Free The Scarred Earl by Elizabeth Beacon

impression your homeland is magical, then?’
    ‘It seems lovely and challenging to me without extra enchantment, but I’m only a bastard Welshman. My father was solidly English and so are my titles and most of my lands. I only suppose that when a people lose the chance to determine their own destiny they escape into a past of legend and power to avoid their day-to-day lot.’
    ‘I don’t seek to diminish the legends or suffering of your countrymen because I made an idle remark, Lord Calvercombe. I was brought up in these Marches, don’t forget, my nurse used to tell me stories of magicians and fierce dragons as well as the great princes of Gwynedd. Wales always seemed a green and enchanted land to me, as well as sometimes a very wet one—a caveat you must grant me from experience. I used to stay with my mother’s cousins in Pembrokeshire as a child, if I’d been good enough to deserve such a treat.’
    ‘I warrant that didn’t happen very often,’ he said with a look that might be admiring if it didn’t come from him.
    ‘No, I was a sad romp in those days.’
    ‘Only in those days? How you do surprise me, Miss Seaborne.’
    ‘Good, I should hate to be predictable.’
    ‘Believe me, there’s very little risk of it. I consider myself lucky if you fail to attack me on sight these days.’
    ‘I thought you were trying to harm Jack that night in the park and I wasn’t so very far wrong about your motives, was I? You may not have come here to hurt him physically, but you would have fought him if he took exception to your wandering about his estate as if you owned it, wouldn’t you?’ she challenged, trying to control a blush when she recalled her conduct the first time they met this summer, outside the summerhouse by the lake where Jack had gone to confront the elusive intruder stalking his lands by night.
    ‘I was frustrated at not being able to find a trace of my cousin Annabelle once they apparently left London together,’ he muttered gruffly, clearly ashamed of a lapse of judgement.
    If that was the only reason he had agreed to take a role in Jack and Jessica’s wedding, Persephone couldn’t help admiring Jack’s ruthlessness in using any weapon handy to persuade his old friend to stand shoulderto shoulder with him when he needed him there most.
    ‘I still can’t find her and we’re wasting precious time arguing whilst the trail is going cold and both your brothers are now missing,’ he pointed out.
    ‘How do you suggest we change that state of affairs, then? I doubt Marcus’s kidnapper left us a convenient trail of breadcrumbs to follow to his lair.’
    ‘I intend to make use of the talents nature gave me and Sir Arthur Wellesley and India refined when you finally take me to the place where Marcus’s hat and Rich’s ring were found and leave me to look and think,’ he told her irritably. She supposed it was the only course of action available given that Marcus and his captor must be long gone by now.
    ‘Very well,’ she conceded, but again that vital grip of his tightened without hurting her and stopped her in her tracks. ‘What? You demanded action and now you hold me back from taking it? You really are the most contrary as well as the most infuriating man I ever came across, my lord.’
    ‘You will take no part in this affair apart from showing me the place Marcus’s hat andRich’s ring were left,’ he said as if he had the right to dictate to her.
    ‘Intending to kidnap and imprison yet another of my unlucky mother’s brood, are you, my lord?’ she demanded hotly. ‘That’s the only way you’ll keep me from doing everything I can to find Marcus and then bring the black-hearted rogue behind his abduction to justice.’
    ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he rapped out furiously, glaring down at her.
    ‘Shall we get on? You’re the one impatient to be going.’
    ‘And you didn’t have a stern enough beating when you were young to make you tolerable to your fellow man now.’
    ‘Only