by Rye Hart
I jumped up. “Jared! What are you going to do? What are you doing?”
“I’m giving this man the chance to repent for his sins before I send him to his maker!” he snarled, eyes raging with anger.
He pressed his gun to the man’s forehead. “Grovel! Beg for forgiveness!”
The man’s eyes were wide and he was pleading for Jared to spare his life, but Jared just stared him down. “I already gave you one chance. Why should I give you another?” he asked.
I ran to Jared and grabbed his arm. “Jared! Don’t do this!” I pleaded, my eyes wet with tears. I dug my fingers into his arm and gave him a little shake. “Please! Please don’t do this!”
He looked at me, his eyes full of surprise and shock. “What do you mean?” he asked, setting his lips. “Don’t you want him to pay?”
“God will make him pay! It’s not our place to decide who lives and dies. I’m here, I’m fine now,” I whispered, holding him close.
He swallowed and closed his eyes, turning to look at me. “I cannot let him get away with hurting you. What if he hurts someone else?”
“God will judge him. God will protect his children. Hasn’t he always protected us?” I whispered. “He brought us together and we cannot question Him. We have to believe that there is a bigger plan,” I whispered, leaning up and kissing his cheek.
Jared’s hands shook for a moment but he finally holstered his gun, clenching his teeth and turning away. “Get out of my sight,” he ordered.
The other man jumped to his feet and ran off in the same direction as his horse. My heart finally started to calm down and I gripped Jared’s arm, looking up at him, smiling shakily. “Thank you.”
He sighed. “No, thank you. I was blinded my own anger and fear,” he said sadly, reaching out and touching my cheek.
I sighed and leaned into him, nuzzling him gently. “It’s okay. We’re okay now. But we need to get home. Gabriel is alone and terrified.”
Jared helped me onto his horse and we rode back to the house where Gabe’s cries could be heard from outside the door. I ran inside and scooped my child up, holding him close to my chest and trying to comfort him with kisses and kind words. Gabriel sobbed for a while, his tiny hands tangled in my hair. When he finally calmed, I set him down to sleep and took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Everything had happened so fast today and my brain was struggling to keep up.
I turned to look for Jared but he’d gone to the bedroom, starting to take off his holsters and uniform. When I entered the bedroom he was down to his shirt and pants and he turned to look at me. I frowned a little and stepped inside the room.
“Don’t you need to-“
“I don’t need to do anything other than be with you right now,” he whispered, walking over to me and wrapping his arms around me. “Everything else can wait,” he murmured, holding me close.
I sighed softly and kissed his neck, resting my head against his shoulder. I leaned into him, allowing myself to feel safe in his arms after this whole ordeal.
“It would be nice if you would stay,” I whispered, finally allowing myself to be weak.
He gripped my shoulders and pulled me away, looking at me seriously. “I have something I need to tell you.”
I looked at him and blinked, unsure of whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. I nodded and pressed my hand to his cheek. “Of course. What is it darling?” I asked, almost hesitant.
“I was so scared. When I heard your screams and when I saw him with his hand in your hair. I was so afraid that I might lose you for good and I’d never be able to tell you-” he broke off, overcome with emotion.
My eyes widened and my heart fluttered in my stomach. “Tell me what?” I breathed.
He took a deep breath. “I was afraid I’d never get to tell you that I loved you,” he whispered.
Tears came to my eyes and I threw my arms around him, holding him tight “I love you! I love you too!” I said.
He rocked me back and forth for a moment, kissing my face wherever he could. “I promise, I’m never going to let anyone hurt you ever again.”
“I know. I love you.”
We held each other for what felt like an eternity, kissing and whispering our love to each other. I knew, in that moment, that Richard was smiling down on us from heaven.
Chapter Ten
We were married shortly after that incident. We were planning on waiting until the fall but ended up being married in the summer. After everything that happened, we didn’t want to waste any more time.
The wedding was beautiful and more than I could have ever hoped for. Everyone came and wished us well, offering gifts of food and flowers. Gabriel was walking by the time our wedding came around and acted as the ring bearer. Jared was kind enough to have a small suit tailored for him.
After the wedding, a peculiar thing happened. The man who had tried to abduct me returned. He’d been unable to find his horse and had tried making it on his own in the wild, but it proved too difficult. He returned to the town and begged forgiveness, admitting that he had been shows the error of his ways. After a little nudging from me, Jared offered him a job as a deputy.
The man’s name was Maverick and he ended up being one of the best deputies Jared ever worked with. As he was integrated into our little town, he used his strength and size for good rather than mayhem. He turned out to be a rather mild-mannered man who loved to read and spend time with the horses. We learned so much about him in the time he stayed with us.
One of the young girls in town took an interest in him and despite his past, the two went on to get married. She was pregnant with their first child and looked like she might pop any day now. Maverick was proof to me that the Lord really did work in mysterious ways.
I smiled softly and ran my hand over my belly, tracing shapes with my fingers. I’d only found out about my own pregnancy about a month previous. I was barely showing but Jared was impressed with the tiny baby bump. He would come home every night and kiss it, offering tender, loving words. He was going to be an amazing daddy, even if he was terrified he might mess up.
When Jared started to worry about his abilities as a father, I would point out the fact that Gabriel adored him. Gabriel knew Jared as his daddy and while I wanted to tell him about Richard eventually, I thought it best to let Jared and Gabriel bond as father and son for now.
Marrying Jared didn’t mean I forgot about Richard. I’d never forget about Richard for as long as I lived. He would always be my first love, but I knew I couldn’t hold onto him forever. He wouldn’t have wanted that for me. I knew that if he could have met Jared, he would have wanted him to take care of me.
“What are you thinking about over there?” Jared called, walking over to me from the river.
He was carrying a net and Gabriel tottered along behind him, holding a small bucket that had rocks in it. I smiled and shook my head.
“Just daydreaming.”
“About what?” Jared asked, settling beside me.
I chuckled and leaned in, offering him a kiss. “You,” I hummed.
He smiled and put a hand on my belly, whispering the words that still made me blush. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Those words were so simple, but they gave me so much hope.
The End
The Blind Eyes of Love
Chapter One
“There you go, sir, right down this way, mind your step or you’ll be down in the dirt and that’s no way for those fine white breeches of yours to end up now, is it? Down one more, there you go, and then more—oh, have a care, sir, that step is a bit tipsy, like. There we go, ‘tis all right now. Just a bit more.” The sturdy grip of the innkeeper’s wife steering him out of the inn was both reassuring and annoying. “Now up you go, into the post-chaise, that’s right, sir, up—yes, that’s it!” she crowed as if he had done something quite remarkable by hoisting himself into the post-chaise after she had directed him to the opening. “Now, mind, my Harold wi
ll go along with you to get you to Laverly Hall, sir, and he’ll come back after you’re safely home.”
Dennison St. John, Duke of Laverly, fumbled for his purse. “Please take this for your pains, and your Harold’s, too,” he said, drawing out a coin.
“Not to hear of it, sir. You kept Bonaparte out of England, and that’s good enough for us,” the woman said.
She sounded sincere. More likely, she pitied him, to have gone off to war in full manhood and to return home sightless. It would doubtless be a tale she’d regale others with in the tavern; the poor Duke, not a soldier any longer, just a blind man who’d given his eyes at Waterloo for the glory of England .
“I insist,” he said, his tone firm and cold.
“Can’t do it, sir,” she said. “I told you, you’ve given us enough.”
Laverly put his purse back in his coat. He would give payment to her husband. Perhaps the good Harold would be more willing to be paid for his pains.
He could hear Harold entering the carriage and the seat creaking as he sat down opposite Laverly. Then the post-chaise took off. Harold, who smelled, not unpleasantly, of ale, cleared his throat.
“Good to be heading home, sir,” he said.
Laverly kept his gaze, such as it was, on the window, as the landscape he couldn’t see passed.
“Reckon you’ve had enough of Europe,” Harold tried again.
“Europe,” Laverly said, “has had enough of me.”
“Right, yes, of course. Did you see him, sir? I mean, before? Did you see Bonaparte?”
“Unfortunately, no. I was in hospital when he was taken.”
“Pity. You’d have wanted to see that,” Harold said.
“Not really. Bonaparte isn’t worth the effort.”
“No, course not,” Harold said hurriedly, as if aware that he was on unwelcome territory but unsure of how to deliver himself from it. “Still, I reckon it’s like seeing a monster when you’re a little ‘un. You’re that frightened of him, , but then it turns out to be only the shadow of the bedpost or some such thing, when you wake up.”
The bedrooms at Laverly Hall were grand; he remembered that much, although he’d been away for years, serving with Wellington. His family wealth, his mother’s style, and his father’s pride of heritage had guaranteed that Laverly Hall did justice to its architectural ancestry. The estate had been long inhabited by Laverlys when the Yorks and Lancasters were fighting one another. Now, centuries later, it was the one constant remaining in his life. At least in his own home, with the family servants around him, he could take account of his life and decide his next step. He would not venture out into society until he had mastered himself. Blindness was not death; that was what the doctor had told him. Of course, the doctor could say that, he had his bloody sight. But at Laverly Hall, Laverly knew that he could restore himself. The family paintings in the hall that celebrated the Laverly who’d married a Spanish princess, the Lavelry who had taken the cross to Jerusalem, the Laverly who had served Queen Elizabeth; they were part of his inheritance, even if only in portrait form. He could no longer see them, but he remembered where they were, each and every one. He recalled his father, when guests came to stay, showing them the gallery of Laverlys and reciting the biography of each one’s renown. For one did not merit a portrait merely because one was a Laverly. No, one was expected to have done something of note.
What was there for him to do? He’d served with Wellington, fought with honor, earned his medals. Was that enough to garner a portrait? A fine showing he’d make in his scarlet coat and white breeches, polished boots, saber in hand, the unruly black hair that defined a Corinthian’s style, and of course the famous Laverly jade eyes--and dark spectacles. Just what was needed to polish off the dashing figure of a Hussar, that final proof of his sacrifice for King and country.
Laverly realized that he must have spoken out loud because Harold cleared his throat and Lavelry could hear him shift his weight in the seat as if he were uncertain whether to get up or stay seated.
“We’ll be there shortly, sir,” Harold said encouragingly.
Yes. Home. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until the days after the artillery explosion when he’d awakened in the field hospital, his eyes bandaged and his surroundings strange to him in a way that the barracks never had been. His wounds were healed, the doctor had said dispassionately. It was true that he couldn’t see, but there had been damage and they’d feared scarring, but he had nothing to fear there.
As if a scar would be worse than this, Laverly thought savagely, his anger roiling through him anew at their stupidity. To be blind, when he was not yet thirty, when he had not married nor fathered a child, was a cruel prank worthy of the Greek Furies or an uncaring God. In his present state of mind, he could see little difference between the two.
“Almost there now, sir,” Harold said as if he were a talking timepiece. “Will your servants be expecting you?”
They would not. Laverly had told no one that he was coming home. Explanations were too unwieldy; he had dictated a letter to be sent to Glesson, the butler, explaining that he had been wounded and would be mustered out and returning home before the harvest was over. That was as much as he would let the nurse write, even when she begged him to allow her to provide more detail. He refused. One didn’t provide one’s itinerary for servants, he had told her haughtily. But that wasn’t the reason for his reticence. He would be returning home to a staff that had known him since he was a wild youth; now they would seem him chastened. They would most likely feel it was his comeuppance. And he would not be able to tell who pitied him, who was amused, who mocked, because they would be able to see him and he, with his useless, sightless, ruined eyes, could see nothing. To be so humbled when one was an officer, a gentleman, the scion of a noble line, was to be less than a servant, it was to be nothing at all.
“I’ll wager they’ve missed you, sir,” Harold offered. “We don’t hear much from Laverly Hall; quiet, it’s been, since Her Ladyship passed on. A house in mourning.”
His father had died four years ago. His mother had been gone a year. A sister had died in childbirth three years ago, her child taken with her. There were cousins, and if he should die without an heir, there would doubtless be someone who would be more than willing to inherit the title, the lands, the estate, and the gold. But he didn’t intend to die without an heir. Dammit, he didn’t need sight to do that!
“Yes,” he said simply, feeling obligated to acknowledge Harold’s efforts to make the journey a pleasant one, even if his attempts simply conjured forth the ghosts of Laverly Hall and the fact that the living Laverly was not a whole man any longer.
The post-chaise stopped. The postilion and coachman dismounted, and Harold got out of the vehicle. Impatient, Laverly got up from his seat. He could hear the two men talking in low voices as if they didn’t want him to hear. He banged on the door of the post-chaise to indicate his desire to descend and obviously, since he couldn’t see the bloody ground, he would require some assistance.
“Sir, did you say no one knows you’re back?” the coachman asked.
“Said as much. No, I didn’t announce my homecoming. I expect they’re inside. Be so good as to carry my trunks to the door, if you please. One of the footmen will take them from there.”
“Sir, it don’t look as though anyone’s about,” Harold said uneasily.
“Of course they are, where would they be? Knock on the door,” he ordered sourly.
“I did sir,” said another voice, belonging to the postilion. “Nobody come to the door, sir.”
Laverly swore. “Is there some village festival to which they’ve gone?” he suggested.
“Sir,” Harold said, “it don’t look like anyone’s been about for some time. The grass is overgrown, and no one’s trimmed anything since last spring, I’m figuring. No lights are on inside. And the fine house looks poorly done by.”
“What the devil do you mean, it looks poorly done by?” Laverly raised th
e hilt of his sword and hammered the door with it. They’d hear that, even if they had turned in for an early night.
Silence returned his barrage of knocks. Laverly waited, then commenced knocking again.
“Sir, I don’t think anyone is---“
“Dammit, they’ll rouse or I’ll know the reason why!” Laverly bellowed, giving up on his sword and applying his fists to the hard oaken door.
“Sir,” Harold said. “I’ll find a window and see what’s inside.”
Laverly turned the doorknob. It opened without resistance.
“Careful sir, it’s near dark. I don’t—“Harold muffled an oath as he tripped over something in the entranceway.
The house was cold. It bore a musty, unused odor as if nothing fresh, neither human nor floral, had been inside its walls for too long.
“Those blackguards,” Harold said in a long, exhaling breath of disbelief.
“What is it?” Laverly asked, keeping his voice level with effort. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the French coming at him, it wasn’t swords or guns.
“Sir, it looks to me like your house might have been robbed,” Harold said.
“Robbed? Well I’m not surprised if the servants were so witless as to leave the door unlocked.”
“Take my arm, sir, and we’ll head in a ways, and I’ll tell you what I see and you can tell me what it signifies,” Harold said.
What it signified was that someone was going to get sacked, Laverly thought, but he said nothing to Harold, who linked his arm with Laverly while the postilion followed them.
They went through the house that way, Harold describing what he saw, and Laverly realizing what was not there by the slim evidence that met Harold’s eyes of what remained. Room by room they walked, Harold’s amiability changing to grimness as he described furniture that was devoid of adornment, windows minus draperies, fireplaces forgotten, the ashes of a long-ago flame now cold. Now and again, there was the sound of a rustling that hinted at other inhabitants who had moved in to take advantage of a residence where humans would not disturb them.
