The Scarred Earl (22 page)

‘Be quiet, you,’ she ordered between clenched teeth and led the way back in what she hoped was a dignified silence.

By the time they reached the carriage and horses waiting for them over a mile the other side of Kingslake village, Alex and Brandt were nearly carrying Mr Peters between them with young Givage lurking behind them, casting suspicious glances at the trees behind them through the ever-lightening dawn. Persephone stalked ahead with her pistol openly on show and the abhorrent stiletto in her other hand and felt she would cheerfully use them on the wretch if he was rash enough to step in front of her now. Certain the man had flown like a hare from a hound, she wondered what on earth Rich had on the wretch to scare him into coming after his kin so ruthlessly.

‘Now what?’ she demanded crossly once they were back with Brandt and the stable-boy he had brought with him to keep the horses quiet.

‘We go and get Marcus before that jackal can move him,’ Alex said calmly and helped Peters into the carriage before inviting her to follow him to the nearest stand of trees where she could resume her proper raiment in peace.

Casting him a dark look, she collected
the neat bundle Brandt Senior handed to her with silent encouragement to do as she was bid for once and dared Alex to follow.

‘Hurry up,’ he ordered brusquely as he did so without a pause and she tightened her fist until the pistol was in danger of going off on its own.

‘Arrogant great bear,’ she muttered as she donned her habit over her breeches, since she didn’t intend to be shuffled into the carriage like an unwanted package and they would make riding more comfortable.

‘Stubborn little witch,’ he greeted her placidly when she emerged and she wondered if a single thing she said or did ever escaped his notice.

‘Too much to expect you to ride inside and minister to poor Peters like a quiet and seemly maiden, I suppose?’ he said when she went to stand by her spirited mount and looked at him expectantly for a leg up.

‘Far too much and he wouldn’t like it if I did,’ she said with a sympathetic smile for the young man who looked as if he would very much prefer to be riding with them in the fresh air.

‘It’s only a scratch,’ Peters insisted, but she could see how pale he was and left him
to enjoy a brief respite from being peered at like a prize exhibit as Alex finally gave in to the inevitable and threw her into the saddle.

Having a gallant if rather gruff gentleman about to tuck her boot in the stirrup and fuss over the proper arrangement of her habit so no other man could glimpse her shapely legs in their breeches wasn’t a necessity, she decided, but it felt like a luxury. She looked forward to enjoying a lifetime of being ruthlessly guarded from wolves, considering she was very happy to have her own particular one and keep his eyes solely on her in return.

With very few doubts they would be compatible in the marriage bed after that scandalous encounter in the Queen’s Apartments. At least that was one aspect of their marriage she was certain would be mutually and spectacularly successful. For the rest, she couldn’t ever dream of marrying another man now she had met her match, and if he didn’t love her as she loved him, no doubt she could learn to live with even that rather than live without him.

Chapter Fifteen

T
he sound of soft-soled shoes scurrying on worn stone steps interrupted Marcus’s early morning reverie. He glanced out of the high grille and saw the distant rising sun was flushing the ancient stone with rose. How he longed to feel it on his skin again, with a need for good daylight he couldn’t even have comprehended a few short weeks ago. He’d spent so much of his youth expecting adventures to fall out of the sky on him that he wondered why he’d been content to live the life of an idle buck rather than following in his elder brother’s footsteps. Fear, he supposed, as the old Marcus seemed a stranger to the one who had been forced to learn the true meaning of idleness.

There was the vague excuse of his mother’s sad eyes whenever someone unwarily mentioned her absent son and Cousin Jack’s determination to make sure he didn’t do as Rich had and disappear for months at a time. The task of finding a wild life to live, with the Duke of Dettingham watching every move he made like the proverbial hawk, had simply been beyond him. Even with weeks to think out alternatives, he didn’t know if he could escape the iron grip Jack kept on him even when pretending to hold the reins in a velvet glove. Now he wasn’t sure he even wanted that wild life any more and was fairly certain the cause of that change was hurrying along the stone corridor outside his cell at this very moment.

‘I hope you’ve brought something better than an ancient novel or a third helping of yesterday’s pease pottage with you,’ he greeted his wardress disagreeably.

‘Hush!’ the girl ordered in a panicked semi-whisper a deaf dowager might have missed, but nobody else within a hundred yards could fail to hear.

‘Why should I? I’m the one in captivity,’ he allowed himself to mutter and he watched
her turn the key in the stout lock and rush in so she was firmly on the inside with him.

‘Just be quiet for once and we might both come out of this safely,’ she ordered in an impatient undertone as she watched the door as if it might bite her.

‘Why?’

‘He’s sent someone to get you,’ she whispered impatiently.

‘Who has?’

‘Lord Calvercombe, of course,’ she said with only half her attention on him.

‘What the devil?’ he bellowed and she turned on him as if he’d given the whole game away and ought to be ashamed of himself.

‘Idiot, can’t you be silent for five minutes? He’ll know for certain Papa and I lied when we told the men you overpowered us and escaped if you don’t.’

‘You’re talking in riddles,’ Marcus said in his normal voice.

‘His lordship told us to house you on pain of being evicted when he brought you here unconscious. He wanted you kept safe while he tracked down a witness against you for the rape and murder of his young ward and cousin.’
‘If he’s been pretending to be Jack’s friend all these weeks I’ll kill him, but why did you ever risk being locked up with a monster like that when I was brought here drugged and nigh out of my mind?’

‘Papa and I were certain he had the wrong man as soon as we set eyes on you, but we thought if we held you here, the true villain might relax his guard. And we really don’t have anywhere else to go,’ she excused them with a shrug that told him she wasn’t very convinced of her own arguments.

‘Tell me what his lordship looks like?’ he insisted, thinking none of that sounded like the Alex Forthin the Seabornes all thought they knew.

She looked puzzled, as if he might as well ask her why the sun rose in the morning and set at night. ‘He’s darkish, I suppose. He hid his face and I’ve heard he has terrible scars and shuns company, so I didn’t get a really good look at his face.’

‘How tall is he, then?’

‘About middling height, I suppose. I didn’t take much notice of his appearance, since I was so busy being horrified by what he had to say at the time.’

‘You were deceived,’ Marcus said grimly.
‘Calvercombe is over six feet tall and a powerful and dangerous-looking devil you’d remember after one glimpse.’

‘Then it wasn’t him?’ she said blankly.

‘He was my cousin Jack’s groomsman the day I was beaten senseless, then drugged and brought here, so I can assure you I know the man. I certainly never set eyes on the one who overcame me before that night, and Alex Forthin has far more interesting quarry in his sights than me.’

‘Then could that man have been acting for him?’

‘If he was, I’m the man in the moon. Now open the door so I can challenge your latest visitor for the rogue he surely is.’

Alex wanted to pace again, but made himself stand still and did his best to look forbidding and far too dangerous to argue with instead. The room didn’t lend itself to pacing anyway and he cast an impatient look round it. This one was so stuffed with ancient treasures that he doubted there was a piece of good furniture left anywhere else in the entire castle. How typical of the magpie at the centre of it to gather every comfort there was to be had here and keep it to herself.

‘If Mr Seaborne is imprisoned here, madam, why is it taking your daughter so long to fetch him?’ he demanded brusquely.

‘I should never have permitted Warrender to keep him, Lord Calvercombe,’ she said as if her husband had brought a dog into the house, instead of stowing the first cousin of a Duke somewhere in the castle’s vast undercroft.

‘If you took the trouble to meet the young man, you might have realised who he was yourself,’ he pointed out, unwilling to let her get away with this ‘it was nothing to do with me, blame my family’ attitude of hers.

‘It would be unladylike to trouble myself with such unpleasantness.’

‘Yet it doesn’t seem to trouble you unduly that Miss Warrender was exposed to this conspiracy?’ he said sternly, not that he had any intention of prosecuting his own relatives, but this harpy didn’t know it.

‘Dear Antigone and her father have a coarser nature than mine. They are lucky enough to be able to undertake the most repellent of tasks without flinching.’

‘Or perhaps they prefer to get on and do whatever needs doing, rather than starving
to death or being forced to go barefoot,’ Alex said impatiently.

Clearly Electra Warrender made sure every available penny the family had was lavished on her, while her husband and daughter endured her greedy self-interest with a stoicism he struggled to find admirable. A little healthy argument and outright rebellion would have done the whole Warrender family a great deal of good, in his opinion, and he was surprised stormy-looking Antigone Warrender had put up with her unreasonable dam for so long. Necessity, he decided grimly, considering the very few avenues open to young ladies of breeding and no fortune whatsoever.

‘A lady does not toil nor does she spin,’ Electra explained and Alex thought of busy Lady Henry and his Persephone’s active lifestyle and wondered if he could dislike his new relative any more than he did already.

‘Miss Warrender certainly does,’ he said, glancing at highly polished cabinets and neatly mended tapestries this woman certainly did nothing to maintain.

‘Her father is not a gentleman. Antigone lacks the breeding to feel the shame of our position as deeply as I do.’

‘Yet you don’t feel it enough to be moved to help her?’

‘I am your cousin, Calvercombe, how can you even ask such a thing of me?’ she said, seeming genuinely bewildered.

‘You are my predecessor’s cousin three times removed, madam. Your relationship to me is so remote I doubt even the College of Heralds could unravel the fine detail of it without months of careful research I don’t suppose you’ll welcome.’

‘Since your name was used by the thug who brought a Seaborne under my roof, I doubt I need to worry about such remoteness if you refuse to do anything for us, my lord. Rumour can do so much to damage a reputation, even that of an Earl who has so very little regard for his family.’

‘I am engaged to marry the sister of the gentleman who has been held under your roof for nigh on three weeks now. You should be very careful indeed what further gossip you spread, Mrs Warrender, since you are one of the most culpable of the parties to this story,’ he told her impatiently. ‘No doubt you have a wide acquaintance,’ he said with irony so broad even she might detect it, ‘but I don’t believe circulating tall stories
that reflect so badly on you and yours will add to it.’

‘Neither my mother, Lady Henry Seaborne, nor I would receive you if you do any such thing, Mrs Warrender,’ Persephone added as she finally gave up waiting impatiently and entered the room to find out what had happened to her fiancé. ‘We have known Lord Calvercombe since he was at school with my elder brother and my cousin, the Duke,’ she said, the possibility of social exclusion cold in her voice and Alex realised she knew how to humble this chilling social mushroom of a woman far better than he did.

‘Miss Seaborne, may I introduce Mrs Warrender?’ he asked formally, glad she had disobeyed his request to wait until he was certain it was safe to enter Electra’s lair, but determined not to show it.

‘Mrs Warrender,’ Persephone said with the weary air of a very high-born lady and Alex hid a grin by kissing her finely gloved hand in more personal greeting.

‘Miss Seaborne, how delightful,’ Electra twittered as if all her social ambitions had come true and of
course
she wouldn’t dream of spreading spiteful gossip about the head
of her own family as soon as his back was turned.

Alex was gloomily convinced she might be right about those ambitions when Persephone welcomed Mr Warrender with a genuine smile. Clearly his love approved of her host as much as she disliked his wife. Alex foresaw a ruthless Seaborne campaign to do Electra as little good as possible, whilst rescuing her husband and daughter from her clutches, and looked forward to watching that sleight of hand from the sidelines.

‘Where is Miss Seaborne’s brother?’ he cut through Electra’s effusions to demand of henpecked Mr Warrender.

‘My daughter has locked herself in the cellar with him and won’t come out until you prove you’re who you say, my lord,’ Mr Warrender said with a shrug that told them he didn’t exert much authority in this household.

‘How admirable,’ Persephone approved warmly and Alex resigned himself to having control of this farce wrested from him.

‘She has my horse pistols and threatens to shoot the first person who tries to break in,’ Antigone’s fond parent said with a gloomy shake of his greying head.

‘I’m sure dear Marcus won’t let her do anything so drastic,’ Persephone said with a stern look to tell Alex she could read his suppressed mirth far too easily.

‘He said he was damned sure it was the real Lord Calvercombe this time since he’d risked coming here in daylight and she should let him meet you and confirm it,’ the lady’s father told them.

‘What did Miss Warrender say to that?’ Alex asked, only just managing not to laugh at the picture his imagination was painting.