we Seabornes feel about each other, my lord. Your example proves how very lucky we are to do so, I suppose.’
‘Or that you are better and more generous people than we are.’
‘Far be it from me to suggest it,’ she said innocently, then wondered why there was a flash of some powerful emotion in his eyes, as if he had an impulse to do something very foolish indeed.
‘Perhaps it’s because my cousin Annabelle wasn’t born a Forthin that I loved her so much,’ he said almost as if he was reasoning something out loud, rather than confiding in her. ‘And why I must find her, or at least know what happened to her, while I was too far away to help. She is the only child of my cousin Alicia and her nautical husband, Captain de Morbaraye, and she came to live at Penbryn once she was considered in need of an education, while they carried on sailing the seven seas.’
‘Penbryn was your father’s house?’
She was interested because his precious Annabelle disappeared at the same time as her brother Richard. This discovery had provoked his midnight visit to Ashburton—and there was nothing personal about her memories of that night, she excused herself. She wasn’t intrigued by this complex and contrary man; she only needed to know Rich was alive and well, and if his search helped prove it then all well and good.
‘Penbryn was my mother’s home,’ he replied with a puzzled shake of his head and a distant look in his eyes as if trying to recall her. ‘It was probably only because she was heiress of Penbryn Castle that my father married her in the first place, since my uncle didn’t have a Welsh castle and it must have annoyed him to know his younger brother would live there with his second wife. You can probably only imagine how my brother hated me for inheriting the castle when he was the eldest son. In his own opinion, as well as that of the law, he should have had everything, although he had no blood ties to my late grandfather, the Earl of Tregaron, whatsoever.’
‘If the castle is yours, why did you join the army and leave it for India?’
‘Have we not discussed the fact I’m a fool already, Miss Seaborne?’ he asked with a wry smile that set her heart skipping all over again when it made him look boyish and almost lovable.
It should not be allowed. She could cope with him bitterly furious at life; could easily endure arrogant and aloof Lord Calvercombe with little more than an irrepressible flutter of girlish excitement; but the complex man underneath made her long for all sorts of things the Earl would never countenance.
‘My grandfather tied up my inheritance until I attained the age of five and twenty,’ he went on. ‘Since my legal guardian was to administer the trust and my brother became that guardian when my father died, I could not endure seeing him play ducks and drakes with my inheritance whilst I waited impatiently for that day. I decided I’d better put a few thousand miles between us, before I gave in to the urge to strangle him before he did more damage.’
‘How could the other trustees sit back and let him ruin your future?’
‘It was easier than arguing or taking him to law,’ he said ruefully.
‘Cowards,’ she muttered furiously and surprised some intense feeling in his eyes, before he clamped down on it and it was gone.
Chapter Three
Lord Calvercombe shrugged dismissively.
‘My brother is dead, Miss Seaborne. The law is quite strict in its refusal to prosecute dead men.’
‘At least he didn’t inherit the estates that go with your title,’ she said consolingly, but from his moue of distaste that wasn’t much of a blessing.
‘There was little my predecessors hadn’t already done to impoverish them. If not for the revenues from my grandfather’s estates that even my brother Farrant couldn’t quite dissipate during his five years of trusteeship, I would be in hock to every moneylender in Greek Street to pay the wages on my new estate, let alone redeem the mortgages.’ ‘How profligate of your predecessors,’ she said and wondered at so much wealth and power being so spectacularly wasted.
‘That’s what happens when jealousy and pride come before love or duty. One branch of my family litigated against another, solely for the joy of a good argument so far as I can tell. The Seabornes have a more pragmatic approach to inheritance they would have done well to share.’
‘How odd that the first male heir born in the Duke’s bed becomes Duke in turn, God willing.’
‘So it would seem, Miss Seaborne.’
‘Your mother must have been furious at being caught in the midst of their quarrels and petty rivalry.’
‘My sainted mama ran off to Naples with a poet about a year after I was born and died of typhus fever in Rome a few years after that. I doubt she cared one way or the other what became of me. She clearly couldn’t abide my father, yet she left me in his so-called care when she ran off with her lover.’
He said it with such matter-of-fact composure Persephone might have wept for the lonely child he’d once been, if that child hadn’t grown into the latest Earl of Calvercombe, who clearly didn’t want or need anyone’s tears.
‘Who have you got left to argue with now then, my lord?’
‘That’s the beauty of it—apart from one childless and ancient great-uncle who refuses to have anything to do with me, or anyone else so far as I can tell, I am the last of my line. Apparently we Forthins have litigated one another into oblivion.’
‘I suppose there’s plenty of time to remedy that situation,’ she said, wondering why the idea of him setting up his nursery as soon as some poor innocent girl would marry him made her shiver in the enclosed warmth of her namesake’s garden on a hot, late-August afternoon.
‘No, we’ve run our race,’ he said, his expression closed and even a little bleak.
All sorts of unsuitable questions raced to spill off her tongue and he must have sensed them teetering there outrageously in an unmaidenly rush she somehow managed to contain. His austere expression gave way to the mocking grin she was beginning to loathe and any compassion she felt for the lonely man vanished like mist in the sun.
‘My captors made the mistake of saving that particular form of torture as their ultimate threat, but ran out of time or chance to carry it out, Miss Seaborne. You can restrain your unladylike imagination on that front at least.’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ she said distantly.
‘Oh, come now, my dear. I prefer your open curiosity to the soulless propriety of most of your kind. Don’t disappoint me by becoming as mealy-mouthed as any other well-born single lady I would go well out of my way to avoid.’
‘If you shun such correct young women, I’d best polish up a suitably outraged expression and work harder on my simper.’
‘At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about you getting in the way while I search for my ward and your brother, even if it would be a crime against nature to meddle with your more strident character. I can’t imagine such a properly nurtured female squawking and swooning and disapproving her way about the countryside without an entire army of villains knowing she was on her way, so if you could arrange to become one as soon as may be I shall be enormously relieved.’
