Chapter 2
“Well, I think it is abominable.” Lady Honoria Sarre, Adrian’s twenty-two-year-old sister, set her fork down with an unnecessary clatter.
Adrian merely raised his eyebrows, used to this line of attack from his little sister. “Please, Honoria, do not mince words for my sake.”
“I will not!” she exclaimed. “You should come to London with me, plain and simple. It is time you were back in society, and Aunt Brearley has extended an invitation to include you.”
“You have not changed my mind on this matter during the entirety of your visit,” Adrian said with a small smile.
Honoria always stayed with her aunt when she went to London.
It provided her a chaperone, and Adrian some peace of mind.
“I am uncertain why you think you might change my mind now, when you are leaving in less than a days’ time. ”
“Desperation, dear brother.” Honoria was a shining example of the Sarre family beauty. Her silken black curls framed her face to perfection, her every movement was grace and elegance. It was easy to see why she was such a favorite in London.
Not so with her brother. He had last rubbed shoulders with London society more than two years ago, and it had found him wanting. And that was well enough, in the end. Adrian Sarre, the Viscount Marwood, had no more use for London than it had for him.
He had found it difficult to fit his towering height, his war wounds, his taciturn nature, and his general disregard for the conventions of others, into the mold London forged for him.
“I will ruin your fun,” he said simply. “Go and enjoy yourself, and when you wish to come home, I will be waiting with open arms.”
“And what a home you have fashioned for me to return to,” Honoria said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “Where the halls are haunted by our parents’ memory, and your own grief. Do you know… this seclusion has tipped from grief into self-pity, and if Mama were alive she would say as much.”
Her words cut him to the quick.
He had happy childhood memories here, but loss had haunted the estate for years. His older brother, gone from fever in India. Adrian’s own losses as a soldier under Wellington, culminating in a nightmare at Waterloo that he would spend eternity attempting to forget.
The return home, only to lose his father within the year and his mother six months later… A person would have been excused for thinking the beautiful marble halls were cursed.
He swallowed hard. I cannot make her understand. She stood before him, glistening with hope and beauty, without the scars he held and the white already tinging his short dark hair.
He was only thirty years of age, and yet he felt he had lived a lifetime. On the contrary, she was all pink happiness and delight, and thought London would solve everything that afflicted him.
“You must trust me on this, Honoria,” he said. “I am not fit company for London.”
“On that, we agree,” she snapped. “Although if you will not take the time to practice, it is difficult for me to see how the circumstances holding you back will ever be remedied.”
She turned on her heel and stomped out of the room.
Adrian shook his head, discouraged at the way his own fight for peace was pushing him further and further from Honoria—one of the only people in his life who could still press through his seclusion to something real.
He took to the stables, wanting to ride the boundary of the estate to cool his temper and his mind. He rode only his brother’s stallion, now—Thunder.
The horse had fought against other riders when the heir to the estate had died, but when Adrian returned from the war Thunder had sensed something broken in the soldier that matched his own disrepair, and the two had become inseparable.
Adrian saddled the stallion, and climbed easily up, nudging the horse through its paces and into a fast gallop across the stretch of green field leading away from the estate.
As he neared the woods, knowing the uneven ground like the back of his hand, he pulled Thunder up and trotted carefully over the roots and hollows in the treacherous ground, letting the peace of the verdant forest wash quietly over him.
He knew why this landscape ministered to him so completely.
Not only did it hold the laughter of his childhood and the freedom of his memories with his now-deceased brother, but it was the furthest thing in the world from the battlefields in France, with the burning hedges, abandoned farmhouses, and mud, mud, mud.
For the rest of his life, when he thought of war, he was certain he would think of mud and staring, lifeless eyes. They were one in the same, for him.
Suddenly, the peace was shattered by a cry.
It was not far away, near the boundary but, he was certain, on his side of the wood.
While Adrian could not determine whether the victim was a man or a woman, he could tell with certainty that the poor person was afraid—and likely injured.
The cry was short, and sharp, urging Adrian forwards in the saddle.
Thunder leapt ahead, chasing the sound without having to be guided.
As they burst into a clearing, Adrian saw from whence the sound had come—a small figure, laying face-down under a lamp pony, seemingly unconscious. The animal was trying frantically to rise, and in so doing was rocking dangerously close to the exposed back of the wounded rider.
Adrian leapt off Thunder before the stallion had fully halted and sprinted to the scene, helping to calm the pony with a few low tones and a gentle leading, rolling the animal free of the rider.
He could see that it was a boy, no more than a child. The boy’s eyes were closed, but as Adrian put a trembling finger to his neck he could make out a steady pulse. Blood stained the child’s temple, but he seemed otherwise unharmed. Adrian gently rolled the child over, lifting him free of the pony.
He did not recognize the boy, but he had been a stranger in his own neighborhood for two years.
Even before that, he had been rather more consumed with a certain London beauty and the distraction she had promised than the more common reality of his local acquaintances.
He did, however, recognize the Thorne arms on the pony’s browband—three sheaves and a stag.
“You are about the right age,” he murmured, lifting the weight of the child easily. He suspected, from the arms and the quality of the boys’ clothing, that this was the late Mr. Thorne’s son.
He knew the estate was held in trust—by a family friend, or perhaps the older daughter, he could not remember which—until the boy came of age. Looking at the injured child in his arms, Adrian wondered just how long it might be before that day came.
He could see that the pony was injured—perhaps a problem with his hoof or a sprain. It would do no good for the animal to thrash about until his return, injuring itself further.
Adrian set the boy down and worked to tie the pony’s reins to a low branch, helping it stay down until he could send a groom in search of the doctor. He spoke gently to the pony as he did this, and was rewarded to see the animal calm under his touch.
Then he called Thunder and, picking the boy back up, led the horse a more direct path back through the woods to the estate. As he neared, someone from the main house must have sighted him walking with the child, because his valet came running out to help him.
“What has happened, my lord?” the young man gasped, eyes wide.
“An accident in the woods,” Adrian said gravely.
“The boy has taken a blow to the head and is senseless still. Send a groom for Dr. Ashcombe. Tell him of the situation and ask his immediate attendance. Oh, and you should send word to Thornefield. Whoever is charged with caring for the boy will want to be here as soon as possible, I am sure.”
The valet nodded, and took Thunder’s reins, leading the stallion carefully back to the stables before continuing on his way.
Adrian was out of breath from the exertion as he crested the hill, coming into the main drive.
The child was not overly heavy, especially for a man of Adrian’s build and sinew, but any weight over such a long distance was taxing, and Adrian heard the drag of his feet over gravel as he neared the front door.
Suddenly, he realized it was not the drag of his own feet he heard, but the pounding of distant hooves against the drive.
He spun around, the child still in his arms, and saw a figure approaching at a full gallop on horseback.
She had come from the direction of the woods—the same way he and the boy had just traversed, and veered towards him.
A groom stepped out to greet her, but before the man could reach her head, she was off the horse and sprinting towards Adrian.
For a moment, he was frozen. She was at once so familiar, and yet entirely strange.
She was tall and slim, that he could see even as she sprinted towards him, dressed in a delicate blue gown that was now muddy to the knee, with pale brown hair that had come loose during her wild ride and was down her back and about her shoulders in a madness of gold and copper.
She was running like a man, and her eyes were on the boy in his arms.
He could not tell if she was beautiful or terrifying.
“My lord,” she cried, clearly recognizing him, though he could still not place her for the life of him. “Is that Harry? Is he alive?”
Adrian nodded. “I found him in the woods. His pony—”
“Yes,” she gasped. “I found the pony, and the tracks in the mud. I assumed the worst.” She stopped short in front of him, her gaze fixed on the child. “He is unconscious,” she said, fear creeping into her voice.
“After a fall like this, it is common,” he assured her. “I have sent for the doctor already. Come. We will take him in and lay him down—perhaps we can bring him back to his senses before the doctor even arrives.”
She nodded, and for the first time since arriving breathless at his side, she raised her gaze to his face. The force of her blue eyes hit him like a blow.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“Of course,” he mumbled, confused by the way his heart hammered. “Are you his caretaker?” he asked at last.
“Sister,” she said, taken aback. “Miss Thorne. We have met, my lord, many years ago.”
Rosalind Thorne. That is why he recognized her.
Although the creature standing before him with the disarming beauty was a far cry from the girl he remembered years ago, only a few years older than Honoria, who kept to herself at parties and wore her hair in long braids as though she was a milkmaid instead of a member of the landed gentry.
He remembered one garden party, in particular, where Rosalind—then no more than fourteen—had spent the entire time in a tree, feet dangling, her nose in a book.
“Yes of course,” he said. “Miss Thorne, I…”
“It is a heated moment,” she said, graciously excusing him before he could come up with a fabrication to explain not recognizing her.
“There is much to consider other than old acquaintances.” She reached out and touched Harry gently on the shoulder.
“We should get him inside,” she said softly. “He looks so like…”
But she trailed off, not willing, for whatever reason, to share exactly who the unconscious Harry reminded her of at present. Adrian showed her into the house. She was the first woman, other than a small handful of staff and his own sister, who had stepped past these oaken doors in years.