Joanna Johnson - Scandalously Wed To The Captain

‘As I said. Mind your step.’ Spencer didn’t slow his pace, his head bent slightly against the chill of the wind that flung icy rain into their faces. ‘We’re almost there.’

Grace squinted through the gloom, attempting to ignore the altogether too-absorbing sensation of the hand on her elbow that sent strange prickles down her arm and made it oddly difficult to focus on anything else. They were drawing into a crescent of magnificent houses, tall against the dark menace of the stormy sky and set around a small park of landscaped trees that bent and shook with the wind through their branches. It was too dim to see clearly, but Grace thought she saw a curtain move slightly at the downstairs window of one of the largest houses—the next moment a grand front door was flung open and candlelight spilled down a set of iron-railed steps, illuminating a gravelled path that gleamed wetly in the orange glow. Spencer ushered her towards it and before she had a moment to consult her thoughts on the matter Grace found herself standing in a bright entrance hall, her head spinning and her soaking cloak dripping on to a polished parquet floor.

She looked about her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the warm light thrown out by numerous candles. There were candelabras set around the space, their flames dancing in the draught that accompanied Grace and Spencer into the house, and painted portraits smiled stiffly down from the walls to watch as she hesitated, unsure of what to do next. She’d been too distracted to give much thought to anything other than getting out of the rain and now she stood in the unfamiliar territory of Spencer’s luxurious house she felt a thrill of some strange anxiety flutter through her nerves.

He’s a stranger, really. I barely recognise the man he’s become.

Dimly she heard Spencer speaking to somebody behind her, too low for her to catch the words, but it would hardly have mattered if he had been shouting in her ear for all her attention was fixed on the uncertainty circling in her stomach. Perhaps to take his offer of sanctuary had been a mistake. He only seemed to have offered under some kind of duress and it was with mounting unease she waited for her unwilling host to decide what to do with her now she had followed the lion into its den.

‘May I take your cloak and bonnet, ma’am?’ A maid materialised as if from nowhere, making Grace jump with her murmured question.

‘Have them dried, please, Thorne.’ Spencer glanced at Grace as he removed his own soaking outer things and handed them to another waiting servant. ‘It will take a short while to ready the carriage. You might want to sit before the fire, warm yourself a little.’

Grace turned away from him quickly, mumbling her thanks. The heavy rain had penetrated the costly material of Spencer’s coat, dampening the shirt beneath; it clung to his broad frame a little too lovingly for comfort, the soft white outlining a landscape of muscle that made Grace’s pulse skip more than a fraction faster. Alarm swept through her, wrinkling her brow: Spencer’s masculine physicality, so different from Henry’s slim elegance, surely shouldn’t even register with her. It was an irrelevant detail, no more to be noticed than the fact he had two eyes and a nose on his stern face.

She frowned, trying to silence the troubling thought. After Henry’s thoughtless rejection and the suffering that even now churned within her like a stormy sea, any strange reaction of her unconscious to Spencer’s admittedly impressive musculature should be dismissed without hesitation. It was laughable, the very notion of Spencer provoking her interest, and surely only a nostalgic shadow of the partiality she’d felt for him as a girl—she could almost have smiled at her momentary folly if the unhappiness in her chest hadn’t been weighing her down like a stone. She would never allow herself to surrender to such weakness again and certainly not in favour of a man so apparently aloof as Spencer now was. Not even she, with her admittedly poor record of good judgement, would ever be quite that foolish.

Her disquieting host was running his hand through his short crop of dark hair when Grace dared look towards him again, raindrops glinting in the candlelight as he brushed them from his head. Now they were away from the grey shadows of dusk Grace could see the warm brown of his eyes more clearly, and the fine lines, which on anybody else she would have suspected were caused by smiling, that bracketed them at the outer corners. Surely this dour man could never now get enough use out of a smile to make such lines, she thought privately as she watched him straighten his cravat, his brows drawn together in the near-permanent scowl she had already realised he seemed to wear unconsciously.

‘Rivers will see you through to the parlour.’ Spencer gestured to the servant who bobbed a neat curtsy beside him. ‘If you’ll excuse me.’

He turned abruptly to leave, moving towards one of the doors leading from the hall with long strides Grace couldn’t help but follow with reluctant—but uncontrollable—interest. Before he could reach it, however, it opened quietly on well-oiled hinges and a woman appeared on the threshold.

At first Grace struggled to place her; until with an unpleasant start she realised the gaunt figure barely able to stand was Spencer’s formerly vivacious mother. The change was so alarming Grace felt all words flee from her as she took in the drastic alteration in the woman she remembered: just like her son the difference from eight years ago was staggering, as though some malicious enchantment had been cast over the Dauntsey family to curse both their bodies and their minds.

‘I thought I heard you arrive home.’ Mrs Dauntsey came towards Spencer slowly, although her pale face broke into a smile that took the edge off her otherwise painfully fragile appearance. Her skin was so papery every line of bone was clear beneath its thin cover and her hair had the dull tinge Grace had seen only once before, on her grandmama after she had been taken ill with the bad chest that had killed her.

Spencer swiftly reached out a steadying hand as the newcomer swayed on her feet.

‘Why are you up? Doctor Sharp was quite insistent you shouldn’t be walking about.’

His tone changed abruptly from the brusque manner of moments before, now edged with an undercurrent of worry, but it wasn’t just the transformation of his voice that made Grace blink in sudden confusion that grew to join that already holding court in her chest.

The frown had left his brow, his features smoothing out into a look of concern that wiped the displeasure from his face and enhanced the comeliness of his already eye-catching features tenfold. He looked younger, closer to his real age of twenty-five rather than the years his scowl advanced him to, and even the brutal edge his broken nose lent to his appearance diminished with the alteration in his expression.

Grace swallowed down a small sound of dismay as she took in the drastic change in the man who mere moments before had looked as though he might take on a bear and win. Far from shrugging off her unnerving reaction to the glowering Spencer, this new display of tenderness only made it return—with a displeasing vengeance. When he wasn’t looking as though all the world was his enemy Spencer’s face was as handsome as it had been as a youth, and when it softened further into palpable concern it was uncomfortably similar to the countenance that had so intrigued her all those years ago.

She twisted her fingers together, startled by the unconscious response of her body. Perhaps she had caught a chill, standing out on the slippery Cobb in a growing storm? There could no other cause for her cheeks to flush so in Spencer’s presence, or for her heart to flutter at the gentleness with which he supported his mother—only silly girls with romantic fancies would think anything otherwise and thanks to Henry’s cruelty she would never again be one of those .