The Lost Heiress

by Roseanna M. White

  Eyes. Fire eyes …

  Written words flashed through her mind, though she couldn’t be sure she remembered them correctly through the haze. She pushed away. Too slowly to be called abrupt, but still it brought the men to another halt. Brook forced a smile. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m afraid I’m not so well after all.”

  Her father all but leaped from his chair. “I’ll help you back to your room.”

  Panic clawed at her throat. Yet it couldn’t be. She would look at the letter again. Try to make sense of it. “No, Papa. You must finish your conversation here. I shall find …” Mrs. Doyle couldn’t have gone too far. She looked to the door.

  No Mrs. Doyle. But Deirdre appeared as if summoned by her very thoughts. Or, given the exasperation upon her face, by Brook’s disappearance from her bedroom. “There you are, my lady! You look pale as a ghoul. Let me see you back upstairs.”

  “Thank you—I would appreciate it.” Brook bent her knees—all the curtsy she could manage—and nodded at the men. “Pray continue, gentlemen.”

  Deirdre slid a gentle arm around her waist, careful to avoid the injured side. “I’ll have someone bring your plate and coffee. You need to rest, my lady. It’s quite a trauma you received, and not so many hours ago.”

  Brook’s mind buzzed too much to argue. She gladly accepted the help up the stairs and into her room—though she declined the offer of bed in favor of a chair. And she only took the chair once she had first gone to her dressing room and tried to reach, not for the jewels, but for the box of her parents’ letters.

  “Your ladyship!”

  Brook sighed … and winced. “You’re right. I can’t reach it. Would you be so kind?”

  Mumbling in Gaelic all the while, Deirdre pulled down the box from the shelf with ease and shooed Brook back to her chair. “I can’t think what’s so all-fired important …”

  Brook offered no explanation, just opened the box and pulled out the bundle of letters. She had finished reading through them all a month ago and had divided them again into his and hers, in their separate boxes. These were hers, from him.

  She flipped to the bottom of the stack. The very last one by date. It had been buried in the box when she first sorted them—though the rest had been in reverse order, newest on top. She’d thought it odd, but Regan and Melissa had distracted her from dwelling on it.

  Now she dwelled and unfolded the missive. Her eyes scanned over the first few paragraphs, but it wasn’t there. She flipped it over. There, on the back.

  I know you have jewels enough already, my love, but when I saw this, I thought of you. Of how it would look against the cream of your skin, under the fire of your eyes. You have always been my Fire Eyes.

  Fire Eyes. But they weren’t a thing, for a thief to demand. Yet he had tied them to a gift …

  “The letters again?” Deirdre was returning from the door with her breakfast tray. She slid it onto the table by Brook’s side and raised her brows at the paper. “And who’s that one from?”

  “My father to my mother.”

  “Is it? Doesn’t look like his lordship’s hand.”

  “No.” It had been the first thing she had noted too, after sorting through so many of them. But the explanation for that lay in the first paragraph. “The letter says he’d hurt his hand—his valet wrote it for him.”

  Though now that she knew him, she couldn’t imagine her father sharing such intimate thoughts with any third party. Ever.

  Someone else had obviously penned it though.

  Another knock sent Deirdre back to the door, and Papa poked his head in the moment she opened it. “May I come in?”

  “Please.” He could be trusted. She had known it all along, but now she was sure. “I would appreciate your help.”

  Question in his eyes, he strode her way. She held out the letter.

  He took it, but without any change to that silent inquiry. “What’s this?”

  “I wish I knew. It was with the letters you wrote my mother, signed with your name, but not in your hand. It says you dictated it to your valet.”

  His gaze shot from the page to her. “I would never dictate a letter to my wife to my valet.”

  “I know. So then …”

  “So then.” His gaze fell to the sheet again, scanned, narrowed. “What is this gift?”

  She nearly smiled at the temper in his tone—jealous, nearly twenty years later, at the thought of someone else sending a gift to his Lizzie. Did Brice ever react so? Not that she’d seen, though he looked at her warmly. And Justin … he was too much her brother. He guarded her fiercely, but it wasn’t the same, was it? “Some kind of jewelry, obviously.”

  He had flipped the page, and she knew when he got to that last line by the quick breath he drew in. Knew, when he looked up, that his mind had made the same leap hers had. “Not feral ice. Fire Eyes.”

  “Yes.” She moistened her lips. “I first thought it might have been ice—like diamonds. Which is what got me thinking about this letter.”

  “It must be one of the pieces I attributed to the Brooks or Rushworths. She—

  “Wait.” Brook got slowly to her feet and walked into her dressing room, pulling out the card-paper bandbox where she’d put Mother’s miscellaneous correspondence as she’d read them. Tossing it to her bed, she riffled through the contents.

  It didn’t take long before she lifted a few folded sheaves. “I knew I recognized that script, try as he did to disguise it. I found these letters while reading through Mother’s correspondence.”

  Papa took the missives, and as he read, soon flushed. “That blighter.” He threw the pages into the bandbox and turned abruptly. “O’Malley, find us fresh paper. We have a letter to write to one Major Henry Rushworth, in India.”

  Justin hadn’t attended many weddings, but this one seemed exceedingly long to his way of thinking. And dull. Much as he had enjoyed the few moments before the ceremony he’d had to poke fun at Thate, who had been grinning like a lunatic, this wasn’t where Justin wanted to be.

  Not given the gaping absence of Brook.

  His ship had been days late to port, and he was convinced it was only prayer that had allowed him to make it into the city in time for the nuptials. He’d had no time to go to his townhouse, only to send Peters for his clothes while he headed for the church. Once there, of course, it had been straight into the room with Thate and their other friends from school who would stand with him.

  No one had mentioned that Brook would not be present—wasn’t she to be one of the bridesmaids? He’d found Whitby in the crowd, had sent him a questioning look … but hadn’t been able to decipher the mirroring one Whitby sent back.

  The moment the interminable ceremony finally ended and the impossible crowd made its way out to greet the Earl and new Countess Thate, Justin found Brook’s father. “Where is she?”

  Whitby lifted a single brow. “And a cheerful hello to you too, Duke. She’s at Mary’s.”

  But … “Why?”

  The other brow joined the first. “She wasn’t well enough.”

  “What? Is she ill?” It would have to be serious indeed to keep her away.

  Now Whitby sighed and pulled him back into the church, away from the milling nobility. “Did you not go home first, sir? She and I drove round yesterday and left a letter for you.” At the shake of Justin’s head, the earl nodded. “She is injured—a cut to her side that wouldn’t, apparently, allow her to wear her bridesmaid’s dress, and her face is a veritable rainbow of blues and greens that made my sister faint each morning for three days running.”

  Panic vied with pity. “That horse?” It had to be. That stubborn girl—

  “No. She has Oscuro well in hand.” He looked as if he were about to say more but then darted a worried look at the crowds. “I would keep the press out of it, so I’ll say no more. It’s all in the letter.”

  Letter be hanged—he’d get the story from Brook herself, and he certainly wasn’t going to lollygag here when she was but
a few miles away. With a nod to Whitby, he exited again and gripped Thate’s shoulder.

  His friend turned, that idiotic smile still in place. “There you are, Shep. I thought you’d run off to India already.”

  His intentions paused, he blinked. “Shep?”

  “Stafford … Staff … Shepherd … surely you can follow the train of my thoughts by now.”

  A grin stole Justin’s lips. “Never—mine are too logical to take the twists and turns yours do.” He gazed out over the sea of people, far too many of whom watched him. “I’m going to slip away for a bit, but I’ll make my way to the ball when I can.”

  Thate’s smile went lopsided and knowing. “Any particular place you’re slipping away to?”

  As if he didn’t know perfectly well. Thate must have known exactly what kinds of injuries Brook had managed to sustain, even if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to enlighten Justin before the wedding. Though he supposed he would have been a bit suspicious had the man’s mind been on his bride’s cousin rather than his bride. “I have to see her.”

  Thate’s smile was the exact one he’d given him in school when Justin had fallen into the pond after Thate had warned him not to trust that old log. Pure condescending glee. “Oh, I know you do. Go. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts—I daresay she’ll have chains around you soon.”

  And if he could be as happy in them as Thate seemed to be … Justin grinned. “Don’t make me hurt you on your wedding day, Alex.”

  Thate’s laugh followed him down the sweeping stone steps outside the church before it got lost in the chatter of the crowd. He found the Rolls-Royce and gave the motor a crank. Slid into his seat, switched on the magneto, and turned the key.

  He had the direction for Lady Ramsey’s home and knew it wasn’t too far from his own townhouse on Grosvenor Square, so he set off in the general direction. The sun was already setting behind the buildings of London when he found the right street and then the right number. He parked, killed the magneto, and hopped out, sparing only a moment to smile at Whitby’s words. “She and I drove over yesterday …”

  Which of them, he had to wonder, had been behind the wheel?

  The butler opened the door to his knock. Stepping inside, Justin handed over his card and received an immediate bow.

  “Good evening, Your Grace. But I am afraid the family is all out—”

  “At the wedding, I know.” He took a step to the right, though, when the strains of a piano—and a soprano—reached him. “I was just there, where I learned of the baroness’s injuries. I needed to see for myself she is well.”

  The butler’s eyes brightened. “Ah, you are that duke. Of course, Your Grace. I will let the baroness know—”

  “Please, don’t interrupt her playing. It’s been too long since I’ve heard it.” And what other duke would come calling? The only possible answer made his palms go damp. He handed over his hat and overcoat and let his feet point him toward her siren’s song. “This way?”

  “Yes, sir. Follow me.”

  The butler led him a short way down the hall and indicated the double French doors to what must be the music room. He glimpsed a harp near the window, an old clavichord by the shelves. With a nod of thanks he stepped inside. And saw the piano.

  Her back was to him. Her hair was down—the chandelier’s light shone on each spiraling strand of gold tumbling down her back, wild and free. A sight he hadn’t seen in years. And which hadn’t used to make him react like this.

  She played with the same abandon she applied to her every other pursuit, as if it might be the last song she ever sang, the last keys her fingers would touch. He recognized the song—it was from a Puccini opera, and Collette had earned her fame belting out this particular bittersweet refrain.

  Letting the music sweep through him, he eased into the room, careful to keep out of Brook’s peripheral vision. The last time he had happened upon her like this had been that night in Monaco. When he had looked at her and thought how beautiful she had grown to be, how he would soon declare himself.

  Swallow as he might, the lump wouldn’t ease from his throat. A few more months, a few more trips, a few more continents. Things had gone well in Barbados and Canada. Not well enough that he could avoid sinking the money Father left him into improvements for the Stafford tenants in Gloucestershire, but well. Promising. If he could put things to rights as efficiently in India and Africa …

  Brook lifted her voice in the final high, soaring note. Her fingers stilled for a measure, two, then flew over the keys in a heartrending finale. Once her voice had gone silent and her fingers still, he stepped forward, clapping.

  She spun around on the bench, her eyes going bright as she sprang up. “Justin!”

  Because he couldn’t help it, he smiled—and because her face was mottled with bruises, that smile faded as she launched herself into his arms. He let her kiss his cheeks but knew he was scowling. It deepened when she flinched away from the hand he settled on her waist, pain flashing through her eyes.

  “What happened?” He didn’t mean it to come out so harsh sounding. His hands slid to her back—until he realized he felt only cloth and flesh, no rigid boning. Far too alluring. He dropped them altogether.

  Her eyes flickered only briefly. “Did you not read the letter?”

  “I didn’t get home. I had barely enough time to reach the church. What happened?”

  She sighed and rubbed a fingertip over a mostly healed scrape on her arm. “I was attacked one evening—we still don’t know why, or who the man was. I took his gun and shot the knife from his hand—”

  “You what?” Images assaulted him: Brook held at gunpoint. Brook with a knife at her throat. Brook, one of the few people he had left in the world, nearly killed. The fear of it swallowed him, and he dragged her to his chest again and held her close. Let the solid feel of her, the proof that she had survived her ordeal, seep into every inch.

  “Justin—”

  “Hush. Give me a moment.” He squeezed his eyes closed and buried his face in her golden, fragrant curls.

  Her arms were around him. Her breath on his neck. She even stroked a hand over the back of his head. Soothing, giving comfort, when she was the one who had been injured. He swallowed and forced himself to pull away, though he couldn’t resist cupping her uninjured cheek as he met her gaze again. “Sorry. I can see you’re all right, but the thought of it …” He shook his head. “You shot a knife from his hand?”

  Only Brook could nod about it with a hint of a smile. “And then Papa came, and Pratt. Pratt killed the brute when he drew out a second gun.”

  He could only stare at her now, waiting for the words to clarify. She’d called Whitby Papa—that was a big step for her, and it must be a new one. But … “Pratt?”

  The arch of her brows looked amused. “Now you sound like Brice and Ella. Pratt finds any excuse he can to call, though that was certainly the first we welcomed him.”

  His brain had hit another snag. “Who are Brice and Ella?”

  “Sorry—Lord Worthing and his sister, Lady Ella Myerston.”

  Were there a seat handy, he would have sunk into it. As it was, his hand slipped from her cheek. “Lord Worthing.”

  He was back at Whitby Park, on the day Grandfather died. Looking across the lawn at her on his arm. Seeing the way she laughed, the way he looked down at her. “You are on a first name basis with them?” With him?

  She spun away with a chuckle, toward a laden tea table that seemed to have everything but tea on it. A chuckle, as if it weren’t paramount to claiming they were engaged. That, while he was an ocean away dreaming of declaring his love to her, she was forgetting he even existed.

  “You’d like them,” she said, insensibly. “After the house party they had gone back to Scotland to finish their holiday with their mother’s family, and they all stopped again at Whitby Park for a few days’ rest on their way home to Sussex.”

  She turned back toward him, cup of steaming black coffee in hand. “Hav
e you seen your cousin yet? He has spent much of the fall in Town. Largely, it seems, because Melissa was here. She says she is certain he will propose soon, though Aunt Mary wants her to debut first.”

  When Brook extended the coffee toward him, Justin took it without thinking. But he didn’t feel the heat of it on his palm. He wasn’t even certain the electrified chandelier still shone. So many times he had come home from months of school or travel, had sought her out at the palace—and she had spoken to him of academic papers or dignitaries or the latest advances of the automobile.

  Not weddings and debuts and cousins and friends known the empire over for their ability to make women fall at their feet. Friends she called by first name with a gleam in her eye. Friends who had looked at her as though seeing the sun for the first time.

  Justin downed half the cup of coffee in a single shot. It warmed him, but not in the way he’d hoped. “You’ve been busy.”

  She paused with her hand on the gleaming silver coffeepot and looked right into his soul. “Would you have me stand around idle?”

  “No. Of course not.” But he would have her not make him feel, the moment he stepped in the room, that he had become superfluous to her life. “It’s good to know you’ve found your place. Made friends.”

  He must not have sounded convincing. She planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes. “What choice had I? To spend my every waking hour waiting for you to deign to write a letter?”

  “I wrote letters!” He held out a hand, palm up … though he had not written as much as he should have. Every time he put pen to paper, the only words that wanted to make their mark were I love you. I need you.

  She rolled her eyes and spun away again. “One. One letter.”

  “More than one. Three, at the least. They must not have reached you.”

  She sighed and put a pastry on a plate, handed that to him as well. Strawberry—his favorite. But he knew well he couldn’t eat a bite. Not when she looked up at him like that. “Three letters, then. In over two months. You have never written so little, never. You abandon me here—”

  “I did not abandon you.” He set the plate back down with a bit too much force. “I delivered you to your father!”