Leonora let Freddy’s groom give her a hand up into the curricle as they waited in the shadows beside the fence of Gerard’s paddock. She could hear the cry of fire rippling through the crowd inside the barn and she strained her eyes to see if Chester, Freddy’s valet, had been able to get to his master yet. Then she saw a flash of gold in the firelight and was relieved to see Hanson followed by a shirtless Freddy running at full speed toward them.
In one swift leap he was in the vehicle and his valet was headed for where the coach and four had been hidden.
They were almost to the gates leading out of the estate when a shout went up behind them and Leonora looked back to see that Sir Gerard had spotted them. But as he was on foot, he was impotent to do anything to stop them. Especially since his stables had been evacuated because of the fire alarm.
“Spring ’em, Smitty,” Freddy barked to his groom as they took off into the night and raced as fast as the curricle would take them.
Leonora dared not speak, but appreciated the warmth of Freddy’s bare arm around her shoulders.
“How did you ever manage this?” he asked when they were finally beyond the periphery of his cousin’s estate. Leonora gave him the cloak she’d brought for him which Freddy took gratefully, before asking again. “How, Leonora?”
Shaking her head, she said, “I’m not even sure how I did it. Lady Melisande told me when the ladies left the gentlemen to their port what her husband was planning tonight. And I knew that there was no way we could remain in that house without further risking our necks. So, I told Aunt Hortense to prepare herself to go to her friend’s house in the next county—that is where your coach and four are headed, by the way. Along with your valet and my maid.”
“All right,” he said with a grin. “I can last a few days without Chester, I think.”
“Then I spoke to Smith about driving the curricle and had him ready it for a long journey. Fortunately your horses were rested from our journey out here so they were ready for another one. The last thing was to put a torch to one of the hay bales. It managed to make enough of a to-do that panic set in among the men in the barn and voilà!”
She felt him staring at her in the darkness, and Leonora found herself in the unusual position of feeling bashful.
“You are an amazing woman, Leonora Craven,” he said finally, kissing the top of her head. “I don’t think we’d have made it out of that house alive if you hadn’t arranged this escape for us.”
“I feel sure you would have come up with something,” she said with a slight shrug. “If you weren’t faced with having to fight for membership in a club you don’t even want to be a member of.”
“Yes,” he said with a laugh. “There’s that. Thank goodness you spared me from that fate.”
“Anytime, sir,” she said with a giggle.
“Leonora?” he asked after a few minutes had passed.
“Yes?” she asked, snuggling up to him beneath the cloak.
“Where are we going?”
“We can’t go to London because if we were seen there in this condition it would cause the scandal of the season,” she said with a sigh. “So, I remembered that your friend the Earl of Mainwaring has a house not far from here.”
“He does,” Freddy responded, sounding surprised. In the darkness she couldn’t see his expression but she thought perhaps he was puzzled.
“It was your valet’s suggestion,” she explained a little defensively. “He said you’d been there before and that he thought the earl wouldn’t mind. I hope that’s all right?”
She heard him laugh softly before he pulled her close. “It’s perfectly fine, my dear. I just hadn’t realized before that your talents extended to large-scale escapes and capers.”
“Just because I am a poet doesn’t mean my mind is always in the ether communing with the muses,” she replied with a laugh. “I am rather a managing sort of female. As you will recall from the last time we were betrothed.”
There was a pause and, for a moment, Leonora could only hear the sounds of the road—the jingle of the horses’ tack, the wheels on the road, and the wind whipping through the trees.
“I should like to speak about that,” Freddy said into the darkness. “Soon. Not tonight. I think I should very much like to be fully dressed for that discussion.”
She could hear the smile in his voice and knew that whatever the discussion entailed, it would not be a difficult one. At least on his side. She had some things to discuss that would perhaps make it difficult for Freddy to forgive her. For now, however, she was just glad they were alive.
“I can wait,” she said softly, leaning up to kiss his cheek.
When he turned his head to kiss her properly, she did not protest.
* * *
They reached Mainwaring’s little manor house a few hours later. By that time the wind had followed them from South Haven and turned into a rainstorm, and when Freddy approached the front entrance it was miserable out.
Fortunately the butler recalled Freddy from a previous visit and welcomed their ragtag party inside with no questions asked.
He gave orders that his curricle was to be hidden in the stables and that in the event someone should call looking for them, they had not been seen.
Only when he was sure the horses and the servants had been seen to and were comfortably situated did Freddy allow himself to relax. He’d learned from his father that servants—both equine and human—were to be treated fairly and with consideration and dignity. And theirs had proved themselves tonight to be the most loyal sorts.
Though he suspected Leonora might have already fallen asleep, when he’d finished looking in on the horses, he slipped silently into her bedchamber. Quietly, he undressed and climbed into bed beside her.
“Did you see to the servants?” she asked in a sleepy voice as he slipped his arms around her.
He might have known she would guess his task. “Yes,” he said against her hair. “All right and tight. We can sleep here for several hours then set out tomorrow in Mainwaring’s carriage.”
“You’re lucky to have a friend like that,” she said quietly.
“Your brother was that sort of friend, too.”
“I know,” she said, turning so that they were face-to-face. “He told me. If ever he needed help, it didn’t matter the time of day or the circumstance, he could call on one of you. The four horsemen.”
He smiled in the darkness. “That was a silly name,” he admitted, remembering the day they’d come up with it. The young men they’d been.
“Perhaps,” she said, nestling against his chest. “But young men are often foolish. From that silliness however were born lifelong friendships. That cannot be counted as silly,”
“I miss him,” he said, thinking how all this mess with his cousin had begun. “He would have loved the adventure tonight.”
“He would,” she said, and he guessed that she was smiling.
“I think we should be able to bring charges against my cousin now,” he said. “The fact that the curricle was there on his estate should be more than enough to prove that your brother’s death was suspicious.”
“I hope so,” Leonora said, her voice sounding sleepy. “I want this to be over. I am ready to get back to ordinary life.”
He wondered how life with her could ever be anything like ordinary, but said nothing. There would be time enough for them to discuss such things.
With a sigh, he pulled her close against him and they slept.
* * *
The next afternoon, they arrived in London, exhausted. Though he was reluctant to do so, Freddy left Leonora at her father’s house with an admonition for her to rest. Given his own exhaustion, it wasn’t until the next day that he presented himself in her private parlor.
“I missed you,” Freddy said, reaching out to take Leonora’s hand.
“We’ve only been apart a matter of hours,” she responded, squeezing his hand.
“I believe there is still the matter of an engagement to see to,” he said quietly. “A true engagement.”
Looking up, she saw that his handsome face was serious. And deadly earnest.
“I love you, Leonora,” he said, standing and pulling her up to face him. “I want you to be my wife. And I will not stop until that happens.”
“When we parted five years ago,” she said softly, “I thought I would die from the ache of losing you.”
“Then why did you turn me away?” he asked, the pain of that rejection evident in his voice. “We might have been together all these years. We might already have a nursery full of children and another on the way.”
At his wistful tone, Leonora’s heart sank. It had been foolish of her to allow Freddy back into her life when she knew full well that they could never marry. And selfish.
Unable to face the confusion in his eyes, she dropped his hand and turned to compose herself.
Rather than pressing her, Freddy let her go. He’d always been good that way. Allowing her space to breathe. But it was time to tell him the truth, and she greatly feared that when they parted today, it would be forever.
“I regret not telling you the truth five years ago,” she said finally. To her surprise, her voice didn’t break as she spoke. “I thought it best to keep the matter to myself, though I can see now that it was unfair to you. Not to let you know my true reasons for breaking things off. Especially since I had known all along that a marriage could never happen between us. I suppose I was just selfish. I wanted to know what it was I’d be missing, you see. And you were so terribly sweet to me.”
“Leonora,” he said, stepping up behind her—so close she could feel the heat from his body. “You are frightening me. What could possibly keep you from marrying me?”
Turning, she saw that he was serious. And suddenly she could keep her secret no longer.
“When I was fifteen,” she said, “I met a young man at our local assembly. He was charming and handsome, and was the first man to show me any sort of attention. Certainly not the sort of attention a man pays a woman. And I was smitten.
“I was already writing verse, and I suspect part of me thought I had to experience romantic love before I could ever begin to truly understand the emotions necessary for fully expressing them in poetry.”
She smiled ruefully at the foolishness of her younger self. “But I truly did believe myself to be in love with him. And he with me.”
“Since you are not now married to the man,” Freddy said tightly, “then I can only suppose something happened that prevented you from forming a lasting attachment.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “And by the time he was gone, I’d experienced enough emotion to last me a lifetime of emotional verse.”
“What happened?”
“Anthony was a soldier who had come to town with his regiment for several months. And we made use of every moment we could spend together that summer. Father was often busy with his own work, and my governess had been gone for a year then. So it was possible to spend quite a bit of time to ourselves.”
“You got with child,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. As if any hint of disapproval on his part would send her fleeing.
“It’s such a cliché,” she said, grateful she hadn’t had to say the words out loud. “But we were only together that way a few times. And as soon as I realized about the baby, I told him at once. Foolishly, I thought we could simply move up the date of the wedding we’d talked about all summer. But it is remarkable how quickly a rake’s promises dissolve in the face of true commitment.”
“He refused to marry you?” Freddy asked, his tone a mix of disgust and disbelief. “To give your child his name? After he’d seduced you?”
“As I said,” Lenora said with a sigh. “A cliché. Oh, he promised to do all the right things. He would speak to my father the very next day and we would be married within the month. And when he did not appear the next day, I feared he’d been in an accident. Or had taken ill. When he didn’t come the third day, I went to the village, to make sure he was all right. But his rooms had been vacated and one of his friends told me that he’d been called to London.”
She laughed bitterly. “Even then, I thought he’d come back to me. But when a month had passed with no word, I knew that what I’d feared was the truth. He wasn’t coming back.”
“What did you father say?” Freddy asked, his fists clenched. “I hope he put a bullet in the bastard.”
“Papa searched for him, but by the time he found Anthony it was too late.”
“He was gone?” Freddy asked.
“He was dead,” Leonora said, flinching at the memory. “He’d gotten into a brawl in a tavern near the army barracks and was stabbed to death.”
“That saves me the trouble of killing him myself,” Freddy said, stepping forward to lay a hand on her shoulder. “For there’s no doubt he deserved it.”
“Perhaps so,” she agreed. “But at the time, I thought my world was over. And that my child would have no father.”
It was obvious since she had no child now that something had happened, but to Leonora’s relief Freddy didn’t press her. Even so, she would have to tell him the truth of it now.
“Not long after that,” she went on, “I lost the child.”
He made as if to take her in his arms, but Leonora placed a staying hand on Freddy’s chest. “There were complications,” she said, hating the words even as she spoke them. “And the end result was that I can no longer bear children.”
She watched his eyes change as the meaning of her confession sank in. And her heart clenched as he took a step back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded. “It would have made no difference to me.”
“But what of the children you just mourned, that you thought we might have had if I’d not broken our engagement the first time?”
“You cannot blame me for weaving castles in the air when you hadn’t told me how things stood,” Freddy said sharply. “It was a logical hope that we would have children. Had I known the truth I’d have changed my expectations.”
“You say that now,” Leonora said, “because it is what you hope you’d have done.”
“We’ll never know,” he said with a frown. “It’s clear you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. Then or now.”
“Can you blame me?” she asked. “The only other man I’d loved abandoned me when I told him I was carrying his child. Was it really so foolish for me to expect the same thing when you were so clearly looking forward to fatherhood?”
“You didn’t give me the chance to do the right thing,” he said quickly. “That you placed me in the same category as that bastard who left you before shows how little you thought of my sense of honor.”
His words hurt. Because they were true. And Leonora let the shame wash over her. “It was wrong,” she said at last. “I was a fool not to tell you. It was selfish and that is why I had to let you go. I was too cowardly to face you and tell you the truth, but I could make sure that you were free to fall in love with someone else. To have the family you wanted.”
“Do you know how much your rejection hurt me, Leonora?” Freddy demanded, his anguish visible in his face. “I had expected to live the rest of my life with you and you turned me away with no good reason. No explanation. I could only imagine I’d hurt you somehow.”
He laughed bitterly. “But it would seem that it was you who wronged me. For no good reason other than a fear of telling me the truth.”
“Do you deny that most men wish to marry in order to father children?” Leonora asked. “Is it not what the church says marriage was created for?”
“The church, perhaps, but we are hardly the picture of piety, my dear. It’s my brother who is the vicar in the family. Not me.”
“I wanted to save you,” she said, knowing her words were not recompense enough. “I wanted you to have the children you’d wished for. And I suspected you’d forget about me before long.”
“You should have given me the choice,” Freddy said softly. “By refusing to tell me the truth you did the same thing you’re always railing about when it comes to men’s treatment of women. You made the decision for me. As if I didn’t know my own mind and hadn’t the sense to make the right choice. You robbed me of agency in the matter. If I’d done anything like that to you, you’d have rightly ripped me up over it.”
It had never occurred to her to look at her actions in that context, and Leonora knew that if their roles were reversed she would have dismissed him as a paternalistic typical male. If she hadn’t already been ashamed of her actions, she would certainly be now.
Suddenly, she was exhausted and overwhelmed. And she wanted him to go so that she could cry in peace.
“Freddy, I have wronged you,” she said. “And now that you know the truth, you’ll see that the only rational thing for us to do is to dissolve this betrothal. It was never meant to be real anyway.”
“I see nothing of the sort,” he said firmly. “And what if that physician of yours was wrong? You might even now be carrying my child.”
“That is wishful thinking on your part,” she said mournfully. “He was quite certain that the damage was permanent. And aside from that, you are not thinking clearly. When you’ve had a moment to think things over you’ll see that parting now is the best decision for you.”
“And what of you?” He stepped forward and stroked a finger down her cheek. Leonora closed her eyes at the caress. “What about what’s best for you? Surely a life of solitary reflection is not the way for you to live life to the fullest.”
“I am trying to do right by you,” she said, reaching up to take his hand in hers. “Perhaps you are a younger son, but you deserve to have a family of your own. I want that for you.”
“I am not convinced.” He squeezed her hand.
Knowing that if she let him he would persuade her out of her decision, Leonora pulled away and walked toward the door.
“It is for the best,” she repeated, then fled the room.