| |
––––––––
OF ALL THE PEOPLE MILES Radnor thought might show up on his front doorstep at half past one in the afternoon, Charlotte Graystone was not one of them. Yet there she stood, hands on hips, head thrown back, amber eyes glaring daggers through the door as though she knew he was standing just on the other side of it.
“RADNOR, GET OUT HERE THIS INSTANT!” she shouted, her raised voice instantly reminding him of the many times they’d quarreled in the past.
As the two most important people in Dianna’s life, it was not surprising he and Charlotte had often butted heads. It didn’t help matters that Charlotte had always thought arranged marriages were hogwash. She’d never liked or trusted him, Miles recalled with a grimace, and he thought it rather safe to say her opinion of him had not improved in the past four years. He had known he would have to face her eventually... he just never planned on having to do it quite so soon.
“Miles, who is that very loud woman at the door?” Sounding alarmed, Olivia Radnor stepped down off the bottom step of the curving staircase and hesitated in the middle of the foyer, green eyes - the one trait she’d passed onto both of her children - pinned to the door. “And why is she yelling your name?”
A small woman in stature but a large one in temperament, Olivia lived her life according to a regimented set of rules she had absolutely no interest in bending, let alone breaking. She’d been a well behaved daughter, a good wife, and a kind - albeit controlling - mother. Miles knew he’d hurt her immensely when he left, and so he spoke gently to her now, walking across the wooden floor to take her arm.
“A friend of Miss Dianna’s has come to call, Mother.”
“Come to call?” A strict line of disapproval appeared between her thin brows. “At this hour? Absurd. I shall have Davies turn her away at once.”
“RADNOR, I CAN HEAR YOU SPEAKING! OPEN THIS DOOR AT ONCE!”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “Is that-”
“Lady Charlotte Vanderley. Graystone now, I suppose,” he said, recalling that he’d heard sometime or rather that she had married an entrepreneur by the name of Gavin Graystone. As far as Miles knew the man was a commoner, but that apparently hadn’t stopped him from becoming one of the wealthiest men in all of England.
“Do not let that woman in this house.” Not surprisingly, Olivia had never taken a liking to Charlotte. She’d found her too rebellious, and always hinted to anyone who would listen that she was a terrible influence on her son’s fiancée. Her opinion had only been confirmed when Miles left.
The sort of mother who thought her only son could do no wrong, she’d never blamed him for leaving. In her mind Dianna had always been the one at fault, influenced by the very woman who was now demanding entry into her home.
Miles glanced at the door. “She seems rather insistent.”
A small understatement, given that it sounded as though Charlotte had picked up one of the stone frogs Olivia kept on either side of the front veranda - she positively adored the tiny green creatures - and begun beating it against the door.
“I had better go see what she wants,” Miles decided, even though the last thing on earth he wanted to do was face Charlotte in the midst of a temper, especially when she was wielding a giant stone frog.
“Miles-”
“If it has anything to do with Dianna, I need to hear what she has to say.”
Olivia took a step back. “Why would she be here in regards to Dianna?” Realization dawned on her narrow features, followed swiftly by thinly veiled annoyance. “You did not see her, did you Miles?”
Miles grimaced. He’d been hoping to avoid this very conversation, at least until he’d settled completely at Winfield and begun to make some amends. With his mother. With his sister. With his friends. And, most of all, with Dianna. Bending at the waist, he kissed his mother’s papery thin cheek. “You should not blame her, you know. It was not her fault.”
Olivia remained unmoving, both in posture and in sentiment. “If she had been a better fiancee you would have stayed.”
“If I had been a better man I never would have left,” he said flatly. There were many things he would tolerate, but listening to insults about Dianna was not one of them. “I am inviting Charlotte in, Mother. If her being here offends you then I suggest you stay out of the front parlor.”
As a boy, Miles had often bended beneath the authoritative power Olivia wielded. She may have been small, but her influence was great, and she’d used it on him more times than he could count to get her way. Except he was no longer a boy. He was the Earl of Winfield, and he refused to allow himself to be so easily cowed. He would respect his mother. He would even listen to her. But the days of blind obedience were long since past.
Tight lipped, Olivia drew away from him and a wall that had never existed between them before laid down its first layer of brick. “I will go see if your sister is awake. We have plans to see a dressmaker in town. I shall assume if you allow that woman entry into this house she will not be here when we return.”
Miles raked a hand through his hair, pulling at the ends in silent frustration. He understood why his mother felt the way she did, but that did not mean he could condone her behavior. In the past he’d always sided with her against Charlotte, more out of habit and an innate need to please her than anything else. Now he merely wanted to hear what Charlotte had to say and his mother was taking it as a personal offense.
Fickle creatures, women. If you pleased one, you only enraged the other. Could they not just leave him in peace to make his own damn decisions, as foolhardy as they’d been in the past? He may not have been the boy he was, but he also wasn’t the man he wanted to become. Not yet. Not until he’d made up for all of the pain he had caused. Not until his mother saw him for who he was, not who she wanted him to be. Not until his sister looked at him with love instead of distrust.
Not until he had Dianna back.
His father would have known what to do, and not for the first time Miles felt his death like a physical blow to the heart. The pain always came when it was least expected, drowning out anything and everything else.
George Radnor had not an outwardly emotional man, but deep down he’d been a caring one. Unlike his wife, he had not been blind to the faults of his children, most specifically his only son and heir. Miles still had the letter his father had sent him a month after he left home. A letter that spoke of disapproval and regret, but also one that encouraged Miles to find himself, a sentiment he never knew his father had until he’d seen it written down on paper.
He’d painstakingly composed his own response; a letter that took five pages and two full months to complete. But by the time it was finished he found himself in Madrid in the midst of a war that did not favor England, and sending any type of mail between the two countries proved impossible. So he’d kept the letter on his person, intending to deliver it by hand when he at last returned home, never guessing the Earl of Radnor would die of consumption before the year was out.
He learned of his father’s passing in Egypt, and the guilt of not being there, coupled with the guilt he still felt from leaving Dianna, served to send him spiraling down into a drunken stupor from which he did not awaken for six months. It was unequivocally the darkest time of his travels abroad, and when he finally managed to claw his way back out of the hole he’d sunken into he vowed never to return to such a place ever again.
“Miles, did you hear what I said?”
His mother’s voice, sharp as a whip, brought him abruptly back to the present. “Yes,” he said with clipped nod. “I heard you.”
Olivia sniffed. “We should be back in precisely two hours. I trust you will make certain our unwanted guest finds her way out well before then and if any other unwanted guests come to call I will be notified at once.”
In other words, Miles thought grimly, Dianna Foxcroft is no longer welcome here.
Olivia had always been a hard woman, but she’d never a bitter one. He wondered what had made her so in his absence. Was it his leaving? Her husband’s death? A combination of the two? Whatever the reason she was a woman changed from the one he’d known, and not for the better.
“Mother, I...” But faced with her judgmental stare, the words Miles wanted to say welled up in his throat. His mother had already been through so much. Why put her through more? Nothing he could say would alter her opinion. He needed to learn to accept her as she was, just as she still needed to accept him. Not as the perfect son she thought him to be, but as one who had made mistakes that still needed to be atoned for. “I love you,” he said gruffly, pulling the words from a place deep inside of himself he rarely ventured.
When her stiff upper lip wavered, Miles thought she might actually say the same, until she turned and marched away, her spine as rigid and unyielding as an oak.
He watched her go, waiting until she’d reached the top of the stairs and disappeared from view before he crossed the foyer and, taking a quick moment to prepare himself for what waited on the other side, opened the door.
“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed when a stone frog came sailing within an inch of his head, its mouth frozen in a wide, reptilian grin. “Mrs. Graystone would you, ah, mind putting down the frog and coming inside?”
Chest heaving, amber eyes spitting fire, red hair a frenzied halo about her head, Charlotte slammed the stone frog she’d been yielding as a battering ram back down on its pedestal with unnecessary - albeit impressive - force. “Oh, do not Lady Graystone me you pompous ass. It’s Charlotte, the same as it has always been. Now where is she?” Shoving past him, she charged into the front foyer and spun in three rapid circles that lifted the hem of her rose colored gown to reveal trim calves encased in a pair of sturdy brown boots.
“Well?” she said, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling once she’d completed her fourth - and apparently final - turn.
Pinching the bridge of his nose as he closed the door, Miles silently willed Charlotte to lower her voice. The last thing he bloody well needed was to have his mother come storming in and demand Charlotte be thrown from the house, although the idea wasn’t completely without merit after nearly having his brains bashed in by a stone frog. Before that happened, however, he at least needed to know why she’d come knocking on his front door in the middle of the afternoon without any forewarning and who this ‘she’ was that Charlotte seemed so adamant on finding.
“Would you care to accompany me into the parlor?” He gestured towards a room meticulously decorated in varying shades of blue off to their right. “I can have a tray of lemonade readied.” And scotch, he added silently. Lots and lots of scotch.
“No I most certainly would not like to accompany you into the parlor.” Hands on hips, Charlotte sneered at him, making no attempt to disguise her disgust and loathing. “This is not a social call, Radnor.”
Folding his arms across his chest, he gritted his teeth and prayed for patience. “Then why don’t you illuminate me as to why you are doing in my foyer when we both know you cannot stand the sight of me.”
“Is Dianna here?” She jabbed a finger at his chest. “Do not lie to me Radnor, even though I know it is your specialty.”
Caught on the first sentence, Miles ignored the second. “No. I have not seen her since last night at Ashburn.” His eyes narrowed as a tiny ping of alarm sounded inside his head. “Why?” he demanded. “Has something happened to her? Where is she?”
Charlotte tilted her head to the side as she studied him, her unusually colored eyes unblinking. “You are telling the truth,” she decided at last. “You haven’t seen her. Pardon me.”
He caught her wrist when she would have shoved past him a second time. When she made a sound of disbelief and went to yank her arm free he tightened his grip, fingers closing like steel bands. “If you think I am letting you leave here without an explanation you are sorely mistaken.”
“I do not recall asking for your permission. Now release me this instant!”
“Why did you come here? Has something happened to Dianna? Where is she? Where is she?” he growled when Charlotte remained stubbornly silent, her mouth pinched in an uncompromising line and her head turned to the side. On a muttered expletive Miles dropped her arm and stepped back, blocking the door with his body. “I will stand here all day if I must and you will tell me what is going on.”
It was not an idle threat. If something had happened to Dianna... Recalling how upset she’d been when she ran from him last night, Miles cursed again. He should have gone after her. Should have made certain she was alright. Should have offered her comfort.
Every ‘should have’ weighed more heavily on his shoulders than the last. If only he had not followed her outside to the stables to begin with, let alone kissed her. It had been selfish of him to ambush her, and unkind. But he hadn’t been satisfied with his one glimpse of her across the crowded ballroom. He’d needed to see her up close. To smell her. To touch her. To taste her. To ensure the heavenly creature with the soft blonde curls and sad blue eyes was in fact flesh and blood; not an angel sent from above to torment him with her otherworldly beauty.
“I despise you for what you did to her,” Charlotte spat, jerking her chin so he could see the full extent of her wrath lurking in her tumultuous gaze. Hatred emanated from her in waves, crashing over him like a frothy surf against sharp rocks. “I want you to know that.”
“The feeling is mutual,” he said quietly.
Uncertainty softened the hard lines creasing Charlotte’s forehead as she studied him a moment longer. Her mouth parted in preparation to speak, but with a tiny humph of breath she turned on her heel and marched into the blue parlor without a word, the long train of her pelisse fluttering in her wake.
Mindful of all the vases and other delicate glass objects his mother had set about the parlor, Miles followed at once, boot heels echoing off the wooden floorboards. Fortunately, it seemed the worst of Charlotte’s temper had passed. Looking rather pensive, she took a slow turn around the room, lingering at the windows that overlooked the front of the estate. Dapples of sunlight played across her face, highlighting the faint smattering of freckles on her nose and the subtle hints of chestnut in her auburn hair.
As a child her entire face had been covered in freckles, Miles recalled, and her hair had been more red than auburn. She’d worn it in two braids that were always unraveling, the ribbons tattered and worn from catching on bushes and tree branches and any other matter of things.
It was funny that after so many years he should remember something so random and unimportant as a hair ribbon, and yet not entirely surprising. After all they’d grown up together; he, Dianna, and Charlotte.
The bond between Dianna and Charlotte had been strong for as long as he could recall, and in the months between May and August when the skies were a brilliant shade of blue and the air filled with the scent of honeysuckle, they’d been nigh on inseparable.
As a young boy with better things to do than entertain a couple of girls, Miles had done his best to avoid them, although sometimes it proved impossible. Staring at Charlotte’s back, he remembered another time her temper had run high and her anger hot. On that day, just like on this one, he’d been the recipient of it.
“You let it fly too high! Now you’ve lost it!”
Blowing a hank of dark hair out of his eyes, Miles peered up into the branches of the towering oak and tried to hide his grimace of dismay when he saw the white tails of the kite trailing down amidst the diamond edged leaves. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said defensively, jerking his chin down so he could return Charlotte’s glare. “And you were the one who asked me to fly it.”
“You did ask him.” Looking more crestfallen than angry, Dianna stepped out from behind Charlotte and, after an apologetic glance at Miles, gave her best friend a tiny nudge with her shoulder. “Remember?” she whispered.
“Well I did not ask him to fly it into a tree!” Charlotte pointed out crossly. “What are we going to do?”
Sometimes Miles caught himself wishing his quiet, impeccably mannered fiancée was a bit more like Charlotte. This, however, was not one of those times. Looking back and forth between them, he could not imagine two more different people and wondered, not for the first time, how they were friends.
Charlotte stood with her skinny arms akimbo, upper lip curled into a scowl. Her bonnet was gone, her hair a frizzy mess of red curls. There were grass stains smeared down one entire side of her ivory dress from where she taken a tumble in her attempt to run fast enough to get the kite airborne, and her pantalettes boasted several tears.
In direct contrast Dianna’s blonde hair was still neatly pinned beneath her bonnet and not so much as a smudge of her dirt marred her white dress or matching undergarments. Even her ankle boots were clean, a rather remarkable feat given they’d been tromping through the field behind her parent’s estate for the better part of an afternoon.
As though she could feel his gaze on her Dianna turned her head and caught him staring. She looked away quickly, a soft blush blossoming in the apples of her cheeks.
Fascinated by the change a bit of color brought to Dianna’s face, Miles shocked himself by saying, “I can get it. I can get the kite.”
“Get the kite?” Charlotte scoffed. “You can do no such thing. Look how high it is!”
Miles did not need to look. He knew exactly how high the bloody kite was. He’d been the one to fly it into the tree, hadn’t he? And if it were only Charlotte standing in front of him he would have walked away without a flicker of guilt. But one glance into Dianna’s big blue eyes was all it had taken. He would retrieve her kite for her, or he’d break his neck trying.
Shrugging out of his jacket, he tossed it on the ground and began to roll up the cuffs of his sleeves.
“Miles, wait!” Brow creased in worry, Dianna ran forward and grabbed his wrist just as he moved to place his palm on the oak’s rough bark. “Please don’t do this,” she begged, her eyes wide and imploring as she gazed up at him. “You will hurt yourself. It ‘tis only a kite. I can get another.”
“Oh let him go,” Charlotte said. “The worst thing that will happen is he’ll kill himself, and then you won’t have to marry him.”
At Dianna’s sharp intake of breath, Miles automatically put his hand on her shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. “I will be fine,” he said quietly. “You trust me, don’t you?”
Worrying her bottom lip between her teeth Dianna began to fidget from side to side, a sure sign she was truly upset. “Yes,” she said at last, “but-”
“If you’re so worried, why not give me a kiss? For luck,” he said with a grin when all of the color drained from her face, leaving her white as a ghost.
“A k-kiss?” Dianna stuttered. “Oh, I don’t think... That is to say, I don’t know...”
“On the cheek,” Miles said, turning his head obligingly to the side. “It will make me feel better.”
“I am going to be sick,” Charlotte complained.
Just as Miles thought Dianna was about to turn away, she shocked him by pinching her eyes shut and puckering her lips together. He’d meant the kiss to be a jest; a way to get her to laugh and to ease her worry. He never imagined she would actually go through with it.
Butterflies that had nothing to do with the dangerous climb he was about to undertake erupted in his belly, beating their wings in time with his racing pulse. Unconsciously his grip on Dianna’s shoulder tightened as he drew her subtly towards him, moving her close enough so that when he leaned down her mouth pressed against his cheek.
At the soft contact her eyes flew open and she gasped, color returning to her face in a flood of deep red. It was the first time they’d kissed, and the answering rush of adrenaline Miles felt pumping through his veins filled him with a sense of protectiveness.
“Good luck,” Dianna whispered before she retreated to where Charlotte was standing.
With a look of disgust for them both the redhead looped an arm around Dianna’s waist and muttered something in her ear Miles couldn’t hear. Whatever it was caused Dianna’s blush to intensify before she gave a quick, hard shake of her head.
“Well get on with it,” Charlotte called out with an impatient wave of her arm, making Miles realize he’d been standing and staring at them like a dimwitted fop. “We do not have all day, you know.”
Turning his attention to the oak, he began to climb.
It took nearly an hour to navigate the twisted limbs of the tree - many of which were rotting or broken - but when Miles finally emerged from the leafy canopy he did so triumphantly, dragging the battered kite behind him. A bit red in the face and sporting a cut on his chin he held out the kite to Dianna, brandishing the rather sad looking toy as though it were a great treasure.
She took the kite and held it close to her chest. “Thank you,” she said, and the reverent way she gazed up at him made Miles’ chest swell with pride.
“You are welcome,” he said solemnly.
Looking back and forth between the two of them, Charlotte sniffed and crossed her arms. “It’s only a kite,” she said, making a face.
For once Miles did not reply, for as he stared at Dianna and saw a shy smile slowly blossom across her face he knew it was much more than that.
“I cannot stay long,” Charlotte announced, drawing Miles abruptly back into the present. Turning from the window she removed her pelisse and draped it across the back of a chaise lounge before making herself comfortable in an oversized wicker chair. Crossing her legs at the ankle, she looked up to meet his gaze. “But I would like a glass of lemonade. And some scones. Blueberry, if you have them.”
Miles’ eyebrows rose, but he merely nodded and stepped out of the parlor to find a maid.
While the household was set to run on a series of bells, he’d never felt comfortable summoning the help by ringing for them when a short walk into the next room accomplished the same exact thing. Discovering a maid dusting in the library, he made his requests and waited until she’d scurried off in the direction of the kitchen before he returned to the parlor.
“The refreshments should be out... shortly...” Miles froze in the doorway. In the wicker chair Charlotte had fallen fast asleep, her head tilting down into her palm as the faintest of snores passed through her open mouth. He waited for her to wake, but as one minute passed into two and two into five, he realized this was no lighthearted slumber. Not at all certain what one was supposed to do in such a circumstance, he quietly cleared his throat. Unfortunately, the tiny sound had no apparent effect. “Er, Mrs. Graystone...”
“I thought I told you to dispense with that formality nonsense.” Blinking sleepily, Charlotte lifted her head and promptly rolled her eyes when she saw his expression. “Oh, do not look at me like that. I am not ill, if that is what you are thinking. Nor crazed, though I am sure my husband would beg to disagree. I am in a delicate situation. Pregnant, you fool,” she said in exasperation when Miles continued to stare at her blankly. “I am pregnant. Breeding. In the family way.” Her hand waved in the air. “Et cetera, et cetera.”
He cleared his throat a second time. “I... see.”
“I do not know why on earth I am telling you of all people,” she continued, glaring at him as though it were his fault she’d fallen asleep in the parlor, “but now you know. Gavin thinks it is going to be a boy, but I know it is a girl. We are thinking about doing a wager.” She huffed out a breath and sat up a little straighter. “But I did not come here to tell you that.”
Cautiously stepping further into the room, Miles recovered enough to dryly say, “Yes, thank God you did not tell me you are expecting a child.”
“Are you trying to be amusing?” Charlotte drummed her fingertips along the armrest and lifted both brows. “You were never amusing before.”
“You certainly never thought so.” Growing weary of all the words going unsaid, Miles sat heavily onto the edge of a blue sofa situated directly across the parlor from Charlotte’s chair. With only a mahogany coffee table between them, he was able to meet her gaze without hindrance and he did so, green eyes boring into amber. “For once, let us be honest with each other. You never liked me before, and you do not like me now.”
“I never liked you for Dianna,” Charlotte corrected. “You were far too self-centered. You thought only of your own needs, your own wants. She may have been blind to your faults, but I wasn’t. I saw you for who you were, and even though I was dismayed when you abandoned Dianna on the day of the wedding, I cannot say I was not surprised.”
“I was not ready to be a husband.” It was as close as Miles had ever come to admitting the truth.
Charlotte nodded as though he’d just told her something she’d known all along. “You should have said the same to Dianna before you left her. She was devastated, you know. Absolutely and completely devastated.”
His gut twisted. “I know.”
“A true gentleman would have stayed,” Charlotte continued mercilessly, “or at the very least given an explanation. You owed her that, if nothing else. Heaven knows why, but she loved you and you tore her apart. We were all she had, you and I. You know how her parents were. How they treated her. And still you left.”
And still I left, Miles echoed silently. Except he had not only left, he’d stayed away. For four long years he’d avoided the pain and retribution his return would bring, and now he could do nothing but accept Charlotte’s scathing character assassination as his due.
He ran a hand down his face, fingertips tracing all the grooves and angles before he leaned back and settled his arms along the sloping edge of the sofa. “Why have you come here, Charlotte?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a humorless smile. “Other than to remind me of my shortcomings, that is.”
She opened her mouth to answer, only to close it when a maid entered and carefully set down a silver serving tray between them.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” she said, performing a small curtsy. “Would you care for two glasses of lemonade or one?”
“Two. Thank you, Laura.”
Miles waited with jaw clenched while the maid filled two crystal glasses with lemonade and carefully stirred a spoonful of sugar into each one. When she was finished she wiped her hands on her apron, curtsied again, and exited the parlor as silently as she’d entered it.
Charlotte took a long, slow slip of her freshly prepared drink, seeming to savor Miles’ growing impatience. “Oh dear, I am terribly sorry,” she said at last, setting her glass aside with a loud clink. “Have I been making you wait? How rude of me. At least it was only four minutes, instead of four years.”
“You have spoken your mind,” Miles growled. He was willing to accept Charlotte’s condemnation... to a point. But he had his own temper to contend with, and while he managed to keep a tight rein on it more often than not, he felt his grip beginning to slip. “Now tell me why you came here looking for Dianna.”
“Very well.” Leaning forward until her elbows touched her knees, she met his gaze and gave a long, slow blink. “She has gone missing. Interesting,” she murmured under her breath when Miles leaped to his feet, nearly upending the coffee table and its contents in the process.
“Missing? What the bloody hell do you mean, Dianna has gone missing? How does a person go missing with so many people around? Why weren’t you watching her?”
“Dianna is not a dog,” Charlotte said derisively. “I am her friend, not her keeper. She went for a walk in the gardens with Lord Herring this morning after breakfast. He has since returned, but she has not. I would not worry, but given her abysmal sense of direction...”
“She could easily become lost,” Miles concluded. A tightness took hold of his chest, making it difficult to draw a deep breath as he imagined Dianna wandering through the fields of Ashburn on her own. While she had made a valiant effort to keep up with him and Charlotte when they were children, she’d never had any natural sense for the outdoors and he doubted her awareness had improved in the past four years. She could easily twist an ankle. Slip and fall into a pond. Be set upon by wild wolves or highwaymen. The possibilities were endless, each one he imagined worse than the last, and as they played through his mind on an endless loop a tinge of red born of fear darkened the edges of his vision.
“Why did you not tell me this when you first arrived?” he demanded, muscles tensing as he fought the urge to drag Charlotte out of the wicker chair and give her a good, hard shake. How could she sit there so calmly sipping lemonade when Dianna’s life was in danger?
“Because I have little doubt she will be waiting for me at Ashburn when I return. Knowing Dianna she merely became turned around. I only came here because I thought you might have come across her.” Charlotte’s shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug that brought Miles’ blood near to boiling. “I see now I was mistaken, but I am glad we had this little chat.” She stood up and gathered her pelisse, folding the garment twice over before tucking it under an arm. “Thank you for the lemonade. I found it a bit tart, although surprisingly refreshing. Now if you will excuse me, I must return to Ashburn before my husband sends out a second search party.”
Miles followed her out of the parlor and into the foyer. “I will go with you.”
Pausing with one hand on the doorknob - the butler, no doubt at Lady Radnor’s request, was nowhere to be seen - Charlotte glanced back at him over her shoulder. “No,” she said as her thumb depressed the tiny latch and the door swung outwards, “I think not.”
The carriage she had arrived in still waited in the middle of the circular drive. As Charlotte walked briskly towards it with Miles one step behind, boots crunching loudly on crushed stone, a scrawny fellow with a thatch of dirty blond hair snapped to attention and leaped down off the driver’s seat to open the door.
“Missus,” he said, tipping his cap. “Did ye get what ye came for?”
“I did indeed, Ernie.” Taking his offered hand, Charlotte used it to hoist herself up into the gleaming black carriage. Before Miles could follow her in, however, she leaned forward and shut the door smartly in his face. “I believe I said no.”
Miles’ teeth grinded together. Fueled by frustration, his palm bounced harmlessly off the side of the carriage in a loud slap that left a perfect imprint of his hand on the glossy finish. “I can help you look for her. Dammit Charlotte, be reasonable!”
Looking down her nose at him through the open window, she arched a brow. “I think you have helped quite enough, don’t you? Your concern is touching, Radnor, truly. Unfortunately, I fear it has come four years too late. Ernie, if this man” - she pointed at Miles - “attempts to follow us, please shoot him.”
“Aye,” the driver said, his brown eyes solemn.
Looking back and forth between the two of them, Miles raked a hand through his dark hair, tousling the ends. Bollocks on this, he thought as he took a step towards the door, only to suddenly freeze when he heard the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were ye.”
“And I would listen to him if I were you,” Charlotte said cheerfully from inside the carriage. “He is quite a good shot.”
The driver grinned, revealing teeth blackened with rot. “That I am,” he agreed.
Miles did not doubt for a second that Charlotte would take great pleasure in seeing a bullet rip through his flesh. Hands curling into impotent fists of frustration, he took one step back. Were Dianna’s whereabouts not unknown, he would have most likely found the entire situation comical. Here he stood in his own damn driveway with a gun being waved in his face and Charlotte Graystone ordering him about as though she were a queen and he a lowly servant. It was so bloody strange as to be almost surreal. But Dianna’s whereabouts were unknown, and as long as her life was in potential danger he found nothing amusing about his current predicament.
“I can help,” he repeated. “I know these woods as well as any other and more than most. Dianna needs me.”
“Dianna needed you,” Charlotte said quietly. “She doesn’t anymore. Ernie, let’s go.”
Her words hit Miles like a punch to the gut and he watched in silence as Charlotte’s carriage rolled down the drive at a brisk pace, leaving a billowing trail of stone dust in its wake.
Dianna needed you... She doesn’t anymore.
The hell with that, he thought grimly. And the hell with Charlotte Graystone if she believed she could keep him from the woman he loved.
Going to the stables, he ordered his fastest horse saddled, a high spirited chestnut gelding named Blaze for the wide white mark between his eyes. Even before the bridle was completely buckled he’d vaulted into the saddle, and the very second the groom released his hold on the reins Miles spun Blaze in a tight circle and dug in his heels. They exploded into a gallop, kicking up stone and grass as they raced away from the barn.
Hunching low over Blaze’s neck, Miles took to the fields instead of the road, soaring over a wooden fence without hesitation. The gelding’s mane whipped in the wind as his head bobbed in rhythm with his mighty, ground swallowing stride. Air flew by in a rush, the sound of it drowning out everything else. A slight tug on the rein and Blaze obediently veered off to the left towards a narrow trail that led into the forest. Given the uneven terrain Miles usually avoided galloping through the woods, but today the twisted maze of trees and brambles offered him something the roads did not.
A direct route to Ashburn.