Scandalously Wed To The Captain. Joanna JohnsonЧитать онлайн книгу.

       Chapter One

      Grace Linwood stared out at the flat haze of the horizon until she could no longer tell if the tang of salt on her tongue was from the sea spray or her own tears.

      How long she’d stood on the rain-lashed Cobb she couldn’t say; only that when Henry Earls had pushed a piece of paper into her hand he had worn a halo of January sunlight and now that same sun was setting over the sea somewhere far beyond her reach.

      The cries of gulls wheeling overhead mixed with the whistle of wind in her ears, its invisible hands lifting her cloak to snap behind her as though it were alive. Tiny needles of rain pricked at her cold cheeks, at the hands that held a letter between nerveless fingers, but Grace was numb to everything but the lead weight of despair that had settled behind her breastbone.

       In light of your father’s recent incarceration I must rescind my offer of marriage. The unfortunate reversal in your position and fortune render me unable to continue our engagement and I am certain you will be good enough to release me from any obligation towards you.

      A hot tide of tears rose up, stinging her eyes alongside the salt spray thrown into her face. If only they would stop coming. Surely there couldn’t be many left to fall, but each time she recalled Henry’s callous words pain twisted like a knife in her guts and a fresh stream fell to mingle with the rain.

      Perhaps some part of her should have questioned why such a man would notice her, pursue her above all the other young ladies of Lyme Regis, who danced and sang and flirted as brazenly as they dared, bright eyes fixed on whichever fortunate gentleman sparked their interest.

      I was never one of their number.

      Too bookish, too quiet, too plain—it had seemed a miracle when Henry singled her out less than a year previously, asking her to partner him in a quadrille, and the strange thrill that had torn a gasp from her lips at the first touch of his hand on hers was something she would never forget. Staring out across the barren sea, Grace felt those same lips twist into a grimace of pain no words could hope to capture as she recalled another unforgettable moment: how he had left her that afternoon, turning and walking away from her for ever without so much as a backward glance at the woman whose heart he had just ripped from her chest. There could surely be no better proof his interest had only ever stretched as far as her connections and fortune, and now she had neither there was nothing left for him to covet.

      The approach of a pair of older women hurrying along behind her, heads tucked down and cloaks clutched tightly to them, almost made Grace turn. Instead, she stepped closer to the Cobb’s slippery edge as she heard their voices lower into rapid whispers as they passed by her without so much as a nod, the words barely audible above the keen of the wind, but their tone of malice unmistakable.

      ‘...surprised she dare stir out of doors...a shameful business...’

      ‘They claim he was wrongfully accused! They’ll have to give up that fine house, and with so many daughters...’

      ‘Bankrupt, I heard. Can’t imagine her young man will stay much longer, or that any other is like to make advances now.’

      Grace flinched as each barbed word pricked her with their poison. It was hard enough that everything they said was true without the bleak reality of her situation thrown into her face: with no money, no good name and the shame of an incarcerated father—wrongfully or otherwise—neither Grace nor her three younger sisters could hope for any man half as eligible as Henry to so much as glance in their direction ever again, let alone allow himself to be shackled to a wife so humbled to dust.

      She drew her hand across her eyes, feeling the wet tracks that streaked her cheeks, and took a deep breath like fire in her lungs.

      ‘Enough. Enough of this now.’

      Crying would do nothing. No words would bring Henry back to her arms, nor any river of tears make him change his mind. Nothing could undo Papa’s mistake, his willingness to see the best in others the sorry cause of his family’s disgrace. Mama’s face was already drawn with worry, deep lines creasing the formerly smooth plane of her forehead below blonde curls that matched Grace’s own; she wouldn’t add to her mother’s burden by arriving home with trembling lips and eyes made red by weeping.

      The thought of Mama’s tired face sent a fresh shard lancing through Grace’s insides and she pressed a cold hand to the place where her unhappiness lay like a rock in her stomach.

      It wasn’t just my future that was tied to Henry’s love of me—or lack of it.

      Freed from the expense of maintaining all four daughters, Mama might have been able to scrape together enough money to allow them to remain in their home. This was now surely but a fantasy and Grace felt herself sag in mute despair.

      She closed her eyes, screwing them shut against the grey creep of dusk. The roar of the waves and plaintive cries of gulls called to her, curiously melancholy and mingling with her grief. She should leave this rain-sodden place and go home to face her poor mother’s disappointment, she knew, but something inside her held her fast to the spot on which she had last seen Henry, where she had realised her only chance at happiness had slipped from her grasp like sand through her fingers.

      The wind had picked up, its strength increasing with the final disappearance of the sun’s feeble rays. It whipped about Grace like a pack of savage wolves, plucking at the ribbons on her bonnet and flattening her skirts against the chill flesh of her legs. With her eyes still tight shut and her mind reeling with anguish, perhaps it was inevitable that a particularly strong gust caught her off guard—all Grace knew was that one moment she was standing buffeted by the harsh coastal air, the next that her cloak had swirled round to unbalance her and then the world was tilting, the wet ground sliding beneath her feet.

      Far too late she realised how close she stood to the edge. Her eyes flew wide as she grasped for something to save her, anything but the sickeningly empty air that surrounded her on all sides. Henry’s letter slid from her outstretched hand, fluttering away like a small white bird to drift out across the sea—but there was nothing Grace could do as she felt her balance shift to follow it, her heart leaping up into her throat in a silent cry of terror as she began, for what felt like a tortuously slow eternity, to fall.

      ‘Watch out!’

      Grace’s head snapped back so abruptly her neck screamed in pain, the movement forcing a cry from her gaping mouth. The tumbling waves surged below her, spray reaching for her with freezing fingers, but they came no closer and when her senses jolted back into order she became aware of a vice-like grip encircling the top of her arm, the strength of one large hand the only thing restraining her from a drop that with a sudden wave of nausea she realised could have killed her.

      Her unseen saviour jerked her back from the Cobb’s edge with a rough movement that made her wince. Still reeling, she turned to face him on shaking legs, her breath coming hard in short, painful pants as she struggled to control the frenzied racing of her heart. It took a moment for her to register the identity of the man whose countenance she peered up into, who returned her look with a scowl, but when her whirling mind finally managed to place his