LITMIR.BIZ

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a solution to his own problems closing in.

      Unlocking the golden cross that she wore around her neck, she laid it down on the bedside table.

      ‘I do not want you to be a part of this charade, Mama.’ Her neck seemed empty without the chain, though today her mother felt close.

      Susannah Cameron had been a redhead, with a freckled skin and a verve for life that was uncompromising. She had risked the small loan her father had bequeathed to her when he had died as a down payment for the first of Robert’s boats. The best spend of my life, she had said to Robert again and again as Amethyst had grown, the love her parents shared a constant and joyous source of wonderment.

      So different from this marriage, the ghost of Gerald Whitely surfacing in threat. ‘Daniel Wylde will turn out just like me,’ some spectral voice whispered. ‘The very same, you just wait, for you are cursed and marked.’

      Swallowing, she turned away from the mirror. Her maid had helped her to dress, but had gone now to let those downstairs know that she was ready. Amethyst thought her hair looked nothing like it had when Lady Christine had threaded it with roses. Rather it was spiked and ill shaped, the golden band of her mother’s she had insisted on wearing seeming as out of kilter as her dress.

      Pure white. She wondered if she should have worn the colour, but the seamstress had already begun on it when the thought occurred and so she had taken the path of least resistance and left it as it was. At least the veil would hide some of her defects. With care she pulled the gauze across her face and smiled, glad of the opaqueness and privacy.

      A few moments later she entered the downstairs salon at Montcliffe, a room of huge proportion and elegance, though sparsely furnished.

      Lord Daniel Wylde was there, of course, and her father. Beside them stood the minister and an older woman.

      Four people; two of whom she did not know. The conditions he had insisted upon. A small marriage. Uncelebrated. Forgettable.

      ‘We shall repair to the chapel for the ceremony.’ Daniel’s voice, but he neither took her hand nor looked at her directly, leaving it to her father to accompany her. The room appeared otherworldly through the gauze.

      ‘You look lovely, my dear,’ Robert said beneath his breath, and for the first time that day she smiled.

      ‘I think even you know that that is a lie, Papa.’

      The house had been a revelation when she had first seen it the day before. It was huge for one thing and sombre for another. Not a house one would feel at home in, she had thought, and wondered at what sort of a childhood the manor might have provided for a young Daniel. Everything looked old and the faded spaces on the walls alluded to another long-ago time when Montcliffe Manor must have been magnificent.

      The Earl had met them briefly here yesterday, outlining the planned ceremony in formal tones and then leaving. The same butler she remembered from the London town house had shown them to their rooms on the first storey and the dark furniture in each was as Spartan as the rest of the place.

      She had not seen him since. Today he looked taller and as forbidding as his house. She wondered if she had truly ever known him, a stranger with whom she had shared a kiss.

      The minister stood at the pulpit and gestured for them to come before him.

      ‘Who gives this woman in marriage?’ he asked gravely.

      ‘I do.’ Robert’s voice was guarded, as if he too wondered if they had not made an enormous mistake.

      And then her arm was threaded with that of Daniel’s, superfine beneath her fingers and the outline of heavy muscle under the fabric.

      Delivered.

      Into a union that neither of them looked forward to and married under the solemn words of promise. Little words that meant both everything and nothing.

      A ring was slipped on to the third finger of her left hand, the huge diamond glinting in the light and pulling at her skin.

      ‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’

      And it was over, the older lady signing beneath their names, a legal witness along with her father to the nuptials.

      Her husband’s full name was Daniel George Alexander Wylde. Something else she had not known about him.

      Robert took her hand as she stepped back, his glance warm when he looked at the ring. ‘A substantial diamond,’ he said, and she knew that there were things he did not know about her either. The day was threaded with strangeness and juxtaposition. When Amethyst glanced up she saw Daniel watching her, his pale eyes hooded.

      The wedding breakfast was set up in the blue salon to one end of the house and, once they were all seated, an awkwardness overcame everything. At least the minister was talking, his words running into each other in a never-ending stream. Otherwise there might have been silence as each player in this travesty sought their place within it.

      A headache burned into her temples, the laudanum still in her system somewhere and making itself felt. Her father looked worried and thin, none of the certainty that had been there in the days leading up to this moment evident. She had no clue at all about Daniel’s frame of mind because an implacable mask crossed his face and his eyes were a flat distant green.

      The food was lovely, a light soup and then chicken and beef with an array of sauces and roasted vegetables. A cake was presented, too, and it sat on the end of the table couched in a feigned joviality, two figures carved in icing upon it, their arms entwined around each other.

      Amethyst drank deeply from her wine glass, something she seldom did, but the velvet-smooth red banished some of her worries. Then her groom stood to propose a toast.

      ‘To my bride. May this union be kind to us both.’

      The hollow thud of her heart made her feel sick and, as she lifted her hand to push back a falling curl, the diamond ring sliced a scratch right across her cheek. Her father used a snowy-white napkin to wipe away the blood.

      * * *

      How he hated this.

      His new wife looked scared and lost, but he was too angry to understand anything other than retribution. Symbols. The blood, the diamond, the cake with its ridiculous illusion of happiness and joy. He felt none of it. Too few people at the table, too many lies left unsaid.

      This wedding was a parody and the guest list reflected the fact. He had not told Lucien or Francis that he was getting married and his own family thought he had gone to Montcliffe Manor to recover from the events at the Herringworth ball. Recover? Like he had after La Corunna? In their ignorance he saw just how little they knew about him.

      Robert Cameron was looking disappointed rather than furious and that annoyed him further. He had been coerced into this whole situation by a master. The timber merchant could not expect him to enjoy it.

      The huge diamond on his wife’s finger was patently wrong and he saw now that part of the gold clasp had worn free from the stone it held. It had hurt her.

      Yesterday he might have smiled at such a travesty, but today the short spikiness of her hair pulled at him somehow. She had threaded a gold headband through the curls in an effort to emulate what Christine Howard had once done, but it only added a poignant awkwardness and the scars on her wrist above the gaudy diamond were reddened. Like her face.

      When he had raised the veil after the vows all he saw was skin that was rough and raw, her dark eyes taking in the fact that he was seeing her at her very worst.

      But even like that she looked beautiful to him. He ground his teeth in rage.

      Her father was speaking now to the small and mismatched group around the table, thin lines of sickness etched into his face.

      ‘I have always called Amethyst “my jewel” and I hope in the coming years you might see the truth in these words for yourself, Lord Montcliffe.’ He raised his glass and toasted. ‘To Lord and Lady Montcliffe. May their union be blessed

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