by Mia Vincy
Arabella briefly squeezed her eyes shut. This was the right decision. Guy would be happy this way, and his happiness mattered more than anything else in the world. That knowledge helped her utter words she had not spoken in more than a decade.
“Cassandra,” she said. “I need your help.”
Chapter 26
Guy’s errand in Birmingham took longer than he had anticipated, for while the city boasted some of the country’s best jewelry makers, it took time to perfect the piece for Arabella.
As he arrived back in Longhope Abbey, he pictured giving it to her: the firelight caressing her skin and catching in the diamonds, her hair tumbling around her face, her eyes darkening as he told her of his love, her lips parting to tell him of hers.
And perhaps he would also tell her of this odd sense he had, that this was where his long journey finally came to an end.
It had not ended in Rome, when he had learned of his father’s death. Nor when he arrived back in England. Nor when he entered the house in London, or even Roth Hall, the place where he was born.
Now, today, that restlessness vanished. Zugunruhe, the Germans called it. The restless need to move, to fly home. This was the end of his journey, and the years of travel had prepared him only for this. Coming back to Arabella—that was what it meant for Guy to come home.
The light was fading when he arrived at Sir Gordon’s house; the first evening stars had appeared. The days were already getting short. The years were long. Good. Long years and lots of them. Guy was thrilled at the thought.
Indeed, the thought of seeing Arabella again, of their wedding night, and provoking her and loving her for decades to come had him in such a good mood that he was whistling when he strode through the Bells’ front door.
Servants ran into the foyer. Stared at him nervously.
A moment later, Sir Gordon came racing in.
Guy’s heart lurched and thudded. “What’s going on? What happened?”
Sir Gordon said, “You haven’t heard yet.”
“Heard what? Is she harmed?”
“No. She’s gone. We don’t know where.”
The world tilted. Gone. Arabella was gone.
“What do you know?” he asked.
Sir Gordon shook his head. “Two days ago. She left a sealed note for you. It is with Lady Belinda.”
Guy spun around and went back out the door. It was still open. They had not even had a chance to close it behind him. On the steps, he had to stop and stand, to keep from falling over.
You’re not quite the worst thing that could happen to me, she had said.
Yet she was gone.
She had left everything: family, money, reputation, name. Her father would cut her off, her reputation would be in tatters, her family members would not receive her.
Why would she do this? Why would she give up everything rather than marry him?
Curse you, I am no one’s martyr, she had said. True: If Arabella wanted him, she would have held on with both hands and her teeth. But she had chosen to leave. She had chosen to be homeless, friendless, destitute, because that was better than being married to him.
It seemed he was the worst thing that could happen to her after all.
Humbling, that.
Above him, the night sky persisted, the first stars appearing, cold, splendid, indifferent.
She was somewhere under this sky too. Was she looking at these same stars? Was she frightened? Relieved? Did she think of him at all? Now he was getting pathetic. It was almost their wedding and she had run away. Of course she must spare him a passing thought.
He stood by his horse, but suddenly his limbs were too weak to mount. The horse shied away. Guy rested his hands on the saddle and breathed.
She had chosen ruin over him.
As soon as Guy’s feet hit the gravel outside Vindale Court, Lady Belinda emerged, a taut, tired thunderstorm in a dress.
“What did you do to her?” she demanded, advancing on him. “She would never have given up everything unless she was frightened. What did you do? You will tell me, my lord, and then you will stand still that I might shoot you in your rotten heart.”
“I swear I do not know, my lady. But if I have indeed harmed her, I will load the gun and hand it to you myself.”
Lady Belinda was not appeased. “I thought you would be the one to love her, the way she deserves to be loved, the way she needs to be loved. I thought you were strong enough for her. I entrusted her to you, tried to help you, and you— You must have hurt her too, and you know what happened to the last man who harmed my daughter.”
The implications chilled him, but Guy swallowed his questions. Now was not the time. Never was the time. If Lady Belinda had been involved in Sculthorpe’s death, he did not want to know.
“I will give her what she needs,” he said shortly. “So perhaps, madam, you would kindly resist shooting me until I have had a chance to do that. Her note, if you will.”
Without another word, she whirled around. He followed her through the house and into Larke’s study. There, among the dead birds, witnessed by a dead boy, Lady Belinda handed him the sealed note.
It trembled in his hands; they were shaking. His courage faltered. He stared at the lump of wax and tried to imagine what Arabella might have written. She would have argued, naturally, which would give him a reason to argue back. Or perhaps she had made a demand, which he would race to meet. Or she had sent him on a quest, and he would defeat the ogre and seize the gold and she would consent to marry him again.
He fumbled with the paper, but he still wore his gloves. He took his time removing them. Delaying the moment.
The note was his last chance. The note was his only hope.
The note said:
Hardbury—
I release you from our engagement. You owe me no debt or duty. There is nothing else to say.
A.
What the devil?
He turned it over, held it up to the light, waved it over a flame in case she had written in lemon juice. He felt like a fool, but surely, there had to be more.
Before his eyes, the note turned into a blur of black marks. No matter: Those words were already seared onto his eyeballs like a nightmare.
“She did not write this,” he said witlessly.
Lady Belinda came to his side, peered at it over his shoulder. He felt her taut anger soften into pity. “It is her hand.”
So he scoured those twenty words, those three empty, succinct sentences. He searched them for a way in. He found nothing. He could not argue with this. She had made no demands, placed no blame, sent him on no quests.
Here he was, one of the most powerful men in the land, willing to do anything for her, and she had asked him for nothing.
She did not even want to try.
The simple finality of it ruined him.
If only he had told her of his love. But he had held his tongue. He had not wanted her to feel pressured or trapped. He had not wanted to scare her away. She needed time and space to think, he had told himself, after which he had made love to her on the table, to prove to them both that he wanted her forever. But he had not uttered those words of love.
Maybe it would have made no difference, but he could not bear the thought of her, so proud and alone, going out to do battle with the world, without knowing someone loved her so much he would fight any battle by her side.
And maybe the day would come when she would turn to him and smile with the splendor of a thousand stars and find that, by some miracle, she loved him too.
Crouching, Guy fed the letter to the fire, let the flames engulf it, watched it crumble into ash.
“Hardbury? My lord?”
The smoke had stung Guy’s eyes. He blinked away the tears and stood to face Mr. Larke, holding his wife’s hand. Guy had not heard him come in.
“I fear…” Mr. Larke’s mouth worked. His parrot began to mutter and he crossed to stroke her neck. “This is my doing. We quarreled.”
“Why?”
“Over…the education of your sons and this estate. Because…” The man looked distraught. The parrot rubbed her head against his arm as if to comfort him. “I vow, I never imagined she’d leave. She’s so stubborn, so certain, so proud. I never thought…” Shooting a glance at the portrait on the wall, he took a few steps and sank into a chair, head in his hands. “She’s always been so damnably strong-willed, so difficult to control. Using this estate seemed the only way. I was so sure she’d never give this up.”
“Oh, Mr. Larke, you selfish, stubborn sod.” Guy pressed his fingers into his eyes, furious at the waste and the heartache and the loss. He dropped his hands and shook his head at the other man. “It was never the estate she wanted. It was a family. A family to love her. A home.”
“She had that.”
“Did she? Or were you scared to love her in case you lost her too?”
“Lord Hardbury,” Lady Belinda admonished softly. “Please.”
He turned away, mind racing, seeing only Arabella, that first time she smiled. He was the one who had done that. He was the one she needed, even if she was too bloody proud to admit it.
“We’ve sent word to our house in London, to see if she’s there,” Lady Belinda added. “And written to my family.”
Larke clenched the arms of his chair. “You’ll find her, Hardbury. You’ll not rest until you bring her home.”
“And if she doesn’t want me?”
“Find her anyway. It’s your duty.”
Duty. Her note had mentioned duty. And that day in the drawing room, when their marriage had seemed inevitable, she had spoken of his sense of duty then too.
He regretted burning the note, but he knew it well enough to recite in his sleep. You owe me no debt or duty.
Thank the stars. She had given him a clue, after all.
Chapter 27
Arabella made no effort to hide, because she knew Guy would not come after her. And if he did come after her, why make it difficult? But he would not come after her. She knew he would not.
And he didn’t.
It was two days’ travel to London, and she was thankful for Cassandra’s help in providing her comfortable carriage. She avoided her family’s house; the humiliation if Papa wrote to cast her out would be unbearable. Instead, she traveled two extra streets to the London house of her friends, Lord and Lady Luxborough. The earl and countess were at their home in the county of Somerset, but their retainers knew her well. They opened the house and let her in.
Like all her other oh-so-brilliant solutions, it turned out to be a mistake.
Because the Luxborough house formed part of a square, and in the middle of that square was a small, leafy park, and on the other side of that park was Lord Hardbury’s house.
Several days after Arabella arrived, Guy did too.
She knew from the bustle of carriages. She knew from the chatter of servants. She knew because she saw him, day after day after day, playing with Ursula in the park.
She knew because he looked right at her each time, his expression unreadable as he held her gaze.
As always, she was the first to look away; as always, he continued as if she were not there.
“What did you expect?” she muttered to the window. “A bunch of flowers and a thank-you note?”
“Did you say something?” Juno asked from behind her.
Good grief. Arabella had forgotten her friend was even there. She had expected heartbreak to hurt; she had not expected it to be so all-consuming she could concentrate on little else.
“No. Nothing,” she said.
With a whisper of skirts, Juno crossed the room to join her, and side by side they watched Guy and his little sister play. Ursula had spotted the robin redbreast that frequented the park. Guy crouched, with his arm looped around her, as she pointed out the little bird.
“Lord Hardbury came by the studio, with Leo,” Juno said.
As a professional artist, one of the very few women in London with her own studio, Juno inhabited a space parallel to society’s usual rules. While she would never be received in respectable places, it was perfectly acceptable for respectable people to mingle in art studios. Leopold Halton, the Duke of Dammerton, was known to mingle in Juno’s studio quite often.
Perhaps Arabella would learn to exist in a space like that, if she managed to start her publishing house. By jilting Guy, she had thrown herself out of society, but a publisher had little use for a good reputation. All she needed was money. And friends.
Abruptly, Juno bounded back across the room, grabbed her charcoal and paper, and started sketching. Arabella leaned against the windowsill to watch her work.
“How is he?” Arabella asked.
“He didn’t talk much. He seemed distracted.”
“Was he poking and prodding things?”
“Oh dear me, yes.”
Arabella smiled, remembering. “He does that. He gets restless.”
Oh, but she missed him. She made her longing worse, she supposed, the way she kept taking out her memories of Guy and studying them like treasured pieces of art. But she welcomed the heartache; it came with love, and she refused to surrender her love.
“We could arrange a meeting,” Juno said, not looking up from her work. “At my studio. It could appear purely incidental. You would be there visiting me, and Leo will bring Hardbury again. You could talk to him.”
Arabella shook her head. “Talking won’t help.”
Cassandra had said something similar: Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be.
But they didn’t understand. Suppose Arabella had expressed her fears that Guy was marrying her for honor and duty and nothing more? He would have denied it, of course. His honor and sense of duty demanded that he marry her, and his good character demanded that he pretend to be glad. He would have concealed his true thoughts behind bonhomie and jokes, but she would have felt his underlying tension. She would have felt it worsen over the years.
Besides, it was too late now anyway. A lady could not jilt a man, then wander back a few weeks later and say, “Actually, I’ve changed my mind.”
Finishing her sketch, Juno hopped up and handed the page to Arabella. The drawing was of Guy, but Guy looking solemn and stern. Arabella ran a fingertip along the charcoal line of his jaw, as if she could magically touch him, but all she got was a dark smudge on her skin.
“He should be smiling.” Absently, she rubbed at the smudge. “Draw me one of him smiling.”
“He wasn’t smiling when he visited the studio with Leo,” Juno countered, but she started a fresh sketch anyway.
“He has a lot on his mind.” Arabella lowered the page and turned back to the window. In the park, Guy and Ursula were playing a game of chase. Guy was laughing. Once or twice, Arabella had made him laugh. “He is in the papers most days. Between us all, we’ve been keeping the news correspondents busy.”
The inquest had ruled Sculthorpe’s death accidental, and the newspapers overflowed with accolades for the heroic peer, tragically lost in his prime. Speculation buzzed as to why the baron had even been on the Larke estate, and why Hardbury was no longer engaged; few yet dared to explicitly name Arabella, but the implications were clear, if one read between the lines.
The papers had also reported that Chancery was hearing Lord Hardbury’s petition to gain custody of his sisters, while observing that his sisters already lived in his house. Next, they announced his success: The late marquess’s will had been overturned and the guardianship was his.
“They’re going back inside now,” she said. “Ursula has grown. I think Guy’s hair has darkened. Or maybe that’s the light.”
“You could become a news correspondent yourself,” Juno said. “I can imagine your reports: ‘Today, Lord Hardbury wore a new blue coat and scratched his chin. It was very exciting.’”
“That’s hardly exciting news.”
“Exactly. You are becoming boring, Arabella.”
Arabella whirled around with an im
perious glare. “Don’t be absurd. I am never boring. My reputation, certainly, is becoming much more interesting. Almost as interesting as yours,” she added archly.
Juno responded with her merry laugh. “My reputation is only interesting because I am friendly with the Duke of Dammerton.”
“Whenever the newspapers report that, they put ‘friends’ in italics.”
“Because they are incapable of understanding that a man and a woman can enjoy each other’s company without tupping each other. It’s excellent for business. Wealthy bankers’ wives commission portraits in the hope that if they sit in my studio, they’ll meet a real live duke. Leo is very obliging about it. He says he ought to charge me a commission.”
Helplessly, as if compelled by a stronger force, Arabella turned back to the window. Across the park, the front door was closed. In that house was Guy, creating the peaceful, loving home of his dreams. Already he had his sisters; soon he would find a bride, someone as unlike Arabella as possible, and she would read about his betrothal in the news.
Perhaps he’d send the flowers and a thank-you note then.
And she’d send them right back. It was not his gratitude she wanted.
She wanted to be in that house with him, sharing his troubles and triumphs. She wanted to be the one he came home to. The one he confided in and teased and quarreled with and kissed. She wanted to be the one on his arm when he entered a ballroom, exchanging looks down the table when they hosted a dinner. Riding beside him through Hyde Park, nestled against him in a cozy parlor at the end of the day.
She wanted to be the one he opened his arms for, the one who made him smile. The one he looked for when he had news. The one he held against him when he slept.
But more than that, she wanted him and that great big heart of his to be happy. She wanted him to create the warm, peaceful home he craved, to have the freedom to love whomever he wanted and marry as he pleased.
That, at least, she could do for him.
“Leo is leaving for Lincolnshire shortly to visit his mother and younger sister. Lord Hardbury will accompany him,” Juno said. “Lady Gisela is making her come-out next year. Leo says she’s very pretty. I wonder if Lord Hardbury will think so too.”
