Читать книгу The Dissolute Duke - Sophia James - Страница 11

Lord Taylen Ellesmere, the sixth Duke of Alderworth, had the appearance of a man who had been in a particularly rough boxing match when Lucinda saw him for the first time at the top of the aisle in the small chapel in London’s Mayfair.

He did not turn to look at her, his profile granite-hard, his left wrist encased in a bandage and a large cut running along the whole side of his jaw. The muscles beneath the wound rippled with anger, a barely held wrath that was seen in the straightness of his posture and in the rigidity of his being. His hair was shorter, shaved almost to the skull, a single white, opaque scar snaking from the edge of his right ear to his crown. One eye was blackened.

Even Asher looked slightly taken aback by his appearance, but at this stage of the proceedings there was little anyone could do.

The die was cast after all. She would marry the Duke of Alderworth to redeem her place in society and he would marry her because her brothers had made him do so. She had sinned and this was the result. Love existed nowhere in the equation and the empty pews in the chapel reflected the fact. Her siblings and their wives sat on her side of the church, as well as some close friends, but on his side … there was nobody.

Lucinda speculated as to who might stand up as his witness, the question answered a moment later when Cristo moved across to him. Her youngest brother looked about as unhappy with the whole thing as Asher was, a duty performed out of necessity rather than respect.

Every other Wellingham wedding had been a joyous affair, celebrated with laughter and noise and elation. This one was sombre, quiet and dismal. She wondered how long the Duke of Alderworth would stay in London after the ceremony and just what words she might use to explain away his absence. Asher had said that he would remain in the capital for a week or more, so that appearances could be upheld. After that they would be glad to see the back of him.

Her brother had breathed this through a clenched jaw as if even a day in the company of her soon-to-be husband would be one too many.

Lucinda swallowed away dry fear. This was the worst mistake she had ever made, but the consequences of her own stupidity had brought her to such a pass, her whole family entwined in the deceit. She wanted to throw down the bouquet of white roses interlaced with fragrant gardenias and peel off the ivory gown that had been quickly fashioned by one of London’s up-and-coming modistes. The veil helped, however, a layer of lace between her and the world, sheltering confusion. A week ago she would not have been able to walk or to stand for such long periods, but today the utter alarm of everything allowed her to keep any pain at bay.

Posy Tompkins stood to one side of her, her face drawn. Her friend had been nothing short of horrified about the consequences of their ill-thought-out visit to Alderworth and had been attentive and apologetic ever since. She claimed she had managed to avoid the worst of the excesses by locking herself in her room.

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this, Luce?’ she whispered. ‘We could disappear to Europe together otherwise. I have more than enough money for us both. We could go to Rome or Paris to my relatives.’

‘And be for ever outcast?’

‘It might be better than …’ She stopped, but Lucinda knew exactly what she was about to say.

It might be better than being married to a man who looked for all the world as if he was going to his own funeral. With an effort she lifted her chin. It was not as if she was happy about anything, either, although some quiet part of her buried deep held its breath as green eyes raked across her own, the red streak in one of them bright with fury.

‘This is 1831, Luce, not the Middle Ages. If you truly do not wish to do this, you only have to say. No one can drag a reluctant bride to the altar even if the alternative is enormous scandal.’

‘I do not think your words are helping, Posy.’

‘Then let me call it off. I can say that it was completely my fault I took you to Alderworth in the first place and procured the dress and …’

But the minister had begun to speak in his low, calm voice and Lucinda knew that to simply walk out on her last chance of salvation would be to cut herself off from a family that meant the world to her.

She had brought this upon herself, after all, and she just could not think of another more viable solution. A marriage ceremony. A week of pretence. And then freedom. Lord, she would follow the straight and narrow from now on and, if God in all his wisdom allowed her the strength to get through these next hours, she would promise in return an eternal devotion to His Good Works.

When Tay took a quick look at his bride-to-be he saw that under her veil her hair was plaited in a crown encircled by pale rosebuds. Today she seemed smaller, slighter, less certain. The lies she had spun about them, he supposed, come home to roost in front of the altar, no true basis for any such betrothal. He was glad of the lace that covered her head because he did not wish to see her deceitful eyes until he had to. The gown surprised him, though. He had thought she might balk at making any effort whatsoever, but the dress fitted her perfectly, spilling in a froth of whiteness about her feet. A dainty silver bracelet adorned her left wrist, four small gold stars hanging from it.

A continual whispered dialogue with the bridesmaid began to get on his nerves and he was glad when the minister, dressed in flowing dark clothes, called the place to order.

Everybody looked tense. The bride. The brothers. Even the minister as he held his hand up to the organist and called for quiet.

‘Marriage is a state that is not to be entered into lightly, or with false promise. Are you happy to continue, Lady Lucinda?’

Tay bit down on chagrin. Of course she would be. His title was one factor and her ruin was another. He wished the man might skip through to the final troths and then all of this would be over.

But he did not. Rather he waited until the bride before him nodded her head without any enthusiasm whatsoever. ‘Then we are here today to join this man and this woman in the state of Holy Matrimony …’

For ever and for ever. It was all Tay could think as he gave his replies, though his parents had never let such pledges inhibit them in their quest for the hedonistic. For the first time in his life he partly understood them and some of his disillusionment lifted.

But it was too late for such understanding now, with his years seemingly destined to run along the same chaotic and uncontrolled pathway as those that he had sworn he would never follow. He was his father’s son, after all, and this was a universally ordained celestial punishment for what he had become. The thought calmed him; fate moving in ways which allowed no redemption and if it had not been this particular sticky end that he had met, then undoubtedly it would have been another.

‘Will you, Taylen Andrew Templeton Ellesmere, take Lucinda Alice Wellingham as your lawfully wedded wife …?’

The words shook him from his reverie. Her middle name was Alice and it suited her. Soft. Pale. Otherworldly.

‘I will.’

Resignation tempered his pledge.

When Lucinda Wellingham gave the troth her tone was shaken, a thin voice in a house of God that held no message of joy within it.

And finally it was over.

Because it was expected he turned to face her and lifted the veil slowly. The church had been a place of refuge for him as a child and he still believed in the sanctity of religion despite everything he had become. The woman who stood there, however, was different from the laughing brave one in his bedchamber in Alderworth. This girl had dark rings beneath her lashes and eczema on her cheeks. Her eyes were flat blue orbs with no sparkle at all and the bump on her head from the accident was still visible. Exhaustion wove paleness into her skin.

As hurt as he was. A shared damage.

He felt his hand move to touch the wound and stopped himself. Theirs was a marriage in name only and the Wellinghams had been insistent that he understood this was for public consumption. A week or two at the most and then they wanted him gone. Her brothers had said that was her wish, too, his bride who, after uttering only lies, would not carry out even the pretence of a union once her ruin was minimised.

A travesty. A perversion. A shameful parody of something that should have been finer. Lord, the notion that survival justified the use of immoral means to achieve the required end was rubbing off on him in a melancholic and peculiar discontent. ‘He who neglects what is done for what ought to be done effects his ruin …’ Machiavelli. The memory took him back to the night she had burst uninvited into his room, her colour high and the red dress low across her breasts.

Tay wished Lucinda Wellingham would take his hand again and hold it as she had at Alderworth, her fingers entwined into the worth of him as if she knew things that nobody else had ever discovered. He shook his head hard at such nonsense and she chose that moment to look at him directly, pale blue searingly condemnatory, the lies between them settling into an uncrossable distance.

‘It cannot be easy to be the bride of ruin.’ His words made her flinch, but he did not take them back. He wished that amongst those gathered there had been one person who might have welcomed his company. But there wasn’t. All the wives of the Wellinghams had drawn Lucinda into their bosom, their eyes slicing across his like sharp knives—a rancorous truce, the white flag of surrender raised across his spilled blood and bruising. If he had by chance dropped dead due to some unforeseen and dreadful ailment he thought a party might have ensued, this veil of pretence transformed into a celebration of death.

He had never felt so unwelcome anywhere.

The shake of Taylen Ellesmere’s head made Lucinda turn away, the tears she felt smarting at the back of her burning eyes threatening to fall. He did not look contrite or penitent or even slightly apologetic. He looked implacable and indifferent, this man who had disgraced her through fine red wine and a callous disregard for innocence, and was now making no effort whatsoever to assuage such poor behaviour.

The Bride of Ruin, indeed. Her husband now. Judas. Shylock. Marcus Brutus.

Lucinda could not even bear the thought that he might reach out and touch her.

She had been destroyed and she could remember none of it. She had been deflowered by a master with only the slightest jolt of memory remaining. Her brothers stood around her, a wall of masculine prickliness, sheltering her from the canker this betrothal had spawned, her sisters-in-law stalwart in the next ring of protection.

Alderworth had not apologised to them. Rather he had laughed in the face of their accusations and sworn free will was a liberty that all were entitled to.

Free will to take an innocent beneath him and to ravish her under the influence of strong wine; free will to take her to his bed and to say nothing to obliterate the raging gossip that swirled around the circles of society.

Lucinda Wellingham, the harlot. Lucinda Wellingham, intrinsically flawed.

Like the spoilt centre of a fruit, she thought, and was glad Posy Tompkins had also pushed in beside her because at least her friend’s perception of the nuptials was laced with some sense of excitement.

‘You will be free now, Luce. A married woman has so many more liberties.’

‘I doubt another invitation will ever land upon my mantel, Posy.’

‘Then we shall hold our own soirées, brilliant cultured gatherings that shall be the talk of the town.’

‘Like courtesans?’ Lucinda could not take the sting of it from her words for, all of a sudden, the whole world seemed meaningless and hollow. Posy had no notion of the signed agreements designating the boundaries of this marriage. She had not told her.

‘Taylen Ellesmere is titled and handsome. There will be many a woman who might envy you such a husband. Believe me, be thankful he was not old and grey with no teeth and bad breath.’

Despite everything Lucinda smiled. Trust Posy to see the bright side of it all. Taking her friend’s hand, she held her fingers in a tight grip and turned away from the worry of her family. The promises had been given and the deed was done. The only way on from here was upwards and Lucinda swore that when she was finally free of all this she would never allow her life to be mired again in such a shambolic wreck of betrayal.

‘The wedding breakfast has been set up, Lucy. Asher asked if you would come now so that we can get this … finished with.’ Beatrice spoke softly so that no one would overhear. The Wellinghams could manipulate to avoid disaster, but they wanted no others to understand that they did so. The twenty or so outside guests who had strong ties with the family beamed at her from one corner of the room of Falder House.

They had been invited to make this farce seem … legitimate. With the knowledge of what might happen next her brothers had at least given her back her shattered name. But after this she would only garner pity; the bride who was left summarily by a husband who had never loved her.

Threading through the room, Beatrice, Taris and Asher led the assembly along to the blue salon. If she had wondered before at the control her brothers liked to wield, she understood now the very essence of it. The tables were dressed lavishly, the settings of the finest bone china and sterling silver. French wine had been brought up from the cellar. No shortcuts to encourage gossip. No small errors that might make the invited guests wonder. Nay, beneath the polite banter another reality lingered, stronger and unmistakable, but only if your name was Wellingham.

Taylen Ellesmere was sat next to her, his nearness making her shake, though when his leaf-green eyes brushed her own she felt … dizzy and disorientated.

Some worry leaked through her anger, a quiet emotion in a room full of tension. Bruising lay beneath his one blackened eye and there was a cut upon his bottom lip that she had not noticed before. Despite it all his beauty shone through, no slight comeliness, either, but a full-on barrage of masculine grace.

Unnerved, she shifted the lengthy veil which had pulled in beneath her, the lace of the Carisbrook’s heirloom fragile in the play of sunshine from the window. She felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her lungs by one hefty punch of misgiving, but another truth also lingered.

Her husband was not all evil. There was a goodness in him that no one had discovered as yet.

She knew this as certainly as night followed the day, even though on his left hand beside his marriage band other rings glinted in the light—perhaps reminders of love from other women he had once admired before he had been made to marry her by her brothers? His name was always linked to paramours, after all. Was there one who he might have wished was standing here now in her stead?

Her cheeks itched with the eczema she always got when misgiving consumed her and the idea that her good name might be salvaged by such a course of action suddenly seemed foolish and ill advised. She wished she did not feel so shamefully heated by his presence at her side, the indifference she sought so far away from this undeniable awareness of him.

‘The carriage accident hurt us both? I have been told how very lucky I was in not being killed by it, for with only a small movement things could have been so very much worse and I may never have walked again or even spoken and according to Doctor Cameron there might have—’

He stopped her by raising one hand. ‘Are you nervous?’

For the first time she could ever remember in her whole entire life, Lucinda blushed. She felt the slow crawl of blood fusing her cheeks and held her hand up to the heat.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Because you confided in me once that you talk too much when you worry.’

Her mouth dropped open.

Such a private honesty and one that she had never let another soul be privy to. She seldom shared her secrets, keeping them close to her heart instead, safe from derision or discussion. When and why had she told him such a thing? Perhaps the wine had made her speak? The exasperating fact of her lack of memory was both tiring and worrying.

‘Surely you remember. It was just before I kissed you.’

Should she tell him that only a minuscule recollection remained from the time that they had shared in his chamber? His nakedness. The wine. His mouth upon her breast. Her nipples hardening.

Now that was new. Sitting up, she tried to remember some more, but couldn’t. A new resolution firmed. He had taken her maidenhood without her consent and now would pay for it.

The laws of the land were there to protect the innocent and every Lord in his position had been brought up to acknowledge such a code. Ethics safeguarded chaos. When such tenets were broken, this was the result: a hasty marriage between strangers, flung together by the flimsy strands of expedience.

‘I was foolish to come to your house in the first place, your Grace, and more foolish to stay. This is my penance.’ She kept her tone distant, formal, just a polite conversation. When she leaned forwards she caught sight of herself in the wide shiny silver of an unused platter. Her cheeks were worse, even in the few short hours since leaving her chamber. She doubted she had ever looked quite so awful and her groom’s handsome visage just made everything a hundred times more humiliating. Shallow, she knew, but in all her girlhood fantasies she had not imagined herself appearing so very bedraggled at her own wedding feast.

Lord Fergusson came up behind them, placing one hand on each of their shoulders. ‘If you can have a marriage like I had for forty-three years, then you will be well blessed.’ His old eyes brimmed with kindness.

Tay Ellesmere simply looked across at her. Answer this as you will, he seemed to be saying, shards of irritation noticeable.

‘Indeed, Lord Fergusson,’ she replied, remembering Mary-Rose, his beautiful wife, who had passed away suddenly the previous summer.

‘But may I offer you a few words of advice? What you put into a marriage is what you get out from it and agreement is the oil that smoothes the way.’

‘Then with all the agreements between us, ours shall run most smoothly,’ Alderworth observed.

He had changed the meaning of the word ‘agreement’, but Lord Fergusson did not understand his reference. Her new husband’s hands were in his lap. Fisted. Not quite as indifferent as he made out to be. Another thought struck her. Every knuckle had been grazed as though he had only recently been in a fight. Was that why his eye was black and his jaw cut? Please, God, let it not have been her brothers who had hurt him.

‘I knew your uncle, Duke.’ This was said tentatively. ‘The Earl of Sutton.’

‘Unfortunate for you.’ Her groom’s tone was plain ice and Lord Fergusson left as quickly as he had come, a frown on his face as he scrambled away.

‘He is an old man who would do you no harm, your Grace, and he has only just lost his wife. Besides, this is a wedding and people expect—’

He broke in before she had finished. ‘What do they expect, Lucinda? All that is between us here is dishonesty and farce. The charade of a marriage and the farce of a happy ever after. And now you want me to lie about an uncle who was not fit to be around children, let alone one who—’ He stopped suddenly, his green eyes as dark as she had ever seen them, fathomless pools of torture. The real Taylen Ellesmere who lived beneath all he showed to the world was evident, the pain within him harrowing.

‘You speak about yourself as a child? This uncle, the Earl of Sutton, he was your guardian?’

Only horror showed now, though the shutters reflecting emotion closed even as she watched and the implacable ruthless Duke was back.

‘Enjoy your day, my dearest wife, because there are not many left to us.’

With that he stood and walked out of the room.