Scandalously Wed To The Captain
Scandalously Wed To The Captain
Joanna Johnson
Bound to a stranger …in a secret ceremony! With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is ‘I do’ …but who is the man she has just married?
Bound to a stranger
...in a secret ceremony!
With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is “I do”...but who is the man she has just married?
JOANNA JOHNSON lives in a pretty Wiltshire village with her husband and as many books as she can sneak into the house. Being part of the Historical Romance family is a dream come true for her. She has always loved writing, starting at five years old with a series about a cat, imaginatively named ‘Cat’, and keeps a notebook in every handbag—just in case. In her spare time she likes finding new places to have a cream tea, stroking scruffy dogs and trying to remember where she left her glasses.
Also by Joanna Johnson (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
The Marriage Rescue
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Scandalously Wed to the Captain
Joanna Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08954-8
SCANDALOUSLY WED TO THE CAPTAIN
© 2019 Joanna Johnson
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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For my husband, family and friends—
thank you for all the help and support along the way.
Contents
Cover (#ufec79ab1-5c1f-5db2-a8c2-6d478b79bdb2)
Back Cover Text (#ufc0d69d0-622e-5f69-9632-3d4bc2d0b5fc)
About the Author (#u12f6bb32-9c5c-5c28-9f69-ff1564645f0e)
Booklist (#ufa6cdab3-fd56-5d70-b81f-7c75e0f3ebb9)
Title Page (#uce21aac2-fee4-5690-951e-dc1e7c98d3d6)
Copyright (#uae7b4261-d503-5561-8368-d4cfe1701435)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u0334417a-0b08-565a-84c5-3f7172654104)
Chapter One (#u8afb0d5a-3b97-5ba1-a92b-471e2e886081)
Chapter Two (#ue36c9923-6b85-5fff-8b24-2dace0451ffc)
Chapter Three (#uc72a358d-89e5-556a-ba9b-cd752d94cad7)
Chapter Four (#uc2704a0a-6be4-5830-b24d-8a5bde37e9b3)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
Grace Linwood stared out at the flat haze of the horizon until she could no longer tell if the tang of salt on her tongue was from the sea spray or her own tears.
How long she’d stood on the rain-lashed Cobb she couldn’t say; only that when Henry Earls had pushed a piece of paper into her hand he had worn a halo of January sunlight and now that same sun was setting over the sea somewhere far beyond her reach.
The cries of gulls wheeling overhead mixed with the whistle of wind in her ears, its invisible hands lifting her cloak to snap behind her as though it were alive. Tiny needles of rain pricked at her cold cheeks, at the hands that held a letter between nerveless fingers, but Grace was numb to everything but the lead weight of despair that had settled behind her breastbone.
In light of your father’s recent incarceration I must rescind my offer of marriage. The unfortunate reversal in your position and fortune render me unable to continue our engagement and I am certain you will be good enough to release me from any obligation towards you.
A hot tide of tears rose up, stinging her eyes alongside the salt spray thrown into her face. If only they would stop coming. Surely there couldn’t be many left to fall, but each time she recalled Henry’s callous words pain twisted like a knife in her guts and a fresh stream fell to mingle with the rain.
Perhaps some part of her should have questioned why such a man would notice her, pursue her above all the other young ladies of Lyme Regis, who danced and sang and flirted as brazenly as they dared, bright eyes fixed on whichever fortunate gentleman sparked their interest.
I was never one of their number.
Too bookish, too quiet, too plain—it had seemed a miracle when Henry singled her out less than a year previously, asking her to partner him in a quadrille, and the strange thrill that had torn a gasp from her lips at the first touch of his hand on hers was something she would never forget. Staring out across the barren sea, Grace felt those same lips twist into a grimace of pain no words could hope to capture as she recalled another unforgettable moment: how he had left her that afternoon, turning and walking away from her for ever without so much as a backward glance at the woman whose heart he had just ripped from her chest. There could surely be no better proof his interest had only ever stretched as far as her connections and fortune, and now she had neither there was nothing left for him to covet.
The approach of a pair of older women hurrying along behind her, heads tucked down and cloaks clutched tightly to them, almost made Grace turn. Instead, she stepped closer to the Cobb’s slippery edge as she heard their voices lower into rapid whispers as they passed by her without so much as a nod, the words barely audible above the keen of the wind, but their tone of malice unmistakable.
‘...surprised she dare stir out of doors...a shameful business...’
‘They claim he was wrongfully accused! They’ll have to give up that fine house, and with so many daughters...’
‘Bankrupt, I heard. Can’t imagine her young man will stay much longer, or that any other is like to make advances now.’
Grace flinched as each barbed word pricked her with their poison. It was hard enough that everything they said was true without the bleak reality of her situation thrown into her face: with no money, no good name and the shame of an incarcerated father—wrongfully or otherwise—neither Grace nor her three younger sisters could hope for any man half as eligible as Henry to so much as glance in their direction ever again, let alone allow himself to be shackled to a wife so humbled to dust.
She drew her hand across her eyes, feeling the wet tracks that streaked her cheeks, and took a deep breath like fire in her lungs.
‘Enough. Enough of this now.’
Crying would do nothing. No words would bring Henry back to her arms, nor any river of tears make him change his mind. Nothing could undo Papa’s mistake, his willingness to see the best in others the sorry cause of his family’s disgrace. Mama’s face was already drawn with worry, deep lines creasing the formerly smooth plane of her forehead below blonde curls that matched Grace’s own; she wouldn’t add to her mother’s burden by arriving home with trembling lips and eyes made red by weeping.
The thought of Mama’s tired face sent a fresh shard lancing through Grace’s insides and she pressed a cold hand to the place where her unhappiness lay like a rock in her stomach.
It wasn’t just my future that was tied to Henry’s love of me—or lack of it.
Freed from the expense of maintaining all four daughters, Mama might have been able to scrape together enough money to allow them to remain in their home. This was now surely but a fantasy and Grace felt herself sag in mute despair.
She closed her eyes, screwing them shut against the grey creep of dusk. The roar of the waves and plaintive cries of gulls called to her, curiously melancholy and mingling with her grief. She should leave this rain-sodden place and go home to face her poor mother’s disappointment, she knew, but something inside her held her fast to the spot on which she had last seen Henry, where she had realised her only chance at happiness had slipped from her grasp like sand through her fingers.
The wind had picked up, its strength increasing with the final disappearance of the sun’s feeble rays. It whipped about Grace like a pack of savage wolves, plucking at the ribbons on her bonnet and flattening her skirts against the chill flesh of her legs. With her eyes still tight shut and her mind reeling with anguish, perhaps it was inevitable that a particularly strong gust caught her off guard—all Grace knew was that one moment she was standing buffeted by the harsh coastal air, the next that her cloak had swirled round to unbalance her and then the world was tilting, the wet ground sliding beneath her feet.
Far too late she realised how close she stood to the edge. Her eyes flew wide as she grasped for something to save her, anything but the sickeningly empty air that surrounded her on all sides. Henry’s letter slid from her outstretched hand, fluttering away like a small white bird to drift out across the sea—but there was nothing Grace could do as she felt her balance shift to follow it, her heart leaping up into her throat in a silent cry of terror as she began, for what felt like a tortuously slow eternity, to fall.
‘Watch out!’
Grace’s head snapped back so abruptly her neck screamed in pain, the movement forcing a cry from her gaping mouth. The tumbling waves surged below her, spray reaching for her with freezing fingers, but they came no closer and when her senses jolted back into order she became aware of a vice-like grip encircling the top of her arm, the strength of one large hand the only thing restraining her from a drop that with a sudden wave of nausea she realised could have killed her.
Her unseen saviour jerked her back from the Cobb’s edge with a rough movement that made her wince. Still reeling, she turned to face him on shaking legs, her breath coming hard in short, painful pants as she struggled to control the frenzied racing of her heart. It took a moment for her to register the identity of the man whose countenance she peered up into, who returned her look with a scowl, but when her whirling mind finally managed to place his familiar features it was with a sharp punch of shock that she recalled his name.
Captain Spencer Dauntsey?
All the fright of a split second before faded into the background as she stared up into that face with frozen disbelief, weeks and months scrolling backwards in her memory until clicking to a halt on the last day she had seen him. Because it had to be him: eight years might have passed since she had watched in dismay as the identical, newly fatherless Dauntsey twins swung up on to their horses and turned for the long road to York, but there could be no mistaking that dark hair or the masculine cleft in a well-shaped chin. Only Spencer’s nose ever made it possible to tell which brother was which; healed badly after a break, its crooked line had always struck Grace as strangely attractive. The irregularity gave him—in her eyes at least—an advantage over William, whose pristine profile somehow hadn’t made her younger heart beat faster beneath skinny ribs in quite the same way. It had been a sad day for Grace’s mother when Mrs Dauntsey left Lyme Regis following the death of her husband and headed north with her sons to settle near their first posting, as well as spelling the end of Grace’s wistful fancies. The pair of matriarchs had kept up a warm correspondence afterwards, trading news of the twins’ military progress and other triumphs, although for the past two years Mrs Linwood’s letters had been unable to find their recipient and all attempts at tracing the Dauntseys had failed. In the absence of anything else to do Mrs Linwood hoped her old friend was well, wherever she was, and her two fine sons likewise...which had been Grace’s hope, too, until evidence that was not the case stood in front of her, glowering and showing not the faintest glimmer of recognition for the girl he had last seen as a blushing child of thirteen, now before him a grown woman of twenty-one.
‘What the devil were you thinking?’ Her grudging rescuer glared down at her, a pair of dark eyebrows drawn tightly together above warm brown eyes—the colour of which was presently the only pleasant thing about them, so filled were they with unconcealed ire that it made Grace blink. ‘To be so foolish as to stray that close to the edge in this weather? Don’t you know the sea is particularly vicious in winter?’
Grace looked up at him, still not yet able to form a suitable response to his bewildering anger.
What is he doing here? When did he arrive?
It seemed so unbelievable that she hadn’t heard even as much as a whisper to suggest the Dauntseys had returned to town after such a long time. She could hardly credit it, although a half second later she realised the unpleasant truth.
It’s no wonder, really. Who would have told us? Nobody wishes to associate themselves with us any longer, or stop to speak—we have no friends left to tell us news.
It was just so jarring to see a shadow from the past so unexpectedly before her. His frown only deepened as he waited for her to find her tongue and she could have cursed herself—if she’d known any curses—for allowing her wits to escape her so completely. For any other man she could have formed a response immediately, she was sure—but he was an altogether different prospect.
The recollection of how her cheeks used to burn whenever Spencer as much as nodded in her direction returned now to prick at Grace’s insides, a memory—given her current circumstances—she had no desire whatsoever to revisit. Spencer had seemed so much more mature when he had left to escort his grieving mother halfway across the country, an almost grown lad of seventeen, so it was hardly surprising Grace hadn’t had a similar effect on him. It was all too easy to imagine what he would have seen as he’d happened to glance at her all those years ago: a mousy child with her nose stuck in a book, far too shy to return the easy smile the Dauntsey boys had for everyone they met. There was no trace of that trademark grin now, however, and the difference less than a decade had wrought in the first man who had ever made Grace blush was startling.
She gave a small shudder of apprehension at the glint of danger in his narrowed eye, more unfriendly than she had ever seen before and shocking in its coldness. It would have been difficult to think what to say anyway, having stumbled across an acquaintance she’d never thought to see again; the fact he had morphed from a laughing youth to this granite-faced man only made her confusion worse, rising to mingle horribly with the unhappy weight Henry had forced into her chest.
Managing to at last bully her brain into working, Grace swallowed down her unease. Spencer towered above her, his powerful build barely concealed by the expensive cut of his clothes, but there was a touch of something like reluctant concern in his expression where moments before there had been only displeasure and it was enough to help her gather her courage and attempt to muster a reply.
His mama and mine were such friends. Perhaps he might look less severe if I remind him who I am.
‘I’m so grateful to you for your help, sir.’ She peeped up at him from below the brim of her bonnet, gauging his reaction. He stared back, silent and stony-faced, and her courage faltered a little. ‘Even if you don’t recollect we were once acquainted.’
For a long moment Spencer said nothing, the silence between them stretching out unbroken but for the insistent patter of Grace’s rapid pulse and the relentless crash of waves breaking over the rocks that could have been her demise. The pinch of his brows tightened, but still no light flickered in the flinty eyes as they swept from the top of Grace’s sodden bonnet to her ruined shoes, their chilly scrutiny sending a curious shiver through her jangled nerves. His face was as handsome as ever, but the new hardness she saw in every line somewhat tempered the admiration she had felt as a young girl. Only Henry’s features were burned into her mind like a brand, a face that with a pinch of pain she remembered she would never touch again.
‘You’re correct, madam. I don’t.’ Spencer answered flatly, as though barely able to summon any interest, and Grace wondered again at the change in the individual she remembered. That version of Spencer would never have been so brusque, but this one evidently was and she was left with no other option but to answer his indifference.
‘My name is Grace Linwood. Your mother and mine were close friends before you left for York—do you recall?’ She tried to force a smile, but her cheeks felt rigid with cold and frank discomfort. ‘It’s so pleasant to see you returned to town! Are your mother and brother with you?’
Grace felt a flicker of relief as the first hint of recognition sparked in Spencer’s expression, although it did nothing to thaw the coolness that remained.
‘Miss Linwood. I didn’t recognise you.’ He gave a short nod, the closest thing to a greeting she might have expected from this strange new creature. ‘My mother asked I bring her here in search of a warmer winter. Her health has not been good of late.’
Determinedly ignoring the mechanical tone of Spencer’s voice, Grace persevered in her quest for a convincing smile. ‘My mama will be so pleased to see her! And William? Will he be joining you later?’
It hardly seemed possible, but Spencer’s face managed to draw into an even tighter mask that sent dismay skittering at the back of Grace’s neck. Evidently she’d made some grave error, although what she had said to make the firm jaw clench she only realised once it was far too late.
‘He would find that difficult. He’s been dead these past two years.’
A cold trickle of dread crawled down Grace’s spine, drenching her with wordless horror that made her lips part in a silent gasp.
William? Dead?
It was unthinkable and for a sickening moment Grace wondered how Spencer could make such a tasteless joke. Surely the idea of him without his matching other half was impossible? Wherever one twin went the other had always been sure to follow, their identical mouths quirked into charismatic curves and long-legged strides so eye-catching it was hardly surprising Grace’s cheeks had warmed with heat she hadn’t understood. There was no way in the world one could exist without the other, yet the tension in Spencer’s broad shoulders was the proof he did not lie.
Whatever could have happened?
She couldn’t exactly recall the contents of Mrs Dauntsey’s final letter, but surely there had been no mention of the tragedy that now made Grace’s blood turn cold and dismay hold her tighter in its grip. All that life, all that animation and charm and potential snuffed out so mercilessly, leaving behind only its silent mirror image that brought intense pity roaring up from the very depths of Grace’s soul.
‘I’m so very sorry. I had no idea. We hadn’t heard—of late my mother’s letters were always returned and we had no way of knowing your new address...’
Grace’s words tripped over themselves, disjointed and stumbling, although she might as well have been talking to herself for all the notice Spencer took. He waited for her to tail off into mortified nothingness beneath his hard gaze before changing the subject so abruptly there was no hope of return.
‘Why are you out on the Cobb in this mire?’ It was almost an accusation, delivered so tersely Grace nearly flinched. ‘You could have been killed if you’d fallen. I would have thought you’d know better, living here all your life.’
The sudden veer into a completely different conversation caught Grace by surprise. Shock still echoed through her mind, the shattered image of the Dauntsey twins flickering as she peered up at the rain-flecked face of the only one left, and she answered with honesty she regretted at once when she felt pain crackle within her once again.
‘I came to meet with my fiancé. Or the man who was my fiancé, until a few hours ago.’
Spencer raised an eyebrow, some shadow of enquiry in its dark line. ‘Was?’
Grace nodded mutely, eyes downcast and fixed now on the expensive boots planted immovably before her. The agony that had run through her like a cruel river prior to Spencer’s appearance returned with a vengeance, freezing into a shard of ice that lodged itself in the pit of her stomach to merge with the ache of sympathy and awful surprise that already circled.
‘He requested I break our engagement, ostensibly on account of my father’s situation. You’ll have heard all about that, I’m sure.’
Tears threatened to gather at the corners of Grace’s eyes again at the thought of poor Papa and she blinked them away, although she was unable to stop one from slipping down to mix with the cold rain spotting her cheeks. If Spencer saw he gave no sign, instead merely shrugging one huge shoulder in a movement Grace found oddly unsettling.
Had he always been so...broad? The youth she remembered had been agile and lithe, his movements fluid like those of a dancer. The intervening years had increased the width of shoulder beneath a green coat darkened by rain, so different now but not unappealing, and Grace wondered distantly why she should have noticed such a trivial thing.
‘We arrived only three days ago. My mother was intending to surprise yours with a visit, but has been too ill to leave the house and was in no fit state to receive guests. If her health had allowed, I imagine they would be gossiping together as we speak. As it is, we’ve heard no news and I’ve been in no hurry to chase any.’
Grace flexed her cold fingers, her mind too full of a complex jumble of thoughts and emotions to know how to reply. Horror for William’s loss chased sympathy for Spencer that touched her heart, in turn surrounded by a dull pulse of unhappiness and shame.
If Spencer doesn’t know the particulars of my family’s situation, it won’t be long until he does.
No doubt Henry had told all their formerly mutual acquaintances of his clever dodge at once and lapped up their congratulations at his narrow escape. The whispers that already chased Grace down every street would surely only increase now with such fascinating fuel to stoke the flames of delicious scandal higher—how long until the stares turned to nudges and her name was dragged lower than ever before? Nobody would care that as the daughter of a bankrupt and supposed criminal all Grace now had to remind her of her broken dreams was a wedding gown that would never see the light of day and a heart battered by the person she had hoped would always cherish it. She was reduced to an object of ridicule, to be pitied at best and scorned at worst, and in her knowledge of just how far she had fallen her anguish was complete.
I will never give my heart away again.
Grace made the vow fiercely, almost oblivious to the handsome man who watched her sorrow in silent thought. To trust in the love of another person was to make a woman weak, to expose her to the pain, humiliation and agony of rejection that now swept over her like a flood.
She had one thing to thank Henry for, at least: exposing the naivety within her that could not distinguish real regard from false and the sad lack of her own good judgement. His cruel lesson would enable her to guard against making the same mistake twice and never again allow a man to impose on her who had no interests in mind other than his own.
I will never give my heart away again. Not as long as I live.
Spencer turned up the collar of his coat, feeling the wet material beneath cold fingertips. Ideally he would be inside now, warm before the fire in his favourite armchair and his black hair curling slightly as it dried, but the woman in front of him showed little sign of noticing the rain that was soaking them both to the skin or the howl of a bleak wind coming from over the sea, her grey eyes fixed now on the sodden ground and an expression of suffering obscuring her petite features.
Little Grace Linwood. I would never have known her.
She was almost pretty as a grown woman, Spencer noted reluctantly, or would have been if she wasn’t so frail-looking. Certainly her face was very pale, although ruddy spots of high colour showed she had recently been crying—for good reason, if her fiancé had so suddenly called off their engagement. A small part of him wondered why the man, whoever he was, might have acted so; something to do with her father, she’d said, although what she could have been alluding to he could only guess. Robert Linwood had been an amiable sort if he remembered correctly. Surely there was no reason to suspect he might have acted poorly?
Spencer looked down at Grace, weighing up how to proceed. In honesty, consoling an emotional young woman was at the very bottom of a list of ways he would choose to spend an evening. Already the whisper of the new bottle of port awaiting his return to his rooms called to him, its voice sweet in his ear, promising to blot out the memories Miss Linwood had unwittingly stirred with her innocent question about William. The glass and decanter had been his trusted companions these two years, ever since the day his life had fallen so spectacularly apart, and there was nothing more able to dim the echoes of the screams that haunted him.
However...
He clenched his jaw to fight back an irritable sigh. Something inside him, some relic of his moral Quaker upbringing, would not allow him to leave a lady in such obvious distress, especially the daughter of an old family friend. Most of his mother’s genteel teachings had fallen by the wayside in the past couple of years, beaten out of him by the grief and guilt never now more than a half thought away—but some dim gleam of propriety remained, to mutter that to abandon an unhappy woman in the growing darkness was not altogether acceptable.
Plus I’d never hear the end of it if Mother learned I left one of her beloved Miss Linwoods to her fate.
A swift scan about them showed no carriage waiting for her and Spencer made up his mind with only a half-suppressed outbreath of impatience. ‘We are getting steadily wetter and wetter by the minute. The house I’ve taken is only a step away and a good deal closer than your own, if I recall. You’re welcome to return with me and have my carriage deliver you home. My mother would be delighted to see you, I’m sure.’
He glanced down at her. She still avoided his gaze, blind eyes turned to the flooded ground beneath her feet, and Spencer’s brows twitched together in brief discomfort as a sudden glimmer of sympathy flared inside him, appearing from nowhere to surprise him before retreating just as quickly behind his usually impenetrable cynicism. Where the stray spark of weakness had crept from he hardly knew, but it was enough to unsettle him, more than a little taken aback by the uncharacteristic feeling. It was probably because she looked so small standing there, a curiously lonely figure swamped by her large blue cloak, unconsciously radiating such vulnerability that Spencer had to fight back another flicker of pity with more than a touch of alarm. He frowned again, the sense of unease beginning to rise within him that he sought to extinguish with a gruff cough.
You’re walking a fine line, Spencer, a little voice at the back of his mind piped up, a shade too disapprovingly for comfort. You don’t want to invite her in and yet you’ve gone too far to back away now. Was that offer truly necessary?
Perhaps not. Perhaps he could have escaped without extending a helpful hand, always a hazardous action, but surely there could be no threat to his defences from this pitiful drowned rat of a woman who peered at him through the gloom and whose answer was uttered so low he had to stoop to catch it.
‘I admit I’d rather not linger in this storm for very much longer, and to see your mother again would be a rare treat. But—’ She broke off, shame stealing into her expression it took him a moment to understand. ‘I’m already remarked on quite enough. I can only imagine how much more people would talk if they were to see me alone, on the arm of a strange man...’
Spencer stared at her for a moment, taking in the flare of colour that gleamed on her pale cheeks.
That’s her fear? That people might think badly of her? Evidently I’m not the only one behind on current events, although how she could have failed to have heard I don’t know.
Grace was clearly ignorant of the mutters Spencer now drew whenever he stepped out of doors, tales of his behaviour the first night he had returned to Lyme Regis already spreading like wildfire throughout the town. A small flicker of guilt rose to nag at him at the memory of his mother’s face that evening: concern, distress and—worst of all—disappointment crossing it as he had stumbled up the front steps, still with a bottle in his hand and his knuckles bruised and swollen. He should never have allowed himself to lose control of his temper, answering some drunkard’s challenge in the tavern with his fists... If he’d only been able to douse the flames that leapt inside him he might have avoided ending his evening in a pointless brawl that now everybody—barring Grace, apparently—seemed to have heard of, sealing his reputation as uncouth, ungentlemanly and almost certainly dangerous. Society gossips hadn’t given a fig that he’d acted in self-defence, exaggerating and expanding the story until it had become a lurid tale Spencer barely recognised.
‘If anybody were to whisper, it wouldn’t necessarily be about you. You might consider pulling your bonnet a fraction to conceal your face, however, if you’d rather avoid my scandal as well as your own.’
The complete lack of understanding in Grace’s eyes was almost touching, a welcome change from the judgement he saw in those that had looked up at him since his return. ‘Why would they be whispering about you?’
That wasn’t a question he particularly wanted to answer. ‘I’m sure my mother will tell you soon enough. In the meantime, I suggest we leave at once. Watch your step on this wet ground.’
He slipped his hand beneath her elbow, feeling at once how she stiffened and seemed to curb the instinct to flinch away. It was hardly a surprising reaction, he supposed, given her prim propriety in stark contrast to his own unconventional manners, but there was still something decidedly unpleasant about her recoil from his fingertips.
Spencer felt once again that unwelcome sensation of something he couldn’t explain, a dangerous intruder into the usual indifference he so carefully cultivated. The opinions of young women—and the rest of society—as to his looks, conduct or any other part of him were worth less than nothing, so there was no obvious reason for her apprehension to disturb him. It should have been a relief that she didn’t giggle, or simper, or slide an appraising eye towards him when she thought he wasn’t looking as so many ladies of her type did, or had in York at any rate; but then there was something that set her apart, some flicker of suffering in her face that spoke to him like for like and forced him to pay attention. He wanted to disregard her and her quiet pain as he would anyone else, yet with another flare of discomfort he found he couldn’t turn away so easily.
His mother was the single person he usually felt it necessary to in any way consider and for her sake alone he did his best to conceal the melancholy that dogged him day and night that her rapidly failing health only added to. The one other he had held in such high regard was cold in his tomb and with him in the silence of the grave lay Spencer’s ability to see the world with anything other than a weary disgust now so deep it was etched on to his soul.
With a grim scowl of effort he pushed aside the icy creep of guilt and grief that attempted to rise up within him, driving the images that threatened to accompany it back with savage force.
Now is not the time. Later, with a glass in your hand, is when you can do battle with the past.
The wraithlike, damnably disturbing Miss Linwood was still standing close to him, his hand still cupping the delicate bend of her slight arm, and he nodded at her with a forthrightness he only half felt.
‘You needn’t worry about propriety, truly. Anyone with sense is indoors, so we shouldn’t be observed.’
Grace flicked a sideways glance up at him, apparently on the verge of saying something at the edge he knew she would have heard in his tone. Instead she dropped her eyes at once from his darkly questioning look, wincing with the swift turn of her aching neck, and allowed him to guide her away from the sea that could so easily have claimed her.
Chapter Two (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
If anybody had told her the strange turns this day was going to take, Grace thought dazedly as she hurried to keep up with Spencer’s long strides, she wouldn’t have got out of bed that morning. How she found herself lurching from her solitary heartbreak to being marched along by a silent Captain Spencer Dauntsey she still couldn’t say, the firm—and distracting—pressure of his hand on her arm the only real proof she wasn’t trapped in some hideous dream.
The idea that she could wake from this living nightmare was so tempting—to find herself in her own bed with Papa reading in his library and a note from Henry on the post tray—but a sudden slip of her foot on the wet cobbles jolted her from her fantasy, grim reality flooding back in to replace it, and Spencer’s grip was the only thing that kept her from sprawling into the gutter. At least the storm meant the streets were deserted and nobody would see the highly inappropriate sight of her scurrying along after dark on the arm of a man who would apparently set tongues wagging about her even more than they were already.
‘As I said. Mind your step.’ Spencer didn’t slow his pace, his head bent slightly against the chill of the wind that flung icy rain into their faces. ‘We’re almost there.’
Grace squinted through the gloom, attempting to ignore the altogether too-absorbing sensation of the hand on her elbow that sent strange prickles down her arm and made it oddly difficult to focus on anything else. They were drawing into a crescent of magnificent houses, tall against the dark menace of the stormy sky and set around a small park of landscaped trees that bent and shook with the wind through their branches. It was too dim to see clearly, but Grace thought she saw a curtain move slightly at the downstairs window of one of the largest houses—the next moment a grand front door was flung open and candlelight spilled down a set of iron-railed steps, illuminating a gravelled path that gleamed wetly in the orange glow. Spencer ushered her towards it and before she had a moment to consult her thoughts on the matter Grace found herself standing in a bright entrance hall, her head spinning and her soaking cloak dripping on to a polished parquet floor.
She looked about her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the warm light thrown out by numerous candles. There were candelabras set around the space, their flames dancing in the draught that accompanied Grace and Spencer into the house, and painted portraits smiled stiffly down from the walls to watch as she hesitated, unsure of what to do next. She’d been too distracted to give much thought to anything other than getting out of the rain and now she stood in the unfamiliar territory of Spencer’s luxurious house she felt a thrill of some strange anxiety flutter through her nerves.
He’s a stranger, really. I barely recognise the man he’s become.
Dimly she heard Spencer speaking to somebody behind her, too low for her to catch the words, but it would hardly have mattered if he had been shouting in her ear for all her attention was fixed on the uncertainty circling in her stomach. Perhaps to take his offer of sanctuary had been a mistake. He only seemed to have offered under some kind of duress and it was with mounting unease she waited for her unwilling host to decide what to do with her now she had followed the lion into its den.
‘May I take your cloak and bonnet, ma’am?’ A maid materialised as if from nowhere, making Grace jump with her murmured question.
‘Have them dried, please, Thorne.’ Spencer glanced at Grace as he removed his own soaking outer things and handed them to another waiting servant. ‘It will take a short while to ready the carriage. You might want to sit before the fire, warm yourself a little.’
Grace turned away from him quickly, mumbling her thanks. The heavy rain had penetrated the costly material of Spencer’s coat, dampening the shirt beneath; it clung to his broad frame a little too lovingly for comfort, the soft white outlining a landscape of muscle that made Grace’s pulse skip more than a fraction faster. Alarm swept through her, wrinkling her brow: Spencer’s masculine physicality, so different from Henry’s slim elegance, surely shouldn’t even register with her. It was an irrelevant detail, no more to be noticed than the fact he had two eyes and a nose on his stern face.
She frowned, trying to silence the troubling thought. After Henry’s thoughtless rejection and the suffering that even now churned within her like a stormy sea, any strange reaction of her unconscious to Spencer’s admittedly impressive musculature should be dismissed without hesitation. It was laughable, the very notion of Spencer provoking her interest, and surely only a nostalgic shadow of the partiality she’d felt for him as a girl—she could almost have smiled at her momentary folly if the unhappiness in her chest hadn’t been weighing her down like a stone. She would never allow herself to surrender to such weakness again and certainly not in favour of a man so apparently aloof as Spencer now was. Not even she, with her admittedly poor record of good judgement, would ever be quite that foolish.
Her disquieting host was running his hand through his short crop of dark hair when Grace dared look towards him again, raindrops glinting in the candlelight as he brushed them from his head. Now they were away from the grey shadows of dusk Grace could see the warm brown of his eyes more clearly, and the fine lines, which on anybody else she would have suspected were caused by smiling, that bracketed them at the outer corners. Surely this dour man could never now get enough use out of a smile to make such lines, she thought privately as she watched him straighten his cravat, his brows drawn together in the near-permanent scowl she had already realised he seemed to wear unconsciously.
‘Rivers will see you through to the parlour.’ Spencer gestured to the servant who bobbed a neat curtsy beside him. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’
He turned abruptly to leave, moving towards one of the doors leading from the hall with long strides Grace couldn’t help but follow with reluctant—but uncontrollable—interest. Before he could reach it, however, it opened quietly on well-oiled hinges and a woman appeared on the threshold.
At first Grace struggled to place her; until with an unpleasant start she realised the gaunt figure barely able to stand was Spencer’s formerly vivacious mother. The change was so alarming Grace felt all words flee from her as she took in the drastic alteration in the woman she remembered: just like her son the difference from eight years ago was staggering, as though some malicious enchantment had been cast over the Dauntsey family to curse both their bodies and their minds.
‘I thought I heard you arrive home.’ Mrs Dauntsey came towards Spencer slowly, although her pale face broke into a smile that took the edge off her otherwise painfully fragile appearance. Her skin was so papery every line of bone was clear beneath its thin cover and her hair had the dull tinge Grace had seen only once before, on her grandmama after she had been taken ill with the bad chest that had killed her.
Spencer swiftly reached out a steadying hand as the newcomer swayed on her feet.
‘Why are you up? Doctor Sharp was quite insistent you shouldn’t be walking about.’
His tone changed abruptly from the brusque manner of moments before, now edged with an undercurrent of worry, but it wasn’t just the transformation of his voice that made Grace blink in sudden confusion that grew to join that already holding court in her chest.
The frown had left his brow, his features smoothing out into a look of concern that wiped the displeasure from his face and enhanced the comeliness of his already eye-catching features tenfold. He looked younger, closer to his real age of twenty-five rather than the years his scowl advanced him to, and even the brutal edge his broken nose lent to his appearance diminished with the alteration in his expression.
Grace swallowed down a small sound of dismay as she took in the drastic change in the man who mere moments before had looked as though he might take on a bear and win. Far from shrugging off her unnerving reaction to the glowering Spencer, this new display of tenderness only made it return—with a displeasing vengeance. When he wasn’t looking as though all the world was his enemy Spencer’s face was as handsome as it had been as a youth, and when it softened further into palpable concern it was uncomfortably similar to the countenance that had so intrigued her all those years ago.
She twisted her fingers together, startled by the unconscious response of her body. Perhaps she had caught a chill, standing out on the slippery Cobb in a growing storm? There could no other cause for her cheeks to flush so in Spencer’s presence, or for her heart to flutter at the gentleness with which he supported his mother—only silly girls with romantic fancies would think anything otherwise and thanks to Henry’s cruelty she would never again be one of those.
‘Please don’t fuss.’ Mrs Dauntsey swatted at Spencer with a feeble hand. ‘I heard you come back and wanted to be sure you were well. Whatever can you have been thinking of, going walking in such—oh!’ She broke off abruptly as she caught sight of Grace standing awkwardly in Spencer’s wake. ‘I didn’t realise you’d brought company with you.’
Grace dipped a respectful greeting, wishing with all her heart she hadn’t left a trail of dirty rainwater on her unwitting hostess’s pristine floor. Now Mrs Dauntsey’s attention was focused fully on her she saw some faint traces of the woman she had once known: a refined jaw and delicate nose giving an air of sophistication despite the waxy sheen of her skin and mauve shadows beneath eyes that glittered with sudden wonder.
Spencer nodded in Grace’s direction; a little unwillingly, she saw. ‘Mother, I’m sure you recall—’
‘Grace Linwood!’ The stiff introduction was cut off by a gasp of delight. ‘I’d know you at once, although I can scarce believe how you’ve grown!’
Her reaction was far more gratifying than Spencer’s had been, Grace thought privately as she felt a glimmer of warmth touch her otherwise chilly insides. His mother had always been such a kind woman, it was a relief to find at least that much unchanged.
‘Mrs Dauntsey, it’s so wonderful to see you again!’
There was a split-second of alarm as the older woman almost overbalanced in her eagerness to grasp Grace’s hands and Grace had to lunge forward quite inelegantly to stop her from falling. Mrs Dauntsey peered into her face, drinking in the sight of her with happiness so genuine it almost made Grace forget the tide of varied emotions causing chaos in her stomach.
‘Little Grace, quite the grown woman—and the very image of your dear mama! I’d thought to surprise her with my return to town, but as I’m sure you can see I’ve been a trifle too ill to pay any calls. I should have sent a note, I know, but I’m afraid I was determined to see her shocked face when I appeared on your doorstep!’
Spencer’s mother laughed, a thin peal so unlike the hearty sound she might have made eight years ago before her husband had died and her sons had whisked her away, only one of them now left to stand behind her like an unsmiling guard. Spencer’s formerly stern expression was already beginning to set in once again, obscuring the openness of moments before like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Perhaps he only allowed himself one moment of levity a day, Grace just had time to wonder briefly—with another unpleasant jolt of recognition that brooding could still be very attractive indeed—before Mrs Dauntsey laid one skeletal hand on the damp sleeve of her gown.
‘My dear, you look absolutely chilled to the bone. Won’t you sit with me before the fire and take some tea?’ She cocked her head, the sparkle never leaving the brown gaze so like the colour of her son’s. Out of the corner of her eye Grace could have sworn she saw Spencer stiffen, but there didn’t appear to be any question of refusal as the older woman gestured towards the door she had appeared through with a welcoming smile. ‘Do come through to my sitting room. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to see you again after all this time!’
Mrs Dauntsey cast a quick glance up at Spencer, apparently trying to read something in his face, although what she could have seen in the straight set of his lips Grace could only guess. Certainly to her there was nothing to be seen but faint displeasure, almost bordering on discomfort, and it was a relief to follow the slow progress of his mother away from his disturbing presence in the direction of her warm and comfortable sitting room.
‘Do sit down.’
Mrs Dauntsey waved a hand at an enormous chair drawn up to the fire. The flames cast Grace’s shadow long across the carpeted floor as she sank into it, her body leaning instinctively towards the hearth as though longing for its heat. She hadn’t realised how cold she had been; distress had numbed her senses, and it was only when her fingers tingled painfully she saw the blueish hue that tinged them.
There was a bell on a table next to Mrs Dauntsey’s overstuffed armchair and she lifted it with a small sound of effort.
‘There. Tea will be along in a moment. If I remember correctly, you always liked it sweet with plenty of milk.’
For the first time since Henry had thrust his fateful letter into her hand Grace felt a tentative upward tug at her mouth. Despite her fragility and in startling contrast to her glowering son, Spencer’s mother radiated warmth, her memory of the preferences of a child oddly touching.
‘That’s right. I’m afraid I still use rather too much honey.’
‘I’m not sure there’s any such thing.’
Mrs Dauntsey settled herself against her cushions and regarded Grace keenly, apparently hungry for every detail of her face and windswept hair.
‘Let me begin by apologising for my silence the past couple of years.’ Her voice held soft regret, real feeling that Grace knew was sincere. ‘We moved around so often after we left Dorset, even living in Scotland for a time, that inevitably some of my effects were lost between houses. Among them was my writing case, containing—as I’m sure you’ve guessed—not only all the correspondence from your mother, but also my little book of addresses. I thought I’d committed yours to memory, but when my letters were returned as misdirected I realised I must have been mistaken.’
When she smiled again it was like a shaft of sunlight in the darkened room. ‘But now I’ve returned to the place I spent my happiest years and the daughter of my dearest friend sits before me. So please—tell me everything I missed!’
Grace hesitated, taking in the vivid interest on the drawn face, but at a loss as to how to reply.
Where should I start? With my jilting, or Papa’s imprisonment?
To her unending horror Grace felt a prickling behind her eyes, the distress of the past few hours rising again at the question. Mrs Dauntsey’s kindness threatened to make a fresh river of tears flow, her innocent enquiry a stark reminder of Papa’s plight and the dizzying turn Grace’s life had taken for the worse—but wasn’t that the truth for her hostess, too? She’d lost a son since she had been in the north and Spencer had lost his twin; and both of them were now so altered it would have been forgivable for even intimate acquaintances to hesitate. So much had happened in the intervening years, including Grace’s new distrust in the word of a handsome man.
Some clue as to the workings of her mind must have shown on her face, for the smile left Mrs Dauntsey’s lips at once, her brow creasing in concern as she leaned forward to look into Grace’s downturned eyes.
‘Grace? Why, dearest, you look so troubled. Is something amiss?’
Her expression was so worried that Grace had to bite her tongue to stop herself from breaking down. It would have taken a heart of stone to resist the pull of that readily offered sympathy: how many times had Mrs Dauntsey soothed Grace’s bumped head or grazed elbow as a child, or passed her a sweet beneath the cover of a card table? Her kindness had always been apparent, but never more than at that moment, her obvious dismay tempting Grace to confess every secret sorrow she’d ever had.
A single impatient sigh from directly behind her chair made Grace start in surprise, the sudden movement once again sending a shard of agony through her injured neck.
He followed us in here?
She winced, twisting to peer at Spencer looming above her and looking for all the world as though she was the bane of his existence. He was close enough for her to have touched the soft fabric of his rich breeches and the very idea of such a scandalous—and tempting—action jolted Grace into speech.
‘Did you say something?’
Spencer folded his arms across his broad chest, the movement causing his impressive biceps to bunch beneath the scant cover of his shirt in a way so damnably interesting Grace felt her face flush scarlet as she hastily turned away again. A flicker of that same sensation she had felt earlier sparked into being within her and she would have given anything for a glass of cold water with which to douse the alarming embers that glowed at his sudden proximity.
When he replied it was directed over her head as though she wasn’t there at all. ‘I found Miss Linwood out on the Cobb in a state of acute distress. As far as I can gather she’s had to call off her engagement this evening, although I haven’t the pleasure of knowing why.’
Grace gritted her teeth, resentment simmering alongside her dismay as the older woman’s brows knitted together further.
As if I needed more proof his good nature has gone for ever, taking with it the boy I thought so highly of.
She could still sense Spencer standing at her back, in all likelihood scowling down at her from his great height, and the knowledge of his unseen closeness stirred the fine hairs of her neck. Irritation at his meddling coursed through her, although another stream of something close to a kind of breathless apprehension mingled with it. His voice was deep and expressionless, yet it possessed an educated cadence so pleasing that even in the depths of her annoyance Grace felt herself give a small shudder when he spoke.
It has to be the loss of William. What else could change him so drastically for the worse?
From his stance behind her chair—his chair, in fact—Spencer couldn’t see the set of his silent guest’s expression, although if the stiffness of her shoulders was anything to go by it probably wasn’t one of delight. Looking down at her from behind only afforded him a view of her blonde ringlets, one escaping from a cluster at the back of her head to snake at the base of her slender neck, but it was enough to make him avert his eyes in sudden discomfort. There was something so vulnerable about that nape, so delicate as it rose out of her lace-trimmed collar, that was deeply unexpected and just as deeply disturbing. It roused something in him, some glint of the weakness he had determinedly suppressed for so long it was a wonder to discover he could still feel it.
Be careful. A sense of danger nagged at the back of his mind, a clear warning against the perturbing turn this sorry business was taking. It must have been the suffering on her face that called to him, holding a mirror up to the pain that so often clouded his own features; but that was not a good enough reason to allow any assault on his restraint and it was with a frown he took in her words as she began to speak.
‘Thank you, Spencer, for that succinct summary of my misfortune.’
Spencer raised an eyebrow at her frigid tone, but held his tongue. The distress written on Grace’s features had been clear to see and his discomfort grew as he realised how much he disliked the memory. It might even have stirred the remnants of his long-buried compassion had he not been so resolutely steeling himself against the flash of momentary weakness the despondent Miss Linwood somehow already managed to provoke in him.
If Will was still alive, he would have her laughing already. He always knew how to make a woman smile. Then again...
Hadn’t that been the very thing that had come between them, in the end?
Spencer gritted his teeth in instinctive dismay as the question arose, but nothing could stop the relentless march of his thoughts down the one path he would have given anything to avoid.
Not this again. Not now.
He could hardly even recall her face: Miss Constance Strong, the lively, captivating woman both twins had loved—to their everlasting detriment. The image of her beauty was eclipsed by other memories, of how he and the man he’d loved as a second self had argued over her, the only thing they had ever been unable to share. If only he’d let Will win, had stepped back and stopped their quarrel before it was too late—but that was a pointless wish and one that did nothing to erase the guilt that had swirled inside him like an icy storm ever since.
You can’t allow yourself to walk that path again. If you hadn’t been so foolish as to lose your heart to a woman you might still have a brother...not that any woman would want you now.
Alike in so many ways, all traces of the cheerful nature the twins had once shared were now gone for ever: Will’s disappearing in the cold finality of death and Spencer’s snuffed out like a candle beneath the unbearable weight of the shame and remorse that had haunted him since that terrible day two years before. Some pale shadow of his better self lingered for his mother’s sake, a last echo of the person he had once been before tragedy had made him retreat from the world to drown his sorrows in drink, but even that phantom would fade as soon as her sickness overcame her. When that happened, his transformation into a mere husk of a man would be complete.
His mother’s voice jolted him from his maudlin train of thought. ‘Is that true? You’ve had to call off your engagement?’
Even from behind Spencer saw the way Grace’s throat contracted in a dry swallow, the slight curve of her cheek visible to him tight with strain. If she was battling the urge to break down and air her soul, she was putting up a good fight, he thought with a gleam of grudging respect, but nothing could overcome the kind probing of his mother and he at last heard a shuddering sigh escape her that lifted the intriguingly slight shoulders beneath her gown.
‘I...’
Grace stopped at once as the sitting-room door opened and a maid bearing a tea tray appeared, lapsing into tense silence she didn’t break even when the servant retreated once again.
In the ensuing quiet Spencer stepped smartly round Grace’s chair to stand closer to the hearth and table laid out before it. A quick glance in her direction now gave him his first uninterrupted view of her face since she had sat down and he clenched his jaw in sudden horror at the jolt that leapt within him at the sight.
Her lips trembled in obvious emotion and her hands were clasped together tightly on her knees, one finger rubbing at her knuckles in absent-minded distress. She looked so plainly unhappy, so heartbreakingly tiny in his enveloping chair nestled among the cushions like a lost creature in need of a protective arm. The shocking urge to offer that arm was suddenly overwhelming, coming apparently from nowhere, and Spencer shoved it back from the forefront of his mind.
What are you thinking of?
He bent his head lower above the tray, ostensibly stirring the tea leaves while his mind flooded with confusion and the shrill peals of alarm bells rang in his ears.
What is the meaning of this?
It was years since he had resolved to separate himself from the world and all the people in it—both for their sake and his own. Nothing good had come from his weakness for Constance’s charms, her laugh still occasionally punctuating the nightmares that plagued his fitful sleep. Only the death of one he loved and a lifetime of regret had been his reward for believing he might find happiness with another, far too high a price to pay again.
It was easier to turn oneself to unfeeling granite; to care about others was to wear one’s heart outside the body and the world was cruel enough to crush it beneath its boots if given half a chance. If there was something in Grace’s tender vulnerability and guileless face that touched the last shred of humanity he had left, he would fight it every step of the way—anything rather than risk another mistake, another soul-destroying loss; another scar to add to the collection borne by more than just his skin.
He roused himself with a brisk roll of his shoulders. The ridiculous thoughts that insisted on trying to worm their way into his already whirling mind would be dismissed. Grace would soon be gone from his house, taking her disconcerting effect on him with her, and then he needn’t see her or her accursedly moving sadness again if he chose. It was almost amusing he’d let himself get so carried away by such folly.
How foolish to fear something that was never a danger in the first place.
Reassured at last by his own sensible thinking, Spencer risked a swift look up at Grace as he handed her a cup, which she took in one shaking hand.
‘You were saying?’ Mrs Dauntsey prompted gently.
‘Oh. Yes.’ Grace took a small sip of her tea. It was far too hot to drink yet, Spencer knew, but the attempt at normality seemed to give her the courage to go on.
She sighed again, her eyes suddenly sparkling with unshed tears that made Spencer’s brows contract in a brief frown of discomfort. Grace took a deep breath before continuing, but the quaver in her voice was painfully obvious. ‘My fiancé ended our engagement only this afternoon and now I find myself in a position—oh, such a position—I just don’t know what will become of us all now!’
The tears she had tried in vain to conceal now spilled down her cheeks and she covered her face with her hand in a mixture of shame and distress that pricked Spencer in the soft underbelly of his determined indifference. Her dismay at breaking down was clear, but she couldn’t seem to control the storm of weeping that held her in its merciless grasp—it was an uncomfortable relief to Spencer when his mother hurriedly set aside her cup and took the younger woman’s hand in her own, helping Grace to stem the tide of misery that shook her slender frame.
‘Oh, my dearest girl! Please don’t cry so. Whatever do you mean, you don’t know what will become of you all? What can have happened?’
Grace brushed the wetness from her face with the backs of her fingers. She hesitated, a shadow of reluctance crossing her countenance, but the entreaty in Mrs Dauntsey’s face forced her to speak. ‘Spencer said you hadn’t heard of the misfortune that has befallen my family.’
Spencer watched as his mother nodded warily, her glance flickering towards him briefly in a look he had no need to puzzle over. Disappointment and unhappiness gleamed in it, a clear indication of Mrs Dauntsey’s thoughts. ‘That’s correct. I haven’t been able to stir outside since we arrived and I’m afraid an...indiscretion of Spencer’s means we’ve had no visitors to bring us news.’
Another flit of guilt pinched Spencer beneath his ribs at his mother’s delicate phrasing of a distinctly indelicate event. As a Quaker she disapproved strongly of his drinking and as his mother she despaired to see its effect on her only surviving son. His very public fight had made him notorious in a society where once he might have been welcomed with open arms, his fortune and face usually a guarantee of entry into the upper echelons. Now his actions would rob his poor mother of respectable company—for who would choose to spend time with a family whose sole heir was so evidently running wild? The inconvenient truth of his only having acted in self-defence wouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of a good story, the rumours about him too salacious to be tempered by facts.
Spencer tracked the fascinating movement of Grace’s throat as she swallowed down another sigh, bobbing her head in a hopeless nod. ‘I see. Well. Poor Papa has been taken to Fleet Prison in London. He is completely innocent of all charges, of course, but he is accused of making fraudulent investments, running up debts and any number of financial indiscretions actually performed by his dishonest business partners. He has been declared bankrupt in his absence.’
Mrs Dauntsey’s lips parted in frank disbelief. ‘That cannot be so! Surely nobody could be so stupid as to believe your father capable of such actions?’ She pressed a hand to her thin chest, clearly shocked to the core. ‘Such a thing is impossible. Your father was always such a gentleman! Where are the real perpetrators, who allow him to be exposed to these lies?’
‘They have fled, cowards that they are. Without their testimony there is nobody to take the blame but Papa, even though the first he knew of this whole affair was when the bailiffs came knocking at our door.’
Grace looked down at her hands, fingers clenched into fists and knuckles shining white through pale skin. ‘As I’m sure you can imagine, our standing in society is now lower than dirt. I had hoped my fiancé would help us in our plight, but now...’ Her lips trembled again and she folded them into a tight line of unhappiness that made Spencer’s own twitch in unconscious reply. ‘We have no prospects, no fortune, and with four daughters to support Mama faces the likelihood of having to give up our home.’ She finished on a dry sob and clenched her jaw shut so firmly Spencer saw the tendons of her neck flex painfully.
There was a silence.
Standing before the fireplace, Spencer felt the warmth of the flames creeping up his back, although nothing could chase away the chilly dread that flared within his gut. It was a feeling close to sympathy that circled inside him, startlingly insistent and refusing to be dismissed. The sight of Grace’s tears spoke to something in him, some aggravating weakness that he had thought his studied apathy for the world had killed off—but there it was, the desire to wipe away her tears, and the suffering in her look called to his own in a language he understood only too well.
The quiet stretched on for several moments, only the movement of Grace absently stirring her tea breaking the illusion all three were carved from stone. It almost made him jump when his mother cleared her throat and spoke with businesslike directness.
‘Well. As I see it, there’s an obvious solution; at least in part.’
Mrs Dauntsey glanced towards Spencer and he cocked his head in wordless query.
What scheme has she come up with?
Unease began to filter into his mind and he felt his eyes narrow in suspicion.
If his mother saw his cautious reaction, she gave no clue. ‘I will, of course, employ you as my companion.’ She fixed Grace with a forthright gaze, oblivious to Spencer’s start of alarm. ‘You can come to live here and I will meet all your expenses. With only the three younger girls to support, I’m sure your excellent mama will more than rise to the challenge.’
Watching with disbelieving eyes, Spencer saw Grace’s mouth drop open, all words stolen from her by utter surprise.
‘You cannot be serious?’
‘As the grave. It would be a joy to have you about the house and renew the friendship between our families. If you came to live here, it would surely ease some of the financial strain, and Spencer wouldn’t feel obliged to waste his time attempting small talk to entertain his aged mother. After all—’ Mrs Dauntsey shot him another look that made his insides twist ‘—your dear mother and sisters are likely to be the only company I’ll have to enjoy, given the circumstances.’
Spencer sucked in a sharp breath of dismay, covered by an abrupt turn away from both women and towards the hearth.
The very last thing he wanted was for Grace to take up residence in his home, her disconcerting effect on him already becoming an irritation he could have done without. It was bad enough he had felt that damned glimmer of something for her already, without the dangers of having to see her admittedly not unpretty face across his breakfast table every morning. If only there was something he could say, something he could do to dissuade his mother from this plan—but one quick glance backwards pricked at his conscience. His already tainted reputation would have long-reaching effects, the rumours of his temper unlikely to be forgotten. Perhaps there might be some small glint of merit in her scheme—although mingled with the threat of unseen complications for himself.
‘But I could be getting ahead of myself. You might be hoping your fiancé will return to you?’
The shake of Grace’s head was the most vehement movement Spencer had seen her make yet. ‘Henry would never seek my hand again. I wish I’d known before what I now see so clearly: he never wanted anything from me other than my wealth and connections. As soon as I had neither his interest vanished at once. He never—he never truly loved me.’ She gave a small sigh, a wretched thing that nipped at Spencer uncomfortably. ‘The details of our separation will be forgotten soon enough, I am sure. The only thing I wish to remember with any clarity is never to venture my heart in such a way ever again. The risk to one’s soul is too great.’
It was as though she had read his mind, Spencer recognised with a frown of surprise as Grace took another sip from her cup. It was the same conclusion he had come to as he sat within the belly of a storm-tossed ship returning to England, bandages staunching the flow of his blood and pain from more than just his wounds making him want to cry out in agony. Constance had been the first woman to capture his heart and his actions because of it had cost him dearly—he would not be caught out twice. How the pale young lady who had claimed his chair had managed to so exactly articulate his own feelings he didn’t know—only that it was almightily unnerving.
‘My only hesitation in accepting your kind offer would be my reputation.’ A rosy blush spread across Grace’s cheeks as she continued, the colour illuminating the delicate lines of her cheekbones and jaw that Spencer suddenly realised—with another pang of dismay—were very fine indeed. ‘I couldn’t bring disgrace upon this house and allow you to be connected to our shame.’
Mrs Dauntsey waved a dismissive hand, although Spencer could have sworn he saw a glint of irony in her eye.
It wouldn’t be only Grace who made this house notorious. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Mother?
She’d been too frail to leave the house and hear the whispers about him first-hand, but she was no fool. Anybody who had ever walked among the judgement of the ton knew how they could drag a man down with their words, destroying his good name in the blink of an eye if they thought him undeserving.
‘I couldn’t care three straws about that. Society busybodies will always find something to talk about. I don’t see what anybody else’s opinion has to do with it—and that’s my final word!’
She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes briefly. Her chest rose and fell a little more quickly than usual, Spencer saw in swift alarm—she was tiring rapidly, and very soon she would be worn out completely.
She needs to rest. This has been too much excitement.
Whatever his thoughts on the matter, now was not the time for further discussion. His mother’s colour had already ebbed a little and her breaths bordered on laboured as she smiled across at Grace apologetically.
‘I tire so easily these days. I ought to be taking to my chamber now.’ She paused for a moment to regain her breath. ‘But before I do, may we shake on our arrangement? If you are agreeable, of course?’
Spencer concealed his uneasiness behind one large hand, rubbing the dark bristles of his chin. Grace appeared to be hesitating, obviously turning the words over in her mind—but then she extended her hand and his mother took it firmly.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Mrs Dauntsey.’ Grace’s voice shook, but this time the tremor seemed of awed relief rather than bleak emotion. ‘You will never know how grateful I am for your help.’
‘It’s time you called me Dorothea and I only wish I could do more. Please assure your mother of that and tell her I long to see her and your sisters soon.’ Mrs Dauntsey’s eyes were warm, but an edge of pain had crept into her tone and Spencer stepped towards her.
‘If you ladies are quite finished, I shall escort you to your rooms, Mother.’ He fixed her with a look that brooked no refusal. ‘Miss Linwood, the carriage will be waiting for you now. If you are willing, I shall send it again to collect you tomorrow evening.’
‘Thank you.’ Grace averted her eyes from his, the trace of a blush flickering a little stronger under his intense watch. There was none of the warmth with which she had addressed his mother, he noticed.
But who do you have to blame for that?
He sketched a short bow, attempting to block out the unwelcome question. ‘I hope you will excuse us. Rivers will see you out. Goodnight, Miss Linwood.’
Easing his mother to her feet, Spencer helped her from the room. Pausing on the threshold, he turned back briefly, intending to say something more—but all words escaped him as he saw the dazed relief that had flooded Grace’s face and the sudden beauty of her wonderstruck smile sent him striding mutely away before she could turn to see his grim discomfort at the sight.
Chapter Three (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
Spencer strode through the house to his library with his jaw clenched on rising bad temper, trying with each footstep to outpace the thoughts that pursued him. The same old nightmare, the one he dreaded more than any other, had visited him as he slept the previous night and the combination of waking bathed in sweat and the tiredness that resulted from it did not improve his mood. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep that tore at him, however, or the usual sickening guilt that made him reach for the nearest bottle. Ever since Grace’s arrival two weeks before he’d found it increasingly difficult to find an escape from the troubling reaction her presence provoked in him and it was becoming more vexing by the day.
It wasn’t as though he had any real basis for complaint, some irritable part of him recognised. The difference in his mother was striking, even after such a short time, and the change in her would have cheered anybody to see it. She still tired easily and the slow sinking of her features into her drawn face hadn’t ceased, but there was a gleam in her eye Spencer hadn’t seen for months and it was plain Grace’s company was the cause. The regular visits from Mrs Linwood and her three younger daughters had helped, too, no doubt, but it was Grace who was always busily arranging a warm shawl about Dorothea’s shoulders or making suggestions to the cook that might tempt her to take more than a mouthful. He would have to admit having Grace come to live with them, comfortably installed in her own private rooms, was the best thing that could have happened for his mother—especially given his own behaviour had played a large part in her isolation.
No. He couldn’t complain. And yet...
She’s handsome when she smiles.
The unwelcome thought flashed through Spencer’s mind yet again and he scowled to himself in a combination of frustration and alarm. Not this nonsense again. Is there no escaping it?
It was irritatingly true that Grace’s countenance grew in appeal the longer one looked at her. At first sight her fair skin had seemed colourless to him, her pale hair and eyes frankly a little bland, but closer inspection showed an almost pearlescent quality to her complexion and, when the shadows of sadness cleared, her eyes sparkled with an intelligence that would surely interest any sensible man. Even the fragility of her slight frame took on a new elegance after reluctant study, her movements measured and step quiet as she moved through his house.
But it was that smile—that damned smile—that made the biggest difference. It gave life to her face and animation to her features, highlighting the graceful contours of her pronounced cheekbones as though a candle flickered behind them. Only a simpleton could ever think she was plain after seeing that curve of her lips and the tiny dimple that appeared in one soft cheek—
No!
Spencer brought his fist down hard on his thigh as he walked, the furrow between his brows growing deeper by the second.
This will not do!
He shook his head fiercely against the unwanted barrage of images that bombarded him. Dwelling on a woman’s beauty was for other men, men who hadn’t caused such terrible destruction with their misplaced affections. It was for them to stare and pine and write poems praising their lady’s limitless charms: all things he could no longer entertain since his catastrophic entanglement with Constance had caused such devastation. Love and death walked side by side in his mind now. Guilt ran like an icy river beneath both, linking them together with its cold fingers, and no amount of time would thaw the frost that formed around his heart. Grace might have attracted his attention for some absurd reason, but she would never be allowed to be anything more to him than a reluctantly hosted guest. The consequences were too stark and the risk of unimaginable pain could have made a weaker man shudder.
Not that she would want to be anything more. That idiot Henry Earls has cured her of any such notions once and for all, I fancy.
With a fresh wave of aggravation Spencer wrenched his focus away to remember the decanter waiting for him beside his favourite reading chair, which would provide some relief, hopefully, from the disloyal workings of his mind. Whether drink had become his closest friend or worst enemy was becoming difficult to tell these days, he thought darkly; but it was the only thing that helped silence the demons that plagued him, and with the added complication of Grace moving warily about his home his mind felt more troubled than ever.
The library door stood slightly ajar when he reached it and pushed through with an impatient hand. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been quite so surprising, then, to find someone already in the room, although Spencer’s thoughts were too occupied to consider the possibility until his heart gave a sudden lurch at the sight that met his eyes.
Grace sat curled in the very armchair he had been aiming for, her legs tucked beneath her and eyes intent on a dog-eared book Spencer recognised at once. It was one of a pair Mr Dauntsey had given his sons eight years before on the last birthday they would spend with him, the name of one twin inscribed in each in their father’s slanting hand. Spencer’s copy lay safely in his untidy desk, so it had to be William’s that Grace held in slender fingers, poring over the contents with her delicate profile thrown into sharp relief by the window behind her head. It was a pose Spencer suddenly remembered vividly from when Grace was a girl, too shy to speak much in his presence, but she was far more confident now, an intelligent and accomplished young woman, and the knowledge kindled something within the broad spread of his chest.
Pull yourself together, man. So she reads—what of it? She always was a bluestocking.
She hadn’t noticed him standing uncertainly in the doorway. Engrossed in her book, Spencer was at perfect liberty to take in the blonde tendrils that gleamed softly in the winter sunlight as they tumbled about cheeks it would surely be a fine thing to touch... It was an unacceptable urge, but one that roared up with a power that shocked him, strong enough to cause the faintest flicker of something long hidden deep within him to attempt to spark into life.
Spencer took a breath to centre himself, alarmed by the unwanted direction of his thoughts.
You shouldn’t think like that. Have you no control?
It was bad enough to feel such things in private—to do so in Grace’s presence was even worse. She’d be horrified if she suspected how his mind wandered, he was sure; aside from a polite greeting each morning she barely spoke to him, apparently unwilling to spend much time in his company. Any accord they might have enjoyed as children had long since dissipated, chased away by the brusque new identity the loss of Will had forced Spencer, in his guilt and boundless grief, to adopt.
He ought to say something, probably, and stop lingering in doorways, but it was strangely difficult to think what that something should be—especially when Grace flipped to the front page to read where Will’s name would live on for ever in faded ink. Her brows twitched together, the sudden sorrow there only enhancing the fine lines of her face, and that look flew straight to the most vulnerable part of Spencer’s soul. How much had his mother told her of his twin’s too-early demise? Not even Dorothea knew the whole story, of course, or that Constance had even existed—his shame would never allow it—and the nightmares that stalked him whenever he slept would ensure he never forgot. No doubt Grace would flee from him if she ever knew the truth—but wouldn’t he deserve that, for the damage his stupid actions had done?
He cleared his throat, although his voice, when he managed to force out the words, still sounded a trifle strangled.
‘I hadn’t thought you’d be in here.’
Grace started, closing the book with a guilty snap.
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ She unfurled herself hurriedly and slipped off the chair, although she didn’t relinquish the book as she stood before him, looking for all the world as though she wished she was anywhere else.
Spencer frowned, horribly aware of an awkward silence descending on the room. Perhaps once he would have been able to fill it with banal small talk, but now all he could think of was how strangely pleasing the tilt of Grace’s chin was as she looked up at him, tapering to a gentle point he had no way of knowing she hated.
That was yet another thought he shouldn’t be allowing and it was a relief when Grace was the one to break the rising tension between them.
‘I was just looking through this anthology of poems. Some of them are really quite beautiful.’ She paused, apparently weighing up her next words. Spencer realised his jaw had tightened as he willed her not to speak them, but his wordless entreaty was in vain as she continued, a shadow of sympathy in her grey eyes he suddenly couldn’t bear. ‘I saw William’s name written in the cover, along with a dedication from your father. I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was for the loss of Mr Dauntsey, or for Will. You must miss them so fiercely. How have you fared these past years?’
The muscles in Spencer’s throat contracted like a vice.
Of all the questions she could have asked. How have I fared?
Of course he missed his father. The senior Captain Dauntsey had been a warm, compassionate man devoted to his wife and sons and his passing had plunged them all into mourning so deep Spencer had privately known his mother would never truly recover, even after eight long years. There was no guilt, though—Richard Dauntsey had died of a weak heart in his own bed, surrounded by his family in his final moments. William had perished in a foreign land, bleeding in the mud and never knowing how much Spencer regretted the final angry words between them. There could be no comparison and Spencer knew his reply would be harsh before he even opened his mouth.
‘That isn’t something I wish to discuss.’ He saw how Grace blinked at the coldness of his tone and felt an immediate—and uncomfortable—twinge of remorse, but he couldn’t bring himself to let her draw him in. There was already something about Grace that called to him, some reflection of his own suffering he saw in her stormy gaze. The imprisonment of her father, the loss of her reputation and finally her fiancé: it was no wonder she so often wore a cloak of sadness valiantly concealed beneath a stiff smile. Her stoicism was admirable—and that admiration was growing more dangerous by the minute.
‘You have enough troubles of your own, surely, to want to know more of mine. Your time would be better spent thinking of yours than questioning others.’
As soon as the words slipped out Spencer knew they’d been cruel. The sympathy in Grace’s face slowly merged into a look of such quiet unhappiness Spencer felt a kick of powerful regret, so swift it was like a blow to the gut.
Damn you and your barbed tongue. That was unkind.
Grace’s reply was soft, yet so steady it stirred the ashes of Spencer’s worrying admiration even more. ‘My troubles are never far from my mind, I assure you. There’s scarcely a moment Papa is not in my thoughts, but I know he wouldn’t want me to surrender to despair.’
He shouldn’t have rubbed salt in her wounds, Spencer knew, reminding her how all her hopes for the future had turned to dust and what she was now reduced to. The proof was in the way her pretty lips twitched as though fighting the urge to turn down at the corners, all caused by his thoughtless remark born of fear she might see through his defensive façade to the damaged man within.
Internally he muttered something unfit for the ears of a lady, in equal parts dismayed by Grace’s sorrow and his part in causing it, as well as how much he wished to take away her pain.
Make the effort, man. She’s been the best medicine for Mother you ever could have wished for and that matters more than any feelings of your own.
He swallowed, a forced convulsion of his tight throat that made it no easier to find the right words.
‘That was unfair. I shouldn’t have spoken so hastily, or with so little care. I apologise.’
Grace gazed at Spencer for a long moment, not entirely sure how to respond.
Her heart still raced at his unexpected entrance to the library, interrupting her solitude with the presence she still wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. During the two weeks she had spent under Spencer’s roof his transformation from open warmth to icy cold had turned Grace’s ordered world on its head, and she had frequently found herself at a loss for words at some of his behaviour. His chaotic approach to life coupled with the unfortunate galloping of her pulse every time she found herself in the same room meant she did her best to avoid him, but on some occasions he was unavoidable—as he was now, standing in front of her and looking so sincere she felt her heart shudder over a missed beat in the most unsettling manner possible.
Her reaction to his scrutiny was one she resolutely did not want,too similar to the flash of heat Henry had always managed to send thrilling through her with the touch of his hand. It seemed Spencer was able to achieve that same sensation without even making contact with her skin, a realisation that made Grace’s insides twist in keen dismay.
But you needn’t worry. You’re on your guard now and no such vulnerability will be allowed to take hold of you ever again.
If the rich darkness of Spencer’s eyes was something Grace had noticed, she would disregard it at once. Henry’s had been just as fine, although sapphire where Spencer’s were the colour of sweet cocoa... Either way, girlish weakness for such a trivial thing was something Grace would not entertain, especially when those eyes were set in the face of a man surely capable of wreaking untold damage on any woman foolish enough to fall for him. She should be congratulating herself on her own good sense in realising it, Grace thought determinedly—but Spencer still watched her with an expression she had never seen before, standing close enough for her to just catch the clean scent of his shaving soap, and despite her resolve she would have to admit it was pleasing.
He had never before looked at her with anything warmer than faint disapproval at her continued presence in his house and she couldn’t help the dangerous pleasure that shivered through her insides at the new lack of censure in his gaze. It was replaced by a ghost of real remorse, as honest as it was surprising and adding fuel to the new colour that simmered in Grace’s cheeks. With his face no longer darkened by the grim shadows that usually cloaked it he looked so much younger, more human somehow, far removed from the sullen man she was still unable to fully understand and more like the lad she used to think she knew...
Grace attempted a small smile, desperately trying to make it seem natural and not the rigid thing she feared was spreading over her face. ‘Think nothing of it. We all say things we regret from time to time.’
The only response was a curt nod, although Grace thought she caught a glint of faint relief. It vanished again almost instantaneously and she determined there and then she wouldn’t waste a single moment trying to decipher what it meant. There were far more important things for her to be doing than dwelling on the inner workings of a man’s mind—even if the man in question was more attractive than was strictly fair, a direct challenge to her vow never to be imposed on again.
‘I ought to return to your mother. I managed to persuade her to stay abed a little longer this morning and I’d like to check she hasn’t escaped while my back was turned.’
One corner of Spencer’s mouth twitched as if in wry amusement, a movement he checked at once—but still it captured Grace’s attention.
‘You certainly have a difficult task trying to keep my mother restrained. She does so love to be busy.’
‘I’d noticed. I’ve sewn more shifts for parish orphans in these past two weeks than I have in twenty years together. She’s quite the force of nature, even when unwell.’
This time the reply was the flicker of one dark eyebrow and when Spencer met her eye a look passed between them to stir the hair at the nape of her neck. It was close to understanding, as though a fine thread of commonality bridged the gap that held them so far apart, and it made Grace blink in confusion.
‘You needn’t tell me that. Sometimes I think it’s sheer strength of will that’s kept her going through all her troubles.’
Grace nodded, trying to ignore the little voice that piped up inside her to ask the obvious question: Troubles that you’ve only added to, Spencer?
Dorothea had already told her why nobody visited Nevin Place, in equal parts frustrated and worried by her son’s ill-judged behaviour. The decanter Grace had spied waiting for him next to the very armchair she had just been sitting in only reinforced the truth of his mother’s fears: that he spent much of his time alone, stubbornly refusing to explain his reasons for needing to seek oblivion so ardently it had cost him his reputation. It was no wonder the rumours about him swirled, when he stalked through life looking so grim-faced and a smattering of bruises still on the fists that roused such comment.
There was still a glimmer of the unnamed something in Spencer’s look as Grace held out the book in her hand for him to take, suddenly aware how much she wanted to be free of the attention of those sharp eyes. Surely to spend too much time in Spencer’s disturbing company was a mistake, his powerful presence whispering to her with a sweet voice Henry had robbed her of the ability to enjoy.
‘Will you take this? I found it on the table and I’m not sure on which shelf it belongs.’
Spencer reached out for the book she proffered, his large hand taking the weight, and in so doing brushed Grace’s fingers with his own, sending a shockwave streaking the length of her arm to blaze beneath her ribs.
A gasp fell from Grace’s lips before she could bite it back, her breath suddenly scalding at the unexpected feeling on his skin against hers. It was the quickest of touches, so brief it shouldn’t even have registered, yet the nerves in her fingertips sang in unwelcome chorus, her heartbeat leaping to beat in time with the rhythm Spencer’s warmth conducted.
She could have sworn he felt a similar jolt of surprise, no doubt born of the discomfort her company already seemed to inspire. Surely he hadn’t felt a pang of disconcerting pleasure at the feel of soft skin against his more rugged fingers, an echo of the shameful feeling that coursed in Grace’s veins. Only Henry had ever made her feel anything remotely similar; and even then not as vividly as the spark Spencer sent scurrying down her spine, nor half so effortlessly. Spencer looked down at her uncertainly, his gaze moving from her eyes to lips still parted in wonder, and whatever he saw in her flushed face made him step a smart pace backwards.
‘Thank you. I’ll see it’s returned to its proper place.’
Grace nodded, her mouth suddenly dry and mind accursedly blank. It was precisely the kind of situation she’d been so determined to avoid and when she dipped a hurried curtsy and left the library it was with far more speed than might have been necessary.
Grace’s heart still hammered as she cautiously opened Dorothea’s bedchamber door and quietly stepped inside. Mrs Dauntsey lay fast asleep against the richly embroidered pillows of a daybed beneath a large window, her chest rising and falling with an effort it pained Grace to see. The pretty room with its plush carpet and expensive French furniture was not as warm as it should have been, considering the January chill outside, and she moved noiselessly to stoke up the embers that gleamed in the grate.
Another layer draped over Dorothea would be a good idea, too. It made her joints ache all the more if she was not kept snug, even though she protested about being swaddled like an infant, and despite the chaos holding a carnival inside her chest Grace found a small smile at the thought of her friend’s determination not to surrender to her illness. It would claim her eventually, of course, but that was a bleak possibility Grace wasn’t willing to stare dead in the face.
A fine woollen blanket lay folded at the end of the daybed and Grace drew it up to cover Dorothea’s sleeping form, tucking it round her with careful fingers. The more the patient slept now the more energy she’d have later, perhaps even able to be helped downstairs to stand at the garden door and take some of the crisp winter air. The doctor wouldn’t approve, Grace thought wryly as she smoothed the blanket into place, but he might never know the illicit activities of two conspiring women. She and Dorothea made a formidable team, their prior connection only having deepened over the past weeks to a relationship that brought both tremendous comfort. When Mrs Linwood came to drink tea even more peals of laughter could be heard from the formerly silent chamber as events from years past were revisited, renewing bonds and adding a layer to old friendships to make them afresh.
Quite unlike my dealings with another old acquaintance, who shall remain nameless.
At the unwelcome thought of Spencer Grace’s hands grew clumsy, her mind too occupied to pay much attention to her movements. Her skin still tingled where masculine fingers had brushed her own, only feather-light and accidental yet dangerously effective in making her cheeks flare with heat. It was every bit as uncomfortable a fact as it had been the moment it happened, mere minutes ago downstairs, and Grace had yet to find a way to banish the thought back to the darkest pit of her mind where it belonged.
‘Have I done something to offend you, Grace? I’m not sure I deserve such manhandling!’
There was a gleam of amusement in Dorothea’s eye as Grace jumped, freezing in the act of vigorously arranging the blanket. Evidently her focus had wandered too far for her to be gentle and she dropped the tasselled hem with guilty haste.
‘Sorry. My mind was...on other things.’
‘Don’t apologise. Of all people, I know what it’s like to have a lot to think about.’
Dorothea tried to ease herself up to sit back against the cushions behind her, accepting Grace’s supporting hand with a pained smile. ‘Did I sleep for long enough, do you think? I hope you weren’t bored while I was so rudely inattentive. What pleasant thing did you find to occupy you?’
Grace wasn’t entirely sure if spending time with Spencer counted as a ‘pleasant thing’; two conflicting opinions wrestling each other for supremacy. It seemed safest to offer a bland smile of her own, although Grace felt her heart rate skip a fraction faster.
‘I thought I’d sit in the library and read a while, until I was chanced upon by Spencer. We talked for a short while before I came to check on you.’
‘Ah. And how is my son today?’ With a grunt of effort Dorothea pulled a lumpy pillow from beneath her. ‘He came to my rooms soon after breakfast, but I doubt I shall see him again until supper.’
Grace hesitated. The unerringly honest part of her ought to win out, but to tell Dorothea her son had made a beeline for the library decanter as she left seemed unwise. She knew how much her staunchly Quaker friend hated having strong drink in the house, although Spencer was far too stubborn to be ruled by anybody but himself. ‘He—he seemed well enough. After a fashion.’
‘Hmm.’ Dorothea eyed her narrowly, but then merely sighed. ‘You always were faultlessly polite, even as a little girl. I’m aware Spencer isn’t the easiest of companions these days and it worries me relentlessly.’
‘I know. I know you have much to bear, but do try not to distress yourself. It does you no good.’
Something of an understatement, Grace conceded as she watched her friend’s laboured breaths.
To lose the husband she’d adored, followed by a son just six years later, was a devastating blow—only compounded by her remaining boy turning into somebody she barely knew. Her failing health was the final piece of a tragic puzzle, so sad it hardly seemed possible.
‘You’re right, of course. Only...’ Another sigh came from the skeletal figure beneath the blanket. ‘The change in him, Grace. Of course he grieved when his father passed, but since we lost William he’s been a man I simply don’t recognise. You must have seen that he takes no pleasure in anything, not even pursuits he used to feel passion for. There was a time when he sketched every day, you know, and showed great promise; he hasn’t so much as picked up a pencil these past two years, as if the very spark of inspiration has been snuffed out like a candle.’
A sudden cough racked her frail body and she pressed her hand to her heaving chest until the spell passed, leaving her cheeks ruddy and breath coming hard.
‘As time has gone by I find myself grieving less for William. I will be seeing him and my dear Richard again very soon, I am sure of it, and then I need never feel sorrow for them ever again. It is Spencer who now pains my heart the most when I think how he will be left alone with his secrets and the suffering he thinks I do not see in his face. He would never tell me exactly what happened the day Will died, but I am no fool.’ She wheezed for a moment, papery eyelids closed. ‘The idea of what he will become when I am gone—it haunts me.’
Bony fingers found Grace’s arm, grasping at the sleeve of her gown in a twitch of distress, and she immediately covered them with her own. Her heart swelled with pity and powerful sorrow—Dorothea looked so small in her grief and fear, and the sight pained Grace more than she could say.
‘If I’d as much as suspected what damage it would do for my boys to go off to war, I would never have allowed them to enlist. You know my faith prohibits all kinds of violence, but I agreed with Richard on his deathbed I would let the twins carry on the military tradition of his family. If they had only stayed in England, Grace... I curse the day they left for Belgium, and I hate the very name of the Battle of Quatre Bras with a passion I feel in my bones.’
A tear slipped down one sunken cheek and Dorothea cuffed it away, although not before the glitter of it sent ice piercing Grace’s insides. For the family she had known since childhood to be ripped so cruelly apart seemed the worst of injustices and from the tumult of her emotions a new thought arose to make Grace wonder...
Had Spencer seen his brother die, cut down in front of him in some battlefield across the sea? Wouldn’t that go some way to explaining why he seemed so closed off, so strangely emotionless? She could only imagine with a powerful shudder what kind of effect such an experience might have on a man’s soul. It was a startling possibility, yet one that seemed so blindingly obvious, and Grace felt a suddenly overwhelming rush of compassion for the man who had previously inspired such wariness and confusion.
‘None of what has befallen your family is your fault. I hope you know that, despite your regrets.’
Dorothea shrugged a thin shoulder beneath expensive linen. ‘Regrets are one thing I have no shortage of. The reason I sleep so little every night is out of worry for my only remaining son. If only there was something I could do, some way I could rest easily, knowing he won’t be left so alone when I am gone—and yet I fear nothing can turn him from the path he has chosen.’
Grace nodded gravely, the truth in Dorothea’s words plain. ‘I can only imagine how such thoughts must trouble you. I wish there was something I could do to ease your cares.’
Her sad gaze was fixed on the white hand that held her arm, lost in the world of compassion that gripped her—so she entirely missed the slow movement of her friend’s eyes in her direction and the look of dawning contemplation that crept in to brighten them.
‘Do you truly mean that?’
‘Why, yes.’ Grace forced her lips into a small smile despite the sorrow growing ever heavier in her chest. The image of Spencer’s grim face crowded out all other thoughts, the most obvious reason for his tightly drawn expression suddenly clear to her in terrible understanding.
He has suffered so much and with his mother so ill surely there can only be more heartache to come for him. I wish for his sake, and for the friendship we might once have had, that things could be different.
‘Believe me—if there was any way I could help you or Spencer with the unhappiness that plagues you, all you would have to do is ask.’
‘Any way? Any way at all?’ Dorothea reached for a glass of water standing beside her bed, turning away so for a moment Grace couldn’t see her face. ‘Even if it were in a way you never would have dreamed? Even if it seemed the most unlikely thing imaginable?’
‘Even then, to repay your kindness and ease your cares, I give you my word.’
Chapter Four (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
The weeks passed slowly at Nevin Place, dragging out until January gave way to February and the weather turned from merely cold to biting. Time continued its unstoppable march, but the month shown on Grace’s calendar wasn’t the only thing that seemed to progress.
The stares that accompanied her had increased since Henry’s rejection and her residence at Spencer’s vast home, she saw now as she drew her cloak closer about her body and wished her bonnet covered more of her face. Each time she left the safety of the imposing house to visit her family she had to run the gauntlet of whispers that followed her, and now her situation was common knowledge and her link with the scandalous Captain was known the mutters had only grown worse.
Grace Linwood. Daughter of a criminal, wife of nobody and companion to a woman with a reprobate for an heir. No wonder society hasn’t rushed to reclaim me.
It didn’t matter that poor Papa was innocent, Henry a selfish rogue or Spencer not a common brawler. The gossip attached to Grace’s name was too fascinating for any dull truth to temper it and, when combined with Spencer’s own notoriety, she could only grit her teeth and plough onwards as another set of eyes turned towards her in undisguised curiosity she hadn’t yet learned to ignore.
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Joanna Johnson
Bound to a stranger …in a secret ceremony! With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is ‘I do’ …but who is the man she has just married?
Bound to a stranger
...in a secret ceremony!
With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is “I do”...but who is the man she has just married?
JOANNA JOHNSON lives in a pretty Wiltshire village with her husband and as many books as she can sneak into the house. Being part of the Historical Romance family is a dream come true for her. She has always loved writing, starting at five years old with a series about a cat, imaginatively named ‘Cat’, and keeps a notebook in every handbag—just in case. In her spare time she likes finding new places to have a cream tea, stroking scruffy dogs and trying to remember where she left her glasses.
Also by Joanna Johnson (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
The Marriage Rescue
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Scandalously Wed to the Captain
Joanna Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08954-8
SCANDALOUSLY WED TO THE CAPTAIN
© 2019 Joanna Johnson
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Note to Readers (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
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For my husband, family and friends—
thank you for all the help and support along the way.
Contents
Cover (#ufec79ab1-5c1f-5db2-a8c2-6d478b79bdb2)
Back Cover Text (#ufc0d69d0-622e-5f69-9632-3d4bc2d0b5fc)
About the Author (#u12f6bb32-9c5c-5c28-9f69-ff1564645f0e)
Booklist (#ufa6cdab3-fd56-5d70-b81f-7c75e0f3ebb9)
Title Page (#uce21aac2-fee4-5690-951e-dc1e7c98d3d6)
Copyright (#uae7b4261-d503-5561-8368-d4cfe1701435)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u0334417a-0b08-565a-84c5-3f7172654104)
Chapter One (#u8afb0d5a-3b97-5ba1-a92b-471e2e886081)
Chapter Two (#ue36c9923-6b85-5fff-8b24-2dace0451ffc)
Chapter Three (#uc72a358d-89e5-556a-ba9b-cd752d94cad7)
Chapter Four (#uc2704a0a-6be4-5830-b24d-8a5bde37e9b3)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
Grace Linwood stared out at the flat haze of the horizon until she could no longer tell if the tang of salt on her tongue was from the sea spray or her own tears.
How long she’d stood on the rain-lashed Cobb she couldn’t say; only that when Henry Earls had pushed a piece of paper into her hand he had worn a halo of January sunlight and now that same sun was setting over the sea somewhere far beyond her reach.
The cries of gulls wheeling overhead mixed with the whistle of wind in her ears, its invisible hands lifting her cloak to snap behind her as though it were alive. Tiny needles of rain pricked at her cold cheeks, at the hands that held a letter between nerveless fingers, but Grace was numb to everything but the lead weight of despair that had settled behind her breastbone.
In light of your father’s recent incarceration I must rescind my offer of marriage. The unfortunate reversal in your position and fortune render me unable to continue our engagement and I am certain you will be good enough to release me from any obligation towards you.
A hot tide of tears rose up, stinging her eyes alongside the salt spray thrown into her face. If only they would stop coming. Surely there couldn’t be many left to fall, but each time she recalled Henry’s callous words pain twisted like a knife in her guts and a fresh stream fell to mingle with the rain.
Perhaps some part of her should have questioned why such a man would notice her, pursue her above all the other young ladies of Lyme Regis, who danced and sang and flirted as brazenly as they dared, bright eyes fixed on whichever fortunate gentleman sparked their interest.
I was never one of their number.
Too bookish, too quiet, too plain—it had seemed a miracle when Henry singled her out less than a year previously, asking her to partner him in a quadrille, and the strange thrill that had torn a gasp from her lips at the first touch of his hand on hers was something she would never forget. Staring out across the barren sea, Grace felt those same lips twist into a grimace of pain no words could hope to capture as she recalled another unforgettable moment: how he had left her that afternoon, turning and walking away from her for ever without so much as a backward glance at the woman whose heart he had just ripped from her chest. There could surely be no better proof his interest had only ever stretched as far as her connections and fortune, and now she had neither there was nothing left for him to covet.
The approach of a pair of older women hurrying along behind her, heads tucked down and cloaks clutched tightly to them, almost made Grace turn. Instead, she stepped closer to the Cobb’s slippery edge as she heard their voices lower into rapid whispers as they passed by her without so much as a nod, the words barely audible above the keen of the wind, but their tone of malice unmistakable.
‘...surprised she dare stir out of doors...a shameful business...’
‘They claim he was wrongfully accused! They’ll have to give up that fine house, and with so many daughters...’
‘Bankrupt, I heard. Can’t imagine her young man will stay much longer, or that any other is like to make advances now.’
Grace flinched as each barbed word pricked her with their poison. It was hard enough that everything they said was true without the bleak reality of her situation thrown into her face: with no money, no good name and the shame of an incarcerated father—wrongfully or otherwise—neither Grace nor her three younger sisters could hope for any man half as eligible as Henry to so much as glance in their direction ever again, let alone allow himself to be shackled to a wife so humbled to dust.
She drew her hand across her eyes, feeling the wet tracks that streaked her cheeks, and took a deep breath like fire in her lungs.
‘Enough. Enough of this now.’
Crying would do nothing. No words would bring Henry back to her arms, nor any river of tears make him change his mind. Nothing could undo Papa’s mistake, his willingness to see the best in others the sorry cause of his family’s disgrace. Mama’s face was already drawn with worry, deep lines creasing the formerly smooth plane of her forehead below blonde curls that matched Grace’s own; she wouldn’t add to her mother’s burden by arriving home with trembling lips and eyes made red by weeping.
The thought of Mama’s tired face sent a fresh shard lancing through Grace’s insides and she pressed a cold hand to the place where her unhappiness lay like a rock in her stomach.
It wasn’t just my future that was tied to Henry’s love of me—or lack of it.
Freed from the expense of maintaining all four daughters, Mama might have been able to scrape together enough money to allow them to remain in their home. This was now surely but a fantasy and Grace felt herself sag in mute despair.
She closed her eyes, screwing them shut against the grey creep of dusk. The roar of the waves and plaintive cries of gulls called to her, curiously melancholy and mingling with her grief. She should leave this rain-sodden place and go home to face her poor mother’s disappointment, she knew, but something inside her held her fast to the spot on which she had last seen Henry, where she had realised her only chance at happiness had slipped from her grasp like sand through her fingers.
The wind had picked up, its strength increasing with the final disappearance of the sun’s feeble rays. It whipped about Grace like a pack of savage wolves, plucking at the ribbons on her bonnet and flattening her skirts against the chill flesh of her legs. With her eyes still tight shut and her mind reeling with anguish, perhaps it was inevitable that a particularly strong gust caught her off guard—all Grace knew was that one moment she was standing buffeted by the harsh coastal air, the next that her cloak had swirled round to unbalance her and then the world was tilting, the wet ground sliding beneath her feet.
Far too late she realised how close she stood to the edge. Her eyes flew wide as she grasped for something to save her, anything but the sickeningly empty air that surrounded her on all sides. Henry’s letter slid from her outstretched hand, fluttering away like a small white bird to drift out across the sea—but there was nothing Grace could do as she felt her balance shift to follow it, her heart leaping up into her throat in a silent cry of terror as she began, for what felt like a tortuously slow eternity, to fall.
‘Watch out!’
Grace’s head snapped back so abruptly her neck screamed in pain, the movement forcing a cry from her gaping mouth. The tumbling waves surged below her, spray reaching for her with freezing fingers, but they came no closer and when her senses jolted back into order she became aware of a vice-like grip encircling the top of her arm, the strength of one large hand the only thing restraining her from a drop that with a sudden wave of nausea she realised could have killed her.
Her unseen saviour jerked her back from the Cobb’s edge with a rough movement that made her wince. Still reeling, she turned to face him on shaking legs, her breath coming hard in short, painful pants as she struggled to control the frenzied racing of her heart. It took a moment for her to register the identity of the man whose countenance she peered up into, who returned her look with a scowl, but when her whirling mind finally managed to place his familiar features it was with a sharp punch of shock that she recalled his name.
Captain Spencer Dauntsey?
All the fright of a split second before faded into the background as she stared up into that face with frozen disbelief, weeks and months scrolling backwards in her memory until clicking to a halt on the last day she had seen him. Because it had to be him: eight years might have passed since she had watched in dismay as the identical, newly fatherless Dauntsey twins swung up on to their horses and turned for the long road to York, but there could be no mistaking that dark hair or the masculine cleft in a well-shaped chin. Only Spencer’s nose ever made it possible to tell which brother was which; healed badly after a break, its crooked line had always struck Grace as strangely attractive. The irregularity gave him—in her eyes at least—an advantage over William, whose pristine profile somehow hadn’t made her younger heart beat faster beneath skinny ribs in quite the same way. It had been a sad day for Grace’s mother when Mrs Dauntsey left Lyme Regis following the death of her husband and headed north with her sons to settle near their first posting, as well as spelling the end of Grace’s wistful fancies. The pair of matriarchs had kept up a warm correspondence afterwards, trading news of the twins’ military progress and other triumphs, although for the past two years Mrs Linwood’s letters had been unable to find their recipient and all attempts at tracing the Dauntseys had failed. In the absence of anything else to do Mrs Linwood hoped her old friend was well, wherever she was, and her two fine sons likewise...which had been Grace’s hope, too, until evidence that was not the case stood in front of her, glowering and showing not the faintest glimmer of recognition for the girl he had last seen as a blushing child of thirteen, now before him a grown woman of twenty-one.
‘What the devil were you thinking?’ Her grudging rescuer glared down at her, a pair of dark eyebrows drawn tightly together above warm brown eyes—the colour of which was presently the only pleasant thing about them, so filled were they with unconcealed ire that it made Grace blink. ‘To be so foolish as to stray that close to the edge in this weather? Don’t you know the sea is particularly vicious in winter?’
Grace looked up at him, still not yet able to form a suitable response to his bewildering anger.
What is he doing here? When did he arrive?
It seemed so unbelievable that she hadn’t heard even as much as a whisper to suggest the Dauntseys had returned to town after such a long time. She could hardly credit it, although a half second later she realised the unpleasant truth.
It’s no wonder, really. Who would have told us? Nobody wishes to associate themselves with us any longer, or stop to speak—we have no friends left to tell us news.
It was just so jarring to see a shadow from the past so unexpectedly before her. His frown only deepened as he waited for her to find her tongue and she could have cursed herself—if she’d known any curses—for allowing her wits to escape her so completely. For any other man she could have formed a response immediately, she was sure—but he was an altogether different prospect.
The recollection of how her cheeks used to burn whenever Spencer as much as nodded in her direction returned now to prick at Grace’s insides, a memory—given her current circumstances—she had no desire whatsoever to revisit. Spencer had seemed so much more mature when he had left to escort his grieving mother halfway across the country, an almost grown lad of seventeen, so it was hardly surprising Grace hadn’t had a similar effect on him. It was all too easy to imagine what he would have seen as he’d happened to glance at her all those years ago: a mousy child with her nose stuck in a book, far too shy to return the easy smile the Dauntsey boys had for everyone they met. There was no trace of that trademark grin now, however, and the difference less than a decade had wrought in the first man who had ever made Grace blush was startling.
She gave a small shudder of apprehension at the glint of danger in his narrowed eye, more unfriendly than she had ever seen before and shocking in its coldness. It would have been difficult to think what to say anyway, having stumbled across an acquaintance she’d never thought to see again; the fact he had morphed from a laughing youth to this granite-faced man only made her confusion worse, rising to mingle horribly with the unhappy weight Henry had forced into her chest.
Managing to at last bully her brain into working, Grace swallowed down her unease. Spencer towered above her, his powerful build barely concealed by the expensive cut of his clothes, but there was a touch of something like reluctant concern in his expression where moments before there had been only displeasure and it was enough to help her gather her courage and attempt to muster a reply.
His mama and mine were such friends. Perhaps he might look less severe if I remind him who I am.
‘I’m so grateful to you for your help, sir.’ She peeped up at him from below the brim of her bonnet, gauging his reaction. He stared back, silent and stony-faced, and her courage faltered a little. ‘Even if you don’t recollect we were once acquainted.’
For a long moment Spencer said nothing, the silence between them stretching out unbroken but for the insistent patter of Grace’s rapid pulse and the relentless crash of waves breaking over the rocks that could have been her demise. The pinch of his brows tightened, but still no light flickered in the flinty eyes as they swept from the top of Grace’s sodden bonnet to her ruined shoes, their chilly scrutiny sending a curious shiver through her jangled nerves. His face was as handsome as ever, but the new hardness she saw in every line somewhat tempered the admiration she had felt as a young girl. Only Henry’s features were burned into her mind like a brand, a face that with a pinch of pain she remembered she would never touch again.
‘You’re correct, madam. I don’t.’ Spencer answered flatly, as though barely able to summon any interest, and Grace wondered again at the change in the individual she remembered. That version of Spencer would never have been so brusque, but this one evidently was and she was left with no other option but to answer his indifference.
‘My name is Grace Linwood. Your mother and mine were close friends before you left for York—do you recall?’ She tried to force a smile, but her cheeks felt rigid with cold and frank discomfort. ‘It’s so pleasant to see you returned to town! Are your mother and brother with you?’
Grace felt a flicker of relief as the first hint of recognition sparked in Spencer’s expression, although it did nothing to thaw the coolness that remained.
‘Miss Linwood. I didn’t recognise you.’ He gave a short nod, the closest thing to a greeting she might have expected from this strange new creature. ‘My mother asked I bring her here in search of a warmer winter. Her health has not been good of late.’
Determinedly ignoring the mechanical tone of Spencer’s voice, Grace persevered in her quest for a convincing smile. ‘My mama will be so pleased to see her! And William? Will he be joining you later?’
It hardly seemed possible, but Spencer’s face managed to draw into an even tighter mask that sent dismay skittering at the back of Grace’s neck. Evidently she’d made some grave error, although what she had said to make the firm jaw clench she only realised once it was far too late.
‘He would find that difficult. He’s been dead these past two years.’
A cold trickle of dread crawled down Grace’s spine, drenching her with wordless horror that made her lips part in a silent gasp.
William? Dead?
It was unthinkable and for a sickening moment Grace wondered how Spencer could make such a tasteless joke. Surely the idea of him without his matching other half was impossible? Wherever one twin went the other had always been sure to follow, their identical mouths quirked into charismatic curves and long-legged strides so eye-catching it was hardly surprising Grace’s cheeks had warmed with heat she hadn’t understood. There was no way in the world one could exist without the other, yet the tension in Spencer’s broad shoulders was the proof he did not lie.
Whatever could have happened?
She couldn’t exactly recall the contents of Mrs Dauntsey’s final letter, but surely there had been no mention of the tragedy that now made Grace’s blood turn cold and dismay hold her tighter in its grip. All that life, all that animation and charm and potential snuffed out so mercilessly, leaving behind only its silent mirror image that brought intense pity roaring up from the very depths of Grace’s soul.
‘I’m so very sorry. I had no idea. We hadn’t heard—of late my mother’s letters were always returned and we had no way of knowing your new address...’
Grace’s words tripped over themselves, disjointed and stumbling, although she might as well have been talking to herself for all the notice Spencer took. He waited for her to tail off into mortified nothingness beneath his hard gaze before changing the subject so abruptly there was no hope of return.
‘Why are you out on the Cobb in this mire?’ It was almost an accusation, delivered so tersely Grace nearly flinched. ‘You could have been killed if you’d fallen. I would have thought you’d know better, living here all your life.’
The sudden veer into a completely different conversation caught Grace by surprise. Shock still echoed through her mind, the shattered image of the Dauntsey twins flickering as she peered up at the rain-flecked face of the only one left, and she answered with honesty she regretted at once when she felt pain crackle within her once again.
‘I came to meet with my fiancé. Or the man who was my fiancé, until a few hours ago.’
Spencer raised an eyebrow, some shadow of enquiry in its dark line. ‘Was?’
Grace nodded mutely, eyes downcast and fixed now on the expensive boots planted immovably before her. The agony that had run through her like a cruel river prior to Spencer’s appearance returned with a vengeance, freezing into a shard of ice that lodged itself in the pit of her stomach to merge with the ache of sympathy and awful surprise that already circled.
‘He requested I break our engagement, ostensibly on account of my father’s situation. You’ll have heard all about that, I’m sure.’
Tears threatened to gather at the corners of Grace’s eyes again at the thought of poor Papa and she blinked them away, although she was unable to stop one from slipping down to mix with the cold rain spotting her cheeks. If Spencer saw he gave no sign, instead merely shrugging one huge shoulder in a movement Grace found oddly unsettling.
Had he always been so...broad? The youth she remembered had been agile and lithe, his movements fluid like those of a dancer. The intervening years had increased the width of shoulder beneath a green coat darkened by rain, so different now but not unappealing, and Grace wondered distantly why she should have noticed such a trivial thing.
‘We arrived only three days ago. My mother was intending to surprise yours with a visit, but has been too ill to leave the house and was in no fit state to receive guests. If her health had allowed, I imagine they would be gossiping together as we speak. As it is, we’ve heard no news and I’ve been in no hurry to chase any.’
Grace flexed her cold fingers, her mind too full of a complex jumble of thoughts and emotions to know how to reply. Horror for William’s loss chased sympathy for Spencer that touched her heart, in turn surrounded by a dull pulse of unhappiness and shame.
If Spencer doesn’t know the particulars of my family’s situation, it won’t be long until he does.
No doubt Henry had told all their formerly mutual acquaintances of his clever dodge at once and lapped up their congratulations at his narrow escape. The whispers that already chased Grace down every street would surely only increase now with such fascinating fuel to stoke the flames of delicious scandal higher—how long until the stares turned to nudges and her name was dragged lower than ever before? Nobody would care that as the daughter of a bankrupt and supposed criminal all Grace now had to remind her of her broken dreams was a wedding gown that would never see the light of day and a heart battered by the person she had hoped would always cherish it. She was reduced to an object of ridicule, to be pitied at best and scorned at worst, and in her knowledge of just how far she had fallen her anguish was complete.
I will never give my heart away again.
Grace made the vow fiercely, almost oblivious to the handsome man who watched her sorrow in silent thought. To trust in the love of another person was to make a woman weak, to expose her to the pain, humiliation and agony of rejection that now swept over her like a flood.
She had one thing to thank Henry for, at least: exposing the naivety within her that could not distinguish real regard from false and the sad lack of her own good judgement. His cruel lesson would enable her to guard against making the same mistake twice and never again allow a man to impose on her who had no interests in mind other than his own.
I will never give my heart away again. Not as long as I live.
Spencer turned up the collar of his coat, feeling the wet material beneath cold fingertips. Ideally he would be inside now, warm before the fire in his favourite armchair and his black hair curling slightly as it dried, but the woman in front of him showed little sign of noticing the rain that was soaking them both to the skin or the howl of a bleak wind coming from over the sea, her grey eyes fixed now on the sodden ground and an expression of suffering obscuring her petite features.
Little Grace Linwood. I would never have known her.
She was almost pretty as a grown woman, Spencer noted reluctantly, or would have been if she wasn’t so frail-looking. Certainly her face was very pale, although ruddy spots of high colour showed she had recently been crying—for good reason, if her fiancé had so suddenly called off their engagement. A small part of him wondered why the man, whoever he was, might have acted so; something to do with her father, she’d said, although what she could have been alluding to he could only guess. Robert Linwood had been an amiable sort if he remembered correctly. Surely there was no reason to suspect he might have acted poorly?
Spencer looked down at Grace, weighing up how to proceed. In honesty, consoling an emotional young woman was at the very bottom of a list of ways he would choose to spend an evening. Already the whisper of the new bottle of port awaiting his return to his rooms called to him, its voice sweet in his ear, promising to blot out the memories Miss Linwood had unwittingly stirred with her innocent question about William. The glass and decanter had been his trusted companions these two years, ever since the day his life had fallen so spectacularly apart, and there was nothing more able to dim the echoes of the screams that haunted him.
However...
He clenched his jaw to fight back an irritable sigh. Something inside him, some relic of his moral Quaker upbringing, would not allow him to leave a lady in such obvious distress, especially the daughter of an old family friend. Most of his mother’s genteel teachings had fallen by the wayside in the past couple of years, beaten out of him by the grief and guilt never now more than a half thought away—but some dim gleam of propriety remained, to mutter that to abandon an unhappy woman in the growing darkness was not altogether acceptable.
Plus I’d never hear the end of it if Mother learned I left one of her beloved Miss Linwoods to her fate.
A swift scan about them showed no carriage waiting for her and Spencer made up his mind with only a half-suppressed outbreath of impatience. ‘We are getting steadily wetter and wetter by the minute. The house I’ve taken is only a step away and a good deal closer than your own, if I recall. You’re welcome to return with me and have my carriage deliver you home. My mother would be delighted to see you, I’m sure.’
He glanced down at her. She still avoided his gaze, blind eyes turned to the flooded ground beneath her feet, and Spencer’s brows twitched together in brief discomfort as a sudden glimmer of sympathy flared inside him, appearing from nowhere to surprise him before retreating just as quickly behind his usually impenetrable cynicism. Where the stray spark of weakness had crept from he hardly knew, but it was enough to unsettle him, more than a little taken aback by the uncharacteristic feeling. It was probably because she looked so small standing there, a curiously lonely figure swamped by her large blue cloak, unconsciously radiating such vulnerability that Spencer had to fight back another flicker of pity with more than a touch of alarm. He frowned again, the sense of unease beginning to rise within him that he sought to extinguish with a gruff cough.
You’re walking a fine line, Spencer, a little voice at the back of his mind piped up, a shade too disapprovingly for comfort. You don’t want to invite her in and yet you’ve gone too far to back away now. Was that offer truly necessary?
Perhaps not. Perhaps he could have escaped without extending a helpful hand, always a hazardous action, but surely there could be no threat to his defences from this pitiful drowned rat of a woman who peered at him through the gloom and whose answer was uttered so low he had to stoop to catch it.
‘I admit I’d rather not linger in this storm for very much longer, and to see your mother again would be a rare treat. But—’ She broke off, shame stealing into her expression it took him a moment to understand. ‘I’m already remarked on quite enough. I can only imagine how much more people would talk if they were to see me alone, on the arm of a strange man...’
Spencer stared at her for a moment, taking in the flare of colour that gleamed on her pale cheeks.
That’s her fear? That people might think badly of her? Evidently I’m not the only one behind on current events, although how she could have failed to have heard I don’t know.
Grace was clearly ignorant of the mutters Spencer now drew whenever he stepped out of doors, tales of his behaviour the first night he had returned to Lyme Regis already spreading like wildfire throughout the town. A small flicker of guilt rose to nag at him at the memory of his mother’s face that evening: concern, distress and—worst of all—disappointment crossing it as he had stumbled up the front steps, still with a bottle in his hand and his knuckles bruised and swollen. He should never have allowed himself to lose control of his temper, answering some drunkard’s challenge in the tavern with his fists... If he’d only been able to douse the flames that leapt inside him he might have avoided ending his evening in a pointless brawl that now everybody—barring Grace, apparently—seemed to have heard of, sealing his reputation as uncouth, ungentlemanly and almost certainly dangerous. Society gossips hadn’t given a fig that he’d acted in self-defence, exaggerating and expanding the story until it had become a lurid tale Spencer barely recognised.
‘If anybody were to whisper, it wouldn’t necessarily be about you. You might consider pulling your bonnet a fraction to conceal your face, however, if you’d rather avoid my scandal as well as your own.’
The complete lack of understanding in Grace’s eyes was almost touching, a welcome change from the judgement he saw in those that had looked up at him since his return. ‘Why would they be whispering about you?’
That wasn’t a question he particularly wanted to answer. ‘I’m sure my mother will tell you soon enough. In the meantime, I suggest we leave at once. Watch your step on this wet ground.’
He slipped his hand beneath her elbow, feeling at once how she stiffened and seemed to curb the instinct to flinch away. It was hardly a surprising reaction, he supposed, given her prim propriety in stark contrast to his own unconventional manners, but there was still something decidedly unpleasant about her recoil from his fingertips.
Spencer felt once again that unwelcome sensation of something he couldn’t explain, a dangerous intruder into the usual indifference he so carefully cultivated. The opinions of young women—and the rest of society—as to his looks, conduct or any other part of him were worth less than nothing, so there was no obvious reason for her apprehension to disturb him. It should have been a relief that she didn’t giggle, or simper, or slide an appraising eye towards him when she thought he wasn’t looking as so many ladies of her type did, or had in York at any rate; but then there was something that set her apart, some flicker of suffering in her face that spoke to him like for like and forced him to pay attention. He wanted to disregard her and her quiet pain as he would anyone else, yet with another flare of discomfort he found he couldn’t turn away so easily.
His mother was the single person he usually felt it necessary to in any way consider and for her sake alone he did his best to conceal the melancholy that dogged him day and night that her rapidly failing health only added to. The one other he had held in such high regard was cold in his tomb and with him in the silence of the grave lay Spencer’s ability to see the world with anything other than a weary disgust now so deep it was etched on to his soul.
With a grim scowl of effort he pushed aside the icy creep of guilt and grief that attempted to rise up within him, driving the images that threatened to accompany it back with savage force.
Now is not the time. Later, with a glass in your hand, is when you can do battle with the past.
The wraithlike, damnably disturbing Miss Linwood was still standing close to him, his hand still cupping the delicate bend of her slight arm, and he nodded at her with a forthrightness he only half felt.
‘You needn’t worry about propriety, truly. Anyone with sense is indoors, so we shouldn’t be observed.’
Grace flicked a sideways glance up at him, apparently on the verge of saying something at the edge he knew she would have heard in his tone. Instead she dropped her eyes at once from his darkly questioning look, wincing with the swift turn of her aching neck, and allowed him to guide her away from the sea that could so easily have claimed her.
Chapter Two (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
If anybody had told her the strange turns this day was going to take, Grace thought dazedly as she hurried to keep up with Spencer’s long strides, she wouldn’t have got out of bed that morning. How she found herself lurching from her solitary heartbreak to being marched along by a silent Captain Spencer Dauntsey she still couldn’t say, the firm—and distracting—pressure of his hand on her arm the only real proof she wasn’t trapped in some hideous dream.
The idea that she could wake from this living nightmare was so tempting—to find herself in her own bed with Papa reading in his library and a note from Henry on the post tray—but a sudden slip of her foot on the wet cobbles jolted her from her fantasy, grim reality flooding back in to replace it, and Spencer’s grip was the only thing that kept her from sprawling into the gutter. At least the storm meant the streets were deserted and nobody would see the highly inappropriate sight of her scurrying along after dark on the arm of a man who would apparently set tongues wagging about her even more than they were already.
‘As I said. Mind your step.’ Spencer didn’t slow his pace, his head bent slightly against the chill of the wind that flung icy rain into their faces. ‘We’re almost there.’
Grace squinted through the gloom, attempting to ignore the altogether too-absorbing sensation of the hand on her elbow that sent strange prickles down her arm and made it oddly difficult to focus on anything else. They were drawing into a crescent of magnificent houses, tall against the dark menace of the stormy sky and set around a small park of landscaped trees that bent and shook with the wind through their branches. It was too dim to see clearly, but Grace thought she saw a curtain move slightly at the downstairs window of one of the largest houses—the next moment a grand front door was flung open and candlelight spilled down a set of iron-railed steps, illuminating a gravelled path that gleamed wetly in the orange glow. Spencer ushered her towards it and before she had a moment to consult her thoughts on the matter Grace found herself standing in a bright entrance hall, her head spinning and her soaking cloak dripping on to a polished parquet floor.
She looked about her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the warm light thrown out by numerous candles. There were candelabras set around the space, their flames dancing in the draught that accompanied Grace and Spencer into the house, and painted portraits smiled stiffly down from the walls to watch as she hesitated, unsure of what to do next. She’d been too distracted to give much thought to anything other than getting out of the rain and now she stood in the unfamiliar territory of Spencer’s luxurious house she felt a thrill of some strange anxiety flutter through her nerves.
He’s a stranger, really. I barely recognise the man he’s become.
Dimly she heard Spencer speaking to somebody behind her, too low for her to catch the words, but it would hardly have mattered if he had been shouting in her ear for all her attention was fixed on the uncertainty circling in her stomach. Perhaps to take his offer of sanctuary had been a mistake. He only seemed to have offered under some kind of duress and it was with mounting unease she waited for her unwilling host to decide what to do with her now she had followed the lion into its den.
‘May I take your cloak and bonnet, ma’am?’ A maid materialised as if from nowhere, making Grace jump with her murmured question.
‘Have them dried, please, Thorne.’ Spencer glanced at Grace as he removed his own soaking outer things and handed them to another waiting servant. ‘It will take a short while to ready the carriage. You might want to sit before the fire, warm yourself a little.’
Grace turned away from him quickly, mumbling her thanks. The heavy rain had penetrated the costly material of Spencer’s coat, dampening the shirt beneath; it clung to his broad frame a little too lovingly for comfort, the soft white outlining a landscape of muscle that made Grace’s pulse skip more than a fraction faster. Alarm swept through her, wrinkling her brow: Spencer’s masculine physicality, so different from Henry’s slim elegance, surely shouldn’t even register with her. It was an irrelevant detail, no more to be noticed than the fact he had two eyes and a nose on his stern face.
She frowned, trying to silence the troubling thought. After Henry’s thoughtless rejection and the suffering that even now churned within her like a stormy sea, any strange reaction of her unconscious to Spencer’s admittedly impressive musculature should be dismissed without hesitation. It was laughable, the very notion of Spencer provoking her interest, and surely only a nostalgic shadow of the partiality she’d felt for him as a girl—she could almost have smiled at her momentary folly if the unhappiness in her chest hadn’t been weighing her down like a stone. She would never allow herself to surrender to such weakness again and certainly not in favour of a man so apparently aloof as Spencer now was. Not even she, with her admittedly poor record of good judgement, would ever be quite that foolish.
Her disquieting host was running his hand through his short crop of dark hair when Grace dared look towards him again, raindrops glinting in the candlelight as he brushed them from his head. Now they were away from the grey shadows of dusk Grace could see the warm brown of his eyes more clearly, and the fine lines, which on anybody else she would have suspected were caused by smiling, that bracketed them at the outer corners. Surely this dour man could never now get enough use out of a smile to make such lines, she thought privately as she watched him straighten his cravat, his brows drawn together in the near-permanent scowl she had already realised he seemed to wear unconsciously.
‘Rivers will see you through to the parlour.’ Spencer gestured to the servant who bobbed a neat curtsy beside him. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’
He turned abruptly to leave, moving towards one of the doors leading from the hall with long strides Grace couldn’t help but follow with reluctant—but uncontrollable—interest. Before he could reach it, however, it opened quietly on well-oiled hinges and a woman appeared on the threshold.
At first Grace struggled to place her; until with an unpleasant start she realised the gaunt figure barely able to stand was Spencer’s formerly vivacious mother. The change was so alarming Grace felt all words flee from her as she took in the drastic alteration in the woman she remembered: just like her son the difference from eight years ago was staggering, as though some malicious enchantment had been cast over the Dauntsey family to curse both their bodies and their minds.
‘I thought I heard you arrive home.’ Mrs Dauntsey came towards Spencer slowly, although her pale face broke into a smile that took the edge off her otherwise painfully fragile appearance. Her skin was so papery every line of bone was clear beneath its thin cover and her hair had the dull tinge Grace had seen only once before, on her grandmama after she had been taken ill with the bad chest that had killed her.
Spencer swiftly reached out a steadying hand as the newcomer swayed on her feet.
‘Why are you up? Doctor Sharp was quite insistent you shouldn’t be walking about.’
His tone changed abruptly from the brusque manner of moments before, now edged with an undercurrent of worry, but it wasn’t just the transformation of his voice that made Grace blink in sudden confusion that grew to join that already holding court in her chest.
The frown had left his brow, his features smoothing out into a look of concern that wiped the displeasure from his face and enhanced the comeliness of his already eye-catching features tenfold. He looked younger, closer to his real age of twenty-five rather than the years his scowl advanced him to, and even the brutal edge his broken nose lent to his appearance diminished with the alteration in his expression.
Grace swallowed down a small sound of dismay as she took in the drastic change in the man who mere moments before had looked as though he might take on a bear and win. Far from shrugging off her unnerving reaction to the glowering Spencer, this new display of tenderness only made it return—with a displeasing vengeance. When he wasn’t looking as though all the world was his enemy Spencer’s face was as handsome as it had been as a youth, and when it softened further into palpable concern it was uncomfortably similar to the countenance that had so intrigued her all those years ago.
She twisted her fingers together, startled by the unconscious response of her body. Perhaps she had caught a chill, standing out on the slippery Cobb in a growing storm? There could no other cause for her cheeks to flush so in Spencer’s presence, or for her heart to flutter at the gentleness with which he supported his mother—only silly girls with romantic fancies would think anything otherwise and thanks to Henry’s cruelty she would never again be one of those.
‘Please don’t fuss.’ Mrs Dauntsey swatted at Spencer with a feeble hand. ‘I heard you come back and wanted to be sure you were well. Whatever can you have been thinking of, going walking in such—oh!’ She broke off abruptly as she caught sight of Grace standing awkwardly in Spencer’s wake. ‘I didn’t realise you’d brought company with you.’
Grace dipped a respectful greeting, wishing with all her heart she hadn’t left a trail of dirty rainwater on her unwitting hostess’s pristine floor. Now Mrs Dauntsey’s attention was focused fully on her she saw some faint traces of the woman she had once known: a refined jaw and delicate nose giving an air of sophistication despite the waxy sheen of her skin and mauve shadows beneath eyes that glittered with sudden wonder.
Spencer nodded in Grace’s direction; a little unwillingly, she saw. ‘Mother, I’m sure you recall—’
‘Grace Linwood!’ The stiff introduction was cut off by a gasp of delight. ‘I’d know you at once, although I can scarce believe how you’ve grown!’
Her reaction was far more gratifying than Spencer’s had been, Grace thought privately as she felt a glimmer of warmth touch her otherwise chilly insides. His mother had always been such a kind woman, it was a relief to find at least that much unchanged.
‘Mrs Dauntsey, it’s so wonderful to see you again!’
There was a split-second of alarm as the older woman almost overbalanced in her eagerness to grasp Grace’s hands and Grace had to lunge forward quite inelegantly to stop her from falling. Mrs Dauntsey peered into her face, drinking in the sight of her with happiness so genuine it almost made Grace forget the tide of varied emotions causing chaos in her stomach.
‘Little Grace, quite the grown woman—and the very image of your dear mama! I’d thought to surprise her with my return to town, but as I’m sure you can see I’ve been a trifle too ill to pay any calls. I should have sent a note, I know, but I’m afraid I was determined to see her shocked face when I appeared on your doorstep!’
Spencer’s mother laughed, a thin peal so unlike the hearty sound she might have made eight years ago before her husband had died and her sons had whisked her away, only one of them now left to stand behind her like an unsmiling guard. Spencer’s formerly stern expression was already beginning to set in once again, obscuring the openness of moments before like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Perhaps he only allowed himself one moment of levity a day, Grace just had time to wonder briefly—with another unpleasant jolt of recognition that brooding could still be very attractive indeed—before Mrs Dauntsey laid one skeletal hand on the damp sleeve of her gown.
‘My dear, you look absolutely chilled to the bone. Won’t you sit with me before the fire and take some tea?’ She cocked her head, the sparkle never leaving the brown gaze so like the colour of her son’s. Out of the corner of her eye Grace could have sworn she saw Spencer stiffen, but there didn’t appear to be any question of refusal as the older woman gestured towards the door she had appeared through with a welcoming smile. ‘Do come through to my sitting room. I can’t tell you how delightful it is to see you again after all this time!’
Mrs Dauntsey cast a quick glance up at Spencer, apparently trying to read something in his face, although what she could have seen in the straight set of his lips Grace could only guess. Certainly to her there was nothing to be seen but faint displeasure, almost bordering on discomfort, and it was a relief to follow the slow progress of his mother away from his disturbing presence in the direction of her warm and comfortable sitting room.
‘Do sit down.’
Mrs Dauntsey waved a hand at an enormous chair drawn up to the fire. The flames cast Grace’s shadow long across the carpeted floor as she sank into it, her body leaning instinctively towards the hearth as though longing for its heat. She hadn’t realised how cold she had been; distress had numbed her senses, and it was only when her fingers tingled painfully she saw the blueish hue that tinged them.
There was a bell on a table next to Mrs Dauntsey’s overstuffed armchair and she lifted it with a small sound of effort.
‘There. Tea will be along in a moment. If I remember correctly, you always liked it sweet with plenty of milk.’
For the first time since Henry had thrust his fateful letter into her hand Grace felt a tentative upward tug at her mouth. Despite her fragility and in startling contrast to her glowering son, Spencer’s mother radiated warmth, her memory of the preferences of a child oddly touching.
‘That’s right. I’m afraid I still use rather too much honey.’
‘I’m not sure there’s any such thing.’
Mrs Dauntsey settled herself against her cushions and regarded Grace keenly, apparently hungry for every detail of her face and windswept hair.
‘Let me begin by apologising for my silence the past couple of years.’ Her voice held soft regret, real feeling that Grace knew was sincere. ‘We moved around so often after we left Dorset, even living in Scotland for a time, that inevitably some of my effects were lost between houses. Among them was my writing case, containing—as I’m sure you’ve guessed—not only all the correspondence from your mother, but also my little book of addresses. I thought I’d committed yours to memory, but when my letters were returned as misdirected I realised I must have been mistaken.’
When she smiled again it was like a shaft of sunlight in the darkened room. ‘But now I’ve returned to the place I spent my happiest years and the daughter of my dearest friend sits before me. So please—tell me everything I missed!’
Grace hesitated, taking in the vivid interest on the drawn face, but at a loss as to how to reply.
Where should I start? With my jilting, or Papa’s imprisonment?
To her unending horror Grace felt a prickling behind her eyes, the distress of the past few hours rising again at the question. Mrs Dauntsey’s kindness threatened to make a fresh river of tears flow, her innocent enquiry a stark reminder of Papa’s plight and the dizzying turn Grace’s life had taken for the worse—but wasn’t that the truth for her hostess, too? She’d lost a son since she had been in the north and Spencer had lost his twin; and both of them were now so altered it would have been forgivable for even intimate acquaintances to hesitate. So much had happened in the intervening years, including Grace’s new distrust in the word of a handsome man.
Some clue as to the workings of her mind must have shown on her face, for the smile left Mrs Dauntsey’s lips at once, her brow creasing in concern as she leaned forward to look into Grace’s downturned eyes.
‘Grace? Why, dearest, you look so troubled. Is something amiss?’
Her expression was so worried that Grace had to bite her tongue to stop herself from breaking down. It would have taken a heart of stone to resist the pull of that readily offered sympathy: how many times had Mrs Dauntsey soothed Grace’s bumped head or grazed elbow as a child, or passed her a sweet beneath the cover of a card table? Her kindness had always been apparent, but never more than at that moment, her obvious dismay tempting Grace to confess every secret sorrow she’d ever had.
A single impatient sigh from directly behind her chair made Grace start in surprise, the sudden movement once again sending a shard of agony through her injured neck.
He followed us in here?
She winced, twisting to peer at Spencer looming above her and looking for all the world as though she was the bane of his existence. He was close enough for her to have touched the soft fabric of his rich breeches and the very idea of such a scandalous—and tempting—action jolted Grace into speech.
‘Did you say something?’
Spencer folded his arms across his broad chest, the movement causing his impressive biceps to bunch beneath the scant cover of his shirt in a way so damnably interesting Grace felt her face flush scarlet as she hastily turned away again. A flicker of that same sensation she had felt earlier sparked into being within her and she would have given anything for a glass of cold water with which to douse the alarming embers that glowed at his sudden proximity.
When he replied it was directed over her head as though she wasn’t there at all. ‘I found Miss Linwood out on the Cobb in a state of acute distress. As far as I can gather she’s had to call off her engagement this evening, although I haven’t the pleasure of knowing why.’
Grace gritted her teeth, resentment simmering alongside her dismay as the older woman’s brows knitted together further.
As if I needed more proof his good nature has gone for ever, taking with it the boy I thought so highly of.
She could still sense Spencer standing at her back, in all likelihood scowling down at her from his great height, and the knowledge of his unseen closeness stirred the fine hairs of her neck. Irritation at his meddling coursed through her, although another stream of something close to a kind of breathless apprehension mingled with it. His voice was deep and expressionless, yet it possessed an educated cadence so pleasing that even in the depths of her annoyance Grace felt herself give a small shudder when he spoke.
It has to be the loss of William. What else could change him so drastically for the worse?
From his stance behind her chair—his chair, in fact—Spencer couldn’t see the set of his silent guest’s expression, although if the stiffness of her shoulders was anything to go by it probably wasn’t one of delight. Looking down at her from behind only afforded him a view of her blonde ringlets, one escaping from a cluster at the back of her head to snake at the base of her slender neck, but it was enough to make him avert his eyes in sudden discomfort. There was something so vulnerable about that nape, so delicate as it rose out of her lace-trimmed collar, that was deeply unexpected and just as deeply disturbing. It roused something in him, some glint of the weakness he had determinedly suppressed for so long it was a wonder to discover he could still feel it.
Be careful. A sense of danger nagged at the back of his mind, a clear warning against the perturbing turn this sorry business was taking. It must have been the suffering on her face that called to him, holding a mirror up to the pain that so often clouded his own features; but that was not a good enough reason to allow any assault on his restraint and it was with a frown he took in her words as she began to speak.
‘Thank you, Spencer, for that succinct summary of my misfortune.’
Spencer raised an eyebrow at her frigid tone, but held his tongue. The distress written on Grace’s features had been clear to see and his discomfort grew as he realised how much he disliked the memory. It might even have stirred the remnants of his long-buried compassion had he not been so resolutely steeling himself against the flash of momentary weakness the despondent Miss Linwood somehow already managed to provoke in him.
If Will was still alive, he would have her laughing already. He always knew how to make a woman smile. Then again...
Hadn’t that been the very thing that had come between them, in the end?
Spencer gritted his teeth in instinctive dismay as the question arose, but nothing could stop the relentless march of his thoughts down the one path he would have given anything to avoid.
Not this again. Not now.
He could hardly even recall her face: Miss Constance Strong, the lively, captivating woman both twins had loved—to their everlasting detriment. The image of her beauty was eclipsed by other memories, of how he and the man he’d loved as a second self had argued over her, the only thing they had ever been unable to share. If only he’d let Will win, had stepped back and stopped their quarrel before it was too late—but that was a pointless wish and one that did nothing to erase the guilt that had swirled inside him like an icy storm ever since.
You can’t allow yourself to walk that path again. If you hadn’t been so foolish as to lose your heart to a woman you might still have a brother...not that any woman would want you now.
Alike in so many ways, all traces of the cheerful nature the twins had once shared were now gone for ever: Will’s disappearing in the cold finality of death and Spencer’s snuffed out like a candle beneath the unbearable weight of the shame and remorse that had haunted him since that terrible day two years before. Some pale shadow of his better self lingered for his mother’s sake, a last echo of the person he had once been before tragedy had made him retreat from the world to drown his sorrows in drink, but even that phantom would fade as soon as her sickness overcame her. When that happened, his transformation into a mere husk of a man would be complete.
His mother’s voice jolted him from his maudlin train of thought. ‘Is that true? You’ve had to call off your engagement?’
Even from behind Spencer saw the way Grace’s throat contracted in a dry swallow, the slight curve of her cheek visible to him tight with strain. If she was battling the urge to break down and air her soul, she was putting up a good fight, he thought with a gleam of grudging respect, but nothing could overcome the kind probing of his mother and he at last heard a shuddering sigh escape her that lifted the intriguingly slight shoulders beneath her gown.
‘I...’
Grace stopped at once as the sitting-room door opened and a maid bearing a tea tray appeared, lapsing into tense silence she didn’t break even when the servant retreated once again.
In the ensuing quiet Spencer stepped smartly round Grace’s chair to stand closer to the hearth and table laid out before it. A quick glance in her direction now gave him his first uninterrupted view of her face since she had sat down and he clenched his jaw in sudden horror at the jolt that leapt within him at the sight.
Her lips trembled in obvious emotion and her hands were clasped together tightly on her knees, one finger rubbing at her knuckles in absent-minded distress. She looked so plainly unhappy, so heartbreakingly tiny in his enveloping chair nestled among the cushions like a lost creature in need of a protective arm. The shocking urge to offer that arm was suddenly overwhelming, coming apparently from nowhere, and Spencer shoved it back from the forefront of his mind.
What are you thinking of?
He bent his head lower above the tray, ostensibly stirring the tea leaves while his mind flooded with confusion and the shrill peals of alarm bells rang in his ears.
What is the meaning of this?
It was years since he had resolved to separate himself from the world and all the people in it—both for their sake and his own. Nothing good had come from his weakness for Constance’s charms, her laugh still occasionally punctuating the nightmares that plagued his fitful sleep. Only the death of one he loved and a lifetime of regret had been his reward for believing he might find happiness with another, far too high a price to pay again.
It was easier to turn oneself to unfeeling granite; to care about others was to wear one’s heart outside the body and the world was cruel enough to crush it beneath its boots if given half a chance. If there was something in Grace’s tender vulnerability and guileless face that touched the last shred of humanity he had left, he would fight it every step of the way—anything rather than risk another mistake, another soul-destroying loss; another scar to add to the collection borne by more than just his skin.
He roused himself with a brisk roll of his shoulders. The ridiculous thoughts that insisted on trying to worm their way into his already whirling mind would be dismissed. Grace would soon be gone from his house, taking her disconcerting effect on him with her, and then he needn’t see her or her accursedly moving sadness again if he chose. It was almost amusing he’d let himself get so carried away by such folly.
How foolish to fear something that was never a danger in the first place.
Reassured at last by his own sensible thinking, Spencer risked a swift look up at Grace as he handed her a cup, which she took in one shaking hand.
‘You were saying?’ Mrs Dauntsey prompted gently.
‘Oh. Yes.’ Grace took a small sip of her tea. It was far too hot to drink yet, Spencer knew, but the attempt at normality seemed to give her the courage to go on.
She sighed again, her eyes suddenly sparkling with unshed tears that made Spencer’s brows contract in a brief frown of discomfort. Grace took a deep breath before continuing, but the quaver in her voice was painfully obvious. ‘My fiancé ended our engagement only this afternoon and now I find myself in a position—oh, such a position—I just don’t know what will become of us all now!’
The tears she had tried in vain to conceal now spilled down her cheeks and she covered her face with her hand in a mixture of shame and distress that pricked Spencer in the soft underbelly of his determined indifference. Her dismay at breaking down was clear, but she couldn’t seem to control the storm of weeping that held her in its merciless grasp—it was an uncomfortable relief to Spencer when his mother hurriedly set aside her cup and took the younger woman’s hand in her own, helping Grace to stem the tide of misery that shook her slender frame.
‘Oh, my dearest girl! Please don’t cry so. Whatever do you mean, you don’t know what will become of you all? What can have happened?’
Grace brushed the wetness from her face with the backs of her fingers. She hesitated, a shadow of reluctance crossing her countenance, but the entreaty in Mrs Dauntsey’s face forced her to speak. ‘Spencer said you hadn’t heard of the misfortune that has befallen my family.’
Spencer watched as his mother nodded warily, her glance flickering towards him briefly in a look he had no need to puzzle over. Disappointment and unhappiness gleamed in it, a clear indication of Mrs Dauntsey’s thoughts. ‘That’s correct. I haven’t been able to stir outside since we arrived and I’m afraid an...indiscretion of Spencer’s means we’ve had no visitors to bring us news.’
Another flit of guilt pinched Spencer beneath his ribs at his mother’s delicate phrasing of a distinctly indelicate event. As a Quaker she disapproved strongly of his drinking and as his mother she despaired to see its effect on her only surviving son. His very public fight had made him notorious in a society where once he might have been welcomed with open arms, his fortune and face usually a guarantee of entry into the upper echelons. Now his actions would rob his poor mother of respectable company—for who would choose to spend time with a family whose sole heir was so evidently running wild? The inconvenient truth of his only having acted in self-defence wouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of a good story, the rumours about him too salacious to be tempered by facts.
Spencer tracked the fascinating movement of Grace’s throat as she swallowed down another sigh, bobbing her head in a hopeless nod. ‘I see. Well. Poor Papa has been taken to Fleet Prison in London. He is completely innocent of all charges, of course, but he is accused of making fraudulent investments, running up debts and any number of financial indiscretions actually performed by his dishonest business partners. He has been declared bankrupt in his absence.’
Mrs Dauntsey’s lips parted in frank disbelief. ‘That cannot be so! Surely nobody could be so stupid as to believe your father capable of such actions?’ She pressed a hand to her thin chest, clearly shocked to the core. ‘Such a thing is impossible. Your father was always such a gentleman! Where are the real perpetrators, who allow him to be exposed to these lies?’
‘They have fled, cowards that they are. Without their testimony there is nobody to take the blame but Papa, even though the first he knew of this whole affair was when the bailiffs came knocking at our door.’
Grace looked down at her hands, fingers clenched into fists and knuckles shining white through pale skin. ‘As I’m sure you can imagine, our standing in society is now lower than dirt. I had hoped my fiancé would help us in our plight, but now...’ Her lips trembled again and she folded them into a tight line of unhappiness that made Spencer’s own twitch in unconscious reply. ‘We have no prospects, no fortune, and with four daughters to support Mama faces the likelihood of having to give up our home.’ She finished on a dry sob and clenched her jaw shut so firmly Spencer saw the tendons of her neck flex painfully.
There was a silence.
Standing before the fireplace, Spencer felt the warmth of the flames creeping up his back, although nothing could chase away the chilly dread that flared within his gut. It was a feeling close to sympathy that circled inside him, startlingly insistent and refusing to be dismissed. The sight of Grace’s tears spoke to something in him, some aggravating weakness that he had thought his studied apathy for the world had killed off—but there it was, the desire to wipe away her tears, and the suffering in her look called to his own in a language he understood only too well.
The quiet stretched on for several moments, only the movement of Grace absently stirring her tea breaking the illusion all three were carved from stone. It almost made him jump when his mother cleared her throat and spoke with businesslike directness.
‘Well. As I see it, there’s an obvious solution; at least in part.’
Mrs Dauntsey glanced towards Spencer and he cocked his head in wordless query.
What scheme has she come up with?
Unease began to filter into his mind and he felt his eyes narrow in suspicion.
If his mother saw his cautious reaction, she gave no clue. ‘I will, of course, employ you as my companion.’ She fixed Grace with a forthright gaze, oblivious to Spencer’s start of alarm. ‘You can come to live here and I will meet all your expenses. With only the three younger girls to support, I’m sure your excellent mama will more than rise to the challenge.’
Watching with disbelieving eyes, Spencer saw Grace’s mouth drop open, all words stolen from her by utter surprise.
‘You cannot be serious?’
‘As the grave. It would be a joy to have you about the house and renew the friendship between our families. If you came to live here, it would surely ease some of the financial strain, and Spencer wouldn’t feel obliged to waste his time attempting small talk to entertain his aged mother. After all—’ Mrs Dauntsey shot him another look that made his insides twist ‘—your dear mother and sisters are likely to be the only company I’ll have to enjoy, given the circumstances.’
Spencer sucked in a sharp breath of dismay, covered by an abrupt turn away from both women and towards the hearth.
The very last thing he wanted was for Grace to take up residence in his home, her disconcerting effect on him already becoming an irritation he could have done without. It was bad enough he had felt that damned glimmer of something for her already, without the dangers of having to see her admittedly not unpretty face across his breakfast table every morning. If only there was something he could say, something he could do to dissuade his mother from this plan—but one quick glance backwards pricked at his conscience. His already tainted reputation would have long-reaching effects, the rumours of his temper unlikely to be forgotten. Perhaps there might be some small glint of merit in her scheme—although mingled with the threat of unseen complications for himself.
‘But I could be getting ahead of myself. You might be hoping your fiancé will return to you?’
The shake of Grace’s head was the most vehement movement Spencer had seen her make yet. ‘Henry would never seek my hand again. I wish I’d known before what I now see so clearly: he never wanted anything from me other than my wealth and connections. As soon as I had neither his interest vanished at once. He never—he never truly loved me.’ She gave a small sigh, a wretched thing that nipped at Spencer uncomfortably. ‘The details of our separation will be forgotten soon enough, I am sure. The only thing I wish to remember with any clarity is never to venture my heart in such a way ever again. The risk to one’s soul is too great.’
It was as though she had read his mind, Spencer recognised with a frown of surprise as Grace took another sip from her cup. It was the same conclusion he had come to as he sat within the belly of a storm-tossed ship returning to England, bandages staunching the flow of his blood and pain from more than just his wounds making him want to cry out in agony. Constance had been the first woman to capture his heart and his actions because of it had cost him dearly—he would not be caught out twice. How the pale young lady who had claimed his chair had managed to so exactly articulate his own feelings he didn’t know—only that it was almightily unnerving.
‘My only hesitation in accepting your kind offer would be my reputation.’ A rosy blush spread across Grace’s cheeks as she continued, the colour illuminating the delicate lines of her cheekbones and jaw that Spencer suddenly realised—with another pang of dismay—were very fine indeed. ‘I couldn’t bring disgrace upon this house and allow you to be connected to our shame.’
Mrs Dauntsey waved a dismissive hand, although Spencer could have sworn he saw a glint of irony in her eye.
It wouldn’t be only Grace who made this house notorious. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Mother?
She’d been too frail to leave the house and hear the whispers about him first-hand, but she was no fool. Anybody who had ever walked among the judgement of the ton knew how they could drag a man down with their words, destroying his good name in the blink of an eye if they thought him undeserving.
‘I couldn’t care three straws about that. Society busybodies will always find something to talk about. I don’t see what anybody else’s opinion has to do with it—and that’s my final word!’
She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes briefly. Her chest rose and fell a little more quickly than usual, Spencer saw in swift alarm—she was tiring rapidly, and very soon she would be worn out completely.
She needs to rest. This has been too much excitement.
Whatever his thoughts on the matter, now was not the time for further discussion. His mother’s colour had already ebbed a little and her breaths bordered on laboured as she smiled across at Grace apologetically.
‘I tire so easily these days. I ought to be taking to my chamber now.’ She paused for a moment to regain her breath. ‘But before I do, may we shake on our arrangement? If you are agreeable, of course?’
Spencer concealed his uneasiness behind one large hand, rubbing the dark bristles of his chin. Grace appeared to be hesitating, obviously turning the words over in her mind—but then she extended her hand and his mother took it firmly.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Mrs Dauntsey.’ Grace’s voice shook, but this time the tremor seemed of awed relief rather than bleak emotion. ‘You will never know how grateful I am for your help.’
‘It’s time you called me Dorothea and I only wish I could do more. Please assure your mother of that and tell her I long to see her and your sisters soon.’ Mrs Dauntsey’s eyes were warm, but an edge of pain had crept into her tone and Spencer stepped towards her.
‘If you ladies are quite finished, I shall escort you to your rooms, Mother.’ He fixed her with a look that brooked no refusal. ‘Miss Linwood, the carriage will be waiting for you now. If you are willing, I shall send it again to collect you tomorrow evening.’
‘Thank you.’ Grace averted her eyes from his, the trace of a blush flickering a little stronger under his intense watch. There was none of the warmth with which she had addressed his mother, he noticed.
But who do you have to blame for that?
He sketched a short bow, attempting to block out the unwelcome question. ‘I hope you will excuse us. Rivers will see you out. Goodnight, Miss Linwood.’
Easing his mother to her feet, Spencer helped her from the room. Pausing on the threshold, he turned back briefly, intending to say something more—but all words escaped him as he saw the dazed relief that had flooded Grace’s face and the sudden beauty of her wonderstruck smile sent him striding mutely away before she could turn to see his grim discomfort at the sight.
Chapter Three (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
Spencer strode through the house to his library with his jaw clenched on rising bad temper, trying with each footstep to outpace the thoughts that pursued him. The same old nightmare, the one he dreaded more than any other, had visited him as he slept the previous night and the combination of waking bathed in sweat and the tiredness that resulted from it did not improve his mood. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep that tore at him, however, or the usual sickening guilt that made him reach for the nearest bottle. Ever since Grace’s arrival two weeks before he’d found it increasingly difficult to find an escape from the troubling reaction her presence provoked in him and it was becoming more vexing by the day.
It wasn’t as though he had any real basis for complaint, some irritable part of him recognised. The difference in his mother was striking, even after such a short time, and the change in her would have cheered anybody to see it. She still tired easily and the slow sinking of her features into her drawn face hadn’t ceased, but there was a gleam in her eye Spencer hadn’t seen for months and it was plain Grace’s company was the cause. The regular visits from Mrs Linwood and her three younger daughters had helped, too, no doubt, but it was Grace who was always busily arranging a warm shawl about Dorothea’s shoulders or making suggestions to the cook that might tempt her to take more than a mouthful. He would have to admit having Grace come to live with them, comfortably installed in her own private rooms, was the best thing that could have happened for his mother—especially given his own behaviour had played a large part in her isolation.
No. He couldn’t complain. And yet...
She’s handsome when she smiles.
The unwelcome thought flashed through Spencer’s mind yet again and he scowled to himself in a combination of frustration and alarm. Not this nonsense again. Is there no escaping it?
It was irritatingly true that Grace’s countenance grew in appeal the longer one looked at her. At first sight her fair skin had seemed colourless to him, her pale hair and eyes frankly a little bland, but closer inspection showed an almost pearlescent quality to her complexion and, when the shadows of sadness cleared, her eyes sparkled with an intelligence that would surely interest any sensible man. Even the fragility of her slight frame took on a new elegance after reluctant study, her movements measured and step quiet as she moved through his house.
But it was that smile—that damned smile—that made the biggest difference. It gave life to her face and animation to her features, highlighting the graceful contours of her pronounced cheekbones as though a candle flickered behind them. Only a simpleton could ever think she was plain after seeing that curve of her lips and the tiny dimple that appeared in one soft cheek—
No!
Spencer brought his fist down hard on his thigh as he walked, the furrow between his brows growing deeper by the second.
This will not do!
He shook his head fiercely against the unwanted barrage of images that bombarded him. Dwelling on a woman’s beauty was for other men, men who hadn’t caused such terrible destruction with their misplaced affections. It was for them to stare and pine and write poems praising their lady’s limitless charms: all things he could no longer entertain since his catastrophic entanglement with Constance had caused such devastation. Love and death walked side by side in his mind now. Guilt ran like an icy river beneath both, linking them together with its cold fingers, and no amount of time would thaw the frost that formed around his heart. Grace might have attracted his attention for some absurd reason, but she would never be allowed to be anything more to him than a reluctantly hosted guest. The consequences were too stark and the risk of unimaginable pain could have made a weaker man shudder.
Not that she would want to be anything more. That idiot Henry Earls has cured her of any such notions once and for all, I fancy.
With a fresh wave of aggravation Spencer wrenched his focus away to remember the decanter waiting for him beside his favourite reading chair, which would provide some relief, hopefully, from the disloyal workings of his mind. Whether drink had become his closest friend or worst enemy was becoming difficult to tell these days, he thought darkly; but it was the only thing that helped silence the demons that plagued him, and with the added complication of Grace moving warily about his home his mind felt more troubled than ever.
The library door stood slightly ajar when he reached it and pushed through with an impatient hand. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been quite so surprising, then, to find someone already in the room, although Spencer’s thoughts were too occupied to consider the possibility until his heart gave a sudden lurch at the sight that met his eyes.
Grace sat curled in the very armchair he had been aiming for, her legs tucked beneath her and eyes intent on a dog-eared book Spencer recognised at once. It was one of a pair Mr Dauntsey had given his sons eight years before on the last birthday they would spend with him, the name of one twin inscribed in each in their father’s slanting hand. Spencer’s copy lay safely in his untidy desk, so it had to be William’s that Grace held in slender fingers, poring over the contents with her delicate profile thrown into sharp relief by the window behind her head. It was a pose Spencer suddenly remembered vividly from when Grace was a girl, too shy to speak much in his presence, but she was far more confident now, an intelligent and accomplished young woman, and the knowledge kindled something within the broad spread of his chest.
Pull yourself together, man. So she reads—what of it? She always was a bluestocking.
She hadn’t noticed him standing uncertainly in the doorway. Engrossed in her book, Spencer was at perfect liberty to take in the blonde tendrils that gleamed softly in the winter sunlight as they tumbled about cheeks it would surely be a fine thing to touch... It was an unacceptable urge, but one that roared up with a power that shocked him, strong enough to cause the faintest flicker of something long hidden deep within him to attempt to spark into life.
Spencer took a breath to centre himself, alarmed by the unwanted direction of his thoughts.
You shouldn’t think like that. Have you no control?
It was bad enough to feel such things in private—to do so in Grace’s presence was even worse. She’d be horrified if she suspected how his mind wandered, he was sure; aside from a polite greeting each morning she barely spoke to him, apparently unwilling to spend much time in his company. Any accord they might have enjoyed as children had long since dissipated, chased away by the brusque new identity the loss of Will had forced Spencer, in his guilt and boundless grief, to adopt.
He ought to say something, probably, and stop lingering in doorways, but it was strangely difficult to think what that something should be—especially when Grace flipped to the front page to read where Will’s name would live on for ever in faded ink. Her brows twitched together, the sudden sorrow there only enhancing the fine lines of her face, and that look flew straight to the most vulnerable part of Spencer’s soul. How much had his mother told her of his twin’s too-early demise? Not even Dorothea knew the whole story, of course, or that Constance had even existed—his shame would never allow it—and the nightmares that stalked him whenever he slept would ensure he never forgot. No doubt Grace would flee from him if she ever knew the truth—but wouldn’t he deserve that, for the damage his stupid actions had done?
He cleared his throat, although his voice, when he managed to force out the words, still sounded a trifle strangled.
‘I hadn’t thought you’d be in here.’
Grace started, closing the book with a guilty snap.
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ She unfurled herself hurriedly and slipped off the chair, although she didn’t relinquish the book as she stood before him, looking for all the world as though she wished she was anywhere else.
Spencer frowned, horribly aware of an awkward silence descending on the room. Perhaps once he would have been able to fill it with banal small talk, but now all he could think of was how strangely pleasing the tilt of Grace’s chin was as she looked up at him, tapering to a gentle point he had no way of knowing she hated.
That was yet another thought he shouldn’t be allowing and it was a relief when Grace was the one to break the rising tension between them.
‘I was just looking through this anthology of poems. Some of them are really quite beautiful.’ She paused, apparently weighing up her next words. Spencer realised his jaw had tightened as he willed her not to speak them, but his wordless entreaty was in vain as she continued, a shadow of sympathy in her grey eyes he suddenly couldn’t bear. ‘I saw William’s name written in the cover, along with a dedication from your father. I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I was for the loss of Mr Dauntsey, or for Will. You must miss them so fiercely. How have you fared these past years?’
The muscles in Spencer’s throat contracted like a vice.
Of all the questions she could have asked. How have I fared?
Of course he missed his father. The senior Captain Dauntsey had been a warm, compassionate man devoted to his wife and sons and his passing had plunged them all into mourning so deep Spencer had privately known his mother would never truly recover, even after eight long years. There was no guilt, though—Richard Dauntsey had died of a weak heart in his own bed, surrounded by his family in his final moments. William had perished in a foreign land, bleeding in the mud and never knowing how much Spencer regretted the final angry words between them. There could be no comparison and Spencer knew his reply would be harsh before he even opened his mouth.
‘That isn’t something I wish to discuss.’ He saw how Grace blinked at the coldness of his tone and felt an immediate—and uncomfortable—twinge of remorse, but he couldn’t bring himself to let her draw him in. There was already something about Grace that called to him, some reflection of his own suffering he saw in her stormy gaze. The imprisonment of her father, the loss of her reputation and finally her fiancé: it was no wonder she so often wore a cloak of sadness valiantly concealed beneath a stiff smile. Her stoicism was admirable—and that admiration was growing more dangerous by the minute.
‘You have enough troubles of your own, surely, to want to know more of mine. Your time would be better spent thinking of yours than questioning others.’
As soon as the words slipped out Spencer knew they’d been cruel. The sympathy in Grace’s face slowly merged into a look of such quiet unhappiness Spencer felt a kick of powerful regret, so swift it was like a blow to the gut.
Damn you and your barbed tongue. That was unkind.
Grace’s reply was soft, yet so steady it stirred the ashes of Spencer’s worrying admiration even more. ‘My troubles are never far from my mind, I assure you. There’s scarcely a moment Papa is not in my thoughts, but I know he wouldn’t want me to surrender to despair.’
He shouldn’t have rubbed salt in her wounds, Spencer knew, reminding her how all her hopes for the future had turned to dust and what she was now reduced to. The proof was in the way her pretty lips twitched as though fighting the urge to turn down at the corners, all caused by his thoughtless remark born of fear she might see through his defensive façade to the damaged man within.
Internally he muttered something unfit for the ears of a lady, in equal parts dismayed by Grace’s sorrow and his part in causing it, as well as how much he wished to take away her pain.
Make the effort, man. She’s been the best medicine for Mother you ever could have wished for and that matters more than any feelings of your own.
He swallowed, a forced convulsion of his tight throat that made it no easier to find the right words.
‘That was unfair. I shouldn’t have spoken so hastily, or with so little care. I apologise.’
Grace gazed at Spencer for a long moment, not entirely sure how to respond.
Her heart still raced at his unexpected entrance to the library, interrupting her solitude with the presence she still wasn’t quite sure how to interpret. During the two weeks she had spent under Spencer’s roof his transformation from open warmth to icy cold had turned Grace’s ordered world on its head, and she had frequently found herself at a loss for words at some of his behaviour. His chaotic approach to life coupled with the unfortunate galloping of her pulse every time she found herself in the same room meant she did her best to avoid him, but on some occasions he was unavoidable—as he was now, standing in front of her and looking so sincere she felt her heart shudder over a missed beat in the most unsettling manner possible.
Her reaction to his scrutiny was one she resolutely did not want,too similar to the flash of heat Henry had always managed to send thrilling through her with the touch of his hand. It seemed Spencer was able to achieve that same sensation without even making contact with her skin, a realisation that made Grace’s insides twist in keen dismay.
But you needn’t worry. You’re on your guard now and no such vulnerability will be allowed to take hold of you ever again.
If the rich darkness of Spencer’s eyes was something Grace had noticed, she would disregard it at once. Henry’s had been just as fine, although sapphire where Spencer’s were the colour of sweet cocoa... Either way, girlish weakness for such a trivial thing was something Grace would not entertain, especially when those eyes were set in the face of a man surely capable of wreaking untold damage on any woman foolish enough to fall for him. She should be congratulating herself on her own good sense in realising it, Grace thought determinedly—but Spencer still watched her with an expression she had never seen before, standing close enough for her to just catch the clean scent of his shaving soap, and despite her resolve she would have to admit it was pleasing.
He had never before looked at her with anything warmer than faint disapproval at her continued presence in his house and she couldn’t help the dangerous pleasure that shivered through her insides at the new lack of censure in his gaze. It was replaced by a ghost of real remorse, as honest as it was surprising and adding fuel to the new colour that simmered in Grace’s cheeks. With his face no longer darkened by the grim shadows that usually cloaked it he looked so much younger, more human somehow, far removed from the sullen man she was still unable to fully understand and more like the lad she used to think she knew...
Grace attempted a small smile, desperately trying to make it seem natural and not the rigid thing she feared was spreading over her face. ‘Think nothing of it. We all say things we regret from time to time.’
The only response was a curt nod, although Grace thought she caught a glint of faint relief. It vanished again almost instantaneously and she determined there and then she wouldn’t waste a single moment trying to decipher what it meant. There were far more important things for her to be doing than dwelling on the inner workings of a man’s mind—even if the man in question was more attractive than was strictly fair, a direct challenge to her vow never to be imposed on again.
‘I ought to return to your mother. I managed to persuade her to stay abed a little longer this morning and I’d like to check she hasn’t escaped while my back was turned.’
One corner of Spencer’s mouth twitched as if in wry amusement, a movement he checked at once—but still it captured Grace’s attention.
‘You certainly have a difficult task trying to keep my mother restrained. She does so love to be busy.’
‘I’d noticed. I’ve sewn more shifts for parish orphans in these past two weeks than I have in twenty years together. She’s quite the force of nature, even when unwell.’
This time the reply was the flicker of one dark eyebrow and when Spencer met her eye a look passed between them to stir the hair at the nape of her neck. It was close to understanding, as though a fine thread of commonality bridged the gap that held them so far apart, and it made Grace blink in confusion.
‘You needn’t tell me that. Sometimes I think it’s sheer strength of will that’s kept her going through all her troubles.’
Grace nodded, trying to ignore the little voice that piped up inside her to ask the obvious question: Troubles that you’ve only added to, Spencer?
Dorothea had already told her why nobody visited Nevin Place, in equal parts frustrated and worried by her son’s ill-judged behaviour. The decanter Grace had spied waiting for him next to the very armchair she had just been sitting in only reinforced the truth of his mother’s fears: that he spent much of his time alone, stubbornly refusing to explain his reasons for needing to seek oblivion so ardently it had cost him his reputation. It was no wonder the rumours about him swirled, when he stalked through life looking so grim-faced and a smattering of bruises still on the fists that roused such comment.
There was still a glimmer of the unnamed something in Spencer’s look as Grace held out the book in her hand for him to take, suddenly aware how much she wanted to be free of the attention of those sharp eyes. Surely to spend too much time in Spencer’s disturbing company was a mistake, his powerful presence whispering to her with a sweet voice Henry had robbed her of the ability to enjoy.
‘Will you take this? I found it on the table and I’m not sure on which shelf it belongs.’
Spencer reached out for the book she proffered, his large hand taking the weight, and in so doing brushed Grace’s fingers with his own, sending a shockwave streaking the length of her arm to blaze beneath her ribs.
A gasp fell from Grace’s lips before she could bite it back, her breath suddenly scalding at the unexpected feeling on his skin against hers. It was the quickest of touches, so brief it shouldn’t even have registered, yet the nerves in her fingertips sang in unwelcome chorus, her heartbeat leaping to beat in time with the rhythm Spencer’s warmth conducted.
She could have sworn he felt a similar jolt of surprise, no doubt born of the discomfort her company already seemed to inspire. Surely he hadn’t felt a pang of disconcerting pleasure at the feel of soft skin against his more rugged fingers, an echo of the shameful feeling that coursed in Grace’s veins. Only Henry had ever made her feel anything remotely similar; and even then not as vividly as the spark Spencer sent scurrying down her spine, nor half so effortlessly. Spencer looked down at her uncertainly, his gaze moving from her eyes to lips still parted in wonder, and whatever he saw in her flushed face made him step a smart pace backwards.
‘Thank you. I’ll see it’s returned to its proper place.’
Grace nodded, her mouth suddenly dry and mind accursedly blank. It was precisely the kind of situation she’d been so determined to avoid and when she dipped a hurried curtsy and left the library it was with far more speed than might have been necessary.
Grace’s heart still hammered as she cautiously opened Dorothea’s bedchamber door and quietly stepped inside. Mrs Dauntsey lay fast asleep against the richly embroidered pillows of a daybed beneath a large window, her chest rising and falling with an effort it pained Grace to see. The pretty room with its plush carpet and expensive French furniture was not as warm as it should have been, considering the January chill outside, and she moved noiselessly to stoke up the embers that gleamed in the grate.
Another layer draped over Dorothea would be a good idea, too. It made her joints ache all the more if she was not kept snug, even though she protested about being swaddled like an infant, and despite the chaos holding a carnival inside her chest Grace found a small smile at the thought of her friend’s determination not to surrender to her illness. It would claim her eventually, of course, but that was a bleak possibility Grace wasn’t willing to stare dead in the face.
A fine woollen blanket lay folded at the end of the daybed and Grace drew it up to cover Dorothea’s sleeping form, tucking it round her with careful fingers. The more the patient slept now the more energy she’d have later, perhaps even able to be helped downstairs to stand at the garden door and take some of the crisp winter air. The doctor wouldn’t approve, Grace thought wryly as she smoothed the blanket into place, but he might never know the illicit activities of two conspiring women. She and Dorothea made a formidable team, their prior connection only having deepened over the past weeks to a relationship that brought both tremendous comfort. When Mrs Linwood came to drink tea even more peals of laughter could be heard from the formerly silent chamber as events from years past were revisited, renewing bonds and adding a layer to old friendships to make them afresh.
Quite unlike my dealings with another old acquaintance, who shall remain nameless.
At the unwelcome thought of Spencer Grace’s hands grew clumsy, her mind too occupied to pay much attention to her movements. Her skin still tingled where masculine fingers had brushed her own, only feather-light and accidental yet dangerously effective in making her cheeks flare with heat. It was every bit as uncomfortable a fact as it had been the moment it happened, mere minutes ago downstairs, and Grace had yet to find a way to banish the thought back to the darkest pit of her mind where it belonged.
‘Have I done something to offend you, Grace? I’m not sure I deserve such manhandling!’
There was a gleam of amusement in Dorothea’s eye as Grace jumped, freezing in the act of vigorously arranging the blanket. Evidently her focus had wandered too far for her to be gentle and she dropped the tasselled hem with guilty haste.
‘Sorry. My mind was...on other things.’
‘Don’t apologise. Of all people, I know what it’s like to have a lot to think about.’
Dorothea tried to ease herself up to sit back against the cushions behind her, accepting Grace’s supporting hand with a pained smile. ‘Did I sleep for long enough, do you think? I hope you weren’t bored while I was so rudely inattentive. What pleasant thing did you find to occupy you?’
Grace wasn’t entirely sure if spending time with Spencer counted as a ‘pleasant thing’; two conflicting opinions wrestling each other for supremacy. It seemed safest to offer a bland smile of her own, although Grace felt her heart rate skip a fraction faster.
‘I thought I’d sit in the library and read a while, until I was chanced upon by Spencer. We talked for a short while before I came to check on you.’
‘Ah. And how is my son today?’ With a grunt of effort Dorothea pulled a lumpy pillow from beneath her. ‘He came to my rooms soon after breakfast, but I doubt I shall see him again until supper.’
Grace hesitated. The unerringly honest part of her ought to win out, but to tell Dorothea her son had made a beeline for the library decanter as she left seemed unwise. She knew how much her staunchly Quaker friend hated having strong drink in the house, although Spencer was far too stubborn to be ruled by anybody but himself. ‘He—he seemed well enough. After a fashion.’
‘Hmm.’ Dorothea eyed her narrowly, but then merely sighed. ‘You always were faultlessly polite, even as a little girl. I’m aware Spencer isn’t the easiest of companions these days and it worries me relentlessly.’
‘I know. I know you have much to bear, but do try not to distress yourself. It does you no good.’
Something of an understatement, Grace conceded as she watched her friend’s laboured breaths.
To lose the husband she’d adored, followed by a son just six years later, was a devastating blow—only compounded by her remaining boy turning into somebody she barely knew. Her failing health was the final piece of a tragic puzzle, so sad it hardly seemed possible.
‘You’re right, of course. Only...’ Another sigh came from the skeletal figure beneath the blanket. ‘The change in him, Grace. Of course he grieved when his father passed, but since we lost William he’s been a man I simply don’t recognise. You must have seen that he takes no pleasure in anything, not even pursuits he used to feel passion for. There was a time when he sketched every day, you know, and showed great promise; he hasn’t so much as picked up a pencil these past two years, as if the very spark of inspiration has been snuffed out like a candle.’
A sudden cough racked her frail body and she pressed her hand to her heaving chest until the spell passed, leaving her cheeks ruddy and breath coming hard.
‘As time has gone by I find myself grieving less for William. I will be seeing him and my dear Richard again very soon, I am sure of it, and then I need never feel sorrow for them ever again. It is Spencer who now pains my heart the most when I think how he will be left alone with his secrets and the suffering he thinks I do not see in his face. He would never tell me exactly what happened the day Will died, but I am no fool.’ She wheezed for a moment, papery eyelids closed. ‘The idea of what he will become when I am gone—it haunts me.’
Bony fingers found Grace’s arm, grasping at the sleeve of her gown in a twitch of distress, and she immediately covered them with her own. Her heart swelled with pity and powerful sorrow—Dorothea looked so small in her grief and fear, and the sight pained Grace more than she could say.
‘If I’d as much as suspected what damage it would do for my boys to go off to war, I would never have allowed them to enlist. You know my faith prohibits all kinds of violence, but I agreed with Richard on his deathbed I would let the twins carry on the military tradition of his family. If they had only stayed in England, Grace... I curse the day they left for Belgium, and I hate the very name of the Battle of Quatre Bras with a passion I feel in my bones.’
A tear slipped down one sunken cheek and Dorothea cuffed it away, although not before the glitter of it sent ice piercing Grace’s insides. For the family she had known since childhood to be ripped so cruelly apart seemed the worst of injustices and from the tumult of her emotions a new thought arose to make Grace wonder...
Had Spencer seen his brother die, cut down in front of him in some battlefield across the sea? Wouldn’t that go some way to explaining why he seemed so closed off, so strangely emotionless? She could only imagine with a powerful shudder what kind of effect such an experience might have on a man’s soul. It was a startling possibility, yet one that seemed so blindingly obvious, and Grace felt a suddenly overwhelming rush of compassion for the man who had previously inspired such wariness and confusion.
‘None of what has befallen your family is your fault. I hope you know that, despite your regrets.’
Dorothea shrugged a thin shoulder beneath expensive linen. ‘Regrets are one thing I have no shortage of. The reason I sleep so little every night is out of worry for my only remaining son. If only there was something I could do, some way I could rest easily, knowing he won’t be left so alone when I am gone—and yet I fear nothing can turn him from the path he has chosen.’
Grace nodded gravely, the truth in Dorothea’s words plain. ‘I can only imagine how such thoughts must trouble you. I wish there was something I could do to ease your cares.’
Her sad gaze was fixed on the white hand that held her arm, lost in the world of compassion that gripped her—so she entirely missed the slow movement of her friend’s eyes in her direction and the look of dawning contemplation that crept in to brighten them.
‘Do you truly mean that?’
‘Why, yes.’ Grace forced her lips into a small smile despite the sorrow growing ever heavier in her chest. The image of Spencer’s grim face crowded out all other thoughts, the most obvious reason for his tightly drawn expression suddenly clear to her in terrible understanding.
He has suffered so much and with his mother so ill surely there can only be more heartache to come for him. I wish for his sake, and for the friendship we might once have had, that things could be different.
‘Believe me—if there was any way I could help you or Spencer with the unhappiness that plagues you, all you would have to do is ask.’
‘Any way? Any way at all?’ Dorothea reached for a glass of water standing beside her bed, turning away so for a moment Grace couldn’t see her face. ‘Even if it were in a way you never would have dreamed? Even if it seemed the most unlikely thing imaginable?’
‘Even then, to repay your kindness and ease your cares, I give you my word.’
Chapter Four (#ud10f9f25-e6b0-57d5-93b2-cf581cf34aba)
The weeks passed slowly at Nevin Place, dragging out until January gave way to February and the weather turned from merely cold to biting. Time continued its unstoppable march, but the month shown on Grace’s calendar wasn’t the only thing that seemed to progress.
The stares that accompanied her had increased since Henry’s rejection and her residence at Spencer’s vast home, she saw now as she drew her cloak closer about her body and wished her bonnet covered more of her face. Each time she left the safety of the imposing house to visit her family she had to run the gauntlet of whispers that followed her, and now her situation was common knowledge and her link with the scandalous Captain was known the mutters had only grown worse.
Grace Linwood. Daughter of a criminal, wife of nobody and companion to a woman with a reprobate for an heir. No wonder society hasn’t rushed to reclaim me.
It didn’t matter that poor Papa was innocent, Henry a selfish rogue or Spencer not a common brawler. The gossip attached to Grace’s name was too fascinating for any dull truth to temper it and, when combined with Spencer’s own notoriety, she could only grit her teeth and plough onwards as another set of eyes turned towards her in undisguised curiosity she hadn’t yet learned to ignore.
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Joanna Johnson
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Bound to a stranger …in a secret ceremony! With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is ‘I do’ …but who is the man she has just married?