Taking Bell’s hand to reassure her—and himself—that all was well, Quent ordered one of the local men to run up to the house and inquire. She disentangled her hand and stepped away.
Irritated by Bell’s coolness when his own blood was running red hot, he regarded her with caution. “I can take Penrose and go into town for Dolly. Do you want to return to the house with my father?”
“No, I want to go after Dolly with a whip,” she grumbled, finally showing some spirit.
“We didn’t bring any side saddles,” Quent warned, eyeing her trailing skirt.
With a sign of resignation, she leaned against him for just a moment, letting him wrap his arms around her. “I know my limits. I’ll ride back with your blasted father. I’m sure you and Penrose are quite capable of trussing Dolly and dumping her in the river where she belongs.”
Quent held her tight, knowing everything was all wrong but not knowing how to make it right, not while he had a troop of men and thieves waiting on him. “I’ll carry you home myself and let the others sort themselves out,” he suggested.
She shook her head and pushed away. “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll try not to stab your father until you’re there to witness it.”
He snorted and let her walk away, but his heart had taken a dive to his boots. He would have enough difficulty sorting through the mess he’d made. If his father had said something to Bell to make her react this way, he’d have to wait and whip the marquess in the morning.
Twenty-seven
In a bit of luck, Quent discovered the squire in the village tavern. He’d left Bell’s grooms at the farmer’s barn, guarding Hiram and the thieves. He and Penrose sat down beside the tall, saturnine landowner who had assumed the Hoyt family responsibilities as magistrate. In a few curt sentences, they explained the situation.
“Horse thieves ought to be hanged,” Squire Blackstone said. “Simple enough and saves His Majesty the expense of transportation.”
Quent certainly agreed after they’d kidnapped the boy and nearly given him failure of the heart. But aware that he’d already trampled all over Bell’s authority, he preferred not to issue any death sentences in her name.
“One of them is an old retainer of the marchioness’s family,” Quent warned. On his own, he’d have the gang drawn and quartered—but there were children and an old man back in Ireland who would be badly affected by a public hanging. He had to think in terms of Kit’s future and not just himself. “And the female upstairs is a childhood acquaintance. I’d rather not upset Lady Belden if it can be avoided. Remand them to assizes and let the court take them off your hands.”
They might still end up hanged, but it would be on the court, not him.
“You’ll provide the transportation?” the squire asked warily.
“I’ll pay for it and send guards, if needed. I don’t know how you want to deal with the one upstairs.” Quent laid coins on the counter for the squire’s drinks. He wanted this over quickly so he could return to Bell. Negotiating his way back into her life might not happen, but he was constitutionally unable to give up trying. Now that he’d recognized his sentiments, he realized Bell had meant too much to him for too long.
“We’ll just lock in the thief until morning,” the innkeeper said cheerfully, reaching for a key ring. “Won’t be the first time.”
“I’ll verify that it’s her,” Quent agreed in resignation. “It’s likely to be a scene.”
“She’s had enough blue ruin that she’ll be no problem,” the innkeeper assured them.
And so it was. Dolly opened the door with an air of triumph. She tottered in the entrance, regarding them through blurry eyes. Before she realized that her visitors weren’t a victorious Hiram and gang, Quent identified her and walked away, leaving her in the capable hands of the squire and innkeeper. He’d lost all sympathy for her long before she’d hired kidnapping thieves.
If the court ruled on transportation because she was female, he’d have to hire an agent to travel to Ireland to ask Bell’s uncle if he and his family would like to travel with Dolly to New South Wales.
He couldn’t trust his father to care about the people on Kit’s Irish estate, he realized. There was far more to this guardianship business than handing the children over to chaperones and tutors. Bell understood that as he had not in his single-minded pursuit of her bed.
He had to accept all of her—bag and baggage. That’s what she had been trying to tell him while he’d been building his precarious house of cards, thinking he could deal with family as if they were business.
As he and Penrose rode back to the Hall, the fury that had driven him this far died to weariness of mind and soul. The world was full of terrible people. Quent had a need to cuddle Bell and tell her he would protect her from all woe, even knowing she’d hit him over the head if he said any such thing. After the childhood she’d endured, she deserved a future of happiness and carefree laughter. One way or another, he was determined to see that she had it.
He didn’t push his fancies any further than that. He wasn’t a fanciful man. He had a goal—Bell’s happiness. He’d find some way to attain it.
Penrose took their horses to the stable. Quent climbed the Hall’s interior stairs in the light of a single candle, loosening his neckcloth and waistcoat. A bath would have been nice, but it was late, and the servants would be abed. He should have brought his valet with him.
He hesitated outside her bedchamber, not wanting to wake Bell. But he couldn’t help himself—he opened the door.
She wasn’t there.
Unaccustomed to being swept on the storm of emotion he’d suffered this day, he panicked. He had to furl his canvas and tighten the lines to regain control. The carriage had been sitting outside the stable. She was here somewhere.
He turned to his own chamber. The fire was lit and water was heating in the kettle. Bell would have seen to that. In relief and gratitude, he stripped to wash.
By the time he’d scrubbed and donned a dressing gown, Bell still hadn’t arrived. She was still angry. He couldn’t let her finish all the gains they’d made this way. He dragged on clean breeches and found slippers and went in search of her.
Not wanting to wake her sisters, he started at the far end of the corridor where they’d moved Kit and his retinue. Quent wasn’t entirely certain which door was which, but a footman stood guard near the back exit.
“Lady Bell?” Quent inquired.
The footman nodded at the door on his right.
Quent cracked the door to peer in. Bell sat in a wing chair beside Kit’s bed. Her hair tumbled over her brow and her head leaned at an uncomfortable angle, indicating she slept. In the bed, the boy slumbered, motionless for a change.
He ought to walk away, but he couldn’t. After years of living alone, he’d let this pair attach themselves to his insides. Heartstrings, his mother had called this connection. To walk away would be to sever them. He would most likely die if that happened. He’d never lied to himself. To deny his attachment would be a weakness.
He slipped in and lifted Bell into his arms. Kit was well-guarded and sleeping soundly. The boy didn’t need him. Bell did. She stirred in his arms, started to push away, but settled again when Quent reached the corridor. He nodded approval at the alert footman, then carried his intended to his chamber, where the linens would still be warm from the fire.
She didn’t protest when he removed her dressing gown and slid her under the covers. She wore a nightshift. He removed his breeches and wore nothing.
After this past night, he wasn’t letting any chance to hold her go. She turned to him with kisses, and that was all the encouragement he needed to seek the bliss she offered.
***
Bell was gone from Quent’s bed when he woke the next day. Would the day ever come that he could count on waking beside her?
He told himself it was his usual restlessness before closing a deal that had him climbing out of bed at dawn to search for her. Their lovemaking last night should have
settled the quarrel. It hadn’t. He needed the words said and the license signed before he’d believe fate would finally reward him.
As long as his father was here, he wouldn’t be traveling into the city for business. Quent dressed in boots and a tweed jacket and the last of his clean linen, then walked down the corridor to be certain Kit had recovered from his adventures.
The boy was bouncing on his cot, refusing to let his valet wrap his neckcloth. He shouted in glee at sight of Quent and dived at him.
With a laugh, Quent caught the boy, winked at the valet, and let Kit ride on his back. “I’ll carry you down to the breakfast room, just this once,” he said sternly. “Only because your sisters will worry if you’re not at the table on time.”
The boy blew a rude noise and tried to kick with his boots. Quent imprisoned his ankles in his grip and held him until they reached the small downstairs dining table the family had adopted for breakfast. There, he leaned over and dumped Kit, laughing, to the floor.
His father glowered from behind the newssheet. “The boy needs to learn restraint, not to behave like a hooligan.”
“The boy needs love and laughter and his family, which is why I’ll sue you before I let you have him,” Quent said without rancor.
His father paled. He was definitely up to no good.
Bell’s sisters stared over their teacups. Bell was nowhere in sight. Filling his coffee cup, Quent gestured it in salute, then headed for the stable.
When in doubt, always look for Bell in the stable. He was a quick student.
He found her in a morning gown and shawl, standing at the paddock, stroking Dream’s head and feeding the horse from her palm. At least she wasn’t dressed for running away. Breathing a little easier, he strode across the gravel.
“Dolly and Hiram are in the hands of the authorities. I’ll send a man to Ireland to talk with your uncle.” He leaned against the fence, sipping his coffee, and studying Bell. “Arrangements should be made to look after Kit’s holdings.”
She didn’t look at him. The stone in his stomach doubled in size.
“I received word from Summerby yesterday,” she said matter-of-factly. “He has been making inquiries. Uncle Jim has been ill and confined to bed for a while, just as Dolly said. That’s why our agents haven’t spoken with him. Hiram has been acting as their steward. If Dolly and Hiram are transported, there will be no one to look after her children or Jim or the estate.”
He should have known that Bell’s quick mind would have already anticipated the problem and probably considered a possible solution. Why had he even thought this was his burden to bear?
Because he wanted her to need him as he needed her.
Irritated despite himself, he asked, “You’ve inquired with the local church to discover if they have other family?”
She nodded, brushed off her empty palm on her gown, and turned to face the Hall—again, not looking at him. “Summerby has also looked into Kit’s mother’s family. They’re Irish, poor but respectable, as I suspected,” she said without inflection. “It’s possible they might be interested in moving in. Kit ought to know all his family.”
“The poor lad,” Quent murmured, “a passel of ill-bred cousins on his father’s side and who knows what starving aunts and uncles on his mother’s side. He’ll have to find gold in Africa to support them.”
“Taking care of extended family and tenants is what having a title and land entails,” she said sadly. “Edward refused to acknowledge that. I’ll teach Kit differently.”
“We’ll teach Kit differently,” he said, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “You needn’t do everything alone anymore, and I needn’t fight my father’s whims by myself. You’ve cowed him nicely.”
That statement surprised him. He’d been thinking marrying Bell would add to his responsibilities. He hadn’t quite adjusted to the notion of a woman who would actually help him. But he already knew that Bell was just that sort of woman—if he’d let her. Maybe he was a slower student than he’d thought.
Bell turned glistening green eyes up to him. “Your father has agreed to grant guardianship of the children to me. You’re a free man.”
Her tears registered first. The impact of her statement took a moment longer.
A free man? Quent thought he quit breathing. He nearly crushed the cup he was holding while he gasped for air as if the breath had been knocked out of him.
“You won’t have to give up your peaceful bachelor life,” she continued, not acknowledging his reaction. “There will be no need to decide how to combine our households. I will be forever grateful that you were willing to help me, but now I will return the favor. I’ll call off the banns. Everyone will place the blame on me. I hope we can still be friends.”
She really was crying off! After everything that had happened last night . . . Why had he thought he could mend irreparably damaged fences?
Quent struggled with the war exploding inside him. Fury fired cannons. Grief performed a mournful bagpipe dirge. Desolation lamented his lost soul. He thought his heart quit beating.
He’d no notion that all that tumult could still roil his insides. Maybe she was right. Maybe he needed to return to his orderly . . . solitary . . . life. It certainly seemed as if love might kill him.
“My warrior instincts don’t lend themselves to swords and pistols in the manner of our ancestors,” he heard himself saying. He’d never tried to explain himself before, but desperation required that he try now, if only so he understood what was happening while his complacent world drowned in tidal waves of despair. “I’m better at winning economic battles. I established my small shipping company in Edinburgh straight out of school.”
She leaned against the fence and glanced at him with curiosity. “I understand that. The term ‘gentle giant’ was made for you. But when you roar, people listen.”
“It wasn’t always that way,” he said, thinking back. “Back then, I was still a student of business and learning the ways of society and discovering women. When Camilla came to town for her debut, she encouraged my attentions and introduced me to the rarified atmosphere of her father’s wealthy, aristocratic company. I made acquaintances at her soirees that I could never have made without the duke’s invitations.”
Beside him, Bell almost growled. “We were all young once. You didn’t need them. You would have won them on your own.”
“Perhaps.” He shrugged, still struggling with his inner turmoil and trying to pour it out in an orderly manner to better examine his devastation. “I was arrogant. I thought Camilla’s attentions meant she would welcome my suit. I courted her. I’d been raised in a large family, where a wife and children were part of being a man. I was perfectly confident that I would be wealthy someday. I assumed she thought the same.”
Bell took his hand, pried his fingers out of a fist, but didn’t interrupt, even though she had to know the rest of the story.
“When I went to the duke to ask for her hand, he laughed at my pretensions, said he was doing a favor for my father by inviting me into his circle, that his daughter would only marry a title. Who or what I was or would be meant nothing to him.” Quent hadn’t replayed the painful humiliation of that scene in years. It didn’t hurt as much now as it had then.
“Foolishly, I demanded that he ask Camilla. She’d allowed me favors that only a couple with an understanding should have indulged in.” Quent sighed and rubbed the back of his head. “It’s hard to believe I was so young and stupid. Camilla laughed, of course, told me I was lovely. And then the pair of them hit me with the truth . . . Belden had just married a young Irish bride, and my father was no longer heir to a wealthy marquessate. In their eyes, I had become nobody but an impoverished younger son of a younger son.”
“Mea culpa,” Bell whispered
Quent refrained from doing more than holding her hand. “Not your fault at all. It was a good lesson. My fury and humiliation pretty much diluted any heartbreak I might have suffered. I packed up my bags and business and r
ode to London. My first sight of you nearly brought me to my knees, but I persevered. I had every reason to hate you. I had you investigated. I watched you like a hawk, waiting for you to fail Belden. And while I waited, I built my business on my own terms.”
“While I tried to build a marriage,” she murmured.
“Which is why I learned to love you from afar,” he said, admitting what he’d only just recognized himself. He was ready to cry and fall to his knees with the pain of genuine heartbreak. “Despite every reason to hate you, I learned to admire your strength. You were lost and naïve and you bravely faced society’s contempt, learning how to speak properly, learning the ridiculous etiquette of precedence, and demanding respect as the wife of a powerful man. You forged connections that helped Edward, even if he never bothered to tell you.”
She tilted her head thoughtfully, and her bonnet brushed his jaw. Just that touch made his insides clutch.
“I wanted to be useful,” she said sadly. “I was used to doing everything for my family. I would willingly have conquered Spain if he’d asked it of me.”
“And you would have,” Quent said with certainty, understanding now how deep her courage ran. Holding his heart in his hand, he touched a finger beneath her chin, and still, she did not notice. He tilted her head so he could meet her eyes. “You’re not hearing what I’m saying again, ma belle. I have loved you from the first time I laid eyes on you. You were married, and I wasn’t worthy. But these past weeks, you’ve given me reason to believe that perhaps I’ve at least earned your respect. Don’t make me beg.”
Her eyes widened. Her lips parted, but words didn’t emerge.
Taking that as a good sign, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her into his kiss. She hesitated, for just a fraction, and then she flung her arms around his neck and returned his kiss with all the passion of which she was capable. He nearly staggered under the immensity of her trust.
And then she pulled back to meet his eyes. “I have loved you for so long that I could not begin to tell you how it came about. You are just always there, a sturdy presence inside my soul, a trusted friend, a shoulder to lean on, and a man I admire above all others. How could I not love you? And loving you, how could I burden you with my quarrelsome family while keeping you from your own? I love you so much, I had to let you go free so you could be happy!”
Formidable Lord Quentin Page 25
