Ravishing Regencies- The Complete Series

by Emily Murdoch

  It was easy to allow the captain’s words to just wash over her, and she held out her hand automatically when he tried to thrust their wedding certificate into her. She glanced down at it, and the colour rushed out of her cheeks.

  “Now then, young lady, you look quite ill,” the captain said, peering at her.

  Margaret tried to smile, tried to bat away his concerns with a graceful hand, but it was not a skill she had ever really learned.

  Samuel looked at her. “Maggie? Are you feeling unwell?”

  “D-Do not call me Maggie,” she breathed, with a slight glare at Samuel. Surely he must see, now that the truth – or what was closest to the truth – was now between them, how inappropriate it was for him to call her that?

  “Do excuse us, captain,” said Samuel smoothly, bowing away the captain and placing the trunk down on the deck before offering an arm to her. “Maggie, what in God’s name – ”

  There were tears in her eyes, but that did not prevent her from snapping, “Do not call me Maggie.”

  Samuel rolled his eyes, and for a moment it was as though they had gone back in time, and they were happy, as they had been but two days ago, and Margaret felt something joyful rise up in her – and then it faded, as she remembered that five days ago they had hardly met. When half of one’s acquaintance was sorrow, how could you celebrate the other half?

  Samuel was speaking in a low voice, and in all the hustle and bustle of disembarking, the other passengers did not take anything amiss. “I asked you what was wrong.”

  She swallowed. As if everything else had not been enough to bear, now this. “Look at it.”

  Holding out the marriage certificate to him, she felt her legs tremble. She had never fainted before, but there was always a first time for everything, and she did not want to make it now.

  He was staring at the piece of paper as though it was a bill at his club. “What of it?”

  Margaret laughed bitterly. “You do not see it?”

  “Yes, I see it, but I cannot comprehend why it upsets you so much!” Samuel shot back. “Is the idea of being married to me so repugnant that…” His voice trailed off. “That is it. You regret marrying me so much that the mere sight of the marriage certificate – ”

  “No,” Margaret interrupted, knowing that her next words would rip into him just as much as they were paining her, but knowing of no way to stop it. “We are not married.”

  Samuel stared at her, a look of horror and confusion spread across his face. “Yes, we are.”

  “No, we are not.”

  “Damnit, Maggie, I should know,” said Samuel with a hint of defiance, but a smile trying to reassert itself on his features. “I was there.”

  But the twisted knife in her stomach was still moving, and Margaret tried desperately to prevent the tears from flowing down her cheeks. But it was no use, they over spilled and stained her cheeks. “Read it aloud.”

  He was staring at her as though she were possessed, but clearly seeing no point in arguing with her, he cleared his throat and looked down at the piece of paper. “This marriage certificate declares and makes legally binding before God the marriage of Samuel…Samuel Brown and…”

  Samuel’s voice trailed away and his eyes opened wide, mouthing wordlessly as the truth of the matter sunk in.

  “You are not Samuel Brown,” Margaret said bitterly. “That is not your name, legal or otherwise. This marriage certificate, Samuel, is not valid. We are not married.”

  “I will change my name.” Samuel spoke hurriedly, and he folded the paper and thrust it into his pocket. “Legally, Maggie – ”

  “Do not call me – ”

  “Margaret, then, Margaret, I will change my name,” he glared at her with fierce devotion that made her want to kiss him and cry that all was forgiven, but how could it be when she did not even know if he had killed a man?

  “You cannot,” she countered quietly. “You would have to reveal your true identity to change your name, Samuel. I am unwed, and…and ruined.”

  He stared at her in horror. “Ruined? How are you ruined? You are my wife!”

  “Not in the eyes of the law,” she hissed, looking around to ensure that they were not being overheard. “Everyone on this ship has seen that we have…we have shared a cabin, Samuel, they know that we have made love. And once the news gets out that we are not married, once the rumours start to fly – ”

  “Maybe not in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of God we are man and wife!” Samuel took her hands in his own and she gasped at the sudden heat and pressure. “You are not ruined, Maggie. Stay with me, stay with me and be mine!”

  Margaret snorted, and she did not even have the energy to become irritated about the use of Maggie. “And be your mistress?”

  He was stroking her hand, caressing it, and he felt so wonderful but she mustn’t, she could not reveal to him how she felt, it was too much, too hard.

  “We will get married again,” he was saying wildly. “Five times, fifty times, whatever is enough for you!”

  It was tempting, and for a moment Margaret considered the impossible possibility. Living as Mr and Mrs Brown, having a cottage somewhere rural in the south of France, bothering no one. Keeping chickens, perhaps. They could start a school. She always wanted to teach. He would be there, and she would be there, and all they had to do was love each other.

  “An emigrating earl can become anything he wants,” whispered Samuel.

  It was enough to bring her back to reality with a painful jolt. But what had he left behind, in England?

  “Goodbye, Samuel Brown, Earl of Kincardine,” Margaret said with a heart wrenching effort to stem the tears, knowing that it would be for the last time.

  “No – no, Maggie, wait – ”

  “Can I take that trunk for you, madame?” A sailor had approached them, and Margaret grasped at his interruption like a port in a storm.

  “Yes, thank you, that is very kind. I am leaving now.”

  But Samuel had other ideas. “No, Maggie, you are my wife and I – ”

  “I am no one’s wife,” she said weakly. “I am just Margaret Berry, and I need to find my Great Aunt.”

  Without looking back and unclear of where she was going, Margaret walked away from the man she loved.

  10

  Something salty was pooling into her lip, and Margaret wiped it away without thinking, and then touched her cheek. It was a tear. She was crying again, and she had not even noticed.

  A pale face stared out at her from the looking glass on the toilette table, and she tried to smile bleakly into it, attempting to convince herself that she did not look nearly so bad as she thought. It was blotchy and was wearing diamond earrings, but it was certainly her.

  A grandfather clock chimed in the hallway, and her head jerked towards the sound before turning back to the looking glass. It was one o’clock. Great Aunt Sabrina would be expecting her downstairs for luncheon, and she did not like to be kept waiting.

  Before she opened the door to her room, Margaret took a deep breath. She had always been of a shy disposition, but it would take a different kind of bravery to step downstairs now.

  The door opened, and a gaggle of young ladies who had been huddled outside her door scampered away, a few of them giggling. Margaret sighed, and tried to ignore the stares as she silently descended the staircase of the hotel and walked into the dining room.

  It was almost full, couples and families talking and laughing away in rapid French, but that did not prevent the room from falling quiet as she entered it, heads turning her way and unashamed mutterings starting up across the room.

  Margaret did not need to hear them to know why. Spotting her Great Aunt Sabrina at a table on the far side of the room, she tried not to flush as she made her way across the room to sit beside her.

  “What time do you call this?” Her Great Aunt Sabrina barked. “I have no patience with you, girl, no patience at all.”

  “My apologies, Great Aunt Sabrina,” she rep
lied automatically in a low voice, picking up her cutlery to make a start on her beef which had already arrived, pointedly left to cool by her Great Aunt. A waiter was standing nearby, crimson on his cheeks for such poor service.

  There was a gentle metallic clink, and she looked down and saw that her wedding ring was still on the fourth finger of her left hand. She had not taken it off, it had not even crossed her mind, and yet it seemed an impossible task. She probably should remove it, it was almost indecent to keep it on when she was, to all intents and purposes, not married.

  And yet she could not. There it sat, a little circle of gold, so small and insignificant in many ways, and yet it represented something intensely powerful. When she looked at it, she thought of him.

  “Oh, Maggie, the way you feel, the way you touch me, ‘tis enough to drive a man insane! Nothing means more to me than this night, Maggie. Nothing.”

  “And why are you not eating?” The voice of her Great Aunt Sabrina cut into her thoughts, making her jump. “I would have thought that the food of the Hotel Royale would be good enough for you, even after dining on the Adelaide which I must admit, was not terrible food. Well, girl?”

  “I am eating,” Margaret said dully, lifting a fork of potatoes and a little meat to her mouth. After finishing the mouthful, she said quietly, “I am sorry, Great Aunt Sabrina.”

  She had expected another berating complaint, but instead her companion just looked at her quizzically.

  “You know what I have never understood?” Her Great Aunt Sabrina was speaking more softly now. “Why you always apologise all the time.”

  Margaret stared, absolutely astonished. “Oh, I am sorry, Great Aunt – ” The repeated apology made her flush, and laugh a little awkwardly.

  Great Aunt Sabrina leaned forward, and her long beaded necklace tipped into her plate. “One week without you, my girl, has finally taught me a little of what you did for me. I know ‘tis not my place, likely as not, but I am a grumpy old woman and so I will ask anyway. Why are you no longer with your husband, that Samuel Brown?”

  Her eye was beady and stern, and Margaret found that reaching out for a sip of wine was a heady relief than facing her gaze, but it was awaiting her after she placed her glass back onto the table.

  Was there an answer that did not sound ridiculous? Could she hide the truth and yet not lie? Was such a thing even possible?

  And was that, and the very thought made her flush, exactly what Sam had attempted to do with her?

  “W-We have decided to…to live apart,” she said quietly, unable to think of anything more clever to say.

  Great Aunt Sabrina snorted. “Out with it, girl, I know when I am being lied to.”

  Margaret tried not to roll her eyes again. “I-I thought he was a good man, and he is not. I do not have a very high opinion of m-myself, ‘tis true, but I have more belief in myself than that. I did not want to stay with…with a bad man.”

  Her Great Aunt’s eyebrows raised. “And what has he done, to be so bad?”

  The south of France was far warmer than London had been, and Margaret had not been aware of this when she had packed her trunk. The gown that she was wearing seemed inexplicably tight and hot.

  “‘Tis not what he has done, but what he may have done,” was all she could manage until her throat became so dry that she tried to force down another sip of wine.

  She had not thought it possible, but Great Aunt Sabrina’s eyebrows raised even higher. “Ah. So he is the Earl of Kincardine, then?”

  In a prodigiously unladylike manner, Margaret sprayed her mouthful of wine across the table. It was fortunate indeed that her Great Aunt was seated to her left, rather than opposite her.

  She was laughing. “Anyone can be accused of anything, you silly girl. Why, I could accuse you of stealing my diamond brooch right this minute, but that would not make it true.”

  “That was not the only reason,” Margaret said, a little resentfully. “He would not talk about it with me.”

  “Ha!” She threw back her head and laughed at her young companion. “A man that you had only just met a few days before would not go into the embarrassing and shameful accusations that had been levelled against him, and that, more likely than not, were not true? What a surprise!”

  Margaret stared at her aunt in absolute amazement. In a whisper, she asked, “Are you truly encouraging me to go back to him? A murderer?”

  “An accused murderer,” interjected Great Aunt Sabrina. “And yes, I am. I knew Bartholomew, your earl’s father. He would never have raised a murderer, and I knew that from the moment that I saw him board the Adelaide.”

  It was unladylike, and her mother would have been disgraced, but she could not help it. Margaret’s jaw fell open. “You knew? You knew that Sam – that he was the earl? And you let me marry him!”

  “Not so, I quite clearly remember attempting to stop you,” her Great Aunt countered with a smile on her face, perhaps the first genuine one that Margaret had ever seen. “And I knew that it was partly out of selfishness anyway. I knew that I could not keep you forever.”

  Margaret returned the smile wanly at first, and then something slotted into her heart and she suddenly understood. What would she do now, if she were accused of something terrible – something that she could not prove her innocence for?

  Run, most likely. Run, and try to change her appearance as much as she could. Run, and build a life elsewhere.

  And if you met someone along the way who seemed just as alone and lost as you, who desperately wanted a different life, well then. Why not take them with you?

  Something exploded in her mind as all the pieces came together, and she finally saw him, Samuel Berkeley, Earl of Kincardine, for the first time. He was a good man, a man wrongly accused, and he had done the only thing that he had known: run. And he had, and he had been honest with her right from the start that theirs was not to be a marriage of love.

  And yet it had become so. It was foolish to ignore the strains of her own heart, foolish to say that he had not charmed her. The care in his eyes, the devotion in his gaze, one could not lie about such things.

  But what had she done? Abandoned him, at the first moment of trouble. When she should have been listening to him, really hearing his protestations of innocence, she had fled from him in fear.

  She had undoubtedly broken his heart.

  Margaret stood up, ignoring the clattering of her cutlery that fell to the floor.

  “Where do you think you are going?” Her Great Aunt glared at her, smile forgotten. “You have to help me cut up my steak when it arrives, now that chit of a serving maid of Mrs Goodwin decided to stay on the Adelaide!”

  Throwing down her napkin, Margaret shook her head. “I am sorry, Great Aunt Sabrina. But I seem to have mislaid my emigrating husband.”

  The inn was loud and hot and Samuel was able to shrink into a corner – or as much as a man his height ever could shrink into anywhere. After nursing a tankard of beer for the last hour, he had not made much headway. His feet were hot in their boots, and he felt a desperate need to untie his cravat. He could not breathe, he could barely think.

  Éduard had not been at Aviroux Castle. He had been so sure, so certain that he could take refuge there, that his arrogance had overwhelmed him and he had not even thought of writing ahead to ensure his friend’s loyalty.

  Perhaps Éduard had heard. Perhaps he thought, like the rest of the world, that he was a monster. A monster capable of killing his own friend.

  Samuel raised a hand to his face and rubbed his tired eyes. The day had been long, and yet he could not face returning to his lodgings in the inn to stare at the ceiling for hours. He had thought that he was sleeping badly before he had met Maggie, but now…now he barely slept at all.

  A woman with dark chestnut hair like Maggie walked into the inn and his heart leapt.

  “I did not think that mermaids were real, and yet here you are.”

  “I need you to just lose yourself in feelings, do you underst
and me? Before I…before I can love you the way I want to, you need to…well, this will help. Do you trust me?”

  Someone called out to the woman, and she turned around, responding in French. It was not Maggie.

  Samuel sank back into his seat, hardly aware that he had leaned forward in the hope of seeing her again. But what was he thinking? What would he even say to her?

  “Samuel? Is there a Samuel here?” The innkeeper shouted into the melee of voices and sounds, and looked around the room.

  Samuel looked up warily. It could be a trick, but then what did it matter anymore? She was gone, and the way that she had looked at him…it was enough to destroy a man. What did it matter if he was found now?

  “I am Samuel,” he said listlessly.

  The innkeeper glared at him, but handed over the letter grudgingly.

  After the innkeeper had stomped back to his bar, Samuel’s gaze dropped to the letter in his hands. The seal was one he recognised, but could not immediately place. It was only when he opened it and saw the handwriting of his friend Lord George Northmere that his curiosity was piqued. What could Northmere be writing to him about?

  Kincardine,

  If, by God’s fortune, this letter reaches you, come home. I have sent several copies of this to all the inns around Marseille – ‘tis the best way I can think of to tell you the news. The real culprit to the murder of Stephen has been found, confessed to the crime, and you are acquitted. A vagabond, no malice intended, and he has confessed. Honour has been restored to your name, and all that Penkarth Manor needs is for its master to be restored.

  Come home, Kincardine. There are plenty of people who wish to be admitted into your acquaintance again, and I remain your ever faithful and true friend,