“Why not? Because you’d taught me better?” All Luke’s bitterness came rolling out at his father’s harsh questions. “You didn’t spend enough time in a room with me to teach me anything. When Mama passed, you shut me out and sent me away.”
The echo of his words sounded in the room. His father sat frozen and silent; his hands dropped to the arms of his chair as he stared at Luke.
Knocking at the door broke their gaze.
The Earl called, “What is it?”
A footman stepped in. “Pardon me, your lordships, but you have a visitor. She insisted you’d want to know right away.”
“Well, who is it? And you say ’tis a woman, and she is here for... both of us?” His father’s voice was querulous.
“A Mrs. Rossi, sir.”
They gasped in unison.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Belle hated carriages.She’d learned to ride late, as an adult, but had never become comfortable with horses or a sidesaddle. Besides, December was not conducive to riding any distance. So she fidgeted and squirmed on the narrow carriage seat. She hadn’t invested in a better-appointed carriage, as she only ever traveled around London. It was fortuitous that she’d chosen a landau that could be fully enclosed, at least.
Her maid sat across from her, serene. She worked on needlepoint when the light allowed and napped or watched the scenery other times. Belle could not even appreciate the company. She refused to contemplate her reasons for bringing a maid for propriety, given her past. It could not be that marriage still lingered as a faint hope in the back of her mind.
The wet and dreary weather did not allow them to travel at normal speed, so the trip Luke had estimated at five days took seven.
Refusing to think about it, she kept a flask of sherry in her bodice and a spare in her small traveling case at her feet. When her book stopped holding her interest, or she became nauseous from the hours of swaying, she sipped, napped, then sipped again.
Arriving a crumbled and parched mess, she called for a bath at the inn in Old Shoreston. Hating the idea of getting back in that carriage for even a few miles, she was determined to look her best on arriving at the castle. Seven days alone had also not provided her with a plan for what to say if she were even permitted entry.
She sent her favorite burgundy dress downstairs for pressing and splashed through a hip bath with the help of her maid before curling up in a chair near the fire to dry her hair.
Had Luke discussed his future or his past with his father yet? Damnation, what if they’d argued and he’d already left?
No, he’d be there. She knew Luke well enough to know he’d need time to shore up courage to broach difficult subjects with the man he called The Earl.
After a long night with very little sleep, she ate breakfast in her room and paced the length of it until a decent hour to call. Leaving her maid at the inn, she set out for Luke’s ancestral home.
She glanced out the carriage window as it turned through a gate in a wall. Set on the edge of the North Sea, surrounded by the wild heaths and marsh grasses, sat a half-castle, half-citadel sprawled across the top of a long hill. She groaned as the carriage followed a long drive winding around to a huge double wooden door set in the stone.
As if she hadn’t been nervous enough. What business did a whore born in the London rookeries have visiting this place? Even traipsing around to knock on the kitchen door felt beyond her—if she could find the blasted thing. She’d never had a problem with her vocation. Or at least, she’d thought she hadn’t until Charlotte and the Widow gave her cause for concern.
Charlotte’s voice rang in her head.I am equal to any man and better than most.Front doors it was, then. She inhaled long and deep, throwing her shoulders back.
These two men had both cared for her, and despite Luke’s condemnation of his father, she didn’t believe either had a mean bone in his body. If they turned her away, they’d be kind about it.
After what felt like hours, the carriage stopped in a large courtyard. Her heart hammered in her chest as she marched through a stone archway up to the double doors. She took a breath and rapped her knuckles against the wood hard before realizing the heavy iron rings were door knockers as well as handles. Banging one of those, she waited, unsure whether anyone was close enough to hear her.
She gave her calling card to the man who answered the door, which set off a swarm of insects in her belly.
Several agonizing minutes later, the footman returned with both the older and younger Lynwood following him. She noted new lines on North’s face in the miniscule glance she spared him before her eyes slid past him to feast on Luke’s tall loose-limbed form.
“Bellissima?” Luke’s voice overrode his father’s simultaneous, “Belle?”
This was even worse than she’d imagined.
In the moment she needed to regain her voice, North turned to his son. “You know Isabella?”
She silently begged Luke to not make a snide comment. Much as she loved his sense of humor, this was not the time.
Luke didn’t, proving his newfound maturity more than she’d dared hope. “Yes. Among other things, she was my inspiration for Free Your Spirits. She helped me past the worst of my drying out.”
