Unraveling the Earl
Page 38
“I see,” Georgie replied, though she did not understand what Olivia’s past financial difficulties had to do with their present detour over the moors. “In truth, I don’t see at all.”
Henry flashed her quick smile, there and gone again. “One of the properties I assisted her to sell was a small hunting lodge in Cumberland. Bastion’s Cross came to Olivia through Mother and, I believe from my grandmother before that and so on. I’m not entirely certain, as the first and last I’d ever known of it was during the sale. Until I read Mother’s final diary.”
“You read your mother’s diaries?” Georgie asked, surprised and a bit befuddled, though not unpleasantly so.
“I ought to have read them months ago,” he replied with a grimace.
“You weren’t prepared months ago,” Georgie soothed, reaching up to brush of lock of hair from his brow.
“I don’t know that one is ever truly prepared to read one’s mother’s private thoughts, especially a mother such as mine.”
“And?” Georgie prompted when he fell silent. “What did you learn of your mother?”
“She enjoyed the company of ladies,” Henry replied with only the faintest trace of a blush. “You were right about that.”
“Oh, Henry, that’s not what I’m asking.”
“Mother wasn’t always mad, you were right about that, as well. There were times of laughter and joy in our family when I was a little boy, picnics in the gazebo at Hastings Hall, visits to the nursery to tuck us into bed, games of draughts on cold winter afternoons. I’d forgotten those early years, overshadowed as they were by the constant manipulation and bitterness that came later.”
“I’m sorry you had to suffer through those later years.” Georgie had expected the answer but still her heart hurt for him. “Sorry your mother was not the sort of mother she ought to have been.”
“I’m not sorry for any of it,” he replied, with a soft laugh. “In fact if Mother were still alive I would buss her cheeks, never mind the scolding I would get for smearing her powder or mussing her hair.”
Georgie only stared at him, confused and not a little unsettled by his amusement.
“Don’t you see?” Henry asked. “If Mother hadn’t already been a bit mad, she would not have made that wager and your father would not have bedded Connie.”
“He might still have bedded her. He was a libertine of the worst sort.”
“The very best sort,” he corrected, giving her the sweetest, softest of smiles. “If he’d been an honorable man who steered clear of innocent ladies, you would not have been born, Georgie. And I cannot imagine a world without you in it.”
“Oh, Henry,” she breathed, blinking furiously.
“And what’s more, Mother spirited you away to a rickety estate, hiding you from the world,” he continued, taking hold of her hands and squeezing, his blue eyes bright. “She might have shared your mother’s identity and sent you on your way rather than forcing you to follow her about Town. And I never would have known you, never would have fallen under your spell.”
“You’ll have me crying again,” she warned with a wobbly smile.
“We can’t have you arriving with puffy red eyes and splotchy cheeks,” he teased.
“Oh, I like that. Splotchy cheeks, indeed,” Georgie retorted, reaching for the strap dangling from the roof as the carriage jolted over a rut in the lane. “And just where have we arrived?”
“At a rather rickety estate somewhere nearby to Bastion’s Cross.”
“No,” Georgie breathed in shock as his words registered and she whipped her head around to peer out the window.
The first thing she saw was the pig pen, its weathered boards drooping from the thick wooden piles dug deep into the rich brown soil. Some of the wood slats hung from frayed ropes while others were missing altogether. And enormous sow lay in the mud with five or six fat little piglets scrambling over one another to reach their mother’s teats.
In Georgie’s mind she saw herself on the day Lady Joy came for her, a scrawny girl scrambling from the brown muck, her right leg dragging behind her as she crawled through a narrow gap where one of the horizontal slats of the fence had fallen to the ground.
Georgie swiveled her head about, taking in the overgrown lawn and beyond a field of weeds where once had been barley and wheat, tall seedy stalks billowing in the breeze. The barn had fallen in on itself, weathered boards collapsed beneath the remnants of the roof. The river whence she’d given the dilapidated farm its name, little more than a creek in reality, sparkled in the distance.
The carriage rolled to a stop and Henry jumped to the ground, turning to offer his hand.
“You should not…I cannot…Millie won’t…” Georgie stammered, too shocked and horrified and panicky for tears.
“We made a bargain,” Henry replied, his voice soft yet oddly fierce. “I promised to see you reunited with your mother and you promised to marry me and save me. You’ve held to your end and I intend to hold to mine.”
“But…”
Henry ducked back into the carriage and gently scooped her up, one hand beneath her knees, the other wrapped securely around her back. Carefully he lowered her to the ground and turned her toward the house.
It was smaller than she remembered, years of neglect having rendered it little more than a hovel, with two of the four upper-story windows boarded up and a roof that had been patched with mud and grass where the slate tiles had gone missing. The four windows of the lower story were grimy, the paint peeling around the sills. There was no smoke rising from the listing chimney. In fact the entire house and surrounding land had an air of abandonment and Georgie wondered if only the pigs lived here.
Before she could decide whether the tight feeling in the vicinity of her heart was relief or despair, the front door flew open and a tiny woman with hair so pale as to appear silver in the sunlight was running across the scraggly lawn.
“Georgie!” Millie Graham cried, her arms stretched wide open, her faded gray dress tangling around her legs. “Georgie, you’ve come home!”
With Henry’s hand warm on her back, Georgie took half a dozen stumbling steps and met Millie on the edge of the lawn.
Then the Countess of Hastings was on her knees, crying and begging her mother to forgive her in a show of mawkish sentiment so out of character and bloody touching, her handsome earl blinked back tears.
“Damned dusty roads.”
About Lynne Barron
Lynne Barron always wanted to be a writer, if only she could decide what to write. Everyone told her write about what you know. It wasn't until she married her extremely romantic and surprisingly sensual husband that she was able to follow that advice. Lynne lives in Florida with her husband, son, and a menagerie of rescued pets..
Lynne welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Lynne Barron
Idyllwild 1: Portrait of Passion
Idyllwild 2: Widow’s Wicked Wish
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Unraveling the Earl
ISBN 9781419993701
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Unraveling the Earl Copyright © 2014 Lynne Barron
Cover design by Allyse Leodra
Cover photography by Shutterstock
Electronic book publication October 2014
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