It was better alone. It was better without the disgusted glares from William, the hurt glances from Grainne. The knowledge that they knew, that he had been the one to compromise Lydia Dean, and that she had loved him, and he her, and he had let her go.
He had not mentioned Reynard. He had pressed Wilkes, but received only apologies and a vow to send out search parties for the missing horse. It would never come to anything, and Peregrin left his suspicions at Tivington. He would do no more battle against Frederick Sutton. He could not win.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lydia stood over her husband with her heart pounding with such ferocity she thought it might burst from her chest. “Frederick,” she whispered. “Frederick!”
There was a trickle of blood near his hairline, and the darkening of a bruise already showing through his tanned skin. He couldn’t be dead, she thought. That wasn’t a thing that could be real. That wasn’t a thing that could happen. Lydia looked around her, at the muddy road disappearing over the crest of the interminable moors, at the dark skies weeping rain as they had for the past day, at the coachman and footmen trying to steady the fallen horses, untangling the traces. Behind her, rain pelted the velvet cushions of the carriage; she should have shut the door, she thought idly. The rain would ruin the upholstery.
Frederick moaned and stirred then, and she looked back down at him with a sinking feeling that made her toes curl with self-loathing. A hundred times, a thousand, she had wished herself dead since this farce of a marriage. But surely a thousand times more she had wished that fate would dispatch with her husband instead. And now… Shame, Lydia, to wish your husband dead.
But what if she had, what if she did? He was a bastard and a charlatan, an unfeeling blackguard who had hurt her a thousand times since they had been wed. So what if she did prefer a widow’s weeds to her husband’s touch?
No one need know, at any rate. She schooled her features into a concerned expression as the coachman came splashing through the mud, his habit spattered with muck, but the horses righted and being held tight by the footman. “Is he hurt! My lady, is hurt?”
“Oh, I do not know about such things,” Lydia cried, holding up her hands with a ladylike distaste. “You must fetch a doctor at once. I have no such skills.”
“And leave the two of you to drown in this rain?” the coachman was already lifting Frederick, gasping under his master’s heavy frame. “Get you back in the carriage, my lady, and we shall turn back. There was gateposts just a little ways back — we’re near a house. They’ll take care of him there. You need to get warm and dry, besides.” He had bundled the unconscious viscount into the coach and turned back for her. “Come on, now, get in. Keep his head up, that’s the way —” She recoiled a little as he placed Frederick’s lolling head in her lap — “Now you wait right here and we’ll get him help straightaway!”
With a slam of the carriage door that made her cringe, the coachman was barreling back through the slop of the flooding road and climbing back onto the box. She heard him shout to the footman to get up as well and then the slap of the reins. The horses would be frightened and sore, she thought; they had spooked at a flash of lightning and slipped in the swirling waters that were threatening to wash away the very road, and when one fell down the other did as well. She supposed it was a wonder they had not snapped the traces, as she had heard tell of, and that they were not marooned out here on this lonely stretch of high-road, somewhere between the hunting lodge and Marston, in a land where few home-lights seemed to shine through the pouring rain.
The water was splashing up around the wheels — she could see it cascading against the windows, mingling with the fat raindrops as they came down, and then they were heaving up away from the flooding stream and back up the slippery hill, jolting as the horses faltered. She heard the crack of the whip and the carriage lurched forward; in her lap, Frederick moaned, and without thinking she placed a soothing hand on his cheek. He was harsh, and he was cruel, and he had tricked her, but he was in pain, and she did not wish pain upon anyone.
The ride seemed to last forever, especially when the carriage slowed again — she supposed that the coachman was peering into the dark hedges that lined the high-road, looking for the gate-posts he claimed to have seen, and then sure enough she felt their conveyance turn and climb another little hill, before stopping with a sudden a lurch — a gate-house, she supposed. There was a clatter of fists upon a door, a moment of silence, and then angry shouting that was suddenly cut short. Then her door opened and a wild-eyed old man in a wet stocking cap was glaring at her. His eyes landed upon the unconscious man in her lap and he gasped. “‘E wasn’t joking!” he told her in tones of astonishment, and then slammed the door shut again. After a moment she heard the sound of the gates being opened.
They were off again so quickly that she swayed forward, nearly losing hold of Frederick’s limp head; she pulled him back again and he moaned, low, a sound of agony. He is dying, she thought, but without the triumph that she had felt in the road, staring down at him. She didn’t want him to die a painful death, and she certainly didn’t want it to happen in her arms. The very thought filled her with such alarm that she felt gooseflesh rising up on her clammy skin. Whatever happens, she thought, die in a bed and not in my arms.
The carriage was tilting upward again, these cursed hills straining the poor horses, and then everything leveled off and they came to a halt. The coachman was wrenching open the door. “Is he breathing yet, my lady?”
She nodded: he was still too warm to be dead, and there was that moan again — otherworldly, inhuman. The coachman’s eyes met hers nervously. Neither could say what they were thinking aloud. There was a hammering on the door beyond — she looked past him into the streaming night and saw the footman at the front door of a pretty cottage; she saw a lit window above the door. Someone was still up, then.
The door opened, candlelight shone weakly from a single taper within the entrance. There was a man there, too dark for her to see; she saw the footman gesturing, she saw the taper lower, as if it was set down on a table, and then the silhouette of a man running across the gravel of the drive to them. The coachman leapt inside, anticipating help in carrying Frederick into the house, and as he slowly lifted Frederick’s shoulders from their resting place along Lydia’s legs, the man’s head and shoulders appeared in the carriage door, and their eyes met.
Lydia’s mouth dropped open, but she could not make a sound. Inside her throat, her very heart was strangling her.
There he was, the subject of every thought and every sigh and every dream for these long horrible months. There were his beloved brown eyes, shot through with gold from the lamp that guttered beside her, and there was his beloved thin lips, downturned now with worry and fear. There he was, and she could say nothing, with her husband’s head cradled upon her lap, her servant fluttering with anxiety that he step up and offer the man who had ruined his life shelter and care.
He stood arrested in the doorway, his face an unreadable mask, his eyes boring into hers, and then he simply pulled himself into the carriage and grabbed Sutton’s legs, none too gently, before backing out slowly into the rain. The footman had managed to find an umbrella and held it over his lordship’s body, though certainly not Peregrin’s, and together the three men carried Frederick, limp and moaning, into the house, past the lone candle, and on to parts unknown.
Lydia sat alone in the carriage, abandoned, forgotten, in shock. This was not the way things were supposed to happen. This was not the way she was supposed to see him again.
If, in fact, she was ever supposed to see him again.
For what could happen now, if she went inside that house, other than more hurt and heartbreak? She ought to climb up on that box in the streaming rain and whip the horses away from this place, leave them all here to nurse Frederick back to health while she disappeared forever from the whole horrible mess. From her casually cruel husband. From the lover who had not wanted her enough to steal her.
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She stopped her wild thoughts then and considered that.
You chose to marry him, she reminded herself. You told him you were going to marry Sutton. That it was your goal. When did you ever ask him for more than a few kisses, a few stolen moments?
Perhaps when you told him you loved him, a dissenting voice said. Surely that was invitation enough.
Lydia looked at her cold, wet hands for a few moments, willing her breathing to settle, her heart to calm. She must be rational about this. Love is not the way these things are arranged, she told the dissenter. I did my duty, and so did he.
The dissenter was silent now, but she knew — it didn’t seem like enough. It didn’t seem like nearly enough. Especially now that she had had a taste of being married to Sutton.
There was a sound of splashing, of snorting horses and then another carriage pulled up next to hers. Mary came leaping out of the coach and jumped up beside Lydia, closing the door behind her. “A moment!” she snapped at the driver, who, protesting, was climbing down from the box. “Lydia, what in God’s name is going on?”
“The horses fell, and Lord Sutton was flung from the carriage when he was climbing out to help,” Lydia said dully, ignoring her maid’s use of her given name. She did not feel that she was quite up to the force of Mary’s company at the moment. “He hit his head and was knocked unconscious… we came here in search of help. He’s inside now.”
“Good God! Is he going to be alright?”
“I don’t know.” Lydia looked through the streaming window to the house, where a few more windows were now lit. “Probably,” she said resignedly.
“Don’t say it like that when there’s people around, or they’ll all know how you really feel,” Mary warned. “You sound like you’d like nothing more than to put on black for a year or three. And it’s really not your color.”
“Hush, Mary, don’t pick at me now. My nerves are overwrought and you really won’t believe…” she trailed off, feeling as if she couldn’t even talk about it aloud without bursting into tears. She considered, once more, stealing the carriage, although by now one of the footman from the baggage coach was sure to be at their heads.
There was a knock at the door. Mary shoved it open. “What?” she snapped.
“There’s a stable block behind the house,” the footman explained. He was young and handsome and looked at Mary as if she was the font of all good things.
Mary scowled at him. “So?”
“The horses are wet and cold, miss.” He looked past Mary and saw Lydia. “My lady. If I can escort you into the house, we can get the horses sorted, my lady.”
Mary looked at Lydia, and Lydia nodded.
Under the cover of the footman’s up-held umbrella, they scurried through the ponding drive to the house. “An overseer’s house,” Mary observed. “I wonder if the lord and lady are to home.”
“I doubt it,” Lydia bit out. “I saw the overseer.”
Mary looked inquiringly at her mistress, but said nothing more.
The house was nearly empty, dank with the rainstorm and dark as the night outside. The footman left them with a rushed apology, heading back into the night to help with the horses and Mary shut the door behind her. “They can find their own way in,” she said pitilessly. “Or stay in the stable with the horses. Let’s see where we are.” She snatched up the abandoned taper and flung back her hood. “Nice enough place.”
It was nice enough, Lydia had to admit: a pretty entrance, well-cared for, with the paint fresh and the floors, though tracked with mud now, evidently recently polished. To their left was the entrance to a cozy sitting room, to their right, a breakfast room. She heard voices coming from the back of the house. “I suppose they’re in the kitchen,” she guessed, and Mary started marching off in that direction, the candle held high above her head like a torch.
And indeed, they were in the kitchen. A fire had been lit in the range and in the big fireplace, and a pot was hung over the flames, water waiting to boil within. A small man with a white beard was hovering over Sutton, who had been laid out on a great old kitchen-table. At either side stood the coachman and Peregrin, who looked up at their entrance, his eyes lingering upon Lydia hungrily.
Lydia felt Mary stiffen next to her, heard her intake of breath. “Oh madam,” she sighed under her breath. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” And she felt for Lydia’s cold hand and gave it a squeeze.
In the hushed kitchen, the fire cracking under the iron pot, they stood and waited for the man with the pointed beard to make his prediction. She didn’t know who he was — a barber, a doctor, a groom, a cook — but Peregrin seemed to be deferring to him utterly, so clearly he knew what talents the man possessed. She wondered, briefly, if Peregrin would lie, foist a charlatan upon them to draw Frederick towards certain death. But no — he was not that cold-hearted, and neither was he so foolish as to kill a peer of the realm with a lie to the servants.
A man who would not run away with her was not a man who would kill her husband.
So she waited quietly, Mary’s hand gripping hers, until the unknown man straightened up, shaking his head. “I can’t say,” he told the occupants of the kitchen. “He will either wake up, or he won’t. A blow to the head is a mighty dicey thing. We will just have to put him to bed, and wait.”
“Who are you?” Lydia said, stepping forward. “How do you know?”
He pulled at his beard and regarded her for a moment, deciding who she was. “Lady Sutton, I am Dr. Falwell. I was a physician in London before my health failed, and so I moved to my grandfather’s house in Longcastle village, for the fresh air. But I assure you, I am more than able to make a medical diagnosis.”
Lydia’s mouth was dry. “Longcastle,” she repeated. “This is Longcastle.”
“Yes, my lady.” He gestured to the footman and the coachman to heft Frederick’s body once more.
“The third chamber, end of the hall upstairs,” Peregrin instructed, and they nodded and went. Lydia and Mary pushed themselves against the wall as they went through the narrow corridor, her husband’s head lolling from side to side. There was still blood in his hair. The doctor followed, nodding to her as he passed.
“I’ll go and sort the baggage,” Mary said. “Looks like we’ll be staying here a while.” And she was gone.
Lydia looked back into the kitchen. Peregrin was leaning with both hands against the wooden table where Sutton had been lying, his head low. His brown hair had fallen down and she could not see his expression. She should go, she knew — she should not be alone with him, even now, a married woman, she should not.
But she had to.
“Peregrin,” she said softly, stepping down into the kitchen, and her voice was awash with longing.
But he did not look up.
“Peregrin,” she repeated, more insistent, and put her hands on the table across from him.
This time he lifted his head, just enough to see her. His brown hair, loosened from its queue, dangled in front of his eyes. “Lydia, my God,” he said, low. His voice was husky. “How do you come to be here, of all places?”
She laughed, thought it was more a sob in truth. “This is Longcastle, then. The estate they offered you.”
“As steward. Yes. I’m a member of their staff.”
“You’re in charge of their staff.”
“They pay me a wage.”
Lydia sighed. “There is no shame in that.”
“And little reward.”
“It looks like a fine house,” she began.
“Spare me, Lydia,” he said, more loudly than he should have. “You are wearing a gown ruined with rainwater and blood that cost more coin than I have in my own name. And your maid just went to be certain that your trunks full of other gowns, all more beautiful and all more costly than this one, are safe and do not meet a similar fate. You are a viscountess. You are wed to one of the wealthiest men in England. Lydia, I want your happiness, I do, but please do not try to placate me with reassurances that I am do
ing just fine. I am not.”
She curled angry fingernails into the wood beneath her palms. “How dare you fling my husband’s wealth at me? I did no more than my duty, and if you did not like it, well, you should have stopped it from happening.”
“How, Lydia? How would I have stopped it from happening?” He was glaring at her now, with eyes turned from lovelorn to fury.
She pursed her lips for a moment. “You could have wed me yourself,” she said finally. “But you did not so much as ask me.”
At that Peregrin slapped the table, hard, and she jumped back like a startled horse. “Wed you? The Dean heiress, who told me herself that she was meant to marry Lord Frederick Sutton? Not even for a moment did you consider me over him, Lydia. I am sorry you did not find happiness with him, but that does not give you leave to rewrite history and place me in the role of villain. Both of us did no more than our duties; we were honorable, we were respectful of the wishes of your parents. We did what we had to do.”
They were glaring at each other from across the table like sworn enemies, eyes smoldering, faces hot with anger. And then Lydia turned to go, her shoulders suddenly hunched, her head low. She felt hot tears stinging at her eyes, and she did not want him to see. Did not want him to know her regret, when he clearly had none.
She was halfway to the door when he grabbed her, pulling her around roughly by the arm. She opened her mouth to shout at him and found his lips on hers, pliant and warm and strong. He demanded the kiss, stole it from her, but she was unable to fight against him. And unwilling to. Lost in his kiss, she folded into his arms, giving herself to his sweetness. It had been months since Lydia had had so much as a kind word from a man, let alone a loving touch. Peregrin gave her what she craved, and she leaned into him, hands in his brown locks, pulling his hair loose from its queue, deepening the kiss.
She pulled back at last to catch her breath, and as their lips pulled apart she found herself panting. With exertion, with exhaustion, with desire? With all of those things. The old flame leapt up in her belly. Trembling, she let her eyes creep up from his sensuous lips to his hazel eyes. What she saw there was enough to make her burn for more of his touch.
The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2) Page 22
