His Wicked Embrace novel Chapter 14

Lord George Lyon, the Earl of Denbruck, sat in his comfortable leather armchair in the drawing room, watching his son and daughter with their spouses and children play snapdragon. His eyes drank in the sight of his happy family. At the age of seventy-two, he was getting on in years, but staying young was easy when he spent time around his grandchildren.

"Father?" His son, Archibald, came over, holding out a letter. "This came for you. The footman left it on the table, but I believe you missed it."

"Thank you, Archie." George took the letter, studying the seal upon the parchment, and his heart jolted. It was a seal he had not seen in almost two months, yet he'd longed to see it every day. He struggled to open the letter hastily but without damaging it. As he began to read, the world around him seemed to fade into a gray recess.

Lord Denbruck,

It is with a heavy heart that I must share the fate of your daughter, Joan, and her husband, Rafay. They were killed in a raid by a rival power in the region who now claims his lands. Your granddaughter, Zehra, is among the missing. Our men have searched through the bodies and could not find her. We believe she has been taken, as many of the females in the palace were, to be sold into slavery. I will make it my mission to find her, or, that failing, at least to learn what happened to her.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Southerby

George let the note drop from his fingers as his eyes blurred with tears.

"Papa?" His daughter Elizabeth joined Archie at his side. "What's the matter?"

"Take the little ones. I..." He choked. "I need to speak with you both alone."

Archie's wife and Elizabeth's husband collected their children and took them away. Once they were alone, George begged his children to sit. He pointed to the parchment on the floor, which Archie bent to retrieve.

"Read it." George could only whisper the words.

Archie scanned the letter, his eyes widening. Without a word he handed it to his sister.

"Joan is dead?" Elizabeth gasped. Archie put a comforting arm around her.

"Father, what happened?" Archie's voice grew rough with pain.

It took every bit of George's strength to speak to his two remaining children and tell them everything.

"We..." Elizabeth paused to collect herself. "We need to have a service for Joan, and her close friends must be told, the ones who stayed true to her after the scandal."

"Quite, yes, quite right," George murmured, but his mind was a thousand miles away and his heart beating back to the past, fighting hard to grasp onto golden memories, the ones of sunny days when his darling girl danced in the gardens, her little pinafore smudged with dirt and her voice as sweet as any songbird as she sang a lullaby about a nightingale.

"Do you believe, Papa?" the child asked.

He took the small hand she held out and walked with her down the garden path. "Believe what?"

Joan beamed up at him, her cunning mind mixed with an open heart. "That in every bit of the world, there is, in essence, a soul? And they fit together like a grand puzzle."

How could he not have adored such a child? And how could her growing up not break his heart?

"My dear little girl..." He came back to himself, realizing Archie and Elizabeth had left him alone to his grief. He raised his hands to cover his face and wept bitterly. His pride and his mistakes had taken his child and grandchild from him forever.