Realm 04 - A Touch of Grace Read Online Free Page A

crazy Baloch across Scotland is someone else’s mission. Have we not given enough years and faced enough dangers?”
    “You sound introspective, Crowden.” Kerrington’s gaze had shifted to Gabriel’s countenance. “Is there something you wish to say?”
    Staring off toward the trail they should be following, Crowden remained silent for several minutes. “I want what you have,” he said into the stillness. “What Thornhill has. What Wellston has obviously found. If I possessed it, I would be on the road to my estate so quickly people would question whether I had ever been here.”
    Kerrington turned his horse in a tight circle. The captain’s eyes glanced to the disappearing evidence of Jamot’s retreat before returning to Gabriel’s countenance. “You have the right of it, Crowden. Someone will find Jamot, or the Baloch will return to his homeland. Either way, I am to Manchester. I will deliver Ashton’s papers, and the baron can choose whether to prosecute Aldridge. At the moment, all I wish is to sleep with my wife held tightly in my embrace.”
    Crowden nodded his agreement. “I will assure myself Lord Yardley and Swenton have recovered the ladies, and then I will be to Staffordshire. I am of the persuasion I can serve England more by being a voice of reason in Parliament than I can by tracking Jamot.”
    “We will report we lost the trail,” Kerrington confirmed.
    Crowden extended his hand in parting. “Farewell. Be safe, Captain.” Kerrington had accepted it with a nod of approval. His friend turned his mount toward England, his wife, and his home. Gabriel watched the man he had blindly followed into hell wind his way to the west. He watched until he could no longer decipher his friend’s form before hoarsely saying, “If I possessed what you have discovered…” Gabriel gave his head a shake to clear his focus. “Soon,” he murmured. “Very soon.”
    *
    Gabriel had spent barely twelve hours with his friends before he made his excuses and set himself upon the task of returning to Staffordshire–to what remained of his family. Upon taking his leave from James Kerrington, Gabriel had made his way to Leith to discover Marcus Wellston, John Swenton, and Lucifer Hill had been more successful than he and Kerrington. With the earl’s ability to scale heights, and Swenton and Hill’s brute strength the three men had staged a dramatic rescue of Miss Cashémere Aldridge, the woman Wellston intended to marry, and the lady’s twin sister, Miss Satiné.
    During the Season, Gabriel had made Miss Cashémere’s acquaintance during the Realm’s staged ploy that had brought about Sir Louis Levering’s forced transportation and eventual death at Murhad Jamot’s hands. At the time, everyone thought the lady was marked for Viscount Lexford, their friend Aidan Kimbolt; but even upon his limited interactions with Miss Cashémere, Gabriel had never thought her a fit match for Lexford.
    The remainder of the Realm did not know women the way he did. The moment he kissed the back of a lady’s hand, he could tell anyone who bothered to ask the depth of the woman’s guard for a man. Cashémere Aldridge might have possessed a childlike innocence, but the lady also held a deep, passionate independence–one Kimbolt would have smothered rather than nurtured. The lady’s disposition was better suited to Wellston. On the earl’s Scottish border estate, the woman would rule her land with controlled fervor. As if she were a warrior princess. As with Kerrington and Lady Eleanor and Thornhill with his childhood love, Velvet Aldridge, Wellston would know contentment with Miss Cashémere, and she with him.
    Gabriel had remained in Leith long enough to assure himself of a safe end to Wellston’s adventure and to make a manipulated statement to the local magistrate as to his involvement in Miss Satiné’s rescue from her kidnapper and in the eventual death of her abductor, Lachlan Charters. With the knowledge happiness was