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“Do not distress yourself, Eleanor. You are a credit to your family and I welcome your candidness. Please, do not be distressed,” he said in as comforting a voice as he could manage.
She looked up at him and suddenly her lips were upon his. For a moment, he froze in surprise. Her arms went around his head to entwine in his hair and her lips pressed insistently against his own.
The door creaked and Edward heard a gasp. He looked up and saw Harriet standing in the doorway, the door ajar. Eleanor must have not closed it properly and some breeze had nudged it open. Harriet must then have peeked in and saw them kissing. Her face went scarlet and then white. She turned and ran along the hallway.
Edward thrust Eleanor away from himself but she hung onto his arms.
“Leave her, Your Grace. She has disgraced herself with her conduct and simply tries to manipulate you. I have observed her plotting. Forgive me for my forwardness, but that is simply an inexperienced woman responding to a handsome and strong man. But my cousin does not mean you well!”
“Then she must answer for what she has done, Miss Worthingham. And I will have those answers. Now, unhand me. Please.”
Eleanor released his arm, looking up at him with tear-filled eyes. Edward found himself wanting to comfort her. She was clearly vulnerable as well as beautiful. It touched a primitive part of him that wanted to respond in the way that he had always done. With seduction. But, the sound of Harriet’s running footsteps tugged at him. No matter how beautiful this woman was before him, the woman who fled was the more enticing. Harriet spoke to a part of him that was deeper than simple lust.
Edward took Eleanor’s hand, pushed it away, and hurried from the room.
CHAPTER 35
He broke into an outright sprint as he left the room. Harriet knew this house intimately but she was encumbered by skirts. The sound of her hurried footfalls never completely left him, though they remained distant. Trusting instinct and luck, he ran past the main staircase and along the hallway, then doubled back for half its length as a door opened and a servant stepped through. At that moment, the sound of running reached him louder, echoing from a stone staircase.
Edward barged past the startled servant and took the steps two and then three at a time, always on the edge of a nasty fall. A door slammed shut before the staircase ended and he wrenched open the one he thought it had been. A hallway faced him, with tall windows looking out over the unkempt park at the front of Erdington.
“Miss Harriet? Is everything…”
The voice of what he took to be a servant reached him from one end of the hallway and he took off in that direction. Rounding a corner, he met a maid, arms laden with linen. The hallways stretched on behind her to end in a tall, wooden door.
“Miss Harriet, where is she?” Edward demanded.
When the woman gaped at him, he snapped his fingers in impatience. “Don’t simply gape at me like a fish, woman. Where is your mistress? Harriet!”
“S-she went through the small door, Your G-grace,” stammered the woman. “Over there. It leads to the k-kitchens.”
Edward wrenched the door open, stooped through the doorway, and ran along a corridor that sloped downwards. The footfalls were gone but he could hear the bustle of many servants ahead of him as well as the clink of cutlery. At the bottom of the sloping corridor was a set of double doors. Running through, he entered a large, high ceilinged kitchen. The air was hot and steamy and a wooden chair had been placed against a door in one corner, propping it open to dispel the heat. Beyond, he caught a glimpse of a blue dress disappearing around the corner of a stable block.
Ignoring the startled face of the cook and her two helpers, Edward sprinted across the kitchen, knocking over a bowl of shelled peas as he went. Crossing the stable yard in long-legged bounds, he reached the corner around which Harriet had run. Beyond was a gravel path leading to steps and then down into the overgrown, neglected gardens.
“Harriet!” he called as he descended the mossy, worn steps. “Come back!”
Hold your tongue, man! Don’t broadcast your every thought for the whole household to hear. I have shared enough of my business with this house already.
Gritting his teeth, he continued along the path in silence. His instinct was to yell out that she had misunderstood what she had seen, that there was nothing and could never be anything between him and Eleanor.
The very idea! She may be conventionally beautiful, but there is no substance to her. By God, I would be bored out of my mind within a week of being married to her. And then seeking entertainment elsewhere, no doubt.
The truth was that no woman had ever held his attention long enough to stave off the inevitable boredom. Some had never been more than bed partners. Some few had received a proposal, always withdrawn soon after. Harriet was the first to make Edward think of life with one woman. He clenched his fists against the urge to call out her name once more, walking along the gravel paths between towering rhododendron bushes and feral growths of yew that had taken over entire beds. It felt like he was wandering through the deep jungle, unable to see beyond a few yards. The foliage also served to mask the sound someone else might be making.
Nothing reached him but the rustle and crack of nature, the soft sighing of a breeze in the canopy, and the occasional shiver of leaves disturbed by rain. Clouds were rolling across Erdington after a brief shower earlier. Soon, he would be wandering this wild expanse of horticulture in the pouring rain. He stopped at a crossing of two paths. Along the path he had been following, there was another set of steps. To the left, a lawn with statuary scattered through it. To the right, the path was enclosed by tall, yew hedges with thick undergrowth clustered around their base, almost obscuring the path itself.
A faint sound reached him from that direction. It almost sounded like crying. He began to walk slowly, footsteps masked by the thick grass that was growing up through the gravel path. Turning a corner, he found her. She sat against the yew, knees to her chin and arms wrapped around them. Her face was buried in her arms and her shoulders shook with weeping. Edward’s heart broke at the sight of her pain.
“Harriet,” he said gently.
Her head whipped up, eyes wide and red-rimmed. She got to her feet and dove through a gap in the hedge, disappearing from sight.
“Stop running away from me. You’ve got it all wrong!” Edward roared, chasing after her.
A gentle patter of raindrops on leaves suddenly became a hissing downpour. Edward was forced to crawl through wet grass and soil to get through the gap in the hedge that Harriet had made her escape through. Beyond was a sloping lawn, ending at a large, circular pond. A fountain rose from the middle in the shape of a fish, though from the look of the stonework, it was long dry.
Harriet was sliding down the slope and then running around the perimeter of the pond, skirts clutched in both hands. An arching stone bridge crossed the water, only three or four feet above the lily-covered surface. She began to dash across it and a loose stone rolled under her foot. With a scream, she stumbled, failed to get her hands up in time, and caught her temple against the edge of the bridge. Her body went limp and toppled sideways into the water.
