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“Welcome back home, sir.” Charles brushed away the imaginary wrinkles in his black coat, his starched white shirt pristine. “And still sneaking in the back door, I see.” He lifted a hand for Ryder’s bag. “May I take this to your room?”
“I’m heading there now. I’ll take it. But thank you.” Ryder phrased his response so as not to suggest he was more capable than the white-haired man in his mid-seventies. There was etiquette between family and staff that his father insisted be observed, after all.
Not that he gave a fuck, but Charles did. He nodded and moved around the butler.
“It’s good to have you back, sir.”
Ryder’s steps halted, a twinge of guilt stiffening his posture. “Thank you, Charles.”
His childhood bedroom awaited him on the second floor. Bits of his youth still adorned the walls, posters of his favorite football and cricket players, his own sporting trophies. At thirteen, he’d been sent away to Eton, then Oxford, and the family estate became the place he visited on holidays, a place where he could hide from his father and dream up adventures completely unrelated to his station in life.
In the garment bag he draped on his bed were the suit, dress shirt, and tie he’d brought for the evening meal. His parents had reacted with surprise and restrained elation to his suggestion that everyone gather at the family estate. Ryder’s jaw had tightened at the satisfaction in his father’s voice when they spoke on the telephone.
Philip Montague assumed the prodigal son was returning to the fold.
Leaving his room, Ryder strolled the great hall, gazing idly at the portraits of his ancestors, who stared at him with subtle disdain from their gilt frames. The library, one of his favorite rooms, still carried the musty odor he remembered from the old tomes that lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Polished wood gleamed everywhere.
“There you are. I saw your car by the stable.” Becca stood in the library doorway, dressed in riding attire. Cheeks flushed; she held her helmet against her hip. Her expression was guarded, as it usually was when she dealt with him. A shame, really. He and his older sister might have been great friends if his father hadn’t set them up to be competitors.
Another black mark against the Earl of Cannington.
“Hello, Becca.” He pointed to her soiled riding boots. “Are you trying to give poor Charles a heart attack?”
Becca lifted one foot and scrutinized the bits of mud and hay that clung to her heel. “Why the sudden interest in a family gathering?” Her eyes narrowed. “What game are you playing, Ryder?”
He pressed his lips together with an inward sigh. “I’m no threat to you.” He would at least give her that. “We’d both better get cleaned up. You know Father insists on cocktails at six with dinner served promptly at seven.”
As he brushed past her, he stopped to kiss the top of her chestnut hair. She smelled of horseflesh and perspiration tinged with perfume. The rare display of sibling affection startled them both. His shoulders itched as he proceeded up the stairs, imagining her eyes boring into his back, trying to figure him out.
Back in his room, Ryder showered and changed into his suit, making a crisp Windsor knot in his tie. He observed his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were hard, empty of emotion. The man who stared back was the elite soldier who’d busted his bollocks to prove himself as something other than a posh dandy.
Service. Sacrifice. Mates you’d die for.
A wolf whose job was to protect those weaker from being preyed upon by other wolves.
That had become his world.
A twinge of grief tightened his chest at the thought of Hadley and the path he’d chosen. Had Ryder known the difficulties Hadley had encountered after he left the SAS, he would have tried to help him. He understood all too well what it felt like to not fit into the world you found yourself inhabiting.
Now, Nathalie was his world. This time, no one would get between them. He surveyed his opulent surroundings, unsettled at the foreignness of a place so familiar.
This world hadn’t belonged to him for a very long time.
When he arrived downstairs, his family and Becca’s fiancé, Percy, had already gathered in the parlor next to the formal dining room.
“There you are, my boy.” His father approached with two tumblers of Scotch, handing one to him. “I’m glad to see you’ve returned from America.” He might as well have tacked on the world “alone,” given the relief in his voice.
“Thank you.” Ryder hid his smirk behind a sip of whisky. Despite the earl’s frantic phone call to persuade him to leave Nathalie’s protection to others, Nathalie was back in his life. In his bed.
He’d say back in his heart, but the truth was, he’d never been able to evict her from that vital organ.
His father’s gaze narrowed on the scabs on Ryder’s knuckles, then lifted, drifting briefly over the faint bruises on Ryder’s face. His mouth turned down in a glower.
“That’s a twenty-five-year-old bottle. Brilliant, isn’t it?” Philip lifted his glass, admiring the amber liquid.
The old man was going to hold his tongue for once.
Probably because he thought he’d won the long game.