The Wayward Bride

by Anna Bradley

  “Does your head ache today?” he asked, striving for a neutral tone.

  Sydney reached up to touch the bandage at his temple, almost as if he’d forgotten it was there. “No, not much.”

  “You’re healing quickly. You’ll be gone from here in another few days.”

  Sydney’s smile faded, and something like regret flickered in his eyes. “I suppose. Is that what’s bothering you? Lucas, what—”

  “Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. Burke asked me to deliver a message to you.”

  Sydney straightened against his pillows. “All right. It’s not Molly, is it? She’s not injured after all, is she?”

  Molly was the second horse that had been in the carriage accident—the one that had been missing. Against all odds, Burke had found her wandering near the stables last night.

  Lucas shook his head. “No, Molly’s fine. Burke asked me to let you know he left for Huntington Lodge this morning, as you asked.”

  At the words Huntington Lodge, Sydney’s face paled. “Oh? Did he, ah…did he say anything else?”

  Lucas pressed his lips together. He was tempted not to answer. He pictured himself rising to his feet and pouring the tea without offering a word in reply. What was there to say, in any case? It wasn’t his business if Sydney had a betrothed waiting for him at Huntington Lodge, and a dozen mistresses besides.

  I have no right to be angry…

  But it was there, swelling in his chest, burning the back of his throat.

  Sydney saw it, and his next words made it clear they would have this out between them, no matter whether Lucas wanted to or not. “What else did Burke say, Lucas?”

  Lucas lifted one shoulder in a casual shrug, but he didn’t meet Sydney’s eyes. “Not much. Just that your friends at Huntington Lodge would be worried that you hadn’t arrived when you were meant to, and he was going ahead to ease their minds.”

  Sydney’s expression grew wary, but he sat quietly, waiting for Lucas to go on.

  “I told him he should wait another few days until more of the snow had melted, but he didn’t care for that idea. Or, I should say, he didn’t think you’d care for it.” Lucas winced at the resentment in his voice, but the anger had crawled up his throat and into his mouth, and now it was pushing past his lips.

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Sydney’s gaze remained steady on his face. “Did Burke say why I wanted him to go at once?”

  “He did. He said he had to go today, because you didn’t like to worry Miss Ramsey any longer than necessary.”

  Sydney closed his eyes, and when he opened them again they were shadowy with regret. “Lucas—”

  “Miss Ramsey, your betrothed. She’s pretty, Burke says, with blue eyes.”

  “I should have told you,” Sydney whispered. “I meant to, last night, but—”

  “Why should you have told me?” Lucas laughed, but even he could hear the bitterness in it. “It’s none of my concern. You aren’t obliged to explain yourself to some farmer who just happened to be the one who—”

  “You aren’t some farmer,” Sydney hissed through clenched teeth. “Damn it, you know that, Lucas. You’ve known it from the start.”

  To Lucas’s shame and fury, emotions he wished he didn’t feel gathered into a hard ball in his throat. “No, my lord. I don’t know anything like it. I’ll leave you to pour your own tea,” he added, rising from the chair and turning toward the door.

  Before he could take a single step, Sydney’s arm lashed out, and he caught Lucas by the wrist. “No, you won’t, damn you.” Lucas tried to pull his arm free, but Sydney, who had surprising strength for one so recently injured, yanked Lucas down onto the bed beside him. “I won’t let you walk out that door and pretend you aren’t hurt, or that what’s between us doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re accusing me of pretending?” At last, Lucas was able to meet Sydney’s eyes. “I’m not the one who’s betrothed, Lord Sydney. You are.”

  * * * *

  Those eyes would be his undoing. Every time he looked into them, it felt as if the world had just shifted under his feet.

  Except for now.

  Now when he looked into Lucas’s wounded gray eyes, he just felt like a liar.

  Sydney loosened his grip on Lucas’s wrist, but he didn’t let go. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me not to tell you at once. It’s true. I’m betrothed. Her name is Isla Ramsey. She’s Scottish, blue-eyed, and yes, very pretty.”

  “Do you love her?”

  The words sounded as if they’d been dragged from Lucas’s throat with a clenched fist. It had cost him an effort to ask. Sydney laid a hand against Lucas’s cheek, shivering a little at the prickle of hair that tickled his palm. When Lucas met his eyes, he sighed. “I do love her, yes. She’s a dear friend, but beyond that, it’s…rather complicated.”

  Was it, though? It had always seemed so before, but now, with Lucas’s eyes fixed on him, a hidden plea in their depths, it all seemed so simple.

  You gave your life to the person you loved.

  What could be simpler than that?

  Lucas looked away, down at his hands. “It shouldn’t be.”

  “No, and perhaps here in Beaconsfield it isn’t.” Sydney laughed a little. “But aristocratic marriages are often messy affairs, and they’re very rarely about love.”

  Lucas’s lip curled. “What are they about, then?”

  Sydney reached forward and gently brushed the auburn hair out of Lucas’s eyes. “Titles. Fortunes. Legitimate heirs. Scandals.”

  Lucas jerked back, away from Sydney’s touch. “Sounds like ballocks to me. Which is yours about?”

  Once again Sydney laughed, but it was a short, harsh sound. “All four.”

  Lucas’s eyebrows shot up. “There was a scandal?”

  Sydney sighed. “There was an incident about a month ago, at a ball in London, involving a card cheat, a lady being blackmailed into a betrothal, and a secret assignation in a library—”

  “Christ, Sydney.” Lucas was staring at him in horror.

  “Yes, well as I said, it’s complicated, but none of that matters. What does matter is by the end of that ball, the ton believed I’d compromised Isla—Miss Ramsey—and the only way to save her reputation is for us to marry. We announced our betrothal the same week.”

  “Good Lord, you aristocrats are even worse than I thought.” Lucas shook his head in disbelief. Then something else occurred to him, and he jerked his gaze to Sydney’s face. “Did you compromise her?”

  “No! Of course not. She’s…we aren’t…I care for her very much, but our relationship is based on friendship and mutual necessity. We’re not…romantic. I think of her as a sister, not a lover, and I don’t suppose you’re at a loss to imagine why that would be the case.”

  “Yet you’re betrothed to her? You’re marrying a lady you think of as a sister, and you intend to get heirs on her?” Lucas tapped his palm against his forehead, as if trying to force his brain to make sense of this. “I don’t see…how will that even work?”

  Sydney had asked himself that same question, but he hadn’t come up with any better answer than he’d make it work, because he hadn’t any other choice. “I’m betrothed to her, and I consider myself fortunate to have found her. Very few ladies in England would be as…understanding as Isla has been about our unusual circumstances. I haven’t kept any secrets from her. I trust her, Lucas.”

  Lucas’s gaze shifted from Sydney’s face to the pile of pillows behind his head, then to the rumpled coverlet over his lap, and Sydney knew he was thinking of the kiss they’d shared the night before.

  Sydney had thought about it, too. He’d spent all night thinking about it, but whatever dreams he’d woven in his head had dissipated in the cold light of morning. His heart grew heavier every time he looked at Lucas, but there was no point in sniveling over what couldn’t be chang
ed. In the end, there was nothing special about his situation. More often than not, aristocrats married from obligation rather than inclination.

  “I must marry, Lucas. I’m the sixth Earl of Sydney, and my father’s only child. I have an obligation to my properties and title to marry and produce legitimate heirs. Perhaps it shouldn’t be complicated, but it is.”

  “In some ways it is,” Lucas muttered. “In others, it’s much simpler.”

  Sydney stiffened. He’d kept his fingers wrapped around Lucas’s wrist during this discussion, but now he let it go. “If you wish to say something, then just come out with it.”

  Lucas regarded him with shadowy gray eyes. “It’s easier to be a wealthy, charming earl with a pretty, blue-eyed wife and an heir or two than it is to be a nobleman who’s the last of his line, who happens to prefer the company of men to the company of ladies. I can see how that would be inconvenient for an earl.”

  Lucas’s tone wasn’t scornful or condemning, but Sydney caught a flicker of sympathy in the clear gray eyes, and he found himself abruptly furious. “Do you presume to think you know me so well, after so short an acquaintance? Four days, Lucas, and I was bloody unconscious for one of those.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened with surprise at Sydney’s harsh tone. “I do know you. Not the part about being an earl, but the other part, about wanting things to be easier. I know all about that, Lord Sydney.”

  “Don’t call me Lord Sydney! It’s Sydney, or perhaps you should call me by my Christian name, since you claim to know me so well. But where you err, Lucas, is in imagining I’ve ever denied who I am, or even questioned it.”

  “I never meant to say you did.”

  “I’ve known it since the first hair sprouted between my legs. Jesus, Lucas. Do you suppose you’re the first man I’ve ever kissed?”

  Lucas flinched. “No.”

  Sydney bit back the angry words on his lips and ran his hand down his face. “I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t have said that.” His good hand fisted in the coverlet. He’d had this same argument with himself too many times to count. Each time he’d come to the same conclusion, and he’d long since determined it to be inevitable. He would marry and produce heirs. It was what his father always expected of him, and it was what he expected of himself.

  But somehow, with Lucas’s gray eyes on him, all his carefully reasoned arguments seemed less convincing. So he closed his own eyes and waved his hand in a vague gesture of dismissal. “My head aches, after all. I believe I’ll rest now.”

  Lucas didn’t answer, but it was quite a long time before Sydney felt the bed shift as it was relieved of Lucas’s weight. Sydney kept his eyes closed. A long period of silence followed, and he thought Lucas must have crept out of the bedchamber, but then he heard the familiar deep voice above him. He opened his eyes to find Lucas still standing over his bed, gazing down at him with a troubled expression.

  “Perhaps I don’t understand, Sydney. I’m not an earl. But I do know denying a part of who you are is the loneliest feeling in the world.”

  Sydney recoiled, the words striking him like a blow. He knew all too well how true they were, and in that moment, he hated Lucas for saying them aloud—for making him hear them. “Lonely? Christ, Lucas, this from you? From a man who’s spent the past two years alone on a remote farm, without a single person to talk to?”

  There was a moment of fraught silence, and then Lucas asked in a quiet voice, “Do you really believe, Sydney, that if you’re never alone, you’ll never be lonely?”

  Sydney let out a hard, bitter laugh. “Well, I suppose you’d know, wouldn’t you? If anyone’s perfected the art of loneliness, it’s you.”

  Lucas’s mouth opened, then closed again. His face drained of color as Sydney’s taunt sank in. He stood there for a moment, looking down at Sydney, his eyes so dark they were nearly black. “I don’t deny it. I am lonely, but I hoped…” Lucas paused, swallowed. “I’d hoped to save you from the same fate.”

  He turned and walked out the bedchamber door without another word, Brute trotting at his heels. Sydney listened as his boots thudded down the stairs, and after a few moments, he heard the front door open and then close again.

  He lay in the bed for a long time after Lucas left, his eyes squeezed shut, and tried to think of nothing. The tea went cold, and when he opened his eyes again, afternoon shadows had begun to creep into the room.

  He didn’t sleep, and Lucas didn’t return.

  As Sydney lay there, the misery coiled tightly inside him began to uncurl, crawling from the pit of his stomach into his chest, until finally it wrapped around his heart. By then he was so wretched he was twisting in the sheets, as if the fires of hell had been lit beneath him.

  Why had he said such a cruel, hurtful thing to Lucas? He’d never in his life set out to intentionally wound someone as he’d done today. The shock in those gray eyes when those words fell between them…

  Jesus, he couldn’t bear to think of it.

  Lucas had saved his life. He’d carried him more than a mile in a violent storm—carried him. He’d brought Sydney to his home, and he’d taken care of him. Lucas had set his shoulder, dressed his wounds. He’d fed him tea and whiskey, and read to him, and he’d stayed with him while he slept.

  Even if none of that were true—even if Lucas hadn’t saved his life in a dozen different ways over the past few days—Sydney still had no excuse for speaking to him in such a way, because…

  Because you didn’t speak that way to someone you loved.

  He drew the covers back and sat up so he was perched on the edge of the bed. If Lucas wouldn’t come in on his own, then he’d go find him and bring him back. He rested his foot on the floor, shivering at the cold, then heaved himself upward. He hadn’t been out of his bed for days, and his legs wobbled a bit beneath him. Otherwise he felt surprisingly steady, and far stronger than he’d expected.

  Yes, this would do. This would do nicely.

  Clothes, though. He’d need those. Where the devil had Lucas put his clothes? He glanced around and noticed a simple wooden chest sitting to the side of the window, next to Brute’s blanket.

  There, perhaps.

  Sydney hobbled his way across the room, his movements slow and careful. He intended to fetch his clothes, or at the very least his boots, but a glance out the window made him stop and catch his breath.

  Lucas was outdoors, standing in the snow, not twenty paces away from the house. Sydney didn’t know how long he’d been there, but judging from the wash of red the cold had left on Lucas’s cheeks and the way he was rubbing his gloved hands together, he guessed it had been some time.

  Since he’d left the house? No, surely not. That had been hours ago.

  Sydney let his gaze roam over the snowy yard, to see if he could determine what was out there that could hold Lucas’s attention for so long. Brute was frolicking about, spinning in circles and biting at the snow, but otherwise there was nothing. As far as he could tell, it was a typical farmyard—

  Just then Lucas bent down and ran his hand over something on the ground in front of him. He brushed the snow aside, then he crouched down and pushed more of the snow away, until he’d cleared a small patch of bare ground at his feet.

  Sydney drew closer to the window, and that was when he saw them.

  Two small, curved stones.

  Headstones.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lucas knew Sydney was behind him. He heard his clumsy steps and labored breaths well before Sydney even made it halfway across the yard.

  Damn it, the last thing Sydney should be doing was stumbling about in the snow, where he could slip at any moment. If he should fall, he could displace the bones in his shoulder or re-break every finger on his left hand.

  Lucas opened his mouth, a reproach hovering on the tip of his tongue, but then he closed it again without speaking. He pressed his lips
together and kept his gaze straight ahead.

  It was none of his concern.

  If Sydney wanted to take foolish risks, that was his business. He was a grown man—a nobleman, no less. He could take care of himself, and he’d made it clear this morning he didn’t want Lucas interfering in his affairs.

  Lucas blinked down at the slush of ice and snow at his feet. Sydney’s sharp rebuke had been just what he needed to snap him out of the fog he’d been living in these past few days.

  Sydney was leaving. He’d be gone soon, and Lucas would go back to doing what he’d always done. He’d farm his land and take care of Brute. He’d been content enough with his quiet life before Sydney came—of course, he had—and he’d be just as content after Sydney was gone.

  He reached down and stroked Brute’s enormous, silky head. Brute learned against him with a soft snort, his warm breath forming a cloud in the freezing air. Brute was fond of romping in the snow, but he’d learned over the past two years not to leave Lucas alone for long whenever Lucas paused beside the graves. Brute returned to his side every few moments to lick Lucas’s hand or nuzzle into his side.

  Sydney was still trying to catch his breath from the effort it had taken him to walk across the yard when he came up beside Lucas. “I’ve never seen so much ice in my life. Damned ridiculous,” he muttered.

  Lucas nodded in reply, but he didn’t speak, and an awkward silence fell between them.

  “You’ve been gone for hours, Lucas,” Sydney murmured at last. “It’s too cold to stand out here for so long.”

  Lucas’s hands had long since gone numb, but he shook his head. “I’m not cold.”

  “No? I would think all your vital bits would be frozen solid by now.” Sydney tried a grin but then sobered again at the tight look on Lucas’s face. His voice was quiet when he said, “I got worried when you didn’t return to the house, Luke.”

  Lucas sighed. “Go back inside, Sydney. You shouldn’t have come out at all.”

  “I will, in a little while.” Sydney gestured toward the two gravestones at their feet. “I would have come down with you, if I’d known you wanted to—” Sydney broke off, and fell abruptly silent.