The Leopard Prince

Harry threw open the bedroom door, scaring a maid cleaning out the hearth. He strode to Lady Georgina’s vanity table. The top had been cleared. He opened drawers and flung them shut just as fast. They were empty save for a few hairpins and a forgotten handkerchief. The maid scurried from the room. Harry straightened from the vanity and surveyed the room. The wardrobe doors stood ajar and empty. A lone candlestick sat on the table by her bed. The bed itself had already been stripped. There wasn’t anything to indicate where she’d gone.

He quit the room and ran back down the stairs, knowing the servants were aware of his movements. He knew he must seem a madman, racing about the manor and claiming the daughter of an earl as his bride. Well, damn them all to hell. He wasn’t backing down. She was the one who had brought it this far. She’d laid down the gauntlet and then run for it. This time around he wasn’t going to wait for her to come to her senses. Who knew how long it would take her to get over whatever snit she’d gotten herself into? He might be a commoner, he might be poor, but by God, he was going to be Lady Georgina’s husband, and his wife needed to learn that she couldn’t just light out every time she got a bee in her bonnet.

Harry mounted the poor mare, already half asleep, and turned her in the direction of his own little cottage. He’d pack the barest essentials. If he was fast, he might catch her before Lincoln.

Five minutes later, he opened the door to his cottage, thinking about what to bring, but all thought stopped when he saw the table. The leopard stood on it. Harry picked up the carved animal. It was exactly the same as the last time he’d seen it in her palm. Except that it was no longer in a cage.

She’d set the leopard free.

He stared at the wooden creature in his hands for a minute, rubbing his thumb over the smooth back he’d so carefully whittled. Then he looked at the table again. There was a note. He picked it up with a shaking hand.

My Dear Harry,

I’m sorry. I never meant to cage you. I see now that it wouldn’t be right for me to force myself on you. I’ll take care of matters myself. Enclosed is something I had drawn up when last in London.

—Georgina

The second paper was a legal document. Lady Georgina had given him the Woldsly estate.

No.

Harry reread the fine script. The document remained the same.

No. No. No. He crumpled the paper in his fist. Did she hate him that much? Hate him enough to give up part of her inheritance to get him out of her life? He sank into a chair and stared at the balled scrap in his hand. Perhaps she’d finally come to her senses. Finally realized how very far beneath her he lay. If so, there would be no redemption for him. He laughed, but it came out more a sob, even to his own ears. He’d spent the last weeks pushing Lady Georgina away, but even as he’d done so, he’d known.

She was the one.

The one and only lady for him in this lifetime. If she left him, there would be no other. And he’d thought that was fine. His life had been adequate up until now, hadn’t it? He could continue without her. But somehow in the last weeks she had burrowed into his life. Into him. And the things she had offered him so casually, a wife and family, a home, those things had become like meat and wine put before a man who had eaten only bread and water his entire life.

Vital.

Harry looked down at the crushed piece of paper and realized that he was afraid. Afraid he couldn’t make this right. Afraid he’d never be whole again.

Afraid he’d lost his lady and their child.

TWO HORSES.

Silas snorted and kicked a still-smoldering beam. Two horses out of a stable of nine and twenty. Even Thomas’s last act had been a piss-poor one; he’d managed to save only the pair of nags before succumbing to the flames. The air was thick with the stench of burned meat. Some of the men pulling out the carcasses were gagging, despite the scarves they wore over their mouths. Like little girls they were, whining over the stink and filth.

Silas looked at the remains of the great Granville stables. A heap of smoking debris now. All because of a deranged woman, so Bennet said. A pity she’d taken her own life. It would’ve set a nice example for the local peasants had she been fodder for the hangman. But in the end, perhaps he would’ve thanked the crazy wench. She’d murdered his elder son, which made Bennet his heir now. No more jaunting off to London for that young man. As the heir, he would have to stay at Granville House and learn how to run the estates. Silas curled his upper lip back in a grin. He had Bennet now. The boy might buck and paw, but he knew his duty. The heir to Granville must oversee the estates.

A rider clattered into the yard. Silas nearly choked when he saw who it was. “Get out! Get out, you young cur!” How dare Harry Pye just dance onto Granville land? Silas started for the horse and rider.

Pye dismounted his horse without even looking in his direction. “Out of my way, old man.” He started for the house.

“You!” Fury clogged Silas’s throat. He turned to the gawking workmen. “Seize him! Throw him off my land, damn you!”

“Try it,” Pye spoke softly behind him.

Several of the men backed up, the cowards. Silas turned and saw that Pye had a long, thin knife in his left hand.

The bounder pivoted in his direction. “How about acting for yourself, Granville?”

Silas stood still, clenching and unclenching his fists. Had he been twenty years younger, he wouldn’t have hesitated. His chest burned.

“No?” Pye sneered. “Then you won’t mind if I have a word with your son.” He ran up the steps to Granville House and disappeared inside.

Filthy, common lout. Silas backhanded the servant nearest him. The man was caught off guard and went down. The other workmen stared at their fellow wallowing in the stable yard muck. One offered his hand to the man on the ground.

“You’re all sacked after this day’s work,” Silas said, and didn’t wait to hear the grumbling behind him.

He mounted his own stairs, rubbing at the fire in his chest. He’d throw the bastard out himself if it killed him. He didn’t have far to go. Entering the great hall, he could hear men’s voices coming from the front room where Thomas’s body had been laid out.

Silas swung the door open, banging it against the wall. Pye and Bennet looked up from where they stood near the table bearing Thomas’s charred corpse. Bennet deliberately turned away from his father. “I can go with you, but I’ll have to see Thomas properly buried first.” His voice was a whispered rasp from the fire.

“Of course. My horse will need to rest after last night, anyway,” Pye replied.

“Now wait just a minute,” Silas interrupted the cozy pair. “You’re not going anywhere, Bennet. Especially not with this bastard.”

“I’ll go where I want.” “No, you’ll not,” Silas said. The burning pain was spreading to his arm. “You’re the heir to Granville now. You’ll stay right here if you want a penny more from me.”

Bennet finally looked up. Silas had never seen such hatred in another man’s eyes. “I don’t want a penny or anything else from you. I’m traveling to London as soon as Thomas has been decently buried.”

“With him?” Silas jerked his head in Pye’s direction, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “So your baseborn blood has begun to tell, has it?”

Both men turned.

Silas grinned in satisfaction. “Your mother was a whore, you know that, don’t you? I wasn’t even the first she’d cuckolded John Pye with. That woman had an itch that just couldn’t be scratched by one man. If she hadn’t died so soon, she’d be spreading her legs in the gutter right now, just to feel a cock.”

“She may have been a faithless lying whore, but she was a saint compared to you,” Pye said.

Silas laughed. He couldn’t help it. What a joke! The boy must have no idea. He gasped for breath. “Can’t you do sums, lad? Must not be something they teach in the poorhouse, eh?” Another chuckle shook him. “Well let me spell it out for you, nice and slow. Your mother came here before you were conceived. You’re as likely my son as John Pye’s. More like, the way she panted after me.”

“No.” Strangely, Pye showed no reaction. “You may well have planted the seed in my mother, but John Pye and only John Pye was my father.”

“Father,” Silas spat. “I doubt John Pye was even capable of getting a woman with child.”

For a moment Silas thought Pye would go for his throat, and his heart leapt painfully. But the bastard turned aside and walked to the window, as if Silas were not worth the effort.

Silas scowled and gestured scornfully. “Do you see what I saved you from, Bennet?”

“Saved me?” His son opened his mouth as if laughing, but no sound came out. “Saved me how? By bringing me to this mausoleum? By putting me in the tender care of your bitch of a wife? A woman who must have felt the sting of her humiliation every single time she looked at me? By favoring me over Thomas so there was no way we would ever have a normal relationship?” Bennet was shouting hoarsely now. “By banishing Harry, my brother? God! Tell me, Father, how exactly have you saved me?”

“You walk out that door, boy, and I’ll never welcome you back, heir or no.” The pain in his chest was back again. Silas rubbed his breastbone. “You’ll get no more money, no more help from me. You’ll starve in a ditch.”

“Fine.” Bennet turned away. “Harry, Will is in the kitchen. I can have my bags packed in a half hour.”

“Bennet!” The word felt as if it were ripped from Silas’s lungs.

His son walked away from him.

“I’ve killed for you, boy.” Damn it, he would not go groveling after his own son.

Bennet turned, a look of mingled horror and loathing on his face. “You what?”

“Murdered for you.” Silas thought he bellowed, but the words weren’t as loud as before.

“Jesus Christ. Did he say he murdered someone?” Bennet’s voice seemed to float around him.

The pain in his chest had spread and become a fire burning through to his back. Silas staggered. Tried to grab a chair and fell, toppling the chair next to him. He lay on his side and felt the flames licking hungrily down his arm and over his shoulder. He smelled ashes from his son’s body and piss from his own.

“Help me.” His voice was a thin trickle.

Someone stood over him. Boots filled his vision. “Help me.”

Then Pye’s face was in front of his own. “You killed Mistress Pollard, didn’t you, Granville? That’s who you murdered. Janie Crumb never had the strength to feed another woman poison.”

“Oh, my God,” Bennet whispered in his ruined voice. Bile suddenly filled Silas’s throat, and he heaved, choking on the contents of his own stomach. The carpet wool chafed his cheek as he convulsed.

Dimly, Silas saw Pye step aside, avoiding the pool of vomit.

Help me.

Harry Pye’s green eyes seemed to bore into him. “I never begged for mercy when you had me beaten. Do you know why?”

Silas shook his head.

“It wasn’t pride or bravery,” he heard Pye say.

The fire crawled up into his throat. The room was going dark.

“My da begged you for mercy when you had him horse-whipped. You ignored him. There is no mercy in you.”

Silas choked, coughing on hot coals. “He’s dead,” someone said.

But by that time, the fire had reached Silas’s eyes and he no longer cared.

Chapter Twenty

“You’ve gone mad.” Tony sat back in the settee as if his pronouncement settled the matter.

They were in his elegant town house sitting room. Across from him, George sat stiffly in an armchair, the now-ever-present basin at the ready by her feet. Oscar prowled the room, munching on a muffin. No doubt, Violet and Ralph were taking turns pressing their ears to the door.