Page 7 of Earl at First Sight

“Not when I’m… I’m me, and you’re, well, you.” Her brow furrowed. “We don’t match, and everyone knows what happens when you try to hold books up with uneven bookends. They topple,” she said unnecessarily, and Alec’s smile was immediately replaced with a scowl.

It didn’t matter that his first impression of Persephone had been of an austere, rural sort of miss more suited for a barnyard than a ballroom. He’d been wrong, and she was, too, if she thought herself incomparable to him. Physical attributes aside, couldn’t she see that he was as rotten as they came on the inside? Whereas she was sweet, and crisp, and shiny. A breath of fresh autumn air in a world saturated with cynicism and scorn.

Just by being in her presence, he felt inexplicably lighter. As if his feet weren’t as heavily tethered to the ground as they’d been when he’d arrived. As if he could leap, nay, bound into the sky at any moment.

Was this happiness, he wondered? An emotion that had always eluded him growing up under the dark shadow cast by his father’s temper, and had continued to evade him into adulthood as his own shadows had festered and grown.

“We match if I say we match,” he growled, more harshly than he’d intended, and could have kicked himself when Persephone recoiled, her pretty cheeks paling. “That is,” he amended in a marginally improved tone, “I’ve seen nothing that would dissuade me from believing we would be perfectly suitable as husband and wife.”

“Perfectly suitable,” she repeated slowly, a mahogany curl dancing across her temple as her head tilted to the side.

Without thinking, Alec reached out and captured the errant tendril, pinching it between his index finger and thumb. They both went very, very still, only the exhale of his own breath and the trill of nearby songbirds audible above the loud, persistent thumping in his chest. The sound of a heart, long dead, being brought back to life.

“Indeed,” he rasped, intimately, painfully aware of how close his mouth was to hers. A few inches, and he could be kissing her. But this was not a mistress to be ravished, he reminded himself, jaw clenching at the restraint it took not to simply take what he wanted. This was an innocent. A tender young lady, naïve to the arts of seduction. A young lady he needed to like him, not frighten off into the bushes like a rabbit fleeing a hunter’s snare.

With all that in mind, Alec reluctantly released her hair and removed his foot from the bench. “I believe your mother was going to put out lemonade on the rear terrace,” he said, extending his arm.

Persephone stared at his sleeve cuff as if searching for hidden fangs before she tentatively extended her gloved hand onto his forearm and took a small step forward. “I do like lemonade.”

“Excellent,” he said, flashing her a rehearsed grin. Most women would have–and had–swooned at the very sight of it. But his bride-to-be only frowned.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said as they began to walk toward the house, following the same winding trail he’d taken into the maze past the unkempt garden beds and a cherub fountain that had gone dry.

“Do what?” he asked, lifting a drooping hollyhock out of their path.

“Pretend.” She flitted him a sideways glance. “If we are to be married, I should like us to be honest with each other at all times. That’s very important to me.”

“If?” he said, ignoring the twinge of guilt that nibbled at the edge of his frayed conscience. Were he being completely honest, he’d have to admit what he was really doing here, and why. Not just to honor a betrothal contract he’d had every intention of ignoring until his dying breath, but to use Persephone to claim his inheritance and then be rid of her the second he had what he wanted. She wasn’t going to be his wife. She was going to be the means to an end. But if he told her that, she wouldn’t marry him. If he didn’t tell her, he’d be guilty of lying by omission to a woman who had just declared how essential honesty was to her.

It was an uncomfortable position to be in for a man who ordinarily didn’t care about anyone’s comfort but his own, and as they came into view of the terrace where Lady Montague was hovering over a crystal pitcher of lemonade, Alec ordered himself to remember why he’d come here in the first place.

He hadn’t ridden pell mell to this crumbling excuse of a country estate looking for love, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let himself be swayed from his mission by a pair of big, brown, guileless eyes. Persephone may not have been what he was expecting, and his reaction to her was certainly a nuisance, but that was all he would permit it to become. A mild nuisance, easily swatted aside.

“While we are engaged, I should like us to get to know one another before we commit to marriage,” his fiancée said, her expression earnest and all the more adorable for it. “Don’t you agree?”

“But of course. I should like to learn everything there is to know about you.” Alec was relieved to find the lie came easily, as they usually did. No bothersome conscience to contend with. No annoying tweak of guilt.

Thank heavens.

It wasn’t until he had finished his first glass of lemonade and was waiting for the second to be poured that he considered perhaps it hadn’t been a lie at all.

Part III

“Iwill love you forever; whatever happens.”

~ The Amber Spyglass – Phillip Pullman

Persephone did not know what to think about the Earl of Ashford. On the one hand, he was more than she could have ever hoped for.

Handsome.

Charming.

Courteous.

By his third day in the manor (her parents had given up their own personal bedchamber so he could have the largest room in the house), her family was so enamored by him that she was quite certain one of her sisters would happily marry him in her place if something dire happened to her or she otherwise made herself unavailable.

On the other hand…