Anne Gracie - [The Devil Riders 02] Read online

  And then . . . then she would resume her search, her search for her daughter. For Torie.

  She ached at the thought. Her breasts throbbed. She should have removed the bandages that bound them before she left. Her milk was long gone.

  But, oh, how she ached for her baby, for her precious, tiny daughter. She’d kept the bandages on, reluctant to lose even that, a frail, tangible link, to the child that was . . . somewhere.

  Lost. Stolen away.

  Victoria Elizabeth . . . Torie, after Nell’s mother.

  Nell folded her arms across her breasts. She ached with unanswerable questions. Who was feeding her little Torie now? Was anyone? Oh God, let her be alive, she prayed.

  That torment was always with her, like a coal burning through her consciousness, day and night, the fear that like everyone else in her family, Torie might be—no! She couldn’t think like that.

  Papa was misguided, but he wasn’t evil.

  But he’d had no right to take her baby from her, no right to steal her away in the night. If only she’d divined his intentions . . . but he hadn’t breathed a word. If she’d known, she would have fought tooth and nail for her daughter.

  Guilt wracked her. She should never have let herself fall asleep. Only, after the birth she’d had a touch of fever and she was so tired, so tired . . .

  What had Papa done with her daughter? Where had he taken her?

  They’d found him dead at the crossroads, on the way back from London. Dead, and the whereabouts of her baby gone with him.

  Dead men tell no tales.

  She knew why he’d done it. He’d told her when he first came to see her after locking her away for nearly six months. For her own good. To save her reputation. So she wouldn’t have to suffer for his bad judgment . . .

  But she’d told him no. That she wanted to keep her child. That she loved Torie.

  He’d assured her she wouldn’t have to live with the results of his mistakes. That she could make a new life, put it all behind her, forget . . .

  As if Nell could ever forget the baby she’d carried beneath her heart all these long months. In Nell’s mind and heart, her little Torie had no connection with the events that had started it all, for which Papa blamed himself so deeply.

  It was true that when she’d first discovered she was pregnant, she’d started off despising “it,” hating “it,” wishing “it” had never been conceived, but then . . . the first time she’d felt that tiny flutter of life in her womb . . .

  She’d never felt anything like it.

  She remembered placing her palm over the spot, and waiting, breathless, until she felt it again. And then, suddenly, she didn’t have a “thing” in her belly, she had a baby. A tiny, innocent baby.

  A child that had nothing to do with anyone else, that had nothing to do with the ugliness that had preceded it. There was just Nell and her baby.

  And in the long, lonely months in the strange house where Papa had taken her, shut away with strangers—kind strangers, but strangers, just the same—she’d fallen more and more in love with the tiny helpless creature growing inside her, moving, kicking, wrapping herself around her mother’s heartstrings with every movement.

  Nell’s baby, Nell’s child. Nobody else’s.

  She would sit for hours in the chair beside the window—they wouldn’t let her outside for fear she might be seen—with Freckles snoozing beside her. Freckles was the only friend from home Papa had permitted. He didn’t even trust Aggie not to gossip. Nell was to be hidden away with strangers, under a false name. Papa wasn’t going to let her suffer for his mistake . . .

  As if locking her away from everything she knew and loved—except her dog—wasn’t making her suffer. Typical Papa, always locking the stable door after the horses had escaped.

  So she sat with Freckles, growing a baby under her heart, dreaming of how it would be and making plans. She would take the baby home to Firmin Court, to where Mama was born, and Nell would teach her everything Mama taught Nell—and more, because Mama had gone and died when Nell was seven.

  Her. She’d somehow never thought it would be a boy. But she wouldn’t have cared if it was. She only knew that she loved it.

  And then the long, lonely labor through the night, as pain after pain shafted through her until she thought she might die of it, as Mama had. And finally at dawn, as the clear, gray, gold light spilled over the horizon, she had her baby.

  Her daughter. Her precious, beautiful Torie . . . a tiny, fiercely wailing creature with a red face and gold fuzz and a mouth that was pure, furious rosebud, and tiny little fists with fingers coiled like exquisite, budding ferns.

  And when the midwife had put the tiny creature to Nell’s breast, and the angry wails cut off in mid-scream and the little mouth suckled, a fierce love swelled up inside Nell until she felt she would burst with love and joy and pride. She had a daughter.

  She’d hugged Torie to her and whispered in her miraculous, delicate ear that she’d love her forever and wouldn’t ever leave her . . .

  But two weeks later Papa came, his first visit since he’d left her there all those months ago, and the next morning he and her baby were gone.

  She blamed herself. She should have known, should have thought, should have suspected . . .

  But she’d told him she loved her baby. She showed him her beautiful daughter and told him with such pride that she was naming her Torie—Victoria Elizabeth—after Mama.

  And Papa had wept and said Nell was his good, brave girl and that Papa would make everything all right.

  She hadn’t realized what he meant. As far as Nell was concerned, everything was all right. Her childbed fever was passing and she was awash with love for her daughter and for the world. Her baby was strong and healthy and she didn’t care about anything else. She didn’t care about not being married. She didn’t care about people finding out. She only cared about her daughter.

  Besides, Papa was always making vague and futile promises to make everything all right. He never kept them, so she’d thought nothing more of it.

  And oh, what a mistake that had been.

  As usual Papa only saw what he wanted to see. And he could only see Nell’s baby as a child of shame, a mistake—a mistake for which he blamed himself.

  And so while she’d slept, he’d sneaked into her room at night and removed the mistake, leaving a letter that instructed her to forget all about it . . .

  It, not her.

  As if she could. As if anyone could, even if they wanted to. And Nell didn’t want to. She wanted her baby, her precious, daughter, her Torie.

  “Do you mind, miss?” One of the men in the coach—the clove one—addressed her, a little embarrassed.

  Nell looked up startled. She’d forgotten where she was. Everyone in the coach was staring at her.

  One of the women opposite leaned forward and patted her knee. “You was rocking, miss, back and forth, like you was trying to put a babe to sleep. Only there weren’t no baby. It made the gentlemen uncomfortable-like.”

  Nell looked down. “I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “It won’t happen again.”

  What on earth had he been thinking? Making an offer to a girl he’d known a few hours—and an earl’s daughter at that.

  Mounted on Sabre, his favorite horse, Harry rode slowly, leading a string of horses. Behind him rode Ethan, and several grooms, each of them leading horses. Harry was moving most of his stable from the Grange, his brother’s property on the coast, to his own place.

  The negotiations for Firmin Court had left Pedlington wrung out and disappointed and Harry quietly elated. Harry had brought the estate books from the house and had pored over them for several hours with a grim expression while Pedlington watched, getting more and more glum.

  And he asked questions that intimidated the agent; savage questions like, “How many local families have starved since your firm took possession of the property?”

  In the end, Harry had been so ruthless in pointing out
the many severe defects in the property that the agent even expressed surprise that Harry would even take on such an apparently unsatisfactory property.

  But Pedlington was a townsman, for whom peeling, faded wallpaper was a defect. He didn’t see the property the way a countryman did. Firmin Court had been badly run down, but fundamentally it was everything Harry had ever wanted.

  And now it belonged to him. A home of his own.

  It was the first part of his dream come true; he should have been ecstatic. He was ecstatic, he reminded himself. It was just that he couldn’t get that unnerving moment of madness out of his mind. What ever had possessed him?

  You could always marry me.

  Fool! He hadn’t been thinking, that was the trouble. Or at least, not with his brain.

  It had been too long since he’d lain with a woman. That’s why he’d acted so uncharacteristically, so impetuously.

  It was the only explanation he could think of.

  His brain had been so scrambled with desire for Lady Helen Freymore that he’d spoken without thought.

  Thank God she’d turned him down.

  Of course she had. She was an earl’s daughter, a lady. Ladies of the upper crust were out of bounds for the likes of Harry Morant. She might be down on her luck now, but all those born-to-rule instincts were deep within her—look at the way she’d pokered up when Pedlington became too pushy; that graceful spine had stiffened and those soft eyes had spat fire and ice and she’d coolly put the man in his place.

  Harry had become more aroused than ever, dammit.

  No, he knew the sort of girl he wanted; a quiet, well-dowered, middle-class girl who’d respect him and not make a fool of him. She’d dutifully allow him access to her bed and that would be his problem sorted.

  And her eyes and mouth wouldn’t turn a man’s brains to mush. Or make him blurt out things he didn’t mean to say.

  “There’s a village down there in the valley.” Ethan interrupted Harry’s reverie. “Will we stop for some lunch?”

  They’d set out with a large basket stuffed with food—compliments of Harry’s foster mother, Mrs. Barrow, but they’d made it a slow journey and her food was finished.

  “No,” Harry decided. “Send one of the men down to buy some pies or some bread and cheese and ale. We’ll be at Firmin Court before sundown.” He’d deliberately chosen the back roads so as not to draw attention to the fact that he was moving so many valuable animals.

  It would have been safer to move them quickly, but he’d kept to an easy pace. He was hoping to race several of the horses in the next few months and he didn’t want them to lose condition.

  From his vantage point on the hill, he watched the villagers moving about their business. Behind the church, a pair of lovers were making a secret tryst; a stocky young man and a young girl, lissome and pretty. Harry watched them for a moment, touching, kissing, murmuring sweet nothings, then he turned his face away.

  Young fool. Letting himself get entangled by love.

  He hoped the boy survived it.

  Y-you can’t possibly l-love me. And that damned lower lip of hers had trembled, sending a jolt of raw passion through him. His body stirred at just the memory.

  Of course he couldn’t love her—he’d only just met her, and he didn’t believe in love at all—especially not the at-first-sight sort of nonsense.

  What he felt was desire, lust, whatever you cared to name it. His whole body was racked with it every time she was close. And you didn’t marry for desire; you took a mistress.

  Harry gazed down at the thatched roofs of the village. He needed to make a visit to the city—and soon, if that’s where abstinence got him.

  Not London. Lady Helen would be in London by now. Being a lady’s companion. Stupid job.

  He rode on, brooding. A lady’s companion should be the same as a man’s—a dog. It wasn’t a job for a grown woman. She should be married, with a brood of children keeping her busy, not attempting to entertain some rich, bored old lady.

  No, he wouldn’t go to London. He’d write to his aunt again and remind her she still hadn’t found him a likely wife. He needed to be settled, getting on with his life. He needed relief from the tension that kept him like a taut bowstring. Traveling to the city took up too much valuable time, and taking a mistress in the country simply wasn’t an option.

  The country wasn’t like London, where bored married ladies of the aristocracy played musical beds and everyone turned a blind eye. In London a man could keep a mistress in a discreet house that nobody knew about and visit her whenever he wished.

  In the country everyone found out about everything. And blind eyes were for beggars.

  It wasn’t respectability that bothered him. He couldn’t care less what people thought of him, and in any case, few people ever blamed the man.

  The woman, on the other hand . . .

  He had few memories of his real mother; she’d died when he was a little boy. But he’d learned the word “whore” as a toddler, from hearing people fling it at her in the street, over and over, some to her face, and others behind her back. The earl’s whore and her little bastard . . . That was Harry.

  He wasn’t a bastard at all, not legally. His natural father had bestowed a handsome dowry on his pregnant maidservant and the village smith, Alfred Morant, had married her well before Harry was born.

  People still called Harry a bastard.

  And when the blacksmith—Harry never used his name—when the blacksmith drank too much, which was often, he’d call his pretty blonde wife a bloody damned whore as well, and thump into her soft flesh with his huge, meaty fists.

  The moment the man started drinking, his mother locked little Harry away so he’d escape the broken bones and bruises she suffered. A vicious kick had broken Harry’s hip as a toddler. He carried the limp to this day. After that his mother took the beatings for him.

  It was because Alfred loved her, Mam would explain to Harry afterward, weeping. Alfred had always loved her and wanted her, and he was just angry that the earl had had her first . . . But what could she do? He was the earl.

  Mam had died when Harry was five or six. One blow too many and an unborn child died with her. “Whose child is this one, whore?” the smith had bellowed, even though Mam had never looked at another man. She never even left the house anymore—she couldn’t face the village eyes assessing her bruises, the eyes that said she deserved every one.

  After his mother’s death, Harry’s life had become much harder. The smith had kicked him out and he’d lived like a stray dog, on scraps from the other villagers.

  Then one day Barrow, a groom for a great lady, had brought in a horse to be shod and found Harry bruised, half-starved, and shivering out the back. He’d brought him home as a gift to Mrs. Barrow, a childless, motherly woman, who’d taken one look at him and taken him into her warm heart.

  The Barrows worked for Lady Gertrude Freymore, the earl’s dragonlike spinster aunt. That austere lady had taken one look at Harry and realized the blood connection. Along with his half brother, Gabe, she’d raised him as a gentleman and when she died, she’d left him a legacy.

  But Harry never forgot his beginnings . . .

  He would never take a countrywoman as mistress. Marriage was his only option. He would write to his aunt as soon as he got home.

  The thought warmed him. He had a home of his own for the first time in his life. And soon he would have a wife to warm it. And settle his . . . brains.

  “T is a grand place you’ve got here, Harry, lad,” Ethan exclaimed enthusiastically. As soon as they’d settled the horses into the stables, checked on the work that had been done in Harry’s absence, and informed the new cook that there would be eight men to feed, Harry had taken Ethan on a tour.

  “Those stables are magnificent. There’s everything a man could want—even the remnants of a training track, if my eye doesn’t deceive me.”

  “It doesn’t,” Harry said, grinning. “Lady Helen’s maternal grandp
arents—this was their estate, you know—were famous for breeding Thoroughbreds. They bred and trained a number of winners in their day.”

  Ethan quirked his eyebrow. “Lady Helen, eh? And I gather she’s a fine, pretty lass, this Lady Helen.”

  Harry blinked. “What makes you say that?”

  Ethan shrugged. “You’ve only mentioned her about a dozen times in the last few days.”

  Harry scowled. “That’s only natural—it’s her home I’ve bought.”

  Ethan nodded solemnly. “Natural, yes, the very word I’d have used.”

  “Those fences will need to be renewed before winter sets in.” Harry ignored the knowing amusement in Ethan’s eyes and pointed at the offending fences. “Some of them are so rotted they’ll splinter if a horse rubs against them.”

  “Indeed they will,” Ethan agreed, sobering. “First thing in the morning I’ll get a couple of the lads to go over all the fences and make an estimate of what we’ll need.”

  “I’ve already done it,” Harry told him. “The lumber should arrive tomorrow.”

  Ethan whistled. “You wasted no time, did you?”

  Harry made an offhand gesture. “I want to get as much done as I can before winter sets in.” The truth was he was burning up with unfulfilled desire and tramping around in the cold, muddy fields was just the thing to dampen any lingering . . . energy.

  “What’s that place?” Ethan pointed to a cottage on the edge of the estate, close to the village. “It looks deserted.”

  There was obviously nobody in residence; it was a chilly day and every other house in the village had smoke coming from the chimney. The garden in front of it was unkempt and ivy straggled up into the thatch.

  Harry called one of the local men over. The day he’d signed the papers to purchase the estate, he’d returned and with the help of the vicar and Aggie had found half a dozen men to start work on the most urgent of the repairs. “What’s that house?” he asked the man. “Who owns it?”

  “You do, sir,” the man said. “Used to be the estate manager’s house, but when the money run out, ’e didn’t stay on. Well, ’e wasn’t from around here—a foreigner, ’e was, from up Leicester way, I do b’lieve. Nobody lives there now, ’cept spiders, I reckon.”