Page 66 of The Earl and His Lady

His eyes finally met hers again, the gray dominating them in the overcast light. The emotion in those eyes deepened the color in them, drawing her in, speaking to her in a way his words never had. The truth was there, easy enough for her to see, and she could not pretend otherwise.

But he didn’t say anything.

Lucas came forward, moving with deliberate slowness, and extended his arm to her. “May I walk back with you?”

The barriers around Virginia’s heart remained. Still impenetrable, she told herself. But with what Lucas’s eyes revealed, she would have to work all the harder to keep herself well-fortified.

At least for now.

She took his arm and they went back the way they had come, Lucas’s hand steadying her when she stepped over logs and around crumbling stone walls.

Chapter Twenty-three

Lucas didn’t regret going after Virginia, even though she was silent the whole way back to Heatherton Hall. He’d never moved with such speed as he had upon seeing her in that field, moving in such a determined manner. Going after her had been the right thing to do. But he wished he had the strength, the ability, to tell her why it mattered so much that he protect her.

After their argument, he’d had no peace. If his mind was not going over their discussion in painful detail, it was recounting Abigail’s last days on earth. Pulled one way and another, his heart did not allow him rest.

He’d been waiting for a new day, ordering his thoughts, trying to find a way to make things right between them. Dawn had come upon him, with his mind hardly better off than when he’d begun. He’d given up on rational thought the moment he saw her leaving the estate.

No one saw him return Virginia to her room in the family wing. She barely whispered a farewell to him before he sought out his own chamber, the physical distance between them suddenly seeming twice as far as it had before.

Did she guess his feelings for her?

He was the worst sort of man to wish she knew, to wish he could tell her.

Randal found him still pacing. The valet, arriving at the customary time, looked from the rumpled bed sheets to Lucas’s clothing and raised an eyebrow. But Randal was too well trained to do more. He simply went about gathering Lucas’s clothing for the journey back to Annesbury Park.

Virginia would be with him in the carriage for several hours.

Lucas didn’t know if he could stand it. They would have to pretend nothing had happened, because he certainly couldn’t speak about his actions that morning. His emotions were still too new, too close to the surface of his thoughts. Confined to a coach with Virginia, he may very well say more than he ought.

Virginia, his extraodrinary wife, remained beyond his reach in more ways than one. There were nearly seven months of mourning left.

He closed his eyes at the thought, listening to Randal pack his things.

“Leave out my riding clothes,” he heard himself saying. “I will go ahead to the inn. You will take the carriage with our things, and Lady Calvert’s maid will travel with her. If her ladyship wishes.”

Randal stilled, but when Lucas turned to see the man’s reaction, his valet nodded.

“Yes, my lord. I’ll send to the stables for a horse to be readied. Will you go after breakfast?”

“Send a tray up.” Lucas had no desire to eat alone in the dining room, as he had little doubt Virginia would stay in her room today. “And be quick about it. I want to leave within the hour.” He would then be several hours ahead of his wife’s carriage, and hopefully the ride would allow him to clear his head.

His commands were followed, and at such a speed that Lucas found himself on the back of King Lud, the horse’s finer qualities of less importance than his speed to carry Lucas away.

Then he moved the horse along, away from the stables, around the house. He’d left a message for Virginia, explaining that he would ride ahead. The short note was impersonal, direct, without all the details a face-to-face conversation would necessitate.

Having never taken the coward’s way out before, Lucas did not make the decision lightly. It would be best for them both to be left to their thoughts.

Virginia mourned her husband deeply. Seeing her venture out in secret to visit Charles Macon’s grave had crushed Lucas’s heart. The sight had reminded him of her grief, of her inability to truly belong to him. She still loved her first husband, as was right and best, and Lucas was a dishonorable cur to even entertain the idea of caring for her in a manner beyond that of a friend.

And truly, even after her year of mourning was spent, what would he do then?

He passed through the countryside without much notice of it. The horse was obedient, the turns in the road easy enough to remember, which left him all too much time to think.

When Virginia’s first husband had been gone a year and a day, when society’s strictest members would not whisper at her casting off her mourning, what did he expect to happen? He had mourned Abigail, in his heart if not in outward appearance, for longer than a year. He couldn’t be sure when he had put those feelings away.

An arbitrarily appointed amount of time passing would not propel his beautiful countess into his arms, or open her heart to his love for her.