Realm 04 - A Touch of Grace

by Regina Jeffers

  A Touch of Grace

  by Regina Jeffers

  Copyright © 2013 by Regina Jeffers

  A Touch of Grace (Book 4 of the Realm Series)

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any format whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  White Soup Press

  Cast of Characters

  Members of the Realm and Their Ladies

  James Daniel Kerrington, Viscount Worthing (Future Earl of Linworth)–the leader of the Realm; the future Earl of Linworth; from Derbyshire; resides at Linton Park Eleanor Agatha Fowler Kerrington, Viscountess Worthing–Brantley Fowler’s sister Brantley William Fowler, the Duke of Thornhill–from Kent; resides at Thorn Hill Velvet Elaine Aldridge Fowler, the Duchess of Thornhill–the Fowlers’ cousin Marcus Alexander Wellston, Earl of Berwick (Lord Yardley)–from Northumberland; resides at Tweed Hall Cashémere Adele Aldridge Wellston, Countess Yardley–Velvet’s younger sister; has a twin named Satiné Aldridge Gabriel Luis Crowden, Marquis of Godown–from Staffordshire; resides at Gossling Hall Miss Grace Anne Nelson–daughter of Baron and Lady Nelson from Lancashire; her family has known hard times; she works as a governess for the Averettes Aidan Kimbolt, Viscount Lexford–lives in Cheshire; resides at Lexington Arms

  John Swenton, Baron Shannon–lives in Yorkshire; resides at Marwood Manor Sir Carter Lowery–second son of Baron Blakehell; a baronet from Kent; was given Huntingborne Abbey by George IV, the Prince Regent

  Minor Characters of Importance to the Series

  Shaheed Mir–leader of a band of Baloch warriors; seeks revenge on the Realm for stealing a fist-sized emerald Murhad Jamot–Mir’s agent in England

  Viscount Averette (Samuel Aldridge)–the Aldridge girls’ paternal uncle; raised Cashémere Baron Ashton (Charles Morton)–the Aldridge girls’ maternal uncle; raised Satiné Ashmita–Brantley Fowler’s first wife; attacked by Mir’s band

  Sonali–Fowler’s daughter

  Geoffrey Nelson–Grace brother; a destitute baron in Lancashire Shepherd–the Realm’s leader; so called because he gathers “lost souls”

  As she reached the stable’s main door, it swung wide, and a man in a finely fitted coat staggered toward her. At first, Grace had thought to turn on her heels to make a speedy escape, but then a face of an Adonis stilled her. She had seen him previously–but twice. In London. At the party at Carlton House. And again at the celebratory party at the Duke of Thornhill’s Town home. “Lord Godown,” she gasped, and then observed the painful grimace as he pitched forward. Grace instinctively caught him, shoving him backward to brace him against the building. “My Lord, you are unwell!” she said anxiously. He used his free hand to steady himself against the door. “Permit me to find assistance.” Her hand rested on his arm, and Grace heard the hiss as he looked out over the inn yard. She imagined he judged how many steps it would take to achieve the inn’s door.

  “No,” he insisted. With a deep inhale, he said, “Would you be so kind as to lead me to the inn?”

  Without considering her actions, Grace laced his arm about her shoulder to brace his weight against her frame. She had never felt such panic. When she had first laid eyes on this man–some six months prior–she had considered his Christian name and how perfectly it fit his handsome countenance. Gabriel. The angel. The avenging angel, but an angel, nonetheless. “Lord Godown, please,” she whispered hoarsely as his heavy tread nearly took both of them to their knees. “Permit me to find someone more fit to assist you.”

  A barely perceptible shake of his head declared his refusal. Grace’s bonnet shifted forward as his arm pressed heavy on her shoulders. He continued his jerky steps toward his goal–another ten feet to the walkway.

  Finally, she shoved up on his arm to bracket his weight against the building’s side. Sliding free of his grasp, she turned to examine him more closely. In the darkening shadows, she realized his hair was sweaty and windblown, and dirt streaked his clothes’ fine cut. Then she saw the trickle of blood darkening his shirt. “Oh, my God!” she rasped as she reached for her linen to press to the opening. “Tell me what has happened.”

  Head back and eyes closed, he appeared unable to answer, but he finally spit out the words. “Trailed my attacker to this inn.” Grace looked on in wonderment as he took a deep steadying breath. “You did not faint from the blood.”

  “No, my Lord.” Grace pulled a second cloth from her reticule. She pressed it firmly over the first.

  “Do you have a room?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  Grace doubly regretted her unmarried status. If she had proper quarters, she could tend his wounds in private. She shook her head in the negative. “The innkeeper will not let to a woman without companionship. I will spend the night in the common room.”

  Lord Godown nodded weakly. “Would you share my room?” He caught her gaze, and the clarity surprised her. “If you have a husband whom you were to meet on the road…” He did not finish his thoughts as the pain snatched his breath away. Frantically, he caught at her hand. He said softly, “I do not wish to die alone.”

  Grace recognized his proposition to be a scandalous one, but she had accepted the inevitable conclusion the moment she had draped Gabriel Crowden’s arm about her. She would willingly participate in her reputation’s ruination. The fear she recognized in his gaze stayed her. This man carried death about his strong, muscular shoulders. “Yes, I will stay with you, Lord Godown,” she said without hesitation.

  “You have called me by name three times. Do we hold a prior acquaintance?” She noted how he stood taller.

  Grace blushed as disappointment filled her. Why would an “Adonis” remember someone as nondescript as she? “Grace…Miss Grace Nelson. Lord Averette once served as my employer.”

  Lord Godown cupped her face as if seeing it for the first time. “Miss Nelson. Of course.” He stroked her mouth with the thumb of his left hand. “Just what I require. A touch of grace.”

  Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.

  - Friedrich Schiller

  Prologue

  The tension lay thick about his shoulders, but Gabriel Crowden could have cared less. His Aunt Rosabel’s last letter had announced his father’s health had taken a turn for the worst. Aunt Bel had hinted Gabriel should return home, but he could not do so until that horrid business with Lord Harold Templeton had been erased from the books. Shepherd had promised both Gabriel and the Marquis of Godown, if Godown’s only son would give the British government six years of loyal service, then “Shepherd” would see that the Prince Regent would expunge Gabriel’s transgressions. Doubting the soundness of the arrangement, reluctantly, his father had agreed, and Gabriel would not betray his father’s promise. He knew the marquis would never renege on a vow, and neither would he. Gabriel had learned life’s hard lessons. Now, he sat in an open-air tent with his fellow members of the Realm. His group had arrived on Shaheed Mir’s rocky doorstep three days prior. Unfortunately, Mir had made but one appearance in that time, and each man in the Realm had known frustration.

  “What is amiss, Crowden?” James Kerrington said softly from beside him. Kerrington, Viscount Worthing, served as the leader of their tight-knit unit.

  Crowden gave himself a mental shake. He could not worry himself with his father’s well being. It would be nearly five more years before he could return to his family’s bosom. Swallowing his anguish, Crowden shrugged off his friend’s concern. “Just considering what seasonal c
hanges England might be experiencing. Spring time in Staffordshire brings on an explosion of greenery.”

  By design, they both glanced to the open tent flap. There were parts of Persia that were covered in lush greenery, but not this section of scraggily mountains between Persia and India. Yet, the terrain provided Mir’s band protection from their enemies, all the Baloch’s enemies, except the seven Englishmen who occupied the man’s tent.

  Shepherd had relayed orders they were to secure Mir’s cooperation in protecting the English supply routes into the area, but it was the consensus of Crowden’s cohorts Mir could not be trusted.

  “What the…?” Kerrington growled under his breath.

  Gabriel looked up to see Brantley Fowler, his former school foe, shifting his weight toward where they had previously noted how the Balochs had imprisoned a young girl in an adjoining tent. The men had taken turns visiting their captive. In the beginning, her screams had haunted Gabriel’s soul, but he would not risk his friends’ lives to save a girl beyond saving. Unfortunately, Fowler lacked such control. The future Duke of Thornhill held a predeliction toward saving damsels, fair or not. It was common knowledge among the other Realm members Fowler fought a silent battle to right his father’s wrongs. The current duke held a lusty reputation for debauchery, and his son placed himself in the way of other men who hurt innocent females.

  Kerrington moved to temper Fowler’s impetuous nature while Gabriel turned slowly to assess where the others had settled. Carter Lowery stretched out on a low-slung chaise, but Gabriel noted how the youngest member of their group deftly palmed a double-edged knife, which Baron Blakehell’s second son had extracted from his boot’s lining.

  “I believe I will take a walk. Stretch my legs,” Fowler announced as he moved toward the girl’s quarters. Crowden had not expected the Balochs to succumb to such a ploy.

  When the guard motioned Fowler away, Gabriel stepped before the man with whom he held a healthy competition. “You cannot save the world, Fowler,” he cautioned.

  Fowler insisted, “I can save her.”

  Gabriel noted John Swenton had returned to the tent; the baron and Marcus Wellston had assumed an alert slant to their shoulders. Eyeing Fowler contemptuously, Crowden grumbled, “Oh, Lord, here we go again.” He paused briefly before retreating into the shadows. “Give me time…” he began, but Fowler had not hesitated. Raising his hands in an act of submission, the future duke smiled largely and turned casually to the group. Only a raised eyebrow warned the others what would follow. Gabriel nodded to Aidan Kimbolt to flank Fowler on the right while he assumed the left position. A heartbeat later, the melee consumed them. Nearby, Wellston shot one of the charging Balochs in the knee before assisting Swenton with another pair.

  Gabriel noted Kerrington shoving Fowler toward the girl’s tent. They would distract Mir’s men while Thornhill rescued the Baloch’s prisoner. Gabriel sent a burly-looking warrior flying backward with a carefully placed strike to the man’s jaw. Then he turned to pull a dark-skinned brute from Kimbolt’s back. He flung the man from him long enough to toss a dagger, which lodged squarely in their attacker’s throat. Blood gushed everywhere as the man sunk to his knees before crumpling to the rocky tent floor.

  “Now!” Kerrington’s voice rose above the battle’s clamor, and the Realm members synchronized their final strikes, leaving their opponents sprawled on the tent’s floor. Gabriel and Kerrington covered their retreat. They were without measure the best swordsmen and the best marksmen among the group.

  They fell back toward the tethered horses. “Take Lowery with you,” Kerrington ordered as they swung up into the saddle.

  Gabriel nodded his understanding as he kicked his horse’s flanks. “Lowery!” he snapped as he jerked on the reins to turn Thunder toward the open valley. He and Lowery would draw the Balochs from the others. In three days, they would rejoin their friends at the Realm’s safe house in Bombay. “Four years, six months, and thirteen days,” he recited as he raced from the scene. “Before I can return home with my honor.”

  Chapter One

  Nearly Six Years Later

  He had promised the three Roses he would return to England and set up his nursery; yet, a year and a half after he had safely planted his feet on English soil, he had yet to find a wife. In fact, he had purposely avoided a serious entanglement of any sort. He had thought to distract the wishes of his father’s sisters for his immediate marriage by appearing, during the Season, to court Miss Velvet Aldridge. In truth, the lady possessed no more interest in him than he in her.

  Miss Aldridge had set her sights on Brantley Fowler, and Gabriel had agreed to make the new Duke of Thornhill jealous by appearing to favor the woman. Just briefly, he had thought to honestly woo Miss Aldridge from the duke; and although the lady was exceedingly handsome, within a week of their acquaintance, her insipid chatter had bored him. Once Fowler had admitted his interest in the woman, Gabriel had graciously bowed out. Previously, he had desired to know only one woman: His one venture into the Marriage Mart had led to disaster.

  Returning to Staffordshire before the Season had drawn to a close, he had met with his tenants and had righted the estate’s business. His father, always a shrewd land manager, had left the estate in sound condition, and it was pleasant to sit in his father’s study and look out across the land he loved.

  Gabriel had never truly appreciated the life of an English country gentleman until it had been snatched from his grasp by a foolish moment of youthful exuberance. The disappointment in his father’s eyes had torn chunks of Gabriel’s heart from his chest. “Never again,” he had promised when he had bid farewell to his parents on the Portsmouth docks.

  Sometimes, as he had sat miserably cold in the muddy fields of Belgium or sweltering in India’s heat, he had wondered what he had meant with those words. Would he never again commit an act that would shame his illustrious parents? Would he never again set foot on an English shore? Would he never again chase after an ungrateful female? It was to his infinite regret those two words meant he would “never again” lay eyes upon his parents. His father had passed three years into Gabriel’s expulsion; his mother had grieved so deeply for the loss of the man she loved she survived the Marquis of Godown by less than a year.

  A cousin had acted as the estate’s master until Gabriel could serve his “sentence” and return with the Regent’s approval. Yet, even George IV’s acceptance of Gabriel Crowden as the heir to the Marquis’s title had not kept some of the ton’s finest from offering him an indirect cut. They would not openly offend a man of his stature by being anything but polite when they came into contact, but he recognized when a gentleman crossed the street rather than to greet him properly or when a doting mama directed her charge into the nearest shop rather than to permit the girl near the Marquis of Godown.

  Now, as he rode leisurely across the Scottish lowlands he thought once more of his parents and the great loss of never seeing approval in those muddy brown eyes that stared out at him from the fifth marquis’s portrait. They were the same eyes that assessed him as he took his measure in the cheval glass above his dressing table. After many hours of contemplation and self chastisement, Gabriel had decided he would no longer avoid his duty; he would return to Gossling Hill and set about finding a proper wife and populating his estate’s nursery with a brood of his own.

  Less than four and twenty hours prior he had fought shoulder to shoulder with James Kerrington, John Swenton, and Marcus Wellston. The former Realm had given chase in a convoluted kidnapping that had brought Wellston his life’s love. Cashémere Aldridge had, literally, clawed her way to safety when Murhad Jamot, Shaheed Mir’s agent in England, had left Wellston’s love interest hanging by her fingernails inside a glass cone.

  Gabriel and Kerrington had given pursuit when Jamot had escaped. They had chased the Baloch along Leith’s shoreline and toward Edinburgh, following the trail of a well-trained warrior. Previously, Jamot had killed Sir Louis Levering when the baronet had brought
too much attention to the Baloch’s interest in England. Jamot had also staged an abduction of Velvet Aldridge and Brantley Fowler’s daughter Sonali, and although he could not prove it, Crowden was certain Jamot had spearheaded an influx of opium swamping the port at Hull.

  Anxious to capture the man who had promised to take revenge on the Realm for supposedly stealing a fist-sized emerald from Mir’s compound when Fowler had staged the rescue of the woman the duke had compassionately made his first wife, he and Kerrington had cornered Jamot in the ruins of an abbey. Sometimes he wondered if he and his associates would ever know the end of their dealings with Mir.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Kerrington had warned as they dismounted cautiously. Dusk had approached, and soon Jamot would have the cover of darkness to his advantage.

  “I’ll take the left,” he had whispered as they separated to meticulously search the remains of a magnificent religious house. With each cautious step, Gabriel prayed as he had never prayed previously. He prayed to survive this day. He prayed to find a woman he could respect. He prayed to know the simplicity of home and children.

  “Jamot!” Kerrington’s voice ricocheted off the smooth stones. “You cannot escape. Surrender.”

  His former commander motioned for Gabriel to search the area created by a cluster of tumbled down stones. Meanwhile, Kerrington wove his way in and out of the still standing alcoves. The painted glass windows cast odd lines across the stone arches and floor. Swirls of red, yellow, and brown streaked the area.

  The viscount had taken several tentative steps before Jamot appeared on the upper archway. “Jamot!” Kerrington ordered. “Make a move, and I will shoot!”

  Gabriel crawled swiftly among the ruins to reach a position for a better shot, but the Baloch remained partially hidden. He crept closer as Jamot taunted sarcastically, “You sound exactly like Lady Worthing right before I took the gun from her. She died with your name on her lips, Your Lordship.”