She learned one night after dinner, when Mrs. Gable had left the table, that Will was just nine when his father was killed, leaving his family with nothing. He’d been attacked by a raven that plucked and tore at his eyes and temples until it killed him.
Will’s older brother, Harry, had been mauled by a wolf and other forest animals that same day after he had killed a goose from the village. A goose that the young marquess of Dartmouth had considered his “dearest friend”. Will and Sarah had told her how the villagers believed the marquess had the power to control the animals.
“According to my brother,” Will had told her. “He is a madman who was snarling while the raven killed our father.”
“He was more likely smiling,” Sarah corrected. “He used to crinkle his nose when he smiled. One of his eyes would close from the intensity of it. But I doubt he was snarling.”
“So?” Will turned to his sister, who possibly had a crush on the marquess. “It is alright with you then that he was smiling while he watched animals kill our father, as long as we know he was not snarling like the animals he claimed to be friends with?”
She gave him a horrified stare. “No! Of course not! That is not what I meant, William, and you know it! I am just saying he was a boy. Think about what he witnessed that day. Has anyone ever asked him?”
Will gave his sister an indulgent sigh and then returned his attention to Aria. “He is considered mad to this day.”
“He is not mad,” Sarah brooded.
“Very well, odd and eccentric then.”
“If anyone considered him beyond rumors,” Sarah went on, “they would know he would have no desire to control animals. He wishes to live in freedom and would wish the same for his friends.”
“Freedom from what?” Aria asked her.
“I’m not sure, the responsibilities of being the duke’s son, I presume?”
Aria bristled. So, he rebuked his responsibilities. His type sickened her. He was likely a playboy without a conscience. He certainly had the face and physique for it.
“Perhaps the animals needed his permission to harm the man who killed their friend. I heard Father killed the wolf that attacked Harry.”
“Then,” Aria said, “you believe he can communicate with animals?”
“I had been sent to gather the lord’s soiled linens,” Sarah told her. “Though I was only six, I often helped my mother. I practically grew up with the marquess. One day soon after my father died, I was back to gathering linens and I heard the marquess weeping in his bed. The young lord thought he was alone, but he kept saying words between his sobs. Words like, ‘sorry’, and ‘my fault’, and ‘but I told them…they listened to me’.” Sarah shrugged her shoulders, “He was young. He has admitted to imagining it all.”
“You know much about him,” Aria said with a soft smile.
She found herself wondering if the marquess reciprocated Sarah’s feelings. After meeting him and finding that he offered Sarah neither a word nor a nod before he rode off on his horse, Aria didn’t think Sarah’s feelings were shared.
Will’s younger sister plucked her serviette from the dinner table and covered her chuckle.
Will looked away.
“Do you blame him for your father’s death?” Aria asked him.
“Harry does,” Will let her know. “He blames the marquess for what happened to our father and to him. There is hatred between them, and I fear it will only be satisfied by death. You would do best to stay away from both of them.”
Aria felt another chill go up her spine and concealed it lest they send her back to bed.
She thought of a warrior clothed in red, who had backed down from a bed-ridden woman. She didn’t realize she was smiling until Will leaned down and grinned at her.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Me?” she asked, wide-eyed, then swallowed hard when he nodded. “Nothing really…the warm weather in New York.” Yes. She’d welcome the humid, hot steam over the freezing cold seeping in through cracks in the walls.
When Will slipped his gaze to his sister, as if thinking about the way she too smiled when she thought of…No! Aria denied. She wasn’t that obvious.
She met Harry and his wife, Elspeth, the next morning at breakfast. The oldest of the Gable offspring was over six feet tall. He might have been handsome like his younger brother at one time, but not since he was eleven and forest animals had attacked him. His face was scarred from his forehead to his chin in one place and across his cheek. He didn’t greet her but scowled.
“I understand Dartmouth is interested in her. He has stationed thirty of his men to guard the perimeter of this house.”
The marquess did that? Aria wondered. Why? Was it because of the thieves?