4. Part IV
Part IV
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
~ Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Seven days after Lord Ashcroft’s epic defeat in ‘The Mansion of Happiness’
It was the height of terrible irony.
Persephone knew that she should have been happy, and she was.
She was happy that Alec had finally opened up to her.
She was happy when he stole kisses from her whenever the opportunity presented itself; before dinner in the hall, a rushed moment of passion in the garden, an early morning embrace in the woods.
Most of all, she was happy that he was here in the first place. Finally, after so much years of waiting, he was here. And he was more handsome, more charming, and more wonderful than she ever could have dreamed.
He’d even taken a liking to Mr. Roundtop.
Why, then, couldn’t she dismiss the question that seemed to loom larger with every day that passed?
The question that remained unanswered. The question he expertly dodged whenever she tried to bring it up in conversation.
The question that was only two letters long, but so vast that it filled an entire room.
Why now?
What had changed that he suddenly wanted to pursue their engagement now?
And what was the rush?
He’d had four years to come and court her.
Four years to bring her a mangled bouquet of flowers still damp from morning dew that he’d picked himself (flowers that she’d lovingly placed in a vase beside her bed and woke up to each morning with a smile).
Four years to walk with her in the woods while they watched Mr. Roundtop scurry this way and that after tasty grubs.
Four years to cast heated glances her direction at the dinner table hot enough to make the butternut squash soup taste tepid in comparison.
Instead, he’d arrived without forewarning and proceeded to pack four years of courtship into ten days. While she was grateful for the attention, she wondered at the urgency. Particularly when he began hinting at an autumn wedding in London, of all places.
Lady Montague did not share her concern.
“His lordship is right,” she said, her face alight with the glow of a woman who was soon to be mother-in-law to an earl. “London is beautiful this time of year. You’ll love it, Persephone.”
“I love it here, in Litchfield,” Persephone countered, bewildered frustration driving her heel into the floorboards of the upstairs sitting room where her mother was blissfully skimming through the pages of a fashion periodical while her eldest daughter paced back and forth.
“We’ve never gone this early before. Don’t you think it’s odd that Lord Ashcroft is in such a rush to return? ”
“Is he in a rush?” Lady Montague asked, idly turning the page.
“I hadn’t noticed. Regardless, this is cause for celebration, Persephone.
You’ve waited all this time, why waste another minute?
Lord Ashcroft is your betrothed and he wants to marry you.
What is all this fuss about? Save your cold feet for the night before the wedding. ”
“But he’s not, is he?” Persephone folded her arms. “He’s not my betrothed. Not really.”
“What?” Lady Montague snapped the periodical closed. “What did you say?”
“He’s not my betrothed,” she repeated. “Per the contract Father signed, we are not truly engaged. Father is merely withholding my hand in marriage to anyone else until Alec marries. The presumption being that he will marry me, but that’s not written in there. Not explicitly.”
“It is assumed, Persephone!” Lady Montague said shrilly. “Which is the same thing.”
Except it wasn’t.
It wasn’t the same thing at all.
And while she couldn’t fathom what ill intentions might have brought Alec here, Persephone was becoming more and more convinced that his abrupt appearance and quick courtship weren’t as arbitrary as he’d have them believe.
She knew him.
A foolish claim, perhaps, given their short acquaintance, but she did. She could tell when he wasn’t being entirely forthcoming with her. When he was hiding something by omission rather than outright lie. And there was something, something important, that he wasn’t telling her.
“I have come to care for Lord Ashcroft very deeply.” The intimate admission brought a warm flush of color to her cheeks. “I believe he, too, has come to care for me. But I cannot marry him if he does not give me a legitimate reason other than the contract.”
“Legitimate reason?” Her mother looked at her as if a second Mr. Roundtop had jumped out of her pocket. “He is an earl, Persephone. What other reason is there than that?”
Persephone sighed. “Mayhap I should go speak to him about this myself.”
With a sniff, Lady Montague picked up her periodical.
“Mayhap you should. By all intents and purposes, Lord Ashcroft has been a model guest and would be a splendid husband. You were the one that insisted on waiting for him all these years. Now he’s here, and you have doubts?
Sometimes I just don’t know if there’s any pleasing you, Persephone. ”
Maybe her mother was right, Persephone thought silently as she made her way downstairs to the drawing room where a maid had said she’d last seen Lord Ashcroft.
Maybe she was being silly and raising a fuss without due cause.
But when she reaching the drawing room, she found the door slightly ajar and Alec in deep conversation with an older man she didn’t recognize.
Before she could announce her presence, she accidentally found herself listening to what they were saying.
And all at once, in a terribly brutal way, Alec’s true motives became clear.
“…only have nine days left,” the older man was saying. “That includes a day’s travel to London. I’ve already purchased the common license, but if you aren’t married by the eighteenth, there is nothing I can do to reverse the terms of your father’s will.”
“It has to be London?” Alec’s voice was low and terse, so very different from the amused, husky tone he’d used earlier when he’d caught her by surprise at the bottom of the steps and nuzzled her neck before escorting her to breakfast. “It cannot be here?”
“London,” the man confirmed. “Your father’s terms were clear.”
“I don’t know if I can get her there by the eighteenth.”
“Then all inherited wealth and properties, as discussed, will transfer to your cousin effective immediately.”
Alec cursed. “I haven’t brought up the wedding outright. I’ll speak to her again, after dinner. Find a reason to explain the rush and leave for London as soon as possible.”
Explain the rush.
He meant lie.
Lie about the rush to marry.
His true reason for being here.
His sudden interest in pursuing her.
All of it.
All of it one big, awful, painful lie built on some…some sort of inheritance with a ticking time limit.
The tears came silently, but the sob that caught unexpectedly in her throat wasn’t as quiet. Both men looked to the door at the sound, and Alec’s eyes widened when he saw her standing there, her face drained of all color.
“Persephone. Damnit, Persephone–”
She ran. Like the very first time they met, she turned on her heel and bolted, picking a direction at random.
Without stopping to grab a cloak, she fled out the front door and across the lawn toward the distant wood, tears blurring her vision and the dark clouds that had begun to gather, forming an ominous patchwork quilt of blacks and grays as an autumn storm moved swiftly in.
***
“I take it that was Miss Persephone?” Mr. Beasley asked, observing with his typical apathy as Alec shot out of his chair.
“I should have told her,” the young earl said, yanking at his hair by the roots as he turned in a half circle. “Why the hell didn’t I tell her?”
The solicitor had his theories, but wisely kept them to himself as Alec paced across the drawing room.
“I don’t even care about the damned inheritance,” he went on, not waiting for a reply. “It’s not important. Not anymore. Let Eustice have it all.”
Here, as the family solicitor of more than three decades, Mr. Beasley thought it his duty to cut in. “To be clear, my lord, that would mean the entailment of both the London manor and the Wilshire estate to your cousin and his future heirs, in addition to the moneys–”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alec said flatly. “The only thing that matters is Persephone.”
There were, to Mr. Beasley’s estimation, two types of change.
The kind that never occurred, even when you wished most ardently that it would. Like waiting and watching from a distance for a cruel father to be kind to his son.
Then there was the change that seemed to happen overnight.
Unexpected.
Unprecedented.
Unpredictable.
In Mr. Beasley’s estimation, the latter was always preferable.
“Then might I suggest,” he said mildly, “you go get her.”
For a moment, Alec stared blankly at him. “Yes. Yes of course, you’re right. But I need one thing first.”
“And what is that, my lord?”
Alec shouted it over his shoulder as he sprinted from the room and Mr. Beasley couldn’t make out his response clearly, but if he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that the Earl of Ashburn said that he was going to fetch a hedgehog.
***
The rain came suddenly. Great, pouring buckets of it that caused Persephone to seek shelter under the nearest tree as thunder rumbled and lightning cracked across the sky.
Shivering, still crying, she huddled against the rough bark and hugged her arms around herself in an attempt to keep warm as the temperature dropped as swiftly as the water.
Wind whipped, sending wet leaves flying through the air in spirals of red and gold.
A particularly loud clap of thunder seemed to shake the very ground she stood on, and she jumped along with the branches of the tree as the storm barked and howled and bit.
Then, as quickly as the Earl of Ashcroft had appeared, it vanished, leaving a plethora of fallen debris and the smell of wet earth in its wake.