Chapter Seven
A week after he’d found Liberty injured on the side of the road, Toby was still struggling to get her out of his head. Was she healing? He’d not seen her at any society functions and could not simply turn up at her door asking after her, when he’d ignored her for years.
Was her head actually worse than he’d originally thought?
Toby wanted to knock on her father’s door and demand an explanation why she’d left that inn without telling him. Then he wanted an assurance she was indeed healthy.
The woman had not crossed his mind in years, other than when he saw her at a society gathering, but one encounter and he could think of little else. She believed him to be a womanizing rake and a wastrel, which in part was true, but it bothered him Liberty thought of him that way.
“Because you’re a fool,” he muttered, gripping the rope tighter, and beginning to climb. Beside him his friend, Lord Jamieson Stafford, was doing the same, and faster, which annoyed Toby excessively. He’d always been fiercely competitive.
“Yes, you are, but why are you more of a fool today than others?”
“Shut up and climb, Jamie,” Toby said.
Since he’d been plunged into the brutal hell that was Blackwood Hall in his youth, Toby had done whatever he could to outrun his demons.
Like the two friends he’d met there, they did what they needed to stay sane and shut out the darkness.
Jamie chose exercise. He walked, ran, and rode everywhere as fast as he could.
Toby often wondered if one day he’d hear his friend had died due to the extreme lengths he went to in pursuit of good health.
“You can go faster than that, Lord Corbyn.”
“I’m trying, Professor Voelker,” Toby said to the man instructing him. Gritting his teeth, he climbed as the muscles in his arms begged for mercy. “That man is evil.”
He’d allowed his friend to drag him from his bed this morning, and to an open-air gymnasium he’d been a member of since its inception a few years ago.
There was a fence around a grassed area, inside which had masts and ladders for climbing, mats for wrestling, and plenty of other evil forms of exercise.
Jamie had got him at a weak moment, and now Toby was suffering. It would not be happening again.
“Why did I agree to this?”
“Because you are lazy, and wish to have a physique like me,” Jamie said, reaching the top of the mast before him.
“My physique is equivalent, if not better than yours,” Toby gritted out. “My arms are certainly stronger.”
“Perhaps then, if I may suggest you try harder to keep up with Lord Stafford, Lord Corbyn,” Professor Voelker said from below.
“You think I’m not trying to?”
The man showed no emotion at Toby’s attempt at levity. He was relentless and drove those who were foolish enough to enter this hell hole mercilessly.
“What surprises me is that you actually came today,” Jamie said, sitting on the wooden pole above him now.
Toby had come because he’d been unable to sleep and woken foggy. He’d felt forcing thoughts of Liberty out of his head with exercise was an excellent idea… until it wasn’t.
Reaching the top, he gulped in air and then descended behind his friend.
“Next you will climb the ladders,” Professor Voelker said when Toby landed back on the ground.
“Excellent,” he rasped, bent at the waist. “I can’t believe you would willingly choose to do th-this, Jamie.”
“I like to stay strong and healthy. It keeps my mind clear. I don’t want to pickle myself nightly with alcohol.”
“I don’t pickle myself nightly,” Toby protested, glaring at his friend, who was not even breathing hard.
The Marquess of Stafford was tall, with dark hair and piercing green eyes.
Women loved him, and he tolerated them back, but like his two friends he didn’t let any close.
Correction, that had changed for one of them, Anthony, who had married the love of his life recently.
The first of them to fall, he’d said, to which Jamie and Toby had replied, the only one to fall.
“I can’t work out if you two are idiots, or to be commended for what you are doing.”
These drawled words came from his right. Straightening while attempting to force air back into his lungs, Toby found a man leaning on the fence, watching.
“Anthony, have you come to join us?” Jamie asked.
“Absolutely not,” he replied with a wide smile.
“Get away, you lovelorn fool,” Toby muttered. The man never used to smile.
“Jealousy is an ugly trait in a gentleman,” Anthony added.
Ignoring him, Toby gripped the ladder.
Tall like he and Jamie, the Earl of Hamilton was dark haired with amber eyes, and had lost the savage air he’d once carried. As if marrying the woman he loved deeply had cleansed him of his demons. Toby had to say he almost hated him for that.
“Up those ladders now!” Professor Voelker barked.
“Yes, do get up those ladders,” Anthony goaded them safely from the other side of the fence, where he and a handful of spectators watched. “I could do with a laugh.”
Jamie ran up his, and Toby followed wheezing. He’d believed himself strong and healthy, but this had convinced him he needed to do more, not that he’d admit that to anyone, and especially not Jamie and Anthony.
When they were back down, with his hands now raw, Professor Voelker said they were done with their exercise that day but felt it would be best for Toby to return frequently.
“Well, that’s telling you,” Anthony said when they joined him.
“You should join us. I’m sure your middle is thickening,” Toby said.
“Good Lord, why would I want to do that?” He didn’t add anything about the thickening waist, as they all knew that for a lie.
“Because it’s good for you,” Toby wheezed.
“I can see that by the pained expression on your face,” his friend drawled. “I can’t believe you finally agreed to join Jamie, Toby. Didn’t we decide never to do that?”
Toby grunted something that made no sense.
“Now wash in that cold water, and then we can eat,” Anthony said.
“Where is your wife?”
“Shopping with her sister.”
“And so we are fit company for you now she doesn’t want you?” Jamie asked.
“Exactly that,” Anthony agreed.
Shaking his head, Toby went to the trough of cold water and jar of soap behind the screen. He washed and then pulled on his jacket. Jamie did the same. They then left to join Anthony.
“You are preoccupied, Toby,” Anthony said as they walked in the late morning sunshine. The streets were alive with vendors and people. Horses and carriages added to the cacophony of noise, and to some it was loud, but not to him. Toby enjoyed it. He didn’t like silence.
“Am I?”
“Yes, you are,” Jamie added. “And the fact that you came with me today points to you needing a distraction. At least that bruise on your jaw that you have not been truthful about obtaining is fading.”
He’d seen them both since his return to London. Toby had just not mentioned about Bidham, or seeing Liberty. Neither of them knew exactly what had taken place between them, but they knew she had once been his friend.
“Actually, I do want to speak with you both about…” His words fell away as he watched the man running toward him. “Is that one of my footmen?”
As he drew closer, Toby saw it was indeed Nigel.
“My lord,” the man rasped when he reached him. “A note has arrived, and the man who delivered it said you must read it urgently.”
“Have you just run all the way here?” Jamie asked.
“I have, Lord Stafford.”
“That’s quite a distance. Well done.”
Toby opened the note while his friend congratulated his footman on his fitness. Reading the first words, he noted it was from a solicitor. He read on.
“Christ,” Toby hissed when he’d finished.
“What?”
“Thank you, Nigel. Please do not run home, and find something to eat or drink on the way,” Toby said handing his footman some money. Only after he’d left did he read the words on the note before him.
“‘Lord Corbyn, it is with my deepest regret that I must inform you of the death of your cousin and his wife, Reverend and Mrs. Hereford.’”
“I only met him once, when he came to London, but I remember he was a nice man,” Anthony said.
“He never gave up on me, even when I wanted him to,” Toby said, his eyes still on the words before him.
He continued reading. “‘Because there are no other living relatives and you were appointed guardian to their daughter, Miss Florence Heresford, the child will arrive in five days at your townhouse.’”
They stood in stunned silence after Toby had finished reading. Lowering the note to his side, he looked at them.
“Are you her guardian?” Anthony spoke first.
Toby nodded. “Timothy wrote to me every Christmas, usually six pages long of what had happened in his year. I responded with a single page of what a selfish bastard I was, and that nothing had changed.”
“Toby—”
“Then the year you met him, he came to London to tell me Melissa, his wife, was carrying their babe,” Toby continued, cutting Jamie off.
“He asked if I would be its guardian, and I agreed, because I never thought I’d have to do more than send a gift occasionally.
I was invited to the christening, and went, but it was the only time I saw the child.
” He could feel the panic welling up inside him now.
“How old is she?” Anthony asked.
He thought back and came up with a number. “Five years I believe.”
“You are going to be guardian to a five-year-old child when you can barely care for yourself?” Jamie said.
“I object,” Toby said weakly. “My staff do an admirable job of caring for me.”
“But seriously, Toby. What are you going to do?” Anthony asked.
“I feel ill,” he whispered.
The three men looked at each other blankly.
“Tea, I think. We will strategize, and if that doesn’t work, ask someone who has children what you should do,” Anthony said.
“I am not telling my mother yet. She will take to her bed for a week,” Toby said.
“Evie can help. She helped raise her sister,” Anthony said.
“I can’t be responsible for a small child… a girl,” Toby whispered.
They walked and all he could think was how could he protect a child from hurt and suffering, because no one had protected him when he’d needed them to? Was he strong enough to do that? Be a parent?
“I can see the panic clawing at you, Toby. You need to take a deep breath now,” Jamie said. “You are not alone, and never will be. We are there for you as we always have been, and will help you.”
“Agreed,” Anthony said sounding grim.
We will never walk alone, Toby thought. They’d made that promise to each other many years ago when there had been no one else to turn to.