Chapter Fourteen
F elix had a plan. Caro would be proud indeed. And as he did on his impulses, he acted on it swiftly, all the way to London, straight to the Lyon’s Den. When he was shown to the Black Widow’s office, he did not even wait for greetings.
“I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh?” Her veil rustled as she sank into a seat with a sigh.
“I want a trade.”
“What of?”
“In the game of riddles, you asked us all to bet a house. I’ll give you the one I have if you give me one of the residences you won. I do not care which.”
She laughed, her veil wafting forward for a moment before settling. “What an amusing suggestion. Unfortunately… No.”
“Without thought or consideration?” Anger rose in him, spitting like hot grease.
“Settle down, Foxton. I cannot trade them because I no longer own them.”
“Damn.” The breath left him with the word. Seemed the life did too. He’d thought… hoped. To keep her and to keep her dream alive. He still could. He’d find another house in just the right location, buy it, move her enterprise, and—
“What did you do with the house your wife won in the game? Has it burned down? Did she lose it in another high stakes game of wits?”
God, his head hurt. He’d ridden Troy hard all the way here. He was gritty and grimy and after days spent sleeping on an old mattress tick on the marble floor of a damn folly, his body ached for a bed. “No. She has it still.” Better, perhaps, to say it had her. And it wasn’t giving her up.
With his hand on the door, he stopped, an unexpected word passing between his lips. “How?”
“How what, my lord?”
“How do you live? Still? Without—” He swallowed because the rest of the sentence choked him. Somehow he found the words, though. No choice but to find them, and he looked at her over his shoulder to give them to her. “Your husband.”
“Ah.” The woman rose, moving from behind the desk to walk slowly to the window that looked out at the gambling floor. Life buzzed out there, but death, fear of it, buzzed so loudly inside Felix, life couldn’t even come close.
Caro as close as he’d gotten. But Caro… he could lose her, too. “How do you manage the days? After your loss? They say you loved him. How is that love not a burden, a torment, every damn day?”
For a long moment, the only sound was the rustle of her gown as she folded her arms behind her back. Then she said, “Look out there.”
He joined her, watching the men with sweat-beaded foreheads and desperate eyes.
Other men with victory red and high in their cheeks, crazed in the fists they pumped in the air.
Winners, losers. They had no idea what really mattered.
But just as a handful of coins could be lost between one breath and another, so too could a life.
Caro’s life. A child’s life.
“What am I supposed to be seeing?” he bit out.
“Risk. These men risk everything for the high of winning, think any loss worth the slim chance they are victors.”
“Fools.”
“You took that risk and won a wife. I’ve heard about your exploits. You take other risks, gambling with something more precious than money. Tell me, Foxton—do you have a death wish?”
“No.” Yes. God, yes. Living could be a pain, every tick of the hands around the clock a sound of guilt. It should have been him, too. Why had he been left alone?
Not alone anymore.
Caro.
“Liar.” The widow chuckled. “How is your wife? Ill? I must admit your query has me concerned.”
“She is well.”
The widow leaned a shoulder against the window to look at him instead of the crowd beyond. “Then why are you here, chattering about loss? Does she hate you?”
“No.” Though he’d likely irritated her, leaving so suddenly and without explanation. And he’d break her heart when he refused to return to Hawthorne, to live his life with her.
But he couldn’t.
“My footmen have returned with you, then?”
“If a man’s actions can be bought once, Mrs. Dove-Lyon, they can be bought a second time.” He’d offered to pay them twice what the widow had offered. He should have thought of it sooner. He’d wanted an excuse to stay. “Answer my question. How do you go on living?”
“Do you anticipate losing your wife?”
“Yes.” Not in the way she thought, perhaps. “What she asks of me… I cannot give her what she wants.”
“How unfortunate. I’d entertained high hopes for you. Ah well. I’m sure she’ll find a lover strong enough for her one day.”
“Like hell! She’ll have no other man than me!”
Silence. During which he had the unnerving sensation she was staring right at him.
“She can have whomever she wants all alone in that house. That you clearly do not want.”
“You do not understand.” It wasn’t that he didn’t want; it was that he could not .
“She was so very excited to procure a house, so very careful about what kind it should be. She did not confide in me, but I understood that the house held some greater meaning for her. Independence, perhaps. An escape.”
Not for her. But for others. For her it was a dream.
A cause. The thing she’d sacrifice everything else in her life for.
She was so damn good. Too good for him. He’d known it when he’d fallen in love with her years ago.
He’d pushed her away because she was everything good in the world, and he was broken.
He wanted nothing in the world as she wanted Hawthorne.
Except…
For her.
Caro. Now and always.
Even if she came with Hawthorne?
Yes. Even then.
Caroline slept alone in the folly, hoping Felix would wake her with the full moon behind him, sink beside her and kiss her until she couldn’t think.
She woke alone with the morning sun instead.
What was she going to do now?
Felix or no Felix, husband in her bed or husband gone from her bed forever, she still had… a plan.
Cold things, plans, nothing like the warm strength of her husband’s muscle wrapped around her all night long, shifting as she shifted, rolling and turning with her, chuckling at her neck with a hot puff of breath.
She rose and dressed slowly, rummaging through the trunk she’d brought out to house her clothes.
She missed him. He’d been gone a single day, and she’d suffered a single morning waking without him and she missed him.
Missed his quiet determination to meet the challenges of every day head-on.
Missed how she could make him smile when no one was looking.
Missed how he gave her some of his confidence just by believing in her more than she believed in herself.
What was she going to do when she did not see him for months at a time? Years?
She didn’t even know if he loved her, if he were willing or able to love her.
After so much loss… He cared, even if he did not love her, he cared for her.
She knew it, was convinced of it. That was something, at least, a foundation to work from.
The question remained, though: What to do with a caring husband, a hurting husband?
She’d failed to consider what might happen if the one man who cared for her was the one man who hated being here .
At Hawthorne. This house grated so harshly against Felix’s soul, he slept outside its walls.
She could not force him to live here.
Live without him, then?
She pressed her palm over her wailing heart. Also no good.
Then… sell Hawthorne? Find another house. Possible, yes. Even after all her hard work here. She had a supportive husband who would champion her endeavors, after all. She could start all over.
Or perhaps hire someone she trusted to live at Hawthorne and manage it.
But who?
Caroline dropped into a chair and inhaled deeply as she tugged on her stockings. She inhaled again. Something smelled… off. Wrong. Quickly, she finished tying her garters and pulled on her half boots then rushed outside, inhaled deeply. Coughed.
Smoke. There in the sky on the other side of Hawthorne—a gray, curling omen.
Caroline ran. Through the garden, into the house. “Polly! Ruth!” Bodies ran toward her, took shape as a haze of smoke rolled into life at the end of the hallway behind them.
“Oh, my lady, you’re safe!” Polly hugged her.
“Have the others arrived yet?” Caroline asked.
“No,” Ruth said. “They’re all in the village still.”
“Freddy? Pat?”
“Here, my lady!” Behind her came Freddy’s voice.
“You need to get out of here now,” Pat said. The two men ushered them outside, and Pat ran toward the stables. “I’m off for help!”
“Where is it?” Caroline demanded. “How did it start?” Her feet were heavy. She couldn’t leave. Couldn’t let this happen.
But Freddy was pulling her, not letting her have her way. “Don’t know. You have to move away from the house, or his lordship is going to have my head.”
Felix. At least he would be pleased if Hawthorne burnt to the ground.
“It’s in the back of the house somewhere,” Ruth said. “It was coming from that direction.”
She nodded and spoke aimlessly. “Thank you for not leaving. With Felix.”
“Didn’t feel right,” Freddy said. “No matter how much the widow’s payin’ us.”
“I have to do something. I can’t do nothing ,” Caroline wailed. “I cannot!”
“You can’t do something either!” Polly held her other arm. She was trapped by her maid and the footman, trapped by circumstance.
“Do you know what happened? An unattended candle?” Surely there was some reason to this chaos. “A kitchen fire?”
“We’ve not lit any candles this morning,” Polly said. “And no one’s been cooking.”
“Sun’s bright,” Ruth added. “No need to.”
What in heaven’s name had happened, then? She needed a closer look, and she was pulling out of her maid and footman’s hold before they could stop her, heading toward the smoke now billowing out of ground floor windows toward the sky.
“What’s that?” Freddy grumbled, shoving her behind him.
Caroline saw it, too. Movement at the side of the house near the conservatory. “A person!”
“Stay here,” Freddy demanded, and then he took off.
But what if he needed help? Caroline took off, too. She made it halfway around the side of the house when someone caught her arm, swung her around. She cried out.