The moment when he had first met the incredible woman he now found himself married to. The moment when he had stumbled upon her at the Duke of Kent's country party and fallen for her untrusting blue eyes and cynical overbite.
That was what he was thinking about when he had wed her that day four years ago. He had been thinking Fate had finally dealt him a good hand. He was marrying the young woman whose spell he had fallen under, the young woman who had stayed unresistingly resilient, unbending, and proud in his memory. The young woman who had first made him not hate his social obligations so much. The young woman who had first shared his disdain for titles borne by people who did not deserve them.
The young woman who had caused the first stirrings of longing for a family.
Unable to look anymore, Alec stood and walked out of the church, the squishing of his wet boots drowning out the quiet sobs of the young woman hiding in the darkness at the back of the church.
~
London, England
Just before their abduction
Sarah stood inside the doorway of Greyfriars, worrying the fingertips of her gloves. The day was overcast, so candles had been lit in the torches as little light trickled through the windows. She took a cautious step forward, not picking her foot up from the floor, just sliding it across the ground and listening to the scrape of her shoe, letting the harsh sound grate her ears.
She could see Alec, sitting four pews from the front. His shoulders were hunched, and his hair was wet. She could see it glisten in the soft light. It had been raining earlier, hours earlier. She wondered how long he had been sitting there. Since he had left her? Since he had run in the middle of making love to her?
She took another step forward, the grating softer as her foot left the ground a little more. Alec must not have heard her because he didn't move. She pulled at the sleeve of her morning dress where it rubbed against her gloved palm. Feeling the lace through her gloves reminded her that she had not changed into something more appropriate.
She had left Stryden House that morning as soon as she'd discovered Alec was missing. She had gone to his father's house looking for Nora. Sarah had only met Nora the day before, but she had met the woman in a crisis, a particularly bad crisis for a mother. Nora's son had been kidnapped, but Nora was still infallible. And Sarah was convinced Nora could do anything.
But Sarah had collapsed into her agony before Nora could do anything. Awaking some time later on a sofa in the Duke of Lofton's library, Sarah still suffered from a missing husband. The Duke had promised to find his errant son, but when the hours passed without the Duke returning to his townhouse with the good news Sarah wanted to hear, or better, with Alec, she had left the house, her feet moving in a direction all their own. She hadn't realized she was going to Greyfriars until she was bathed in the light of the candles that lit its interior.
Now, she couldn't get her feet to move even with all of her energy concentrating on them, asking them to move, begging them to move toward the bent head of her husband. They just wouldn't go. As soon as her eyes adjusted to the dimness upon entering the church and had made out the unmistakable shape of Alec, her body had ceased to obey her command. It remained frozen where it was, and the most she had been able to do was shuffle a few pathetic steps. The darkness that was not reached by the candles enveloped her, and it was as if her body was reluctant to leave its safety.
But Alec looked sad.
She wanted to go to him, sit on the pew next to him, and if her courage allowed her, take him into her arms so he wouldn't look that way anymore. She couldn't bear to see him so unhappy. Alec, happy, arrogant, unflappable, should not look as if the things he held dear in the world had suddenly evaporated out of existence, and there was no hope that they would be returned to him.
She couldn't handle the emotions that welled up in her. She couldn't handle him looking so horrible and knowing, deep inside of her, that she had made him look that way. She was sure any earl would look that way being married to a bastard like her.
But what about last night?
What had that meant?
The Earl of Stryden had carried her over his shoulder to her bedchamber, thrown her on the bed, and attacked her. But he had uttered a single word before ravishing her. And that one word had sent hope blossoming through her.
Beautiful.
He had been so serious when he had said it. So sure that what he was saying was true and sacred. She had been fascinated by his face as he first touched her. His eyes had been clear and focused, his hands steady and sure, certain of their task, certain of their duty. And as those hands had passed over her, she had become aware of that duty as well.
Cherish. Pleasure. Passion.
Love.
But he had left.
And completely left. Not just left the room kind of left but went off of the bloody map kind of left. Someone did not abandon one's post in the middle of a crisis like they had been facing. Nora's son kidnapped, nonsensical instructions to go to Dover, her husband making love to her.
These were all crisis level events, and he had wandered off. Worse yet, Sarah could not make herself go to him. She could not bring herself to even ask him what was wrong. Any normal human relationship would have allowed for such a question, but theirs was clearly not a normal human relationship. They had been wed by direct order of the government of their country and forced to carry on a charade that suited neither of them. Not that Alec had ever said such, but Sarah knew he couldn't possibly enjoy this farce. So that left her unable to ask a simple question of the man she loved. She could not ask him what was on his mind.
Alec stood before she could start admonishing herself for her illegitimate birth and began walking toward her. She backed up further into the shadows and held her breath.
But the tears she could not stop. The tears came anyway, coursing down her cheeks, and the worst part of it all was she was crying for something that had not yet happened. She was crying for the day she was no longer the Countess of Stryden. For the day when they would receive an official annulment. Most likely something along the lines of her inability to produce an heir. Everyone would think it so tragic, so unfair. But Sarah would know why it really was unfair, and so she cried.
Standing there in the dark, letting her husband slip past her without speaking a single syllable, Sarah allowed herself to take pity on her herself. To bemoan her situation and her existence. To hate the place where she had been put. By the War Office, by her adoptive mother, and by God himself. Sarah hated it all and hated herself even more for thinking it was just happening to her. That she couldn't stop it, that she had no power.
Sarah had never taken anything in her life. At the orphanage, she had made sure there was enough porridge in her bowl every morning. At the place she had once called home in Dorchester, she had made sure her adoptive mother never got too close to her, physically or emotionally. And she most certainly took no slack from anyone at the War Office. It was her duty to protect her country, and she would be damned if anyone fouled up the one thing she was good at.
So why then had Alec just walked out the door without her saying anything? Why had she let the one person she had been searching for leave without a care? Why was Sarah suddenly letting everything happen to her?
What the bloody hell was wrong with her?
She wasn't sure when the tears had stopped, but her face was dry when she reached the street.
~
London, England
Just before their abduction
"You bloody cad!"
Alec ducked before Sarah's flying fist could connect with any part of his person. He looked about him, at the lush grass of Hyde Park and the burbling waters of the Serpetine, and wondered for a moment if his wife was having an attack of the hysteria. He had heard that other women sometimes succumbed to its pull, but he had not expected it of Sarah. He backed up a pace and looked at her wrinkled and mussed pink gown, her hair loose in its pins, and her face streaked with-
; Had Sarah been crying?
He took a step forward.
"Lady wife, to what do I owe-"
"Do not use that kind of language with me, you terribly excuse for a man."
Alec had been called many things in his life, but nothing really sunk in like a blow to his manhood.
"I beg your pardon, Sarah, I did not realize-"
"Yes, you didn't realize," she cut him off again, "You never realize, Alec. You never realize that your words and actions cause consequences, and there are people who must live with those consequences, and you cannot go about flitting through the world as if you have no impact on anyone."
Alec thought that a ripe accusation as he suspected the person he had the least impact on had spoken the accusation.
"I apologize, Sarah. I will try to do better in future. Now, what are you doing here?"
He looked about them again. He had left Greyfriars a short while before, crossed the river, strolled past St. James, and then found himself in the park, looking at the Serpentine. He wasn't even aware that he was being followed if Sarah in fact had been following him, which seemed ludicrous. Why Sarah had any interest in him he could not fathom. But she did in fact stand in Hyde Park yelling obscenities at him, so perhaps, Sarah was not as he had presumed.
"I should be asking you that question, Lord Stryden," she nearly spit at him, "What gives you the right to abandon your wife in the middle of-"
Now she stopped, and he really had been looking forward to her finishing that sentence. But Sarah looked about them instead as if briefly remembering where they stood and not wishing to tarnish her reputation to too great a degree.
"You left," she said instead of what he had hoped she would say, but he still understood her meaning.
"Yes, I did leave. I apologize for that, but circumstances as they were, I could not possibly stay."
He hoped to say nothing on the topic really as he knew he could not speak the truth without Sarah being angry with him. And he did not have the strength in him that day to have his wife be angry with him. Although, she clearly already was. But something passed across Sarah's face then, something dark and foreboding, and Alec took a step forward, his hand outreached as if whatever it had been was tangible, and he could simply lift his fingers and pull it away.
"Sarah-"
"You bastard," she whispered, the strength her voice vanished.
Alec dropped his hand.
"Nathan's the bastard, mate," he said and regretted it the moment it slipped from his lips.
"That is all that you are capable of, isn't it?" Sarah asked, her eyes flashing an icy blue.
Alec retreated a step, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot as elegant strollers moved down the path mere feet from where they had this most indelicate conversation. He watched the strollers, imagining the whispered conversations under their parasols and behind gloved hands. He saw a duchess or two pass by as well as a marquess with her matronly dowager mother. Talk of this little chat was going to spread quickly. Not that Alec truly cared, but he knew at some point, Sarah was going to blame him for something that came out of it.
"You are only truly capable of immature and superficial relationships with the ignorant and uninteresting debutantes of high society."
This last remark was rather loud and emphasized in such an unpleasant way that Alec noticed the heads of a few strollers turning in their direction, and he knew that at least two of them were the ignorant and uninteresting debutantes to which Sarah referred.
No, perhaps it was three.
"And I cannot understand how someone as intelligent, educated and refined as yourself can bear to carry himself in such a manner. Does your lineage mean nothing to you? Does your upbringing mean nothing to you? What does your father think of your behavior?"
Something old and deep sparked inside Alec at the mention of his father. It had taken Alec everything he had as a young boy to make his father love him, to make his father forgive him for the worst of sins, for killing his mother in childbirth. The man he was today allowed him to hold onto that love. He made his father laugh, and if Alec made him laugh, he knew his father would forgive him. Even if Alec could not forgive himself. And to have Sarah question that brought up his defenses.
So he turned away from her.
He heard the sharp intake of breath from Sarah, but he continued to walk away from her down the edge of the Serpentine.
"Alec!"
Sarah shouted now, but he did not turn until she grabbed his arm and spun him around. He had not been expecting her to follow so quickly, and the sudden pull on his arm almost had him falling into the water. He grabbed at her shoulders to steady himself, but for the briefest of moments, he thought of pulling her into the water with him, and the image gave him a perverse pulse of pleasure.
"Sarah, I choose not to have this conversation with you at this place and time."
Sarah's grip on his arm tightened.
"And what place and time would be convenient for you, my lord?"
He felt her hands move to his waistcoat, felt her pull at the fabric, and he looked down, unsure of what she was doing. She was already having a private conversation at higher than normal decibels along a fashionable strolling path in the middle of Hyde Park in the center of the city of London, and he knew he could no longer guess where her polite boundaries would begin to reign in her temper.
He felt something dislodge from his waistcoat, and the glint of watery sun shone off of his pocket watch.
"Time, my lord? You prefer to do this at another time?"
Alec watched his pocket watch flash in her hands as she held it scant inches from his face.
"This is what I think of your time, my lord."
And with that she tossed the watch into the Serpentine. Alec watched the gold flash through the air before landing with a tiny plunk into the water. Annoyance boiled inside him. The watch was not an heirloom or anything, but it was still his bloody watch. And she had no right to take it and toss it into the Serpentine.
Alec turned to her and without thinking, grabbed the parasol that hung from the crook of her elbow and tossed it into the water. It fell just beside the residual rings in the water that the pocket watch had made seconds before. The water closed over it, and it was gone.
"And that is what I think of you throwing my bloody watch into the water."
Sarah's mouth hung open, her eyes wide. She stared at the place where her parasol had just disappeared, and it was a full breath before she turned back to him, her eyes angry slits.
"Wanker!"
"Shrew!" he yelled back, his hands moving to his hips.
His blood boiled now. Sarah had looked down her nose at him for long enough. If he had expected that he could ever make her love him, he had clearly been wrong. Sarah would always think she was too good for him, and no amount of frivolity and laughter would ever change that. Alec could never change that.
"I would prefer it if you could refrain from calling me names in public, countess, but perhaps your crude upbringing prevents such politeness."
It was as if he had slapped her. The blood drained from her face, her skin going white and stark, and her breath caught in her chest. He watched it freeze as she took a step back. He had finally gotten to her. After four years of trying to get any kind of response out of her, his rash words had done it. And he hadn't even really meant them.
"Sarah?" he said, his hand once more outstretched between them as if he could remove whatever it was that had come over her.
But Sarah was already turning, moving away from him along the water, and his legs wouldn't move to follow her. He had to sprint to catch up with her, but by then she had moved a few yards down the water behind a screen of trees along the water's edge. The spot was more secluded, but it did not offer abject privacy. Still, he caught her arm and drew her around.
"You needn't worry, my lord. I shall not be calling you any names in the future."
"Sarah," he began, but she wasn't finished.
&n
bsp; She pulled her arm away. Her voice wobbled as if she were crying, but her eyes were dry.
"I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused you, but I shall be a burden no longer. I shall go to the War Office directly and ask for reassignment. You must no longer worry on how to execute your departure from this situation."
She gestured between them as if to encompass everything that had occurred in four years.
He put his hands on her shoulders and dropped his voice as if soothing a startled animal. He did not understanding what she was talking about, but perhaps he could coax her back to him, back to sanity, at least.
"Sarah, I must beg your forgiveness. My words were careless, and I did not mean them. Please accept my apologies."
But even as he spoke she shook her head.
"No, Alec. I cannot forgive you for speaking the truth. Now if you'll excuse me."
She tried to break free of his grasp and move away from him, but he did not let go.
"Sarah, please talk to me. Really talk to me. I do not know what has upset you. I do not understand. And I'm sorry I threw your parasol into the water. That was extremely childish of me."
He hoped his tone carried with it the emotion he was too frightened to put into words. But he hoped Sarah sensed it, understood it.
"Alec, you needn't worry any longer. I know it must have upset you greatly to think on how you were going to remove yourself from this arrangement, but I will take the responsibility for that endeavor. You needn't worry any longer. I know when my welcome is overrun."
Her words made absolutely no sense to him, but he was not sure how to say such to her. He knew that if he made her explain, she would get even angrier with him, and that would get them no where.
For Love of the Earl Page 12
