Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) (17 page)

Perhaps all that talk of regard had really just been Grainne figuring him as her best chance at escape.

But no, he couldn’t believe such a thing of her. Grainne loved him. She had as good as said so last night. He swallowed, plunged ahead where he did not belong. There was nothing he could do — nothing! — and yet he could not stop himself. “I did not think Miss Spencer had such a regard for Mr. Maxwell,” he said carefully.
 

“She made her choices, William,” Mr. Spencer said gently. His expression softened, and, stepping closer, he put a hand on William’s shoulder. “My lad, I think I know what you are feeling. But it is not to be. My Grainne is run wild. Even if marrying Mr. Maxwell gives her pain, she must be married at once.”

“Wed her to me, then,” William said desperately. “At least not him.”

“Would if I could, lad. But you cannot control her. I have seen you try. Even if I overlooked your lack of birth or portion, and trusted that you could maintain this seat here for Kilreilly after I am gone, I cannot see that you can rein her in as she needs must be. And I cannot risk her again. She has already proven that she has no good sense; she must be married to a man who will keep her safe.”

William looked down. His head was whirling. He
knew
he could not marry Grainne, that he was not free to marry Grainne while he was still affianced to Violetta, that even if he
was
free she was sadly below him in rank, but he knew just as certainly that he loved her, and he could not let her be lost in a loveless marriage, be broken by an unhappy life.

There was no way out.

“Say good-bye to her, lad, for good,” Mr. Spencer said gently. “It’s better to be out in the open about these things.”

***

She looked up, startled, when William was ushered into her room by Emer, and she could not keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks. Had he spoken to her father, then? Was it yea or was it nay? She thought of riding away with William, escaping the bonds she had forged for herself here with her bad behavior and foolish notions, and making a life with this handsome man who made her shiver with pleasure and shout with anger. Life would be an exciting gallop, all the time, she thought, with someone like William to keep her on her toes.

But he did not look like a man about to propose matrimony. She curled her toes inside her shoes.

“Grainne,” he began, and she knew at once that there would be no happy ending. His tone was too bleak. “Your father bids me take your leave a final time.”

“Final?” She knew she whispered, but she could not find her voice. She sank down into the chair by the fire again, hand to her throat, waiting.

“I cannot return.”

“And you will not take me.”

“I cannot —”

“You came here and you ruined
everything
,” she burst out, her voice choking with tears. “You took my horses from me, then when I sought escape, you caught me. I have been locked away here, waiting to be married to a man I despise, to sit at his table and listen to him blather of sheep and of sheepdogs until I shall certainly go mad. I have been torn from everything I love, and now you say you are going away, and I should rejoice that I shall never see you again. But I cannot. I cannot help but ache at the thought of not seeing you, nor of feeling your touch.”

“Grainne —” His face was twisted with grief.

“You love me.”

“Yes.”

“I love you. I have loved you so long. While you tore down my world, I fell in love with you.” She swiped at the tears running down her face, hating herself for allowing them, and him for causing them.

“We cannot.”

She swallowed, and took a deep breath. It was no good. He would not budge, for whatever reason. Perhaps he did not love her enough, despite his fine words. “No,” she agreed. “It is too late.”

“It could never be.”

She took deep, shuddering breaths, trying to compose herself. “Suppose I should throw myself from the window to avoid this marriage.”

“No — no! You would not.” She saw him start to move to her, and then stop himself. She closed her eyes against the pain of it.

“No… you are right.” She turned her face down, so that she would not be tempted to look at him. “That would be too foolish. I may have been a foolish girl, but… I know how to live. I do not know how to die.”

The ship was rolling on the sea unmercifully, and William’s mind was no less unsettled.

“You must pull yourself together, man,” Peregrin said, not unkindly. “We cannot go back to London looking as though we have come away from a funeral, for in fact we are hoping that we are not coming to one.”

“I have ruined her life, Peregrin,” William muttered. “I cannot pull myself together. I am in a most desperate state.”

“Ruined her life! And how, by stopping her from running away with a gypsy and a horse-thief? You saved her life, more like.”

“She would never have done such a thing if she weren’t certain she was being pushed out of the stable-yard. She knew her father was replacing her. With
me.
I drove her to it.” It was not a new argument, but it rang over and over in William’s mind. He had done this to her, he had done this to her. He had ruined her life.
 

“Utter rubbish. Her father had already decided it was time to drag her back into the house and stuff her into a dress. If that’s
why
he hired you, it’s certainly not because of your coming that she fell into bad company. She would have done it had any other man filled the position.”

William looked skeptical.

“Listen, Will, I am fond of you and so I will spend more time than I think this chit could ever warrant on telling you:
you will forget her.
You fell in love with a passionate girl who looks good in riding breeches! Who could blame you! But you certainly couldn’t have entertained any visions of her riding down Rotten Row in those riding breeches. If you
did
bring her back to London with you it could only be as your mistress, and a hidden one at that, for in London society she would have to be bound into the same corsets and dances and drawing rooms that you vow she despises back in her frumpy little house, only it would be a hundred times worse for being the house of an earl!”

Peregrin felt so put out by this speech that he had to go and hunt for a brandy bottle, and when he came back William had sat up a little straighter in his chair and some color had come back to his cheeks. “Agree with me yet?”

“I can see your points,” William said. “Have you brought two glasses? Wonderful. Now listen, and I vow this is my last argument on the subject: she told me that she loves me, despite the ruin I have brought upon her. Can you see how painful this is? That she could form an attachment even as I thwarted her every happiness — that is what concerns me the most. That we might truly be…”

“Romeo and Juliet?” Peregrin broke in dryly. “I think you go too far. A girl of that temperament is not the suicidal kind.”

“No,” William agreed, wincing at the memory of her last words to him. “She would never consider such an action.”

“She will eventually have enough of playing the obedient wife, snatch a rolling pin from the cook, and make that poor sod’s life a living nightmare. He does not keep horses now? I’ll wager that in twelve months’ time he has a new stable built and a horse in every box.”

William thought of Grainne chasing the odious Mr. Maxwell around a kitchen table with a rolling pin and felt marginally better. He added some flour to the tip of her nose and smiled. Then he added some cleavage to her bodice and felt worse. Damnation! How would he ever stop thinking about her?

“You’ll stop,” Peregrin said grimly, and that was when William realized he’d spoken those words aloud. “Believe me, my friend, it will fade with time and distraction.”

William didn’t know that he wanted it to fade. “So this is what love comes to: she learns to overpower her husband and make him miserable as she is, and I wed Violetta and dine at the club every night to avoid her simpers until I die an unhappy man.”

Peregrin looked surprised. “You’re giving up? You’re going to marry her?”

“We’re going back, aren’t we? My father will surely demand it of me now, and he has the fact that I have put him into his death-bed to use as leverage against me.” William drained his glass and looked bleak.
 

Peregrin nodded thoughtfully. “I am a little surprised that this girl has shaken you so much. I would never have guessed you would give up your resolve against marrying Violetta.”

The ship rolled on a swell, the Irish Sea rising up against them, William thought, and the whiskey sloshed in the bottle.
 

He should drink more, lest the bottle topple over and waste the amber liquid within.

Peregrin eyed him as he poured another glass with unsteady hands. “I would rather not carry you onto shore in Wales,” he said grimly. “Perhaps you have drank enough tonight, friend.”

“I am going to drink all the way to London,” William announced with some satisfaction. “All the way to my father’s bed-side. And then,” he paused and took a deep drink. “I am going to tell him that I am going to break the marriage contract.”

“That’s a change. Five minutes ago you were going to marry her.”

“I can change my mind.”

Peregrin sighed and stood up. “I’m going to bed,” he said, indicating the narrow bunks behind them. “I can’t take another moment of this crossing with you. Do try to be quiet.”

William ignored him stalwartly and took another drink. He didn’t need it. His head was swimming, the cabin was spinning — he really had to stop getting so completely foxed. It wasn’t going to help him any tomorrow, when he was rattling in a chaise across the bumpy roads of Wales. It wasn’t going to help him when he went up the dark stairs of his father’s London house, a place he had stormed out of just a few months ago with harsh words flying after him and grim determination on his set face, to visit the sick-bed of the man who had raised him, the man who had taught him to ride, the man who had loved him and challenged him and never taken second-best from him, the man who would not go against
his
father’s wishes and release him from the insane, impossible, unfair contract that hovered over his every day like a black thunder cloud.

And what
would
he say to his father, when he returned? He had accomplished precisely nothing in leaving England. By returning before the contract had been un-made, he had done the very opposite of making a point: he had acquiesced, given in. Come back to London with his tail between his legs, that’s what he had done.

Violetta would clap her hands, and giggle, and purse her fish lips in that ridiculous parody of a woman begging for a kiss, and he would have to bend over her gloved hand and say gracious things while her parents glowered in the background, knowing full well that he had disappeared to escape her. And proud enough, and vindictive enough, to be that much more determined to hold him to his agreement.

His grandfather’s agreement.

And in Ireland, Grainne… ah, Grainne! He nearly moaned aloud at the thought of her. It was dark outside, a dark wet night, and she would be in her bedchamber, sleepless, he was certain, listening to the clock in the downstairs hall ticking away the empty seconds, the meaningless minutes, her life stretching before her in a dull sweep of unhappy deeds and unmeant words. She was such a clever girl — he had always been so uncertain of her attachment, first thinking she was in love with him, then that she was playing him for a fool, and then, at the last, knowing for certain that he held her heart — surely she would be thinking for some way to escape. But she could not run away, not even alone, without disgracing her father, and the dishonor would cost him everything: his livelihood, his position, his home.

She would not do that to her father, though he ruined her life in the most cavalier fashion imaginable.

As he could not dishonor his father.

Ah, there they were. He bit back a bitter laugh, and drained his glass instead. He would go to bed, then, such as it was, and lie on his tipping, plunging bunk as the ship plowed through the Irish Sea, and he and Grainne would go through life two star-crossed lovers, broken by family and honor, as tragic a tale of woe as Juliet and her Romeo.

The house was hushed and dark. It was a different kind of quiet from the one that William had grown up with. That had been a comfort, a respite from the noise and strife of school, all those boys crammed together with little thought but mischief on their minds while the masters tried to beat a classical education into their aristocratic skulls. He had come home from Eton to the peace and quiet of the country: his mother's gentle voice, hardly above a murmur, and his father’s thoughtful silences, could scarcely overpower the thrushes in the hedgerows outside. 

But this was not his old home, and he was not in the quiet countryside now. The London house had always had a bit of life to it, first from the ladies visiting his mother and then, long after her death, his own friends. Even his father was given more to chat and sociability in town. But there was no sign of that former liveliness in this grim place now. The drapes pulled, the servants hushed, it was the house of a dying man in truth. 

William stood for a long moment at the foot of the grand stairway, gazing up its curving balustrade. The mahogany gleamed softly in the faint light from the fanlight above the front doors. Peregrin turned to look at him questioningly. 

“I am not ready to say good-bye to him,” William croaked, his face ashen. The house in its mourning guise had shaken him to his core. It was one thing to receive a message; it was another to see the thing in person.

“You didn't say good-bye before —” Peregrin stopped, comprehending the sudden reality of loss. He took a step closer to his friend.
 

William's eyes were bleak. “I should never have gone there. I should have been a dutiful son and stayed by my father's side. I should have obeyed him and made him happy.” His voice was almost child-like now. “I have caused him to fail in health.”