by Autumn Birt
But there were other doors than the front hall, and she knew the house steward by name, even if the earl had never given her a civil word. Arinna stayed in the rain drenched darkness until she made it around to the kitchen door. The heated smells of bread and roast reached out to her before Betsy’s round silhouette filled the door.
“What’chu be at? Be off w’ya,” Betsy paused as she squinted out into the darkness. She stumbled back a step when she recognized who stood on her doorstep. “My lady, what ‘ave you been doing? You’re soaked through.”
Like some storm sprite, Arinna brought the damp earth in with her. Shutting the door only dimmed the sound of the pounding rain while she stood spreading puddles in the stilled chaos of the kitchen. A pot boiled over, rekindling action as Betsy scolded the apprentice cook before turning to her.
“The Brinny is over the road, and my carriage couldn’t get through. I sent Tom with the horses back to the inn and told him I’d walk the rest of the way, but I haven’t found a crossing yet,” Arinna said. As wet as she was, Arinna was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t chanced swimming the stream.
“Lord, it’s been raining buckets for nigh two weeks. Where have you been, my lady, to think you’d cross that water? I can’t believe you thought you’d walk. More than like what you need is a boat to reach Rhiol.” Betsy waived for hot water while she handed Arinna a small handful of kitchen towels.
“No, Betsy, I won’t stay,” Arinna replied, refusing the towels. The small bundle would hardly make a difference. “I saw the light ... and wasn’t going to stop. It must be a party tonight? I thought I would ask to borrow a better coat or if there were a spare horse that wouldn’t be missed? But if it is as bad as you say, I should just continue and hope for the best.”
Betsy frowned, her eyes shifting around the hectic kitchen. Arinna knew the look and the thought behind it. She cursed herself for being fool enough to put Betsy into such a situation. The rain must have fogged her mind, that or exhaustion.
“It isn’t fit out for no one, my lady. It isn’t my place to ask you ta stay,” Betsy began.
“No, it is mine.”
The voice was well bred and laced with coldness much sharper than the English rain. Derrick Eldridge, the Earl of Kesmere’s entrance into the kitchen came with the sound of a pot lid falling as the two apprentice cooks made themselves scarce. Only Betsy and the wizened head chef remained amid the boiling pots and half peeled carrots, he with a glare on his face for both Derrick and Arinna.
Arinna wondered how much worse the night could become as she pivoted to face one of her strongest adversaries, placing herself between him and Betsy. Though it would easily take two of her to block Betsy’s wide frame from harm.
Derrick was dressed ready for his guests, making her feel all the more in the weaker position, having snuck in his house like a half-drowned kitten. In formal attire of a soft black wool jacket that rested on his upper thigh, a cream linen shirt with a stiff flat collar, and a maroon silk scarf tied over it, he cut a very organized and thought-out figure. Arinna hid her sigh with the slightest bow.
“My lord earl.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face. He nodded curtly at her highjacked civilities.
“Do you make it a habit, my lady, of sneaking into manors’ side doors?”
His voice was brusque and distant. Not that she expected anything less, but it got her hackles up. She had to struggle against a retort that would not improve her situation. Drowning was sounding better than word getting out that she had been thrown out of Kesmere. She needed a polite exit.
“No. Only when I do not want to trouble the lord of the house.”
They paused there, locked eye to eye. His left brow lifted a fraction, and Arinna would have sworn she saw the faintest hint of amusement touch the navy blue of his eyes.
“Well, perhaps you misjudged the need. It is too wet and dangerous out for you to continue on tonight. Please stay over, and perhaps you would be so kind to join my guests and I for dinner?”
The invitation, as unexpected as it was, threw her off kilter. She rocked back on her heel, a habit she had picked up from Jared. It refocused her tactical side.
“I would love to, assuming the dress is rather informal and wet,” she said with a lift of her sodden cuffs.
This time she was sure that the flash replacing the resigned civilities held humor when Derrick’s lips twitched before his expression reorganized itself into boredom again. Arinna was frightfully pleased with herself.
Derrick motioned for her to walk with him. There was little more to be done than to agree. Arinna had all but given up hope of civility from this paramount of County Cumbria years ago. She would not risk offending him again so quickly by demanding a horse instead of dinner.
“You are about my fiancée’s size, and she has left many of her things from the last time she visited. Her rooms are empty, and you can borrow whatever you require. I will have a housemaid show you up.”
They walked to the front foyer down a long hallway barely lit by dimmed oil lamps. Emerging from under the second-floor balcony, Derrick gestured for her to wait by the stairs. Mindful of her dampness and the wooden floors, Arinna walked instead to the rug spread over stone tile by the front door. Plus, it offered a quick escape should the earl change his mind.
The entrance hall was dark, lit only by two oil lamps, one on each side of the door. In contrast, the front salon and formal dining room where Derrick headed blazed with light. It spilled from the wide doors, casting an illuminated square halfway across the front foyer. Her guess had been right. Though there were well-spaced candles, electric lights scattered the darkness to the far corners. It was a sign of Derrick’s standing to have managed that, especially this far north amid the lakes. Recovery from the long war had been slower here. It was almost three years since the official end to the fighting, but electricity remained a luxury only enjoyed by the rich or the inventive. It seemed some days that the mid twenty-first century was mired in aspects of the nineteenth, if not earlier.
Tired beyond thought, soaked to the bone, and caught in a tangle of formalities, Arinna’s instincts were slow to notice the shift in shadows within the music room opposite the bright front salon. A prickling at the base of her neck made her turn her head to focus from the corner of her eye, so as not to give her awareness away. The breath went out of her as the figure shifted further into the light.
“Byran!”
It burst from her before she could collect herself. He was across the hall in paces, sweeping her up into a familiar embrace. For a moment, she let herself be held, welcoming the warmth of his body and arms. Her heart, jolted by the surprise, beat too quickly, flushing her cheeks. In the back of her mind, she was aware that Derrick had stopped mid-sentence. He regarded them in complete shock, too astonished to mask the unfiltered emotion on his face.
Arinna pulled away first, chastising, “You’ll be soaked.”
But the fine wool of Byran’s jacket and trousers did not show any ill effect from their embrace. Watchful, Derrick walked towards them in silence.
“I did not know you were friends with Baron Vasquez,” Arinna said to Derrick while she looked accusingly at Byran.
Byran grinned.
“Nor I he with you,” Derrick replied flatly.
From his tone and look, Arinna couldn’t tell if he was surprised or disappointed at the realization of Byran’s friendship with her.
“Hah, with such love lost between you, I hardly wanted to advertise,” Byran said casually. “Though I did tell you once, Arinna. Still let me introduce you properly now since you are finally standing under the same roof and within hearing distance of each other.
“Derrick, I would like you to meet my long time friend Arinna, otherwise known as the Lady Grey and commander of the Grey Guard. Arinna, I would like you to meet my even more long time friend Derrick, the Earl of Kesmere.”
Arinna played along, as Byran always managed. She’d learned long ago
she was no match for his charm. She bobbed slightly to Derrick despite her dripping garments. “How do you do?”
Derrick bowed stiffly in reply, forced by surprise into Byran’s game. One maple brown lock fell across his forehead as a look of understanding touched his dark blue eyes.
Arinna swallowed hard. Looking away, her gaze returned to Byran. Real warmth filled her despite the cold of her wet coat.
“If you will excuse me, I think I should put on something dry.”
Derrick nodded distractedly as Arinna walked past him to join the servant girl now waiting at the bottom of the stairs, unable to keep her heart from a double beat or mind from memories.
Chapter 2
THE EARL OF KESMERE
THE PAST
Derrick would have thought his father had arranged it, that his power stretched that far. After all, the last thing David Eldridge said to him was to watch her. His father had seen the Lady Grey’s move to the adjoining estate of Rhiol as a threat, and an opportunity. But Derrick had never been his father’s spy, much less his lackey. The conversation had grown more heated. When Derrick had put down the phone, bitterness coated his tongue. That phone call just before Byran’s arrival had been the first time they had spoken in two years, and not simply because phone lines and mail were barely restored.
The one assurance that Derrick’s father had nothing to do with it was that he would never have included Byran. Of that, Derrick had no doubt. That fact moved Arinna’s arrival from a plot to simply ironic chance twisted with ... what he wasn’t sure. With his eyes drifting over Byran’s quiet face, Derrick was afraid to hazard a guess.
Guests would arrive soon, but Derrick’s mind was reeling. The fire warmed the wool of his pants, his leather riding boots protecting his shins from its heat. He played with a port glass resting on the mantel, twirling it absently.
He remembered his childhood friend vexed and cross, pacing across the suite of rooms Derrick had taken for a month. The windows overlooked the Mediterranean on the Costa del Sol of Southern Spain. It had been before the war came to Europe, but only just. Back and forth, Byran stormed, exclaiming his denied passion. His hands flailed in emphasis of his words. Derrick laughed so hard his chest hurt.
“It isn’t funny!” Byran shouted, sending a bottle of wine swaying. Only the remaining liquid and heavy bottom kept it upright.
“Please, it is the first woman who has denied you anything. That is all that has your goat: that she won’t fall for you with nary a word. Besides that, she is like all the others.” Derrick laughed and waved it away.
Byran looked out the window at the moonlight on the water, his features oddly empty compared to the tantrum a moment before. He reset a chair on its legs. Sitting, Byran faced his friend, running a weary hand across his eyes and through his hair. The coal-black curls sprang back from his passing fingers.
“No, she is different,” Byran said, meeting Derrick’s eyes soberly.
Derrick stopped laughing.
“She said she would never betray her husband.” Byran snorted as he said it, as if he couldn’t believe such a notion. He picked up his forgotten glass of wine before adding, “and even if that weren’t so, what had I ever done to ‘recommend myself to her.’” On that, his voice trembled.
Byran’s hazel brown eyes were haunted as he gazed at his friend. He downed the wine in one shot then rolled the empty glass on its base, round and round in a miniature version of his wild pacing.
Derrick considered his friend, whose greatest assets were wealth, a political family that had guaranteed him a job and position, and his Spanish good looks. Derrick tried to think of what to say.
“What have I done?” Derrick repeated the phrase from his memory, his voice trailing off as he looked out the window of the salon in Kesmere.
His glass still twirled slowly in his fingers. He could see Byran’s pale reflection in the storm-darkened pane. Hair as dark as the night outside, Byran’s broody eyes stared unseeing out from where he sat at a desk under the windows.
It evoked a second memory a few years after the first. The war had just begun though at the time it had felt like it surely had to end soon. The war had been known as World War III in the beginning when there were still news channels and TV. Though in the end, it had been known as the Greatest War. Now, it was simply called the War for no other before it had even come close to its vastness and destruction.
The sun was dim on the horizon, shadows still claiming what was left of Europe. The old rambling manor house was yet another headquarters in this time of moving fronts and shifting targets. Derrick could not even recall what former country it had been in. Byran sat hunched in the window seat, his fingers laced through his hair. His eyes rested against the palms of his hands as if he could block the world from his sight.
“She is gone. She left without saying a word,” he said, his voice thick and nearly unrecognizable.
Again, Derrick felt late in getting the details.
“What happened?”
Byran looked up. Derrick had never seen his eyes so bloodshot and lost, before or since.
“Her husband was with the Grey Guard, the division that flew and fought over Kiev yesterday. None of them survived,” Byran choked out the last unnecessarily. The bombs that had torn Kiev apart had left nothing alive or standing for miles.
“I found her in the hallway. She cried. She cried so hard I thought it would tear her apart,” Byran said quietly. “We ... I found her a place to sleep. I left to find breakfast this morning, but when I returned, she was gone.” Byran looked at him with anguish. “If I hadn’t married Isabella, if we weren’t expecting Santi so soon after Cerilla was born ...” There had been no words for those what ifs.
“She was the one. The one you went on about in Porto Banus and again in ... whatever hellhole that was after Kiev?”
Coming fully to the present, Derrick stated it more than asked. He wasn’t sure why he had never questioned who at the time, who could have won over Byran so fully, but he was certain of the answer now. Still, he glanced over to see Byran’s confirming nod. Derrick swallowed another sip of port. It hit his throat tasting of vinegar. His mind whirled.
“You could have told me it was her.” This time the statement was made with an accusing look.
“Hah, like that would have helped. If I had told you that the woman I loved was also the person you’ve come to detest the most, you would have changed your mind?” Byran snorted into his port glass before taking a swig.
Derrick paused, unsure. “It wouldn’t have hurt,” he said finally. He tried a smile to lighten the mood.
Byran half smiled back, his eyes still lost to the past. “I tried to tell you once,” Byran said. The comment dropped the room from under Derrick’s feet for the second time that night.
“When?” he choked, unable to recall any conversation including Arinna’s name.
Byran waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
Derrick took a breath, then let it go. The expression on Byran’s face told him now wasn’t the time to push. “Have you talked since?” he asked, instead.
Byran nodded in answer, which quieted some of Derrick’s unease.
“Mostly letters, but we’ve seen each other peripherally at events, of course.”
Derrick knew what his friend wasn’t saying, that they hadn’t really talked about their past at all. He rubbed a dull ache between his brows with a finger.
“It’s been what, eight years since then?” The time would not add up in his mind. The events of the war, moments he did his best not to think about, seemed unconnected.
“Six and a half, Santi is six.”
That said it all to Derrick. Byran was not close to forgetting Arinna.
Derrick could hear horses pulling up to the main entrance to unload passengers under the shelter of the overhanging porch. He took the last of his port in one gulp. Straightening, he walked over to set his glass on the table, squeezing Byran’s shoulder as he walked by.
Byran tried to smile, but his eyes were still shadowed and belied the action. Derrick wondered suddenly what he’d begun inviting the Lady Grey into the refuge he’d made of Kesmere. Derrick pushed concerns aside and went to greet his guests.
Chapter 3
BARON VASQUEZ
INTRODUCTIONS
A woman’s laugh tore Byran from his thoughts. It wasn’t Arinna’s, though. The feel of her in his arms still tingled on his skin. Arinna was here, granting Byran the opportunity to warn her that had driven him from his home in Spain. But the shock of seeing her again when he hadn’t expected it had scattered his thoughts as if they were rain in the storm. Feelings he thought dormant beyond resurrection surfaced.
There wasn’t time to collect himself. Derrick’s guests were there, and a plan that had seemed so simple until he’d been confronted with the reality of seeing Arinna again threatened to toss him off balance. Byran left the room before his tangled thoughts dragged him under.
In the entrance hall, Derrick stood between two lovely young women. “My good friend, Baron Vasquez is here as well,” Derrick said with a nod toward Byran.
A brunette with high cheekbones set under golden eyes turned to him. Her face was sweet enough that Byran barely needed to sweep down the curves of her burgundy dress, only a shade lighter than her lips, to appreciate her youthful beauty. The nearly antique style of her dress with a bit of lace along the oval neckline and half sleeves suited the young woman’s classic beauty.
“Byran, this is Dame Corianne Heylor and her cousin, Tatiana Grekov.”
It was only at Derrick’s introduction that Corianne turned away from him, and slowly at that. Byran hid amusement with a bow that let his gaze skim over Corianne’s teal silk dress whose cut hinted at the daring of youth, especially unattached and ambitious youth. Thin shoulder straps plunged low to reveal her cleavage, and the fabric of the skirt clung to her hips and thighs. Her face was attractive with a slight chubbiness to her cheeks where they were framed by blonde wisps of hair. Byran judged her as not quite out of her teenage years and the younger of the two women.
