Page 9 of Her Heart's Rightful Earl
“Knowing my innocent, darling son lived in exile while the real killer walks free … I cannot tell–”
“Is Marcus well, Mother?” Alexander interrupted. The insistence in her voice instinctively told him their time together was finite, and he needed her to answer this most crucial of questions before he could be satisfied.
“Marcus?” Margaret seemed wrong-footed by his question, and then her eyes wandered cautiously to the door as she asked in alarm, “He isn’t home?”
“No, Mother. My query was not regarding his whereabouts, but his health. The house, the grounds are in disarray. Marcushas not been tending to the estate—is the burden of such responsibility too much for him?”
Margaret batted her eyes at her son in confusion, and as she took a breath to answer, he noticed she was trembling.
“Marcus battles with demons he cannot name, Alexander …” Margaret clutched him as though she might faint, and he held onto her to further support her, gently lowering her back into her armchair and crouching beside her.
“He …” Margaret began, but there came a sound from the corridor. Purposeful steps approached. Margaret’s eyes widened in recognition of the stride, and she inhaled sharply.
Alexander’s eyes darted to the green fabric dressing screen beside the fireplace, and wondered if he would reach it in time, but he already knew there would be no time for him to leave or hide, and before he even had a chance to try, his mother grabbed his shirt, pulling him in close to whisper urgently.
“All is not as it seems, Alexander! I have been watching, waiting, gathering strength for the right moment–”
The door opened, and Alexander heard a sharp inhalation of shocked breath before the sharp crash of porcelain announced their discovery. The tea tray shattered on the floor as their secret meeting was exposed.
Chapter 4
Arabella stood frozen in the doorway, with detritus of the tea service smashed around her feet. Her green eyes wide and unblinking, her lips parted in unspoken questions, and the colour rapidly draining from her complexion.
She had been heading back to Margaret’s sitting room, focusing on balancing the tea tray and on banishing thoughts of Alexander from her mind. There were evenings like this, sometimes, she mused—she would catch a scent that reminded her of him or hear a piece of music they had danced to together.
Evenings where her mind wandered to the beauty of what could have been, marred by the reality of what had materialized. In times such as these, she worked hard to distract herself with the present moment, so as not to wallow.
As she pushed open the heavy oak door, watching that the tea tray did not overbalance, she became instantly aware of a charged atmosphere in the room. That felt wrong—Margaret often napped, and as she did, a peaceful energy would fall over the room. Even before looking up from the tray, Arabella sensed there was somebody else in the room.
Then her eyes landed upon him, and her world flipped upside down.
Her mind could not fathom that what she was seeing was reality. Margaret was sitting upright in her armchair, her blanket fallen upon the floor, pooling at her feet. In her confusion, Arabella’s brain told her she must pick up the blanket to ensure that Margaret did not trip on it.
Next to Margaret—Arabella could scarcely comprehend—crouched beside her chair and cradling her with a broad, muscular arm across her shoulders, was the only man Arabella had ever loved. His hair was thicker than she remembered, though just as dark.
His face was in profile as she entered, but she instantly knew the tilt of his chin, the pout of his lips as he listened to something his mother said, the slight furrow of his defined eyebrows. His eyelashes swept along the curve of his cheekbone, and as he looked up—directly at her—the shocking blue of his eyes struck her like a physical bolt.
Alexander. He was here.
Arabella tried to form the words that resonated in her head:But you’re dead!The words ran through her mind on repeat, but her voice made no sound.
It made no logical sense that Alexander could be alive. She had grieved him! Marcus had held memorial services, had worn mourning clothes, and had wept publicly for his beloved, olderbrother. Everybody knew Alexander to be dead. And everybody had moved through their bereavement, picked up their lives, and advanced onwards … everyone, that was, except Arabella.
And now he was here, in his mother’s sitting room, gazing straight at her with those impossibly blue eyes. They bore into hers with the same intensity that always made her heart gallop, but now those eyes were more lined with hardship and guarded with vigilance.
Arabella wanted to demand how he was here, but no articulation manifested.
Three years of emotional devastation. Three years of noxious guilt that she was married to one man, yet could never give him her heart, because her affections lay loyally with his own cousin. Even worse was that she felt Edmund must have known it.
The regret she carried daily and the shame associated with her undeniable passion for another man threatened to destroy her.
Could it be possible, Arabella panicked, that it was all for nothing? Had Alexander, she thought, been alive the whole time?
She momentarily entertained the idea that she was experiencing a delusion, brought on by the auditory event of his imagined horse whinnying in the wind.
As the soft, evening candlelight hit his skin from a different angle, she noticed that his complexion was more tanned than when she had known him. He had spent time in nature then, luxuriating in sunlight while she hid away in the shrouded shade of bereavement.
She hated how the mere sight of him made her want to weep with love. All that she had repressed, pushed down, and denied feeling, rushed to the surface in a surge of need and overwhelming want.
