Earl of Every Sin

by Scott, Scarlett

  So blatant.

  So arresting.

  She inhaled slowly, then exhaled. The cloth and basin were in her hands. She settled the basin in her lap and rested the cloth over its lip.

  “Catriona,” he prodded, lingering when she wished he would just go.

  That he would just take his endless love for his first wife and leave, for she had so little to offer him. Nothing but her body, really. She was the house for his heir. She was offering him freedom in the same way he offered hers. An even exchange.

  If only she could think of their arrangement in such cool, passionless terms.

  “Do we not have a long day of travel ahead of us, Lord Rayne?” she asked him, making certain to refer to her husband by his title.

  If he wanted distance between them, by God, she would give him precisely that.

  “Sí,” he clipped, his countenance turning stony once more. “We do.”

  “I will prepare myself,” she told him. “You may go.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  They passed most of the first leg of the journey in stilted silence.

  His bride kept her nose in a book.

  He pretended to doze.

  But Alessandro was not tired. He was aware. All too aware of each movement she made. Every rustle of her skirts. Every soft sigh. The turns of the page. Her scent. Dios, her scent. It filled the carriage.

  It filled him with lust.

  Base lust. Surely that was all he felt. A natural urge to bury his prick in her sweet, tight sheath.

  She shifted again. Her slipper-shod foot caught his boot for the second time. He had to wonder if she was not intentionally jostling him. The traveling coach was well-appointed. Large enough. There was no need for her to crowd him, blast her. His legs were long, but hers were not.

  He opened his eyes at last to find her looking at him. The force of her stare pierced him all the way to the darkness simmering deep within him. Her beauty hit him just as it always did, as a teeming wallop of remorse laden with desire.

  “You wanted something, my lady?” he asked her formally.

  Far better, he had decided since that morning’s folly, to keep her at a distance. Far safer and easier.

  “Yes,” she said, her chin tipping up. The defiant spark he had noted in her eyes from the moment their paths had first crossed was back. “You snore.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You are lying.”

  He did not snore unless he over-imbibed, and he was reasonably certain of that fact. Moreover, he had not been truly sleeping.

  She shrugged, and even the act of apathy was somehow elegant when performed by her. “I am not. You were snoring, and it was ruining my ability to concentrate upon my book.”

  “The Silent Duke,” he read the title aloud, raising a brow. Feminine nonsense, he was sure of it. “Perhaps your concentration was ruined by the tripe within the pages you are attempting to read.”

  “Perhaps the issue instead is with my company rather than the book itself,” she suggested, unsmiling.

  He wondered if she had tapped his boot so she could have a row with him.

  “Playing nursemaid to your brother has made me tired, querida,” he said dryly.

  The devil was already tempting him today. His intention to keep her at bay had been broken like the waves upon the shore. His bid to maintain formality had been failed by his own inability to think of her as he must.

  He ought to have continued to feign sleep.

  But his wife was no fool, and he suspected she knew he had not been napping at all.

  At his mention of Montrose, her shoulders stiffened. “If we are to be husband and wife, you might try to like my brother. He will be the uncle to your heir.”

  He shuddered at the reminder. “I forbid my heir from associating with such a blighter. You will raise my son to be an impeccable gentleman, to do his duty to the succession.”

  “Monty is a gentleman as well,” she defended.

  In addition to having the loveliest pair of breasts this side of the English Channel, his new countess also apparently had a heart the size of London. When it came to her scapegrace brother, that was.

  “Nevertheless, I do not wish for my heir to become a drunkard,” he said coolly. For it was true. “I am not enduring this marriage and getting an heir on you so the future Earl of Rayne is a reckless wastrel no better than my idiot cousin.”

  His words were harsh, and he recognized it the moment they escaped him. They were dripping with bitterness caused by the untenable position in which he now found himself, a man with a wife he had never wished to take. A man who had enjoyed bedding said wife far too much this morning.

  A man who was drowning in guilt.

  Catriona flinched as if he had struck her, her already creamy skin going paler. “I had not realized marriage to me was so abhorrent to you, my lord, that you must endure it. I know I am an unwanted duty, just as you are to me, but did it never occur to you that you might make the best of the time we will be forced to share?”

  “Marriage to you is not abhorrent,” he corrected, a new stone of regret lodging inside his chest, this one a pebble to join the boulders already residing there. “It is, however, not what I would choose, had I the freedom of decision.”

  Her lips thinned, and he understood though he had attempted to ameliorate her concerns, he had only served to heighten them.

  “And pray, my lord, tell me what you would choose. Mourning your first wife forever until you join her in the grave?” she asked.

  It was his turn to recoil, for her words cut deep. Too deep.

  Was that what he was doing? Living for the dead, dead to the living?

  “I have never made a secret of my past,” he forced out. “I loved my wife. If I had the freedom to choose, she would never have died. My son never would have died. I would not have held him lifeless in my arms only to watch his mother slowly fade away.”

  He had said more than he had intended. Revealed far more than he wanted to reveal. And now, he was once more firmly trapped in the past. The agony of that long-ago day revisited him in the form of a fiery ache in his heart. A bayonet to the gut would not hurt as badly. Would not wound him as deeply.

  The juxtaposition of his former life with his current life was not lost on him.

  He was in a carriage, hurtling onward to the estate he had not bothered to visit since he had been a lad. From the time he had reached his majority, he had spent as much of his time as possible abroad. Away from the father who had never truly accepted him. From the land that had never felt like home. From the obligations he had never wanted.

  “Your son,” Catriona repeated softly, the word on her tongue as effective as a lance to his heart.

  Somehow, hearing someone else acknowledge Francisco was more difficult than keeping his son’s memory to himself had been.

  He wanted to look away from her, from the compassion in her eyes, the softness in her countenance, which had replaced the anger. Somehow, he could not. But neither could he speak. The carriage swayed over the road, and the sudden silence which had fallen between them seemed loud enough to reveal the furious thumps of his heart.

  “Alessandro,” she said.

  The tenderness in her voice cut him like a blade, for it was undeserved, and yet precisely what he craved.

  He gripped his thighs with bruising force. “Enough, my lady. I have grown weary of this discussion.”

  “I have not.” Her expression was determined. Fierce.

  Cristo.

  “I do not speak of it,” he bit out. “Not to anyone.”

  This was the truth. Speaking of Maria, of Francisco, of what he had lost, was far too painful. Far too difficult. Their deaths had left an unspeakable hole in his life, in his heart. And so, he had thrown himself headlong into war instead. He had become a machine of death and destruction. It was all he knew how to be, for it was the only way the pain had become bearable.

  It had been the only way his life had been worth a damn.

>   “Perhaps you should speak of it,” Catriona pressed. “You lost a wife and child, Alessandro. You cannot endure such pain alone.”

  “I am not alone,” he lied.

  “You did not tell your sister,” his wife stated.

  Correctly.

  Mierda.

  “How do you know?” he bit out.

  A flush colored Catriona’s cheeks. “I asked Lady Searle. I was curious about you, about your past. I wanted to know more. But I discovered your sister knows less about you than I do. I cannot help but to wonder why.”

  He looked away from her, his entire body feeling as if it were wound as tightly as the coil of a pocket watch spring. He gazed out the window, wondering if they were near the inn where they would have a respite and a change of horses. It had been so long since he had last made this journey to Wiltshire, he could not recall the landmarks of his youth.

  “Alessandro,” she prodded, ever persistent.

  And then, there was a rustle of skirts. Jasmine fluttered over him in the same moment the soft, feminine weight of her filled his lap. He turned back to her, and her face was close. So close, their noses almost brushed.

  The carriage hit an untimely bump in the road, making the entire conveyance sway. Catriona was jostled. He caught her waist in his hands, steadying her. What else was he to do, allow her to go sprawling to the floor?

  “What are you doing in my lap?” he growled.

  “Making you look at me.” Her hands fluttered to his shoulders.

  At this proximity, he could once more see the vivid striations in her irises. The freckles decorating the dainty bridge of her nose. Still as alluring as ever. A rush of longing he could not contain hit him. Not just primal desire, but something far stronger.

  Something far more dangerous.

  Something he must avoid at all costs.

  “I have already looked,” he gritted. “Return to your seat.”

  “You have been looking through me,” she argued. “Ever since this morning. We were closer than we have ever been, only for you to withdraw and place this icy, unscalable wall between us. I will not have it. If we are husband and wife, you must look me in the eyes. You must speak to me, confide in me. Seek comfort in me.”

  Seek comfort in me.

  What a strange thing for her to say.

  No woman before her had ever uttered such an invitation. But they had been different. Camp trulls, women who followed armies and soldiers and offered a different sort of consolation than the one Catriona did.

  “I do not need comfort,” he told her. He had been living these last few years without it. Nothing would change just because he had married her. Nothing could, for he was irreversibly broken. “I am leaving you as soon as you are with child. You do understand that, do you not, querida? There is no point in this madness you would foist upon me.”

  He felt her stiffen beneath his touch, but still she did not retreat. “You do need comfort, Alessandro. You lost the woman you loved. You lost your son.”

  Yes, he had, and curse her, the kindness in her voice drove him near the point of breaking. A point he had not descended to in some time.

  “I have been comforting myself as I see fit,” he told her coolly. “I am fighting for the land Maria loved, the land where she and our son are buried.”

  “What happened?” Catriona searched his gaze, her right hand going to his cheek, cupping his jaw tenderly.

  Part of him wanted to haul her back to her side of the carriage. Part of him wanted to keep her here. To bask in her solace.

  His hands tightened on her waist, and yet he did not remove her from his lap. “He never took a breath.”

  He had not meant to make the revelation. But saying it aloud somehow lightened the burden of the weight upon his chest. Catriona said nothing. Instead, she drew his head to her shoulder. Her arms came around him, holding him tightly to her.

  And though he told himself to push her away, Alessandro embraced her back. He buried his face in her throat, stifling the sob rising within him only through sheer force of will. He had not cried in years. He told himself he would not do so now.

  Her skin was soft, her pulse a throbbing affirmation of life against his lips. She stroked his hair. Slow, soothing ministrations. Another realization nudged him, no one had touched him thus since he had been a lad. Since his mother. Not even Maria had dared.

  He had been a young buck when he had met her, angry at the world. She had always told him he reminded her of a wild horse. She approached him with caution, never knowing what to expect. Peligroso, she had called him teasingly.

  Dangerous.

  And he had been. He still was.

  But this foolish woman he had married, who had settled herself upon his lap as if it were where she belonged, seemed unconcerned. She did not know half the things he had done. The violence he had committed with his bare hands, the men he had killed in the name of war.

  He was a monster.

  He did not feel like one now, however.

  He felt like a man.

  Like a husband.

  Like her husband. Catriona’s.

  “The birthing was difficult,” he said against her throat. “Maria labored for hours.”

  He would never forget her screams. The relief of the doctor’s pronouncement the babe was arriving at last. The silence that came after. A shuddering sob fled him before he could control it.

  “You can tell me, Alessandro,” Catriona murmured, still stroking his hair. “Let me share your burden.”

  No one could share his burden. But he did not say that.

  He inhaled jasmine and sweet, warm woman. “The cord was wrapped around my son’s throat. He was an angel when he came into this world.”

  “Oh, Alessandro,” she crooned, kissing the crown of his head. “I am so sorry.”

  “It was too much for Maria. She was weak and bleeding.” He stopped himself from saying more.

  But he would never forget the sight of Maria, ashen and wan. Of their son, perfectly formed yet lifeless. Within hours, he had been sobbing into the bedclothes covering his dead wife.

  “She died soon after?” Catriona guessed softly.

  To his eternal shame, he realized her throat was wet with tears. His tears.

  “Yes,” he found himself answering. “Not long after, Murat occupied Madrid, and all hell broke loose.”

  Dos de Mayo had come and gone, innocents slain in the streets by Murat’s French soldiers. Alessandro had decided he must do something. And so, he had been swept up in the gathering storm of the conflict, eventually leading a band of guerrilla soldiers in an effort to inflict as much damage as possible upon enemy troops. To stop Bonaparte.

  He had been fighting ever since.

  Until he had returned to England, driven by the Marquess of Searle’s campaign of vengeance against him. And though his post as a spy for the English troops had come to an end, he still had his men to lead. There was still a war to be fought.

  To be won.

  He must not lose sight of that now.

  He jerked his head back. His wife watched him with an expression of such tenderness, he wanted to slam his fist into the squab. He did nothing. Instead, he stared back at her.

  “You were a soldier in Spain, were you not?” she asked then, her gaze searching his.

  Seeing too much. “Yes,” he bit out. “But I have said enough. We are due to arrive at the coaching inn any minute now.”

  At least, he prayed they were. He could not withstand much more of this torture.

  Alessandro Diego Christopher Forsythe did not weep.

  He did not feel anything.

  Damn Catriona for making him.

  “What do you fear?” Still, her hands were upon him, holding him captive, touching him with such feminine care, it reminded him of a time when he would have reveled in it.

  “I fear nothing,” he told her. “Not even death. I have nothing left to lose.”

  “Why do you close yourself off,” she conti
nued, undeterred. “I am your wife now, Alessandro. You must trust me. If I am to be the mother of your heir, it stands to reason we should have a bond, some understanding between us.”

  “Our bond is what happened between us this morning,” he told her cruelly. The need to inflict some of his own inner torment upon her, to chase her away, could not be denied. “I am bedding you to get you with child. I will never love you. Spare us both and stop trying to make me feel that which I cannot feel.”

  His words were harsh, and he recognized it the moment her lips tightened. She had only shown him kindness and compassion, and he had devoured both like a starving man laid before a table laden with delicacies.

  But still, she made no move of retreating. He was beginning to realize his bride was stubborn. Strong and relentless, and determined, too.

  “I am aware of the reason for our marriage,” she said, her voice going quiet. “I do not require you to love me. As for trying to make you feel… I believe you are wrong about yourself.”

  He almost laughed at her pronouncement. Would have had he been capable of levity, but the desolation of mourning was still enshrouding him, and he could not smile. Could not laugh.

  “Indeed, querida? Pray, tell me how you might know me better than I know myself.”

  She framed his face in both her hands now. “You think you cannot feel, but in truth, you are terrified of acknowledging just how much you do. I still have your tears on my skin, Alessandro, proof you have a heart.”

  But she was wrong about that. He had spent years proving it.

  “My heart is dead,” he denied, “and the sooner you realize that, the better off you shall be. Ours is a marriage of convenience and nothing more.”

  And having her examine him was decidedly inconvenient.

  How easy it had been to hide from the pain when he had been at war. When his every move had been made for the sake of survival and vengeance against the enemy. When it had been either kill or be killed.

  “Hearts do not die,” Catriona insisted. “We are all capable of healing and loving again. Will you not try, at least for this time we have together, if not for your own sake, then for mine?”