Page 78 of Dangerous Exile

“Gather men of your employ and send them out in search for her. I don’t know in which direction she’s gone.”

“Of course.” Clayborne motioned toward the stables. “Come. Between the grooms and stable hands, we have six able-bodied men at the ready. And then I will gather footmen and my driver.”

Clayborne started to walk as he talked, his long strides eating up the ground toward the stables. The man was rushing forth to help where he could and Talen had to give him credit for it. He was a man of action, something Talen was forced to admire.

Their walk through the woods quick, Clayborne kept talking. “The peculiar bit on the debacle of all this is that I never wanted the title. You don’t know how many times in my life, growing up, that I wished you hadn’t died. That I imagined you were alive. That you would show up and save me from my fate. Which is why I intercepted you at the door in hopes to talk to you in private.”

Talen looked over at him. “So the dowager wouldn’t interfere?”

“Exactly.” He nodded. “She has always had much more…aspirational plans for me. She still does. Advancing in parliament. The expansion of the title. More wealth. It is never enough for her.”

Talen looked ahead, his head cocking to the side as his feet crunched over fallen leaves. “She drives you?”

“That is putting it mildly.” He shrugged the shrug of a weary, nagged-upon man. “Mother would have had me married off to an American heiress years ago if she’d had her way. The estate is now solvent, but it has taken me years to make that happen.” He exhaled an obvious sigh of relief. “And now you are back.”

Talen glanced sideways at him and instantly recognized the look now on his cousin’s face. “And you suddenly look free.”

A half smile lifted Clayborne’s cheek. “If I help you find Mrs. Docherty, I have hope that I just may be. I never wanted the burden of the title, and it’s been hanging over my head for the last thirteen years, ever since you and your father died, and then Uncle Walter died only months later.”

“But I thought your father died nine years ago?”

“Yes, that is true, but he’d been incapacitated a month before I was born. Was so my entire life before he died.”

“What do you mean incapacitated?”

“My father lost part of his skull—and brain in the war. He was never able to take over the earldom and died when I was thirteen. He never talked. Never walked. I never saw him out of bed. Rarely saw him awake. It’s why my mother never let me play with you, she was always so fearful of something happening to me like it had to him. Never let me do anything, really.” His hand ran along the side of his face. “And, to be truthful, my mother was disastrous at running the estate until I turned of age. I’ve been attempting to correct all she has wrought for years.”

Talen’s feet stopped. “What did she do?”

It took Clayborne a few steps to halt as well and he looked back to Talen. “To be blunt, my mother has expensive tastes and the uncanny ability to convince any and every vendor to take credit. Granted, marrying the American heiress would have been the smartest thing to do back in the day. But that was not to be.”

Talen’s eyes narrowed at Clayborne. “What did your mother tell you about my parents’ deaths? Did she tell you how they died?”

His brow wrinkled. “Just that you three were together when you were attacked by cutthroats from London. She didn’t expand beyond that. Was there something else I should know?”

Ice flooded Talen’s veins.

She hadn’t told him. Hadn’t told him his own father had killed his parents.

Hadn’t told him because it couldn’t have happened.

Talen whipped around, frantically searching through the trees. “What is to the east of the manor house?”

“To the east?”

“Yes, man. To the east?”

Clayborne looked in that direction, his jaw shifting to the side as his confusion deepened. “Beyond the formal gardens and pond, there are several sheep fields, another pond, a hunting cottage, a small barn with the cows, the blacksmith’s—”

Talen didn’t hear another word.

He was running.

{ Chapter 28 }

Talen was poking her arm. No, shaking it.

Wait. He wouldn’t be doing either. His lips would be on her neck, nuzzling her awake. This was shaking. Hard shaking. And she wasn’t in bed—something hard was rubbing against her spine.