Cavendish Brothers 01 - An Unintended Journey Read Online Free PDF Page B

across from her. Thank goodness Father and her brothers had chosen to ride on horseback instead of sitting in the carriage with them. She’d never be able to keep her crying hidden if they were all crowding her on the benches.
    Botheration, she hated crying, but her life had been flipped on its head and shaken for good measure in the last day, and the tears just wouldn’t seem to stop no matter what she did. She’d think they were all dried up, that she couldn’t possibly have another tear in her body, and then the wheel would hit a rut or a raven would fly into her view overhead or an image of Wesley Cavendish’s clenching hands would skitter across her mind, and a fresh bout would leave her eyes.
    It was downright maddening.
    As was the thought that her family could just intrude on the Duke of Danby’s castle at Christmas and he’d welcome them with open arms. Good God in Heaven, her father was a bastard. Yes, it was an ugly word. It was an even uglier thing to be in the modern world. Yet that wouldn’t be changed simply because the duke knew of his existence. And she, Abby, would still be a bastard’s daughter, no better than the bastard himself.
    This was a pointless journey, and it couldn’t come at a worse moment.
    Abby wished to be home at Henley Green, mourning Grandmama in peace while she had duties to occupy her mind. She wished they could have stayed long enough to put a holly wreath over Grandmama’s grave. She wished she knew for certain Wesley Cavendish would still be in Macclesfield upon her return, and she wished she hadn’t had to leave him in the first place when he’d only just come back into her life.
    But wishes and dreams were like fishes in streams. Or so Grandmama had always told her when she’d cry over something she couldn’t have.
    Dashing away another tear, Abby opened to her reticule and took out some sewing. One of her aprons had torn last week, and she’d yet to repair the damage. Well, she would have more than enough time to do that sewing and then some while they traveled to Yorkshire on this fool’s journey.
    She’d found everything she needed other than her thimble. It must have fallen to the bottom of the reticule, dash it all. Abby pulled bits and bobs out, reaching her hand all around, and thoroughly oblivious to anything else happening as she searched for the missing thimble.
    Just as she found it, pulling it out triumphantly, the racing clatter of horses’ hooves bore down on the carriage from behind. Abby’s eyes shot up to meet her mother’s, which were equally wide and terrified. Could it be highwaymen? Her pulse thundered to life in terror.
    But then Father’s booming laughter sounded and a jovial sound came from both Robert and Thomas, and she took a calming breath. They wouldn’t be laughing and joking if there were anything to fear.
    Mother craned her neck over to glance through the dust-covered window. “I can’t see who it is. Can you?”
    Abby tried the opposite window, to no avail. She shook her head with a frown.
    The masculine voices drew nearer to the carriage. She concentrated hard, trying to make out who might have followed them. They’d been gone half a day, already. Perhaps they’d forgotten something and Lord Pritchard sent a rider after them to deliver it? Or maybe he’d changed his mind and was ordering them to return to Henley Green.
    She could hope that last was the case.
    Finally, the men were close enough that she could make out words amongst the racket of the carriage and horses.
    “ It seems I also have business with His Grace that cannot wait. Lord Pritchard suggested that if I rode hard, I could catch you and travel with your family. If you don’t mind, of course.”
    Wesley! She’d know that voice anywhere. But what business could he possibly have with the Duke of Danby? Then again, Abby hardly knew anything at all of him these last years. For all she knew, he could be a spy for the crown or a horse thief, or any number of