The Scarred Earl (19 page)

Chapter Thirteen

‘D
id you make Jack some sort of ridiculous masculine promise?’ Persephone asked incredulously and saw a faint flush of colour burn across Alex’s high cheekbones before he avoided her eyes by pacing back to the windows to gaze out.

‘How could I have done? I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day of his wedding and neither of us are given to prophecy,’ he growled at the view from the finely leaded casements most commentators on the ducal pile raved about, but then, they were actually looking at it and not glaring into the middle distance.

‘Because you’re both men, and Jack very recently found out how hotly masculine need
of the most unexpected of women can burn and rage until neither are strong enough to resist it. So, did you or did you not promise him you would not make love to me if you stayed here to guard his empire from his enemies during his absence, Lord Calvercombe?’ she demanded furiously, the very fact they could have discussed her so intimately threatening to stoke her temper white hot and reckless.

‘He brought up the subject, not me,’ Alex Forthin told her with an infuriating manly shrug, as if that disclaimer made the whole topic safe, and she totally disagreed.

‘Why? What did you say to make him suspect you might even try to seduce me? I hadn’t the slightest inkling you’d noticed me as anything other than Rich’s annoying little sister until the night we met in the Queen’s Apartments. Was that mere proximity? Would any female not actually repulsive to look on and receptive to your oh-so-flattering attentions have done just as well, my lord? Was I nothing more than another grey cat in the dark to you, Alexander Forthin?’ she demanded, hearing some of the pain and fury at the very idea in her voice and wishing she had his ability to cut
himself off from his fellow beings as she stood here glaring at his broad back.

‘Never,’ he told her as if it was the only word he could get past clenched teeth.

‘Then what was it?’

‘Nigh uncontrollable need,’ he snapped as if she was torturing him when all the time it felt as if she was the one under almost unbearable pressure at the idea she would only ever be his accidental wife.

‘Then you did promise Jack not to seduce me, didn’t you?’ she said on a heavy sigh that sounded weary and a little lost even to her.

‘Yes, damn it! I laughed it off when he cornered me the day of his wedding and asked me to stay on here after he left, so he wouldn’t have to have nightmares about what might be happening at Ashburton while he was gone every night of his honeymoon. Of course, I knew he would fret and fume about what might happen here if I didn’t agree to stay because he’s Jack and that’s what he does. Perhaps his instincts for trouble are better than mine—he had already set Peters on Rich’s trail by then. He must have wondered what sort of trouble that might stir up along the way, but your cousin loves his Duchess so deeply, how could he not take
her away from the bustle and burdens of the Duchess of Dettingham’s new life and make love to her until she was a lot more certain she can carry them? I didn’t have it in me to let him ruin his new wife’s bridal tour of the Lakes when she was looking forward to it and to having him to herself after all the fuss and palaver of the wedding.’

‘I can see why you stayed and you’re right, Jessica does need to know she matters to Jack more than Ashburton does if their marriage is to be the happy one they both deserve. It’s the conversation you two must have had about me that still concerns me so deeply,’ she informed him coldly. The idea of them discussing her fiery responses to a certain annoying Earl made her clench her fists in humiliated fury.

‘He claimed he’d had his eyes opened to fools like himself, who went about blundering into ladies of beauty and character such as his bride as if they were just another attractive example of young womanhood. He’d discovered how desperately he wanted his Jessica before the reasons why had the slightest chance to catch up with his instincts to hunt and capture, apparently. He even had the audacity to warn me I already felt far
more strongly about you than I knew and told me to avoid meeting you in the stilly watches of the night, now he knew how potent moonlight could be for a Seaborne, male or female.’

‘Drat him for an interfering idiot, then,’ she condemned, some of her fury with this particularly annoying man transferring to her utterly infuriating cousin instead.

‘Curse him for being right, Persephone. Damn him for dragging that promise out of me, despite my scepticism at the time, but I can’t call him an idiot when we proved every word he said was true as soon as his back was turned and we were alone together,’ he told her gruffly, turning to face her with the same mix of frustration, puzzlement and burning desire that was eating away at her.

‘We weren’t alone, though, were we? He was there with us every moment you held off from me and honoured your promises to my cousin more than you did any you could make me. Jack was with us that night as surely as if he was standing by glowering at us like the most unlikely chaperon I could imagine in my wildest nightmares. How can you let him dictate our lives from afar, Alexander? He’s keeping us apart when
he certainly didn’t keep away from Jessica before their wedding and that makes him a hypocrite of the worst sort. I doubt they spent a single night apart during the weeks it took Mama and Lady Pendle to organise their wedding. The poor darlings had to deploy every social skill they possess to stop the two of them making it very obvious to the rest of the world the Duke of Dettingham spent all his nights, and much of his days, making love to his bride-to-be well before the wedding took place. Now Jack is insisting we do the exact opposite and act like polite strangers until
our
wedding night.’

‘He wasn’t to know we would be so desperate for each other it was nigh unendurable not to love one another to the finest degree of desperation,’ he excused his friend rather lamely while he avoided her eyes again, as if that might make it easier on both of them that they had weeks more of frustration to endure before they were properly wed and, finally, bedded.

‘I could learn to hate him for being only half a soothsayer, then. He must have known you would make me an honourable offer if you ever let yourself get carried away by that proximity with me we’re doing our best
not to talk about,’ she said flatly, wondering why it seemed so fascinatingly urgent to lose herself in his arms when she still wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about him even now.

‘I wonder if he might not have thought of that as well. Perhaps we do need to know each other better before we fall headlong into a fever for one another that we still don’t really understand,’ he muttered as if he was half-heartedly trying to find the bright side of a thundercloud.

‘I thought you were a rake, at least once upon a time, if not since you came home and learnt to hold yourself aloof from your fellow beings, Lord Calvercombe,’ she said severely, surprised to find herself chiding her future husband for not being as wild as rumour once credited him with being.

‘I was,’ he told her with a pantomime leer that made her shiver at the heat and wicked intent one pair of masculine eyes could convey, as if he’d been holding that rake on a very tight leash ever since the night by the lake back in June. The beast looked as if it was straining hard against its collar now as it snapped and snarled and wanted her so badly it took a mighty effort to keep the
curb Jack and his own honour had put on it firmly in place.

‘Then passion certainly isn’t a closed book to you,’ she said, jealousy of all the other loves strewing his path to now lending an edge to her voice.

‘It is with you, and I can assure you I know now, even if I didn’t before I met you again, that there are very different kinds of passion that plague the human heart and mind until I scarce know where one begins and another ends with you, Persephone. I know a vigorous young man like Marcus has the fiery need for female company biting and roaring at him until he has to find out more about the passion that burns between man and woman than soirées in Mayfair or polite dances at country balls will ever teach him. So, yes, Miss Seaborne, I know what mere passion is and what it can do to a man, unless he learns some measure of wisdom and control over its wilder excesses. Which doesn’t explain why I feel so raw and driven by my physical need of you that it’s like a finer torture than even this—’ he waved dismissively at his scars ‘—to play the honourable idiot with you as I am now,’ he told her.

‘There’s something more than mere wanting
between us and I don’t understand it any more than you do,’ he barked as he went back to his pacing, as if it was the only outlet for suppressed feelings he dared allow himself.

‘How do you know I don’t?’ she asked defensively, wishing Jack hadn’t blundered in and had left the finding out a little easier on both of them.

‘Don’t be more foolish than you can help,’ he snapped, as if the mere thought of her experiencing even a tithe of the desire she’d felt for him with another man might drive him to madness.

‘Not that I ever experienced passion with another man, you idiot, but I might understand what this is better than you do. I might know what it is by feminine instinct,’ she defended herself, wishing she really did know what she felt for him so fiercely it was distracting her from everything else in her life that should be important, such as finding both her brothers.

‘If you did, you would probably be handing out an ultimatum like the one your friend gave Jack when they unleashed all that fire and fury between them and she refused to wed him unless he loved her. Am I fated to
get to the altar and discover you won’t turn up until I swear undying love for you, Miss Seaborne?’ he almost mocked.

‘No, Jessica is a romantic and I’m not so deluded that I expect you to love me,’ she said with as much offended dignity as she could cram in without shouting at him.

‘You were deluded enough to meet me at dead of night in as compromising a place as a lady could without actually inviting me to join you in your bed.’

‘I was, although I can’t help wondering why you came to risk your freedom and your rakish reputation when you must have known how silly it was of me to suggest such a meeting. I’m no longer quite so innocent of what we’re both capable of after that night, but surely
you
were taking a foolish risk, my lord?’ she said with a shrug that invited him to be philosophical about their stupidity as well.

‘Especially when you’re not foolish enough to actually love me?’ he asked as if it was a possibility that had haunted him.

He’d made it clear from the first time he laid eyes on her this summer that he only reluctantly admired her. Now he seemed to want reassurance she would try to love him,
with no indication in return that his feelings towards her had changed. Pride and an aching heart meant she couldn’t look too deeply at her feelings for this painfully aloof, damaged man while he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do the same for her.

‘What would you have me do, my lord?’

‘I’d have you give as much or as little of yourself to me as you dare trust me with,’ he replied harshly and she let out her waiting breath with a sigh.

‘To me it looks more a question of your trusting me than the other way about,’ she said and shook her head sadly when he went back to studying the view as if it fascinated him far more than she did.

‘What sort of woman could love me, Miss Persephone Seaborne?’ he asked as if at least half his attention was on the distant hills.

‘Only the deluded kind,’ she said with a wobbly apology for a smile at his averted dark head it was as well he couldn’t see while she counted on her fingers the reasons why she would be a fool to love him. ‘I would need to be patient and forbearing if I was going to put up with your morose silences and your aloofness, gracious to cover up your gruffness with strangers and make
you almost human to your friends. I would have to be strong enough to take some of the burdens off your shoulders as well. Fiery enough to blast my way through your ridiculous belief that a few scars and the actions of a ruthless enemy somehow set you apart from your fellow man. It seems to me you need to marry a harem full of women to accomplish all that, my lord, not just one faulty individual like me,’ she finished as lightly as she could.

Even if she knew she would ache intolerably if he ever so much as looked at another woman with haunted longing in his eyes, there was no need to give him too many advantages by letting him know it.

‘Or maybe the one very special she who would put up with all that and still do her best to love me,’ he said softly to the vista outside.

Persephone felt as if a void had opened inside her as she wondered if he’d loved his little cousin like that and only been waiting for her to grow up to come home and marry her. The idea froze her in place and she felt silence stretch between them like tensioned wire. She had fallen into his arms like some overripe plum, so he couldn’t help
being splattered with sugary sweetness, and he’d responded as any healthy young male would to her shameless encouragement when she’d thrown herself into kissing him as if it might be the last thing she did on earth.

A flush of colour surged all over as she realised how responsible she was for the pickle they found themselves in. He had gallantly saved her good name at the expense of his cherished freedom and a dream perhaps he wouldn’t let himself realise he had ever dreamt now. Apparently Persephone Seaborne had made the mighty mistake of feeling something powerful for a man whose true feelings lay with the girl who had run off with Persephone’s eldest brother while his back was turned.

‘I suppose there might be such a brave woman alive, if you’re prepared to look hard enough for her,’ she heard herself say limply and felt her heart thud in panic as he turned from that fascinating view as if steeling himself to meet her eyes instead of his precious Annabelle’s limpid gaze.

‘To win a female so special, I would have to be a lot more godlike than I actually am, Miss Seaborne,’ he said solemnly, as if she
ought to understand such things only happened in myth and legend.