Chapter Four
“MAKE HIM LOVE YOU, precious. Make him fall deeply in love and you will have a good life with him,” Brooke’s mother whispered to her before Brooke stepped into the coach.
It took hours for Brooke’s shock to wear off. Her mother had called her “precious” and given her advice? She had already been surprised that Harriet had come outside to see her off, when last night Harriet had sent the butler up to Brooke’s room to give her money for the trip instead of coming herself. Those words, however, had almost sounded as if Harriet cared about her, but Brooke’s entire life vouched otherwise. Why couldn’t her mother be consistent? Why did Brooke only ever get these confusing glimpses of the mother she wished Harriet could be, but so rarely was?
If the wolf of the north became besotted with her, then he’d leave Harriet’s darling Robert alone and stop trying to kill him. Brooke was no fool. Only one child had ever been loved in her family, and her parents would do or say anything to protect him, including lie to their daughter about her chances of charming a man who hated her family as much as she did!
The family-crested coach had pulled up to the front door for her. Her parents’ pride demanded that she arrive at the enemy’s door in style, she supposed. Besides the driver, two footmen escorted her. Earlier that morning, she’d gone to the stables for one last visit with the horses. She’d informed the head groom that she’d be taking Rebel with her. If she was not coming back here, and she truly hoped she wasn’t, then she didn’t want to leave behind anything that she cared about.
Most of the staff came out to bid her good-bye.
She didn’t think she would shed tears for this place, but she did for the people she’d grown up with, servants who actually cared about her. Her groom, William, even handed her a wood carving he’d made of a horse, telling her he hoped it reminded her of Rebel. It didn’t—he wasn’t good at carving—but she would cherish it anyway.
The servants accompanying her had their instructions. They were to bring her straight back home if the wolf didn’t allow entrance into his lair. Otherwise, the servants, except for Alfreda, were to return to Leicestershire with the coach. Brooke hoped she gained entrance. She hoped she would find something to like about Dominic Wolfe other than their mutual dislike of her brother. But it was possible she wouldn’t, and possible, too, that she wouldn’t get through the door.
The emissary had come to the Whitworths first. From Leicestershire it was half a week’s ride by coach to Lord Wolfe’s home near York. The Regent’s man was only a day ahead of them on the road, which meant Lord Wolfe was still blissfully unaware of any of this. If he was going to be enraged when he was told—and rightfully so, Brooke thought—she wished he could have more than just one day to calm down before she arrived.
It would have been logical for her family to wait until they’d learned his reaction to the Regent’s demand before sending her north. To dispatch Brooke so soon smacked of fear. They might have raged and railed about this, but they would never have called the Regent’s bluff. The consequences meant too much to them to do so.
And her brother, what a blackguard! When he’d come to her room last night, he’d had a calculating look in his eyes that warned her she wouldn’t like the “strategy” he had mentioned in the dining room.
“Marry him first, then poison him,” Robert had simply stated. “We can claim half his lands or all of them, if he has no other relatives. I know he had a sister who died, but no one knows much else about Dominic Wolfe.”
“And what if I like him instead?” Brooke had replied. It could happen. She wasn’t hopeful that it would, but it could.
“You will not. You will be loyal to your family and despise him.”
She might end up despising Dominic Wolfe, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of loyalty to her family. She hadn’t said that, though. She had kept her incredulity over Robert’s suggestion to herself. She knew he was mean and spiteful, even cruel, but murderous, too? Yet he was so handsome! He had so many blessings, was even an earl’s heir. There was no excuse for him to have turned out as he did, except that he was his father’s son. “Like father like son” had never been so true as it was in the Whitworth family.
She refused to even acknowledge his preposterous suggestion and instead asked, “What did you do to Dominic Wolfe to make him challenge you three times?”
He snorted. “Nothing to warrant such persistence. But don’t cross us on this, Sister. We don’t want him as a relative through marriage. His death will remove any further demands the Prince Regent can make of us.”
She gestured to the door. He gave her such a vicious look for dismissing him that she thought he might use his fists on her to make his point. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that.
But he was still scheming and in parting said, “As a widow, you will have your freedom, more freedom than family or a husband will ever give you. Keep that in mind, Sister.”
Her fondest wish! But not at the cost he was suggesting. Yet she’d lost her chance to learn something about the man they were sending her to. Robert knew him, could have told her something about him, but didn’t. She’d almost asked before the door closed behind him, but she’d never asked anything of him in her life and wasn’t going to start now.
It was ludicrous that the only thing she knew about Lord Wolfe was that he wanted her brother dead. She didn’t know if he was young or old, infirm, ugly, or even as cold and callous as her own family was. He could already be engaged to marry someone else, too, could be in love. . . . How horrible to think that his life was going to be turned upside down just because he’d wanted justice from her brother that he obviously couldn’t get from the courts. She already felt sorry for him!
When the coach stopped for lunch that day, they’d already traveled farther from Whitworth manor than Brooke had ever before been. By evening they would be out of Leicestershire! The trip to London was to have been her first long journey and her first time out of the shire. She’d been to Leicester and a few other towns around it, but those had been short visits that hadn’t required spending the night away from home. So she was determined to enjoy this journey despite what would happen at the end of it, and she spent much of that first day staring out the window at countryside she’d never before seen.
But she still couldn’t stop her thoughts and anxieties from churning. By late afternoon she got around to telling Alfreda about Robert’s nefarious suggestion.
The maid merely raised a brow, not showing the least surprise. “Poison, eh? As cowardly as he’s always been, that boy. He’d ask this of you but he wouldn’t do it himself.”
“But he fought those duels,” Brooke reminded her. “That took some bravery.”
Alfreda scoffed. “I’ll warrant he fired his pistol before he should have. Ask your wolf when you meet him. I’m sure he’ll confirm my guess.”
“He’s not my wolf and we probably shouldn’t call him that just because my parents did,” Brooke said, even though she’d been doing just that.
“Well, you might want to.”
“Call him a wolf?”
“No, poison him.”
Brooke gasped. “Bite your tongue, I would never.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. I will if necessary. I won’t have you suffer at his hand, if he has a heavy one.”
Despite the subject, Brooke was comforted to know how far Alfreda would go to protect her from the stranger who was to become her husband.