The Scarred Earl (15 page)

Corisande actually hung her head rather
than face more chilly looks from the lady the rest of the Seabornes respected as the true matriarch of the family, despite the Dowager Duchess’s apparent claim to the role. Nevertheless, Persephone knew the story would be off and running as soon as the household woke the next morning and Corisande’s maid was called to dress her for a day of furtive scandal-mongering. Whatever power was deployed against her, Corisande would never hold her tongue and Persephone resigned herself to becoming a scarlet woman. It seemed all the more of a pity Alex had restrained his manly passions with such a heroic effort and not fully become her lover. If she was to be hung as a sheep, providence might at least have granted her a year’s growth of wool to keep warm with.

‘I lured Miss Seaborne here at this scandalous hour of the night in order to beg her to marry me,’ she heard Alex tell her mother in a gruffly embarrassed voice, and tried her best to believe her ears were deceiving her. ‘I thought the setting must be romantic enough to make her relent and say yes at long last,’ he carried on as if he’d been begging her to do so for all the weeks he’d been trying to push her away.

‘Some sort of yes seems to have been accomplished tonight, whatever the truth behind it,’ her mother said with a stern look that made Persephone want to hang her head and shuffle her feet.

Alex managed to look as if he was torn between delight and shame over his extreme methods of persuading his lady to marry him after a long campaign. She wondered numbly at his acting ability as the horror of him being shamed into marrying her ground away any belief she might have left that he truly wanted her as his Countess.

‘It is to be hoped you managed to obtain the consent required to restore my beloved daughter’s good name, as well as whatever other form you obtained from her tonight by fair means and foul, my lord?’ her mother challenged Alex with a straight look for her son-in-law-to-be that might chill the marrow of a lesser man.

‘Persephone would never have kissed me back in the first place if she wasn’t seriously considering it, my lady,’ he said as if he knew her far too well and was longing for his pantomime offer to be accepted.

Lady Henry might be content with that ambiguous answer for now, but Corisande
clearly wasn’t. ‘Are you going to marry him or not?’ she demanded sourly, as if she’d thought about doing so herself and begrudged him to anyone else.

Even Persephone knew there was more chance of the Thames freezing over in high summer than his wedding a lady with so little reputation left to lose. If Alex had been caught in carnal congruity with Corisande, she doubted anyone but Corisande would have expected him to marry her. Persephone’s racing thoughts stalled when she realised such a lot would fall to her if she refused Alex’s
de facto
offer.

Despite her aristocratic status and previously spotless reputation, she would be easy prey to any fortune-hunting schemer who wanted to marry into one of the most powerful families in the land. Her family would be forced to defend her lack of virtue at every turn and poor Jack would be beside himself with fury, even as he fought duel after duel to assert her honour in the face of all the evidence. The idea of him fighting Alex over her blasted reputation made her shudder and rapidly make up her mind to accept his half-hearted offer after all. They had made
themselves a marriage bed tonight. However hard it might prove.

‘You’re right,’ she agreed softly, turning to look up at him as if he was the light and centre of her very life and saw a flare of something in his eyes she doubted really was joy and relief. ‘I have agreed we will be wed as soon as Jack and Jess are back from their honeymoon, if you will consent to such haste, Mama?’

‘Consent, my love? I will dance down the aisle after you two have pledged yourself to one another with the lightest heart a mother ever rejoiced in, if you can promise me you love him as dearly as he clearly loves you,’ her mother said, as if she truly believed Alex was as besotted with her as Jack was with his beloved new wife.

‘Oh, I do, Mama,’ she said with a candour that seemed to resolve all Lady Henry’s doubts, since she smiled as if this was a very conventional betrothal rather than a scandalous hand-fasting in the little hours of the night.

Squashing a fleeting sense of guilt, Persephone knew enough about the world to acknowledge Alex Forthin was deeply attracted to her, but certainly didn’t love her.
He would struggle to make their marriage work because he was a good man and would never walk away from a lady whose good name he had compromised. If Corisande hadn’t been stinging from his rejection and determined to bring Persephone down, who knew what they might have built on tonight’s conflagration of the senses? Too late for that now, she decided sadly, while she did her best to look like a newly betrothed lady who had just landed a very fine husband indeed.

‘If you wish to be invited to the wedding, or any other family gathering at Ashburton or Seaborne House in the future, Cousin Corisande, I suggest you abandon any more schemes you are concocting to damage my daughter’s standing in the eyes of the world,’ Lady Henry warned with a stern look.

‘And as Jack’s new Duchess happens to be related to any of the
ton
he isn’t connected to himself, at least
I
shall not need to exert myself unduly to make sure you’re very swiftly ruined and expelled from polite society if you move against my future wife in any way, madam,’ Alex added with chilling indifference.

Thanks to her intervention, Alex now had to marry Persephone, so perhaps Corisande
would believe him. Persephone suspected he was too soft-hearted to let even Corisande sink any lower, but if the annoying harpy believed he would twiddle his thumbs while she was cast out, she might behave long enough for her tale to lack impact when she finally told it.

‘It will be a scrambling affair anyway,’ Corisande said sulkily, but Persephone knew she would dine out on their wedding for months.

‘No, it will be perfect,’ Alex argued, taking Persephone’s cold hand in his warm one, as if he wanted to make
her
feel better about this scrambled-together wedding of theirs when so much of it was her fault, for suggesting this ill-considered meeting place and possessing a relative like Corisande in the first place.

‘But not quite as splendid as Jack and Jessica’s wedding was I hope?’ she asked with a would-be happy smile that ought to tell anyone watching they could hardly wait to be sanctioned and blessed as a couple.

‘So do I, my love, since I don’t intend to wait two months to claim my bride as poor Jack was forced to do to wed
his
duchess,’ he said huskily and Persephone wondered
if he’d ever considered making a living on the stage.

‘As mother of the bride, I have dreamt of my eldest daughter’s wedding since she was barely out of swaddling bands. Had I known it would be to you, my boy, I might have dreamt of it even more hopefully,’ Lady Henry said with a hazy smile that brought tears to Persephone’s tired eyes.

If only it were true; if only Mama were right and Alex was indeed the best and most loving bridegroom she could pick out. She would have thrilled to the romance and breathless fascination of being made love to by the dazzling young man she recalled coming here to stay all those years ago. On those days she had longed so desperately to be out of the schoolroom and doing her best to shyly fascinate her elder brother’s most enthralling friend, before some other older and more privileged female could capture his wild heart. When he went off to be a soldier she would have given her eye teeth to have him look at her with admiration and longing in his eyes. Now both of them were grown up and all she could expect was driven passion in the bedchamber and cool tolerance elsewhere.

She let herself gaze up at him with everything there could have been in her eyes, then lowered her gaze to meet Corisande’s with an unspoken challenge
not
to believe they were deep in love. Glad when her remote cousin let her eyes drop before the cool assurance the Countess of Calvercombe was going to need to get her through her new life, Persephone yawned delicately to imply it was high time they were all safely in their separate beds.

Luckily Hughes had left the moment he realised something untoward was afoot between his fellow conspirators. Corisande was not going to let good manners get in the way of her triumph, though, even if it was a triumph she couldn’t trumpet to the world. She waited stubbornly for Persephone and her mother to precede her out of the room with a smug look for Alex, left standing impassive and alone to take up the candle and light the ladies into the great hall, where spare candles could be got and their ways could finally part.

Persephone felt terribly weary by the time they left him to go his way and Corisande hers—Alex to Jack’s grand wing, Corisande to the least important guest room Ashburton
possessed. Persephone wished vengefully her cousin had the scullery maid’s humble bed, close to the vast kitchens so she could light the fires well before dawn. The scullery maid certainly deserved a soft feather bed and an undisturbed night’s sleep far more than Corisande ever would.

Lady Henry paused outside her eldest daughter’s bedchamber and gave her a look that told her she knew there was far more to this affair than any mother wanted to be told.

‘It’s high time we were all in bed, my love. We all stand in need of as much sleep as we can get against the frantic day we’re sure to have tomorrow, with your betrothal to announce and all the preparations for your wedding to be made in so short a time,’ she said softly.

‘Indeed, Mama,’ Persephone agreed meekly and kissed her mother’s cheek, before giving her a weary smile to thank her for understanding she was beyond explaining tonight. Then she stumbled into her deserted bedchamber to fall asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

‘Shock,’ her ladyship muttered to herself before removing her shoes and pulling up
the covers. ‘At least I managed to get
some
sleep before that wretched female insisted on tracking down our daughter so she could prove to me what a scandal was brewing under dear Jack’s roof, Henry my love,’ she told the miniature of her late husband she kept on her nightstand. ‘Not that you would have objected to the match any more than I do, darling, but I wonder how long it will take those two stubborn children to realise they could have been put on this good earth to love one another, they’re so well suited?’

Eyeing the irrepressible humour obvious in Lord Henry Seaborne’s finely painted image, she nodded as if he’d spoken and smiled a wry smile. ‘Aye, it did take us two far too long to discover the same thing, did it not?’ she asked the soft pre-dawn air and fell into a reverie about bridesmaids and flowers and music that inevitably drifted into memories of her own wedding day.

It had been a wonderful spring wedding, the airy romance of it all almost wasted on Miss Melissa Caroline Malvan and the very suitable Lord Henry Seaborne, neither of whom had had the sense to know at the time that they were wedding the love of their life
one fine May morning at Ashburton Church nearly thirty years ago.

‘I have high hopes for this hastily arranged marriage, Hal, despite a distinctly raffish start to it I cannot help but wonder at,’ she muttered as her eyelids grew heavy and her breathing began to slow after all.

As she drifted into sleep it was almost as if she could feel her love next to her and see his knowing smile as if he sleepily answered, ‘Sometimes they turn into true love matches all unknowing, my love’, then turn over and went back to sleep as he might have done if only he was still alive and real in her bed, instead of a certainty out of sight and touch that she hoped her darling daughter would never have to miss so savagely in her own marriage bed.

Marcus Seaborne stirred on his hard bed and listened intently for any sounds in the corridor outside his cell. He had come to the conclusion this had to be a gentleman’s residence of some sort, although it had clearly fallen on hard times. The occasional rumble of heavy hooves on cobbles or the light sound of a pony cart said there was no elegant hurry of leisured families calling on
each other at polite hours of the day. When he stood on a rickety chair to look out, all he could see was an inner courtyard, long abandoned and rank with weeds.

He’d begun to dig mortar out from round the base of the bars on that high window. Not that an inside court with walls all round looked the best place in the world to escape into, but if he didn’t do something he might run mad. It was a slow and perilous job, since his chair wasn’t much better than the rest of the rotting lumber in his improvised cell, but it occupied a few weary hours. There was nothing else to do but struggle with the ancient prayer book he’d found in a chest of motheaten blankets or read endless volumes of Richardson’s
Clarissa
his occasional cellmate kept here against the boredom of his conversation.

Marcus preferred action to the stalwart suffering of a tragic heroine and had wondered out loud last time she bustled into the room what such a practical lady had in common with lovely, doomed Clarissa Harlowe. He smiled as he recalled her salty answer that beggars couldn’t be choosers and to thank his lucky stars it was at least in English and not some barbarous tongue.
Wondering what she thought boys did at their lessons besides learn to decipher barbarous tongues, he smiled into the gloom of his subterranean cell and pondered his captivity.

His nurse and wardress hadn’t been locked in with him for long since that first day when he was almost delirious. She had a silent companion who locked the door behind her, then opened it when she shouted to leave. He had learnt to listen for them while he scraped at the mortar grain by frustrating grain and wondered if someone would question the girl’s disappearance if she came at set times of day. He couldn’t think of anyone he had offended so vilely they might take such a revenge on him and had the impression she was uneasy and at odds with the person who silently escorted her here. Shaking his head, he gave up on his excavations for the day and lay back on the makeshift bed with his tousled head resting on clasped hands.