Just as quickly he discarded the thought. He might well be a Wincanton, but the army had taught him about his responsibilities. It was his duty to do right by Connie. He had wronged her and he would not let her pay the terrible price alone. Aaron had ruined enough peoples’ lives already, he did not need another on his conscience. The guilt from all of his previous sins was already too heavy to bear.
‘I will offer myself as Constance Stuart’s husband and let her decide.’ He sincerely hoped she would turn him down—despite her unfortunate family connections she deserved a better man than him, but it had to be her choice.
‘If you do, then I will...’
‘You will what, Father?’ It was a familiar threat that he had lost patience with long ago. ‘You cannot disinherit me. The estate is entailed. You can throw me out until you die, which we both know will happen sooner rather than later, and I will survive well enough until then.’ Aaron stalked towards his father and loomed over him. ‘Take comfort that I inadvertently ruined a Stuart, Father. It is the only satisfaction that I will allow you to take from this whole sorry mess.’ Aaron turned to leave.
‘You are soft, like your mother. She had no backbone either. But, as I have always said, bad bitch—bad pup. And now you would bring another bad bitch into our house.’
Aaron spun around and practically growled into his father’s face. ‘If Connie will have me, then she will be my wife by tomorrow and you will treat her with the respect that position deserves. I promised you a grandson within the year. What difference does it make whose belly he comes from?’
He had stepped away then, frightened by his own need to cause the man who had sired him physical pain, and had stalked out into the street in search of a cleric senior enough to issue him with a special licence. Only then did he seek out her father. He had been surprised that the man had so readily agreed—but now, seeing the way the earl treated his only daughter, he was not surprised at all. The earl was determined to make Connie pay for the shame she had brought down upon their family. To add insult to injury, the Earl of Redbridge only agreed to the match if Aaron agreed to take her without a penny—which of course he had. He might desperately need the money, but that was hardly Connie’s fault. What better way to make her pay than to make her marry the enemy and disown her completely? Like his own father, the Earl of Redbridge was so fuelled with bitterness and hatred from the feud that he could not see past his own nose. Both men were tyrants. Both men made his flesh crawl.
Connie was now sat hunched on the sofa, looking defeated and disgusted in equal measure. Aaron had no idea what to say to her, so he sat in a chair close by and waited. Neither spoke. What was there to say? They were doomed to be stuck with one another now and neither one of them wanted to be with the other. Fortunately, they did not have to wait long. A very nervous-looking vicar arrived. He blinked awkwardly at the pair of them through the lenses of his thick spectacles. ‘May I see the licence?’
Aaron handed it over and the man scanned it quickly. ‘Everything appears to be in order. However, I cannot help but notice that the two of you do not look quite so keen.’ He was peering kindly at Connie, but it was her father who answered him.
‘That is simply natural bridal nerves. My daughter is as keen as I am to begin the wedding formalities.’
The priest did not look convinced and was still looking from Aaron to Connie with concern. ‘We will need some witnesses.’
‘They are waiting in the next room,’ the Earl of Redbridge said curtly. ‘I shall fetch them and you can get it over with.’ He walked towards the door and then slowly turned back and spoke to Aaron directly as if his daughter was not there at all. ‘I shall not be returning. Once the ceremony is over with, get that girl out of my house. I wash my hands of her. She is your problem now. And she will be a problem. She always has been.’ And with that he left.
‘It might be prudent to wait a bit.’ The priest rested his hand gently on the back of Connie’s. ‘Perhaps in a few days all will seem clearer. This marriage is particularly fast.’
She shook her head without looking at the man and then retreated back into herself. Several ashen-faced servants filed in and stood uncomfortably in the room. Connie stood next to Aaron stiffly, staring off into space and struggling not to cry.
‘Do you, Constance Elizabeth Mary Stuart, take this man, Aaron Phillip Arthur George Wincanton, to be your lawfully wedded husband?’
Aaron held his breathe until Connie nodded once.
‘I need you to say the words, Lady Constance.’
There was a long pause. Aaron watched her hands fist at her sides and a myriad of emotions cross her face. After an age she turned to him with an expression of complete hatred.
‘I do.’
She mumbled the rest of her vows as if in a trance. In his haste, Aaron had forgotten to buy a ring and was forced to use his own signet ring as a wedding band. It swamped her delicate fingers and looked completely wrong on her hand, as he supposed he did too. Everything about this marriage was wrong. At best they were strangers, at worst sworn enemies.
As the first rays of the sun filtered into the study the vicar declared them man and wife. He did not suggest that Aaron should kiss his bride. Even the vicar realised that Connie would rather kill him than kiss him. But it was done. What had possessed him to follow her into that library last night he could not say, only now they both had an entire lifetime to regret his impulsive decision.
‘Come, Connie,’ he said with a sigh of resignation, ‘it is time to go.’
Aaron did not sit in the carriage with her as they travelled directly to Ardleigh Manor, instead he rode his horse alongside. While she was grateful that he had the good sense to realise that she really had nothing whatsoever to say to him, and probably never would have, it meant that she was left alone with her own thoughts and fears for hours on end.
Ardleigh Manor.
Whilst she had seen it almost every day of her life from her bedchamber window, the Wincanton estate was completely unfamiliar to her. It might well neighbour her father’s land, but that might as well be the moon now, it was so far away. She was completely and irrefutably estranged from her family. Her father had made that quite clear. Never again would she while away the hours chatting to her brother, Henry, or her mother, nor would she ride her own beloved horse again, nor would she experience the comfort, smells and cosiness of her childhood home. Although she doubted that she would miss her father—she had been a disappointment to him from the moment she had been born—each of those losses was a cruel blow. Connie felt as if her heart had been ripped from her chest and shredded, and there was not a thing she could do about it. She felt raw and broken, wronged and ashamed.
And so very angry that she felt as if she might burst from the way it boiled and curdled in her gut. She had let her mask slip in front of Aaron Wincanton, of all people. The man who had cursed her with that dreadful nickname, had seen how much it had hurt her, how it continued to hurt her because she had never been the kind of woman that men fancied, and that the only husband she could get was either bought or trapped into marriage.
Connie heard the sound of gravel under the wheels of the carriage and forced herself to look out of the window at her new home. Up close, Ardleigh Manor was larger than she had realised. The symmetrical, classically designed front appeared stark white against the night sky, the windows glowing warmly with candlelight. If it had belonged to any other family than the vile Wincantons, she might have considered the house pleasing to look at, rather than menacing, but as the carriage came to slow stop outside Connie physically steeled herself to go inside.
An austere butler and a small round housekeeper stood waiting just outside the open front door. Connie rudely ignored her husband’s proffered hand and made her own way down the short steps to the floor, all the while staring up at the enormous double-front door looming menacingly from ahead.