Chapter 30

CHAPTER30

“Iwill tell you in the morning. Good night, my love. Rest well,” Joanna spat, as she urged Pegasus along the road toward home. Her real home; the place where she at least knew everyone’s wretched secrets and could never receive a nasty surprise.

As if telling me in the morning would lessen the blow, she fumed in silence. Why bid me goodnight at all, if you intended to turn my world upside down?

She had repeated Edwin’s whispered words at least a hundred times in her escape from Bruxton Hall, using them to steel her resolve whenever it had wavered. And it had, on several occasions.

Indeed, she had almost given up while trying to flee the manor itself, for she had first had to contend with Edwin coming to her bedchamber unexpectedly. She had thrown herself into the bed, pulling the coverlets around herself, though she had been fully dressed beneath. Once she had heard the door close, she had waited a short while before running the gauntlet of packing a small bundle of precious belongings without being heard by him.

After that, she had faced the challenge of making it out of the house without being discovered, for even at three o’clock in the morning, she had heard the cook baking in the kitchens and Golding muttering to himself in his study.

Her last obstacle had presented itself at the stables, in trying to saddle Pegasus and lead him out of the stables without anyone noticing her. Unfortunately, one person had: the stablemaster’s boy. They had stared at one another from opposite ends of the hay-scattered thoroughfare for at least a minute, before the boy nodded his head and clambered back up into the hayloft, leaving her standing alone. Had it been anyone else, she was not certain she would have been allowed to depart.

After reaching the country roads that weaved away from Bruxton Hall, she had assumed her abscondment would be easy, but with every mile she put between herself and her husband, her broken heart only hurt more.

“You were supposed to be different,” she murmured, her eyes tired of the tears, her chest aching from the wheezing, sobbing breaths that had been wrenched from her lungs as the darkness of night had transformed into dawn and then into the most beautiful, crisp daylight. A mocking blue sky with a fierce sun, glowing as if it was a happier day.

Pegasus snorted, but Joanna could not tell if he was agreeing with her or not. All she knew was that she could not return to her marital home. She would not be her mother, even if she could not turn back time and prevent herself from suffering a similar fate. She could not change what had already happened, but she could live her life apart from Edwin, just as he had originally planned, forgetting that she had ever fallen in love with someone who had fooled her into thinking it was real.

* * *

“Your Grace!” Mrs. Hislop’s voice pierced through Edwin’s hazy awareness. “Your Grace, get up! You must get up!”

Groggy, he squinted out of one puffy eye, his head thumping as if a miner was trapped inside, taking a pick to his skull to try and escape. His throat was raw and dry, his stomach unsettled, and his tongue felt two sizes too big for his mouth, while a sheen of perspiration slicked his hot skin.

“Is there a fire?” Edwin rasped, wondering what on earth was wrong with him. It could not have been the latent effects of his scorching bath, though he felt as if his veins had been replaced by that hot bathwater.

Mrs. Hislop ran to the drapes and wrenched them apart, pouring in sunlight that stung his eyes, prompting him to recoil. “Get up, Your Grace! Immediately!”

“I… think I shall rest awhile,” he replied, covering his face with a pillow. “I do not feel well.”

“You’ll feel even worse in a moment,” she shot back, grabbing the coverlets and pulling them off him. Too late, he remembered that he had taken to his bed wearing nothing, but Mrs. Hislop merely tutted and turned her back.

Nevertheless, Edwin hurried to cover himself. “What is the meaning of this?”

“She is gone, Your Grace.”

Edwin groaned. “I know. I sent her away.”

“You did what?” Mrs. Hislop whirled back around, staring at him as if she did not know him at all. “Why would you do such a thing? If you begin to spout nonsense about your father and curses, I swear to you upon the loss of my employment that I’ll box your ears!”

Edwin sat up, holding the pillow for comfort. “It is a long and tedious story.”

“And I shall not move until you have told it,” Mrs. Hislop retorted, folding her arms across her chest.

Despite what he had promised Jane, Edwin saw no harm in explaining the situation to Mrs. Hislop. As the housekeeper of a manor like Bruxton Hall, she was nothing if not discreet. Indeed, she likely knew more secrets than Edwin would ever know. So, he told her of what had occurred over the past few days, with Jane throwing herself in his path in a vain attempt to seduce him, and how it had concluded the previous evening.

He grimaced as he came to the end of the story, feeling dirty all over again. “That is why I sent her away, but my aunt does not need to know. If Jane has gone, then all will be well.” He paused, “I intend to tell Joanna this morning, once this headache has passed, in case you think me cowardly.”

Instead, Mrs. Hislop looked horrified. “I wasn’t talking about Jane, Your Grace.” Her voice trembled. “Your wife is gone… and now I think I understand why.”

“Joanna is gone?” Edwin was out of bed in half a second, running for his clothes. His skull threatened to splinter with each movement, but he did not care.

Mrs. Hislop nodded. “The stableboy saw her early this morning before dawn. She was saddling Pegasus. He didn’t think he ought to say anything, but his father came to me and told me.” She shook her head, fidgeting with her chatelaine. “Do you think it possible that she saw what Jane did last night?”

“She was… asleep,” Edwin murmured, too confused to think. “I was asleep. I heard no one come into the library. If I had, I would have rushed Miss Russell out of it!”

At that moment, one of the maids—Cathy—entered the bedchamber with her hand raised. “I saw her,” she admitted. “I saw her wandering. It must have been one o’clock or later. I thought she was venturing to the kitchens, but she went down the hallway to the library. I didn’t think anything of it, ‘til I overheard the stablemaster and his boy this morning.”

“And no one thought to stop her, in her condition? Has everyone gone quite mad?” Edwin tilted his head back, expelling a strained breath. Of course, he knew it was no one’s fault but his own; he should have been firmer with Jane when she began her silly antics.

Cathy dropped her chin to her chest, “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”

Edwin ignored her, sifting through his swirling thoughts. Evidently, during her nighttime wandering, Joanna had entered the library at the worst possible moment, capturing sight of something easily misinterpreted. And, given Joanna’s experience of seeing her father indulge in affairs, that would have been her first and only thought—that Edwin was exactly the same.

“How long ago did she depart on Pegasus?” Edwin turned back to Mrs. Hislop.

“Long before dawn, according to the boy,” she replied. “But I reckon there’s only one place she would go. If you leave now, you can be there by this afternoon.”

It took Edwin a moment to realize what the housekeeper meant, for though panic had sharpened his mind somewhat, it remained foggy from the encroaching swell of the fever that did not seem to care what had happened. Not that Edwin would let something like a sickness prevent him from going to his wife and winning her back. If winning her back was even possible.

Let it be possible, he prayed, his heart threatening to pound out of his chest. He had been a shell of a man before she came into his life, and he would be no more than a husk if she decided she was better off without him.

“Will you follow in the carriage?” he asked Mrs. Hislop. “I… do not know if Joanna will believe me, if I am alone.”

Mrs. Hislop smiled sadly. “Of course, Your Grace.”

“You do believe me, do you not?” Edwin had a moment’s hesitation, wondering if this was what an innocent man, sentenced for a crime he did not commit, felt like.

Indeed, when he had committed a crime, and he and his brother had suppressed the truth by pretending their father’s death had occurred during a riding accident, he had not experienced fear like the fear that coursed through his veins in that moment. Nor had he thought his world was about to crumble, as he did then, thinking of how Joanna might look at him when they saw one another again.

Mrs. Hislop rested a hand upon Edwin’s shoulder. “I don’t know too much, Your Grace, but I know love when I see it. I know how much you care for Her Grace, and I know you’re not so daft as you appear sometimes. You wouldn’t have done that to her, not in a thousand years.”

“Then, let us hope I can make my beloved understand that,” Edwin rasped, his throat choked with worry. Still, there was hope in Mrs. Hislop’s words of faith, and he clung to it as he raced toward the stables to saddle Bellerophon.

All the while, his head spun with vicious regret, I should have sent my aunt and that wretched girl home when I had the chance. I should never have allowed them to stay. For, in that one mistake, made to try and appease his wife, he knew he might well have lost her for good.