to take her down and read her, she’ll be there. When I don’t, she’ll wait patiently, precisely where she was left. She’ll make me a comfortable wife, Ames. Besides, my mother likes her.”
Robert didn’t believe he’d met an Ames. He shrugged and glanced down at—he was guessing—Miss Pursling to see how she took this revelation.
She didn’t look surprised or shocked at her almost-fiancé’s unromantic utterance. Instead, she looked resigned.
“You’ll have to take her to bed, you know,” Ames said.
“True. But not, thank God, very often.”
“She’s a rodent. Like all rodents, I imagine she’ll squeal when she’s poked.”
There was a mild thump.
“What?” yelped Ames.
“That,” said Gardley, “is my future wife you are talking about.”
Maybe the fellow wasn’t so bad after all.
Then Gardley continued. “I’m the only one who gets to think about poking that rodent.”
Miss Pursling pressed her lips together and looked up, as if imploring the heavens. But inside the library, there were no heavens to implore. And when she looked up, through the gap in the curtains…
Her gaze met Robert’s. Her eyes grew big and round. She didn’t scream; she didn’t gasp. She didn’t twitch so much as an inch. She simply fixed him with a look that bristled with silent, venomous accusation. Her nostrils flared.
There was nothing Robert could do but lift his hand and give her a little wave.
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