Again, shock suffocated his rage. He’d never heard his father admit such a thing before. Before Alexander could speak, his father said, “Do you love the younger Purcell girl?”
He couldn’t find the words, he could only stutter, which was answer enough.
His father nodded. “Then marry her, Alexander.”
Marry her.
His father told him all about Lord Purcell’s proposal, and how he’d accepted it. For several moments, all Alexander could do was stare at his father. “You’ll allow this?” He said, quietly. “Truly?”
“I will. The deal has already been made. If the girl will have you, she’s yours.”
“And my title?”
“You will remain Marquess of Riversdale. And my son.”
And then, in a strange and almost awkward show of affection, his father put his arm around his son and squeezed.
He couldn’t remember the last time his father had come so close to embracing him. And though his father looked awfully uncomfortable and had to clear his throat, he’d done it.
“It may not matter,” Alexander said, when his father released him. “She thinks me a cad.”
“Then convince her otherwise,” his father said. “Go now and see her.”
Alexander concurred with a nod and turned to leave. But before he could move a step, his father caught his arm and stopped him.
Their eyes met.
“I hope this makes you see that I love you, Alexander. That I always have. I will pass on word to the Purcell girl, as I promised. And this time, I will not postpone.”
Looking into his father’s eyes, which were so much like his own, Alexander felt a warm feeling burst through his chest. Before he left, his father hugged him.
And then Alexander devised a plan.
He didn’t go to Lady Lilia’s. He went to the inn. It was late when he arrived, and Julius was just settling into bed.
Alexander pulled back Julius’ cover and his friend sighed.
“I need a favor, my friend,” Alexander said.
Julius sat up on the edge of the bed and looked at Alexander. “What’s new?”
***
Lady Marianne Purcell, Daughter of the Baron of Westlake
She didn’t want to go, but Becky was surprisingly adamant on the subject.
“I’m not sure I’m feeling up to it,” Marianne admitted.
“Please, Marianne. Julius wants to take me, but I wouldn’t dare go without you there. What would people think if they saw him and I together? They’d start to talk.”
Let them talk, Marianne thought to herself. It continued to bother her that Becky wouldn’t accept Julius’ hand in marriage, on account of their difference in rank. Didn’t she understand what she was throwing away?
“It’s just a ball,” she went on. “I’ve never been to a ball before, Marianne. At least, not as a guest.”
“I’m not sure,” she said, slowly.
But Becky continued to beg. It was so unlike her that Marianne conceded. And so they dressed for the ball. Becky picked out a deep blue gown for Marianne and wore a light green one herself.
Marianne was very quiet on the carriage ride there. She watched the trees roll past through the window and thought about how cool and fresh the air was. The experience gave her a strange sense of déjà vu. It reminded her of the carriage ride to Bath.
When they arrived, Marianne frowned out the window. “This can’t be it,” she said. Marianne couldn’t see an estate, or any lords and ladies.
What she did see was a gathering of bell tents, stalls and lanterns littering a field. And townsfolk. Perhaps a hundred townsfolk moving from stall to stall, chatting and laughing.
It was a fair.
Marianne stepped out of the carriage in a daze, feeling as if she’d gone back in time. She felt her stomach flip when music reached her ear. Music that made her feel tears with recollection.
She took a step backwards and started shaking her head. “I can’t be here.” Not here. It was too much for her heart to bear.
Marianne took another step back, but someone stopped her by putting a hand on the small of her back. She looked up and saw a gentleman standing beside her, wearing a mask.
“Will you dance with me, my lady?” The gentleman put his hand out. In it, he held a mask.
Marianne took the mask and held it for a moment, staring down at it. Then she looked up into his eyes. Green eyes she knew all too well.
She considered leaving, then and there. But when she saw the silent plea in his gaze, she put the mask on. “Very well, my Lord,” she said, in a shaky voice.
He twined his fingers with hers and led her to the dance floor. The music was slow and gentle, which allowed him to keep her close.
“I did not expect to see you again,” she admitted.
“You did not want to,” he corrected.
“Can you blame me?”
The familiar scent of him made her feel light-headed. “Not in the least,” he said. “Given what you were led to believe.”
Marianne looked up at him. “What I was led to believe? Have you come to play another game with me, Alexander?”
He shook his head slowly, with a small furrow between his brows. “I am not the sort of man who plays games, Marianne. You’ve always known that.”
“Then why have you brought me here? I assume that it was you who arranged for me to come. I am only surprised that Becky played a part in the deception. Unless she did not know either?”
“She knew,” he assured her, which made her heart sink a little, at first. “Once she learned the truth, she was keen to help me. So that you could learn it too.”
“I know the truth, Alexander. I know that you never called off the marriage.”
“That is only part of the truth.” They stopped dancing and Alexander took hold of her hands. “I told my father that the marriage was off, just as I told you. But he asked that I allow him to reveal it to your family, as he was the man who arranged the engagement.”
At first, Marianne didn’t want to listen. But as he went on, that began to change.
“All that time we spent together, I thought he’d called the marriage off, as he’d promised he would. But he hadn’t.”
“Then Eliza had no idea when she came to speak to me?”
“Precisely.”
“But what about your father? He was so determined to keep you with Eliza. What has calling off the marriage cost you?”
Alexander drew her hands to his lips and kissed each of her knuckles before he spoke. “It has not cost me a thing,” he murmured against her skin. “I have only gains to speak of.”
She started to smile hopelessly and shake her head. “Don’t you see? The world has pitted itself against us. Right from the start, all we’ve known is trouble. And I was a fool to think I could have you without the both of us losing a great deal more than we can stand.”
“But Marianne,” he said, softly, without losing his smile. “That is why I have come.”
Alexander lowered himself to the ground, in the middle of the dance, so that he was knelt on one knee. At the sight, Marianne sucked in a breath. The townsfolk around them had stopped dancing, and stood to watch them.
“Your father saw how much I love you, Marianne. He saw it even before I did, because I was too blind and foolish to accept it. He spoke to my father and proposed a new arrangement.”
Alexander reached into his pocket and withdrew something that sparkled in the moonlight. She recognized it the moment she saw it. “Us,” he concluded, as he held it up towards her. It was the necklace he’d bought for her at the fair.
“I am sorry it is not a ring,” he said, with a small smile.
She couldn’t breathe. She felt like a single breath would shatter this moment.
“Lady Marianne Purcell. I have loved you in heart for the longest time… but now, if you allow me, I want nothing more than to love you in action. Without secrecy. Without hiding.” He held up the jewel between his thumb
and forefinger, allowing the chain to dangle down his forearm.
“Marianne,” he murmured, his green eyes twinkling by lantern-light. “Will you marry me?”
Marianne covered her mouth with her hands and felt a sob rise in her throat. Then she reached down and touched the necklace pendant with her fingertips and whispered, “I thought you’d never ask.”
Marianne did not wait for him to rise to his feet. Instead, she sank down onto her knees and twined her fingers through his hair. She’d never wanted to feel a man’s lips so much as she did now. With a soft intake of breath, their mouths met in a pliant press.
And there they knelt, with her arms around his neck and his tongue pressing gently against her lower lip.
When they heard the cheers, they broke from one another to take a breath and look around them. The townsfolk were smiling and clapping. They’d seen it all.
Marianne laughed, with true joy. And then, looking up into Alexander’s eyes, she smiled and whispered, “Kiss me again, my Knight.”
He did. Over and over.
The Extended Epilogue
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Book 4 - A Preview
Chapter 1
Miss Charlene Ellington, daughter of Dr. Aldric Ellington
Miss Charlene Ellington knew that she wasn’t meant to be out in Raven’s Hollow on her own. It was unseemly for a woman to come out to this cool and damp bit of forest all by herself.
It was dangerous. Who was she supposed to ask to chaperone her, though? Most people gave Raven’s Hollow a pass.
It was spooky, they said. Haunted. Charlene very much doubted that, or at least, she had never come across any reason to believe the place to be haunted.
There were plenty of hazards, from careless missteps to wild animals, but as long as one was careful and respectful, well, she at least had never had any trouble.
The only person that she could have asked to accompany her was her father, the eminent Dr. Ellington of Bath, but that would defeat the purpose of her being out here collecting herbs.
These were meant for his homemade medicines, and Charlene was here not only because she tended to be quicker at the task of gathering, but because her father’s time was better spent in town looking after the patients in his care.
Of course, Charlene and her father would never agree on that front. She was sure he knew, logically, that Charlene was right to do this, but he was her father and protective of her. He would never consent to her being out there on her own.
If she were a son, that would be one thing, but she wasn’t, and she had no right to act as one. Charlene could practically hear him in her head now: It just isn’t proper, Charlene.
He always stopped short of reminding her that if she did enough things that were considered improper, it would be impossible to find a husband for her.
No one wanted to marry a wild hellion, that was what her mother had always said. Just as well; Charlene wouldn’t marry anyone who thought that going out to gather herbs meant that she was a hellion.
No threat of argument could keep her from slipping away that morning. She would go crazy if she spent another day cooped up in the house with tutors – or worse, alone!
Besides, she might as well make herself useful in whatever way that she could. Things had been hard for her father as of late.
Charlene was startled from her contemplation of a particularly interesting vine when she heard a long, drawn-out groan.
Immediately, she tensed, cocking her head to the side in case the sound came again. It hadn’t been an animal that made that sound, she decided. No, it must have been a human. A human in pain, too, if she knew anything.
The sound didn’t come again, and there was a part of her that wondered if she had only imagined it. Maybe it had been nothing more than the wind blowing through the creaky trees.
Charlene wasn’t known for her imagination, though. She took after her father, the doctor: all focused practicality.
Not only that, but she knew that if there really was a man lying around here in pain, there was no way that she could abandon him. That just wasn’t in her nature.
She searched the area, looking for anything that might help her in her search. There, a footprint in the mud! Flattened grass, too wide of a path and straight for it to have been made by an animal.
It didn’t take her long to find a boy, nearly a man, lying down in the brush and cradling his left ankle.
For a moment, all Charlene could do was stare at him. It was rare for anyone to venture into this part of the wood, let alone one so finely dressed as he.
From the discarded bow and arrow sheath, he had been out hunting, or at least practicing his archery. Most people coming to Bath came for relaxation at the spa, not to go bushwhacking through Raven’s Hollow.
He must have had no idea what he was getting himself into, Charlene thought, shaking her head.
She stepped closer to him, wondering what had happened to his ankle. A twist? A break, even? He looked up at her with his cerulean eyes, and for a moment, Charlene could barely even think, lost in those deep pools of emotion.
Her breath caught, and she felt her heart beat a hair faster. She pushed those thoughts aside, though, remembering how Dr. Ellington worked with his patients.
She knelt next to him on the loam, feeling the slight dampness through the fabric of her skirt. “Let me see,” she demanded, trying to gentle her voice so as not to frighten the man.
Although,
if the first sight of Raven’s Hollow itself hadn’t managed to scare the boy off, there was little that Charlene could do to frighten him.
The boy shook his head. “There’s blood,” he said, like that should warn her off.
Charlene rolled her eyes and carefully pried his hands away. The boy, Eric Cumberland, reluctantly let her, his eyes curious as she tore a piece of fabric from the hem of her skirt and wet it from her waterskin.
The girl dabbed at the wound, wondering what had caused it. As she wiped away the excess blood, though, it was obvious: an adder.
Charlene gave the boy a troubled look. “Did you see the adder that did this?” she asked.
“Only for a moment,” he admitted, and Charlene could hear the pain in his voice. “Pale, with brown splotches. I don’t know how I missed it initially.”
He shivered slightly, and she could tell that it was more than just his body going into shock at the bite.
The girl grimaced. Venomous, she was sure of it. From everything she knew, which admittedly was nowhere near as much as her father, he still had time, though.
She dropped her basket beside him and darted off to find the herbs that she needed. She was breathless as she retraced her steps.
The boy hadn’t moved; he just leaned back against a tree, his eyes closed, his lips drawn tight with pain.
Charlene threw herself back on the ground. She didn’t have a mortar and pestle with her, but she made do with some jagged rocks, making a thick paste with the herbs that could save his life. She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
She pulled Eric’s hands away from his wound, noting how much weaker his grip was already. Or maybe it was just that he knew better, by now, than to fight her.
Charlene would never go so far to presume that he trusted her, but he had to realize that with no help at all, he wasn’t going to make it.
She used another strip of her skirt to bind the poultice to his ankle. Dr. Ellington was going to be irate when he found out that she had ruined one of her frocks, but what else was she to do?
Besides, it wasn’t as though the mud stains at the knees would ever come out satisfactorily. Might as
well ruin the whole thing.
Eric’s blue eyes flicked open again, and he seemed to be considering Charlene for a moment. “What is it?” he asked, gesturing weakly towards the wrap.
“They’ll draw out the poison,” she promised him. She bit her lower lip. “You still need more help, though. I expect the fever to set in, and then you’ll need water and someone to bathe the wound and reapply the paste. I can’t do that here.”
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