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  SIGNET REGENCY ROMANCE

  Miss Carlyle’s Curricle

  Karen Harbaugh

  InterMix Books, New York

  INTERMIX

  InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  MISS CARLYLE’S CURRICLE

  A Signet Regency Romance

  An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Signet edition / June 1999

  InterMix eBook edition / July 2012

  Copyright © 1999 by Karen Eriksen Harbaugh.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56750-0

  INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to acknowledge Mr. William R. Robbins, curator of the Remington-Alberta Carriage Centre, in Cardiston, Alberta, Canada, for his assistance in finding information regarding specific harness equipment for curricles. I was amazed and pleased to find out about the resources, and the amount of information at this organization, and not the least, the generosity in sending me the information.

  I would also like to acknowledge the help of my critique group in figuring out ways to do away with certain unfortunate characters in my book. In particular, I would like to thank Sherrie Holmes, who is the horse expert in our group, and whose breadth of knowledge and devious mind I profoundly appreciate.

  Prologue

  The horse screamed madly, going wild, and the sickening crash of the curricle’s broken wood made Diana Carlyle freeze in horror where she sat on her horse, many yards away.

  In the next moment she slipped off her own horse, hitting the ground in a run. She ran to the overturned curricle, reaching for her uncle, who was facedown on the ground. Others came with her—she did not know who, nor cared—and hands came together to turn over his lordship.

  “A doctor,” she cried. “Someone fetch a doctor, immediately!” She swallowed down bile at the sight of her uncle’s bloodied face. “Uncle . . . Uncle Charles . . .” Please God, let him be well, she prayed. He is like a father to me. The shouts of grooms and spectators roared in her ears, but she ignored them. “Oh, please. Oh, please—you will be well, I know you will be. Please be well.”

  “Ain’t likely, miss,” a groom said near her.

  She turned fiercely to him. “He will be well, you shall see! He only needs a doctor.” She felt a touch on her hand, and she turned eagerly back to the man who had cared for her since she had been ten years old, had patched her knees, had taught her to ride and shoot as well as any man.

  “Diana?” His voice was a whisper, and he stared at her, but seemed not to see her.

  She clasped his hand. “I am here, Uncle.”

  He gasped, then groaned. “Tell your mother not to worry. I have taken care of her—and you, too.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, and I have been grateful for it, dear uncle. No one could have done better.”

  He moved his head, a negative motion. “No. . . no, in the will. You are provided for. The heir . . . not. . . he is . . . Tell Cecelia. . ..” His eyes closed, and the fitful rise and fall of his chest ceased.

  “Uncle? Oh, no, please, no!” Diana frantically squeezed his hand, wanting to will her own life force into him. Impossible . . . Surely he was only resting? His hand was already lax in hers. It was not possible. She gazed at her uncle’s face, a kind and fatherly face, now seeming to be asleep.

  Diana still held his hand and somehow could not let go, for her fear had frozen into incomprehension—how could it be? He had, just moments ago, been all vivid life, laughing as he touched his whip to his horses, as his curricle bowled down the road, swiftly, sure to w
in the race. She had seen him and had cheered him on. It had been minutes, only minutes ago. She watched for one more breath. One more breath . . .

  “Miss—miss, it’s done, the good doctor is here—there’s nothing more for you to do.”

  She turned at the voice . . . it was McKinney, the head groom. He had helped her up on her first pony, when she first came to Brisbane House. She stared at him, shaking her head slowly. “The doctor . . . he will make Uncle well, will he not?”

  “Ah, miss . . . ah, miss.” The groom’s face creased in sorrow. “It’s best you go to your mother.”

  She gazed at the doctor, who had lifted Lord Brisbane’s hand and felt his wrist, then felt for the pulse at the neck. He shook his head, and a heavy ache pressed into Diana’s heart. The doctor gazed back in return, looking grim.

  “He . . . he is gone, Miss Carlyle,” he said.

  “No . . . no.” A stubborn part of her did not want to believe him. She turned to the head groom. “The horses, McKinney, should you not be attending them?” Gunshot made her jerk back and drop her uncle’s hand.

  A tear fell down McKinney’s weathered cheek. “There’s naught to attend, Miss Diana.” The sound of the gunfire and the sight of McKinney’s sorrow forced the truth into Diana’s mind at last, and she gasped as the dull ache in her heart twisted and turned sharp.

  “McKinney’s right, Diana.”

  She rose and turned—it was Sir James, her cousin. She hunched her shoulders against the familiar irritation she felt when he was about, and wished that they were not cousins so that he would have no cause to call her by her Christian name. He looked at her, a small crease between his brows, the rest of his face impassive. “I think your mother would want to hear the news regarding Lord Brisbane from you, rather than a servant.”

  He was right, and this fact irritated Diana even more. “Of course,” she replied, and moved away. She gave a last glance at her uncle, and drew in a shuddering breath. “I will go, immediately.”

  She ran to her horse, still standing obediently where she left him, though his ears were pricked forward and he shifted his feet uneasily. McKinney helped her up, and she urged the horse to a gallop back to Brisbane House.

  Diana worried her lower lip as she left her horse in the stables and hurried up the stairs of Brisbane House. How would Mama react to the news? Surely in her calm, sensible way, although of course she would be sorely grieved, for both of them had been fond of Uncle Charles, her father’s brother. Mama had always been strong and full of good sense—she had been Diana’s anchor when Diana’s father had left them and eventually died, her father who had left them to starve until Uncle Charles had come to their rescue. Mama would know what to say, she would know how to deal with this terrible pain.

  “Mama, it’s I,” Diana said when she knocked on the door of her mother’s room, and at her mother’s welcome, entered.

  “Did your uncle win, Diana?” Mrs. Carlyle said cheerfully. She sat in her comfortable chair near the fire, setting a loop in her tatting. She looked up, then she frowned upon meeting Diana’s eyes. “What is the matter, my dear?”

  “Mama . . . it is very bad. . ..”

  Mrs. Carlyle smiled slightly. “Nothing is as bad as we first think, Diana.”

  How was she to tell her? She stared, confused, at her mother, uncertain how to breach the assurance her mother always had about her, and not wanting to breach it. “No, listen—it—Uncle Charles—”

  Mrs. Carlyle’s smile disappeared, and she gazed steadily at Diana. “Yes? What is it?”

  “There has been an accident—he was injured—the doctor said—”

  Her mother paled. “He is hurt—but surely he will be better.”

  Diana swallowed and looked away. “No, Mama.”

  “The doctor cannot tell that in such a short time—”

  She raised her eyes and stared at her mother, and her lip trembled. “Yes, Mama, he can.”

  Silence, then: “He isn’t . . . he isn’t—”

  “Yes, Mama,” Diana said, her voice a whisper.

  The tatting dropped from Mrs. Carlyle’s hands and she gazed around the room, blindly, her face bewildered. “But he cannot—I must see him. The servants—they must fetch cold cloths—he must be injured, only injured, and he could become fevered—”

  “No, Mama,” Diana said, making her voice louder though her closing throat tried to cut her off. “He—he is gone.”

  Mrs. Carlyle rose from her chair, the lace and the tatting bobbin falling unheeded to the floor. “Dear God,” she said. Her eyes were wide, her face more pale than before, as if she looked at some horror in front of her, and not her own daughter. “I must see him. I shall change my dress and I shall see him, for . . . for it would never do for him to see me in this . . . this. . . .” She took two trembling steps toward the bell rope, lifted her hand to pull it, then collapsed to the floor.

  “Mama!” Diana screamed. She ran to her mother’s still form and fell to her knees, frantically feeling for a pulse—it was there. She breathed a sigh of relief and rose again to summon a servant. A sudden dizziness swept through her, but she clenched her teeth against it, pulling together all the self-discipline she had learned when she was a child and had felt the dizziness of hunger. She grasped the rope and tugged it.

  Sitting down again, Diana carefully lifted her mother’s head to her lap, and smoothed away the hair from her forehead. The dizziness had passed, and had turned into an iron wall around her heart. It seemed her life was crumbling, but she could not let it crumble her: her mother needed her, and no tears would help her or those she loved right now. She would cry later, when she had time, when her mother was well enough to put her arms around her and comfort her.

  But somehow a line was crossed, a step taken on a journey. Diana took her mother’s hand in hers and patted it, and remembered how her mother had done this to her, when she was hurt or sad. Mrs. Carlyle moaned softly, whispering Lord Brisbane’s name, her voice sounding lost and lonely.

  Diana sat up as straight as she could, while a rising sob lost the battle against the wall she had erected within herself—her numbness was firmly in place now.

  A maid entered the room, cried out, and exclaimed, and helped get Mrs. Carlyle undressed and into her bed. Diana instructed the maid to find the doctor and have him come to her mother, then sat by the bed, still holding her mother’s hand. When the doctor arrived, quickly, he assured her that Mrs. Carlyle merely needed rest.

  Diana sighed and nodded, squeezed her mother’s hand one more time, then went downstairs to call upon Mr. Southworthy, the vicar, to arrange the funeral.

  Chapter 1

  Diana Carlyle rode furiously through the fields and into the woods, her mare’s hooves pounding the turf beneath her, pounding as hard as her heart. Cold needles of rain splashed her face, washing away tears of grief. She did not know how else to come to terms with the death of the man who had been, for all practical purposes, her father.

  When she reached the wood, she more tumbled than descended from her horse, and leaned, gasping, against the old oak whose large, rambling roots she had often played amongst as a child. She had been happy that her Uncle Charles had brought her and her mother from London and from destitution after her own father had died. Her belly had been full after being empty for so long, and her mother’s face had ceased being so pale and wan.

  But now she felt an emptiness once again, and her mother’s face was again pale and wan, but this time it was caused by a hunger in the heart, left bare and comfortless for the lack of Lord Brisbane’s joyful presence.

  It had happened so quickly—the accident, the funeral—that Diana felt as if she had gone through it in a disbelieving trance, holding both emotions and reality at bay to keep some semblance of self-control. She had managed to note her mother’s bewildered gaze, and had held her hand through the funeral. But when the first shovelful of earth had been thrown upon the coffin, the sound of it had pierced the numbness that had covered her lik
e a muffling shroud, and told her that her beloved uncle was indeed dead—suddenly, violently. She had drawn in a sharp gasp and shook her head in denial, and when the funeral was over, she had walked away as quickly as she could, running the last few steps to the house, and then up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She had no comfort in the silence of her room; it reminded her of her first day in Brisbane House, how lonely she had felt in an unfamiliar place, and how her uncle had greeted her with kindness and a gentle pat on her cheek. She wanted to howl her grief, but her gentlewoman’s training forbade it.

  She had borne the stillness and inactivity for more than a few days—until now. Today, the will would be read, and she could not stand one more reminder of her uncle’s death. Her mother’s mention of the will had brought on an inner wailing of sorrow, and Diana knew she had to leave before she humiliated herself with an outpouring of tears.

  She had run to her room and stripped off her black gown and had pulled on her riding habit, then run into the stables, ordering, in a low, harsh voice, the startled stable boy to saddle her mare. She had had neither voice nor breath for thanks when the job was done; she had hoisted herself astride on the horse, for that was the only way to ride as hard and fast as she wanted, away from death, away from grief.

  But here she was, leaning and sobbing against the old oak, for grief had followed her like a Greek Fury, making her want to wail and scream in protest against the snatching away of an important person in her life. She groaned instead, and pounded the bark of the tree with her fists, for the years of discipline she had imposed on herself would not allow the wildness within herself to burst forth as wildly as it wished.

  The rain fell. It soaked her riding habit, and soon Diana’s sobs ceased. Perhaps because of the rain—the drops falling around her felt almost like the world itself wept, and it was an oddly comforting thought. She still leaned against the tree, sighing and catching her breath from the ride and the weeping, when a sound made her turn quickly around.