Page 32

“I hate storms,” Peter muttered where he stood at the window of his study. The thunder rattled the windowpanes loudly, drowning out his words. Without warning, his mind filled with the memories of London on that terrible night.

“My lord?” Mr Preston, Peter’s butler, called from the doorway of his London study, his voice raised to carry across the sound of the rain and thunder. The lamplight flickered on the walls as the door opened.

“What is it?” Peter asked, his grey eyes widening to take in the tense, hunched figure of the man who waited outside with Preston.

“I apologise for interrupting you so late, my lord,” Preston demurred. “But this man has urgent news. He rode from Holway Manor post-haste.”

“Holway Manor?” Peter snapped. That was where his cousin and best friend, Charles, resided; a secluded estate around eight miles from London.

“In this storm?” Rain lashed at the windows, and thunder rumbled outside.

Peter’s heart thudded. He had expected to hear that his cousin had returned from the opera an hour ago.

Charles had borrowed the Landau so that he and his wife, Eliza, might attend the theater in comfort.

The coach had gone out to fetch them almost two hours previous, and, even with bad conditions on the road to Holway Manor, one would have expected that they would have arrived at home.

“Yes, my lord.” Mr Preston was fidgeting with his shirt-cuff, a habit when he was tense. Peter swallowed. Clearly, the butler had some knowledge of the matter at hand, and his unease was far from reassuring .

“Send him in,” Peter tried to say, but his voice came out almost as a whisper, tension tightening his throat too much for speech.

The butler nodded to the man and withdrew.

“Shut the door,” Peter commanded. His heart was thudding. Somehow, he knew without being told that something terrible had happened.

The man stood with his cap in his hands, clearly deeply distressed. Peter nodded to him.

“State your message,” he said as gently as he could. The man began speaking.

“My lord. I am sorry. So very sorry,” he began.

His voice wavered, and he seemed on the verge of tears.

A servant from Charles’ household, Peter surmised.

His heart froze. He already knew before the man told him.

“My lord, I am so sorry to have to tell you. Your cousin, Viscount Holway, was shot in a highway robbery. Her ladyship too.”

Peter gripped the desk. Unreality surged in.

He could not believe it. The man was talking, and he was trying to listen, but he could not think.

His mind was entirely blank. The words made no sense.

Charles was his dearest friend, like a brother to him.

A light in the darkness that had followed the death of his own parents. He could not be dead too. He could not.

“...and you will have charge of their son. Thomas.” The man concluded, voice shaking.

Peter stared at him. Without consciously trying, words poured out of him—commands and instructions were at his lips, delivering orders and organising meetings and coaches and all manner of necessities.

He was barely present, diving into the world of bureaucracy and duty because it was something he understood, somewhere safe.

A crash from the hallway brought him sharply back to the moment. He blinked. His mind was still usually locked, after six months, in the world of bureaucracy and duty, his heart still achingly empty of any feelings at all. This was the first time in a long while that he had recalled that night.

“My lord?”

Peter turned to the door. His butler—not Preston, because Preston staffed the London house, where Peter had not returned since the accident—was there.

“Yes? What is it?” Peter asked a little sharply.

“My lord? The new maidservant has requested that a room in the east wing be prepared for young Master Thomas.” Mr Harris answered tensely.

“What?” Peter asked harshly. The new maidservant had arrived two days ago. Was she already causing trouble? He tensed. “To what purpose has she requested such an odd thing?” He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, feeling tense and weary.

“The roof in the nursery leaks, my lord. She fears it may be unwholesome for Master Thomas.” The butler sounded apologetic.

“Oh.” Peter bit his lip. The west side of the house was drafty. He could not argue with the young woman’s estimate—it probably was unhealthy. “Well? See that it is done.” He lifted his shoulder.

The butler, Mr Harris, bowed. “Yes, my lord.”

When the butler had departed, Peter ran a hand wearily down his face, allowing his rigid posture to slump.

He was exhausted. His ten-day journey from London to his country home, his sister’s arrival at the family estate, and the need to find a replacement for Mrs Milnerton, who had cared for Thomas, had thrown him badly.

He looked up, seeing his face reflected in the window pane against the dark sky outside.

He looked thinner than he recalled, his cheeks hollow, his eyes ringed with dark bags.

His thick, dark brown hair was tousled from lack of sleep, and his skin seemed even paler in contrast to its darkness.

His grey eyes stared back at him, blank and weary.

His tall height was masked by his weary, stooping posture.

He looked much older than his seven-and-twenty years.

“I need to go to bed,” he told himself firmly, stifling a yawn.

It was only seven o’clock in the evening, and he had not yet eaten dinner, but already the need to sleep dragged at him.

He had not yet recovered from the journey, though he had been at Brentdale Manor, his home and the country seat of the Earls of Brentdale, for three days.

There had simply been too much to organize in that time.

He walked to the study door and paused there. There was noise in the hallway—the sound of servants moving something heavy. He wandered towards the sound.

“And pull! Oh! My lord!” Mr Samuel, the footman, tensed, shooting Peter a worried glance. “Men, that’ll do,” he added to the team of three men who were pushing a vast dresser, the legs wrapped in cloth, across the hallway.

“What is the meaning of this?” Peter demanded. His voice was cold. The sound brought instant silence to the hallway as four pairs of eyes gazed at him with fear.

Mr Samuel looked down uncomfortably. “My lord, we are moving the furniture. Miss Matthews requested that we move it all from the nursery into the Green Room. So, we moved it.” He stepped in place, seeming awkward.

Peter blinked mildly. “If it is needed, then, pray, continue,” he said lightly. Mr Samuel nodded formally.

“Yes, my lord. Men! Keep moving,” he added, addressing the three men, who grunted with effort as they pushed the dresser across the floor.

The former nursery was in the west wing, the corridor that led to it opening off just after the drawing room.

Peter walked in that direction. His ancestors had been adding to Brentdale since its original building two hundred years before, and the place was a warren of hallways.

He could have found his way in the house blind, so it was easy enough even in the stormy darkness of the hallway where the butler had not yet lit the lamps.

“Hush. Hush, now,” a woman’s voice was saying as Peter approached the open door.

A candle was flickering, casting shadows through the door and onto the hallway floor.

He tensed, hearing the woman’s soft voice and the sound of fretful crying.

He did not want to intrude. He stopped in the hallway, the need to remain out of the way warring with curiosity.

As he stood there, the shadow moved, and a woman stepped into view.

Her long chocolate-brown hair was coming loose from its thick bun; some thick, wavy locks framing her pale face.

She was slim and quite tall, her arms wrapped protectively around the bundled form of an infant in her arms. She wore a neat white uniform.

Her thin face looked oddly calm, despite the fretting baby in her arms. He could see high cheekbones and a determined chin below a soft, generous mouth.

Her nose was slender and well-formed, her face a longish oval shape.

She was pretty. The thought filled him with surprise.

It was the first time he had thought anything like that since the night his cousin was killed.

She looked up. Her eyes locked with his. They were green, a rich, dark green like emeralds. He froze in place, startled as much by the shock in her own gaze as by its riveting effect.

“My lord!” she gasped. “I apologise. I did not see you there.”

The baby in her arms wailed, seeming to sense her distress.

Peter tensed awkwardly. He avoided visiting the nursery, preferring to allow others—more capable than himself—to tend to the small child.

Seeing that innocent, childish face with its hazel eyes and mop of honey-coloured hair was like being stabbed in the heart.

He could see Charles in the baby’s squarish countenance and friendly smile and Charles’ wife, Eliza, in those hazel eyes. He could not bear the reminder.

“He’s fretting. It is because of the storm.”

Peter blinked. The young woman was talking to him again, and this time he listened more carefully and noticed something. Her speech was oddly unaccented, like his own. She had a cultured voice, neither low nor high-pitched. Somehow, it was not the voice he had expected, and he tensed, listening.

“Yes?” he asked after a moment when she looked up at him expectantly. Her green eyes were mesmerising, not just because of the colour but because of the strange calm in their depths. Even when he had startled her, that calm had shifted only for a moment, returning instantly.

“I just meant to say that when the storm settles, he will settle too.”