With This Ring (2 page)

Now, after they’d finished their beef and greens, her brother Lysander had become restless as usual.
Zander couldn’t be still if he wasn’t eating or sleeping—and even then the entire Worthington household was sometimes woken by his nightmares.

Not as often now, of course.
He was much better than the mostly silent, sometimes howling, shell of a man who had returned from the war against Napoleon.
He wasn’t nearly so thin for one thing, though his restlessness did tend to keep him well honed.
And he did speak now … at least, occasionally.

At the moment, however, he simply gazed at her meaningfully.
Fortunately, as a Worthington, Elektra was a native speaker of the Cagey Clue.
“Something I should know?”
Saving her place, Ellie set aside her book and gave her beloved older brother her full attention, just as if he’d clamored for it, which he would never do.

Lysander’s dark eyes shifted toward the casement window that looked out onto the inn-yard below.
Ellie stood, crossed the room, and leaned one hand upon the window frame to look out.
Through small, diamond-shaped panes separated by wooden muntins, she saw a rainy, muddy yard, the same one they’d driven into earlier that day on this ridiculous errand that she’d have given anything to skip—

“My goodness!”
She leaned closer, peering down at a limp form even now being lifted from a dark, unmarked carriage.
“Is that man dead?”
She glanced back over her shoulder in time to catch Zander shaking his head.
She rose to tiptoes and pressed her forehead to the chilly glass to watch as the burdened men passed directly below her on their way into the inn.
When she noted the horizontal gentleman rolling his head in feverish protest, she let out a breath of relief.

Then she noticed the other man, still out in the rain, pulling two satchels from the carriage.
She wasn’t sure why her gaze was pulled to him.

The fellow turned at that moment and lifted his gaze to meet hers, almost as if he’d known she stood there, watching him.
A jolt of something exhilarating shot through her and fixed low in her belly.
Elektra caught her breath in surprise, then blinked at her own reaction.

Then the stranger lifted one hand to his dripping hat and tipped it, all the while gazing at her boldly.
Cheeky fellow!

Her eyes narrowed as she cataloged the curious fellow’s person.
Years of practice taking note of appearances had bestowed a lightning ability to accurately sort and label everyone she met according to wealth and rank.

His build was tall and fit, at least as far as she could tell beneath his oilcloth cape.
He moved like a man prepared for anything—a little like the Worthington siblings’ old fencing master, combined with the determined intent of a pugilist and a dash of the head-up awareness of a … highwayman?

His clothing marked him as a servant or driver.
She could not make out his face clearly through the wavy glass spattered with raindrops, but he looked road-worn and unshaven, and far too disreputable to be gazing boldly at a lady as if she were a barmaid.

Do I look like a barmaid?

Well, wavy glass twisted the light in both directions, didn’t it?
Likely he wasn’t even looking at her.

The flutter in her belly told her a different story, but she ignored it.

Never mind the driver.
What of the first man, the ill one?
Tapping her fingertip on her bottom lip, Elektra drew his image from her memory.

“That was a fine coat,” she mused aloud.
“Though it is from several seasons ago … real gold thread, I’d say, from the shimmer … it fitted a bit loose, but if he’s been ill…” She let her assessing gaze encompass the carriage as the horse boy led the team out of the rain.
“The carriage is well made, though it is almost as old as the one in our mews.
Could be he can’t replace it, or could be the frugality of the wealthy, buying good and keeping it up.”
She squinted as she tried to peer between raindrops at the disappearing horses.
“His team is matched, but they are too covered in mud to tell if they’re fine.”

She set back on her heels with a sigh, her curiosity wriggling like a hooked fish.
“I would have liked to have seen his face, but it wouldn’t look proper for me to run out and gawk.”
Though she had taken a good long look at the driver, hadn’t she?
She turned to Zander.
“Go on, will you, and tell me if he’s dying?
And if he’s young or old?
Ask the innkeeper—well, try to catch his name, at any rate.”

Zander nodded indifferently and left the room.

Elektra glanced back through the rain-streaked glass, but the yard had inconveniently been emptied of evidence.
The impudent driver was gone as well.

With a huff of impatience, she stomped back to her chair and sat with a flounce.
She was bored out of her mind, stuck in this room, waiting for a cousin she’d never seen—never even heard her parents speak of, for pity’s sake!—the previously unknown Bliss Worthington.
They were meeting her halfway from her home in Shropshire, the seat of the Worthington name, where apparently she had long been living with a foster family far from London.
Their mission, in the end, was to bring Miss Bliss Worthington to London to share in Elektra’s hard-won victorious first Season.

I, as one might imagine, am less than thrilled at the prospect.

Not that Elektra was looking forward to the journey back to London, particularly.
It had been a slow, dreary ride—where she’d been mostly alone inside the coach.
Lysander rode his horse alongside, since he was still quite unable to be confined in a small space.
No one in the family knew what had happened to Lysander in those months when the world had thought him dead behind enemy lines, but the tense stranger who had come home was every bit as beloved as the laughing boy who had gone away soldiering.

He was simply not as well understood.

The assumption was that Bliss would join her in the coach home.
Doubtless she would come supplied with luggage after all.

The foul weather that had made Elektra and Lysander’s journey a slow and tedious one had apparently delayed Bliss’s arrival as well.
The only interesting thing to happen in the past tedious hours of waiting was the arrival of a dead man.
Well, almost dead.

Elektra pondered the possibilities, uncomfortably aware that she was being quite heartless.

Well, a girl in her position couldn’t afford a heart, could she?

Folding her arms, she allowed herself to slouch back into the seat and glare around at her private little domain.
If the new gentleman were of any social quality at all, he would likely claim this room for himself, contingent on his survival, of course.
The Worthington name was old and well connected, but not terribly high in rank—and the innkeeper would doubtless prefer to be paid in something more substantial than Elektra’s radiant smile.

The only thing more boring than being stuck in this dingy sitting room would be to languish in her own tiny closet of a private room.
Even her best smile and a demurely cleavage-focusing curtsy hadn’t been able to upgrade her accommodations above what she and Zander could afford.
At least they had separate rooms.
She loved her brother with a deep and terrible pity, but she couldn’t tolerate his wakeful restlessness for long.

If only her blasted cousin would hurry along!

Elektra snarled slightly as she recalled her parents’ request three days before.

Papa had acted as if he were offering her a treat.
“It will be lovely, dearest!
She’s a darling girl, just wonderful—at least, she was when we saw her last—”

“She rode on your shoulders, Archie, while you played the gallant steed!”
Iris, as all the Worthington siblings called their mother, had fluttered her trailing handkerchief flirtatiously at her husband.
“And she called you ‘Uncle Artsy’!
It was adorable.
Just wonderful.”

Elektra had stared at her parents.
“Let me understand fully.
You wish for me to miss Lord Orwell’s revel, for which I have been preparing for weeks, in order to tromp across the countryside to pick up a cousin I have never even heard of, so that I can bring her back to London to share in
my
Season?”
Her Season, her first and probably only Season?
The Season she had lied and scraped and sold her soul to have?

Thinking of the endless work, the decade of preparing for this year, the dance lessons paid for with egg money from the garden hens, the begging of gowns from a family friend, the endless work trimming and retrimming said gowns so that she never looked the same yet always looked stunning, the forged correspondence from her “mother” begging invitations from everyone who was everyone, the outright theft of invitations from the overflowing side-tables of her own wealthier friends—

Her belly had gone cold at the loss.
“I won’t do it!
I won’t!
If this Bliss creature thinks she can horn in on
my
Season, she can bloody well—”

She hadn’t been able to continue when her dear, foolish parents had turned to her with hurt incomprehension in their eyes.
Iris and Archie loved her, she knew that.
They might be utterly useless in every other respect, but their love was unconditional and warm and true.
Beneath her sarcasm, hidden under her pragmatism, down deep in her cynical heart Elektra violently adored them both.
She couldn’t bear to disappoint them.

Helpless to do anything but agree, she’d scowled darkly.
“She’ll not borrow any of my things.
Ever.”
Only her Season.
Only her one chance to fix everything that was broken in her family with a single brilliant match.
Only her family’s best and only hope for the future.

Damn you, Bliss.

Just Wonderful Miss Bliss Worthington.
Ellie despised her already.

Ridiculous name, Bliss.
Really, the things some people named their children!
With a motion of her fingertips, she figuratively brushed aside her own family’s tendency toward grandiose classical names: Daedalus, Calliope, Orion, Lysander, Castor, Pollux, Atalanta—and of course, Elektra.
They had all at least managed to boil those extravagant monikers down to Dade, Callie, Rion, Zander, Cas, Poll, Attie, and Ellie.

Bliss?
What was she supposed to do with a name like that?
What in heaven’s name was she supposed to call her cousin?
Bly?
Lissy?
“
Bliss
, fix your bonnet,” Ellie caroled facetiously to the silent room.
“
Bliss
, your petticoat is showing!”

Bliss, give me back my bloody Season!

Idly, Elektra wondered if her cousin was pretty.
Worthingtons generally were.
Iris, though gone a bit plump and prone to wearing her long silver hair in outlandish, off-center knots, often shot through with paintbrushes, was still radiantly lovely.
Elektra’s married elder sister, Callie, was very attractive.
Little Attie, while still a bit unbaked at thirteen, threatened to outshine them all—if anyone could ever get her to wear a bonnet or put a bit of lemon juice on her freckles.

Born with symmetry of facial features and a pleasing figure, Elektra worked a keen fashion sense and a bold confident flair for all she was worth, giving the impression that she was more beautiful than she truly was—but not, as most people thought, out of vanity.
She viewed her looks the way some people viewed their bank accounts.
Ruthlessly, with frank calculation.
It was the only true currency she had, and she meant to make the most of it.
A title, absolutely, and not an impoverished one, either!
She meant to spend her single advantage wisely, and her final purchase would mean the restoration of the Worthington family to their former glory.

And with the widespread and quirky reputation of her peculiar, madcap clan, for that she’d need an insanely wealthy earl—a spotless earl, truly above reproach!—at the very least.

Of course, her virtue she guarded with zealous care, for it was value added, but she wasn’t some ignorant schoolroom miss.
She had seen clearly the mechanisms of the world since a tender age, and she meant to utilize those gears to save her family, by God!

She was, in her own opinion, the only Worthington who inhabited the tangible world.
Her family cared nothing for the swirl of petty gossip and stabbing of backs in Society.
Worthingtons walked blithely through it all, secure in their important friends and their ancient name.
“Older than Stonehenge” was Archie’s stout assertion.

Unfortunately, that mighty ring of stones remained stubbornly silent on the topic of who would pay the butcher’s bill, or repair the ancestral manor, or provide a decent dowry for Attie.
Those tiny little concerns were apparently left to Elektra.

Zander entered the room, interrupting her wandering thoughts.
“Lord Aaron Arbogast,” he told her shortly.
“Fever.
Not dying, not yet.”
Then he turned and left again without ceremony.

Elektra sat up straight, her quick mind flipping back through the gossip sheets stored in her memory.
Lord Aaron Arbogast … wealth-building sojourn … assuming the title …
and, saving the best for last, savoring the words on her tongue, she spoke aloud.

“… to find himself a proper English countess!”

Elektra’s fingers twitched as if eager to get her hands on such a fellow.
This was it.
The intimate setting of the inn … the ill lord … Zander hadn’t mentioned if he were old or young, not that it mattered, really …

And the best of it all was that he had just arrived
from out of the country
!
Had she actually found a man who had never heard of the Worthingtons?
A singular, elusive creature indeed—a veritable unicorn!

And she was just the virgin to snare him.

By her presence, in this place and in this moment, she had finally been handed an advantage in a game unjustly weighted to the wealthy and powerful.

Bless you, Bliss!

Chapter Two

Later that evening, as Aaron gazed down at his bed of hay in the stable loft with dismay, he decided that his sacrifice almost—
almost
, mind you—repaid his debt to Hastings.
The man might have saved his life, but at this moment he was ensconced in a heavenly soft bed, being doted on by angels … well, voluptuous chambermaids, anyway.