Love's Reward (7 page)

Lenwood flushed, an angry burn of color that washed over the fine bones of his face, then left him unnaturally white.

“Damn you!” he said quietly. “It’s not by my choice that we mention your marriage, Tarrant.”

“No,” Fitzroy replied coolly. “Least said, soonest mended.”

Joanna stared at two men, the brother she loved, and the dark, forbidding man who had tracked her down and kissed her so ruthlessly. Quentin’s wife made no difference to her. She had never intended to marry him.

But what on earth was she going to do now? And how was her father going to react when he heard about this?

* * *

Two hours later, her face blotched with tears, Joanna had her answer. The Black Earl, Lord Evenham, had swept into the room carrying a package of papers from Lord Acton. He handed them to Richard in silence. Joanna watched her brother turn white as he read the covering letter. He barely glanced at the other documents.

“For God’s sake! But my father doesn’t know what this man is!” he exclaimed. “It’s impossible!”

“It is done, sir!” Lord Evenham snapped. “You will please apprise my son Fitzroy of the contents.”

“What man?” Joanna asked. The tension pressed around her like a thick bank of ice.

Richard thrust the papers at Lord Tarrant and dropped back onto the chair beside her.

“Joanna, listen. There are things in life that cannot be undone. But if he harms one hair on your head, or causes you a moment’s disquiet, I shall happily kill him.”

“Who?” Joanna said. Blind panic was undermining her determination, as if a storm surge attacked dunes. “Kill whom?”

Lord Tarrant perused the letter rapidly. He looked up with a hard, clenched line at the corner of his mouth, and an unholy light of deviltry in his eyes.

“This man, my dear,” he said, indicating himself. “There’s only one rogue here whose very existence stirs up murder in every peaceful breast. Your brother means me, of course.”

“What is it?” Joanna stood up. She wanted to break the air and see it shatter in shards. “What does Father say?”

Tarrant did not reply. He turned to the Black Earl, his movements fluid and deadly, like a swordsman facing an enemy.

Lord Evenham stood at the window, tall, imposing, elegantly inhaling a pinch of snuff. As calm as when he had first entered, he was in complete, quiet command, an absolute, certain authority, without bluster or excess.

He met his eldest son’s cold anger with equal implacability.

Tarrant held up the letter and faced that merciless will with an identical determination and dark, icy depths in his voice.

“You have arranged this, sir, for your own ends. You know that I will not stand aside to see Quentin hanged. But do not think that, by forcing my hand in such a way, you will avoid seeing the singer’s little waifs finally inherit Evenham Abbey. I will do it, but you may have my oath upon it that there will be no joy in it for you and Lady Evenham.”

“I will see you wed, sir.” Lord Evenham closed the lid of his snuffbox with a snap. “And if force is what it takes, so be it. You have a duty to your house and to your blood. Your Spanish bride has been dead for two years. As the next earl of Evenham, it is incumbent upon you to take another wife. Lord Acton and I have agreed to the settlements. But do not think for a moment that Lord Acton is bluffing about Quentin, or that I will intervene. If you refuse, you will see your brother hang.”

“And which do you think is more trying to my tender sensibilities?” The subtle voice betrayed depths of sarcastic awareness. “A hanging or a wedding?”

Joanna was shaking. “Whose wedding?”

Tarrant turned to her and grinned. He looked wild, dangerous.

“Why, yours and mine, my dear,” he said gaily. “Our fathers have agreed without consulting either of us. Your father will overlook my family’s stain to your honor, if I redeem your reputation by marrying you. Otherwise he will have his revenge on that poor clay.”

He indicated the still flaccid figure of his brother, breathing more noisily now on the couch. Quentin groaned and turned over.

“But how?” she said.

Tarrant held up the two sheets of paper that Richard had handed him with the letter.

“This is a legal complaint drawn out against Quentin Mountfitchet for the kidnapping and rape of Lady Joanna Acton. And this is a special license for the marriage of that same lady to Fitzroy Monteith Mountfitchet, Viscount Tarrant. It is up to us which one is acted upon.”

“What?” Joanna exclaimed. “This is absurd. I won’t marry you.”

“Oh, no, my dear, on reflection I think that you will, though it is as far from my inclination as it is from yours. Sadly, I am quite a catch, however black my character.”

Suddenly hating the hostility he saw in her face, Fitzroy turned to Richard.

“Unless you think that when you tell Lord Acton what kind of man he is forcing is daughter to wed, he will change his mind?”

Joanna caught at her brother’s sleeve. “You can stop Father from doing this, surely?”

“He won’t care,” Richard said, gently touching her cheek. His eyes were bleak with devastation. “Unfortunately Tarrant doesn’t make a false claim about his value on the marriage mart, Joanna. As heir to Evenham, he’s a fine catch.”

Lord Evenham laughed. “If my son had murdered and ravished his way across Europe and back again, Lady Joanna, your father wouldn’t mind.”

“But you will always have the backing of your brothers, sister mine,” Richard said quietly. “Either Harry or I will happily cripple or dispatch him for you, if you ever say the word.”

“And if I still refuse to marry him?”

Richard’s distress was clear in every feature. “Then Father will press charges against Quentin and see him hanged, and you will live out your days confined to King’s Acton, publicly disgraced. There will be no reprieve and certainly no painting. He means it, Joanna. Quentin may deserve death, but only you can decide what to do. I hope that it will be to tell all the Mountfitchets to go hang.”

“Lord Lenwood!” Fitzroy said, mocking. “When did you ever suggest that an innocent man should meet such a fate? I am as much a victim of my brother’s indiscretion as your sister, am I not?”

Richard met his derisive gaze. “For God’s sake, Tarrant, show her the letter!”

With an elegant bow, Fitzroy gave Joanna her father’s letter.

Rage sputtered from the page, echoed in the ink splattered across the paper by a pen breaking under too forceful a fist. Lord Acton had learned from Lord Evenham that Quentin was already married. The two earls had agreed to the only solution: Joanna must marry Quentin’s brother, Fitzroy, or they would both suffer the consequences.

She closed her eyes for a moment. Surely her mother could soften him? But, no, at the bottom of the letter was a terse note in Lady Acton’s flowing hand.

“He is not to be moved this time, Joanna. After what happened with Harry, like the lamb you are to be led to the slaughter. Your father has no compunction in destroying the tree along with the fruit thereof. I’m very sorry, my dear girl, but not every forced marriage is a bad one. You must make the best of it that you can.”

Let us destroy the tree with the fruit thereof, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may no more be remembered.

It was one of Miss Able’s favorite passages from Jeremiah. Lady Joanna Acton had done something even more unforgivable than her brother Harry, who had married a Scottish governess, and her father was not going to excuse her. He was prepared to see Quentin Mountfitchet hanged at Newgate if she did not give in—a slightly uneven return for the loan of a curricle and an escort to Harefell, however ineffective he had been in delivering her there.

Even if she called Lord Acton’s bluff over Quentin, her own future was doomed: to live out her days in that great marble mausoleum, King’s Acton, cut off forever from the world.

She could stand it, perhaps, and surely they would not really hang the son of an earl?

Joanna glanced up at the ring of faces.

“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot marry this man.” She turned to Lord Evenham. “My lord, you will not allow my father to harm one of your sons, surely?”

“I must have a suitable heir in the direct line in the next generation,” the Black Earl replied without blinking. “If it is necessary to sacrifice one useless son to compel the other to do his duty, then so be it.”

Fitzroy watched Joanna with an oddly conflicting range of emotion. She was headstrong, willful, spoiled. She was at least ten years his junior, little more than a schoolgirl. She was beautiful.

And at first glance she looked—if one did not concentrate too long on the pure English skin and the full curve of upper lip—decidedly like Juanita, his Spanish bride, who had died in circumstances that had made honorable Richard Acton want to execute her husband without compunction.

Fitzroy turned to his father. “Sir, if you would kindly allow me a few moments alone with my future bride, I would be most grateful.”

“I shall be waiting in my carriage, sir, to escort the young lady back to town. You may have five minutes. Then I would be pleased if you would do something to sober Quentin and bring him back with you in your phaeton. Smithers may retrieve my curricle, and this unfortunate incident will be behind us. Lord Lenwood, perhaps you would accompany us?”

Richard bowed his head and with one quick, agonized glance at Joanna, followed Lord Evenham from the room.

* * *

Joanna could not bear to meet his gaze. She let her eyes wander across the dull plaster—faded prints hung on the walls, of birds and flowers—then up at the low, timbered ceiling where traces of paint hung in small green peels, so that the beams had the look of lichen-covered tree trunks in an ancient forest. The Swan was Tudor, no doubt, with its lead-paned windows and crooked doorways.

How odd that in this busy, modern world, so many post houses should still echo that long lost past.

“Evenham Abbey is Tudor, also,” Lord Tarrant said quietly, although still with an echo of anger and derision. “Stolen from the monks for the benefit of my ancestors. Strange that such a hallowed place should spawn such an unholy family, isn’t it?”

“They will not hang Quentin,” Joanna replied.

He dropped onto the chair opposite hers and stretched out his long legs.

“Are you prepared to take that risk? I am not.”

“I thought you hated him. Aren’t you glad to have an excuse to see him hanged?”

“I do not hate him.” It was said flatly, without emotion.

Silence echoed for a moment.

Joanna studied the carved leaves trailing up the edge of the stone fireplace. They were battered and blunted by time, the veining blurred, the stems chipped away.

“It’s all absurd. I was not abducted. I left with your brother of my own accord.”

“The law is often absurd, and Quentin has broken it. To carry off an heiress is a hanging offense, whether you claim you were willing or not. We have two earls determined to press charges. Your father to save your reputation. Mine to force me into marriage at any cost. Once the charges have been made, the law will grind out its inexorable course. No one will be interested in your opinion.”

Joanna knew that she was defeated. She could not stand alone against the force of all of them: her father, the Black Earl, and most of all this man with his spoiled, sarcastic humor.

“So what are we to do?”

He laughed with a reckless lack of restraint.

“Why, we shall marry, of course, like the dutiful children we are, and thus I shall save your reputation. It will be the first honorable act toward a lady that I have been seen to commit in a long time. We shall set up a splendid pretense at housekeeping in my house near town, and receive the well-wishers with smiles and a sham of wedded bliss. Privately you won’t ever need to see me. I have my own pursuits.”

Why should it wound, when she had no desire to marry him? Yet it did.

“Involving women, I suppose,” she said tartly.

He grinned. “Of course. I shall make no demands on you. You may live as you please. As I shall continue with my own life. I have urgent business in town at this moment, which interests me far more than taking an unwilling bride.”

The painting above the mantel was a watercolor, not badly done, of a riverbank and a rustic cottage.

“I should want a studio.”

“Very well. You may have an entire floor, if you wish. In fact, you may do any damned thing you please with the house. I don’t imagine I shall be there much. So, you see, marriage to me will bring you what you have been longing for, freedom to paint. Ironic, isn’t it?”

She felt the force of his dismissal pierce like an arrowhead. It settled somewhere inside her rib cage, threatening to fester.

But I have never wanted to marry. And he is offering me my heart’s desire, more clearly than my own plans for Harefell. It doesn’t even matter whether or not he means it. Because if he breaks trust, Richard and Harry will retaliate, and—like Quentin’s wife—once I am married, I can always run away. A married woman is free of her father, at least.

“You don’t want children?” she asked.

He took up the poker to rearrange the coals. Joanna’s attention snapped back to him. His hands were lovely, square and strong, yet with elegant, blunt-ended fingers.

“I most particularly don’t want children. There’s no other revenge I can have on my father for this, except to deprive him of the grandson from my loins that he so desperately craves.”

“In that case, Quentin’s wife will be the mother of the next earl.”

The dark eyes glanced up, implacable, but with just that hint of derision.

“Exactly. You will not again be subjected to my unwanted attentions. I have enough females to satisfy my natural male needs. Once we are married, you may take whatever lovers you please, as long as you’re discreet and produce no bastards. So let that one kiss be the first and last expression of lust between us. Even if you invite me, Lady Joanna, it will never happen again.”

Fitzroy accepted the brandy from Lord Grantley with a polite bow of the head.