Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (2 page)

She peered at the unmoving body of her “betrothed” through the tangled curtain of her black hair. And to think, when Peter had told her he had arranged a marriage for her she had been happy. Happy! As darkly comical as that seemed now, she had seen marriage as a way to leave Peter’s household, a way to escape from the cold stranger he had become since his return from the Peninsula, a way to escape from their quarrels and icy silences—so different from the laughter of her childhood. She had dreamed of a handsome young gallant, who would take her to London where she could become the portrait painter to the
ton,
the Toast of the Town.

Ha! Had there ever been a more naive chit than she had been? Those dreams had died a hard death when she had come downstairs for their dinner party that very night and seen the duke waiting for her, ancient and portly and drooling. She would have run away right then and there, barricaded herself in her room, if Peter’s iron grip on her satin-covered arm had not prevented her. She had had no choice but to bow her head and allow the duke to take her hand in his scaly palm.

She had thought she knew the worst life had to offer when she sat beside him at dinner, watching him down champagne and lobster patties as if they were nearing extinction. What very little she knew. What had happened after she retired, and the duke paid her a little “call,” had been inestimably worse.

It had been, in fact, like a painting she had once seen of the Last Judgment. Elizabeth now knew what those poor, doomed souls, flayed alive and shrieking, had felt when they were thrown to torment. Those snakelike hands had shoved her to the bed, the bed her mother and stepfather had once shared, and reached for her hem.

“You are mine now,” he had panted in her face, his breath hot and reeking of garlic. “Your brother thinks he has the better of me, but he can think again, my pretty little whore.” And he had latched his teeth onto her earlobe.

Elizabeth screamed then, screamed in mindless terror. Not even his slaps could silence her—she did not even feel them. As he turned to reach for a discarded petticoat to shove into her mouth, her desperate fingers had groped across the slippery sheets for something,
anything,
she could use in her own defense. She had only one thought now, desperate as a wounded animal, that she would surely die if this terrible assault went on.

Then she felt the cool, heavy porcelain of the chamberpot.

Thankfully, it was an
empty
chamberpot.

She had not meant to actually kill him. Just stop him from touching her.

Her own loud sobs, and a timid knocking at the door, jolted her into the present.

“Lady Elizabeth!” Daisy, Elizabeth’s young maid, pecked at the door again. “Was that you screaming, Lady Elizabeth?”

They knew! They knew what she had done, that she was a murderess, and now she would be dragged off and hanged, and Peter would laugh. All because of a pig like the duke. She was only eighteen—she did not want to die!

Life was so very unfair.

Daisy knocked at the door again, louder. “Lady Elizabeth, please! Is something amiss?”

They did not know! Of course they did not. Not at the moment, anyway. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she called, “I am quite all right, Daisy.”

“Truly, my lady?” Daisy’s voice was uncertain.

“Truly. I ... I had a bad dream, that is all.” Elizabeth shut her eyes tightly. If only that were true. “You ... you may go. I will ring for you in the morning.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Elizabeth listened as Daisy’s footsteps faded, then she ran across the room, tripping over her tattered hem, to where her armoire stood open. She scattered ball gowns, tea frocks, parasols, slippers, and bonnets onto the floor carelessly, pushing a change of clothes into a valise along with her mother’s jewel case and a packet of letters from an old schoolfriend, the famous artist Georgina Beaumont. Georgie was in Italy now, far away from England, and she had always urged Elizabeth to join her.

Elizabeth felt that now would be an auspicious time to accept that offer.

On top of the clothes, she placed a carefully wrapped bundle of sketchbooks, pencils, and pigments.

“I have to leave,” she whispered as she wriggled out of the ruined chemise. “There is no other way.”

As she turned to snatch up clean undergarments, she caught a glimpse of herself in the gilt-framed mirror above her dressing table. Purple bruises darkened her pale shoulders and small breasts; blood had caked at the corner of her mouth. She was suddenly disgusted, nauseous, at such vivid proof of what had happened this horrible night. She grabbed up the lethal chamberpot and deposited the meager contents of her stomach.

When the illness had passed, Elizabeth knelt there on the floor, naked and trembling, unable to cry or think or do anything.

She swore, then and there, that no man would have such power over her again. Her father, her stepfather, her brother, the duke—all the men in her life had caused her naught but sorrow. From then on, she would not be Lady Elizabeth, pampered daughter and helpless pawn. She was simply Elizabeth, and she would be fine on her own.

Chapter One

London, Two Years Later

“B
y the gods, it is Old Nick.”

Nicholas Hollingsworth, now Sir Nicholas Hollingsworth, late of His Majesty’s Army and with a knighthood for valor on the battlefield, raised his dark gaze from the cards in his hand. He squinted through the haze of cigar smoke and brandy fumes until he met a pair of cold blue eyes he had never thought to see again this side of hell.

“Peter Everdean.” His voice was steady, low, despite the turmoil in his brain, in his soul. “Is it you? Alive?”

“Sorry are you, Nick?” The golden-haired man smiled sweetly, Mephisto disguised as Gabriel.

Around them, the tumult of the gaming hell went on, men laughing and shouting, bottles shattering, smoke billowing, fortunes won and lost, lives changing on the turn of a card. But to Nicholas, as he folded the cards carefully in his long fingers and laid them on the table, none of the London decadence existed any longer.

He was back on a scorching Spanish battlefield, and the smoke was now cannon fire, the smell acrid in his nostrils, the dirt under his worn boots slippery with blood. He felt again the sharp pain in his leg, the wet, sticky warmth of his own blood, the numb sensation of falling, falling....

A pair of blue eyes above him, a voice telling him they would soon reach the field hospital, not letting him fall any further. Not letting him die.

Nicholas shook his head fiercely. He rose to his feet, perfectly steady despite the quantity of brandy he had consumed that night, his knuckles white on the silver head of his walking stick. He moved carefully toward the elegant figure who waited in the smoke, not entirely sure he wasn’t more drunk than he had thought. Or dreaming.

“I thought you were dead,” he breathed.

“Certainly not.” Peter’s voice was as cool, as controlled as ever. “I am far too wicked to die. As, I see, are you, Old Nick.” He gestured toward Nicholas with his quizzing glass, taking in the long scar on his tanned cheek, the walking stick that was more than a mere fashionable accessory.

“Quite. Just a bit the worse for wear.” Nicholas ran his hand through his thick black curls, uncharacteristically bemused. Here he was, standing in a noisy London hell, conversing calmly with the “late” Peter Everdean, as if four long years had been nothing. Peter was still the golden Apollo to Nick’s Hephaestus ; slender, charming, graceful, still able to gain every girl’s eye, be she duchess or Spanish peasant.

And still as cold as a witch’s ...

Hmm.

Nicholas had seen the truth of Peter long ago, when they had lodged together in Spain. Peter was a man with some secret torment, some demon that rode him. He was charming, yes, an excellent companion, but unpredictable.

Entirely the wrong companion for wild Old Nick Hollingsworth, bastard son of the Earl of Ainsley, whose father had bought him a commission in the hopes he would stick his spoon in the wall in Spain and cause the Ainsleys no more trouble with his escapades. Together, Nick and Peter had been the terrors of the army.

And Peter had saved his life, practically carried him miles to a field hospital. Then disappeared. A physician had told Nicholas, when he awoke from his delirium, that his rescuer had died later that day.

Now here he was, alive, whole, the same Peter. With the same flashing, secret torment in his eyes. And Nick owed him so very much. Owed him his very life.

Now Peter smiled at him coolly, swinging the quizzing glass by its long ribbon. “You know, my friend,” he said. “You may be just the man who can help me.”

A short carriage ride later, Peter sat down behind his massive library desk and waved Nick to a nearby armchair. “I have been living rather quietly in the country since the war, gotten involved with local politics, that sort of thing.” He held out a box of expensive cigars, waiting for Nicholas to take one before he chose for himself. “But I am not altogether isolated in Derbyshire. I’ve heard of
you.”

“Indeed?” Nicholas grinned.

“Indeed ... Old Nick. I read the scandal sheets.”

“Doesn’t seem your sort of reading material, Everdean. Or should I say, Clifton.” Nicholas leaned back in his chair, enjoying the cigar, the familiarity of Peter’s cynical company.

“My ... someone at Clifton Manor enjoys them greatly. I merely read them when they happen to be lying about, of course.”

“Of course,” Nicholas replied, all innocence.

“Yes. Your name is always there. Duels, brawls, hearts broken, horse races won. They say you refused to marry the Woodley chit when you danced with her three times at Almack’s.”

“I only danced with her once, and of course I would never marry her. She has less conversation than my horse, and is not nearly as pretty.”

“Ha! And what was the latest? That opera dancer? Celine Lacroix?”

Nicholas laughed out loud, more at Peter’s coolly raised brow than at the memory of the fiery mademoiselle. “She stood in front of my house screaming and throwing rocks at the windows. Woke the whole neighborhood, not to mention that she broke five windows.”

“You
had
given the ... lady her congé. Quite understandable that she would be upset.” Peter clicked his tongue in mock sympathy. “But really, Nick, you cannot devote your life to tormenting your father’s family forever, you know.”

Nicholas sighed. “I know, I know. But since the war, there is not much need for the meager skills I possess.”

Peter studied him for a long moment. “What have you been doing, besides drinking and whoring?”

Nicholas looked down at the smoldering tip of his cigar. “Forgetting, of course. As I am sure you are. And having a very good time in the process.”

“Old Nick, eh?”

“Quite.”

“If you ever happen to become bored with that, I have a task that might amuse you.”

Nicholas sat up straight, his interest caught by something in Peter’s voice, a distant longing perhaps, a hint of steel. “Do tell.”

“Perhaps you will recall, two years ago my household was involved in some ... unpleasantness, which I do not like to recall.”

Nicholas frowned. “Yes, of course, Clifton. I did not connect it to you. I was in Paris at the time.”

Yet the tale had reached even to Paris. The Earl of Clifton’s sister, fleeing her home the night of her betrothal, leaving behind a very elderly, very dead fiance. Clifton had put it about that the deceased duke had died of a heart attack, hinted that it had come about because of his exertions in the bed of a housemaid, and that his sister had retreated in heartbreak to distant relatives.

Not that anyone actually believed that. But the Earl of Clifton was rumored to be as ruthless as he was reclusive, and the heirs to the dead duke had been hardly prostrate with grief, but rather elated to inherit the title and estates. The scandal had soon died down, and there had been no inquiry.

Peter’s eyes flashed a blue fire, quickly hidden by golden lashes. “I need someone, someone I can trust, to find my sister and bring her back to England.”

Nicholas almost fell out of his chair. Him, as the finder of lost brides, the seeker of runaway debutantes? Ludicrous. Absurd. “I understood the young lady to be in Cornwall. Or was it Devon?”

Peter’s pale hands tightened. “Neither. I’ve recently received word she may be in Italy.”

“And you want me to find her?” Nicholas rose to his feet, convinced completely that his old friend had truly gone mad at last. “Italy is a very large place, Everdean, and there are many locations where a runaway heiress could hide.”

“There is no place where she could hide from Nicholas Hollingsworth, surely. It is very important that Elizabeth be brought back here to me. Soon. And there is no one I trust to do it, as I trust you. Remember Spain? We are old friends. Are we not?”

Nicholas looked into those ice blue eyes, and saw there all he owed Peter Everdean. His life might be worthless, wasted in drink and women, but he liked living it all the same. If it had not been for Peter, he would be lying even now in a mass grave in Spain.

Perhaps a sojourn in Italy would do him some good.

He slowly sat back down. “I don’t even know what your sister looks like.”

A small smile never reached Peter’s eyes. “That is easily rectified. And Elizabeth is actually my step-sister. Her mother married my father.”

Peter pushed a small inlaid box across the desk. Nicholas lifted the lid, and there was the most lovely woman he had ever seen in his thirty-four years. And he had seen some.

No, he amended, as he studied the miniature portrait closer. She was
not
beautiful. Her sweet, heart-shaped face and narrow shoulders above a purple satin bodice almost gave her the appearance of a child. Her slender neck seemed to bend with the weight of black hair, swept up and entwined with pearls and amethysts. Yet her wide, blue-gray eyes seemed to speak to him in some way. The curve of her shell-pink lips indicated some wonderful, precious secret that she would divulge only to him.