Page 12 of A Christmas Love Redeemed

brANTSTONE HALL

In the light of the lanterns held up by the stablehands, the glossy hide of the great, black horse reflected fire.

The animal shivered, breaking the fire into golden sparks.

The handsome head bobbed, testing the hold of Thompson, the head groom, while the huge eyes, white against the dark-fringed lashes, scanned the crowd of faces.

Isabel, Lady Somerton, clutching her shawl around her shoulders against the cold, dark winter morning, stopped short of the horse, her hand going to her mouth.

No saddle—no rider.

‘What’s happened?’

The words were forced through lips that refused to move.

‘His lordship went out on Pharaoh last evening, my lady.’ The head groom, Thompson, swallowed. ‘We found the ‘orse in the stable yard this morning. We’ve no idea how long it’s been here.’

Pharaoh pulled at the restraining reins, rearing up, his great ironclad hooves raising sparks as they returned to the cobbles.

‘Get the horse inside the stable and see to him,’ Isabel ordered. ‘We must order a search party. My husband is lying out there, injured.’

And in this cold.

She shuddered, dismissing the thought that they may be too late.

Thompson thrust the reins at his son. ‘See to the ‘orse, boy.’

Peter Thompson seemed dwarfed against the enormous animal, but Pharaoh went meekly at his touch, head lowered as if exhaustion had claimed him and he wanted nothing more than a warm stall and a basket of oats.

Thompson looked at Lady Somerton. ‘Do you know where he was bound, my lady?’

Isabel swallowed.

‘Lady Kendall,’ she said. ‘He was intending to visit Lady Kendall.’

Thompson nodded. ‘Aye. We’ll take that route first. To me, all of you.’

Thompson gathered his hands around him. The staff, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes, were fetched from the house, and the men of Brantstone Hall set out on foot to search for the missing Lord Somerton, leaving Isabel standing alone in the stable yard in the cold, grey light of dawn.

She would have stood there all morning if Mrs. Fletcher, the housekeeper, had not fetched her inside, sitting her down in the blue parlour with a tray of tea and buttered bread.

Isabel sat unmoving, staring out at the winter landscape of the Brantstone Park as if she expected Anthony to come galloping down the carriageway.

The tea, in its delicate porcelain cup, sat undrunk and cold, and the bread curled and dried as the little clock on the mantelpiece ticked away the minutes.

She knew, even before Thompson knocked on the door and stood shifting from one foot to the other, his shapeless felt hat clutched in his hand, that Anthony was dead.

Isabel followed the head groom back out into the stable yard. She looked at the farmer’s manure cart that had been dragged into the yard and with her head held high, she walked across to it. Thompson interposed himself between her and the inanimate object that lay in the filthy dray.

‘Are you sure, my lady?’ he asked.

She nodded, and Thompson flicked back the sacking that covered the shapeless lump in the back of the cart.

Anthony lay, stiff with rigor mortis in the slimy filth, and Isabel stared down into her husband’s face, into his open, staring eyes, already opaque in death.

An ignominious end to his life, she thought.

‘We found him over by Lovett’s Bridge. He’d taken the hedge intending the shortcut across the Home Farm fields,’ Thompson was saying.

He jerked his head at the saddle, the beautiful, hand-tooled saddle that had been tossed into the cart with its owner.

‘Looks like the girth strap broke, and he came off. Broke his neck in the fall. He’d not have known anything about it, m’lady. ’

Her gaze rested on the saddle. It had been her gift to Anthony on his birthday only a few months earlier. Now it was the cause of his death. It stood as a symbol of everything that had gone wrong between herself and her husband.

Aware of the anxious faces that surrounded her, Isabel swallowed. They expected her to break down. They wanted her tears, but she had none to give. She had expended too many tears over Anthony, Lord Somerton, while he lived to spare any for him now that he was dead.

She turned on her heel and walked back to the house with her head held high. With every step, the enormity of Anthony’s death sank in.

She was free, but at what price came that freedom?

Her back straightened, and her lips tightened.

To attain freedom, first she had to find Lord Somerton’s heir.

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