Page 79 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
‘My lord,’ three voices said to him at once, requesting he climb into the carriage, out of the rain, so they might be on their way.
He could not stand here forever. His shirt and his waistcoat were drenched.
‘My lord,’ the groom encouraged again.
Henry looked at the groom and nodded, then walked to the carriage in a daze.
Behind him there was the sound of the backboard banging closed against the cart, and chains moving to secure it.
He and William had a long journey. His father had asked him to take William home, to Farnborough. Henry was to meet the rest of his family there.
Henry held the edge of the carriage by the door and climbed the step, dropped onto the leather seat and looked through the window. The groom shut the door and lit the oil lanterns on the corners outside the carriage. Henry had ordered they travel night and day.
The cart pulled away first, then the carriage moved forward, following it. Henry’s awareness was outside in the rain, on the cart with William.
When he could no longer see it, he tipped his head back and shut his eyes.
He wished to wake up in a brothel in Brighton and for this all to have been nothing more than a liquor-induced nightmare.
Overwhelming pain welled up inside him. The hours he had spent in agony from his shoulder had been nothing. This was torture.
He wished his brother were alive.
He needed Susan… He wanted her comfort. That too was impossible.
20
Susan looked out from her bedroom window at the sound of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves. Her father’s carriage. The book she had been trying to read fell to the floor as she stood up hurriedly. She ran from the room, lifting the skirt of her dress and petticoats and up to her knees so she might indecorously run along the hall. She longed to hold her mother.
When she reached the stairs, she rushed down. Her mother and Alethea walked through the front door into the hall as Susan reached it.
‘Susan!’ Alethea hurried forwards, as Susan ran from the bottom step. They embraced firmly. It was wonderful to have Alethea back.
‘I missed you,’ Alethea said.
‘I missed you too.’Terribly. But Susan longed to hold her mother most. She turned to her.
Her mother’s arms wrapped about her and squeezed her tightly. Susan held her mother tightly too and breathed in the scent of her perfume.
‘Are you well, dear?’ Her mother stepped back as her palmspressed either side of Susan’s face, knocking her spectacles askew in the urgency of the movement. ‘You look as though you have not slept.’
‘I have been worried for Uncle Robert and Aunt Jane.’ And Henry and the others. ‘How are they? Have you seen them?’
‘Your father called on them the day we heard?—’
‘And they were as you would expect,’ her father continued. ‘Distraught. Robert was quiet and subdued and Jane in tears. None of the children came to the drawing room, but I believe they were all there. Uncle Robert brought the boys back from the school, and Percy came from Oxford.’
‘They should all be here at Farnborough now,’ her mother added.
‘I have not heard of their return.’
‘They would have kept it quiet,’ her father said. ‘They are in mourning, they will not want lots of visitors.’
Susan looked at Alethea and swallowed sharply before uttering the words, ‘How is Henry?’
‘We have not seen him. He stayed at the school and was to bring William’s body back to Farnborough.’
‘He should be there by now,’ her father stated.
