Page 55 of Otters and Obstacles
He fumbled in his pocket for the key and unlocked the front door. It was black as night inside, with not even a thin line of candlelight coming from the kitchen. Mrs. Barwick must have gone to stay the night with her sister rather than remain alone in the empty house.
He could not blame her. The rectory nearly echoed its emptiness without Georgie there, bustling around with her projects and her painting, sweeping in and out of the door as she visited the otters and returned with late summer wildflowers to scatter in vases around the house.
Picking his way through the hallway—and nearly upsetting one of the vases as he did—Peter made his way to the drawing room and shut the door. He crossed to the fireplace and took down the tinderbox to light the fire that had been laid for their eventual return.
As the fire caught, he sank into his chair, not daring to look at the empty one across from him.
Staringat the ceiling of Mrs. Clarke’s guest room, Georgie could not help but wonder how they had come to this. She had known Lord Peter Avondale had made a sacrifice when he married her, the countrified mixed-race daughter of a mere baronet, but she had not truly understood until now how great Peter himself felt the social divide between them was. He must feel that way if had not even told his family of their marriage!
And how far would he have taken it? Would he have expected her to stay at the rectory while he visited them? Would he have told the villagers to stay quiet about the marriage if Cousin John had not caused a scene? Would he have succumbed to family pressure to find a way to set her aside despite their havingbeen wed by an archbishop, leaving her alone once more? Her stomach roiled with anger and grief until she felt dizzy.
Instinctively, she reached for her wrist to rub her fingers against her red thread bracelet for comfort… but it was gone.
She sat bolt upright to stare at her bare wrist, rousing one of the otters to peer up from their basket near the hearth. Frantically, she fumbled around the bedsheets. Perhaps it had merely fallen off and was nearby.
But it was not in the bed. Or on the floor. Or in her bag. Or in the otters’ basket. Or anywhere at all in the room.
She sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
The bracelet was gone.
Her last tie to her family was gone.
Her loneliness—heraloneness—struck her like a blow. As kind as they were, her friends in Kilbythorpe had only known her for a few weeks, including Peter. She had no family to support her. No mother, no father, no brother. No one.
Tears welled in her eyes and she gasped, trying to hold back her sobs, but it was too late. All her pent-up loneliness and grief and sense of being abandoned poured out in a storm of weeping that only eased when Bonny scrambled up the coverlet and onto the bed, chirping her own distress until Georgie was forced to laugh and stroke the otter to reassure her.
She heard quiet conversation outside her bedroom door, and turned her head as it creaked open a bare inch. Mrs. Clarke peeked through the gap. The older woman’s expression grew sheepish as Georgie’s gaze met hers.
“I am sorry to bother you, my dear. Miss Welburn and I were unable to sleep, so I decided to see if you would like a cup of warm milk as well.”
Miss Welburn peered around Mrs. Clarke’s shoulder to give Georgie an encouraging smile and, unexpectedly, some of herdespair waned as Bonny slithered out of her arms and back into her basket, wary of the strangers.
Georgie scrubbed at her cheeks with her palms to wipe the tears away and sat up, reaching for her dressing gown. “Thank you. I would love one.”
Mrs. Clarke beamed at her and pushed the door open wider. “Then let’s all go down to the kitchen for a natter and some warm milk. I do believe there are a few leftover cakes from our nuncheon as well.”
Georgie was not alone, not in Kilbythorpe. She had friends here. Even if… if the worst happened, she had friends.
18
Peter woke abruptly shortly before dawn, his neck stiff from falling asleep in the armchair in his study. He had been unable to bring himself to sleep upstairs knowing Georgie would not be in the bed with him. He had formed a habit over their first few weeks of marriage of awakening at dawn to curl himself around her and hear her purr in her sleep as she cuddled closer, trusting him completely. Finding her side of the bed empty when he reached out would have broken his heart all over again.
His cock ached for her, but his heart ached even more. The knowledge that she could barely bring herself to look at him after the way he’d hurt her still lay heavy in his chest, and he wondered how he could persuade her to come home and forgive him.
Rubbing his neck, he sat up, trying to determine what had awakened him. He listened closely as the unexpected sound came again, clear even through the closed window in the still air of early morning.
It was the sound of a hand rattling a lock, not too far distant from the rectory.
Perhaps from the coop where they kept the otters.
Leaping to his feet, Peter dashed through the house and out the French doors that opened to the kitchen garden from the drawing room. From the garden, he looked from the stables on the right to the coop on the left, trying to see through the early morning gloom. The light was still dim, but he spotted a shadow running towards the road from the direction of the coop, already too far ahead for him to think of catching up.
Instead, he walked to examine the coop. Bootprints at the gate were easy to see in the soft earth.
He crouched down to get a closer look. Neither he nor Georgie had been out to the coop since he had left on his thrice-damned fool’s errand to intercept his family, so they could not be either of theirs.
These marks were new.
