Joanna Johnson - Scandalously Wed To The Captain

William? Dead?

It was unthinkable and for a sickening moment Grace wondered how Spencer could make such a tasteless joke. Surely the idea of him without his matching other half was impossible? Wherever one twin went the other had always been sure to follow, their identical mouths quirked into charismatic curves and long-legged strides so eye-catching it was hardly surprising Grace’s cheeks had warmed with heat she hadn’t understood. There was no way in the world one could exist without the other, yet the tension in Spencer’s broad shoulders was the proof he did not lie.

Whatever could have happened?

She couldn’t exactly recall the contents of Mrs Dauntsey’s final letter, but surely there had been no mention of the tragedy that now made Grace’s blood turn cold and dismay hold her tighter in its grip. All that life, all that animation and charm and potential snuffed out so mercilessly, leaving behind only its silent mirror image that brought intense pity roaring up from the very depths of Grace’s soul.

‘I’m so very sorry. I had no idea. We hadn’t heard—of late my mother’s letters were always returned and we had no way of knowing your new address...’

Grace’s words tripped over themselves, disjointed and stumbling, although she might as well have been talking to herself for all the notice Spencer took. He waited for her to tail off into mortified nothingness beneath his hard gaze before changing the subject so abruptly there was no hope of return.

‘Why are you out on the Cobb in this mire?’ It was almost an accusation, delivered so tersely Grace nearly flinched. ‘You could have been killed if you’d fallen. I would have thought you’d know better, living here all your life.’

The sudden veer into a completely different conversation caught Grace by surprise. Shock still echoed through her mind, the shattered image of the Dauntsey twins flickering as she peered up at the rain-flecked face of the only one left, and she answered with honesty she regretted at once when she felt pain crackle within her once again.

‘I came to meet with my fiancé. Or the man who was my fiancé, until a few hours ago.’

Spencer raised an eyebrow, some shadow of enquiry in its dark line. ‘Was?’

Grace nodded mutely, eyes downcast and fixed now on the expensive boots planted immovably before her. The agony that had run through her like a cruel river prior to Spencer’s appearance returned with a vengeance, freezing into a shard of ice that lodged itself in the pit of her stomach to merge with the ache of sympathy and awful surprise that already circled.

‘He requested I break our engagement, ostensibly on account of my father’s situation. You’ll have heard all about that, I’m sure.’

Tears threatened to gather at the corners of Grace’s eyes again at the thought of poor Papa and she blinked them away, although she was unable to stop one from slipping down to mix with the cold rain spotting her cheeks. If Spencer saw he gave no sign, instead merely shrugging one huge shoulder in a movement Grace found oddly unsettling.

Had he always been so...broad? The youth she remembered had been agile and lithe, his movements fluid like those of a dancer. The intervening years had increased the width of shoulder beneath a green coat darkened by rain, so different now but not un appealing, and Grace wondered distantly why she should have noticed such a trivial thing.

‘We arrived only three days ago. My mother was intending to surprise yours with a visit, but has been too ill to leave the house and was in no fit state to receive guests. If her health had allowed, I imagine they would be gossiping together as we speak. As it is, we’ve heard no news and I’ve been in no hurry to chase any.’

Grace flexed her cold fingers, her mind too full of a complex jumble of thoughts and emotions to know how to reply. Horror for William’s loss chased sympathy for Spencer that touched her heart, in turn surrounded by a dull pulse of unhappiness and shame.

If Spencer doesn’t know the particulars of my family’s situation, it won’t be long until he does.

No doubt Henry had told all their formerly mutual acquaintances of his clever dodge at once and lapped up their congratulations at his narrow escape. The whispers that already chased Grace down every street would surely only increase now with such fascinating fuel to stoke the flames of delicious scandal higher—how long until the stares turned to nudges and her name was dragged lower than ever before? Nobody would care that as the daughter of a bankrupt and supposed criminal all Grace now had to remind her of her broken dreams was a wedding gown that would never see the light of day and a heart battered by the person she had hoped would always cherish it. She was reduced to an object of ridicule, to be pitied at best and scorned at worst, and in her knowledge of just how far she had fallen her anguish was complete.

I will never give my heart away again.

Grace made the vow fiercely, almost oblivious to the handsome man who watched her sorrow in silent thought. To trust in the love of another person was to make a woman weak, to expose her to the pain, humiliation and agony of rejection that now swept over her like a flood.

She had one thing to thank Henry for, at least: exposing the naivety within her that could not distinguish real regard from false and the sad lack of her own good judgement. His cruel lesson would enable her to guard against making the same mistake twice and never again allow a man to impose on her who had no interests in mind other than his own.

I will never give my heart away again. Not as long as I live.

Spencer turned up the collar of his coat, feeling the wet material beneath cold fingertips. Ideally he would be inside now, warm before the fire in his favourite armchair and his black hair curling slightly as it dried, but the woman in front of him showed little sign of noticing the rain that was soaking them both to the skin or the howl of a bleak wind coming from over the sea, her grey eyes fixed now on the sodden ground and an expression of suffering obscuring her petite features.

Little Grace Linwood. I would never have known her.

She was almost pretty as a grown woman, Spencer noted reluctantly, or would have been if she wasn’t so frail-looking. Certainly her face was very pale, although ruddy spots of high colour showed she had recently been crying—for good reason, if her fiancé had so suddenly called off their engagement. A small part of him wondered why the man, whoever he was, might have acted so; something to do with her father, she’d said, although what she could have been alluding to he could only guess. Robert Linwood had been an amiable sort if he remembered correctly. Surely there was no reason to suspect he might have acted poorly?

Spencer looked down at Grace, weighing up how to proceed. In honesty, consoling an emotional young woman was at the very bottom of a list of ways he would choose to spend an evening. Already the whisper of the new bottle of port awaiting his return to his rooms called to him, its voice sweet in his ear, promising to blot out the memories Miss Linwood had unwittingly stirred with her innocent question about William. The glass and decanter had been his trusted companions these two years, ever since the day his life had fallen so spectacularly apart, and there was nothing more able to dim the echoes of the screams that haunted him.

However...

He clenched his jaw to fight back an irritable sigh. Something inside him, some relic of his moral Quaker upbringing, would not allow him to leave a lady in such obvious distress, especially the daughter of an old family friend. Most of his mother’s genteel teachings had fallen by the wayside in the past couple of years, beaten out of him by the grief and guilt never now more than a half thought away—but some dim gleam of propriety remained, to mutter that to abandon an unhappy woman in the growing darkness was not altogether acceptable.