The Scarred Earl. Elizabeth Beacon

now and no doubt I shall see you at dinner, whether I wish to do so or not,’ she said ungraciously and, tugging her arm from his slackened grasp, marched off like an offended queen.

       Chapter Four

      ‘Well, that certainly told me,’ Alex Forthin muttered ruefully.

      Of course he recalled coming here one moonlit night in June to vent his wrath on Jack Seaborne, because Jack’s errant cousin had spirited Cousin Annabelle away so effectively. Back then he’d been so full of wild plans to avenge himself on Richard Seaborne and rescue his vulnerable young cousin that it had never occurred to him that she had wanted to disappear and Rich, gallant fool that he was, insisted on going, too.

      Now he knew it was an idea born of pain and suffering in a war that brought little glory to either side—a ridiculous scheme he’d thought up to try to redeem the aching darkness in his own soul. He had needed Annabelle’s gift for loving the unlovable too much to consider why she had gone and what looking for her might stir up, but facing Jack across that would-be Grecian temple down by the lake had jarred him into reality somehow. Jack was so completely his old complex and sometimes arrogant self that Alex realised he was the one who had changed into someone he didn’t want to know.

      He’d let the fanatics who had tortured him to the edge of madness cloud his thoughts and colour his actions. His cousin’s absence had taken any gloss there might have been off a homecoming only a few old servants were left to rejoice in, but he should have realised Rich wouldn’t run off with an innocent like Annabelle. Clearly there had been a pressing reason for them to disappear and it remained urgent enough to keep them away three years on. How could he have wasted so much time suspecting his friends when he could have been looking for real enemies all along?

      His cousin Annabelle had an independent spirit, as well as a truly loving nature and sunny optimism she must have got from the other side of the family. She would never have stayed with Rich for so long unless she truly wanted to and there was the crux of another conundrum. If Rich knew how Alex lusted after Persephone, he might suspect him of wanting to avenge himself on Rich through her for carrying off his own innocent young cousin. Truth to tell, he would hide at Penbryn himself and try to forget the beautiful virago existed if he could, but he must stay here and risk what little peace of mind he had to make sure she didn’t risk her lovely neck on some harebrained scheme to track down the missing pair.

      At least being armed against a vain hope she would come of her own accord would guard him against wanting her so badly he’d risk asking her to go with him. He was a fool like all the other idiots who desired the unobtainable Miss Seaborne and pined for only a sight of her across a crowded room. After today she would avoid him like a noxious disease, which might keep her safe and dutifully by Lady Henry Seaborne’s side for the next few weeks, while Jack was away and Alex was busy searching the length and breadth of Britain for Belle and Richard without their enemies noticing he was doing it.

      Something told him Miss Seaborne was more likely to dash off on some reckless adventure—giving him three people to rescue instead of only two—if he didn’t fool her into playing the docile young lady somehow. He shuddered at what trouble she might bring on herself if he didn’t divert her and decided he couldn’t ride off into tomorrow’s sunrise without a backward glance at the Seaborne lair and all those supposedly safe inside it. Wondering how to keep an eye on a single lady whilst she decided which way to jump into the lion’s den, he paced the quiet garden. Only once did he catch himself wondering how such a sanctuary could be created at his Welsh home for a lady of his to roam, so that she might stay and make Penbryn Castle and his other rundown homes less spartan.

      Deuce take it, he wasn’t going to have a lady. Even before he set foot on home soil again, he’d decided the Forthin name would die with him. It was a cursed line—a supposed family where hate and greed and jealousy stood in for the love, generosity and solidarity that seemed to bind the Seaborne clan together. Belle would inherit everything he had to leave. And when he found he’d become Lord Calvercombe, it seemed the final joke of fate to come home and find his cousin gone and no clue to her whereabouts. So any hope he still had for the future was wiped out.

      He didn’t dare let himself think her truly lost—the one hope of redemption for his whole rotten clan. So he had to find her, rather than succumb to the ridiculous hope that he might build a life on shaky foundations with some spoilt society lady and see it crash round his ears when she laughed in his marred face.

      ‘Wherever have you been, Per?’ Miss Helen Seaborne demanded a little too loudly as Persephone did her best to slip into the dwindling crowd as if she’d never been away.

      Silently cursing little sisters and their over-eager tongues, Persephone shrugged with would-be carelessness. ‘I went for a walk in the gardens to clear my head, sister dear. Since it’s been a long and exciting day, I needed a little peace to gather my senses. You dare to call me Per again and I’ll retaliate in kind, Hel,’ she added in a fierce aside meant for her sister’s ears only.

      ‘Neither of you will do any such thing,’ Lady Henry informed her daughters with a look neither of them quite managed to meet. ‘This is still Jack and Jessica’s special day and I won’t have you two arguing like fishwives just because they can’t hear you at the moment.’

      ‘They can’t hear anyone but each other when they’re together nowadays,’ Penelope Seaborne put in with obvious disgust at such mutually obsessed lovers.

      ‘Which is exactly how it should be when two people love each other as deeply as those two clearly do,’ her mother said with an understanding smile at her youngest daughter’s moue of distaste. ‘One day you will understand, my love,’ she said and laughed when Penelope gave a disgusted shudder and fervently declared,

      ‘Never!’

      ‘Well, I think they’re very lucky and I wish I might love any man half as much as Jess does our cousin, even if I can’t quite understand why anyone should,’ fifteen-year-old Helen declared, halfway between the romance of being almost grown up and the brutal frankness of nine-year-old Penelope.

      ‘What, love a man, or love Jack specifically?’ Persephone asked, reluctantly intrigued by the workings of her little sisters’ minds and the changes maturity was threatening before she felt prepared for any of them to move on.

      ‘Jack, of course. He’s all very well and I know he’s a Duke and fabulously rich and not particularly ugly, but he’s only Jack when all’s said and done.’

      ‘True,’ Persephone agreed seriously enough, ‘but Jessica has known him for ever and still thinks he put the stars in the sky, so I suppose love must be blind.’

      ‘Wait until you’re in love, my dearest, then you can tell me how it feels to trust a man to do so for you,’ their mother advised, too seriously for Persephone.

      A moment later she wondered why his lordship the Earl of Calvercombe had chosen to emerge from the spring garden at the worst moment possible and felt her mother’s eyes on her when she refused to meet his gaze or Lady Henry Seaborne’s.

      ‘I doubt I shall ever love a man so completely,’ Persephone argued as she squirmed at the very notion of ever loving such an aloof and cynical one.

      ‘I don’t think a woman can sensibly consider herself immune to such folly until she’s cold in her grave, my love,’ Lady Henry objected mildly enough, but her eyes dwelt thoughtfully on Lord Calvercombe while she did so.

      The shock of seeing her wise, sensible and almost cynical best friend tumble fathoms deep under Jack’s rakish spell had been bad enough, Persephone decided, but he’d made bad worse by stumbling so totally into love with Jess it sometimes seemed as if he could scarcely string two sensible words together for enchantment. The whole mad business had shaken Persephone’s confidence in her own cool judgement and well-guarded heart. If Jack and Jessica could fall so comprehensively in love with each other, nobody was safe from the malady.

      Well, almost nobody. She really couldn’t imagine the Dowager Duchess of Dettingham falling in love, even in her salad