The Cold Earl's Bride: A Historical Regency Romance Read online

  Annabelle was his wife. Under the law. Before the church. In the eyes of society. Her father no longer had any power over her. She was his, Marcus St. John’s, damned property. Only in one respect, which really mattered, was she not his wife but a stranger. He looked at her pale face and carefully lifted her head. She was trembling all over, and her teeth chattered so much that she was unable to tell him if the movement was causing her pain. The posture in which she was lying in front of the window was certainly not comfortable, so without hesitation, he lifted her up into his arms and carried her over to the small sofa. Carefully, he rested her head on a pillow. He should make sure that she had not banged her head when she fell, he thought, running his fingertips over her scalp, thankful for her loose hair, which made his search for a bruise easier. It didn’t bear contemplating if he were to now have to work through a plethora of hairpins or embellishment in the form of flowers, flying creatures and other silly things that the ladies loved to stick into their hair these days.

  He had never seen her hair over-lavishly styled. Carefully continuing to feel for bumps, and thereby inhaling the flowery scent of her hair, he realized that she favoured a much simpler style, which was, in turn, pleasing to him. Only the dresses that she had brought with her did not fit the picture. She was rather tall for a woman, even though still a good one head and a half shorter than him, and with her curvy feminine figure, those dresses seemed… well, somehow like costumes on her.

  Someone like her, with the pale skin and the warm tone of her silky hair, needed strong colours. A royal dark blue, for example, and an austere, shady green that brought out the red glow of her hair, her statuesque beauty, and the stubborn, exquisite face...

  Marcus jumped up when he heard Clarice’s tripping footsteps. His face felt hot. What the devil had come over him that he all of a sudden considered this woman, whom Greywood had so skilfully inveigled into his own house, as a human being?

  Worse than this, he had seen in her a woman who was beautiful in her own right. He had slid his fingers through her hair, feeling a sensual delight that was completely inappropriate, and came dangerously close to his feelings for Matilda.

  He must never forget who she really was. Yes, it was true – she had warned him. Who knew, after all, how the cowardly assault would have unfolded had she not called out to him? For a brief moment, he had considered that she had called her warning not to him but to the other, however, this was, yet again, absurd.

  Everything about this accursed situation made no sense. Well, not everything, but most of it. The biggest mystery of all was the woman whom he had married. She was a walking contradiction and seemed to him like an encrypted message whose code he was unable to decipher.

  In the meanwhile, Clarice had knelt beside her mistress and followed Wickham’s instructions in her own placid manner. St. John’s fingers were tingling to rip the wet cloth from her hands and deal with the cleansing of Annabelle’s wound himself. He took a step closer again and saw that a hint of colour had returned to her cheeks.

  Marcus decided to allow her this moment of privacy. His face was certainly the last she wanted to see. Besides, he and Finch needed to at least try to pick up the trail of the attacker, even if the odds were slim. Marcus still did not understand why he had almost mindlessly stormed upstairs into Annabelle’s room, instead of taking up pursuit of the wounded man.

  It was only when he closed the door that he realized that an innocent bystander might have possibly come up with the idea that he had fled.

  Chapter 7

  Her hand hurt. Her head hurt. But what hurt Annabelle the most was the fact that St. John did not think it necessary to come see her, to ensure that she was doing well. Sure, he had sent her maid and his butler to look after her, but her own husband did not even think it was required to at least thank her! She did not expect a grand gesture like his falling on his knees before her, kissing her, and reassuring her of his eternal gratitude, certainly not, but one or two kind words would have been only fit, Annabelle thought. Gradually, the thought of getting a ​​divorce did not seem so absurd, after all. Had it concerned just her alone, her own wellbeing, her reputation, and her future, she might have probably risked the scandal-ridden and embarrassing procedure.

  Darned Felicity! Darned St. John!

  And triple darned her heart, which was still fighting against her reasoning mind, whispering that behind St. John’s cold façade hid a man worth saving.

  Wait a minute. No. Annabelle pulled back the blankets and got up. She had given in to the plea to “take a little rest”, as Wickham had called it before he had discreetly left her room. God forbid that Clarice said even one redundant word to her. She continued to do her work in silence, with her head down and with such an accentuated forbearance, that Annabelle’s patience with her was slowly running out. Breathe deeply, she bid herself, while slipping into a day dress, without the help of the silent Clarice. Her bodice was loosely tied and stood out underneath the thin, ghastly pale-yellow muslin, but that did not matter to Annabelle. She slipped into her slippers, made from purple silk, thinking that with her reddish-brown hair, the yellow dress and these shoes, she probably resembled an exotic bird.

  Marcus St. John. When did she start to find him… interesting? Because he had to be, since she was reading something into his coldness that in all likelihood was not even there. If she was not careful, she would turn into one of those romanticising geese, the type Felicity liked to surround herself with. Annabelle shook her head as she imagined herself, staring at Marcus St. John’s lips with clouded eyes, blinded to the illusion of being able to heal the wounds of his past. What utter nonsense! Annabelle had always believed that one could not change a human but simply had to accept them for who they were. How better to serve one’s counterpart than to hold them dear for what they truly were and not for something an overly romantic imagination had turn them into? She, too, did not want to be changed just because a man fostered a very specific vision of how she should be.

  St. John was a grouch. He barely spoke, he withheld numerous things from her, and he was the first man whom she could not figure out. St. John was beyond her. Not only was his mouth closed off, his body, too, was uninterpretable. He was restrained and angry, strong and hurt, arrogant, and yet, in those moments when he did not speak with her or her family, she had seen him amiable. Annabelle had observed the way he addressed the butler or other servants in his house. He was the master of the house, there was no doubt about that, but he approached his servants respectfully. What weighed much more was the way his servants – from the butler to the suspicious Finch to her own maid – looked at him. They trusted him.

  She was improvising a hairdo with her unruly mane when she heard a knock on her door.

  Her heart skipped a beat when no one entered. Well-trained personnel always knocked before entering a room, but never waited for an answer, since they were considered nothing more than a useful item. Waiting for her answer could only mean one thing – he was standing at the door. Silly me, Annabelle chided herself when she realised that she was standing motionless, her hands buried in her hair, staring at the door. She lowered her arms and called “Come in”.

  The door opened. St. John entered her room.

  Her treacherous heart hammered inside her chest like a relentless blacksmith as he approached.

  “Good evening,” he said and stopped before her.

  “Good evening,” Annabelle replied, searching feverishly for words. Again and again, she had pictured herself confronting him, and now that the opportunity presented itself, her mouth was dry, her tongue too thick, and her throat parched.

  “How do you feel? How is your hand?” For the first time, she noticed how pleasant his voice sounded. Without its usual coldness or suppressed rage, his tone was deep, almost soothing. No wonder the women lay at his feet. One sentence from his mouth and…

  “Apart from a slight throbbing, everything is fine. Clarice took good care of me. And so did Wickham. Thank you.�
�� Blue eyes looked at her from underneath golden brows. His glance was different, too. It took a moment for Annabelle to pinpoint the difference. The mistrust that otherwise dominated his demeanour was missing. She was all too aware of her racing heartbeat as she took half a step towards him, just as St. John decided to do the same movement. Now there was less than a foot between them.

  “Let me see for myself,” he said, holding out his hand. Annabelle hid her hand behind her back.

  “It is nothing,” she countered.

  “I shall make that decision myself,” St. John insisted and waited with his hand stretched out, indicating for her to oblige to his demand. Or was it a request? Annabelle did not have much time to ponder it, for his next words were so unusual that her knees buckled underneath her.

  “I am indebted to you,” he said and gently pulled out her hand, which she slowly put into his. As he began to carefully remove the bandage, she looked spellbound at his hands. They were strong, masculine hands, with a surprising hint of sensitivity in his long, slender fingers. He was, unlike most gentlemen, lightly tanned – a testament to his spending a lot of time outdoors. The fingertips were slightly coarse, as if he was no stranger to physical activity. Or did it come from his fighting manoeuvres that she had watched in the middle of the night? Annabelle felt the heat rise under her light day dress.

  He lifted his head. She had always believed that his eyes were of a purely blue tone, but now that he was so unfamiliarly close to her, she recognised hazelnut-coloured speckles in his irises.

  “No,” she finally warded off his gratitude. Had she not just been in a rage a few minutes ago, for him not having said anything of the sort? Annabelle was surprised by herself. “There is no reason to thank me. What else should I have done? Watch while the attacker injured or even killed you?”

  A slight contraction of his brows was the only sign of his irritation. “For instance.”

  “That is absurd,” the words burst out of her. She looked down and saw that he had removed the bandage completely. The cut was neither too deep nor too long to be cause for worry. She had seen far worse injuries in her parent’s house, starting with burns from hot fat in the kitchen splashed across the arm of a scullery maid through to a stable boy’s broken leg. Somehow, Annabelle always managed to sojourn right where these things occurred, and which a normal young lady should better not have seen.

  “Why would that be so absurd?” he asked in a husky voice, while turning her hand back and forth searchingly. “Should I die, you will inherit most of my fortune. The Grandover male lineage has been wiped out, and whatever doesn’t fall to the crown will pass into your possession.”

  “But…” Annabelle stumbled. “That is impossible. Surely, there is a distant relative who will inherit the title, the money, and the land. Aside from that,” she straightened her posture and ignored the prickly sensation on her skin that his close physical proximity caused her, “the assumption that I married you for your wealth is cruel and entirely out of place.” For a moment, St. John looked into her eyes before he pulled a clean piece of mull from inside his bag and began to wrap her hand in it.

  There it was again, the coldness. What had triggered it? This time, she would not be satisfied with excuses! “I could just as well accuse you of only marrying me for my dowry. That would be equally preposterous.”

  “We both know that I do not need your dowry to be able to afford a comfortable lifestyle,” he countered. “Nor the lands, which your honourable father was generous enough to consign over into my name.”

  “What… what lands are you talking about? That is the first time I have heard about it.”

  “Maybe he and Greywood wanted to make sure that I did not choose the less disreputable route of cancelling the wedding.” He let go of her hand. Where his warm fingers had just touched her, her skin now felt cold. “Tell me, Annabelle, what do you have to do with Greywood?”

  “What is it always with you and Viscount Greywood? I realise that you detest him, but to assume that he and my father somehow orchestrated this wedding is laughable. My father doesn’t even know him particularly well. And why would the viscount be so interested in our marrying?” The shadows in his eyes grew, and before he could turn back into the distant, arrogant man he was most of the time, Annabelle quickly added: “Have you ever considered what this groundless suspicion says about you?” She took a deep breath. Suddenly, she was unsure whether to tell St. John what she was truly thinking, but she realised that it was already too late. His full attention was focused on her. He would not tolerate a lie or an attempt at evasion.

  “Do you really think so little of yourself that a peacock such as the viscount and a weak woman like me could prompt you into doing something you do not want?”

  She held her breath. There was a gushing sound in Annabelle’s ears. The breath escaped her when St. John, all of a sudden, loomed threateningly in front of her. How did he do that? In one moment, he had just stood there and looked at her – not friendly, but at least like a living, breathing, thinking being – and in the next one, he was the threat personified. Was it because of the combat training that made him change as fast as lightning?

  She had expected her words to hit him, maybe even hurt him, but nothing of the sort occurred. The only sign that he had heard her words was a lowering of his eyelids. After a while, which seemed like an eternity to Annabelle, he finally spoke. His voice was so subdued that it was barely more than a hoarse whisper.

  “That is what I’m asking myself, my dearest wife.” There was a pause in which she not only heard him breathe, but also perceived the raising and lowering of his chest. “Who are you, Annabelle? Who are you really?”

  She glanced up, but his facial expression was unreadable. Desperately, she searched for the right words to answer his question, but there was too much that went through Annabelle’s head and at the same time – too little. It was as if his closeness sucked the last bit of reason out of her. Had she not read somewhere about a mad man who claimed that there was animal magnetism? Back then, Annabelle had dismissed the claims by the professor as folly, but here and now, she could have sworn that St. John possessed the power of mesmerism. Heavens, she could not even reflect one thought when St. John was present. He must think her one of those women who lost their senses at the sight of a man.

  He did not wait until Annabelle had composed herself thus far to give him a coherent answer, but instead, he turned and left. Even though he did not know it, he had just carried away a victory, Annabelle thought. For as much as she strived against the notion, the less she could deny the bitter realisation: whenever St. John was near her, she lost the ability to think clearly, just like those other women she had observed and looked down upon in silent mockery.

  The insight, however, also had one advantage. Now that she knew that she had some sort of weakness for him, she could begin to sort out the reason for her feelings. Only a weakness which was accepted as such could be overcome. As she padded back to her bed, to hide there for the rest of the day and night, her only question was why this decision did not make her happy.

  “You must be more careful, or else this little vixen will have you–” Finch began when Marcus stormed into his study and slammed the door shut behind him. However, this time he did not want to hear his friend’s advice.

  “Stay out of it,” Marcus interrupted Finch roughly and sat down in his armchair. The high back and hard upholstery helped him regain some of the composure he had just lost so grandiosely in the bedroom with that woman. The thought of it almost made him laugh, as he imagined himself crawling under the bed in search for his lost self-control. “Whatever it may be that she is waking up inside me, I have it under control.”

  Finch raised an eyebrow, which, in combination with the scar that graced one side of his face, made him look almost frightening.

  “Yes, I know,” Marcus grumbled and ran both hands through his hair before he loosened his too-tightly-bound cravat. He looked at his companion, whose mo
uth twitched treacherously.

  He had not slept one wink last night, and the tension in his body hardened his muscles. The search for his attacker had come to nothing. Finch had lost Greywood in Whitechapel, and as interesting as the question was – what kind of business would take the viscount to the city’s worst poverty-stricken quarters? – it was as insignificant for now. He and Finch had followed the trail of blood drops that had remained mostly undisturbed thanks to the early hour – and that even after he had stormed Annabelle’s room. The trail had ended in an alleyway, where the imprints on the ground pointed towards a waiting coach. It had been a heavy carriage, as was easily to conclude by the deep ridges created by the sunken-in-wheels. However, there was no one who could provide a description of the carriage, or, what would have been even more valuable, of the man who had climbed it. Well, it did not help to mourn a missed opportunity. Greywood might have been the attacker, but it was equally possible he had hired an accomplice.

  Two minutes later, he filled two glasses with brandy, one for Finch and one for himself.

  “There is something about this woman that drives me to the brink of insanity,” he admitted, savouring the burning sensation of alcohol running down his throat. Finch sat with crossed legs on the floor, a nonchalance he allowed himself only in privacy with his old friend.

  “I have to admit that I do not particularly like her,” Finch said. “But the first rule of our business is…”

  “… that there aren’t any rules,” Marcus finished his sentence simultaneously with Finch. “You mean that she is not the joker whom Greywood or his ally brought into play, but landed in my house by some crazy coincidence?”