The Scarred Earl (10 page)

‘Why the devil should I?’ she was surprised into protesting crossly.

‘I don’t know—could it be because your brother was overpowered and taken by a rogue on this very estate or nearby?’ he responded sarcastically.

‘Surely two Seabornes are enough for any man to try to control at the same time without adding me to the pot?’

‘I suspect he has only one at present,’ he observed almost to himself, ‘and what better lure to bring Richard out of hiding than knowing his precious sister is in the hands
of the very man he disappeared in order to avoid? Even a strong, bull-headed and nigh fearless idiot like Rich wouldn’t be able to stay away if the brute got hold of you, Miss Seaborne.’

‘No,’ she conceded on another weary sigh, ‘he would not and this man must be a brute indeed for Rich to avoid his own world for so long to steer clear of him. I suppose you’re right and I’d best take a groom with me when I ride out.’

‘Thank you. It would worry me, too, if this villain had you in his power,’ he said gruffly, his eyes on the mellow stable roofs in front of them as if reluctant to concede even that much.

‘Then put me out of your mind and find Marcus before whoever has him spirits him further away,’ she said, but she had to suppress a shiver at the thought of this aloof man putting himself in danger for the sake of her scapegrace brother.

‘Very well, your ladyship,’ he replied with a mocking half-bow.

‘I’m not a ladyship.’

‘No doubt you soon will be,’ he muttered darkly as if it was a sin he would find very hard to forgive her.

Chapter Seven

M
arcus Seaborne struggled to throw off an odd sense of being lost in dreams and shadows and blinked his eyes tightly shut before forcing them open. He flinched against the dull light in a narrow room he was certain he’d never seen before. Devil take it, but he must have drunk enough to sink a flotilla last night and damnation take the drummer who was beating a tattoo in his ears. He heard himself groan, then felt a terrible urge to retch.

‘Drink this,’ a very cross virago shouted at him from far too close by.

‘Ugrumph,’ he remarked.

‘Don’t argue, do as I say,’ she snapped and solved the problem by tipping his head back
so she could drown him with the water he’d thought he wanted so badly.

‘Glurgh!’ he found energy to protest as he began to cough, then retch in earnest as he fought to get the stuff out of his windpipe before she did for him.

Thrusting a chamberpot of mercifully pristine white earthenware under his nose, she held it steady while he rid himself of the water and anything else in his unlucky stomach. Alternately hot and cold and shivering like a sick dog, he passionately wished he was alone and said so as soon as he could string a sentence together.

‘You can’t want it more fervently than I do,’ she muttered gloomily and watched him fumble for the cup of water she’d done her best to choke him with as if she would rather she’d succeeded.

‘Then go away,’ he ordered gruffly.

‘I should like nothing better,’ she snapped.

‘Then leave me to die alone—I’d vastly prefer it that way.’

‘I am locked in here and was ordered to make sure you stay hale and healthy, or it would be the worse for me and my family,’ she said obscurely and Marcus decided some
cruel joker had locked him up with a madwoman.

‘Probably wanted to be rid of your shrewish tongue and unpleasant temper for a few blessed minutes,’ he grumbled, then tried to take in his surroundings. He fought a heavy lethargy he couldn’t remember experiencing before, even after a night of hard drinking and mischief with his less reputable friends. ‘Deuce take it, I feel as if I’ve been pole-axed,’ he mumbled as he tried to stand, felt the room revolve and hastily sat down again.

‘Nigh on,’ his companion admitted, seeming unimpressed he had found the mighty bruise lurking at the base of his skull.

‘You could at least try to sound sorry,’ he protested, wincing as he probed a bit too hard and nausea threatened all over again.

‘And what good would that do you?’

‘It might make me feel better.’

‘No, you would probably lie there feeling pathetic and ill, then go into a decline,’ she argued and he managed a rueful smile. If he must be knocked out, drugged and imprisoned, the company of a female unlike any he’d ever met in his life before should stave off all traces of boredom for the time being.

Alex Forthin halted his tired horse at last and looked down on the famous prospect of Ashburton New Place glowing richly in the fading light of a late-August sunset. He’d been gone two days and all he had to show for it was acute unease and a rumour that made him feel even wearier. Keeping Persephone safe at home while he routed the Seabornes’ enemy was about to grow even harder and somehow he had to make sure she stayed free, safe and annoying as ever.

Doing his best to shake off a tiredness that went deeper than the physical effort of tracking about the English Marches for two days on a wild goose chase, he pressed his knees into the warm flanks of his horse and urged him toward the gracious old mansion, wishing he was bringing better news with him. In this busy, ordered nineteenth century of theirs, it seemed unlikely that three prominent men could come and go as if the gods had wafted them off to an enchanted Aegean island beyond human curiosity, so he knew he had missed some clue to where young Marcus was, even if Rich was cunning enough to hide away as if he’d never been, and their enemy was elusive as ever.

It was logical that their unknown foe would do everything he could to stay invisible, but after weeks of racking his brains he couldn’t imagine who the man was and it troubled him deeply. He’d been an effective intelligence officer, which was why he’d been treated to the finest torturer the enemy had at his disposal when he was finally captured. But he’d found no trace of a stranger who had stolen a member of the rich and powerful Seaborne clan from under their noses and gone to earth with his latest quarry.

Even the Romany bands had largely left the area for distant goose fairs and mops and he was sure that those left were as truthful as they ever were outside their own tribe when they shrugged and swore nobody had paid them to kidnap a lord’s son lately. As the headman of the tribe he knew from his own holdings told him with the apparently open smile of an expert liar, they would be fools to wear out their welcome for the sake of a stranger who would happily let them hang when the hue and cry was raised after such precious young gentlemen.

‘Welcome back, my lord,’ Jack’s butler greeted him as he did his best to ghost into
the Duke of Dettingham’s private wing of the house without notice.

‘Thank you, Hughes, I should have known better than to try to sneak in and make myself presentable before anyone knew I was back, should I not?’

‘Very likely, your lordship. I will send the second footman to attend you, he has some skill in looking after a gentleman and I dare say your own man is enjoying the holiday you were gracious enough to grant him while you are with us.’

‘Aye, I dare say he might well be doing so, if I had remembered to employ him in the first place.’

‘I beg your pardon, Lord Calvercombe. It is, of course, none of my business, but I must compliment you on such admirable self-sufficiency.’

‘Good of you,’ Alex said, unable to suppress a rueful laugh at being gently chided for his lack of state by Jack’s major-domo.

‘Shall I send Amos up to help you dress for dinner? You appear to have had a long day.’

‘Then please send him up along with enough hot water for a bath, if it can be got at such short notice. I’m not fit to get within
a hundred yards of a lady’s drawing room at the moment and I suppose dinner will be at the usual hour?’

‘Indeed, my lord. Lady Henry is still entertaining some of the guests who came for his Grace’s wedding,’ Hughes observed in a world-weary voice that told Alex that some had worn out their welcome.

‘Perhaps it would be better if I had only arrived an hour or two later then,’ Alex said ruefully and thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of sympathy in the man’s eyes. ‘Now I am here, I’d best scurry about,’ he said and ran up the graceful cantilevered staircase.

On his way to Jack’s ducal apartment, he decided it would take more than the half an hour he had to make himself fit to join the ladies and gentlemen gathered here for dinner tonight. He had a villainous growth of beard and a pressing need to feel properly clean again before he met anyone’s critical gaze, let alone finicky Miss Persephone Seaborne’s perceptive green-grey eyes and sceptical smile.

‘Good evening, Lord Calvercombe, how lovely to be granted this chance to further
our acquaintance after all,’ Persephone heard her third cousin, Corisande Beddington, murmur in a husky tone that she probably imagined was seductive and mysterious as soon as the Earl of Calvercombe stepped into the smaller drawing room where the family and their few stubborn remaining guests were gathered tonight.

‘Good evening, Mrs Beddington,’ he responded with a lift of one dark-as-midnight eyebrow that ought to tell Corisande he knew what she was after and wasn’t planning to be used or trapped by a harpy.

Persephone managed not to bestow a smug smile and stop-trespassing look on her lovely cousin, but couldn’t help keeping an eye on them both. His lordship met it with a challenge, once he had brushed past clinging Corisande with a swiftness that made the family seductress pout and saunter towards one of Jack’s middle-aged neighbours with a swing of her hips supposed to make the Earl of Calvercombe regret dismissing an experienced bedmate like her, when he had little prospect of slaking his manly needs with any other member of this very respectable house party. Unfortunately for Corisande, Lord Calvercombe didn’t look in the least
bit sorry to escape that invitation and concentrated on greeting his hostess and avoiding the
tête-à-tête
both cousins were eager to force, for very different reasons.

‘Did you find out anything useful?’ Persephone managed to murmur as softly as she could under the polite hum of conversation in the ducal drawing room, once she finally managed to manoeuvre herself a few seconds’ privacy with him.

‘Nothing but a rumour I can’t pin down,’ he admitted in a similarly intimate tone, but Persephone doubted Corisande would envy her quite so bitterly if she knew that they were discussing Marcus and not making shady assignations.

She met her distant cousin’s hard-eyed glare with what she hoped was a look of bland indifference, but knew she had finally made an enemy after years of skating round the edges of outright dislike blazing between them. Trying to regret the vague possibility of friendship with a woman with whom she had nothing in common, she turned her back on her cousin and met his lordship’s knowing look. Nothing about that silent falling-out had escaped him.

‘Would you like me to flirt with her and
cast you in the shade? It would be pure pretence, as I disliked the obvious even before I learned to distrust it, but it might make her feel a little better disposed towards you,’ he offered and surprised a genuine smile out of her that probably made Corisande all the more determined to hate her for being younger, better dowered and closer to the heart of the powerful Seaborne family than she would ever be.

‘No, thank you. Not only would it raise her hopes unnecessarily if you truly feel nothing, but poor Lord Ambleby would feel doubly rejected, since her flattery seems to be going some way to mending his broken heart,’ she said, careless of the private affairs of others for once.

She realised what she had done as soon as she saw comprehension dawn in the far-too-intelligent Earl of Calvercombe’s eyes and gave him an imploring look.

‘It was indiscreet as well as unkind of me to speak of such private matters. I would be grateful if you could forget I ever mentioned it,’ she added quietly.

‘I will in a while, but I’m not surprised to hear he’s put his fortune to the test,’ Alex replied with a cynical smile that told her there
was no point trying to pretend the genial peer hadn’t offered for Lady Henry Seaborne’s hand and been sadly but finally rejected.

‘My mother loved my father far too much to marry a dear old friend to stave off the loneliness of living without him.’

‘They might have been good companions to each other,’ he offered with a shrug, as if love between two human beings that endured even after death had parted them was a concept he found distinctly uncomfortable as well as unlikely.

‘I’m sure the very idea of living in such a lukewarm marriage would seem far worse to her than carrying on as good friends. Only imagine how the poor man would feel if he knew he was constantly being compared to her lost love. If she had accepted him, I would be far sorrier for him than I am at the moment. Lucky she is too sensible to inflict such a life on an old and valued friend. It’s a shame they will lose their ease together now, but I suppose it’s better to know.’

‘No doubt his lordship will come round to the notion of being her friend again, given enough time to recover his equilibrium,’ he replied with a nod towards Corisande, who
was hanging on his every word as if it might be sent from heaven to enlighten her.

Persephone frowned at the idea of Corisande wrapping genial Lord Ambleby in her witchy toils, and wondered if she could do anything to save him far worse pain than being gently rejected by Lady Henry Seaborne.

‘I believe Lady Clare is at a loose end, now she has both her chicks safely engaged and waiting to join the unseemly scramble to the altar Jack and Jessica managed to launch this summer,’ he suggested, with a hard look that admitted he was prepared to assist in matchmaking if it would save a man from the over-eager and self-obsessed Corisande Beddington, so long as she understood he could never endure it himself.

‘If she set her heart on Lord Ambleby, they might be very happy together, I suppose. They are both good-natured and principled, if inclined to be self-indulgent. I believe you’re right and they would suit each other very well, my lord,’ she mused and caught his half-amused, half-horrified expression as he watched her resolve to promote a different match to the one Corisande had in mind.