Dangerous Exile by K.J. Jackson
{ Chapter 27 }
She’d better be back at Washburn Manor.
Pushing the horse like a demon, Talen had made it to and from the coaching inn in Calthwaitein half the time it should have taken, but it still hadn’t been fast enough.
Ness hadn’t been at the coaching inn. The driver hadn’t seen her and nothing had been touched in the luggage still strapped to the carriage. And there had been no sightings of her, though the landlady hadn’t been present so his report had been limited.
She had to have been at Washburn and he just hadn’t looked hard enough. There was nowhere else she could have escaped to.
Unless…unless the threat of her father coming to Washburn Manor had sent Ness off on a panicked, mad dash through the countryside.
He wouldn’t put it past her. Not after her reaction the last time she believed her father was coming for her.
He needed help.
He never asked for help—never—not even from Declan. But he needed it now. Help from as many men—grooms, footmen, gamekeepers—any and everyone he could steal from the Washburn household to send out in all directions to find her.
Jumping from his horse and tossing his reins to a stableboy with instructions to ready a fresh horse for him, Talen could barely contain himself. He was at the stables when he needed to be searching the house. He was at the house when he needed to be searching the countryside.
Where in the blasted hell had she gone?
He charged up the hillside toward the manor house, his stride long but not nearly fast enough for how every muscle in his body wanted to explode, the pathway through a narrow band of trees from the stables to the main house only slowing him down.
He looked up at the long, thick clouds across the grey sky. More rain hung in the air, though it hadn’t begun to fall just yet.
Hell, if Ness was out in this. Out in the rain. The cold. No place to go.
He jerked his head from left to right, his eyes always searching, hoping to spy the tiniest swish of her blue skirt behind one of the perfectly manicured evergreens molded into tall cones that dotted this side of the estate. What if she was lying somewhere? Injured?
What if the real reason he couldn’t find her was because he’d scared her so badly the previous night that she had fled? Fled him?
The sudden possibility sent a spear through his chest, slowing his steps. That she would ever be afraid of him—something he couldn’t bear.
No. He swallowed back a growl. Ness was fine. His feet sped.
She was probably sitting in the drawing room at that very moment. Probably sipping tea with the dowager. Maybe she’d even picked up a tambour frame to do some embroidery. No matter that she’d told him weeks ago that she’d done more than a lifetime’s worth of sewing at Whetland Castle and never intended to pick up a needle again if she could help it.
But maybe she was sitting there, docile and content and contritely waiting for him. And safe. Safe.
Almost there.
He yanked open the heavy oak north door into the manor house.
His body in full forward motion, he couldn’t stop his momentum as a man barreled straight toward him on his way to the outdoors.
They rammed into each other hard, forearms hitting chests, one impenetrable body bouncing off the other.
Talen found slippery footing and jumped a step backward as the other man grabbed the doorframe to steady himself, then reached out to steady Talen. “By graces, you’re a wall, man.”
Talen shrugged off the man’s hand pawing at him and took another step backward, then looked up.
The devil.
The man looked just like him. His cousin. Both products of their fathers. Their grandfather. Except for his eyes. His brown eyes looked just like the dowager’s eyes.
Talen’s eyes narrowed. “You—you’re…”
“I’m Clayborne—your cousin. I saw you from the study charging up here and I thought to meet you before you made it inside.”
The hairs on the back of Talen’s neck spiked, his fingers instinctively curling into fists. “Meet me outdoors? Why? Where’s Ness? What have you done with her?”
Clayborne’s eyebrows drew together. “Ness? Who is Ness? What else do I not know? Blast me. I’ve only been back for fifteen minutes and my mother cornered me to tell me about your arrival. My cousin, back from the dead.” He paused, his head shaking. “I saw you approaching and I wanted to catch you outside.”
“Why?”
“Please, speak with me privately.” Clayborne looked over his shoulder and then motioned toward the exterior and Talen took another step backward.
Clayborne closed the door behind him, looking to the left and right and only finding empty landscaping. “Out here so as to not have our first meeting in front of my mother. She can be a…handful. I thought this better to handle between the two of us.”
“Your mother told you exactly who I am?”
“She did. But I have always known of you. I just thought you were dead. I gather you don’t remember me?”
“I don’t.” Motion drew Talen’s attention away from his cousin and he looked to the east side of the manor to see the dowager in a grey cloak walking down toward the pond and then shifting direction, disappearing into a long row of manicured hedges that led away from the house. Looking for her son, no doubt.
His impatient gaze shifted back to Clayborne. “There is very little that I do remember.”
“I understand. She did say memories of those times were slowly coming back to you, but that you hadn’t truly recalled your life here,” Clayborne said. “I wouldn’t expect you to remember me as it was. I was eight, almost nine, when you died. I would watch you playing from inside, wanting to join you, but I wasn’t allowed. My mother always kept me away from my cousins.”
Clayborne’s mouth closed for a long moment and then he shook his head to himself. “Excuse me. This was a shock and I’m only just wrapping my mind around what my mother just told me. Forgive me, but I must verify the truth of it.” His look pinned Talen. “When you disappeared, I thought you had died along with your parents. But my mother just informed me that was not the case? She told me you survived an attack on your family and that she found you and she sent you off on a ship for safety.”
Talen gave him one nod.
He drew in a deep breath, his eyes going up to the sky as he exhaled it. His gaze dropped to Talen. “I am sorry for all that has happened to you. What happened to your parents. My mother said that you are still reeling from the new memories that have returned?”
“I am. It has only been a few days since I remembered…this place.”
Clayborne nodded, his look fixed on Talen as his fingers ran along the backside of his neck. “I will come out and address head-on why I wanted to talk to you in private. The title. Mother claims you don’t want it, but I think that is a mistake. It is yours. I can start the arrangements with the crown to transfer the title immediately. I can set it into motion today.”
Talen didn’t have time for this. More idiotic talk about a title he didn’t care about. He needed to get on with finding Ness. “I don’t want it, but if it will get me what I want, I’ll take it.”
Clayborne’s eyebrows lifted. “What you want?”
“Ness.”
“Ness?” Realization crossed over his brown eyes. “Oh, is Ness Mrs. Docherty? Mother mentioned you had a lady companion with you.”
“She is, and I’m more interested in finding her at the moment than talking to you.” Talen pointed toward the door. “Is she inside?”
“Inside? No, mother said she left early today. Mother said something about a mistake she made? Where is Mrs. Docherty?”
“If I knew I would be with her and not talking to you.”
Clayborne nodded. “Of course, what can I do to help find her?”
“Gather men of your employ and send them out in search for her. I don’t know in which direction she’s gone.”
“Of course.” Clayborne motioned toward the stables. “Come. Between the grooms and stable hands, we have six able-bodied men at the ready. And then I will gather footmen and my driver.”
Clayborne started to walk as he talked, his long strides eating up the ground toward the stables. The man was rushing forth to help where he could and Talen had to give him credit for it. He was a man of action, something Talen was forced to admire.
Their walk through the woods quick, Clayborne kept talking. “The peculiar bit on the debacle of all this is that I never wanted the title. You don’t know how many times in my life, growing up, that I wished you hadn’t died. That I imagined you were alive. That you would show up and save me from my fate. Which is why I intercepted you at the door in hopes to talk to you in private.”
Talen looked over at him. “So the dowager wouldn’t interfere?”
“Exactly.” He nodded. “She has always had much more…aspirational plans for me. She still does. Advancing in parliament. The expansion of the title. More wealth. It is never enough for her.”
Talen looked ahead, his head cocking to the side as his feet crunched over fallen leaves. “She drives you?”
“That is putting it mildly.” He shrugged the shrug of a weary, nagged-upon man. “Mother would have had me married off to an American heiress years ago if she’d had her way. The estate is now solvent, but it has taken me years to make that happen.” He exhaled an obvious sigh of relief. “And now you are back.”
Talen glanced sideways at him and instantly recognized the look now on his cousin’s face. “And you suddenly look free.”
A half smile lifted Clayborne’s cheek. “If I help you find Mrs. Docherty, I have hope that I just may be. I never wanted the burden of the title, and it’s been hanging over my head for the last thirteen years, ever since you and your father died, and then Uncle Walter died only months later.”
“But I thought your father died nine years ago?”
“Yes, that is true, but he’d been incapacitated a month before I was born. Was so my entire life before he died.”
“What do you mean incapacitated?”
“My father lost part of his skull—and brain in the war. He was never able to take over the earldom and died when I was thirteen. He never talked. Never walked. I never saw him out of bed. Rarely saw him awake. It’s why my mother never let me play with you, she was always so fearful of something happening to me like it had to him. Never let me do anything, really.” His hand ran along the side of his face. “And, to be truthful, my mother was disastrous at running the estate until I turned of age. I’ve been attempting to correct all she has wrought for years.”
Talen’s feet stopped. “What did she do?”
It took Clayborne a few steps to halt as well and he looked back to Talen. “To be blunt, my mother has expensive tastes and the uncanny ability to convince any and every vendor to take credit. Granted, marrying the American heiress would have been the smartest thing to do back in the day. But that was not to be.”
Talen’s eyes narrowed at Clayborne. “What did your mother tell you about my parents’ deaths? Did she tell you how they died?”
His brow wrinkled. “Just that you three were together when you were attacked by cutthroats from London. She didn’t expand beyond that. Was there something else I should know?”
Ice flooded Talen’s veins.
She hadn’t told him. Hadn’t told him his own father had killed his parents.
Hadn’t told him because it couldn’t have happened.
Talen whipped around, frantically searching through the trees. “What is to the east of the manor house?”
“To the east?”
“Yes, man. To the east?”
Clayborne looked in that direction, his jaw shifting to the side as his confusion deepened. “Beyond the formal gardens and pond, there are several sheep fields, another pond, a hunting cottage, a small barn with the cows, the blacksmith’s—”
Talen didn’t hear another word.
He was running.