How to Marry a Marble Marquis(42)
“So stop her. She’s not there yet, you dolt. I don’t see why you won’t just —“
“Because it’s not fair,” he shouted again, his voice ringing through the rafters. “To take a wife of another species would mean to be absent from her life for half of it, Maris. What is the sense of having a partner that you love only to leave them vulnerable to a cruel world? Am I to make my wife sleep throughout the day and wake at eventide with me? Am I to make her shun her friends and family to exist at night with me and me alone? I can’t. I won’t. I won’t ask that of her, and I can’t bear to know that she’s living a life that doesn’t include me in it.”
His sister rubbed at her eye, a thoroughly aggravated move. “Silas, listen to yourself. The girl’s been here for two bloody weeks. Celestia said you’re together every night, and apparently, you’ve been spending all of your time together for the last month. Her family is clearly used to it. What friends are you speaking of? The ones who’ve assisted since her family’s downfall? Because it doesn’t seem like she actually has many of those. She stays abed every day past noon. Kestin said she goes to the moon temple each evening and waits for you to wake. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s making some arduous sacrifice. Now if you truly have no intention of seeing the responsibility to your title through and want to run off and play pirates with our brother, then I suggest you hurry up and leave. I’ll miss you every single day, but I can’t bear to watch you make yourself miserable and ruin our family name in the pursuit of your misery. I don’t especially want to be marchioness, Silas, but mercy knows someone needs to be accountable for the Stride name.”
He was going to combust. Silas raised a shaking finger, jabbing it in his sister’s direction. “How do you know about that? What sneaking, blabbing rat bastard told you that?”
She rolled her eyes again. “Oh, please. It’s all well and good that you hand-picked Luenn to be your confident as well as brother-in-law, Silas, but if you truly expected him to keep all of your secrets, then you ought to be the one sucking his cock, brother. He’s a rat bastard of your own choosing, but he’s trained up remarkably well. Stop changing the subject. What are you going to do about Miss Eastwick?”
He was sinking into a sea of stupidity, one of his own making. He was trapped in the hull of the ship, a worthless slab of stone, and there was nothing he could do. He’d sent her off to another’s arms instead of holding her in his own forever.
“It’s too late,” he whispered brokenly. “She’s already gone.”
“For pity’s sake, do I have to fucking do everything?!“ Maris pushed to her feet, flinging the glass of ratafia into the fire, and the flames surged. “Go pack a bag right now, you fucking child, and go after her. You have an invitation to the ball, Silas. Go claim your bride. And I swear to the moon, if you bollocks this up, I will push you from the roof. You’re too stupid to wear the title. I’m going to the gryphonrie to have one of the males saddled. They can carry your weight. As soon as dusk falls, you get there, and you claim her.”
She was right. There was no way to go back to his prior lifestyle, not now. He’d already seen that. There would never be another for him, and empty sex with an endless succession of nameless women would never fill the hole in his heart, shaped like her name. Eleanor Stride, Marchioness of Basingstone. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be too late. He wouldn’t let it be. There was only one reason the titled lords of the bête monde attended the Monster’s Ball, and this year, he would be one of them. Maris was right. It was time to go and claim his bride.
Eleanor
Broadstone Hall sat atop the cliffside in Maidenbury, overlooking the crashing waves much in the same way Basingstone did on the opposite coast.
The manor itself was a formidable thing. Silas Stride’s home was impressive and beautiful ― picturesque and gleaming amidst the rolling greenery of the northern countryside, stately and airy, far too nice for a scoundrel like him, but Broadstone was massive. Eleanor was grateful for the concealment of her carriage as she gaped through the lace-covered window, taking it all in. With high stone walls, peaked towers, and turrets, the architecture was gothic and imposing, and home for the next several days.
As the carriage navigated up the private road, she spied a massive expanse of gardens and pavilions, stone paths intersected with statuary and archways, topiaries and fountains, and outbuildings as far as the eye could see. Spires sliced through the grey Dorset sky, and at the roofline, the black silhouette of gargoyles squatted. Eleanor shivered. It was hard to believe she’d been clear across the country just a short while ago.
“Is it able to fly that far, truly?” she had asked him shortly before dawn. “It’s not going to get tired and drop out of the sky like a stone?” The gryphon that was being saddled for the journey had given her a swift, sharp-eyed look over its leonine shoulder, and she blanched. “Can it understand me?!” she hissed to the marquis, balling her fists at his arrogant chuckle.
“Well, I should certainly hope so, my dear,” he drawled. “Elswise, how do you expect her to follow the directions she’s given? They have to know the destination in order to deliver you there, of course. It’s not magic.” She glared up, but he took no notice. “And besides, gryphons are some of the most intelligent creatures in existence. I’ve no doubt that if they possessed hands and a quill, they would be able to sit and write the most divine of poetry and work out the most complicated of mathematical equations. Gryphon gondola is a perfectly safe way to travel, Miss Eastwick, probably more so than a carriage. There’s no need to fret.”