Anne Gracie - [The Devil Riders 02] (34 page)

The woman called Tibby didn’t move. A small, thin, sharp-featured woman in her middle thirties, she stood with her hand pressed to her bosom, staring out of the window.

“Tibby?” the princess said.

Tibby started and looked around. “Oh, please forgive me,” she said hurriedly. “I was miles away. Lady Helen, how do you do?”

“Is anything the matter, Tibby? Not bad news, is it?”

Tibby looked at her blankly. “No.” She flushed. “I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet. Please excuse me, I need to . . .” And she ran out of the room.

“Do forgive her,” the princess said. “She does this every now and then when a letter from a certain person arrives. She’s always a little agitated afterward.”

Nell knew how she felt. What had Ethan said in the letter that had caused that grim look in Harry’s eyes? It was very unsettling. If she didn’t know better, she’d think . . .

The princess picked up the teapot. “But look at me, rattling on about Tibby when you’ve only just met her. Let us pour the tea. Lady Gosforth has retired to her bedchamber to lie down until dinner and the men and boys have gone off to the odious stables to look at some horrid horse, so we won’t wait for them. Don’t you just loathe horses?”

“No,” Nell said. “I adore them. I’m planning to breed them.”

The princess laughed. “Then you’re marrying into the right family. Every single member of it is horse obsessed. Except me. Now, do you take milk or lemon? Neither? Good.” She passed Nell a cup of tea. “And now you shall tell me how you met Harry.”

Nell smiled and took a sip of tea. “I’m not sure where to start, Princess Carolin—”

The princess held up her hand. “Please, you must call me Callie, as the others do. We are going to become sisters. I’ve never had a sister and I always longed for one.”

“I’m the same,” Nell said.

Callie lifted her cup to drink and suddenly gasped. A faraway look came into her eyes.

After a moment, she blushed and looked shyly at Nell. “My baby moved. I’m sorry, I know it is indelicate of me to mention such a thing, especially in front of an unmarried girl, but this baby is so precious to me.”

Nell shook her head, her eyes prickling with tears. “I don’t think it’s indelicate at all, and you need not mind me.”

Callie laid her hand on her swollen belly. “For nine years after Nicky’s birth I thought I was barren and, oh—” She broke off again.

Nell smiled at the look of rapture in the princess’s lovely green eyes and remembered how she’d first felt the miracle of Torie moving inside her. She said softly, “It’s the most wonderful feeling in the world, isn’t it? Feeling that tiny flutter beneath your heart and knowing that there’s a tiny babe growing inside you. And feeling such intense love . . .”

She stopped suddenly, aware she’d said too much.

The princess stared at her wide-eyed.

Nell bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone, but it had just slipped out. And now it had, she didn’t regret it. It it was right for Harry’s family to know. They’d welcomed her as one of them. Her secret would come out eventually—look at how easily it had slipped out with the princess. And Aunt Maude. And if they found out later rather than sooner, well, that would feel like a betrayal of their trust. She wanted their acceptance, but not under false pretenses. She wanted them to know the truth. She took a deep breath and began.

By the time the men arrived from the stables the tea was cold and Nell had told the whole story to Callie. The only part she left out was Sir Irwin. She was determined to bury that part of her life completely.

In the telling, both women had wept and embraced and Nell had found a friend. A sister.

Harry took one look at the swollen eyes of the two women and guessed what they’d been talking about. He sent the boys to the kitchen and was about to hustle his brothers away when Nell interrupted him. “No, please, everyone, come in. There is something I have to tell you all. It has been weighing on my conscience—”

“You don’t have to explain anything to them,” Harry snapped.

“No, Harry. If I am to become part of your family, they should know the truth. I would feel like an impostor otherwise.”

“What rot. You are to be my wife. No impostor about it.”

“He’s right.” Gabriel crossed the room and put his arm around his wife. “You don’t have to tell us a single thing. You are to be Harry’s wife, and that’s enough for any of us.”

“I agree.” Callie took Nell’s hand and squeezed it in a silent show of support.

Neither Nash nor the earl said anything.

Nell looked at Harry. “If you ask me to, I will say nothing.”

He gave her a goaded look. “It’s not me I’m worried about, you foolish woman. Tell them whatever you like, it makes no difference to me.” He came and stood beside her, arms folded, like a protector.

“Then I want to explain,” she said. “I would rather my story didn’t leave this room, but—”

“Rest assured, it won’t.” Nash crossed the room and sat down. The earl remained standing stiffly beside the doorway.

Quickly and simply Nell told her story. In a calm voice born of emotional exhaustion, she told them everything, from discovering she was pregnant to seeing the basket of vegetables on the church steps.

She didn’t tell them how she had come to be pregnant in the first place. That was nobody’s business but hers.

“And so,” she finished, “now you know.”

Callie jumped up and hugged her wordlessly. None of the men moved. They were all looking at the earl.

There was a long silence. Then the earl cleared his throat. “I have a question.”

Everyone stiffened. Nell tensed as beside her Harry clenched his fists.

Nell straightened, as if about to face sentence. “Yes?”

“Your father is dead.”

Nell blinked. “Yes.”

“And you have no male relatives in this country?”

“That is correct,” she said with a quick glance at Harry. He shook his head, as mystified as any of them as to what the earl was getting at.

The earl cleared his throat again and looked at her with Harry’s eyes. “Then may I offer my services to give the bride away?”

 
 
“I still don’t trust him,” Harry growled in bed that night. “One gallant gesture doesn’t wipe out the things he’s done in the past.”

“But didn’t Nash do them, too? You seem to have forgiven him.”

“Yes, but he was younger than Marcus. Marcus was always the leader. And besides, Nash apologized last year. And he helped Gabe and Callie a great deal.”

“Maybe Marcus will apologize, too.”

He snorted. “Pigs might fly. He’s too stiff-necked to apologize about anything. And some things can’t be cured with words.”

He’d been very badly hurt, she saw. “What did he do to you?” she asked softly.

He gave her a flat look. “You’re going to keep on about this, aren’t you?”

“It’s just that I don’t understand. I’ll always take your side anyway, you know that. But I would like to understand.”

He sighed. “Very well. But get comfortable, it’s a long story and not very interesting, so you’ll probably fall asleep.”

She snuggled in. And he told her the story of his first love, Anthea, who’d betrayed him in the worst way and watched secretly as he was thrashed to within an inch of his life.

Nell was horrified and angry and hugged him convulsively as if somehow she could comfort his youthful self.

And somehow he did feel comforted.

“And then they took me, half naked and bleeding and worse, and dumped me at the foot of the steps of my father’s London house—Alverleigh House, in the heart of Mayfair. And of course my father, the Earl of Alverleigh, had to be in,” he said bitterly. “My first meeting with my real father and I was half naked and bleeding and unable to stand.”

“Why did they take you there, if you didn’t know him?”

He shrugged. “No doubt Lord Quenborough took the view that my father should take responsibility for his bastard.”

“And did he?”

“He took one look at me and said to the butler, ‘Glover, there is a mess on the front step. Have it removed.’ I’ll never forget those words.”

Nell gasped. “So heartless.”

“And then my brother Marcus came down the steps and stared at me, those pitiless eyes of his taking in every detail. He didn’t say a word to me. Just stared and then followed his father back inside. Like father, like son.”

“I understand now,” she said, her arms around him. “It would be very hard to forgive such cruelty. And I’m sorry for bringing it all up, stirring up old hurts and opening old wounds.”

Harry kissed her, feeling comforted. He’d never told anyone that tale, only Gabe. And then not in such detail.

He didn’t feel stirred up, though, or as if old wounds had reopened. Instead he felt . . . healed.

Telling her, lying entwined with her like this, talking in quiet voices into the night, made him realize how young he’d been. It wasn’t love he’d felt for Anthea, he suddenly realized. It was infatuation, calf-love, his first serious boyhood crush.

It wasn’t love at all.

It was nothing like love.

“Oh Harry,” Nell whispered. “I love you so much . . .”

She looked at him with eyes full of love and expectation.

Harry stared down at her. He couldn’t speak the words she wanted to hear. They were stuck in his throat. They would remain there, he knew, until he did something, until he was able to give her more than words.

They made love again, and it was slow and tender and bittersweet. The unspoken words hung silent and heavy in the room.

C
ooper put the last touches to Nell’s coiffure. She’d tried something different again, plaiting in sections of hair in a continuous circle around the crown of Nell’s head, like a coronet.

Nell regarded her reflection with amazement. Who was that elegant young woman? Certainly not Nell, the hoyden who’d grown up in the stables with her skirts hitched up to stop them dragging in the mud and her hair falling down around her ears.

Lady Helen, perhaps? No, she’d never felt like a Lady Helen. Lady Nell now . . .

“You’re glowing, m’lady,” Cooper told her. “You look wonderful.”

“Thank you, Cooper, you’ve worked miracles.”

“I can only do so much, m’lady. ’Tis love does the rest, I reckon.”

Nell blushed. He’d made love to her last night with a tender sweetness that had melted her completely.

And very early this morning they’d made love again with a fierce passion that had burned her last inhibitions up in glorious conflagration. She was still a little stiff from it. She didn’t mind at all.

He still hadn’t told her he loved her. Physically, she felt well loved, but she craved to hear the words from him. More and more she recalled his words back when he had first proposed.
It’s not love’s young dream I’m offering you.

It wasn’t love’s young dream she wanted. Just love. Harry’s love.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” she called.

A footman entered and bowed. “I’ve been sent to show you to the breakfast parlor, m’lady.”

“Oh, thank you. Can you just call Mr. Morant, please?”

The footman frowned. “But he’s already left, m’lady.”

“For breakfast?” She frowned. It seemed unlike him.

“No, m’lady, he had his breakfast an hour ago. He left for London straight afterward.”

“What?”
Her jaw dropped.

“Yes, m’lady.”

Why go to London without even telling her? She could only think of one reason—that letter. Nell flung open the connecting door and hurried through. She searched but there was no sign of the letter. Nor was there a note from Harry explaining why he’d gone off without telling her.

An ominous feeling grew inside her.

She turned to the footman. “Take me to Mr. Gabriel Renfrew immediately.”

“He’s in the—”

“Please, just take me. And hurry.” She didn’t know the layout of the big house yet.

They passed along the corridor, down the stairs, through several twists and turns until finally the man knocked, then threw open a door. “The breakfast parlor, m’lady.”

Gabriel was about to sit down at the table, a plate of roast beef in his hand. His brothers, Nash and Marcus, had already started. At her entrance, they rose to their feet, as usual. She tried to catch her breath.

“Lady Helen, what is it?” the earl asked.

Nell looked at him, not quite sure how to begin. The preposterous idea in her head just kept growing.

“Harry has gone to London,” she said.

The earl nodded. “Yes, on business,” he said.

She looked at Gabriel. “I don’t think so. I think—I think he might have gone to kill a man,” Nell said. It sounded so dramatic when she said it aloud. But every instinct she had told her he’d gone after Sir Irwin.

“Why on earth would you think such a thing?” Gabriel asked her. “Here come and sit down. Have a cup of tea.”

She allowed him to seat her and accepted the tea, but she didn’t drink it. “He’s been after this man for some time. He—he’s very angry with him.”

“Yes, but you don’t go around killing people because you’re angry with them.”

“No, but I think he might challenge this man to a duel.”

There was a short silence. “A duel?” Gabriel’s gaze sharpened. “For what reason?”

Nell swallowed. “Me.” She forced herself to meet their eyes. “It’s the man who—who—r-rap—”

“We understand,” Nash said, cutting her off compassionately.

“But if you’re right,” Gabriel said, “why didn’t he challenge this man before. Why wait till now?”

“He didn’t know the man’s name until now. I refused to tell him. But I believe the information was in the letter he got yesterday. It would explain his tension afterward.”