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29
Theo paced outside the small coaching inn they’d stopped at to change horses, frowning at the way the sun was dipping lower in the sky. The sense that she must get to Haven immediately had her walking in circles, growing more anxious by the moment. What if she was too late?
No one at Greenbriar suspected Erasmus of anything worse than petty theft so he could buy himself a bottle. Not even Haven thought his uncle capable of plotting his demise.
Theo tapped her chin with her forefinger. He had fooled everyone. Even her. He’d had the audacity to ask her for an allowance, sing his ridiculous songs, and pick her violets, all the while planning to kill her husband.
I’m coming, Ambrose.
Bloody idiot didn’t even know he was in danger. Theo’s only consolation was that Erasmus on his own was unlikely to do much damage. Hewasstill a sot, though a very devious, malicious one. But he could have hired someone. As he’d done in Italy. Because she was fairly certain that Erasmus was behind the attack on his nephew. Which is why he’d gone back to Greenbriar because he’d assumed the attack would be successful. And told everyone who asked that the fairies told him his nephew had died.
Fairies my—
“My lady, we are ready.” Coates appeared next to her, probably wondering why she’d been circling the courtyard like some crazed chicken for the better part of an hour.
“How much longer, Coates?” Erasmuscouldwield a pistol. Probably, depending on how much he’d had to drink.
“Not too much longer.” The footman looked up at the sky.
Or slit Haven’s throat while he slept.
“Tell Stitch to drive faster.”
* * *
Ambrose sat outsideon his newly renovated terrace, admiring the recently trimmed row of hedges in his garden, and took another sip of his mildly expensive wine. The sun was setting low, hanging over the edge of the trees as it sank into darkness. Soon, the stars would come out, filling the sky above his head with their brilliance, very much like what was depicted in the drawing room.
Not one bit of it interested him.
He took another sip of the wine. There weren’t enough bottles in all of England for Ambrose to drown himself in.Finally, Ambrose understood some of his father’s grief. Why he’d started drinking. Theodosia wasn’t dead, not in the way his mother was, but she was gone all the same.
Each morning, when his fingers crawled across the mattress, searching in vain for her slender form, Ambrose considered riding to London to fetch her. The smell of paint no longer suffused the bedsheets. Nor lemon. Yesterday, he’d gone up to her studio and taken out one of her sketchbooks to look at. In her haste to be away from him, Theo hadn’t packed any of her things here, nor had she sent for them. She’d only taken her maid.
Ambrose took that as a sign of hope.
The pad was full of sketches of her father, the progression of his illness apparent in the drawings. He could make out Theodosia’s grief in every brush of the charcoal. Saw the water stains of her tears blurring the edges of the paper. Another sketchpad held drawings of her sisters. Her mother. Several of the duke. One page revealed Leo Murphy, flawlessly handsome with a smug grin on his lips, staring up at Ambrose.
He’d stared at that face for a long time, allowing the anger to ebb and flow over him. Theodosia loved her brother.
Even if Theodosia forgave him one day, and he prayed she would, she would never give up her family. And if Ambrose didn’t put aside his anger—
Leo Murphy was likely guilty of many questionable things; he had to be in his line of work. But he hadn’t made Edmund Collingwood a drunk. Ambrose’s father had managed that all on his own. Acceptance of his father’s failings was painful, but also necessary. He had to believe the evidence his father’s behavior presented and put the past behind him, as difficult as that may be. It would do no good to continue to blame Murphy.
Because he loved Theodosia. Every half-blind, clumsy, brazenly improper, artistic bit of her. He probably had from the beginning.
After she left him without allowing him to explain, something that infuriated Ambrose even though he knew the fault was his, his temper had slowly faded. Barely hours after the Averell coach had rolled away, Ambrose was left with an enormous hollow feeling in his chest. A gnawing emptiness that would not be assuaged. The very worst sort of hunger. He’d always be starving without Theodosia.
Ambrose had shut the drawing room the very day she’d left, threatening Rolfe with bodily harm if anyone so much as dared step inside.
Rolfe, to his credit, hadn’t so much as flinched at the threat.
Ambrose, to his everlasting shame, couldn’t allow anyone else to see what Theo had painted for him. At the very corner, tucked near the windows, was the outline of a man and his son. Watching the stars together outside Greenbriar. A message meant for Ambrose alone.
And I let her leave.
A small growl left him. He sat down on one of the stone steps and took the bottle of wine he’d brought with him, refilling his glass.
Jacinda had been devastated by Theo’s departure. She had only recently started speaking to Ambrose again, and when she did, it was not without censure.
