The Beaumont Betrothal: Northbridge Bride Series Book 2

by D'Ansey, Leigh

  His companion’s face lit up. Her smile pulled at something deep within him. “Indeed I am! Why, her grace—Vanessa—lunched with us only a fortnight ago. How is it you are acquainted with the duke?”

  In the face of her lively interest he found unexpected enthusiasm for relaying the story of his first meeting with The Most Noble Hugo Ashton Duke of Northbridge, known to Bruno now simply as Ash.

  He took a step towards her. Although the wind had dropped, he did not wish to raise his voice above the chime of breeze and brook combined. “We met in London some years ago,” he began, warming to the subject as he continued. “I’d been travelling with my business partner and our ship berthed for repairs. We’d been weeks sailing through atrocious weather and we limped into dock glad to have escaped with every limb intact.”

  Amused by her enthralled expression, he had no intention of revealing how the ocean filled him with a visceral terror he’d never been able to explain. He’d forced himself to conquer his fear to a degree, but if there’d been a quicker way to travel across the Atlantic, he’d surely have taken it. Even the lake at Northbridge Castle unsettled him with its unknown depths and water made black by the rocks that formed its base and sides.

  For now, let her believe him to be a fearless seafarer if that’s what it took to bring a shine to her eyes and lift the corners of that delectable mouth.

  As if she read his mind, she gave a soft, musical laugh. “And I suppose you found a respectable inn and put yourselves immediately to bed?”

  He grinned. “We celebrated at Whites, tried our luck at Brooks’ and ended up in a tavern near Paternoster Row. By the time we emerged, it was just the dark side of daylight and we were worse for wear than when we’d steered ourselves into dry dock. They were upon us before we knew it.”

  “They?” She splayed her long, ungloved fingers across her throat with a delicious shiver. He was surprised to note a broken nail and well-scrubbed skin; not the soft, pale hands of a lady, although everything else about her belied this.

  “Do go on,” she urged, tucking her fingers into her palm as if she’d noticed his observation but did not choose to sanction a digression from his narrative.

  “A band of toughs as wicked as any you’d find in the old Port Royal.” He resumed his tale, letting his nostrils flare. “They stank of the evil inside ‘em, rotten to the core.”

  Her eyes widened. “How many?”

  “Ten.”

  “Perhaps you were seeing double.”

  “…at least eight.”

  “Please continue,” she invited, her eyes dancing.

  “The scoundrels were armed to the teeth. We were surrounded on all sides.” Bruno embellished his story without remorse, relishing the gurgle of laughter in her voice and her lively expression as she followed his daring tale. “It had begun to rain,” he lied boldly.

  “Hard?”

  “Teeming.”

  He trailed her movements as she pressed her fist against her collarbone. The collar of her coat slipped aside. Whatever garment she wore beneath was the color of moss, soft and dark against her creamy skin.

  He shifted his stance and when he spoke his voice sounded rough to his ears. “My companion dispatched one, sliced him almost in two.”

  The mirth brimming in her eyes goaded him on. Her mouth curved into laughter and he found he could not drag his eyes away.

  “And was it during this altercation you received your injury?” With a delicate gesture, she indicated the narrow scar on his cheek.

  Bruno remembered with pain the origin of his scarred features and a nerve flickered in his jaw, but he censored the bitter remembrance and concentrated on spellbinding his audience. “Indeed no. That was a different…encounter.” He drew a harsh breath across his vocal cords before continuing, although the fleeting expression that clouded her face told him she’d perceived his discomfort.

  “My musket misfired,” he carried on resolutely. “I threw it to the side and felled another wretch with my sword but not before I’d taken a Toledo blade between my ribs—close to my heart,” he added, deliberately provoking her sympathy.

  She un-fisted her hand and brought her fingertips to her mouth. Her gaze, tinged with horror, flew to his chest as if to penetrate his waistcoat and linen shirt to uncover the wound that had only just side-stepped his heart.

  Her eyes widened. “And I suppose the duke came flying down this dark, dangerous alleyway mounted on Satan, pistols ablaze?”

  “No, indeed.” Bruno flung one hand in the air and snapped his fingers. “Pfff! He simply stepped out of the shadows, a sword in each hand and spitted the pair of ‘em while my companion and I looked on bemused.”

  His companion lifted her fingers from her lips and pretended to count on her fingers. “That makes six,” she said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.” She put one finger to her cheek and caught the corner of her lower lip between her teeth as if giving the matter serious consideration. “Perhaps the other two, assured of their inevitable demise simply…” here she threw her free hand in the air and snapped her fingers: “…pffff! Disappeared into thin air.”

  “I believe that’s precisely what occurred,” he said unable to prevent the rumble of laughter that welled up from his chest.

  “And what of your wound?” she pressed.

  Bruno leaned forward, close enough for strands of her hair to drift against his face. He smiled. “I’ll show you the scar,” he promised, allowing the beat of his arousal to warm his gaze.

  Her own eyes flew open. Her cheeks flamed. She stumbled backwards, putting her hands behind her to grip the parapet. The wind rose and clawed suddenly at her hair, tearing off her scarf and hurling it into the air. Instinctively he reached up and caught it, barely looking away from her.

  “Mr Cavanaugh! I…”

  Desperation sounded in her voice as she stared up at him. It took a baffled moment, but then the confusion in her expressive eyes and her stammered protest made him realize he had completely misjudged the level of her sophistication.

  He cursed inwardly, feeling unaccountably lecherous. Gripped by remorse, he was compelled to bring their encounter to a close before she was entirely mortified.

  At the same time, he vowed this would not be the end of their association. She was too desirable a woman to abandon without advancing an arrangement for a further encounter. She’d lit something inside him, and he could swear he’d done the same for her.

  He stepped crisply back and made his smile formal, managing to inject an austere note into his voice although his foremost inclination was to sweep her into his arms and press his face into her neck.

  She brought her chin up and met his gaze, but her mouth quavered as if unsaid words scrambled for balance on her lips. It caught his heart to see her valiant fight for composure.

  “Ma’am.” He gave her an opportunity to gather her poise and make polite response. “You have not yet given me your name.”

  She did not extend her hand. “I am called Sophia Cranston.”

  Sophia Cranston! Now it was Bruno’s turn to stare in stunned disbelief. His hand went to the scar across his cheek and rubbed hard. Although he was ravaged with disappointment, he thanked God he had pressed for an introduction. Of all the women in the world this was the one utterly beyond his reach!

  * * *

  What an absolute cloth head, Sophia scolded herself as she tramped through the copse a few minutes later. She had flirted quite shamelessly with Mr. Cavanaugh, then she had fallen apart at his really very innocuous advance!

  Her carnal reaction to the warmth in his gaze and the nearness of his taut masculinity had shocked her. To top it all off, he had simply reared back when she’d spoken her name. His dismay had been so apparent and her humiliation so great, she had not even been able to speak. She’d heard a gasp tear from her throat as she’d spun away, not bothering to retrieve the scarf he’d snatched from the air so reflexively she barely saw the movement.

>   She should have realized her inferior standing in polite society had somehow reached Mr. Cavanaugh’s ears as he’d journeyed through the county. Tears scalded her eyes and she swiped them away impatiently. Crying for a man she had only just met; a man who so clearly found her wanting! Surely, she was not such a pathetic creature as that.

  A sudden, aberrant fondness washed over her for Freddy, who, despite the disrepute that had rubbed off onto her, had opposed his father and fixed upon Sophia as his future countess. Didn’t his allegiance more than make up for any of his rather harmless shortcomings?

  The sun appeared again as she hurried through the copse, aware now of her muddy boots and damp skirts. The earthy smell of fresh foliage and new growth filled her senses. New greenery misted the trees, making an intricate embroidery against the shining steel of the sky.

  Just a few yards ahead of her a roe hind and her fawn stepped daintily across the path. Sophia halted, watching how tenderly the hind shepherded her offspring until the hind and her spindly-legged babe disappeared into the undergrowth. Sophia wondered how it would be to have a child of her own. She imagined holding a baby to her breast. A sudden yearning for her own child countered the underlying dread that always assailed her at the thought of childbirth.

  She clutched at the possibility that marriage to Freddy might offer other benefits than the merely pecuniary. Mr. Cavanaugh’s thighs might show off his breeches to better advantage than Freddy’s but he had rapidly shown himself to be less of a man than her plain but staunch fiancée.

  Exiting the copse, she turned onto the pathway towards the sprawling pile of Foxwood. As she neared the old hall, the sun slipped away again, and the mellow stone walls turned a dull grey. With its crooked chimneys and crumbling corners, Foxwood resembled a tired old animal down on its knees. Sophia’s optimism shriveled.

  Although she tried desperately to retain the image of her and Freddy with a sweet baby, she found she could not dispel the memory of Mr. Cavanaugh’s laughter or the imagined vision of her fingers tracing a crooked scar across the contours of his chest.

  Chapter Three

  “I do not understand!” Jonathan Frederick Digby Beaumont, fifth Earl of Enderby, Earl of Drayton and Baron Beaumont of Brackmore, sat up and glared at Bruno. His eyes gleamed dully in the sunken hollows of his skull and his shoulder blades protruded like knife blades underneath the nightshirt hanging off his skeletal frame.

  Bruno had completed his journey at a fast clip, setting Sophia Cranston into a secluded corner of his mind where she glimmered like a distant star, far beyond his reach. And that’s where she must stay, he told himself as he surveyed the complete antithesis of the vibrant young woman who’d stirred him to his roots.

  He suspected that if he ran so much as a feather across Lord Beaumont’s dessicated features the parchment-like skin would split at the touch. Dwarfed by a high canopy and voluminous velvet hangings, the old man sat against a bank of pillows. Across the room a fire blazed in an immense fireplace, making the atmosphere overwarm and stuffy. Although it was daylight outside, the only illumination came from the flickering flames and the candles on a sturdy oaken table beside the enormous bed.

  Moved by a strange blend of emotions, half of him longing to escape this dim, fusty room, the other half burning to familiarize himself with the autocratic old man, Bruno persevered with his introduction.

  “My name is Bruno Cavanaugh,” he repeated. Painfully aware of the precipice he was about to leap off, one which could never be rescaled, he forged ahead. “I have come at the express wish of Isobel Hexham.”

  Beaumont’s eyes flashed. An agonized cry erupted from his wizened throat. “Isobel Hexham has been dead these past thirty years!” He struggled to lever himself upright, gesturing violently towards a manservant who hurried to the bedside. This same manservant had reared back at first sight of Bruno, his eyes widening as if confronted by an apparition from the past.

  Bruno had not been unaware of the startled glances sent his way by other servants as they made their way to Beaumont’s bedchamber. He’d taken in his likeness depicted in portraits along the walls, but he’d kept his attention fixed ahead, unwilling by even a flicker of an eyelid to encourage speculation until the facts had been laid bare.

  Now, he shook his head. He’d rehearsed this moment many times, but the reality proved even more difficult than he’d imagined. He realized he’d considered only the Earl’s pain and not his own, still keen after this short interlude between discovery and disclosure.

  He straightened. “I must inform you, Sir,” he overrode the surge of emotion that threatened to close his throat, “…that although Isobel Hexham is in fragile health, she still lives.”

  Beaumont’s features grayed. “She lives?” The words were a harsh whisper, broken by wrack of coughing that shook his emaciated frame.

  The elderly manservant poured ale from a pewter tankard and held it to the old man’s lips until the spasm ended and he managed to swallow a few sips. His Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the folds of skin that draped his throat. A trail of liquid dribbled from one corner of his shriveled lips. Bruno was surprised by the wave of tenderness that swept over him.

  Should he have come? Was his news more than the old man could bear? Should a promise be honored when the outcome was likely to be an old man’s misery and an ancient family in disarray? But his longing to connect, not only to Beaumont, but to the half-brother he had yet to meet, overcame his misgivings.

  He leaned over and touched the fragile shoulder, only to have his hand shaken off as Beaumont raised his sparse lashes, dragged in a ragged gasp and ratcheted himself upright. The ale appeared to have revived him. Spots of color bled back into his cheeks and his eyes glittered with newfound resolve. His mouth set in a thin, hard line. “Preston. Fetch my robe.”

  Bruno stood silently while the manservant collected a quilted maroon robe from a settee at the foot of the bed. He maneuvered the earl into its capacious folds.

  “Now get me out of here.” The old man aimed his request at Bruno.

  Bruno obediently stepped forward, but Beaumont had already shifted his spindly legs over the side of the bed. With one arm across his back, his hand beneath the old man’s armpit, Bruno guided him to a large winged chair near the windows. Dust motes hovered in the shaft of sunlight that slipped through a chink in the curtains.

  “Preston! Draw those damn curtains,” barked Beaumont. “Let some light into this godforsaken place.”

  With a speaking look that suggested the room had been darkened at Beaumont’s express command, the manservant grasped the crimson velvet drapes and drew them away from the tall windows. A film of dust drifted into the air. Light flooded the dreary chamber.

  Lord Beaumont blinked several times, adjusting his rheumy eyes to the glare before gesturing curtly for Bruno to take the seat opposite.

  “Coffee, bread, meat… and Madeira,” he ordered as Preston hovered nearby.

  Bruno remained silent as Preston departed, thinking it best to allow Beaumont time to absorb the information he’d delivered before revealing the remainder. Apparently lost in thought the earl stared out of the windows, across the parklands towards the far distance where the hills made a smudged outline against the sky.

  At length he transferred his attention back to Bruno. His fingers grasped the arms of the chair like the claws of a falcon seeking purchase on an uncertain support. He squared his frail shoulders and Bruno sensed him martialing his resources.

  His jaw worked painfully before he spat out the question: “What is Isobel Hexham to you?”

  Bruno measured every word. “I am her son,” he said.

  Beaumont came bolt upright as if an iron shaft had been drilled down the center of his spine. His ragged brows came together. Fire leapt into the faded eyes.

  Bruno held himself still as Beaumont leaned close. The old man’s breath smelled of decay, but he examined Bruno with a sharp, penetrating gaze. Through hooded eyes he studied every feature of Bruno
’s face. Piece by piece he stared, as if locking in place the individual parts of a puzzle. Bruno stilled his expression, scarcely daring to breathe. He could almost feel the old man’s gaze tip-toeing over his face. What did he see there, he wondered? Would he recognize at least something of himself? The answer was not long in coming.

  When he met Bruno’s gaze again, Beaumont’s head jerked back. His stare sharpened and gathered focus until his look of scepticism transitioned from one of bewilderment to a transfixed understanding.

  Bruno stared back. He let out his breath. “…and yours,” he dropped the two words into the tense silence.

  Beaumont’s ragged breathing sawed the quiet air. When his lids dropped over his eyes Bruno was reminded of the defenseless baby birds he’d discovered in his boyhood, fallen or flung from their nests. Their translucent, naked skin had offered no protection from whatever perils life cared to throw at them.

  But he sensed this old man was made of steelier stuff and while he longed to reach out and take that unsteady hand into his own, he held himself in check. The call was Beaumont’s to make. He waited quietly while the old man wiped a trembling hand over his face. After a few moments he removed a large white handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and mopped his eyes.

  When at last he replaced the handkerchief and stared at Bruno again, it was as if he observed a mirage and could not get his fill of it. He reached out and touched Bruno’s cheek.

  “It is my face I’m looking at,” he whispered disbelievingly. The tips of his fingers were like moth wings against Bruno’s skin. “But with her Spanish eyes…” His voice wavered.

  Moved beyond his imagining, Bruno stared back at the man he knew in his heart he could by all rights of nature and mankind call ‘Father’. He saw the sharp planes of his own high cheekbones mirrored in the face of the man opposite him. He knew the blade-like nose and square chin as if they were his own and although the old man’s hair was thinning, it still stood up in a brush, just as his, Bruno’s did. Tears stung his eyelids.