With This Ring (32 page)

“What have you done to her?”
Carter gazed at Aaron with the purest hatred.
“Bastard!
Blackguard!
Scoundrel!”

Aaron gritted his jaw.
We have moved into nouns.

“I knew you were up to no good!
What other reason could you have for returning to England but to despoil more virtuous women?”

Well, I had worked my way through every female in the Bahamas …

Unfortunately, Aaron could not bring himself to mock Carter.
Although Carter was an idiot, he was a righteous idiot.
The young man had every reason to want retribution for his sister’s senseless death.

“How—” Elektra clung to Carter, her voice wispy with distressed innocence.
“How did you find me?”

Carter sneered.
“I watched him stealing away from your house in London.
I was on my way to warn your brothers, you see.
I had no idea you were not safely within your home, so I followed his ugly horse for miles.”
Outrage took over Carter’s expression.
“Then I saw him steal you directly off your own carriage!”

Elektra could barely breathe with the stranger’s arm wrapped about her ribs.
She needed to think, quickly!

First of all, who was this idiot?
Aaron seemed to know him.
So who would hate Aaron so much he would feel compelled to follow him halfway across England?

Well, Black Aaron had killed Amelia Masterson—according to gossip!—so this must be a Masterson.
Brother, probably.
Younger, definitely.

She twisted a bit, trying to expand her lungs.
He gripped her more tightly to his side.
“Don’t worry, Miss Worthington.
I have you.
I will take care of you.
I fear I cannot undo what this maniac has wrought, but I will repair your reputation as well as I can.
We will ride directly to Gretna Green.
I traded for a fresh horse just this morning.
I calculate we can be married by supper!”

Elektra panicked.
Marvelous. Everyone wants to marry me—except the one man I wish would ask!
“But, sir—we do not have a ring!”
She heard a strangled noise from Aaron’s general direction.

“Furthermore, this morning I posted a letter to the Earl of Arbodean about your activities!
That will fix you, you bastard!
I would kill you myself right now, but I would not deprive Miss Worthington’s brothers of their right to vengeance!”

“Oh!”
Elektra fluttered her lashes at young Mr.
Masterson a bit more.
He did not seem tired of it yet.
“I long to see my dear brothers!
Please, let us go from here!
Leave him behind—my brothers will see to his dastardly hide!”

Mr.
Masterson gazed down at her.
“Yes, you have been through too much.
However, we must assure that he does not follow us.”

“Tie him!”
Don’t sound too eager.
“If you think it would be best, of course.”
Flutter.

“I haven’t any rope.”

Heaven help her.
How had he survived to his twentieth year all by himself?
So this is how it feels! Trying to talk sense to him must be what it’s like for an ordinary person to talk to a Worthington!

She pasted a worshipful expression on her face.
Flutter.
“Rope?
Oh, you are brilliant, sir!
The rope he tied his horse with, of course!”

Mr.
Masterson looked torn.
She could almost see the gears turning slowly in his head.
Very.
Slowly.

Elektra filled in the blanks for him.
“Yes, I will fetch it for you.
Anything for you, my rescuer!”

She slipped out of his arm before he could wrench her back and scuttled to the exit.
Once outside, it was a simple matter to set Lard-Arse free and return with the rope.

“Miss Worthington, you must hold the pistol upon him while I bind him.”

Elektra staggered backward, etching a horrified expression on herself.
“Oh, I could never touch that awful thing!”
She took the rope from him quickly.
“I shall tie him while you protect me.
I know you would never let him hurt me!”
Flutter.

She tied Aaron very well indeed, using miles of rope and creating large unwieldy knots that would convince Mr.
Masterson even at a distance.
It wouldn’t do for these two to get within arm’s length of each other.

Poor Aaron was at his breaking point, she could see.
Alarm for her, fury at his helplessness, and just plain anger at Mr.
Masterson’s assumptions called up storm clouds in those gray eyes.

She reassured him with a squeeze of his fingers when she was sure Mr.
Masterson couldn’t see, then finished tying him.
She tried not to look too practiced and efficient, but she also wanted to get this idiot as far away as she could from Aaron before something detonated!

Returning to Mr.
Masterson, she shyly took his unarmed hand.
“Please, let us leave this horrible place.”
Flutter-flutter.
“He is bound and his horse is gone.
He cannot follow us now!”

If she could get him on the road, she was sure she could extricate herself from his presence quite easily.
She managed to get him as far as the open archway.
Unfortunately, Aaron rushed matters just a bit.
Men!
Before she could stop him, he burst from the folly to fling himself bodily upon Mr.
Masterson.

That was the trouble with the trick knot.
It was simply too easy to get free of, once one had learned the way of it!

*   *   *

Elektra gazed down at the bound and furious Mr.
Masterson.
This time her knots were unassailable.

She folded her arms in exasperation.
“He’s so earnest and noble.
How exhausting!”

Aaron glanced at her.
“I didn’t realize you knew Carter Masterson.”

“I don’t.
I simply recognized the species.
I believe it is
Gullible idiotis
.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Easily identified by total lack of humor and immunity to irony.
Natural predators include Castor and Pollux Worthington—and anyone else with a brain and an agenda.
Spare me, please.”

Aaron gazed down at Carter, who nursed a black eye and a decidedly resentful humor.
“It isn’t his fault.
He’s hardly more than a boy.”

“He must be twenty at least!”

“Twenty-two,” Carter muttered bitterly.

“There, you see what I mean?”

Elektra and Aaron spoke simultaneously.
Aaron stared at Elektra.
“So … how old are you?”

She tossed her head.
“Nineteen.
Why, how old are you?”

He rubbed his face.
“Mumble-mumble.”

Unfortunately, Elektra was fluent in Mumble—probably due to close association with those five miscreant brothers.
She gaped at him.
“You’re thirty-four?”

“Is that a problem?”

She blinked.
“Ah.
Well, no.
It is only that Archie is precisely fifteen years older than Iris.
And … they wed when she was nineteen.”

“What does that mean?”

She shook her head quickly.
“Nothing.
A coincidence, I’m sure.”

Aaron felt a strange tingling sensation on the back of his neck, the sort of feeling one gets when being watched—or being conspired against!

Carter lifted his head.
“If you two are finished comparing birthdays, I think you should either untie me or kill me, for you both sicken me!”

Elektra scowled at Carter.
“Pardon me, but we were happily minding our own business when you insisted on inviting yourself in.”

“Happily?”
Carter sneered.
“He doesn’t deserve happiness!
Amy deserved happiness!
He deserves to be lying cold in the ground, not her!”

Elektra knelt beside him and put her hand on his arm.
“I’m so sorry.
I forgot about your poor sister for a moment.”
She was enraged at Carter but also heartbroken for him.
She knew what it meant to watch one’s family fall apart.

However, he was far too mired in the past.
Instead of enjoying his own careless youth, he remained obsessed with his own helplessness while his sister crumbled, too young at the time to help her, too young to challenge Aaron to a duel, too ignorant to help his parents survive the tragedy.

Mired in the past? Does that sound familiar?

Elektra tried to shut that thought away.
She was entirely focused on the future.

Really? While wearing the key to a moldering ruin about your neck?

Carter pulled away from her touch.
She looked up at Aaron, biting her lower lip.
“Can’t you—?”

“No,” he interrupted her.
Then, because Carter’s pain was so obviously raw, “I wish I could, but it would only cause more pain.”

“More pain?”
Carter turned his hate-filled gaze upon Aaron.
“Do you know what you did to me?
To my entire family?”

Elektra reached to comfort him again.
He scuttled violently away from her hand.

“You are a fool to trust in him,” he snarled to her.
“He’ll only betray you, too!”
He pointed out the door with his chin.
“Go, look in my saddlebag!
I was bringing my sister’s diary to prove this bastard’s worthlessness to your family.
Read it!
You’ll see his relentless, heartless seduction and his vicious attack on her innocent heart!”

Elektra glanced at Aaron.
“Hmm.”

Aaron narrowed his eyes.
“Elektra,” he warned.

She raised a brow.
“Do not take a tone with me, my lord.
I will read what I like.”

In moments she had the leather-bound journal in her hands.
Poor Amy Masterson’s diary had only a few weeks of entries.
Elektra supposed the girl had never had a secret before in her life—until she met a handsome, flirtatious fellow at a ball.

Furious, Aaron stalked from the folly.
He couldn’t bear to watch Elektra read Amy’s words.
Would they contradict his tale?
He thought they must, if Carter Masterson had read it and still believed in Aaron’s sins.

Although he’d spent the night in her arms, Aaron still wasn’t completely sure how Elektra felt about him.
She spoke nothing of love.
Didn’t women speak endlessly of love?

Damn it, she had finagled her way into his lonely, dark heart, his mind, and his soul.
He could not bear to see her turn away now!

Would she keep faith in him, even in the face of Amelia’s words?
Would she join the world in its poor opinion of him?

In the end, who would Elektra believe?

*   *   *

Elektra read quickly but carefully.
Once, when Carter Masterson began to speak to her, she held a finger absently to her lips.
“Hush!”

He actually obeyed her.
It was refreshing, that’s what it was.

The pages were full of a young woman’s fancies come to life.
The moment she had met “Him.”
Their first kiss, the description of which caught at Elektra’s heart.
She firmly squelched her own romantic flight of fancy to continue reading.

Amelia and “Him,” making love for the first time.
Elektra swallowed hard, reading the diary’s frank description.
She could not rationally feel superior to “silly” Amelia any longer.
She now knew the pull of male to female, the bond of heated kisses and tender touch, the wild sensation of skin to naked skin, the way a man’s body fit into hers.

Then came Amelia’s realization of her lover’s failings—her disillusionment, tangled with the love she still felt, confused by her passion and jealousy.
She’d been shattered—entirely devastated by “His” desertion.

Finally, Elektra reached the last entry, the final words of Amelia Masterson.

Lord Aaron came to me today. His lordship’s words left me cold, my heart frozen and alone, my life an interminable winter.

The winter must end. I must convince Lord Aaron that I am willing to end it.

I must sleep.

The girl’s words left Elektra chilled and aching herself.
She could see how Amelia’s family must have interpreted the final sentence.

However, if one read it with the knowledge of Aaron’s conversation with Amelia on her last day, one realized that the dire-sounding “I must sleep” meant precisely that.
They were the words of a girl exhausted by her grief, who recognized that she was weary beyond the ability to make reasonable decisions.

Elektra closed the diary slowly and pressed it to her lap.

“Well, now you know the truth about your lover.”
Carter Masterson’s voice overflowed with bitterness.
“You must realize that you are simply another Amy, on your way to ruinous disappointment.”

Elektra didn’t look at him.
“Mr.
Masterson, was your sister a mannerly girl?”

“Why—I know you think her wicked from her diary, but she wasn’t!”

Elektra closed her eyes.
“I am trying to ascertain if she were inclined to the proper use of titles and rank.”

He sputtered.
“Well, yes, of course!
She was most genteel—until he debauched her!”

Elektra opened the book to the last page and held it out for him to see.

He flinched.
“I’ve read it!
I couldn’t bear to read it again!”

She moved closer.
“Pray, take note that your sister refers to ‘Lord Aaron’ and ‘his lordship’ when speaking about Aaron’s visit that last day.
A visit, I might add, in which he offered her his hand in marriage and she refused him an answer.”

Carter snarled.
“So he claims.
Of course, he would say anything to absolve himself!”

Elektra resisted the urge to smack him firmly with the diary.
“Mr.
Masterson, my point is that your sister, even on her darkest day, did not forget to properly refer to him as ‘Lord Aaron’ and ‘his lordship.’
Do you concur that that was characteristic of her?”

“Yes.”
Then, more quietly, “She was exceedingly well mannered.”

Elektra sat herself down, tailor-fashion, before him and held the diary in his view.
“Yet, see here, and again, here—she refers to ‘He’ and ‘Him’—not ‘his lordship.’”

Carter blinked and peered at the pages where she indicated.
“I … I did not take note of that before.”

Elektra regarded him with sympathy.
“Would she have refrained from doing so for weeks, then, in the last entry, suddenly change her address?”
He remained silent.
She leaned forward.
“Sir, don’t you see that whoever it was that seduced her and broke her heart, it was not ‘his lordship’?