When the Earl Met His Match

by Stacy Reid

  He touched his father’s shoulder lightly, and when he had his attention, Hugh signed, “Yes.”

  This commitment encouraged his father to face him fully, his brow arched in surprise. “Serious consideration?”

  “Of course.”

  His father’s remote countenance melted, and his features relaxed. A glint appeared in his dark green eyes, and his sigh was one of deep satisfaction. “I’d sent my man of affairs to verify their claims of which family they belong to, their situation and reputations. Each lady spoke the truth, and all are willing to stand beside you and be your countess.”

  His hands and fingers spoke for him as he asked, “Have you told them my secret?”

  His father contemplated the frothy waves below for a few moments before saying, “There is none to tell. Whoever you choose will be a countess, a part of the Winthrop family, a place where many in the ton hungered to be once. They will be wealthy beyond their imagination.”

  His father had taken Hugh and his two younger siblings from England when he was only a boy of ten years, claiming he’d found the air too foul to raise his beloved children. Society had been cruel in their speculations, and even as a child Hugh had understood the sly murmurs of “not the earl’s son” or “bastard children foisted on the earl.” He did not resemble anyone in the Winthrop extended family or anyone in the paintings which hung in the gallery. Even then, he had heard the whispers from the servants of his beautiful mother and her lovers. Was his father the Italian count? Or the Egyptian Emissary who had been in England around the time she got with child? Who amongst her many lovers had hair as black as midnight and eyes as dark blue and unfathomable as the terrifying depths of the ocean?

  He glanced back at the man who still retained traces of his ash blond hair and his vibrant green eyes, traits common to the Winthrops. A dark curiosity shifted through Hugh. “Father…do you truly believe me to be your son?” His hands and fingers signed the words before he had fully processed them.

  Shock flared in his father’s eyes before his expression shuttered into a civil mask. Hugh’s heart throbbed, and he stared at the old earl, careful to only display the mildest of curiosity. His father had always shown him love and acceptance. Hugh returned the sentiments, and it affected him somewhere deep down that this man truly was not his sire. Worse…he had hurt the old earl with his query. Hugh wanted to apologize for opening old wounds, but he remained guarded.

  “In all the years we’ve been together, you have never asked me this,” his father said gruffly.

  “You thought me ignorant of the rumors.”

  “Yes,” he replied with an evident touch of reluctance. “You were young when we left that vile place.”

  A spurt of amusement darted through Hugh. “Did you also believe me to be ignorant of my features?”

  His father gripped the head of his silver walking cane with gnarled fingers and with labored steps walked to the edge of the cliff. Hugh ensured he remained close but gave him enough space to breathe, to still know that he retained the power to stand on his own.

  “Marianne.”

  Hugh flinched at that low, aching whisper, grateful the wind had snatched it away and flung it down to the sea before it lingered in the air. A side glance at his father showed his weathered face creased with remembered pain and longing.

  He touched his shoulder, and when his father glanced at him, he signed. “I did not mean to stir painful memories, Father.”

  The only reply was a deep grunt that sounded like a choked chuckle. His father had married Lady Marianne Bartley, a beautiful social butterfly and the most sought-after diamond in the ton, when he was two and fifty and she was only nineteen. His father said the first time he had seen her had been like a lightning strike to his heart, and for the first time in his life, he knew love. Rumors of her many affairs had been vaunted even before Hugh’s birth, and when he arrived into the world and that world peered upon him, the wagging tongues had moved from murmurs and supposition to a roar—the countess had foisted a bastard onto her lord.

  All society had known, all society had spoken, and all had judged. Then, when it had been revealed that he was a mute, it had been said the countess was being punished for her sinful ways. Hugh knew it all…his father perhaps thought he was ignorant because they had been living near the coast of Scotland for almost fifteen years, but the old earl had also taught him how to be calculating…how to plan steps ahead, and how to use his money and resources to unearth answers to any question that needed an answer.

  “Father—”

  “The only thing that matters is that you are my son.”

  “And Caroline and Matthew?”

  His father observed him under slightly knit brows. “You are aware of the full truth?”

  He lifted his fingers. “We are not blind, Father. Did you not find it odd that only recently Caroline has learned my language? Before that, we barely spoke.”

  His father’s eyes went dark with unnamed emotions, ones Hugh could not identify.

  “You are all my children, and not a damn soul in society will say otherwise to your faces.” The earl’s voice sounded rough, choked, foreign to Hugh’s ears. “But I’ve done you all a disservice…hiding you out here, in the middle of nowhere. Caroline…she is charming and quite ravishing, and she is my daughter.”

  One with the darkest of red hair and ash gray eyes. There had been speculation that her father had been a footman.

  The old earl cleared his throat. “You must return home to take your rightful place. Caroline will need to find a good family to marry into and a suitable living found for William when he returns to England. I’ve sent a letter to New York, and he will surely be home in a few months. Our family has always been powerful, a voice for the people in the House of Lords, wealthier than most dukes! You have estates and tenants waiting for you. You have a sister and a brother who rely on you. You must live, my boy, live a life rich and full of potential. To take your place in Society, you must return with a wife who will help you fulfill your duties. A wife with a proper reputation and connections!”

  Hugh jolted and then faltered into stillness. The wind rolled down the mountains and plucked his hat from his head and tossed it below onto the sand. A wife…

  Though his father had lovingly and harshly prepared him for the cruelty of the world he lived in, Hugh had still been caught unprepared for society’s derision when he had stepped into the limelight a few years ago in Edinburgh. Somehow because he was mute, they had inferred that to mean he was also deaf. All their harsh criticisms whispered behind fans and false smiles had reached his ears. There had been a young girl he’d thought would make him a lovely wife, for in their several walks and carriage rides she’d been good-natured and charming. It had all been a façade, and her words of derision were remembered with perfect clarity.

  “I do not care if he will soon be in possession of the famed Winthrop wealth!”

  “My dear sister, that wealth is rumored to be one hundred thousand pounds a year, with several estates in England, Scotland, and Greece. Why, imagine how lavish your life could be!”

  “I’ll not marry a man as dumb as an ox! And I do mean that quite literally,” she’d said in her snotty English accent and had then descended into fits of horrified giggles with her sister as if she, too, had been astonished at her awareness.

  The scathing words hadn’t hurt, but they had shown him a side of the young lady he hadn’t been exposed to before, and then he’d gained more clarity on why his father had been so ruthlessly exact in his upbringing.

  “But he is so handsome, Emma!” the sister had exclaimed.

  Emma had tossed her artfully coiffed blonde hair and pouted. “Yes, but can you imagine being in a marriage with a man who simply cannot talk back to you? Ghastly!” she’d said in an accent of loathing. “How will he ever be able to tell me how pretty I sing and dance, and do you suppose
his laugh sounds like someone is choking?”

  The sisters had giggled, and how it had grated to hear it.

  “I daresay his silence could be a blessing…then you’ll have no complaints from him when he gets the shopping bills!”

  Hugh had thought their gossip nonsensical—worse, though he stood only a short distance, they truly believed he could not hear. He’d turned away, and then he had seen her…his mother, one of the reigning beauties of Edinburgh society. All the longings and pain he’d thought left behind had surged into his heart with the ferocity of a battering storm. He’d taken a halting step toward her, and she had paled, her delicate hand fluttering to her chest, her lovely features creased with dismay…or perhaps abhorrence.

  While he had battled with his hopeful expectations and the truth of his reality, his mother turned away and had made a concentrated effort to ignore his presence for the night. The knife had cut deeply, and a wound he had thought long healed had been dug into, and the old scars had been brutally tugged apart. It had infuriated him that seeing her, all the pain of her abandoning him returned.

  Such weakness was abhorrent. She did not deserve his pain or the lingering affections inside his heart. The memories of how she would sing to him and kiss his bruised knees had twisted through Hugh. The sweet scent of her perfume, how they would laugh and play the piano together. None of that had mattered to her. She had taken her love from him, abandoned him, never once looked back. That day, he had wrapped his sentiments in a deeper layer of indifference, burying the pain in a place inside that would never see it surface again.

  When he’d left the ball, he’d seen the countess waiting outside, appearing almost anxious and regretful. She had stepped toward him, but Hugh hadn’t paused and had strode past as if she were an insubstantial shadow. The whisper of his name had curled on the air, but he hadn’t looked back.

  He had returned to Glencairn Castle the following week, finally for the first time in his life ruminating that perhaps his father’s fear of him never finding a wife once he returned to England might have some bearing. It was a fear he had brushed off several times as an exaggeration from a man who ignored the delicate intricacies of society for too long. The old earl often planned Hugh’s return to England as if he were some exiled prince returning to conquer his land. Since his twelfth year, his father had impressed upon him that he belonged to the British peerage, and he would prepare him to stalwartly endure life within that society. He had prepared Hugh for England as if he would face a battalion across enemy lines instead of lord and ladies in the ton. Too often he had said, “Father, it is not a battlefield.”

  To which his father would squint his eyes and say, “It is, my boy, it is.”

  His father’s earnestness had amused him at times, but Hugh had obediently mastered all the lessons brought before him—the art of war, politics—a deep intensive study of the Whigs and Tories, their policies, weaknesses and strengths, literature, philosophy. His father had taught him about honor, friendship, how to think like a businessman, and even how to analyze cunningly, and of course, ballroom dancing.

  The old earl had attempted to teach him the delicate art of wooing and courtship, but those many lessons had been about the treachery and duplicitous nature of a beautiful woman, and how to best avoid actually marrying anyone “too enchanting, bold, and too decided with her thoughts and opinions”—simply put, the opposite of Hugh’s mother.

  “Did you hear me?” the old earl snapped, a hard edge to his tone. He shifted slightly and peered at him. “You are my son…and my heir, Caroline and William are my beloved children, and never shall we speak of this again.”

  There was no shame in his father’s eyes. Only a fierce pride and such burning love that a lump formed in Hugh’s throat. He signed, “I will select a lady from the list, and I will marry her within the month.” This he could do for the man who had given up everything for him—even the fierce and unwavering pride of the Winthrops.

  His father smiled, his first in days. “I am very pleased to hear that.”

  That half smile slipped from his father’s lips and his dark green eyes grew distant. “Remember,” his father cautioned, “love has no place within a marriage. That useless, trite, and overly bothersome concept has been the downfall of many fine families. Including ours. Do not ever forget.”

  “I am not likely to, considering how often you’ve mentioned it over the years.” Hugh once again looked toward the crashing waves against the cliffside.

  His father wasted his breath in warning him that he must not love. Hugh truly had no expectations in regard to anyone. If the lady who was supposed to love him more than anything else had left to simply live a life as unfettered as possible, why would he have any expectations of love or loyalty from anyone? The entire notion was laughable and did not even merit a discussion.

  Hugh was indifferent to the idea of such sentiments, never having sat down and yearned after the blasted thing. Despite his father’s many warnings over the years, Hugh possessed a very determined will, and if he truly wanted something, nothing could prevent him from seeking it. He suspected it was this that his father worried about, that one day he might want this love that had the power to ruin him. Rubbish. What sort of fool would he be to allow an intangible idea to inflict havoc with his life?

  “Love has a way of creeping upon you when it is least expected,” the old earl said with a probing stare. “You must be on your guard at all times.”

  “Truly? Based on your ramblings, I believe it can strike with the ferocity of lightning and thunder, and I’ve wondered why you’ve bothered to caution me against something that will come at me without warning,” he rejoined.

  His father scowled.

  It was difficult to explain to the man before him that he did not hunger for any particular connection. He wasn’t seeking love. Nor was he running from it. He was just not…interested. “I’ve far more important things to occupy my mind than an attachment with a lady…even the one I intend to marry.”

  Such as your impending death and the dark hole it will leave. And situating my family for a life of happiness and prosperity.

  His father appeared contemplative for a while, and Hugh’s gut tightened at the way he stared at him.

  “What is it?”

  “It cannot be her.”

  The words fell between them, a fiery arrow piercing his affected calm, and an unexpected tension mounted in Hugh. He did not have to ask for clarity as to who the “her” belonged to. He had entered his private study only this morning to see his father reading the letters and words that had been indelibly seared onto Hugh’s memory.

  Her—the lady who had been bold enough to berate his actions in advertising for a wife. The one who had responded to each of his eleven letters over the course of several weeks. The one who made him anticipate seeing that rider racing up the lanes of his home, black coat flapping behind him as another of her replies was delivered. The missives enlivened his days, and he slept with the sometimes caustic, other times lonely, then curious words rolling through his mind.

  It had been a matter of honor that he’d not used a devious tactic to uncover her identity. She wanted to remain a mystery, and it was important to him that he honor that request. Many times, he had fiercely suppressed the need to set his man of affairs to find out exactly to whom his responses were delivered.

  The first tones of her letters had implied the quill had been dipped in acid, so fiery and scathing her words had been. Something had changed over the course of their interchanges, an odd friendship of sorts, if he could dare to label it as such. But he looked forward to those letters even when she queried if he had found his wife in her dry, mocking, and often amused tone.

  What did she look like? What did she sound like…and what could she possibly taste like? Sweet or tart like her words? Oftentimes, it bemused Hugh that he wanted to kiss a lady he’d never seen. In the nig
hts, he stood atop this very cliff and spoke to her.

  Do you like to read? he would ask and then silently offer to her, I enjoy Mencius, a master philosopher who lived in the Zhou dynasty.

  That dream woman would lift her face to his and her lips would curve.

  How do you smile? With your lips only or with your eyes as well? Despite her bold and provocative replies to his letters, he believed her to be a lady who saw and enjoyed the humorous idiosyncrasies of life. Many of their exchanges were indelibly seared into his memory, especially the one that had led him to believe her heart had been recently broken.

  Dear A Gentleman of Distinction and Wealth,

  I think perhaps your remarks might be right. Love has nothing to do with marriage. I am a bit wiser in that regards. I do hope you find your helpmate.

  A Curious Lady.

  He had seen her, sitting at a small writing desk, her chest tight from the hurt she must have endured. The bright, passionate words that had declared so ferociously that love was necessary had gone, and in its place, he’d heard the jadedness and the pain. Hugh had wondered if he was being fanciful.

  Dear A Curious Lady,

  I am sorry you were hurt. Please avail yourself to my listening ear if you wish to speak of it.

  A Gentleman of Distinction and Wealth.

  …

  Dear A Gentleman of Distinction and Wealth,

  A very thoughtful offer from a man who seems to lack any refined sensibilities. Have I experienced enough of the world to be betrayed by love? I even wonder if what I had felt was love…and truly how does one measure such a sentiment? Is it real, do you think? Someone who I thought loved me has hurt and disappointed me most terribly.

  But then I reflect that those with familial connections who should have loved and protected my heart did not, so why should I ever expect it of another? I confess to you, and it is frightfully easy to do so because I do not know you, there is a heaviness in my heart, and despite my numerous reflections, I cannot understand my discomfort or what to do about it.