To Win a Lady's Heart (The Landon Sisters) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Corbeau licked his lips. The dampness vanished immediately in the dry air.

Was there anything left to say?

Desperation clawed in his chest—desperation that it wasn’t over, that there was one last thing to annihilate everything else and win her once and for all.

There wasn’t.

He should leave. But she’d seen him.

They stood, together and apart, somehow the only two people in existence.

Words coalesced in his mind.

He approached like a man whose insides were about to be sliced out and fed to pigs. But approach he did, horse in tow, newly fallen snow crunching beneath his boots. “You’re out alone, Lady Grace.”

“I know.”

The horse shook its head and stomped a hoof. Corbeau absently stroked its nose.

“You must be chilled.”

“I’m warm enough, my lord.” The heavy cloak she wore had collected and melted just enough snowflakes to emit the distinctive scent of wet wool.

“I’m not sorry, you know.” He was scowling fiercely, but couldn’t stop. “For this afternoon, I mean.”

“I wouldn’t have you be.”

“I hope—I hope what I said didn’t embarrass you.”

She gave him a wistful smile. “Of all the things that have been said about me or my family, I promise you, what you said didn’t rate a mention on the list of worst moments.”

A silence drew out between them.

He took a breath. “I have a question to ask you. You don’t have to answer, but I would like to ask all the same.”

“All right.” The tip of her nose was pink.

“Might you have had me if your father hadn’t lost everything?”

She looked startled, but recovered almost instantly, blinking rapidly as if suddenly recollecting a subject pressing on her conscience. “What about that poor serving maid?” Grace shook her head as if lost in thought. “What’s to happen to her?”

Maybe the question was too much for Grace at this juncture. Never having an answer would plague him, but perhaps there was no answer. Perhaps it was impossible to tell what would have been if only this or if only that. “She’s going to be all right, you have my word. I’ve put aside a portion of money that will support her and the child both.”

Grace’s eyes took on a faraway look and her head bent. “Poor girl.”

“She’ll have choices. They’ll be limited by what has already come to pass, but you have my word, she’ll have choices. I shall never forget what you said, my lady. ‘The world works by our hands and ours alone.’ They’ve been imprinted forever upon my mind.”

“I like to think she hasn’t lost everything. Lost everything…” Grace’s mouth twisted into bitterness. “It doesn’t come close to describing what he did to our lives.”

Grace stared into the distance. They stayed quiet a moment. “It’s funny. I was out here thinking about my father. And you.”

“Me?”

“How sorry I am. About everything.”

It pierced his heart, that tremble in her voice.

His own turned rough. “Don’t be sorry on my account, Lady Grace. I’m not sorry for what we had together, and I won’t have your pity.” This woman had joined with him in one magnificent act of love. She’d shown him true passion. She’d opened his heart. How could he be bitter for having had a taste of something most people couldn’t even dare dream of? “It’s my failure in social graces, isn’t it? You can’t take to husband a man like me, so incapable in the simple niceties everyone else takes for granted.”

Grace gazed at him in utmost earnestness. “Whatever else you might think of yourself, my lord, you should know there wasn’t a single person among your guests who didn’t change a little for the better when singled out for your notice.”

Corbeau started inside.

“More than your guests. Remember that first morning when we arrived unexpectedly early and the carriage was stuck in a rut?”

“It was worse than that, if memory serves. The wheel broke.”

“Remember the coachman who brought us here?”

The only thing he recalled about that morning was not having the first notion how to handle the fierce need to be close to Grace. “I don’t.”

“A battered old man, hunched and world-weary. The way you were kind to him—the way you’re unthinkingly kind to everyone… Then when you took me around the estate, how all your tenants admired you, how all the villagers look upon you. I kept asking myself who could ever possibly be deserving of you.”

“If we’re going to venture into the question of just desserts—”

“No. Let’s not. To be sure, I have too many defects for calculation, my lord.”

The dark of night was closing in around them; the glow of the torch in the sconce of the stonewall enclosing the inn’s yard was becoming more intense.

“Oh, your flaws are as innumerable as anybody else’s, no doubt. For your strength, Grace, I love you. For that I can hardly fault you when you show it, and I won’t allow you to term that resolute part of your character as a flaw.”

Brows rising, her lips parted. “Love me?” Her gaze fell to the ground, and her voice came out soft. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t have stood before all and said what you said had you felt anything less than love.”

He reached out with a gloved finger to draw a single line down the side of her face. Who would kiss those freckles now? “And I love you still.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“What would I be if I could alter so readily?” Any man whose heart could change so rapidly deserved no one, least of all a woman such as Grace. “I wish I could have induced you to take my hand for any reason whatsoever. I do. And I will…for a long time. Perhaps forever.”

She looked away. “You wouldn’t have wanted me if I took your hand only for your fortune.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You would have come to resent me. Perhaps not at first, but eventually.”

“My biggest regret is that I wasn’t able to show you that I would have stood by you. I would have faced down anything for you. Anything. Anyone. And I regret the fact that we stayed away from each other for years.”

She gave him an arched look. “You stayed away from
me
, my lord.”

“Yes.” He smiled, the memory bittersweet. How important it had been to maintain as wide a berth as possible. Knowing what he knew now, how he was around her, it would have been easy to fault his former self for the precaution. Could he have loved her from afar? Would what he felt ever fade into a soft sort of platonic love suitable for a dear friend? “I stayed away from you. I should hate, after all this, to go on as we were, as virtual strangers to each other.”

“I can’t say if we will ever see each other again or not.”

“I have a promise to uphold, don’t you remember?”

“Promise?” His heart gave a jerk of hope and immediately crashed down again, cold and desolate, as if alone in a frozen pond. “What promise is that?”

“In the storeroom.”

She went incredulous. “Which time, my lord?”

He let out a small laugh. “I promised to suffer through the attempt of trying to speak to you at least once a year. I believe it was decided that November next would be appropriate, leaving me plenty of time to think of what subject I might broach.”

He sobered. “But enough of this now. The air is too cold for this absurdity.” Two people out of doors alone while snow fell. It wasn’t done. “You should be going in. Have something to warm yourself. I should be returning.”

“Wait—” Alarm flashed in her face.

“Yes?” His lungs caught hold of his breath and wouldn’t let go.

Her expression fell. “I
am
sorry.”

Corbeau nodded. “As am I.” But for such different reasons. For not having won her. For thinking that money would have been the answer to everything.

He hitched his foot in a stirrup and swung up on his mount. Taking the reins, he signaled the horse to turn back toward the house. Before they went, however, he looked back at her over his shoulder. Those deep-set eyes in her beautiful face were so wide and sorrowful. It was almost as if he could break her heart, after all.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Grace wriggled out of the warm bed she was sharing with her mother and sister. They didn’t travel with their own bedcoverings, of course. They’d had to make loan of the inn’s, which weren’t a fraction as nice as those at Corbeau Park.

In the darkness, she rubbed her arms. Did he have one more morning of his work in the stables? If so, he’d begin in a few hours. She smiled. What other earl in the whole history of the world would have done such a thing? In an odd way, it suited him. That’s what great lords did, wasn’t it? They served. And there was no one who exemplified that more than Corbeau.

She moved carefully in the blackness, feeling her way around slowly. All the while her heart thumped madly, urging her to make haste. She found her own clothing by process of elimination. Her mother’s smelled of lavender, Phoebe’s of crushed almond—although goodness knew why. Grace felt around in her trunk for the snuffbox. Her hand hit upon something else, something hard and covered in leather. Was that the book he’d lent her? Well, she’d take that along, too. In their haste to leave, it was easy to see how it could have been packed by mistake.

She rummaged some more until she found what she originally sought.

Dressed and wrapped in her cloak, she slipped from the room, cringing with every rustle, every creak of the floor.

“I need transportation,” she announced to the innkeeper’s wife, who was bent over bread dough and kneading aggressively, her thick arms covered in flour. The kitchen smelled of heaven.

The round-cheeked woman of middle years straightened. “At this hour?” She swept a lock of frizzy hair from her forehead, marking her face with a white streak. “’Ain’t no one going out in this here snow, even if you could find one such as will take you in the dark.”

“I can pay.” The snuffbox was heavy in her inner pocket. It was worth more than a trip to Corbeau Park, even factoring in a large sum for the inconvenience of weather and time. Parting with the object would cost her mother and sisters dearly.

Did she dare hope that losing the one thing of value in her possession wouldn’t be the last in a long line of regrets?

The innkeeper’s wife considered. “Suppose I could send over to Mill House to see if Mr. Miller will take you. He keeps a sleigh and is never one to turn up his nose at a good opportunity for an extra bit of coin.”

“Yes, please do so.” She spoke before realizing she had nothing extra to offer for the assistance. “On second thought, direct me and let me go.”

The woman waved. “It’s no trouble to our Francis. Fine lady such as yourself shouldn’t be out alone, not in the dark in such cold.”

Grace wasn’t a fine lady, and her worn traveling costume betrayed as much, but she let the woman’s words pass. “If you’re certain.”

“Of course. You just sit yourself down and you’ll have one of these meat pies once they’ve cooled. They’re for tonight, but they make a mighty fine way to start the day, too, if I do say so myself.” She brushed her hands on her apron and bustled through a back door.

Yet more kindnesses Grace wouldn’t be able to repay. Not unless…

But she couldn’t pin her hopes on that. Not yet. They’d parted. There was no reason to believe he might want her back. Yes, he’d said he would continue loving her, but loving her and tolerating her as his wife were two different things. After all they’d gone through these past few days, after all they’d said…after all she’d said.

No. Going to him with any expectation wouldn’t be fair to either of them.

But neither could she leave before telling him… Grace swallowed at the lump forming in her throat. The only place that could ever be home now was in his strong arms. She had to tell him she’d thought of a name for that gray barn cat.

…

Grace had finished one whole pie, and now the food weighed heavy in her belly. She was much too agitated to have taken such a full meal, except doing otherwise seemed terribly impolite after all the trouble they’d gone through on her whim.

Mr. Miller proved a disheveled man, with the indentation of a too-snug nightcap across his forehead.

He didn’t greet her with so much as a grunt. “Francis said you’d pay.”

“And so I shall.” She rose and held out the snuffbox. “Will this do?”

Large hands with stubby fingers closed around the payment. This time, there was little chance of her father’s possession resurfacing in her life. Good riddance to the thing.

Mr. Miller didn’t help her into the sleigh, the dogcart version of the conveyance compared to the one she’d ridden in with Corbeau. During the night, the sky had cleared, and the first hints of a rosy dawn set the snowy world aglow.

“Corbeau Park, you said?”

“With all possible haste, if you please.”

He flicked the reins.

As per her request, he deposited her back behind the stables.

She was descending when Mr. Miller caught her by the wrist, his twisted yellow teeth gleaming as he snarled at her. “Going to cost you a bit more if you think I’m going to keep my mouth shut about bringing you up here. I know what the likes of you are about, and I don’t mind who knows about it.”

Grace jerked free, struggling to maintain more poise than it would take to tell the man to go hang. “You don’t mind who knows about it, do you? Well, that’s convenient, because neither do I.”

…

The door to the stables clattered, and Grace jumped back from where she’d been caressing the silky nose of a patient spotted mare. She pulled back deeper into the shadows. The horse snuffed. The gray tomcat had come to demand its fair share of her attention. He walked farther down the ledge of the stall and butted his head against the hand she rested there. Idly, she stroked the cobby body.

There was the sound of flame bursting to life. Instinctively, her eyes squeezed shut.

The room went silent. Even the cat suspended his purring.

A large figure at the far end lifted the lantern up above his head. “Is someone there?”

A barrage of fluttering assaulted her insides.

It was him.

She’d been right—he had one more morning in the stables.

“Hallo?”

The timber of his voice turned her flesh to marble. Her lungs ceased their function, compressing around themselves as if wound by strangling vines.

But what if the earl didn’t want to see her? What if it was too late?

If it was too late, it was too late. There wasn’t a single thing left to lose. Attempting to exert a measure of control over the blood pounding through her veins, Grace inhaled a deep breath.

Numb to feeling, she forced the dead weight of her heavy leg forward a step. Then another. Then, shielding her eyes from the intensity of the glare, she stepped into the ring of lantern light.

“Lady Grace?”

“Would you mind lowering that thing?”

First he put something down that clinked. A tin cup full of a hot beverage, no doubt. Then there was the metallic sound of lantern doors being adjusted, and the light went from being shone directly in her eyes to a soft glow.

She lowered her arm, the tips of her fingers working over one another in desperate need for occupation.

The gray cat leaped down, landed on the clean-swept planks of the stable floors with a thud, and swirled around her ankles. He sat to look up at her, tail thrashing back and forth. The cat made a little noise that, instead of the standard expected meow, might have more properly been termed a chirp. And, Lord help her, but it sounded for all the world like a demand.

The earl kept an awkward distance. “You came back?”

“’Tisn’t far.” Her voice was thick with all the emotion she held in check—but only just. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Nor could I.”

The rich aroma of coffee mingled with the smells of sweet hay and horse.

She brushed a hand back over her hair. It’d been left straight and pulled back in a simple twist. He’d seen it in a more shocking state and hadn’t seemed to think the worse of her, so she tried not to feel insecure about it now.

But she was. And so instead of speaking to what hovered waiting, shy and hopeful, in the corners of her heart, she reached back to the ledge where the book he’d loaned her rested. “I had to return this. I found it packed away in my trunks.”

He took it from her outstretched hand. “The post too dear to send it back?”

In his tone was challenge.

Seems he wasn’t going to make this easy. Very well. Corbeau deserved as good as she could give—so as good as she could give he would have.

A bold charge crackled through her veins, spurring her onward.

“It’s not the only thing I came back for, my lord.” She took the lantern from him and strode to the other end of the stables. Corbeau followed, book tucked under his arm.

She found the goat in the same place she’d discovered him the other morning. He had twisting horns that culminated in sharp points, and the hircine smell about him was unmistakable. “The old boy is still here, I see.”

Sebastian bleated at them, noise bouncing from the walls.

“Until I know what else to do with him, there he’ll stay.”

“It’s not fair that he should have a name and the cat shouldn’t.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Osiris.”

Silence.

More silence.

Yet more silence.

If Grace didn’t know better, she might venture to say he was weary from the efforts of advanced cogitation.

“What?”

“That’s the cat’s name, of course. I did manage to read some of the book, you know, and from what I can tell, the cat has the blood of dead Egyptian princes in his veins. At first I didn’t understand why you might be interested in an underworld god. Reading on, though, I realized he’s also the god of rebirth. And renewal. That’s what I want, you see. A renewal—a new hope.”

“Perhaps…” He spoke carefully. “Perhaps you’d better explain.”

From the floor there came a chirp. “You see?” Grace glanced up. “He approves of the name. I knew he would.”

“Grace—”

“Yes, I know. I’m going to explain, really I am.” She hung the lantern on a nearby post and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. “Remember this?”

He looked unsure of what was happening. “I’ll still honor it, if you wish. I stand by my word.”

“I think it’s better suited to this fellow here.” She unfolded the leaf and held it out to the creature.

The earl looked baffled. “What do you—?”

Corbeau stared as Sebastian reached out his neck and chomped the page. Soon it’d vanished completely—nothing left but an old billy looking up at them for more. He bleated again, harsher this time.

The earl shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t live my whole life with my father’s treachery fettering my soul.”

He looked guarded. “I’m still not following.”

From the other end, a horse whinnied and kicked against the wood of his stall.

Corbeau sent the impatient gelding a glower. “Hush. You’ll have your fill soon enough, I daresay.”

He looked back to Grace, eyes full of wary expectation.

She swallowed. “What I mean is, I can’t allow one man’s ghost to stand between myself and happiness.”

“I don’t think—what?”

She held up her hands to stop him. “You’ll have to give me time, my lord. I can’t change overnight. But time, I think, we have.”

His brows crossed. “Have we?”

“Have we what?”

“Time?”

“Oh, I do think so.” She drew upon every last reserve deep in her most hidden crevices. If she said this, there would be no going back. He could pull back and dismiss her. He’d do so with kind gentleness, but it would be the end of all hope—forever. “That special license you procured shouldn’t go to waste. We’ll put it to use, and then we’ll have all the time in the world.”

Her heart had never battered harder in all her life.

“We’re no longer engaged, my lady.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right. But remember when you told me I had the power to demand what is right? Well, now I am demanding what is right.”

“And what demand, exactly, might you be making of me, my lady?”

“I don’t have much to offer but what stands before you.” She held out her hand. “Well, my lord? Will you have me?”

This was it. It would either be the beginning of everything or the destruction of her very being.

The way he looked at her—she couldn’t read in his eyes which it would be.

The whole world spun as if on the end of a pin.

Corbeau slipped his hand into hers and drew her close.

Her heart took flight.

He was warm and solid and she was in his arms, where she belonged. She reached up to press a flat hand against him—just in case he wasn’t real.

He was.

He stroked her hair. “Why did you come back?”

She looked up at him. “You want to hear me say it?”

“I must.”

“I rather liked what we did in bed together, and I should like to do it again. Many times over, if possible.”

Little lines crinkled on the edges of his eyes as he smiled. “I can see the attraction to that part of the equation.”

She put a finger over his lips. “I’ve lived in the cold shadow of my father’s doings for far too long. It’s time to let the past go and begin anew…with you, my lord. The only thing that matters is that I love you.”

“You—are you sure?”

“Never have I been more so in my life.”

“About loving me—are you sure? Because, my dearest one—” Wrapping his hand in hers, he drew her hands up to press a kiss into her knuckles. “I need you to be sure. I thought once that you made me a stranger to myself, when in fact with you I have never known myself more completely. I couldn’t survive having that taken away.”

“This is where I belong, my lord. With you—wouldn’t matter if you were prince or pauper, just so long as we were together. My heart is and ever shall be…irrevocably yours.”

Her throat constricted, and hot tears burned her eyes. She blinked at them furiously lest they fall, biting hard into a trembling lip. It’d been years since she’d cried. She wasn’t about to start now.

“What’s the matter?” He stroked her face, his own lit with concern.

“Children—we might have children someday. Yours and mine. Can you imagine?” She tried to smile against her wobbling chin. “I hope they’re just like you.”