Diamond in the Rogue

by Wendy Lacapra

  As for what came next…?

  Nights, of course, she warmly anticipated, but what would her days be like?

  She’d only ever seen the Grange from an indistinct distance. She knew Rayne’s land contained mines—she’d listened to Clarissa and Bromton consult. But Clarissa had never spoken of the manor, tenant farms, or even a home farm.

  She frowned. Did the Grange even have a home farm? With a name like the Grange, she’d always assumed the manor had once served Bromton Castle in that capacity. Surprising she knew so little.

  Then again, maybe not.

  For one, Clarissa had always been careful about the subject of her brother.

  Since Clarissa knew something had passed between them—something that had made Rayne’s former friends glance uneasily in Julia’s direction whenever Rayne was mentioned—for her to issue an invitation to come to Rayne’s home would have been odd indeed.

  What was more, Julia hadn’t dared believe her aspirations could actually come true—not after Rayne’s departure—so she’d never questioned Clarissa’s reluctance to spend time at the Grange.

  Whenever Clarissa had visited, they all—Julia, Katherine, Bromton, Clarissa, Markham, and Farring—had stayed together at Bromton Castle. And Julia was happiest in an overflowing home…like the Duke of Shepthorpe’s London home.

  Or Southford after Bromton had arrived.

  Or Bromton Castle after Bromton and Katherine were wed.

  Or even Periwinkle Gate.

  Then again, all of those places were full of love—or at least they were now.

  Just how forbidding did one’s childhood home have to be to stay with one’s former betrothed and his new wife? How forbidding was it that both Clarissa and Rayne left it completely abandoned?

  What if—Julia set down her comb—the very prospect of returning to the Grange had something to do with Rayne’s oddly taciturn mood this morning?

  Pensively, she began coiling her hair.

  She’d always been impulsive, though marrying Rayne hadn’t felt impulsive.

  Marrying Rayne had felt like the culmination of every wish. Not only did she have the man her heart had chosen—the man who, over the past few days, had cared for her in ways she hadn’t even hoped—she was about to take up residence not an hour’s walk from the eastern border of Bromton Castle, her sister’s home.

  Then again, Rayne still hadn’t shown any warmth toward Bromton and had even refused Miss Watson’s wedding invitation. Would Rayne ever willingly visit Bromton Castle?

  Would he welcome her family to the Grange?

  She winced as a hairpin went awry. Dash it. She’d coiled her curls too tightly—not that she had any intention of going through the trouble again.

  And where was Rayne, anyway?

  She pushed back her chair and then paced the length of the room. Their bags were packed, the sheets folded, leaving her nothing to do but wait.

  Wait…and worry.

  She lay back on the bare bed and counted the spidery cracks in the plaster ceiling, willing away the fear that everything was about to go terribly wrong. By noon, she was restless. By one, thoroughly vexed. As the clock chimed quarter past, she’d traded thoughts of her future home for visions of pirates and planks.

  Then he opened the door.

  Cold had rouged his angled cheeks. His eyes were glossy and bright, and his dark hair swept back beneath his hat. He filled the room and her heart all at once, and her fretting simply vanished.

  Oh yes. So. Much. Trouble.

  “Where were you?” she demanded.

  “I told you.” He blinked. “On an errand.”

  “What kind of errand takes nearly four hours?”

  He counted on his fingers. “Horses, for one. Food. Placing an advertisement for help. Acquiring a permanent coachman. Postponing my meeting with the land agent.”

  Not cancel but postpone?

  Surely, he couldn’t still be thinking of selling the Grange?

  “I see.” She held her hand against her ribs, just beneath her gathered bodice, caught between the impulse to rail and the sheer strangeness of her new position.

  How would a wife respond?

  Her hurt bubbled up. “Mightn’t you have brought me along…or at least provided some occupation?”

  His gaze blanked. “I thought you needed rest.”

  Well, he’d been thinking of her, at least. “I was worried.” She twisted a curl around her finger. “I hadn’t considered how much there would be to do.”

  “Hadn’t considered?” He cocked his head. “I’ve been away for almost two years. You knew Clarissa closed the house. She also sold the horses. Gave references to all but the most essential staff.”

  “I—I suppose I did.” She’d thought the house had been closed the way Bromton closed the Castle for the London season. But it sounded as if the Grange had been completely emptied…and was possibly, even now, uninhabitable.

  She worried her lip. Rayne had the look of a gamekeeper with his eye on a pacing fox.

  “Is there something you would like to ask?” he queried.

  She searched his face.

  He was waiting. No, not just waiting…he expected her to balk. What on earth had she gotten herself into?

  She shook her head no. “Not at present.”

  “Well, then.” He exhaled. “Your carriage awaits.”

  Before they left, Rayne went out of his way to pass an extra vail to Atkinson and thank Sarah for her kind attention. Then he settled Julia into the carriage, pulling her close in his usual manner as the carriage rattled away.

  But the closer they came to the Grange, the more uneasy he became. And the more uneasy he became, the colder the carriage felt.

  She crossed her hands over her chest and rubbed her upper arms as the traveling chariot made the final turn onto the main drive of the Grange.

  “Cold, I know.” Rayne frowned out the window. “Looks like a possible storm. I hope you weren’t planning on returning to London any time soon.”

  She studied him beneath her lashes. His choice of words had not been accidental.

  “I planned to be with you,” she replied as the carriage jerked to a stop.

  Wherever he was.

  Wherever he wished to be.

  “I’ll need to open the stables.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You may stay beneath the blanket until I return, if you wish.”

  “I’m quite warm,” she lied. “I’d like to stand…if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” He opened the door, positioned the stair, and handed her down. With a brief bow, he disappeared.

  She cast her gaze to the west, facing a sea of endless gray stone marked by the occasional copse of bare trees and patches of ice and snow. Where were the sheep? Didn’t every manor home have sheep?

  She lifted her brows. Apparently not.

  In fact, were it not for a column of distant smoke, there’d be no sign of life at all…hard to believe bustling Bromton Castle was only a few miles away.

  She braced her courage and turned around to face the house.

  Her eyes fell on the centuries-old square tower. She counted four stories from the windowless base floor to the flat, battlemented roof. A three-story hall and wing had been added to the east of the fortification.

  The latter was Elizabethan, if she had to guess. But the age of the place mattered less than its striking effect. Like overlooked relics from the past, the smoky stone tower and the bleak redbrick additions blended in with the rest of the lifeless surroundings.

  With a shiver, Julia stepped out of the faint shadow cast by the embattlements.

  Rayne strode across the courtyard, cupping his gloved hands and blowing into his fingers.

  “Well,” he said, lifting his brow. “Have you any first thoughts, Lady Rayne?”
>
  Yet another question-trap. “It’s…” She searched for a word.

  “Foreboding?” he supplied. “The desired reaction, I believe. That, if you haven’t already surmised, is a twelfth-century Pele Tower. A fortification against our neighbors to the north. The iron basket for the signal fire is still up there”—he paused—“should you wish to send a signal of distress.”

  She forced a swallow. “May we go inside?”

  He planted his hand on the small of her back. An unconscious gesture, no doubt. Yet, one she relished this time more than ever—the single point of warmth in a frigid sea.

  “The impression from the other side is slightly more pleasant,” he explained. “My grandfather planned a modern Georgian wing but died not long after renovations begun. The aspect you can see from the front is…” He cleared his throat. “Just a facade.”

  “Didn’t your father finish the work?”

  He cast a downward, sideways glance. “My father had no interest in wasting coin on something so impractical as comfort.” His voice had gone frighteningly flat. “Inside is every bit as welcoming as you might expect.”

  “So we’ve come around to the back?”

  “Worst first, so I thought.” His bright blue eyes glowed vivid against the white background of low-hanging clouds. His face emptied of sentiment—no lascivious twinkle, no half smile, not even a mocking sneer. Only impassive hardness. “I ask yet again…regrets, Lady Rayne?”

  She tamped down her unease. This was a test. A peek over the edge. One last chance to change course before the rapid descent.

  By now, he ought to know better.

  Every madcap risk had led her here. The Grange was hers. He was hers. Just as she’d always known he would be. Whatever lay ahead, she was fully up to the task.

  “No regrets.” She squared her shoulders. “And you might as well stop asking, because my answer will remain the same.”

  Something flashed behind his eyes—the smallest of hopeful flickers. He turned to face the orange door and felt his way across the mantle until he located a key.

  Julia frowned. “I thought you said you’d written ahead.”

  “I did. And, as I asked, Mr. Wheeling left the key.”

  To Julia’s surprise, the rusted lock clicked.

  Rayne released the latch, and the door opened, moaning in protest. In fact, as he guided her through the oldest part of the house, everything moaned in protest—floorboards, stairs, chimney flues. Even the walls emitted a repellant, musty scent, as if the manor itself was warning her away.

  The Grange boasted no window curtains. No papered walls. No rugs. No pretty landscape paintings. Nothing pretty at all. Just room after room of stone, dark wood, and brick.

  Not a single room contained any hint of a feminine touch.

  Not even the library managed to cheer.

  She stared in horror at the empty shelves. “Where are the books?”

  “I suspect the steward Clarissa hired has taken the estate ledgers to his offices.”

  “Not the ledgers—the books? Parliamentary records. Maps. Histories. Farming journals. Novels.”

  “My father had some of the latter.” He stared at the empty shelves. “Clarissa must have taken what she wished and sold the rest.”

  Bleak hopelessness was one matter—but no books? She felt the skin quiver at the base of her throat.

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve a library in London.”

  London, at a minimum, was four full days away. “Is the estate in debt?”

  “I can see why you might think so, but no. Not if you factor in the mines. I wrote Clarissa from New York telling her to do as she wished with the contents.”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. “You truly never intended to return, did you?”

  “Not permanently, no.” He sighed roughly. “Now do you see?”

  Oh, she saw.

  He had not just neglected the Grange. He disdained the Grange. Hated it, even.

  “Every opportunity to leave,” he murmured.

  His hand felt heavy—a weight she’d never anticipated. Why?

  Why had he married her and brought her here when his antipathy ran this deep?

  She struggled to control her breath, to convince herself that, yet again, she would find a way.

  Because here, a way did not seem possible.

  He touched his hand to the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, aware of the subtle flutter in her belly—a small spark, but enough to remind her of the fire that was worth any sacrifice.

  “You haven’t shown me any bedchambers,” she said.

  “There are two above us in this wing. Three, if you count the nursery. But the master’s chamber is in the tower.”

  He couldn’t possibly mean to install her in the opposite end of the house. “And…where will I sleep?”

  His cheeks went taut. “With me, in the latter. That is, if you want any hope of warmth.”

  Did that mean he and Clarissa had spent their formative years in a frigid nursery? “Might we”—she blushed—“go up?”

  With a heavy sigh, he tucked her palm into the crook of his arm. Her heart hammered beneath her chest as they passed back through the Elizabethan hall—the house was a maze of hidden rooms and unexpected staircases she might never be able to unravel. No part connected to any other in a rational way. The only true sign that they’d reentered the tower was when they passed through a doorway with walls an arm’s length thick. She followed him up an internal stair, and then he opened a heavy oak-and-iron door.

  “There’s a fire,” she said, startled.

  “Our new coachman,” he explained, “was kind enough to agree to light one while we toured.”

  The fire did little to cheer the room. Though the room had been aired and dusted and the bed spread with clean sheets—perhaps there was a Mrs. Wheeling—the bed set between two thin windows that barely gave forth light could not be described as inviting. As for warmth, she supposed he referred to the heavy bedcurtains.

  She turned back to the hearth opposite the bed and glanced up. Her hand flew to her swerving stomach. The largest, most grotesque tapestry she’d ever seen hung over the hearth—screaming children, wailing mothers, and Roman soldiers with spears aloft.

  No one in their right mind hung a tapestry like that anywhere, not to mention at the foot of a bed. She turned back with an accusing glare.

  Leaning on one of the bed beams, Rayne crossed one leg over the other. “Massacre of the Innocents. Biblical, if you can believe—as related in the Gospel of Matthew.”

  “Did you hang that—that monstrosity?”

  He shook his head. “Never set foot in this room until I inherited.” He half lidded his gaze. “Of course, I’ve used the room for unavoidable visits. Like I said, this is the easiest bedchamber to heat.”

  Unavoidable.

  She’d done this. She’d brought him here with the force of her will. She’d trapped him in this nightmare.

  She turned back to the tapestry, which was barely illuminated by faint light—but still all too visible.

  She couldn’t lie. She hated the Grange. She hated everything about her new home from the shadows that never ended to the heaviness in the air.

  It didn’t matter that she’d always been able to find a way.

  She couldn’t bring this back.

  Not alone.

  …

  Ever since they’d met, Rayne had yearned to understand the things Julia left unspoken. Even as they’d grown close, he’d struggled to discern her will. She’d been, from the start, a mystery.

  No longer.

  From the moment they’d left the carriage, her every sentiment had echoed hollowly in his gut—from shock to horror to despair.

  He could blame no one but himself. The Grange was a shackle—a
weight that could drag down anyone, even a starry-eyed woman with the most optimistic of intentions. Only ennui blunted the effect…and then, only for a time.

  He’d seen her home. He’d known nothing in her life could have prepared her for rot on this scale. Now, she’d finally come to understand the dilemma he’d tried to explain.

  Damn tradition. Better to leave a place like this and start over. One could not sweep away centuries of fear and bloodshed and the effects of merciless retribution.

  New York’s sense of newness, the boundless buoyancy, had been why he’d remained there for so long. The stubborn belief that the past could be outrun was written into the young country’s constitution. But even they would have to reckon with their violent beginnings one day.

  No one completely escaped the past.

  Nor was he fated to escape the Grange.

  He was married, now. He’d made his choice. Something had to change, and the change had to begin with him.

  But what had he ever actually built? What had he ever cared for that had flourished?

  “I regret…” His words tangled in throat thorns, leaving them garbled and torn. “I shouldn’t have—”

  She swiveled around. “Shouldn’t have?” She rested her hand against his heart—the hand with the sparkling diamond. Her voice rose. “Shouldn’t have?”

  He swallowed. He hadn’t been talking about her or the marriage. “I shouldn’t have let the place fall into disrepair.”

  Her shoulders fell. “Yes, well. Hardly welcoming, is it?”

  “No.”

  “We can change this.”

  She’d spoken the statement with the undercurrent of a question. Still, she’d said we. He could have gone to his knees and wept. He’d given her no reason—no reason at all to believe he was capable of such a feat.

  She put her hands on her hips, swiveled around, and pointed to the tapestry. “I don’t care what that’s worth—it comes down before we sleep in that bed.”

  “Anything.” He swayed from the effects of holding his breath. “Make any change you wish.”