Page 25 of When her Duke Returns
The girl nodded. “It’s even more beautiful than the Carlisle houses.”
Alexander nodded. While the Carlisle estate was certainly full of merit, no structure would ever compare to Whitcliff in his mind. “Howdidyour family come to be such close acquaintances of the Carlisles?” he asked when the conversation waned.
Cecelia sunk into contemplation as the two of them picked up a gentle trot across the fields. “Well, my mother wasn’t always the wife of a Baronet. Her father was an earl.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do. My father’s family were in the business of land and owned some plots around my mother’s father’s East Anglian country home. They met at a village fete, or something of the sort, locked eyes across a table of jams,et cetera… and the rest is history.”
Alexander hummed. He quite liked that story. “She didn’t mind renouncing her higher standing?”
“I don’t really know. Though I suppose whatever love she felt trumped the allure of a greater title.”
“Her father must have been displeased.”
Cecelia scoffed and swung her mare around to block his path once the trail they were on had come to an end. “I’m sure he was though he didn’t live long enough to protest their marriage before it happened… and my grandmother was a romantic at heart.”
She seemed to melt at whatever memory that utterance had stirred, and it made Alexander smile. He could see how Mary had become such good friends with the girl—she was terribly affable.
“And are you?” he asked.
Cecelia smiled broadly, and Alexander caught the small gap between her front teeth. “I’d like to think so.”Alexander dared not question his own stance on the matters of the heart—nothing good would come of it anymore.
As if beckoned wordlessly by memory, he looked over the overgrown fields and forested brush to their right which looped back toward the castle grounds. It was upon those fields that he had spent so much of his youth locked in a childish game. “Come!” he ordered at once, drawing the attention of Sir Stanton with a wave of his hand. “Let me show you my favorite spot before the eve is upon us, as promised.”
Alexander navigated the place with ease. He had mapped the spot early in his childhood—both to sanctify the space for use as a hidey-hole when his grandmother’s shouting would frighten him beyond sleep and to have the upper hand in any games he might be engaged in with others, chief among which had been slippery Antony and the equally agile Carlisle brothers.
At the heart of the wood sat a large, dilapidated fountain with a pool at its base. All of the structure had fallen into disrepair, its white stone discolored green and brown by the passing of time. It was still as heavenly as he remembered.
He turned to Cecelia then to catch her gaze… and was suddenly struck by the sound of small, whimpering cries carried to him by the wind from their source behind the pool.
He jumped from his steed and walked closer for inspection, expecting to find a wounded woodland creature in need of aid or perhaps the child of one of the nearby farmers seeking refuge from their parents’ ire.
Instead, his eyes came to rest on the body of a woman, bruised and bloodied, her gown wrapped around her legs, her slippers long discarded—the body of Lady Mary.
ChapterEleven
Maryreallyhadn’t meant to get herself in so much trouble.
After she had stormed off—to the cries of Antony and her mother, no less—she had sought to circle around the statue gardens a few times to cool off, not knowing how or when she would ever be ready to face her back-stabbing family again. Perhaps, she had thought, she would settle forever in the woods or find a kind family of farmers to take her in and teach her the ways of the land.
Before long, she had found herself strewn greatly from her path, all mixed up by a new patch of overgrowth and a tumble of trees she had no memory of. Round and round she went, like Rosie with her pocket full of posies, until at last she heard a whisper of conversation and the rumble of hooves.
It must have been the Duke, she conjectured, and whatever was left of his riding party. It was such that she sprung toward the sound, keeping a steady pace until, just like Rosie, she fell down… and down, and down, over an overcrop and into a thicket, her head hitting the rocks of the bank when she landed.
* * *
“Mary! Good God! Mary, can you hear me?”
Alexander could hardly believe his eyes. Mary was outstretched beneath him at the base of the fountain, her light blue dress stained dark with muck and spots of blood. Her dark hair was a tousle about her head, and her face was marked with small cuts. She was whimpering loudly but made no discernible move at his approach as if she could not perceive him or did not want to.
“Is she all right? Oh,God, Mary…” he heard Cecelia squall from behind him. “She’s dead!”
Alexander ground his teeth together and relieved himself of his riding jacket which he draped over Mary. “Hush, Cecelia! She’s breathing. She must have suffered a shock.” He looked around quickly to see where she could have come from and settled for a fall down the bank overhead. If she had been conscious by the end of her tumble, she might have dragged herself to the fountain in hopes of finding aid…
The thought made Alexander’s heart sink to his stomach.
“Is there naught we can do, Your Grace?” Cecelia’s father questioned though he seemed rather in a state of disrepair himself.
