by Lydia Joyce
Reston’s eyes widened as he realized what she was doing. “No!” he shouted.
She turned and ran in the only direction she could go—up, thrusting her hand into her pocket and crumbling the papers in fingers numb from lack of oxygen. Reston was right behind her as she reached the first floor, but she didn’t pause, pressing upward even as her body seemed to become strangely distant, as if she were looking down a long tunnel at herself. Air, she told her diaphragm, forcing it to move faster, faster against the hard whalebone of her corset. I must have more air. But the black spots in front of her eyes got bigger, and darkness closed in at the edges of her vision.
She burst out onto the roof. Rain lashed her face, bringing her to herself just in time to throw a foot out in front of her body as it began to pitch forward. She threw herself through the crumbled remains of a wall and toward the broken hole in the roof. She hit the edge, grasping a broken timber with her free hand as she pulled the other one from her pocket and flung the broken fragments of the letters into the rain. The wind snatched them, sending them whirling away into the storm.
She could keep the blackness at bay no longer, and she felt it close over her just as she heard Reston’s bellow of rage. Then she heard no more.
Chapter Twenty
Colin stood staring at the empty doorway for a long moment after Fern had left, unfamiliar emotions warring within him.
First there was his reaction to the letter—a cold jolt of consequences that, however natural in respect to his actions, were out of place in his picture of the appropriate concerns of a future peer. A bastard. His bastard, without even the excuse of passion to mitigate the dire responsibility for another life that his actions had thrust upon him. It occurred to him, as it never would have before, that Emma was not a good mother for any child, not even if her husband ignored her infidelity and accepted it as his own. He had handed this unknown creature’s future over to his wife on an impulse, but he was abruptly convinced that he could not have made a better decision. She had a greater heart than he, certainly, and perhaps a wiser one. The words of Emma’s letter—passionless, practical—burned into his mind, and he shuddered that he had once seen that as the most desirable kind of relationship with the opposite sex.
The child, though, was not yet fully real to him—and Fern was, with an immediacy unmatched by any future event. He had realized, when she looked at him with those hurt-filled eyes, that he could lose her. They would continue to live together, of course, and would even share the same bed with appropriate regularity, but she could still escape him. He had never thought of such a possibility—too self-centered or too shortsighted, he didn’t know—and the idea chilled him down to his bones. He felt the familiar deadness stirring in his chest, cooling the blood in his veins.
It isn’t my fault, he told himself. She had no right to have any expectations of him—she’d made no demands or even inquiries when they were wed. She had no right to read his correspondence, for God’s sake. His sins, whatever they were, were his own.
But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that look she had given him right before she had left, the terrible sorrow that he had seen reflected in those eyes. All that mattered was that he had been the cause of her grief—and that her grief could destroy everything they had found together.
No, he thought fiercely, the force of that word driving back the coldness. He would not—could not—let that happen. He could not allow the pain to continue in those eyes, and now that he lived, he could not let himself wither away again, until her pain would stir no response in him but coldness.
He had promised her time. How much? He dreaded the decision she might come to in the depths of the bleak manor. He paced the room, staring out the window as the storm grew fiercer, until finally, he could stand it no longer. His decision made, he strode out the open doorway and down the dizzying stairs.
“Colin!”
He hesitated. The voice was so faint—was it Fern’s, or was it his own disordered brain, playing tricks on him? The great hall was empty and silent below him.
“Colin, help!”
Without making a conscious decision, he began to run, the steep stairs falling away under his feet as the sheer drop yawned on one side.
“Colin!”
The last, despairing cry shot through him, and his heart jolted in his chest as it died away. Where was Reston? The question pounded through his brain. He had left the man safely in the village—had watched from the window of a neighboring cottage where he negotiated for the boy to run to the nearest town as Fern walked, alone and unmolested, up the drive to the manor house. But where was Reston now?
He had no answers as he reached the level floor, stumbling at the sudden change of stride. He ran toward the kitchen stairs, his only choice, and flung himself down them. Six feet from the bottom, he vaulted over the rough wooden handrail, landing hard enough that he felt the jolt in his joints. The kitchens were silent, the massive pillars blocking his sight. He paused for an instant, then sprinted for the door to the pump yard. When he reached it, it was shut fast, with Fern’s umbrella leaning against the jamb just as it had been when he arrived.
Fern would have picked it up—or at least knocked it over—had she passed by. His fear growing, Colin ran for the Tudor wing. He dashed down the empty dining room, and after throwing open the door to the cabinet—empty—he ducked through the passageway. He was about to enter the great hall when the sound of footsteps that weren’t his stopped him dead. He skidded to a halt, panting. There it was again—footsteps, coming from above.
He sprinted up the stairs, stretching his legs to take them three at a time. He reached the first floor—but the heavy treads continued farther above, and so he put on another burst of speed and pounded up the last flight.
He emerged into the attic and staggered as a gust of wind struck him. Then he saw her—Fern, standing at the edge of the gaping hole in the roof, her hand extended into the storm as something white streamed from it in tatters. Reston was charging toward her, shouting unintelligibly, and Colin’s heart contracted hard with dread.
“Fern!” He shouted her name as he threw himself toward Reston. But what happened next made no sense: She swayed once and slid to the ground in a boneless puddle of skirts and outspread white arms.
He slammed into Reston then, and the two of them fell hard against the floorboards—and went through, falling amidst a shower of plaster and rotted wood.
Colin’s vision went dark briefly as they struck something on the level below, but he shook his head and pushed off from Reston, knowing the danger of closing with the burlier man. Reston lay dazed across an escritoire.
Colin stumbled as debris caught between his legs. His shoulder sent a message of fire to his brain—it must have struck something as they fell. He moved his arm, and it swung freely, so he pushed the pain from his mind.
A quick glance around the room oriented him—they were in the bedchamber where he and Fern had started their first night. Reston shoved himself off the escritoire with a roar, lunging, but Colin reached behind himself and found the handle of the ewer exactly where he had remembered it. Bringing the pitcher around in a wide arc, Colin lashed out at the man with all his strength. Something cracked as it struck Reston’s head. The man went down hard, sprawling at Colin’s feet.
Colin blinked at Reston, then at the handle of the shattered ewer still clutched in his hand. He prodded the recumbent figure with the toe of his boot, ready to turn the prod into a kick, if necessary. The man grunted but did not move. Colin forced a deep breath through his protesting lungs and pushed out of the room, staggering up the stairs again.
As he emerged into the attic, he almost wept with relief to see Fern sitting up against the edge of the broken roof. She blinked dazedly at him as he approached.
“Thank goodness,” she croaked. “Corset. Couldn’t breathe.”
“I thought I’d lost you,” Colin said, his lungs feeling too tight for air. “Don’t you ever do that again
.” He wanted to scoop her into his arms and kiss her, but he didn’t dare, for she looked as if she were on the verge of fainting again.
“Won’t. Promise,” she said, still gasping for breath. She looked up at him, tendrils of hair clinging wetly to her face, her eyelashes heavy with rain. “He wanted the letters. Not papers—letters.”
“Come on now,” Colin said. “Get up. We’ll talk about the madman later. I’ve incapacitated him, but I don’t know for how long. Thank God I haven’t killed him.” He grasped her weakly extended arms and levered her to her feet, gritting his teeth at the pressure on his shoulder. He put her arm around his neck. She took two wobbly steps, and then her legs gave way entirely, and she shook her head mutely, panting.
Colin swung her into his arms, his shoulder sending out new waves of pain, and strode rapidly down the stairs as she clung feebly to his neck.
“He wanted the letters,” Fern repeated, more intelligibly. “The letters in the packet. They were the papers he kept going on about.”
“He said he had them,” Colin objected, looking down at her wan face.
“He didn’t know—couldn’t read,” she said. “He must have thought they were in the hut, but he didn’t know which ones they were. He didn’t tell his wife—too ashamed, or scared, or proud.”
“My God,” said Colin, taking it in. “But why those letters?”
“They had the secret. Colin—the second John Radcliffe was a bastard, and not even Charlotte Gorsing’s bastard.” Her forehead was knitted with concern.
“Illegitimate. Our viscountcy could be challenged,” Colin said slowly.
“Yes—I don’t know what the outcome would be …” Fern said.
“But even if we won, it could be a ruinously expensive victory,” Colin finished. “Fern—”
“I couldn’t let him do it,” she said, her hands winding slightly tighter around the back of his neck. “I destroyed them. Crumpled them and threw the pieces into the rain.”
“You ran from him,” Colin said. “You fool. You bloody fool—you should have given them over! They were only pieces of parchment.”
“They might as well have been knives to cut you with, Colin,” Fern said as they reached the ground floor. Colin carried her toward the front hall’s door. “I couldn’t let him have them. I love you too much.”
Colin came to a dead stop as her face whitened again, even her lips growing dangerously pale. “What did you say?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, the words barely a whisper. “I shouldn’t have … I didn’t mean to say that.”
Colin stared down at her upturned face. “Did you mean it?”
She closed her eyes, her throat moving as she swallowed. “Yes,” she whispered.
Yes. The word hit him like a thunderbolt. Only the knowledge that Reston was lying on the floor above made his legs move toward the door. “Thank all that’s holy,” he said, “because I am not sure what love feels like, but I’m pretty damned certain that I love you, too.”
Her eyes flew open with a small cry, and after searching his face, she broke into a weak smile. “Do you mean that?”
“I still think that you’re a fool for not giving over the letters, but yes, I do,” Colin said.
“I shall be your fool gladly then,” she said.
They reached the door. “We have to make it to the vicarage,” Colin said. “We need to be well away from Reston and send some sturdy men up to get him.” He grimaced. “I don’t think the rest of the village is mad like the Restons.”
“I don’t think they like them much,” Fern said flatly. “I can walk now,” she added as he shifted his grip upon her to open the door one-handed.
“Are you certain?” Colin asked, though his arms were burning with the strain of holding her far-from-slight frame and the ache in his shoulder was beginning to slide from pain to agony.
“Yes,” she said a little more strongly.
He let her slide gently to the floor. She stood firmly without swaying, though her face was still pale.
“Let’s go,” she said, and she pushed the door open and stepped out into the rain.
Colin strode after her, stripping off his coat and placing it around her shoulders. “Take this,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.
She started to open her mouth and then shook her head, walking slightly unsteadily across the uneven cobbles. He took her arm and placed it over his. She leaned on him slightly, quickening her pace.
“Was he badly injured?” Fern said. Water streamed from her face now, dripping onto his coat, but she appeared to ignore it.
Colin didn’t have to ask whom she meant. “I don’t know,” he said shortly. “I hope not.”
“Why?” she asked. It was a simple question, without viciousness.
“Because I should like to see him in gaol soon and would like to ensure that I do not join him.”
“Oh,” Fern said, her gray eyes widening. “Did you have your knife?”
His steps faltered. “Damnation. I did. I forgot all about it. If I’d remembered, I’d have skewered him.” Colin’s stomach churned at that possibility. An inquest of a death caused by a future peer, with all his father’s political enemies determined that the result would be murder, and him having stabbed a man with a meat knife one hundred feet from his dinner table … He didn’t think he’d be hanged, but it might be a near thing.
Fern slipped slightly on a wet patch of ground, and Colin tightened his grip on her arm.
“I almost forgot!” she said. With her free hand, she reached into the folds of her dress, pulling a pocket inside out through a slit in her skirt and sending a dozen fragments of parchment dancing away in the wind.
“It’s all gone now,” she said with satisfaction.
Their appearance in the village drew an unexpected crowd—houses that had presented nothing but blank, dark windows to them before disgorged their occupants into the stormy afternoon at the sight of Wrexmere’s now-familiar master and mistress in such a bedraggled condition.
“Joseph Reston has assaulted my wife,” Colin announced to the small crowd. He read their reactions—some were surprised but far more were disgusted, and at the absent Reston rather than at him. A small knot of fear inside him loosened—however unpopular the man was, he was still one of their own, and future lord or not, Colin was to all intents and purposes an outsider. He pulled Fern protectively closer against him. “I incapacitated him, but he needs to be brought into custody—and possibly needs medical attention, as well.”
“I’ll go,” said one burly man, his face showing an almost unholy pleasure. In a moment, half a dozen more men had volunteered and began hiking up the long drive.
Dorcas Reston stood pale and speechless at the edge of the crowd. The men’s departure seemed to trigger something in her, for she lifted a shaking hand and pointed it at Colin. “Murderer!” she cried shrilly. “Thief and murderer! Ye stole our papers and murdered my husband.”
“God willing, your husband shall be fine, madam,” Colin said coldly.
“There are no papers.” Those words came, serenely, from Fern. “There is nothing but dust and mud.”
“You and your husband shall be standing before the magistrate before a fortnight is out to answer for your misappropriation of funds,” Colin continued implacably.
At that announcement, Dorcas Reston seemed to choke, staggering backward before whirling and fleeing into her cottage. The shiny door slammed closed and a chuckle ran through the assembled crowd. A few faces were still pulled in expressions of anger or bitterness, those of Mrs. Willis and old Jim among them, but among the rest, the chuckling grew louder until entire peals rang out, long and loud, battering against the silent green door.
“We shall seek shelter at the vicarage,” Colin said as the laughter died away, “though I would greatly appreciate it if some women would go and fetch my wife some dry clothes, as I fear she might catch cold after her shock and drenching.”
Instantly, there were mor
e volunteers, and after they were dispatched, Colin bade the crowd good-bye and escorted Fern behind the church to the doorstep of the vicarage. He looked around. There was no one within sight—no one to embarrass her. He turned Fern toward him firmly then and took her chin, tilting it upward.
“I have been wanting to do this so badly that it hurts.”
Then he kissed her, fully, intimately, his tongue exploring the welcoming heat of her mouth as her body melded against his. Finally, after a time that was too short by an eternity, he pulled away.
She sighed and opened her eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
He gave her a crooked smile and knocked on the door.
*
It was a long time later before they were alone again. First, everything had to be explained to Rev. Biggs, and then someone had to be sent to the nearest village with a magistrate. Fern and Colin were each provided with attendants and dry clothing from the vicarage attic while their trunks were fetched.
Soon, Fern was ensconced in the vicarage’s musty spare bedroom with Abby while Colin was sequestered in the churchman’s own bedchamber. While she was grateful for the chance to change clothes, more than a small part of Fern would have chosen to stay wet if it meant that she could remain in her husband’s company. They had discovered something new and precious and, she was afraid, delicate in the way that an oak seedling was delicate. There were still things that she must say to Colin, and the thought of them filled her with the dread that she might destroy what they had just found.
A commotion outside made Fern look out the window. “They’re bringing in Reston,” she breathed. The crowd had reformed in the lane at the edge of the village as the men returned from the manor house, bearing Joseph Reston among them.
Abby craned her neck around Fern’s head. “He’s being carried. Do ye think he’s—No, look at him; he’s jumping like a vish on a line.” Her tone carried not a hint of regret nor vicious pleasure.
“What do you think about all this, Abby?” Fern asked.
She shrugged. “The family’s been setting themselves up as better’n the rest of us vor many years. Either they’d make true gentlefolk or they’d meet their comeuppance, is the way I see it, though I be glad enough that unkindly folk like them won’t start going to the county gentry dances.”
