The Scarred Earl (25 page)

‘I have already said I will, Alexander Forthin. Why are we out here when all respectable folk are in bed asleep, rehashing a matter I thought we’d well and truly settled several weeks ago?’

‘No, we scrambled into it more or less by accident, love. So it’s high time I asked properly and you gave me a yea or nay in reply.’

Chapter Seventeen

P
ersephone decided she must have been wearier than she thought last night. She was probably wandering in a hazy dream right now, not really taking care not to crunch the finely raked gravel drive underfoot in the pearly light before sunrise. Now this handsome apparition was asking her impossible questions and Alex had certainly never named her his love whilst she was awake to appreciate it.

‘Why now?’ she asked, her eyes wide and heavy with those dreams as she did her best to wake up properly and dispel this unlikely fantasy.

‘Because it’s the right time to ask. An answer one way or the other would be good,’
he insisted, as if it was the most urgently longed-for answer he’d ever waited for. ‘Will you marry me, Persephone Seaborne?’ he asked very seriously indeed once again and sank to one knee on the damp ground, despite her horrified attempts to make him stand up again and the dawning realisation this really was happening and she wasn’t dreaming, after all. ‘Not until you say yes,’ he argued stubbornly, all the hopes and dreams she had never dared look for until now open and desperate in his dear blue eyes.

She finally awoke to the glorious reality of her love on his knees to half-beg and half-demand her hand in marriage—and wasn’t that so typical of him that this had to be real? ‘Yes,’ she whispered with a mischievous, triumphant smile that risked making the sun stay at home this morning for fear of being outshone by Alex’s besotted gaze. ‘Yes, I will marry you. Yes, I love you, Alexander Forthin, Earl of Calvercombe, and suspect I always will, despite everything you will surely do to infuriate me by treating me like some meek and feeble female in the years to come.’

‘I already know you’ll never be so if you
live out your century. Now I’m almost used to your stubborn independence, I wouldn’t have you otherwise,’ he said with the wry grin she’d come to love and got to his feet to kiss her breathless.

It took a series of ever louder coughs to remind them they were not alone out here as the birds stirred into action all around and discovered at least a small part of humanity didn’t need reminding it was time to get up.

‘So will you marry me now, my one and only love?’ Alex asked with heat and joy and laughter in his eyes and a broad smile on his lips that told her it was possible.

‘Now, this minute?’ she asked as the whole business seemed in danger of drifting off into dreamland again, just when she had her love warm and masculine and very definitely wanting her in his arms.

‘Well, in five minutes if we hurry,’ he said as he scurried her up into the carriage and Scrooby gave in to the romance of the occasion by snicking his whip just short of the leaders’ ears to spring them into action.

‘Yes,’ she said on a long and blissful sigh as she realised her love had finally found a way round Jack’s wretched embargo on her joining Alex in the former ducal bed, now
Jack had declared it his intention of sharing the Queen’s Apartments with his Duchess for the rest of their days at Ashburton.

‘I love you, Persephone,’ he assured her as if she might not have heard the first, second or third time.

‘I know, isn’t it wonderful?’ she said brightly as she watched the first rosy streak of sunrise tint the sky over the east of Ashburton Church where she was about to marry the man she hadn’t dared dream of spending her life with all these years.

He laughed as if sheer joy made him forget they were supposed to be quiet and held her close in contented silence on the way to church where they could become man and wife in the sight of God as soon as Scrooby got them there.

Luckily the peace that always seemed to permeate Ashburton Church quieted the urge to shout her commitment to this man to the rooftops, and the freshness and bird-song of very early morning for their music made their promises seem all the more heartfelt and binding. Every moment of her unexpected wedding would live in her memory for evermore, Persephone decided with a
dreamy sigh. So Alexander Matthias Geraint Forthin, Earl of Calvercombe, married Persephone Ann Seaborne for the first time with an unusually solemn Marcus waiting to give her away and Mr Warrender proudly standing in for Jack as Alex’s groomsman and witness. She could not have felt more truly wed to her husband and lover than if the Archbishop of Canterbury had performed the service and the King was there to watch him do it.

‘Congratulations, my Lady Calvercombe,’ Marcus said as he kissed his sister shortly after the vicar had pronounced them man and wife in a triumphantly ringing tone that seemed to fill the whole church. Antigone Warrender in her old grey gown as Persephone’s sole attendant and Scrooby and as many grooms as he could spare from keeping his horses from rousing the whole village echoed his words as quietly as they could when they too wanted to shout their good wishes to the rafters.

‘Lord Calvercombe is the one who needs most congratulation,’ Mr Warrender observed with the spark of mischief Penelope had learnt to look for in his eyes. ‘But I don’t think he’d be any too pleased if
I
kissed him.’
‘Don’t encourage them, we’ll be here all day and then the cat will be well and truly out of the bag,’ Marcus argued, and the very idea of what his mother would have to say about all this made them all want to hasten back to their beds, before anyone even suspected they’d ever been out of them.

‘Here’s a guinea for each of you to celebrate our nuptials with,’ Alex told Scrooby and his most trusted lads when he and his bride stepped down from the landaulet and Marcus, Mr Warrender and Antigone were already on their way to their beds. ‘And another if you manage to keep a still tongue in your heads as to why you’re making merry, at least until the next time we do this all again in daylight,’ he added and Scrooby grinned and wished him joy of a fine morning’s work, before returning the rig to the stableyard with a very cold eye on anyone who dared question his reasons for exercising the team very nearly in the middle of the night.

‘What next, my lord?’ Persephone asked with apparent innocence as they stole back into the house and crept upstairs hand in hand.

‘Shush!’ he admonished softly and dragged
her into the nearest unused room as a sleepy housemaid sped downstairs to her breakfast and never mind if she did take the front stairs at this time of day.

‘Now what?’ Persephone whispered.

‘Well, since we’ve paid over our penny, now we get to eat the bun,’ Alex murmured very close to her ear and she felt a delightful shiver run down her back, as the fact they were legally wed and about to bed each other sank in after all the weeks of longing for the magic and mystery of him in her bed.

She looked at him expectantly and marvelled he had the will-power not to fall on her right here, but her lover had exquisite self-control. How could she doubt he would insist on making this wonderful for both of them to look back on when they were old and grey? Impossible, she decided with a joyous smile that seemed to dazzle him with its trusting brilliance. He blinked as if she outdid the autumn sun so merrily rising outside for him and she wanted to dance through its mellow brilliance with him, but couldn’t spare time from the delicious promise of so much eager loving to come.

‘I’m not having you stealing about the place at risk of being caught creeping back
to your room, so it will be my pleasure to come to you, my love,’ he told her in a husky whisper that told her he was nearly at the end of his tether.

She considered the idea for a long moment, decided she would risk anything to have her husband in her bed this fine September morning and smiled in agreement as seductively as she knew how, before tugging him out of the side room and slipping through the sleeping household with her hand so firmly in his that an earthquake was unlikely to part them. It was her turn to hush him as she pointed out a board that creaked, but at last they were outside her bedchamber and nobody had seen or heard. How on earth he would get out of here without everyone knowing where he’d been and why was beyond her, but that was for later. All that mattered now was beginning the Countess of Calvercombe’s married life in her husband’s arms.

‘Hurry,’ she muttered as she urged him inside and he closed the door on the world with a sigh of relief.

‘What if your sisters are awake?’ he whispered back.

‘They will need to hear like bats even if
they are, as they still sleep in the nursery wing on the other side of the building. Now will you please hurry up and get us both into bed and doing what a newly married couple should be doing now we’re finally alone together?’

‘What about your mama?’

‘She sleeps in the other wing, away from the bedchamber she and Papa shared when he was alive. Anything else? Would you like me to list where and how everyone in the entire household sleeps and wakes, so we can be sure they won’t burst in on us? I suggest we simply lock the door and pull the curtains round my bed so Corisande couldn’t see us, even if she was still here to peer through keyholes. Or have you gone cold on the whole notion of bedding your wife, Lord Calvercombe?’

‘Does it feel as if I have?’ he asked as he obliged her at last by setting about her sleepily fastened gown with fingers that shook with need, but finally got on and did the job he set them.

‘Alex-ander,’ she said on a long drawn-out sigh as he hastily pushed the soft muslin off her shoulders and let gravity do its work
with a little help from him when her curves got in the way of that fine force of nature.

‘Per-seph-one,’ he sounded out with infinite satisfaction as she stood before him impatiently in her short shift and no corset, since she had lacked the patience to don one in the little hours when she woke and stole out to meet him.

‘Why do you have so many confounded buttons and manly reasons for me not to get at you as easily as you seem able to get at me?’ she asked crossly and he grinned unrepentantly as he began to strip for her as if they were illicit lovers going back on a solemn promise to her cousin, rather than man and wife with vows made between them that trumped all others.

‘Will that do?’ he asked with a wicked grin as he stood before her in a white linen shirt and cream breeches that clung lovingly to every lean muscle and manly inch of his long, long legs. He stood straight-backed and superbly at ease with his powerful body as any arrogant potentate about to take another harem favourite.

‘You need to ask
me
that? My goodness, Alexander, we’re in trouble,’ she observed with a flirtatious look designed to get him
to strip bare for her delight without her actually having to give in and do it for him.

‘Personally,
I
was in trouble the first night I finally set eyes on you again across that fanciful Grecian temple one of your ancestors built out in the midst of nowhere in particular, probably for the express purpose of giving men like me ideas about goddesses like you,’ he said, but she noticed he was ridding himself of his pristine neckcloth and immaculate white shirt with so much haste his valet would probably give his notice as soon as he saw what his master had done to them.

‘Do you think I have never seen a man before, when I have two brothers and a cousin who always insisted on swimming in the lake in a state of nature, Alex?’ she asked with a tender smile for his consideration of her supposedly maidenly nerves.

‘I can guarantee you never saw one like this before,’ he said in a voice thick with need and yet oddly diffident about the effect his fully roused manhood might have on the love of his life.

‘Ooh,’ she allowed herself to say appreciatively as he finally did as she wanted and stripped himself as naked as the day he was
born. ‘You could be right,’ she added as her gaze lingered on his rigidly eager member and wondered.

‘I sincerely hope I am,’ he teased her gruffly and flicked the straps of her shift aside so it would go the way of her gown and he could gaze on her tightly betraying nipples and every last inch of silky naked skin as if he was starving for the sight, sound, scent and touch of her. ‘I want you so much, Persephone,’ he said shakily and she found it more seductive than if he told her poetry, or seduced nearly every inch of her slowly and worshipfully as he had that night in the Queen’s Apartments.

‘Then have me, husband. Take me to wherever we went last time and a lot further as well.’

She felt his shuddering response to her wanton invitation and realised he’d been on fire with need for her ever since that memorable night. Awed by his physical need for her, at the same time she knew that need was only a symptom of his deep and abiding passion for her as herself, Persephone Forthin, his wife and only lover from this moment on. A wide and lovely symptom it was as well, she decided hazily as he took
her at her word and seized her in his arms and kissed her breathless at the same time as he was expertly caressing her into a wild woman again, seducing and enchanting her at the same time.

‘Alexander,’ she whispered as soon as he let her mouth take a brief rest, ‘I want you,’ she encouraged huskily and felt the fire he’d shown her that night leap fully back to life.

‘Persephone, you are about to have your wish fulfilled,’ he half-boasted and half-moaned with need of her. ‘Are you quite sure?’ he asked as he paused, his manhood taut and craving at the centre of her womanhood.

He waited for her final permission with a patience she found so touching that tears threatened to fall and mislead him into thinking she wasn’t as ready for him as she and her body were telling him she was. So urgently indeed that she wanted to scissor her legs together with the pleasure-pain at the heart of her greatest need for him.

‘Never more sure of anything in my life, darling Alex. Hurry up and seduce me completely before my maid comes knocking on the door, there’s a good Earl.’