For Your Arms Only by Linden, Caroline (best fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

lived very quietly for some time, still respectable but widely pitied. This Major Hayes’s return, if he really was Major Hayes, would stir up the neighborhood to no end. She wondered what on earth he could want with her father.

“The obviously not dead one,” she said in reply to Tom’s question. “He doesn’t look even the slightest bit worm-eaten.” Far from it, in fact. Which was too bad. Now even people who were supposed to be moldering in their graves were coming around to pry into their troubles. Cressida would fear demons escaping hell to torment her next, except that she suspected they were already upon her. If only Papa would come home…

They had reached the house. The door stood open, begging a cool breeze to drift through, to no avail. It was as hot inside the house as it was outside. Cressida knew the heat was shortening her temper as much as her other worries were, and she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, feeling her sleeve stick to her arm. She wished they hadn’t moved here. If they still lived in Portsmouth, she could have sneaked down to the sea after dark and gone for a swim to cool down. How she missed Portsmouth.

“George? George darling, is that you?”

Cressida paused, glancing up at Tom. Her grandmother’s voice was so bright and hopeful, as if she truly believed Papa might just stroll into the house. Tom, looking grim again, opened his mouth, but she pressed a finger to her lips and handed him the pistol. Tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she straightened her shoulders and walked into the drawing room as if she hadn’t just confronted a stranger at gunpoint while he studied her horses with an eye to buying them at auction.

“No, Granny, it’s just I,” she said, going back to her seat. They had been having tea when her ears picked up the sound of hoofbeats behind the house. She had slipped out with some murmured excuse to her grandmother, who was a little hard of hearing and hadn’t noticed the approaching horse. Her older sister, Callie, shot her a questioning glance, but Cressida just smiled.

“I was sure it would be your father,” Granny said fretfully, her gaze lingering on the doorway. “Your step sounds so like his, my dear. And he is due home any day now.”

Cressida picked up her tea. Her father had been due home any day now for four months. He had gone missing before—or rather, he had left and not told them where he went or when to expect him back, but they had always known it before. Papa would wink and pinch her cheek and say he was off, and he’d be back “in a fair while.” “A fair while” had lasted anywhere from a fortnight to three months, but he had always come back just before the money ran out. Papa seemed to have a knack for knowing when the money was about to run out. Not this time, though. This time they were staring complete and utter ruin in the face, and there was still no sign of her father.

“I’m sure he’ll be home soon,” she said for her grandmother’s benefit.

“Of course he will.” Granny put down her tea and turned to stare out the front window, the one that faced the road. “Any day.”

He’d better, Cressida thought, staring into her tea, now stone cold in the expensive new teacups Papa had ordered when they moved to Marston. Otherwise they were all sunk.

After tea, when Granny had dozed off in her chair and they had cleared away the tea, Callie followed her to the kitchen. “What was wrong?” she wanted to know, setting down the tray of dirty dishes as Cressida put on her apron. Papa had hired a cook and a pair of maids, but they were all gone now. How fortunate that Cressida and her sister were quite used to having no servants at all. “You just jumped up and ran from the room, and then were gone a quarter hour. Granny remarked on it.”

“Did she?” Cressida poured out the dregs of the tea from the pot. “What did she say?”

Callie sighed. “She thought you might have heard Papa approaching. She’s certain he’ll walk through the door at any moment.”

“If only he would,” she muttered. “I begin to wonder…”

Her sister went still. “To wonder what?”

“To doubt,” Cressida admitted. She picked up a teacup and began to wash it. “He’s never been gone this long without some sort of word, not unless there was a war going on. And then we certainly knew where he was.”

Callie bit her lip and said nothing.

“I heard a horse,” she said bluntly. “Out behind the house. I thought it might be another creditor, so I went out to see. A man was walking around the stables, and I thought he had come to take the horses.”

“Cressida, you shouldn’t go out there by yourself! You should send Mr. Webb—”

“He was busy mending the fence, and there wasn’t time to fetch him. We’ll be even worse off if the sheep get loose. Don’t worry,” she added, seeing Callie’s dismayed expression. “I took Papa’s pistol, just in case.”

Callie gasped. “You pulled a pistol on him?”

She flushed. “I didn’t shoot him, if that’s what you’re worried about. Even Granny would have heard that.” The door creaked open, and Tom came in. At the sight of Callie he stopped short, ducking his head in a hasty bow.

“Mr. Webb, my sister says there was a man on the property, looking at the horses,” Callie said.

He glanced at Cressida, who kept her eyes on the teacup she was wiping. “There was.”

“What are we to do?” When no one answered, Callie threw up her hands. “What aren’t you telling me? Did he take the horses? Did he set fire to the stables? What happened?”

Tom just looked at Cressida, who took her time washing every last crevice of the delicate cup. It would be