The Leopard Prince (Princes #2)(58)

Will looked him over. “You’ll do, I guess.”

“Ta.”

“Am I to stay here?” The lad’s face was too stoic for his young age.

Harry hesitated. “Would you like to see the Woldsly stables while I speak to my lady?”

Will was immediately on his feet. “Yes, please.”

“Then come on.” Harry led the way out the door. The boy could ride behind him on the back of his horse.

Outside, clouds gathered in the sky. But it hadn’t yet rained today, and saddling the mare would take time. It was unreasonable, but he was anxious to see Lady Georgina.

“Let’s walk.”

The boy followed at his heels, silent, but with suppressed excitement. They were almost to the Woldsly drive when Harry heard the rumbling of carriage wheels. He quickened his pace. The sound grew rapidly closer.

He broke into a run.

Just as he burst from the cover of the copse, a carriage passed, shaking the ground beneath his feet and sending up globs of mud. He glimpsed her ginger hair, then the carriage turned the corner and was gone, only the diminishing sound of wheels marking its passage.

“Don’t think you’ll be able to talk to her today.”

Harry had forgotten Will. He stared blindly down at the boy panting at his side. “No, not today.”

A fat raindrop splattered on his shoulder, and then the clouds let go.

TONY’S CARRIAGE JOLTED AROUND the corner, and George swayed as she peered out the window. It had begun to rain again, soaking the already sodden pastures, dragging tree branches earthward, and turning everything into the same gray-brown color. Monotonous veils of dingy water fell, blurring the landscape and trickling down the window like tears. From inside the carriage it appeared that the whole world wept, overcome by a grief that would not fade.

“Perhaps it won’t stop.”

“What?” Tony asked.

“The rain,” George said. “Perhaps it won’t stop. Perhaps it will continue forever until the mud in the highway turns to a stream and rises up and becomes a sea and we float away.” She traced a finger through the condensation on the inside of the window, making squiggly lines. “Do you think your carriage is buoyant?”

“No,” Tony said. “But I shouldn’t worry. The rain will stop sometime, even if it doesn’t seem so at the moment.”

“Mmm.” She stared out the window. “And if I don’t care if it goes on? Perhaps I wouldn’t mind floating away. Or sinking.”

She was doing the right thing, everyone assured her so. Leaving Harry was the only proper choice left to her. He was of a lower class, and he resented the difference in their ranks. Last night, he’d been ugly in his resentment; and yet, she couldn’t fault him. Harry Pye wasn’t meant to be anyone’s lapdog. She hadn’t thought she was confining him, but he obviously felt demeaned. There was no future for them, an earl’s daughter and a land steward. They knew that; everyone knew that. This was a natural conclusion to an affair that should never have been begun in the first place.

But, still, George couldn’t shake the feeling that she was running away.

As if reading her thoughts, Tony said, “It’s the correct decision.”

“Is it?”

“There was no other.”

“I feel like a coward,” she mused, still looking out the window.

“You’re not a coward,” he said softly. “This course wasn’t easy for you, I know. Cowards are people who take the least difficult path, not the hardest.”

“Yet I’ve abandoned Violet when she needs me most,” George objected.

“No, you haven’t,” Tony said firmly. “You’ve turned her problem over to me. I’ve sent Oscar and Ralph ahead of us to London. By the time we arrive, they should have learned where this cad lives. In the meantime, rusticating for another few weeks in the country won’t hurt her, and she has Miss Hope to keep her company. That is what we pay her for, after all,” he finished dryly.

But Euphie had failed Violet once already. George closed her eyes. And what about the poisoned sheep—the reason she’d traveled to Yorkshire in the first place? The attacks were growing more frequent. As she’d left, George had overheard two footmen talking about a poisoned woman. She should’ve stopped and found out if the dead woman was connected to the sheep, but instead she’d let Tony hustle her out the door. Once she’d made the decision to leave Woldsly, it was as if a strange lethargy had taken over her body. It was so hard to concentrate. So hard to know what to do. She felt wrong in her bones, but she couldn’t seem to make things right.

“You must stop thinking about him,” Tony said.

His tone made George glance at her brother, sitting in the blood-red leather seat across from hers. Tony looked sympathetic and worried. And sad, his shaggy eyebrows drawn down. Sudden tears clouded her eyes, and she turned to the window again, although she couldn’t see a thing now.

“It’s just that he was so… good. He seemed to understand me in a way nobody has before, not even you or Aunt Clara. And I couldn’t figure him out.” She laughed under her breath. “Maybe that’s what attracted me to him. He was like a puzzle that I could have spent the rest of my life studying and never grow tired of.” They rumbled over a bridge. “I don’t think I’ll ever find that again.”