by Jenny Lykins
Alec continued to stand, soundly cursing the servants’ grapevine, swearing to turn out whoever had leaked the knowledge. He knew with a certainty the trail would lead back to Ned’s wife. He poured himself his third glass of whiskey that morning, idly remembering the days - only a few short hours ago - when he’d been a temperate drinker.
“I did not marry Phillipa Morgan, Father. She’s dead.”
That piece of information knocked the wind from the old man’s sails.
“Oh my,” his mother squeaked.
“I do, however,” he went on, “seem to find myself married this morning, since I found the woman wearing Great Aunt Eleanor’s ring on the ship and married her on board. It wasn’t until this morning that Ned returned to inform me that Miss Morgan had died. It seems I’ve married a stranger.”
“What?” his father boomed.
Charles dropped back into the chair, then vacated it immediately for his mother. She snatched up a sheaf of papers from Alec’s desk and fanned herself, emitting odd little noises that never quite formed into words.
Alec could almost hear the Almighty chuckling to himself from above.
“What do you mean you’ve married a stranger?” His father continued to bellow - the only means he’d ever known of communicating.
“Perhaps I should rephrase that, Father. She is no more a stranger than Miss Morgan was to Charles, or Daphne Witherson was to me.”
William Hawthorne’s face turned from mottled red to a hue resembling Alec’s favorite claret.
“I demand to know why she was wearing the betrothal ring!”
Alec calmly poured yet another whiskey while he pictured the celestial Power slapping His knee with mirth.
“It seems,” his gaze wandered around the room, landing on shades of green that matched his wife’s eyes, “that she found it on the ship and slipped it on to remember to give it to the captain.”
The angels, he was sure, were pounding each other on the back now, holding their sides and gathering to peer over at the comedy being played out in the library of Windward Cottage.
For a moment Alec thought his father would climb over the desk to get to Alec’s throat. In a rare moment of self control, William managed to stop himself. Instead, he turned, grabbed the nearest vacant chair, slammed it onto the floor, then threw himself into it with a glare.
“You will start at the beginning and explain to me why you married a woman because she found your great aunt’s ring, and then I will meet this woman myself.”
Alec spent the next thirty minutes trying to weave the truth into some semblance of a sensible explanation. Only then did he realize that his actions - when put into words - weren’t nearly as logical as they’d seemed at the time. His only defense was that he hadn’t had the luxury of time to come up with a better plan. And, truth be told, he was not experienced in spur of the moment activities.
“I refuse to believe, Alec Christopher, that you do not see that the woman stole that ring and then posed as Charles’ betrothed when she saw the opportunity to snare a rich husband. Thought it all an act, my eye.”
“There’s no proof to that, Father.” Why was he taking up for her, when he himself had made the same accusations no more than an hour before? Even now he had her room watched because he didn’t trust her.
Because, you great fool, for some strange reason, you want to believe her.
“Where is this woman? I daresay when we delve into her background, we shall find her history as larcenous as it is thespian.” While he spoke, his father neatly bent Alec’s favorite letter opener into a quaint, silver rainbow. “Have one of your people bring the girl here.”
Alec bristled at being ordered about in his own home. Returning his father’s glare, he circled the desk and went to the door.
“I’ll fetch her myself.” Before stepping into the hallway, he turned back to the little group. “And, Father, please do not waste all your charm on her at once. Or at least until we get to the truth of the matter.”
“Alec,” his father’s voice stopped him once more. “Is there any reason why you cannot pursue an annulment?”
Alec’s jaw popped when he ground his teeth.
“No, Father. In fact, she wishes one.”
The only sound when he left the room and strode to the stairs was that of his mother fanning herself with the morning’s invoices.
With one foot on the bottom step, he happened to glance out the window of the formal parlor. With a curse, and the sound of celestial laughter pealing from the heavens, he changed directions and ran for the back door.
*******
Shaelyn prowled the confines of the bedroom, picking up knick-knacks and setting them back down without even looking at them. The more she prowled, the angrier she got.
How dare he lock her up and put guards on her, as if she were a criminal? That’s what she got for wanting to return that stupid ring. No good deed goes unpunished. That was the motto her college roommate lived by. If she got out of this alive, she might very well adopt the saying for herself.
She paced the perimeter of the room, opened the door to glare at the man sitting in the chair in the hall. She slammed the door, then stomped to the window and growled at the sight of another man propped under a tree, eating an apple. When he nodded at her she slung the drapes closed.
Oh!
She marched around the room, kicking at the skirts of that stupid, stupid gown. What she wouldn’t give for her jeans and tee shirt.
She passed the pocket door that separated the room from Charles’. No. Alec’s. Her captor’s name was Alec. On her second pass, she stopped and pressed her ear against the carved wood. She could hear no sounds on the other side. With all the stealth of a cat burglar, she slid the door open a crack and peeked in.
Empty.
Heart drumming in her chest, she slipped through the opening, tiptoed to the window on the far side of the room, and peered out. She saw no sign of anyone watching Alec’s windows.
Ha! Male superiority underestimates again.
Without a second thought she pulled the sheets from his bed, ripped the Egyptian cotton into several strips, and within five minutes had them tied together, one end tied to the stone balcony and the other dangling a few feet from the ground. Not until she started to climb over the balcony did she realize the problem her clothing might pose. She yanked off the petticoats, grabbed the back hem, pulled it between her legs and tucked it into the front of her waistband, giving the gown the look of a middle eastern eunuch’s garb. She tested the knot in the sheets, scrambled over the stone railing and lowered herself hand over hand down the side of the house.
Just a few more feet.
“Going somewhere?”
An ironclad grip fastened around both her ankles.
In one startled gasp she upped her charitable donations by another hundred dollars.
“With language like that, dear wife, one might find cause to wonder about your breeding.”
“Oh, you can take your breeding and--” She stopped herself. She’d be da...darned if she let him stir her enough to curse again. “Let go of my feet!” She kicked out, but his grip remained solid.
“Let go of the rope, or should I say what’s left of my favorite sheets.”
“No!” She peered down at him. Her feet hovered nearly a foot and a half above his head, yet he held her with ease. Her stomach flipped when she looked down. It had to be from the height. It certainly wasn’t because of that smug, heart-stopping smile of his.
“I daresay, Shaelyn, I’ll wager that I can hold your feet longer than you can hold onto those sheets.”
Her hands were already beginning to slip. And it wasn’t as if she had any hope of escaping now. With an evil grin, she looked down, calculated her trajectory, and let go.
“No, wait! I didn’t - OOPH!”
He fell flat on his back with Shaelyn sprawled on top of him. She managed to land a knee dead center in his stomach. Even though he wheezed for breath, he managed to
get his arms wrapped around her and hold her so tight she could do no more damage.
“Let go of me! Let go!” She struggled against him, but it was like struggling against steel bands. She stopped her squirming and glared at him. He glared back. And then a hint of a grin curved his lips. She felt her own lips twitching and fought to stop it. He didn’t bother to stop his. In moments his laughter boomed in her ears, and she found herself laughing with him. At what, she didn’t know, but suddenly everything seemed ridiculous. They lay there in the dirt of the flower bed, surrounded with the scent of crushed pansies, howling with laughter and gasping for breath. When her neck started to hurt, she rested her head on his shoulder and giggled into his shirt.
And suddenly neither of them found anything funny anymore.
“Shaelyn.” His voice was almost a whisper, and she raised her head to look at him. Golden brown eyes studied her, sent hot little shivers racing through her blood.
He raised his head and she watched his mouth come closer. The warmth of his breath mingled with her own. This was insane. She didn’t know him. She’d tried to escape him. She’d melt if he kissed her. She’d die if he didn’t.
“May we presume this is your wife?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Alec stopped, his mouth a fraction of an inch from Shaelyn’s. He turned his head, and so did she, to look up at a man glowering down at them, a woman fanning herself, and a younger version of Alec. Charles, perhaps?
“Why, yes, Father. May I present my wife, Shaelyn…” he turned back to her with an irreverent glint in his eyes, “what was your surname again, darling?”
“Sumner,” she supplied sweetly.
“Oh yes. Sumner. Shaelyn Sumner Hawthorne.” He loosened his steel grip for the first time and pulled them both upright before helping her to her feet. “May I introduce my mother, Jane, my father, William, and my brother--”
“Charles?”
The young man in question looked surprised that she would know of him.
“Why, yes,” Charles said.
Alec dusted off the back of his clothing, then brushed Shaelyn’s skirts as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The gesture, however, felt more like a caress with all her nerves still tingling from that near kiss. Thank heavens her skirts had come untucked from their harem pants fashion. She fluffed them around her as if she always picked herself up out of petunias to meet people.
“It seems my bride tired of waiting for me to procure the annulment,” Alec said in way of explanation.
“Yes,” Shaelyn smiled. “And I have an aversion to being held prisoner, especially for something I didn’t do.” She smiled as if she were accustomed to making such statements on a regular basis.
Alec looked a little uncomfortable at that. Could he be having second thoughts about believing her? And why was he being so nice, when earlier he’d all but threatened her?
The woman named Jane stood wringing her hands while William grabbed Shaelyn’s hand and studied the ring.
“Take it off,” he barked, then shoved her hand back at her.
She managed not to jerk from having the order boomed in her face. Somehow she maintained her sweet smile and held her hand back out to him.
“I’d be happy to take the ring off, Mr. Hawthorne. And you have my permission to try. Maybe if you continue to glare at it, my finger will wither and the ring will fall off. Heaven knows, I’ve tried everything else.”
It would have been impossible for William Hawthorne to intensify that glare, so he shifted his attention to Alec.
“What does she mean she’s being held prisoner?”
Alec opened his mouth to answer, but Shaelyn bristled and stepped in front of him.
“I can answer for myself, thankyouverymuch. Your son has put guards on me, for fear I’ll leave with the ring. But I can assure you, as soon as the ring comes off, it will be returned. I don’t want the ring, and I don’t want to be married to your son.” Why did that last statement feel like a lie? She ignored the odd, foreign feeling of belonging that had started to uncurl when Alec had almost kissed her. She turned to her questionable husband and gave him an innocent, irreverent smile. “I’m sorry I tried to escape, but I usually do the opposite of whatever people order.”
Disapproval emanated from his father, as thick as the fog that rolled in from the ocean, but Alec expected nothing less. Indeed, so far his father had behaved with boring predictability. And Alec had long ago stopped quivering in his shoes at the sight of William Hawthorne’s glare. Charles and his mother simply stood there; Charles with his mouth agape, his mother making worried little noises.
Even though he no longer feared his father, he was grateful that Shaelyn hadn’t launched into her extraordinary story about being some sort of journalist. He had enough to contend with without a hue and cry to send the woman to an asylum.
“If you’ll not confine me to a room, I promise I won’t run away. After all, where would I go? I don’t know anyone here.”
From the corner of his eyes, Alec could see his father’s disapproving stance. If for no other reason than that, Alec chose to grant Shaelyn her request. She seemed surprised that he capitulated, and he had to admit that he surprised himself.
Defying his overbearing father brought him a sense of satisfaction. Perhaps he would do it more often.
“Alec, I want to see you in the library. Alone.” William issued his order, then turned and marched off, his stride telegraphing that he expected nothing less than absolute compliance.
Alec turned back to Shaelyn. She frowned at his father’s retreating back before turning a questioning gaze to Alec.
“You may leave your room. I apologize for locking you in earlier. Blame it on my temper. But if you leave the grounds, I ask that you take someone with you.”
“Fair enough,” she nodded.
He studied her face for a moment, wondering at her odd language, and then wondering if her body, too, had come alive when they’d almost kissed. While she’d lain atop him, he’d felt like a youth again. An irreverent, devil-may-care youth. It’d felt like heaven.
With a sigh he broke the gaze and turned to make his way to the library. When he arrived, he found his father sitting behind the desk - Alec’s desk. His knuckles popped as his hands curled into fists.
William leaned back in the chair with his arms on the armrests, like Henry VIII waiting to dole out judgment on a hapless subject.
“I want your immediate annulment from this...woman.”
Alec’s fingernails bit into the palms of his hand at his father’s king-of-the-castle attitude. William had used the word “woman” as if it were interchangeable with “slut.”
“I’d already planned to start proceedings as soon as I see my attorney. You needn’t worry - ”
“Needn’t worry?” William blasted. “My eldest son sets out to deceive me! Marries the woman he thinks is his brother’s betrothed! The woman her father and I arranged for him to marry! All in the name of love.” Again, he’d pronounced the word as if it were the vilest of curses. “You get the annulment, Alec Christopher, because I’ve betrothed you to someone else!”
For the first time in his memory, a surge of anger tore through Alec with such violence it left him light-headed.
“You have done what?” Though he spoke his words quietly, they carried all the force of a bellow.
“I believe I enunciated that statement quite clearly.”
“Father, has it not come to your attention recently that I am a man of thirty years? Do you not find it at all ludicrous to even contemplate arranging my marriage?”
William’s neck bulged over his pristine collar as his face turned the color of a ripe tomato.
“I am still the head of this family! A man marries to further his business and his social standing. I won’t have our good name and our business threatened because some little thief has out-deceived you!”
Alec closed his eyes and wondered why he ever bothered to have a conversation with this
man. But with the closing of his eyes came the image of Shaelyn, dangling from the torn, knotted sheets, the ring still on her finger. Enough time had passed to convince himself that the almost-kiss and all that followed had been nothing more than defiance against his father.
He massaged his eyes before looking back at the man behind the desk. He might as well find out the identity of this latest marriage acquisition. Then he would disabuse his father of any notion that he might comply with yet another arranged marriage.
“Would you care to enlighten me as to the name of this hapless woman, no doubt too homely to acquire a husband in the normal manner?”
Leather creaked as William settled back into the chair and picked up the letter opener he’d earlier mangled.
“Faith Almany.”
“Faith...” Alec’s heart lodged in his throat. Faith. The one name he would have never imagined. The woman he’d fallen in love with twelve years earlier. The woman his father had forbidden him to marry...because he was already betrothed to a woman ten years his junior with a face and disposition less appealing than a jackass’s. “But she’s married. She moved to Boston with her husband years - ”
“Dead. Nearly a year past,” his father interrupted. “She’ll be back here by October. You’ll wed before Christmas.”
A string of emotions warred in Alec. He would defy his father to his dying breath over this latest “chess move” if the woman had been anyone but Faith.
Faith. His first love. Just the thought of her brought a warmth to his heart, a tenderness to his soul. Much as Charles must feel when thinking about his Mary.
Alec squared his shoulders and turned his gaze back to his father’s smug face.
“When Faith arrives here, she and I will discuss the matter. We will decide if and when we shall marry.”
Amazingly, his father chose not to bark out a contradicting order. Instead his face contorted into the closest thing to a smile Alec had ever seen, then he rose from the chair and left the room without a word.
*******
Shaelyn walked the rocky beach for hours, most of that time spent tugging on the ring that refused to leave her finger.
