Better Love Next Time (Rakes & Ruin #2)

Prologue

Notfelle Estate Family Chapel

Huntingdonshire, England

Drag me to the altar and I’ll shout my refusal to marry to the heavens.

How many women throughout time had thought those words?

How many had dared to say those words aloud?

Exactly how many had done as Kitty did? Thought and said those very words and then walked meekly down the aisle, head bent to the worn tiles, halted at the left of her betrothed, Lord Staverton—a man old enough to be her great-grandfather, more malicious than a Nile crocodile—and waited.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God…” Vicar Johnston began.

Kitty prayed.

“Therefore, is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites…”

She prayed harder.

“Therefore, if any man can shew any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak…”

She prayed for a second chance. For Julian St. Clair to burst through the chapel doors and save her.

The vicar said, “Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife…”

“I will,” Lord Staverton replied.

She ceased praying when the vicar turned to her and said, “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him…”

Kitty raised her head and said, “No.”

Her father, Lord Staverton, and Vicar Johnston jerked forward in stunned unison.

The vicar cleared his throat.

“She said yes,” her father said, gripping the tender flesh beneath her arm.

Kitty raised her voice. “No.”

“Yes,” her father hissed.

“Sir Jeffrey—”

Her father cut off the vicar with a slash of his large, bony hand. “She said yes. Now get on with it.”

“She must consent.”

“She has.”

“Sir, I distinctly heard your daughter say no.”

Lord Staverton’s bulbous nose turned a livid shade of purple. “I heard yes.”

Kitty’s voice drew low, anger swirling from the deep to fortify her courage. “I said no.”

A hand seized the back of her head, followed by the sickening crackle of her hair being torn from its roots.

Not a surprise. No, she had expected it.

The hand dragged her down the stone aisle and up two flights of service stairs.

She lost one shoe in the servant quarters and the next up the rickety steps leading to the tower.

The fortress opened and slammed with a boom.

Dropped to the floor, she scrambled to the old trunk full of her childhood treasures and held on.

Her father struck her back with his riding crop. “You will say yes!”

Kitty clenched her fists against the agonizing burn.

“Say it!” The leather stringer lashed across her neck.

To consent to whom she would marry was the only power she had in this world. She’d die before she would give it away to a fat, old man. A man she didn’t love, a man who lived in a gloomy manse in the wilds of northern England where the sun never shone. Where dreams went to die.

If her dreams were going to die, she was going with them.

Her mouth hit the edge of the trunk, splitting open her lip and jarring her teeth. She fought the urge to writhe and cry and beg him to stop. Instead, she willed every screaming, throbbing fiber to hold still.

Her father’s breath grated in silence. “I will return in the morning, and so help me God, you will say yes.”

His uneven steps echoed across the old wood planks. The door slammed shut, and a key turned in the lock.

Gritting her teeth over the pain, Kitty opened the trunk and searched for something to defend herself with when he returned.

Frayed books, a journal with three entries, her doll, Prudence, without hair and clothes.

An empty bottle of her mother’s perfume.

Her hand grazed a ribbon. Bringing it up, she fumbled to her side with a noiseless cry.

Tied within the Prussian blue silk was a lock of Julian’s black hair.

Rain tapped a gentle rhythm on the stained glass as she looked to the ceiling, the rafters wavering through her tears. She closed her eyes and prayed for oblivion, and when she awoke at the creak of the floorboard near the door, she realized she had fallen asleep. And everything was the same.

As footsteps rushed toward her, she clutched the lock of Julian’s hair, still in her hand, and braced for a kick. There was a thump at her side. A hand rolled her to her back. In the moonlight, Julian knelt beside her.

His dark eyes narrowed in disbelief. His arm scooped her waist, drawing her to her knees. He shed his coat, threaded her arms through the sleeves, and sat back on his haunches. And just stared.

She tucked her chin to the facing of his green frock coat, breathing in the scent of spice and oranges. “I said no. It… it didn’t go over well.”

“Christ, Kitty, I—” He scoured his face with both hands. “What now?”

“I don’t know, but I…” I would rather die.

Pulling her to her feet, he plied her chin and studied her face, her neck. By the muscles working his stubbled jaw, she looked as bad as she felt.

He secured each button of his coat about her, adjusting it on her slim shoulders. He rolled up her sleeves and halted at the Prussian blue ribbon peeking from her fist. Unfurling her fingers, he regarded the lock of his hair.

In his grimace, she saw the boy she had loved and let go. Let go and still loved.

The silence lengthened. In answer, somewhere outside the old manor’s stone walls, a robin warbled.

His gaze flicked to hers, the brown of his eyes black, the whites stark. “You left me. You did not wish to marry me. This—all this—is your doing.”

“It is,” she whispered. She had left him unwillingly. On a steel-grey day three years past filled with hope and the miracle created by their love.

“You made your feelings for me perfectly clear three years ago,” he said. “In a damn letter.”

“I did.” She could not tell Julian she had been forced to write the letter without risking a life most dear, and that she was really not supposed to be here, alive, at all.

He strode away with an oath. Raking a hand through his hair, he kicked a dilapidated crate, one they had used as children when they had played Henry VIII.

Kitty had relished her role as Anne Boleyn.

She had steadied herself on the crate, after a prayer and wishing everyone well, ready for the French executioner to do God’s will.

She looked to the narrow, arched windows and pictured the tangled shrubbery and unforgiving ground below.

With a leap, it would all be over. She would cease to live in fear.

Never have to pretend again. And she was so very tired of pretending she was the same girl she had been three years past, before that steel-grey day. Smiling. Laughing.

It was a mortal sin, to take that leap. Yet relief washed over her.

Her fingers were deft as she undid the buttons of Julian’s coat. “Please leave before Sir Jeffrey comes.”

“I don’t give a damn about your father.”

“I… I have decided it is best I marry Staverton.”

“After all this?” He cut a hand at her figure. “I don’t believe you.”

“I am tired, Julian. I can fight no longer.” The summer moonlight beckoned through the window. Her legs felt light, ready to run there, ready to break glass and plant her hands on the sill.

And jump.

She trembled with anticipation as she slipped out of Julian’s coat and held it out to him.

He hesitated. Then crossed the garret with quiet steps and took back his coat. “I never thought we would end this way, you know.”

Her mouth was dry. “Neither did I.”

He grazed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I loved you. And I’m sure”—he swallowed—“I’ll never love another as I did you.”

“And I am quite sure you will love again,” she said. “We were but children. The next will be a better love.”

A sad laugh broke from his lips. He bent and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Take care, fairy. I wish you a happy life.”

“And I the same.” She struck out her hand. “Remember me well, will you?”

He engulfed her hand, made to speak but didn’t. Without lingering further, he walked away.

Tears clouded her eyes and slipped down her face, obscuring her sight. But she needn’t eyes to form the picture of Julian leaving her life for good. Nor did she require clear eyes to see what events lay before her. She only needed the will.

At the garret door, the latch clicked.

Julian swiveled on his heel, his expression inscrutable in the shadows. “Come here, Kitty.”

“Go,” she whispered harshly.

He met her in long strides. His right thumb worked the ruby ring on his little finger as he looked down his proud nose, made proud by its aquiline curve and the cool manner in which he peered.

He wrenched the ring from his hand and jammed it upon her right fourth finger. “We will leave for Scotland immediately and be married. Once it is done, you are free to leave and live your life. If you wish, you may follow me to the Continent.”

She gaped down at the ring.

“I know you. I know your soul, and though I have damned it countless times, I will not allow it. ‘Remember me well?’ No. I will not. And by God, you will not jump out of that window.”

Reaching to the back of his breeches, he pulled out a silver-inlaid flintlock pistol and cocked it. Her eyes widened at the weapon before he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her from the garret.

The Blacksmith’s Shop, the first establishment in the first village over the Scottish border delineated by the River Sark smelled of burnt coal, horse sweat, and coin.

Mr. Joseph Paisley, in the wake of England’s prohibition of “irregular marriages” ten years past, had seen an opportunity.

Paisley had styled himself an anvil priest as a few other Scots had done, and married his first eloping couple.

And so Julian stood in front of a large anvil, his bride quiet at his side, with a blacksmith for an officiant.

He had paid an exorbitant amount to rouse the enterprising smithy from his bed and more for witnesses.

Kitty had asked and been denied a real priest. As if the marriage which they entered into could have any semblance of heavenly endorsement.

Julian did not want to marry Kitty.

But the alternative was indefensible. Remember me well? What Kitty had sweetly uttered when facing the executioner during their childish games? Not while he breathed.

He had been drinking steadily the afternoon Kitty’s father had carried her out of his cousin’s home after getting word of Kitty’s scheme to escape marriage to Lord Staverton.

The friends Julian had been drinking with had gone and invited Kitty Babbington to join them on their trip to the Continent, commencing in a week’s time.

Yes, Julian had been drunk when he had seen the bleakness in Kitty’s eyes, almost a death, as her father had dragged her down the stairs.

Julian had veered his bleary gaze to Staverton as Sir Jeffrey Babbington hauled his daughter across the reception hall.

The fat lord who could be Kitty’s grandfather had wiped his fish lips with the back of his sleeve.

The lecher had been salivating on his coming wedding night. Church-sanctioned rape.

Julian had felt the blood drain from his face.

He should have walked away. Better yet, ridden neck or nothing back to London where he had spent the past year forgetting Kitty Babbington’s betrayal with whores, high stakes, and liquor.

Why had he listened to Anthony Philips? Julian’s friend had been drunker than all of them. Though he hid it well. Always had.

A vengeful, rotten part of Julian’s soul had rejoiced in the face of Kitty’s plight. It said she deserved Staverton’s withering old member pumping away in the dark, every tear to be shed in her future as Lady Staverton. For leaving him gutted.

He hadn’t walked or ridden away. He had rescued her. Bottles of whisky had fortified him as his coach had raced north to Scotland. Now he was here, marrying the young woman who had shattered his soul in a letter. And there was nothing he could do but answer Mr. Paisley’s questions.

“Your home parish?” Paisley asked.

“Holyrood, Southampton.”

Sober, with a crushing headache, he calculated how large an allowance he could afford to offer his wife when she left. He hoped to God she left.

Another question was posed. “Are you free to marry?”

He would offer Kitty a lump sum as well as an allowance. A letter to his solicitor and it would be out of his hands. He would never need to know her address, how she spent her freedom, only that he had afforded her the opportunity.

Kitty’s voice whispered, “Julian?”

He roused himself from his thoughts and, for the first time since arriving at the blacksmith’s, looked down at the pale young woman at his side.

Her upper lip was swollen. It still bore the cut from her father’s cruelty.

There was a violet bruise marring her left cheek.

Her back was slim and straight, but he had seen the work of Sir Jeffrey Babbington’s riding crop.

The raised wheals beneath her torn bodice hadn’t yet healed.

He did the right thing by marrying her. But it didn’t mean he wanted to.

Kitty’s huge hazel eyes glazed with tears in the lamplight.

She was frightened. Not because she feared her father would catch her.

There was no one on their trail. They had vanished the night he had rescued her without having to use his pistol.

Even when he had obliged her request to retrieve her sketchbooks and dared the extra steps to her room.

No, Kitty feared he would walk away. As he should have done four days ago.

The words stuck in his teeth until he swallowed and looked away. “I am free to marry.”

A few more declarations followed, shockingly insufficient for the permanence of their undertaking. Paisley announced them man and wife. The hammer struck the anvil, the harsh clang reverberating in Julian’s miserable four-and-twenty soul.

Kitty’s small, cold hand curled in his. His gaze dropped to her parted lips. Did she actually think he would kiss her? He could never touch her again because he knew where that would lead. She was a drug requiring strict avoidance.

His eyes flared before turning and directing Paisley to lead them to the register.