She tried to tug her hands free, but he held fast. “Lord Shrewsbury, I have no intention of calling off my engagement. You are forgetting that I do not want to marry you, regardless of the feelings you claim to have.”
“I do not claim,” he insisted. “I know. I am in love with you, Lady Catriona. You hold my heart in your hands.”
“You are too late in making such confessions.” His protestations of feelings for her left her oddly unmoved. Whatever his motivations, he had betrayed her. She could not forgive a man so willing to use her for his own gain. Some hurts simply ran too deep to be dispelled.
“I tried to tell you before,” Shrewsbury said. “I made every effort to see you, and after you left London, I sent you letters.”
She had returned them all, unopened.
“Because I did not care to hear what you had to say, my lord,” she told him resolutely. “If you will excuse me, I must return to the ball before my absence is noted. Thanks to you, I am already treading upon the thinnest ice in society.”
But his grip on her hands only tightened.
“My lady—”
“I recommend you release my betrothed,” interrupted a deep, accented baritone.
Catriona turned to find the familiar silhouette of the earl prowling toward them. Relief warred with misgiving at his appearance. Shrewsbury still held her hands in his, and the scene must look damning. She could only wonder how long Rayne had been in the shadows, how much of her dialogue with the marquess he had overheard.
“Unless you would like to name your second and meet me at dawn?” Rayne persisted, his voice laced with danger.
Shrewsbury dropped her hands as if they had been fashioned of flame, but instead of fleeing the balcony as she had supposed he might, he turned to face the earl.
“I am an excellent marksman, Rayne,” the marquess said. “If you wish to take such a foolish risk, I welcome it, especially since your demise will leave Lady Catriona free once more.”
Catriona inserted herself between the two men, facing Rayne with Shrewsbury at her back. “Please, my lords, stop this nonsense. It ill becomes the both of you. Bloodshed and further scandal will not solve anything.”
Rayne’s dark eyes glittered. “He was touching you.”
“My hands, nothing more,” she promised. “I was leaving the balcony when you arrived, my lord. Nothing untoward occurred, nor would it have, I assure you.”
“You are damned right it will not,” Rayne growled. “If this puppy so much as looks in your direction again, I will gut him.”
“How dare you?” Shrewsbury cried out at her back. “I ought to challenge you to a duel instead for such an insult.”
Rayne smiled, but there was no mirth or levity, only menace. “Be my guest, bellaco. I will not challenge you to pistols, but swords, and then I will make good on my word to slit you from your navel to your chin. No one dishonors my family. Do you understand? No one.”
Catriona shuddered at the suppressed rage in the earl’s voice before making the disquieting realization he had just referred to her as his family. “Rayne,” she said pleadingly. “I do not want violence. Please.”
Rayne’s lips tightened, and his shoulders were still tensed, as if he were a man about to go to battle. “You are a cobarde, a coward, to use a woman to get what you want and then expect her to fall upon you with gratitude. Do not dare to ever so much as look in her direction again.”
“I will not be threatened by you,” Shrewsbury said.
A change came over Rayne then. Catriona could not define it, for it was so subtle, someone less observant may have missed the manner in which his shoulders went back, the sudden stillness with which he held himself. But she noticed, and a new kind of fear crept into her heart.
It occurred to her she did not know what he was capable of any more than she had known what Shrewsbury would do. And yet, she was entrusting herself to him. To this stranger who was at times smoldering, at times cold. This man whose heart belonged to a dead woman. This man who intended to wed her, bed her, and leave her.
“Go inside now, Lady Catriona,” Rayne ordered her. “I will find you within.”
She did not want to leave. Misgiving held her in place. She feared what the two men would do to each other. “Lord Rayne, I do not think it wise for the two of you to remain here alone. Let us all return to the ball separately and forget this discourse ever happened.”
“Go,” Rayne said, and though his tone was gentle, it was edged in stone.
He would not bend.
There would be no forgetting.
She swallowed down a knot of dread. Both men had left her with little choice. First, Shrewsbury had kept her on the balcony far too long, increasing the odds of discovery. Now, Rayne had come as well, as distant, cold, and angry as he had ever been. The longer she lingered, the sooner her mother would look for her, the greater the chances of someone else seeking the cooler air of the outdoors.
“Promise me you will not hurt him,” she begged.
A grim smile twisted the earl’s lips. “Such pretty concern for the man who ruined you. Your heart is too good, my lady. But never fear. I have no intention of maiming this bellaco unless he forces me to. You must return to the ball before you are missed.”
Still filled with a grim sense of foreboding, she curtsied, the formality ingrained in her, and left the men behind. Slipping back into the ball, she searched for a friendly face and found Hattie near the potted palm she had abandoned not long before. She made her way through the revelers, all too aware of the conversation between the earl and the marquess she had left. What would Rayne do? What would Shrewsbury say?
By the time she reached Hattie’s side, her inner misery must have been written all over her face, for her friend took one look at her and frowned.
“What is the matter, dearest? You look as if you saw a ghost,” Hattie said.
In a way, she had.
A ghost from her past meeting the grim wraith of her future.
“Shrewsbury and Rayne are on the balcony,” she said, biting her lip.
Hattie’s brows shot up. “Shrewsbury and the earl?”
She nodded miserably. “I fear they are going to either break into a bout of fisticuffs or challenge each other to a duel.”
“Oh dear.” Hattie sighed. “That is rather unfortunate, but if anyone deserves to be shot, it is the Marquess of Shrewsbury.”
Unfortunate did not begin to adequately express the situation.
“Shrewsbury asked me to cry off my betrothal to Rayne,” she revealed. “Rayne found us. He was most displeased.”
“How dare Shrewsbury?” Hattie fumed on her behalf. “Has he not already done enough damage? If Rayne does not plant him a facer, I will be more than happy to do so on your behalf.”
The notion of Hattie walloping the Marquess of Shrewsbury spurred a reluctant smile to Catriona’s lips. Her beloved friend’s ceaseless championing of her was heartening, though it did little to put her mind at ease. Her eyes remained upon the doors to the balcony until at last, Rayne stalked back into the ballroom. His expression was thunderous.
There was so much about the earl she did not know. He was an enigma. A mystery.
And soon, he would be her husband.
Chapter Six
Alessandro ate his turbot with lobster sauce and pretended to listen to the Marquess of Searle.
Lady Catriona was seated across from him, but she may as well have been an ocean away. Just as well, for if she were nearer in proximity, he would be tempted to touch her. And if he touched her, he would not be able to control himself.
As it was, he was already a wild, ravening beast, hungering for her in a way that perplexed him. Three days until she was his.
Purgatorio.
“Where shall you and Lady Catriona go after the wedding?” Leonora asked, stealing Alessandro’s attention away.
Dinner tonight was, blessedly, a small affair, attended by only family and close friends. Leonora, her mother,
Searle—who he reluctantly counted as family—Lady Catriona, her mother, Montrose, and the Honorable Miss Harriet Lethbridge and her mother. Miss Lethbridge was a friend of his betrothed’s who had the good sense to scowl at Montrose as if he were lower than a louse.
Which he was.
“We will honeymoon in Wiltshire,” Alessandro told his sister.
Although this was to be a marriage of convenience, he had not been to his country seat in several years. Since he was to be landlocked in England until Lady Catriona was with child, it stood to reason he may as well see Marchmont himself rather than continuing to rely on the reports of his steward. Especially since Searle had warned him his steward had been badly mismanaging the estate.
“How lovely that shall be,” Leonora said, giving him a look of sisterly approval.
“I deemed it best to ascertain the state of things myself before I return to Spain,” he said, needing to undercut any hopes his sister harbored that he had changed his mind.
It would not do for either Leonora or Lady Catriona to imagine he had any intention to remain in England. The approval in his sister’s countenance was replaced by a frown. “I do hope you shall change your mind about Spain. You are needed here.”
He inclined his head and proceeded to continue eating his fish. There was nothing he could say which would please his sister, and he was not going to change his mind. Wedding Lady Catriona would not alter the course of his future.
After an awkward pause, Montrose began a conversation about the weather.
“I confess, I am shocked you have been outdoors enough of late to realize there is weather at all,” Miss Lethbridge told the duke tartly, her condemnation almost palpable.
Montrose sent Miss Lethbridge a quelling look. “Of course I have been outdoors, m’dear. How else is one to travel to amusements?”
The sly emphasis in the duke’s voice as he said the word amusements left no question as to what he referred to. Even as rusty as Alessandro’s manners were after being gone so long from English shores, he knew better than to allude to Cyprians at the dinner table. Either Montrose had never learned how to behave as a proper gentleman, he was too soused to care, or he was intentionally nettling Miss Lethbridge.
The lady in question’s eyes narrowed to an undisguised glare. “How excellent to hear you have been enjoying your amusements, Your Grace. I am quite gratified on your behalf.”
In truth, Miss Lethbridge sounded rather the opposite.
Alessandro was grateful for the distraction of the boorish Montrose and his betrothed’s prickly friend. Far better to watch the consternation of others than to wallow in his own.
And of his own, he had plenty.
The evening before, he had almost courted scandal by beating the Marquess of Shrewsbury to a pulp for her. No man had ever deserved a drubbing more. Alessandro had arrived late to the ball, having spent the previous evening determined to find the bottom of a bottle of whisky.
He had watched from afar as she slipped onto the balcony. And watched as a few moments later, the marquess had followed her. His legs had taken him to her, eating up the distance. But part of him had been curious enough to linger in the shadows and eavesdrop upon their exchange.
At first, he had not realized Shrewsbury was the man responsible for compromising Lady Catriona. But it had become quickly, appallingly apparent to him just who the man was.
The daring of the bastardo, ruining a woman over a wager and then expecting her to wed him. Lady Catriona should have clubbed the blighter. An answering spark of jealousy had been lit within him. Jealousy he had no right to feel, let alone act upon. Though she was his, their relationship was to be temporary in nature. Just as he wanted it to be. And there had been another instinct, rising like a tide, the urge to feel her lips beneath his. To kiss away her every memory of the arrogant lord who had seduced and betrayed her.
He still did not know the details of his future bride’s ruination. If Shrewsbury had taken her innocence, all in the name of a wager…
Alessandro would duel him after all. He would not rest until the bellaco was as dead as any enemy soldier he had faced in Spain.
The next course arrived, glazed Westmoreland ham and greens. Like every other part of society, Alessandro had forgotten how tedious a dinner and all its courses could be. Soups, removes, entrées, entremets, an endless procession of food and falsely polite conversation, all drowned in wine.
Speaking of which, he needed more. Such dullness was not to be borne without the gentle warmth of incipient inebriation. He quaffed the remainder of his wine, and a footman appeared at his elbow to refill his glass.
Say what you might of Searle, the fellow had efficient domestics.
Alessandro noted then that Lady Catriona was scarcely touching the food on her plate. His gaze lifted to her lovely face. Their stares meshed for a brief moment, and the connection hit him with the force of a blow to the midsection. Already, he felt responsible for this woman.
He wanted to be the man who claimed her, and the man who shielded her from every hurt. He wanted to be the man who made her forget whatever it was that had happened with Shrewsbury.
But how could this be when he was also the man who would leave her?
“Wiltshire,” she said softly.
“It is my country seat,” he offered as it occurred to him he had not discussed a honeymoon with her. “You are displeased at the notion, my lady?”
“No.” A smile pulled at her lips.
The urge to taste them anew hit him, shocking him. Would they be as soft as they looked? Would they part for him? Move in response against his? Surely it was the wine he had consumed which led him to wonder.
He drank some more. “Marchmont was originally built in the sixteenth century, though my father employed an architect to modernize it.”
“I should like to see it,” she surprised him by saying, and still her gaze lingered upon him, searching.
Whatever she was looking for, he did not possess it.
“See it you shall.” He poured a bit more wine down his throat. Cristo, he was turning into Montrose. He returned his wine glass to the snowy table linen with a grimace. “We will stay a month’s time. Perhaps longer, depending upon the state of affairs.”
And how quickly she was breeding.
But he did not say that.
“How very agreeable, Lord Rayne,” said the dowager Duchess of Montrose then.
Since the early stages of his courtship with Lady Catriona—namely the three occasions upon which she refused to see him—the dowager had spoken few words to him. Her expression now was one of intense relief.
He could not blame her, for at least one of her erstwhile offspring would be well settled now. As for the other…the Duke of Debauchery was decidedly not Alessandro’s problem.
“Lord Rayne is a most agreeable fellow,” Searle added to the conversation then, his tone grim as Charlotte of apples with apricot was brought round.
Alessandro gritted his teeth at the subtle jibe. Perhaps he and his brother-in-law would never achieve a true peace. But as long as the marquess kept Leonora happy, Alessandro was willing to accept every veiled insult aimed in his direction.
He deserved them all, and worse.
He ate the rest of the meal in self-imposed silence.
*
After dinner, Catriona and the other ladies settled in the drawing room. Hattie and the Marchioness of Searle flanked her whilst her mother, the dowager Countess of Rayne, and Hattie’s mother chatted to each other quietly on the other side of the chamber.
“I cannot believe you shall be gone an entire month,” Hattie said. “I will miss you, my dearest. What shall I do in your absence?”
“Perhaps you can browbeat Monty,” Catriona suggested impishly, relieved for the opportunity to think of something lighter.
“He requires a beating with more than just my brows,” Hattie grumbled, sotto voce so the mothers would not overhear.
“I agree,” the Marchiones
s of Searle chimed in. “I love Monty like a brother, but someone needs to take him in hand. A wife, perhaps.”
Catriona did not miss the way Hattie stiffened at the mentioning of Monty taking a duchess. Interesting.
“Marriage would likely do him good,” Catriona added, watching her friend closely. “Monty is too much like our father, I fear. But with a duchess at his side, preferably one who is intelligent and strong, the sort of lady who is unwilling to allow him to run roughshod over her, perhaps he could change.”
Hattie let out a dismissive puff of air. “Forgive me, dearest friend, but the Duke of Montrose will no sooner change his roguish ways than the sky shall trade places with the earth.”
“Your opinion of poor Monty is hopelessly grim,” she observed.
Perhaps too grim. Her friend was protesting just a bit too much.
“Love can change a man,” the Marchioness of Searle said, her bright gaze pinned upon Catriona. “Marriage to the right woman can exert all manner of transformation.”
Catriona thought of the Earl of Rayne and how impenetrable he was, how confusing. He was more intense than any gentleman she had ever known, and yet there was some part of her that could not deny she longed to be the right woman for him.
But of course, theirs was not to be a true marriage. It was to be a marriage of convenience, nothing more. Moreover, he had already found that woman and lost her. She thought then of his first wife, and sadness blossomed inside her, replacing the trepidation.
“Will you tell me about the previous Lady Rayne?” she asked the marchioness before she could stifle the impulse.
Knowing more about her predecessor was unnecessary, but she was curious all the same. What kind of woman had stolen the inscrutable Rayne’s heart?
The Marchioness of Searle frowned at her. “Rayne’s mother, you mean? I know little of her, aside from her position as my father’s third wife. Rayne tells me she was a kind woman, loving hearted and sweet. She taught him to speak Spanish before he learned English, much to the dismay of our father.”
That would explain the lingering hint of an accent in the earl’s speech.
Earl of Every Sin Page 6