Annette Blair - Scandalous Brides

Hawksridge, the home of his birth, temporarily his heir’s, sat at the opposite summit overlooking Devil’s Dyke, which formed the valley between. Hawk gazed westward to catch sight of his estate, but nearly a mile separated the houses, and he had forgotten that, other than in the dead of winter, the very woodland they had romped in grew too lush to allow for even a glimpse from the hill.

Besides, night had long since fallen, and the looming Lodge claimed his full attention. A few windows shone with light but the rest remained dark. And though a half-moon shone, he could not tell whether the house was still as much a leaking, tumbling pile as he remembered, or worse.

“Should I go in alone, first, and break the news?” Alex asked, as the carriage came to a stop before a set of weather-beaten granite steps. “I would not want your Uncle Gifford to have a seizure.”

“You think my scars will come as that bad a shock to him?” Hawk asked. Apoplexy was very near what he expected the first time people who knew him caught sight of him.

Alexandra regarded him as if he were daft. “Of course not. But I think the ghost of his dearly beloved nephew walking through the door, more than a year after his death, might do the trick.”

Hawk felt himself flush.

“I perceive that your scars are a great deal more of a difficulty for you,” Alex said, “than the people who must look upon you.”

“Therein rests the crux of the problem. They must look upon me, but they would not, if they could help it.”

Alexandra sighed and shook her head, as if she might argue the point, but the carriage door was thrown open and Claudia and Beatrix scrambled inside, out of the rain.

Even as the interior grew bright with the light from their lantern, they began tossing rice in the air. “Hurrah for the bride and groom. Hurrah, hurr—”

Sound stopped as if severed by a blade.

Hawk braced himself, even as he consumed the blessed sight of them, Bea bigger, but still a halfling, Claudia, nearly a woman, but sadder somehow.

When Bea focused on his face, she gasped and stepped back, regarding him fixedly, her curly little saffron head tipped in concentration. “Do I know you?” she asked, her small voice wobbling.

“Do not be afraid,” Hawk said.

To his horror, she began to cry as she climbed into Alex’s lap.

Hawk felt the blood drain from him and went stone cold, inside and out.

Alex wrapped Bea in love and soothing words. The little one had taken one look at him and was frightened to death. His worst nightmare come true, or one of his worst.

“Muffin?” Alex coaxed. “What is it, Love? Why are you crying?”

“That man made me sad. I miss my Uncle Bryce.”

Claudia’s gaze shot to his face then, as if the scales had slipped from her eyes, and she saw him true, and understood the reason for Bea’s confusion.

Hawk gave her a half nod, and as quick as he did, Claude covered her mouth with a hand and her eyes filled to brimming, not for the first time that day, if he did not miss his guess. Her tears overflowed and spilled onto her cheeks.

Hawk wished he knew whether she wept with happiness, or horror, or both. At least he understood the little one’s tears. “Come,” he said, lifting Beatrix away from Alex. “Come, Pup, I am Uncle Bryce.” He hugged her close and smoothed her hair. “No more tears for missing me. I am here, Sweet. I am here.”

Bea looked up at him, taking her lip between her teeth, her eyes wide, sobs escaping at odd moments, her expression moving from doubt to wonder. “Uncle Bryce?”

“Bumble Bea?”

“Uncle Bryce,” she screamed, throwing her arms around his neck. Then Claudia was laughing and hugging him, too, and all his girls, Alex included, wept openly, laughing through their tears.

And as Alex reached for his hand, and the little one kissed him all over his face, scars and all, Hawk felt, amazingly, as if he had come home… for the first time in his life.

Beatrix had so much to tell him that they did not move from the carriage for fully three-quarters of an hour, and even then, Alex kept telling her that she would have the rest of her life to catch him up.

“Hello the carriage,” came a gruff, old, curmudgeonly shout from the darkness. “Where has everyone got to?”

“In here, Uncle Giff,” Alexandra said. “Come in, out of the rain.”

Hawk shrugged at Alex, as his stodgy old uncle squeezed into the seat opposite, so busy ordering Claudia aside he had not yet regarded the seat across from him. And when, at length, he did, he simply furrowed his grizzled brow in bewilderment.

Hawk kissed Bea’s little head, firm against his chest. “I am Hawk, Uncle. I survived, after all.”

“No.”

“Truly, though I am a little the worse for wear, as you see.”

“No.”

Alexandra laughed. “Quiz him, Giff. You will discover that he knows all our atrocious middle names, including the most ridiculous of our secrets. No doubt about it. He is Hawksworth.”

“No.”

The girls burst into laughter and began talking at once, and Beatrix practically fell from the carriage, she was so excited, then she dashed for the house.

In the foyer’s dim light, Hawk noted his uncle’s hair had turned the color of pewter in the intervening time, and his manly physique may have thickened and shifted somewhat. But all in all the old boy looked fit and spry and he seemed much less a curmudgeon than Hawk remembered.

“Well what do you know,” his uncle said, quite belatedly slapping him on the back, at long last accepting the truth before him. “The dotty old magpie isn’t five feathers short a tail, after all, but wise as an owl.” Giff grinned. “Hildy,” he called, striding to the bottom of the stairs. “Hildy, you will never guess.”

“Alex?” Claudia asked, stepping near. “Did you find Uncle Bryce today? Or yesterday?”

Alex smiled. “He found me… before I married Ch—”

“Hurrah,” Claudia exclaimed twirling away from Alex and into her uncle’s arms. “I love you, Uncle Bryce.”

Hawk knew he had missed some pertinent component in that exchange, then he heard Alexandra’s Aunt Hildegard reproaching his uncle from somewhere on the upper floor.

Nothing had changed.

When Aunt Hildy started down the stairs, Hawk saw her focus on him right away. And she did not miss a beat, not even when she took his uncle’s arm halfway down. “Bryceson, you stayed away too long this time,” she chided, beaming, as if he had not changed a jot, as if she had been expecting him all along.

“But we forgive you, do we not, Alexandra? I am so glad you are back.” She stood on the bottom step, and still she barely reached his chin. “Though why your letters stopped more than a year ago, I cannot imagine. And it was too bad of the war office to ship you out a mere week after your wedding. Poor Alex wept for months about not even having your child with which to remember you. Now you have another chance, you can get on with having that family of yours while you are still young. I shall put in my order, now, shall I, for a big, noisy brood?”

His uncle Gifford’s sudden paroxysm of coughing turned into a strangled laugh.

“Ah, good to see you, too, Aunt Hildegarde,” Hawk said, feeling the tightening of his cravat.

The dear old lady bussed his cheek, but when she did, and he placed an arm about her shoulders, he realized, from the degree of her trembling, that she was a great deal more shaken than she was letting on. And when he bent nearer, he saw tears hovering on her lashes.

“Praise be,” she whispered.

“My sentiments exactly,” Hawk said, for her ears alone, kissing her cheek in turn. “Especially now that I have seen my best girl.”