Obsession (23 page)

“Could it be, Your Grace, a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’?”

I remained silent.

“Yes,” he said. “I do believe so. Your brother is somehow related to whatever discourse you had with the dowager duchess. ’Twould explain why you returned from London with such fury and frustration toward him.”

“You think too much,” I told him sharply, the truth of his words turning the warm air cold upon my flesh.

He leaned toward me, faded eyes round, tufts of white hair peaked on each of his temples, giving him the appearance of a hoot owl.

“You have defied your grandmother all of your life. Fought her control over you tooth and nail. You so loved a woman named Maria Ashton that you were willing to blow your heritage to hell in order to marry her.

“Yet you continue to sequester yourself in this place, refusing to face her again. The whole thing smells foul as kippers, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you,” I snapped.

His gray eyebrows drew together as he continued to glare at me. Finally, he gave a quick nod and stood, smoothed his hands down over his coat, then said, “Very well. Then we’re finished.”

He offered his hand to me, and I grasped it, shook it.

“Good luck to you, Herbert.”

“And to you, Your Grace.”

I did not watch Herbert depart but sank deeper into the chair, my legs outstretched, gazing at the distant wild swell splashed with vibrant heath-bells and bracken.

My home loomed behind me, Goliath in height and width, empty of a solitary human. Servants all gone. Only me left, to ramble along the dreary corridors, plink away at piano keys, and drink away my guilt until I became oblivious to my loneliness and continuing ache for Maria.

Herbert had been correct, of course. Fresh old bastard—too smart for his own good. Smarter than I, apparently.

I reached for the note on the small table by my chair, the missive having arrived yesterday morning from Paris—a solitary line that had unleashed a sort of mourning in me, a profound sense of loss that had made me sleepless throughout the night.

The babe is born. I have a son.

What bitter irony that Edwina, who cared not a whit for such a gift, would be blessed with a son, while Maria…

Christ, when had I become such a coward?

Herbert was right. For the first time in my life, I had allowed the dowager duchess to manipulate me.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Correct there, as well.

Yet here I sat, my head pounding from another night of drinking myself into oblivion in an attempt to numb myself from the pain gnawing at my black heart.

Aye, I deserved this sorry life. Destitution. Misery. Humiliation. It would do myself, my brother, my lineage, a favor if I put a bullet in my head.

I turned my face toward the sun.

The damnable memories were always there, lurking, forcing their way before my mind’s eye.

I had sat in this very place with Maria, mesmerized by her image—her wide blue eyes so innocent and vulnerable, her lips the color of ripe plums. Her smile was not the sort a man, even a man as jaded as I, could easily ignore, or forget.

Sweet, beautiful angel. Savior of my soul.

Without her, I was lost.

A sudden and too familiar sense of desperation roused inside me. I jumped from the chair and strode with fierce determination along the cobbled footpath, until I reached the stables.

Maynord had taken leave of Thorn Rose the day before—skulked away in the dead of night with most of my tack. There was no one but myself left to feed the swine, milk the damned cow, and see to Noblesse.

The horse regarded me with suspicious eyes as I grabbed up a brush and began to groom him, my strokes growing harder as my frustration mounted.

“I’m done with, old boy. Just the two of us now.”

Stroke. Stroke.

“It’s nothing more than I deserve. I’ve been a blight on humankind all of my life. Dammit!”

Noblesse snorted and shifted away.

“They’ll find us nothing more than a lot of moldering bones in a few months, and who the hell will care? Not one damned soul, that’s who. Not that I blame them. My brother will think ‘good riddance.’ ”

I threw the brush against the stable wall, causing the stallion to flinch and sidle away from me.

Dropping into the sweet-smelling straw, I leaned against the stall wall and let out a sigh. Noblesse nuzzled my shoulder, then sniffed at my hair, his warm breath scented with oats and hay.

“Why the blazes should I care how our illegitimacy affects Clay? He’s a wealthy man. He built up Basingstoke’s coffers with his own blood, sweat, and tears. It’s me I’m worried about. Daft, misguided bastard that I am.

“If I had a grain of conscience and intelligence, I would mount you right now and return to Huddersfield, go to bended knee, and beg her to marry me—before she marries that pompous, sanctimonious young vicar and breaks my heart completely.

“But what then?” I scratched between the horse’s ears.

I looked through the stable door, at the manor with its high-pitched gables silhouetted against the blue sky—all that I had left, all other properties sold to satisfy my gambling debts. It was only a matter of time—months, weeks, perhaps—before I would be forced to sell my home.

I glanced around the stables, once sparkling, each stall once filled with the finest horseflesh in all of England.

Even here, the memories of Maria roused in my mind’s eye: Maria nestled in sweet straw while a newborn filly nuzzled her hand.

Cursing, I stumbled to my feet and saddled the horse.

I
RODE WITH NO PARTICULAR DESTINATION IN
mind, simply allowed the animal his head while I tried to avoid the clash of thoughts in my mind. As we meandered along the pebbly bridle paths disappearing beneath the wild growth of spring thatch, my eye feasted upon each swell and sweep, more beautiful than I had ever seen them.

Why had I never noticed before the wild, colorful sprinkling of turf by heath-bell and bracken, the moss-covered crags and the aged firs twisted and bent by the winds?

My thighs hugged Noblesse as he descended the declivity and splashed across the gill that bounced and bubbled around his fet-locks until we reached the fern bank on the other side. Then up, laboring along the incline of the mossy swell, up, up, the stallion’s sides warming beneath me. Reaching the summit, he paused, lifting his nostrils into the breeze as if detecting some threat.

I stared down on the remains of the mine.

More memories I was not prepared to embrace.

I tried to rein Noblesse around, but he snorted and pranced, his dancing hooves stirring up dust. He fought the bit, teeth grinding upon the metal as he half reared and tossed his head. No encouragement of spur or crop would convince him down the slope toward home—as if he was somehow being obstructed from moving.

With no warning, he collected himself and tossed back his head so forcefully that a rein snapped. I grabbed hold of his mane as he descended the swell toward the mine, his hooves scrambling and scraping amid the loose stone until, at last, we stood upon the deserted road leading toward the mine.

I dismounted, breathing heavily, sweating from the heat of the afternoon and the efforts of fighting the oddly belligerent animal. No sooner had my boots touched the ground when Noblesse bolted up the incline, disappearing over the summit with a thundering of feet.

Damn, damn, damn.

I reluctantly looked around me, first at the collapsed entrance of the mine, then at the lines of stone houses blackened with soot, their windows void as dead eyes and roof timbers jutting up against the fair sky like incindered bones.

The silence of death settled like a shroud upon me, and I shuddered.

I envisioned the long line of stoop-shouldered miners shuffling from the pit, their faces smeared by thick dust and sweat, chests heaving with wracking coughs as their wives left their homes to greet them.

There, beneath the tree, Maria had reclined on a patch-work quilt and allowed sunlight to bathe her face.

There, upon the boulders lining the road, I sat with a dozen men and imbibed ale as I listened to their conversations.

I had worked alongside them. Sweated and cursed and bled beside them. Dreamed of becoming the man I knew I could be. Wanted to be.

Worthy of Maria.

Worthy of self-respect.

Wearily, I dropped onto a boulder, and with elbows on my knees, closed my eyes.

Minutes stretched into hours, and the shadows of the cottage shells elongated toward me. The air cooled and came in sharp gusts.

I would eventually acknowledge the whispery voice for what it was—years later, when I became a more spiritual man—a voice of unspeakable strangeness that touched my ear and sparked the first inkling of an epiphany in my thoughts.

I heard it, and questioned whence it came as I stood and looked around me. No doubt some trick of the wind, now moaning through the collapsed stone and timbers. Perhaps a shuddering of the branches over my head, a trembling of colliding leaves?

What delusions flashed through my brain!

I saw clearly the miners, familiar friends, with shovels and picks shouldered, marching like troops into the mine. The homes were rebuilt. I smelled the fresh lumber and heard the boisterous conversations of men.

And there, among them, stood another: a stranger, tall and slender, with pale hair and eyes as blue as a summer sky.

He stared directly at me, a kind smile on his face. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Hurry! You haven’t much time!”

Then he was gone.

The miners were gone.

I was alone again.

The wondrous shock of awareness came like an earthquake; it sprang trembling and quaking through my heart and spirit.

I would buy the mine and rebuild it!

I would find some way to do it—mortgage Thorn Rose, if I must.

But I
would
rebuild it. For myself.

And Maria.

22

B
Y THE TIME
I
REACHED
H
UDDERSFIELD, THE
day was nigh over and dusk painted the eastern sky a somnolent purple. The April breeze cooled my flesh and smelled of tender grass, and wildflowers covered the black earth in sprays of blue and yellow.

Cursed, I was, that every living thing around me encouraged memories of Maria: the smallest bird, the tiniest flower, the warm sun upon my shoulders.

Even in that moment, as my horse shifted beneath me, her words came back to me, and the vision:

Maria sitting at my feet with book in hand, her silvery flowing hair reflecting the firelight like a mirror.

“Do you recall, Your Grace, how, when we were children, each new season was the prelude to new experiences? Spring brought birds and flowers, summer the long, warm days of sunshine and fragrant heather. Autumn was a time for harvest and color, of gold and red falling leaves in which we frolicked and daydreamed of winter snow. Winter was roaring fires and snuggling deeply beneath good down comforters, and listening to the howl of wind and sleet scratching at our windowpanes. It was a time to share secrets and to dream of the coming spring.

“I wonder, Your Grace, when, exactly, did the seasons become so monotonous and something to be dreaded? When did the summers become too intolerably hot and long, and the winters too cold? Why did the autumn leaves become a drudgery to be raked and burned? Why did the springs become far too dismally wet and chilly?

“When, exactly, did our every aspiration, dream, and hope become simply another anticipated disappointment?”

I had made this journey a dozen times since the day I awakened to discover Maria had left me. A dozen times of wandering the paths along the Huddersfield canals, finding myself standing outside her little cottage and hoping against hope to catch a glimpse of her.

How strangely I had been appraised by the townfolk as I asked them about her.

“Is she well?

“Is she happy?

“Has she married?” I held my breath in anticipation that she had.

I had watched her walk to the church, where John Rees waited to greet her, his expression one of such delight that I felt murderous. That he should now become the beneficiary of her kindness, her sweet smiles and gentle touches, knifed at my soul.

The pain was there still.

Although I had had no intention of returning to Huddersfield on my way to London, here I was again, unforgivable thoughts plaguing my mind.

I would confront her.

Confess my feelings on bent knee.

She had loved me once.

I would make her love me again.

To the devil with John Rees.

I stabled my horse and rented a room for the night. Then I made my way to the church, where I sat on a bench beneath a twisted old rowan and listened to the chorus of voices sounding like angels from heaven. The sky was starless, the air cool enough to make me shiver.

At long last, the singing ended. The church doors opened and there stood John Rees in cloak and collar…and at his side, Maria.

Not the Maria whose face had been gaunt from fear and sadness. Not the lass whose emaciated body had been as light as goose down. She stood at Rees’s side offering each of his congregation a gentle touch and the smile that had once radiated through my darkness to heal my spirit.

How lovely!

Her hair was no longer the sheared and shaggy mess from her days in Menson. What a rare and beautiful shade it was, rolling in silken waves over her brows and framing her eyes, the flaxen strands reflecting the candle glow from within the nave.

And those eyes—smiling once again with such depth of compassion, it seemed that each man, woman, and child she looked upon must feel the blissful touch of God Himself.

I remained within the shadow of the rowan for what felt like an eternity, each smile and touch she bestowed on the young vicar aggravating the impatience that had taken a painful hold on my chest.

I shook as the air grew colder, the night darker, the fog obscuring all but the haze of light illuminating the church entry—and the couple who remained there even after the last of the congregation had made their way home.