Free The Scarred Earl by Elizabeth Beacon Page B

nobody. Persephone thanked God she had grown up surrounded with love.
    ‘That’s the Three Sisters’ Oak,’ she pointed out as they took the undulating rise from house to deer park and saw the venerable tree in the distance. ‘I don’t know if you came here with Jack and Rich when you were still of an age to climb it. My sisters consider themselves far too aged and ladylike to tear their skirts and dirty their slippers on it nowadays, but I suspect Marcus wouldn’t be above doing so even now.’
    The mental picture of her scapegrace brother unconscious and ill in the hands of a desperate man tripped her up and she forced back hot tears that would only confirm all his suspicions about weak females.
    ‘He’ll soon be back here plaguing you again,’ he said, as if he knew how she wasfeeling, which seemed unlikely when he’d clearly loathed his own half-brother.
    ‘You can’t say that, you don’t know.’
    ‘I can use the brains I was born with. Marcus is more boy than man yet, despite twenty-three years of life and the ladybird you suspect he has installed nearby. I dare say he enjoys the status of the Seaborne name, whilst knowing he will never be called upon to run the family estates or the many other holdings that make up your family’s empire. One day he might find a use for the energy and intellect he was born with, but for now he’s an engaging scamp. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that, if your elder brother is truly lost, he must take over his estates and your late father’s business interests in his stead. It must seem one of his best virtues in his family’s eyes that he’s not in the least bit avaricious.’
    ‘He’s not very ambitious, either,’ she admitted, astonished his lordship drew such shrewd conclusions about the people around him.
    ‘Born into his shoes, you would feel differently, I suspect.’
    ‘I would want to forge my own path,’ she informed him, fairly sure he wasn’t listeningas he took in every detail of the oak and its surroundings, then jumped off his horse to examine the ground for clues.
    ‘And woe betide anyone who tried to say you nay?’ he asked with a quick glance up at her, still seated on her favourite gelding and warily watching him.
    ‘Of course,’ she agreed with a regal nod of her head.
    ‘Would you be a warrior or a bandit queen in another time, I wonder?’ he mused idly and she felt her temper rise again when he seemed amused by the idea.
    ‘If I had the choices of a gentleman’s son, I’d have become a sailor or an army officer. I don’t have enough tact or duty for the church or the law.’
    ‘No doubt you would be a general or an admiral before you had left your twenties,’ he told her as he bent to examine a piece of dry turf as if it was the crown jewels.
    ‘Now why do I think that wouldn’t be a good thing, I wonder?’ she asked, intrigued by whatever he found so riveting, but refusing to ask.
    ‘Because I disliked or distrusted most of those I’ve met.’
    ‘You do have a glowing opinion of me, don’t you?’ she felt stung into asking.
    ‘Because I don’t pander to your reputation as the toast of St James’s, it doesn’t mean I lost the use of both my eyes in India, Miss Seaborne,’ he said to the few blades of dried up grass he found so fascinating.
    ‘Have you any idea how annoying it is to be dismissed as merely decorative, my lord?’ she demanded.
    When he merely shrugged and continued with his studies, she eyed him furiously. But she wondered if he might understand after all, when she considered what a young Adonis he’d been before he went to India.
    ‘Can you see with your damaged eye?’ she heard herself ask with horrified fascination, as if she were a spectator at a carriage accident. ‘I beg your pardon, how tactless of me.’
    ‘Not at all, although I hate it when females stare at my wreck of a face, then turn away as if they might turn faint when I gaze back. If you do that, I might ride away and