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‘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.
‘Why?’ she demanded, uncrossing her arms so she could fist her hands and pretend he was wrong.
‘Because you’re as lovely as half-a-dozen goddesses put together,’ he told her with a wry grin that acknowledged it was a silly thing to say and almost made her long to melt into the sort of weak-kneed female he obviously admired.
‘With a dozen fists to hit you with and as many feet to kick you, I think I could support being that lovely,’ she said and tried not to laugh at the very idea of it.
‘You’d fall over,’ he informed her solemnly. Oh, the temptation of him as he stood there, suddenly as light-hearted and heart-breakingly handsome as Mother Nature had intended him to be.
‘True, but at least I’d do it happily, knowing you were sure to be hurting far more than I was,’ she said, determined not to be charmed into a quieter, more accepting frame of mind.
‘I bet you were a devilish little girl, ready to lash out at anyone who told you not to do something merely because you were born a girl,’ he said reflectively.
If he but knew it, he was in danger of succeeding by using his acute mind to read her true character where all his raging and charming and unreasonableness had failed to persuade her. Mainly because he was right, she told herself. His knowing all her frustrations at being born a girl in a world dominated by men, when every time they met they quarrelled and struck sparks off each other, felt oddly disarming.
‘Please don’t think me so changed I won’t do it again, Lord Calvercombe,’ she told him rather half-heartedly.
‘Yet it would have been such a shame if you had been born one of us unsatisfactory males instead of a goddess-like female, Miss Seaborne, for then I would be denied the sheer pleasure of looking at you,’ he told her as if it were no more than passing the time of day.
‘I’m not a cold collection of limbs and good enough features to be gawped at like yonder statue, my lord. I am a human being with all the faults and failures and hopes and dreams we earthly creatures are subject to.’
‘But it doesn’t hurt the rest of us fallible beings that you’re a sheer pleasure to look upon, Miss Persephone Seaborne,’ he informed her quietly and strode dangerously close again, to look down at her as if he’d find out all the secrets of her inner soul she’d managed to bury deep inside.
‘And if I was to be as rude and bold as you are, I’d have to admit you’re no hardship to behold yourself, Alexander Forthin,’ she countered, meeting his disconcerting gaze as if it were normal for a lady to compliment a gentleman.
For a moment he looked shocked, then almost flattered, before his insecurity about his scarred face and marred eye surfaced and he merely looked offended—as if she were mocking him for being less handsome, at least in his own eyes, than he’d been once upon a time.
‘I do remember you from before, you know,’ she said softly and, as he appeared to want to step back, she took a step nearer so she could meet his eyes to show him she meant what she said. ‘You were handsome and arrogant and proud as sin back then, when Rich and Jack left Eton for Oxford and you got your commission and a scarlet coat to dazzle schoolgirls like me out of the few wits I had left me. To my mind you’re a great deal better looking now than you were back then and considerably less vain.’
‘Then you’re still dazzled?’ he asked as if that was all that mattered to him in her shaming admission that she’d once cherished a fiery and fearsome crush for him, even though she’d only set eyes on him once or twice when she was supposed to be minding her lessons.
‘I’m no longer a schoolgirl who can be easily enchanted by a devil-may-care manner and a pair of knowing blue eyes, Lord Calvercombe,’ she claimed primly, but inside she wasn’t quite so sure.
‘If you first set eyes on me when I was still a boy straight out of school, I doubt they were as knowing as either of us thought at the time,’ he admitted and disarmed her all over again.
‘Whatever you knew, it was a lot more than I did,’ she admitted. Since he was about the same age as Jack and therefore eight or so years older than herself, that was a safe enough bet at least.
‘Not that you would ever have admitted it.’
‘No, not then,’ she acknowledged.
‘Or now,’ he said flatly, and since she’d dug that trap for herself, she supposed she couldn’t blame him for using it.
‘Nine or ten years have gone past since we first set eyes on each other and I’ve learnt a lot in the meantime, Lord Calvercombe.’
‘Then you’re prepared to rashly lay claim to having become a woman of the world since then, are you, Persephone? I suppose you are an experienced female with three, maybe even four Seasons at your back by now and still no husband to make them into a triumph,’ he observed, and she wasn’t going to admit the cutting edge of that conclusion, coming from him instead of her few known and familiar enemies among the ton as it did.
She knew he was using temper to set her at a distance, but it hurt her far more acutely than it should. He’d slyly trailed the outrageous possibility she might have become worldlier than a respectable young lady should be, as well as reminding her the world might one day mock her looks and birth and comfortable marriage portion if she refused to wed. He deserved to have his face slapped before she flounced away, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
‘Only three Seasons actually, my lord, and that really doesn’t mean I’m either desperate for a lover or considered to be at my last prayers quite yet. I happen to be very particular about the man I might one day decide to marry.’
‘After you’ve had your pick of the bachelors to flirt and test and measure against some impossible ideal of perfection, I suppose? Please don’t tell me how he must be, let me guess. The poor man will have to be rich if he’s to afford you,’ he said as if about to count off on his fingers all the things she must demand in a husband, when all she really wanted was to love passionately and be loved in return one day or not wed at all. ‘Then there’s all that ducal blood flowing proud in your veins to measure up to. I doubt some ancient old noble will do for such a lovely and fastidious young lady as you, either, so he must be smoothly god-like and haughty as a Roman senator with all except his lady. He’d better be a fine horseman, or strive to become one, since you’re reputed to possess a fine seat and a good eye for a horse that he’d do well to match. All in all, the man must be a paragon, don’t you think? Little wonder it’s taking you so long to select the poor fellow; such a pattern card of perfection can exist only once in a generation.’
‘Even more of a wonder if he actually exists at all. What right have you to think you know me so well that all my most private thoughts are an open book to you, Lord Calvercombe? I’d sooner stay a maid all my life than go about the business of finding a husband in such a cynical and chilly fashion and, if that’s the best you can let yourself think of me, I’ll thank you to avoid me in future for our mutual comfort.’
‘It would certainly help mine,’ she thought she heard him murmur as if she made him acutely uneasy somehow by breathing the same air as him.
‘Consider it done,’ she declared airily and would have strolled away from him as if nothing about him interested her, if he’d let her.
‘If only I could,’ he rasped as he grasped her arm and his touch burned through her like wildfire and froze her in her tracks.
‘Take your hands off me,’ she hissed with all the passion she could muster, since the very air seemed to hum with a warning that he was now far too close.
‘Gladly, if only I could believe you will dutifully return to your mother’s side and leave me to find Richard Seaborne and my ward.’
‘Do you think Mama would want me to do that if there’s a chance we can find Rich and have him back here in his true home once more? Or do you assume she doesn’t miss him every minute of every day? I suppose you see the serene face she shows the world and imagine Lady Henry Seaborne either doesn’t feel deeply, or knows very little of the world beyond the safe boundaries of the Seaborne estates. My mother longs desperately for Rich every moment of every day he’s away, Lord Calvercombe, as she would for any of her children should they disappear. My big brother is her first child, the one she and my father made in the heat of first love and he will always be special to her. And, no, before you imply it, I’m not jealous of the strong bond that exists between them.’
‘You really do have a low opinion of me, don’t you?’ he asked with a look that seemed to hint he was hurt by such a harsh summary of his possible thoughts.
‘I merely reflect what I see in your eyes when you look at me, my lord.’
‘Then you see something I didn’t put there,’ he responded rather bitterly, as if that blurred line of scarring troubled him far more than his arrogant manner and to-the-devil-with-you glare allowed for.
‘Can you blame me when you’ve done nothing but snap at me since we first met again by moonlight that first farcical night you came to Ashburton?’
He looked down at her as if he’d almost forgotten she was there that night and didn’t relish the reminder. ‘You’re certainly a thorn in my flesh, Miss Seaborne, but I don’t suppose you mind if I consider you irritating and prickly, since you have done nothing but abuse and rebuke me from that moment to this.’
‘Of course I have—you manhandled me like a sack of potatoes.’
‘And that still rankles with you? What a veritable goddess you are, Miss Seaborne, to expect reverent awe from the opposite sex at all times of the day and night, however ungoddess-like your own behaviour might be at the time.’
‘Enough, my lord, I’ve had more than enough of your illogical arguments and irrational prejudice against my sex. I’m going to find my family now and no doubt I shall see you at dinner, whether I wish to do so or not,’ she said ungraciously and, tugging her arm from his slackened grasp, marched off like an offended queen.
Chapter Four
‘Well, that certainly told me,’ Alex Forthin muttered ruefully.
Of course he recalled coming here one moonlit night in June to vent his wrath on Jack Seaborne, because Jack’s errant cousin had spirited Cousin Annabelle away so effectively. Back then he’d been so full of wild plans to avenge himself on Richard Seaborne and rescue his vulnerable young cousin that it had never occurred to him that she had wanted to disappear and Rich, gallant fool that he was, insisted on going, too.
Now he knew it was an idea born of pain and suffering in a war that brought little glory to either side—a ridiculous scheme he’d thought up to try to redeem the aching darkness in his own soul. He had needed Annabelle’s gift for loving the unlovable too much to consider why she had gone and what looking for her might stir up, but facing Jack across that would-be Grecian temple down by the lake had jarred him into reality somehow. Jack was so completely his old complex and sometimes arrogant self that Alex realised he was the one who had changed into someone he didn’t want to know.
He’d let the fanatics who had tortured him to the edge of madness cloud his thoughts and colour his actions. His cousin’s absence had taken any gloss there might have been off a homecoming only a few old servants were left to rejoice in, but he should have realised Rich wouldn’t run off with an innocent like Annabelle. Clearly there had been a pressing reason for them to disappear and it remained urgent enough to keep them away three years on. How could he have wasted so much time suspecting his friends when he could have been looking for real enemies all along?
His cousin Annabelle had an independent spirit, as well as a truly loving nature and sunny optimism she must have got from the other side of the family. She would never have stayed with Rich for so long unless she truly wanted to and there was the crux of another conundrum. If Rich knew how Alex lusted after Persephone, he might suspect him of wanting to avenge himself on Rich through her for carrying off his own innocent young cousin. Truth to tell, he would hide at Penbryn himself and try to forget the beautiful virago existed if he could, but he must stay here and risk what little peace of mind he had to make sure she didn’t risk her lovely neck on some harebrained scheme to track down the missing pair.
At least being armed against a vain hope she would come of her own accord would guard him against wanting her so badly he’d risk asking her to go with him. He was a fool like all the other idiots who desired the unobtainable Miss Seaborne and pined for only a sight of her across a crowded room. After today she would avoid him like a noxious disease, which might keep her safe and dutifully by Lady Henry Seaborne’s side for the next few weeks, while Jack was away and Alex was busy searching the length and breadth of Britain for Belle and Richard without their enemies noticing he was doing it.
Something told him Miss Seaborne was more likely to dash off on some reckless adventure—giving him three people to rescue instead of only two—if he didn’t fool her into playing the docile young lady somehow. He shuddered at what trouble she might bring on herself if he didn’t divert her and decided he couldn’t ride off into tomorrow’s sunrise without a backward glance at the Seaborne lair and all those supposedly safe inside it. Wondering how to keep an eye on a single lady whilst she decided which way to jump into the lion’s den, he paced the quiet garden. Only once did he catch himself wondering how such a sanctuary could be created at his Welsh home for a lady of his to roam, so that she might stay and make Penbryn Castle and his other rundown homes less spartan.
Deuce take it, he wasn’t going to have a lady. Even before he set foot on home soil again, he’d decided the Forthin name would die with him. It was a cursed line—a supposed family where hate and greed and jealousy stood in for the love, generosity and solidarity that seemed to bind the Seaborne clan together. Belle would inherit everything he had to leave. And when he found he’d become Lord Calvercombe, it seemed the final joke of fate to come home and find his cousin gone and no clue to her whereabouts. So any hope he still had for the future was wiped out.
He didn’t dare let himself think her truly lost—the one hope of redemption for his whole rotten clan. So he had to find her, rather than succumb to the ridiculous hope that he might build a life on shaky foundations with some spoilt society lady and see it crash round his ears when she laughed in his marred face.
‘Wherever have you been, Per?’ Miss Helen Seaborne demanded a little too loudly as Persephone did her best to slip into the dwindling crowd as if she’d never been away.
Silently cursing little sisters and their over-eager tongues, Persephone shrugged with would-be carelessness. ‘I went for a walk in the gardens to clear my head, sister dear. Since it’s been a long and exciting day, I needed a little peace to gather my senses. You dare to call me Per again and I’ll retaliate in kind, Hel,’ she added in a fierce aside meant for her sister’s ears only.
‘Neither of you will do any such thing,’ Lady Henry informed her daughters with a look neither of them quite managed to meet. ‘This is still Jack and Jessica’s special day and I won’t have you two arguing like fishwives just because they can’t hear you at the moment.’
‘They can’t hear anyone but each other when they’re together nowadays,’ Penelope Seaborne put in with obvious disgust at such mutually obsessed lovers.
‘Which is exactly how it should be when two people love each other as deeply as those two clearly do,’ her mother said with an understanding smile at her youngest daughter’s moue of distaste. ‘One day you will understand, my love,’ she said and laughed when Penelope gave a disgusted shudder and fervently declared,
‘Never!’
‘Well, I think they’re very lucky and I wish I might love any man half as much as Jess does our cousin, even if I can’t quite understand why anyone should,’ fifteen-year-old Helen declared, halfway between the romance of being almost grown up and the brutal frankness of nine-year-old Penelope.
‘What, love a man, or love Jack specifically?’ Persephone asked, reluctantly intrigued by the workings of her little sisters’ minds and the changes maturity was threatening before she felt prepared for any of them to move on.
‘Jack, of course. He’s all very well and I know he’s a Duke and fabulously rich and not particularly ugly, but he’s only Jack when all’s said and done.’
‘True,’ Persephone agreed seriously enough, ‘but Jessica has known him for ever and still thinks he put the stars in the sky, so I suppose love must be blind.’
‘Wait until you’re in love, my dearest, then you can tell me how it feels to trust a man to do so for you,’ their mother advised, too seriously for Persephone.
A moment later she wondered why his lordship the Earl of Calvercombe had chosen to emerge from the spring garden at the worst moment possible and felt her mother’s eyes on her when she refused to meet his gaze or Lady Henry Seaborne’s.
‘I doubt I shall ever love a man so completely,’ Persephone argued as she squirmed at the very notion of ever loving such an aloof and cynical one.
‘I don’t think a woman can sensibly consider herself immune to such folly until she’s cold in her grave, my love,’ Lady Henry objected mildly enough, but her eyes dwelt thoughtfully on Lord Calvercombe while she did so.
The shock of seeing her wise, sensible and almost cynical best friend tumble fathoms deep under Jack’s rakish spell had been bad enough, Persephone decided, but he’d made bad worse by stumbling so totally into love with Jess it sometimes seemed as if he could scarcely string two sensible words together for enchantment. The whole mad business had shaken Persephone’s confidence in her own cool judgement and well-guarded heart. If Jack and Jessica could fall so comprehensively in love with each other, nobody was safe from the malady.
Well, almost nobody. She really couldn’t imagine the Dowager Duchess of Dettingham falling in love, even in her salad days. The unlikelihood of her grandmother considering the world well lost for love made Persephone smile ruefully, then curse her abstraction when she realised she was beaming idiotically at the Earl of Calvercombe as if he were the light of her life. Berating herself for a fool, she frowned fiercely at him, then felt a prickle of what must be fear run up her spine when he seemed to read her confused thoughts and flashed a crooked smile of understanding at her. He was far too dangerous to exchange perceptive glances with and she told herself to look away when there was any danger of him looking back at her from now on.
The chambermaids of all the inns from here to London who’d been gifted one of Lord Calvercombe’s devil-as-angel smiles must spend their working days yearning for him to come by and lavish another on them. She told herself she was made of far stronger stuff and tried not to wonder if his lordship currently kept a mistress to charm and seduce and puzzle. No point wondering how it felt for the unfortunate female to have such intense masculine attention concentrated solely on her.
He was such a self-contained puzzle of a man the poor woman was probably left to yearn and yawn the days away until he felt the need of her so strongly he would lavish all his passion and attention on her once more, for as long as she could hold his restless attention. Then he would be off back to his splendid isolation until next time. Glad she would never need to charm, caress and fawn on a man to know there would be food on the table or clothes to render her decent, she shot the object of her half-furious speculations what she hoped was a coldly quelling look.
On the hill above Ashburton New Place the observer snapped his telescope back into its case and let his fist tighten into betraying fury. He was alone up here, after all, and could afford to reveal his feelings for once. The original baron who built Ashbow Castle on this patch of high ground would despise the Seabornes as fools for letting themselves be overlooked like this, but the watcher knew it was a deliberate statement of power. The Tudor pirate who had made his fortune at sea under Good Queen Bess’s flag, if not exactly at her direct order, sited his new mansion on the side of the valley precisely because nobody dared challenge him at the heart of his ill-gotten estates. The whole breed of Seabornes were so arrogant they considered themselves beyond the reach of their enemies, but he was here to prove them wrong.
Up here on the defensible ground others had fought over for generations before the Seabornes claimed it he seemed face to face with failure. A vantage point was useless when the enemy wouldn’t emerge from hiding to give battle. He longed for the lawless days when a rival lord and his army could camp up here while they destroyed the arrogant Seabornes to every last man.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, to fight off a reckless, cleansing fury at the thought of all he wanted being ripped away from him, he slunk back into the cover of the trees. Forcing himself to watch the nauseating spectacle of the Seabornes joyously en fête for so long had all been for nothing, he concluded bitterly. Richard Seaborne had stayed away from his cousin’s nuptials and outfoxed him once again. Overcoming the need to lash out at something to relieve his frustration, he forced a mask of calm on to his face and strolled along as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Experience had taught him that the man who looked as if he didn’t care if he was seen or not was less noticeable than the one slinking along furtively with a guilty look.
It was time to take the fight to the enemy, he decided as he went. Three years waiting for Richard Seaborne to show his hand was more than enough patience for any man. Time to see how the elusive devil felt when everything he valued was under threat and an enemy held his fate in the palm of his hand.
Later that day Mr Marcus Seaborne was expecting to be on his way to heaven in the arms of his mistress, keen to shake the dust of Ashburton off his feet and get to that lovely armful as fast as a good horse would take him. He was three and twenty, vigorous, healthy and generally held to be a handsome, if currently rather unsteady, young gentleman with the world at his feet. He was almost as happy as he knew the bridegroom would be on this fine August evening, as he rode away from Ashburton with a picture of the beauty he was intending to bed tonight in his head.
His frivolous and sweetly rounded Clarice was no Jessica Pendle, of course. There was only one Jess, and if not for the fact she had grown up with him and he saw her as another sister, he might feel a twinge of jealousy for all she and his Cousin Jack had tonight. As it was, he blessed them both and whistled softly between his teeth as he rode towards his current love with the certainty he had plenty of time to find one to last for ever, when he was creeping up on thirty like poor Jack and called upon to take life seriously.
He wasn’t as intense about anything as his brother Rich either and growing up with the ducal succession at two removes hadn’t felt like a hardship to him, but he still felt smug about the fact Jack clearly couldn’t keep his eyes, or his hands, off his new wife. Soon there would be a pack of little Seabornes crowding the Ashburton nurseries and when he got to that solemn age himself there would be no need to search for his Mrs Seaborne with the driven urgency Jack had been pushed into earlier this summer. Marcus was free—not as free as he would be if Rich had stayed home and done his duty as well, he recalled with a frown, but free enough. With luck, Rich would come back now Jack was wed and would take his own responsibilities off his little brother’s shoulders.
None of them seemed to matter when lovely Clarice, with her inviting smile and tightly luscious curves, was waiting for him in the nearest town she considered remotely civilised. He dwelt on happy memories of her dancer’s body and the eager glow in her sloe-dark eyes when she slanted one of her come-and-get-me looks his way, and felt so on fire with desire he tightened his knees and urged his grey into a smooth canter and then a downright gallop. At this time of year daylight lingered long enough in the sky to get a lover to his lady before pitch dark, he decided with a cocky grin, as he calculated how much riding he had to do before sunset finally thickened into darkness.
‘Givage, wherever are you off to in such a mighty hurry?’ Persephone asked the morning after Jack’s wedding when she saw the usually dignified steward close to running towards her towards the main staircase.
‘Let me pass, Miss Persephone, I must speak with Lady Henry.’
‘My mother is very tired after the wedding and hasn’t left her bedchamber,’ she informed him briskly, refusing to step aside so he could hurry upstairs and worry her mother with some crisis Persephone could deal with just as well.
‘Then I really don’t know what to do,’ Givage said despairingly and Persephone’s heart began to thump with fear as she took in the white line about the man’s mouth and the look of despair in his eyes.
‘About what precisely?’ she asked abruptly.
‘This,’ he replied, holding out what should have been a jaunty beaver hat.
She stifled a horrified gasp as she took in the battered state of her second brother’s favourite headgear. It looked disturbingly as if someone had taken a cudgel to it whilst it was still on his head, or perhaps he’d taken a headlong tumble off his horse. That was a thought she hastily decided to ignore, since she doubted even her brother’s hard head could survive such a bruising fall without desperate injuries.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘Well, it was under the Three Sisters’ Oak first thing this morning. Joe Brandt brought it to me, since he didn’t know if her ladyship was aware Mr Marcus had left Ashburton after dinner last night and didn’t want to make bad worse, so to speak.’
‘Did he indeed?’ Persephone asked disapprovingly, having a very good idea why her brother would sneak off when the company were occupied with discussing the wedding and the business of everyday life Marcus always did his best to avoid.
‘Mr Marcus asked the stable boy who saddled his horse to keep the news of his departure to himself as long as he could.’
‘I dare say he would have done,’ she said absently, wondering if the opera dancer she suspected he had waiting for him nearby had any idea where he was now.
‘Joe said the hat was placed on the ground with this underneath it, Miss Persephone. Not even Mr Marcus would do such a thing as a prank,’ Givage said and delved in his waistcoat pocket to produce a heavy signet ring for her inspection.
Persephone looked at the distinctive stone with a fantastic sea creature resting on the waves engraved into its surface and gasped. Halfway between affectation and joke, with its pun on a sea-borne monster, it was her late father’s signet ring. Richard had reluctantly slipped it on his own finger after Lord Henry Seaborne’s funeral and that was the last time she had seen him or her father’s ring. Knowing a fine manor house and large estate were now his, Rich had ridden away from them all that day as if pursued by devils. Intent on going his own way as usual, Persephone reflected bitterly now, and had succeeded so well this was the first sign of him she’d seen from that day to this.
‘Please don’t tell my mother,’ she asked, her gaze hard on her old friend as she silently pleaded not to add to Lady Henry’s burdens.
‘How can I not?’ the ageing steward asked.
‘It will break her,’ Persephone said bleakly. ‘She’s borne enough since my father died and Richard went missing. She must not know that both her sons could be in danger until we’re certain this isn’t a mare’s nest.’
‘We can’t pretend nothing has occurred, Miss Persephone. Not when he could be in the power of some shameless rogue.’
‘Let me think about it properly before we make any over-hasty decisions,’ Persephone insisted and held out her hand for the hat and ring, her gaze steady on her old friend’s until he gave a faint shrug and passed both into her keeping.
