crystal, Countess, so that even a misfit like myself can understand.’ Her cold, insulting slight had brought him rudely to his senses, a cutting reminder of the impossibility of any further association between Roberta and himself.
‘Roberta is to wed Viscount Pemberton. No woman in her right mind would give up the like of his title and wealth for a man who has lived as you have lived.’
‘As a slave,’ Ewen stated with sharp icy clarity, ‘and not of my choosing, I assure you. I did not go to the villains of my own free will.’
‘I do not imagine you did. But you cannot escape the fact that the taint of slavery still hangs over you. You shall probably never shake free of its degrading grip. I feel I should also remind you that you are also a Roman Catholic and a defender of the Jacobites.’
‘I do not need reminding of my faith. I am a defender of my family.’
‘With a brother who was involved in plans to bring James Stuart back to the throne—a brother who fought at Culloden—and afterwards his whole family were held to be traitors.’
‘It is my brother Simon you speak of,’ Lord Tremain replied, his voice thick with unsuppressed wrath. ‘Whatever he has done in the past, he has suffered at the hands of those people who wish harm to the Catholic church.’
‘If he were my brother, I should have become a Protestant long ago. All your troubles might then have been avoided.’
‘I do not think my brother ought to be censured for doing what he believed was right. Had I been of an age, he would have had my full and active support.’
Ewen felt a perverse pleasure in seeing the Countess’s face blanch at his carefully flung remark. He was surprised also by how angry her attack had made him. He had certainly never considered himself a defender of the Jacobites, not even of his own religion, but the Countess had forced from him a loyalty that he had not known before. After all, Simon had been stripped of his right to property and position. It was easy enough to forget now that twenty years had elapsed since the battle that had blighted his family and the Scots loyal to King James.
‘Nevertheless, it is one of the reasons why I cannot countenance a marriage between you and my niece.’ A mild-mannered woman might have quaked beneath the murderous contempt Lord Tremain directed at her, but Lady Marchington had never known anything but wealth and power. Her imperious disposition had been carefully nurtured by a demanding father, who had instilled in her the importance of aristocratic breeding and the family’s pre-eminent ranking above worthier nobles than Lord Tremain. ‘It is done.’
‘Is it?’ With those two words hanging in the air he turned away. Halfway across the room he turned and looked back. ‘Have a care, Countess,’ he warned. ‘Have a care, for I would not hesitate to expose your most intimate family linen to the scrutiny of the illustrious company partaking of your hospitality below.’
Lady Marchington paled. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Oh, no? Try me,’ he challenged. ‘We both know there is one member of your own family whose connections to the Jacobites could not withstand the most scrupulous examination. I believe you know what I am talking about.’
He had hit a nerve. His words made Lady Marchington recoil. Her voice was barely audible. ‘How dare you?’
‘But I do dare. Where is he now, Countess? Or perhaps you have no idea since you quietly disowned him after he, too, fought at Culloden. You may not wish to know, but I will tell you anyway. He is in Italy, and on occasion in France, with Charles Edward Stuart, the Bonnie Prince. Although after all the years the Prince has spent in idleness and good living, he is not quite so bonnie these days.’
Lady Marchington stared at him in horrified silence as she weighed up his words. Should it come out that her only brother was a Jacobite who had once taken up arms against the King, it would be the society scandal of the year. There were many who would like to see the proud and mighty Countess of Marchington brought low. She would not allow that to happen.
‘Whatever else you claim to be, sir, you are not a gentleman.’
His lips curled scornfully. ‘Did you expect to find one from the slave pens of Morocco?’
‘What are you trying to do? Destroy Roberta?’
‘Destroy Roberta?’ Lord Tremain echoed with a twisted smile on his firm lips. ‘Oh, no. I am not here to harm Roberta. I intend to marry her. As God is my witness, Countess,’ he grated out, ‘I shall see our bargain carried through.’
Lady Marchington must have been aware of Lord Tremain’s anger, for whatever she saw in his eyes made her let the matter rest without further discussion.
The moment caused a peculiar unease and Alice felt a little chilled when she looked at Lady Marchington and saw her staring at Lord Tremain. She could not begin to recognise the depth of Lady Marchington’s fury, but she saw the taut rage emanating from every line of her body. There was a look of such cold calculation in her eyes as they rested on Lord Tremain that Alice felt the cold hand of fear race up her own spine.
Lord Tremain turned sharply on his heel and headed for the door.
Alice took a step forward, wondering if he would acknowledge her, but he was encased in his anger and resentment and either did not or would not see her. She watched him go with a feeling that Lord Tremain was a man with no room for forgiveness or emotion. Dismissing her without a glance, he strode to the door and went out, letting it swing shut behind him with a bang that echoed in the very depths of her heart.
Bringing herself erect, Lady Marchington cast a steely eye on Alice. ‘What you have heard in this room tonight you will never speak of. Do you understand me, Alice? Roberta must not know of this.’
‘Yes—yes, of course,’ she murmured.
Without another word Lady Marchington walked out of the room.
* * *
A while later, lying in bed with her eyes wide open, Alice reflected on the strange occurrence that had taken place in her chamber and the man who had disrupted the events of the evening. What had happened to him to make him so objectionable? She suspected there was more to it than his broken engagement to Roberta. What Lady Marchington had disclosed about his past disturbed her. He had been a slave, she had said. How could that be? Alice wondered. There was something indestructible about Lord Tremain, something fear-provoking that made her shiver.
* * *
Ewen left the house with a firestorm of humiliated fury erupting from his heart, burning its way through every nerve, every vein and every artery. His pulse pounded out a primal drumbeat as he strode through the snow to where Amir was waiting with a horse.
With Roberta Hislop by his side, he had been looking forward to beginning a life as near normal as was possible for him. So he had been taken aback to find Lady Marchington had betrothed her to someone else—a Viscount, no less. He clenched his mouth in a grim line in roiling anger and persistent shame of himself, of the monster he had become.
The pain was back again. Not the crippling pain he had felt from the wounds inflicted on him by the whip, but the other, the bad, the unthinkable hurt that was inside him. It had no definite location, but filled the whole of him. It was inside and out, expanding until it tore through his veins.
During
