The Scarred Earl (11 page)

‘Thank heavens you were born a woman, Miss Seaborne,’ he said mockingly and she couldn’t stop herself asking why, even though she told herself she didn’t really want to hear his answer.

‘I don’t quite see why, when I’m not too sure it was a good thing myself. Being female apparently means I must stay at home and twiddle my thumbs while you males are busy doing things. Why are you particularly glad I’m bound and subdued by convention today more than any other day, my lord?’

‘I’m quite relieved about that every day, since you would be far too dangerous if convention allowed you to wander about the countryside at will. But in this case I thank the good Lord you were born a woman because you would be so uncomfortable in the Seaborne nest if you’d been created a man. I can’t see you happily embracing an idle life and letting Jack take the lead as Marcus seems perfectly content to do. You would either break out and go your own way, as I suspect Rich has done, or break yourself on the frustration of being born out of the direct line of succession and all the power that goes with it.’

‘What a very poor opinion you have of
me, my lord. I’ll leave you to enjoy it before the matchmakers start speculating about us instead of Corisande and whomever her roving eye settles on next.’

‘Don’t you want to know what I found out?’

‘Of course I do, but you seem disinclined to tell me, and I won’t have local society whisper that I have set my cap at you.’

‘Meet me later so we can talk properly then,’ he said with an impatient look that told her exactly how frustrating he found the conventions that bound them and the onlookers all around.

Considering how public his projected meeting with Jack at the summerhouse by the lake in the outer parkland had turned out to be, Persephone racked her brains for a place that would assure them a great deal more privacy. ‘Meet me in the Queen’s Apartments then. You know where they are, I suppose?’

He nodded solemnly and somehow she doubted there was a stick or stone of vast and rambling Ashburton he didn’t know, since he had obviously failed to leave his role of watcher and sifter of information behind when he left India.

‘There’s an inner closet that leads off the state bedchamber with no windows to give away a light while we talk privately. That wing is deserted again now Jess is away, so nobody should see either of us come or go and I can’t come to Jack’s wing myself when you’re known to be occupying it.’

‘That didn’t stop you the other day,’ he objected.

‘I was so agitated I forgot you were still here,’ she said brusquely, and if that really was a glint of hurt pride in his eyes he should review his warrior credentials. ‘Midnight,’ she mouthed and stalked off as if they’d had a falling-out, which ought to please Cousin Corisande no end.

Alex made himself do his duty and be polite towards Lady Henry’s guests while doing his best not to look at them full on, since he’d learnt his damaged eye seemed to bother some people far more than his other scars for some reason. Whilst he was with the lovely Miss Seaborne he seemed to forget he wasn’t just one more bemused gentleman, happy to gaze on her beauty and burn. He wondered how many men would envy him his assignation with her and if that meant he
should be elated or disappointed she thought he was safe to meet at midnight.

Every single male who still longed for a woman in his bed and wasn’t already fathoms deep in love would covet an unchaperoned meeting with her, so he wasn’t at all special in that respect. Tonight Persephone Seaborne was even more of a picture of lovely femininity than usual in a gown of cream satin and gauze that showed off her glowing chestnut locks, creamy complexion and graceful figure. He lingered in a quiet corner to revisit an image of her holding court in a London ballroom, which he was glad she had no idea he carried in his memory.

Not long back from India, still tender from wounds of the body and of the mind that had been inflicted on him there, he’d been at the rout in a desperate attempt to find a trace of Annabelle in polite society. He had treasured the vain hope that a whisper might reach him of what had become of her after she’d left his father’s dubious protection.

Despite the glitter and fuss and clamour of the
ton
at play during the height of the London Season that made him feel alien and uncomfortable, he had found no sign of his
missing cousin. He had been foolish even to hope, since Annabelle was barely seventeen when she ran away. Instead of a trail that might lead to his cousin, he had been fascinated by a beautiful young woman so in command of her world that he realised how ill he fitted in and left as soon as he could tear himself away.

Miss Persephone Seaborne had been almost too perfect that night. He had envied her the security and support of a large and powerful family to scare off fortune hunters and keep the worst of the rakes at bay on Annabelle’s behalf. Yet even then he felt ill when he imagined Miss Seaborne wed to some suitable pattern-card gentleman. It was the way of his kind to marry for mutual advantage and he never hated it more passionately than he did in that overcrowded London ballroom.

Alex supposed he had pushed his own failure to protect Annabelle on to Miss Seaborne. Her position as society beauty, toast of St James and close as a sister to the mighty Duke of Dettingham meant that Jack would thrash any man who tried to touch her against her will. Underneath his restless bitterness Alex knew he was to blame for Annabelle’s
plight and it was doubly unfair to put the blame on Miss Seaborne. He should have sold out and come home as soon as he knew Captain de Morbaraye had been killed and left his daughter in Alex’s care, instead of putting it off for fear he and Farrant would murder each other and leave her all alone.

If not for his farcical meeting with Jack one fateful moonlit night, he might have gone on believing Persephone Seaborne was only a pampered beauty who played with men’s hearts for amusement. His mouth twisted into a wry smile as he recalled the virago who had launched herself at him to protect her large and formidable cousin from an unknown assailant.

His smile grew into a chuckle as he recalled struggling with the wild-cat while she had done her best to unman him, then scratch his eyes out if that was what it took to save Jack from his evil clutches. Very little of aloof, goddess-like Miss Seaborne had remained in the spitting vixen who managed to land a few blows on him before he could overpower her with an efficiency he should never have had to use on a woman. At least that meeting had opened his eyes to the fiery nature underlying her serene beauty.
Maybe next time he met a diamond of the first water he’d be more cautious about dismissing her as a pleasant collection of features and a lushly formed body without a heart to make her human.

The thought of being alone with her in a room designed to be the most intimate heart of a queen’s privacy made him squirm with a hot shiver of wanting something he ought to have learnt to live without by now. He was, he assured himself, too cold and aloof to be carried away by an itch he didn’t have to scratch these days. The unease he felt at dismissing her as an easily disregarded female, to be desired and taken, then forgotten, told him his feelings for her already ran too deep. No, he truly was aloof—set apart from his kind. As long as he remembered that, they would emerge from this affair as far apart as ever and quite happy to be so.

Chapter Eight

A
lex was still reminding himself how little he and Persephone Seaborne had in common, apart from their cousins, when he stole through the sleeping mansion towards the Queen’s Apartments that night, feeling like a very amateur cracksman indeed. It was insane to meet her in such a private place and he’d been tempted not to turn up. The thought of her wandering about Ashburton in the middle of the night looking for even more trouble than he was spurred him into keeping this assignation, if only to tell her they could ride out in the morning with far more propriety than they could expect from another eventful midnight meeting.

‘There you are at last. Hurry up and close
the door so I can light this wretched thing and we can see each other,’ he heard her demand impatiently as soon as he crept close enough for her to sense him coming.

At least she murmured so softly he could barely hear her over the normal shifts and settlings of an old house, but he had to swallow his impatience with her for being here in the first place and do as she bid him, because it made sense for them not to be seen or heard. Since they were both still in darkness, he allowed himself one rueful smile for her haste to meet a man most ladies regarded as repulsive, dangerous or even a little of both. He doubted very much she had thought about the consequences if they were to be discovered and found he was grinning at nothing when he concluded she would have come anyway, even if she had.

‘How long have you been lurking here, waiting to nag me about this, that and the other?’ he said once he had silently shut the sturdy oak door on the world.

For a moment the darkness was stuffy and as black as pitch and he shuddered and recalled too many nights and days shut in a dark hole by his enemies. Alex fought the sense of panic all confined spaces threatened
him with nowadays, however hard he had struggled against it after he was freed from captivity on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s victory at Assaye and began his long convalescence. He had come a long way since the very thought of being confined to a cabin even to sleep made him rig up a hammock on deck throughout his passage home, once he was finally considered strong enough to stand the journey. He’d slept under the stars of the Southern Hemisphere and the storms of the Northern one during the whole voyage back and suspected the sailors thought he’d run mad.

Forcing himself to breathe slowly and deliberately now, he was still very glad when Persephone finally struck a spark and set the tinder alight. He watched her gently blow on the cloth until the flame was strong enough to light the candle that would illuminate their furtive assignation and did his best to hide this ridiculous affliction from her acute green gaze. Using his own eyes to divert his thoughts from spectres he supposed would probably haunt him for the rest of his life, although he sincerely hoped they would continue to lessen in intensity, he then had to remind himself he wasn’t here to admire the
way the soft light picked out some of Persephone’s finely cut features and made a shadowed mystery of others he wanted to know intimately.

‘This is ridiculous,’ she informed him, as if it had been his idea and not hers.

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ he countered blandly and eyed her in the half-light the candle cast as if waiting for her to spark like the flint she still held as if not quite sure what to do with it. ‘Neither of us should be here and I can’t imagine why we are.’

‘We couldn’t talk anywhere else without risking eavesdroppers. It’s your fault for enchanting my cousin Corisande with your dark looks and romantic past until she’s jealous of every word you say to another female,’ she said severely.

‘I’ve done all I can to avoid her without insulting a member of my host’s family.’

‘And I can’t imagine why you’re so delicate with Corisande’s feelings when you gave Jack the biggest insult you could possibly think up by accusing him of conniving at your cousin’s kidnap,’ she argued crossly.

‘Jealous?’ he asked before thinking what he was implying.

‘Never,’ she told him with a look of such
revulsion that it convinced him she would rather be shut in a room with Hades himself as her namesake had been for half of every year than admit she even liked him.

‘I made no attempt to charm your voluptuous cousin Corisande into feeling so aggrieved that you’re so much more beautiful than she has ever been and I am very happy to promise you that I never will. Satisfied?’

‘No, not since you appear to have intrigued her without trying. Knowing Corisande, I think it might even be
because
you don’t try that it worked so well. She’s so used to having any man she sets her sights on totally fascinated and at her mercy that finding one indifferent to her charms has her far more fascinated than if you’d fallen flat at her feet and offered her everything you have.’

‘If it makes me boring, perhaps I should prostrate myself.’

‘Or perhaps she’d pick
you
up if you tumbled under her dainty little feet,’ she argued, then seemed impatient with herself and he was too fascinated by now to end this ludicrous encounter and tear himself away from the danger such scandalous solitude offered both of them.

‘Not the smallest risk of that, since not even to stop her watching me like a terrier at a mouse-hole could I parade myself as the latest of her legion of lovers,’ he said, breaking his own rules not to speak ill of a lady.

The notorious Mrs Beddington was an attractive woman, in her own brash style, but he wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole unless she was in peril of her life, and even then he might have to think about it twice.

‘You know her?’ Persephone asked.

Acute Miss Seaborne must have read contempt for her cousin in his eyes, for all he thought himself so guarded. ‘I knew her,’ he felt moved to explain, despite the fact every second that passed without a very urgent reason for being here was sheer folly. ‘Once upon a time, she decided she wanted my brother and seemed as violently in love with him as Farrant was with her for a few weeks. Then she grew bored with him, since he had little money and was halfway to becoming a drunkard even then. For some reason, she decided to want me instead and made it very obvious, although I was far too young for such a she-wolf at the time and treated it as a joke. At least I did until Farrant and three of his least scrupulous friends
waylaid me on my way home from a neighbour’s house one night and beat me unconscious, after ordering me to stay away from her if I wanted to live. None of my denials made a ha’pennyworth of difference after she had told my brother I was her lover and a better one than he had ever been, so she was done with him and never wanted to see him again—which was probably the only true part of the whole rigmarole she spun him.’