Ruined by the Reckless Viscount Read online

  * * *

  Forty minutes later as the carriage slowed to rest the horses at an inn, her eyes opened. When she moved his jacket pulled away from her neck and her cheeks paled again as she registered her extreme lack of outer wear.

  Such false theatrics irked him. ‘I am sure in your profession you must have some days in less than your petticoats, Miss Kensington.’

  ‘Miss...Kensington?’ Her voice sounded rusty, the fright evident in every single syllable for she trembled as she took in breath. ‘I think...you are indeed...mistaken.’

  ‘Acacia Kensington?’ He heard the horror in his tone. ‘You are Miss Acacia Kensington, the paramour of my cousin Thomas, are you not?’

  She shook her head hard, the long blonde hair falling loose now in a swathe across her shoulders and down over her chest.

  ‘I am not, sir. I am... Lady Florentia Hale-B-Burton...youngest daughter...of the Earl of Albany.’ Each breath was raw with the effort of talking.

  ‘Hell.’ He could not believe it. ‘Hell,’ he repeated and like the tumblers in a safe all the clues fell into place. The servant running down the road before the park screaming. The ring. The priggish dress. Her voice.

  He’d kidnapped the wrong woman, rendered her unconscious, stripped her almost naked and subjected her to the sort of danger and terror she’d probably never ever manage to recover from.

  For the first time in his life he was almost speechless.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen. This...was my...first...Season.’

  Young. Unprotected. Defenceless.

  ‘Are you married?’

  His eyes searched the fingers on her left hand and saw them bare.

  ‘I am...not, sir...but I soon...may be. I...have a...suitor...who...likes me and I am...sure that we...will...’

  She didn’t finish for shouts filled the courtyard of the inn as another conveyance reeled wildly into view. Several men alighted and came towards them and as the door was snatched open all James felt was pain as a firearm exploded into his face, the smell of gunpowder one of his last and abiding memories.

  * * *

  He was dead.

  Her father had killed him, the blood oozing from his neck and his mouth in a slow dribble of frothed red.

  The sound of the shot had deafened her so that all she could see were people with open lips and corded throats and wildly gesticulating hands.

  She felt him fall and she went with him, the green-eyed stranger who had taken her. She saw the spurt of his blood and the quick steps of the horses as they danced against the movement. She saw the rough broken face of her father above her, too.

  Crying.

  That single thing shocked her more than anything else had, his tears against her face as he tried to pull her up.

  Everything smelt wrong.

  The blood. The gunpowder. The fear of the horses. Her sweat. The last tinge of vomit in the air.

  It smelt like the end. For him and for her. A quick and final punishment for something so terrible she could hardly contemplate just what might happen next.

  He lay on the ground beneath her, her abductor, young and vulnerable, one arm twisted under himself, a bone sticking out through the linen shirt and blood blooming. She wanted to hold on to him, to feel the lack of pulse, to understand his death, to allow him absolution, but her father was dragging her away, away from the people who had gathered, away from the driver who was shouting and screaming, away from the light of a rising moon.

  The smell of peppermint followed her, ingrained and absolute, the heat of it sitting atop her heart which was beating so very fast.

  He had rubbed the ointment there. She remembered that. He had lifted her on to the seat and placed his jacket around her shoulders to cover her lack of clothing, to keep her hidden. He had removed her dress so that she might breathe, protecting her as he done against the threat of the dogs.

  The wrong person.

  He had said so himself.

  The wrong punishment, too. She began to shake violently as her father discarded the jacket she’d clung to before calling to his driver and footman. Then the horses jolted forward as they left the country inn and raced for the safety of Mayfair and London.

  A warm woollen blanket was tucked carefully about her and she heard the soft sound of her father praying. Outside it had begun to rain.

  * * *

  ‘Is she ruined, John?’ Her mother’s voice. Tear filled and hesitant.

  ‘I don’t know, Esther. I swear I don’t.’

  ‘Did he...?’ Her mama’s voice came to a stop, the words too hard to say out loud.

  ‘I do not think so, but her petticoats were dishevelled and her dress was disposed of altogether.’

  ‘And the cuts all over her legs and arms?’

  ‘She fought him, I think. She fought him until the breathing sickness came and perhaps it saved her. Even a monster must have his limits of depravity.’

  ‘But he’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘God knows. Florentia could hardly draw breath and so we left. I don’t want to send anyone back either to the inn to make enquiries in case...’

  ‘In case our name is recognised?’

  ‘Milly said the Urquharts saw Florentia in the park a moment before the abduction and that she had spoken to them. They are not people who would keep a secret easily. I doubt Milly is a girl of much discretion, either. But they did not see our daughter as I did. They did not see her so underdressed in the company of a stranger, her gown gone and her hair down. There might be some hope in that.’

  Her mother’s sob was muffled and then there were whispered words of worry, the rustle of silk, the blown-out candle, the door shutting behind them and then silence.

  She was in her room in Mayfair, back in her bed, the same bunch of tightly budded pink roses bought yesterday from the markets on the small table beside her. It was dark and late and a fire had been set in the hearth. For heat, she supposed, because all she could feel was a deathly cold. She wiggled her toes and her hands came beneath the sheets to run along the lines of her body. Everything was in place though she could feel the scratches incurred during her flight through the woods.

  She breathed in, glad she could now gather more air than she had been able to in the carriage. Her neck throbbed and she swallowed. There was a thick bandage wrapped across her right thumb and tied off at her wrist.

  He was dead. All that beauty dead and gone. She remembered the blood on the cobblestones and on her petticoats and in the lighter shades of his hair.

  The beat of her heart sounded loud in a room with the quiet slice of moonlight on the bedcovers. A falling moon now, faded and low.

  Was she ruined because of him? Ruined for ever?

  She could not believe that she wouldn’t be. Her sister had not come to seek her out and extract the story. She imagined Maria had been told to stay away. Her maid, Milly, had gone too, on an extended holiday back to her family in Kent. To recover from the dreadful shock, her father had explained when he first saw her awake, but she could see so very much more in his eyes.

  The howls of the dogs came to mind. Her abductor’s voice, too, raw but certain. She remembered his laughter as she’d hit him hard with her books. There was a dimple in his chin.

  Where would he be buried? She’d looked back and seen the servant lift him from the ground, carefully, gently, none of the violence of her father, only protection and concern.

  She was glad for it. She was. She was also glad that she was here safe and that there was nothing left between them save memory. His pale clear green eyes. The shaved shortness of his hair. The two parallel scars evident on his scalp. The smell of wool and unscented soap in his jacket. She shook away such thoughts. He had
ruined her. He had taken her life and changed it into something different. He had taken her from the light and discharged her into shadow.

  The deep lacerations on her arms from the trees in the glade stung and she could still smell the peppermint even after her long soak in a hot bath scented with oil of lavender.

  The scent clung to her and she recalled his fingers upon her as he had rubbed it in. Gently. Without any threat whatsoever.

  He was dead because of his own foolishness. He was gone to face the judgements of the Lord. A deserved punishment. A fitting end. And yet all she could feel was the dreadful waste.

  A tap on the door had her turning and her sister was there in her nightgown, face pale.

  ‘Can I come in, Flora? Papa said you were sleeping and that you were not to be disturbed till the morning. But Milly has been sent home and she was so full of the horror of your abduction it began to seem as if you might never be back again. What a fright you have given us.’

  Florentia found her sister’s deluge of words comforting.

  ‘Mama says that there is the chance we might have to leave London for a while and retire to Albany. Did he hurt you, the one who took you from Mount Street, I mean? It is being whispered that Papa shot him dead somewhere to the north?’

  Flora’s stomach turned and she sat up quickly, thinking she might be sick, glad when the nausea settled back into a more far off place.

  Warm fingers curled in close as Maria positioned herself next to her and took her hand, tracing the scratches upon each finger and being careful not to bump her thumb. ‘You are safe now and that man will never be able to hurt you again, Papa promised it would be so. At least we can leave London and go home for it’s exhausting here and difficult to fit in.’

  The out-of-step sisters, Flora suddenly thought. She had overheard that remark at their first soirée. One of a group of the ton’s beautiful girls had said it and the others had laughed.

  They were an oddness perhaps here in London, the two daughters of an impoverished earl who held no true knowledge of society and its expectations.

  Heartbreak had honed them and sharpened the edges of trust. But she would not think about that now because she was perilously close to tears.

  ‘I heard Mama crying and Papa talking with her and she asked if we were cursed?’

  ‘What did Father say?’ Flora stilled at Maria’s words.

  ‘He said that only the weak-willed can be so stricken and that the true curse would have been to never find you. He also said while there is life there is hope.’

  Life. Breath. Warmth. No hope for him though, the stranger with his blood running across the cobbles.

  ‘Papa also said that perhaps we should not have come to London in the first place, but Mama asked how are we to be married off otherwise. Father replied there was an unkindness here that he found disappointing and I think he’s right for people laugh at us sometimes. Perhaps we are not as fashionable as we should be or as interesting as the others are? Papa’s title is something that holds sway here, but I suppose they also realise there is not much more than that behind our name.’

  Flora pulled herself together and spoke up. ‘We are who we are, Maria. We are enough.’

  ‘Enough,’ her sister repeated and brought her fingers up into a fist.

  This was an old tradition between them, joining hands and making a chain. Pulling them together. Keeping them strong. Maria was only a year above her in age and they had always been close. But even as she tried to gather strength Florentia felt that something had been irrevocably broken inside her, wrenched apart and plundered. She wondered truly if she would ever recover from a sadness she could not quite understand.

  * * *

  Her father called her to his library the next morning and he looked as tired as she was, the night past having been a long and fitful one to get through.

  ‘I thought we should try to remember something of yesterday between us, my dear. To keep it in memory so to speak, in case we have to think about it again in the future.’

  ‘In the future?’

  ‘If he has left you with child—?’

  She didn’t let him finish. ‘It was not like that, Papa. He did not...’ She stopped. ‘I think he thought I was someone else entirely. Some woman who needed to be escorted north because she was in trouble. He did not touch me in that way.’

  Relief lay in the lines of his face and in the lift of his eyes. ‘But your dress and the scratches?’

  ‘I had been sick and used water to try to make my gown clean again and he took it off me because it was wet and I was shaking and breathless. I also ran through a forest to try to get away and the branches snagged at my skin.’

  ‘He is a monster to do what he did.’

  ‘Is? I thought the man was dead. Are you saying he could still be alive?’

  Her father’s hands came up. ‘I am certain he is not, but we shan’t stay in London to find out. I have ordered the town house to be closed and have put in motion the means to remove us once again back to Kent. We shall leave on Friday.’

  Albany Manor. Two days away. The bloom of thankfulness made Flora dizzy.

  ‘There is something else that I think you should know.’

  The tone of his words was gentle.

  ‘The story of your abduction is all over London this morning. There were people near Mount Street who spoke when they should not have and Milly was not...careful with her own words either.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you do not see it all. There will not be a gentleman here in London who would now offer his hand in marriage. Quiet ruination is a completely different thing from this utterly public condemnation and I doubt that we can recover from such a spectacle. If I had more capital behind me or the title was not an entailed one...’ He stopped and took another tack. ‘For the moment I think withdrawal might be our best defence. Your mother has the same thought. The Honourable Timothy Calderwood has sent a message to say he shall not be able to call upon you again, but he is sorry for your trials.’

  Sadness welled. She had enjoyed Timothy’s company with his laughter and his conversation. When she had danced with him a few days ago at the Rushton ball he’d intimated that he would like to know her much better and she had smiled back at him as if all her world was right. A kind man. A man of integrity. The first man who had made her feel special.

  Her father’s eyebrows raised up.

  ‘Did your abductor say anything at all about who he was?’

  ‘He didn’t.’ Florentia wondered if she should mention the name of Acacia Kensington and a man called Thomas. She decided against it, though, reasoning if her kidnapper was identified and still alive he’d be badly hurt and unable to fight off any further recriminations against him. ‘I am sure he imagined I was another and had just realised his mistake when you came and shot him.’

  ‘And mark my words I would do exactly the same again for I am not sure how you might recover from this travesty.’

  ‘With fortitude, Papa.’

  Her reply made him laugh though there was no humour in it. ‘I wish Bryson was here...’ he said and stopped, realising what he had just uttered.

  Her brother stood in the empty space between them. Beautiful funny Bryson with his golden hair and blue eyes and his cleverness. The glue in a family that had come unstuck ever since his passing.

  The son. The heir to an entailed property. Florentia’s twin.

  She sat down on the nearest seat, trying to find breath. It had been so long since his name had been mentioned out loud even though he was silently present in every moment of every day.

  ‘I no longer think the fault lay with you, Flora, and am sorry that I once implied it such.’ These were words she had heard before and foolish apologies that she had long since ceased to refute. ‘We will get
through this. All of it. There will be an ending to the pain, I promise.’

  But there wasn’t. There hadn’t been. There never would be.

  The nausea she had felt in the carriage returned and she forced it down. She hadn’t been able to eat anything and although she felt hungry she just could not swallow even the smallest morsel of food. A new symptom that. Perhaps she was going mad in truth. The completion of a process that had started as she had sat there with her brother dying in her arms and both their clothes splashed in red.

  Her fault. Her dare. Her imprudence. She began to shake in earnest.

  ‘Shall I fetch Mama, Flora?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head hard and the memory shattered.

  * * *

  The ache was lessened now, the burn and throbbing of it where his neck met the collar bone. Tommy was beside him.

  ‘Here, take this. It will help.’

  Bitter like almonds. James screwed his face up at the taste, but after a few moments he started to feel as if he was floating, as if the land was somehow below him and he was flying through the clouds on a murmur.

  He liked the sensation. He liked the freedom though his head still throbbed with each beat of his heart, leaving him squinting his eyes against the light.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You were shot.’ His cousin lent closer, eyes shadowed. ‘It was the wrong woman, Winter. You got the wrong damn woman.’

  The red dress. The dogs. The breathlessness. It all came back in a fractured whirl.

  ‘Is she safe? The girl I took?’

  A curse and the shifting of light was his response, quiet between them until his cousin spoke again. ‘She’s fine. It’s you we are worried about.’

  ‘I...won’t...die.’ He managed to get the words out one by one.