Something About Her

Chapter One

Rosemead Manor, Gloucestershire, England
Sunday, 12 February 1815

Thomas is dead. Blythe’s brother’s words echoed in her head as she peered out her bedroom window at the black clouds.

“Did you hear me?” Adam’s hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Blythe, I’m so sorry.”

She should feel something.  After a year of not knowing where her husband was, there should be grief, sadness. Perhaps a desire to rage at the quirk of fate that had brought her here.

Anything but this veil of nothingness.

“Was he traveling alone?”  She knew the answer, or at least she suspected it.

“He had a woman with him.”

Pain sliced through the numbness. Of course he did.
Sheets of rain poured down outside and pelted the window with fat droplets.  She stared at a rivulet of water as it slid down the glass.  It seemed fitting somehow that the skies would rage today.

“When did he die?”  She turned to Adam.

“Six months ago, in a carriage accident. She…the woman, I mean, survived.”

Blythe’s husband was dead, but his mistress was alive.  Was that supposed to be comforting?

She nodded her understanding and turned back to the window to stare at the ominous clouds on the horizon.  She had always loved storms, their volatile energy, the way the clouds hugged every inch of land and saturated it with rain.  She had been enthralled, ever since she was a little girl, by the loud cracks of thunder and the explosions of light that seemed to reach into every corner of the world.  Oddly, they calmed her.

“Blythe, I didn’t come alone. Mama and the girls are here.”

Panic slid in behind the pain.  Her family, here?  The idea of seeing Adam had been hard enough.  But now she had to deal with her mother and three sisters, too?  The urge to run from the room and escape into the storm overwhelmed her.

She hadn’t been able to face them for months.

“They are all here?”  And ready to pounce, no doubt.

“Yes.  We will be leaving for London from here.  Cordelia’s debut and all.”  He paused.  “We plan to leave in less than a week.”

“A quick visit, then.”  How odd that even though she hadn’t invited them, now that they were here, the idea of such a short stay distressed her.

“Not a visit, Blythe.” Her brother’s voice was firm under the gentle tone.  “We came to take you with us.”

She snapped her gaze to his. “What? Take me where?”

“To London.”

“You can’t believe that I’d run off to the London season now.”

Adam stared at her with that look, the one that bordered on pity, the look that had finally forced her into seclusion at Rosemead.  The look that said, ‘Oh, that poor girl, abandoned on her wedding day.  How pitiful.’

“Rosemead is my home,” she told him, when his demeanor didn’t change. “I belong here. People need me here.”  She fisted her hands together.  She would not leave the only sanctuary she had.

Her brother chose that particular moment, however, to act the part of the Earl of Merewood – unyielding, unbendable.  No sign of the easy-going brother she’d always been able to cajole to her side.

“I failed you when I let you marry that bounder.  I will not fail you again by leaving you here alone.”

“I’m hardly alone in a house full of servants.”  She left out how lonely she’d felt of late.  Lonely she could deal with.  But London?  A town full of people who would whisper behind her back about her inability to keep a husband?  Not in her foreseeable future.

“This is not negotiable. You are coming to London with us.”

“No, I am not.”

“I won’t have my sister spinster herself for a man who wasn’t worth it.  And it’s ridiculous for you to remain here alone, when–” He stopped. “There is more I have to tell you. Then you will see we are right.”

“We?” Blythe echoed. “Mama agrees?” She sniffed. “Of course she’d want me to come home.  Silly question.  I’m surprised she hasn’t started packing my belongings.”  She bit her lower lip and hastened to the doorway that adjoined to her bedroom.  Just in case.

“Blythe, you need to listen to me.”

The metal of the doorknob chilled her hand as she turned it and entered the room.  Her gaze swept across the furnishings, focusing on the items important to her.  Her brush and mirror on the dressing table.  A book on the nightstand that she’d used to help herself fall asleep.  Her dressing gown, thrown across the foot of the bed.

It all remained as it should.  Nothing out of place.

She continued toward her dressing room.  At the doorway, she peered inside and sighed with relief that her clothing was where she’d left it.

As were Thomas’s things.  His empty trunks sat against the far wall.  His clothes still lay folded where his servant had stored them a year ago.  Blythe had never moved them.

Had she somehow believed that leaving his belongings ready and waiting would bring him home?  How foolish.  It had become an eerie shrine to a man who didn’t deserve one.

She turned and saw her brother standing in the middle of the room, arms folded and legs spread out as if he balanced on a ship’s deck.

His fighting stance. Blythe sighed, not in the mood to do battle with her brother.

“Thomas is gone.  He can’t hurt me any longer.  So it does no tmatter where I live.”

Adam’s troubled expression did not bode well.

“What haven’t you told me?”

He took a breath as if to fortify himself. “The money is gone – your dowry, your dower portion.  Thomas took it.  All of it.”

“What do you mean, he took it?”

“I don’t know how he managed it.  Your entire dowry is gone. Disappeared from the accounts.  He must have withdrawn it when he went to London.”

“He went to London?” She shook her head, as a myriad of memories pummeled her.  The man she’d married had dressed to the hilt, as only a man of excessive means could. “I don’t understand.  Thomas was wealthy when I met him.  He didn’t need my dowry.”

“If he ever had wealth of his own, it’s gone.  His accounts have been in arrears for years.”

“Wonderful.  I am a walking cliché.  Abandoned and penniless.”

“You know I won’t leave you penniless.” Adam studied her with apparent frustration.  “I’m sorry for all of this.  I only wanted to find your husband and bring him home.  I did not expect to find such a deuced mess.”

“Either you brought him home or you didn’t.  Neither option makes me giddy with happiness.”  What self-respecting woman wanted a husband she could keep only if her brother dragged him back by his well-heeled toes?

She moved to a nearby chair and sank back onto it.  “What a bloody horrible day.” She cringed. “I didn’t mean you being here.  Or Mama or the girls.  I am happy about that.  It’s just-”

He waved a hand in the air. “No need to explain.  You’re entitled to your share of dissatisfaction.”  He strode to the small seating area she sat in and dropped into the chair opposite hers.

When he smiled, the tension disappeared and she could see the light-hearted brother she knew.  “You almost had me fooled, you know.”

“Fooled?”

“Into thinking you were the unbendable Earl Who Would Broker No Argument.  Papa would’ve been proud.”

He chuckled. “It seems to be a talent I’m gaining. It must be infused in the title.”  His brows furrowed.  “But I was serious about London, Blythe.  It would be best.”

“For you, perhaps. Not for me.”  She hoped she carried some of that brokering-no-argument ability herself.  “I have no desire to go to Town and be gossiped about and pitied.”

Adam stayed silent.

“See, even you can’t deny there will be wagging tongues.”

“You wouldn’t be gossiped or pitied.”

Amused at his brotherly solidarity, she laughed.  “A woman married and abandoned on the same day by a man who couldn’t wait to run off with another woman?  Town gossip thrives on stories such as mine.  You know it as well as I.”

“No, I don’t.  Because no one knew Thomas had married.”

That wall of blessed numbness crumbled like dust around her. “What?”