In the Wake of the Wind (2 page)

“I—I realized that you might be angry, but there was not time to consult you,” Lord Delaware said, wiping away the thin film of perspiration that had sprung to his brow. “You were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, unreachable in a time of crisis, and the marriage was the only way to secure enough money to save us from ruin. Serafina Segrave has a fortune, a very large fortune, and it is yours the day you marry. The contracts are already signed between her aunt and myself.”

“I see,” Aiden said, his voice sounding amazingly controlled to him, considering the acute shock he was laboring under. He’d been home only ten minutes and his father had wasted no time in informing Aiden of his latest and most profound idiocy in a lifetime of idiotic mistakes. But this one really took the prize. And it appeared that from this one there was to be no salvation.

“So to save the shipping company and your own skin, you bartered me,” he said coldly, his mouth tightening into a hard line. “You
bartered
me, damn you, sold me off like some prize piece of cattle!”

“Now Aiden, be reasonable,” his father said nervously, the tips of his fingers working fretfully on the threadbare tapestry of the armchair. “If I hadn’t acted quickly, what would have become of us? Just think of your poor sister…”

Aiden glared at him with disgust. The man never missed an opportunity to drive Aiden’s obligations home, as if Aiden hadn’t always taken responsibility for Charlotte. But his father was right. Charlotte didn’t deserve to live in poverty, not on top of everything else she had suffered. Still, he wasn’t about to let his father off the hook so easily.

“Be reasonable?” Aiden said dangerously, leaning slightly forward, his fists clenched by his sides. “Tell me, why should I be reasonable? In one fell swoop you’ve taken away _ my freedom, not to mention making a travesty of my free will. And I’m supposed to get down on my knees and be thankful, I suppose?”

“It’s no good losing your temper now,” his father said, not meeting his eyes. “The bargain is sealed, and unless we want to face a breach-of-promise suit on top of everything else, you’ll have to go through with the marriage. The situation can’t be unmade at this late date.”

Aiden bowed his head, staring at the floor, at the tip of his boot, at anything that might distract him and keep him from putting his hands around his father’s neck and wringing it. “Maybe you’d like to explain how you got us into this financial mess to begin with?”

“I—I made some bad investments,” he said. “I thought I could recoup them by taking some risks on the ‘Change, but I was wrong. Eventually I had to take a loan out against the company, and then I found I couldn’t repay it, and I’d already mortgaged everything else…” He trailed off into silence.

Aiden looked up. “I suppose if Townsend and its lands weren’t entailed, we’d be on the verge of losing this as well. And now you want me to tell you that you’re brilliant for having come up with a solution to keep us from bankruptcy?”

“I couldn’t think of anything else,” Lord Delaware said, hanging his head.

Aiden ground the sole of his boot into the carpet as if he could somehow smother his frustration, his outrage, his sense of helplessness. All of his life he’d done his best to compensate for his father’s mistakes, his inadequacies. But he’d never once imagined that he’d end up being the sacrificial lamb. “And how did you manage to secure a fabulously rich heiress at a moment’s notice—a woman, I might add, who has never laid eyes on me? I find that singularly unsettling in itself.”

“It was a promise, Aiden.” His father reached out an imploring hand. “A promise made eleven years ago to my dearest friend.”

Aiden’s gaze snapped back to his father, his eyes narrowed. “A
promise?
What kind of promise?”

“Well, you see, John was dying, and I wished to put his mind at ease about his daughter, who had only her aunt left to look after her. John was naturally concerned about Serafina’s future. So I agreed that when the time was right, you would, er … marry her.”

Aiden stared at his father in disbelief. “You took it upon yourself to engage me to be married eleven years ago, when I was what—the tender age of seventeen?” He plunged his hands through his hair. “What the bloody hell were you thinking?” he said, his voice rising to a shout. “It can’t have been about money—we had plenty of our own back then!”

“As I said, I was trying to provide comfort to a dying man,” Lord Delaware mumbled. “I didn’t want to upset him in his last hours by refusing his request to join our two families.”

“I find it most interesting that you’ve never mentioned Segrave’s name before, or this pact with the devil you made with him on his daughter’s behalf,” Aiden said frigidly. “I also find it interesting that you never bothered to inform me of it. I think that my forthcoming marriage would have been of some slight interest to me.”

“I was only waiting until I thought you were ready for marriage,” Lord Delaware said defensively. “I hoped you would court her, see if she suited you. I planned to give you a gentle push in the right direction.”

“Rubbish,” Aiden spat out, glaring at him. “I know you too well to believe that story for an instant. If that’s what you’d had in mind, Serafina Segrave’s name would have come up on every occasion you could find to mention it over the last eleven years.”

Lord Delaware shifted uncomfortably under Aiden’s unrelenting gaze. “Oh, very well. The girl disappeared with her aunt, and I confess I forgot about her. Out of sight, out of mind.” He attempted a weak laugh, instantly suppressed by the daggers in Aiden’s eyes.

“Let’s see if I have this right,” Aiden said, pressing his fingers against his temples as if that could stifle the pounding headache that had taken up residence there. “You conveniently forgot all about a promise you made a dying man, just as you forgot all about his daughter until the need for a substantial amount of money drove them both back into your mind?”

“Well, yes. I was going through some old papers in the hope of finding a way out of our difficulties, and there it was,” he continued, looking acutely embarrassed now that the full truth was finally coming out. “Segrave had drawn up a suggested marital contract before he died, along with a list of his daughter’s assets. I hadn’t bothered to read it at the time, but as I told you, her assets are more than enough to get us out of our present difficulties. We should be thankful that she hasn’t been snapped up by someone else before this.”

“I wonder why,” Aiden said tightly. “Or did you also forget to mention that she has two heads?”

“Well …” his father said, avoiding Aiden’s eyes.

“Oh, God,” Aiden groaned, his chest tightening with severe alarm. “What else haven’t you told me, Father?”

Lord Delaware scratched his cheek. “I suppose I might as well prepare you, since you’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

Aiden closed his eyes.

“She isn’t the most—well, the most
attractive
girl,” Lord Delaware said. “I only met her that once, mind you, but I had quite a shock as both her parents were so handsome, and she was, er—not so fortunate in her looks.”

“You’re saying she’s ugly.” Aiden pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking he surely was having a bad dream. Nothing he’d done in his twenty-eight years, no matter how terrible, warranted this horrific fate.

“Um, yes, yes I’m afraid I am. She’s rather sallow and pinched looking with bulging eyes and bad teeth and an awkward, knobby body. But you needn’t look at her very often, Aiden. I’m sure you can put her in the east wing or some such thing.”

“That’s
your remedy for this preposterous marriage?” Aiden choked out. “You throw an ugly heiress at me and you suggest I lock her away in the east wing for the rest of her days?”

“I don’t know what else you’re going to do with her,” Lord Delaware said helplessly. “I don’t think you’ll want to parade her around London. On top of being ugly, she’s not very personable—rather sullen and taken to listening at keyholes, actually.”

Aiden covered his face with his hands. “Oh, my God,” he moaned. “Oh, my God.”

“I can understand why her aunt is so anxious to see her married, and I gather the girl is just as anxious. Apparently there have been no other suitors, despite her inheritance,” Lord Delaware said, shaking his head sadly. “I expect you see now why I didn’t intend to honor the agreement. But trust me, my boy, there is no other solution. Serafina Segrave is our only hope.”

Aiden scrubbed his hands over his head.
Serafina
? What kind of absurd name was Serafina, anyway? A hideous vision danced before him of the girl—a bag of bones crowned by a pinched face with sharp, feral little teeth and protruding eyes. A girl desperate for marriage and willing to take what she could.

He could just see Miss Serafina Segrave now, congratulating herself over her booty: Aiden Delaware, Earl of Aubrey, heir to an ancient marquessate—impoverished perhaps, but only for the moment, since apparently Miss Segrave was prepared to pay well for a husband with title and position.

She obviously cared nothing about any other aspect of marriage if she hadn’t even bothered to ask for an introduction to him before committing to the arrangement. Too bad—maybe he could have somehow contrived to give her a thorough disgust of him, although he doubted there was much he could have done to accomplish {hat, short of confessing himself to be an ax-murderer. Which he wasn’t. Yet.

Aiden swallowed hard against the knot of despair that had formed in his throat. Sunk. Condemned. Honor bound by an agreement he hadn’t even been consulted about. Engaged to be married to a woman no one else wanted despite her vast fortune, which told him a very great deal.

He wearily raised his head, feeling cold as death on the inside. “Very well, Father,” he said, knowing there was no way out, not if he was to save his family from penury and disgrace. “I’ll marry your hideous heiress, since I can’t see what else to do. But know I damn you to hell for the bumbling fool that you are. And thanks very much for ruining my life.”

His father exhaled on a long breath of relief, Aiden’s plight clearly the least of his concerns. “Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll send for Miss Segrave immediately. You’ll have to apply for a special license, as the marriage must take place as soon as humanly possible. There’s no time to waste.”

Aiden nodded, then turned on his heel and walked out without a backward look. He’d never felt so sick in all his life.

April
30, 1819
Clwydd Castle, Wales

“Did you have a nice time tonight, Auntie?” Serafina glanced up from her tedious paperwork as Elspeth flew in the door, tossing her cape on one chair and her bag of odds and ends on another.

“Divine, my child, simply divine,” Elspeth trilled. “I do so love celebrating Beltane with all its lovely fertility rites. We made such a nice circle, and we even had an initiation tonight—I can’t think how long it’s been since one of those. People are so … skittish about covens.”

“And for good reason,” Serafina said, putting her pen down. “I realize there’s no harm in what you do, but you really must be a little more careful, don’t you think?”

“Careful of what?” Elspeth said disdainfully. “If I wish to be a Wiccan, I shall be a Wiccan, and I don’t give two snaps if the vicar finds out. What is he going to do—bum me at the stake?”

Serafina smiled fondly at her dear, eccentric little aunt, who embraced all the ancient Celtic practices of Wales with unbridled enthusiasm, although her techniques generally left something to be desired. “I think he’d already like to do that, given the way you sit in the back of the church every Sunday and scowl and snort at most of what he says.”

“Well, if he said anything useful I wouldn’t feel so agitated,” Elspeth said. “But he has a particular fondness for carrying on about guilt and hellfire and original sin, and really, Serafina, all his foolish jabbering puts my poor back out, as if the damp isn’t bad enough.”

She tossed her head and one of her bone hairpins went flying in a ninety-degree arc and landed in the cauldron simmering on the stove. “I wouldn’t be there at all if it wasn’t for having to cart you back and forth, and all because of a silly promise I made to your father.”

She tried to fish her hairpin out of the cauldron with a ladle, but gave up after a moment. “Can’t hurt, can’t hurt, nice clean bone after all,” she muttered. Throwing on a stained apron, she bent over the cauldron again and sniffed the brew. “Hmm. A little more mugwort, I think,” she said, poking in a canister. “Oh, and Serafina, dearest, I need some strands of your hair.”

Serafina rolled her eyes. “What for now?” she asked with exasperation. “I’ll be bald if you keep plucking me. Can’t you use your own?”

“Certainly not. My entire head is gray and the hair has to be dark or the spell won’t work. Just fetch a few from your hairbrush, won’t you, dearie? Have you had your supper?”

“Tinkerby and I ate ages ago. We had the last of the stew.”

“And did you feed my dear Basil?” Elspeth asked, shooting a stern look over her shoulder.

“Yes,” Serafina said absently, looking down at her books again. “He threw most of his food on die floor, made rude comments, and tried to bite Tinkerby—nothing out of the ordinary. I put him back on his perch upstairs. Auntie,” she said cautiously, knowing exactly what reaction she was going to get, “I’ve been going over the household books, and I think we need to make a few adjustments in our budget. There are some receipts here from an order you recently made…”

“If you’re going to start in again about how much I spend on my special ingredients, I shall become very cross, Serafina. You can be a big Miss Bossy-Boots, you know. And answer me this—without my spells, where would we be?”

“Well …” Serafina said, “we’d still be living in the west wing, for one.”

“Oh, that,” Elspeth said, waving her hand in dismissal. “A little too much sulfur in the mixture, that was all. I couldn’t help it that the wind was up and the draperies caught on fire, now could I?”

Serafina put her forehead in her hands and sighed. “But deer antler tips? And red jujube dates? And really, Auntie, precious eye of newt? These things are awfully expensive, and you know there’s no money to spare. Are they really that useful?”