by Vincy, Mia
Thea said nothing.
The grumbling grew. The crowd stirred angrily. Some stood. Others banged the tables. A riot was brewing.
Rafe lurched to his feet. The angry faces swiveled toward him and quieted at his glare.
“She jests,” he said. “Of course that’s not how the story ends.”
“So how does the story end?” demanded the man named Joe. “What does she do next?”
“Next she…she…” Bloody hell. How did he end this story? “She gives them both a kick in the bollocks.”
The crowd erupted into cheers and applause. Shrieking with delight, Rosamund threw herself into her task with glee, while the knaves sought to evade her. Some audience members decided to take part, and then the innkeeper was in the fray, yelling at them to stop, because broken furniture wasn’t good for his economics, so Rafe paid for more drinks, and helped settle everyone down, and when he looked up, Thea was gone.
* * *
Thea breathed in the cool night air. The beech trees beside the inn were silhouettes against the sky, lit by a valiant half moon. She wandered onto the road, and when she looked back at the inn, with its noise and yellow pools of light, it seemed eerily removed, as if she viewed it through a glass. Lord Luxborough would like this; he would have preferred to stand out here, yet he had entered the crowded tavern for her sake. A small sacrifice on his part. Another unexpected kindness.
Wandering on, she sucked in more country air, filling her lungs but not the hollow in her stomach. What on earth was wrong with her? Finally, she had told her story. Strangers agreed she had been wronged. Surely she should feel some satisfaction or vindication? Yet all she felt was an aching sorrow for some other girl.
Around her, the fields were silent and still, the darkness thick and endless. An owl hooted. A gust of wind tugged at her skirts. She turned and, for a panicky, disoriented moment, feared she had lost sight of the inn. But there it was, a distant glow. Thea headed back, her regrets dancing at her side.
If only she had trusted herself. A little voice inside her had whispered that Percy Russell was rotten, but she had allowed her parents to tell her she was wrong. Thea had never been averse to the idea of marrying into the upper class, for the sake of her whole family, but until Percy Russell it had only been an idea, and then she faced the reality of marrying a man she disliked. Everything had changed with Percy, especially Ma and Pa; the thought of Thea marrying a viscount’s son had gripped them like a fever and they’d stopped listening to reason. And Thea, hating to disappoint them, hating to let down the whole family, had tried to suppress her dislike and accepted his attentions, but not without arguing first.
Would that crowd still have cheered if she had confessed to the next part—the part where she began saying foolish things? “Why should I stop with charming Mr. Percy Russell to induce him to marry me?” she had snapped, as Ma, seeking to “improve Thea’s charms,” pinched color into her cheeks. “Maybe I’ll expedite matters and simply seduce him instead. Maybe I’ll seduce the whole jolly lot of them.” But she never dreamed Percy and his friends would hit on a similar idea, as punishment for her good deed. Never dreamed her bitter jokes would come back to haunt her, and prevent Ma and Pa from believing a word she said.
Reaching the yard to the inn, Thea paused and breathed deeply, shoving away the grim thoughts before she once more faced the world.
Then a shadowy figure caught her eye, slinking between the carriages. Pausing at the Earl of Luxborough’s carriage. Easing the door open, disappearing inside.
“Hey you!” she called out. “Stop! Thief!”
She ran in search of help, one eye on the carriage, one on the figure emerging with a box of plants. Again she called out, as the thief ran. And ran.
And stopped.
For his way was blocked by a tall, broad man with tousled hair.
“Put down that box,” the earl said calmly.
The thief nimbly darted to the side. Luxborough was there before him. The thief darted back the other way; his path was once more blocked.
“I do not much care for dancing,” Luxborough said. “So put down that box and if you run very fast, perhaps you’ll escape with your life.”
He loomed, head raised, the moonlight hitting his scarred cheek. Thea heard a whimper and the sound of the box hitting the ground and then footsteps as the thief fled. Luxborough immediately dropped into a crouch by the plants and began inspecting them. He did not look up as Thea approached.
“Are they unharmed?” she asked.
“Hmm.”
“Would you really have killed him?”
“Hmm?”
“You threatened to kill a man over some plants.”
“The plants are irreplaceable,” Luxborough said. “Yet that ignorant thief would probably just feed them to the pigs.”
“And then what?” she demanded. “The pigs would poop diamonds?”
He shot her one of his looks, and went back to tenderly inspecting each plant, each clay pot. Hands that a moment ago had been ready to take a man’s life now cupped a yellow flower as tenderly as if it were a newborn kitten.
“Those plants are so fortunate,” Thea heard herself say softly. “To have you to protect them and look after them.”
In a swift, fluid movement, he stood, and she realized again how big he was. His chest and shoulders were vast and his arms looked strong. Perfect for hugging, really. How selfish of him not to invite closeness. Surely it was his civic duty as an earl to offer a hug to any citizen who required one.
Starting with her.
“That story you told in there,” he started.
“It was the truth, you know.” Belligerence made her voice too loud. “I suppose you think it’s silly, for m–my sister to cry over a ruined reputation.”
“Hmm?”
“‘By George, you think someone laughing at you is bad. You should try being attacked by a wild animal.’”
“Hmm.”
“Forgive me.” She glanced down at the flowers and back up. “It is impolite to mention it.”
“I imagine scars this pronounced are difficult to ignore.”
Behind them, the inn door opened, releasing the noise inside, which became muted again as the door slammed shut. The inn was settling for the night, and the yard was quiet but for them and the owl.
“Yet why should we ignore them?” she asked. “I do not wish to pretend your scars are not there. Our scars are our stories, and stories should be told.”
“Then my story must be a frightening one, to match my face.”
“But that’s it.” She stepped closer to him. “The attack must have been horrific, but now you seem so strong and fearless, and I wish I knew how to… You wear those scars like a challenge. As if to say, ‘Yes, I tussled with a wild animal with paws as big as my head. What did you do this morning before breakfast?’”
He did not seem to mind her words, for that half smile curled his lips, and the corners of her own mouth tugged upward in response. The streaks of his scars looked almost shiny in the moonlight. She was already used to them, she realized, yet she longed to touch them, to pretend she could ease his past pain, to pretend he gave a flying farthing for hers.
She tangled her fingers together at her waist.
“Actually, I find it a benefit, that my face makes children run away,” he said. “Although their screaming gives me a headache.”
Encouraged by his self-deprecating joke, Thea ventured a reply. “And if ladies swoon at the sight of you, you are spared from having to talk to them.”
“Precisely. Although that raises the question of the etiquette of stepping over their prone bodies.”
“And the men?”
“Ah, the men.” He scratched his chin. “They say something jovial, like, ‘Spot of bad luck there, what?’ as if my cricket match was rained out.”
Thea laughed, the sound a lonely one in the deserted yard, but he was smiling, just a little, and she liked having someone to smile with agai
n. Then his smile faded, for he was searching her face with questions in his eyes, and the silence grew as heavy as the dark. She should go in, but she was not ready to leave him, not while there was the smallest chance they might smile together again.
“The selva is intense,” he said abruptly.
“The… I beg your pardon? What is the ‘selva’?”
“The tropical forest. It teems with life. Everything is bigger, brighter, bolder. One can encounter snakes longer than a warship, butterflies as big as a man’s palm. One can almost see the plants growing. With so much life, death is closer too. There is no past, no future, only the present, as one avoids the myriad of ways to die.”
She tried to understand what he was saying. “So one knows, when one goes into the selva, that one might not make it out alive.” Laughter bubbled up in her throat. “It is rather like a ball, then.”
He made a small sound that might have been a chuckle. “All those poisonous flowers. Vines that will choke you.”
“Man-eating animals.”
“Precisely. I’d risk the selva over Almack’s any day.” He paused. “The point is, I knew the dangers beforehand. No one betrayed me, unlike y–your sister. That makes my loss easier to bear.”
His words stole her breath and a pang shot through her heart. He didn’t understand. Ma and Pa thought she had betrayed them.
Yet he was being kind. Again.
Before she knew what she was doing, Thea’s fingers were untangled and she was moving forward. She placed one palm on his scarred cheek. He did not flinch or object, so she let it rest there. His skin was like her skin, warm and alive and soft, but for stubble of his beard. These scars were not ugly; they were simply part of him. She placed her other palm on his other cheek, and she cradled that bold face in her hands.
“You’re just a man,” she whispered.
He studied her with a faintly troubled expression, as though she was a puzzle he had already solved a dozen times, yet still did not understand. She wished she had the right to ask what thoughts were forming behind those eyes of his.
Then he covered her hands and gently lowered them away from his face, his fingers big and warm as they curled around hers. He was so close, all delicious solidity. If he could wrap his arms around her, pull her against his chest… Oh, how she yearned to be held. It had been so long since anyone had held her.
Too long, clearly, if she looked to him for comfort! She must not forget she was nothing but the means to an end for him, as he was for her. He would never be her friend.
She tugged her fingers free and edged away.
“You need not fear me,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back.
“You threatened my friend.”
“I never intended any harm. That was merely a maneuver to force your hand.”
“It was badly done of you.”
“I daresay it was.”
“You don’t seem sorry.”
He shrugged. “I wanted something. I went after it. I got it. In this case, what I wanted was you.”
A thrill coursed through her and she fought to quell it. How the moonlight made her silly!
“You mean, you wanted me to agree to marry you, so I could not marry Beau Russell and you could get some money.”
“Exactly.” He wiped a hand over his eyes. “I promise, you will be safe.”
How marvelous, to feel safe again. She had always believed herself safe, until those minutes in that ballroom, when her world was whipped out from under her and she learned that everything she believed in could disappear in the blink of an eye.
“Sometimes I wonder if someone like me can ever be safe,” she said. He frowned and she did not want to talk to him anymore. “I’m tired, my lord. I trust you and your plants will sleep well tonight.”
Thea turned away to go inside, and had taken barely three steps when—
“Countess!”
She turned back.
“Those people in there were right,” he said. “Percy and Francis should get their comeuppance.”
She must be more tired than she realized, because all she could think was that the world didn’t work like that. Her scheme seemed silly, so puny and hopeless.
But in the morning, she would feel brave again. So she pretended it was already morning and she was already feeling brave.
“They will,” she said.
Then, before she could do something foolish—something like throwing herself into his arms and pressing her face to his broad chest—she turned and ran inside.
Chapter 6
Ah, London. Rafe muttered curses as he cut through the commerce-fueled hubbub of the City two days later. Grime, stench, noise, people. As usual, London put Rafe in a foul temper, which had the effect of arranging his face into an expression that made people scurry to obey.
So it was with pleasing speed that he and his solicitor—a co-conspirator in Rafe’s fraudulent marriage scheme—convinced the trustees that he truly was married and secured their agreement to release the funds. But such things took time, the solicitor advised: Rafe should keep Thea close to allay any suspicions before the money was definitely his.
“Easily done,” he snapped, ignoring the memory of her hands in his, her palm on his cheek. He would put her on the other side of his house at Brinkley End, where he would never see her or talk to her, or be tempted to touch her again. His plans had no place for Thea and her infectious smiles.
Nevertheless, since they were near the Exchange anyway, an impulse inspired Rafe to call on Thea’s father at the man’s office. It went against all his plans, not to mention common sense, but Thea’s story had roused his curiosity about the kind of man who abandoned a daughter for his own ambitions.
Mr. Knight turned out to be stout and brightly dressed, with a skip in his step and an appealing shrewdness in his eyes. When Rafe informed Mr. Knight that he had married Helen—“met her in Warwickshire…very taken with her…couldn’t wait”—the man seemed to become younger by ten years.
“By my buttons! Our Helen, a countess!” the man repeated, then clapped and laughed and clapped again. He pressed his hands to his chest and murmured, as if to himself, “The girl has done it. We may all rest secure.”
“You have another daughter,” Rafe interrupted. “Thea, I believe is her name?”
Mr. Knight shook his head. “I do not know where we went wrong with Thea.”
“Did it never occur to you, Mr. Knight, that those men in her scandal might have lied?”
“The trouble with Thea, my lord, well, she was always up to some mischief or other, and that time she went too far. We never could make a rule but that she would find a reason to break it. But don’t concern yourself, my lord—our Helen is quite different, and she will be a credit to you. Why, when Miss Larke invited Helen to her house, we never imagined she would end up married to an earl.” His eyes brightened. “But you must dine with my wife and me tonight!”
Even if that were possible, Rafe would rather dive headfirst into a piranha-infested pond. His face must have helpfully indicated as much, for Mr. Knight actively recoiled.
“Forgive my impertinence, my lord,” he hastened to add. “I would never dream of imposing.”
“My bride and I return to my estate in Somersetshire tomorrow. We wish for complete privacy while our marriage is new.” Rafe lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “For the first month, the marriage will be our secret, Mr. Knight.”
“By my buttons! A secret with my son-in-law, the earl.”
At which point, Rafe should have left, but instead said, “My solicitor desires to discuss the settlement.”
His solicitor, having not been aware of this desire, looked surprised, but Mr. Knight didn’t notice. He launched into a story of how he had set aside a portion of fifteen thousand pounds for each of his elder daughters, to be protected even if he lost his fortune again, but considering he now had only one daughter of marriageable age—and why, she had married an earl!—his lordship could have t
he full thirty thousand.
“Fifteen thousand will suffice,” Rafe said.
From there it was a matter of tedious paperwork, but fortunately Rafe’s solicitor took a perverse pleasure in paperwork and briskly made arrangements for receiving the funds. Back on the street, the solicitor agreed to open an account in Thea’s name, in which to deposit her dowry. Secret, Rafe insisted: The lady must not be informed of her new fortune until Rafe was ready to tell her. If she knew, she would leave, and he had to keep her close.
Close. He shook off the memory of her cradling his face. Not that close, he scolded himself, a scold he had to repeat, several times, all the way home.
Where he discovered that London had not finished torturing him yet.
William Dudley was back on the street outside Rafe’s townhouse. As he had previously, the actor wore tattered black robes and his hair was in disarray. He curled his fingers into claws as he screeched about sorcery and poisons and how the Earl of Luxborough was a demon made flesh.
A very convincing performance, Rafe had to concede. One could almost believe Dudley to be a genuine zealot, like the many other men and women who shouted their messages in market squares around the land. It was all very well for the upper classes to pride themselves on their rationality, in these oh-so-enlightened times, but in the absence of widespread education, superstitions ran deep. No wonder tales of a devil-scarred witch in the aristocracy spread faster than typhoid.
Rafe stopped right in front of him. Dudley gave him an apologetic nod, before continuing.
“Behold the evil sorcerer,” he screeched, clawing at the air. “He who rains demons down upon the innocent!”
“Heard that one before, Dudley,” Rafe said. “Haven’t you a new script?”
With a nervous glance down the empty street, Dudley dropped his voice to a normal tone. “Sorry, my lord. No time to prepare one. Lord Ventnor didn’t know you would be back in town and he sent for me in a hurry.”
“He pays you well, I hope?”
“Beware the witch! Bears he the mark of the Devil!” Dudley screamed, then, after another furtive glance, whispered, “’Tis good work, my lord. ’Tis hard for an actor these days. Especially in summer, when everyone’s out of town.”