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Dropping into a crouch, he set her on her feet and she threw her arms around this neck. He hugged her, trying to find in his baby sister’s embrace something to soothe the ragged hollow in his chest.
All night he had ached with longing, tempted to go to Arabella’s bed, take her in his arms, and sleep by her side. He awoke still haunted by a feeling of loss, even as he insisted he had lost nothing.
“We’ll have a home together soon, I promise,” Guy said to Ursula. “We’ll be a happy family.”
She patted his cheek. “I want a nice home with cake every day,” she might have said, and he decided he’d take that too.
Of course, his household would be nothing like the harmonious place—or dollhouse, according to Freddie—he had imagined. Ursula was a rambunctious child, and Freddie was downright unruly.
He wouldn’t have them any other way.
He went in search of Freddie, hoping to find her before Arabella returned from her ride, but instead, in the music room, he found Lady Treadgold distressed and Matilda Treadgold confused.
“She needs to be here.” Lady Treadgold was wringing her hands. “Of all the times for Lady Frederica to be running off. She knew we needed her here.”
“What for?” Miss Treadgold asked. “No activities are planned, and you never minded when she went off alone before.”
“Yes but today…”
“What’s happening today?”
Guy had no patience for their family squabbles. “I need to see Freddie now,” he interrupted.
“You see?” Lady Treadgold said to her niece. “His lordship needs to see her. But she went… Oh, and she’s wearing those dreadful trousers. Though I’ve no idea how she found them again. Whatever will he think?”
“I think they look regal,” Miss Treadgold said loyally.
“I’ll find her,” Guy said.
Better to run around the estate seeking Freddie than to chance a meeting with Arabella.
Sheer luck had him heading toward the abbey ruins first, where he spotted Freddie riding ahead. By the time he dismounted, Freddie’s horse was already tethered, and she had just started climbing the ruins. The Turkish trousers were paired with a man’s shirt, waistcoat, and boots—an eccentric, mismatched ensemble, but she likely had few options. She climbed higher than he ever had, apparently indifferent to any danger. Nimble and sure-footed, she traipsed along a broken wall to reach what had once been a long hallway, now an exposed platform.
Guy climbed and found her sitting cross-legged like a tailor under the arch of an ancient window.
He dropped onto the sill beside her. The ground was far beneath them, but the view was magnificent: a rolling patchwork of fields and woodlands, punctuated by villages and manors and rivers.
“You’re good at climbing,” he remarked. “Those Turkish trousers are perfect for it. Lady Treadgold doesn’t approve.”
“She took them away, but Arabella arranged to get them back for me.”
A pang struck him. Yet again, Arabella had done a kindness for someone else.
“How do you know where to put your feet?” he asked Freddie.
“I just do what feels right.”
“A philosophy to live by.”
Freddie picked the moss off the stones. “Everyone’s always telling me what to do and how to be and what I want. If I listened to all of them, my head would explode.”
“You don’t seem to listen to any of us.”
Freddie sighed and shifted. “Arabella told me to give you another chance.”
“Arabella said that?”
“She said I should get to know you again. That you are all heart and muscle and you fight for what you believe in.”
