Frantic now, he tried the handles, but the pocket doors to the chamber were locked. Bracing himself for the impact, he shouldered the doors open with a crack and splinter of wood and erupted into the room.
To see his mother, Nerissa, stripped to the waist, her lower back a mess of weals, and the Earl of Bute standing over her with a whip in his hand.
For one suspended moment, he couldn’t believe what he saw. After all he’d been through today on her behalf, Nerissa had come to Bute’s house? To his bedchamber? It didn’t make sense.…
Then the image of her, bloody and cowering, clicked into place. Murderous rage boiled inside him. “Get away from her, you bastard!”
Three strides had him across the room. Wrenching the whip from Bute’s hand, he wrapped its lash around the man’s throat before the earl could utter more than a truncated oath.
Bute was a big man, thickset and powerful with it, even if he did get his jollies beating women. But Xavier’s fury lent him exponential strength and he had the advantage of surprise.
The earl clawed at Xavier’s hands as Xavier winched the whip lash tighter around the man’s neck until Bute’s hands dropped helplessly to his side. The bloodstained leather constricted Bute’s throat until his face turned a mottled purple and his eyes bulged out of his head. The earl’s feet kicked out helplessly before ceasing the struggle, but Xavier felt not the slightest twinge of mercy stir in his soul.
Nerissa’s screams changed tone now. Somehow, they penetrated the red mist in Xavier’s brain. He let Bute drop to the floor with bruising abruptness.
Leaving the villain to choke for air and fumble at his throat, Xavier bent over his mother. She was a beautiful, incoherent mess huddled on the floor against the bed.
She raised her face, her blue eyes leaking tears. “You killed him. Oh, God, you’ve killed him.”
“You should be glad if I have.”
Seething with furious pity and bitter shame, he mastered himself enough to draw her gently to sit on the bed. Then he helped her pull up her gown and secure it somehow. She winced and whimpered as the silk touched her flayed back.
What the hell had possessed Nerissa to come here tonight? Xavier had gone through the entire damnable farce to save her from such a fate, hadn’t he? He’d made perhaps the greatest sacrifice of his life to allow her to sever her ties with Bute once and for all.
“How did you come to be here, Mama?” he demanded, perhaps not as gently as he ought.
She’d danced over the edge this time. He wanted to believe she deserved the consequences, but something inside him balked at such a notion, even after all the things she’d done.
Her hands fluttered and grasped at him and her eyes implored. “Don’t ask me. Please, I can’t tell you. I can’t speak of it. Just get me out of this place.”
He’d never seen her with a hair out of place, much less in such disarray as this. Her jet black hair, always coiffed to perfection, now straggled around her heart-shaped face. Her high cheekbones were streaked with tears and her perfect bow mouth trembled.
Bute had begun to stir. Probably best to get her out before the man recovered and called for help.
“You can’t go anywhere looking like that,” Xavier said. “Let me tend to you first.”
She took his outstretched hands. Despite the proud lift of her chin, she was shaking. Whether or not she’d been willfully reckless, she got more than she’d bargained for in Bute.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Don’t thank me.” He should have found a way to annihilate Bute rather than fall in with his plans. Then none of this would have happened.
Strangling was too good for the man. After this night’s work, Xavier was going to ruin the Earl of Bute if it was the last thing he did.
He helped his mother to rise and climb onto the bed and lie facedown upon it. He went to the washstand and wet a cloth, wrung it out, and brought it to her.
On closer inspection, the wounds were not so bad as he’d first thought. Only one of them broke her pale flesh, but it had bled profusely. With as light a touch as he could manage, he cleaned away the blood. His mother tried to stifle her cries of pain, but he saw how hard her fingers dug into the coverlet, and he clenched his teeth in sympathy.
There might well be scarring from tonight’s work, and his rage against Bute flared once more. He’d done many sinful things in his time, but beating women was not one of them. Only the most contemptible cowards stooped to that kind of behavior.
Nerissa’s gown was ruined, and in any case, it would be too painful for her to be laced into her stays again.
“Do you have a cloak?” he asked her when he’d finished.
“Over there.” Her voice was stronger now. She nodded toward a chair by the door. He snatched it up and put it around her, careful of her wounds.
“Can you walk, ma’am?” said Xavier, noticing her wince.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she murmured, subdued but not broken.
That was a relief. His mother might be many things, but weak was not one of them. He didn’t know what he would have done if Bute’s actions had destroyed her spirit.
A groan sounded from the floor. Bute was conscious and dragging himself to a sitting position. His face was an ugly shade of red, his lips white. He wheezed and coughed in a futile effort to speak.
After an internal struggle, Xavier tamped down the urge to flay the fellow with his own whip. Just as well the earl lived, he supposed, or there’d be no escaping the consequences. He’d be damned if he’d fly the country on account of this cur.
Once Xavier was sure his mother was safe, he would send someone to tend to the earl. Primarily because it would be very inconvenient for him if Bute died tonight.
No servants had come running at the commotion. Were they accustomed to ignoring women’s screams, or had their master dismissed them for the evening?
When he’d managed to help his mother downstairs and settle her in her carriage, Xavier glanced back at the house. “Can you wait, Mama? I must return for the girl.”
He would not leave her to Bute’s tender mercies.
“Don’t trouble yourself.” His mother caught his wrist, her eyes blazing to life. “You owe her nothing.”
He’d thought the same a bare hour before. Yet now the notion seemed callous in the extreme. “Of course I do. I must fetch her. I’ll be back directly.”
She looked beyond him, her lips parted a fraction, as if in surprise.
He turned his head but saw nothing in the blackness surrounding the quiet house.
“Can you wait, Mama, while I fetch her?” he repeated.
Nerissa shrugged, uncaring about the girl who had sacrificed herself on her behalf. As uncaring as he had been when he’d left this place the first time.
Taking that for assent, he shut the carriage door with a smack, nodded to the coachman, and strode back toward the house.
But when at last he reached the girl’s chamber, the bed was empty. He searched the house and the grounds, but to no avail.
The new Marchioness of Steyne—his wife—had vanished.
Chapter One
Eight years later …
The villagers of Little Thurston did not know what they had ever done without Miss Elizabeth Allbright. If the squire was the backbone of the community, the vicar its spirit, and old Lady Chard its spleen, Miss Allbright was undoubtedly its heart.
Known as Lizzie to her friends, Miss Allbright lived at the vicarage with the parson of the parish, who had taken her in eight years before.
It seemed to the Little Thurstonians that an angel had come amongst them. A tall, flaxen-haired angel with fey green eyes and an enchantingly wistful smile.
No one, least of all Miss Allbright herself, knew anything about her origins. She’d arrived by the grace of a good farmer who had taken her up with him at the crossroads. He’d known precisely where to take a gently bred girl who had clearly been terrorized by some horrific experience into losing her pa
st.
Miss Allbright had only the clothes she’d stood up in and a few coins in her purse, and no memory at all of her previous life, or even of her name.
The young lady had never recalled the location of her home or who her people were. She did not appear to regret those lost years, nor did she show the slightest sign she yearned for her family or her former home. She became a daughter of the heart to the childless vicar and his wife, and called herself by their name.
Now she seemed such an integral part of the small community at Little Thurston that her sad history was almost forgotten.
“But are you truly happy remaining here in Little Thurston forever, Lizzie?” said Clare Beauchamp. “Don’t you long for something more?”
Clare was the daughter of Lord Fenton, the major landowner of the district. She was diminutive and very pretty, with black hair and a pair of lively gray eyes. She reminded one of a kitten, until one realized there was a clever, devious mind behind that dimple-cheeked façade. Not many gentlemen did realize it, fortunately for Clare, who enjoyed the status of reigning belle in the district.
“Of course I am happy.” Lizzie stood back to judge the balance and tastefulness of a huge display of spring flowers she had arranged for this evening’s assembly. She made a dissatisfied grimace. Her talents, such as they were, did not extend to floral art. Instead of the fan shape she’d been striving to achieve, the blooms tottered drunkenly to one side.
“You are simply buried here.” Clare stepped in, her nimble fingers quickly making a showpiece of the mess Lizzie had wrought. “I wish you would come to London with me for the season next year. It would be beyond anything.”
“Your aunt might have something to say about that.” Lizzie did not add that she had no money and a London season was frightfully expensive. Quite apart from the obvious objections to making her debut.
“Oh, tosh! Aunt Sadie would be delighted to have you. You know she would.” Clare’s cheek dimpled. “She’d depend on you to keep me out of trouble.”
“I expect that’s a task quite beyond my capabilities,” Lizzie teased.
Clare grinned, plucking an extraneous fern frond from the urn before them. “I know that, but Aunt Sadie doesn’t.”
“Everything I want or need is right here in Little Thurston,” said Lizzie. “Good Heavens, why should I wish to go to London?”
Clare opened her eyes wide. “To get a husband, of course. Why does any young lady go to London?”
“I am not so very young anymore,” said Lizzie. “I am almost five-and-twenty, you know.”
“Oh, past your last prayers, indeed.” Clare tickled Lizzie’s chin with her fern. “Silly. Don’t you want to fall in love?”
With difficulty, Lizzie repressed a shudder. No. She most certainly did not want to fall in love.
“My sole ambition is to end up an old maid and become the terror of Little Thurston,” she said with a chuckle.
“Speaking of terrors, how is the coven?” said Clare, referring to the old ladies of Little Thurston whom Lizzie gathered together once a week.
“I thought they would take Miss Richland’s passing to heart,” admitted Lizzie. “And of course, one never truly knows, but I believe they are all sadly inured to their peers leaving them. At any rate, a great deal of sherry was drunk—for the shock, you know—and they reminisced about some of the more atrocious things Miss R. did while she was alive. I think she would have appreciated it very much.”
“Miss Richland was a Tartar,” said Clare. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”
“She had spirit and determination,” said Lizzie. “One can’t help admiring that, even when it makes the person a trifle difficult to deal with.”
“By ‘a trifle difficult,’ you mean she threw china at your head and called you ‘that Beanpole,’” said Clare. “She ought to have been grateful to you, rather.”
Lizzie didn’t see it that way. She liked visiting the older ladies of the parish. Whether it was because time had worn away their inhibitions or they simply belonged to a more licentious generation, hobnobbing with the elderly female denizens of Little Thurston was quite an education.
In some strange way, she felt more comfortable with them than with many ladies of her own age, whose chatter was entirely of fashion and husbands and babies. All except for Clare, whose idea of a comfortable coze was a keen political debate.
Picking up her basket, Lizzie tucked her other hand in the crook of Clare’s arm. “Let’s go. You must rest and primp for the ball and I must call on the Minchins and Lady Chard.”
“Ha!” said Clare. “Rest and primp, indeed. No, I shall draft my next petition.”
Clare wished to be a politician, but given that ladies were not allowed to vote, much less stand for Parliament, she had to content herself with plaguing the life out of Mr. Huntley, their resident MP.
“Poor Mr. Huntley,” murmured Lizzie.
“Well, he can stand down if he doesn’t like it, can’t he?” said Clare with relish. “Only, we’d need another candidate, and there is no one I can think of who might be half as worthy. Besides Tom, but he won’t do it,” she said, glumly dismissing her brother. “That is why it’s so important that I marry.”
“So you can plague your new husband instead,” said Lizzie.
A heavy tread preceded the large figure of Mr. Huntley, MP, himself. He was moderately handsome, with a thick head of light brown hair and kind gray eyes. He was only in his twenties, but election to Parliament at an early age had lent him a confidence and slightly ponderous dignity that made him seem older than his years.
Lizzie curtsied to him. “Mr. Huntley, we were just speaking of you.”
His face lightened until he noticed Clare and gave a slight recoil. “Ah,” he said, adjusting his cravat. “Yes. No doubt.”
After a slight pause during which Clare simply looked enigmatic, Mr. Huntley brightened again. He clapped his hands together and held them clasped while he surveyed the room. “Delightful, Miss Allbright! Simply delightful! But then you always do us proud, my dear.” He waggled a finger at her. “I shall claim a waltz from you tonight, you know.”
“What a surprise,” muttered Clare.
“I should be happy, Mr. Huntley,” said Lizzie, with another curtsy and a covert glare at her friend that said behave. Clare rolled her eyes in response.
To distract him from Clare’s rudeness, Lizzie asked Mr. Huntley how his mother did—a topic that never failed to elicit a lengthy response. So it proved that afternoon, and the long history of Mrs. Huntley’s illnesses and megrims occupied at least a quarter of an hour, time that Lizzie could ill spare.
She was hard put to keep her attention fixed, until Huntley said, “It is a vast pity my mother’s poor health prevents her from attending the assembly this evening.”
His regard rested on Lizzie in a way she could only construe as meaningful. A vast pity she had not the slightest idea to what he referred.
“Indeed, sir?” she said.
He grasped his coat lapels and rocked a little on his heels. “Yes, for I expect to make an important announcement at supper, you know. I may leave you to guess what it will be about.”
“Good grief,” muttered Clare.
“An important…” Lizzie looked from her friend to Mr. Huntley and back again. Understanding came in an unwelcome rush.
Oh, dear. Mr. Huntley was at it again.
“Really, sir,” said Lizzie. “I cannot think what you mean.”
Now his eyebrows and his index finger waggled in unison. “Ah, you mean to tease me, Miss Allbright, but I vow you take my meaning.” He made an arch sort of moue. “Until tonight, then, ladies.”
With a bow that owed more to correctness than grace, Mr. Huntley left the ballroom.
There was a silence. Then Lizzie blew out a long breath. “Do you think he’ll actually do it this time?”
Clare snorted. “Of course not. Mrs. Huntley’s vapors are more than a match for his tepid intentions tow
ard you, dear Lizzie. Ten to one, his dear mama will throw out a rash or have a spasm or some such thing, and we will not see Mr. Huntley at the ball at all.”
Clare twirled a stray ringlet around her finger. “Which is a shame, really. For I would give anything to see you hand him his marching orders.”
Lizzie smiled but said, “Oh, no, how can you be so unfeeling?”
“If the man can’t pluck up the gumption to propose marriage after five years of mooning over you, he doesn’t deserve my compassion.”
Lizzie sighed. “I suppose you’re right. The trouble is that he has treated our marriage as a foregone conclusion for so long that everyone in the village believes we’re promised to each other.”
Clare shrugged. “Then you must tell everyone it’s no such thing.”
“I would, but no one ever asks me if it’s true,” said Lizzie. “I suppose it is a little strange that I should not wish to marry him. I mean, he is a respectable man of good fortune and not in his dotage. I could scarcely do better.”
“Bite your tongue, you foolish, foolish girl,” said Clare, swatting Lizzie’s shoulder with her fern frond. “You are a thousand times too good for Mr. Huntley.”
“You are a true friend to say so,” said Lizzie, conscious there were many in the village who would not share Clare’s view. “But the fact remains that I am a nobody who is firmly on the shelf, and Mr. Huntley is extremely eligible.”
Of course Lizzie couldn’t marry anyone, eligible or not, for a very good reason.
Contrary to the deception she had perpetrated on the good people of Little Thurston, Lizzie remembered very well who she was and where she’d come from. Not to mention why she could not wed Mr. Huntley, even if he were to screw his courage to the sticking place and ask.
She was Lady Alexandra Simmons, daughter of the Earl of Bute. And she was already married to the Marquis of Steyne.
But the marquis didn’t want her. And she was never going back to her father’s house. Never, ever again.
* * *
Far later than she’d planned, Lizzie hurried along with her basket and her book to Lady Chard’s. The lady was elderly and astringent, but she shared with Lizzie a penchant for novels, from Waverley to the more lurid Mysteries of Udolpho.
The Wickedest Lord Alive Page 2