“No. Not that it is any concern of yours, Mr. Pye.” Greaves stared down
his thin nose. “Now, if I may show you the door?”
Harry took two quick steps and grabbed the butler by the shirtfront. One
step more and he slammed the man against the wall, cracking the plaster.
“As it happens, what my lady does /is/ my concern.” Harry leaned close
enough to smell the powder on Greaves’s wig. “She’s carrying my child
and will soon be my wife. Is that understood?”
The butler nodded, sending a fine dusting of powder onto his shoulders.
“Good.” Harry released the other man.
What would make her leave so suddenly? Frowning, he took the curving
main stairs two at a time and headed down the long hall to his lady’s
room. Had he missed something? Said the wrong thing? The problem with
women was that it could be damn near anything.
Harry threw open the bedroom door, scaring a maid cleaning out the
hearth. He strode to Lady Georgina’s vanity table. The top had been
cleared. He opened drawers and flung them shut just as fast. They were
empty save for a few hairpins and a forgotten handkerchief. The maid
scurried from the room. Harry straightened from the vanity and surveyed
the room. The wardrobe doors stood ajar and empty. A lone candlestick
sat on the table by her bed. The bed itself had already been stripped.
There wasn’t anything to indicate where she’d gone.
He quit the room and ran back down the stairs, knowing the servants were
aware of his movements. He knew he must seem a madman, racing about the
manor and claiming the daughter of an earl as his bride. Well, damn them
all to hell. He wasn’t backing down. She was the one who had brought it
this far. She’d laid down the gauntlet and then run for it. This time
around he wasn’t going to wait for her to come to her senses. Who knew
how long it would take her to get over whatever snit she’d gotten
herself into? He might be a commoner, he might be poor, but by God, he
was going to be Lady Georgina’s husband, and his wife needed to learn
that she couldn’t just light out every time she got a bee in her bonnet.
Harry mounted the poor mare, already half asleep, and turned her in the
direction of his own little cottage. He’d pack the barest essentials. If
he was fast, he might catch her before Lincoln.
Five minutes later, he opened the door to his cottage, thinking about
what to bring, but all thought stopped when he saw the table. The
leopard stood on it. Harry picked up the carved animal. It was exactly
the same as the last time he’d seen it in her palm. Except that it was
no longer in a cage.
She’d set the leopard free.
He stared at the wooden creature in his hands for a minute, rubbing his
thumb over the smooth back he’d so carefully whittled. Then he looked at
the table again. There was a note. He picked it up with a shaking hand.
/My Dear Harry,/
/I’m sorry. I never meant to cage you. I see now that it wouldn’t be
right for me to force myself on you. I’ll take care of matters myself.
Enclosed is something I had drawn up when last in London./
/—Georgina/
The second paper was a legal document. Lady Georgina had given him the
Woldsly estate.
No.
Harry reread the fine script. The document remained the same.
No. No. /No./ He crumpled the paper in his fist. Did she hate him that
much? Hate him enough to give up part of her inheritance to get him out
of her life? He sank into a chair and stared at the balled scrap in his
hand. Perhaps she’d finally come to her senses. Finally realized how
very far beneath her he lay. If so, there would be no redemption for
him. He laughed, but it came out more a sob, even to his own ears. He’d
spent the last weeks pushing Lady Georgina away, but even as he’d done
so, he’d known.
She was the one.
The one and only lady for him in this lifetime. If she left him, there
would be no other. And he’d thought that was fine. His life had been
adequate up until now, hadn’t it? He could continue without her. But
somehow in the last weeks she had burrowed into his life. Into him. And
the things she had offered him so casually, a wife and family, a home,
those things had become like meat and wine put before a man who had
eaten only bread and water his entire life.
Vital.
Harry looked down at the crushed piece of paper and realized that he was
afraid. Afraid he couldn’t make this right. Afraid he’d never be whole
again.
Afraid he’d lost his lady and their child.
TWO HORSES.
Silas snorted and kicked a still-smoldering beam. Two horses out of a
stable of nine and twenty. Even Thomas’s last act had been a piss-poor
one; he’d managed to save only the pair of nags before succumbing to the
flames. The air was thick with the stench of burned meat. Some of the
men pulling out the carcasses were gagging, despite the scarves they
wore over their mouths. Like little girls they were, whining over the
stink and filth.
Silas looked at the remains of the great Granville stables. A heap of
smoking debris now. All because of a deranged woman, so Bennet said. A
pity she’d taken her own life. It would’ve set a nice example for the
local peasants had she been fodder for the hangman. But in the end,
perhaps he would’ve thanked the crazy wench. She’d murdered his elder
son, which made Bennet his heir now. No more jaunting off to London for
that young man. As the heir, he would have to stay at Granville House
and learn how to run the estates. Silas curled his upper lip back in a
grin. He had Bennet now. The boy might buck and paw, but he knew his
duty. The heir to Granville must oversee the estates.
A rider clattered into the yard. Silas nearly choked when he saw who it
was. “Get out! Get out, you young cur!” How dare Harry Pye just dance
onto Granville land? Silas started for the horse and rider.
Pye dismounted his horse without even looking in his direction. “Out of
my way, old man.” He started for the house.
“You!” Fury clogged Silas’s throat. He turned to the gawking workmen.
“Seize him! Throw him off my land,
damn you!”
“Try it,” Pye spoke softly behind him.
Several of the men backed up, the cowards. Silas turned and saw that Pye
had a long, thin knife in his left hand.
The bounder pivoted in his direction. “How about acting for yourself,
Granville?”
Silas stood still, clenching and unclenching his fists. Had he been
twenty years younger, he wouldn’t have hesitated. His chest burned.
“No?” Pye sneered. “Then you won’t mind if I have a word with your son.”
He ran up the steps to Granville House and disappeared inside.
Filthy, common lout. Silas backhanded the servant nearest him. The man
was caught off guard and went down. The other workmen stared at their
fellow wallowing in the stable yard muck. One offered his hand to the
man on the ground.
“You’re all sacked after th
is day’s work,” Silas said, and didn’t wait
to hear the grumbling behind him.
He mounted his own stairs, rubbing at the fire in his chest. He’d throw
the bastard out himself if it killed him. He didn’t have far to go.
Entering the great hall, he could hear men’s voices coming from the
front room where Thomas’s body had been laid out.
Silas swung the door open, banging it against the wall.
Pye and Bennet looked up from where they stood near the table bearing
Thomas’s charred corpse. Bennet deliberately turned away from his
father. “I can go with you, but I’ll have to see Thomas properly buried
first.” His voice was a whispered rasp from the fire.
“Of course. My horse will need to rest after last night, anyway,” Pye
replied.
“Now wait just a minute,” Silas interrupted the cozy pair. “You’re not
going anywhere, Bennet. Especially not with this bastard.”
“I’ll go where I want.”
“No, you’ll not,” Silas said. The burning pain was spreading to his arm.
“You’re the heir to Granville now. You’ll stay right here if you want a
penny more from me.”
Bennet finally looked up. Silas had never seen such hatred in another
man’s eyes. “I don’t want a penny or anything else from you. I’m
traveling to London as soon as Thomas has been decently buried.”
“With him?” Silas jerked his head in Pye’s direction, but he didn’t wait
for an answer. “So your baseborn blood has begun to tell, has it?”
Both men turned.
Silas grinned in satisfaction. “Your mother was a whore, you know that,
don’t you? I wasn’t even the first she’d cuckolded John Pye with. That
woman had an itch that just couldn’t be scratched by one man. If she
hadn’t died so soon, she’d be spreading her legs in the gutter right
now, just to feel a cock.”
“She may have been a faithless lying whore, but she was a saint compared
to you,” Pye said.
Silas laughed. He couldn’t help it. What a joke! The boy must have no
idea. He gasped for breath. “Can’t you do sums, lad? Must not be
something they teach in the poorhouse, eh?” Another chuckle shook him.
“Well let me spell it out for you, nice and slow. Your mother came here
before you were conceived. You’re as likely my son as John Pye’s. More
like, the way she panted after me.”
“No.” Strangely, Pye showed no reaction. “You may well have planted the
seed in my mother, but John Pye and only John Pye was my father.”
/“Father,”/ Silas spat. “I doubt John Pye was even capable of getting a
woman with child.”
For a moment Silas thought Pye would go for his throat, and his heart
leapt painfully. But the bastard turned aside and walked to the window,
as if Silas were not worth the effort.
Silas scowled and gestured scornfully. “Do you see what I saved you
from, Bennet?”
“Saved me?” His son opened his mouth as if laughing, but no sound came
out. “Saved me how? By bringing me to this mausoleum? By putting me in
the tender care of your bitch of a wife? A woman who must have felt the
sting of her humiliation every single time she looked at me? By favoring
me over Thomas so there was no way we would ever have a normal
relationship?” Bennet was shouting hoarsely now. “By banishing Harry, my
/brother?/ God! Tell me, Father, how exactly have you saved me?”
“You walk out that door, boy, and I’ll never welcome you back, heir or
no.” The pain in his chest was back again. Silas rubbed his breastbone.
“You’ll get no more money, no more help from me. You’ll starve in a ditch.”
“Fine.” Bennet turned away. “Harry, Will is in the kitchen. I can have
my bags packed in a half hour.”
“Bennet!” The word felt as if it were ripped from Silas’s lungs.
His son walked away from him.
“I’ve killed for you, boy.” Damn it, he would not go groveling after his
own son.
Bennet turned, a look of mingled horror and loathing on his face. “You
/what?/”
“Murdered for you.” Silas thought he bellowed, but the words weren’t as
loud as before.
“Jesus Christ. Did he say he murdered someone?” Bennet’s voice seemed to
float around him.
The pain in his chest had spread and become a fire burning through to
his back. Silas staggered. Tried to grab a chair and fell, toppling the
chair next to him. He lay on his side and felt the flames licking
hungrily down his arm and over his shoulder. He smelled ashes from his
son’s body and piss from his own.
“Help me.” His voice was a thin trickle.
Someone stood over him. Boots filled his vision.
“Help me.”
Then Pye’s face was in front of his own. “You killed Mistress Pollard,
didn’t you, Granville? That’s who you murdered. Janie Crumb never had
the strength to feed another woman poison.”
“Oh, my God,” Bennet whispered in his ruined voice.
Bile suddenly filled Silas’s throat, and he heaved, choking on the
contents of his own stomach. The carpet wool chafed his cheek as he
convulsed.
Dimly, Silas saw Pye step aside, avoiding the pool of vomit.
/Help me./
Harry Pye’s green eyes seemed to bore into him. “I never begged for
mercy when you had me beaten. Do you know why?”
Silas shook his head.
“It wasn’t pride or bravery,” he heard Pye say.
The fire crawled up into his throat. The room was going dark.
“My da begged you for mercy when you had him horsewhipped. You ignored
him. There is no mercy in you.”
Silas choked, coughing on hot coals.
“He’s dead,” someone said.
But by that time, the fire had reached Silas’s eyes and he no longer cared.
/Chapter Twenty/
“You’ve gone mad.” Tony sat back in the settee as if his pronouncement
settled the matter.
They were in his elegant town house sitting room. Across from him,
George sat stiffly in an armchair, the now-ever-present basin at the
ready by her feet. Oscar prowled the room, munching on a muffin. No
doubt, Violet and Ralph were taking turns pressing their ears to the door.
George sighed. They’d arrived in London yesterday, and she seemed to
have spent all the time since debating her condition with her brothers.
/I should have just eloped with Cecil./ She could have informed her
family in a note and not even have been around to hear the resulting
commotion.
“No, I’ve gone sane,” she replied. “Why is it that everyone was against
my being with Harry before and now they keep pushing me at him?”
“You weren’t increasing before, Georgie,” Oscar pointed out kindly. He
had a fading bruise high on one cheek, and she briefly stared at it,
wondering where he’d got it.
“Thank you very much.” She winced as her tummy gave a bubbling rumble.
“I think I’m aware of my state. I don’t see that it matters.”
Tony sighed. “Don’t be obtuse. You know very well that your state is the
/> reason you need to marry. The problem is the man you’ve chosen—”
“It’s a bit thick, you must admit.” Oscar leaned forward from his place
at the mantelpiece and waved a muffin at her, scattering crumbs. “I
mean, you are carrying the fellow’s child. Seems only right he should
have a chance at marrying you.”
Wonderful. Oscar, of all people, was lecturing her on propriety.
“He’s a land steward. You told me only recently that a land steward just
/wasn’t done./” George lowered her voice in a fair imitation of Oscar’s
tone. “Cecil comes from a very respectable family. And you like him.”
She folded her arms, sure of her point.
“I’m terribly disappointed in your lack of morals, Georgie, old girl.
Can’t tell you how disillusioning this insight into the female mind is
for me. Might very well make me cynical for years to come.” Oscar
frowned. “A man has a right to his own progeny. Doesn’t matter what
class he comes from, the principle is the same.” He bit into his muffin
for emphasis.
“Not to mention poor Cecil,” Tony muttered, “foisted off with someone
else’s get. How are you going to explain that?”
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