Amanda McCabe - The Runaway Countess

Here there was nothing but the trees and the wind, the dark clouds sweeping in faster and faster over his head on the rumble of thunder. Maybe that was why Jane had run here, he thought as his horse leaped over a fallen log in the road and galloped onwards even faster. Just to be able to breathe again.

He urged the horse on, trying to outrun the raw anger that had burned in him ever since he had read Jane’s letter. Even if she was tired of her London life, she had duties, damn it! Duties as his wife and countess. She had left them, left him, behind. And now she wanted to abandon them permanently.

She had to see how impossible her suggestion of divorce was. He had to make her see.

A bolt of sizzling blue-white lightning suddenly split the sky, cleaving a tree beside the road only a few feet away. With a deafening crack, a thick branch split away and crashed into the road. Hayden’s horse reared up and the wet reins slid from his hands at the sudden movement.

He felt himself falling, the sky and the rain and the mud all tumbling around him. He crashed to the ground and pain shot through his leg as it twisted under him.

Hayden cursed as loudly as he could, but he was drowned out by the shout of the thunder. The horse scrambled to regain his footing and ran away down the lane. Hayden tried to push himself up, to balance on his good leg, but he fell back to the mud.

He shoved back his sodden hair and stared up into the leaden sky. He laughed at the storm. It seemed even nature wanted to keep him away from Jane.

‘Are you all right?’ he heard a woman call. He twisted around to see her running towards him through the misty sheets of rain, like a ghost.

She looked vaguely familiar, not very tall and too slender in a faded, rain-spotted dress. A loose braid of wet golden hair lay over her shoulder and a barking puppy ran in circles around her. But despite that nagging sense that he should know her, he didn’t really recognise her as she ran down the lane towards him.

Until she knelt beside him, completely careless of the rain. She stared up at him with bright green eyes, pale and clear. He remembered those eyes. He had seen them at his wedding when Jane proudly introduced her sister. She had been younger then, scrawny and awkward. Now time had moved on and she had grown up.

And he remembered that Jane had written that her sister lived with her now. He had to be close to Barton Park.

‘Emma?’ he said.

She sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. ‘Yes, I am Emma Bancroft. How do you…?’ Suddenly she gasped. ‘Ramsay? What in the hell are you doing here?’

‘Does your sister let you curse like that? Most unladylike,’ he said, suddenly aware of the utter absurdity of his situation. He was sitting in the rain, in the middle of a muddy country lane, arguing about propriety with the sister-in-law he hardly knew.

He laughed and she frowned at him as if he was an escaped bedlamite. He certainly felt like one.

‘Of course she doesn’t let me,’ Emma said. ‘But she is not here and this situation clearly warrants a curse or two. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in London?’

‘I was, but now I’m on my way to Barton Park. Or I was, until that infernal horse threw me.’

Emma glanced over her shoulder at where the horse had come to a halt further down the lane. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I think I twisted my leg. I can’t stand up.’

Her frown of suspicion vanished, replaced by an expression of concern. Perhaps like her sister she was too soft-hearted. ‘Oh, no! Here, let me help you.’

‘I’m far too heavy for you.’

‘Nonsense. I’m much stronger than I look.’ She wrapped her arm around him and let him lean on her as he staggered to his feet. She was rather strong, and between them they managed to hobble over to the fallen branch.

‘Stay here, Ramsay, and I’ll get your horse back,’ she said. ‘You need to get out of the rain and have that leg looked at.’

She dashed away, leaving her now-silent dog to watch him suspiciously in her place. She returned very quickly with the recalcitrant horse.

‘We aren’t far from Barton Park,’ she said. ‘I can lead you there, if you can manage to ride that far.’

‘Of course I can ride that far, it’s just a sprain,’ he said, even though his leg felt like it was on fire and he could see blood spotting his rain-soaked breeches.

‘Good. You’ll need to save your strength for when Jane sees you. She doesn’t know you’re coming, does she?’ Emma asked matter of factly, as if she ran into estranged relatives every day.

Hayden gritted his teeth as he pulled himself up into the saddle. The pain washed over him in cold waves and he pushed it away. ‘Not yet.’

To his surprise, Emma laughed. ‘Oh, this day just gets more interesting all the time.’

Emma tried not to stare at her brother-in-law like a lackwit, tried to just calmly give him directions to Barton Park as he pulled her up on to the horse behind him and set them into motion, Murray running alongside them. But she just couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe Lord Ramsay was actually there, that she had actually stumbled on him right in the middle of the road as she tried to hurry home for tea.

Whatever was he doing there? It couldn’t possibly be good. As far as Emma knew, Jane hadn’t even talked to him in all the time since they came to live at Barton. Jane never even talked about him, so Emma had no idea what had happened in London.

But she did have imagination and it had filled in all sorts of lurid scenarios that could drive her kind-hearted, responsible sister away from her husband. Ramsay had become something of an ogre in Emma’s mind, so her first instinct when she saw him there in the road had been to run from him as fast as she could. Especially after what had happened to her at school, with that odious Mr Milne, the music master. He had been enough to scare her off men for ever.

And yet—yet she remembered that one other time she had met Ramsay, on the day he married her sister in that elegant town ceremony. He had looked at Jane then as if all the stars and the moon revolved only around her and he had held her hand so tenderly. And Jane had been radiant that day, as if she was lit from within. Emma had never seen her sister, who tended to worry over everyone else so much, so very happy. Emma had even known she could endure her hated school because she knew Jane was happy in her new life with her husband.

What had gone so wrong? Why was Ramsay here now, after so long? Emma was bursting to know, but she just said calmly, ‘Turn right up there at the gate.’

‘Thank you, Miss Bancroft,’ he said through gritted teeth. When she glanced up at his profile, she saw he looked rather pale. He was probably in more pain than he wanted to show, just like a man.

‘I hardly think we need to be so formal,’ she said teasingly. ‘I’m your sister. My name is Emma.’

A flash of a smile touched his lips. ‘I do remember your name, Emma.’

‘That’s good. If you turn left here, you’ll see the house just ahead.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘So, Emma, what are you doing running about in the rain?’

‘It wasn’t raining when I left,’ she said. ‘And if you must know, I was collecting some specimens.’

‘Specimens?’

‘Plants. For my studies.’ And she really had taken a few cuttings of the plants. He didn’t need to know her other errands. No one had to know, not yet, that she was hunting for the lost Barton Park treasure.

Emma tucked her sack closer to her side and felt the reassuring weight of the small journal in its pocket. She had found it in a forgotten corner of the Barton library last month. She had been hoping to find old plans of the gardens, but this book was even better. It was a journal belonging to the young cousin of the first mistress of Barton Park.