Читать книгу The Handmaiden's Necklace - Kat Martin - Страница 9

Rafe leaned back in the chair behind his desk. A mild June sun streamed through the mullioned windows, warming the room, but it didn’t improve his mood. His arm was throbbing, yet the wound, thankfully, had proved to be minor. The lead ball had gone through the fleshy part of his arm without hitting bone and passed out the opposite side.

Oliver Randall had not been so lucky. The ball had hit a rib beneath his heart, glanced off and lodged in an area near his spine. Neil McCauley had successfully removed the ball but the damage had already been done. Assuming the wound escaped putrefaction, Oliver Randall would live, but the man would never walk again.

Rafe felt no remorse. Oliver Randall had cruelly and deliberately destroyed two people’s lives for no other reason than jealousy. He had plotted and planned, lied and duped the entire town of London and especially Rafael. Now, in return, Oliver’s own life had been destroyed.

“You reap what you sow,” Rafe’s father had said when Rafe was a boy. The late duke had been fair and just. He would have seen justice in the outcome of the duel.

Still, Oliver wasn’t the only man at fault. In the days since the duel, Rafe had set out to mend some of the damage he, himself, had caused. He meant to clear Danielle’s name of any wrongdoing in the scandal that had ended their betrothal, but he wanted to speak to Dani first.

In that regard, his efforts had failed.

Rafe swore softly. Frustrated and out of sorts, he was thinking of Danielle when a knock at the door drew his attention. His butler, Jonathan Wooster, silver-haired with a narrow face and watery blue eyes, stood in the doorway.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Your Grace, but Lord and Lady Belford are here to see you.”

He had wondered when his friends would arrive. “Show them in.” They were worried about him, he knew. He’d been holed up since the duel and hadn’t left the house. Though justice had been served, he felt defeated. He hadn’t left the house because he couldn’t find the will.

Ethan ushered Grace into the room, a lovely young woman with heavy auburn hair and jewel-green eyes and dressed in a fashionable, high-waisted gown a paler shade of green. Grace and Rafe had long been friends, but never anything more. Rafe believed that Grace had been destined from the start to become Ethan’s bride, the one person who could dispel the darkness his friend had carried inside him.

“How are you feeling?” Ethan asked, a worried look on his face. He was as tall as Rafe, leaner, darker, his features more sculpted, the sort of man women were drawn to. Even more so now that his demons were gone.

“The wound was never that serious.” Rafe strode toward them across the room. “And the arm seems to be healing very well.”

“That’s very good news.” Grace’s pretty face lit with a smile. “Perhaps you feel well enough to accompany us to luncheon. It’s such a lovely day.”

Rafe glanced away. His body was mending, but his mind lingered in the past. The day after the duel, he had summoned Jonas McPhee to discover the whereabouts of Lady Wycombe and her niece, Danielle Duval. Since Rafe hadn’t seen her since the afternoon tea and neither had his mother, he thought that perhaps she and her aunt had returned to Wycombe Park.

Instead, according to McPhee, Danielle and her aunt had left the country.

“I can tell by the grim look on your face that you have discovered Danielle is gone,” Ethan said.

Rafe frowned. “How did you know?”

“Victoria told us,” Grace said. “She seems to have an invisible connection to every servant in the city. She was looking for information about Danielle. I suppose she thought you would probably wish to see her.”

Rafe bit back a sigh of frustration. “Unfortunately, Jonas McPhee informed me three days ago that Danielle and her aunt have sailed for America, gone off to the city of Philadelphia. I had hoped to speak to her, to apologize and somehow try to make amends. I don’t suppose that is going to happen now.”

“Certainly not right away,” Ethan agreed.

Rafe looked at his friend. “Did Victoria also tell you that Danielle has accepted a proposal of marriage from an American name Richard Clemens?”

“No. I don’t think she knew.”

Rafe stared past the couple, out the window into the garden. The sun was shining as it hadn’t in days, and a pair of sparrows sat on the branch of a sycamore tree beside the house.

He turned back to his friends. “Danielle has given up her home, been forced to leave her own country to try to find some kind of happiness for herself. She has sailed thousands of miles to escape the terrible things that were said about her—none of which were true—and the fault is entirely mine.”

Grace reached over and touched his arm. “That is not so. Your actions undoubtedly played a part, but Oliver Randall is the man responsible. He planned to end your betrothal to Danielle and destroy your feelings for each other—and he succeeded.”

Rafe’s hand unconsciously fisted. “Randall accomplished exactly what he set out to do. He destroyed any chance for happiness Danielle and I might have had. Unless, of course, she finds some measure of contentment with the man she intends to marry.”

Grace’s fingers pulled on the sleeve of his coat. “Are you willing to take that chance, Rafael?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Danielle’s marriage might make her life even more unhappy than it’s been for the past five years. Are you willing to take that risk?”

His chest tightened. The thought had occurred to him more than once in the past few days. He remembered the Dani he had fallen in love with, so sweet and innocent yet filled with such passionate fire.

Who was this man she intended to marry? Did she love him? Would he take care of her, treat her the way she deserved?

Ethan’s voice filled the silence that had fallen in the study. “Grace believes there is yet a chance for you and Danielle—if you are brave enough to take it. My wife believes that you are still in love with the woman. She is convinced that you’ve never stopped loving her. She believes you should go after her and bring her home.”

Rafe cast a hard look at Grace. “I realize you have always been an incurable romantic, sweeting, but this time I think you may have gone completely over the mark. Dani is marrying another man. She is probably in love with him. And I… I am betrothed to Mary Rose.”

“Are you still in love with Danielle?” Grace pressed.

Rafe took a steadying breath. Was he still in love with Dani? It was a question he had never allowed himself to ask. “It’s been five years, Grace. I don’t even know the lady anymore.”

“You have to find out, Rafael. You have to go after her. You have to discover if you still love her—and if she still loves you.”

Rafe snorted. “The woman loathes the very sight of me.”

“Perhaps she does. Perhaps she only thinks she does. Once I convinced myself that I hated Ethan. I blamed him for everything that had happened to me. But the day he showed up on my doorstep, I realized that the feelings I once held for him were still there, hovering just below the surface. At the time, I wished it weren’t so. Now…”

She turned, slid her arms around her husband’s waist and leaned into his embrace. “Now I am only grateful that he came for me, grateful that he has come to love me the way I love him, grateful for the son he has given me.”

Ethan bent his dark head and pressed his lips against his wife’s auburn curls.

“What about Mary Rose?” Rafe asked. “We are betrothed, in case you have forgot.”

“You don’t love her,” Ethan answered, surprising him. “And I don’t believe she loves you. I don’t think you want her to.”

No, he didn’t want Mary Rose to love him. Because he knew he could never return that love.

“Ask her to wait,” Grace urged. “Surely a little more time before the wedding wouldn’t be too much to ask.”

Rafe made no reply. His chest was squeezing. The questions Grace posed had been hovering at the edge of his mind since McPhee had discovered the truth about that night. The list had only grown since the duel. They were questions that needed to be answered.

There were words that needed to be spoken, a past that needed to be resolved.

“I’ll think about what you’ve both said. I want you and Ethan to know that no matter what happens, I appreciate your friendship. You will never know how much.”

Grace’s pretty eyes filled with tears. “We just want you to be happy.”

Rafe only nodded. He had given up that hope five years ago. Now, hearing his best friend’s words, the thought burned inside him again. Was it possible? He didn’t know, but he knew he had to find out.

Tomorrow morning, he would book passage for himself on a ship bound for America.

“If you decide to go,” Ethan said as if he had read Rafe’s mind, “Belford Shipping has a vessel sailing for America three days hence. The owner’s cabin is yours. The Triumph can sail you straight up the Delaware River to Philadelphia, and she’s a fast ship, Rafael. With good weather, she’ll cut at least a week off the time Danielle has ahead of you.”

Rafe looked up at him. Inside his chest, his heart was squeezing as if it were locked in a fist.

“Make the arrangements” was all he said.