Scandalously Wed To The Captain. Joanna Johnson

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

      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,