Leslie Lafoy (38 page)

“Is Ryland Castle still standing?” he interrupted.

“It was when I left yesterday afternoon, your lordship.”

Well, there was good news. As long as he knew that this wasn’t going to end badly, he could be patient in hearing the story. “And then what, Miss Durbin?”

“There was a small fire during the costume party the night before last. Lord Henry came as Mount Vesuvius and when he erupted, a few sparks caught in the drapes of the ballroom and up they went.”

A fire.
“Was anyone hurt?”

“Just Lord Henry when Caroline knocked him aside to get to the drapes and pull them down before the flames could spread.”

His heart tripped. “Is she all right?”

“Caroline is a cat, your grace,” Jane assured him with a wave of her hand and a chuckle. “Nine lives and always lands on her feet.”

Yes, he could see that. “Was Lord Henry seriously hurt?” he asked, not because he particularly cared, but because it was the next logical and socially expected question.

“Not so much seriously as embarrassingly,” Jane answered. “Lady Sillings—who had come as a Vestal Virgin, which no one guessed—attempted to catch him as he staggered back. She got her hands on his rocks and was doing nicely at hauling him upright when his costume had a bit of an avalanche. He went reeling right into Lord Bidwell, who was rushing over to help Lady Sillings. Unfortunately, Lord Bidwell had come as Marc Anthony, complete with sword. Lord Henry’s been standing to dine ever since.”

“Anything else?” he asked warily.

“Nothing that began or ended in damage.”

He knew a hedging answer when he heard one. “What about injury?”

“Well, there was the time Scutter escaped his cage.”

Again his heart raced. Fiona. God, she loved that squirrel. It took conscious effort, but he managed to calmly ask, “What happened?”

“Scutter made it down the stairs and into the foyer with Lady Fiona and Lady Simone in pursuit just as Lady Ralls and Lord Betterton were coming back from their afternoon ride. They opened the door to come in and Scutter made a run to get out. At the sight of a squirrel limping at her, Lady Ralls, twit that she is, fainted dead across the doorway. Lord Betterton, valiant moron that he is, tried to
bludgeon Scutter with his riding crop, but kept missing and hitting Lady Ralls.”

“Fiona?”

“The girl has quite a voice when she’s angry,” Jane supplied. “And she’s utterly fearless.”

When it came to defense of helpless animals, yes, Fiona would take on the world and not think twice about it. Drayton sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid to ask about Simone.”

“The brass vase off the foyer table,” Jane supplied, grinning from ear to ear. “From the center of the room. Hit him square in the chest. Knocked him clean off his feet and right out of the house. Which, of course, ended his attempt to be a hero.”

Well, at least she hadn’t run him through with a cutlass. “And Scutter?”

“A bit shaken up by the whole thing, but otherwise unscathed.”

Thank God. Fiona would have been devastated. “All of this in two weeks?”

“It hasn’t been the least bit boring, your grace.”

An explosion. A fire. A stabbing—albeit accidental. An assault with a brass vase. Oh, yes, and whatever the hell reindeer rides were. No, boring it hadn’t been. “Does Caroline need me to return to throw out the Huns?” he asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Oh, no, your grace,” Jane quickly replied, reaching into the side seam of her purple skirt. She produced some folded pieces of parchment and handed them to him, explaining, “When Simone and Fiona heard that Lord Ralls was bringing me to London for fabrics, they asked me to deliver letters to you and I said I would.”

“Thank you,” he said, glancing down at them. Three. There was one there from Caroline, too. He brought his smile under control, cleared his throat, and met Jane’s gaze. “When you return to Ryland Castle, please give my regards to Caroline and tell her that if she needs anything of me, she has but to ask.”

“I’ll certainly do that, your grace,” she promised. She sighed and shook her head slightly and then gave him a little smile. “Although I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that Caroline isn’t inclined to think of any situation as being beyond her ability to manage or endure all by herself.”

“I have,” he admitted, half wishing that Caroline had it in her to be helpless about something, anything.

“Well,” Jane said breezily, “since Lord Ralls is waiting in the carriage for me, I really must be going now.”

“Safe and pleasant travels, Miss Durbin.” He lifted the notes in his hand. “And thank you again for delivering the letters.”

She gave him a bright smile and another curtsy, then turned and said, “Lord Aubrey,” as she walked away.

Aubrey. Damn. Out of sight, happily out of mind. Deciding to keep him that way for a while longer, Drayton opened the first of the letters. The penmanship was atrocious and the ink spots numerous. In the upper right-hand corner was a clear paw print. Drayton grinned and read the short note.

Dear Lord Ryland,

Scutter is safe. Tarban can fly.

Deebs is fat. I miss you.

Lady Fiona Turnbridge

And he missed her, too. Horribly. His chest tight, he cleared his throat and went on to the second note.
Where Fiona’s letters had been round and full, these were angular—as though they’d been written either in great haste or under great duress. The penmanship was slightly better than Fiona’s, but the ink spots were even more numerous. Some of them looked a bit deliberate. One tiny one . . . He angled the paper into the fading afternoon light. Yes, that was definitely a hangman’s noose.

Dear Lord Ryland,

All is well here. We are in good health and spirits. I hope you are enjoying London.

Your ward,
Lady Simone Turnbridge.

Drayton chuckled. Definitely duress. And probably dictated, too. Simone would never have thought of saying anything like that, much less spent any time putting it down on paper. God love Mrs. Miller; the woman was a saint for trying.

He opened the third letter and his smile faded. The handwriting was clearly Simone’s. There weren’t any ink spots, though. Not a one. And no pictures, either. Setting aside his disappointment that Caroline hadn’t thought to write, he angled the paper into the light.

Dear Drayton, I surched Lady Awbree’s rume an dent find yor balz. I think Lord Awbree has them.

Simone.

Ah, yes, that was the real Simone. He read the message again, appreciating both her keen perception and her persistence. She’d been right all along; he just hadn’t seen it.

“Anything of great import in the correspondence?” Aubrey asked.

Yes, but he wasn’t going to share it with him. “Deebs is fat.”

“That’s good to know. Would you like to go out clubbing this evening?”

“I’d rather eat glass,” he said, moving to his desk.

“You cannot sit in this house day in and day out doing nothing but supporting England’s distillers.”

“I’m supporting Scotland’s distillers, too.”

“You’re missing the point,” the other snapped, his irritation obvious.

Drayton dropped down into his desk chair and laid the notes aside, saying, “I’m ignoring the point, Aubrey. And you. Very deliberately.”

“I’ll be at White’s if you decide that you’ve had enough of living like a mole. Think before you publicly commit yourself to a liberal political course, Drayton. If you don’t, you’ll quickly regret your lofty ideals.”

“Advice noted,” Drayton replied, opening a drawer and taking out several sheets of stationery. “Enjoy your evening at White’s.”

Aubrey left without—uncharacteristically but wisely—saying another word. As soon as he was gone, Drayton leaned back in his chair and cradled his head in his hands. God, he hated being in London. He hated this house. He hated the life he was living in it. He wanted to go home. To be with . . .

He looked at the letters from Fiona and Simone as he considered the realization. Not since his parents’ passing had he had a home. Yes, he’d had a place where his bed was; the regiment provided all its officers with billets. But a real home, a place his heart actually yearned to be?
Somehow, without his being aware that it was happening, he’d put down roots and made a claim to Ryland Castle. It was home. It was where his family was. Fiona and her little zoo. Simone and her wild ways. And Caroline.

It wasn’t the physical he missed. Well, he did, horribly, but not as often as he missed the everyday, very public pleasures of her company. The way the color of her eyes changed with her emotions. The expressiveness of her smile, the way she tilted her head back to look up at him. He missed watching her, talking with her, laughing with her.

He swallowed the knot in his throat. If she’d ever felt any affection at all for him, he’d crushed it in walking away from her. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to drown his guilt or numb his regrets. Or erase his memory. For as long as he lived, he’d remember the hurt in her eyes and the sadness in her voice as she’d tried so hard to play the part of the accepting mistress.

If only there was a flaw in the logic that had driven him to sanity. If only there was some way that he could reasonably ask her to give up all the possibilities in the world for him. Weighed against all that she could have . . . What did it matter that he loved her?

  Twenty  

CAROLINE DREW ANOTHER WILTED LILY FROM THE ARRANGEMENT ON THE
foyer table and considered what was left of the arrangement. After she had plucked the faded blooms, the front side of it looked a bit empty; the result, no doubt from bearing the brunt of the frigid blasts that accompanied every coming and going of Ryland Castle’s guests.

What they all found to do that required them to enter and leave the house a half dozen times each day, Caroline didn’t know. And didn’t care enough to discover. Her only hope was that at some point, they’d go out and not come back in. Christmas was only a month or so away. Surely they all had somewhere to go, some family who would pine horribly in their absence.

Perhaps, Caroline mused, she could begin mentioning the approaching holidays in casual dinner conversation and work her way toward inquiring as to where everyone intended to spend them. Just to give them all an extra nudge along the road, she could talk about shopping and lament as to how few true luxuries there were to be had in the village, how the goods to be found anywhere else were ever so much more interesting and varied. Maybe, if
it looked as though no one ever planned to pack a bag and leave on their own, she could organize a complicated scavenger hunt. In London.

London. Where Drayton was. In the big, lavish house her father had built in Hyde Park. It was probably too much to hope that he wandered its halls and rooms and wished that she were there with him, but she did anyway. Not that there was ever so much as the slightest hint in his letters that he was feeling anything except terribly frustrated with the repairs being done on what he referred to as Geoffrey’s White Elephant and obsessed with properly preparing for his first session of Parliament. No, odds were he hadn’t missed her at all.

With a sigh, she gathered up the flowers she’d pulled from the arrangement, wondering what Drayton’s plans were for Christmas. Did he want to spend the holidays with them? In London or here? Or had he already made arrangements to pass them in the company of others? She really should write and get an answer before inquiring of the guests what their plans might be. In asking them, she opened herself to the expectation of sharing hers.

The cold air struck her, cutting through her skirts to chill her skin. She turned to see which one of the guests had realized that it was approaching time for another free meal. She arched a brow as Simone stomped past her, leaving the door wide open so that Lady Aubrey could charge in after her.

“What’s wrong?” Caroline asked, pivoting.