“My trustees claim they’re powerless to intervene.” Her voice was husky with chagrin she couldn’t help feeling when Gideon refused her thanks. “My brothers convinced them I’m wild and flighty and need a man’s guidance.”

She’d spent many a night cursing the spineless solicitors at Spencer, Spencer and Crosshill. Old Mr. Crosshill had been her father’s friend, but he’d been dead four years. His egregious nephew had advised her to accept her stepbrothers’ plans with suitable female obedience.

“No relative offered you shelter?”

“None with the power to stand up to my brothers.” Charis’s voice flattened into grimness. “Believe me, Sir Gideon, I’ve assessed all options. Only one remains. Will you put me down at the next substantial town we come to?”

“What do you intend?”

To survive the next three weeks without surrendering either to privation or my stepbrothers.

“I only have to avoid my brothers until the first of March.” Heat climbed in her cheeks. Her pride abhorred what she was about to ask. But she must conquer pride for survival’s sake. “If you lend me a few shillings, I’ll repay you when I come into my inheritance. I couldn’t find any money to take with me. Which must seem hen-witted, but…”

“Miss Watson.”

“I’m not solvent right…”

“Miss Watson.” His voice was sharper.

She relapsed into silence, embarrassed at her nervous babbling. Tears of humiliation rose to her eyes. She didn’t want to set out alone. More than that, she didn’t want to leave Sir Gideon, which was just too pathetic to admit. How had he so quickly become the most important person in her life? It seemed absurd. Unreal. Dangerous.

He appeared displeased. Again. “Confound you, I’m not going to slip you some blunt and put you down defenseless and alone in a strange place. If any town between here and Penrhyn was big enough to offer a hiding place. Haven’t you looked out the window, girl? We’re well into the wilds of Cornwall.”

She gulped back the lump in her throat while fugitive hope stirred in her heart. “Oh.”

He looked in better health, more like the man she’d met than last night’s invalid. He looked clever and purposeful and invincible. He looked like he would keep her safe forever.

His deep voice was firm. “We aren’t far from my home. I hope you’ll accept my offer of sanctuary.”

Five

Gideon expected Miss Watson to demur. After all, only yesterday she’d been so desperate to escape that she’d risked her life to run away. But she turned a solemn hazel gaze in his direction and, after a moment, nodded.

He couldn’t help noting her beautiful eyes, remarkable even in her bruised face. A striking mixture of green and gold, they were the shifting, fascinating color of the tarns he remembered from the woods near Penrhyn.

“I accept, Sir Gideon. Thank you.” Her lush lashes lowered to shade her eyes to malachite. “I just hope your many kindnesses to me don’t bring you trouble.”

More damned gratitude. He dismissed her remark with a grunt. “I’m not sure how kind you’ll think I am when you see the house. I haven’t been back since I was sixteen. Even then, it was far from luxurious. Lord knows what state the place is in now.”

According to his father’s solicitors, the old manor still stood as it had stood through four hundred years of wild Cornish weather. They hadn’t, however, been able to vouchsafe the property’s condition. Ramshackle, Gideon guessed, reading between the lines of legal nonsense.

Neither his father nor his older brother had been much of a manager. No reason that should change because Sir Barker Trevithick’s despised younger son vanished into Asia. Before breaking his neck in a drunken hunting accident, Sir Barker hadn’t known whether his second son was alive or dead. Nor, Gideon grimly knew, had he much cared. But then, he’d thought the succession rested safely in Harry’s plate-size hands.

Like so much about Gideon’s return to England, the deaths of his father and brother aroused conflicting reactions. Neither had ever evinced an ounce of affection for him, and he wasn’t hypocritical enough to pretend to mourn their passing. Nonetheless, there was a…regret when he thought of two lives so close to his own wasted in debauchery and drunkenness.

Curiosity lit Sarah’s face, and she leaned forward, bracing herself against the jolting carriage. “Has the house been unoccupied since you left?”

“No. My older brother lived there until last winter, when a fever took him.”

He kept his voice steady and unemotional. Still, the girl’s expression filled with compassion. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Her ready sympathy made him uncomfortable. “We weren’t close.” To say the least. Wild beasts received a more tender upbringing than the two young Trevithicks.

“Then I’m sorry for that too,” she said. “Family is important.”

“Not to me,” he said tersely. “And I hardly think your experience is any improvement on mine.”

Her jaw firmed. “My brothers’ brutality can’t destroy my faith in human relations. That would give them too great a victory.”

Tags: Anna Campbell Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net