He turned away to stare into the fire. “There you were.” He shook his head. “And here you are. Why?”
It was easier to talk to the back of his head than to look into those midnight eyes. “I owed you an explanation, as you said.”
“You explained sufficiently,” he said. “I’m destitute, not stupid. I’ve worked it out. I mowed you down, like the Juggernaut. Sorry about that. I was in a panic, you see. Couldn’t let you get away. But you did. You got away.” Still without turning he waved the wine glass, and wine sloshed over the rim. He didn’t seem to notice. His big shoulders slumped. “Go away now, Miss Findley,” he muttered. “I’m growing maudlin, and that’s a mood best enjoyed in solitude.”
“Yes, I’m going,” she said. Her eyes filled, and she blinked hard. She had to swallow hard, too, to go on. “It’s stupid, I know, but I wanted us to be in love, you see. Like the queen and her prince. Royal marriages are always arranged. It’s politics and money and power and alliances. They never marry for love, do they? But I thought, if she didn’t have to settle for less, why should an ordinary woman, who hadn’t a single drop of blue blood in her veins? That’s what I thought.”
She waited.
She heard a sound. It was faint but unmistakable.
He was snoring.
She started toward him, and put her hand out, to touch his head, wishing she could make go away all the trouble he carried in there. But she couldn’t. She drew her hand back and went out, closing the door quietly behind her.
9 February 1840
Nine o’clock in the morning
The road was slick and muddy after the rain, but he’d ridden like a madman through yesterday’s storm. Why not ride madly now?
He rode on, toward the house.
I wanted us to be in love.
He didn’t remember stumbling to bed but he must have done, because he’d woken this morning in the bedchamber he’d hired. The first thing he noticed was the silence, the end of the rain’s drumming. And the second thing was his aching head and her voice in it—saying something about the queen and her prince and wanting to be in love.
He’d told himself he dreamed it, and he was a maudlin imbecile for dreaming it, and he’d dressed and set out for London. He’d traveled a few paces along the stretch of the Old North Road past the entrance to the Swan’s stable yard. Then he’d turned his horse in the other direction, like a moonstruck boy, to chase a dream.
Halfway to the house, reason gained the upper hand.
Wasn’t that drunken display enough?
How much more pathetic do you want to look?
He drew his horse to a halt, and was preparing to turn when he heard approaching hoof beats.
At first he saw nobody, but the hoof beats grew louder, and a moment later, the horse and rider came round the turning.
He recognized the cloak streaming out behind her, the handsome green cloak that enhanced her delicate skin tone and deepened the green of her eyes.
He recognized the ease and grace with which she rode, and her headlong pace—the way she did everything, it seemed: bursting into a room, telling him he was drunk, refusing to tiptoe about his poverty, mocking his high-handed ways.
But I do love you, he should have said. How could I help it? How could you not see?
He saw the bird swoop down, aiming, probably, for some tiny creature scurrying in the ditch. Her mare shied and reared, and everything inside him froze. A heartbeat later, he was in motion, racing toward her, but not fast enough. He saw her struggle to control her mount, but something else—a slippery patch of ground, or some other distraction nearby—panicked the creature. He watched helplessly as it reared again, throwing Barbara down. Then he couldn’t breathe.
An eternity later he was dismounting, then sinking into the muddy road beside her crumpled form. He caught her up in his arms. Her head sagged against his forearm. Her face was white.
“No,” he said. “No.” He pulled her close, burying her face against his heart, a great lump of fear in his chest.
She must wake up. The longer she remained unconscious, the greater the danger. Or was it too late? Was she breathing? He put his fingers to her neck, to her wrist, but his hands were shaking. He couldn’t tell if what he felt was a pulse or his own trembling.
“You must wake up,” he said in the dictatorial tones she would have labeled fee, fie, foe, fum. “I won’t have any of this . . . swooning. I won’t—drat you, Barbara, you must wake up.”
She lay so still in his arms. “Listen to me,” he said. “I was so drunk last night I could hardly see straight. I wasn’t sure, this morning, whether I’d dreamed you. Were you talking about love, or did I dream it? I must have dreamed it, because you couldn’t be so thick not to have known.”