by Anna Bradley
He wasn’t reading it. He was staring straight ahead, with such a look of sadness on his face Sydney’s heart contracted with pain. He wanted to leap through the window and take Lucas into his arms, and yet something held him back.
He’d come all this way, but now he was here, he found he couldn’t move a step.
Until he saw it for himself, he hadn’t truly understood what he’d done to Lucas when he left him behind this morning. He’d known Lucas would be left alone, yes, but this…
This was something more than that.
Loneliness. Heartbreak.
Sydney stood frozen, his throat going tighter with every moment he gazed at Lucas through the window. Lucas had only lit one lamp. Outside that narrow pool of light, the room was dark and agonizingly still, with the sort of silence that screamed at you, deafened you with its totality.
This…this was how he’d left the man he loved.
Utterly, unbearably alone.
Lucas would pretend to bear it, though, just as he did everything else. Even now his shoulders were straight, his mouth set, and his face, to a casual observer, expressionless. Looking at him now, no one would ever guess that inside, he was bleeding.
No one, perhaps, but Sydney.
He’d peeled back those layers. He stripped them away, one by one. He hadn’t stopped until he’d reached the tender skin underneath, and then…
Then he’d left.
He couldn’t think of a single reason why Lucas should ever forgive him for that.
Sydney might have stood there all night, gaping through the window like a besotted fool, torn with indecision, but in the end, Brute made up his mind for him. He raised his furry black head, sniffed a few times, then bounced to his feet and dashed to the kitchen door, barking joyfully and battering at the wood with his massive paws.
Lucas looked up, his gray eyes dull. “No, Brute. No chasing raccoons tonight. Go lie down.”
Brute shamelessly ignored this command. He spun around in circles and barked himself into a frenzy. When Lucas still made no move to open the door, he nudged at the knob with his long nose, determined to open it himself.
“Brute. I told you to go lie down. There’s nothing out there.” Lucas’s voice was as dull and flat as his eyes, and Brute seemed to interpret this lack of enthusiasm as permission to do as he wished. He began a frantic digging at the bottom of the door, as if he’d made up his mind to go under it, since he couldn’t go through it.
Sydney couldn’t ever recall being as miserable as he was right now, but even so, a small smile rose to his lips. Really, Brute was the most brilliant dog he’d ever known.
But his smile faded when Lucas sighed, rose to his feet, and approached the door. “You’re a bloody nuisance, Brute. All right then, get back.” He was still muttering irritably when he threw open the door, but when he saw Sydney standing on the other side, he fell silent. The light from the lamp behind him left his face in shadows, and Sydney couldn’t see his expression, but he saw Lucas’s shoulders stiffen.
Was he welcome here still? Or was Lucas about to send him away?
It was a mistake for me to leave you, and I’m sorry. I missed you. I love you…
A thousand words hovered on Sydney’s tongue, but only one made it to his lips. “Luke.”
“What are you doing here?” Lucas’s voice was cool. Certainly not welcoming.
It didn’t bode well, but Sydney took a deep breath and plunged ahead. He’d come here for Lucas, and he wasn’t going to let him go without a fight. “I forgot something before.”
“No. I don’t have anything of yours here.”
“Yes, you do.” Sydney took one step closer, but he didn’t cross the threshold. Lucas hadn’t invited him inside. If anything, he was blocking Sydney’s way. He was standing in the middle of the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest.
The same chest he’d held Sydney against. The same chest Sydney had covered with passionate kisses. He’d rested his head on that chest last night and listened to the sound of Lucas’s steady heartbeat echoing in his ear.
It was where he belonged. It had just taken him a little while to realize it.
“Yes, you do,” Sydney repeated. “You have me, Luke. My heart.”
Lucas went still. “I see. Does your betrothed know about this?”
Sydney rested his good hand on the doorframe above Lucas’s head and leaned forward a little, so he could see Lucas’s face. “As a matter of fact, she does.”
It was surprising news, and another man might have exclaimed at it, but Lucas’s expression never changed. He didn’t even blink. “What did pretty, blue-eyed Miss Ramsey say when you told her?”
“She said she released me from our betrothal, and she did it with joy.” Sydney smiled as he recalled what Isla had said next. “Her only condition was that she be allowed to ‘meet the man who’d won my beautiful heart.’ Those were her exact words, and yes, she’s as lovely as she sounds.”
Lucas shrugged. He was doing his best to appear unaffected, but Sydney saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “She knows I’m a farmer?”
Sydney sighed. “Yes, she knows. Not all aristocrats are obsessed with rank, Lucas. You care far more about it than my friends or I ever would. I don’t deny the issue is there between us, but it’s not the most important thing.”
“It was important enough this morning, Sydney. You’re still an earl, with all the same obligations you had when you left me behind. What’s changed since then?”
The hurt in Lucas’s voice sliced right through Sydney’s heart. “What’s changed is I realized nothing matters to me as much as you do. Not the fortune, not the title—not even the obligation to my father, which I’d told myself was so important. He would have wanted me to be happy, anyway. It’s not as if the world will end when the title passes on. When I’m gone, someone else will become the Earl of Sydney.”
“Someone else will become the Earl of Sydney.” Lucas shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Just like that, eh? Who becomes the earl, if you don’t have a legitimate son?”
Sydney shrugged. “Some distant cousin or other. I think I met him once. He’s half-American, but a good fellow, in spite of it. I’m sure he’ll make a wonderful earl.”
Lucas let out a short laugh. “No doubt he will, but where do we go from here? I don’t know what it is you want of me, Sydney.”
“Well, you could start by letting me through the door.”
Sydney inched forward until the tip of his boot crossed the threshold, but Lucas didn’t move. “Suppose I do. Then what? What is it you see happening between us?”
“Whatever we like. I thought perhaps we’d go to my estate in Kent for a time. It’s quite comfortable, with gardens and grottos and whatnot—all the usual things estates have. Brute will like it, and I think you’d enjoy the library. Once we get bored of that, perhaps we’ll take a trip to the Continent.”
Lucas stared at him without saying a word, and Sydney felt his face heating. “That is, we don’t have to go to Kent. We could stay here, if you’d rather. I could help you plant turnips, and you can read The Complete Farmer to me in the evenings. I swear I’ll listen this time.”
Lucas snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. We’d never make it past the letter B.”
Lucas’s eyes were no longer dull. They were alight with hope, and heartbreaking vulnerability, and love and yearning swelled in Sydney’s chest. “It doesn’t matter to me what we do. All that matters to me is you. I love you, Lucas.”
He’d said the words in his head a dozen times, but never aloud.
Silence fell between them. Even Brute didn’t make a sound.
Then Lucas blew out a quiet breath. “I guess you must, if you’re offering to plant turnips.”
Sydney’s heart leapt with hope, but there was one thing he had to know
before he could take Lucas into his arms. “Do you care for me, Luke?” He swallowed. “Do you think you could ever love me?”
What was left of Lucas’s flat façade cracked and fell away then, replaced with the rare smile Sydney loved so much. “I do love you. How could I not, Sydney? Even when you were unconscious with a concussion, you were smiling.”
Lucas stepped forward and rested his forehead on Sydney’s chest. Sydney’s arms went around him, and he gathered him close. He held Lucas tighter than he’d ever held anything in his life, and there wasn’t a single place he’d rather be.
* * * *
Isla loved her three brothers dearly, but at the moment she was considering leaping over the back of the settee to escape them.
It was intimidating enough to have to explain herself to Finn, but he’d brought Lachlan and Ciaran into the room with him, and neither of them looked any more pleased than Finn did.
“What sort of emergency calls a man away from his betrothed only hours after he’s been reunited with her?” Finn was pacing from one end of the drawing room to the other. Every time he passed the settee, he paused to frown at Isla. “You promised me an explanation, Isla, and I intend to have it. Why was Lord Sydney so determined to return to Beaconsfield?”
“He, ah…he forgot something.”
When she didn’t elaborate, Finn raised an eyebrow. “What?”
His beloved.
Love and urgency often went hand in hand, didn’t they? Isla was rather surprised her brothers hadn’t already guessed the reason for Sydney’s sudden departure. He’d had the look of a man who was desperately in love, and not with his betrothed.
“Isla?” Finn’s voice was sharp. “What did he forget?”
Isla bit her lip. She didn’t like to tell Sydney’s secrets, but she had to tell her brothers something, if only to put an end to this inquisition. “He had a message for Lucas Dean—the man who saved his life—and he’s gone back to Beaconsfield to deliver it.”
Up until this point Lachlan had been content to let Finn question her, but this strange reply tried his patience. “For God’s sake, Isla. He went twenty miles out of his way to deliver a message? Why couldn’t he send it by post?”
“It, um…it’s not the kind of message one sends by post.”
Finn, Lachlan, and Ciaran exchanged glances at this cryptic reply, but instead of elaborating, Isla pressed her lips into a stubborn line. She’d have to tell her brothers she was no longer betrothed to Sydney—that much was certain—but the details of Sydney’s love affair were none of their concern.
Ciaran recognized her mulish expression and tried another tactic. “All right, Isla. Never mind why he went. When’s he coming back?”
Isla looked from one irate face to the next. Somehow all of her brothers had approached the settee at once, and now they were looming over her like three enormous hounds over a tiny, quivering fox.
She swallowed. “He’s not.”
A brief silence followed, and then, predictably, all three men erupted at once.
“What the devil do you mean, he’s not?” Ciaran’s face had gone an ominous shade of red. “He bloody well is, even if I have to—”
“Even if I have to go to Beaconsfield and drag him back here myself.” Lachlan’s hands clenched into fists. “He’s your betrothed. A man doesn’t just run off to Beaconsfield and leave his betrothed behind.”
“Is he even your betrothed anymore?” Finn, who was the first to arrive at the obvious conclusion, regarded Isla with narrowed eyes. “Because it doesn’t sound to me as if he is, Isla.”
Ciaran and Lachlan gaped at Finn, then jerked their gazes back to Isla. “No, that can’t be right.” Lachlan gave Isla a hopeful look. “Can it?”
“It is right,” Isla whispered. “We’re no longer betrothed. This afternoon, I released him from his promise to me.”
Ciaran gripped his hair as if he were ready to tear it out, one fistful at a time. “You released him? You mean he bloody jilted you, don’t you? By God, I’ll call him out over this—”
“Calm down, Ciaran—” Finn began.
“No!” Isla shot to her feet. “Sydney didn’t jilt me! He’d never do such a thing, and you know it, Ciaran. He’s an honorable man. I told you, I released him, and I don’t regret it. I feel nothing but relief.”
A strained silence followed this outburst, then Finn shook his head. “You may come to regret it. Your reputation is ruined, Isla. The ton isn’t going to overlook that business at Lady Entwhistle’s ball. A respectable marriage is your only option, and there won’t be any more suitors.” Finn reached for her hand, his hazel eyes dark with concern. “We’re worried for you, Isla. We don’t want you to be unhappy.”
Tears filled Isla’s eyes. “I know, and I adore you all for it, but I don’t love Sydney, Finn. That is, I do love him, but not in the way a woman ought to love her husband. He doesn’t love me in the right way, either.”
Finn’s face softened. “Ah. That does present a problem, doesn’t it?”
“I can’t think of any reason you shouldn’t love Sydney,” Lachlan muttered. “He’s a decent sort.”
“He’s the loveliest gentleman imaginable.” Isla sighed. “I wish I could love him. It would be a great deal easier if I did.”
Finn gave her a half-hearted smile. “Love is many things, but easy isn’t one of them.”
Isla could see Lachlan and Finn weren’t pleased to find their only sister would likely end a spinster, but neither of them offered any further arguments. They were both married to women they adored. They wouldn’t have settled for anything less in their own marriages, so they could hardly insist she should.
Ciaran, however, wasn’t at all satisfied with this explanation. “Love him? What bloody difference does it make whether you love him or not? You’re not going to toss away a perfectly good match over something as insignificant as love, are you?”
Isla had dropped back down onto the settee and let her head fall into her hands, but she raised it again to look at her brother. Her heart throbbed with pain at the hard expression on his face. Not even a week ago, she would have agreed with him. She would have scorned the idea of marrying for love. She would have argued love was at best a paltry thing and at worst a lie.
Everything had changed since then. She’d changed, and there was no going back to who she’d been before she fell in love with Hugh Courtney. The best she could hope for Ciaran was that someday he’d find a love to heal his own broken heart.
But that wouldn’t happen today.
“It isn’t a good match. Not without love, Ciaran. Both Lord Sydney and I deserve love. We’ll never have it if we marry each other. I could never stand in the way of his happiness, and so I released him from our betrothal.”
Finn sat down beside Isla on the settee, and laid a gentle hand on her back. “Lord Sydney’s already fallen in love with someone else, hasn’t he?”
Isla hesitated, then nodded. “How did you know?”
Ciaran gave Finn a baffled look. “Who could Sydney possibly have fallen in love with in the past week? He’s been recovering from his injuries this entire time, hasn’t he?”
Finn ignored Ciaran and smiled at Isla. “I didn’t think of it at first, but I should have. I’ve never seen anyone so desperate to go to Beaconsfield in my life.”
“It’s not as if there are dozens of pretty young debutantes roaming around Beaconsfield,” Ciaran muttered, shaking his head. “I’d like to think I’d know of it if there were.”
Isla returned Finn’s smile. Others might find Beaconsfield a dull place, but Sydney’s entire world was there. “He’s fallen in love, yes—deeply so—to someone who deserves his affection.”
Ciaran was still trying to puzzle out Sydney’s mysterious love affair. “He hasn’t seen a blessed soul in days, aside from…oh.” Ciaran met Isla’s gaze, his eyes wide.
“Oh.”
“What of you, Isla?” Lachlan asked quietly, his face tight with concern. “Sydney’s found his love, but what of you? What happens to you?”
I love someone else. Someone I can never have.
If she confessed her hopeless love for Hugh, her brothers would wrap her in their big arms and smother her against their enormous chests while she cried. Perhaps then the tight ball of misery in her heart would unravel.
But in the end, she held her tongue. There was nothing to be done for it, and it would only upset her brothers if they knew. Instead, she offered the three of them a weak smile. “For now, I think I’ll settle for an afternoon of rest in my bedchamber. Beyond that, well, I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”
The truth was, nothing much at all would happen to her. Sydney would be with Lucas, and Hugh would marry Lady Juliana, and she…she would go on just as she always had, as if love had never found her at all.
Chapter Twenty-three
Hugh sat behind his desk, watching the shadows lengthen across the walls as twilight settled over Hazelwood.
He seemed to have made a habit of retreating to his gloomy study every evening. No brandy tonight, though. That could far too easily become another habit, and it was one he didn’t intend to indulge. No, if he was going to surrender to his morose moods, he’d do it sober.
Hugh fiddled with the letter opener on his desk, spinning it this way and that, thinking about dinner this evening. It had been a lengthy affair. He’d made it through creditably enough, but it had cost him an effort, and now he was slumped in his chair, his limbs heavy with exhaustion.
Lady Juliana had kept up a determined stream of cheerful chatter throughout the meal. She’d filled all of Hugh’s awkward silences with talk of bluebells and dollhouses, spring flowers, and the sweet little mare Grace had ridden this afternoon. She’d kept to light, pleasant topics, which made it easy for Hugh to join in the conversation now and again without having to give it much thought.
