She impatiently blinked them away. Their future still lay in uncertainty. Their trials were far from ended, and she knew that in the coming days she would have to be stronger than ever before. All she knew was that, no matter what happened, she would stand by him. Even if it meant angering Victoria and sharing his fate.
“Holly?”
Ivy’s quiet summons jarred her from her thoughts. Steeling herself for the immediate task at hand, she pulled her gaze from the man she loved, linked an arm through each of her sisters’, and went with them into the house.
They were the most difficult words Holly had ever had to utter. The tale, defined by greed and brutality and murder, left Ivy and Willow pale and speechless. Willow wept silently. Ivy pressed a hand to her belly.
They had retreated to the privacy of the ground floor receiving parlor where they had met Antoine de Vere. The silence, as her sisters took in all she had told them, stretched on until it resounded in Holly’s ears.
Then Ivy tilted her head, her brow wrinkling. “Uncle Edward’s garden.”
“I’m sorry?” Holly could understand her sister’s thoughts turning to Thorn Grove, the estate where they had grown up isolated but protected, but why the garden in particular?
“Can’t you picture it?” Ivy closed her eyes for a moment. “The towering laurel tree. The ivy clinging to the back of the house, the old dovecote and the stables. The holly growing in tangles around—”
“The giant willow,” Willow finished for her. Her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “He brought us to his home and found names for us in what he saw outside his windows.” She swallowed audibly and wiped her palms across her cheeks. “Then I am . . . Wilhemine? Wilhemine de Valentin?”
“Yes.” Holly, who had stood as she wove her tale for them, walked behind her younger sister’s chair and pressed a hand to her shoulder.
“Yvonne.” Ivy seemed to test the fit of the name on her tongue. She shook her head. “It is as though we are speaking of strangers, not ourselves.”
Holly agreed. “I am perfectly content with who we are. Were. I mean . . .”
“The Sutherland sisters,” Ivy finished for her. “No matter our past, we are the Sutherland sisters, with all that entails. This changes nothing, except . . .” Her eyes filled with tears. In a whisper she said, “Now at least we know what happened to our parents.”
Holly went to sit beside Ivy on the settee and put an arm around her. She held out her hand to Willow, who immediately jumped up from her chair and hurried to them. Taking Holly’s hand, she sank to her knees on the rug and rested her cheek on Ivy’s knee.
“I don’t care about the fortune. I don’t want it,” she declared, sounding much like a recalcitrant child refusing the offer of a treat. “That money is tainted. It killed our mother and father and I . . . I never knew them. I have no memory of them.” She lifted her tearstained face. “Do either of you remember anything at all about them?”
Her heart clenching, Holly started to shake her head, but Ivy whispered, “I remember a scent . . . like lilacs . . . Whenever I smell lilacs I feel . . . I don’t know . . . soothed. Calm. Almost . . . happy.” She reached down and stroked Willow’s hair. “I think perhaps Mother wore that scent. I like to believe it.”
Something not quite a memory, more of a sensation, pushed its way through Holly’s thoughts like a ship breaking free of an ice flow. “Rumbling. I remember a rumbling against my cheek, and . . . and reaching up and tangling my fingers in the curly softness of a beard. Uncle Edward never wore a long beard . . . so it must have been Father’s.” She bent down and put her arms around Willow. “Think, dearest . . . perhaps there is something . . . even the smallest thing.”
Willow’s face filled with eager hope. Her brow furrowed and she closed her eyes. But the upsweep of her lashes revealed only a deep and unshakable sorrow. “There is nothing. I was too young. Oh, it isn’t fair.” She bowed her head, and Holly thought she heard words slip out beneath her breath, ones that sounded very much like, Damn those men for doing this to us.
Ivy was the first to gather her composure. “I agree with Willow. I don’t care a whit about this fortune. Of course, we’ll have to confer with Laurel, but I say we either give it all away or allow it to remain in abeyance indefinitely.”
Holly related the details Antoine de Vere had revealed to her, that after Napoleon’s defeat, the newly restored French monarchy had seized the family’s holdings, or what remained of them. In those chaotic years following the wars, it had been unclear which branch of the family, the de Veres or the de Valentins, had betrayed their king and so many of their peers, and equally unclear which cousin had preyed upon which. Indeed, many had believed the fire that killed Roland and Simone de Valentin had been an accident, and that their four daughters had perished with them.
“Yes, give it all away.” Willow lifted her blotchy face higher. “I’ve no wish to be suddenly French.”
Madly, that assertion sent laughter bubbling up in Holly’s throat. She tried to stifle it, for there was nothing humorous here, nothing at all, but not even biting her lips kept the chuckles from spilling out. Certain her sisters must be appalled, she tried to apologize but could barely form the words. Suddenly Ivy was laughing as well, her shoulders shaking. Willow frowned with a mixture of puzzlement and hurt, but after a moment her lips parted and she, too, fell to uncontrollable guffaws. Holly laughed until her cheeks ached and her belly cramped. Scarcely able to sit up, she half collapsed against Ivy’s side, while Ivy, in turn, wilted helplessly back against the cushions and Willow, red-faced and nearly shrieking, huddled against their knees.
Their laughter gradually subsided with tears and sniffles and more silence, until a sobering, but not unhappy thought made Holly smile. “Well . . . it would seem we are still indeed the Sutherland sisters, aren’t we?”
Colin wasn’t certain his mother fully understood what he had spent the last quarter hour trying to explain to her. Sabrina, who had come running from the paddocks at the first sound of shots, sat dumbfounded beside the elder woman as Colin’s story unfolded. Geoffrey added his version of events as witnessed from the music room window, leaving out, however, his part in wounding Antoine de Vere.
In the end, their mother nodded her head with something of a dazed look. “So, then, Miss Sutherland and her sisters are not misses at all, but ladies in the aristocratic sense of the word?”
“One would make that assumption, Mother. Their father was le Comte de Valentin, or was so before the end of the wars. The title has been in abeyance ever since.”
“Ah, well, no matter.” His mother gave a little shrug. “Miss Sutherland will be the Countess of Drayton as soon as the two of you are wed.”
Unease mingled with the joy he should have felt. For several precious moments out on the lawns, he had wholeheartedly believed that with Holly at his side, there wasn’t anything in life he couldn’t do, couldn’t face.
But now that the immediate danger had passed, it was remorse and not relief that filled him. If he married Holly and the queen sent him to prison, Holly’s life would be ruined. If he didn’t marry her, Lady Penelope and her family would waste no time in sullying Holly’s reputation, and thus ruin her prospects. Either way, he had wronged her grievously, given into temptation and failed to protect the one person he loved most dearly.
It was time to see exactly what the future held. Leaving Geoff to answer his mother’s questions as best he could, Colin excused himself from the library. He intended first to check on Monsieur de Vere. Then he must return to the abandoned manor. In his haste to save Holly from Antoine, he had left the colt—around which so many fates hinged—alone in the dilapidated stable.
Chapter 30
Colin left Masterfield Park without informing Holly, but she was with her sisters, the three of them struggling to come to terms with the startling truth of their origins. The revelation had so shocked Holly that she hadn’t even remembered to ask him whether he had found the colt. He couldn�
�t blame her. Even now he could hardly fathom this new identity of hers, and he wondered how Simon de Burgh would react to the news that his wife was not the obscure miss he believed he had married, but a member of the French aristocracy.
Colin quickly realized it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to Simon, because it didn’t make the slightest difference to him. Holly was still Holly: sensual and surprising and courageous. She could be a queen or a washerwoman for all he cared; he’d still be intrigued by her, at times awed by her. He’d still wildly crave the spicy warmth of her skin and the taste of her lips. Still love her to distraction.
At the pair of rickety gates he’d entered earlier, he and the others turned down the dilapidated drive. Halfway to the house he brought Kirkston and the footmen to a halt. “Weapons out,” he told them. “Eyes and ears sharp. We don’t know what we’ll find.”
Not that he believed Antoine would have returned here, even if he could have, but it paid to be prudent. Judging by the amount of blood the man had left splattered on the ground near Holly, Colin doubted Antoine had gotten very far in his flight, perhaps no farther than the heath beyond Masterfield Park’s pastureland.
Had he survived? And if not, would his brother join him in death? Henri had lost a good deal of blood, and the physician feared the bullet might have nicked a lung. If that was the case, Henri de Vere had only hours to live.
“I believe the young devil just gave a snort,” Kirkston said, interrupting Colin’s bleak musings. They had ridden through the derelict gardens and dismounted just outside the low wall encircling the stable yard. “The colt must smell us coming.”
With great relief they found the animal safely in the stall where they had left him earlier. They made short work of their errand and turned toward home, the colt’s lead rope wrapped securely around Colin’s hand.
The next morning, Colin stood beside Holly in the stables as she reached up and stroked the animal’s neck. In her other hand she held a halved apple. She raised it and the colt snatched the fruit from her palm.
“I believe I would recognize this horse if I were blindfolded,” she said.
“Perhaps more readily.” Colin smiled, remembering how yesterday, when he’d first brought the colt home, Holly had insisted on examining him from every angle to make certain he was the same horse the queen had named Prince’s Pride. “He looks much like the rest of the Ashworth stock. What is inside him makes him unique.”
“The enchantment.”
He chuckled softly. “Have you become a believer in Celtic magic?”
“No.” She turned her face to him, her expression causing his chest to tighten. “I am a believer in the magic you have created through your science. Through your brilliance as a horse breeder.”
“I don’t think . . .” His throat constricting, he closed the small space between them and pressed his forehead to hers. “I don’t think any compliment has ever made me more proud.”
Her arms encircled his neck and she pulled him lower still for a kiss—one quickly interrupted by the colt’s impatient nudging. They broke apart, and Holly fed the animal the other half of the apple. “The bracken . . . do you think it was Antoine who poisoned the horses?”
Colin scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I wish I knew. All I can say is I won’t rest until I have the answer. The investigation shall continue.”
“If it was Antoine, I shall certainly feel guilty about having accused Mr. Bentley.”
“He need never know.”
“That’s true. Isn’t it, boy?” she cooed to the colt. She laughed softly as the animal lowered his head and snuffled as if searching out further fruit. Then she sighed. “We do need to bring him back to Devonshire as soon as possible.”
Colin started to question the claim that they together must bring the colt anywhere when he realized that if he went to Devonshire, he would most assuredly bring Holly with him. And everywhere else he happened to go. He’d almost lost her yesterday; he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight, at least not until the queen’s decree forced their separation.
“There is no need to bring that colt anywhere,” a voice said from down the aisle. They turned to peer through the dusty shafts of light streaming through the narrow windows. “At least not with any immediacy.”
Colin squinted into the intermittent shadows and brightness. “Grandmama?”
With her butler, Hockley, trailing behind her, Grandmother walked—not hobbled but walked at a pace that had Hockley almost running to keep up—down the aisle. When she reached Colin and Holly her smile tilted like that of a young debutante. “It is I.”
“But . . . how? When? I don’t . . .” Realizing he was stammering, Colin closed his mouth and simply marveled at the sight before him. Grandmother still clutched her cane, but she’d used it haphazardly, as if out of habit more than from any true need. With a delighted grin he kissed her cheeks. “I don’t understand. How can this be? You haven’t visited Masterfield Park in . . .”
“At least five years,” she finished for him. Then her gaze shifted to Holly and her eyebrows angled to an amused slant. “How are you, my dear?”
“I am well. Thank you, Your Grace. And you . . .” What began as a question quickly transformed to a statement that echoed Colin’s own sentiments. “You look positively splendid.”
“Thank you, dear. I feel splendid. More splendid than in . . . goodness . . . I don’t know how many years.” She placed a gloved hand on Colin’s cheek. “Since those first few years after your grandfather passed away.”
Colin nodded his understanding. Before he could comment, however, she moved past him and stood before the colt. “So, here is what all the trouble has been about.”
“He can go home now, Your Grace, where he belongs.” Holly absently stroked a hand down the colt’s nose.
“Yes, he should go home. But it is no longer of the utmost urgency.” Grandmother’s exuberant expression melted years, even decades from her age. “Everything has changed. Two days ago Jon Darby’s sow birthed a healthy pair of piglets. The sun has come out, and the seed crop we had believed to have been washed away when the river flooded is beginning to sprout. Apparently, everyone has taken these occurrences as a sign, for the farmers and shopkeepers resumed the tasks that had gone ignored these many weeks. And me . . . well!” She held her arms out, the cane dangling in the air. She then turned a narrow-eyed gaze on Holly. “One wonders . . .”
Holly backed up half a step. “Your Grace?”
Grandmother thrust her cane into Hockley’s hands. Then she gripped Holly’s shoulders and drew her closer. “Hmm. Yes, there is a difference about you, too, my dear.” She glanced over at her butler. “Hockley, would you mind?”
The man gave a nod and, with Grandmother’s cane in hand, he retreated down the aisle.
Holly’s gaze darted to Colin, and then returned sheepishly to Grandmother. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, I think you do.” Grandmother released her. Gripping Colin in similar fashion, she studied him as if he were a specimen under a microscope. “When I arrived Sabrina informed me of an impending wedding. Ah, yes. It is clear to me now.”
Her capriciousness was beginning to exasperate him. “Good grief, what is clear, Grandmama?”
“The two of you. You’ve . . .” Her eyebrows arced in amusement.
“Grandmother.” Colin injected a good dose of warning into the word, but she went on smiling shrewdly while Holly blushed furious shades of red.
Finally, Grandmother threw back her head and laughed. “Do you children not see? Your union has lifted the curse.” She clapped her hands together. “Briannon has her resolution and we are free.”
“Oh, Your Grace, that cannot be so. You know it cannot.” Holly gently clasped his grandmother’s hand. Colin feared she would attempt to dissuade Grandmother of her romantic, magical notions by denying the existence of the curse, but Holly only said, “Whatever your grandson and I have done, we are not married . . . not yet . . . and ther
efore—”
“My dear,” Grandmother interrupted, “do you not realize that in Briannon’s time, marriage was a simple matter of handfasting and . . .” She lowered her voice, though her whisper rang with delight. “Consummation, though not necessarily in that order. In Briannon’s eyes, in her heart, you are married enough.”
“Grandmother’s right,” Colin murmured quickly. Curses or no, he agreed that in his heart of hearts, he was already married to Holly Sutherland and nothing could change that.
But Holly wasn’t finished trying to reason with his grandmother. “Your Grace, you’re forgetting one essential part of Briannon’s legacy. Perhaps the most important part—”
Colin cleared his throat loudly, and Holly broke off with a bewildered scowl.
“There is no arguing with my grandmother once she has made up her mind,” he said.
Holly hesitated; then her scowl faded and she nodded.
Later that afternoon, Holly stood alone in the doorway of the guest chamber where Henri de Vere had been brought. The physician still could not say with any certainty what the man’s fate would be, though his having held on this long was cause for optimism.
Willow and Ivy asked after the health of their distant cousin often, but other than an initial visit, neither had showed any inclination to venture to this wing of the house. To them, the man represented danger and changes neither of them welcomed. These forebodings loomed over Holly as well, but after being caught smack in the middle of the two brothers, tricked by one and rescued by the other, she alone understood that her future hinged on finding a balance between the past and present, between danger and change, between what she wished for and what simply was.
Recklessly Yours Page 35