"I've no time for conversations," he replied in a muddied, weak tone. He waited, the haze drifting painfully through his mind. He heard no further protest, and turned his gaze once more to the bottle, the swill stinging his nostrils. He recoiled, before another loud knocking interrupted him.
Knock knock!
"Begone!" he retorted, beginning to fear his demons had coalesced into a hate-gnashing mob, come to drag him to his rightful spot in hell. He focused his mania on the bottle before him, his shaking hands lifting it to his mouth, but before he could sip, he heard the hinges to his bedchamber door squeaking quietly open. He heard footsteps... no, he wouldn't look away. He had made his decision. He would hear no more protest.
"M'lord," came a quiet voice.
"Ms. Cauthfield, I'm not in need of a dressing-down in any sort of fashion at this particular moment," the duke dismissed her with an obstinate venom.
"No, I think you are," she responded, like the bite of an angry beast whose rage had been simmering for some time. The old woman threw the door shut behind her and she charged heedless at her master, slapping the bottle from his hand, sending it careening to the carpet, shattering, its contents spilling and the foul, ichorous smell permeating the bedchamber. Lord Beckham blinked in utter amazement; his mouth agape and astonishment in his eyes, he watched as Ms. Cauthfield, who had spent so long a time as a reticent observer of his self-destructive tendencies, positively seethed at him. She had never seen her so, and it... well, it quite scared him.
"I've watched you struggle along this path alone for far too long, Marshall, and I'll not tolerate it any longer," she sneered.
"Ms. Cauthfield, this is outrageous," Lord Beckham rumbled in protest. "You—"
"No, you're outrageous! You're utterly outrageous, Marshall, and I'll not stand for seeing it any longer," Ms. Cauthfield exhorted him, tears beginning to stream from her own eyes. "I'll not watch you destroy yourself again. That girl loves you!"
"Anna loved me too," Lord Beckham lamented. "Anna—"
"Enough with Anna! Enough! How could your mind be on something from so long ago with a beautiful young girl who's fallen in love with you, pleading to have you? How?!" Ms. Cauthfield exclaimed, and in a sudden surge of emotion the older woman slapped her master across the face, stunning him. Her eyes widened; she couldn't rightly believe her own actions, her wrinkled cheeks reddened with tearful rage. She cleared her throat, shivering.
"Ms. Cauthfield..." Lord Beckham mumbled halfheartedly.
"I'll not... apologize, for what I've done, and if you'll have me dismissed for it, so be it," Ms. Cauthfield said, shaky. "I'd far prefer to be dismissed, to find myself on the streets of London, than to stay in this manor, and watch it die; watch the family I've served loyally my whole life wile away, to watch the boy I've known for so long give in to his self-hate, to destroy himself, and destroy so true a love as he has right in front of him," she exclaimed through sniffles. Try as she may to maintain her professional dignity, Ms. Cauthfield couldn't let her emotions simmer. "Decades of braised honey beef and scraped knees; decades of service to your father, your mother; to you, and I promised your parents - promised them - I'd watch after you, until I no longer served the Beckham household. And I suppose I shall consider today to be that day, because I cannot simply watch that poor girl walk away, Marshall, because you despise yourself so deeply! Because of that blasted woman, and that day in the Delshire Moors. She never loved you, Marshall! But Nadia, this poor girl, you showed her something she's never seen before," Ms. Cauthfield seethed.
"Ms. Cauthfield, I don't want to dismiss you," Lord Beckham insisted, his voice weak. "I don't..."
"Then I'll offer instead my resignation, for I can't bear to do this any longer," she said shrilly, In a storm was she off, the bedchamber door slamming behind her; Marshall sat in stunned silence for a long and quiet moment, breath caught in his throat. He smelled the rank burn of the liquor rising from the carpet and swallowed hard.
He gathered himself up, and wandered out of the door to his bedchamber in search of the maidservant, but silence crept across the entirety of the manse. In an emotional haze he stumbled back to the stairwell; deathly silence fell across the chamber, and he spied on the carpet - stamped and ripped - the contract he had drawn up, his own name next to Lord Havenshire's. At the front door stood loyal James, though in his expression Lord Beckham could read the same disappointment with which Ms. Cauthfield had only recently bludgeoned the duke with.
"James," the duke said, acting as if in a trance, his mind addled with some sense of shocked madness.
"M'lord," the butler responded coldly. He saw her in the window... he saw her down the stairs. Always that smile. When Lord Beckham looked upon the dead fireplace at the rear of the foyer, he saw her again; flashes, pained flashes, like the memories of Anna.
He needed to forget Anna, he told himself. Perhaps Ms. Cauthfield had been right.
"A carriage... a carriage," Lord Beckham blurted. He stepped lightly down the stairs, his mind wandering. He could hear Nadia's words echoing through the vaulted ceilings. He saw her face; heard her fiery exhortations.
"A carriage, m'lord, bound for where?" James asked.
"The Emerys estate, I... I need to have Nadia sign this contract," he rambled. "I need..."
"M'lord... I think you need something different," James murmured.
"...Perhaps... perhaps I..." Lord Beckham exhaled.
"Do you love her, m'lord?" James asked.
"I... think, I do," the duke responded hesitantly.
"You'll only ever know what can happen with love if you try," James pleaded. He could only hear her words; every time he closed his eyes he saw her face.
"I think... I do, love her," he shuddered. "But how could anyone truly love me back?"
"You can't let that woman haunt your life forever," James said.
"...prepare a carriage, James... this contract..." Lord Beckham repeated his idea, a curious mantra of self-protection.
"I'll do as you wish, m'lord, but perhaps you should reconsider your course of action," the butler added, before stepping through the grand front doors.
He closed his eyes. He saw her again.
"Perhaps..." Lord Beckham's voice trailed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"I'm certain your father will be fine, m'lady," Egan murmured as the carriage pulled alongside the front of the Emerys manor. Her heart shattered, Lady Havenshire had spent the trip back across the moors with her mind awash in rage, in pain; she felt utter loss, betrayal. She had never felt something so acute in her life; something so stinging in her chest as a round and utter rejection.
"Father is going to die, Egan, and all he wanted was to see my face happy before that happened," she lamented with a sigh. "I loved that man. I didn't know what real love meant, and..."
Her mind flashed back to the first night together. How she had treated him harshly after hearing of his sister. She thought of the laughs; the smile, before a darkness crept across them. She thought of his stormy eyes; how she had seen him, a darkness against the backdrop of Lord Perrywise's gaudy and ostentatious ballroom; she had seen something different in him. Had he truly been different? Or had he used her as any man would - in all that ways that Ms. Mulwray had warned?
As the horses' hooves clopped along the roadway, her family manor looming close, she closed her eyes and saw him again. She saw his dusky expression at the far end of the dining hall; she felt in her mouth the sweet succor of honey-braised meat, a recipe that felt as delectable in her imagination as it had in person. She smelled the steam of fresh food, heard the echo of his darkly-commanding tone rolling through the dining hall. His quips took her heart away to a different place; to a better time, to laughter at his expense as he saw the terrified lord atop the back of a lazy, aging horse.
It brought her back to that day. The rains fell and she thought her very life in danger at the spine-tingling chill of the rain across swaying autumn trees. Hearing his voice call out a
cross the forest, like a rescuing lifeline. She saw the old cabin; the smell of mold, spurts of dust; dried wood. She recalled his scent; his body. An exceptional body; one she wanted to wake up next to, every single morning.
"Your father will be waiting, m'lady..." Egan broke into the reverie; they had arrived at the front door of the manor, the horses clopping their hooves impatiently, wanting for the embrace of the stable. Her eyes opened and that memory drifted away, even as he heard in her mind memories of her name burning passionately from his gaping mouth. She shivered, recalling the rainy cold of that day; a cold she felt now renewed, as a breeze passed through the opened door of the carriage. She stared at the face of the manor - it felt flat; everything felt flat, as if all the color and all the life and vigor of all the world had withered away without the thought of him brimming in her mind. The vibrant, burning fiery-oranges and reds of the trees in autumn, the blanket of fallen leaves and swaying yellows of bushes dying away for the season felt dull compared to the fire he brought to her life.
Soon, she thought, winter would come; a freezing blanket of white would claim the bright colors of autumn, washing away warmth and filling bones that had once felt the sudden, lively surge of love with the icy fingers of contempt; of loneliness. Frozen in the unchanging, gray doldrums of that dark time would be her memories of him, gleaming within the frozen wilds, always beckoning her back to that embrace. But she couldn't have them; she couldn't cling forever to fall, for winter would come and claim everything she had loved. It would claim her father, as it had claimed her mother; it would claim her fortune, and her freedom. She'd be a captive bird shrilly squeaking from a crushing cage.
"M'lady..." once more her gloomy recollections fell victim to the quiet, meek tone of the portly man at the head of the carriage. The horses whinnied and waited; dark-gray clouds gathered at the far edges of the sky, and she could hear faint rumblings of thunder threatening to bring back those memories all over again. Wherever a storm brewed, she saw him - the stormy man she had fallen for, who had slain her dreams.
"Yes, Egan, I... I know," she murmured. As she stepped from the carriage a great wind swept up, throwing dust and rotting brown-gray leaves into her messy hair; she exhaled deep, taking a breath of the air; she couldn't taste it, her senses dulled to their depths by the experiences of the morning. She hesitantly stepped towards the door to the manor. Her eyes closed again, the wind whipping against her, her dress clinging to her body; her hair thrown in tangled masses across her shoulder by the powerful gusts.
I loved him, she thought to herself. She wanted to give herself to him - just as they had promised in those hot, tense, wet throes of flaming passion. When he drew his coat atop their quaking bodies she had everything she had ever dreamed of - a true gentleman, one who respected her; one she loved, a man different from the others.
She entered the manor, immediately greeted by the sight of her father - arms spread, hopeful and caring, at the base of the foyer's grand stairwell.
"Nadia! Dear, how... how did everything go?..." he asked, his face crested with pain. Clearly he had hoped to see the two of them return together, and heartbreak filled his expression at the sight of a lone woman standing in the opened doors.
All he had wanted was to see her happy, before he passed. And she had been happy - happy like she never thought she could be, here in England; here in the moors and forests, where the world had been built against her freedom and happiness. But somehow, she had found it - for those few passing days with him, she had found it.
"Father, remember the story you used to tell? About mother?" Nadia asked, the winds gusting across her back. "About how you met."
"Your mother," he chuckled. "Oh, how I miss her... we met not far from here, remember?"
"Tell me," she insisted, her body shaking.
"Come inside, please, Nadia," her father pleaded through a cough.
"Please, father, tell me," Nadia insisted.
"I tripped in her dress and she called me a scoundrel," her father coughed out a laugh. "She hated me. And yet we met, again and again, at dinner parties, and because our parents insisted upon it," he chortled. "You know the story."
"She hated you, but you never gave up, did you, father?" Nadia asked, her voice shaking.
"Love is... a complicated thing, Nadia. It takes dedication, it takes sacrifice, it takes... well, stubborn, persistence," he advised.
"Stubborn persistence? And what's that you once said of me, father?" she demanded. His vexed expression shifted slowly to a warm smile.
"You're the most stubborn young woman I've ever known, Nadia," he responded gently.
"I have somewhere I need to go - I need to be rather stubborn, father," she said with a smile, "as I've a very... stubborn man. A man I love."
"Egan will get you there I'm certain," he replied.
"No, I must move with great haste. Shadow will take me there far faster," she responded, hurrying towards the stables. Her father beamed with pride as the door slammed behind his daughter. He'd finally gotten to see her so awash with that feeling - love.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Hyah!"
Lady Havenshire's voice carried across the moors; she raced atop Shadow's back as the horse bucked and brayed anxiously, leaping along the cobblestone paths, through dusty trails and along pathways coated in dead leaves and dying autumn colors. The pathways connecting Emerys to Berrewithe had never seemed so long, so painstakingly jagged and mazelike, as they did now - when she needed to make every second count. She needed to see his face again - to tell him he loved her, and that as a stubborn woman, as stubborn a woman as ever lived in the moors, she wouldn't simply let him decide alone who was worthy of whom. She raced against time; she raced against her own doubts. She raced against a storm brewing at her back - gray clouds had gathered against her, threatening to stop her forced and hasty march across the roads, the thunder rumbling ominously closer and closer each maddening mile her steed traversed.
"Shadow, here! Hyah!" Nadia's mind worked quickly; she spotted a sideways path that she knew cut across the river bank that separated her estate from the wilds between Berrewithe and Emerys. The long and sloping road saw little traffic from carriages and merchants, on account of its steep and awkward slopes, but atop proud Shadow's back Nadia had no doubt the route would prove faster. Dashing past thorny yellowed bushes and tall, unkempt grasses, Nadia and her proud mount barreled through mud and mush and weeds, the storm growing louder with each passing moment. A crackle of blinding lightning frightened both Nadia and her horse, who whinnied loudly at the blaze of white light, but continued on heedlessly. As trees blurred past, she saw him everywhere - in everything. Her father had been right about her - stubborn. Stubborn enough to put herself at great risk... riding alone, a woman along the moors, as a thunderstorm rumbled forward... and worse, taking a rarely-used path carved along a marshy, rock-riddled highway.
Only then, as the blinding blast of white subsided, did Nadia notice the peculiar horseman at the side of the rarely-traveled path, leading his white-skinned horse to drink at the side of the road. Nadia felt it odd... practically none dared travel this roughly-hewn path. Nadia tried not to worry about the sight, though her heart began to thump in her chest when she saw another horseman clad in black, a scarf drawn across his features, further along the path. Lightning flashed blinding again and Shadow stepped through a morass of muddy puddles, her pace slowing briefly before taking to the bridge up ahead - a rickety bridge of crumbling stones drawn across the river bank, the rushing sounds of a shrunken stream gushing along her ears. The bridge rose tall above the stream, and she dashed across it quickly... but a wary glance back took notice of a gaggle of horses gathered at the shadowy arches beneath the bridge, and a gathered group of men in patchwork clothing, their faces masked, swords and flintlocks slung at their waists, scrambling as they saw her pass.
Her heart stopped and terror froze the blood in her veins as a realization struck her hard as a musket-blast to the back.
Bandits, she realized too late. So few took this roadway... particularly in the interest of avoiding entanglements with the sorts of bandits who infested the distant paths. At night the bandits scattered across every roadway, but now Nadia had crossed daringly into their own domain, and they gave chase. Nadia tightened her profile against the horse, urging Shadow on with loud walloping calls, spurring the creature into a fevered run as she heard horse hooves clopping behind her.
The storm... the bandits, and the threat of losing a man's love. They all loomed over her shoulders, chasing her desperately - threatening to claim her love, her comfort, her future, and now - her life.
"Shadow! Hya!" She glanced over her shoulder as she called to her steed, and the bandits dragged slowly behind her; she took a detour from the rough roadway, her horse deftly leaping across a small stream and hopping up a series of stony cliff-faces. Grinning, she looked back and found several of the foul horsemen confounded by the path, their steeds unwilling to brave those same dangers... but a few were gaining on her, and her heart pounded against her ribs. She felt Shadow's pace slowing; Nadia had pushed the poor horse hard, and now her stamina had begun to wane. Her hands shaking, Nadia gripped the reins tight, leading her tired mount back to the roadway. Shadow gave her all, galloping along; even the horse, it seemed, knew the stakes, feeling sympathetic to her loving master's pained plight. A loud crack rang out, but it wasn't thunder; terror in wide eyes Nadia looked back to see the bandits gaining ground, hooping and shouting, firing their pistols in her direction. She swooped to one side, then the other, leading Shadow skillfully along a lower path down a mountain as her pursuers kept close. Another volley of crackles erupted, loud and high-pitched; her breathing met a wild, fevered pitch, adrenaline pumping fear and flight into her every being. She had made a grave mistake, and as the thunderstorm drowned out the sound of the shouting, screaming bandits chasing after her, trying to intimidate her, she closed her eyes.
The Duke's Headstrong Woman: True Love In London (Regency Romance: Strong Women Find True Love Book 2) Page 14
