Scandalously Wed To The Captain
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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
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.