Her inherent poise and unconsciously regal bearing proclaimed her a lady of the first consequence. But from her own lips Carlyle had heard her admission that she had been Lord Eliot’s convenient. She could have been no more than fifteen, perhaps younger, when she had become Eliot’s plaything. Had she been sold against her will by an avaricious parent to a rutting old man whose fancy she had caught when she was little more than a child? If that had been the case, then Carlyle sincerely pitied her, and he clenched his hands unconsciously in longing to wrap them around a certain elderly neck.
As Alyssa and Jeremy began their ride, she again found several imaginary faults in his handsome new gelding, even though she had seen no finer horse in London, except for Carlyle’s big black. After her unwarranted criticism, Jeremy lapsed into angry silence as they cantered through the park.
Despite the tension between them, Alyssa was happy to be riding again, especially on a spirited hack from Carlyle’s justly famous stables. She had sorely missed her early morning excursions the past several days, sacrificing them rather than expose herself to the duke’s deserved contempt. A contempt that would be heightened by his erroneous conviction that his threats had frightened her into remaining silent about his offer of a carte blanche. She hated to have him think her so pudding-hearted!
Rounding a curve in the meandering path, she and Jeremy came face-to-face with the duke and his youngest brother. Alyssa’s heart turned over at the sight of Carlyle, looking so very handsome in his buckskin breeches and a buff riding-coat that was every bit as elegant as the russet green one in which he had wrapped the muddied Master Eustice. His face with its remarkable eyes and thick brows had haunted her thoughts for days. Now, seeing it before her, she was both thrilled and unnerved.
“What a surprise meeting you and Miss Raff here,” His Grace said to his son. An ironic undertone to his words told Alyssa that it had been no surprise at all. Their meeting was deliberate, but to what purpose?
Lord Sidney immediately exhorted his nephew to show off his new gelding’s paces. Jeremy was delighted to oblige, calling back to Alyssa, “Now you shall see how fine they are.”
His tone revealed just how aggrieved he still was with her for her slurs on his mount, and amusement tugged at her lips. It would not be above another day or two before he cried off their engagement. Alyssa, having no desire to be left alone with the duke, started to follow Jeremy and Lord Sidney as they galloped away, but she was checked by Carlyle’s hand on her mount’s reins.
“Stay.” The word was a command, not a request. “I wish to talk to you.”
Somehow she managed to conceal her tumultuous emotions beneath a cold voice. “But I, Your Grace, do not wish to talk to you. You have said too much to me already.”
“Afraid of me, Miss Raff?” he challenged, a strange gleam in his gold-flecked eyes as he guided their mounts into a secluded spot.
“Of course not!” she protested with more haste than accuracy. “But I cannot imagine that we have anything else to say to each other.”
“I want to know why you did not tell my son about my offer of a carte blanche? I do not flatter myself that my threats bought your silence.”
“No, they did not,” Alyssa replied, feeling considerably more kindly toward him for recognising that fact. “I applaud your perception.”
“Thank you. I have a reputation for acuteness—among other things,” he said dryly, edging his mount so that he was very close to her. “And now, pray, assuage my curiosity.”
His eyes were no longer mocking but deeply penetrating as they studied her face. His nearness had a most alarming effect on her heart, causing it to beat quite erratically. She remembered what it was like to be kissed by that sensual mouth, and she had no stomach for continuing to deceive him. In a day or so Jeremy would end their betrothal. What would be accomplished by continuing to bait his father now?
“I had no wish to destroy Jeremy’s regard for you,” she said truthfully. “He would have been deeply hurt, and I will not do that to him.” She met Carlyle’s startled gaze squarely. “You see, I do care very much about Jeremy.”
The duke’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “If you think by that to gain my permission to marry him, you are dead wrong. You will never have it.”
Once again he had misinterpreted her words. It infuriated her that he always insisted upon thinking the worst of her, and she was goaded into crying, “I do not care!”
The thick, dark brows rose sceptically. “Don’t you, now?”
“No,” she said, bringing her temper once again in check. Thinking of how astounded and relieved he would be when he learned the truth in a few days, she suddenly smiled mischievously. “I predict a very happy ending to our story!”
His face turned thunderous. “Happy for whom?”
“For everyone concerned,” Alyssa said mysteriously.
“Surely you do not include me in that group.” The gold-flecked eyes glittered dangerously. “A happy ending in your scheming mind can mean only one thing. You are still determined to elope to Gretna Green!”
It would serve him right to let him think that, but Alyssa no longer found any satisfaction in perpetuating the battle between them. His darkly handsome face and his kiss had haunted her since their meeting at the Hagars’. Now, with her heart beating like a pagan drum in his presence, she was forced to acknowledge to herself how much she had come to care for this man who so despised her.
How bitterly she regretted that her outrage and stung pride had kept her from telling him the truth at the Hagars’. Her desire to chasten him by making him think that she would trap his son into a mésalliance had justifiably earned her his hatred, making what had been meant as punishment for him punishment for her instead. Even when he learned the truth, he would no doubt still hate her for having cruelly deceived him.
“Answer me!” he snapped. “Is it still Gretna Green?”
“You may rest easy on that score, Your Grace. I have no intention of eloping with Jeremy,” she said, gazing unflinchingly into eyes that, at her answer, became more perplexed than angry.
“So you have come to appreciate that you would gain nothing by your elopement scheme?”
“It never was a scheme of mine. I could not resist letting you think so after you put me so out of temper at the Hagars’, I think understandably so, given your provocation.”
“So you concede defeat,” he said triumphantly. “Do I have your word of honour that you will not attempt to elope to Gretna Green with my son?”
Her green eyes flashed stormily at his assumption that he had bested her. Cocking her head proudly, she observed in frigidly mocking accents, “But, Your Grace, I am quite astonished that you would bother to ask for a strumpet’s word of honour. And a scheming strumpet at that!”
“Have I wronged you, Miss Raff?” he asked quietly, no trace of mockery in either his tone or his eyes.
Her heart fluttered like a drum-roll at the sudden softness of his eyes. “Yes, you have wronged me!”
He studied her for a long, silent moment, then said in a voice as soft as a caress, “Give me your promise that you will not elope with my son and then let me hear your story. If I have misjudged you, I shall apologise.”
“I swear to you that I will not elope with Jeremy,” she said, suddenly eager to confess the truth. But she was prevented from doing so by Jeremy and his uncle’s riding up.
“Uncle Sidney says my gelding’s paces are superb,” Jeremy told her triumphantly.
Alyssa, wishing Jeremy, his gelding and Uncle Sidney all to Jericho for having robbed her of the opportunity of explaining herself to the duke, raised a sceptical eyebrow, but said nothing.
She did not need to. Her look had been sufficient to anger Jeremy. “I say, you are the most provoking creature, Alyssa. Come, let us be on our way.”
Reluctantly she rode off with him, not trusting herself to look back at Carlyle.
Chapter 13
Alyssa travelled to Drury Lane
that night with the Hagars. When Jeremy joined them at the theatre, he was accompanied by George Braden, who had come because Sarah Turner would be attending with her aunt, uncle, their two daughters, and Thomas Stokes.
The Hagar party was scarcely seated in its box when George pointed out the Turners’ box to Alyssa and Jeremy. Both Sir Egbert and his lady were large, corpulent and florid-complexioned. Their two female progeny had inherited these traits and their mama’s horse face that placed them at great disadvantage beside the lovely Sarah. She was such a tiny, frail little thing with a frightened look on her beautiful face that reminded Alyssa of a little lost fawn. How cruel to marry such a sweet, young creature scarcely out of the schoolroom to a man who, although he might be very rich, was thirty-five years older than she, and mean in the bargain!
On the other side of Sarah was Thomas Stokes himself, a thin, wiry man, with eyes as cold and emotionless as stones. The centrepiece of his ugly, dissipated face was a bulbous nose almost as wide as the pinched mouth beneath it. He looked a decade older than his two-and fifty years and was as unloverlike a man as Alyssa had ever seen. Meek little Sarah would never dare to stand up to a tyrant like that.
Alyssa’s perusal of Stokes and Sarah was cut short by the appearance in a box across the way of a stunning woman, dressed in a clinging gown of blue watered silk that enhanced her milk-white skin. Her blonde hair curled artfully around her lovely face. It was the famous Duchess of Berwick, whose charm was even greater than her beauty.
Alyssa was as enchanted as everyone else by her former neighbour from Northumberland. One of Alyssa’s bitterest fights with her grandfather had come when he had prohibited her from seeing the duchess any more because her morals no longer measured up to his righteous standards. But where grandpapa had seen immorality, Alyssa had seen tragedy. The duchess had won the heart of every man in the kingdom save one—her husband’s. And Alyssa knew how much the duchess had loved him. Nothing could be worse than to be married to a man one loved and not have that affection returned. But how could Berwick resist his vivacious duchess? Indeed, how could any man?
Her Grace was followed into her box by a man as elegantly garbed as she, in a brown spotted silk coat over a white embroidered silk waistcoat. His chocolate-brown hair was not powdered, and his darkly handsome face was a perfect foil for the duchess’s light colouring. A collective gasp rippled through the theatre as the audience recognised the Duke of Carlyle. The others in their party went unnoticed as all eyes remained fastened on the duchess and her companion.
Alyssa felt as though her heart had just been dealt a stunning blow.
“She must be Carlyle’s latest flirt,” Charlotte Hagar whispered. “They make a spectacular couple, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Alyssa agreed. In fact, a perfect couple. She was seized by a strong urge to burst into tears but was saved by Jeremy’s amazed exclamation:
“Why, it is Papa with that dazzling creature!” The youth’s tone turned disapproving. “And at his age, too!”
Alyssa could not help laughing. “Your papa is hardly ancient.”
“But he is old! After all, he is my father! Imagine having him take up with women now.”
Alyssa regarded Jeremy with surprise. Clearly he had never heard the numerous stories about his father’s romantic exploits. She remembered what Lady Braden had said about the duke’s conduct being above reproach at Beauchamp. With a twinkling eye, Alyssa teased, “Perhaps your papa has decided that you need a wicked stepmama, after all.”
“But that lady does not look at all like a stepmother,” he protested.
The duchess looked like what she was, a most alluring creature, but Alyssa hid her unhappiness behind levity. “Pray, Jeremy, what does a stepmother look like?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “she would be much older, with grey hair and a sterner countenance and steely eyes.”
“Would you wish to have such an unappealing creature as your wife?”
“No,” Jeremy admitted. “But that is the kind of woman fathers marry.”
Alyssa had no opportunity to respond, for the play was beginning. The appearance of the duke and his charming companion destroyed for Alyssa all enjoyment of the performance that followed. When the curtain descended for the intermission, she had very little notion of what had transpired on the stage. Her thoughts were too preoccupied with the inhabitants of a certain box.
When the Hagars, George and Jeremy left to greet friends, Alyssa remained behind, saying she was feeling unwell. Before the intermission was a minute old, the Duchess of Berwick’s box was flooded with admirers. But since Carlyle had disappeared from it, it no longer held any interest for Alyssa. She turned her attention instead to the Turner box, where Sarah had been left alone with Stokes, who was making the most of the opportunity. Alyssa’s heart went out to the poor girl as she shrank back, trying to escape Stokes’s lecherous hands. She averted her face, which was a study in fear and disgust, from him. This clearly angered him, for he suddenly seized her by the hair, jerked her head round so painfully that tears welled up in Sarah’s wide blue eyes, and boxed her ear with his other hand.
Alyssa was so shocked and angered that she longed to march over to the box and give Stokes the same treatment that he had just inflicted upon poor Sarah. If he dared to treat her like that in public before they were married, what would he do to her in private once she was his wife?
“What has given you such disgust?” a soft, caressing voice beside Alyssa asked, sending a tremor of excited happiness coursing through her. She looked up at Carlyle. “I—I... Nothing.”
“Surely something inspired such a profound look of revulsion.”
Alyssa nodded her head in the direction of the Turner box. “It was the sight of that odious old Thomas Stokes mauling terrified little Sarah Turner.
The poor child is scarcely out of the schoolroom, and she is being forced to marry him.”
Carlyle turned to scrutinise the box that Alyssa had indicated. Stokes was still holding Sarah tightly by the hair, forcing her to face him. Whatever he was saying to her clearly terrified her. Helpless tears were streaming down her face.
“Beauty and an old beast,” the duke observed succinctly. Turning back to Alyssa, he said in a tone as cold and hard as winter ice, “You know what it is like to be mauled by an old man, do you not?”
Alyssa was uncertain that she had heard him correctly. “What are you talking about?”
“Stokes is not nearly as old as Lord Eliot, and you must have been considerably younger than Sarah Turner when you began living under his protection.” His eyes and his voice were oddly furious, but Alyssa was so shocked that she did not notice.
“You have suddenly become very pale, Miss Raff. How disagreeable your experience must have been. Is that why you refused my offer?”
“What offer, Papa?” Jeremy asked, stepping into the box.
His father started in surprise, paled, then, recovering, said smoothly, “Good evening, Jeremy. How are you enjoying the performance?”
“What offer, Papa?” his son repeated, refusing to be put off.
There was a moment of tense silence before Alyssa interposed, “He—He suggested that I might like to ride in the park with both of you tomorrow, but I declined.”
Carlyle flashed her a quick smile of gratitude.
Hastening to divert the youth’s attention, Alyssa said, “Jeremy is quite taken with your companion, Your Grace, but he finds your squiring of her quite shocking for one so stricken in years.”
Jeremy coloured to the roots of his hair.
Carlyle laughed indulgently. “Think I’m making a cake of myself in my dotage, do you, Jeremy?”
The youth’s blush deepened to the colour of his burgundy coat and he whirled angrily on Alyssa. “You did not have to tell him that! You exasperate me beyond endurance.”
The duke’s eyes widened at his son’s outburst, but Alyssa’s only response was a beatific smile.
The next act was be
ginning; the Hagars returned to the box, and the duke took his leave.
After the final curtain, Alyssa departed with the Hagars in their carriage, while Jeremy, accompanied by George Braden, rode away in his own equipage.
The marquess had also witnessed Thomas Stokes’s behaviour toward Sarah and had been as revolted by it as Alyssa. His kind, chivalrous nature was incensed by such ill treatment of a helpless, frightened girl. As his coach moved away from the theatre, its wheels clattering over the cobblestones, Jeremy announced to George, with steel in his voice, “Sarah must be saved from that old pig.”
“But what are we to do?” George moaned. “Her uncle is adamant that she must marry Stokes. What is to be done?”
“There is only one thing to be done,” Jeremy cried impetuously, quite out of patience with George for wailing when he should be plotting. “You must elope to Gretna Green with her.”
In the pale light of the carriage lamp, George’s face was shocked. “But I would not know how to go about it,” he stammered.
“Tis very simple. You hire a coach and the fastest horses you can find, collect Sarah and her maid, and dash for the border,” Jeremy replied with great practicality.
“Dash for the border?” George echoed faintly in a tone that indicated he thought that only slightly more difficult than flying to the moon.
“Of course you must keep going at top speed and shall have to hire fresh cattle frequently to keep up your pace,” Jeremy continued enthusiastically, “but I am told that the Great North Road abounds with posting-houses, so that should pose no difficulty.”
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