Earl Crush (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #2)

Chapter 9

… Men being the Historians, they seldom condescend to record the great and good Actions of Women…

—from Lydia’s private copy of THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AS PROFESS’D BY A DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, annotated in her hand: “And so we must take up our pens.”

They gathered in the drawing room the following morning after breakfast. Huw and Bertie arrayed themselves around the desk. Georgiana and Lydia sat on the chaise longue, Bacon between them and Annabelle the degu at their feet. And Arthur—

Lydia tried not to look at Arthur, looming grumpily in the threshold like a bear roused from hibernation. Her eyes were gritty—she had not slept well. She had caught a glimpse of herself in the glass this morning and winced at the bruised-looking purple beneath her eyes. Her cursed skin was too revealing, her fears written out there on her face for the world to see.

No, she had not slept well. She had not been able to stop recalling their encounter in the drawing room, circling round and round the moment when Arthur’s thumb had caught the corner of her mouth and his hand had grasped her waist.

She had never been kissed. There was, of course, nothing wrong with never having been kissed at six-and-twenty, or at any other advanced age. There was no reason to be embarrassed by it—except that she was the sort of woman who wanted to be kissed, hard and thoroughly, and the opportunity had not presented itself, not even once, in her entire life.

She had never been kissed and yet, in that moment, she had been quite certain that Arthur’s mouth was going to descend upon hers. She had wanted it, with a yearning that had stolen her breath.

She’d waited, wishing, hoping. And nothing had transpired after all. The man had dropped his hands and flung himself backward like she was hot to the touch, and she’d had nothing to do but leave the way she had come in.

There was no rational reason to be embarrassed—she had not done anything wrong. And yet she found she could not look at Arthur anyway, not at his eyes or his hands or the almost-pout of his mouth.

Especially not his mouth.

Arthur broke the silence that had descended upon the assembled group. “Miss Hope-Wallace has solved it.”

She gaped at him, no longer pretending not to look in his direction. She had… what? She was not sure she had heard him correctly.

Behind the desk, Bertie took on a proud, almost avuncular smile. “Of course she did. I knew she would.”

She felt heat rise in her cheeks. She hadn’t… not really… “No,” she protested, “I didn’t do anything in particular. His lordship was the one who—”

“Aye, you did,” said Arthur. “I merely did the labor. You saw the pattern in it. The whole project was your idea from the start.”

She did not know what to say. She felt revealed, every eye in the room fixed upon her.

And yet, strangely, there was none of the squirming discomfort that usually filled her in such a moment. Somehow, she felt not pinned to a wall, examined like a trapped and wriggling thing, but recognized . Seen.

It was not an unpleasant sensation. Not at all.

“Well done, lass,” said Huw. “What did you discover? Do you know where Davis has taken the rifle scope?”

Everyone waited for her to answer, and to her surprise, she found she could.

“I don’t know precisely,” she said. “I only know that when he was writing the majority of the letters, he seemed to be living in or near a town called Haddon Grange. His lordship says you are familiar with it?”

“Yes, of course.” Bertie picked up a quill and spun it eagerly between his fingers, as though he meant to take notes on their conversation. “About three hours from here on horseback; we sell some of our grain to the milner there. A not insubstantial village—a few dozen houses and shops. The estate of Lord and Lady de Younge is not far.”

“Could Davis have resided there?” Georgiana asked. “Perhaps under an assumed name? Would his face have been known to the people of Haddon Grange?”

“Aye,” Arthur said. “We’re both familiar enough to them—his face and mine as well. Most of the town, I think, would recognize him if they saw him there.”

“He could be there now,” said Huw, “practically right under our noses.”

Lydia felt an unexpected ripple of pride.

Between her naive trust in Davis and her impulsive journey to Scotland, she’d marinated in her own foolishness since the moment she’d arrived at Strathrannoch Castle. But perhaps—if she helped Arthur find his brother, if she played a role in preventing violence—perhaps she would have turned a rash impulse into something worthwhile.

Perhaps she could do right in the end.

“You should go to Haddon Grange,” Bertie said decisively, his gaze trained on Arthur in the threshold. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow, if you can manage it. See if you can find him—or, if he’s no longer there, see if you can work out any clue as to where he might have gone.”

“Aye,” Arthur said. He levered himself up from where he had been leaning against the frame of the door. “Come up to your office with me, Bertie, and we’ll make a plan for the estate in my absence. I trust you to know what’s right, of course, but you’ll understand if I want to speak of it anyway.”

“Yes,” said Bertie, drawing the word out as he slid the quill between his fingers. “Yes. But you ought not go alone. You should take Miss Hope-Wallace and Lady Georgiana.”

Lydia felt slightly dizzy as the words registered. There was a faint buzzing sound in her ears that almost drowned out the rough sound of Arthur’s next words.

Not quite though. His deep voice rumbled straight into her chest.

“Absolutely not.”

“Only think upon it,” Bertie said serenely. “If Davis is there, he may be more willing to meet with Lydia than with you. She may be able to entice him—”

“I will not use her as bait!”

“She need not involve herself beyond writing Davis a note, perhaps. He knows her hand.”

“She is too bloody involved as it is!”

The words stung. They scraped at the soft parts of Lydia’s heart.

She wanted to tell him he was right. She was far too involved; she should never have come in the first place. She wanted to say that she had no desire to accompany him in any case, that she only wanted to help him with the letters and then go home.

No. In truth, she wanted not to speak at all. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and let them argue above her head, to fade away until no one in the room could see her.

It would be so easy to disappear from the conversation. She was exquisitely accomplished at disappearing.

And what had it gotten her? That hiding, that lying in wait?

She had done some good these last three years as H. She knew that she had. She had helped rouse public sentiment in favor of universal suffrage and divorce reform. She’d been largely responsible for the failed campaign of a pro-slavery MP in Camelford. She had arranged alternate employment for all of the Marquess of Queensbury’s female staff after she’d discovered that he’d impregnated three serving girls and then tossed them out on the street.

But she herself had not changed. Not yet.

“I want to go.” Her voice came out small and strained, and though she was painfully embarrassed, she tried again. “I want to go with you to Haddon Grange. I’d like to see what we can find out about Davis.”

Arthur turned toward her, shifting his glare from Bertie’s face to hers. “And what will you do if Davis finds you there? If the first time he lays eyes on you is through my rifle scope, aimed at your heart from a hundred leagues away?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps I’ll propose.”

There was a brief startled silence, broken by the squeak of Georgiana’s hastily stifled laugh.

Arthur glowered. “For Christ’s sake. I showed you on the ramparts what the scope can do. You could be hurt. I wouldn’t… I would not have you hurt again by me or mine.”

“I know,” she said. “I understand. But I believe…”

She could not put it into words—what she thought, what she wanted. She struggled a moment, trying for speech, and Arthur—

Waited. He waited patiently for her, his hazel eyes resting upon her face.

This is your chance to change your life , she had told herself, and then lied to her family and set out for Scotland.

It had been an unqualified disaster. She’d proposed to a literal stranger, had been quite squarely rejected upon the basis that they were literal strangers , had nearly been run over by a herd of zebras, and had gotten herself involved in the theft of experimental weaponry. She had hoped, in her most optimistic fantasies, that this trip would end with her happily settled into a marriage of convenience with a man who respected her and her ideas, who appreciated the wealth and political connections she could bring to their marriage.

That happy outcome was, it went without saying, not to be.

And yet… and yet…

Was it not still possible for her to change? Was this not a chance for her to do something—to thrust herself into the world instead of hiding from it, to take action instead of waiting fruitlessly for a life that never quite seemed to begin?

“I believe I can help you,” she said finally. “I cannot write to him from here—the postal mark will be unmistakable if it comes from the vicinity of Strathrannoch Castle. He will know I came here, know I spoke to you and discovered the truth of his identity. But I could leave a note for him at Haddon Grange. I can ask after him, in places that you cannot because your face would be known to all and sundry.”

“’Tis not safe—”

“It is not more unsafe for me than it is for you. Perhaps less so—if Davis hears that you have come to Haddon Grange in search of him, he will either flee or fight. But he will not learn of my arrival except on my terms.”

“I can help as well,” put in Georgiana at her side. “I can speak to the villagers. I can gain their confidence and find out what they know or remember about Davis.”

“She’s very good,” Lydia said. “You will want her along.”

“’Tis not about wanting or no!” Arthur’s voice was rough with frustration.

“You’re right. It is not about what you want or what I want. It’s about what is the most expedient—and right now, that is for all of us to travel together to Haddon Grange and locate Davis as quickly as possible.”

“I can go with you,” Huw said.

Lydia’s gaze darted to the Welshman, whose normally booming voice was almost soft.

“If it eases your mind about the ladies’ safety, lad, I’ll go with you. Willie can mind the stables for a day or two without me to clout him regularly. It’ll be good for him.”

“And I will take charge of Sir Francis Bacon,” said Bertie mildly, “whilst you are gone.”

Arthur seemed to be gritting his teeth. “I don’t need all of you to come to my aid. This is my brother—my damned responsibility. I’ve asked enough of Miss Hope-Wallace as it is.”

Huw’s mouth was quirked at one corner beneath his beard. “There is no particular honor in going it alone, lad. If Miss Hope-Wallace and Lady Georgiana want to help, then you are best served by letting them.”

“And,” Bertie put in, “there is no little urgency to the project of finding your brother.”

Arthur rubbed one large hand across the back of his neck. His blue-green-gold eyes flickered to Lydia’s for one brief moment and then away.

“All right,” he said. “Fine. Let’s go then, we four, to Haddon Grange.”

Satisfaction flared in Lydia, bright and fervent, and alongside it—

Alongside it, a sudden horrible realization.

She had just committed herself to entering a town of strangers and talking to them. With no prior introduction or invitation—no, she would simply march up to a whole village’s worth of people she had never met and demand to know the whereabouts of one Davis Baird.

She could picture herself, with a kind of hallucinatory clarity, fainting at their feet. Her mind offered up a banquet of horrifying possibilities. She would cry. She would speak out of turn and be pilloried. Somehow her identity as H would become known and she would accidentally kindle a resurgence of Jacobitism.

Dear God. She had run mad. She could not do this.

She opened her mouth to say something— I take it back, I was merely jesting, ha ha ha, what a lark!

And then she closed her mouth again.

She was going to help. She could help. She had ridden astride and cut her horse free before they were all trampled by zebras. She had helped Arthur solve the puzzle of Davis’s whereabouts. She had gotten herself and Georgiana to Scotland without alerting her mother or brothers, for heaven’s sake.

She could do this too.

She hoped.