The Scarred Earl (9 page)

‘Very true, my dear,’ he replied with an unrepentant grin.

She reminded herself she found the glint of laughter lurking in his blue eyes annoying and certainly not attractive in any way.

‘Miss Seaborne,’ she corrected him shortly.

‘Of course. Miss Seaborne the society beauty has dozens, if not scores, of besotted would-be lovers at her feet, has she not?’ He looked up from his nature studies to observe, as if she were a prime example of a breed he despised.

‘No, she is merely a woman lucky enough
to be born into a family who have wealth and position to make them respect instead of try to seduce her,’ she was stung into replying.

‘So you clearly believe,’ he said as if musing on a conundrum he found half-amusing and half-bewildering. ‘Have you no idea how truly lovely you are?’

‘I’m nothing out of the common way. It’s my portion and connections that cause me to be put up on some sort of pedestal. Jessica is far lovelier than I and nobody seemed to notice it until Jack took a second look at her this summer and saw her as she truly is. I really can’t make myself take any man seriously who claims to be struck witless by the tilt of a woman’s head, the set of her eyebrows, or the turn of her chin or nose—as if she were little more than a well-executed classical sculpture dug up and sold off to a rich English milord with more money than sense.’

‘My, my, Miss Seaborne, what extraordinary passion you do feel about a set of silly young gentlemen,’ he observed, more absorbed in searching for mysterious marks in the turf than replying sensibly.

‘Then you think they contribute to the advancement of their fellow man, my lord?’
she asked sweetly, succumbing to curiosity at last and jumping down to peer at his few blades of grass as if they might talk if she listened hard enough. ‘I can’t see anything extraordinary,’ she admitted and turned to peer up at him with a question and a demand in her silver-green eyes.

‘I dare say not,’ Alex Forthin agreed, with a silent admission that she really didn’t know what those clear light-green eyes of hers did to a man.

Nor had she any idea how the rich dark chestnut of her thick and temptingly unruly hair made a man long to see it loose about her shoulders and run his fingers through the heavy softness of it, to find out if it was as silky soft and full of life as it looked. He felt in the acutest danger of doing something reckless whenever he was with her. Luckily, only he knew he’d shamelessly used his quest and the bustle of Jack’s wedding to hold himself aloof from her since that heady night in June when Jack Seaborne won himself a wife in a million, and Alex Forthin found himself struggling with a slender yet deliciously rounded young lady at midnight
in a moonlit garden full of scent and secrets and impossible promises.

The girl had been out three years, and the toast of St James from the instant the first wolf spotted her. If his life had been different, perhaps he would have been that wolf; perhaps he would have wooed and won such an intriguing innocent as she must have been at eighteen. Or perhaps he would have been vain and careless of such a rare female and idly flirted with her back then, as if she understood he was not and would not be serious. He would have walked away after engaging her interest, piquing her hopes and spoiling her dreams of true love and an enduring Seaborne-type of marriage. The whole family were primed for an unfashionable kind of alliance based on love and enduring closeness he had never aspired to and never would. Three years ago, when the world was very different, he had envisaged marrying one day when bored enough with life and being Alex Forthin: gentleman, beau and wolf in a pleasing pelt.

Now he doubted he would find a tolerant and well-bred female who could look him in the face without flinching and suddenly what he hadn’t wanted back then looked infinitely
desirable. Persephone Seaborne didn’t seem to notice he was marred; her clear-eyed gaze only puzzled that he dwelt on the folly of very young girls so ill at ease with anyone less than perfect. He shook his head to try to clear it of the notion that Persephone Seaborne was the ideal female to soften his hard edges and add purpose and contentment to his austere life. Ridiculous to look too long into her intriguing grey-green eyes, to catalogue the perfection of her features and the delicious promise her maturing body would hold for her lover one day.

‘The man who kidnapped your brother carried the hat and ring here from elsewhere,’ he made himself tell her and banished all thought of raising her up and kissing her soft mouth to find out if it would yield under his, or repudiate in a rush of revulsion he would find it almost too painful to endure.

‘How do you know?’ she demanded with a preoccupied frown at his bent blades of grass.

‘He wasn’t carrying enough weight to flatten the grass right down and there’s no sign of a struggle in the vicinity of this tree. It stands alone and even your brother would never be so preoccupied with a lady-love
that he wouldn’t notice a man standing by it waiting to kidnap him. He was attacked elsewhere and the man walked here to leave his message for your family.’

‘So he left Marcus elsewhere while he did so,’ Persephone mused. ‘Either he left my brother bound and gagged in case he woke and raised an outcry, or he has a confederate.’

‘You know the area far better than I do. Would anyone locally want to damage your family by co-operating in your brother’s abduction?’

‘Every powerful family has enemies, but I don’t think any of them bold enough to strike at us here,’ she admitted after a pause to run through a mental list of anyone with a grievance against the Seabornes.

‘Enemies are unpredictable at the best of times. Can you think of any around here who might be glad to damage you and yours?’

‘Jack dismissed a keeper for laying mantraps on the estate a year or so ago, but he was caught poaching himself a few months later and the magistrate gave him the choice between the army and prison. He’s probably far too busy worrying about his own skin
at the moment to think of avenging himself on us.’

‘Does he have family?’

‘Yes, and very ashamed of their black sheep they are, too. No, don’t look at me like that, they asked to be moved to one of Jack’s other estates so he wouldn’t find them if he deserted and managed to get home. He was a mean-tempered bully. After he was gone and they were no longer terrified to tell anyone, we found that he beat his wife and terrified his children. Nobody but Belford himself bears ill will towards Jack for banishing him from Ashburton, I can assure you.’

‘Jack’s no saint, though—are you sure there is nobody who would be happy to see him brought low?’

‘You think Jack’s been dallying with farmers’ daughters, my lord?’

‘Can you be certain he has not?’ he countered, determined not to let scruples stop him finding anything that might lead him to Marcus, or Rich and Annabelle.

‘Because he’s Jack, of course. He might have been rackety and wild for a while after he lost his parents and found out how false and toadying the world could be to a young
Duke with a vast fortune and large estates, but he would never dishonour his name or himself by tampering with innocents. I challenge you to find one female he ever kept who now regards him as anything other than a generous lover she regrets losing.’

‘I agree,’ he said ruefully and almost laughed at the look of consternation on her lovely face. ‘I spent all my spare moments trying to track a clue that would lead me to your older brother and my cousin these last few months. Sometimes I think I know more about Rich and Jack Seaborne than I do about myself. Despite his rakish reputation, he left all his lovers better off than they were before he found them and he certainly intends to keep no more now he’s wed his Duchess. I’ve heard more mawkish sighs of regret among the muslin company over him these last few months than I would have thought the whole regiment capable of uttering in a lifetime.’

‘He’s a darling,’ Persephone Seaborne said with an indulgent smile for her big cousin. Alex felt a pang of something all the more sharp because he refused to name it as jealousy for an easy affection she would never show him.

‘I don’t think Jack would thank me for agreeing,’ he said with a wry smile and heard her chuckle at Jack’s reaction to being thought a darling by his cynical friend.

With laughter in her silvery-green eyes and an affectionate smile kicking up the corners of her lush mouth, she was dangerous. That quirk of connection he’d felt for her earlier might all too easily grow into longing and frustration if he wasn’t careful, so he made himself look away from the enchanting picture that Miss Persephone Seaborne made, with all her unselfconscious allure.

Even if he was in the market for a wife, an accredited beauty wasn’t the one for him. Maybe in ten years’ time when he was near forty and his estates and fortune were restored he might consider it. Something told him he wouldn’t dwell very long on the idea of a lady young enough to bear him an heir having to steel herself to become his bride for the sake of his title and position even then. He shook his head at the very idea of a woman deciding she could do no better than a battle-scarred monster with a shriveled-up heart like him. He felt too old and world weary for such a desperate lady now and was well aware the scars he carried made
him an object of morbid interest, rather than a desirable
parti
.

‘You’re a dangerous woman, Miss Persephone Seaborne,’ he told her and decided not to look too deeply into what might have been.

‘I don’t know where you got that idea, my lord, but it won’t help us find Marcus, so what do we do next?’

‘I shall search for any sign of him and the rogue who seized him and you will go home to pretend nothing is amiss for the sake of your mother and little sisters,’ he told her, hoping she would see sense and not insist in embroiling herself so deeply that he would be distracted from his quest by worrying about her.

‘Can I trust you to look to Marcus’s safety first and not use him to get to your cousin?’ she asked with a very direct look from those clear, cool eyes of hers.

‘You can—I am a gentleman,’ he said stiffly.

‘Can I indeed, my lord? And what does that mean when you’re still a man with it? Being both a lord and a man, you might regard your own family as a higher obligation than mine could ever be, might you not?’

‘I might, except Annabelle has been gone three years now and your younger brother a few hours. If you are and yours are not to go through what I have done since I arrived home and found her long lost, time is of the essence. You’ll just have to trust my word I’ll put the recovery of your second brother at the top of my list of things to do today, won’t you, Miss Seaborne?’

‘I could always make my own enquiries instead,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘And risk the whole enterprise because you won’t accept my word? I happen to like the resty young devil for his own sake, so think what you will of my motives. Do you really believe I would leave a young fool with the delusion the world is his friend to learn how wrong he is at the hands of his enemies as harshly as I had to, madam?’

‘No,’ she said with a heavy sigh, her gaze meeting his for a long moment. ‘You would probably do too much to prevent that happening to another, so promise me not to take any wild risks with your own safety.’ she demanded.

‘I never take unnecessary risks,’ he defended himself gruffly from the notion that
she might care one way or the other what became of him.

She gave a significant glance at the scarred side of his face that didn’t dwell on the healed web of distorting cuts, but told him he’d put himself in the hands of his enemies precisely by taking unnecessary risks.

‘You know nothing of how this happened,’ he defended himself with an impatient flick of a long-fingered hand at his half-damaged face.

‘Then why not tell me when we have a little leisure from brother-and-cousin hunting?’ she said, as if they were going to have time and intimacy to talk of such things when their quest was done.

‘It’s not a pretty tale.’

‘And I’m not an infant to be told sweet fairy tales and kind little lies,’ she said flatly, as if he’d disappointed her.

‘Whatever either of us might be, we must ride back and I must find an excuse to wander off for a day or two while you pretend all’s well. Are you actress enough to carry off such a role, I wonder, or will you fold and let Lady Henry suffer agonies of mind over the welfare of her second son as well as her first one?’

It was harsh, but he could see from the exasperated look she cast him and the queenly lift of her neat chin that he’d managed to goad her into proving him wrong. How long that would last once her temper cooled, he had no idea, but it should give him long enough to evade her and be well on his way before impatience broke through her resolution to prove him wrong.

They rode back in silence, Lord Calvercombe preoccupied with the adventure ahead and Persephone searching for ways to join in the chase but finding he’d left her no way out. If she sent for Jack, he’d keep her out of the search as well. If Alex Forthin was going to creep about the countryside and track her younger brother and his kidnapper, then far safer for them if Jack was oblivious to the danger Marcus might be in, given the hot and headlong temper she knew still existed under the cynical control he used to fool the world he was tamed.

She silently fumed at the conspiracy of gentlemen to keep ladies meek and at home and dearly wished the world was arranged differently. Maybe then she could storm about the place doing as well, rather than
sitting about trying not to chew her nails and quietly worrying about Lord Calvercombe and her brothers. Her mother had faced so many blows with unbowed faith in her maker and the basic goodness of the human spirit, which should show her daughter and the rest of the world what a resolute female was capable of, but, no, somehow gentlemen still deluded themselves ladies were fragile and over-sensitive creatures in need of protection.

‘Promise me not to ride out alone, even on your cousin’s land?’ the worst example of them all demanded before they were quite within earshot of the stables.