Chapter Thirty-Three
London, England, December 14, 1811
The legal office of Mr. George Brook, solicitor. Mr. Brook was presently disconcerted for the first time in his life. Understandably so. Unfortunately, matters were about to get worse. Far worse. His very livelihood passed before his eyes.
It was, Foye discovered, a massively inconvenient thing to return home a dead man. But once he’d presented himself to his solicitor, the process of resurrection began. Matters had not gone far enough to be dire, thank God. By all accounts, he’d been dead only a few weeks, and Mr. Brook, in whose offices Foye now sat, bless the man’s soul, had been actively working on the assumption that Foye would make a miraculous return to the living, preserving his fortune for future generations. To that end, they were both pleased with the outcome. But there was a deuced lot to take care of now.
The Hecla had indeed gone down. But he had not been a passenger, though he was supposed to have been, and had, in fact, been listed on the manifest. But for Hugh Eglender catching him just as he was heading for the quay, he would have been. Inclement seas had delayed his obtaining alternate passage for another fortnight. Foye leaned back, one leg crossed over the other, holding the cup of tea the clerk had brought him. He swirled the nearly empty cup and watched the tea leaves settle at the bottom. He had a strong urge to upend his cup and read his fortune there. For that, however, he needed Sabine’s expertise.
Brook clasped his hands on his blotter and gave Foye a grim look. “May I say, my lord, welcome back among the living.”
“Thank you.” He didn’t smile. “It’s good to be alive.” He leaned forward. “Did my wife contact you?”
“Yes, my lord, she did.”
“Thank God. We were to have met in Oxford, but her house has been let to complete strangers and the attorney had no notion where she’d gone.” He did, however, and Brook confirmed it for him.
“She is at present at Maralee House.” His lawyer cleared his throat. “Perhaps you are aware that she, too, was reported dead.”
“Yes,” Foye said wryly. “I knew before I left Turkey that a notice had been sent.”
“I am handling the matter of seeing her possessions and inheritance returned to her.” Brook clasped his hands on his desk. “Given her condition, your title and entailments are in abeyance for the time being. Now, of course, the abeyance is a moot point, given that you are not deceased.”
“Her condition?” Foye straightened on his chair. “She’s with child?”
“Indeed, my lord.”
“My God.” He leaned back. “I’d no idea.” He looked at his lawyer. “I suspected she could be, but…My will must be changed. Immediately.”
“Understood.”
“What do you need to know? She is to have her own funds and a substantial jointure should I actually predecease her. Payment guaranteed. Invest it, Brook. If something should happen to me, she must not suffer financially.”
“It will be as you wish, my lord.” Brook took up a pen and a clean sheet of paper. “If you will return later this afternoon, my lord, I will have documents for you to execute.”
“How soon?”
“Four o’clock?”
“Three.” Foye started for the door. “She thinks I’m dead, Brook.”
Brook nodded. “Three is agreeable, my lord.”
Foye returned at precisely three o’clock, signed his new will, and twenty minutes later was on his way to Cornwall. He faced easily seven days from London to St. Ives, the nearest town to Maralee House. Seven days before he could hope to see Sabine. He traveled hard, ten hours a day driving, changing teams when he could, through poor winter-condition roads, sleeping in the coach rather than stopping at an inn. More than once he drove the coach while his driver slept inside.
He was six days on the road before he came upon the drive to Maralee. The two posts that marked the road meant he was just under a mile from the house. He rode the rest of the way, hell-bent and as fast as his mount would carry him. Outside the house, with its view of the bay, Foye dismounted, practically jumping off the animal. A groom came from behind the house to take his horse.
The man’s eyes got big when he saw Foye. His face split in a grin. “It’s the master!” he shouted. “The master’s here!”
Foye didn’t wait. He climbed the stairs to the door, and only when he threw it open did he think to wonder how he ought to present himself to a woman who thought he had died. He went inside. “Sabine?” he shouted.
His butler came out from a side room, hurrying to see who could be shouting, and stopped in shock when he saw Foye. “My lord, is it you?”
“Yes, by God, it is me.”
“You haven’t drowned, then?”
Foye heard a door open upstairs, and he called out again, shouting, “Sabine?”
More servants were appearing, having heard from the groom or heard him shouting. Foye pushed past the butler and took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the top, he came full stop, because it wasn’t Sabine waiting for him. If he’d been hit with hammer he couldn’t have been more stunned. Not Sabine, but the Earl of Crosshaven stood there.
“What the hell are you doing at Maralee?” Foye said.
At the same time, Crosshaven said, “Good God, Foye.” He took a half step from the door he’d exited. “We thought you were dead.”
We?
A smile of pure joy turned Crosshaven’s face from handsome to radiant. He walked forward and enveloped Foye in a bear hug that actually lifted him off his feet. Cross released him and pushed his shoulders. “What the devil, old man?”
Foye grabbed Cross’s wrist and leaned in. “What are you doing here, Cross?”
Nightmarish anger flooded through him. Every self-defeating thought he’d ever had rushed back, filled him with self-loathing. Sabine had left him. Fallen out of love with him. My God. The woman he loved beyond anything had left him.
“Where the hell is my wife?”
“Foye,” Cross said. He took a step back, both hands lifted. “It’s not-what you think. Foye, it’s not. And Lady Foye isn’t here.”
“Get out.”
“I didn’t mean—”
Foye grabbed Crosshaven by the lapels and brought him up off his feet. White-hot anger lanced through him. “You never meant. Damn you, you never meant.” He wanted to throttle the bastard. Jesus, he was more than a little tempted to toss him headfirst down the stairs. “What happened because of your lie that night turns my stomach, and for that I’ll never forgive you though St. Peter himself denies me entrance to heaven.”
“I’ll not forgive myself, either,” Cross said.
“Then why are you here?” He released and pushed Crosshaven’s wrist so hard Cross’s arm jerked in the air. “Why the devil are you here?”
“Rosaline,” he said, and he had the effrontery to sound and look angry. “Her parents live near St. Ives. You know that, Foye. Better than anyone” Crosshaven took a step back, pulling on the end of his coat to set it back to rights. “We were visiting her parents when we heard the news about you, and then about Lady Foye. About there even being a Lady Foye.”
“You brought Rosaline here?”
“No. They don’t get on, actually, your wife and Rosaline.”
“But you two do.”
Cross flushed. The bastard. “If you must know, Foye, she’s cold to me as well. I don’t blame her. But Rosaline’s father insisted on calling. Today of all days.” Crosshaven inclined his head toward the open parlor door. “He’s not well, Foye, but he insisted on paying his respects, and since I am home and able-bodied and he is not, I brought him here. He admires you still, Foye, Rosaline’s father. He took the news of your death hard. We’re here, waiting for her, your wife, Foye, so that a man who hasn’t done you any wrong can tell her how sorry he is that you’re gone.”
Foye stared at him. He could hardly believe this was Crosshaven.
“She doesn’t know we’re even here, for God’s sake, your wife.” He grabbed Foye’s arm. “Listen to me. She’s out, Foye. Not even at home yet. She doesn’t talk to me unless it can’t be avoided, and she doesn’t even know I’m here.”
Foye didn’t know where to look, what to do, what to feel. His heart was still pounding in his ears.
“Cross?” called a thin voice from the parlor.
“Come tell the old man you’re alive, Foye,” Crosshaven said. “Please? Not for me. For him.”
Foye took a deep breath and went into the parlor to say hello to Rosaline’s father.
He was frailer than Foye recalled. Too thin, his hair mostly gone. But he gripped the old man’s hand and told him the tale of his survival, and all the time he could hardly concentrate but for thinking about Sabine.
Cross had the decency to stay out of the conversation. He kept to himself on the far side of the room and didn’t say anything unless it was to remind his father-in-law of some name or event he’d forgotten or gently correct him when it became plain the old man’s mind had wandered and had suddenly mistaken Foye for his late father.
He could hardly concentrate, but all the same, he knew the moment Sabine came into the room.