Candice Hern (78 page)

But then she had asked him all those questions about his wealth and what he could give her. He thought he had acquitted himself well in that respect, for he was, after all, a rich man. But, apparently, it was not enough.

And so, he had made a bloody fool of himself. For the first time in his life he thought he had found a woman he might want to spend the rest of that life with, and she had thrown his offer back in his face like so much dirt. Bertie was probably right. He had been confined with this wretched leg for too long, and his imagination had spun dreams out of loneliness and boredom. He was missing his friends and jealous of their marriages, and attached himself to the first available woman in hopes of imitating their new lives.

What a fool he had been.

He had let himself fall in love with Meg, a thing he had never before done in his life. Sedge remembered once telling his friend Bradleigh that he did not believe in love. He had said that the notion of love was nothing more than schoolgirl nonsense fostered by romantical novels and poetry, and that mature, sensible adults should not expect such impassioned relationships, particularly in marriage. At the time, Sedge had believed his own words, despite the evidence of such love between Bradleigh and his wife, and later between Pemerton and his wife. He had believed it for himself. He had always been rather sensible and pragmatic in his approach to all aspects of his life: his home, his finances, his family, his lovers.

Somewhere along the line he had stopped being sensible.

When he had come awake to find a fiery-haired angel bending over him.

What a fool he had been.

He looked up at the sound of voices. Albert was followed by Timms, his valet, Pargeter, and a Thornhill footman. The two valets carried various parcels and the footman hurried past Sedge to open the heavy oak door to the outside. All three bustled out the door and down the front steps to the waiting carriage. Sedge looked up at Albert, who glared down at him and lifted a brow in question.

Sedge uncurled his lanky frame from the settle, stood, and pulled himself onto his crutches. Without a word, he hobbled through the doorway and hopped carefully down the steps to the gravel drive below. He was headed toward the open door of Albert's carriage, with its boxes and portmanteaux strapped to the top, when a voice stopped him.

"Lord Sedgewick!" He turned to find the plump figure of Mrs. Lattimer bouncing down the steps toward him, a look of chagrin on her round face. "You are leaving us? So soon? Are you certain you ought to be traveling just yet? Oh, but of course, you are missing your own home. How foolish of me to wish you to stay." She held out a hand to him, and Sedge tossed his crutches into the carriage and reached out to take her hand in his own. He brought it to his lips and attempted a smile.

"I am most grateful, ma'am, for all you have done for me," he said. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Albert's sigh of relief. He no doubt feared Sedge would continue in his sullen, inarticulate rudeness and further embarrass them. But Sedge had somehow gathered his wits together. He really did wish to thank these good people. They had, after all, saved his life.

He said all that was proper to Mrs. Lattimer, and to Sir Terrence, who had come up behind her.

"I am sure Meg would wish to make her farewells to you, but we cannot seem to locate her," Mrs. Lattimer said with a disappointed frown. "That girl! She is probably out with that horse of hers."

"Not to worry," Sedge said. "She and I.. . spoke earlier. We have said our good-byes."

Mrs. Lattimer's eyebrows disappeared beneath her lace cap as her eyes widened in surprise. "Well, then," she said, "I suppose we must say ours as well. It has been a pleasure, my lord, Mr. Herriot."

More good wishes, thank yous, and farewells were exchanged before Sedge finally hauled himself into the carriage. He slid across the single upholstered bench to make room for Albert. The two valets would ride in the servants' seat perched at the rear of the chariot just above the back wheel. Sedge noted that Pargeter had made his usual meticulous preparations for Sedge's comfort and safety, including several extra cushions on which to prop his leg. At least there were some things in this life he could still count on.

Albert entered the carriage, and Sir Terrence closed the door from the outside, with final good wishes for a safe journey. Albert raised his hand in a parting wave as the carriage at last pulled away along the gravel drive.

They drove through Thornhill's large, elaborate stone entry and Sedge saw for the first time the gilded horse's head atop the iron gates that Albert had told him about some weeks ago. He only glanced at the golden head in passing, wishing more than anything that horses and stables would someday cease to remind him of Meg. To remind him of his foolish attachment to a woman who did not care for him.

* * *

Meg held an anxious Bristol Blue in place on a slight rise near the southern boundary of Thornhill's land. The unusual land ridge, thought to be the remnants of an ancient barrow, overlooked the road below as it wound its way through the wide, flat clay loams on its way to join the Ixworth Road. Just below Meg's position, the road came to a small stone bridge spanning a narrow portion of the Black Bourne. Screened from view by a well-timbered hedgerow and a stand of elm trees, she had a clear prospect of the river and the road. A jackdaw screeched as its gray head swooped down toward the fat clumps of marsh marigolds edging the river, and Bristol danced and nickered in his impatience to be off. Meg stroked his neck to calm him as she watched the black-and-yellow carriage make its way across the stone bridge.

"Good-bye, Sedge," she whispered.

A single tear rolled down her cheek as the carriage disappeared from view into the thick woodlands beyond.

Chapter 15

The jostling and jouncing of the carriage as it rolled along through the rustic Suffolk landscape aggravated both Sedge's headache and his black mood. Whenever Albert attempted to make conversation, Sedge rebuffed him and turned to stare out the window of the carriage. He wished his cousin would just leave him alone.

He kept his gaze firmly out the window as they bounced along through clay farmlands dotted with windmills and enclosed by frameworks of ditches, banks, and hedgerows. Through tiny hamlets of clustered thatched-roof cottages. Through larger villages of timber-framed and jettied houses and gray flint churches. Through market towns crowded with blue-painted wagons. The road swept past budding poplars and rampant nettle, bright lupine and wild poppies, and fenced pastures of new lambs and wobbly-legged foals. Sedge watched it all pass by, and saw nothing. As new life and growth flourished all around him, he felt as if a part of him had died.

His desolation at Meg's rejection increased along with his headache as they traveled through Bury St. Edmunds and Hawstead. He thought of all that might have been and now would never be. He would never ride over the parklands of Witham Abbey with Meg at his side. He would never walk hand-in-hand with her through the abbey ruins in the moonlight. He would never see all eyes turn toward him as he entered a ballroom with Meg proudly on his arm. He would never get the chance to introduce her to his mother and Georgie. His mother would have adored her.

Ah, Meg. Why did you do this to me?

By the time the carriage had passed Sudbury, his misery had gradually transformed itself into full-blown anger. How could he have made such a fool of himself? How could he have embarrassed himself so? With his first ever proposal of marriage? He should have listened to Albert's warnings. He should have left Thornhill earlier. With each bump and jerk of the carriage, his anger at his own stupidity increased.

When the carriage slowed, Sedge's temper flared. "What the devil are we stopping for this time?"

Albert poked his head out the window. "Another herd of sheep," he said, turning a wary eye toward Sedge.

"Confound it, must the world come to a halt because of a few sheep? Why can't they keep the bloody beasts to the roadside?"

"It appears they must cross the road, cuz, to get wherever they are going."

Sedge snorted.

"Are you in such a hurry to get to Town?" Albert asked. "I had thought you were reluctant to leave Thornhill."

"I was not reluctant to leave," Sedge snapped. "In fact, I could not have been more anxious to leave. And now my head aches, my leg is stiff, my backside is sore, and I just want to be finished with this journey. Blasted sheep!"

Sedge shifted his weight on the bench and readjusted the cushion beneath his right foot. What made Albert think this damned chariot was any more comfortable than his curricle? There wasn't enough room to stretch his legs out in front of him, and no bench opposite that he might have propped his feet upon. He should have had his own carriage sent to Thornhill. At least it had been designed with Sedge's long legs in mind and was more comfortable on a long journey. But this one, he thought as he shifted the angle of his legs from left to right, was a bloody nuisance.

Albert watched Sedge's movements in silence and shifted to the far edge of the interior to allow his cousin more room. "I know your leg must be paining you, Sedge," he said. "If you'd like, I can ride up on the box and you can stretch your legs across the bench."

"Thank you, Bertie," Sedge replied, feeling miserably contrite that his cousin should be willing to put his own comfort aside on Sedge's behalf. "I appreciate the offer, but it really is not necessary. I will be fine. It is just that I am feeling particularly disagreeable and have the devil of a headache. I do not mean to take it out on you."

Albert waved his hand in dismissal. "What has you so cross, then? If you don't mind my asking. You have been in a brown study all day. Not like you, cuz."

Sedge beetled his brows as he watched the last of the black- faced sheep reach his side of the road. He did not know how much he wanted to tell Albert. He would as soon no one knew how he had been made a fool by that long-legged, red-haired siren. "Sorry, Bertie," he said at last, just as the carriage lurched forward again, throwing him hard against the seat back. "A few unpleasant words with Miss Ashburton this morning set me off. Nothing important. It is just this wretched headache that has made me so irritable. I am afraid I am not very good company today."

Sedge turned his body away from his cousin and closed his eyes as he rested his head against the window frame, hoping to nap a little. But the bouncing of the carriage caused the barely healed gash over his left temple to bang against the wood frame. Damnation. He twisted back around and threw a cushion behind his head and closed his eyes once again.

He never fully slept—the roads being as bad as they were— but he dozed a bit, on and off. After another hour or so, he was jolted awake when the carriage jerked to a stop so suddenly it almost tipped over. Albert was flung against Sedge with a jarring force that sent stabs of pain through his splinted leg. Damnation. He shifted his leg with a groan. "Now what?"

Albert shot Sedge an apologetic look as he scooted back across the bench. He opened his window in time for them to hear altogether too clearly those words dreaded by all travelers.

"Stand and deliver!"

Bloody hell! This was all that was needed to make the day a complete disaster. At this rate, he would be lucky to make it to Town at all.

Leaning forward, Sedge could see through the window two masked men on horseback. One pointed a pistol at their coachman while the horses whinnied nervously and plunged in their traces. The other waved a pistol in their direction, and Sedge's anger flared.

"Oh, my God." Albert looked as though the blood had drained from his face.

The second rider eased up to the side of the carriage, bent down from the waist to roughly jerk open the door, and sat smugly with a cocked pistol resting across his forearm. "Awright, gents," he said with a sadistic leer. "Let's 'ave yer blunt, then, and no one'll get 'urt. Come on down, now," he said with a wave of the pistol, "both o' yer. An' we'll just 'ave a look through them fat pockets o' yers."

"Damnation!" Sedge muttered.

"We had better do as he says," Albert said in a soft, nervous voice. "I don't like the looks of him."

"Aye, the lad's a smart 'un 'e is, fer a gentry cove. C'm on down, then, boys, and I'll be real nice, like."

Albert made a move to leave the carriage when Sedge's arm whipped out across him holding a long-nosed flint-lock pistol. "The hell we will," Sedge said through his teeth. With only one shot available, he had to make it count. Within the space of a heartbeat, and almost without conscious thought, he aimed at the horseman, cocked, fired, and landed a bullet in the man's shoulder. The rider screamed and was almost thrown from his horse by the force of the gunshot, but managed somehow to stay in the saddle. The sound of the blast echoed in the carriage and smoke billowed in dark gray swirls around a stunned Albert, whose nose had been a mere inches from the flashpan. The rider's wail of pain was followed by the sound of hoofbeats as his companion galloped in retreat to the woods edging the road. Clasping a hand to his bloodied shoulder, the horseman uttered a curse, turned his mount, and fled into the woods in the wake of his partner.

By God, he had actually foiled an attempt at highway robbery, Sedge thought as a tiny bubble of triumph began to fill his chest. He had even shot a man. He had never done such a thing in all his life.

Albert stared open-mouthed at Sedge, sputtering and coughing as he waved away the smoke. Sedge felt a momentary pang of regret that the spark from the flint had practically exploded in his cousin's unsuspecting face, but there had been no choice.

"What the devil did you do that for?" Albert shouted, looking wide-eyed and pale. "You bloody fool, he might have killed us."

"Precisely why I fired," Sedge replied.

The coachman and both valets had jumped down from their respective perches and huddled in the carriage doorway, each looking slack-jawed with alarm and concern.