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

S he hid.

Every time a carriage came ambling down the drive, winding through the jutting deposits of limestone that made up the quarry that once stood here, Claire hid.

She wouldn’t apologize for it.

She wouldn’t admit to it either.

There simply was always a reason to go see to the nursery at just the moments carriages drew close to the door. That’s all.

Oliver’s little nursery room had the perfect vantage over the drive without being directly visible from the ground.

A layer of gauze curtains helped, but so did its positioning near the corner of the house.

No one would glance up, taking an innocent accounting of the house, and find Claire staring back down at them like some plotting spectre from Minerva Press.

It avoided making the wrong sort of first impressions.

It also gave her enough time to descend and perform delighted surprise when the people she was waiting for arrived. She’d been able to burst from the house proper just in time to greet her parents, Dot and Silas, and other such intimates from London.

If nothing else, it gave her a much longer sequence of mirrors to check herself in before reuniting with various persons of import. There was no downside in that!

So, it was with a fragile sort of belief that he’d never show up at all that Claire was forced to witness the return of her prodigal husband.

She’d almost tipped all the way forward and out the window this time, pane of glass in said windowframe be damned. It was still early in the day. Very early. Claire hadn’t even had breakfast yet. Why were they here so early?!

She knew he was in there, of course, because Joe Cresson had emerged first, holding out his hand and receiving the hand and person of his wife, Ember.

Abe had already told Claire that Freddy would be with them, but even then, even after seeing the first two, she was holding a breath in her lungs that believed Freddy would not follow.

He followed.

She dug her fingers into the curtains on either side of her body, squeezing the fabric against the palms of her hands hard enough to imprint the laurels brocaded there directly into her flesh.

She blew out that mutinous, lying gust of breath and drew in another, holding it until her lungs were near to bursting.

He was there. Just below.

She hadn’t been this close to him since the day she’d given birth to Oliver, and she hadn’t actually seen him on that occasion, what with being on her back and screaming for the duration. He had tried to see her then, of course, and she had forbidden it.

It was actually sweet, gentle Mr. Cresson who had stopped him from charging out of the carriage that day and into the house where she’d given birth.

He had stopped Freddy from confronting her at her most vulnerable and also stopped him from witnessing the birth of his son.

She’d always meant to ask how, exactly, he had managed such a feat.

But forget that! Because there he was, just a stone’s throw away.

He was still gilded, still golden enough to glint in the sun.

He tipped his face back like he was receiving that light with the full knowledge of how it suited him, his eyes closed as his boots settled into the gravel.

When he opened them again, he stared at the house, at the manor that had been carved into the commerce of this place, and he smiled.

She let out a hissing sound of protest without meaning to, her fingernails straining against the grip she had on those curtains.

She could see the flash of his teeth, even from up here. She could feel the smiling. She could feel it in her veins.

He turned abruptly, like his name had been called, his body turning with an agility she remembered well, finding, just as Claire did, the source of the hail: Silas and Tommy, approaching over the green hill that led to the dower house.

Tommy was clinging to Silas’s elbow, the brass fittings of her walking stick flashing in the morning sun with every swing she made of it. Silas’s dark hair and Tommy’s white both caught the sun as well, but not in a way that could be compared to Freddy. Nothing much could compare to Freddy.

She had also, somehow, forgotten that Tommy was also Silas’s grandmother.

Somehow, beyond the father that sired them both, she hadn’t put much thought beyond that into the family tree.

Silas arriving, dropping his bags, and making a beeline for the dower house only seemed to have surprised her.

Dot and Patricia had both watched it happen with resigned expectation.

She leaned forward, the tip of her nose pressing against the glass, her breath creeping up along the tableau in a hazy half-circle.

She watched Freddy break into a jog, meeting them more than halfway with several shouted exclamations that she could not make out from up here.

How he managed to be at once both so intentionally silly and so graceful was a crime. A heinous crime.

She frowned. Perhaps the nursery was not the ideal watching post after all.

He leaned down to let Tommy drop a dutiful kiss on his forehead, cradling his face between her wrinkled hands.

He grinned at her and said something that made her reach up and twist his ear, making Silas burst into laughter and Freddy to dance back, grinning like that was exactly the outcome he was after.

He stepped between them, slinging an arm around each, and urged them back toward the house—back toward her house!

“Oh, no,” she muttered to herself, nose still planted to glass. “Oh, no, no, no.”

What now?

What now?

How could she get downstairs in any semblance of dignity and greet Joe and Ember without slamming directly into her husband? How could she do that!

And then, blessing of blessings, balm of all the heavens, Tommy paused like she had realized something, drawing the attention of both of the men down to her as she turned and pointed back toward her little dower house on the hill.

Silas said something. Freddy said something. Tommy said something.

They agreed! It seemed they agreed!

And they turned in tandem to go away—completely and all the hell away—from her house!

She almost collapsed in relief.

Some ghostie or saint or bygone agent of Woden had stepped in and told Tommy to take them away! Oh, thank them all. Many god-fearing thanks to every heretical one of them!

She gathered up her skirts and flew out of the room, eager to make and break her greetings before Freddy could return.

Maybe she’d get some breakfast down besides.

She didn’t look at any of the mirrors on her path back to the door.

Well, she didn’t look at many of them, anyway, and she certainly didn’t stop to tuck her hair into place.

“Ah, there she is!” Ember cried from the doorway, raising her hands in a prayer-like clasp to her chin. “Look at that gown! A thiarcais! ”

“Ember!” Claire squealed, leaping off the bottom step and into her friend’s arms. “You know I don’t understand when you speak heathen!”

“I know you don’t!” Ember returned, squeezing her tight. “That’s why I do it.”

“It means she’s impressed with your frock,” Abe put in from his conversation with Joe Cresson nearby, raising a tawny brow, “though I agree, her dialect is quite heathen.”

“You would know, wouldn’t you, Alban?” Ember snapped back, grinning. “Oh, look at this place! It’s the size of a whole town, isn’t it?”

“Not a town,” Claire demurred, pride swelling up in her despite the fact that she hadn’t built the place. “Maybe a hamlet.”

“Senhor Cresson!” called Dom Raul, who had just emerged to join the reception.

Claire turned, watching him stride through the reception hall with the long steps of a man who was accustomed to lordship. Patricia trailed a bit behind him, overtly admiring the fine bespoke fit on the suit he wore.

He had been at the tailor, Claire thought, and it certainly showed.

Mr. Cresson and Dom Raul had fallen into an exchange of rapid Portuguese before they’d even cleared the space between them. The words jumped and danced, colored with enthusiasm and a wealth of inflections evident in Mr. Cresson’s voice that never seemed to be there when he spoke English.

“I keep forgetting he knows how to do that,” Abe said with a frown.

“Aye,” said Ember softly, in an altogether different tone, “so do I.”

“ Ubh,” grunted Abe Murphy, seemingly only to needle Ember with his theatrical revulsion.

Claire just watched it happen, a little dazed by the change in this man, who had been so shy and uncertain when she’d first met him, back when she still carried Oliver in her belly. If Mr. Cresson could change so thoroughly, why hadn’t Freddy?

“Where the devil is Freddy?” Ember exclaimed, dropping her hands on her hips and looking around the room like he might be hiding under a bench. “He was just behind me.”

“He’s gone to the dower house,” Claire said without thinking.

“Oh?” Ember returned, batting her lashes. “Has he, now?”

“I … yes,” said Claire with a grimace. “The footman told me.”

Ember grinned. “Which footman?”

Claire only glared at her in response, letting the silence spool out between them until they were joined by Millie and Dot and another flurry of activity, the tide of bodies pulling them in fits and starts toward the salon while luggage was carried in.

She realized later that she should have stayed behind rather than following the pull of social gravity, because in her absence, the footmen did what footmen do.

They took Freddy’s luggage to the master suite.

Her suite.

It was the sound of Abra, Tommy’s favorite terrier, yipping in the foyer that gave Claire the advance notice she’d needed to excuse herself before any unfortunate reunions could be sprung upon her.

She announced a need to “see to matters relating to the wedding,” whatever the dickens that meant, and no one seemed to raise an eyebrow about it, at least no one that she looked at directly, anyway. So Lady Patricia and Dom Raul hadn’t raised an eyebrow.