The Scarred Earl (4 page)

‘How could the other trustees sit back and let him ruin your future?’

‘It was easier than arguing or taking him to law,’ he said ruefully.

‘Cowards,’ she muttered furiously and surprised some intense feeling in his eyes, before he clamped down on it and it was gone.

Chapter Three

L
ord Calvercombe shrugged dismissively.

‘My brother is dead, Miss Seaborne. The law is quite strict in its refusal to prosecute dead men.’

‘At least he didn’t inherit the estates that go with your title,’ she said consolingly, but from his moue of distaste that wasn’t much of a blessing.

‘There was little my predecessors hadn’t already done to impoverish them. If not for the revenues from my grandfather’s estates that even my brother Farrant couldn’t quite dissipate during his five years of trusteeship, I would be in hock to every moneylender in Greek Street to pay the wages on my new estate, let alone redeem the mortgages.’
‘How profligate of your predecessors,’ she said and wondered at so much wealth and power being so spectacularly wasted.

‘That’s what happens when jealousy and pride come before love or duty. One branch of my family litigated against another, solely for the joy of a good argument so far as I can tell. The Seabornes have a more pragmatic approach to inheritance they would have done well to share.’

‘How odd that the first male heir born in the Duke’s bed becomes Duke in turn, God willing.’

‘So it would seem, Miss Seaborne.’

‘Your mother must have been furious at being caught in the midst of their quarrels and petty rivalry.’

‘My sainted mama ran off to Naples with a poet about a year after I was born and died of typhus fever in Rome a few years after that. I doubt she cared one way or the other what became of me. She clearly couldn’t abide my father, yet she left me in his so-called care when she ran off with her lover.’

He said it with such matter-of-fact composure Persephone might have wept for the lonely child he’d once been, if that child hadn’t grown into the latest Earl of Calvercombe,
who clearly didn’t want or need anyone’s tears.

‘Who have you got left to argue with now then, my lord?’

‘That’s the beauty of it—apart from one childless and ancient great-uncle who refuses to have anything to do with me, or anyone else so far as I can tell, I am the last of my line. Apparently we Forthins have litigated one another into oblivion.’

‘I suppose there’s plenty of time to remedy that situation,’ she said, wondering why the idea of him setting up his nursery as soon as some poor innocent girl would marry him made her shiver in the enclosed warmth of her namesake’s garden on a hot, late-August afternoon.

‘No, we’ve run our race,’ he said, his expression closed and even a little bleak.

All sorts of unsuitable questions raced to spill off her tongue and he must have sensed them teetering there outrageously in an unmaidenly rush she somehow managed to contain. His austere expression gave way to the mocking grin she was beginning to loathe and any compassion she felt for the lonely man vanished like mist in the sun.

‘My captors made the mistake of saving
that particular form of torture as their ultimate threat, but ran out of time or chance to carry it out, Miss Seaborne. You can restrain your unladylike imagination on that front at least.’

‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said distantly.

‘Oh, come now, my dear. I prefer your open curiosity to the soulless propriety of most of your kind. Don’t disappoint me by becoming as mealy-mouthed as any other well-born single lady I would go well out of my way to avoid.’

‘If you shun such correct young women, I’d best polish up a suitably outraged expression and work harder on my simper.’

‘At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about you getting in the way while I search for my ward and your brother, even if it would be a crime against nature to meddle with your more strident character. I can’t imagine such a properly nurtured female squawking and swooning and disapproving her way about the countryside without an entire army of villains knowing she was on her way, so if you could arrange to become one as soon as may be I shall be enormously relieved.’

Tempted to flounce away and let him believe whatever he chose about her whilst she conducted her own investigation into Rich’s disappearance, she was held back by the frustrating certainty that a lady on her own would never get far with such a quest. She was too hedged about with constraints not to need a man of power on her side to forge through or round any obstacles thrown in their way.

‘Whatever your opinion of me, I’ll not rest until I know where my brother is and what has made him conceal himself so completely from those of us who love him, Lord Calvercombe. Despite all Richard has done to put his family off the notion of owning up to him, let alone loving him, we stubbornly insist on doing so,’ she told him with as much icy dignity as she could muster.

If not for the habit he had of watching her with cynical incredulity—as if he were about to have her stalked and captured to be displayed as a public curiosity—she might have turned and walked away, but as it was she didn’t trust him not to go straight to her mother and warn her that her daughter was intent on seeking out her errant eldest son, if only to get Persephone out of his way and
carry on searching for Rich and his precious cousin Annabelle unopposed.

‘At least I now know I read you right in the first place,’ he muttered with a formidable frown to tell her he’d hoped he was wrong, for once in his life.

‘I’m a Seaborne—what else did you expect?’ she said scornfully.

‘Some common sense and a smidgeon of ladylike self-restraint to make you more endurable?’ he asked as if he already knew that was too much to ask.

‘That would be your mistake, my lord, not mine.’

‘So I see, but would you truly risk your unfortunate mother losing yet another of her offspring in such a reckless fashion, Miss Seaborne? I dare say she’d miss you as much as she does her eldest son, even if I can’t currently fathom any reason why she should find your absence aught but a blessing,’ he replied, as if only his talent for merciless words kept him from physically shaking her.

‘It’s because she’s our mother and a darling, something you clearly wouldn’t understand,’ she declared, informing her conscience it wasn’t a low blow if it got her out of here with her dignity intact.

She would
not
lose the blazing Seaborne temper she had inherited in spades from her passionate and often restless sire and make this infuriating idiot happy that he’d bested her in an argument. She didn’t need his admiration or approval, but letting him brush her off as a feminine irrelevance was not an option she could allow, either.

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he admitted. ‘Although I do have an imagination,’ he went on, ‘even if it’s a quality you clearly lack. Being cursed with such a questionable gift, it tells me you could end up as alone and beleaguered as Rich Seaborne if you carry on pursuing this mystery. You risk losing everything you have, Miss Seaborne—your health, your safety and even your sanity—if you try to pick up their trail where I left off, and that’s a risk too far for a gently bred female.’

‘How would you know?’ she demanded, stung by the assumption he knew better than she did what was good for her.

‘You can really ask such a question of a former soldier like me? How naive are you in this ridiculous quest to outsmart your brother and the enemy he and Annabelle must be hiding from? Rape and slavery are weapons of war, Miss Seaborne. Pray that you never
have to watch the sack of a conquered city or face the wrath of a triumphant enemy.’ He fell silent as appalling images flicked through his head in a kaleidoscope of horror she could only imagine.

Persephone hesitated between keeping out of whatever battles might be coming, as he wanted, and following her instincts to find her brother and help him come home at long last. At times she knew he was in trouble almost as if she were there with him, while at others his fate was obscure as a brick wall. No, even if it meant losing some elusive something she should never want and couldn’t have with this man, she still had to find Rich. She shook her head sadly and met his eyes with something she feared was very close to an apology in them.

‘Would you give up trying to find your cousin Annabelle if someone warned you it could be dangerous and tried to make you stop?’ she asked.

‘No, but I’m a man and a former soldier. If you have it in you to look beyond the end of your own nose, imagine what a bitter enemy might do to the lovely young sister of a man he’s set out to break and overcome. Rich Seaborne has enemies who would love to hold
a trump card like his sister in their hands, so why not show some crumbs of common sense and stay here while I track them both down for you?’

‘You must do as you please, my lord,’ she made herself say as distantly as she could manage when he was so close that every sense seemed on edge.

Apparently he expected her to behave like some passive maiden in a story, waiting for the prince to slay her dragons and retrieve her when he wasn’t busy. She told herself this hollow feeling she was fighting wasn’t caused by the disappointment that he could misread her so radically, or want her to be so different from the real Persephone Seaborne under her fine lady gloss.

‘While you do exactly the same?’ he asked as if he’d like to shake her.

‘I must,’ she said quietly.

‘From where I stand, you absolutely must not.’

‘Ah, but you’ve got your feet firmly planted in those trusty male Hessians of yours, haven’t you, Lord Calvercombe? Standing in them, I doubt I’d see how anyone could go their own way without your interference, either.’

‘Nonsense,’ he said gruffly, with a look that told her he knew she was right, under all that temper and frustration, and it only made things worse.

Something inside her shifted, almost softened, and since that would cause all sorts of chaos if she let it, she refused to consider the notion they might do better together than they would apart. ‘How is it that men always accuse us women of speaking rubbish whenever we’re in danger of winning an argument?’ she mused, doing her best to guard her inner thoughts and fears from him with a superior smile.

‘I don’t know,’ he said after what looked like a mighty struggle. ‘Could it be because you talk such illogical claptrap we can’t help but be driven half mad? Maybe it’s because when a woman risks having to admit a man could be right, she deploys every weapon she can lay hands on to avoid doing so?’

‘What a very odd opinion you do have of my sex, my lord,’ she said sweetly, deciding that since she wasn’t going to find peace today, perhaps she ought to leave him to his instead.

‘I’ll admit I find many ladies empty-headed and silly, but that’s mostly the fault
of unequal upbringing and low expectations. In your case it can only be wilful stupidity though, since your family seems to expect a great deal of both its male and female members. Your little sisters behave themselves with grace and intelligence, after all, so I can hardly blame your parents for your own lack of manners, can I?’

‘Penelope and Helen are good, dear girls, my lord. You’ll not succeed in driving a wedge between us by praising them and slighting me. You clearly never had a brother or sister you would walk to the end of the world for if you had to, so I can only feel sorry for you for that lack,’ she said, hoping he would see steady purpose in her eyes when they met his, rather than a fear they were both up against a force hellbent on making sure his family never set eyes on Rich again this side of the grave.

‘It won’t do Rich a mite of good if you sacrifice your peace of mind, personal safety and reputation and achieve nothing. Can you imagine how he would feel if he knew you were pitting your wits against the enemy he disappeared in order to avoid?’ he asked, running his hands through his hair, making it curl wildly. He turned away from her
to stride up and down the path as if it were the only way to stop himself laying hands on her and physically shaking her this time.

‘It may surprise you, but, yes, I can see that,’ she told him quietly.

‘And it makes no difference? You’re bound and determined to go your own way, whatever the cost to the rest of us might be.’

‘It will cost you nothing, my lord. You clearly don’t like me and will not care a snap of your fingers what happens to me.’

Somehow that stopped him in his wolf-like pacing and he turned to glare back at her as if she’d accused him of some terrible crime. ‘I might not like you, woman, but that doesn’t mean I can’t worry about you—donkey stubborn and as wilful as a three-month-old puppy as you clearly are. You need someone by who isn’t blinded by charm and physical perfection to the heart of a vixen that lies underneath it all.’

‘I could be just like you, then,’ she said unsympathetically, trying to fight a ridiculous feeling inside her that something astonishingly promising had just fallen empty at her feet like a deflated hot air balloon.

‘Hah!’ he raged on, resuming his pacing again, except now it was more of a wild-cat
lope than a wolfish fury as he worked himself up about her shortcomings instead of Rich’s plight. ‘We’re not in the least alike, you and I, not in the least similar in any way,’ he accused as he kicked a skewed edging tile, then had to pretend it didn’t hurt as it proved to be a lot more fixed in place than it looked.

‘Well,’ she said sarcastically and folded her arms to stop herself going up to him and holding on to halt his frustrated activity, ‘we certainly have a foul temper in common, if nothing else.’

‘I’ve enough to make me foul tempered; you could infuriate a whole regiment without even pausing for breath.’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ she argued for the sake of arguing as much as to prove a point now. ‘Even I can’t shout loudly enough to make that many bone-headed, born-stupid, stubborn-as-rock men hear me all at once.’

‘Ah, but they’d hush long enough to listen to the likes of you, Persephone,’ he told her, as if saying her name softly like that ought to cancel out his unflattering opinion of her up until now.