But how to make things right with her? The remembered look of betrayal wounding her features a second punch to his gut.
Once more, the empty staircase drew his gaze. Could he—
“You’re healing nicely, son. The swelling has gone down tremendously since I saw you last.” His mother had taken his hand in both of hers, was patting and petting him as though the action calmed her. But then the relaxed look on her face pinched as she clasped her fingers round his smallest one. “Where is it? Your signet ring?”
His mouth opened but nothing came out.
“You lost it?” said in such a way one would have thought he’d gambled away their home.
Curling his raw fingers into a fist, despite her lingering touch, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Lost it. Left it. I know not which.”
Her dismay brought back his own, some days prior, when he’d first discovered it was gone.
His second evening at the cottage—the first without her distracting company—he’d been emptying his valise, taking stock of food (none), clothing (some), money (enough), ahead of a walk into the nearest village the following morn for supplies and sustenance.
The valise emptied, a sick feeling hollowed his gut.
His thumb circled his smallest finger. Bare. Then again. Still bare. Then the next— It’s not there; you refused to wear it.
“Where is it?” He grabbed the bag, turned it topsy-turvy and shook it, the blame sides flopping together until he rammed the stump of his arm inside to hold them open.
His father’s—yours now!—signet ring. The one his mother brought him, her impassioned words echoed in the letter she’d left with him on her first visit to London after his father died.
But other than trying it on—once, and unsuccessfully due to the still-healing bones—it’d been easier to ignore. Both the ring and all it represented.
Had he secured it on his person for the journey?
Knowing it wasn’t on him, Ed still patted his pockets with frantic motions, his left arm crossing his body to reach and check every one.
“Damn. ’Tis truly gone.”
Had he forgotten it? Or had he intentionally left it behind?
It was a symbol of all that had changed, of all that he had assumed: the title, the responsibility of making success from the dregs of whatever his father and brothers hadn’t frittered away…so many resources belonging to their family undervalued by his sire.
Was it still at his temporary London lodgings or—
By blazes. What if it had been in the other valise?
The snow and cold, his injured left side, along with his injured pride, fingers mostly frozen by then, all hampering his rushed search when he combined the two?
Every bit of remorse he’d felt then came roaring back now, staring into her not-quite condemning but definitely questioning eyes. “Grandmother’s Bible.” He bit his lips before finishing. “It’s mislaid as well.”
He’d decided he must have missed both in the dark, after yelling at his contentious horse. “Failing on all accounts before I have even started as Lord, eh?”
His mother gripped his hand—hard—and leaned back up to whisper harshly in his ear, “Banish that sort of thinking, Ward. For it is beneath you.”
To anyone looking, they had been savoring a long-awaited reunion. No one but the bothersome inner voice that needled him frequently knew how very much that sentence reminded him of the other woman so recently in his life.
Told you not to let her go. Idiot.
“Lord Redford.” As if deciding he and his mother had been private long enough, the other, definitely piqued matron sought his attention as she clasped hands and threw a few daggers of her own up the staircase, after the recently departed pair before returning her attention to him. “I am mortified at my youngest. Mortified! That is not how the rest of us go on. If I didn’t know better, I would think she wasn’t mine.” The woman heaved a sigh big enough to ruffle the curtains across the hall. “Preposterous girl! Behaves as though she was raised in a barn by wild Gypsies,” Anne’s mother uttered, proving a kinship with the entertaining, forthright Harriet after all.
“Supposed to be celebrating your engagement, old man.”
The deep voice he instantly recognized jerked his head toward the man striding forth.
“Frost?” The bewildered syllable actually prompted the customary grimace into a grin from the phiz before him.