“He owed it to her, to risk any thing that might be involved in an unwelcome interference, rather than her welfare . . .”
Jane Austen, Emma
“We’ve come to steal you away for an outing,” Temperance announced almost the second she stepped foot in Holliford Park manor the following morning. Enthusiasm fairly vibrated from her.
If her friend possessed a pair of wings, Briar would be embracing the tallest hummingbird imaginable.
The missive Briar had received yesterday afternoon was just as wild—a few lines announcing her plan to visit, and a wonderful surprise to follow, and to be prepared to depart at once.
“Can we not pause to bid everyone a good day, first?”
Temperance blushed and looked around to see that the Duchess of Holliford was framed in the archway of the sitting room, just off the foyer. “Forgive me, Your Grace. It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen my dearest friend that I forgot myself.”
“No need to apologize. Mrs. Fitzherbert and I greet each other in the same fashion,” the duchess said, her mouth drawn into a tiny smirk, apparently pleased with her own jest.
Briar laughed at the vision that conjured—the two older women giggling like schoolgirls while clutching their shawls, but then abruptly altering to austere expressions when another person might come into the room.
Daniel stepped into the open door next, greeting her with a shy smile and a bow before seeing the duchess and offering the same to her. “Your Grace.”
Temperance, already over her embarrassment, tugged on Briar’s arm. “Fetch your bonnet. And where is Nicholas? Ah, there you are, cousin.”
He ambled toward them with a covered basket in hand, mouth moving suspiciously as he gave Briar an unrepentant look. “I came upon the rest of the scones, purely by accident and not rummaging about the larder at all. Assuming you planned to bring them along, I decided to do my part.”
Daniel, recovering from his shyness, strode past her. “Are they Mrs. Darden’s scones?”
“Even better,” Nicholas said, rotating evasively as Daniel reached for the basket. If it wasn’t for the compliment, Briar might have been quite cross. Instead, her heart kicked in a few additional beats, feeling quite too large for the cage of her ribs.
Temperance came up beside her. “I have the best news to share with you. Let’s away so I can tell you all of it, hmm?”
“Very well, for if we do not leave this instant, I’m afraid there will be no scones left by the time we reach the carriage.”
After bidding the duchess a good day, and her doing the same with a pleased smile on her lips, they left Holliford Park in an open carriage, sunlight peering down at them through a gradual gathering of clouds.
Temperance looked up at the sky with worry. “I hope it does not rain, for I want today to be perfect.”
“And am I ever going to learn our destination, or is that part of the grand surprise?” Briar asked, watching Nicholas and Daniel on the opposite bench, each with a hand on the lip of the basket.
Temperance turned, angling toward her. “Before we get into all that, you must tell me about your gentleman. Your Mr. Woodlyn.”
“Well . . .” She exchanged a wry look with Nicholas. “It was all a terrible misunderstanding, I’m afraid. He portrayed himself as a much different person at first, but after your cousin arrived, I was able to see his true nature.”
“It’s rather fortunate then that Nicholas read your every correspondence,” Temperance said, a sly glance darting between the two of them. “When he snatched the last letter out of my hand and left without a word, I never imagined that we would learn he’d ridden all the way to Holliford Park, and even more shockingly, that he’d decided to stay. I thought, perhaps, his horse had gone lame.”
“You make a very good point,” Briar said, feeling a bit daring as she sent a grin across the carriage. “I never inquired, my lord. Why did you remain at Holliford Park?”
His lips quirked back. “Perhaps I enjoy the pond.”
“There is a pond at Blacklowe Manor,” Temperance supplied.
“Ah yes, but there isn’t a summerhouse, and I’m rather fond of those.”
Briar turned away from the warmth in his gaze and tilted her face up to the sky so that anyone would think her cheeks were pinkened by the sun. Of course, the sky chose that precise moment to darken, lavender-tinged clouds crowding closer together.
“Come now, cousin, you could build one of those, if you truly wish, so that is not an answer.”
“If I were Nicholas,” Daniel said, sneaking a hand into the basket, “I’d stay wherever I could find these scones and never leave.”
Nicholas did not respond, but turned his gaze heavenward as well, a contemplative frown on his lips. “How much further to our destination, Teense?”
“Not far, for the place is only five miles from Holliford Park.”
A cold shiver skirted down Briar’s limbs at the mention of the distance. The cottage where she grew up, where she had lived with Mother, was only five miles from the duchess’s residence. Though, surely that was a coincidence.
She shrugged off the sensation, blaming it on the cool breeze here beneath the shade of elms on either side of the road.
It was a familiar setting. The village was just to their left, houses and old stone buildings with thatched roofs, nestled up to a narrow cobblestone lane that led to the square. With her sisters, she’d taken this path many times in her youth, but not once after Mother died. They’d gone to live with Uncle Ernest, and his estate was nearly twelve miles in the opposite direction. Even when they were invited to visit Holliford Park, they never found reason to return. It had been too painful.
“And now for my news,” Temperance said after they’d chatted for a while. Drawing in a steadying breath, she shook out her hands as if her short gloves were making them hot. Then, after a moment, she laid them in her lap, her expression earnest and excited. “I’ve been exchanging letters with John Cartwright.”
If Briar had been suddenly bounced out of the carriage and run over by it, the sensation would have made less of an impact. “You have?”
“When you said you were not bothered at all by our introduction, I gave myself over to the fullness of the feelings I had the instant we met. And when he wrote to me that first exceptional note, I knew he’d felt something, too. From that point, and from each correspondence since, my affections have only grown. He has confessed the same to me. I’ve already told Daniel.”
“In great, unending detail,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes.
“And Mother knows, too. In fact, that is where we are headed today. It’s rather serendipitous that he should have a house here, and to be visiting north Hampshire precisely when we are.”
“Temperance,” Nicholas said, his voice low with warning as he sat forward, looking from his cousin to Briar, his surprise and displeasure apparent. “You should have mentioned this beforehand.”
His cousin disagreed with a shake of her head. “You couldn’t be more wrong. Briar understands these things better than most. And I didn’t want to tell her because she would have felt obligated to arrange for harp music and rose petals. Isn’t that right?”
Laughing, Temperance clasped her hand. Briar nodded but looked down to shield her expression beneath the brim of her hat. She wasn’t certain she could fix a smile on her face. Too frozen with shock, any movement at all might break her.
There was so much news coming at her all at once that she hardly knew how to process it.
Then before she could even begin, the driver turned down another lane, passing a familiar obelisk with the letter C cut into the pitted stone. C for Cartwright.
Unspeakable dread filled Briar. She had traced that letter hundreds of times. When she was young, and still Briar Bourne-Cartwright, she’d thought of the marker as a wishing stone. If she held her breath, ran around it, and traced every C with her finger, it would surely work to bring Father home and make Mother well again.
But he never came. Not for his wife. Not for his legitimate children. And so, years later, Briar and her sisters had abandoned his name, like he had abandoned them.
“Briar,” Nicholas said quietly, his low tone so tender that she felt the first prickle of tears.
Without looking at him, she shook her head in silent communication. Not now, when I’m so close to falling apart.
Temperance did not seem to notice her distress. Understandably, she was caught up in the thrill of meeting someone she was fond of. Briar could not fault her for that.
“Oh, I think we are here. Is that he? Daniel, move your enormous head out of the way.”
“Miss Bourne, are you unwell?” Daniel asked.
Gathering the last bit of strength, she flashed a glance up to him and hoped that a smile touched her lips. “Perfectly hale. A bit too much sun, perhaps.”
No sooner had she uttered the last syllable than the rain began, proclaiming her a liar. It was a small scattering at first. The droplets warm on her chilled skin. They beaded up on her forearms, magnifying the sparse golden hair. She almost wished she could disappear into one of the tiny domes.
The driver spurred the horses, jostling the party—and Temperance with a gleeful giggle—as they drove the final stretch to the cottage where Mother had died.
Briar still couldn’t look up. It would be like seeing Mother’s eyes drift closed for the last time. To see her skin change from glowing cream to the ashen gray of death, like the façade. To hear her mournful sighs slowly give way to that awful, wet, and wheezing final breath.
It stood to reason that someone in her father’s family would live here, she supposed. But in the back of her mind, she’d always thought of it as a crypt more than a house. Memories died here. So did her childhood.
The carriage came to a halt, the horses shifting nervously as if they sensed it, too. Nicholas called for the driver to help raise the top panel. Daniel was quick to leap down, and took Temperance by the waist, helping her without waiting for the step.
“Miss Bourne,” Daniel said, his hand appearing in her line of sight, which was still limited to her lap.
“I have her,” Nicholas answered, his boots shifting into view. He laid a hand on her shoulder and leaned down to whisper, “Can you hold on another minute while I put up the hood?”
She nodded and took comfort in the rocking of the carriage beneath his feet, the jerk of movement as he freed the corner fastenings. Then at once, she was enshrouded in shadow, listening to the rain patter against the leather hood and the sound of Nicholas’s breaths.
He shuffled past her and leapt to the ground, turning with his arms extended. She lifted her face, needing the contact of his gaze.
“I . . . I’m not certain I can,” she rasped, her throat raw from holding back years of pain. Anguish that she wasn’t aware could ache this much after so long of being buried deep. But that was the problem, she supposed. She’d never had an outlet for all the hurt. They never talked about Mother or Father or their half siblings, or anything really. And oh, how she wished they would have done. If she’d had the chance to release the pain, she might have filled up the void with her own strength instead. Yet she didn’t have any right now.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be by your side all the while. I’ll never leave you for an instant,” he promised.
Briar told herself she could do this, and that she didn’t need to be shielded, protected, or kept in the dark any longer. But she couldn’t move.
Her gaze flitted past him to see Mr. Cartwright holding an umbrella over Temperance’s head as he escorted her inside. The door was open wide enough for her to glimpse the banister she used to slide down whenever Ainsley wasn’t watching. Jacinda’s name was probably still carved into the bottom stair tread. Mrs. Darden had once tripped over Briar’s doll and spilled an entire pot of tea on the round Persian rug.
So many memories.
“I wasn’t expecting this either, but I know you’re strong enough to sit in the parlor and get to know your brother for one afternoon.”
She stuttered out a breath. “The last time I was in that parlor, my mother’s casket was there.”
Nicholas drew her exhalent in on a hiss, then let it out with an oath. “This was your home? I didn’t . . . Damn. I’m taking you back. No, wait, Blacklowe Manor would be closer.”
She nodded, willing to go anywhere. It didn’t matter. “But don’t tell them. Just say that I’m . . . suddenly unwell. I don’t want to spoil Temperance’s day. Even though I know it will disappoint her.”
He was only gone for a minute.
Then he was beside her, crooning softly as the first sob took hold, his arm a comforting brace around her shoulders. Pulling her onto his lap, he never stopped holding her, all the way to Blacklowe Manor.