Tempted By His Secret Cinderella (Allied At The Altar Book 3)

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘Be angry, Cousin. You should be furious,’ Bax growled.

  ‘Why?’ Sutton glared. ‘Because you would be? Because you want me to do something rash? Because my anger serves you more than my hurt?’

  ‘Because any normal man would be, damn it!’ Bax spat. ‘You’ve always thought you were better than the rest of us. Smarter, wiser, above the social fray the rest of us slog through. My own father liked you better than he liked his own son.’

  He released Bax and stepped away, getting a grip on himself. It would be easy to be angry. To throw a vase or a decanter, to see it smash against a wall and shatter into a thousand pieces like his heart. But it would solve nothing. It would give Bax pleasure. Sutton refused to cater to such dark humours. There was no logic in them and he needed his logic more than ever if he was to see his way through this.

  A footman cleared his throat, warning of his approach. He held a basket in his hand. ‘Sir, the gentlemen are ready to fish. Shall I tell them you’ll meet them at the river? This was left for you, as well. The Principessa’s gosling. There’s a note inside.’

  ‘Thank you, tell the men I will join them shortly.’ Sutton took the basket, his heart pounding at the sight of the note, but he’d be damned if he was going to read it in front of Bax. ‘If you’ll excuse me. I’d like to read my mail in private.’

  * * *

  The gosling cheeped as Sutton set the basket down on the desk in the estate office. Sutton turned the note over, hesitating. What if he opened it and Bax was right? What if he opened it and discovered she’d simply left out of some misguided notion to protect him? He knew the reality before he opened it. Whatever was in this letter wouldn’t change how he felt for her. It would only change how much it would hurt. Had he been betrayed?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The shaking of his hands betrayed how much the contents of the note mattered as Sutton tore open the paper—another reason he’d not wanted Bax present. His feelings made him vulnerable. The note was short, disappointingly so, but not without meaning for a man who read between the lines.

  Please return the gosling to its natural habitat and let it rejoin its family.

  Sutton crushed the note in his palm. He was meant to let her go. To set her free. It was what she wanted. Which meant horrible things. It meant that Bax was right. She had something to hide. That she’d lied about who she was.

  The anger he’d kept under a tight rein surged, pulling on his restraint now that there was no one to see. His logic mocked him: If an angry man threw a decanter and no one heard it shatter, had he really thrown it? Rage tore through him. Rage for himself, for falling prey to yet another Anabeth Morely; rage at Chiara for leaving, for not telling him; and rage for what had been lost when she’d made her choice. There’d been something beautiful and rare between them and now it was gone.

  There was a quiet knock on the door and his mother entered, concern etched on her brow. ‘Your worthless cousin told me you were in here. Is the Principessa’s leaving his doing?’

  Sutton shook his head. ‘Not entirely.’ It was, ironically, quite his own doing. If he hadn’t told her about writing to the Viscountess, Chiara might still be here. But for how much longer? If she was a fraud, the letter from the Viscountess would have exposed her. Even if he’d been willing to countenance her lie, the threat posed by Bax would have scared her off eventually. If she was a fraud, he’d been wrong yesterday in assuming Bax had no leverage over her. Exposing her would have scared her into desperation. And yet, even if that were true, he couldn’t help but feel a protective anger rising on her behalf. If Bax had threatened her with bodily harm, he would call him out for that alone. There were so many ‘ifs’.

  What did such thoughts matter now? Chiara was gone. He would know soon enough as to why she’d left. If she hadn’t known about his letter, all it would have allowed was for him to have had her a day or two longer. That seemed like an eternity right now. He’d give anything for a day or two more of Chiara in his arms, for the blind bliss of thinking she was real. Dear lord, was he truly believing she wasn’t real? That she was the fraud Bax accused her of being? What was he supposed to believe? She’d left him in the middle of the night.

  ‘I am sorry, my son.’ His mother sat down gingerly on a chair, unsure how to proceed. ‘I know you were enchanted by her. This will pass. It must pass. There is still a bride to be chosen.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for platitudes or brides, Mother, if you don’t mind?’ Sutton ground out. Why hadn’t he listened? How many times had Chiara told him she was not what he thought? Had she been trying to warn him? But that made no sense. If she wanted to win the competition, why would she drive him off? Was there another reason for her having been here? Was falling in love with him an unintended consequence? He remembered that first night in the gallery—are you avoiding me? Perhaps she truly had been. But that raised other concerns. He thought about the faulty jewellery Bax had shown him. Had they been here to steal? To cheat at cards? He hated the direction his thoughts were headed.

  ‘Then maybe you’re in the mood for logic,’ his mother said sharply. ‘I understand you’re hurting, but there’s no time to lick your wounds. The party ends in three days. You have precious little time after that to satisfy the will’s requirements with a wedding and your cousin is trying to seduce every virgin in the house. We need to bring this to a close, for everyone’s sake.’

  ‘It will never be closed for me, Mother. Don’t you see? Whatever happens here will be with me for the rest of my life. Everyone else gets to go home and pick up their ordinary lives. But not me. I have to live with it for ever.’ With it, without it...no matter what he chose to do, that decision would follow him.

  ‘Yes, precisely,’ his mother snapped. ‘Thank goodness she had the sense to leave. Can you imagine what choosing her would have meant? Public humiliation. People would have been sympathetic eventually, felt sorry for you once the truth came out and once you officially distanced yourself from her.’

  ‘Is that what I would have done, Mother?’ Sutton fingered the obsidian paperweight idly. What would have happened? What would he have done if the nobles and Bax made good on their threats and actually had proof? If Chiara had been exposed? Was that even her real name? He would have felt betrayed, as he felt now. But would he have distanced himself? Would he have walked away from her? Was he willing to distance himself even now?

  ‘How could you have done otherwise?’

  ‘What if no one found out? What if any claims against her were discredited? Or silenced?’ Bax wasn’t the only one who could play that game. Bax had little credibility on his own and he’d have even less once Sutton got through with him.

  ‘You would dirty yourself for her? Live a life of lies and blackmail to protect her secret? That’s no life, Sutton. It makes you Bax’s equal. I always thought I’d raised a son who was a cut above most men.’ She paused, eyes narrow. ‘You should be thankful Chiara left when she did. If she’d actually succeeded in marrying you, you would have had no choice in the matter. You would have been forced into complicity to protect your good name, to protect the fortune, to protect any children you might have had. The Everards, the Viscount and Viscountess Taunton, would have been required to avow the lie as well. The only avenue left might have been a divorce and that’s a whole other scandal, one that would cost you the fortune after all you’d risked for it.’

  His mother was right. A life of lies was no life at all, a fragile house of cards easily toppled that would consume whatever happiness they’d found. It would destroy them as assuredly as Chiara’s departure had destroyed him today. A marriage needed honesty above all else. It’s the one thing Chiara could not give him. Logically, there was nothing else to do but to give her up. Yet, his heart was already arguing otherwise. Logic had never so thoroughly failed to bring him peace as it had this morning.

  * * *

  Sutton got through the day
. Thank goodness, fishing was a solitary pursuit even with other men on the river. Somehow, he survived tea on the terrace, finding the wherewithal to listen as the girls chatted about shopping, raving over the shops in Newmarket’s High Street. He made sure to keep Eliza Fenworth in sight in case Bax tried anything untoward. He managed appropriate responses to the conversation at dinner and even to partner Wharton’s daughter, Miss Hines, to victory at cards afterwards. He could barely concentrate as Wharton rambled on about his disappointment over the Prince leaving before they could arrange for him to meet a playwright the Prince highly recommended. He was numb, a machine going through the motions of living. It was as if the light had gone out of the world. He couldn’t think straight. He could only think of her.

  * * *

  It wasn’t much better the next day either. In fact, it was worse. The ball was closing in. Who did he choose in Chiara’s place? It hurt to even think of the possibility. It hurt even worse to spend his day contemplating comparisons. No one was as funny as Chiara, no one as direct, no one as daring. He stole away to the stables for a couple of hours in the afternoon, thinking to find peace only to discover she’d stolen that, too. This was where he remembered her the most. ‘She’s left us,’ he murmured to the foals.

  He wished that were true. But despite her physical absence, she hadn’t left. She was imprinted on everything around him. For a woman who didn’t exist, she took up a considerable amount of his thoughts.

  The darkness of his thoughts swamped him with two emergent truths in the solitude of the barn; the first was that he would give anything to have her back, whoever she was. And that was the problem. People who appeared out of thin air also disappeared into it. Chiara Balare was gone for good and for the best. For a man of logic, he was having a deuced difficult time accepting that. Why had she done this? Was she safe now? Did it hurt her to leave him as much as it hurt him to be left? Who was she? Where was she? And if he knew, what would he do about it?

  * * *

  Chiara Balare was gone. Elidh had never felt less like a princess than she did right now, jouncing along a dusty country road on the tailgate of a farmer’s wagon, the July sun beating down on them, melting away the last of their ambition like Icarus’s wings. She sat between Rosie and her father, all of them dressed once more in their old clothes, brown and grey and drab. Their fine garb was packed away in a trunk, the rest of it sent to Rosie’s sister in Upper Clapton for safekeeping.

  Elidh swatted at a fly with her hand. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. A day ago she’d had every luxury to hand, including a lacy fan to swat errant flies. A day ago, food had been no effort either, the tables at Hartswood had groaned with its largesse three times a day and two teas between. Shelter had been an afterthought: canopies on the lawn to shield guests from the sun, a beautifully appointed chamber with a white coverlet she’d miraculously managed not to stain. Now, each meal was a calculation, the night’s lodging dependent on her father’s persuasion with an innkeeper.

  It was no less than she deserved. She’d reached too far above herself. The higher one flew, the harder the fall. She hadn’t just fallen, she’d crashed. The luxury and security of Hartswood was far behind them. The reality was bleak. The sum of her entire world was contained in this wagon: her father, Rosie and one trunk between them. And it wasn’t even their wagon. This wagon bed was provided on the good humour of a stranger, as was their destination. They would simply go wherever the stranger took them.

  Beggars could not be choosers and they were surely beggars now. She’d squandered their last hope and now they could not squander their remaining funds on train tickets or mail coaches. Not that it mattered, because it didn’t. What did it matter where they were, or where they went or how long it took them to get there, as long as they were out of reach of Viscountess Taunton’s letter. Even her father had understood that. They’d had to disappear before it arrived so that Sutton couldn’t find her.

  Yet, she’d found herself looking up, hopeful, every time she heard hoofbeats on the road until her father had scolded her. ‘Don’t wish for it, Daughter. The man who comes to fetch you back won’t be the one you knew,’ he’d cautioned. He was right. How silly to think otherwise. If Sutton took the effort to find her, it wouldn’t be out of love.

  Rosie had taken pity on her, giving her father a scalding look. ‘Men are ten different kinds of fools all at once. They don’t see what’s true and real right in front of ’em.’

  Rosie wrapped an arm about her now, but that only engendered tears. Everything had been a fog since she’d kissed Sutton goodbye. Her father was right. Sutton would be angry before the Viscountess’s letter arrived, frantic perhaps with worry. But after the letter? He’d be furious then. He would think... Elidh swiped at her tears as unsuccessfully as she’d swatted the fly. She knew too well what he’d think with Bax whispering poison in his ear. Only it wouldn’t be poison, not all of it. Quite a lot of it would be truth. But Sutton wouldn’t have the luxury of sifting through all of it and determining what was real. He would think she’d lied about everything: who she was, what she felt for him. Worst of all, he would think she’d left because she hadn’t loved him.

  He’d be wrong there. She’d left because she did love him, because it was the right thing to do for him. He would never know how much it had cost her. So this was love, too, this hurt, this ache whenever she thought of him and whenever she thought of never seeing him again. Doing right shouldn’t hurt so much. There should be some comfort in it, something to offset the pain.

  The wagon stopped in a busy inn yard and her father jumped down, a spark in his eye. One might think this was all a lark to him. ‘I’ll see if the innkeeper will let us perform monologues in exchange for food and lodging tonight.’ If he was angry with her, he didn’t show it. She’d cost him a patron in the end as well. They could have no connection now with Sutton or anyone at the house party. After all the risk, they only had a small bag of card winnings to show for it. He winked at Rosie. ‘Just like old times, eh?’

  Her father was back shortly, rubbing his hands together in glee, already making plans. ‘We can have supper and beds in the hayloft and we can even pass the cup for whatever coin we can get. It’s market day and the tavern will be busy. Elidh, you can wear the blue gown and Rosie will put your hair up. You’ll do the Juliet monologue. I’ll do Macbeth tonight.’ Never mind that she hadn’t done Juliet in years. Her father would simply say there were two hours to refresh her memory and if that wasn’t enough, no one else would know if she made a mistake. She envied him the way in which he just forged ahead, blindly ignoring the fact that the world was falling apart on all sides.

  * * *

  Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say ‘Ay,’ And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear’st, Thou mayst prove false. At lovers’ perjuries, They say, Jove laughs.

  She couldn’t do it. Elidh paced behind the grey flannel blanket serving as a curtain. She couldn’t go out there and say these words. She couldn’t think of love without thinking of Sutton. Her father came around the makeshift curtain, looking royal in the clothes he’d worn as Prince Lorenzo.

  ‘Are you ready? We have a nice crowd, Elidh. We can make a little money tonight. You look splendid. Rosie has outdone herself on your hair.’

  How many times had she heard him give a similar talk to his troupe backstage before a performance? For a moment, she saw him as he used to be: younger, more vibrant, his stomach perhaps a bit more taut, a man who had people to command, a man who would be King for a night, who would drink in the adulation of an audience and his troupe, all of whom believed he could conjure magic. How reduced he was now, older age upon him, no troupe left, just a reluctant daughter with no particular talent for the stage, certainly nothing to rival his dazzling wife, a man with no home, a man with nothing to his name. Did he see that man or did he still believe he was the Actor King? That the next great thing was just around the corner?

 
‘I can’t do it, Father,’ Elidh cut off his speech.

  ‘Yes, you can, because you must.’ Her father fixed her with a stern stare. ‘It doesn’t matter if you mess up the lines. These blokes won’t know. Besides, they’ll be too taken looking at you to pay close attention. Dazzle them and they will follow you anywhere.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Elidh pleaded. ‘I am not like you, Father. I can’t just plunge ahead as if the world isn’t going to hell around me, as if my heart isn’t breaking.’ There was anger in her tone, resentment even. ‘You have to face reality!’

  He grabbed her arm, claiming all her attention. ‘Face reality? Do you think I don’t? I face it every day as best I can. When your mother died, she took the best of me. Plunging ahead is all there is.’ The sternness left his features. ‘What else can I do? I am fit for very little in this world besides acting, maybe a little writing. I am doing the best I can with what I have: a modest talent for that stage, for charming a crowd, and a broken heart. They are not amazing assets. But every so often, I get lucky and there is magic. For a few moments, I am allowed to forget my troubles and the crowd forgets theirs. That’s all I can ask for.’

  She heard the lesson in it for her, too. Move forward, find joy in the moments if the days eluded her in that regard. Be thankful for small mercies: a meal, a roof, a place to perform, and a chance to earn her way. It would have to be enough. She had to find a way forward because there was no other choice. She couldn’t go back. Her father was right. If she ever saw Sutton again, it wouldn’t be the man who’d held her beneath the summer stars and whispered words of love at her ears. There would be no love for her in those blue eyes, only hate. He could not possibly forgive her for what he thought she’d done, nor would he have reason to understand the truth. A man like Sutton Keynes, a man with everything, couldn’t understand what it meant to be desperate.