Mastered by Love (Bastion Club 8)

His father had died on Sunday.

Leaving the rift between them—vicious and deep, naturally enough given they were both Variseys—unhealed. Unaddressed. Unlaid to rest.

He hadn’t known whether to curse his father or fate for leaving him to cauterize the wound.

Regardless, dealing with his past was no longer the most urgent matter on his plate. Picking up the reins of a far-flung and extensive dukedom after a sixteen-year absence was going to demand all his attention, command all of his abilities to the exclusion of all else. He would succeed—there was neither question nor option in that regard—but how long it would take, and what it would cost him…how the devil he was to do it, he didn’t know.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.

His father had been hale and healthy enough for a man in his sixties. He hadn’t been ailing; Royce trusted that if he had, someone would have broken his father’s prohibition and sent him word. Instead, he’d been blindsided.

In his version of his return, his father and he would have made their peace, their truce, whatever arrangement they would have made, then he would have started refreshing his knowledge of the estate, filling in the gap between when he’d been twenty-one, and last at Wolverstone, to his present thirty-seven.

Instead, his father was gone, leaving him to pick up the reins with a lag of sixteen years in knowledge hanging like a millstone around his neck.

While he had absolute confidence—Varisey confidence—that he would fill his father’s shoes more than adequately, he wasn’t looking forward to assuming emergency command over unfamiliar troops in terrain that would have shifted in unforeseen ways over the past sixteen years.

His temper, like that of all Variseys, especially the males, was formidable, an emotion that carried the same cutting edge as their broadswords of long ago. He’d learned to control it rather better than his father, to keep it reined, another weapon to be used to conquer and overcome; not even those who knew him well could detect the difference between mild irritation and a killing rage. Not unless he wished them to know. Control of his emotions had long become second nature.

Ever since he’d learned of his father’s demise, his temper had been surging, restless, largely unreasoning, violently hungry for some release. Knowing the only release that would satisfy had, courtesy of fickle fate, been denied him forever.

Not having any enemy to lash out at, to exact vengeance from, left him walking a tightrope, his impulses and instincts tightly leashed.

Stony-faced, he swept through Harbottle. A woman walking along the street glanced curiously at him. While he was clearly heading for Wolverstone, there being no other destination along this road to which a gentleman of his ilk might be going, he had numerous male cousins, and they all shared more than a passing resemblance; even if the woman had heard of his father’s death, it was unlikely she would realize it was he.

Since Sharperton the road had followed the banks of the Coquet; over the drumming of the horses’ hooves, he’d heard the river burbling along its rocky bed. Now the road curved north; a stone bridge spanned the river. The curricle rattled across; he drew a tight breath as he crossed into Wolverstone lands.

Felt that indefinable connection grip and tighten.

Straightening on the seat, stretching the long muscles in his back, he eased the horses’ pace, and looked around.

Drank in the familiar sights, each emblazoned in his memory. Most were as he’d expected—exactly as he recalled, only sixteen years older.

A ford lay ahead, spanning the River Alwin; he slowed the horses and let them pick their way across. As the wheels drew free of the water, he flicked the reins and set the pair up the slight rise, the road curving again, this time to the west.

The curricle topped the rise, and he slowed the horses to a walk.

The slate roofs of Alwinton lay directly ahead.

Closer, on his left, between the road and the Coquet, sat the gray stone church with its vicarage and three cottages. He barely spared a glance for the church, his gaze drawn past it, across the river to the massive gray stone edifice that rose in majestic splendor beyond.

Wolverstone Castle.

The heavily fortified square Norman keep, added to and rebuilt by successive generations, remained the central and dominant feature, its crenellated battlements rising above the lower roofs of the early Tudor wings, both uniquely doglegged, one running west, then north, the other east, then south. The keep faced north, looking directly up a narrow valley through which Clennell Street, one of the border crossings, descended from the hills. Neither raiders, nor traders, could cross the border by that route without passing under Wolverstone’s ever-watchful eyes.

From this distance, he could make out little beyond the main buildings. The castle stood on gently sloping land above the gorge the Coquet had carved west of Alwinton village. The castle’s park spread to east, south, and west, the land continuing to rise, eventually becoming hills that sheltered the castle on the south and west. The Cheviots themselves protected the castle from the north winds; only from the east, the direction from which the road approached, was the castle vulnerable to even the elements.

This had always been his first sight of home. Despite all, he felt the connection lock, felt the rising tide of affinity surge.

The reins tugged; he’d let the horses come to a halt. Flicking the ribbons, he set them trotting as he looked about even more keenly.

Fields, fences, crops, and cottages appeared in reasonable order. He went through the village—not much more than a hamlet—at a steady clip. The villagers would recognize him; some might even hail him, but he wasn’t yet ready to trade greetings, to accept condolences on his father’s death—not yet.

Another stone bridge spanned the deep, narrow gorge through which the river gushed and tumbled. The gorge was the reason no army had even attempted to take Wolverstone; the sole approach was via the stone bridge—easily defended. Because of the hills on all other sides, it was impossible to position mangonels or any type of siege engine anywhere that wasn’t well within a decent archer’s range from the battlements.

Royce swept over the bridge, the clatter of the horses’ hooves drowned beneath the tumultuous roar of the waters rushing, turbulent and wild, below. Just like his temper. The closer he drew to the castle, to what awaited him there, the more powerful the surge of his emotions grew. The more unsettling and distracting.

The more hungry, vengeful, and demanding.