Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

OCTAVIAN RACED UP to his bedchamber as soon as Greeves told him Syd was not feeling well. He cursed under his breath, knowing the visit to her parents must have badly overset her. He should have gone with her. Why did he not go with her? Those blasted Admiralty reports could have waited an extra day. It made no difference whether he turned them in tomorrow or two days from now.

He felt a heaviness in the air as he strode down the hall toward their chamber. His heart twisted in knots. What had her parents done to her? Greeves said she had returned home looking ashen and pale, and had practically crawled up the stairs.

She was in utter despair, if his butler was to be believed.

Of course, he believed Greeves.

The man was loyal and never lied.

The room was dark when he entered, the curtains drawn tightly closed to hide the late afternoon sunlight. "Syd?"

He saw the littlest lump beneath the covers and knew she was lying there, curled in a tight ball. He crossed to the drapes to draw them wide and allow in all the light because he wanted to see her face while he spoke to her.

She groaned as the fading rays of sunlight streamed in. "Why did you do that?"

He marched to the bed and sat beside her prone form. Her head was barely peeking out from under the covers, so all he could see was the top of her head and a little of her nose. "Syd, sweetheart. Talk to me. Tell me what happened."

An ill feeling overtook him. He knew this dread haunting her for weeks had finally reared its ugly head and become horribly real. It was no longer a wispy specter that hovered on the outer edges of her mind. He waited for her to speak, but all that came out were hitching breaths and soul-deep sobs. "Syd, please. I'm here. We'll deal with the problem together."

"That's just it. We cannot be together," she said between hiccups and more ragged breaths. "I'm so sorry, Octavian. You are completely blameless in all this. I will do whatever I can to spare you. It has all been make-believe. I feared it. Did I not tell you how much I feared it? Not just our marriage, but my entire life. A complete sham. Please believe I never knew. And now I've got you into this scandal and ruined your life, too."

He had never seen Syd this vulnerable and shaken.

The fight had gone out of her.

The impassioned fires had been stomped out.

It tore him up inside.

"You haven't ruined anything for me," he growled. "And what is it that you never knew?"

She tried to speak, but was aching so badly that she couldn't.

Blessed saints.

What had her parents done to her?

He sighed. "Sweetheart, start at the beginning."

Her father was a despicable cheat and a weasel, but his method was to charm and cajole. It was not his fashion to intimidate and destroy. Whatever took place during her visit to her parents was no mere argument.

Syd looked broken.

"No more hiding, love. Come here." Despite her token protest, he slid the coverlet aside and hauled her onto his lap because he wanted to look at her face and hold her in his arms as they spoke. Her eyes were red and her cheeks blotched from all her crying. He withdrew his handkerchief and gave it over to her since hers was thoroughly soaked from her tears. "Tell me, Syd. What has this to do with your parents?"

She took several deep breaths to calm herself. "I knew something bad was going to happen. Did I not tell you so?"

He nodded. "Yes, love. You did."

And he blamed himself for dismissing her concerns.

Syd was no feather-headed fribble of a girl. Nor was she a mouse who shrank at her own shadow. She was often too brave for her own good. For this reason, he ought to have taken her distress more seriously. That she could not explain exactly what was troubling her was no excuse to absolve him of blame.

He should not have let her go into the Harcourt house alone.

"My skin prickled as I walked through the front door," she said, her words still hitching because she could not calm herself. "I wanted to turn and run. But I made myself enter, even though I could not stop shivering. That sense of doom fell over me as Stanford led me into the parlor. I felt a darkness surrounding me. Our parlor is the ugliest room. Truly, such an ugly room. Austere. Devoid of all cheer. It sucks all the joy out of one's soul."

Octavian caressed her cheek while waiting for her to continue.

He did not want to hear about the Harcourt parlor, but understood that Syd needed to build up the strength to talk about the fight that obviously took place between her and her parents. Did they both attack her? Verbally, that is. Her father, for all his faults, was not a physically brutal man. He could not say the same about her mother, however. Syd appeared to have a small bruise on her wrist.

Had one of them done this to her?

The mere thought of Syd being hurt shot his heart into his throat. Not that she couldn't defend herself. Syd was fearless and had not backed down when any of those Scots had tried to put a hand on her.

But this was her parents.

She would not fight back because she loved them. They were most undeserving, but he had no control over her soft feelings toward them.

In any event, Octavian could not imagine both of them assaulting Syd since the husband and wife never agreed on anything. If one claimed it was day, the other said it was night. If one said the moon was out, the other would claim it was the sun. If one attempted to hurt Syd, would not the other prevent it? "Sweetheart, what did they say to you?"

"The dread," she said with shattered breath. "The fear. The lies. The schemes. The depravity."

He wrapped her in his embrace. "Blessed saints, Syd. What happened?"

"The end to our marriage. That is what happened. We were happy together, weren't we Octavian?"

"And still are," he said, trying to contain his mounting anger. It was not aimed at Syd, of course. He wanted to protect her to the end of his days. He wanted to shield her from hurt and pain, but he hadn't shielded her from whatever torment this was. "I love you, Syd."

"No." She shook her head vehemently. "You won't after this."

She started crying again.

Syd did shed tears on occasion, but she was hardly a watering pot. However, rivers of water were now flowing out of her. Oceans of it. "I came to you with nothing…and this is what I am. Nothing. Not even an earl's daughter. Less than nothing . I do not even know who I am."

It took another half hour to get the entire story out of her because she spent so much of the time catching her breath and going on about that awful parlor that he did not give a fig about. But he finally understood what had taken place.

Syd believed she was some illegitimate newborn taken from her dying mother's arms and given over to Harcourt and his wife for the sole purpose of getting their hands on a children's trust set up by Lady Harcourt's family.

Dear heaven.

This sounded like some hatched up scheme out of a cheap novel. A gothic tale of treachery and the innocent orphan girl used for a villain's depraved purpose. Only this girl was Syd and this was real.

Well, he wasn't sure if any of it was true. Syd obviously believed it because of the coldness she had endured from the woman she had always thought of as her mother. Lady Harcourt was a bitter woman who did not know the meaning of love. Octavian had never seen her crack a smile or ever utter a kind word to Syd. It was not farfetched that she now lied to Syd for the sheer purpose of hurting her.

It likely was more for the sheer pleasure of hurting her husband. Unfortunately, Syd was caught in the middle. Her mother would not care that her words also destroyed her daughter.

"I'll move out," Syd said, letting out another trembling breath. "I'm not sure where I can go yet. I don't even know if my friends will accept me once they learn the truth. I think they will, even though they will be scorned if they dare keep me in their social circle. But you and I must deal with this problem first. Perhaps we ought to return to Scotland and quietly annul the marriage. It is easier done there, don't you think? Can we annul it?"

"No, we cannot," he said with determination, for he'd gained Syd's love and was not about to toss it away.

"Oh, because we've made the marriage real in that way. But there must be other legal grounds for an annulment. Lying about my identity should be an acceptable reason. A commoner masquerading as an earl's daughter. They will declare me a liar and a fraud, and grant your freedom. Oh, Octavian. I don't even know my real name!"

He wrapped his fingers gently around her shoulders, holding her so that she could not turn away while he spoke to her. "You are Sydney Thorne now. Lady Thorne because I am the son of a duke and you are my wife. Whether you should have been addressed as a lady in your past is no longer of any relevance. You are a lady now because of your connection to me. The only question is, do you prefer to be addressed as Mrs. Thorne or Lady Thorne? It is up to you, but does not change your right to be Lady Thorne."

"My mother…if she is even that…is going to spread the story of my illegitimacy around London because she is so angry with my father. He tried to reason with her, but it enraged her all the more. He even agreed to end all relations with the other woman he had recently taken up with. A rich widow, my mother claims. He vowed never to see her again and that he would remain under the same roof with my mother, but this was also to no avail."

Octavian doubted her father would ever keep to his word. If he was going after this rich widow to gain access to her wealth, then nothing would deter him. Also, if he truly cared for this new woman, he would not be deterred either.

Even scoundrels fell in love.

"Octavian, my mother never cared a jot for him. Truly, she has always detested the sight of him. So, why does she care that he is now taking up with another woman? It is not uncommon among members of the ton to look elsewhere for affection."

"Perhaps she loves him and has always been afraid to admit it because he might spurn her." In truth, he dismissed this as a possibility. The woman was cold as an iceberg. If one peered beneath the surface, one would only find more ice.

"Oh, no. It isn't possible," Syd said, confirming his own thoughts. "Well, who knows what happened between them in the early years? Perhaps she did regard him with affection in the beginning. And as you say, he might have spurned her. Yet, I have never known my father to be unfaithful. For all his faults, this was never one of them."

She sighed and continued. "How could my mother have loved him and to this day never bothered to tell him so? Or ever shown him a scintilla of caring or compassion? In this I cannot condemn my father for finally having had enough. She never smiles. She never has a kind word to say for anyone, least of all him. You've referred to her as icy. But that is just her facade. Inside, she is a bubbling cauldron of dark thoughts and feelings. The irony is that she does not even realize she will be destroying herself along with him. Social standing is everything to her. Perhaps she does realize it and no longer cares. She certainly has never cared for me."

She looked up at Octavian, her beautiful eyes filled with so much pain. "Are there such people, Octavian? Those who cannot abide happiness and seek to destroy it in others? Is this what she is doing? Destroying everything my father holds dear? How can I have been so blind not to see the depth of her resentment? I am such an idiot."

He still had his hands on her slight shoulders and now rubbed them lightly in a gesture meant to comfort her. "You are not an idiot, Syd."

She shook her head in disagreement. "But I am. I walked around thinking I was so clever. A bluestocking know-it-all. Yet, I could not see what was going on under my very nose."

"How could you know, love? Your heart has always been filled with hope and compassion. What a strong, little heart yours must have been as a child to overcome her vindictive bile. This is your heart now, too. Strong, resilient, full of compassion and goodness."

She threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. "I love you, Octavian. I love you with all my heart and soul. But I will give you the annulment because I will not have your good name ruined by all this. If an annulment is not possible, then I shall grant you the divorce. We can accomplish this as quietly as possible. I never cared for any of the privileges of rank. I don't want anything from you. I am not afraid to work hard and make my own way. Well, I may need your help in securing employment. I would enjoy working in a museum or other place of knowledge. I understand that any position at the Huntsford Academy would be out of the question now, of course. You would need to cut all ties with me."

He eased out of the hug and took her hands in his. "Are you done with your list of demands?"

"What demands? I have only asked for your help in seeking employment." She stared at him through her misty eyes. "Am I not being reasonable?"

"Not at all. You are assuming I wish to end our marriage, which I do not."

Her eyes widened. "But once the scandal breaks–"

"I do not care. Lord, Syd. How could you think I would?"

"What about your Admiralty work? Your career. Your impending promotion."

He kissed her with raw abandon, wanting her to feel the tingle on her lips long after the kiss ended. Wanting her to feel him on her lips and not forget him. "It is all worth nothing if I do not have you beside me. I do not care who you are or where you came from. In truth, I think you are an angel sent from heaven."

She gave a wistful laugh. "I'm not sure you understand the definition of angel, if you think I am that."

"I understand it perfectly. An angel is a good, sweet soul who is beautiful in appearance but occasionally irritating, often impossibly independent, and incredibly opinionated. An angel is also recklessly fearless in her defense of others. Sound familiar? Because you are exactly that. This is why you have always been perfect for me. No matter how much of what your parents told you is true, even if all of it is true, I do not care. All that matters is you are mine now. Mine to love and protect."

"Octavian, you cannot mean that."

"Every bloody word. You are my happiness. You are my heart and my future. I have no intention of giving you up."

She place a finger to his lips and slid it lightly back and forth across his mouth to quiet him as she gazed at him in wonder. "I will not hold you to this. You need to sleep on such an important decision that will change the course of your life. Think about it overnight, Octavian. Or take longer. I do not intend to force you into making a rash choice."

"I am not the rash one in this marriage," he reminded her, his manner light and affectionate.

She managed a small smile. "I know, but you are very quick to dismiss the potential damage to your future. You sounded very much like me just now. Hotheaded. Impassioned. Stubbornly certain you were right."

"Because I am right. There is nothing to consider."

"The repercussions of this scandal might take weeks or months to unfold," she needlessly warned because he was fully aware of all that could happen, especially the damage to his chances of promotion to the rank of admiral.

It all paled in comparison to losing her.

"You need to think calmly about this without my interference. I'll ask Mrs. Quinn to prepare one of the guest chambers for me."

He held her fast to him when she attempted to rise. "No, you won't. Syd, so help me…don't you dare turn martyr on me. Sacrificing your happiness is not going to save me from strife. We are married and will stay married, and that's an end to it."

She frowned at him. "Why are you being so difficult?"

"Me?" Octavian shook his head and laughed. "Have I not been clear enough? I do not care who your true parents might be. They could not possibly be any worse than Harcourt and his wife. In truth, I would cheer loudest and longest upon having it confirmed that you are no blood relation to them. Could anyone have in-laws worse than them?"

He tipped her chin up to bring her face closer to his, and then dipped his head and kissed her full on the mouth again. She had the prettiest bow lips, soft and slightly plump. Lips a man could sink into and lose himself in their splendor.

Her body was the same, soft in all the right places, and curved in all the best places. In addition, she loved him truly. There was never any guile or artifice about Syd. He knew exactly where she stood on any subject, especially those she was passionate about, because she gave her opinion whether asked for or not. "I married you for better or for worse, minx."

"Ugh, don't call me that," she muttered, managing a small smile even though she was overset.

He nuzzled her neck, inhaling the soft, sweet scent of her skin while he suckled the pulse now throbbing at the base of her throat. "You started off as a thorn in my side, and shall now always be a Thorne by my side," he said with a husky ache to his voice, intending the pun on rose thorns and his family's surname of Thorne.

Syd stared at him, although he doubted she could see much beyond the veil of tears still clouding her eyes. "Why are you being so obstinate when I am trying to save you?"

"I do not wish to be saved from you. How many ways must I tell you that I do not want to be without you, Syd?"

"How can you be so wonderful to me? What did I ever do right to deserve a husband like you?"

"I could ask the same about you. Why did good fortune smile down on me and give me the perfect wife?"

She laughed. "Dear heaven, I am far from perfect."

"Neither am I."

"Oh, you are so wrong about that, Octavian. There is not a man in all England better than you. So, how can you attach yourself to a wife who is not even real?"

"I did not marry a name. I married you . We may have questions about your true identity, questions that will be addressed in time. If this requires Homer Barrow and his army of Bow Street runners to dig into your past, then so be it. But one thing I know for certain is that you are not Joan of Arc. So kindly stop tossing yourself onto that burning sacrificial pyre for my sake. I would rather have you in the lovely, pink flesh and not as the ashen remains of a burnt offering."

"Octavian!"

"What? Am I not entitled to my opinion?"

She furrowed her brow and pursed her lips, making him want to kiss her again even though she was frowning at him. But then, he always wanted to kiss her. "You have not given this problem enough thought," she chided.

"I have given it all the thought it merits. Shall I have supper sent up here? We can dine quietly in our chamber tonight. And we shall both sleep in this bed tonight and every night hereafter. End of discussion, Syd."

"You are being most highhanded."

"Sorry, but the thought of losing my wife over something that was not her fault has put me in ill humor. I'll arrange to meet your parents tomorrow and find out what is really going on."

"We'll go together," she said, easing back to look up at him. "I want to do this with you."

He was not thrilled with that idea. "Syd, today's visit devastated you. Are you sure you want to accompany me?"

"Yes." She nodded emphatically. "I can face anything when you are by my side. You wonderful, big ox. How can you not hate me?"

He tweaked her chin. "Your parents caught you by surprise today. Your mother's words were meant to be cruel, her barbs tipped with poisonous bile aimed at your lovely heart where they would cause the most damage. You were alone and unprepared for her attack. But you have me by your side for now and always. We shall deal with her tomorrow."

She cast him a breathtakingly tender smile.

He ordered their supper brought up.

Syd hardly touched her food, merely pecked at her vegetables like a little bird.

Once all had been cleared away, they readied for bed. Octavian usually stayed awake later than Syd. His routine was to settle in one of the tufted chairs beside the hearth with a book and a glass of wine in hand. But Syd never fell into more than a light sleep until he joined her in bed and took her into his arms. Only then would she let down her guard and drift into a deep and unreserved slumber.

The more he learned about Syd, the more he grew to understand how much she had kept bottled up inside for much of her life. That she had grown to trust him and rely on him was an enormous compliment. It could not have been easy for her to let anyone in. In truth, no one had ever gotten this close to her before.

But she had let him in, trusting him to keep her safe.

This is why she held onto him even while asleep.

It was his touch that allowed her to shed her defenses.

For this reason, he altered his routine this evening. He still read, but did so while in bed. This allowed Syd to burrow against him and be comforted by his body beside hers.

This was a comfort to him, too.

He needed her beside him…whoever she was…wherever she had come from. She was his wife and nothing else mattered to him.

But it mattered to her.

Despite his presence beside her, he saw that her sleep was not as peaceful as it could have been. She tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position. "Syd, love. Your fretting won't help anything. Try to rest."

"I'm trying, but it is hard to fall asleep when I don't know who I am."

"You are my wife, that's who you are. No matter your lineage, you are the woman I love and nothing is going to change that." He set aside his book and simply held her, stroking her hair and caressing her until she finally drifted off, her body half sprawled atop him.

Yes, she was his to love and protect.

Would her parents tell them the truth when confronted tomorrow?