Already His (The Caversham Chronicles - Book Two) (45 page)

“She will marry me as soon as possible,” Michael said, “so that no one besmirches her character, or worse, because of what happened the other night. Even though we did everything in our power to staunch any gossip while we were at Whippleworth’s, if her name comes out in Marlowe’s trial, she will be ostracized. You know that is the way some in society behave.”

His friend nodded. “It will be good for her to go home for a while and let the bruises heal. Too, Lia can talk with her and try to help with this as well. But....” Ren appeared to ponder something serious. “Michael, is that the only reason you want to marry her? Because of gossip, or her reputation? Because if that’s the case—”

“No,” he quickly interjected. “I’m marrying her because I care for her deeply. I do.” Michael went to the rooms only window, and stared out to the stable yard below. “I will be at Haldenwood in a week with a special license. It might take a few days longer for my mother and sisters.”

“If she refuses, I will not force her.”

“She won’t refuse me,” Michael said confidently, all the while praying he was right. Because he didn’t know what he’d do if she truly would not marry him.

Of course, he did still have the threat card, but knew that was not the way to start off his marriage. He smiled. Elise would cut his heart out if he tried that.

“I
will not allow Michael to sacrifice himself to save my reputation,” Elise told her brother when she met with him on the afternoon after their return to Haldenwood. “And that is what he’d be doing. You know I am right.”

“He
wants
to marry you, Elise,” her brother said as he placed his elbows on the desk surface and began to rub his temples. “He cares for you deeply, he’s told me so.”

“Caring is not the same as loving. He doesn’t love me as you love Lia.” Elise felt tears threaten to spill over again and she hated it. “How long will it be before he resents his decision? When he realizes he could have made a better match?” She saw Ren’s jaw twitch and knew he fought his rising frustration with her.

“That will not happen with Michael. I know him. Once he makes a vow of commitment, he will honor it.”

She was tired of discussing this. “He might honor it, but he will not be happy. And I’ll not do that to him. I’ve already put him through enough over the years. He deserves happiness.”

It made Elise sick to think that had she not been abducted he would never have offered to marry her. Michael was only doing this out of his devotion to her brother. And she was doing what she was doing for the same reason.

Now it seemed she would have to tell Michael this in order for him to recant on this plan to make himself a martyr because he felt guilt over the other night’s events. The nerve of him.

“Is it because of this... argument you had. Can it not be worked out?”

Elise shook her head.

“What is it you wish to do if not marry?”

Her brother’s tone was taught, as though he were conducting an uncomfortable interview. Elise felt his voice was cool, and not his normal grumbly ogre self. She wondered why he was being so solicitous after what she’d just had happen. “I want to live the quiet life of an eccentric aunt to my nephew, and hopefully a new niece. To that end, I’ve decided I would like to live in mother’s dower house. It’s a beautiful place, and I can see being happy there.”

“It’s yours, so you may certainly live there. With a proper companion, of course.” Her brother drummed his fingers on the desktop, not because he was thinking, but because he was restraining his upset for her sake. “We would have to give the tenants notice. It could be... six months to a year before you were able to move. “

“I expected as much. Thank you, brother,” she said as she fought down a painful lump in her throat that threatened to bring up tears. But she wouldn’t cry again. The past was over and done with, and the future lie ahead.

“Are you sure you are well? I wish you would let me call in Prescott.”

She nodded. “The bruises are fading, and this....” She fingered the cut on her cheek. “This is healing nicely. The good doctor would not be able to do anything for me, except perhaps give me laudanum. And I’ve never been fond of that stuff as it tastes horrible.”

“As you wish.”

E
ight days after parting ways with Elise and Ren at the inn, Michael took the seat across from his friend in the ducal office at Haldenwood. “Were you able to convince her then?”

Ren shook his head. “We have had two discussions, and she has remained adamant. She thinks you would be sacrificing yourself for her honor, and said you deserve better. She thinks to live in our mother’s dower house and become an eccentric spinster.

Michael laughed, for the first time in days. Elise had too much passion to closet herself away from the world the rest of her life. “She’s already eccentric. It’s one of the many things I love about her. And, if I have my way, she’ll not become a spinster.”

“Don’t press her, Michael. Give her time. She’ll come around eventually. Especially with Beverly here with her.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

“I don’t understand,” his friend said. “Why the rush to marry?”

Michael turned away and stared into the glowing remnants of logs in the hearth. He didn’t want to tell his friend there was a chance, even through it had only been once, that his sister might be with child.

“Michael, Lia asked Elise if she felt as though Sinclair might have....” Ren cleared his throat, the topic uncomfortable for them both. “Abused her....”

“Stop.” He lifted his hand, stopping his friend before Ren spoke further. “I don’t care.” Once the realization came to him that this feeling he had was more than just need or want, more even than desire—because it was all that and so very much more—
that’s
when Michael felt the words rushing from his mouth as never before. “I... I love her.”

“Then you have some groveling to do,” Ren said, shaking his head in confusion. “Because I sense that’s what she’s wanting from you.”

He could only nod. He planned to find her and apologize. Michael had to start making amends right now. If she truly needed time to get over the trauma of the abduction, he’d give her all the time she needed—after they were wed.

E
lise dismissed Bridget after the maids finished carrying in the hot water. Alone in her bathing chamber, she dropped her robe and stared into the pier glass. She was thankful that the bruises on her face and neck were fading quickly, though her breasts were still tender. She wished she knew what that heathen had done to her, how she received the cut and bruise on her cheek, what he’d done to her breasts to make them so very sore. If only she could remember all that happened that night over a week ago. But try as she might she could not. Both Grandmother and Lia thought it was a good thing she didn’t remember, then it wouldn’t interfere with her finding pleasure with a husband later they told her, should she marry one day.

She remembered the night she met Sinclair, how his touch made her skin crawl. Had she trusted that instinct a little more none of this would have occurred. Thinking back on those few encounters with him, Sinclair never gave any clues of his true nature. He had been quiet and introspective at times, but she didn’t think.... She even remembered telling her grandmother once she thought him harmless.

“Ha! Harmless,” she said to the empty room.

As she sunk deeper into the big brass tub, she relished the feel of the hot water as it relaxed her sore muscles. Evidently in her unconscious state, she must have fought him because the muscles in her arms and legs still ached.

She wished she could turn back the hands of the clock and undo all that had occurred. But who could have known that Marlowe would do something so dastardly as to lace her drink with a sleeping drought, then hand her over to Sinclair? Why did he do such a thing? What had she ever done to him, to either of them, that they would do this to her?

Did they want her inheritance? If so, they could have gone about it in a different way and not inflicted this harm on her person. She’d heard stories of heiresses being abducted and taken to Gretna Green where they would be coerced into marriages, but she’d never met any. Had Sinclair done so, she never would have signed a certificate, and secondly, her brother would have contested it and had it deemed illegal.

Then there was Michael.

Why had he suddenly become so solicitous toward her?
Now
he believed in her virtue? She wondered what had changed his mind, for something obviously had.

And why did he all of the sudden want to marry her? Especially now. It had to be because he pitied her. She didn’t want a husband who felt sorry for her, and that was all he felt right now. Whether he realized it or not.

The pain of knowing that this was all Michael felt for her, hurt almost as much as the physical pain she felt due to Sinclair and Marlow’s actions. She’d told Ren the truth when she’d said Michael would come to resent her should she marry him. But she could never tell her brother what Michael believed of her. Refusing to marry him was the right thing to do. Eventually Michael would come to think he could have made a better match with a woman more virtuous than he thought her to be. One who didn’t have shame hanging over her from being compromised.

She wished she’d never been abducted, and that Michael loved her.

Conversely, if Michael had loved her, she never would have been abducted.

It was a vicious circle, she knew, and one not likely to change her current predicament. Nothing would. Except maybe the passage of time. Time for her wounds, both emotional and physical to heal. Time for someone else to do something equally if not more reckless than she, making them the next target of the gossip columns and scandalmongers.

M
ichael grew tired of waiting in the hallway outside Elise’s rooms. The chair he’d moved in front of her door two hours and ten minutes ago had become impossible to remain in. Thus he began wearing a path in the carpet. By his estimation, there was one hundred and twenty feet of runner in the hallway. At two and a half foot strides, it took him forty nine steps to make it from one end to the other. And if he shortened his stride mere inches, he could get fifty steps.

This was bollocks, pacing the hall and sitting outside her door waiting for Elise to come out of her room so he might catch a moment with her.

Elise was being obstinate. She’d skipped coming down for dinner the past two nights and had, in fact, taken to having all her meals brought up. She even skipped her morning ride once she learned he was in the barn waiting for her. In fact, since Michael had arrived, she’d not come out of her rooms at all.

Which is why he waited in the hallway.

Lady Beverly went in to visit Elise on his behalf, and returned with a message for him. “My lord, she does not wish to see you, and asks that you please go from her home so that she may continue with her life.”

Elise’s words were like a blow to the gut, but he quickly recovered, replying, “Not until I have two minutes of her time, in private.”

Beverly went back in Elise’s room, and quickly returned with another reply. “My friend has begged me to convey to you that she said all she had to say to you the morning after at Caversham House. She also asked me to remind you that honorable men keep their promises.”

“Lady Beverly, I know I’ve been a boorish ass, but in my deepest heart I pray Elise still loves me. And I am not—” He paused and took a deep breath, collecting himself. “She must care. She must, or she wouldn’t be acting this way.”

He lowered his frame into the under-sized, impractical chair he’d put in front of her door earlier. Crossing his legs at the ankle, he reclined as best he could. “So, tell the lady I will wait no matter how long it takes.”

“W
ell,” her grandmother said as she entered Elise’s sitting room an hour later with her stitching in hand. Both Grandmother and Lia had taken to doing their stitching each afternoon with she and Beverly in the better light of her west-facing sitting room. “Michael said he is not leaving his spot, and that he will in fact sleep across your threshold tonight.” Elise watched her grandmother’s maid set her stitching on the table, then helped her grandmother onto the sofa under the window in Elise’s sitting room. “You know your brother will not allow this silliness to continue much longer before he says something, either in your favor or his friend’s.”

When Elise sniffed and refused to comment, her grandmother continued, “If His Grace were to ask my opinion, to help him make a decision, I shall be completely honest with him.” The maid handed Grandmother her hoop frame and threaded needle, then set the pin cushion holding the other pre-threaded needles for later use on the side table. Without ever looking at Elise her maternal relative continued, “My opinion is that Lord Camden will make a wonderful match for you. Whatever tiff you feel you have will work itself out in time, and...”

Beverly raised a startled gaze and sucked in a breath at Lady Sewell’s words.

Elise was fighting tears again, just when she thought she’d dried out. She looked at the penciled pattern in the taught fabric of the embroidery hoop in her lap and watched the first of several tears fall onto the cloth. When the maid departed, she said through her tears, “It will never work. He doesn’t believe me and will never trust me.”