by J. K. Coi
“Yes.” His mouth was suddenly dry and his voice came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes, I’ve got it. I’m coming down.”
Somewhat grudgingly, he put the tinderbox into the pocket of his coat and carefully made his way down. When he dropped to the ground, boots thunking deep into the muck at the base of the tree in much less time than it had taken to get up, he turned around, expecting the hounds to be nipping at his heels. But they were gone.
“Here you are, madam—” He spun in a circle looking for her, but the old woman was gone too.
Boots muddied, clothes torn, hair plastered to his scalp and dripping water into his eyes, Graham realized he was in front of Anna’s father’s bakery and stopped to look in through the rain-streaked window.
A chill had settled into his bones since his mad foray up the tree, and the warmth from the bread ovens filtered right through the glass, making him sigh.
It was late afternoon, and he wasn’t surprised to see that the shop was empty. Anna’s father was the only person inside. He stood behind the counter, wiping it down with a cloth. His hair was completely gray and there were deep lines in his face that hadn’t been there when Graham left for the war, but he understood better than most what a difference three years could make on a person, both inside and out.
With his face pressed almost to the window, he searched hungrily for Anna, feeling like a child once again. Many times he’d peered inside the shop looking for her like this, knowing if he opened the door, her father would shoo him away for disturbing his customers.
As much as he ached to see her right now and feast on the pure, golden beauty he so vividly remembered, she wasn’t there. In any case, he didn’t want their first meeting after so long to be when he was dripping wet and dirty, looking like a mangy stray dog.
With some regret, he straightened and continued on. At the street corner, a carriage approached and stopped at the intersection, directly in his path. Stopping to look up, he caught sight of the horse first—a familiar-looking mare—and then to the conveyance which advertised fresh bread from Finnegan’s Bakery on its side.
He jerked his gaze to the driver, who was protected from the rain by the carriage awning.
His chest tightened. The sight of her hit like a bolt of lightning. Her hair was pulled up tightly into a bonnet, but wispy golden curls had pulled free. Her profile was as regal as any queen, no matter that she sat atop a merchant carriage drawn by a tired old mare.
“Anna!”
She looked down at him standing there on the corner. At first, her expression remained blank.
That she didn’t even recognize him was a devastating blow. Had he really been gone so long and changed so much? It was entirely possible after everything he’d done and been through these last three years. Certainly, he almost didn’t recognize himself anymore.
And he wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Anna had filled out in his absence. When he left, she’d been a girl blossoming into womanhood. He remembered a young lady constantly tugging on her skirts and hunching her shoulders because she’d been forced into her older sister’s hand-me-downs. They’d been too small and short for her taller, more generous frame.
But this was a woman full grown, with finely arched brows over sultry, deep green eyes, and a figure with curves that took his breath away.
Still, some things remained the same. She had the same round cheeks he’d loved to pinch. The same full lips that could curve into a smile to warm his soul—lips he’d kissed that desperate night. Creamy skin he’d covered with his hands before he left to go to war.
When recognition finally flooded her face, instead of the lovely smile he’d been waiting for and maybe some happy tears, those cheeks took on an ashen caste. Her lips fell open with what could only be horror and shock.
She dropped the carriage reins. He leapt forward to catch them for her, dropping his bag in the process. It fell in a puddle with a little splash.
“Gra—Graham?” Her voice shook, hand pressed into a fist under her chin.
“Annabelle. Good God, you’re a sight for sore eyes. I can see you’re surprised to see me, but I don’t really look all that bad,” he teased, knowing full well he was a mess.
She still didn’t return his smile. In fact, she looked absolutely stunned, mouth opening and closing like one of the trout they used to pull out of the lake and bring to Mistress Campbell in the kitchen at Hill House.
He reached for her hand but she shrank back, sliding away from him along the bench seat. The mare’s hooves clopped on the cobblestone as she shifted as well. “Shhh, Sugarplum. You know me. It’s okay.” He stretched out his arm, smoothing his hand over her rump to soothe her agitation.
“What is it?” he asked Anna. “Why do you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?”
This certainly wasn’t the reaction he’d expected to receive on his return home. Then again, nothing this afternoon had quite happened the way he’d expected. What the hell was going on?
“Graham. It—it’s really you?” There were tears in her eyes and her bottom lip quivered. “Here in the…in the flesh?”
“Of course it’s me,” he said. The hurt he felt at coming home to an empty train station bled into his voice and he winced. She didn’t deserve that. Forcing a smile, he said, “Who else do you know with such ridiculously large ears?”
Her eyes widened and she pulled in a deep breath. He had reminded her of the year he returned home for the holidays after his first semester at school, long hair curling around his collar. The Earl had pitched a fit over his appearance and made him cut it. “The future Earl of Kent will not represent the title in such a slovenly manner.”
Annabelle and her family visited that evening for the Yule celebration thrown by his father every year for the villagers. It was the first year she’d been old enough to attend. She’d found him sulking in a corner and complained that he wasn’t any fun and she was going to leave him there to pout by himself. He’d confessed that he’d grown his hair to cover his ears after the boys at school made fun, and was angry with his father for making him cut it.
She’d picked at her clothing and ducked her head. Her eyes had become sad and she wisely said that boys would always find something to ridicule.
He remembered asking who had hurt her feelings and whether they’d made her cry. He promised that if any of them were at the party he would bust their noses and kick their arses, but she’d refused to elaborate.
He pictured her standing in front of him as she’d looked then. The adults had been dancing and mingling with one another, paying none of the children any heed. She’d been stuffed into a particularly hideous velvet green dress too short and too snug, blonde hair frozen with pomade into stiff curls that he knew she’d hated, hands on her hips as she laughed at him loud enough to turn heads. “If it wasn’t your ears, Graham, they would have poked fun at that monstrous nose of yours and what would you have done then? Cut it off?”
He’d laughed then too, just as she’d intended him to do, because he realized that he didn’t care what the boys at school thought. He had Annabelle’s friendship and she was worth one hundred of them.
After that night, she teased him often about his big ears. He’d always responded with, “The better to hear your unladylike chortling, my dear.”
“I’m sorry I startled you,” he said now. “I know I probably look like hell.” He glanced down at himself, dirty and rumpled from traveling and climbing trees, wet from the rain. His arm ached, but he’d refused to put the sling back on.
When he glanced back up, she was scrambling across the bench toward him. He realized almost too late what she intended, and barely caught her as she launched herself from the carriage.
Stumbling back, he winced when her arm grazed his, but grasped her small waist and held her close. God, she felt good.
“Graham. Oh, Graham.” Her voice broke in his ear. She was sobbing.
For a long moment he just held her, breathing d
eeply of the fresh citrus scent clinging to her hair, reveling in the soft curves pressed against him. He whispered words into her ear…even he didn’t know what they were.
It wasn’t until it had already been too late that he’d truly realized how much he was going to miss Anna. His punishment for leaving her—after the irresponsible acts that had taken place between them—had been not being able to put her out of his mind from then on.
She’d been his closest friend, his only confidante, and the girl he’d hoped to marry one day, but all those feelings had been vague and unfocused until that crystalizing moment. And yet, even then he’d known he couldn’t ask her to wait for him. She was too young. It wouldn’t have been fair.
Now…the horrors of war had made an impression, put a dark shadow on his soul that might be with him forever. How could he in good conscience burden anyone else with that?
Luckily, he didn’t have to think about it right now.
Anna eased back to look into his face, blinking as fat raindrops dropped off the sagging feather sticking out of the top of her bonnet and splashed across her cheeks. “I’ve never been so relieved to see anyone in my entire life.” Pausing, she lifted her fingers to his cheekbone, touching his face as if needing to make sure he was real. Her eyes were deep pools of green, and the moisture gathered there hadn’t come from the rain.
Her lips parted as she gazed up at him and his arms tightened around her middle. Anna. Still his Anna. This was what he’d been dreaming of for three long years. What if he pulled her back into his arms, leaned down and kissed her? Kissed her until she would never again have any trouble recognizing him no matter how long they were apart? The powerful urge was like the blood that rushed fast and hard through his veins.
Her fingers tightened on his forearms. He felt the rapid rise and fall of her chest against his.
The horse shinnied and stomped her hooves, forcing them both back to reality. He put her on her feet with a sigh and moved to reclaim the mare’s reins before she could inch out into the crossway.
Anna took a step back. When he turned to her, she was frowning at him. “We were told that you died, Graham.” She said it like an accusation.
“Dead?” He stopped, incredulous. “It wasn’t so serious an injury as that.” He scoffed, but his survival had been less than certain for a long time. After lying in the dirt of the battlefield, wavering in and out of consciousness for what had seemed an eternity, he’d finally regained his senses to learn that it had been three days before his body was even discovered and by that time the notices of his death had already gone out to his family.
“Admittedly, my captain did make the announcement prematurely, but I sent a wire to my father soon afterward to let him know I was indeed alive and recovering…and when to expect me home. The correspondence should have arrived well ahead of me.”
“You were injured?” She gasped in dismay, as if she hadn’t just believed him dead.
He shrugged and rotated his shoulder. “Almost completely healed now.” He was downplaying to a great extent, but there was no reason to worry her with the gruesome story.
“When I wrote, I asked my father to pass along a message for you. It looks like neither of you received the notes, because there was nobody waiting to meet me at the train this afternoon.” He frowned and pressed his lips together. “I suppose it’s not necessarily surprising given the unreliability of the post, but a few missed letters certainly doesn’t make me dead.”
The rain was coming down harder, sheets of water drenching them both completely. “Come, get back in the carriage where it’s marginally drier,” he urged.
Good lord. He swallowed. She really had…matured. Her thin day dress—now soaking wet—clung to every one of her womanly curves, highlighting all the changes to an almost indecent degree. “You can’t stay out in the rain dressed like that.”
“Dressed like what?” She looked down at herself and gasped. “Oh! I wasn’t expecting to be out in the— Wait, what did you say?” she cried over the sound of the pelting rain, suddenly clutching the lapels of his coat in her fists.
“You’re getting wet? And I’m already thinking disgraceful thoughts?” he teased, trying not to watch the way her chest heaved with her quick breaths.
She shook him. “No, before that.”
“I sent letters to tell you I was coming home?”
“Yes. You said you sent a letter to your father. Oh no, Graham. You mean you don’t know? Nobody has told you?”
“Told me what?” He swiped a hand across his face and over his slick hair, leaning forward to hear her over the crack of thunder ripping through the darkening afternoon. “What are you talking about?”
“Graham, I’m so sorry. But…the Earl—your father…” She shook her head. “He’s dead.”
Chapter Two
Graham could see his father’s face perfectly in his mind. Dark brown hair, perpetually windblown. Deep brown eyes with thick bushy brows that almost came together into one enormous line across his forehead. A nose big enough to prop up three pairs of spectacles at one time—although he didn’t wear any at all. And a robust laugh that echoed throughout the house, making all the servants smile.
Graham had obviously inherited his father’s eyes and nose, although he had his mother’s light-colored hair and reserved nature.
The Earl had assumed the duties of his title early, after the untimely passing of the previous earl, his elderly uncle. Everyone had said he was much too young for the responsibility of such a position, much less for marriage. But at twenty-three years of age—four years younger than Graham was now—William George Grey, the fourth Earl of Kent, had fallen head over heels for the squire’s daughter and none could sway him from marrying her.
None could console him when she died seventeen years later, but he’d rarely shown anyone the depths of his loneliness. He’d wanted to be strong for his son.
In fact, the only weakness Graham had ever known his father to indulge was a love for sleeping late in the morning. Every holiday home from school, Graham would have to sit and wait in the morning room for the sound of his father’s footsteps coming down the stairs. Only then would the servants hasten into motion, pouring coffee and preparing the breakfast table. He’d never complained because he’d enjoyed those mornings with his father too much to give them up, especially as he’d gotten older and they’d grown closer. They’d had more in common with each other as men, instead of simply father and son.
The Earl had understood how Graham felt about Anna and even agreed to support his son’s plans to marry her as soon as he returned from his tour of duty. That felt like a decade ago now, instead of only three years. So much had changed—even more than he’d expected, it seemed.
“Are you certain you don’t want me to come inside with you?” Annabelle asked as she turned the carriage onto the drive that would take him home.
The rain had stopped not too long ago. The carriage wheels landed in a rut every now and then, spraying muddy water out to the sides.
Apparently the woman his father had married only six months ago was still living here with her son. Not that Graham begrudged them the space, but he couldn’t imagine walking into the house and seeing a stranger in the study or the morning room.
Looking to Anna beside him on the bench seat, he shook his head. “I think I’ll be all right.”
He’d been staring up the drive, waiting for the moment when the carriage crested the small hill and the house would come into view. That moment always made him smile. Always. He’d never dreaded coming home…before today.
“Graham—”
“Thank you for your support, but I suppose I should do this on my own.”
She opened her mouth, only to shut it again and press her lips together tightly. “I’m so sorry.” Anna had apologized no less than four times since giving him the devastating news.
He stopped her. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about. What could you have done?”
Thre
e weeks. His father had been gone for three weeks already.
He hadn’t known.
“It’s only…we thought you were dead. Lady Grey herself showed me the wire listing your name as a casualty of war.”
A horrible turn of fate. “It figures that’s the only correspondence which made it through,” he said dryly. “Obviously I’m not dead.”
“But your father didn’t know that. None of us did.” She glanced over at him, looking devastated. “The one time I was able to get inside the house to see him after hearing the news, he looked…broken. Lady Grey admitted that the earl hadn’t come out of his study in days. Nobody else had been allowed in. I was shocked when I saw him. He’d lost so much weight. There were dark patches beneath his eyes like he hadn’t slept in ages. He wouldn’t speak to me, only gazed across the dark room at nothing.” She paused. “Except…he started mumbling craziness. About demons and dead things. His face twisted up as if with pain and that’s when Lady Grey forced me to leave. Since then, nobody else has been admitted to the house, not even…” Her voice broke and she stared out ahead of the carriage into the dying light of the late afternoon. “Not even for your father’s funeral.”
The carriage topped the hill and the house came into view at that moment. Graham almost didn’t recognize it. It looked as if all the rain that had stopped falling in the village now waited in the dark clouds suspended over his childhood home. The front gardens were overgrown and weedy, bushes and trees having gone untended for who knew how long. As they got closer, he could see that the drapes were pulled tight across all the windows.
He didn’t know how to respond to Anna. From the hurt in her voice, she seemed to think the new Lady Grey’s actions had been harsh and unacceptable. But he remembered what it had felt like when his mother died. He hadn’t wanted anyone else around. Only wanted to lock himself in his room and shut the whole world away. Social courtesy demanded certain appearances be maintained though, and his father had said they had to be strong.