by Pendle, Eve
“No? Well. I would be charmed to hear ‘all about it’. Why not tell me?” There was honey in every guileless word.
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Or perhaps she did. They’d both allowed themselves to be drawn together by his impulses and her fears. But now it was the moment to warn her off.
“Is it a long story? I would think we have enough time.”
He smiled at her irony. “Very well.” He’d tell the story of his rakish activities.
This was his test. When a woman heard this story, whom did she support? But he had to ensure it was fair. Lady Emily was tender-hearted. She would need a very sympathetic version to persuade her that he was the wronged party.
He really had no idea whether she would pass or fail.
Chapter Four
As soon as she’d turned the questions on him, he’d tensed and perversely that had allowed some of her panic to recede. She would listen to anything he had to say if he didn’t pry into her past. This was the opposite of her nightmare. Spring instead of autumn, life instead of death, and Devon instead of Cumbria. Lord Markshall was not James Rowson, the future Lord Navenby.
“It all started with a vivacious young woman of my then acquaintance, called Matilda. She is now the Countess of Lakenham.” His voice was calm, but with an edge. “We met in the park, on Rotten Row no less. Matilda was, is, an excellent horsewoman. My stallion took an interest in her mare. It was rather diverting. Henry, my horse was getting rather amorous–” He stopped himself. “Anyhow, that’s not to the point. We became friends, and there was an expectation that I would court Matilda.”
So far, so usual. Horse antics were often liable to bring couples together. James’ horses had always adored her because they knew if she was there they’d get a decent gallop.
She was thinking of James again. She must focus on Oscar.
He paused. “Matilda was rather intractable, in the end and we didn’t suit. But her sister… Well.”
Emily blinked in the darkness. He couldn’t mean…
“Lydia was lovely and very flirtatious. I came to believe that she was attracted to me, and I was to her. Younger than Matilda, she was jealous, I believe, of her elder sister. She would meet me in secret, and we would talk and kiss.”
Her stomach ought not to be able to roil with nothing in it, but it did. Acerbic fire rose in her throat. A young woman scorned and another seduced. He had courted one woman and given rise to expectations, whilst stringing along another lady. She knew what damage such deceit could inflict. This was not benign. He was so much baser a rake than she’d ever thought.
All her muscles congealed like she was standing above a precipice. Lifting her head, she shifted an infinitesimal distance away from his curled tendrils around her. He allowed her to go.
“One thing led to another, as these things do.” There was the sound of crumpled fabric.
“You didn’t marry her.” That much was evident. She fought the urge to order him to stop telling her. Not knowing was so much healthier.
“I didn’t promise,” he emphasized. “She was willing. We had fun and the affair ran its course. She was that sort of girl.”
Emily bit her lip until the pain was more than that in her chest and pressed her eyelids closed. It was better she heard this and remembered what he was: a rake who used ladies for fun. A man who thought nothing of throwing over one woman who adored him for another he’d cultivated.
“I told her she needed to take some preventative actions. I offered to buy her some monthly regulators, Pennyroyal, and such things. But she probably already knew about these things and decided not to use them. The silly girl allowed herself to get in the family way,” he said regretfully. His inference was clearly that Lydia had tried to ensnare him.
A babe out of wedlock. Anger unfurled in the pit of her stomach. “Her family…”
“They were furious. Well, I only heard about this later.”
Emily jerked away. She was going to throw up. Only a few moments before Markshall had been soothing her. Now he was calmly announcing that he’d... He hadn’t just said what she thought he had. Her skin crawled, and she fought the instinct to brush herself off, or wash, or run away. He had touched her with the same hands that had... They had kissed. She had kissed him.
“What happened to her?” she choked. She imaged this girl, Lydia, bedraggled, impecunious, round with her shame.
“Lydia was sent off to a little village in the middle of nowhere to live as a ‘widow’. She’s settled comfortably now.”
“You ruined her.” She didn’t mean for it come out that way, somewhere between a sickened accusation and almost a question. Maybe it was a plea for this all to be untrue.
He didn’t confirm or deny the charge.
Her mind reeled. “It was breach of promise. They could have taken you to court and forced you to marry her. They should have.” That would have been fitting revenge. A proportional revenge that was the right line between accepting the situation and doing nothing and exacting a bloody pound of flesh from his heart like a merciless vixen.
“Ha. And have their family name dragged through the mud?” He laughed mirthlessly. “You don’t think I’d have meekly rolled over, do you? I didn’t promise to marry her. Either of them. It was hoped I would ask. But judges don’t blame a man who doesn’t buy a cow when the milk is given away for free.”
He was correct, but that didn’t mean she had to like the injustice of it. Ladies didn’t choose to pursue breach of promise cases for fear of it inferring some deficiency in their purity and desirability. It was only actresses and tarts who went after men for breach of promise. Most gently bred women didn’t want the scandal.
“How could you?” He’d broken Matilda’s heart and that was bad enough. But he’d ruined Lydia. Not a trifling dent to her good name like Emily worried about these days, but an irrevocable blemish. A sin.
“I’m a rake.” His exacting accent sounded like cut glass. “It doesn’t do to romanticize rakes. I was young, arrogant, and powerful. I wanted her, and she made herself available.”
His matter-of-fact attitude chilled Emily more than the damp ground. In the space of a few sentences, her feelings towards him had changed. Any nascent ideas she might have entertained that he might not be so bad had died in this pit. Their easy banter and the comfort she’d begun to derive from his presence had paled and begun to decay like a fern in fetid water without light.
“She thought you would marry her.” Yet another man dashing the dreams of a woman he callously rejected. They all just enticed a woman for as long as convenient to them, then discarded them like a mud-smeared handkerchief. “Even though you didn’t have a formal agreement, I think it’s horrible.”
There was a long silence. And if she hadn’t been listening carefully, she might have missed his response.
“As do I.” His whisper was almost silent. In the darkness, she thought she could hear a smile in his words. “Could you forgive it?”
“What, could I forgive you?” If it was light, he’d see her shaking her head instinctively. “For abandoning Lydia?”
“Yes.” There was suddenly a desperate hope in his voice.
It could have been naïve Miss Green who fell for a charming libertine and trusted him. Any woman might think a man was sincere in his regard and make a mistake. This was why she wasn’t married, after all. Because men weren’t to be trusted.
Sins shouldn’t be punished too severely, either, so arguably forgiveness would be the right thing. If for no other reason than to avoid a woman staining her own repute with a man’s offense.
“No. I don’t think I could.” Men like Markshall deserved no forgiveness.
“Of course.” He exhaled, a cross between a sigh of relief and despair.
The prickly thing in her stomach demanded more. “What did you think I would say?”
There was a shuffle of sound and the blanket was thrown more completely over her, still heated from his body. She flinched
away but didn’t reject it, allowing it to lie over her like a dead weight.
“Some women think wicked men whom they can reform would make the best husbands. They were desperate to heal the darkness in my soul. They made excuses for me. I barely needed to make them for myself. They say, ‘she knew what she was doing,’ or ‘she’s in a nice position now, comfortable, with her daughter’.”
“No right-minded woman would condone such an act.” Her strident words echoed off the walls of the pit. Every woman should understand the importance of a man keeping his promises, whether they were explicit or implicit.
“Perhaps not while they’re in company.” He sounded entertained. “And perhaps not if the man were a boot-maker or a sailor. But an earl? An earl of marriageable age, who has been paying particular interest? I think you might be surprised how many idealistic debutantes are willing to blame a woman’s weakness to justify their own inclination.”
“I can’t... That’s not true.” She didn’t want the world to be so shallow.
Minutes went past in silence.
“It’s the darkness before dawn, you know,” Markshall said eventually.
“Is that what this is?” It just felt like darkness. She couldn’t see him, it was just gloom surrounding her.
“Yes. Tomorrow it will all be over and forgotten.”
He meant to be comforting, but she could only see a young woman, alone with a young child. She’d like to think this was the end, but she wouldn’t forget Lydia. Emily would love to have a child, but not in the circumstances Oscar had described.
She wanted a normal family. Failing that, some days she wished she could roll back time to more innocent days. When she and James were best friends and adored each other, and there was no question of impropriety and everyone pretended not to notice Emily was a girl and ought not to hunt and fish and shoot with such abandon. The thrill of riding over hedges and streams following the hounds was enormous, with James always beside her, or just behind when he couldn’t keep up.
Was it the same for Markshall? Did he long for a simpler, innocent time, before he’d followed the path of vice? Or perhaps he’d always been on that path. Not likely, though. Children were born innocent and corrupted by the world.
“What was your childhood like?” Her question came out on impulse. There must be a reason that he'd behaved so abominably.
“Good.” His response was curt.
“Oh.” Was that all he was going to say? He might have been abused and refused love. That might be why he chased affection then pushed it away.
“You’re disappointed that I wasn’t mistreated? I was, obviously,” he drawled. “But I had food and drink, a bed with a horse-hair mattress, woolen blankets and a fire all night. I didn’t see much of my parents, but who does?”
She did.
“I had no-one sell me into an abusive, inappropriate trade. No-one starved me or forced me to make a two hundred silk flowers a day. I was well educated, and my school room had every modern convenience.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant at all. She tried again. “What of love?”
“What of it? I had everything. And it made me think I was entitled to even more. There is no way to turn me into a victim, Lady Emily. No dark secret about my parents not loving me excuses what I became. What I am. A rake.”
Chapter Five
The light crept in so gradually, Emily almost didn’t notice it. It went from utterly black to having gray highlights, to mostly gray. Then, amongst the rustling sounds of animals doing their morning breakfasting and ablutions, there were voices.
“They’re here,” she whispered. She wouldn’t have to talk to Markshall anymore, not that they’d said anything for hours. She could leave him and this moral-less pit behind her.
“Indeed. Are you ready for this to be over?” Markshall had his arms crossed over his chest and was slumped against the wall of the hole. His blond hair was mussed, and his blue eyes had dark circles beneath them.
A pang went through her. Whatever else he was, he was a sort of gentleman. He hadn’t hurt or taken advantage of her, and he clearly hadn’t enjoyed this night either.
“The Lady Hunters will tell stories about the great fern hunting expedition that turned into our terrible ordeal.” She tried to break the tension that had remained like spores in the air between them since her dream, their kiss, and his confession. “Your heroism in keeping me safe from the pixies over-night in a dark cave.”
She could joke now they were going to leave this hole and never see each other again. All the things that had been revealed in the dark would be invisible, bleached clean by the sunlight. “Miss Green might write a poem. She likes that sort of thing. I will be re-imagined as a damsel in distress, and you will be portrayed as a hero, a knight.”
He made a derisory snort. “I’m not a hero.”
“In your story, you’re the villain. And in mine, I am the dull blue-stocking spinster, who has ferns instead of babies.” They were beautiful, delicate ferns, but they weren’t the family she longed for. “A fine pair we are, an anti-hero and an anti-heroine.”
“I’m sorry, Emily.” He sighed with unsought for gravity. “I really am.”
She was about to ask why he was sorry when Miss Green’s face appeared at the entrance to their hole.
“Good morning! We have a way to get you out!” Without elaborating, Miss Green drew back, and an object began to be lowered into the hole. A ladder.
Emily jumped up. A cherry picker ladder. Easily sixty feet high, cherry trees needed very long ladders to harvest the crop. How Miss Green had found one so early in the morning, Emily didn’t know, but she didn’t care. She was profoundly grateful.
The ladder eased down, and when it touched the ground, a laugh bubbled out of Emily. She turned to Oscar.
An odd, half-smile played around his mouth but didn’t reach his eyes. “Ladies first.” He made a flourish of his hand and a slight bow. “I’ll hold the ladder steady for you.”
“You’re kind, but my skirts make that quite impossible.” He would be able to see her drawers. Sight was a funny thing. Despite their proximity last night and their attempt to escape with the rope, now he was able to see her, she felt different. That and his revelation. In the darkness she’d seen two confusing sides to him, and she didn’t now know how to act.
"I’m not so desperate for a glimpse of ankle as to look when you tell me not to.” He quirked up an eyebrow as he grasped the ladder and pulled against it.
“Are you coming?” called Miss Green from the top of the hole.
“Yes!” Emily put her foot onto the ladder, grasping the smooth wood of the uprights, and stepped up. It was stable, and she stepped again. Then quicker, and the light intensified. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. Then she topped out, and her head was in the breeze, the blue and white sky visible between the people and trees. A crowd of the Lady Hunters were all around, clapping and laughing.
“Lady Emily!”
She turned towards the shout and into a bright light, more than the sun she remembered, and she squinted as her eyes revolted at the intrusion. She blinked and swayed, then willing hands pulled her up from the hole and she couldn’t take it in.
“Lady Emily, I need to talk to you,” Miss Green babbled.
“What is going on?” The light made everything confusing, like waking from a vivid dream into an unfamiliar room.
“Well, that is what I want to talk to you about.” Miss Green’s eyes shifted to the side and she clasped her hands behind her back.
A terrible thought occurred to Emily. “Is there a photographer?”
“Lady Emily.” A man in an ill-fitting suit approached her, notepad and pencil in hand. “How was your ordeal? Is fern collecting a dangerous pursuit? Ought these cliffs to be closed for the protection of the public?”
“I will speak with you in a moment, sir.” Her smile was only just friendlier than a gundog baring its teeth. She rounded on Miss Green. “What is the m
eaning of this?” She grabbed her sleeve and pulled her aside.
“I’m so sorry.” Miss Green’s eyes were wide, and her eyebrows pinched. She thrust a shawl into Emily’s hands. “He overheard us asking the landlord about a rope and offered to fetch the ladder. It was the only way to get you out early in the morning. I thought you’d want to be rescued as soon as possible.”
“As quietly and quickly as possible, I said. Quietly.” So much for her hopes of starting new ladies’ fern hunting groups in London and elsewhere. A stone of resentment lodged in her stomach. She wouldn’t get to distribute the informative pamphlets to the ladies who needed them and give them an excuse to go out in the fresh air.
“When he arrived with the ladder and asked if he might just note down a few things for the local newspaper. I didn’t think there was any harm. And I didn’t see how I could say no, seeing as he’d been so kind…” Miss Green tailed off.
Emily knew that the reason Miss Green had run out of words was the look on her own face. She could feel the tightness across her mouth and blood rushing to her cheeks. “You gave our story to a news hack? I will be humiliated. Have you any idea–”
“Lord Markshall!”
She turned to see Oscar emerging from the hole, his crumpled hat safely on his head and hers in one of his hands.
In that photograph, she was bare-headed too, she realized. In public, without a hat. She may as well have been without a corset as the effect would be the same. People would talk and assume the worst of her and then they'd ask questions and…
“How do you feel after having spent the night alone with Lady Emily?” She heard the hack ask the question innocently, but there was a knowing hint to it.
Had she said she was grateful for being rescued by this ladder? She took it back. She entirely took it back.
Her muscles wouldn’t move, but the need to run was overwhelming. Hands shaking, she stuffed them into the shawl Miss Green had given her. She was going to be ruined. She would be disowned, unable to see her parents, not received by anyone in society, shunned and mocked. The care she’d taken over her reputation in the last few years was so much ash. Even her ferns would be out of her reach, as a woman with a decimated reputation could not lead a group of ladies.