The Carhart Series Read online

  This was not good. It was very not good. Kate curled her lips up into the semblance of a smile while she tried to arrange her muddled thoughts. “Of course,” she said. “I’ll ring for tea, and you can tell me how I can help.”

  Chapter Four

  “JENNY,” NED SAID AS KATE stepped outside the room, “before we begin to discuss Louisa, there is something I must ask you.”

  Jenny, who had sat next to her husband on an embroidered sofa, smiled up at Ned and motioned him to sit. Ned slipped into a nearby chair and leaned forward. What he had to say next was something that had bothered him for the past hour. Under the circumstances, it seemed unfair to confront her with the question. And yet…

  “Why didn’t you write me that the gentlemen of the ton were conspiring to seduce my wife?”

  Jennifer Carhart had never, in Ned’s experience, been a coward. Yet she looked away at this, biting her lip. “Letters took so long to cross the ocean,” she finally assayed, not meeting his eyes. “And Lady Kathleen—Kate, I mean—dealt with the wager so matter-of-factly. I didn’t suppose she needed my assistance, and to be quite honest, I suspect she wouldn’t have appreciated my interference. Besides, you…” She trailed off, her finger tracing circles against her palm.

  “I what?”

  “You needed time to sort through matters.” Jenny reached over and adjusted his lapels in some invisible manner.

  “Christ,” Ned swore.

  All those years ago, Jenny had been the one to observe the sum total of his youthful foibles. When he’d made a hash of his life, she had helped him pick up the pieces. She was like a sister to him, and one who had quite literally saved his life. Perhaps that was why she sat here, protecting him, as if he were still that fragile child in need of mollycoddling.

  “Next time,” he said quietly, “tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” Harcroft’s voice boomed behind Ned, and he turned reluctantly. “Are you telling us that you had great success in your venture abroad?”

  “If by ‘success,’ you mean, did I discover the truth? Yes.”

  Gareth looked up and leaned forward. “That bad, was it?”

  “Worse than even the discussions in Parliament indicated. If matters have not changed, John Company is currently shelling villages at the mouth of the Pearl River, all because China refuses the privilege of purchasing India’s opium. This is not Britain’s finest hour. When we’ve resolved this other matter, we’ll have to have a discussion about what can be done in the Lords. I’ve made notes.”

  “And did you find it easy to take those notes?”

  “Easy enough.” Ned smiled briefly. “Once I stopped letting the officers push me about.”

  Harcroft waved a hand. “We can speak more of that later. For now, we’ll need a plan. The first thing that we must organize is—”

  “I thought we were going to wait for Kate to return,” Ned interrupted in surprise. He’d never known Harcroft to be downright rude before. And imposing on Kate’s hospitality, while starting the conversation without her, seemed the height of rudeness.

  Harcroft made a disparaging sound in return. “Why bother? What do you suppose she could do to assist us? Go shopping?” He shook his head. “If my wife were hidden on Bond Street, I might turn to Lady Kathleen for assistance.”

  Ned’s hands balled at that implied insult.

  “Yes, yes.” Harcroft waved a dismissive hand in Ned’s direction. “I know. You feel duty bound to complain. But do be serious. Some women just don’t have the head for anything except frivolity. She’s good at a great many things, I’ll give you. Planning parties. Purchasing of a great many hats and gloves. Trust me, Ned. We’ll all be happiest if Lady Kathleen restricts her assistance in this matter to choosing the menu.”

  At that precise moment, Kate came back into the room, followed by a servant with a tea-tray. She didn’t meet Ned’s eyes. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She didn’t say anything about the conversation. She didn’t say anything at all. But Ned could tell, by the careful way that she concentrated on the distribution of delicate, gold-edged cups and cucumber sandwiches, that she’d overheard those last few words. And they’d hurt.

  Worse, nobody had leapt to defend her. Not even him. And by the way she fixed her gaze on the teapot, she knew that.

  When she sat down, she took the chair farthest from their company, as if she were outside the enterprise. Harcroft began outlining his plans for questioning villagers and hiring searchers, and Kate sat in silence, staring into her teacup. Ned could put no words to the prickle of unease he felt watching her. She was dignified and pleasant, every inch the duke’s daughter he’d married.

  She was also hurt. And looking at her, he could not help but feel as if…as if, perhaps, he’d forgotten something.

  Not her; he’d never forgotten Kate. Not their vows; he’d struggled long and hard with how to both cherish Kate and keep her safe from the darkness he knew lurked inside him.

  No. After what she’d said in the hall, he was certain he’d not done well by her, and he was not sure how to patch matters up. If he could even do so. She had said their marriage might blow away with one gust of wind; he had no idea how to bring it to life. He wasn’t sure if he could do so, without also resurrecting his own dark demons alongside. But what he did know was that if he kept silent now, if he did nothing to try to mend the hurt she’d just been given, he wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror any longer.

  He stood and walked to her. Behind him, Harcroft was still nattering on. “These days,” he was growling, “nobody gives a fig about the husband’s rights. Too many newfangled notions interfering.”

  Standing above his wife, Ned could see the fair lines of her eyelashes. She didn’t darken them, and as she gazed down into her teacup, those fine, delicate hairs fluttered. Without lifting her eyes to Ned—he wasn’t sure if she was even aware of how close he stood—Kate blew out her breath and added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, followed by another.

  The time they had together had been damnably short. But those days spent breaking fast with Kate had been time enough for Ned to know that his wife never took sugar in her tea.

  “In fact,” Harcroft was saying behind them, “the very notion of Britain is founded on the rights of a husband.”

  “Husbands’ rights,” Kate muttered. “In a pig’s eye.”

  “Kate?”

  Kate jumped, her teacup clattering in its saucer. “That is the second time you’ve come up behind me in as many hours. Are you trying to do me an injury?”

  From her private reaction, she didn’t think much of marriage—either Lady Harcroft’s or her own. Perhaps they had compared notes. He didn’t know what to do, except to try to make her smile.

  “Am I interrupting a private conversation between you and your teacup?”

  Kate stared down. Even Ned could see the liquid was practically viscous with dissolved sugar. How many spoonfuls had she dumped into it? But she said nothing.

  “I must be,” Ned continued. “No doubt you and your tea have a great deal to converse about. Can I call it merely tea?” She looked up at him in surprise. “I’d hate to insult your efforts to transform it into a syrup, after all.”

  A reluctant smile touched her lips, and she set down her worthless, oversweetened beverage. And oh, he didn’t know why, but he reached out and laid his hand atop the fingers she had freed. The delicate bones of her hand felt just right against his skin.

  “Let me guess,” Ned said. “I’ve mucked up the forms of address. You’ll have to excuse me. I haven’t thought about etiquette and precedence in years. You’re a duke’s daughter, and furthermore, you are the tea’s only natural predator. According to Debrett, that means—”

  “I am not!” she said. But she hadn’t lost that shine in her eyes. Maybe, if he made her laugh again, he could resume where they’d left off. Maybe he could bridge the gap between them with humor.

  “You’re not a duke’s daughter?” He looked abou
t the room in exaggerated confusion. “Does anyone else here know that? Because I shan’t tell if you won’t.”

  Her hand shifted under his, and he won another reluctant smile from her. This, too, Ned remembered—his attempts, at breakfast, to make her choke on her toast and reprimand him for making her cough. It had seemed a dangerous endeavor then, even in the bright light of day.

  “Don’t be foolish,” she admonished.

  “Why not?” He reached out and tapped her chin.

  She tilted her head. And then, he remembered why conversing with her had always seemed so dangerous. Because she looked up at him. The years washed away. And for one second, the look she gave him was as old and complicated as the look Delilah had once given to Samson. It was a look that said Kate had seen inside his skin, had seen through the veneer of his humor to the very unamusing truth of why he’d left. She might have seen how desperately he needed to retain a shred of control over himself…and how close she came to taking it all away.

  His wife had been a threat when he’d married her. She’d been a confusing mix of directness and obfuscation, a mystery that had dangerously engrossed him. He’d found himself entertaining all sorts of lofty daydreams. He’d wanted to slay all her dragons—he’d have invented them, if she lacked sufficient reptilian foes. In short, he’d found himself slipping back into the youthful foolishness he had forsworn.

  He’d run away. He’d left England, ostensibly to look into Blakely investments in the East. It had been a rational, hardheaded endeavor, and he’d proven that he, too, could be rational and hardheaded. He’d come home, certain that this time, he would leave off his youthful imaginings.

  “Are you planning to play the fool for me?” And in her face, turned up to his, he saw every last threat writ large. He saw the sadness he’d left in her, and felt his own desperate desire to tamp it down. And he saw something more: something stronger and harder than the woman he’d left behind.

  He had come back to England, planning to treat his wife with gentlemanly care. He would prove once and for all that he was deserving of their trust, that he was not some stupid, foolish boy, careening off on some impossible quest.

  Kate made him want to take on the impossible.

  When she smiled, the warmth of her expression traveled right through his spine like a heated shiver. It lodged somewhere in the vicinity of his breastbone, a hook planted in his ribs, pulling him forward.

  For one desperate second, he wanted to be laid bare before her. He wanted her to see everything: his struggle for stability, the hard-fought battle he’d won. He wanted to find out why she sat as if she were not a part of this group.

  And that was real foolishness. Because he’d worked too long to gain control over himself, and he wasn’t about to relinquish it at the first opportunity to a pretty smile. Not even one that belonged to his wife.

  “No,” he said finally. “You’re quite right. I’m done playing the fool. Not even for you, Kate. Not even for you.”

  THE SMELL OF HAY AND MANURE wafted to Ned as soon as he stepped inside the stables. The aisle running down the stalls was clean and dry, though, and he walked carefully down the layer of fresh straw. The mare he had pulled from the mews in London for the journey here put her dark nose out over the stall, and Ned reached into his pocket for a small circle of orange carrot. He offered it, palm up; the horse snuffled it up.

  “If you’re looking for that new devil of a horse, he’s not in here.”

  Ned turned at the sound of this ancient voice. “You’re talking about Champion, then?”

  Richard Plum scrubbed a callused hand against an old and wrinkled cheek. It was the only commentary Ned expected the old stable-master would make on the name he’d chosen. Ned could almost hear the man’s voice echo from his childhood. Animals don’t need fancy names. They don’t know what they mean. Names are nothing but lies for us two-legged types.

  “I’ve seen a great many horses,” the man offered.

  Ned waited. Plum spent so much time around animals—from the horses in the stables to Berkswift’s small kennel of dogs—that he sometimes forgot that ordinary human conversation had an ebb and flow to it, a certain natural order of statement and response. Plum seemed to think all conversations had only one side, which he provided. But if left unprompted, he usually recollected himself and continued.

  “This one, he’s not the worst I’ve seen. Not the best, neither. Conformation leaves a lot to be desired, and even after we’ve put some flesh on his bones, he’ll likely always be weak-chested. But his temperament… He’s as wary as if the devil himself were pissing in his grain. I don’t trust him near my mares.”

  Technically, they were Ned’s mares, but Ned wasn’t about to correct the man. He’d hoped this morning’s equine tantrum had been nothing more than an aftereffect of Champion’s earlier mistreatment.

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Plum seemed to think that bare mono-syllable constituted sufficient answer, because he put his hands in his pockets and looked at Ned. “An animal needs to know some kindness in its first years of life, Mr. Carhart. If your, ah, your horse—” Ned noticed that Plum carefully eschewed the name of Champion “—has never known good from people, that’s the end of it. It can’t be fixed, not with a day of work. Or a week. Or a year. And if that’s the case, there’s nothing to be done for it.”

  “When you say ‘nothing,’” Ned ventured gently, “you don’t literally mean nothing can be done. Do you?”

  “Of course not.” Plum shook his head. “Always something to be done, eh? In this case, you load the pistol and pull the trigger. It’s a mercy, doing away with a one such as that. What an animal doesn’t learn when young, it can’t find in maturity.”

  Ned turned away, his hands clenching. His stomach felt queasy. He hadn’t saved Champion only to have him put down out of some sense of wrong-headed mercy. An image flashed through his head: a pistol, tooled in silver, the sun glinting off it from every direction.

  No.

  He’d not wish that end on anyone, not even a scraggly, weak-chested horse.

  “How far gone is he?”

  Mr. Plum shrugged. “No way to know, unless someone gives it a try. Have to make the decision out of rational thought, sir. Me? I doubt the animal’s worth the effort.”

  He paused again, another one of those too-long halts. Ned began to drum his fingers against the leg of his trousers, an impatient ditty born out of an excess of energy. Another bad sign.

  “Very little use in him, sir.”

  “Use.” Ned pressed his palms together. “No need for an animal to be useful, is there?”

  Plum met his gaze. “Use is what animals are for, Mr. Carhart. Useless animals have no place.”

  Ned knew what it was like to feel useless. He had been the expendable grandchild, the non-heir. He’d been the fool, the idiot, the one who could be counted on to muck up anything worth doing. His grandfather had expected nothing of Ned, and Ned, young idiot that he had been, had delivered spectacularly. But he had learned. He had changed himself, and it had not been too late.

  “Where have you put him?”

  “Old sheep corral. It’s empty, this time of autumn, what with the sheep all brought to the lower fields.”

  “He’ll come around.”

  “Hmm.” It was a versatile syllable, that. Plum might have delivered an essay on his disbelief with that single sound. “In all those heart-felt do-gooding stories, some child rescues an animal and it then proceeds to take the cup at the Ascot. And the knock-kneed beast does so, just because it’s fed a decent measure of corn and lavished with kind words. But be realistic, Mr. Carhart. This is a barrel-chested animal that’s down on its strength. Even if you do somehow calm the thing enough to toss a harness on it, and convince it to pull in tandem with another animal, it’ll be skittish all its life.”

  “Skittish,” Ned said, “I can live with.”

  Plum stared at him a moment, before giving his head a dismissive
shake. “Hope so, then. There’s still hay out in that field,” he finally said. “We’d been planning to bring it in soon, before the rains come. I’ll pull a pair of men from the home farm this afternoon and see to it.”

  “Don’t bother,” Ned volunteered. “I’ll do it.”

  This was met with a longer pause.

  “You’ll do it,” Plum finally repeated, looking off at a speck of dirt on the ground. He said the words as if Ned had just announced that not only did he plan to save a useless horse, he had five heads.

  And no wonder. Gentlemen offered to pitch hay approximately as often as they sported five heads. And a marquess’s heir was no common day-laborer to dirty himself with a pitchfork. But then, Ned wasn’t precisely a common marquess’s heir, either. He needed to do some thing to bleed off the excess energy he felt. It was beginning to come out in fidgets; if he didn’t do something about it, it would never dissipate.

  Instead, it would go careening off at the first opportune moment. Or, more like, the first inopportune one, as he’d learned by experience.

  “This is a joke?” Plum asked, bewildered. “You always were one for jokes, when you were a child.”

  Oh, the inopportune moments of his childhood.

  “I’m perfectly serious. I’ll manage it.”

  Over the past few years he’d learned he could contain the restiveness, his simple inability to just stop. All he had to do was channel that excess energy into physical tasks. The more mundane, the more repetitive, the greater the strain on his muscles, the better it worked.

  Plum simply shook his head, no doubt washing his hands of his master’s madness. “Cart’s already in the field,” he said.

  Ned found the cart in question half an hour later. Champion watched him, his eyes lowered, yards away at the fence. Pitching hay into a cart was excellent work—back-straining and tiring. Ned could feel his muscles protest with every lift of the fork. His back ached in pain—the good sort of pain. He worked through it.