Page 68 of Dangerous Exile
“An elopement?” Shock widened her eyes for a second, quickly being replaced with a smile. “How wonderful. Yet please, my son should only be a day, two at the most. But more importantly, this matter is most urgent for you. You do want to marry under your proper name, do you not?”
His right eyebrow cocked. “My proper name? Talen Blackstone.”
“No, no. You must marry under your real name. Conner Burton—wait—Conner Josiah Bron…Bar…No, I don’t recall the full of it. There are at leasttwo more names in your full Christian name.It was so long ago. You will want all of those for the marriage to make it proper. I have all the names in the family bible, but it is not here. It is at the dower house a half day’s ride away. I’ll go to fetch it tomorrow.” She jumped up from the table, going to the wall by the side door and picking up the large frame with a sheet over it that leaned against the wall.
Walking back to the table, she tugged the sheet off and dropped it to the floor, then turned the painting toward Talen. “Please, just look. I wanted you to see this, see them. See you.”
The portrait held three figures. A brown-haired man in ared uniformstanding behind a seated woman—a beautiful woman with blond hair, striking blue eyes, the slightest smile on her face and dressed in a resplendent peach gown that flowed down and to the width of the portrait. Poised just in front of her, a little boy with dark blond hair in a blue skeleton suit, maybe six or seven and staring stoically at the artist.
A boy with his very features. Nose and cheeks and jawline that matched his father’s. Eyes that matched his mother’s. Hair the color between the two.
The air disappeared from his lungs, leaving him weightless, groundless for several seconds.
“Please, just stay here at Washburn for a few days,” the dowager said. “You do not belong in a coaching inn. You belong here. Stay and learn what you can, maybe remember who you are and then you can go into the marriage with the blessing of the family behind you. It is a miracle that you have returned to us.” Her words paused, sudden tears in her eyes. “A true miracle.”
With a deep breath she set the portrait down on the chair she had been occupying and her look shifted to Ness. “If I remember correctly, Mrs. Docherty—Nessia—you were such a sweet child. You were Harriet’s favorite playmate as I recall. I’m sure you will make Conner a fine bride if you are as delightful as you once were. Please, can the elopement wait not but a few mere days?”
Her eyebrows lifted as her look went back and forth between Talen and Ness.
Ness squeezed his hand and he looked to her. She gave him a slight nod.
He hated the thought of it—of staying here.
Not when he could be headed north and making Ness his wife. Making certain she was protected. Though his given name would be important to that end, he loathed to admit.
“It is just a few days, Talen,” Ness said softly. Not imploring or demanding, just letting him know it was right by her.
His head heavy, he nodded. “We can stay. Two days is all we can afford.”
{ Chapter 24 }
“This is the spot?” At the water’s edge, Talen looked to Ness as he stopped his horse next to hers.
She glanced at him, at the rigid hold his body still held. The cords along his neck so taut they could snap with the slightest provocation.
Talen had insisted to the dowager that they needed to travel back to the coaching inn to gather a few items and let their driver know of the plans to stay at Washburn Manor for a few days, but Ness knew he’d just needed to get out of that drawing room, out of that house. He’d been near to jumping out of his skin, he’d been so tense.
No wonder, for the monstrosities that his aunt had described.
She could see full well he needed to injure someone—kill someone if he could. But there wasn’t anyone to attack, to make suffer for what had happened to his parents. Not anymore, and that was the cruelest blow of all.
Ness nodded to Talen’s question. Their trip to the coaching inn could wait an hour. He needed to breathe. Breathe air that wasn’t tainted with death and the past and this was the most secluded spot she knew on the Washburn estate.
“This is it. This is what I wanted to show you.” She looked out across the crystal-clear pond, the water always so peculiarly pure without the usual muck of ponds this size.
Tucked into a glade of the forest surrounding the main estate, the pond was lined with tall reeds on the left of the waterside, a raft of ducks floating in and out of the spikes of green.
“I spent countless hours out here with Harriet when we were young, mainly because bunnies were always nesting in the thick of the grasses at the far side of the pond where the trees skirt up from the water.” She pointed across the way. “And we loved to uncover the bunnies and play with them, holding them tight in our skirts before tucking them back into their little burrows.”
A crooked smile came to Talen’s face and he dismounted, then tied the reins of his horse to a nearby low-hanging branch. He came to her side, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her down from her mare.
So easy for him, as though she was a little scrap of tulle he barely had to extend a muscle for.
He set her down, his hands not moving from her waist as he held her stare for a long, silent moment. A twinge of uncertainty made the edges of his light blue eyes crinkle and he leaned slightly away as his left hand went to her right arm, pulling it up between them until both of his hands could clasp around her palm.
He looked down at her hand, his fingers gently tracing bones and ligaments from wrist to fingertip. “Your hand. I hurt it in there.”
“It is fine.”