Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

“I do not believe it of Judith either,” he said. “I am going after her.”

“Judith,” she said. “She is Judith to you, then, Rannulf?”

“I rode over to Harewood this morning to propose marriage to her,” he said.

“Well.” The usual briskness was back in her voice. “You had better not delay any longer.”

Fifteen minutes later she stood out on the terrace, straight-backed and unsupported, to wave him on his way when he rode out of the stable yard.

Judith would doubtless have been feeling very frightened indeed if she had allowed her mind to dwell upon the nature of her predicament. She was alone with only a small bag of essential possessions in her hand. She was on her way to London, which she might hope to reach after walking for a week or perhaps two. She really had no idea how long it would take. She had no money with which to buy a coach ticket or a night’s lodging or food. Even when—or if—she reached London, she did not know how she would find Branwell or whether it would be too late to recover the jewels and take them back to their grandmother.

Meanwhile there was bound to be pursuit. Uncle George or a constable or—worst of all—Horace might come galloping up behind her at any moment and drag her off to jail. Having escaped from Harewood, she would probably no longer be given the option of returning home. She was not sure that would not be worse than going to prison anyway. How would she face Papa when it was so impossible to prove her innocence and when no one could prove Bran well’s?

No, it was the very thought of facing the dreadful disgrace of going home and of seeing Bran crash down off the pedestal he had always occupied that had finally convinced her just before first light to flee alone and on foot while she still had the chance. She had been surprised at how easy it was. She had fully expected to find guards outside her door or at least in the hall below.

She refused to give in to fear now. What was the point, after all? She trudged along the road on an afternoon that was growing hotter by the minute, concentrating upon setting one foot in front of the other and living one moment at a time. It was more easily said than done, of course. She had had a ride for a mile or two early in the morning in a farmer’s cart, and he had been good enough to share a piece of his coarse, dry bread with her. Since then she had drunk water at a small stream. But even so her stomach was beginning to growl with emptiness, and she was feeling slightly lightheaded. Her feet were sore and probably acquiring blisters. Her bag was feeling as if it weighed a ton.

It was difficult not to give in to self-pity at the very least. And ravening fear at the worst.

The fear crawled along her back at the sound of clopping hooves behind her. It was a single horse, she thought, not a carriage. It had happened a number of times during the day, but she had stopped ducking into the hedgerow to hide until the road was clear again. She waited for the relief of seeing a strange horse and a strange rider go past.

But this horse did not pass her. Its pace slowed as it came up to her—she prayed that she was imagining it—and it clopped along for a while just behind her right shoulder. She would not look, though she braced herself for she knew not what. A whip? Chains? A flying human body to knock her over and pin her to the ground? She could hear her heartbeat thudding in her ears.

“Is this an afternoon stroll?” a familiar voice asked. “Or a serious walk?”

She whirled around and gazed up at Lord Rannulf Bedwyn, huge and faintly menacing on horseback. He had stopped his horse and was looking gravely down at her despite the mockery of his words.

“It is no business of yours, Lord Rannulf,” she said. “You may ride on.” But where was he going? Home again?

“You failed to keep our appointment this morning,” he said, “and so I was forced to ride after you.”

Their appointment. She had completely forgotten about it.

“Don’t tell me you forgot about it,” he said as if he had read her mind. “That would be very lowering, you know.”

“Perhaps they did not tell you—” she began.

“They did.”

“Well, then,” she said when it appeared that he would say no more, “you may ride on or ride back, Lord Rannulf, whichever you choose. You would not wish to associate with a thief.”

“Is that what you are?” he asked her.

It was incredibly painful to hear him ask the question.

“The evidence was overwhelming,” she told him.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “You are a particularly inept thief, though, Judith, to have left evidence lying about your room when you must have guessed that sooner or later it would be searched.”

She still could not understand why Bran had put the bag in her room. The earring she could understand.

Panicky in his haste, he must have dropped it without even realizing it. The floor was carpeted. There would have been no loud clatter as it landed. But the bag ... The only explanation she had been able to devise was that he had known he would be suspected from the first moment but had not expected that her room would be searched. He had hidden the bag in her drawer, she guessed, as a sort of private acknowledgment of his guilt to her and a pledge that he would return the contents as soon as he was able. It was not a very satisfactory explanation, but she could think of no other.

“I am not a thief,” she said. “I did not steal anything.”

“I know.”

Did he? Did he trust her? No one else did or probably ever would.

“Where are you going?” he asked her.

She pressed her lips together and stared up at him.

“To London, I suppose,” he said. “It is a pleasant stroll, I believe.”

“It is not your business,” she said. “Go back to Grandmaison, Lord Rannulf.”

But he leaned down from the saddle and held out one hand to her. She was powerfully reminded of the last occasion on which this had happened and of her first impression of him then—broad, rugged, dark-complexioned, blue-eyed and big-nosed, his fair hair too long, not handsome but disturbingly attractive. Now he was simply Rannulf, and for the first time today she wanted to cry.

“Set your hand in mine and your foot on my boot,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Do you know how long it will take you to walk to London?” he asked her.

“I will not be walking all the way,” she said. “And how do you know that London is my destination?”

“Do you have any money?”

She compressed her lips again.

“I will take you to London, Judith,” he said. “And I will help you find your brother.”

“How do you know—”

“Give me your hand,” he said.

She felt bowed down by defeat then and at the same time strangely comforted by his large presence, by his knowledge of what had happened, and by his insistence that she ride up with him. She did as he had directed her and within moments was up before his saddle again, bracketed safely by his arms and legs.

How she wished time could be wound backward, that that adventure of three weeks ago could be lived all over again and what had followed it could be changed.

“What are you going to do when we find him?” she asked. “Turn him over to the authorities? Have him sent to jail? Could it be even worse than that for him? Could he be ...” She could not complete the appalling possibility.

“Is he guilty, then?” he asked.

“He is very deep in debt,” she said, “and his creditors have followed him even to Harewood and pressed him to pay.”

“All men in debt steal their grandmothers’ jewels, then?” he asked.

“He knew about them,” she said. “He had even seen the box. He joked about how they could get him out of his difficulties. At least, I thought it was a joke. And then last night he came to me in the middle of the ball to tell me that he was leaving, that he thought he would be out of debt and would make his fortune very soon. He was very agitated. He kept looking around him as if he expected someone to pounce on him and stop him. He would not let me see him on his way.”

“The evidence seems overwhelming,” he said.

“Yes.”

“As it seems in your case too.”

She turned her head sharply to look into his face. “You do believe I am guilty,” she cried. “Please set me down. Set me down.”

“My point being,” he said, “that evidence can sometimes lie. As it obviously does in your case.”

She gazed at him. “You think it is possible that Branwell is innocent , then?” she asked him.

“Who else might have taken the jewelry?” he asked her. “Who else but the two of you had a motive?”

“No one,” she said, frowning at him. “Or perhaps a large number of people to whom the prospect of riches is enticing.”

“Precisely,” he said. “We could easily narrow down the number of possibilities to nine-tenths of the population of England. Who might have had a motive to ruin you and your brother?”

“No one.” Her frown deepened. “Everyone loves Bran’s charm and sunny nature. And as for me, no one ...”

“It is at least a possibility, is it not?” he said when her eyes widened.

“Horace?” The idea was an overwhelmingly attractive one, deflecting as it would the guilt from Branwell.

“He certainly had a vicious plan for me,” he reminded her.

But she could not accept a theory merely because she wanted to believe it. Except that the velvet bag in her drawer and the earring on the floor would make far more sense if Horace were the culprit.

“I must find Bran anyway,” she said, “even if only to warn him. I need to find out the truth.”

“Yes,” he said, “you do. When did you last eat?”

“This morning,” she said. “I am not hungry.”

“Liar,” he said. “Claire Campbell tried that one on me too. You could well starve on pride, you know.

Did you sleep last night?”

She shook her head.

“It shows,” he told her. “If I were meeting you now for the first time, I might mistake you for only a marginally lovely woman.”

She laughed despite herself and then had to clap the back of her hand over her mouth and swallow several times in order to prevent herself from bawling.

One of his hands pulled loose the ribbons of her bonnet from beneath her chin. He took the bonnet off—it was the one he had bought her—tied the ribbons inexpertly again, and looped them over his saddle. Then he drew her sideways against him and pressed her head to his shoulder.

“I do not want to hear another word from you until I can find a respectable-looking inn at which to feed you,” he said.

She ought not to have been comfortable. Perhaps she was not. She was suddenly too tired to know. But she could feel the strong, firm muscles of his shoulder and chest, and she could smell his cologne or whatever it was about him that made him unique, and his head and hat were shading her from the rays of the sun. She drifted into a pleasant state between sleeping and waking and imagined lying safe on the bottom of a Viking boat while he stood massive and protective at the prow. Or standing beside him on a cliff top while his Saxon locks and his Saxon tunic fluttered in the breeze and she knew that he would take on every fierce warrior who dared invade his shores and vanquish them single-handed. She would have thought she was asleep and dreaming except that she was aware that she dreamed and seemed to have the ability to direct the dream in whichever direction she wanted.

She wanted to believe in him as the eternal hero of mythology.

He let one inn go by since she was dozing on his shoulder and he guessed that she needed . sleep at least equally as much as she needed food. He stopped at the next decent inn and insisted that she eat every mouthful of the meal that was set before her even though after the first few bites she told him that she did not think she could eat any more.

It was already late afternoon. They would not make it to London tonight. He thought briefly of hiring a carriage and going as far as Ringwood Manor in Oxfordshire. Aidan had told him fondly in London, while waiting impatiently for all the business of selling his commission to be completed so that he could return to his wife, that Eve had a strong tendency to reach out to all sorts of lame ducks, most of whom ended up in her employment. She would take Judith in even if Aidan pokered up and looked askance at her. She would perhaps be able to offer Judith some of the comfort she needed.