Louise Allen - Silk And Seduction Bundle 2

He joined her on the ottoman, wondering if any other bridegroom had ever found himself coming so low down on the list of his bride’s priorities on his wedding night.

She looked up at him warily when he sat down, a question in her eyes.

‘Go on.’ He sighed. ‘Let us see what all the fuss was about.’

With a smile of relief, she tore open the wrapping paper.

Then went white.

He forgot all about his own fit of pique when he followed her appalled gaze and saw, lying in her lap, a replica of a hangman’s noose. Fashioned from what looked like a lot of silk scarves plaited together.

‘Dear God! What is the meaning of this? Is it some kind of threat?’

‘Not a threat, no,’ she said in a thin, reedy voice. ‘He said, it was to remind me. I stupidly thought…’ She raised one trembling hand to her brow to push back a hank of hair that had flopped into her eyes.

‘You see, on the way to church, I had such high hopes…’

His heart leapt at her words. Had she, too, seen that they could forge something good together?

‘…the children of all three families brought together, to celebrate a new start…the Carlows were there, and William Wardale’s daughter, and me, Kit Hebden’s daughter. And then he showed up too, and I hoped finally, we would all be able to move out of the shadow of what our parents did…’

Her fingers hovered over the glistening silken noose coiled in her lap, as though not quite daring to touch it. Lest it develop fangs and strike out at her like a venomous snake.

‘Midge.’ He took her chin in his hand and turned her face towards him. ‘You are making no sense.’ The only thing he knew for certain was that, once again, her mind was far from him.

She shivered, and the vague, troubled look crystallized into something like ice.

Her lips pressed firmly together, she pushed the torn edges of the packaging back into place, to conceal the silken rope. Then she got up, walked to the fireplace, and threw it into the flames.

‘Rick was right all along,’ she said bitterly. ‘Someone did want to ruin my day. Only it was not some rival for your title.’ She flicked angry eyes over him. ‘But my own brother. Half brother,’ she corrected herself, seizing the poker and holding down the package as the heat began to make the paper uncurl. ‘The announcement was only in the Gazette yesterday, so he must have known where I was all along. And never once did he come forward. All those years, we thought he was dead. Mourned him. While he was out there, watching us, hating us, waiting for some chance to strike back at us…’

‘Midge, you cannot possible deduce all that from a few silk scarves fashioned into a hangman’s noose—’

‘Oh, but I can!’ She turned round to look at him. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know…’

She swayed on her feet. The poker fell into the hearth with a clatter. Monty swept her into his arms, drew her away from the fire and settled her on the edge of the bed.

‘Then tell me,’ he murmured.

She wrapped her own arms about her waist. ‘How much do you already know?’

‘I suppose, only what is generally known. The tittle-tattle about your mother’s lover killing your father. And him being subsequently hanged for the murder. But until today I had never heard of the existence of…an illegitimate Gypsy boy. Nor do I understand why those three families in particular, gathering together, could have much significance.’

She nodded her head, just once, as though making up her mind about something.

‘My father and Lord Leybourne and Lord Narborough were working together on some kind of state secret. My mother did not know exactly what. Except that one night, my father told her he knew who the spy was, and he was going to meet the other two and tell them how he had worked it out. Lord Narborough found Leybourne later, crouching over my father’s body, with a dagger in his hand. And eventually Leybourne was hanged for murder and treason. They used a silken rope, since he was a peer of the realm.’ She jerked her head towards the direction of the fireplace, without taking her eyes off her hands, which were now clasped together in her lap.

‘The shock made my mother very ill. Grandpapa Herriard took the opportunity to get rid of Stephen, when he moved us all back to Mount Street. But Stephen’s mother came looking for him. It seems my father had promised her he would raise her son like a little lord. She blamed my mother for the broken promise—and put a curse on her.’

Viscount Mildenhall could not help the derisive snort that emanated from his mouth.

Midge looked up at him coldly. ‘It might sound like a joke to you, sir, but the words were so accurate they haunted my mother to the end of her life. The Gypsy woman said that because she had stolen her son, she would never see a single one of hers live to adulthood. My mother had just had a miscarriage. And not long after that, my younger brother, my only real, full brother, took ill and died too.’

‘It was probably just a coincidence—’

‘You have not heard the rest,’ she broke in. ‘After cursing my mother, she went to Wardale’s execution, screamed curses at all three families involved in the loss of her son and her lover, and then hanged herself too. With a silk scarf. That—’ She did glance at the fireplace then, appearing momentarily distracted from her narrative by the sight of the purple and blue flames licking along the charred edges of the symbolic noose. She shuddered again, saying, ‘It is a reminder that my family, along with the Wardales and the Carlows, destroyed his mother. And that her curse will keep on eating us all alive until her form of justice has been satisfied.’

She turned and buried her face against his shoulder.

‘I am sorry I seemed to scoff at the revelation of a Gypsy curse,’ he said, hugging her tight. ‘And I am not sure I believe in such things now. But one thing I do believe, and that is that man holds a grudge against you all. Hal Carlow warned me that he has already tried to cause trouble for his family, and the Wardales. Well, tomorrow,’ he said, looking down into her troubled face, and smoothing the hair from her brow, ‘I am taking you down to Shevington.’ He had never thought of the place as a refuge before, but it could be for her. From the malicious gossip that painted her as something far different from her true nature, for one thing. And, ‘The devil will not be able to get at you there.’

Though the thought that the Gypsy might do her some actual, physical harm alarmed him, there was a tiny part of him that welcomed having the opportunity to demonstrate his ability to protect her. So that she would come to rely on him.

‘I don’t suppose he will ever come near me again.’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘He only came to the wedding today to sow discord. The first time members of all three families have gathered together for a generation, and he ruined any chance there might have been for some kind of…reconciliation between us all.’

He wanted to tell her to forget the Gypsy. To put it all behind her. But he had seen her face when she thought she had regained a brother she had long thought dead. To have found him, only to discover he had only revealed himself in order to declare his enmity, was not something she would get over in a hurry.

‘I won’t let him come near you again,’ he swore. ‘The man is a menace!’

He thought there was a flare of something mutinous in her eyes, before she subsided and said in a subdued tone, ‘I am sorry. I have caused you nothing but trouble today.’

‘Nonsense!’ he rapped. Nothing that had happened today had been her fault, yet here she was, sitting with drooping shoulders, apologizing to him! When he should be the one making her feel better. She had been pushed into a marriage she had not really wanted, to a man she had taken in dislike, only to please her family…and how had her family repaid her loyalty? Her uncle had been angry, her aunt distant, one of her stepbrothers had blatantly made use of the wedding breakfast to suck up to Lord Keddinton, and a half brother had emerged from his hiding place to openly declare his hatred.