He released her, thinking he might have held her too hard. "Are you in pain?"
"No." Her voice cracked, and she immediately stared at her hands with a dismayed expression. Again she closed her eyes and whispered something.
The poor thing really was praying. He glanced up at his friends to gauge their reaction and heard her fingers snap a second time.
A loud crack pierced the air, followed by another shout and a vibrating thud. It sounded as if the heavens had just fallen to earth.
He wrenched open the door and called out to his men. "What's the trouble?"
Henson ran over, a stunned expression on his face. "Appears half the forest is in the road, Your Grace. Strangest tiling I've ever seen . . . trees falling like wounded soldiers." He reached up and scratched his head. "And there's no wind, Your Grace."
"Watch for highwaymen." Alec opened a small compartment near his seat and removed a pistol.
"There's not a soul about, Your Grace. The outrider checked." Henson gestured toward the forest with his own pistol.
Alec handed weapons to Downe and
Seymour
, told them to stay with the girl, then left the carriage, armed. He surveyed the surrounding forest and saw nothing but trees mired in an eerie fog. He stood there for a silent moment, listening for movement. There was nothing. He walked to where the coachman surveyed the wood-piled road and another footman steadied the nervous horses.
At least fifteen alder trees lay like fallen columns across the roadway, and yet not a suspicious sound or movement came from the woods that lined the road.
"Oh, my goodness!"
Alec was fast learning to hate that phrase.
"Oh, no! I thought I said ‘alter,' not 'alder'!"
Slowly he turned around to see the girl hanging out of the carriage and staring at the trees across the roadway, an appalled expression on her face. She cast him a quick look, appeared to gulp, and disappeared inside in less time than it took to breathe. A moment later Downe and Seymour stepped down from the carriage and stood beside him assessing the problem.
"There are fifteen of them," the viscount announced.
"That's what I admire about you, Seymour. You've an uncanny ability to state the obvious,” the earl said.
"When have you ever seen fifteen trees in the road? It's not something one sees regularly." The viscount walked over to the first fallen tree, then looked up. "Not a lick of wind."
Downe examined the closest stump. "Hasn't been cut. Looks like it just fell over."
"I've got a bad feeling about this,"
Seymour
said, his gaze darting left, then right, as if he expected the rest of the forest to collapse.
"Here it comes again." Downe said, resting a booted foot on the splintered stump. "
Seymour
's gloom-and-doom speech. To what do you attribute this? Fairies? Trolls? Ghosts? Witches?"
A gasp of horror sounded from behind them, and all three men turned. The girl peered out from the carriage, her color pale.
"Now look what you've done, Downe. You've scared the bloody hell out of Belmore's future wife!"
Seymour
rushed toward her.
"Did he just call that chit what I think he called her?" Alec stared at
Seymour
's retreating back.
"You heard him. He believes all that balderdash. Here, have some of the Little Emperor's finest. Dulls the cold and makes
Seymour
tolerable." He held out his brandy flask. "If you drink enough of the stuff, he might even start making sense."
"The
Seymours
aren't known for their sense and sensibility."
Downe gave a snort of sardonic laughter and pressed the brandy into Alec's hand. Alec looked at the flask speculatively, then returned his gaze to the carriage where
Seymour
was just opening the door.
Alec strode over to the carriage, stepping in front of
Seymour
. "I'll take care of her." His voice brooked no argument.
Seymour
looked at him, glanced back at the girl, then smiled knowingly, which earned him a cool glare that spoke volumes.
Seymour
quickly stepped away from the carriage.
Alec leaned inside and saw that the girl had no color, so he assumed either her ankle pained her severely or she was as easily spooked as an untrained filly. "Does it hurt?"
She gave him a blank stare. “What?”
"Your ankle," he explained with patience he was far from feeling.
She looked at her foot. "Oh . . . yes, my ankle."
Alec took that for an affirmative, although she seemed to be thinking about something else altogether. He reached into the gun compartment and took out a small glass. He filled it with Downe's brandy and handed it to the girl. "Here, miss . . . ” Alec stopped himself and frowned. "Or is it madam?"
"It's miss."
"Who?"
"Me?"
Alec took a long breath. "What's your name?"
"Joyous Fiona MacQuarrie," she said, not looking at him, but giving her skirt a little shake before she settled back against the seat.
He nodded. "Scottish. That explains it."
She looked at him then. He placed the glass in her hand. "Take this. Sip it. It will keep you warm while we clear the road. I suspect it might take a while.” When she hesitated, he ordered, "Drink."
She quickly lifted the glass to her full lips and took a sip, then made a face and wrinkled her nose.
"Trust me. You'll feel better."
She took a deep breath, apparently to prepare herself for the upcoming ordeal, then sipped again, screwed up her face, and gulped as if she'd swallowed the sins of the entire ton. It was a few minutes before she stopped coughing and looked up at him again, her eyes tearing, but the moment they met his gaze they grew misty with that same odd yet familiar expression.
He still couldn't place the look, but he knew one thing for certain: it made him bloody uncomfortable. He closed the carriage door and walked back to the fallen trees with
Seymour
trailing him like an overanxious beagle.
"She must be the one,"
Seymour
said in a rush. "It's fate. I know it."
Alec stopped and turned to his friend. "Do you truly believe I would take a complete stranger and make her the Duchess of Belmore?"
"Of course he wouldn't," Downe said, joining the two men in time to hear
Seymour
's comment. "After all, he hasn't yet researched her background. Have you, Belmore? She might not be duchess material. Besides which, when have you known Belmore here to do anything without first planning every single detail?"
Alec's back went ramrod straight.
"This trip to Belmore’s hunting lodge was not planned"
Seymour
shot back, his expression triumphant.
"Are you two finished? We have business more pressing than goading each other or trying to goad me into one of your rows."
"Never works anyway,"
Seymour
muttered.
Alec gave them his best ducal glare—the one that usually stone-silenced anyone within an immediate range and could send a servant into double time. He glanced at the flask, still clutched in his hand, and was tempted to take a drink, a very human reaction considering the day's events. But the Duke of Belmore prided himself on not giving in to human reactions. He handed Downe the flask and turned to his servants— two footmen, an outrider, and his coachman— who were valiantly trying to move the first of the fallen trees. With the wood green and wet the trees weighed enough to need special handling. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it near Downe's feet.
Seymour
followed suit while Downe, whose injured arm rendered him unable to help, stood nearby making snide comments about fate and destiny and the predictability of the Duke of Belmore.
Half an hour later, having had enough of Downe's wry tongue,
Seymour
suggested that he and Alec ram a tree trunk into the earl's blasted big mouth.
Alec didn't answer. In his mind he kept seeing Juliet's letter, which had contained the same unflattering word that Downe had unknowingly just used: predictable.
For twenty-eight years, Alec had thought his behavior unquestionably suitable and logical for a man of his consequence. Life wasn't simple for the English aristocracy, and the higher the title the greater the responsibility. At least that was what Alec had been raised to believe. It had been pounded into his head over and over that ducal duty came first. Belmore traditions, the revered family name, the example he set by his actions—those were the things that mattered.
He took command but rarely lost his temper. He'd learned at a very young age that a Belmore Duke did not show emotion. A duke needn't shout and therefore didn't. In his life there was no room for folly, which was fine with him; his behavior was ruled by custom, logic, social standing, and traditions that were generations old. Life had been that way for his ancestors, and now it was the same for him, and that was a matter of supreme pride with him.
But predictable? Boring? Those were not traits he relished, any more than he relished the humiliation of losing Juliet. He glanced at his coat, lying on a stump near the earl. In his coat pocket was the special license he had requested from his man of business, with a careful preparation that did his reputation justice. Marriage by special license held more than only its aristocratic allure. His wedding was to have been a quiet ceremony with two witnesses. That had appealed to him because such ceremonies were private and expedient. The frivolity of a huge wedding was something he would not embrace.
Yet now the license served only as a reminder that he had been jilted. A wave of icy humiliation ran through him. His mind flashed with an uneasy curiosity about what Juliet's mere soldier had to offer compared to him. In her letter she had said she wanted love. Love. He'd seen what love could do. He'd seen men shoot each other in the name of love. He'd seen perfectly sane, reasonable people crumble like week-old bread for the sake of that one elusive emotion that he was sure was either fantasy or folly.
There was a time, long ago, when he, too, had thought that love would be magical. He could remember standing before the tall rigid figure of his father, a monolithic presence to a five-year-old boy. He had forced himself to raise his eyes and look into those of his father. They had the same eyes, same face, same Castlemaine blood. His hands had grown clammy and he had wanted to wipe them on his thighs, but he'd caught himself, remembering that a marquess and future duke didn't do such things. He'd had to take deep breaths to get the words past his dry throat. Then he'd done it, told his father he loved him, thinking with childish simplicity that perhaps that was the magic phrase that would win approval. It won cold anger instead.
Love. He viewed it the way an atheist might look upon a crucifix. The word had meaning only for those fools who sought it.