He suspected she would never fully know peace until and unless she finally fulfilled her mother’s final wish. And that meant she would live out her life ensconced in a house like the one he was staring at now, the word “Lady” instead of“Honorable” engraved on her calling cards. She would probably sit across from a man named Francis at the breakfast table.
Then again, he may have already robbed her of a chance at peace, merely by virtue of existing.
And that gutted him.
Would he have forgone the experience of knowing her? Of holding her in his arms?
He was not that selfless of a man.
He had no map for any of this. He was fumbling in the dark, with only instinct to guide him.
But the enforced domesticity of the Grand Palace on the Thames had cornered him into an uncomfortable realization: He’d been wrong about what he really wanted and who he really was. It had nothing to do with turning the Grand Palace on the Thames into a gaming hell.
No matter how uncomfortable that realization, he was not one to take for granted the gift of that epiphany.
Discreetly but determinedly, nervously but with a sense of irrevocability, he’d already gotten a change of course underway.
That change of course was part of the reason he was here today.
He’d made his decision about this trip to Ginny’s family home sometime during the visit to Michael. He’d known he’d needed to leave straightaway if he wanted a seat on the royal mail coach that afternoon, so he collected a few things in a valise from his residence, had a look to see how the repairs of his roof were going (slowly), then asked Mr. Ogden to send amessage to the Grand Palace on the Thames to let Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand know he would be away.
He’d found a room in an inn in Sussex before the end of the day. That was where he realized he’d become a bit of a snob about inns. There were no comfortable rugs on the floor, no little flower in a vase. He’d miss Helga’s magnificent morning scones.
But he did like how warmly the faces of the innkeepers lit up when he inquired how to find the Woodvilles’ residence. They clearly thought highly of the family.
He walked up the drive.
A luxuriously woolly goat was nibbling the bright flowers growing with unchecked abandon around the perimeter of a fountain in the center of it.
“You must be William,” he said to it. “Something tells me you’re not supposed to be out here eating those.”
William lifted his head and eyed him benignly with his wise, oblong amber eyes.
Marchand gently looped his hand under the rope collar around William’s neck and led him up to the door. The goat clopped behind him complacently, right up the steps, as if he’d done it a dozen times before.
He’d needed to knock twice, much more emphatically the second time, before the door opened a crack.
A woman with chaotic eyebrows peered out and flicked her gaze over him.
“We already have a goat. We don’t need another one,” she said, and began to close the door.
He thrust his booted foot into the crack.
“Are you Mrs. Haddock?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Gabriel Marchand. I hear you’ve been spreading rumors about me, and I’ve come for a reckoning.”
It was a wicked impulse, but he’d been unable to resist it.
She gasped so mightily she nearly sucked his cravat through the door crack.
“Forgive my little jest, Mrs. Haddock. My name is, however, Mr. Gabriel Marchand. I’ve come to call upon the master of the house. The Earl of Highgrove. Is he in?”
“What do ye want wi’ that boy, Mr. Marchand? If you ’arm a hair on his head, I’ll put a curse on you that withers yer nether regions.”
He rather approved of the unorthodox gate-keeping.
