Authors: Lightning
The rain, now light, awakened senses dulled by the intensity of their recent lovemaking. He raked his wet hair with a hand, pushing it back from where it tumbled on his forehead.
He had to know how far they were from the Potomac, how well the river was guarded. With both armies so recently engaged in Pennsylvania, he and Lauren didn’t have to worry about stumbling into main camps. But they did have to worry about guerrillas on both sides, raiders and deserters and predators. There would be small troops of men watching on both banks of the river, and he had to figure a way of crossing it.
And then what?
Bloody hell, he didn’t know. Would Lauren run? He had seen the intent in her eyes several times. But now …
There could be a baby. If enthusiasm had anything to do with it, they had surely created one. He smiled as he considered the prospect. He’d thought never to marry for love, not after Sylvia. He’d even thought himself incapable of that emotion in the past years, but now he realized how foolish he’d been.
He loved Lauren. He knew it. He also knew he couldn’t tell her that. Not as long as secrets hung between them—not until she trusted him. He wouldn’t risk himself that way. But he was bloody determined he was not going to let her go. One way or another, she was going to England with him.
Despite his preoccupation and the still-driving rain, something alerted him. Perhaps it was his horse, whose ears suddenly perked up. He heard the whinny of horses, and he moved from the path he was following into the woods.
Adrian quickly dismounted and held his hands over his horse’s mouth to keep the animal from responding. The sound of hoofbeats was audible, despite the fact that the rain-soaked ground tended to swallow the sound. That meant there were many riders.
And then he heard voices … near.
“Goddamn Englishman.”
“Captain must be out of his mind. Can’t find anything in this mess.”
“Let’s go by that old haunted farmhouse.”
“You can go, Sergeant, not me.”
“It’s the only shelter within miles.”
“No one’s gonna stay there, not for long. Remember those last …”
Adrian didn’t wait to hear any more. He ran his horse a quarter of a mile or so, then mounted and pushed the horse into a gallop.
Lauren kept looking toward the house. She was both repelled and attracted by it.
Her dress was dry now, and she put it on, trying to smooth the wrinkles, with little success. She also combed her hair as best she could, but she couldn’t find the pins to keep it in place, so she twisted it into a long braid.
From the barn door, Lauren looked at the house again. She had been restless since Adrian left to scout. She had walked around the wet barn, the hem of her dress soaking up rain from the puddles, yet she couldn’t stay still. And something about the house beckoned even as it frightened her.
She held out her hand to Socrates. “Let’s explore.”
The house was draped in gray. Rain continued to fall, but with less force than before. The clouds above were still full and pregnant, but the tension had flowed from the air—except, it seemed to Lauren, around the house.
Socrates swung up into her arms, scolding, and she knew he didn’t want to go in; nor did he want to stay behind.
Lauren approached slowly but inexorably, as if dragged on an invisible leash. Entering the house, she ignored the room with the bloodstains. Instead, she went down a small hall into a room on the left, again as if drawn.
Like the other room, it had been stripped of nearly everything. Her eyes went to the brick fireplace and stayed there. She felt something strange in the room, a chill, but there was nothing menacing about it. She moved to the hearth, her eyes searching for something, though she didn’t know what, and then she found it, and the chill seemed to fade. In the hearth, as though thrown against the side, was a book. Lauren leaned down and picked it up.
Just then she heard the sound of a rider outside, and one arm tightened its hold on Socrates while the other held tightly to the book as she moved quickly toward the front door.
Adrian! Adrian was gesturing toward the bam, and she hurried over to it just as he dismounted. “Yanks coming,” he said, and he hurried to saddle her horse while Lauren quickly gathered their possessions. She stuffed as many as she could in the saddlebags and the rest into the one of the blankets Adrian had taken from the house. The book she’d picked up went with the frying pan, playing cards, and Adrian’s shirt into the blanket. She tucked the bundle under her arm.
Adrian was finished saddling her horse, and he helped her mount, then took Socrates and swung up on his own mount, leaving the barn at a trot. Lauren followed, her precious bundle now tucked under her skirt to keep it from getting wet.
Just as they reached the trees, she looked back. Through the gray fog of rain, she saw the head of a horse, and then blue uniforms, but then the trees blocked her view, and Adrian and she were moving quickly through the forest.
They seemed to go on forever. The rain continued to fall, and occasionally thunder roared. Streaks of lightning flashed in the distance. Water spilled from the leaves, soaking already sodden clothing.
All of Lauren’s aches and pains returned. To try to forget the misery, she thought of the book she had found, and wondered about the strange feelings she had in the house. It was almost as if someone had been trying to tell her something.
Nonsense. It was nothing but an ordinary book, and it had been only the silence of the house that made it so eerie. But it still gave her something to think about, something other than how very miserable she was.
And still they went on and on until it grew too dark to see.
Adrian stopped beneath a huge oak. It wasn’t a completely satisfactory shelter, for water dripped from the leaves, but they couldn’t go any farther, not in the pitch-black darkness. He helped her down, unsaddled the horses, and used the horse blankets to rig a shelter above them. The damp horse odor was strong, but Lauren was ready to accept any small favor of cover at this time. Thank God, it was summer, and there was no chill to the rain, but still the rivulets of water under her dress made her feel clammy and uncomfortable.
Nothing seemed to bother Adrian, however. He moved as decisively as ever and, if anything, looked more dashing with wet clumps of curling chestnut hair falling on his forehead. He bent over her, kissing her forehead and taking her damp form in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said.
And suddenly everything was all right, as it always was when she was in such close proximity to him. But Socrates evidently didn’t feel the same. He howled in abject misery and tried to get under Lauren’s petticoat, finally succeeding as her skirts took on a life of their own.
Adrian chuckled even as he kissed her. “I’ll make this up to you someday,” he said.
But he didn’t have to. They were here … now … because of what she had done. He should be back at sea, or in Nassau. Instead, they were in the middle of nowhere in the midst of a seemingly unending storm with few clothes and even less food.
She started to giggle, partially from hysteria. She heard his answering laugh, and it seemed neither of them could stop. And so they sat in the rain under a dripping oak tree in the middle of a war, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.
Lauren and Adrian huddled under the tree until dawn.
They were able to snatch an occasional few moments of sleep until water collected on the blanket and tumbled on them like a waterfall.
Sometimes they just held each other to forget the physical misery, the hunger that revealed itself in occasional rumbles in their stomachs.
The laughter was gone. There were only the two of them—no, the three of them—trying to endure what usually would be unendurable.
But as Lauren felt Adrian’s arms around her, she knew she would rather be here with him than alone in a palace.
It made her think of his home. Where did a lord live? How did a lord live? He’d mentioned the name of his estate: Ridgely. How did it compare to the small cottage where she’d lived, a thousand years ago? What would he think of her home, he who had probably supped with the queen?
She snuggled deeper in his arms. “What was your house like in England?”
He was silent for several moments. “Old … old and full of history and memories. King Henry VIII slept there. So did George during your Revolution.”
“Is it large?”
“Very large. When I was a young boy, I would get lost in the wings. The old part was once a castle, better than seven hundred years old. It was expanded, and expanded again to house whole armies. You walk through the halls and you can almost hear their voices.”
He hesitated, and she rubbed his hand, silently urging him to continue.
“The family divided during the War of the Roses, one brother on one side, one on the other. One brother was even locked in the dungeon by the other for months. I used to go down there … I could feel the pain …”
His hand tightened around hers. “And the main hall … where dances were held … the music seems to still echo …”
“You loved it,” she said quietly.
“More than anything in my life until—” He stopped abruptly. “Yes, I loved it. It was always my refuge.”
“Refuge?”
“My father and I didn’t get along. A second son was of no use to him, and all he cared about was people who were of use. The irony was that I was the son who cared about Ridgely, who would have preserved it.”
“And your mother?”
“She died when I was young.” His voice was curt.
“Your brother?”
“He always hated Ridgely … as much as I loved it. But because of English law, he inherited everything. And gambled it all away.”
Lauren heard the pain in his voice.
“You would love it,” he said. “There is a private forest with a fast-running stream. The fields are rich and productive.” There was a terrible wistfulness in his voice. “I would like to show it to you.”
“Who … owns it now?”
“A man named Rhys Redding. He won it from my brother. He’s indicated he would sell it back for the right price.”
The right price.
Lauren felt the familiar sickening guilt inside. She remembered when, on the
Specter,
she’d asked him why he ran the blockade, and he had teasingly said it was the game. But it hadn’t been. It had never been. Ridgely had simply meant too much to Adrian—he hadn’t been able to talk about it. She knew that now as surely as she knew how painful it was to think of Larry. Yet he was finally sharing part of himself with her, though she couldn’t do the same. She realized she had cost him the chance to regain his heritage. He would never forgive her. She wondered if she would ever forgive herself.
His hand tightened on her, tensing with suppressed emotion. “Ridgely’s my legacy from the past … who I am. Cabots have lived there more than seven hundred years. For us to lose it now …”
“Your brother lost it—you didn’t.”
“But if I have a chance to get it back and fail …”
The defeat in his voice was almost more than she could bear. She cast frantically for another subject. “What is it like to be an English aristocrat?”
“Lonely,” he said unexpectedly. “My father cared only about the name being carried on, not his sons as such. Though John, as heir, received attention, if not love. He had to be perfect, and he could never quite be that. So he resented everything about Ridgely.”
“And you?”
“A nuisance barely tolerated, particularly when I got into mischief. But getting into mischief meant getting attention. So I was always doing that. I wanted Ridgely—I cared about Ridgely while my brother didn’t—but there was never any chance of that, so I drowned my dreams in ale and disgraced my father by reckless gambling. At least it had the effect of making him realize I was alive.” Adrian didn’t know why he was telling her all this. He had never spoken of such things to a soul before. But Lauren’s acceptance made the confession easier. He wanted her to know him, to trust him, to share the things close to her with him.
It was frightening how much he wanted that.
But he was answered only by understanding silence. A silence heavy with things left unsaid.
“And you, sweetheart?” he said finally. “How did you grow up as a doctor’s daughter?”
With love, she wanted to say. But how could she when he’d obviously had so little? How could she explain that love had made her do things she ordinarily would never have done. Just as his lack of it had done the same.
She lifted her head, glad that the wetness of the night disguised the tears running from her eyes. I love you, she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the right to say it. She would never have the right to say it, so instead she pretended a sleep that she was sure would be fraught with disturbing dreams.
But if she’d had dreams, she remembered none of them when she woke in Adrian’s arms. Only the slightest gray peeped between the heavily laden trees. With her movement, she felt Adrian’s and looked up. He was blinking, so she knew that he too had got a little sleep.
Socrates had found a place beside the two of them. He lay partly on Adrian, partly on her, in probably the driest spot around. No fool that monkey, Lauren thought with quiet amusement tinged with envy. Socrates’s problems were minor ones, and he had a way of making the best of things.