A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (2 page)

Lord Aldridge’s reaction was more tempered. He maintained a tight approximation of a smile, but his face seemed to stiffen, settling into a careful veneer. “I rarely jest. We are now engaged.” His tone, though calm, was everything she had come to expect from listening to him direct the hunt—confident that his wishes would be followed to his exact specifications.

The rest of the world might cower, or jump to obey his every word, but Antigone had no scruple in disappointing him. It was impossible for her to accept—every thought and every feeling, from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes, rebelled.

Antigone ignored her mother’s wide-eyed nod urging her to accept with all possible alacrity, and latched firmly on to the first and most polite excuse that leaped to mind. “It is impossible, sir. We are in mourning.”

Lord Aldridge’s quick response showed him prepared for just such an argument. “Just so,” he confirmed. “But at such an unsettling time, it is best to secure one’s future.”

Unsettling? To Antigone’s way of thinking, “unseemly” was the more appropriate choice of words. Even she, who had shared Papa’s cheerful disregard for appearances and social conventions, found the haste to settle her future shockingly swift—and deeply, deeply disrespectful. She had only just come from her father’s grave.

“I am freshly bereaved, sir,” she began in a tone no less uncompromising than his own. “While I thank you for the honor you do me by your proposal, it is impossible for me to accept. I must respectfully—”

“Ask that you give my daughter some time to accustom herself to the honor,” Mama broke in hastily, having seemed to find her voice at last. “Of course, nothing can be mentioned while we are in mourning. Our
understanding
will have to remain a private matter for…”—Mama foundered briefly—“for some months. And with Antigone so young—a girl just eighteen. She has been raised as a gentleman’s daughter, but she will need to learn a very great deal in order to be prepared to be Lady Aldridge, and manage a household as large as Thornhill Hall.”

Another shock, as swift but only slightly less appalling than the first because of its unexpected strangeness, buffeted Antigone, knocking the wind from her. She was not eighteen. She had not been eighteen for two years.

Why on earth was her mother so blatantly lying?

But Mama’s pointed, almost wild look pinned Antigone to the lie, warning her not to argue, or challenge her fragile authority in front of this stranger. This rich, well-connected, powerful stranger. And Antigone wavered, if only for a moment.

Unfortunately, without any more immediate argument from Antigone, Lord Aldridge took her silence as compliance. “Yes, of course. You may take some time to accommodate yourself. And to make the necessary plans.”

Antigone swallowed the profane retort that rose to her lips. His lordship was already very much mistaken in her—she didn’t have an accommodating bone in her body, and the only plan she would be making was how to convince her poor, delusional mama of the utter, insane unsuitability of such a match.

“Though our betrothal must at this point remain private,” Lord Aldridge continued, “I’ve arranged for you a small present. A token of my regard, as our engagement cannot yet be made formal.”

Again, “arranged.” Strangely condescending for a hopeful bridegroom.

In the absence of any sign of acceptance from Antigone, her mother supplied the necessary enthusiasm. “How good you are, my lord.”

Antigone refused to be so easily led. If the man thought he could buy her compliance with a trinket, or seduce her with material gifts, he was even more deeply mistaken in her character.

But his offering proved to be something more than a mere trinket. The gift Lord Aldridge drew from the sueded pouch in his pocket was a delicate, ceramic cameo mourning pendant. He held the heart-shaped pendant out carefully so that the luminous pearl edging glowed in the bright winter sunlight, beckoning gracefully to her across the short distance. Luring her into polite submission with its thoughtfulness.

The carved scene depicted a classically draped figure mourning over an urn. Even though it was not large, the tasteful piece must have cost a bloody fortune—enough, at any rate, to keep the Prestons in coal and meat, and free from even imaginary worry, for at least a year.

Antigone could already see the light of relief—as well as the canny calculation of cost and value—spark in her mother’s eyes as Mama moved forward, irresistibly drawn by the promise of so much thoughtful beneficence, while Antigone struggled to find a suitable objection.

But there was nothing untoward, nothing inappropriate or objectionable, in such a gift. Any other sort of girl would have accepted it gracefully. But Antigone Preston had never been any other sort of girl but the kind who looked gift horses directly in the mouth, and checked every last one of their teeth.

She chose her words carefully. “I am honored, sir. And I am deeply appreciative of the thoughtfulness of such a gift. But everything forbids that I should accept it.”

He made a strange involuntary movement of his mouth, a satisfied turning up and narrowing of his lower lip, as if her resistance secretly pleased rather than annoyed him. “I honor your scruples. But I must insist.”

Such a bald statement deserved an equally blunt rejoinder. “So must I.” Her tone was just short of tart, but it was better he know that she was no witless gudgeon to be gulled or intimidated into easy compliance. And perhaps her intractability would put him off where her mere objections had not.

Mama gasped at her boldness. “Antigone,” she warned under her breath as she grasped her daughter’s elbow. “You will accept the gift. Not to do so would dishonor the very kind and thoughtful memorial to your father.”

Papa would have cared nothing for the showy sentimentality of mourning, but Antigone’s grief was too new and too vast to allow her to give even the
appearance
of disrespect to his memory. There was nothing for it but to accept.

“Thank you, sir.” She had to work to steady her voice. “Pray forgive me if I appeared ungrateful.”

“There, now.” Mama was restored to some semblance of serenity. She patted Antigone’s hand before she turned to encourage Lord Aldridge with a smile and a nod. “You must allow his lordship the privilege of putting it on you.”

Antigone was not by nature a docile person, but with her mother at her elbow, there was little she could do, short of physical disobedience, to prevent Lord Aldridge from circling around behind her, and reaching over her shoulders to loop the necklace about her neck.

There was even less she could do to prevent herself from twitching, jumping almost, as if a spider had landed on her neck, when Lord Adldridge’s thumbs brushed her skin as he settled the clasp against her nape.

A moment, no more. But it felt as if … as if he were testing her out. The way one put a horse into the traces of a carriage for the first time. How very strange. And uncomfortable.

Antigone stepped quickly out from under his hands, but the uncomfortably proprietary sensation of his touch against her skin lingered.

For the first time in her life, she felt
unsettled
—uneasy and at a loss for what to do or say to regain her equilibrium. The chain and pendant were delicate and small, but the necklace hung heavy against her neck with a force all out of proportion to its weight, pressing against her breastbone like a yoke—hard enough to make her pulse start and falter in her veins.

Lord Aldridge, on the other hand, seemed to have gained composure and stability. His mouth arranged itself into an real, albeit acidic smile, as if he were pleased with the results of his little test. “Your gift, Miss Antigone, contains two parts. The first was so you might think of your father. And the second, I hope, will make you think of me.”

Lord Aldridge then offered to her an antique lover’s eye ring—a small enameled depiction of his left eye, made in much younger days when such tokens had been fashionable, and his hair had been brown, instead of silver, and his cheeks far less drawn than they appeared today.

While such a gift might once have been fashionable, Antigone could not help but find it distasteful—it was too intimate a thing to be given by someone she had only just met. But how clever of him to attach the giving of such an inappropriately intimate
thing
to the wholly appropriate and acceptable mourning cameo. How bloody diabolically clever.

“I commissioned it some years ago, on the Continent, during my grand tour, and have kept it as a keepsake all these years.”

“It is very pretty, my lord.” Mama supplied the praise Antigone would not. “Is it not a handsome gift, Antigone?” she prompted.

Antigone could only guess at his lordship’s age, but his grand tour must have been at the very least twenty-five, if not thirty-five years ago, as England had been at war with France for one reason or another for the whole of Antigone’s life. The recent peace had only just made travel on the Continent safe again. “It must be very old, indeed.”

Another squeeze on her elbow kept Antigone from making any further blunt commentary. Mama was the one to say, “I am sure Antigone would be honored to wear such a mark of your favor.”

For herself. Antigone was not at all sure.

But his lordship, whatever his years, had not been born yesterday. And his pride ensured that he had the last word. “A little something, my dear Antigone, so you know that though our agreement remains private, I am nevertheless keeping my eye on you.”

She felt it then, the full breadth of her repugnance—the chill that skated across her skin like the rime of ice reaching its cold fingers across the surface of a pond, spreading frost over her skin as his meticulous, appraising glance slid slowly over her with the soft, dry skin of the belly of a snake.

No, she wanted to shout. No, no, no. Not in a hundred years. Never.

She wanted to snatch the pendant over her head and throw the ring at him and tell him exactly what he could do with his bloody eye.

But she did not. She stood in the middle of the morning room as if she had been struck as numb and frozen as the statues in the graveyard, and wanted her father back. She watched with silent, surprised shock as Lord Aldridge and her mother
arranged
her future.

“Mrs. Preston. I thank you again for your time, ma’am.” Lord Aldridge turned and bowed again, very formally, to Antigone. “I hope I’ll see you wearing my gifts when next we meet. Until then.”

He didn’t even have to finish the sentence. She heard the words echo through her head as if he had whispered in her ear.
Until then, I’ll be watching you.

With that he strode out of the morning room and out of the quiet house. Leaving silent destruction in his wake.

Chapter Two

Mama collapsed into a chair and passed her hands over her face, as if the interview had exhausted her diminished reserves of strength. As if she, and not Antigone, were the one who had just been bartered away to a man she could never hope to even tolerate, let alone come to like.

A man who filled her with something close to dread if not outright nausea.

“Mama!” She knew her mother was beyond fragile from trying to cope with her fear and loss, but all the gentleness had been wrung out of Antigone by the events of the day. She could not keep the petulance from permeating her voice. “What can you be thinking? You must know that I can never engage myself to Lord Aldridge. I don’t care if he is rich—all the money in the world could not induce me to accept such a man. It’s impossible. And this is no day for a proposal, no matter this talk of unsettled futures. Papa is not yet cold in the ground.”

“Oh, Antigone.” Mama’s face began to crumple. “Don’t be so cruel.” She clutched her handkerchief into a damp wad of fabric.

“I don’t mean to be cruel, but how do you think I feel? Do
my
feelings account for nothing?”

Mama countered with a question of her own. “How could I refuse? He is Lord Aldridge, and he called for no other reason, it seems, than to ask for your hand. I felt it was my duty to accept. With things, yes—don’t give me that look—
unsettled,
we cannot afford to do otherwise. Who knows if we will even have a roof over our heads tomorrow. What will become of us if we have to leave this house?”

“Mama, there is no reason we should have to leave the house.” Antigone tried to keep her rising frustration in check. “The deed is in Papa’s name.”

“But Redhill was a gift from his uncle, Lord Baywater. A wedding gift. All these years. But now the present Baywater may take it back.”

“He may not, Mama. But I have written to both Papa’s solicitor in Chichester and to Papa’s cousin, Lord Baywater himself, to assure us that it is so,” she explained for what seemed the fifth time. “You must not let your grief carry away all logical thought.”

“Don’t talk to me of logic. How can I rest until I know for sure? And how could I refuse such an offer from Lord Aldridge?”

At least they were back to the matter at hand. “Because it makes absolutely no sense.”

“Of course it makes sense. He is in need of a wife.” Mama stated her facts as if they were obvious and required no explanation. “You have caught his eye.”

“But why, Mama, why?” Antigone threw up her hands in frustration. “Why should a man as old, and rich, and used to having his way as Lord Adlridge want
me,
of all people? I’ll warrant the man never looked at me before in his life, except to criticize the way I ride Velocity.”

It was her beautiful but painfully shy older sister, Cassandra, with her dark hair, luminous lavender eyes, porcelain skin, and pink mouth, that people had always looked at and admired—at least one local would-be poet had been driven to write rapturous odes in her honor. If anyone had ever admired Antigone, it had been for the openness of her straightforward, cheerful character.

A character that had not come from her mother. “His lordship would not be alone in his criticism,” her mother rejoined with a sniff. “You ride that mare a great deal too fast for anyone’s comfort, especially mine. Half the district is sure you will come to grief in a ditch, and I live in terror that you’ll be killed, and leave me alone. I don’t know what I should do if you were taken from me as well.” She covered her face with her handkerchief, and descended into noisy sobs.