‘It doesn’t change the important things.’ Ren was trying to placate her with comforting reassurances. It was a sweet gesture, a protective gesture and she was absolutely not in the mood for either.
‘Stop right there. Do not give me platitudes about how it doesn’t change your feelings for me. You have no idea what those feelings are.’ Those feelings hardly mattered now. She should have refused the temptation of taking those feelings out and looking too closely at them before reality struck. Earls didn’t marry daughters of colonels. They didn’t marry women who hadn’t set foot inside English society since they were eight and earls certainly didn’t wed women who carried scandal for a calling card. If she showed up in England with Ren, there would be curiosity and curiosity would lead to enquiries. Eventually, her sordid past would come out. Earls needed pure innocent girls to be their countesses. Nothing could come of Ren’s feelings even if they ran deep. It was best if he realised that before he decided chivalry could take forms other than leaving. Who was she fooling? It would be best for her, too.
‘Perhaps we should talk about this back at the house,’ Ren suggested. ‘I’ve picked a poor place for this discussion.’
‘No, we’ll talk about it now.’ Emma drew a deep breath to steady her mind. ‘There’s too great of an opportunity for interruption. We’ll have privacy here.’ Her thoughts were starting to move past the initial shock. ‘What else don’t I know, Ren? What are you really doing here?’ Not for the first time, she wondered why he’d bothered to come at all, especially now when it was clear he had demanding responsibilities in England. Adventurers and businessmen could move around. But Ren was neither. Earls did not have the luxury of that freedom.
By silent, mutual consent, they started to walk. Ren was reluctant to talk. His words came haltingly. ‘I’m here because the earldom is nearly broke and Cousin Merrimore’s inheritance looked like manna from heaven at the time, a chance to restore our fortunes. I had to come and see if that was true.’
Guilt consumed her. She could have stopped that journey if she’d written, if she’d done more than wait around to see if he’d come or not. She could have written about the truth of that last payment to his account, that it reflected an illusion. She’d gone without her usual allowance to make that payment. He would have known from the start there was no real money. That would have changed everything.
Perhaps not for the best for her at least. What if he’d sold his share? What if he hadn’t come? She would have had to face Gridley alone and possibly a second villain in the form of the new owner. She never would have stumbled on the rum contract. How long would she have lasted without Ren? She felt less guilty now, but a lot more selfish.
‘I could have managed the inheritance from England, but I wanted to come. I was selfish.’
The words so closely mirrored her sentiments, Emma thought for a moment she’d spoken out loud. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was selfish,’ Ren repeated. ‘This was an escape from an arranged but unwanted marriage.’
There was another woman! Her head swam. She’d desperately wanted to believe Ren was different from the men she’d known. She’d been terribly wrong. Did all men have women stashed in every corner of their lives? This was shaping up to be a rather unpleasant morning all around. ‘How do you mean unwanted? Unwanted as in you didn’t want to go through with it, or unwanted as in you did go through with it under duress?’ She stopped walking and fixed him with a stare. ‘I will not be a party to adultery or bigamy or anything of the sort.’ The thought of encountering such circumstances a second time after Thompson Hunt made her stomach churn. She was supposed to have been smarter now.
Ren shook his head. ‘I’m not married. I couldn’t go through with it. There was an heiress in York who was willing to trade her fortune for my title, but we did not suit.’
Emma breathed easier. Not quite Thompson Hunt, then. She was still free to believe Ren was different; upstanding and noble. ‘It’s not selfish to avoid unhappiness.’ She knew a thing or two about that.
Ren gave her a sharp look. ‘It is when your sister sacrifices herself on the matrimonial altar in your place.’
‘She married the York heiress?’ Emma wasn’t following the twist and turns of the story.
‘No, she’s marrying, or has already married, a man for his wealth in order to save the family from scandal. She did what I should have done.’
His remorse was palpable and it moved her. Above all, Ren Dryden was a responsible man. If the weeks of knowing him had shown her anything of the man it was that. ‘Is the money that important?’ She felt impotent. She would give him the world if it was hers to offer. But she didn’t have the kind of money he was looking for. No wonder the ledgers had upset him. He’d come looking for the pot of gold.
‘The money is everything, or was.’ Ren paused. ‘I suppose everything has worked out for now.’
But not the way he’d planned. Clearly, these new developments pained him. He’d been the one who had thought to provide for the family and given time, he would be, if he could just see that. Meanwhile, she hurt for him. When had she started to care so much about this man? It had been easier to fathom him when he was nothing more than an adventurer looking for fast money. She might be wary of such men, but at least she understood them. The islands were full of such men, every last one of them looking for an opportunity to make riches, men like Kitt Sherard. Ren Dryden was entirely out of her league. She didn’t know what to do with a man of principle. Her experience there was admittedly limited.
‘Is he a good man?’ Emma could think of nothing else to say that would assuage Ren’s guilt or feelings of failure.
Ren nodded. ‘He’s a good friend of mine.’
‘Then he’s a good man. I can’t imagine you having bad friends.’
‘What about Kitt Sherard? We went to school together.’ Ren stopped himself from saying any more. Kitt had his secrets.
‘You’re trying to pick a fight now and we’re not discussing Kitt Sherard. We’re discussing you,’ she gently reminded him. If they wanted to quarrel there was plenty of more immediate material to fight over than Sherard. ‘Do you really see leaving as your only choice?’ She brought the focus of the conversation into sharp relief with her words.
Ren faced her, his face serious, his eyes sombre. ‘If I stayed, we’d be talking about marriage. We cannot live under the same roof without its protection. I could not do that to you.’
‘That’s definitely not the most romantic of proposals.’ Duty and obligation were written all over his suggestion and not an ounce of feeling, or love. However, she’d reached for the fairy tale once before and found it to be just that. Fairy tales weren’t real. Neither were Prince Charmings. The fairy tale had been overrated. ‘It would be no different from what you left England to escape, a marriage of convenience,’ Emma posited.
Ren shrugged. ‘Perhaps we can’t really run from our fates.’
Emma shook her head and stepped away. If he touched her, she would lose control and she did not want to cry. It would be too easy to fall in love with him. She suspected she was already a good portion of the way there. To completely fall and to know he only saw her as an expeditious arrangement that suited him in bed and out would break what was left of her heart. ‘I’m sorry, Ren. I couldn’t do that to me. I am selfish, too. I need to be more than a man’s convenience. In truth, I couldn’t do it to you either.’
‘I haven’t even asked.’ Ren tried to smile, but she could see that her outright refusal had surprised him. She realised he’d already tried the idea on in his mind and found the offer probable. He thought he could be comfortable with it. She ought to be flattered. An earl didn’t come asking for her hand every day. But he was only asking because he didn’t know better.
He studied her for a moment. ‘I understand your reticence. I can only tell you I don’t think it would be like that.’
They started walking again as if they could put distance between themselves and the awkward subject if they moved the space that had witnessed it. ‘Have you ever thought Cousin Merrimore wanted us to marry?’ Ren said after a while. ‘Maybe that was why he divided the estate as he did?’
‘No. It’s a fairy tale of a thought, Ren, the perfect happy-ever-after is an impossibility under the best of circumstances. Merrimore knew better.’ She paused, holding on to the last of her damning secrets for a moment. ‘He watched my first marriage fall apart.’
It was her turn to stun him and that did it. If anything could trump the disclosure that Sugarland’s majority shareholder was an earl in his other life, this was it. But all Ren said was, ‘Perhaps you should tell me about it.’
She was glad they were walking. Talking was easier when the rest of her body had something to do. She didn’t have to look at Ren and watch his reaction to just how ruined she was. What had happened had happened almost nine years ago and she’d thought she’d put her past behind her. More importantly, she’d thought she’d come to terms with it. Ren’s arrival had shown her she had not. He tempted her to make the same mistakes again. More than that, he’d shown her what an imperfect shambles her life was without even meaning to do it. She was a treasure trove of scandal.
‘I married at eighteen, perhaps too young, although lots of girls marry before they’re twenty. I was dazzled by him and I rushed in. In retrospect, I think it was because I was lonely after my father’s death. I had no family, no sense of place, except for what Merry had given me. But I was acutely aware of how temporary that might be. I wanted something solid of my own. I wanted to build a family that was mine, something to replace all that I’d missed in my nomadic childhood.’
The parallels to what was happening right now were overwhelming in their symmetry; the death of a close protector spurring her to subconsciously cast about for a replacement. Her father’s death had encouraged her towards an early marriage, and now Merry’s death was encouraging her towards Ren. She’d always thought of herself as strong and independent, but this pattern indicated otherwise.
She slipped a sideways glance at Ren. He nodded, focused on the outer story itself. ‘You felt this man could give you those things?’ He was taking it all in with a great deal of calm, she thought. But he didn’t see the parallels yet. He didn’t understand this story was a form of rejection, full of reasons why she couldn’t marry him if for no other reason than to prove to herself she’d learned something from her past and would not repeat those errors.
‘All that and more,’ she admitted honestly. ‘He was comfortably situated. He was older, in his late thirties. He’d been married before. He seemed to know everything about the world. He could make me laugh, he showered me with little gifts. He always had a little treat in his pocket, a ribbon or a bonbon. I worshipped him. He was Prince Charming, so handsome and gallant. Merry encouraged me to wait, to give it more time, but I didn’t want to. I was afraid he’d leave and never come back. After two months of courtship, I married him. Merry gave us a lovely wedding in the gardens. Then it all fell apart.’
Very slowly, to be sure. Her new husband had been too smart to show his hand right away. He’d helped Merry with the plantation, gradually usurping the role she’d held. He’d befriended Sir Arthur Gridley and the other planters in an attempt to be seen as the new face of Sugarland. After all, even nine years ago, Merry had been old. Then he’d tried to formalise that arrangement, pressuring her to get Merry to acknowledge him in the will.
‘When that failed, the laughter stopped, the gifts stopped. He became an entirely different creature from the man I thought I knew,’ Emma confessed. ‘It was clear he’d married me to get to the plantation. It was a far easier route to landownership than starting up one of his own.’
‘There’d likely been nothing to start from,’ Ren put in. ‘Gridley once mentioned there’s no land for sale on the island.’
Emma nodded. ‘It’s true. The only way to acquire a plantation of any size is to buy it from someone else. But my husband wasn’t interested in buying, only in taking. He thought he could woo Sugarland out of me. Fortunately, Merry was onto him. Unfortunately, too. Once he realised Merry wouldn’t acknowledge him, he took his frustrations out on me.’
Those had been dark days. She’d tried to hide the bruises from Merry, but her husband had not been careful, or perhaps he had. He’d wanted his mark to be visible, wanted Merry to be coerced into reconsideration. She could feel Ren bristle beside her, his chivalry on full display. Ren’s gentleman’s code would not tolerate such treatment. ‘Tell me how this story ends, Emma.’ His voice was tight.
‘Merry ordered him from the house at gunpoint one day. He was a coward at heart. He left. Shortly afterwards, we learned he’d gone to Jamaica and was living openly with a wealthy widow. Some even said he’d married her, but we have no real proof. I didn’t care at the time. I was glad he was gone. Forever only lasted three years, and happy-ever-after lasted even less than that.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Mouldering in a grave, shot dead by a jealous husband. It seemed the wealthy Jamaican widow wasn’t enough for him. He had quite an enterprising career here in the Caribbean.’ This was the more embarrassing part to admit. ‘It’s likely he was married to someone else while he was married to me. I can add bigamy to my list of accomplishments. Not everyone can claim they were a bigamist at eighteen or a widow by twenty-four.’
‘You were an unknowing participant. It’s hardly your fault—’ Ren began.
She cut him off. ‘Are you trying to absolve me or yourself? I don’t need absolution, Ren. I made a mistake and married a bad man against the advice of those who cared for me. I can’t pretend it didn’t happen or excuse it. Society certainly won’t. They feast on it.’
‘He’s lucky he’s dead,’ Ren said. ‘If he wasn’t, I’d have to shoot him myself. Even though he was gone, he kept you trapped in that marriage for two years after he left.’
‘In name only was far better than having him here. But now you see the whole of me. You understand now why it’s best I remain alone. I’m ruined and I’ll never be anything but trouble to any man.’
Ren ignored the dismissal. ‘What was the bastard’s name?’
‘Thompson Hunt.’