My Wild Heart (Regency Shakespeare Book 2)

by Martha Keyes

  Elias shook his head. “I never did that, Matthew. I was merely weary of the way you and Rumford would never stop taunting me about her. I wanted it to stop, so I lied.”

  Matthew stared at him. “I had no idea.”

  Elias shrugged. It hardly mattered now.

  Matthew sighed. “Well, I didn’t know that. But I couldn’t disregard Mother’s orders, and the rain was all but pounding at that point, so I stayed home. And I began to convince myself that you meant well by Edith, strange and unexpected as your tactics were. So when I saw the chaise drive up to Shipton Hall so soon after…” He looked at Elias with a frowning brow, his mouth twisted to the side.

  “I understand.”

  Matthew nodded, and it was silent for a moment. “I must ask, though, Eli. What is going on with you and Edith? I can’t seem to make heads or tails of it.”

  Elias shot his friend a grimace. “I feel the same way.”

  Matthew stared at him, and Elias could feel him searching his profile, as if it held some answers. “Have you fallen in love with her?”

  Elias said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to.

  “But you detest women! And you and Edith do nothing but fight when you’re together.”

  Elias let out a breath through his nose. “I know.”

  The leaves on the trees nearby rustled in the wind as Matthew processed what he was learning. “Then I don’t understand. What is the problem? Why is Edith visiting people like Miss Perry instead of marrying you?”

  Elias clenched his jaw. “Because the thought of marrying me is repugnant to her.”

  Horse hooves on the grass were the only sound as the seconds dragged on.

  “Listen, Eli. Edith isn’t like other women.”

  Elias chuckled genuinely for the first time. “And you think this is new information to me?”

  Matthew’s half-smile appeared. “I suppose not. But what I mean is, I’ve often thought she’s much like an unbroken filly.”

  Elias frowned, trying to follow Matthew’s train of thought. “You think I must break her in order to make her marry me?”

  Matthew shook his head. “No. That’s the point. She’s not going to respond to that kind of treatment. I don’t think anyone does, in truth, but especially not Edith. She thinks everyone is trying to break her, and she needs to know that no one wants to. She doesn’t want to be saddled—she wants to be free.”

  “Which is precisely why she refuses to marry me.”

  Matthew shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe there’s more to it than that. I don’t know, truthfully. But I know Edith enough to tell you that she’s taken things to heart that have made her the way she is, and she’s become devilish good at hiding that heart. If you try to put a rope around her, she’ll break the rope and run off.”

  “And she views my love for her as a rope?”

  “I doubt she can recognize the difference. She feels a pull, she sees it as someone trying to control her—I don’t think she can discern between coaxing and forcing. She’s spent too many years watching my parents push and pull each other, I imagine.” He sighed, looking at Elias with an understanding grimace. “Edith’s got to come on her own—on her own terms.”

  Elias frowned, looking at the reins in his hands. “Something she has sworn never to do.”

  Matthew nodded. “She might never come—only she can decide that—but I can tell you with certainty that she won’t do so when she feels she’s being pulled.”

  Elias knew it. Edith was a thorny stem. She thought those thorns made her capable of dealing with people like Mr. Stratton—people determined to force her to comply with their will. But she wasn’t all thorns, contrary to what she wanted people to believe, and someone like Stratton could do irreparable damage to the soft and vulnerable part of her she took pains to pretend didn’t exist. Hadn’t she said it herself? Even a villain has a heart somewhere deep down. And Edith seemed to see herself as a villain.

  “She intends to go see Mr. Stratton,” Elias said.

  Matthew’s head whipped around. “What?”

  “She thinks she might be able to convince him to retract his threats against your father.”

  Matthew swore. “She mustn’t. You must stop her, Eli. He won’t hesitate to use her visit against her in any way he can. The man is a blackguard.”

  Elias’s horse tossed its head. “She warned me not to interfere—threatened me with those eyes.”

  “So what?”

  Elias looked at Matthew with incomprehension. “We’ve just discussed how Edith is not to be controlled, and you tell me I must yank her rope, as it were? She’d never forgive me.”

  “She might not. But I guess you have to decide what’s more important to you: her favor? Or her well-being?”

  Elias chewed on his lip, then, realizing Matthew’s eyes were on him, said only half-teasing, “Or you could do the honors. She’ll forgive you.”

  Matthew seemed to consider this, tilting his head from one side to the other. “Perhaps. But she told you of her intention, not me. If I’m the one to stop her, she will see it as cowardice on your part, and Edith has no patience for cowards.”

  Elias threw his head back, a sound of consternation escaping him. “So I am to leave her well alone because she can’t abide having someone exert any type of pressure upon her, yet I am to forbid her in this because if I don’t, she will think me lily-livered? It makes no sense at all!”

  Matthew grinned. “I daresay you’d have tired of her long since if she were so easy to comprehend. When does she mean to go?”

  “I couldn’t say. She only told me of her intention half an hour ago.”

  Matthew raised his brows, taking a tighter hold on the reins. “Knowing Edith, she’s halfway to Stratton’s already. Shall you stop her? Or must I?”

  Elias hesitated. He couldn’t see the way before him at all. He was in entirely unfamiliar territory. He could already see how Edith’s eyes would flash when she realized his intention. He blew out a long breath then tugged the reins to the side without a word, guiding his horse back toward Shipton House.

  Matthew followed. “You’re a good man, Eli. I thought you and Edith would make the worst pair of anyone I know, but I’m beginning to think I’ve been wrong all along. You’re the only man equipped for her vagaries. If I could shake her and bring her to her senses, I would do it.”

  “I’d never ask you to do something so foolhardy,” Elias said with as much humor as he could muster.

  He squared his shoulders and pressed on toward Shipton House.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Edith’s hands were still unsteady as she passed through the front door to the courtyard to leave for Mr. Stratton’s. She told herself it was just some residual nerves from the emotional confrontation with Elias, that it had nothing to do with any fear on her part for what might occur when she arrived. She had to believe herself capable of dealing with someone like John Stratton.

  She needed but persuade him that it was not in his best interests to hold Edith’s reputation over her father’s head in order to have his way. If his priority was his own interests, she needed to find something of more worth to him than what he thought he would gain from his current threat. What that something was, she didn’t know, but she trusted that she would be able to come up with something in the half hour’s carriage ride ahead of her. She had a quick mind and more experience than she ever wished for with the means men used to achieve their political ends.

  The thundering of horse hooves sounded behind her, and she snapped her head around to see Elias and Matthew approaching on horseback.

  They both pulled up on the reins, and Elias swung a leg over his horse, hopping down to the ground.

  “What a grand entrance,” she said. “You must be very proud.” She had little doubt what they were there for, and the thought that they intended to stop her acted like a spur. Everyone believed they knew what was best for her.

  Well, they didn’t.

  “You cannot go, Ed
ith,” Elias said, watching her with a set jaw and wary eyes.

  “Webb,” Matthew said to the groom as he dismounted, “have the horses taken back to the stables. My sister isn’t going anywhere.”

  Edith’s eyes widened, and she gritted her teeth. “Webb, do not listen to him. I am going to Stratton Place.”

  The groom hesitated, looking back and forth between Edith and Matthew as a man caught in cross-hairs.

  Matthew held Edith’s eyes. “Webb, take them now. That’s an order.”

  The groom bowed, avoiding Edith’s eye, and led the carriage back toward the stables.

  “How dare you?” She looked to Elias. “And you! I told you not to interfere. And instead you tell Matthew?”

  He looked at her impassively, the set of his jaw the only evidence that her words had hit their mark.

  “Oh, Edith,” Matthew said impatiently. “It doesn’t matter what a man does, you will be angry with him. But that’s beside the point. What in the devil are you thinking going to Stratton’s? It’s lunacy!”

  “I shan’t let him, or anyone” —she glared at Elias— “dictate my future.”

  Elias’s lips drew into a thin line. “And just how do you propose to convince him against it? Did you hope that he would lay down his arms out of the goodness of his heart?”

  She put her shoulders back and tipped her chin up, annoyed that she had no good answer. “He cannot be allowed to leverage my life and reputation for his own ambition—and certainly not when what he is claiming is false. I did nothing improper at the inn.”

  Elias took a step forward. “You are right, of course. He is the one in the wrong. But surely you see that your arrival at Mr. Stratton’s estate—an unaccompanied, single young woman—will stoke the flames of the very same doubts Mr. Stratton seeks to raise against your character. Even should you manage to wring a promise from him that he will not use his experience at The Old Dog against you—a promise worth very little, I imagine—you will have given him more ammunition against your father by your mere presence.”

  She swallowed, her chest rising and falling quickly. She couldn’t deny the force of his argument—indeed, she had known that what she was doing was foolhardy—but neither did she feel she could simply surrender to Mr. Stratton. She was desperate.

  “Come,” Matthew said, walking to her side and taking her gently by the wrist. “Surely we three can come up with an alternative preferable to this one.”

  “What alternative, Matthew?” She wrenched her wrist from his grip, feeling her emotions build in her throat and behind her eyes.

  He stared at her, looking as deficient of any ideas as she was. “We will think of something.”

  “There is no time,” she said. “Father will be here with the license tomorrow—the next day with any luck—and he is determined that the wedding take place as soon as can be managed. He may well insist upon it being carried out the very next day.”

  She glanced at Elias, who stood a few feet away, ever impassive. It was strange to see him so quiet, so grave. She longed to return to the way things were, to the easy and electric understanding between them. She wanted challenge in his eyes, she wanted the heat of conflict, even anger—anything but the withdrawn heaviness she now saw.

  She wanted to lift that heaviness, to tell him how she felt for him and assure him that she loved him so much it made her feel mad. But it would be cruel: to express her love for him yet stand firm in her refusal to marry him—to soothe him with words and then strike at his heart with her actions.

  He wouldn’t understand. For she couldn’t marry him. She would lose her reputation before she would risk watching Elias fall out of love with her as he came to know her better. She was too passionate, too headstrong, too sharp-tongued to keep something as fragile and precious as Elias’s love.

  In time, their love would deteriorate. The inevitable clashes of will would nudge the love toward frustration and defensiveness, and before long, they would care more about their own self-interest than each other. She thought she could bear anything but that.

  “Can I have a moment with her?”

  Matthew nodded. He gave Edith one more bracing glance, full of sadness, and strode inside.

  She and Elias stood in silence for a few moments. She felt Elias watching her, but she was afraid to meet his gaze. It was easier to keep her head without looking him in the eye.

  “What do you want, Edith?”

  It wasn’t accusatory or frustrated; it was genuine, and she didn’t know how to answer. What did she want?

  She wanted what she couldn’t have. She wanted the impossible. She wanted any number of contradictory things: to be free, to belong to Elias; to spit in the face of her father and Mr. Stratton, to relent; to fight, to surrender.

  His brown eyes were fixed on her, watchful, begging for an answer. “If you want me to tell your father, to tell him that I refuse to marry you, I will do it if it will spare you—if it is what will make you happy. That is all I want.” He let out a helpless gush of air, throwing his hands up helplessly. “I just want you to be happy.”

  Happy? That didn’t even seem possible anymore. No matter which direction she faced, Edith saw pain.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t want you to do that. I simply need some time to think. Perhaps to sleep.” She was so very tired, and yet she had no time for rest or contemplation.

  Elias nodded. He hesitated for a moment, searching her face with his brows drawn together, then walked toward her and slowly wrapped his arms around her so that his cheek rested on her bonnet. Her hands were tucked up under her chin, and she shut her eyes, submitting to the embrace and resting her head on his shoulder because she was tired. She was so desperately tired of fighting, and she wanted to feel safe, if only for a moment.

  Elias was warmth and softness and strength, and the embrace held her together in ways she hadn’t known she needed.

  “It will all be all right,” he whispered so softly she could hardly hear it.

  She shut her eyes, trying to breathe in the words so they filled her until she believed them. “I am sorry,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. He said nothing. He didn’t ask her what she was sorry for. He only kissed her bonnet and held her.

  It was minutes later—or perhaps seconds, maybe hours—when Elias next spoke, pulling away and looking down at her with a hint of a smile. “You should go rest, particularly if you don’t wish to be cajoled into a reading of your cousin’s poetry, for I heard her speaking of her intentions this morning.”

  Edith stepped back, even though she wanted him to hold her again. “Good heavens,” she said with as much of a smile as she could muster. “I shall take shelter in my bedchamber at once.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, and she turned toward the house, knowing that every second she stayed near him weakened her resolve.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The carriage rumbled over the uneven ground, and Elias looked with a furrowed brow at the passing countryside. Letting go of Edith physically had been one of the greatest challenges to his self-discipline he had ever encountered. He would have gladly stayed there in the courtyard forever, holding her. She was finally unfurling a few of her petals to him, finally showing him that she wasn’t all stone and high walls.

  But she was a tortured soul, and one embrace would not cure that.

  It had been as he watched her retreating figure disappear into Shipton House that he had realized what he needed to do. He had let her go physically—now he needed to let her go in the way that would mean the most to her.

  Edith needed to be set free, or she would never stop resisting. She was unhappy, and he saw her helplessness crushing her spirit. It was as Matthew had said, like watching a magnificent horse being cruelly broken. She might finally surrender, but she would never be the same again, and that prospect left Elias full of sorrow. To force Edith to marry unwillingly was to break her. He had to find a way to free her, even if it meant losing her.

/>   The carriage turned onto the smaller lane leading to Oxley Court. Somehow, in all his years of friendship with Lord Oxley, Elias had never been there. For a moment, he forgot the weight upon him as he peered out of the carriage window toward his friend’s estate.

  It was every bit as imposing as Elias had expected. It matched the title it belonged to in that way—ancient and impressive, like the many Viscounts of Oxley who had lived there before. Its stone façade must have once been golden, though it was difficult to tell with the amount of gray discoloration from centuries of existence.

  Elias’s carriage was intercepted by a groom, and within minutes, he was awaiting Oxley’s pleasure in a very grand room. If not for the tall windows that lined one edge, it would have been quite dark, encased as everything was in mahogany. The gilt-edged desk that sat before a wall of books and the chairs before it were of the same wood, the seats upholstered in a deep blue velvet.

  An enormous painting of a woman hung on one end of the room. She was almost ethereal in her beauty, with flaxen hair, rosy lips and cheeks, and a regal posture. Her blue eyes watched the room, following Elias no matter where he went, as though it was her domain and he an intruder there. There was no question at all in his mind that she reigned there.

  He was still looking at the painting when the door opened and Lord Oxley walked in, with his confident gait and biscuit colored pantaloons. He looked every bit the part of a viscount, with a strong jaw and dark, expressive brows that had the power to transform his aspect from alarming severity to genial good-humor.

  “Abram,” Oxley said with his wide grin. “Very glad to see you again so soon.”

  They embraced, and Oxley set to pouring Elias a glass of brandy.

  “Who is that?” Elias pointed to the painting. He didn’t know whether it was the size or the subject of the painting that drew his eyes toward it again and again.