‘Brook. Lydia Brook,’ she provided, getting her voice under control and her features into a semblance of their normal expression. ‘And you, sir?’
‘Alexander Golding.’
Lydia faced him, resolute and defiant, her small chin thrust forward. She favoured him with a gaze of biting contempt before dismissing him and looking again at Henry. The words the stranger had spoken lapped round her like a wave threatening to engulf her at any minute. Her head felt suddenly weightless and she had to stiffen her spine to remain upright.
She studied Henry’s face and read what he couldn’t hide. In the space of a moment his expression had changed from the amiable, loving man who had been impatient to make her his wife, to that of a self-seeking, cunning being who was clearly thinking quickly what he could do to turn this situation he had not anticipated to his advantage. With the arrival of his brother-in-law, no longer at ease and in control, beads of perspiration began to dot his brow. She could almost hear the workings of his mind.
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the tightness in her throat to go away. The sun that had shone so brightly had gone out of the day. How gullible she had been to let herself believe after Henry’s passionate kisses and soft persuasive words that he really did want her, for she now realised that his words had been hollow, his passion no different from the passion he might feel towards any woman he was attracted to. The fact that she hadn’t succumbed to his attempts of seduction—indeed, she had adamantly refused to do so without a wedding ring on her finger—had only served to make him want her more and try harder. When she thought she could speak in a normal voice, she opened her eyes and looked at him, trying to stand on her dignity before these strangers.
‘Tell me why you have done this.’ He cast a look at her. She wanted to see it as a look that asked her to understand, but she saw instead the calculation behind it.
‘If only you knew,’ he said, his voice so low that she hardly caught the words. ‘I did want you—’
‘But not as your wife,’ Lydia bit back scornfully, noting that he didn’t look her in the eye.
‘No. I care for you—’
‘You do not ruin someone you care for.’
‘From the first time I saw you, I wanted you. I couldn’t help myself. I have waited so long for this. I thought my chance to possess you would never come. My desire for you subverted whatever sense of right and wrong—of breeding—I have. It’s not something I am proud of.’
‘No. You should be ashamed. We were to have been married. You deceived me and brought me here to make me your wife. You were to take me to your home in America—your father was ill, you said, which was the reason you didn’t want to wait the requisite three weeks for the banns to be read out in church. None of it was true. What a gullible idiot, what a stupid blind fool I have been. How you must have laughed. What you have done is underhand—despicable. Oh, how dare you? You have treated me abominably.’
‘Lydia—if only you knew—’
‘Knew? Knew what?’ she flared, anger flowing through her veins like liquid fire. ‘That you already had a wife? What did you plan to do with me? Abandon me in Scotland following one night of connubial bliss and return to London flush with your success?’ Seeing this was exactly what he had intended, she gave him a look of profound contempt. ‘You disgust me, Henry. How dare you make me an object of pity and ridicule?’
‘What will you do?’
‘What I have always done—get on with my life. Let’s be honest, Henry. You didn’t love me any more than I love you.’
‘You mean to say you didn’t develop a tendre for me?’ he quipped sarcastically.
‘Your intention was to seduce me and when that failed it only served to make you more determined. Instead of doing the decent thing and walking away you went one step further, playing on my ignorance and vulnerability, and offered me marriage—even though you had no right to do so. You are a liar and a cheat. The worst of it is that I fell for your lies. I didn’t know what you were trying to do to me. Your aim was to diminish me, but I will not be diminished—not by you. Not in any way.’
Knowing he had played with her as a cat plays with a mouse was almost more than Lydia could bear. She looked at him, at his curly fair hair and his lean athletic body. His face was sensuous with heavy-lidded eyes and a full-lipped mouth, which, no doubt, women found appealing. He looked just the same, this man who had shown her kindness and consideration and been attentive to her needs. But now, looking behind his handsome facade, she saw that man did not exist any more, if indeed he ever had. Now she saw a man emotionally devoid of those things. She saw boredom and greed, self-interest and contempt for her as his inferior. He looked at her as he would at some low creature—arrogantly and insolently.
She hated him then. She felt a mixture of rage and humiliation that was so profound she almost believed she would die of it.
‘How could you be?’ Henry retorted, her words having roused his anger. On the attack and uncaring how wounding his words could be, he went on to regale her and those present with her many shortcomings, much to his brother-in-law’s irritation.
‘You, my dear Lydia, would make an amusing bed warmer were you not as cold as the proverbial Ice Maiden and set with wilful thorns. Some might think your virtue admirable—personally, I consider it a damn waste of both time and a beautiful woman. It’s unfortunate since beneath the ice you have spirit and should have proved highly entertaining in a chase—which I was about to experience for myself until my brother-in-law blundered in. Any man who shows an interest in you, you hold at arm’s length until there is the promise of a ring on your finger.’
‘Including you, Henry,’ his brother-in-law said sharply in an attempt to silence him on seeing the young woman’s shocked expression and how she had paled beneath the force of his attack.
Henry lifted his arrogant brows, drawling, ‘Including me. I wanted her—rather badly, as it happens—and was prepared to go to any lengths to possess her.’
‘Even to commit bigamy. You have failed, Henry, which is why you are so ready to point out Miss Brook’s faults to anyone who will listen.’
‘Indeed, I confess to having been afflicted by a strong desire to possess her, but perish the thought that I would actually marry a woman of such low character and without a penny to her name.’
‘Your failure to seduce her will do nothing for your self-esteem when you are back in town and you have to face your acquaintances and admit your failure to win the wager and have to part with the five hundred guineas.’
Lydia stood like a pillar of stone, her mind numb. Her senses and emotions would return when she realised the nightmare she was experiencing now was no nightmare at all, but an extension of reality that would affect the whole of her life. But at the moment she was too traumatised to feel or see beyond it. Henry’s insulting words and the stranger’s revelation hung in the air like a rotten smell. No one had insulted her as much as this and it was more than her pride could bear. She saw it all now.
Dazed and unable to form any coherent thought, she backed away as the implication of what she’d heard rammed home. Her heart began to beat hard with humiliation and wrath. She was appalled and outraged—there was no possible way to deny the awful truth.
Henry had made a wager with his friends to seduce her and, should he win, he would be richer by the sum of five hundred guineas. It was more than her lacerated pride could withstand. Her face glazed with fury. Oh, the humiliation of it. Any tender feelings that might have remained for him were demolished. The discovery of his treachery had destroyed all her illusions.
‘How dare you?’ she said, her voice low and shaking with anger. ‘How dare you do that to me? I do not deserve being made sport of.’
‘Miss Brook,’ the stranger said. ‘Please believe me when I say I regret mentioning—’
Her eyes flew to his. ‘What? The wager? Is that what you
were about to say? Why should you regret it? Why—when you were telling the truth? I have a right to know the extent Henry went to in order to get me into his bed.’ She looked at Henry. ‘What you have done is despicable. From the very beginning you set out to degrade me in the most shameful way of all. I am not too proud to admit that in the beginning I was foolish enough to fall for your charms. You’re no doubt accustomed to that sort of feminine reaction wherever you go,’ she said scathingly, ‘even though you have a wife. It would give me great satisfaction to know that handing over five hundred guineas for your failed wager would ruin you, but I doubt it will.’
Faced with such ferocity, Henry took a step towards her. ‘For heaven’s sake, Lydia, it was just a wager—a moment of madness. I never intended to hurt you,’ he said in an attempt to justify his actions, but Lydia was having none of it.
‘A moment of madness!’ she flared, her eyes blazing with turbulent animosity. ‘Is that what you call it? There is no excuse for what you have done. What is true of most scoundrels is doubly so of you. You would have ruined me, defiled me without any regard to my feelings and then cast me off as you would a common trull, you—you loathsome, despicable lech.’
‘Lydia, listen—’
‘I am not interested in anything further you have to say. But you listen to me, Henry Sturgis—Seymour—whoever you are,’ she said, her chilled contempt meeting his spluttering apologies head on. ‘I will never forgive you for this. From now on you will keep your distance from me.’ She turned from him and walked away. She couldn’t bear to look at him. The man and woman who had been brought in to witness their wedding stood side by side, rigid, their faces blank and expressionless as she brushed past them.
What he had done to her and what it would mean for her in the future spooled before her like a long ribbon of anger and grief. She wanted to lash out at him, to claw his face and pound him with her fists. Hate, disgust, disappointment and a deep sense of humiliation and hurt throbbed inside her skull and tightened her chest until she thought she would choke.
He had brought her all this way for a pretend wedding on the strength of a wager with his friends. She felt as if he’d taken a knife to her and sliced her into little pieces. Gripped by a terrible miasma of pain and deprivation—feelings she recognised, having grown up with them—she turned and ran unseeing out of the room which she had so recently walked into with a happiness she could not conceive. Now she saw nothing, heard nothing but the heavy pounding of her heart as she left the house and out into the street, hurrying to goodness knew where—anywhere, as long as she didn’t have to go back into that room and face them all, to confront the truth of what Henry was and what he had done to her.
Rage, white-hot and fierce, coursed through her, bringing a suffering so excruciating as to be unsupportable. She felt cruelly betrayed, lost and abandoned, the immensity of it causing her intense pain.
She knew she’d feel better if she could only get away. If she could escape from him. She didn’t want to stop because then she wouldn’t have to think about anything else. But eventually she would have to stop and when she did she would have to feel, which she didn’t want to face. She didn’t want to see Henry. She didn’t want to look in his eyes. She hadn’t loved him. She didn’t know what it meant to love anyone, but it did nothing to lessen her humiliation and the pain of such a public betrayal.
She kept on heading out of the village. What she was planning to do when she stopped running she couldn’t say. The most important thing was to get away. She heard her name being called. She kept on going. Her heart was racing in her chest and she felt a sharp pain in her side.
‘Wait,’ someone called.
She heard herself gasp and saw the road ahead of her blur. She kept hurrying on. She heard footsteps behind her and then another call of her name. Not until a hand grasped her arm did she halt, breathing hard. She turned, her mind and her senses disjointed, the people and carriages passing by in a maze of confused colours and muffled sounds. Her confusion was exacerbated by the colour of light blue eyes surrounded by thick black lashes, the sound of a deep, mellifluous voice and the pleasant aroma of a sharp cologne. Still holding her arm, Alexander Golding led her to the side of the road, out of harm’s way of passing carriages.
The eyes that looked into hers were as transparent and as brilliant as sunlight on water. His sharp, sceptical gaze seemed to bore into her brain.
‘Are you all right? You are upset.’ He spoke evenly, without sympathy, seemingly uncaring of her plight or the cause. Her chest was rising and falling in rapid succession.
‘Of course I am upset,’ she replied irately, trying to pull herself together. ‘What Henry has done to me is unforgivable. What was I? Some tender titbit he decided to play with, a simpleton to fill his needs for a night or two. What amusement he must have had playing his sordid little game with me. And how disappointed he must now be feeling, knowing he has lost his wager.’
Nothing moved in his face, but his eyes darkened. Quietly, he said, ‘I am sorry you had to find out like that.’
‘Yes—so am I, but thank goodness I found out before it was too late. Now would you please let go of my arm?’ He obliged at once.
Her anger somewhat diminished, Lydia stared at the darkly handsome stranger. He possessed a haughty reserve that was not inviting. There was also an aggressive confidence and strength of purpose in his features, and he had the air of a man who succeeded in all he set out to achieve. From the arrogant lift of his dark head and casual stance, he was a man with many shades to his nature, a man with a sense of his own infallibility. With her mind on what Henry would have done to her had this stranger not intervened, she was unnaturally calm, as calm as the Ice Maiden Henry had accused her of being.
‘I—I...’ Words seemed to stick in her throat, almost choking her. She felt exposed and vulnerable, knowing this man was seeing her like this. Normally poised and in complete control of herself, she felt so undignified. It was all so humiliating. When she had first looked at him she had seen by his face that he was a hard man not easily softened, so she was surprised he had even come after her. ‘Please excuse me. This is all so sudden—so confusing.’
For the first time, Alexander looked at her and she at him. Something passed between them. Each felt that this moment was one of great importance, that they stood on the edge of something tangible, but they did not understand what it could be. Lydia swallowed hard. She could not seem to look away. She thought she should scream or try to run away. She did neither. Noise and bustle went on around them, but the sounds and people were lost to them as they looked at each other. It was a look that stretched for only seconds, but seemed far longer before Lydia averted her eyes as her heart swelled with such a bewildering array of emotions that she was overwhelmed.
* * *
Caught off guard by the effect this young woman was having on him, Alex immediately recollected himself. He could see she was still in the process of reeling from the truth of what Henry had done. She was dressed with tasteful simplicity in a gown the colour of raspberries. Her features were striking, her hair beneath her bonnet a rich, shining black. Her large dark green eyes tilting slightly upwards were moist, droplets of tears caught in her thick fringe of lashes glittering like diamonds. Her mouth was as red and ripe as a berry, her lower lip full. The sun was warm and the light glinted softly against her. It made her skin luminous. Quite tall and slender, she was wholly arresting and he could not seem to drag his eyes away.
When he had burst into the room to halt the wedding, he had been unable to focus on anything else but his brother-in-law. When he had learned Henry had come to Scotland and his reason for doing so, he had taken the young woman to be one of the high-spirited good-time girls who thought of little else but the frivolous pursuit of pleasure, whose life was one constant round of uninhibited fun and who thought it necessary to be a rebel, to outrageously defy the order of society—hence her eas
y compliance to adhere to this mad escapade.
The anger provoked by Henry’s reprehensible behaviour began to subside a little, and Alex felt a faint stirring of admiration for the self-assured way in which the young woman faced him. Anger burned like a flame in her eyes and he was touched, despite himself, by her youth. When he looked at her, there was no hint of the softening in his mood. His eyes, harsh and impenetrable, met hers, and, if she had but known it, they were adept in keeping a legion of employees in their place.
‘I imagine it is,’ he said at length. Beginning to see how devastating it must be for her to realise she had fallen prey to a seducer, he suddenly showed a hint of human feeling. ‘This cannot be easy for you. You did not know Henry had a wife.’
Wishing herself anywhere but where she was, facing the lonely place that rejection and anger had taken her, Lydia blinked hard to make the tears of hurt, anger and frustration disappear, hating herself for a weakness which ordinarily she would never show. ‘Had I known that, I would not be here. I cannot believe he has done this to me. How could he?’
There was a desperate, almost wild look about her. She seemed ready to bolt like a wild horse at any moment. The cords in her neck were strained and the glimmer of tears slipped like melting dreams from her eyes. Alex felt a curious need to treat her with gentleness, to say something to comfort her. But he didn’t know her or understand the nature of her grief, or her true relationship with his sister’s husband.
‘It’s all right. I am not about to judge you.’
She didn’t look convinced. Distrust clouded her eyes. Fiercely, she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘But I think you will.’ She tried to sound scornful. She only sounded afraid. The stranger would know, hear her inner weakness, and she despised him for knowing. Her natural resilience began to reassert itself. She looked at him, eyes flashing, defiant chin lifted. ‘I thank you for arriving when you did.’
‘There’s no need.’
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