“Thank you,” she breathed.
They faced each other in the empty inn parlor. He coughed.
“I suppose this is it, then,” he said. “I'll take you to Bayonne, and then...” he cleared his throat.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I'll join the garrison there.”
“Indeed.” He had been about to say, “and then I'll have to say farewell to you.” He didn't.
They went out into the sunshine.
Bayonne loomed up on the skyline before too long, a biggish town. William swallowed hard. He desperately didn't want to leave her here.
He rode with her into the town.
When they reached the headquarters, Colonel Green was very friendly. He was amazed by the appearance of an Englishwoman, so far behind the lines.
“Good gracious,” he kept on saying. “Good gracious.”
They fluffed around the edges of the story, trying to explain her appearance here, and her desire to fight, without having to elaborate too much. If the man knew she had actively served, and engaged an enemy, he might have a fit of apoplexy and die. At that moment, it seemed a real likelihood. William swallowed.
“So, you see, milady has a desire to help us.”
Beside him, he could feel her quivering with excitement. She was about to say something when Green interrupted.
“Of course, we will take any help we can. You have a letter?”
“Yes!”
When he read it, he raised a brow. Then he nodded.
“I will see that this is delivered to Wallace as soon as possible,” he nodded. “In the meantime, we will find her ladyship accommodation befitting of her status.”
“Thank you,” William said, nodding.
They went out of the room a moment later, following a manservant who would lead Catharine Favor to her new accommodation William turned to face her.
“So,” he said uneasily. “This is goodbye.”
“Yes.”
They stood in the hallway. He stepped from foot to foot, uneasy. How was he meant to do this? What could he say? They had shared so much together, and now here it ended, in this room with dusty parquet, in the morning sunshine.
He realized he had no words. He had never had to say such a big goodbye before. He didn't know how.
“Um, take care,” he coughed. “And...let me know when you're safe?” he said. “You know the address.”
“Denham house, yes,” she said, giving the London residence.
“Or North Hall,” he added.
“Yes.”
They didn't say anything else. Outside, in the street, William could hear a carriage roll up. He cleared his throat. He had to go. He had handed in the dispatch, and he had to reach the coast.
He looked into her eyes. They held his. Abruptly, he reached out a hand, blindly. Took hers in his own and squeezed it, as if he could make an impression of her fine-boned fingers on his hand, fill his eyes with her lean, tired but beautiful face.
“Goodbye,” he whispered.
Then he turned and walked out into the street, feeling emptiness all around him.
Chapter 6: A return of sorts
William rode back along a road so familiar, he knew it like the back of his hand. It was sunny, the light dappling through the oak leaves along the path. It had a dreamy unreality to it, so that he rode, but felt as if he didn't truly do it.
Am I really here?
His heart ached with familiar joys—the oak tree he'd climbed in as a lad, and then got stuck in. There, the turn in the path where he'd fallen the first time from a horse and cried. The long grassy slope beyond the house where he and his brothers used to sled in winter—and, once, in summer, because Bradford thought it was a good idea.
He smiled. It felt almost unreal to see it all again, after a year abroad.
I should feel happy.
Instead, where the happiness should have been was a bittersweet ache. The place was the same, but he wasn't. It felt like it was still home, but someone else's. The home of a man with a past he knew, intimately, but which had always been apart from him. Another man's story.
He sighed. Shaking his head, drawing in a deep breath, he rode up to the house.
He knocked at the door. Laney, the butler, answered it. His long, solemn face stared up.
“Master William!” he said. William blinked, feeling a tear trace his cheek. After all, something still had the power to move him.
“Yes,” he nodded, as another tear fell. He didn't care. “I'm home.”
“William?” a voice inquired. It was his brother, Bradford. He felt his heart crack.
“Fordy! You rascal!” he said. “Yes, it's really me. I'm back.”
His brother appeared. Handsome in a way that made William himself stare, with a cleft chin, big blue eyes and soft chestnut hair, Bradford was a lady-killer of the first water, even though he was three years' William's junior. Now, his handsome face split with a massive smile.
“William!” he yelled. He reached for him and drew him into a strong embrace. “You rascal! You're home!”
They both laughed. William drew back, and they simply looked at each other. He could see tears in Bradford's eyes but knew his brother wasn't about to shed them. He nodded, too moved to speak.
“Come on,” Bradford said, turning away so his elder brother wouldn't see the tear that ran down his cheek. “You need to see Mama. And Papa! They'll be overjoyed.”
He was already heading up the stairs to the parlor. William, following him, called up after. “Are any of our other brothers here?” he asked. “Elton, and George?”
“Elton's here, somewhere,” Bradford called down, turning to face him. William thought he might try and climb the stairs backward, but fortunately, he seemed to have calmed down a little in the last few years. He stayed put. “And George is coming down from college just today, as it happens! You'll be just in time to see him.”
“Good!”
Meeting his parents was moving in ways he would never have expected. Lady North seemed to have shrunk a little, her proud, lovely face growing more pulled back on its bones, somehow. She held out her arms and William walked into them, crying freely now.
Her frail body seemed as if it might break as he held her to him and he leaned back, almost afraid of breaking her.
“Mother,” he said.
She was crying too. She sniffed. “Welcome home, son.”
His father waited behind her. He held out his hand. “William,” he said. “Welcome back.”
William nodded, swallowing hard. “Thank you,” he said.
He didn't say it was good to be back, for, in a funny way, he still felt as if it wasn't yet. It was all too unreal.
Opposite him in the hallway, Bradford nodded. He seemed to understand.
“I bet you want to lie down awhile,” he said. “I'll call Laney and ask him to set out an early tea.”
“Thanks, brother.”
“Don't mention it.”
At tea, the discussions grew loud and enthusiastic. Elton had appeared, and his gentle smile brought everyone out of themselves a little more. William, eating currant loaf and Madeira cake, found himself feeling slightly less hollow.
“You must have had a rough trip on the sea, this time of year,” Elton commented.
“It wasn't bad, no,” William said. He dabbed his lips with his napkin and reached for his tea. Thinking of the crossing made him think, abruptly, of her. Catharine Favor. He didn't want to think of that right now—the pain in his heart surprised him.
“I wonder when George will arrive,” Elton said, quickly changing the subject as if he noticed discomfort. “Poor fellow—still stuck at Eton.”
“Indeed.”
“This calls for a celebration!” Lady North said. “My sons, all back safely. We need to honor your brother's return with a ball.”
“Mother...” William began. He was about to protest, but Bradford grinned.
“Come on, brother,” he said. “Don't be such a stick-in-th
e-mud. It's rare enough we have parties in this place. Let's have one, for a change. And think of George's surprise. Poor fellow never usually gets balls when he gets home. It'll be quite the happening.”
William chuckled, and nodded. “Well, if everyone wishes...”
“We do,” Bradford said, finishing firmly. “So. You can get rested, and then we can send to Lintley Village for the tailor. I'm sure you're in sore need of a new suit. Know I am,” he sighed, rolling his shoulders.
“Son, you ordered one last month,” their mother protested.
“One cannot have too many suits,” Bradford countered, reaching for another slice of cheese. “I think everyone's already seen me in the brown. I need something new.”
Their father chuckled and Elton grinned.
“You'll be the death of us,” he said. “Fancy! A fellow wearing the same suit twice! What disgrace!”
As Bradford retorted, and Elton laughed, teasing his elder brother mercilessly, William leaned back in his seat, sighing. In some ways, it was, indeed, very good to be home.
His mother organized the ball to be a week after his arrival. That gave Mr. Haddon, the tailor, time to make a suit. Two suits.
“I think I will look rather nice in ocher,” Bradford said.
It was the evening of the ball, and they were getting ready. William, dressed in a black suit, felt as if it was tight on him. He was oddly unused to ordinary clothing now. He missed his comfortable uniform. Well worn, giving a little at the elbows, it fit him like a glove. This new suit was tight and uncomfortable.
“You do look nice in ocher,” William nodded, looking up as his brother entered quietly. Resplendent in an ocher velvet that shied just the brown side of brass, Bradford shone. William wondered, absently, why he was bothering to go. The ladies would all look at Bradford first anyway. They always did. It was a private joke between them.
Not that he was there with an eye for the ladies.
At twenty-seven, William had long since set aside the idea of ever finding a partner. He had simply never met a woman who, well, felt right. He wasn't sure how to explain it. Bradford always said he was too fussy. Appealing looks, a nice smile, a smattering of conversation, that was it. He was stupid, Bradford urged, to look for someone who matched him more than that.
Maybe I am.
All the same, he couldn't help but think, restless, of her. Catharine Favor. That moment in the forest, and before that, on the path. Before that, even, in a wind-chilled canvas tent on an autumn evening, when they'd met. He couldn't forget that strange sensation when he looked into her eyes, as if they knew each other perfectly.
He sighed.
“We should go down.”
“Yes,” Bradford nodded, rolling his shoulders in the new suit. “Guests arriving soon.”
“Uh huh,” William nodded, glancing sideways. The clock on the mantel said seven. It was indeed time to go downstairs.
He went down with Bradford, joining his parents by the staircase that led down into the ballroom.
“Sons! Oh! You look splendid!” their mother exclaimed. William grinned.
“He is, you mean,” he inclined his head to Bradford, who blushed and laughed.
“Come off it, old boy,” he grinned. “You look a treat, too. I should buy you a mirror.”
William just smiled.
“You're looking a right lady-killer, son,” Lord North commented, chuckling. “Looking for someone?”
“No, Father,” William said, looking away from his father's cheerful face. Undeniably handsome, the earl had gone a little florid in the face with age—too many parties, his mother always said. William nodded, privately worried for his father's health. He put too much strain on himself.
His father chuckled again. “Well, your mother made sure to invite some people we don't know too well. Lots of variety, eh? That's the spice of life, what?”
William sighed. He was about to correct his father's idiomatic use when the door scraped at the front of the hall. Over by the door, Elton and George, dressed in navy and brown, respectively, turned to take their positions to welcome the guests. William nodded and went over. It was time for the ball to start.
As the familiar guests arrived—local families William knew well—he started to feel a sort of sadness. His father hadn't exactly delivered on the promise of some variety, and somehow the same old familiar scene, a family party, felt uncomfortable.
I have grown, since I left. And now everything seems just slightly out of place.
He rolled his shoulders in the uncomfortable suit and looked around.
His younger brothers stood at the end of the row, attention drifting. George, seventeen, dressed in his brown velvet, looked as if he desperately wanted to be somewhere else. His pale hair shone in the lamplight, blue eyes searching the hall.
Beside him, Elton was also looking away across the ballroom. But not wistfully searching. His eyes were wistful, certainly: but they were trained on a particular person.
Laurel Millgate.
He sighed. Laurel was beautiful—with bronze-pale hair, brown eyes and a face like a pixie, she would have caught anyone's attention with her vivaciousness. All the same, she was also promised, shortly after birth, to Culver.
Elton's college friend.
He sighed.
Setting aside his worries about his next-to-youngest brother, William drew his attention back to the present moment. His brother cleared his throat.
“A big gathering,” he commented.
“Yes,” William nodded. It was a big gathering, but no more excessive than any family event. He felt restless and wished himself elsewhere. All the pleasantries and niceties, the talking in restrained voices about genteel things, weighed on him suddenly.
He didn't want to be here.
He wanted to be in France, on a road under sky. With freedom. And, somewhere just beside him, a woman who, tatty and dirty as she was, embodied all he lacked here. Freedom.
He sighed. Looked out across the stairs to the entrance, where pretty, genteel women in pretty, refined dresses were arriving.
“Almost the last guests,” his father commented beside him.
“Oh,” he said. Good, he thought inwardly. Soon as he could get away from this door and into the ballroom, where given some time to himself, he could quietly blend into the background and disappear; he would feel alright again.
He could feel his father's tension, almost as if he was waiting for something. He frowned and looked away, greeting Lady Harris and her two lovely daughters.
“Enchanted, my lady,” he nodded.
The girls—Merrill and Marguerite—both giggled. William sighed. Closer to Elton or George in age than to either of them, he felt almost bad for making them nervous.
Their mother walked on into the ballroom, the girls close to her.
“That must be everyone.”
William nodded He was about to drift away from his post, seeing Laney ready himself to make one more announcement and then close the door, when he paused. He couldn't have said exactly why, save that his feet wouldn't carry him off.
Someone was in the doorway.
It was a woman, that was clear. She was with another woman, dressed in a light muslin dress, patterned with little diamond shapes. The woman who held his gaze was beside her. Tall, with curly hair—she was in shadow and he couldn't see the color—there was something about her that made him look again, blinking.
She drifted down the stairs into the light. She was wearing a fine gown—cream-colored, with ruffles at the neck and flowing, puffed sleeves. She had pearls at her throat and fine slippers and white satin gloves. It was none of those things that held his attention, though.
It was her eyes.
Brown, with little lights of russet, they smiled up at him. They almost, but not quite, fought with the color of her hair. Rich red.
He swallowed hard. It couldn't be. It mustn't be...
But it was.
Catharine Favor.
S
he was here, in a gown, in his family ballroom.
When he had thought her alone in France, left behind.
Chapter 7: A secret meeting
William stared at her. She grinned.
“It...”
“Shhh,” she said quickly. William nodded, and looked sideways. Bradford was already staring off across the ballroom. Then his eyes focused on the girl in the diamond-printed dress and he seemed to regain his interest. William bit back a grin.
“Milady,” he said, bowing low. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“And I yours,” she said, curtseying. Beside him, William felt his father tense, as if wanting to ask a question. He turned sideways, moving his shoulder ever so slightly to place himself between the two.
She seemed to understand the movement, for she nodded.
“I suppose I'm a little late,” she said.
“Not really,” William said, feeling his reality fray a little further as he stared at her. “We're just about to go in.”
“So I see,” she nodded. George, set free at last, had drifted from the end of the line the moment Laney closed the doors. William, seizing the moment, took the opportunity to step out of the line and follow his younger brother into the hall.
Catharine Favor walked along beside him.
He turned to stare at her. She looked remarkable.
With her hair curled and styled elegantly, her long neck shown to its full beauty by the heart-shaped neckline, she was a woman of delicate grace. He drew in a breath and simply stared at her. This couldn't be the woman who fought like a man possessed, who swore and rode and slept under trees?
But it was her. Undeniably, and incontrovertibly, it was her. It walked like her, talked like her, looked like her. All the while, though, the beauty that shone out of her was blinding.
He had only half-seen it on the ride through rural France.
“Milady,” he said, and bowed.
She laughed. “Sir! Get along with you,” she dismissed gently, flapping her hand at him. “You shall embarrass me.”
Her Fiery Heart: Brides for the Earl's Sonsa Page 5
