The Cold Earl's Bride: A Historical Regency Romance Page 6

  What had caused his backsliding? Annabelle could not figure out which word it was that had ruined the budding thaw between them in one fell swoop. To a bystander it would seem that Marcus St. John was just a moody man, Annabelle thought and sighed softly, ringing for her maid. The abrupt change in his mood had to have a reason. It was noticeable that he disliked Viscount Greywood, to put it mildly. In fact, he seemed to downright hate him.

  The one thing Annabelle did not understand was what kind of connection her husband saw between her and Greywood. She had not given him so much as a word or a gesture to prompt the absurd supposition that she and Greywood were involved with each other. Therefore, it had to be something else that had happened between the two men.

  Annabelle glanced at the street-worthy dress that Clarice had laid out at her request earlier. Her plan had been to go to the viscount and ask him discreetly about her sister. Or, if the discrete approach did not bear fruit, to question him directly. But the longer she thought about it, the more silly her plan seemed. A little while ago, St. John had mentioned that he expected the viscount to attend the countess’s dinner. So, instead of storming out and possibly putting herself in a compromising situation (not to mention risking enraging her husband further), Annabelle decided to wait patiently until Friday.

  She had never been someone who acted or spoke spontaneously and without thinking. Either the seven days she had so far spent as a married woman had taken their toll on her and changed her more than she had ever thought possible, or the secrets surrounding her were starting to nip at her sanity.

  If she was not careful, she could very well end up in the earl’s attic as his insane wife.

  What could it possibly be that seemed to drive him to the verge of madness whenever he spoke to Annabelle? It had to be more than just her resemblance to Matilda, because the longer Annabelle stayed in his house, the more differences he noticed between the living and the dead. Annabelle was not remotely as feminine as Matilda had been, but instead, she was sometimes frighteningly direct, even blunt, whenever her self-restraint dropped. Her tantalisingly shaped female body… Enough, he ordered himself. Matilda and Annabelle had nothing in common, and he would not taint the memory of his beloved fiancée by comparing her to Annabelle.

  Marcus St. John had endured a full three hours until he was certain that she would not leave the house that night. Three long hours, during which he had tried to regain his ability to think analytically. He knew that he should not trust her, and yet the temptation to do exactly that, had become a constant nagging pressure.

  Was it due to her appearance? She had none of the sugar-sweet beauty of the debutantes who were dangled in front of his nose like candy by the more scrupulous of mothers. Everything about her, from the curve of her cheekbones, the movement of her expressive mouth, to her slightly angled eyes, spoke of intelligence. Matilda’s eyes had been blue and had had a much lovelier look. Her reddish-brown hair was darker than that of his dead fiancée, and her voluptuous feminine figure seemed a little bit lusher. Just now, he had been so close to her that he had noticed a cheeky band of freckles that ran from her nose across her cheeks. When she had laid her hand against his cheek… in that very moment, he had been startled by himself. Marcus had longed to trust her – and more than that. He had wanted to be her husband, with everything that it promised. But when Annabelle had claimed that she only knew Greywood superficially, he had been almost thankful for her blatant lie. After all, that is what it had been, had it not? A lie would never have passed Matilda’s lips.

  He exhaled loudly and chided himself as a fool. Had he not just urged himself not to think about Matilda?

  The restlessness that had engulfed his body could no longer be contained. He stripped off his clothes and slipped into comfortable breeches. A thin wide shirt followed before he grabbed bandages and started to wrap them around his ankles. He had to let off steam, and since Finch was on his way to Greywood, only one option remained: the attic. Silently, and like a thief inside his own home, he climbed the stairs towards the top, until he reached the wooden door that separated his training room from the rest of the house.

  Deeply taking in the scent of woodchips, he realized how the familiar smell already unfolded a calming effect. To warm up, he skipped on the spot for a few minutes, before including his arms as well. Marcus enjoyed the feeling of being physically active and feeling his tense muscles loosen up. Maybe it was not such a bad thing that Finch was not around, he thought, as he approached the life-sized, stuffed boxing body in the middle of the attic, which was hanging from a sturdy beam. The pale moonlight that fell through the skylights gave the faceless figure the appearance of being alive, albeit for a moment. Today, he was not in the mood to be mindful of a living training partner. The punching bag, he was able to maltreat as he pleased.

  This was his domain. Here, he did not have to pretend. He gave the down-feather-, sand- and straw-filled body of the punching bag a punch and nimbly dodged the momentum that send it straight back at him. Another blow and another followed against the head. He ducked, and his lips started to form a smile as he kicked the figure right in the kidney area.

  Boxing was a sport for gentlemen, but strict rules held true. He preferred to use his legs as well as his fists. Had one of the would-be boxers in the clubs seen how he used his entire body, he would have been thrown out anyway. He imagined giving one of the limp-wristed dandies from the Jacksons a kick to his side. As long as the gentlemen fought within controlled boundaries, their fighting style was well and good, but when it came to fighting for their lives, drawn into a street fight using knives and bats, things looked drastically different. But what Marcus valued most about his training, was the physical exhaustion that gave him an otherwise unknown inner calm.

  Dreamless sleep, he thought, dosing the dummy with a quick series of uppercuts and straight punches – that was what he needed tonight. It was a shame that the boxing opponent did not fight back. He closed his eyes for a second and envisioned it was Greywood, to whom he was teaching a lesson. Another kick, this time to the chin. Another blow, and one of the seams burst open. That was still not enough! Not if he wanted to forget the sight of Annabelle – how she had stood before him, her eyes observing every bit of him, and then the touch of her hand that had led him to believe in her warmth when it had been only an act. The sound of another bursting seam deluded him to believe of hitting a warm, living body. Greywood, he’d finally have to get Greywood to be able to make peace with the past. Or was his mind just fooling him to think that he was able to end this darkest chapter of his life?

  Marcus realised that he had stopped beating the bag. His chest moved up and down heavily. The shirt stuck sweaty to his upper body. For a moment, Greywood’s features seemed to form in the bright fabric that represented the head of the dummy. Marcus blinked, then the phantom was gone. His ankles burned despite the bandages, and his muscles were shivering – whether from the physical exertion or because of his crazy imagination, he did not know.

  If he did not find a solution soon, he would lose his sanity.

  A faint sound at his back made his head whip around. Despite the exhaustion, he managed to reach the door just in time to see a figure in a white nightgown scurrying down the stairs. It was Annabelle. He recognised her by the reddish shimmer of her hair in the light of the single candle that she held in her hands.

  He wondered what she had seen. A man who practised his street fighting skills? Or a desperate human who hammered again and again at the face of the man who had killed his fiancée?

  Chapter 6

  Annabelle only slept poorly that night, and whenever she managed to escape into Morpheus’s arms, she dreamed. They were wicked dreams, deeply unsettling and with recurring elements. The one that scared her the most had her in its claws by daybreak.

  In her dream, Annabelle ran up endless flights of stairs. She knew there was a room at the end of each flight, where her sister was being held captive. Without having reached the top of t
he stairs, Annabelle saw what was happening in that silvery-moon-lit attic. A man who seemed to consist of nothing but shadows, had his back turned towards her and held a miniature version of her sister in his hand. Annabelle saw the tiny Felicity flailing her arms about as the man threw her into the air and caught her, casually and with a stretched-out hand. She even heard the shrill sound that the miniature Felicity made when she landed in the palm of his hand. Her sister’s rigid, doll-like face was frozen into a mask of terror, and Annabelle, who was in the room and yet, with the woozy logic of a dream, continued to climb step after step, was unable to help her. Annabelle turned around and heard herself scratching at the wooden door from the outside. The man who was throwing her sister into the air did not seem to mind, for he did not interrupt what he was doing, not even for a second. Then the wood of the door splintered and both Annabelles, the one in the room and the one from the stairs, moulded into one person. But that was not the end of her trip to the realm of sleep. Annabelle ran towards the man in the middle of the room and reached for his sweaty shirt. Like precious crystals, the drops of sweat pearled off him and shattered on the dirty wooden floor with a clash. She pulled and tugged at him to make him stop. But the moment he turned, the position of his hand changed, and her doll sister fell to the ground. She, too, shattered into a thousand pieces, while her intact mouth continued to cry pitifully. Then Annabelle lifted her head and looked into his face.

  That was the moment she woke up.

  Annabelle’s first thought was that she did not know him. Something about the posture of his back seemed familiar, but… she sat up and drank a sip of water. It was only a dream, she reminded herself again and again, it did not mean anything. It was not important who the man had been, who had treated Felicity and her so heartlessly.

  She got up and walked on bare feet to the window, ignoring the cold. Outside, it was no longer completely dark, but not bright either. Her heart skipped a beat when her imagination performed caprioles and tricked her into thinking that she was still trapped in her nightmare. With all her might she pushed aside all shadows of fear that the dream had left behind, only to endure the onslaught of yet another flood of unwanted images. With shaking hands, she opened the curtains a little further and leaned her hot forehead against the cold glass of the windowpane.

  A shiver ran down her spine when she recalled the image of St. John, beating the head of a rough imitation of a human with empty eyes and a hate-filled face. In each punch she had felt his anger, but also something else that she had only recognised after a longer while: despair. Quite some time passed while Annabelle had watched – fascinated and frightened at the same time – how his masculine body exerted itself, but eventually his kicks and punches had become less violent. Even then, as his aggression seemed to gradually lessen, Annabelle had been unable to tear her eyes away from his frame.

  This was the real Marcus St. John. The one who partially scared her with his belligerent masculinity, and who, at the same time, captivated her. It had been like a peek through a keyhole, Annabelle thought, catching sight of something forbiddingly intimate. His damp shirt had clung against his torso, tracing his muscular physique, which was usually hidden underneath silk and brocade. The elegance of his attacks, his legs, his back, his buttocks… With a jolt she had realized what she was doing. She had stood there like a naïve young girl, staring at the body of a man, experiencing feelings she could not explain, and causing a disconcerting heat to rise to her face. That had been the moment when Annabelle had been more startled at herself than at St. John. She had turned on her heels and ran down the stairs towards the safety of her room. Cursing her own curiosity, she had drenched a cloth with cold water and pressed it against her face and neck, until the panicky heaving of her chest subsided.

  Last night’s fright had since paled into restlessness, still palpable like the humming of a busy beehive. The unsettling images kept appearing in front of her closed eyes like ghosts, and simply could not be pushed aside. With a sigh, Annabelle opened her eyes and looked out onto the street. At this time of day, Eaton Square was deserted and empty. The servants in the surrounding homes were already up, but the deliveries of milk, bread, and other things that would land fresh on the breakfast tables of the ladies and gentlemen were handled via the back doors. It was a deceptively peaceful image, Annabelle thought. The bright façades of the stately homes were becoming more and more contoured the longer she stood by the window, watching the rising sun.

  At some point, her feet became cold, and she noticed her bare arms were covered in goose bumps. She was just about to turn around and slip into her dressing gown when she saw a carriage approaching the Grandover house. It slowed down in front of the entrance. Before he descended from it, St. John’s head appeared in the window. His facial traits were not visible, but Annabelle recognised his blonde hair and the demeanour that was unmistakably his. Annabelle stepped back behind the protective curtain as his eyes searched the front of the house. She chided herself a silly bean and peeked once more through the narrow slit. Firstly, he could not possibly see her, and secondly, it was not like she was spying on him.

  With a strange feeling in her stomach, she watched as St. John strode with heavy steps towards the front door, while the carriage drove off. Maybe the idea of spying on him was not such a bad scheme. If he did not talk to her voluntarily, then she would have to find out what was going on in this house, off her own bat. He not only seemed tired, but downright exhausted – and he looks lonely, Annabelle thought. Like someone who had been carrying a burden for far too long, and who no longer knew what it felt like to be without the weight of it on his shoulders.

  She was so immersed in his appearance that she only noticed the attacker when it was almost too late. A person wearing a widely flared, dark coat broke loose from the house entrance across from them. In retrospect, Annabelle could not pinpoint what had aroused her suspicion – the determination of his footfalls or the tense posture – but as soon as she saw him, she knew that he had evil intentions.

  His steps quickened the closer Marcus St. John got to the front door. When she watched the man’s right hand reaching into his coat, Annabelle’s heart was racing.

  “Watch out! Behind you!” she yelled at Marcus, but of course, he could not hear her. She banged against the window, several times in a row, but apparently her bedroom on the second floor was too far away for him to notice her. Annabelle wasted valuable seconds, during which the darkly dressed figure had decreased the distance between them to only a few meters. Something shiny flashed in the man’s hand. Fear shot through Annabelle’s body like a lightning strike. She tasted copper on her tongue. Her eyes were fixed only on the hand holding the knife, while her thoughts tumbled. Frantically, she hammered with her flat hand against the glass, which splintered with an ugly sound. At the same moment as pain rushed from Annabelle’s wrist to her arm, she screamed another warning.

  And finally, finally, St. John woke up.

  In a distant corner of her mind, Annabelle knew that she had to attend to the ugly cut, but she was unable to move. It had been, she thought afterwards, similar to her experience in the middle of the night when she had been unable to avert her gaze from St. John. Watching him was akin to witnessing a coach accident on the open road. It was impossible to turn away one’s eyes, no matter how cruel the scene was.

  St. John’s eyes flew up to her. His blue eyes bore into hers for the duration of a heartbeat, holding her there. Then he turned around with the agility of a wild animal sensing danger. He lifted his arm and ducked down in one swift motion, at the same time finding the arm of the attacker inside the fluttering fabric. Metal flashed. Both men froze. The attacker shrugged his shoulders, then he jerked away from St. John’s hard grip and ran back towards the street.

  St. John took up the pursuit while dancing stars appeared in front of Annabelle’s eyes. She heard herself release a wiggy sound, half a call for help and half the echo of her warning. Funny, she thought, why was it suddenly
getting so dark outside? She blinked, her eyes still fixed on St. John, who chose that moment to turn around and look up at her once more.

  The jagged outlines of the opening she had created with her bare hand seemed to come closer. The last thing Annabelle saw were his blue eyes boring into hers. She even thought that she could not possibly see the colour at that distance; then feeling queasy, her knees trembled, and she slipped inelegantly, yet still conscious, to the floor.

  Marcus hesitated only for a second, but his attacker was already beyond his reach. He ran up the last few stairs to his front door, which was opened in that moment by his butler, Wickham.

  “Send Clarice upstairs with smelling salts,” he ordered his butler, and took the first steps before halting again. She had disappeared so abruptly from his sight, plus there was the broken window – it was possible that she was hurt. He quickly called out to Wickham to bring the wound care kit, and then he stormed into Annabelle’s room. He needed to find out if she was well.

  After all, she was his wife, St. John told himself, as he saw her figure lying in front of the blasted window. She was awake but very pale. He personally did not care if she had come to harm, but if he wanted to go to dinner with her on Friday, he had better make sure that she did not look like he was abusing her. Liar, an inner voice whispered to him, which he rigorously pushed aside.

  Instead, he focused on her injuries. Already upon entering, he had noticed that she had suffered a nasty cut on the palm of her hand, but the bleeding was slowly stopping. Where were Clarice and Wickham with the bandages? The cut had to be cleaned and bandaged, but most importantly, he needed to examine her to see if she had any other injuries. He clenched his teeth together. He would have to touch her, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  An absurd thought shot through his head while he tried to collect himself. What if she was only pretending to be indisposed just so she could later accuse him of licentious advances? The moment he had the thought, Marcus realised just how preposterous it probably was.