Chapter 21
Even the lambs, with their downy fleece and tiny bleats, couldn’t cure Violet’s poor mood.
In the three days since Benedict had disappeared from Aldercombe without a word, she’d visited the sheep pastures enough times that Green was likely tired of seeing her coming. The animals were well, after all, continuing to show no ill effects after their misadventure on the water meadow.
Yet she was desperate to keep busy in any way possible. There’d been daily tours of the estate. Walks with Achilles. Cloudless afternoons spent underneath the beech on Skylark Ridge with her book. Nothing, though, felt right. None of it would take away the ache in her heart.
With a sigh, she lifted her hand from her favorite lamb’s woolly head—Petunia, she’d named the little thing, adamant that the creature would not appear on the dinner table come autumn—and hopped over the stone fence.
It gave her no joy to return to the house and eat dinner at the massive table alone, nor did it help that all food had come to taste like sawdust. However, the sun, gently sinking in the sky, indicated that the hour had come, and Mrs. Wheeler would worry if she didn’t return.
Violet wouldn’t do that to the kindly housekeeper. Benedict had already caused enough worry for them both.
She plodded through the grass, kicking at a small rock that appeared in her path. Drat Benedict Prescott. If not for the grooms, she wouldn’t have even known that he’d hied to London, for he’d shut her out as soundly as if he’d slammed a door in her face.
And drat her for caring. Drat her for staying up at night and wondering how he fared. Drat her for thinking they shared a confidence they clearly did not.
He wanted to be angry with her? Well, she was angry, too. But that was the most damnable part of all: she missed him, nonetheless.
She pulled off her bonnet to let the sun stream upon her face, trying to push out the chill that had seeped to her bones. However, no sooner did she turn her face to the sky than a low rumble started in the distance—the pounding of hooves churning gravel. The faint echo of a whinny.
A frisson of hope shot through her chest, although it vanished the instant her eyes focused on the front drive. Even from afar, it was plain to see that the approaching horse didn’t come from Aldercombe’s stables. Nor was the rider the same exasperating man who’d dashed away three nights prior.
The figure on horseback was indeed a gentleman, but he was broader across the shoulders than Benedict. The hair that crept below the brim of his top hat glinted auburn, not black.
She began running at a breakneck pace, lungs burning, until the stranger’s identity became obvious. And then, she ran even faster, arriving at the top of the drive just as Lord Rockliffe handed off his horse to a groom.
She’d encountered the stern-faced marquess only once or twice at ton events over the past few years but had a clear enough memory to recognize him as Benedict’s uncle.
A strange sense of unease churned in her stomach.
He didn’t seem the type to ride about the countryside for the purpose of spreading joyous news.
“Lord Rockliffe.” She ground to a halt in front of him, folding herself into a breathless curtsy. She knew she looked a fright, and that her apprehension was likely plastered across her face. Unfortunately, there was little she could do to change that.
“Mrs. Prescott, I presume.” He dipped his chin, uttering her name almost like a question. When she didn’t refute it, he quickly straightened, his mouth pressing into a severe line. “Has Benedict returned?”
“Returned to Aldercombe?” Her insides did a flip. “No.”
“Damn.” He muttered another string of curses under his breath, his gaze drifting beyond her to survey the drive he’d just traversed.
Her heart, the foolish thing, battered against her ribs like the wings of a moth trapped beneath glass. “Where’s Benedict? Has something happened?”
He shook his head, turning toward the entrance of Aldercombe Grange. “We should go inside.”
“No.” She rushed in front of him, using every bit of restraint she possessed not to grab the marquess’s dusty coat sleeves. “Whatever news you bring, tell me here.”
Lord Rockliffe—for all that he could cast her aside like the impertinent chit she was—stilled, his ice-blue eyes filling with reluctance.
The following silence lasted an eternity, bringing her toward the point of pleading.
But just before she could do that, he finally spoke, the words low and terrible.
“Benedict hasn’t been seen since Monday morning when he had a confrontation with his brother at their home on Buckingham Street.
We thought he might have returned to Aldercombe without telling anyone. ”
“He hasn’t.” Violet had to swallow down a lump before she could force out the clipped phrase.
He removed his hat, pressing a hand to his dust-stained brow. “I should have suspected as much. He changed horses in Reading during his ride to London early Monday, but none of the coaching inns have heard tell of him since.”
So Benedict had simply vanished? It wasn’t possible; he was far too ordered for that. He followed rules, adhered to responsibilities, and he couldn’t suddenly be missing. He just couldn’t.
She didn’t know how long she stood there, legs trembling beneath her skirts, her head trying to reconcile a shock that made no sense.
She only knew that after an indeterminate amount of time passed, Lord Rockliffe strode away, making for the front steps.
“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Prescott, I’m in desperate need of a chair and a brandy. ”
With a start, she raced into action, grabbing his forearm just as he reached the landing and forcing him to look back at her. “But Benedict,” she said thickly. “Where is he?”
The marquess, despite his foreboding mien, peered at her with gentleness, not shaking off her brash touch.
“I have men out searching for him. Although I doubt any are so fierce as his mother.” He shook his head, his lips twisting into a humorless smile.
“Between us all, we’re bound to find him somewhere, eventually. ”
Eventually. Somewhere. Those weren’t good enough! Benedict may well infuriate her, but that didn’t mean she could sit back and merely hope he would turn up.
“I’m going to London,” she said, her path forward suddenly as clear as the blazing sun above.
However, Lord Rockliffe didn’t look convinced. “He might return to Aldercombe within the next day or two, but none of us will know if there’s no one here.”
That was indeed a fair point, but she dismissed it after a few seconds of thought.
“London was the last place he was seen, so that’s where I’m traveling,” she asserted.
“If he is, in fact, returning to Aldercombe as we speak, our paths are bound to cross on the road.” Whether they’d have a happy reunion remained to be seen, but she’d worry about that after she found him.
“If you’re certain, Mrs. Prescott.” He appeared weary—and not altogether certain himself—although as a man with a wife and two daughters, he was likely used to the tenacity of a woman who’d made up her mind.
“If you’d like to go in and see to your packing, I’ll arrange for the coach to be made ready for you at first light. ”
“I’m not taking the coach.” She shook her head, the mere thought of all those extra hours of waiting causing her skin to bristle. “I’ll go on horseback. And I’m leaving now.”
He raised a severe auburn brow. “Shall I remind you that darkness will soon fall?”
Sunlight, moonlight. It was all the same to her. She shrugged a rigid shoulder. “I’ll bring a groom. We’ll stop a few hours at a coaching inn if need be.”
“There’s no dissuading you, is there?”
“Indeed not, my lord.”
He gave a clipped sigh before drawing his elongated spine even taller. “When you arrive in London, go to Rockliffe House and seek out my wife. She’s being kept apprised of the search efforts throughout town, and she can also show you to Mr. and Mrs. Clare’s residence, should you require it.”
“Thank you.” After sparing a moment to express her gratitude, she hurried to the door, about to run inside to gather a few items for the road. However, his next question caused her to freeze in place.
“Should I take this to mean that the union between you and Benedict is more than a necessary arrangement?”
A lightning bolt shot down the center of her chest, the accompanying thunder a rumble around her heart. “Ask me again once we find him,” she murmured, placing her fingers on the door handle, unable to look back and meet the marquess’s eye.
Then, she burst through the door, running all the way to her bedchamber so she could throw on a traveling dress and locate the small satchel at the bottom of her clothespress.
She grabbed a spare frock, chemise, and stockings, each action mechanical and unthinking, until a faint whine caught her notice.
Her eyes darted around to discover Achilles sitting in the doorway, his dark gaze eager and his tail swishing tentatively against the floorboards. The poor thing was lonely without Benedict. Keen to find attention wherever he could get it.
She snapped the overstuffed satchel closed, pulling the strap over her head and going to kneel beside the waiting dog.
“Your master is a pudding head, a numbskull, and a clodpate,” she announced crisply, causing Achilles to cock his ears and watch her with those intent eyes.
She sank her fingers into the fur atop his broad head, giving him a few farewell scratches before leaning close to whisper the truth that kept thrumming in her frantic, frightened heart.
“I believe I’m falling in love with him. ”
Ben’s mind had become a sieve, unable to hold an intelligible thought.
What time was it? What day was it? He blinked, brilliant sunlight assaulting his eyes each time he turned them up from the pavement. It was morning, then. Or afternoon?
How long had he been walking? His knees wobbled from the strain of his weight, as if he’d subjected them to cruel overuse.
But it hadn’t really been that long, had it?
Fragments of memories darted through his head like slithering eels.
His arse on a rickety stool beside a barroom counter.
His body toppling to the ground, shards of gravel digging into his palms.
What the hell had happened? And where was he? He blinked again, forcing his heavy eyelids to stay open and meet the merciless sun.
God, he was tired. The type of tired that made him crave sleep for a week, if only he had a safe place to rest his head.
He could imagine that place. Fresh springtime grass beneath his palms, beech leaves swaying above his head.
A soft, floral-scented lap for his pillow, a golden curl that tumbled down to brush against his jawline, and fingers that stroked him, letting him know everything wrong in the world could be put right.
But that place was in a countryside far away. Maybe it had only been a dream.
A horse’s hooves clip-clopped beside him, the deafening rattle of the cart it pulled making the vision evaporate. He was in the city. In London. Life bustling around him in every which way.
And the building in front of him—the sunlight catching its red-gray brick and gleaming white stone as if it were favored by the heavens—was goddamn Rockliffe House.
He staggered forward on aching legs, a bitter laugh rising in his throat.
He was desperate for shelter. For home. And somehow, he’d ended up here, at his uncle’s Mayfair town house.
The place he’d been dragged as a child after his father’s death had left his mother penniless.
The place he’d be dragged again someday, permanently, assuming he lived a long life and that the pain coursing through his body didn’t signal his imminent demise.
He laughed harder, each peal smarting his ribs, although the situation seemed far less amusing than unequivocally pathetic.
This was the place on which his father had turned his back so he could marry a woman of lower birth and follow his dreams of poethood.
The place he’d deemed oppressive and disparaging, swearing the family he created would have no association with the house, its occupants, or anything else linked to the peerage.
And yet, Ben kept stumbling toward the edifice’s polished front door. A hapless creature venturing right into a predator’s open jaws.
“Oh, thank the Lord.” A sharp rasp pierced his eardrums, followed by a rhythmic tap, tap, tap that grated on his skull.
He squinted, and although the world swam before his eyes, he could see that a figure had appeared on the doorstep. A swath of gray fabric. Crepey skin. A silver-handled cane that glinted in the sun.
Laughter seized his insides as he stumbled toward the steps, for this was the funniest thing of all: his dragon of a grandmother standing here to welcome him to hell.
The elderly dowager marchioness may look frail, but he’d be a fool to forget all the times she’d been calculating and ruthless.
How when a rift occurred in the family, she could usually be named as the cause.
But it didn’t matter. He went up those steps anyway, propelled by a power that didn’t seem his own.
The snare snapped closed the instant he arrived on the landing, sharp nails digging into his arms like claws and refusing to let go.
“Whatever you’ve done, don’t you ever do it again; you hear me?
You’re better than this.” Icy eyes glared up at him venomously, the gruff voice an echo in his pounding head.
“You have Rockliffe blood in your veins. Marquess’s blood. ”
She shook him, her fragile body surprisingly potent, and he was forced to grab her arms in return before her efforts made him crumple to the doorstep. He wanted her to stop talking. Wanted her to cease jostling him before he vomited on her shoes.
But the dowager, who rarely behaved as desired, grew louder and more forceful, the cloudy blue of her irises transfixing him as everything else continued spinning.
“I’ve come to realize something over the years: fate didn’t grant sons to your uncle because you are the one built for the title.
You always have been. Even the circumstances of your upbringing couldn’t take that away from you. ”
He trembled violently, his nerve endings freezing over despite the sun that beat down on him. You’re wrong, he tried to say. You’re wrong. He couldn’t have been built for the title; it was an accident. Something that never should have been.
A betrayal of his father.
However, it would seem his tongue had forgotten how to do anything but loll about inside his mouth. And his legs, which had held him upright for too long, didn’t care to do so any longer.
He was bone-weary. He wanted to go home.
Marquess’s blood. They were the final words to tumble through his head before his body gave up and everything went black.