Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  ‘Me?’

  It was more a sound than a word, a guttural rasp from Fell’s dry lips and throat filled with broken glass. Sick dread flared in his gut as the reality of Ma’s past unfurled before him, her suffering and unhappiness that made him want to reach out and take her cold hand in his. A hundred questions reared up, battling for superiority over his concern for Sophia and his mother who looked as though she plumbed the very depths of her worst memories to bring them into the light.

  Ma nodded, her features cloaked in emotion so intense it pierced Fell’s soul. ‘The moment I felt you move for the first time was when I knew I had to escape. I loved you before you were even born and the thought of how your father might insist on raising you turned my blood to ice. I could stand his temper when it was just me who took the brunt of it, but the idea of him turning it on you was more than I could stand.’

  Fell swallowed painfully, a forced convulsion that hurt his throat.

  I can hardly credit this. Can this truly be so?

  ‘Did he know that you carried me when you ran?’

  ‘Yes. He was delighted at the prospect of an heir to shape in his own image—the very thing I wanted least in the world to befall you. I would have been allowed no input in how you were raised; by that time my low birth was an irritation to him and the differences between us too vast to ever be governed. I was terrified for what your fate might be with him as your guide.’

  ‘But he never knew where you’d fled? Or what became of us afterwards?’

  ‘I wrote to him. Only once, a few months after you were born. Rector Frost had to help me as I had no learning, but I swore him to secrecy and, bless him, he took my sorry tale to the grave. I told your father he had a son, a fine healthy boy with the best parts of both of us and beautiful, mismatched eyes the likes of which I’d never seen before—and by which he would recognise his legitimate heir, should the baby ever grow into a man who came seeking his inheritance. But I never told him where we were, for fear he would try to take you from me and infect your life with cruelty as he had done mine.’

  Fell held his head in his hands, fingers raking through tousled black hair. If there had been a chair in the stable, he might have sunk into it, so dizzyingly did his thoughts chase one after the other until his head spun and bewilderment swallowed him whole. Confusion and disbelief swirled inside him, jangling his nerves and tossing him amid a heaving sea. It was too bizarre to countenance: Ma, a countess? Himself, the heir to an earldom and who knew what fortune? Scant moments ago he’d been a Roma bastard and nothing more—now he was in line for a peerage that would elevate him higher than even Sophia’s own family?

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? I lived my whole life thinking I was one thing, when all along I was something else entirely! And this is the moment you choose to enlighten me, with my wife carried off and your poor face bruised by her captor? Your timing is impeccable!’

  A lesser woman might have taken a step backwards at the wildness of Fell’s tone, but instead Ma seized his arm again, speaking so passionately her voice cut through the clamour of his turmoil.

  ‘I know I should have told you. I’ve wanted to for years. But heaven forgive me, I was afraid of what you might think of me, of how you might react. I took you from a place of luxury into a tiny village miles from your birthplace and thrust you into a world so unkind I saw how it affected you each day—can you understand why I couldn’t bring myself to admit to you that I was the reason for your suffering? I was terrified of losing your love and frightened half to death you might return to your father and become the kind of man I wanted to save you from being.’

  Her desperate gaze sliced Fell down to the bone, a meeting of three black eyes and one hazel interloper whose origin was so shockingly revealed. Fell looked down at the woman who had been both mother and father to him for thirty-one years and felt himself still, the flames leaping inside him flickering lower as he took in the real fear she wore like a mask.

  ‘Will you ever be able to forgive me? After all the pain I caused you?’

  Some shadow of that pain echoed now as Fell considered her pleading face, turned up towards him so beseechingly it stung. Her secrecy had been at the root of all his feelings of inadequacy, his entire existence now something that didn’t make any sense. If only she’d told him sooner, had trusted him not to follow in his father’s brutal footsteps…

  But didn’t she act out of love? From some misguided attempt to protect me?

  That couldn’t be denied and, despite the discord churning in his innards, Fell knew it was a truth worth clinging to.

  He took her hand and gently disengaged it from his arm, feeling the ice in each fingertip. ‘I can’t pretend I’m not hurt you kept this from me. For thirty years… Thirty years, Ma! A whole lifetime of concealment and secrecy that could have been avoided if only you had trusted me with the truth. I can’t say that doesn’t grieve me. But you need never fear losing my love—not then and certainly not now, despite all that’s passed between us. That will never be.’

  Ma’s jaw tightened so hard tendons flexed in her neck and she nodded just once, blinking to chase away the tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I’m glad of that. In turn, I want you to know this: if you chose to seek him out I wouldn’t stand in your way. He was a poor husband, but the choice is yours now as to whether you wish to try him as a father.’

  ‘This isn’t the time to think about that.’ Fell squeezed Ma’s hand with rough affection, finely tuned throughout the years to say far more than words. There were more questions to be asked, more secrets to be unravelled, but with Sophia trapped in her worst nightmare there wasn’t a moment to lose. He and Ma had so much to discuss; but not while his beloved lived in fear, and the ghosts of Ma’s past—and his own future—would have to wait. ‘We can discuss that later. For now, I must go.’

  He swung himself up on to Bess’s back and gathered the reins in his fist, ready to ride out when Ma laid her hand on the horse’s grey neck.

  ‘One final thing…’

  ‘There’s more? Am I to find out I’m actually a prince now?’

  His mother smiled, thinly, worry for her daughter-in-law and concern for her son still clouding her expression, but a definite curve of her lips all the same. ‘I owe you another apology. I allowed my own experience of marrying a high-born to sway my judgement of your situation and to think the worst, but I can see now what I didn’t before: Sophia loves you, unless I’m very much mistaken. I should never have suggested otherwise.’

  Fell stiffened, wonder and agitation stirred by the disclosure of his father’s identity falling away to leave behind only stunned blankness that must have shown on his face.

  What? What was that?

  ‘What do you mean? Why do you say that?’

  His heart shivered in its rhythm, falling over itself in its haste to know what Ma could possibly mean. It wasn’t true, surely—he’d misheard, or misunderstood, left so rattled by the morning’s events he was half-mad and thinking things that couldn’t for a moment be true.

  Ma shook her head pityingly, her smile growing in strength as she took her hand from Bess’s neck and moved to one side. Nothing now stood between Fell and the open stable door, somewhere beyond which the wife who might or might not love him must be beside herself with fear.

  ‘I have my suspicions, but I think it’s up to you to find out for certain. What are you waiting for? Go and ask her yourself!’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sophia sat quite still, hands clasped carefully in her lap and shoulders pulled back with perfect deportment. Anybody chancing upon her arranged demurely in Fenwick Manor’s best parlour would have thought her very elegant indeed, not suspecting for a moment concentrating on her posture helped Sophia suppress the desire to scream.

  If I start, I might never stop. I could lose my wits sitting here waitin
g and then I’d be no different from Septimus’s first wife after all.

  She looked about her at the lavishly decorated room, trying to tamp down the nausea she could feel rising in her throat. It was a luxurious prison and yet a prison none the less, the key grating in the lock at Phillips’s retreating back and the windows shut tight against the approach of autumn. There was nothing she could do but wait, watching the minutes tick by on the face of a gilded clock and pray for the deliverance she knew would not come.

  How could it?

  Even if Fell came after her—and there was no guarantee that he would, given what she had gleaned from Essea as to his feelings—what could he do? They wouldn’t let him in the house and Mother would send a servant running for the law before he had time to blink. The only chance she had of escape was to insist on the validity of her marriage, a legal state even Mother’s tantrums could do nothing to alter. She would need to summon all her courage and face the oncoming storm, Lady Thruxton’s wrath certain to shake the walls and make chandeliers ring with her fury.

  It was as though Mother could sense Sophia’s fear. From the other side of the locked door came the sound of light footsteps, followed by the turning of a key—and then she stepped into the room, a graceful dark-haired woman of middle age who looked at Sophia with such triumphant coldness it made her daughter shudder.

  ‘Well, now. Home at last!’

  Lady Thruxton moved so smoothly it was as though she was on wheels, coming towards Sophia with her hands outstretched. A smile played about her full lips, but her eyes were hard and chill as two chips of flint and Sophia recoiled from the reaching fingers.

  ‘Sophia!’ Mother chided her, pressing a hand against her chest as if mortally wounded by her daughter’s retreat and yet relishing the power to unnerve. ‘Don’t you want to embrace your poor mother who has been in agonies these past months? I grieved so, not knowing where you were. You ought to thank me for taking the time to find you and apologise for all the trouble you caused. Such a terrible, disappointing mess. If I were you, I’d be quite ashamed.’

  She paused expectantly, the age-old rhythm of their relationship so familiar it was second nature to follow. They both knew their parts in this dance: Mother injured by Sophia’s many failings and Sophia asking forgiveness for her flaws, begging to be absolved. That forgiveness might be offered after a while, but not until Mother had said her piece, usually at a volume the whole manor could hear and most gratifying when accompanied by the sight of Sophia’s regretful tears. A handful of months might have passed since their last encounter, but what was that balanced against the habit of a lifetime—Lady Thruxton in charge and Sophia pleading to be let out from beneath her boot?

  But the delightful imploring didn’t come.

  ‘Hello, Mother.’

  Sophia slowly lifted her chin to meet her mother’s eyes, seeing the flit of confusion and then anger there and bracing herself for impact. Once upon a time she would have thrown herself into the role set out for her, but with sudden surprise she realised something had changed—nothing she could put her finger on, but there all the same as she watched Lady Thruxton’s temper rise.

  ‘Don’t “hello, Mother” me, girl.’ The cruel smile had slipped and the words were hissed with real venom that stung Sophia’s heart into a rapid beat. ‘You should be counting your blessings to be back in this house and showering me with gratitude for bothering to retrieve you! And the state of you…hair quite wild and a disgrace of a gown—don’t you know what a slattern you look?’ She stopped again, leaving another space for Sophia to fill with the pleasing shame and remorse she owed for her actions.

  Sophia swallowed, tasting the sour bile that turned in her stomach. Fear still gripped her, but curiously less tightly than when Phillips had dumped her in the parlour, and certainly less than when he had snatched her from the forge. She’d expected to be beside herself to see Mother, but now the woman in question stood there with building rage flushing her cheeks she seemed a less daunting prospect than before, alarming but not quite the all-encompassing monster Sophia remembered.

  It’s because of Fell. It has to be.

  The words he’d murmured in the kitchen all those weeks ago echoed in her head, repeating themselves until she had no choice but to listen. She’d doubted them of late, it was true, but they must have taken root regardless of her caution and delved deeper inside her than she realised. They’d made her question all she thought to be fact and now she couldn’t help but wonder, timidly at first but more strongly by the second, if her husband had been right all along.

  ‘You deserve far more than neglect and contempt. It’s time you started to believe it.’

  Mother’s face had darkened to a dusky rose at Sophia’s silence, the lack of contrition fanning the flames of her ire. Sophia wasn’t playing the game for the first time in her life and for one glorious second it seemed her mother was caught off balance, a sight so wonderful she couldn’t help but marvel. In that moment Lady Thruxton seemed so much smaller than the woman of Sophia’s memory, diminished somehow by the healing power of Fell’s words. He might never know what comfort she found in them, drawing the strength from his kindness not to crumble beneath her mother’s spiteful glare.

  But then a malicious gleam grew in Mother’s eye and with the smile hitched back into place she spoke silkily as she sat down beside her daughter on the richly embroidered sofa.

  ‘Lord Thruxton and Septimus have been hunting in the park, but I believe they are due to return any time now. Imagine their delight when they find you safely home! Dear Septimus in particular will be most gratified to have his intended back where she belongs.’

  This time her words had the desired effect. Sophia stiffened, her already galloping pulse charging ever faster as the panic she’d forced back railed against her defences, testing the walls for weak spots it might break through.

  ‘I’m not his intended. I’m a married woman.’

  The image of Septimus’s handsome, merciless face swam before her to make the nausea roiling inside her bubble all the more. He could do nothing to her now, she reminded herself fiercely, and yet the naked terror she’d felt on the night she ran from Fenwick Manor reached for her again with icy fingers.

  He can’t touch me. He can’t touch me.

  Can he?

  ‘Don’t you dare argue with me.’ Mother’s tongue was a razor flashing out to cut Sophia to the quick. ‘Your pitiful imitation of a marriage counts for nothing. Your so-called husband will give you up at my asking and the rest is easy enough to undo. It will be as though you were never wed at all.’

  Sophia’s skin tingled with cold fear, the fire curling in the parlour grate doing nothing to lessen the chill that crept upon her like mist. Mother couldn’t dissolve the marriage, surely—yet the idea burrowed into Sophia’s chest to snatch her breath.

  Fell would never bow to her demands. He might not love me, but he would never be so weak as to abandon his honour on Mother’s say so, even if he regrets taking me as his wife. He’s a better man than that—better than she’d ever understand.

  Mother watched her closely, a grim kind of enjoyment flickering in her expression. It reminded Sophia of a cat toying with a mouse, the little creature fighting to escape while its captor sharpened its claws.

  ‘You will do this, Sophia. You owe me your obedience after all the harm you’ve caused both now and to your poor dear father.’

  Looking down at her clenched hands, Sophia hesitated. It was the same old song Mother had sung for almost twenty years, vicious and designed to keep her daughter in line. For every one of those twenty years Sophia had believed it—until a lowly blacksmith had come along to finally make her question it.

  ‘Nonsense.’

  She raised her head, throat tight with apprehension, but the truth no longer willing to be denied. Those months with Fell had shown her a world beyond that of guilt and grief an
d despair, and she wouldn’t be pulled away from it without a fight. Fell might not return her love, but his teaching was priceless in a different way, a gift he’d given with no idea of its value.

  ‘That wasn’t my fault.’

  Mother’s face tightened, the skin around her eyes hardening into a porcelain mask of disbelief.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Papa’s death. It wasn’t my fault.’

  Lady Thruxton stared as though she couldn’t understand what she was hearing. Sophia could hardly credit it either: two decades of shame falling away in a matter of moments as effortlessly as taking off a coat. If anybody had told her how brave she would become when faced with Mother’s wrath she wouldn’t have believed them, even now scarcely able to comprehend where she found the courage to defend herself. It was wonderful and terrifying at the same time, Fell’s words ringing in her ears to spur her on further than she’d known she could.

  There was little time to celebrate, however. Mother surged to her feet and stood over Sophia like a mountain, or perhaps more like a volcano for all the molten malice that spewed from her snarling lips.

  ‘Stupid, useless girl! Of course it was your fault!’

  Sophia flinched away, pressing herself further into the sofa’s luxurious cushions. Mother’s rages were nothing new, but there was something uncanny about this rant—her eyes flashed and her fingers curved into talons as though she would rake her daughter with sharp nails. ‘Every misfortune to ever befall me has been your fault! If you’d been less vacant, less of a burden around my neck—’

  She broke off, head snapping towards the parlour door. Both women watched as the handle began to turn, Sophia with fresh dread and Lady Thruxton with wild triumph that made her look all the more unhinged.