Page 3 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

F reddy Hightower woke at dawn.

Of course, there was not a damned thing to do at dawn, especially at a coaching inn. Wasn’t that always the way?

He’d tried to read the book he had brought for the journey, but the words kept blurring and melding together on the page.

They were just outside of Oxford. He could buy another book if this one was defective, though of course, the bookshop owners were probably still on their lazy arses in bed at this hour.

He sighed, tossing the book onto his rumpled bed and making his way to the window to look out at the environs beyond, the little streams that sprouted from the Thames, reaching in all directions like they didn’t know how feeble and narrow they were.

Everything was green now. The white and pink and yellow of early spring bloom had fallen away to the vibrant monochrome of summer, well ahead of the necessary deadline.

Freddy preferred the flowers, of course, but he didn’t mind the milder weather. It suited his walks; it let them meander out for longer, taking him to places he might not have found before.

In fact, it had been a bit of a torment, hadn’t it? Not having his walks, spending all day cooped up in a carriage with Ember and Joe, who couldn’t stop touching one another and softly whispering things that Freddy was cursed to have to overhear.

Some months ago, they had passed a portion of the winter together on the Cornish coast. That place had allowed for the most magnificent walks, all jagged cliffs and seafoam on the shore.

There weren’t the birds Freddy usually looked for above, but underfoot had been all manner of life, some completely new to him.

Those walks had been ideal. He could go for one of those walks just now. Sadly, however, only freshwater streams tickled at the terrain here, a pale attempt at matching the majesty of the sea.

Oh well, Freddy decided with a shrug. He knew a fair amount about pale imitations. Maybe he would find fraternity with the streams.

Yesterday morning, back when they had been closer to London, he’d spotted a nightingale. He’d have to tell Tommy about it when he got to Crooked Nook. He wanted to see her wrinkled face contort into envious approval at the announcement. Her letters never held quite the same gravity.

Perhaps he’d tell her he saw a bird rarer than she was. Or better, he could call her an old bird in relation to the rare one. He missed the way she used to pinch his ear when he got impertinent.

He stepped out into the mist with his hands in his pockets.

This inn had the lovely features of doors that led directly outside, without the necessity of cutting through the dining hall.

All the same, he was forced to see people who were also awake at this ungodly hour, and likely out of habit due to their vocations.

He nodded to a stablemaster. He sidestepped a girl churning butter. He convinced himself that he was the most tragic figure here, despite knowing damn well that he’d never have to rise early at anyone’s behest but his own.

His boots sank into the marshy ground, saturated with streams so tiny that the naked eye could not appreciate them. Above, a murmuration of starlings burst from a tree, moving in a great black cloud in one direction, then another, before vanishing over the horizon.

In the distance, he could see great shadows. Deer, perhaps? Or horses out to graze.

It smelled good out here. It smelled like loam and sweet water. It wasn’t the Cornish coast, but it was all right, after all. Good, even.

He walked for a long time, long enough that the sun wasn’t shrouded anymore by the time he headed back.

It was naked, the mist fully shaken off, and beating down on the top of his head, reminding the world that it still had heat, even if it had been tempering it for the first half of the year.

It promised more, even in its restraint.

Mercifully, Ember and Joe were both already seated for breakfast, Joe’s lips uncomfortably close to Ember’s ear as he whispered some observation to her, winning a laugh, winning a softness in her face that Freddy had never seen before.

They were good for one another. He would never have said perfect, because the match, to him, had seemed so wildly uneven from the get. But perhaps perfection was its own sort of trap. What they had instead was balance.

“Morning!” he sang, dropping onto the bench opposite of them, watching the way his presence cracked them apart, back to a respectable distance. “Sleep well?”

“Not as well as you,” Ember returned, raising her brows. “You’ve slept quite late. Usually you’re already a rasher of bacon deep by now.”

“Ah, well,” Freddy said with a shrug, noting the way Joe’s eyes flicked to his muddy boots. Noting the slight frown. “You can’t hold a bit of rest against me.”

“Lazy bones,” said Ember fondly.

When they had eaten and she had gone out to have the carriage brought around, Joe put his elbows on the table, leaning forward, staring in that unsettling, all-too-quiet way of his.

Freddy sighed loudly, narrowing his own eyes at the other man. “What?”

“Hm?” said Joe, still staring.

“I went for a walk,” Freddy snapped. “Is that a crime?”

“No.”

He frowned. “I couldn’t sleep. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I wasn’t blaming you for it,” Joe returned, giving a single, steady blink of his eyes. “I would be shaken too, in your place.”

“Please,” Freddy quipped, rolling his eyes. “You’re never shaken.”

It made Joe smile, which was perhaps even more unsettling than the staring. “Of course I am.”

Freddy doubted that very much. If it was true, he had certainly never seen it. He frowned, looking down at his hands, at the dull glint of his wedding band over the raw skin beneath it, worn thin by the constant twisting of the ring it had endured over these last days.

“She doesn’t want me there,” he said finally, softly. “Does she?”

“She lifted the ban,” Joe replied evenly. “It might not be a perfumed invitation back to your marriage, Freddy, but it’s a start.”

“But what if it was only because of my mother’s wedding?” he argued, wrinkling his brow. “What if that’s the only reason?”

“It isn’t,” Joe told him. “I wrote up that ban myself. I sat with her for its creation. She was terrified of having to face you in person, Freddy. Determined to avoid it at all costs. Something must have changed for her to allow it to be struck down. Much has probably changed. It has been a long time.”

At that point, they were interrupted by Ember’s return and call to them from the inn door. Joe clapped him on the shoulder in passing, a quick, firm reassurance that he was not alone. Not entirely alone, anyway.

It had been a long time. That much was true. But, for all his folly and foibles, Freddy remembered his wife with enough clarity to know that time itself was not enough to shake her of any deeply held beliefs. It had to have been something else.

Perhaps she has found someone else , a voice suggested, sharp and evil in his ear. Perhaps you are just a memory now. Just a memory, now and forever .

Yes, he thought, hoisting himself into the carriage. Perhaps.

Up until this wedding announcement, he had been legally barred from stepping foot in his ancestral home. He had been verboten from contacting his wife or his child, young as the babe was at the time. He had legally forfeited the running of the estate and its full custody to Claire and Claire alone.

She was allowing him back to see his mother wed. Could it be anything more than an act of charity?

After all, his life was certainly very different than it had been the last they saw one another. Unrecognizable, he thought. Truly unrecognizable. There was no flourish in acknowledging that.

He had spent the last handful of years as Orpheus and Eurydice both, trekking to and from Hades with no idea what trailed behind him or if there was any reward at the end. Sometimes, he’d catch his own reflection and pause, not quite sure the person who looked back was still him.

The dice were gone now. The cards were burned.

He had lived through a month in a den of vice, a temple of gambling, and not placed a single bet.

He’d lived as a common man, sharing a townhouse with Abe for a time; he’d kept vigil for Joe during the year he’d spent abroad, during which Freddy had lived in his little flat, cared for it, kept it warm.

He’d lived half a dozen new lives in the time since she’d gone.

He’d tried to be better. But he hadn’t really changed , had he?

He was still himself, still stuck in this body, still thinking with this mind.

He could hold the demons at bay, perhaps.

He could make a damn fine hollandaise and dust a bookshelf now.

He could direct a pedestrian to Canary Wharf and Covent Garden and Cheapside if they asked, places he’d never dreamed of visiting in the before.

That didn’t make him anyone new, though. He was still just Freddy Hightower. Still saddled with the mistakes he’d always made. Still lucky that anyone still spoke to him at all.

He knew how the others saw him. How they passed him around like a seasonal burden. How none felt any sort of surprise, even mildly, when he messed things up again.

She was terrified .

That’s what Joe had said. That was the word he’d used. Terrified .

What had he done to make her afraid? Of all the things he’d done, why had she been afraid? He didn’t know, and without knowing, how could he ever make amends?

What about the boy? His son. He had a son.

What had she told him? Had she told him anything at all? Surely his mother would not have stood by and let her grandchild think he had no father? Surely Tommy would have … surely?

He tried not to sigh. He tried to focus on the world rolling past outside of the carriage window. He tried not to twist his wedding ring. He tried not to think about Bruges.

And like many things that Freddy tried, he failed.

It was Ember who insisted they stop again, only an hour or two from Crooked Nook, and rest for an extra day.

“Weddings are so very much,” she said, blinking innocently at her husband. “I’d rather be perfectly fresh when we arrive, especially in such genteel surroundings.”

“Is that so?” Joe replied with the faint look of a charmed man hovering about his features. “Well, if Freddy isn’t opposed…”

“I’m not!” Freddy put in immediately. “I wouldn’t mind the rest myself. There’s a very good inn at Moreton-in-Marsh, the White Hart. Let’s do it. I will pay.”

“He will pay!” Ember echoed, delighted, and then a few moments later, “Hart?”—she held fingers up to her hair—”or heart?”—she moved her fingers to thrum over her chest.

“The former,” Freddy told her. “The latter would be rather horrifying, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ember said.

“It would,” Joe also said at the same time, causing the two to catch one another’s eye and hold it for a shared moment of sickening intimacy.

“Stop!” Freddy moaned, flicking his hand at the air between them. “You’re being lewd.”

When they arrived, Joe took to the particulars, leaving Ember and Freddy by the carriage in the gentle glow of early dusk.

Freddy glanced at her, feeding a sugar cube to one of their pulling horses as it was freed from the yoke. He waited for her to glance back and then he said, “Thank you.”

“Ever so welcome,” she replied, walking toward the horses and leaning against the driver’s seat. Always the jealous one, Ember motioned for a cube of her own and delivered it to the other horse, whispering that he was her favorite anyhow.

Freddy only shook his head.

She smirked at him, dusting her hands off as the mounts were led away to rest for the night. “So,” she said briskly. “Have you a plan, yet?”

“A plan?” Freddy almost laughed. “How do you plan for something so completely unknowable?”

She made a face. “I could describe Claire in half a thousand ways, Freddy Hightower, and none of the words I’d use would even suggest unknowable .”

“Joe said she was afraid of me,” he said, lowering his volume lest the Cotswolds overhear, “terrified. I didn’t know she was terrified, Ember.”

“She wasn’t terrified of you, idiot,” Ember said, nodding toward the inn doors as Joe emerged with a porter.

“She was terrified of herself. Of what she’d do if she was face-to-face with you again.

Think about that. Why would that scare a woman in Claire’s position unless she’s afraid she’ll fall right back into your arms? ”

“But I—”

“Hush,” she said with a breathy little hiss. “I don’t want Joe to frown at me later.”

And so he had, though hushing was always a bit of an effort for Freddy Hightower. The problem was that once he’d gone silent, he couldn’t dredge up his old song and dance again that night.

Joe frowned at him as they unloaded. He frowned again at dinner. And he frowned one more time when Freddy bade the happy couple good night.

“Ugh,” Ember said under her breath in that last moment in the hallway, once Joe had vanished into their room. “Now I’m in for it. He’s going to tell me he’s mildly concerned and it’s going to be the most violent outburst of which he’s capable.”

“My sympathies,” Freddy replied, more than a little delighted at the prospect. “Godspeed.”

“Oh, thank you,” she returned sarcastically, batting her lashes. “Don’t think you’re exempt, Freddy. If he frowns one more time, then you owe me again. I mean it.”

“I can live with that,” Freddy replied, the first genuine smile in a week’s span finding its way onto his face as she rolled her eyes and spun into her room like a little cyclone.

He didn’t mind owing his friends, he realized. It just meant they had another reason to keep him around.

He fell into the bed and didn’t bother to fish the book out this time. It was a good idea, he thought, stopping here, even so close to their destination. This inn had lovely soft beds and just the right amount of pillows.

White harts, he thought. Mythical. Once in a lifetime. A sign of sovereignty.

Perhaps it was a sign. Maybe the beast he’d seen through the mist this morning had been one? And even if not, here he was, deep in the belly of another anyhow.

He started to doze, Ember’s words tumbling softly in the space of his thoughts, both waking and dreamlike.

She wasn’t terrified of him. She was terrified of how she’d react to him.

That suggested want. It suggested love.

It suggested, Freddy Hightower thought, that the door was still a little bit open. All he’d have to do was step inside.

She’s afraid she’ll fall right back into your arms.

I’ll catch her when she falls , he decided with his final waking thought. This time, I won’t let go.