An Unforgettable Rogue (6 page)

“A derelict, Alex?”

“Look at your hair,” she said. “Did you ever, in your stylishly-groomed life, wear it wild and flowing away from your face, for all the world as if it were a lion’s mane? Though it is too devilish dark to be any such thing, of course. And those clothes. They are not even yours.”

Hawk fingered the frockcoat he might have tossed on the flames a war and a lifetime before. “Do you not appreciate my stylish attire? Is the weave of the fabric not fine enough for you?”

“As if clothes ever mattered a jot to me.”

“These clothes were a gift from the peasant family who nursed me back to health, I will have you know.” Hawk shook his head, but he could not help looking back. “I remember that they were as pleased to present them as I was to receive them. I have nothing else to wear, as things stand, and by the time Sabrina told me of your upcoming nuptials, I had less than an hour to stop you. I could think of no better way than to go myself, my destitute appearance notwithstanding.”

His words furrowed Alex’s brow. “Had you been in London long? And Sabrina knew you were there?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Hawk could not precisely say why he had been back so long without contacting Alex, because he could no more explain it to himself than to her, but knowing the length of time would only hurt her, so he decided on a temporary half-truth. “I have been back long enough to discover that you were no longer living in my London house and that you did, in fact, sell it, for which I planned to teach you some vengeful lesson.”

“I most certainly did not sell your house. What kind of lesson?”

“I learned the truth before your lesson was ever devised.” He shrugged. “I soon discovered that my heir tossed you out and later disposed of the townhouse, that you were living at Huntington Lodge and taking excellent care of the family. Again, thank you.”

“It was my pleasure,” she said. “I love them.”

Hawk grew uncomfortable with his inability to say how much his family loved her, without including himself in the declaration. He cleared his throat. “For all my dastardly ancestors’ rule-breaking, I doubt any of them ever found themselves in the incongruous position of trying to wrest, or should I say, rescue, what little was left of their fortunes and estates from the greedy hands of their improvident, globe-trotting heirs. Nor did any of them ever have to stop their wives from marrying another.”

Alex knew Bryce was probing for the details of her alliance with Chesterfield, again, but if he thought she would reveal them, he had another think coming.

Even now, he regarded her in such a way as to invite her to take up his verbal gauntlet, but she firmed her spine and her resolve, and remained adamantly silent.

“Tell me,” he said, giving up. “How is your Aunt Hildegarde? She was always my biggest fan. Did she mourn me for long?”

“Aunt Hildy did not mourn you at all.”

Hawk’s arrested shock at her response made Alex chuckle. “She did not mourn you, because she refused to believe that you had been killed. We tried to tell her, but doing so was like speaking to a stone, so we gave up.

“On the rare occasions she still asks for you, we tell her that you are on a hunting trip, or taking care of business in London. I thought that, perhaps, my marrying Judson and moving everyone to his house might bring her around, but none of that matters now, does it?”

Hawk looked away, unable to tell how Alex really felt about the turn of events. But they were nearing the Lodge and the thought of seeing his family, and of them seeing him, knotted his stomach and slicked his palms. The arrogant rogue of Devil’s Dyke, as frightened as a schoolboy who forgot his lessons.

The carriage climbed Gorhambury Hill—along the River Ver—towards Devil’s Dyke and the house where Alex grew up. With the placement of their family homes, fate had merged their lives at so early an age, Hawk could not remember his life without Alex in it.

Hawks Ridge, the home of his birth, temporarily his heir’s, sat at the opposite summit overlooking Devil’s Dyke, which formed the valley between. Hawk gazed westward to catch sight of his estate, but nearly a mile separated the houses, and he had forgotten that, other than in the dead of winter, the very woodland they had romped in grew too lush to allow for even a glimpse from the hill.

Besides, night had long since fallen, and the looming Lodge claimed his full attention. A few windows shone with light but the rest remained dark. And though a half-moon shone, he could not tell whether the house was still as much a leaking, tumbling pile as he remembered, or worse.

“Should I go in alone, first, and break the news?” Alex asked, as the carriage came to a stop before a set of weather-beaten granite steps. “I would not want your Uncle Gifford to have a seizure.”

“You think my scars will come as that bad a shock to him?” Hawk asked. Apoplexy was very near what he expected the first time people who knew him caught sight of him.

Alexandra regarded him as if he were daft. “Of course not. But I think the ghost of his dearly beloved nephew walking through the door, more than a year after his death, might do the trick.”

Hawk felt himself flush.

“I perceive that your scars are a great deal more of a difficulty for you,” Alex said. “Than for the people who must look upon you.”

“Therein rests the crux of the problem. They
must
look upon me, but they would not, if they could help it.”

Alexandra sighed and shook her head, as if she might argue the point, but the carriage door was thrown open and Claudia and Beatrix scrambled inside, out of the rain.

Even as the interior grew bright with the light from their lantern, they began tossing rice in the air. “Hurrah for the bride and groom. Hurrah, hurr—”

Sound stopped as if severed by a blade.

Hawk braced himself, even as he consumed the blessed sight of them, Bea bigger, but still a halfling, Claudia, nearly a woman, but sadder somehow.

When Bea focused on his face, she gasped and stepped back, regarding him fixedly, her curly little saffron head tipped in concentration. “Do I know you?” she asked, her small voice wobbling.

“Do not be afraid,” Hawk said.

To his horror, she began to cry as she climbed into Alex’s lap.

Hawk felt the blood drain from him and went stone cold, inside and out.

Alex wrapped Bea in love and soothing words. The little one had taken one look at him and was frightened to death. His worst nightmare come true, or one of his worst.

“Muffin?” Alex coaxed. “What is it, Love? Why are you crying?”

“That man made me sad. I miss my Uncle Bryce.”

Claudia’s gaze shot to his face then, as if the scales had slipped from her eyes, and she saw him true, and understood the reason for Bea’s confusion.

Hawk gave her a half nod, and as quick as he did, Claude covered her mouth with a hand and her eyes filled to brimming, not for the first time that day, if he did not miss his guess. Her tears overflowed and spilled onto her cheeks.

Hawk wished he knew whether she wept with happiness, or horror, or both. At least he understood the little one’s tears. “Come,” he said, lifting Beatrix away from Alex. “Come, Pup, I am Uncle Bryce.” He hugged her close and smoothed her hair. “No more tears for missing me. I am here, Sweet. I am here.”

Bea looked up at him, taking her lip between her teeth, her eyes wide, sobs escaping at odd moments, her expression moving from doubt to wonder. “Uncle Bryce?”

“Bumble Bea?”

“Uncle Bryce!” she screamed, throwing her arms around his neck. Then Claudia was laughing and hugging him, too, and all his girls, Alex included, wept openly, laughing through their tears.

And as Alex reached for his hand, and the little one kissed him all over his face, scars and all, Hawk felt, amazingly, as if he had come home … for the first time in his life.

Beatrix had so much to tell him that they did not move from the carriage for fully three-quarters of an hour, and even then, Alex kept telling her that she would have the rest of her life to catch him up.

“Hello the carriage,” came a gruff, old, curmudgeonly shout from the darkness. “Where has everyone got to?”

“In here, Uncle Giff,” Alexandra said. “Come in, out of the rain.”

Hawk shrugged at Alex, as his stodgy old uncle squeezed into the seat opposite, so busy ordering Claudia aside that he had not yet regarded the seat across from him. And when, at length, he did, he simply furrowed his grizzled brow in bewilderment.

Hawk kissed Bea’s little head, firm against his chest. “I am Hawk, Uncle. I survived, after all.”

“No.”

“Truly, though I am a little the worse for wear, as you see.”

“No.”

Alexandra laughed. “Quiz him, Giff. You will discover that he knows all our atrocious middle names, including the most ridiculous of our secrets. No doubt about it. He is Hawksworth.”

“No.”

The girls burst into laughter and began talking at once, and Beatrix practically fell from the carriage, she was so excited, then she dashed for the house.

In the foyer’s dim light, Hawk noted that his uncle’s hair had turned the color of pewter in the intervening time, and that his manly physique may have thickened and shifted somewhat. But all in all the old boy looked fit and spry and he seemed much less a curmudgeon than Hawk remembered.

“Well what do you know,” his uncle said, quite belatedly slapping him on the back, at long last accepting the truth before him. “The dotty old magpie isn’t five feathers short a tail, after all, but wise as an owl.” Giff grinned. “Hildy,” he called, striding to the bottom of the stairs. “Hildy, you will never guess.”

“Alex?” Claudia asked, stepping near. “Did you find Uncle Bryce today? Or yesterday?”

Alex smiled. “He found me … before I married Ch—”

“Hurrah,” Claudia exclaimed twirling away from Alex and into her uncle’s arms. “I love you, Uncle Bryce.”

Hawk knew he had missed some pertinent component in that exchange, then he heard Alexandra’s Aunt Hildegard reproaching his uncle from somewhere on the upper floor.

Nothing had changed.

When Aunt Hildy started down the stairs, Hawk saw her focus on him right away. And she did not miss a beat, not even when she took his uncle’s arm half-way down. “Bryceson, you stayed away too long this time,” she chided, beaming, as if he had not changed a jot, as if she had been expecting him all along.

“But we forgive you, do we not, Alexandra? I am so glad you are back.” She stood on the bottom step, and still she barely reached his chin. “Though why your letters stopped more than a year ago, I cannot imagine. And it was too bad of the war office to ship you out a mere week after your wedding. Poor Alex wept for months about not even having your child with which to remember you. Now you have another chance, you can get on with having that family of yours while you are still young. I shall put in my order, now, shall I, for a big, noisy brood?”

His uncle Gifford’s sudden paroxysm of coughing turned into a strangled laugh.

“Ah, good to see you, too, Aunt Hildegarde,” Hawk said, feeling the tightening of his cravat.

The dear old lady bussed his cheek, but when she did, and he placed an arm about her shoulders, he realized, from the degree of her trembling, that she was a great deal more shaken than she was letting on. And when he bent nearer, he saw tears hovering on her lashes.

“Praise be,” she whispered.

“My sentiments exactly,” Hawk said, for her ears alone, kissing her cheek in turn. “Especially now that I have seen my best girl.”

Hildegarde swatted his arm but preened anyway. “Are you hungry?” she asked, stepping off that last step, and composing herself. “Thirsty? Have you dined?”

“I am fine,” Alex said. “How about you, Hawksworth?”

“Nothing for me.” Hawk felt all the nervousness of an imposter. Alex was treating him like Hawksworth, the stranger, rather than Bryce, the friend. His family believed good of him, when no good existed.

He had chosen to ship out immediately after their wedding, rather than risk leaving Alex with the child of a man she did not love. And he had not written, not to anyone, to sever their ties early, in hopes that when he was killed, which he daily expected, their shock and grief would be diminished.

Had Alex stayed somewhere else in London, alone for a time, to shore up a pretense of wedded bliss? Had she passed them news that
supposedly
came from him? Considering what her aunt had said, had Alex even pretended for a time that she might be carrying his child?

“Why has little Miss Beatrix not been sent up to bed, I would like to know?” Alex asked, cutting the tense silence, looking as uncomfortable as him, as she ruffled Bea’s curls. “It is gone past ten.”

“Because of your wed— Because these are special days,” his Uncle said. “Though we expected you yesterday.”

“Very special days, more than you can imagine,” Hawk said. To his mind, stopping Alex’s nuptials to Judson Broderick, Viscount blasted Chesterfield, offered a great deal more to celebrate than her marrying him might have done.

“Exhausting days, all the same,” Alex said. “And it is very late, past time for little girls to be tucked into their beds.”

“Time for all of us to go up,” Aunt Hildegarde said.

“But there is no bedchamber for Uncle Bryce,” Beatrix wailed in distress.

“Of course there is,” Alex said. “He shall have the master bedchamber.”

“But that is your b—”

Claudia had clapped a hand over her sister’s mouth. “You heard Alex, Little Miss Mischief, time for little people to be in their beds.”

“Big people, too,” Giff said, taking Aunt Hildy’s arm. “Let us all go up and allow Hawk and Alex the opportunity to, er, settle everything.”

That fast, Alex and Bryce were left standing at the base of the main staircase to regard each other. Alex wished the foyer did not seem so drab for his homecoming, while he appeared, for all the world, like a raw boy with his first girl, the way she was certain he had never appeared in the whole of his life.

“I do not want to put you out,” he said, wrapping dignity about him like a shield, much as he had done the evening before. “As you know, I do not sleep well these days. Any bedchamber will do.”

Plague take it, Alex thought. Was not a husband expected to sleep with his wife? They were home now. She was no longer in shock. And if she did not begin the way she intended to go on, then she would deserve the consequences. “There
is
no other bedchamber,” she snapped.

“There must be a dozen at least.”

“If they have beds, they have no mattresses.”

“Why ever not?”

Alex gave a long-suffering sigh. “When we were forced,” she stressed, “to return here, the mattresses had been turned into mouse houses, so we turned them out of our house, leaky and dilapidated as it is.”

Bryceson clearly bit back an oath, and that old impatient tic worked in his cheek. “The tower room in the attic,” he said, seeming to grasp at straws. “Isn’t there a chaise lounge, or a daybed, that would serve? When we used to practice our archery up there on rainy days, I am certain we proved the thing indestructible.”

“You are able to climb so many stairs, then?” Alex asked, hoping to discourage him.

“I climb better than I descend, it is true, but I can manage. Besides, I am convinced that the more I use my legs, the better they will work.”