To Catch a Bride (43 page)

 

 

 

 

H
erode down the path and galloped along the road in the direction the wagon had gone, but when he caught up with it, he saw the splash of red he’d seen was a tattered old rug wrapped around a chest of drawers.

With a curse he wheeled his horse around and headed back the way he’d come.

At the junction of the path and the road, he headed down the path toward the village of Penton Mewsey. There was just a handful of shops and houses, and Lady Cleeve’s servants had already investigated. There was no sign of a young lady in a dark pink cloak with a cat in a basket, they told him. Nobody had seen any young lady, not hereabouts, sir.

The original path continued past the village. Rafe followed along it. A light rain started. Rafe ignored it. From time to time another path branched to the right or the left, and at each fork he shouted her name and waited, wondering which path Ayisha would choose. She was a city girl, had lived most of her life in Cairo, and this countryside was foreign to her, with its fields and hedgerows, its tangled woods and rolling hills. She would take the path the most trodden, he decided.

But after following a dozen paths to each village, hamlet, or roadside within a five-mile radius without success, he began to wonder. He’d crossed a few larger roads. She hadn’t ridden off in that first wagon, but maybe she’d been offered a lift, maybe she’d hailed a passing vehicle.

She had a little money—not much, he knew, but it might get her as far as Andover, or even Winchester.

If the driver was trustworthy.

She knew about villains, he tried to tell himself. She knew what life in the streets was like. She didn’t trust easily. How long had it taken before she trusted him?

He groaned, thinking about it.

She still didn’t trust him. Didn’t trust him to know what he wanted, know what was good for him. Otherwise she would never have left him.

Not his ruin, his salvation. What did he care for the opinions of others?

He should have married her on the ship. They could have married again in a church. His worry then about protecting her from gossip meant nothing now that he’d lost her.

He should have told her about Axebridge and the succession. He hadn’t thought it would matter.

Liar. Of course it mattered. Most women liked the idea of a title. Most women loved the idea. He’d been courted for that title . . .

Had he, deep down, feared she might be the same?

The chill deepened. Rain pelted down in icy streams. If he hadn’t left in such a hurry, he would have brought his greatcoat. No matter. He pulled up his collar and continued the search. Where the hell was she? Had she found shelter? He had visions of her crouched in the mud, under a bush, wet and cold and miserable. The thought was unbearable.

His clothes were soon sodden, heavy with water and clinging clammily to him. He was shivering with cold, but he didn’t stop. If he was cold, how much colder was Ayisha, daughter of a hot climate? And women’s clothing was so much more inadequate than men’s—men’s! He stopped, started. She’d disguised herself in boy’s clothing before. Had she done it again?

He galloped back to the village of Penton Mewsey and questioned everyone he could find, but nobody had seen a young man or boy with a suitcase and basket containing a black-and-white spotted cat.

By that time darkness was falling. The rain stopped. Rafe knew there was only the slimmest of chances, but he rode the paths again in the dark, calling out her name. But the sound echoed hollowly through the silent landscape. It was so cold his breath hung in smoky drifts. The clouds obscured the moon and he couldn’t see a thing in the inky dark. All he could hear was the dripping of water and the squelch of mud beneath his horse’s hooves.

He turned his weary horse toward Cleeveden. He’d resume the search in the morning.

He slept badly, rose early, and this time used a map of the local area to set out a coordinated search, military style. Higgins had arrived the previous night with Rafe’s curricle and horses, so Rafe put the former soldier in charge of the search.

Rafe sent the servants out, each with strict instructions to search a particular area, looking for a young woman or a youth with a black-and-white spotted cat in a basket. She might leave her heavy valise behind, she might not care about her clothes, but she would never abandon that cat.

Rafe himself rode to Andover and questioned people there. A coach had passed through the previous afternoon, but whether there was a young lady on it, or a boy and a cat, nobody could say. He wasn’t sure then where to go. To the east was London, to the south was the way they’d come; which way would Ayisha go?

He tried both. He took the London road first, and rode more than forty miles, as far as the second coach stop, but nobody at any of the inns had seen her. He then retraced his steps and rode south, but again, after several coach stops, gave up the chase. Nobody had seen her.

How did a young woman with a spotted cat and a valise disappear to completely from the face of the earth? She must have been offered a lift in some private vehicle, he decided. She could be anywhere.

Exhausted, dispirited, and sick at heart, Rafe rode back to Cleeveden. It didn’t surprise him at all when the servants who’d been out hunting all day had nothing to report. He’d felt it in his gut all day.

He’d lost her.

H
ave the vicar of your local church call the banns,” Rafe told Lady Cleeve a week after Ayisha had gone missing. He’d spent every day out searching, in vain.

Lady Cleeve’s jaw dropped. “Call the banns for whom?”

“For Ayisha and me, of course.”

“But she’s gone. You don’t know where—”

“I’ll find her,” Rafe said firmly. “And when I do I’ll marry her. I’ve written off for a special license, of course, but it won’t hurt to have the banns called.” It was a slim chance, he knew, but if Ayisha was still in the district, she might attend church, and if she did, he wanted her to hear the banns for her wedding being called. That would make his determination to marry her quite clear.

“Her mother’s name was Kati Machabeli. I’ve written it out here.” He passed her a slip of paper. “I’m going to Axebridge to get my brother’s vicar to do the same. And to inform my brother of my intentions.” He gave Lady Cleeve a cool smile. “We shall be married in the chapel at Axebridge. I want the world to know this marriage has the Earl of Axebridge’s approval.”

Lady Cleeve frowned. “Does it?”

“It will,” Rafe said. “He will have no choice.” His brother owed him, and Rafe would force from him at least a facade of approval.

 

 

 

 

I
am betrothed,” Rafe told his brother and sister-in-law the next evening at dinner. He’d reached Axebridge at dusk.

“I see,” George said cautiously. “And who is the bride-to-be?”

“Ayisha Cl—I suppose legally she is Ayisha Machabeli.”

George’s brow rose. “Who?” His tone was cold.

“Ayisha Machabeli. She is the natural daughter of Sir Henry Cleeve and a Georgian woman called Kati Machabeli,” Rafe told his brother the next day.

His brother’s mouth tightened. “
Natural
daughter?”

“Yes,” Rafe said coldly. “Ayisha’s mother was Sir Henry’s mistress. He bought her as a slave.” He was determined there would be nothing hidden, nothing kept back. George would know exactly who his brother was marrying.

“And you think this—this
female
is suited to be the mother of a future Earl of Axebridge?”

Rafe looked at him. “Call her ‘this
female
’ in that tone again, brother, and I’ll shove your teeth so far down your throat you’ll never find them.”

What followed was the kind of silence you could cut with a knife. The two brothers stared at each other across the table.

“And yes, she’s magnificently suited to be the mother of a future Earl of Axebridge,” Rafe continued after a moment. “She would never countenance a devil’s bargain such as your Lady Lavinia Fettiplace agreed to. Ayisha would fight tooth and nail—literally—to keep her children safe and in her arms.”

Lucy, his sister-in-law, made a small sound, and Rafe glanced at her. Her plain, rather horsey face was filled with distress.

“You must not blame—” she began.

Her husband placed his hand over hers. “Silence, Lucy,” he said. “We need explain nothing to him.”

She shook her head. “Of course we must, George. It is his child we were plotting to take, after all.”

Rafe blinked at such unexpected honesty.

“It’s all my fault—” she began.

“It was my idea,” George spoke over her. “So any blame must go to me. I put the proposition to Lady Lavinia, you can hold me entirely respon—”

“But you did it for
me
, because of
me
, because I am such a hopeless failure as a wife!” Lucy, Rafe’s sister-in-law, burst out harshly. Tears poured down her cheeks.

Rafe stared, stunned by the unexpected outburst.

To Rafe’s surprise, George leapt from his chair and put his arms around his wife. “You’re not a failure, Lucy,” George said urgently. “And I forbid you to ever say so. You’re a wonderful wife and I—I couldn’t live without you,” he added in a lower voice. He pulled out a handkerchief and began to dry her cheeks gently.

Rafe watched in amazement. He’d never seen his brother this . . . this human. And until this moment he had no idea that his brother even cared about his wife.

Rafe himself had always liked Lucy, had even felt a bit protective toward her. She was plain and gangly and a bit horse-faced, but was always kind and gentle and quietly perceptive. For Rafe as a boy, she had been the one good thing about visits to Axebridge.

George, he recalled, had been bitterly disappointed when he first met her—the Earl of Axebridge had selected a bride for his heir and Lucy’s bloodlines and fortune were both excellent.

“Good breedin’ stock,” his father had declared. “Lackin’ in looks of course, but that’s all to the good. The plain ones tend to stay loyal, especially if they’re wed to a handsome dog like yourself, George.”

Not that it mattered what George thought. His father was not to be gainsaid. And he was proven right when shy, awkward Lucy had taken one look at her handsome fiancé and fallen desperately in love.

But it seemed, somewhere along the way, his brother had come to care for her. Care deeply, if Rafe was any judge.

“It was for me, Rafe,” Lucy said once she’d composed herself. “George did it for me. I was so . . . so desperate for a child. And Lady Lavinia . . . Lady Lavinia had said . . .”

Her husband took over. “Lady Lavinia made it clear she disliked babies and children and talked of leaving the children to servants. And while there is nothing wrong with that . . . It’s just that Lucy . . .” He gave his wife an anguished look.

“Oh, Rafe, I
ache
to hold a babe in my arms,” Lucy said brokenly. “I ache so much I nearly stole a baby in the village. I only lifted it up for a moment—I did put it back, but . . . it worried George.” Her face crumpled.

For a long moment there was no sound in the room but the crackling of the fire and the soft sobs of Rafe’s gentle sister-in-law. Her husband held her helplessly.

After a time, Lucy’s weeping stopped, and after pouring a drink for everyone, George took up the story. “I thought if Lady Lavinia didn’t want to bring the children up . . . Lucy could. She’d make a wonderful mother . . .” He looked at Rafe. “I’m sorry, Rafe, I didn’t consider your position; I was thinking of Lucy, only Lucy . . . I hope you’ll forgive me one day.”

Rafe was shattered by the admission. He’d seen the arrangement with Lady Lavinia as yet another sign that Rafe mattered nothing to his family, that his brother had no respect for Rafe and cared for nothing except the Earldom of Axebridge and the succession.

But it wasn’t the future of Axebridge that had driven George to such a desperate measure, it was love for his wife.

And that Rafe could completely understand. And forgive.

“I didn’t know. And now I do, there’s nothing to forgive,” Rafe said quietly.

“But—”

He shook his head. “I’m not marrying Lady Lavinia. I have Ayisha now, and there’s nothing to forgive. It’s all right, Lucy, I forgive you, both of you. I understand.”

His words brought fresh tears to Lucy’s eyes, and Rafe found he had to walk to the fireplace and stare into the fire; the sight of his brother comforting his wife brought such . . . feelings . . . welling up in him.

He ached for Ayisha, he wanted her in his arms. Here. Now.

The thought crossed his mind that like his sister-in-law he might ache, unfulfilled and empty, for the rest of his life.