For Love of the Earl (22 page)

She wanted Alec here.
 
She wanted to see his face, feel his touch.
 
She wanted to goad him into saying something immature and ridiculous like he always did.
 
She wanted him there to make her laugh.
 

Her eyes flew open as she sat up on the bunk, her head barely missing the ceiling above her.
 
Realization spread through her like the warming effects of good brandy.
 
And with it came long seething anger.
 

"Alec Black, you son of a-"
 

~

The Duke of Kent's Country Party

July 1800

Sarah Beckham scratched at the lace of her collar.
 
She didn't know why the frilly thing was considered so posh or why her guardian felt it was necessary to subject her to such torture.
 
There was nothing wrong with a simple cotton pinafore.
 
Her guardian said girls of her class did not wear such garments.
 
That only those still in the orphanage would wear such a uniform.
 
Besides, she was too old for such things.
 
Sarah was becoming a lady, and she had to dress as such.
 

Sarah felt no such thing.
 
Barely half fifteen, she still felt exactly the same as she did when she was but an eight year old child at St. Mary's in The City.
 
She may have grown a bit taller and gained a bit of weight, but there was nothing about her that said she was a lady.
 
And why was her guardian always going on about class?
 
Sarah had no time for such things.
 
She knew who she was, and she needn't be reminded every time her guardian told her she belonged to a different one now.
 
Bastards never changed classes, and her guardian should've known that.
 
Funny how no one told her.
 

Sarah had tried to tell her a time or two, but her guardian had simply muttered some words Sarah didn't understand but presumed they indicated her fresh behavior.
 
She didn't see what was fresh about pointing out someone's mistake.
 
It seemed like simple courtesy to her.
 
But what did she know?
 
She spent her first eight years pulling scraps of food from garbage piles and dodging carriages in the muddy streets.
 
You could stick her in all kinds of lace, and she was still just Sarah, parentage unknown.
 

And if her guardian had stopped having such inflated notions about what Sarah would one day be, she would not now find herself in such a position that required sneaking through ducal gardens in the middle of the night to find said duke's famed library.
 
If her guardian had just left her at home while she herself attended his country party, Sarah would never have been tempted by such rumors that included tales of stacks that ran four stories high.
 
Sarah knew this rumor to in fact be a lie.
 
The Duke of Kent's country home was only three stories high, and therefore, the stacks could only progress for the height of the manor house.
 

Unless there was a secret floor beneath the ground.
 
Sarah had not accounted for that.
 

She hurried more quickly along the path that she felt was headed in the correct direction.
 
It circled around from the east wing, which contained the nursery in which Sarah had been imprisoned or offered quarters in, depending on whom one asked, and snaked its way through some decadent shrubbery, veering in the general direction of the main house.
 
If her calculations were accurate, she would be approaching the rose gardens that were situated off of the library in question.
 

The moon was full and lit her path with more brilliance than she could have hoped for.
 
The night was silent except for the odd call of an owl and the sound of the wind moving through the shrubs.
 
She had thought she had heard the sound of running feet a time or two and the strange sound of a faded giggle, quite feminine in nature, but she dismissed the noises as her imagination rearing up on her.
 
She did not have time for her imagination to do anything and had plodded on.
 
She rounded the last row of hedges and came to a stop, taking in her surroundings.
 

Several paths converged at that point just as she had expected.
 
She rolled her right shoulder back, the stiffness from her horse riding injury settling into her bones.
 
She tweaked it without really noticing as she decided which path to take from there.
 
That was when they found her.
 

There were three of them.
 
All tall and gangly, not quite men but no longer boys either.
 
Their clothes were rumpled, collars loosened and buttons half done.
 
They all had dark hair and were rather plain Sarah noted before she turned to move down the path from which she had come.
 
But she was not quick enough.
 
They had already seen her.
 

"What do we have here, gentlemen?" one of them said.

His voice was deeper than Sarah had expected, more man than boy, and she felt the first trickle of fear drip down her spine.
 
Sarah was no child.
 
She knew what men did to helpless women.
 
Women who went places unchaperoned.
 

"That's the Beckham chit.
 
My mother told me of her.
 
Lady Barnstead adopted her or some such nonsense.
 
Says she leaving this girl her fortune."
 

"Fortune?"
 

This was from another one.
 
This one was a touch taller than the rest, and his position slightly in front of the others led Sarah to understand he was the leader of the pack.

"I don't care what fortune she has or will have.
 
She's still a trollop, isn't she?
 
That's what her mother was.
 
Isn't that right, gentlemen?"
 

The trickle of fear that had been working its way down her spine vanished in almost an instant.
 
Rage simmered inside her.
 
The boy may have spoken the truth, but it was a truth that did not settle well on Sarah's shoulders.
 
It made her twitch with an unfulfilled desire to land her fist in someone's face.
 
But there were three of them and only one of her, so she took a step back.
 

"Where are you going, my lady?"

Her anger twitched.
 
The last part had been spoken with a sarcasm so plain, she expected it to get up and walk about as if it were human.
 
She clenched her teeth and dug her nails into the palms of her hands.
 

"Gentlemen," she said with equal sarcasm, "I was on my way to the library.
 
You know.
 
A room that houses books.
 
I'm sure you've never heard of it."
 

While the remark was well placed, it did not fulfill her desire to hit something, and her anger boiled on.
 

The leader of the pack stepped toward her.
 
Sarah would not back up.
 
Her pride would not allow her.
 
The boy came closer and closer still.
 
Sarah's heart raced, and her mind flashed to the pain a blow could cause.
 
So many times had her cheek been struck by the sisters in the orphanage.
 
She girded herself for another such slap, but one never came.
 

Instead, a fourth boy did.
 
Right out of the hedge in a somersaulting catastrophe of limbs, dust and foliage.
 
Sarah stepped back to avoid being trampled and waved her arms in front of her face to dispel the sudden cloud of dust.
 
The three boys who had stopped her on the path backed up as well, coughing from the dirt the fourth boy's spectacular entrance had kicked up.
 

The boy stood, and the moonlight hit him like a spotlight from the sky.
 
Sarah knew the breath had frozen in her chest, but she would deny it if anyone called her on it.
 
The boy was magnificent.
 
She didn't know what it was that tugged at her stomach or made her feel suddenly wobbly, but there was something about this fourth boy that called to her.
 
And it was more than his carefully put together visage.
 
It was his presence.
 
Or lack there of as it were.
 

"Oh, hello, mates!" he said over brightly, "Do beg your pardon, chaps.
 
Beg your pardon.
 
Beg your pardon.
 
Beg
your
pardon."

He said this to each of the three boys in turn as he bowed to each of them.
 
Sarah had yet to see his face in its entirety, and she moved just a bit to see if she could take in more.
 
Her movement must have startled him, because he spun around so quickly, he knocked into her.
 

Sarah instinctively tucked in her recently healed arm as she prepared to be tossed on her rump, but he caught her at the last moment, his hands firm on her shoulders.
 

"Oh, I do beg your pardon-"

He stopped, his eyes growing huge and round, and-

Green.
 
They were breathtakingly green eyes.
 
Sarah blinked, but their intensity was all the same when her eyes adjusted once more.
 
He was...beautiful.

"My lady!" he said with a grand sweep of his arm and an expertly executed bow.

Sarah did not say a single word.
 
She had forgotten all of them.
 

"I do hope you accept my apologies.
 
You see, I was on my way-"

He stopped again and turned back toward the other three boys.

"Oh, I'm sorry, chaps.
 
I'm probably in your way, am I not?
 
How inconsiderate of me.
 
We will just get out of your way here."

At some point the fourth boy had taken hold of her arm and now steered her away from the the other three boys in the direction of the rose gardens.
 
Sarah allowed herself to be taken along, pulled in the wake of this mesmerizing boy.
 
She had never felt what it was that she felt now, and she didn't know what to do.
 
She just let herself be led.

"Have a good night then, chaps," the fourth boy said as they slipped behind the hedge separating the rose garden from the path.
 
The boy held her arm and moved quickly, disappearing deep into the gardens before stopping abruptly and looking back over his shoulder.
 
The whole time he never loosed his grip on her arm.
 
And Sarah never stopped staring.
 

"You really shouldn't go traipsing about in the middle of night unchaperoned.
 
Your likely to run into hooligans like myself."

He turned his attention back to her and smiled, the moonlight striking his brilliant white teeth.
 

Sarah still did not speak.
 
Or blink.

"They didn't hurt you, did they?" he asked, and the concern in his voice finally snapped her back to attention.

"How dare you," she said, wrenching her arm from his grasp.
 

He blinked at her but otherwise did not move.
 

"I beg your pardon, my lady, I was trying to-"

"I am not a lady, and you will do well not to call me such."
 

Her voice was flat with the anger she had not been able to release on that boy who had so carelessly demeaned her person.
 

"Is there something else you'd like me to call you?
 
Because if you're having trouble, I can think of a few suitable names."

Her outrage came out in a strangled gasp and finally her anger released in a right cross, her newly healed arm protesting through the entire swing.
 
Her fist caught him squarely in the eye socket, and the moment she felt her flesh connect with his, she regretted her actions.
 
But the boy did not howl in pain.
 
He made hardly a noise as he gripped the side of his face and staggered away from her.
 

"I was only trying to make you laugh," he said as he blinked at the ground, his hands on his knees.

Sarah did not stay to ask him what he meant.
 

CHAPTER TEN

On a ship bound for France

April 1815

"He was trying to make me laugh," Sarah said to no one in particular as there was no one in the berth with her except the lantern and the jug at her feet.

She held her head in her hands, elbows perched on her knees.
 
Her hair hung in filthy curtains by the sides of her face, and she peered through them at the lines of light created by the lantern on the floor of the berth.
 
Her mind felt as if an infestation of ants had invaded and set up home, but there was nothing Sarah could do about it.
 
An entire marriage of events came rushing back to her all at once, overwhelming her in capacity and depth.
 

Alec was trying to make her laugh.
 

But what for?

She had never seemed like an unhappy person who required a spot of fun to lift one's spirits.
 
She had always thought of herself as rather polite, positive and simply nice.
 
Why did she need so much cheering?
 
But there was something in the tone of Alec's voice that night in the gardens when he had told her he was just trying to make her laugh.
 
There was more there than just a basic desire to cause fun.
 
There was a need, a primal need, that said if Alec did not accomplish this, all was lost.
 
Sarah didn't understand, but she was beginning to understand that the problem with her husband was not his noble birth.
 
It was the fact that she did not understand him.