Chapter 22

Curse whatever circumstances visited a megrim on her the very moment she’d needed to show her strength. Hardly a surprise, however. Stressful situations often brought her low, her head pounding, odd wiggles across her vision. She never told anyone about the wiggles. Afraid of what they might think of her. They didn’t seem to hurt her, and they disappeared after a bit, leaving only the pain, the pounding.

And over the last two days, she’d been isolated in her new bedchamber, Quinton scratching at her door, whispering, wanting to know if she’d had the tea, if she needed a bath drawn, if it was dark enough inside her room, warm enough, comfortable enough. If he should send for the doctor.

If she’d let him in.

No to those last two queries.

How could she convince him of her strength while laid so low, so helpless? She hated it. Hated herself. Hated him for saying he loved her but…

But. Horrid word, that.

At least the headache had left her sometime in the night. The day spread cloudy and thus tolerable before her, and she’d even thrown her curtains open. She ached to go out, but her mood kept her confined. As did, it must be admitted, the possibility of coming face-to-face with her husband, whose voice had taken on many tones over the last two days from the softness of concern to the sharpness of irritation. Her refusal to let him in frustrated him. Well, he frustrated her, too. He’d made her cry. She hated crying. Always brought on the headache.

She rolled out of her bed and shuffled for the window, leaned her temple against the warm glass. Was that figure riding into the distance Quinton? If so, she could leave her room for a few hours, enjoy the gloomy day, and return before he did. She wanted to see the cottages, help in some way. But that’s likely where he’d gone.

She called for her maid and donned a walking gown, spencer, and bonnet. Her family’s land was not too far, and the chapel where her parents had been buried. She’d needed her mother the last few lonely days, and her feet easily took her down the path that led to home. But when they reached a crossroads—one leading to Clearford Castle and the other to the village—they stopped, as if they could not decide which direction to go in. The wind whipped up around her, and she searched the skies. Gloomier than before. Would it storm again so soon? Were the remaining cottages in danger? Should she go to Quinton and offer help?

Finally, a question with a clear answer: He would not welcome her help.

He’d asked her twice now, both times before she’d drifted off into a fitful sleep, speaking low through the locked door that connected their rooms: What can I do? “Tell me Lottie,” he’d said, “please tell me what I can do?” The first night, she’d thought he meant her headache. But the second night, she’d heard a deeper timbre to the question, and she’d recognized a different meaning to it. How could a man prove to a woman that she was not a distraction? How did he show her that her presence in his life was a boon not a regret, that she made him stronger instead of weaker?

Because that’s what Lottie needed Quinton to do, prove to her he saw her strength.

Perhaps she asked too much. Perhaps she’d damned herself to a life in which she felt like a burden to her husband.

No. She was not damned to hell. While she’d ruminated, her feet had chosen a path—toward the village. And she had chosen a path as well—to fight with her husband until he saw her worth, to prove to him through action and time that he would not regret binding their lives together.

As she approached the cottages, voices rose into the air, sharp and tight. She picked up her pace and found several men, Quinton among them, gathered before an undamaged cottage.

The wind picked up, howling their words toward her.

“There are weaknesses, especially in the roof, but we can use the canvas tarpaulins, can’t we?” Quinton’s voice, looking for reassurance.

“Yes,” a familiar voice Lottie couldn’t quite place said. “But we’d better hurry.”

“The storm doesn’t seem like it will be as bad as the last one.” That voice belonged to Quinton’s estate manager. “But we should inspect all the standing cottages. Not much time.”

Lottie could help. Letting her bonnet fall from her head and dangle down her back, she ran around the side of the cottage.

“Lord Noble!”

Quinton’s head jerked around. “Lottie.” He strode toward her, then he ran, grabbing her hands and pulling her beneath a slight overhang on the side of the cottage. “What are you doing here? Your head—”

“Is significantly better. You need help. I can offer it.”

His jaw set hard, twitched. He would send her away.

Two men sauntered into view, Mr. Rilston and Mr. Barnaby.

Barnaby scowled as only a disgruntled man could. “Leave the men to worry over it, Lady Noble. You’ll only be in the way.”

Mr. Rilston’s eyes popped wide, but he screwed his mouth shut, glancing at his employer.

Keeping his body turned to Lottie, Quinton slanted his head at a sharp angle to face his father’s friend. “Talk like that to my wife again, Barnaby, and you’ll not be welcome here.”

“What’s she going to do but distract you, Quinton.” Barnaby sniffed. “Send her away. Or she’s just another bad decision.”

Finally, Quinton snapped long steps toward Barnaby. “I am the one making the decisions on my own estate if you haven’t noticed. It has been some years since you’ve had any control here, though I’ve always taken your input into account. If you’d like that to continue, take my wife’s name off your lips.”

Lottie watched them bounce their antagonism like a ball between them. She should step forward and stop it. But… she rather enjoyed listening to Quinton put Barnaby in his place.

A rumble nearby shot Lottie’s gaze skyward. Clouds but no lightning, but there it came again—a rumble. She looked down the road.

“A coach.” She walked toward it. “It… it’s my brother’s coach.”

Quinton cursed and joined her, watching the coach wind its way toward them. It stopped on the road near the cottages, and after a moment, the door flew open.

And four women jumped down.

Lottie cried out and flew toward her sisters, hugging them all at once in a flurry of bonnets and velvet and lace that felt like home and comfort and everything good. “What are you doing here?”

Prudence frowned and found a spot behind Lottie to focus on. “We were worried.”

Andromeda patted Lottie’s shoulder. “Your new husband did not behave well at the wedding. And you left so quickly.”

“We thought to save you,” Isabella said.

“If you need saving,” Imogen added.

“Do you need saving?” Andromeda, too, looked behind Lottie.

So, Lottie turned as well, found Quinton looking pale and rigid against the gray sky.

A rumble like a low roar, and then Quinton’s form illuminated by the yellow green of electric light.

Thunder. Lightning. They did not have much time.

The lightning must have jumped Quinton into motion. He ran toward her once more, barely acknowledging her sisters and cuffing her arms with his hands. “You must leave now.”

“I can—”

“Get in the damn coach now and go, Lottie. I don’t care how scared you are of its confines.”

She felt the rush of heat, her sisters’ confused glances, heard Imogen whisper to Isabella, “Scared of the inside of a coach?”

Lottie shook her head. In response to her sister’s query or her husband’s command, she could not say.

His hands on her upper arms became manacles, tight, demanding. “Go, Lottie. Now. Because as scared as you are I am doubly so. Of that sky throwing death your way.” Something like madness in his eyes, his hair damp against his forehead.

She understood that madness, that fear. She felt it even now; her sisters had traveled here without her knowing. Anything could have happened. And they would travel back, too. The future was so entirely unknowable, that blank darkness terrifying. Is that what Quinton saw with her and the lightning and the whipping wind? Unknowable terror?

Shaking his hold loose, she cupped his face and kissed him, hard and with every ounce of pent-up emotion coursing through her. She kissed him with more fury than the building storm and more joy than the sun that would shine after the storm raged itself into nothing.

“Don’t get hurt, Chance,” she said, resting her nose alongside his, each word brushing her lips against his.

His arms clenched tight around her, his face dove deep into the crook of her shoulder, and he inhaled, ragged and deep, and the sky above them boomed, glowed. He pushed her away. “Go. Now.”

No hesitation in her steps as she hitched her skirts and ran. She felt the first drop of rain on her cheek as she climbed into the coach, and her sisters appeared around her, hair damp and spencers dotted with the deep hues of rain drops.

Andromeda and Prudence sat on either side of her, hugging her tight, comforting. Across from them, the twins fussed, pulling books and blankets out of corners as well as a wicker basket Imogen popped open.

“Take a biscuit,” Imogen said, pulling one from the basket’s bowels. “Your favorite.”

“No thank you.” The coach lurched forward, and Lottie gripped the edge of her seat, waiting for the familiar fear to roll through her.

Prudence patted Lottie’s hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll have you home soon enough, and then you can send for your clothes later.”

“Send for my… Do you think I’m going to return to London with you?”

Andromeda hummed, pushing a lock of hair behind Lottie’s ear. “I have been trying to tell them that is not likely to be the case, but—”

“But you looked so miserable on your wedding day,” Isabella said.

“And that scoundrel, your husband, looked so very guilty. A true villain.” Imogen’s knuckles whitened as her grip tightened on her book.

“We’ve not heard from you,” Andromeda said softly. “Not a single letter. I thought a quick visit might reassure us all that you are well.”

“I haven’t been well,” Lottie admitted. “My head.” She rubbed her temples. The discomfort returned. Those lightning flashes in the sky had set off waves of lightning in her head. “I could not write. I’ve been abed in the dark.”

Commiserating murmurs joined the grumble of the wheels of the path and the deep rumble of the sky’s disapproval. A storm. A coach. Her sisters within. She should be near paralyzed with fear. Her heart skipped not for her, for them, but for the man standing beneath a raging sky who’d sent her away. He would be well. He must be.

She faced Andromeda first. “Thank you for worrying over me.”

Andromeda’s soft smile could heal almost any wound.

Lottie faced Prudence. “Thank you for coming to save me.”

Prudence pulled up tall, beamed with pride.

Lottie faced the twins. “And thank you for facing Quinton, even when you think him a villain.”

“Always,” the twins said together.

Lottie smiled then, a curve of lips she felt in her soul, impossible to put into words. “I love you all. But I am not going back to London. Not without my husband.”

The coach exploded into objections, but Andromeda’s arm slipped around Lottie’s waist, squeezed. She rested her head on Lottie’s shoulder.

Lottie rested her head against her sister’s and waited for the others to quiet down before she said, “I love him, and he loves me, and we are at loggerheads, but we will fight until we work it out.”

Prudence leaned her head on Lottie’s other shoulder and huffed. “You mean you’ll insult him until—”

“No. I will not insult him. Because I love him. I will fight for him. And for us. We will fight our fears together and help each other overcome them. That is what I mean by fight. Not insults and barbs. But standing together and fighting everything that seeks to pull us apart.”

“And if he will not fight alongside you?” Imogen asked, clutching her book.

“If that proves true…” Lottie was determined it would not. “Then, and only then, will I come home.” Because staying would be beyond painful. “Let us go to Dewmore and enjoy a meal at the pub while it storms. It is closer than Bluevale.” And though her fear for Quinton seemed to outweigh her fear of coaches for the moment, she did not wish to test it with a longer trip.

The sky roared and the coach shook, and Lottie gripped the seat, hugged her sisters, and prepared to fight.