Page 53 of The Trials of Alaric
“How could I not?” Alaric told her. “I had promised your father. I had promised you, in the message I gave Ellie. I could not be back by dinner last night, but I am here as soon as I could be.”
There it was.Her smile. The smile that made his heart grow two sizes too big for his chest. “I am glad,” she said.
“I realized what the fifth clue meant,” he told her. “Tarquin, my brother, suggested we were like Odysseus, thwarted at every turn.”
“It is the rhyme!” Bea declared, after a cautious look to see that the others were all absorbed with their own conversations. “Odysseus and Penelope. Alaric, there is a frieze in the picture gallery of scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and one of them is of Odysseus drawing his bow, with Penelope and her loom, and the suitors all looking horrified.” She chuckled. “Having one’s husband shoot them all is not something one can do with unwanted suitors in this day and age.”
“Am I a wanted suitor?” Alaric dared to ask.
She had no time to answer, for Lady Dashwood came hurrying up, her son beside her. “Dear Lady Beatrice,” she gushed, “what are you doing all by yourself over here? Henry has come to keep you company, haven’t you Henry?”
Their private moment was over, but Alaric was content. Lord Claddach had accepted them back into the trials. Bea wasn’t angry with him. Both had agreed to wait for a fuller explanation.
As they prepared to ride back to the castle, Bea found a moment for another private word. “The picture gallery is on thefirst floor. From the main stairwell, turn east and go through the double doors. At the far end of the passage, turn right into a salon. The doors on the other side of the room let into the picture gallery. Meet me there at two o’clock.”
They were interrupted by Dashwood again. He brought Bea’s horse, leading it with the reins gripped close to the bit, so that the mare was objecting, sidling sideways and rolling her eyes.
“Your horse, Lady Beatrice, though she’s a bit feisty for a lady, isn’t she?”
Bea held out her hand for the reins, her eyes snapping. “You are holding her too close and pulling on her mouth, Sir Henry.” She softened the rebuke, adding, “Thank you for bringing her to me.”
The horse had calmed immediately under its mistress’s tender hands, one on the reins and one on its neck. Bea said a few gentle words to it. “There you are. Good girl. Good girl.”
Sir Henry, who had bristled at Bea’s criticism, was looking around, frowning. “There isn’t a mounting block, my lady,” he pointed out.
“Mr. Redhaven shall toss me up,” Bea decreed, and Alaric took his cue, bending to offer his linked hands to her boot.
One of Claddach’s servants had taken his horse for water and food, and now led it to him, and soon the entire party was on its way back to the castle, leaving the servants to pack up the tent and all that was in it.
Bea rode next to the curricle containing her friends from the town, and Alaric took a place as close to Bea as he could, given that Dashwood had the same idea.
Dashwood had the coveted position when they were approaching the castle. The earl rode up next to Alaric. “I will hear your fuller explanation when you have had time to wash and change, Mr. Redhaven. I assume you will bring your friendVersey and your brother. Perhaps Stavely’s wife, too, if you consider it appropriate. Two o’clock. My study.”
“Yes, sir,” Alaric replied.Damn. The same time as Bea had set. “Sir? It might be helpful if Lady Beatrice was also there. She has a right to know what took me—me and Luke—away when we are committed to the trials.”
Claddach responded with a piercing look and a single nod. “Very well,” he said.
Alaric hoped Eloise did not mind.
He went up to the bedchamber the Stavelys had been assigned. Tarquin opened the door to their room. “Oh. Alaric. Come in.”
It was a two-room suite. Eloise was reclining on a sofa in a little sitting room, and Alaric could see the corner of a bed through the door into the next room. “Alaric. Did Lord Claddach forgive you for arriving late? Did Lady Beatrice?”
“Provisionally,” Alaric told her. “We have been granted a pass in the three trials we missed, since they were all things we’ve done on the island—catching bulls, driving a carriage, and buying a horse. He wants a fuller explanation, though. So does Bea. That’s why I came. Tarquin, he wants to meet us at two o’clock. Eloise, you too, if you wish. Bea and Luke will be there, too.”
Eloise paled. “Do you have to tell them about Bebbington and… you know.”
“Sweetheart,” Tarquin told her, bending over her and taking her hand. “Lord Claddach guessed at the same time as Alaric and I did. We shall not need to talk about it, will we, Alaric?”
“We can just say that Bebbington wanted to keep you from leaving, and Tarquin, Luke, and I had to rescue you,” Alaric agreed. “But Eloise, I would like your permission to tell Bea the truth. She is, I hope, going to be my wife—your sister. She will not blame you, I know. Indeed, she might blame you if she doesnot know the truth. For jilting me.” Was it unfair to say that? But Alaric thought it was true. When he had mentioned Eloise and Tarquin at the horse fair, Bea had made a caustic comment about forgiveness and his years of exile.
Eloise grimaced. “I am so sorry that I lied about you forcing me, Alaric. Or, at least, failed to correct Tarquin when I realized what he had assumed. It was wicked of me.”
“We understand, darling,” Tarquin assured her. “You did not know me well enough to know I would not blame you. Bebbington is at fault—for damaging your ability to trust as well as the other.”
“You did what you thought you needed to,” Alaric said, dutifully. He was determined not to hold a grudge, and he truly did not want Eloise to keep apologizing, which she had been doing at intervals ever since they’d extracted her from her stepbrother’s clutches.
This time, she explained. “I should have told the truth,” she insisted. “About falling in love with Tarquin, and about what my brother had done to me. Bebbington was threatening to ruin you if I married you, and you didn’t deserve that. Besides, I didn’t desire you, Alaric, though I could see you desired me. I didn’t think I would ever desire anyone. And then you introduced me to Tarquin, and I discovered I was not as broken as I thought. I knew my brother would be no match for the heir to an earl. In any case, it would not have been fair to marry you, feeling as I did about Tarquin.”
