The Scarred Earl

‘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.

‘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.