Scandalously Wed to the Captain

by Joanna Johnson

  ‘Captain Dauntsey is, understandably, indisposed at present. I shall send a servant to call on you very first thing in the morning with your payment, if you are agreeable?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am. We wouldn’t expect the poor Captain to be troubling himself with anything tonight.’

  Nothing else was said as the three figures moved through the shadowy house. Evidently in the chaos and confusion of this dreadful night nobody had thought to light the candles, so it was by moonlight Grace stood on the imposing front doorstep and felt the winter darkness turn her skin to gooseflesh that she rubbed at with cold hands.

  ‘Thank you for coming, especially so late and under such...sad circumstances.’ There was a tremor lurking beneath each word Grace forced through taut lips and she was obliged to grit her teeth against a sob that would have burst from her mouth. ‘We are so grateful for your tender care. Mrs Dauntsey will be very much missed by all who knew her.’

  Another sob rose up—another one to catch before it could break free.

  Not yet.

  She swallowed down the swell of her emotion, unhappiness bitter as bile in her throat.

  If you surrender control now, you will be lost. The privacy of your rooms is the place for your grief to unleash its storm.

  * * *

  Spencer heard the door open and shut again as Grace returned to the sitting room, but didn’t pause in his task, steadily stacking kindling into the fireplace with a kind of grim focus.

  He worked methodically, first putting down one layer and then another on top in a neat criss-cross pattern that would allow air to pass between them. A few small logs placed on top would be enough to let the fire take hold, he thought absently, once a spark was allowed to skitter across them. His father had taught him and Will how to start a good blaze when they were small boys and now Spencer was the only one left it was up to him to keep the family knowledge going.

  It was a thought so blindingly agonising for a moment Spencer could scarcely breathe. He closed his eyes, fighting the growing ache that bloomed inside him like a dark flower. It unfurled its tendrils, snaking outwards to curl around his heart and squeeze it in a thorny grip so tightly it hurt.

  Except you’re not the only one left, are you? Thanks to Mother’s scheming at the last.

  The whispered thought cut into his pain, reverberating inside his mind like an echo in an empty room.

  You’re not alone. You have Grace now—your wife.

  She had looked so hesitant as her little hand had reached out to touch his own, so sweetly unsure it had taken everything within him not to grasp hold of her slender fingers and pull her closer. How would she have reacted if he had done just that? he wondered, for one blessed moment able to consider something other than his grief. Would she have ripped herself free of his grip, horrified he had misunderstood the intention behind her unexpected gesture?

  The answer was obvious.

  Of course she would. She’d be mortified if she suspected your weakness. Any kindness she showed you was just that, simple kindness, of the sort a woman like Grace would give to anybody in need of it. You’d be a fool to think any different and an even bigger fool to desire anything more, especially since she as good as told you her heart still yearns for that simpering wastrel Earls.

  If there was a quality to Grace that spoke to something inside him, her tenderness and kind nature a soothing balm for his troubled soul, he must fight against it. To accept her compassion could all too easily lead to the weakening of his defences, built up by guilt and grief into a fortress he had thought impenetrable. If his experience with Constance had taught him nothing else it was that his affections only brought pain—to others as well as himself. A woman like Grace would never look at him with anything warmer than pity, and besides: Henry had broken her heart like cheap china, the uncomfortably enviable first love no other man would ever eclipse.

  It was only when he realised he hadn’t heard Grace’s footsteps move across the room that Spencer finally looked up from the hearth, still holding the tinderbox between numb fingers.

  She was watching him, standing just inside the doorway dimly lit by the feeble light of dying candles set about the room. Their soft orange glow threw shadows across her face, but even in the gloom Spencer could make out the luminous pallor of her skin and the world of compassion contained in the grey beauty of her eyes. They fixed on him unwaveringly, radiating concern only tempered by an air of uncertainty betrayed by the pinch of her eyebrows. Her close scrutiny stirred the fine hairs at the back of his neck; for a brief, unstoppable moment his mind reeled back to revisit the memory of Grace’s corresponding nape, so delicate it had stolen words from his lips and set him on a course more uncomfortable than any he had ever known.

  He must have looked up more sharply than she had been expecting, catching her before she could swiftly turn her head away and pretend she hadn’t been studying him.

  ‘I told the midwives we would send a servant with their payment in the morning.’

  Spencer nodded, although the roulette wheel of his mind slowed to stop on one particular word: we. They were a pair now, he realised with a dawning sense of dread and wonder. It was the strangest feeling to think it was Grace, of all people, to whom he was now bound by one familiar word.

  There were dark smudges beneath her eyes, tiredness making her look older than her years, and with a flicker of wonder Spencer saw again how she had matured from the girl he had known into an elegant woman, still far too young to look so haunted, both by grief and fear of a future she had not foreseen.

  It was an effort to rise to his feet and turn towards her. ‘It’s late and you look tired. You ought to go to bed.’

  For a moment she merely stared at him, pale and delicate in the growing warmth of his fledgling fire. Her mouth opened as though to reply, but then her eyes slid away from his and she nipped at her lower lip. When she spoke it was in a low murmur he couldn’t quite catch.

  ‘What was that?’

  Grace’s discomfort was almost palpable in its intensity. ‘I said I’m not sure which chamber to sleep in. I would of course have gone to my own, but now...after tonight...’ She delivered the final words in a rush, as though determined to get through them before she lost her nerve. ‘If I am to stay here, there can be no doubt as to our situation. Perhaps, given our new arrangement, we ought to share.’

  Spencer felt the muscles of his face freeze as a cold wave of surprise crashed over him like an icy sea against rocks. Share a bedchamber? She wanted to share a bedchamber—and presumably his bed?

  It was such an obvious question for her to ask, he realised belatedly as he stared at her burning face; sensible, even. Even in the half-light the crimson sheen of her cheeks was plain to see and Spencer felt himself swallow as a sudden picture of how she might look laying against his rich pillows leapt within him before he could stop it.

  ‘I confess I had given that no thought whatsoever.’ She mustn’t see his discomfort—indeed, it was vital Grace have no inkling of the whirl of feelings that swirled inside him at the thought of her curled beneath his covers, a warm shape so painfully tempting he felt his mouth dry at the very thought.

  Calm yourself.

  Of course they would have to reach some kind of arrangement. Regardless of his feelings on the matter, or whatever misgivings Grace might have, they would have to find their way through the uncharted darkness of matrimony together—in all its forms.

  ‘It would be the most fitting thing.’ Still Grace didn’t meet his eye, instead staring fixedly down at the patch of sitting-room carpet between her neat little slippers. ‘There could be even more rumours if we are seen to be living together but not quite as man and wife, especially as our wedding was so unconventional. We of all people know how society likes to whisper.’

  The automatic temptation to reply with some barbed retort was strong, but Spencer held his tongu
e. His own disregard for the thoughts of others meant he cared little for his own sake about what talk already swirled, or might begin to, but for Grace it could spell further humiliation worse than any she had experienced before. To be the daughter of a suspected criminal was one thing; the suspicion she might be living unwed with a man as notorious as himself was quite another and so it was with a supressed sense of extreme misgiving Spencer inclined his head.

  ‘Very well. Feel free to move into my rooms as soon as you please.’

  There was a decanter and glasses set out on a table not far from the fireplace and Spencer turned to it with relief. It was becoming too much: the death of his mother, his new identity as an unwilling husband, the knowledge his life would never be the same again... It weighed on him like a rock on his chest and suddenly all he wanted was to be alone with his grief and the confusion that churned inside him, turning upside down every secret vow he had made in the solitude of his suffering. How he was to proceed with not just a wife, but the dangerous entity that was Grace, was a puzzle he had no hope of solving while she stood across from him, watching his every move as though he was a wild animal she didn’t yet know if she could trust.

  He poured himself a generous measure of port, drank it down without tasting it and poured out another. ‘I doubt I shall sleep tonight. You will not be disturbed.’

  Grace said nothing for a long moment, her eyes finally rising from the floor to read whatever she could in the blankness of his expression. There mustn’t have been much to see, for with only a small nod of her head she turned away from him, one hand on the smooth brass of the door handle that stood between her and escape.

  Just before she disappeared from his sight she turned back, a complicated mixture of compassion and worry mingling to enhance the porcelain loveliness of her face that made Spencer’s jaw tighten with unconscious admiration. ‘Is there truly nothing more you’d like to say? After everything that’s happened here tonight?’ She gestured around the room, glancing in particular dismay at the glass he held in one cold hand.

  Spencer looked at her, held her gaze for what felt like far too long. She didn’t falter, gazing back at him with that vivid concern that made him want to allow a growl of grief and confusion to erupt from his lips, regardless of the consequences.

  Instead he turned away, staring into the fire with blind eyes that saw nothing of what lay before them.

  ‘You’ll learn I’m not one for talking these days. Goodnight, Grace.’

  Chapter Six

  It didn’t take long for Grace to realise her new husband was as good as his word.

  Barely a single sentence had passed between them since the night Dorothea died: a week of scarcely broken silence. She’d held on to the slim hope the funeral might prompt Spencer to unburden himself, but he had returned from that sorry event—as usual barred to women, for fear their distasteful emotion might not be publicly contained—with his lips pressed into a tight line and disappeared back into his study from which the only sound that came was the gentle splash of liquid against fine crystal. That was where he slept, if the fitful armchair doze he lapsed into occasionally could be termed sleep, leaving Grace to wait breathlessly upstairs for a footstep outside their bedchamber door that never came. Mama had hinted delicately at what that footstep might lead to on Grace’s first visit home after her hasty marriage, when she and her daughters had stared at the new Mrs Dauntsey with wide eyes and mute disbelief; but for now Grace had been spared whatever subtleties her mother had been trying, with ladylike vagueness, to express.

  The servants had noticed Spencer’s absence from the great feather bed—Grace had overheard them whispering and knew it was only a matter of time before fresh rumours began to spread. Older couples might sleep apart, after years of matrimony and the necessary heirs had been obtained, but for a pair of young newlyweds... It cast doubt over their arrangement, blurring boundaries that should have been crisp. He would have to share with her eventually if they were to avoid yet more gossip as to the legitimacy of their unconventional marriage, already raising eyebrows for its secrecy and speed. Spencer didn’t care about that, of course, but the idea of being subject to more assaults on her reputation gave Grace a second reason for increasing concern.

  * * *

  On the morning of the seventh day that she awoke alone in the grand expanse of Spencer’s bed, Grace lay back against the smooth linen of unrumpled sheets and stared up at the embroidered canopy while she decided how to proceed.

  Currently the only other person in the calm green-papered bedchamber was the maid laying out Grace’s clothes for the day ahead. A black bombazine dress was complemented by a string of jet beads and a cameo brooch to be pinned to the bodice, finished by a pair of queen’s silk slippers—all in the sombre tones of deep mourning, which with a sigh Grace recalled she’d be enveloped in for months. It wasn’t that she begrudged Dorothea such a mark of respect; more that it seemed so at odds with the vibrant personality of the woman whose passing it marked, for whom a dress of the brightest silks would have surely been more appropriate. All the gloom of mourning did was remind Grace of her grief, a connection that couldn’t have escaped Spencer’s keen eye, either.

  Perhaps that was why he seems so intent on avoiding me, Grace mused as the maid helped her into her dreary gown.

  She must seem like a spectre haunting the rooms of his house, her dark presence tangible proof of a nightmare come true, but he couldn’t hide away from her for ever.

  Grace caught sight of herself in the long mirror affixed to one wall of what should have been her marital chamber and gave a wry nod at the determination she saw in the face reflected back at her. Dorothea had as good as given her a binding task before she died: to guide her straying son back to the right course. And by heaven, Grace meant to keep her word as well as she could, despite her own hesitations—whether Spencer liked it or not.

  He was exactly where she had known he would be when she was ready to go in search of her errant husband, although Grace felt her breath halt in her throat at the sight that greeted her as she quietly opened the study door and peeped inside. The room was dim, the servants obviously not having dared enter to open the heavy curtains despite the wintery sunshine battling earnestly to stream inside—so it was in semi-darkness Grace saw Spencer asleep in his chair, even while unconscious his face never free of the permanent scowl he wore like a second skin.

  With those sharp, dark eyes of his closed Grace found herself in the novel position of being able to stare as long as she liked and she felt heat climb her neck as she took in the powerful breadth of his chest that rose and fell with uneasy breaths, fitful as though sleep brought no relief from whatever dark thoughts stalked his waking mind. It wasn’t just the movement of his chest that drew her gaze like an arrow, however; he had evidently loosened his cravat at some point during the night and a few buttons of his white shirt had come unfastened in careless disregard of any kind of propriety. The overall result, when combined with the tousled mess of his hair, was one of such indecent abandon Grace felt her heart rate pick up speed. She shouldn’t be looking, her innate sense of decorum instructed prissily, yet something about the line of his sculpted collarbone giving way to a teasing glimpse of toned chest transfixed her attention so stubbornly she could barely tear herself away. What would that chest feel like beneath her fingertips, she wondered, the hair there gently curling to mirror the soft waves on his head...?

  Grace’s brows drew together in a brief frown as a prickle of conscience nagged at her.

  That’s not what you’re here for. You came to try to help him, not lurk in doorways.

  Still, she had to admit it would have taken a woman of stone to remain unmoved by the scandalously uninhibited sight of her reluctant new husband and Grace was as human as any other.

  Spencer lounged against the cushions with legs outstretched and one wrist hanging over the arm of the chair, fingers twitching sligh
tly as Grace stepped carefully past him. On the floor directly beneath his hand lay an empty glass, rolled on to its side amid a congealing stain she had no need to inspect any closer.

  At the first shaft of blinding sunshine that burst into the room Spencer flung up a hand to shield his face, drawing in a harsh breath as Grace seized another curtain and yanked it back to allow yet more light to flood in. He groaned something Grace was quite grateful she didn’t catch as he peered round the room to locate his tormentor with eyes narrowed against the sudden brightness. They grew narrower still when he saw his wife standing before one floor-to-ceiling window, beckoning reassuringly to Rivers who now hesitated on the threshold.

  ‘Good morning, Spencer. Did you sleep well?’ Grace allowed no time for him to reply before gesturing to Spencer’s untidy desk. ‘Set the tray down there, please. Thank you.’ The poor maid did as she was asked, laying her burden down while shooting nervous glances at the glowering figure in the chair, before scuttling from the room as quickly as good manners would allow.

  Grace turned the smile on Spencer, resisting the impulse to wilt slightly beneath his unforgiving stare. ‘I’ll pour, shall I?’ She moved over to the desk with as much authority as she could muster, the very image of a well-bred lady hosting an honoured guest.

  ‘Grace.’

  Staunchly ignoring the hoarse voice at her back, Grace busied herself with the cups. ‘Will you take sugar this morning?’

  ‘I don’t want—’

  ‘Perhaps just a little.’

  ‘I said I don’t—’

  ‘Now, do be careful. It’s very hot—’

  ‘Grace!’ The words burst forth in infuriation, although Spencer was left with no choice but to grasp the drink fairly shoved under his nose. ‘For pity’s sake, woman—what are you about? What do you mean by bursting in here, ripping my curtains to shreds and then harassing me with a teapot?’