A Marriage Made in Scandal

by Elisa Braden

  Sighing, Hannah brushed at the black wisps that had fallen along her cheek. Then she glanced down at her green-sprigged muslin skirt—the one she’d been wearing for two days. “Perhaps a bath, too.”

  Genie gave a noncommittal “hmm” and nudged her sister-in-law—no, her sister—in the direction of her lady’s maid, who had been hovering discreetly behind a large urn for the last minute or two. “Go on with Claudette, now. Eat. Rest. Let the physician do his work. I shall speak with Phineas.”

  Hannah nodded and left.

  “I bloody well do not understand.”

  At her husband’s muttered complaint, Genie turned. “Which part?”

  “Any of it.”

  She paused. Listened. Smiled. “The rain has stopped.”

  “She scarcely knows Hawthorn. They’ve spoken a handful of times. She is behaving as though his death would be—”

  “Phineas. Let us take a walk together.”

  He glowered at her, the strain around his eyes and forehead signaling his frustration. “I must return to my research.”

  She looped her arm around his and tugged him toward the entrance hall, pausing to retrieve the bonnet she’d left on a table outside the library. “No. You must take a walk with me. I need to escape this castle.”

  He let her lead him outside, albeit reluctantly. “Where are we going?”

  “To the beach.”

  His sigh spoke of impatience. “Give me the list.”

  She tucked the now-folded square into her long sleeve. “No.”

  “Bloody hell, woman.”

  Arching a brow, she tied her bonnet’s ribbons beneath her chin and tugged him past the fountain at the castle’s entrance. “We have matters to discuss.”

  “I do not want to discuss. Nor do I want to walk to the beach. I would, however, very much enjoy taking you to bed.”

  “Perhaps later.”

  His nostrils flared. “Give me the list, Eugenia.”

  “No.”

  “I want to burn it.”

  “Sometimes what we want is not what should be.”

  He fell silent, but he kept walking. They traveled through the south gardens, along the tunnel of grapes and out to where the wet grasses grew high on the bluff. Phineas braced Genie’s waist as she started down the cliff trail. Although worn by rain and wind and time, it had been carved into alternating slopes and steps winding down the cliff’s face to Primvale Cove. Wind buffeted her, dragging her skirts sideways against her legs. But Phineas was always there, his hands steadying her, his surefooted strides a reassurance.

  She braced her hand against the stone as a damp breeze caused her skirts to tangle and shorten her steps. “The first time I visited the beach,” she began, nodding her thanks for his help over a slick spot, “I thought it must have taken years to carve these steps.”

  “It did,” he replied. “Before then, the way was treacherous, indeed.”

  She halted. They’d traveled perhaps two-thirds of the way down. Hugging his arm, she sighed and gazed out at the Channel, shimmering gray beneath clouded skies. “So very beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced up to find his eyes upon her, burning with intensity. She swallowed. Felt her cheeks heat. Forced herself to keep to the path she had set for them. When they finally stepped down onto the beach, she ran toward the water’s edge and spun, laughing. “How could anyplace be more splendid than this, Phineas?” she called above the crash of the waves.

  He did not reply, merely gazing at her, unsmiling.

  She cast off her bonnet. Unpinned her hair. Extended her arms out to her sides and spun in circles, tilting her face to the sky.

  “What are you doing, Briar?” His voice was nearer now.

  “Wallowing, Phineas. I am wallowing.”

  “Could you not wallow in my bed?”

  She stopped. Laughed breathlessly. Looked at her husband.

  He was not laughing, nor even grinning. Instead, he appeared ravenous. Lost.

  “I love you,” she called softly.

  His brow furrowed in what looked like pain. Yet, he said nothing.

  She crossed soft sand and round pebbles, brushing long strands of hair out of her face. When she stood within a foot of her husband, she saw the battle he was waging. Felt the turmoil shining in pale, glorious green. “I love you,” she said again.

  His chest shuddered, his eyes growing desperate.

  “All of you.”

  He turned his gaze to the water. “You shouldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  Again, he fell silent, his jaw tight.

  Sighing, she grasped his hand and pulled him to where waves clawed at the shore. “I did a bit of reading earlier.” She chuckled. “I know, I know. A bit unusual for me, but I was curious about something.” She shook his arm. “Ask me what.”

  “What were you curious about?”

  “Griffins.”

  He froze. Stiffened. His hand loosened its hold upon her, but she refused to release him.

  “Do you know what they are?”

  His breathing quickened. Long muscles in his neck resembled ropes. He blinked down at her as if she’d planted her fist in his belly.

  “The eagle and the lion, the noblest of two breeds, united in one extraordinary creature.”

  “Stop, Briar.” His words were airless, carried away by the wind.

  But she heard. “Griffins are protectors,” she continued. “Ferocious and valiant. Best not to challenge them, for they will savagely kill those who attempt to harm whatever or whomever is in their care.”

  A tormented stare was her only answer.

  “They also mate for life, or so legend has it.” She smiled and pulled him closer, aligning their forearms and wrists as she threaded her fingers through his. “I liked that bit especially well.”

  Water washed across their feet, saturating her slippers. Genie did not care a whit. Her husband needed to stop fighting himself. It was tearing him apart.

  She held his eyes, refusing to release him. “You gouged out every trace of her, Phineas. Her gardens. Her blue silk walls. But not her fountain.” She tilted her head. “Why is that?”

  “I should have stopped her.”

  She waited.

  “I should have seen what she was and stopped her.”

  “But, you did see it.”

  He shook his head, clearly confused.

  “You wanted her to die. Isn’t that what you told me? As far back as you can remember. That means even as a boy, you sensed the evil inside her.”

  “No, I … I hated her.”

  “Of course you did. You are a protector, Phineas. That is your nature. Protectors cannot abide threats in their midst.”

  “How can you speak of my nature with such certainty? You’ve no idea of the darkness inside me.”

  His pain tore at her. She raised his hand up to her lips, kissing his knuckles and stroking his arm, giving him what comfort she could.

  “I doubt my own sanity, Briar.” The whispered confession broke her heart.

  “Never doubt it,” she said fiercely. “You asked how I can be so certain of you. The answer is that I have known you from the first. What did you think I meant when I referred to your peculiar nature?”

  He gave her a blinking frown. “My interest in plants, I suppose.”

  She snorted. “Lord Gilforth has an interest in plants. So does Maureen, for that matter.”

  “Then, what did you mean?”

  She reached up to stroke his jaw, collecting her thoughts before she explained, “You are two parts in one man. The first part is the head—clear of vision, precise and focused. That is the part you prefer to show the world.” She laid her hand upon his chest. “But here is the other part, my love. The very heart of you. The protector. The warrior. The one who recognizes evil and longs for its death.”

  “The blackness.”

  She smiled. Stroked his chest with her hand. “Yes.”

  “It is uncivilized.”<
br />
  “Very.”

  “Irrational.”

  “Oh, yes.” Her grin widened. “And it—no, you are magnificent.”

  For long minutes, he gazed down at her. Then, his jaw eased. His neck slowly relaxed. He sighed, long and deep. “As a boy, I came here often.” He turned his gaze past her head toward where a large rock arch curved into the sea like a dragon taking a drink. “She demanded that I stay out of sight when my father was away.” His fingers tightened where they twined with hers. “I dreamt of her death over and over. I dreamt of being the griffin. Tearing apart the serpent and scattering it at sea.”

  “Such dreams would frighten anybody, let alone a child. But she was deserving of that fate, Phineas. What you think of as blackness is simply your natural instinct.”

  “I should be able to control it.”

  “You do control it. It is you, for pity’s sake.” She clicked her tongue. “If you would stop trying so hard to deny your own nature, you might find instinct serves you rather well.” She sniffed. “It certainly has for me.”

  “You.”

  “Indeed. What do you suppose led me to you?”

  “It also led you to experiment with a bloody footman.”

  She shook her head. “That was not instinct. That was precisely what I am warning you about.”

  “How so?”

  “I denied my own nature. Everyone expects an earl’s daughter at age nineteen to make her debut, have a season, dance and deliver pretty compliments and mind every propriety.” She rolled her eyes. “Does this resemble me in the slightest?”

  His mouth quirked. “No. Well, perhaps the dancing.”

  “I tried desperately to be what everyone expected. Another Huxley girl who marries well and settles down into domestic bliss. But I was never the same as Annabelle or Jane.”

  “Or Maureen,” he said softly, his thumb stroking the back of her hand.

  She sniffed and raised her chin. “Quite right. I was different. And rather than stand firm in that knowledge, as I should have done, I patterned my life after theirs. That was my mistake. The scandal was simply the consequence.”

  His eyes turned curious. “What would you have done differently, if you could have?”

  She shrugged. “What I was doing when poor Lady Randall’s pug ate your hat.”

  He frowned. “Working.”

  “Learning. Discovering how to run a shop of my own.” She moved closer, aligning their bodies so she could feel his heat. “Now, it is your turn. What would you have done differently, Phineas?”

  Pale green blazed. “I would never have written that bloody list.”

  She released him to pluck the list from her sleeve. “You mean this one?”

  “Damn and blast.” His nose flared as he eyed the paper. “I am sorry, Briar. The thought of how I hurt you is—bloody hell, it is agony. Please forgive me.”

  “Oh, I have.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. I am a very generous woman. I might have mentioned this before.” She waggled the folded square. “Now, then, when you wrote this list, what was your aim?”

  A frown. “To control the blackness.”

  “There!” She tapped his chest with the list. “You see? That is it precisely!”

  He shook his head in puzzlement.

  “The attempt to stifle your true nature made you act in a way that you have come to regret.”

  “But I must control it. If I do not, then you will never leave my bed.” He appeared genuinely confused, which was how her laughter started. “I am quite serious.”

  She held her middle and tried to stop, but she couldn’t.

  “Eugenia. What the devil are you laughing about?”

  “You,” she gasped, knuckling away a tear. She took several deep breaths and released one final giggle. “That is like saying, ‘Because I am hungry, I shall eat an entire ham in one sitting.’ Which may sound lovely, but a sensible person knows how to manage such impulses so that one does not cast up one’s accounts onto the dining table.”

  “You clearly have no idea how much I want you.”

  She tsked. “What a lot of rot.”

  “Or the lengths to which I will go to keep you all to myself.”

  She propped her hands on her hips. “Such as?”

  “The day before our wedding, I rearranged the entire male staff at Primvale.”

  She blinked, recalling Hannah’s mention of such a measure. “You—you did that for …”

  He nodded.

  Her eyes widened. Oh, dear. “You hired ugly servants for me?”

  “No. I relocated them from other properties. I have many.”

  “Servants?”

  “Properties.”

  “Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes upon him. “And you chose ugly males for what purpose?”

  He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “To keep your eyes where they belong.”

  She raised a brow.

  “Upon your husband.”

  “Which, to be clear, is you.”

  The intensity she’d seen in his eyes when they made love gleamed there now. “Yes,” he gritted. “And you are mine.”

  Slowly, her grin started. Then, it grew. “Well, this is all rather primal, is it not?” She inched toward him, her feet sinking into the wet sand. “You are a very possessive man, Lord Holstoke.”

  “Only with you.”

  “And I reserve my lustful gazes for only you, so surrounding me with ugly footmen was rather unnecessary, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I did not know that at the time.”

  She squinted up at him. “Do you trust me, Phineas? Do you believe that I love only you?”

  He nodded. His eyes were an extraordinary blend of heat and possession.

  She dangled the list near his chin. “What would you like to do with this?”

  Deep, flinty, and unhesitating came his answer. “Tear it to pieces.”

  She grinned wider. “And?”

  “Throw it into the sea.”

  She offered up the paper in her open palm. “Then do it, Phineas.”

  He blinked. A heartbeat later, he plucked up the pages and tore them into shreds. Then, he walked deep into the waves and hurled the tiny scraps into the water. His shoulders were heaving by the end. Perhaps from the cold. Perhaps because he’d made a decision.

  She’d felt it. Seen the shift in his eyes. She walked out into the waves to stand beside him then laced her fingers with his. “Well done, my darling.”

  His chest heaved several more times. “It is impossible for me to explain how much I love you, Briar.” He looked down at her, his eyes blazing. “Impossible.”

  She smiled up at him with all the love that shone inside her, an entire sun burning bright and hot. “Then you will simply have to offer evidence until I am thoroughly persuaded. A man of science should do no less.”

  The next wave struck her knees as he cupped her face and kissed her with exquisite tenderness. Perhaps that was why she could scarcely stand when he was through. Or perhaps it was him—Phineas—and his fascinating lips.

  “I shall take you to bed now,” he whispered.

  Incapable of speech, she nodded. Suddenly, he bent and scooped her up out of the surf before striding swiftly toward the cliffs, her skirts dripping seawater. She was laughing and telling him to put her down, as he could not possibly carry her all the way up the trail, when something caught her eye. A shadow among the grasses at the top of the bluff. It looked like a man, tall and lean, holding something long and thin and curved.

  “Phineas?”

  He frowned at her tone and set her on her feet.

  She blinked. And the figure was gone.

  He glanced up in the direction she’d been gazing. “What is it?”

  A chill settled in. “N-nothing, I suppose. Only a shadow. Perhaps one of the gardeners.”

  Phineas’s jaw hardened. He took her hand and pulled her up the slope of the trail. By the time they’d completed the long climb to the t
op, Genie’s damp skirts and slippers had sapped whatever warmth she’d felt in Phineas’s arms. He drew her swiftly through the tall grass, but as they passed the spot where she’d seen the shadow, she couldn’t help tugging him to a halt.

  “Is this where you saw him?” Phineas asked quietly.

  “Yes.” There was nothing but grass now.

  Phineas went to examine the spot. “No footprints in the mud,” he noted. “No trampled grass.”

  She frowned. Had she imagined it? “Perhaps it was simply an odd shadow. The breeze does move the grass about in strange ways sometimes.”

  “Come, love,” he said, returning to her side and offering his hand. “Let us return to the castle and get you warm and dry.”

  She looked at her husband, whose eyes and hands remained steady. Strong. And she knew that, whatever she’d seen—a gardener, the poisoner, or a shadow—Phineas would protect her. He would protect everything he considered his.

  Slowly, her smile returned. She took his hand. “Walls and a bed, hmm?”

  “Mostly a bed.”

  She stretched up on her toes to kiss her magnificent griffin, lingering for a long, sweet while. “With such a tempting offer, how can I refuse?”

  *~*~*

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “As I have previously noted, husbands require careful handling. But if a wife goes about her work with diligence and cleverness, a man may find himself reshaped by her hands before he realizes she’s removed her gloves.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to Lady Katherine Huxley at a weekly luncheon filled with sound advice and womanly wisdom.

  From across his bedchamber, Phineas examined Eugenia’s naked form. She slept on her belly amidst rumpled bedclothes, pale shoulders and curved back bare and lit by the morning sun. Her confounding hips were covered by silver silk and emerald velvet. One small foot peeked out from beneath the blanket.

  His heart was still raw. The previous day, when she’d led him down to the beach, he’d thought himself mad, despite her assurances to the contrary. With her usual stubbornness, she’d refused to accept his conclusion. Instead, she’d systematically cracked him open and forced him to examine himself more thoroughly.

  Perhaps it had been the setting or Eugenia’s persistence or the anomaly of arguing with Hannah, but as he’d stood at the sea’s edge with the woman he loved, he’d felt as though time had reversed. Once again, he’d been a boy, sitting amongst sand and stone and water, attempting to trap blackness inside boxes. But this time, he hadn’t been alone. Eugenia had been there, assuring him there was no need for boxes, because the blackness was not weakness but strength. His strength.