The Scarred Earl (18 page)

‘Can you recall the precise location of this castle, my lord?’ Peters asked.

Persephone thought it sounded the ideal place to hide Marcus and would neatly account for the oddly persistent whispers that Alex was behind it all, as well.

‘I have never heard of it and doubt many others have, either,’ she said, and the thought of Marcus incarcerated in a decrepit old fortress made her shudder.

‘West Shropshire, but I dare say it’s pinpointed on the estate maps, or maybe we could ask Lady Henry? Considering I’m trying to put my houses in some sort of order before becoming a married man, she might not think it out of the ordinary if I want to know where one of them actually is,’ Alex suggested and she wondered for a moment if it might save him a ride into Wales to consult the estate maps and that survey.

‘Mama is far too acute. She’s already concerned at the lack of any word from Marcus since Jack’s wedding, without dropping clues she might seize on when she thinks about it later,’ she argued after a few moments’ thought.

‘I agree it would be too much of a risk, my lord,’ Peters added.

‘Then I dare say you’re both right, but we need details about the place and my relatives before we march up to the front door and accuse them of abduction and possible extortion. Can you find all we need to know in time for us to rescue Miss Seaborne’s brother before our wedding, whilst doing your best not to alert anyone else we may be on his tail at long last, Peters? You will be a very remarkable man if you can pull all that off
under their very noses, if you ask me,’ Alex observed sardonically.

‘It’s my job to discover such things without anyone knowing I’ve done so, my lord,’ the man replied with such quiet confidence that Persephone believed him, although Alex looked a little less convinced.

‘I’m glad you’re on my side then, Peters,’ Alex only half-joked.

‘Whilst I’m thankful not to face you in any sort of battle, my lord,’ the man said solemnly, ‘I wouldn’t work for a kidnapper, or anyone who forced a gentleman like Mr Richard Seaborne into hiding to protect his family from harm.’

‘And the wretched man will be suspicious if Lord Calvercombe leaves Ashburton before our wedding to wander about Shropshire looking for ancient castles,’ Persephone concluded. ‘If we put it about Mr Peters is acting for your steward, he might come and go easily enough.’

‘The thought of a younger man on his way to inspect the castle might scare them into doing something foolish,’ Alex argued.

‘Then let me find out all I can in my own way, my lord. I can don a good enough disguise to deceive the acutest of watchers and
come and go without being seen by most ordinary people going about their business,’ Mr Peters said immodestly, but Persephone believed him. Alex would have to put his faith in the man until they knew they were on the right track and could get on with rescuing Marcus at last.

‘My cousin has various maps and geographical guides in his library you can consult if you need to, Mr Peters,’ Persephone offered, but he shook his head.

‘My thanks, Miss Seaborne, but you never know what spies your enemy has recruited even here. Some observant soul might note which books have been moved and pass the information on. With only half a county to explore, I should be back before a week’s out.’

‘If you can do all that and not alert our quarry we’re on his tail, I’ll pay you twice the fee we agreed, man, and the Duke will double it as soon as he gets back.’

‘Best perhaps if we discuss such things after we free Mr Marcus Seaborne, my lord. My rates are high enough to cover my needs amply,’ Peters announced and left with his usual quiet and economical movements.

‘Supposing our foe to be awake on every
suit, I can’t help but wonder if he might already be aware of Mr Peters’s profession,’ Alex mused.

‘If we credit him with superhuman powers, we’ll never make a move against him. I want Marcus at my wedding, Alex, even if he did declare he’s had his fill of them before he rode away from Jack’s and got himself kidnapped. I need one of my brothers to give me away. Jack can be your groomsman as you were his, and it’s not that Jack isn’t as dear as a brother to me, but Mama will be heartbroken not to see one of her sons give me away as Papa cannot. Not that she won’t be heartbroken anyway if we have to tell her Marcus is being held until we somehow manage to find Richard.’

‘It’s intolerable!’ Alex barked as he marched up and down the room again as if he wished it was the ramparts of a defeated enemy’s stronghold. ‘Damnable to do this to you when you’ve lost one brother already for fear of this rogue. I wish I could have the crook at my mercy for half an hour and teach him to suffer for once.’

‘You don’t have it in you to torture another being. At least this wicked man doesn’t know where he is and has had to think up
this fanciful scheme to use Marcus as bait to make us find him,’ she said philosophically.

‘I’d love to know why he thinks he has the right to hound you all; there just can’t be a good enough reason to cause such suffering to Rich’s family.’

‘One day we’ll know it, Alexander,’ she assured him.

‘What if that day isn’t soon enough?’ he asked, stopping to stare down at her with unaskable questions in his eyes.

‘It will be,’ she told him fiercely. ‘Rich would never give up fighting for what he loved and neither would your cousin Annabelle from the sound of her. Marcus might be young and untested in comparison to the rest of you, but he’ll do all a man can to confound this enemy of ours somehow.’

‘But will he still be your light-hearted young brother at the end of it all?’ Alex asked painfully and Persephone had to fight to keep her gaze steady on his and not let it veer towards his visible scars, because she knew they were talking of his captivity and not Marcus’s now.

‘Maybe he will be someone better,’ she told him softly.

‘Aye, and maybe he’ll be nigh as big a
monster as the man who put him wherever he is now against his will.’

‘Nothing could make him as ruthless and unfeeling as that, my lord. It’s no more in my brother’s nature to become such a cold-hearted beast than it was in yours in a far worse situation than any Marcus is likely to encounter.’

‘And you think I wasn’t such a beast?’ he asked grimly.

She could see such painful shadows in his eyes that it was tempting to change the subject and laugh him into the here and now instead of there and then. Pain that he’d had to face so much absolutely alone and stripped of everything that made life bearable gnawed at her, but she couldn’t let it show in case he mistook it for pity and she didn’t need him to tell her how much he would hate that.

‘You would be an unlikely saint and not the man I want to marry if you simply shrugged and walked away from your ordeal as if it hardly mattered. No doubt whoever did that to you, when they finally had the wild and beautiful young man I first remember you as in their clutches, had a dark and dangerous mind that needed stopping from causing any more harm. I’m sure you
did whatever you had to do to make sure he couldn’t do it to anyone else. Whatever you had to do to track him down and rob him of his power to hurt others has only made you suffer more.’

‘You really thought I was wild and beautiful? How admirably you young ladies do conceal your emotions from silly young men, my dear, for I swear I was convinced you scarcely knew I existed when I used to come here for holidays my ever-loving family couldn’t be bothered to offer me when I was a callow youth.’

‘I knew,’ she said shortly, with a steady gaze into his slightly bewildered blue eyes as she let him know how acutely she’d noticed him and would never find him insignificant if they both lived to be ninety. ‘And, yes, I thought you the most breathtakingly handsome youth I ever laid eyes on.’ She saw warmth and laughter leap in his bluest of blue gazes and held up a hand to prevent either of them getting carried away. ‘I also thought you knew it a little too well and would become even vainer and sillier if you launched into polite society as such a gilded youth. They would have flattered you into thinking yourself a demi-god, sent from
heaven to dazzle silly little débutantes out of the few wits they had in the first place.’

‘I would have had to wait a few years for you to come along and humble me then, I suppose,’ he said, quirking a dark eyebrow and inviting her to smile with him at the two spoilt and much-flattered socialites they could have been.

‘Considering I risked having my head turned when I first came out, perhaps it’s just as well we never did meet on the dance floors and promenades of the
ton
.’

‘Afraid we wouldn’t have liked each other?’

‘Certain of it. We hated each other on sight when we met again this summer and I was far less bearable at seventeen than I have learnt to be now,’ she told him, still refusing to let him know how hard her silly heart had fluttered and her skin tingled the instant she realised whose arms she was struggling to escape that fateful night in June.

‘Which leaves me with the question of what made you lose your goddess-like certainty you were put on this earth to rule it, Persephone mine,’ he teased, yet he waited for her answer as if it was important to him.

‘I broke a young man’s heart,’ she told him
shortly and winced at the memory. ‘With four years more experience of the world, I can see being a Seaborne and first cousin to the Duke made me irresistible to a youth with a title and fortune to hand on.’

‘Then why blame yourself?’ he asked and the frown was back in his eyes and it was wrong to hope it was caused by jealousy.

‘Because I didn’t notice him, I suppose, then he insisted I’d ruined him for anyone else and I must marry him, although he has since wed.’

‘You clearly didn’t break his heart then.’

‘Since he and his doting mama and sisters proclaimed to the world I did, some of it still thinks me hard-hearted, proud and vain.’

‘Then they’re wrong—you might be headstrong and loyal to a fault, but you’re neither heartless nor obsessed with your own reflection in the mirror. The idiot would have found himself with a tigress by the tail if he’d managed to badger you into accepting his proposals and you would have been bored half to death.’

‘True, and we could find out if I’m truly unlike the tame little kitten he married instead if you like, my lord,’ she suggested
with a bold invitation in her eyes she hoped he found very hard to resist.

‘Not yet, you witch,’ he protested huskily, as if the idea appealed very strongly, but he didn’t dare come near enough to test his will power any further. ‘We have a wedding to accomplish first.’

‘You
could
just kiss me then, I suppose,’ she offered in a martyred tone.

‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said, the need he finally let her see urgent in his heated blue gaze. Clearly he thought even a kiss would burn away his formidable self-control and wasn’t that exactly what she wanted?

‘Since we will be wed in a month anyway, why don’t we risk it all?’

‘Because we’re going to be wed for life, Persephone Seaborne, and need some mystery and magic to get through it without you becoming as bored with me as you would have been with your fine young lord. I can’t offer you anything less than the rest of my life and don’t you dare expect a marriage of convenience from me, woman. If you’re thinking to take lovers once we’ve made the first two or three of our boys together, then you’d better cry off now and we’ll face down the scandal somehow. We can have girls by
the dozen, of course, since I never wanted to hand this bedevilled title on in the first place, but if you will insist on boys, we’ll somehow manage to endure making our marriage renowned for faithfulness rather than disloyalty between us.’

‘I suppose we might as well, then,’ she answered, preoccupied with the hugeness of the whole enterprise he’d outlined for them to take on and live by. ‘I want to start now,’ she admitted, the need to feel his child grow in her belly so strong it seemed wrong not to get on with making their first as soon as possible.

‘You always were impatient, from the first moment I met you dancing up and down on the Ashburton steps haranguing your brothers and cousin to hurry up and join your latest misadventure before your governess caught you. Even back then you seemed to me a whirlwind in miniature to be avoided as often as possible, so I knew you were trouble at first sight. It’s high time you learnt you see more of a country by the long route, Persephone,’ he said huskily, as if the need to risk making those unruly babes right now goaded him as harshly as it did her, despite his fine words.

So why would he hold back from her when it was what they both wanted? She ran the idea through her head of who he might be considering if not her. Her mother? She doubted Lady Henry would be deeply upset by the idea her headstrong eldest daughter had anticipated her marriage vows by the distance of a few weeks. Indeed, she thought her mama might be more shaken to know Persephone was still a maid when she had a wildly handsome and passionately wolfish nobleman as her promised husband.

Lady Henry would very likely expect a dangerous gentleman like Alexander to bind his chosen mate to him by every available tie there was between man and woman. Knowing her mama, she would then congratulate herself that her Persephone had found the ideal man to provoke, then enjoy, her wilder impulses and deepest passions. Mama had never wanted the sort of milk-and-water arranged marriage for her daughters many aristocratic mothers seemed to expect for their offspring, as if they were merely goods to be traded in exchange for wealth and position.

It couldn’t be the thought of Jack’s protective wrath that held him back, because Jack
had proved himself a very faulty Galahad indeed when it came to adoring
his
love from afar. Persephone doubted Jack and Jessica had spent a night apart from some time before the day their betrothal was announced until they were legally wed and entitled to spend them together. So, as she was almost shamefully willing to abandon her maidenly modesty and learn the next heady stage of her life in his powerful arms, that left the only person who could hold them back from blissful fulfilment—Alexander Forthin himself, who looked as if he was on the rack with wanting her and not being able to take her at her very willing word.