Nicola Cornick - Deceived

John Ellis placed the book on the table in front of him and looked up at her for a very long moment. There was a stillness about him that was striking. He did not say a word.

“Stand up when a lady enters the room,” the turnkey snapped at him.

The gentleman allowed his gaze to travel very slowly and insolently down Isabella’s entire body, from the peak of her hood to the tips of her shoes. Then, with equal deliberation, he removed his booted feet from the table and sat up a little straighter, but still he did not stand. There was an insolent appraisal in his eyes that brought the blood to Isabella’s face and her chin up in haughty defiance. His gaze fixed on her face and he did not look away for a single instant. His eyes were hard, his expression that of a man who has seen and done too much and will never again feel any emotion stronger than indifference.

Recognition, shocking and instantaneous, hit Isabella in the stomach. The world closed in around her. She felt seventeen again and a heedless debutante, barely more than a child. She remembered how her eyes had met those of this gentleman, not across some romantically crowded ballroom, but prosaically, over the teacups in her aunt’s shabby drawing room at Salterton.

“Who is that young man?” she had asked her aunt, Lady Jane Southern, and Jane had smiled and replied:

“His name is Marcus Stockhaven, my dear, and he is a lieutenant in the navy.” Jane had frowned a little as she’d watched Isabella’s expressive face. “Do not develop a tendre for him, Bella, for your mama would never allow the match. He is a nobody.”

She had spoken too late, of course. The tendre had blossomed instantly as Isabella had sat there, her gaze locked with the direct dark one of the man in the doorway. She had felt excited and faint and deliciously helpless to fight against her fate.

“He has no money and no expectations and your mama wishes you to marry well,” Jane had reminded her crisply, but her words of warning had been like an echo fading in the dark. Isabella had paid them no heed and had rushed headlong into first love. It had been a love that was going to end, quite properly, in a wedding. But then she had been obliged to marry Prince Ernest and everything had gone wrong….

Now, as her gaze met and held that of Marcus Stockhaven in much the same way as it had done in that faded drawing room twelve years before, Isabella felt a stunning sense of awareness and loss. A longing seared through her that made both the love and the heartbreak feel sharp and alive, as though all the feelings she had thought were dead had merely been sleeping and were awoken to instant life.

Then Stockhaven spoke, and the shackles of the past were broken.

“A lady,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze still resting on her. “I think you mistake. What possible reason could a lady have for coming here?”

One of the gamesters looked up and made a remark so coarse that Isabella winced. She raised a hand to stop the swelling indignation of the turnkey.

“Thank you,” she said crisply. “I will deal with this. Please show…Mr. Ellis…and myself to a room where we may speak alone.”

Her request caused some consternation. Evidently the jailer had not anticipated that she would require a private conversation and there were few facilities to deal with such an eventuality.

Marcus Stockhaven got to his feet. “You wish to speak privately with me, madam?”

“I do,” Isabella said.

Stockhaven’s voice was smooth and cold and its tone was mocking. “Surely you are aware that the price of privacy is higher than rubies in a place like this, madam?”

“It is fortunate then that I have brought my emeralds with me,” Isabella said, with composure. “Their price is higher than that of rubies.”

She put her hand in her reticule and withdrew the emerald bracelet that Ernest had given her when their daughter was born. He had told her that had the child been a boy then the bracelet would have been of diamonds. The emeralds were second best, like her marriage. She had never quite measured up to Ernest’s expectations, but at least his gift would come in useful at last.

In the dark light of the cell, the jewels glimmered with a deep radiance. The gamblers paused; one swore with awe and avarice.

“A private room,” Isabella repeated to the jailer. “At once.”

“At once, madam,” the jailer repeated, adjusting his assessment of her from countess to duchess. He had not considered the possibility of a foreign princess because she sounded so English.

An empty cell was found in short order. It was bare but for a moldy mattress, one hard chair, a table and a slop bucket. It was also cold. The jailer grabbed the bracelet from Isabella’s outstretched hand and it disappeared into his pocket quicker than a mouse down the throat of a snake. Marcus Stockhaven tucked his book beneath his arm and followed her from the one prison cell into the next with as little concern as though he were taking a walk in the park. Isabella admired his nerve at a time when her own feelings were in tatters. Her nerves were trembling; the conflict inside her echoed by a telltale quiver through her body.

The door scraped closed. There was a long silence, which Stockhaven did not break. He did not offer her the chair but took it himself, sitting watching her, his head at a slight slant, a quizzical look in his dark eyes. Isabella found it deeply unsettling. But then, he had always been able to disturb her with a mere glance.

“Well?”

Isabella jumped at the authoritative tone. Already it felt as though the balance of power in the interview was tilting away from her and that was all wrong. She needed to keep control of this. It was imperative that she dictate the terms. She struggled to regain the initiative.

“I—” Suddenly the words stuck in her throat. It was inconvenient to be troubled by scruples now. After she met with Churchward, she had gone straight out to the Doctors Commons to procure the special license. From there she had gone to the Fleet to purchase a husband. Desperation had kept her going and prevented her from questioning her actions too deeply. Whenever doubts had surfaced, she had fixed on the grim prospect of prison, and that had blotted out all else. But now, under the pitiless dark stare of Marcus Stockhaven, she was lost for words.

Stockhaven raised one black brow sardonically. “I have all the time in the world,” he said, “but I would prefer you to state your business as soon as possible, madam. It is a surprise to see you after all this time, and not a particularly welcome one. So…” He shrugged, and said, “Say your piece and let me get back to my book.”

Isabella swallowed hard. So he was not going to greet her with open arms. Of course not. How foolish of her to expect it when she had jilted him in the most painful and humiliating way imaginable. The shreds of their past passion mocked her.

“I thought that it was you,” she said slowly. “I recognized your voice.”

“How very flattering, after all these years,” Stockhaven said dryly. He leaned his chin on his hand. “What are you doing here?”

Isabella glanced toward the door, where she imagined that the turnkey’s ear was welded to the grille. There could be no names exchanged now if she wanted to preserve her anonymity, as presumably he wished to preserve his.

“I was looking for someone,” she said.

“But not me, I assume.” Stockhaven came to his feet with a compact grace. He was tall and broad-shouldered and his presence seemed to dominate the shabby cell. There was latent power in every line of his body—power that the stuffy confines of the room could not stifle. Isabella found that she was instinctively backing away, though he made no move toward her. She took a deep breath and forced herself to hold her ground.