The Reckless Love of an Heir: An epic historical romance perfect for fans of period drama Victoria. Jane Lark

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      That small tug became an overwhelming sense of coming home when the carriage passed beneath the archway of the oldest part of the house underneath the ancient portcullis of the original castle. The emotion was spurred by the sound of the horses’ hooves and iron rimmed carriage wheels ringing on the cobble and sending metallic echoes bouncing back from the walls of the house around the courtyard.

      His sisters came out, surrounded by his father’s giant grey deerhounds before the carriage had even drawn to a halt, followed by his mother—there was another pull in his chest. Love. He loved his family, no matter that he had left them behind here. It had been easier to leave them because he’d always known when he needed them, they were here.

      The dogs’ tails waved in the air like flags of welcome on the castle’s walls, as they surrounded the carriage.

      A footman moved before the women to open the carriage door. Henry climbed down, gripping the carriage frame with his left hand, trying not to move his right arm, because the thing still hurt like the devil from all the damned jolts it had endured to get here.

      The noise of the fountain running at the centre of the courtyard echoed back from the old stone about him; another sound which spoke of home.

      Samson, his favourite among his father’s dogs, slipped his head beneath Henry’s good hand urging Henry for a petting. He stroked behind Samson’s ear in an idle gesture, that recalled years and hours spent with his father’s dogs.

      His mother came forward, her arms lifting to embrace him, as her face expressed her concern over the sling holding his arm.

      “Mama,” He acknowledged as she wrapped her arms about him.

      She held him too tightly, though. He pulled away. “My shoulder.” The jar of pain was sharp and twisted nausea through his stomach as well as shooting pain down his arm and across his back. He gritted his teeth, trying not to wince from it.

      “Oh, I am sorry. Are you so badly hurt? You have had your father and I worried beyond measure.”

      “How far did you fall?” Christine his youngest sister asked. She was not the youngest of his siblings, though. He had two sisters but his brothers out numbered them two to one. Fortunately the younger ones were away at School and not here to disturb him. The eldest, Percy, the next to Henry in age was twenty and at University in Oxford. Christine was seventeen.

      “Too far,” Henry answered her.

      “Were you winning the race?”

      His good arm settled about Christine’s shoulders, in brotherly comradery, as they all turned to walk towards the house, the dogs with them. “Of course. Do you not remember? I always win.”

      Sarah, who was eighteen, and to have her come out in London in a few weeks, was walking ahead of him. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I have sent a groom over to the Forths’ to tell Alethea you are home. She wished to know as soon as you arrived so she might call and see you at once.”

      Henry smiled. God bless Alethea… He would be required to feel guilty within the hour then. Yet they were not officially engaged. It had been an unspoken agreement cooked up almost from their births. A plan formed between his father and his father’s friend, Uncle Casper, Lord Forth, who owned a neighbouring estate.

      After Henry’s birth Lord and Lady Forth had been blessed with a daughter—and probably even while wetting Alethea’s head—it had become the perfect plan, to match the two.

      The expectation placed upon him had been talked about as far back as he could remember. He’d never disagreed, nor disliked the idea, it was simply that he had not yet gone along with the plot and said the words that would seal the agreement and he had no intention of doing so during this visit home either. His marriage could wait, he was currently very much enjoying his bachelorhood and he was only twenty-three, it was too bloody young to betroth himself.

      “I am sure you need to sit down,” his mother said. “You must be tired. Is it painful still? It must be. Have you taken laudanum?”

      “I took some when I last stopped, but it is not intolerable, you need not fuss.” Yet he had come home because he’d known they would fuss and he was in a self-indulgent mood; a mood which appreciated their fussing. It did hurt, and his mother’s concern was the best balm—for a spoilt son.

      He smiled at his rumination and allowed Christine to take hold of his good hand and pull him over the threshold of the house.

      The square hall welcomed him, with its dark, wide, oak staircase, that wrapped itself about the walls, leading, seemingly, forever upward in an angular ascent. He loved the house. It smelled the same—of polished wood, candle wax and his mother’s perfume.

      Christine tugged his hand and pulled him on, not to his father’s stately drawing room in one of the more recently built wings of the house, but to their smaller family drawing room. The dark oak panelling and the window full of Elizabethan lead-lined diamonds, made it seem austere, yet to Henry it induced that final sense of being home more than any other place in the house.

      He sat down on an old sofa that his mother had had reupholstered in a gold velvet. The room brought back numerous happy memories of his childhood. This was where they had spent their days when he was young, playing and laughing, and many evenings too when he’d returned from school for the holidays—

      “Must your arm remain in the sling always?” Christine asked.

      “Always, for a few weeks.”

      She made a face at him. “You knew what I meant.”

      “You should see my shoulder and my arm, then you would have cause to make a disgusted face, I am black and every shade of red and yellow.” His hip was black too, and half his leg, and elsewhere there were other bruises. He’d truly shaken himself up. He’d lived carelessly his entire life, but his fall had made him realise more than just that he’d nearly broken his arm, he had nearly broken his neck, and the thought of that, that he might not have survived was the thing that had shaken him up. He had been given a second chance at life, he supposed. A chance to consider what he had done with his life. If he had died, he would have left no legacy. He’d spent his years carelessly and recklessly.

      “Do you wish for tea and cake? You must be hungry…” His mother did not await his answer but turned to pull the cord to call for a maid. “And if you need to rest,” she said when she turned around, “you are in your old rooms.”

      It would be as though he had never left home then. He smiled. He’d needed a sanctuary, and comforting, and as he’d known his mother and sisters were here and ready to offer both. “Thank you, Mama.”

      He had at first moved to London to avoid her mollycoddling, and yet now he’d received a hard dose of fate’s medicine he’d realised that at times it had a value. His low spirit craved it.

      “Here.” Sarah picked up a cushion from another chair, as Samson settled down, laying beside Henry’s feet and resting his head on Henry’s boot as he’d always done. His tail thumped on the floor as it continued to wave. The other dogs lay down on the hearth rug, their eyes on the returned prodigal son. “Sit back, Henry. Rest against this.”

      Christine picked up a cushion too. “You may rest your arm on here.”

      They arranged the cushions about him so he might sit more comfortably. СКАЧАТЬ