The Scarred Earl

‘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.

She sighed in what should have been relief, but felt the heavy burden of what could be both her brothers’ safety on her shoulders. ‘Please speak to Joe and the stable lad, Givage. I’m sure you told them to be silent until you had spoken to Mama, but they must stay so until we know for certain what’s to do.’

‘I’ll do it, Miss Perry, but we can’t sit and do nothing about this for very long,’ he cautioned, slipping back into that childhood nickname.

‘We won’t have to, but someone clearly wants us to panic and I intend to plan our response rationally, if only to spite him.’

‘Please don’t delay until there’s no hope of us finding a trace of Master Marcus though, will you, Miss Perry?’

‘I hope I have more Seaborne blood in my veins than that, Givage,’ she said and let her steady gaze hold his so he would see how serious she was.

Her instincts had been proved right, Persephone reflected without satisfaction as she resorted to Jack’s bookroom to prowl, as he was on his way to the Lakes with his new Duchess. If only she’d raised the alarm yesterday, this calamity might have been prevented. Impatient with herself for dwelling on yesterday, which couldn’t be altered, she felt panic threaten after all. Perhaps the magistrates should be informed and their constables, maybe even the Bow Street Runners, set on the trail of Marcus and his abductor? She shuddered at the idea of whoever had left her father’s ring and Marcus’s hat for them find. It spoke of a cold and calculating mind to leave objects the family would know were removed against their owners’ will and imply a threat she couldn’t let herself explore completely just now.

‘What else can you tell me?’ she asked those objects.

She set them on Jack’s desk to puzzle over and stopped pacing at last, still with the long skirts of her riding dress draped over her arm to free her feet for action.

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