“What do you mean by that?” he asked, frowning at her.
“A real lady,” she explained, a shudder passing through her at the memory of her behavior in the stables with Vander. She forced some enthusiasm into her voice. “Someone beautiful and far more suited to you!” Now she sounded like a barker trying to sell an undersized pig.
“I never could get you to look at yourself in a glass,” he said, shaking his head.
Mia looked down. It had turned out that Madame duBois’s idea of a bodice was little more than a corset with a covering of tulle.
“Not just your breasts,” Edward said, in the detached tones of a scholar, “though those are damned beautiful. You are exquisite, Mia. Every part of you: your spirit, your laugh, your face, your body.”
Mia found herself turning rosy. “You never said anything like that before.”
“I had a lot of time to think in prison.”
She flinched at the thought of where he’d been, and only managed a wobbly smile. Edward took both her hands in his and raised one of them to his lips. “You’re well out of that marriage, Mia. Marry me, and we’ll raise Charlie in a house full of books and children, and the kind of love that grows and deepens.”
“That sounds lovely.” She managed a wobbly smile. “Thank you. But I can’t marry you. I do love you, but—but more like a brother, Edward.”
His eyes darkened. “It may feel familial now, but I assure you that with time a different bond will grow between us.”
Prison had changed Edward. He was more muscled, and he had a ferocious edge that she didn’t remember. He used to look professorial. But even with a broken nose, he was a very good-looking man.
“Don’t answer me now,” he said, before she could reply. “This is no time to make decisions.”
“Very well,” she answered. She was beginning to feel like a teakettle coming on to boil. It wasn’t just tears bubbling up inside her. It was anger too.
Vander had said hurtful things during their marriage, but he had also said other things. He had made her feel beautiful. He had laughed at her jokes. He had not shown even the slightest distaste when he learned that she and Lucibella were one and the same; indeed, he had been fascinated in her writing.
Her father and brother had dismissed her novels. Edward had been supportive, but uninterested. Vander might have poked fun at her characters, but he had listened intently and made suggestions, though none of them were usable.
He had made her feel accomplished. Cherished.
But it was all a lie.
Edward leaned forward and brushed his lips over hers. Before she could stop him, the kiss deepened. Mia froze, letting it happen. She felt no reaction at all. None. Edward had broken out of prison, then returned to her—and ungrateful wretch that she was, she felt nothing for him other than affection.
Mia used to think that love could come after a wedding. But her love for Edward would never be like a wildfire that ravaged everything in its path. It would never strip Mia of all her illusions about herself and the world, and throw her naked onto the ground. Turn her into a woman aflame with desire.
That would never happen to her again.
That’s when the tears came.
Chapter Thirty-one
After Edward Reeve drove away with his duchess, Vander sent a message to Thorn, informing him of the man’s miraculous reappearance. Then he rooted Charlie out of the nursery for another riding lesson.
He called him “Gimpy” all afternoon, because his ward looked pale and shocked, though Charlie improved after Vander allowed him to trot Lancelot for the first time. Sometime later they groomed the horse together, and Vander showed him how to pick stones out of a horse’s hoof.
One thing led to another, and they ended up in the blacksmith’s shop on the estate. Charlie was not afraid of the pungent smoke or glowing coals, though Mia would have shrieked if she had seen her beloved boy’s jacket smoldering from a flying spark.
Once Vander explained what he had in mind, the blacksmith took Charlie’s crutch apart and inserted a small dagger while they watched. Mia probably wouldn’t approve of that, either.
On the way back, Vander hoisted Charlie onto his shoulder and the boy slung a thin arm around Vander’s neck and chattered about horses and smithies all the way back up the hill. Charlie had decided that he would like to be a blacksmith. Vander didn’t point out that a hereditary title and its estate could not be renounced in favor of a smithy. He was living proof that a member of the peerage need not restrict himself to lounging about ballrooms.
“I could make crutches for people like me,” Charlie told him.
“From steel? They’d make an awful racket on the cobblestones.”
“But wood isn’t as strong. You could swing a steel crutch and take someone’s head off,” Charlie said, with relish. He was a boy, through and through.
Even as Charlie happily nattered on, resolve was slowly growing in Vander’s mind. Sir Richard Magruder had ruined his damned life, as surely as if he’d swung a steel crutch at his head. And Vander meant to pay him a visit that very night.
“Aunt Mia says we’re moving back to Carrington House,” Charlie said, out of the blue. He was clutching Vander’s hair to keep his balance.
“Yes. But you’ll pay me frequent visits, as often as every day, if you’re not at school.”
“I will?”
Vander gave the legs dangling against his chest a squeeze. “You’re mine, Squinty.”
“I don’t squint!” Charlie squealed.
“I’m preparing for when you do,” Vander told him. “Looking ahead.”
Charlie gave his hair a tug. “I want to live here, with you. I want to go to the stables every day.”
Vander reached up, lifted him over his head, and set him down. Then he crouched down so they were at eye level. “You have to go away to school, Charlie. You’ll be going to Eton with other boys. But you’ll be luckier than they are, because you’ll have two fathers: Mr. Reeve and me.”
Charlie’s mouth twitched.
“He’s a good man,” Vander said, hating every word. “Your Aunt Mia will be his wife. But never forget that your estate runs alongside my lands. We will see each other often, for the rest of our lives.”
Charlie stepped forward and with the great simplicity of childhood, put his arms around Vander’s neck. He didn’t say anything.
And Vander didn’t say anything either.
After a while, they continued on their way. They talked about how a blacksmith was the heart of a great estate. Charlie would need to know these things.
Vander had the feeling that professors didn’t know how to run estates. Why should they? “A good smith will say that a ‘job well done is a job never seen again,’” he told Charlie, keeping an eye out to see if the boy was starting to flag from overdoing it. But his leg was visibly stronger, just in the last week.
They returned to the stables and stayed there until Thorn showed up, walking from his carriage with that loose-limbed ferocity of his. He didn’t say a word about what had happened. Instead, the three of them got grubby washing down Jafeer, and ate roughly cut ham sandwiches with the grooms while discussing training schedules and other important things.
When Charlie had been dispatched to the care of Susan, Vander jerked his head at Thorn. “Sir Richard had Mia’s fiancé—Reeve—thrown in prison under false charges. He was about to be sent to Botany Bay when he escaped.”
“Reeve? Edward Reeve who made that paper machine I told you about?”
Vander nodded.
“I never knew the name of your wife’s betrothed.”
“Not my wife for long,” Vander said, striding into the house. “She will be Reeve’s wife, which is the way it should be.”
“Right.” There was something guarded in Thorn’s voice, but Vander ignored it.
“Sir Richard?” Thorn asked, following him into his bedchamber.
Vander nodded. The time had come. He stripped, then donned a blac
k shirt and close-fitting trousers that went to his ankles.
“My breeches and coat are dark, but my shirt won’t do. Have you another black shirt?” Thorn asked.
“This will be dangerous. Your wife is carrying a child.”
Thorn’s response to this was a curled lip, and after a moment Vander tossed him a shirt like the one he’d put on. Then Thorn left to collect his matched pistols, left in his carriage, and Vander took his own Bennett & Lacy pistols from the gun cabinet. They were overly embellished for his taste, with the ducal insignia picked out in silver, but their aim was true.
It would take approximately an hour to reach Sir Richard’s estate, on the far side of the Carrington lands, if they went across country on swift horses. If there was one thing Vander’s stables could supply, it was swift horses.
He had thought to take his usual mount, but as he walked down the central corridor of the stable, he heard a soft whicker. Jafeer’s head appeared over his stall door. His eyes shone with lonely, surprised betrayal. Mia hadn’t come to the stables before she left.
“Saddle up Jafeer,” Vander instructed Mulberry. “And Ajax for Mr. Dautry.”
“Are you certain about Jafeer, Your Grace?” Mulberry had clearly appraised Vander’s attire and guessed that something was afoot, not much of a leap, given the pistols tucked into Vander’s belt. “He still tends to shy at the slightest thing.”
“He’ll be fine.” Vander could see it in Jafeer’s eyes. The horse had known love back in Arabia and lost her; he had known love here in England and lost her. He had won his first race. Jafeer had grown up.
A half hour later they were flying straight across Pindar fields, and Jafeer was responding to every touch of Vander’s knees and hands as if he had been born with a man on his back.
The moon was rising by the time Vander slowed Jafeer to a walk, Thorn pulling up Ajax behind him. The horses were breathing heavily, but Jafeer’s ears were twitching with delight and the willingness to gallop through the night.
They had reached the border of Sir Richard’s land. They picked their way quietly through the surrounding wood, finally stopping at the edge of a long, rolling lawn.
Vander dismounted, tied Jafeer to a tree, and told him to be quiet. Thorn followed suit, and they melted into a clump of ash trees.
He had a shrewd notion that Sir Richard kept men on guard all night. He likely had enemies of every stripe. Sure enough, as Vander came closer, he saw that there was a man standing beneath the front portico, his outline just visible when the moon came out from behind a cloud.
Thorn touched his arm and nodded toward the shadow cast by a man leaning against the side of the house. There were likely at least two more guards inside the front door.
At that moment, the moon emerged fully from the clouds and Vander saw the cruel face of the man guarding the front door. He had the bone-chilling air of a man who would kill for a triviality, for a baked potato.
Vander gestured with his hand parallel to the ground, and Thorn nodded. Silently, slowly, they sank to a sitting position against a tree and waited for something to happen, something they could take advantage of.
For an hour or perhaps longer, the grounds were utterly silent. More clouds drifted by, causing the moon to be obscured more often than it shone. The man in front took a piss off the steps, but no one made a circuit of the house. In fact, neither man stirred, which Vander took to mean that Sir Richard wasn’t worried about the house being broken into from the rear.
No, his threats entered straight through in the front door, likely because he defrauded men like Squire Bevington, an honorable gentleman who had no idea how to contend with a perfidious villain.
Vander’s mouth curled in faint amusement. He and Thorn didn’t qualify.
Thorn had grown up on the streets, and he had taught Vander a great deal. Vander had had all too many opportunities to practice those skills in the rough world of horse-racing, where a desperate owner could hire any number of thugs to take out the opposition by stealth or outright violence.
He touched Thorn’s arm, and they rose and made their way silently up to the back of the house. Sure enough, no one appeared to be stationed there at all. Just as they were about to cross to the kitchen window, he saw an indistinct figure against the wall enclosing the kitchen gardens. It seemed Sir Richard had a guard in the rear of the house after all.
As he and Thorn watched, the moon emerged from a cloud and shone directly—on Reeve’s face. Vander swore under his breath and they both stepped out of the shadows and walked over to him.
Reeve was wearing a tattered shirt, so shabby that Thorn guessed he’d had it in prison, and leather breeches of the sort that blacksmiths wear.
A shiver went over Vander’s skin, visceral hatred for the man who had taken Mia. His wife.
Bloody hell.
Reeve showed no surprise at their presence. Instead, he jerked his head at the dim light one story above their heads. Vander took the lead. He would have doubted that a professor had experience in breaking and entering, but Reeve slipped into the shadow of the house like a man trained to robbery from the cradle. Of course, this was child’s play compared to breaking out of Scotland’s most fortified prison.
A kitchen window had been propped open to allow the heat of the ovens to escape the house. Vander pushed it farther open and put a leg over the sill. In a moment he had a hand clapped over the shoeblack’s mouth.
Large eyes stared at him, more excited than afraid. Vander grabbed a cloth from the table and tied it around the boy’s mouth.
For a brief moment they all stood silently, listening to the sounds of the great house breathing. There was a restless flow to the air. The master of the house was awake; Vander would bet on it. Likely Sir Richard had received word that Reeve had broken out of prison. Likely, too, he was planning to flee; only a fool would imagine no revenge would be taken, and whatever else he was, Sir Richard was no fool.
Thorn and Reeve followed Vander, low and close, down the servants’ corridor leading to the baize door, which in turn led to the entry. There would be guards in the entry, trained for combat, but they wouldn’t be expecting men to attack them from behind.
The three of them came through the door as one. There was a ferocious crack as Vander knocked a man to his knees, a bitten-off cry as Reeve took out another, and the sound of a brief struggle until Thorn dealt a third man a clout from the butt of his pistol. They were tying them up when a foot scraped outside; the man on the porch had heard the disturbance.
As the guard pushed open the front door, a flood of moonlight illuminated his coarse features and slack, thin lips. Sir Richard wasn’t a man to do dirty work himself, so it was unsurprising to find that he’d hired a man who looked capable of anything. Vander took him in a silent rush, knocking him out with one well-placed blow.
At first Vander thought Reeve crossed to his side in order to help in tying up the guard, but instead he heard the sudden sound of a dagger leaving its sheath.
“What in the devil are you doing?” Vander growled, seizing Reeve’s wrist.
Reeve’s jaw hardened but he didn’t resist Vander’s grasp. “He shot two of my grooms, knocked me senseless, and threw me in prison. He kept me from my own damn wedding.”
“Let the authorities take care of him.” Vander had occasionally taken the law in his own hands—no one involved in the horse racing could avoid it—but he had never watched a man being killed in cold blood and he didn’t intend to now. “The price of murder is too high,” he added.
Their eyes held a moment. Then Reeve snarled, “He gut-stabbed my thirteen-year-old post-boy. I was told last night that the boy lived a full day in excruciating agony before he died. He’s a monster.”
“In killing him, you risk becoming a monster yourself.” When the truth of that had registered on Reeve’s face, Vander let his arm go.
They drifted up the stairs as quietly as snowflakes, Vander thinking hard. He loathed Sir Richard Magruder, but Reeve was
transported by rage, his body clearly burning with steely fire. Sir Richard’s greed had cost Reeve the life of that boy, of his other servants, nearly cost Reeve his own life, not to mention his marriage.
That same greed had given Vander the best days of his life. It had given him Mia. Even though he’d had her only a short time, it had been worth it. He fell back, ceding the other man’s right to revenge.
Whatever Reeve did to Sir Richard . . . he did.
By the time Vander reached the top stair, it was as if the shock of Reeve’s return had evaporated. Instead, a new truth ploughed into him with a body-shuddering blow. For good or bad, despite the similarities with his father, he could not live without Mia.
She was his.
His woman, his wife.
He stood in the door of Sir Richard’s study as Reeve swiftly and cold-bloodedly pummeled the man into submission.
Watching absent-mindedly, another fact hit Vander hard: something that had been there, but he hadn’t allowed himself to look at. She was his life. In a few short days, she had worked her way into his soul, and for the first time in his life, everything had felt clean and true.
The hell with his past, with his parents’ relationship. He refused to let her go without fighting for her.
If that aligned him with the tragedy of his father’s marriage, the hell with it. He didn’t give a damn. He had been a fool to walk away.
Vander left without bothering to say a word to Magruder. He no longer gave a damn about the man.
Mia was exasperating and fiery. She would likely disagree with him on a daily basis. She would court scandals, and ride with her eyes closed, and write stories in which men fell on their knees at the drop of a hat.
He would go to bed every night of his life hungry for her. And rise from that bed every morning satisfied.
All he had to do was make her realize that she was meant to be with him. He had to take her back, take her away from Reeve.
Make it clear to her that she loved him, and only him.