by Eloisa James
Lucius didn’t say anything. Mayne knew as well as he did that whatever had been the case previously, Helene, Lady Godwin, fairly glowed when the earl entered a room these days. And Godwin might have had an opera singer or two around the house a while ago, but he had eyes for no one but his wife now.
“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” Mayne said belligerently, glaring at Lucius.
“You’re foxed. I would suggest you retire. If you remember, you are embarking on married life tomorrow morning after breakfast.”
Mayne didn’t take that very well. He narrowed his eyes and his speech grew even thicker. “You’re turning into a pretentious little prig, do you know that? You were never exactly easy in your manner, but now your prudery is close to sinful.”
“Since you’re cast-away, I’ll ignore that,” Lucius said calmly.
“Above correction, are you?”
“No. But above fighting with a man who’s drunk as a wheelbarrow.”
“I’m not drunk,” Mayne said, returning his glowering eyes to the fireplace. “I wish I were drunk.”
Lucius refrained from comment.
“I’ve no doubt you think I’m jug-bitten,” Mayne said with a heavy sneer. “A gentleman of your caliber finds himself on the go from a glass of milk.”
Lucius got up and walked to the door, but Mayne was out of his chair in a violent surge of unsteady limbs.
“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said, jerking Lucius back by the arm. “I remember you casting up your accounts into the Thames—or are you too abstemious to acknowledge such a thing?”
Lucius turned to face him, pulling away his arm so swiftly that Mayne swayed and almost disbalanced. “I was seventeen.”
“Stubble it,” Mayne snapped. “The only thing that’s changed between us is that your blasted mother decided you were smelling of the merchant classes. And since then you’ve been a regular Holy Willy.”
Lucius froze. “I would greatly prefer that you didn’t comment on my mother.” His voice had the smooth threat of a pope chastising a junior devil.
But Mayne was too far intoxicated to have an ear for innuendo. “We’ve handled the subject of your family with kid gloves for years. The hell with it. She may be the daughter of an earl, but she’s a right b—” He caught himself, just in time.
Lucius just waited. He was leaning against the door, arms folded over his chest.
But Mayne had seemingly realized that he was on the verge of causing a breach from which there could be no recovery and was sorting through his rather bleary brain, trying to find a way to rectify the situation.
“Yes?” Lucius asked, his tone excruciatingly polite and just as icy. “Surely there is more that you would like to get off your chest?”
Mayne had apparently decided that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamp. “I don’t really give a damn about your parents. I’ve always thought your mother was a mean-spirited woman who never got over the shock of her own marriage. Now you—you’re turning into the type of self-righteous prig whom no one really likes, even if they pretend that they do.”
Lucius felt the blow to his chest as if it were physical. Mayne turned and dropped into his chair again.
“Your father is a small-minded wart on the ass of—of—of the ton,” he added, with rather less clarity than could be desired.
Lucius turned, but Mayne’s bleary voice from the depths of the chair stopped him. “You’d better drop all that stiff-rumped nonsense before it’s too late, before you turn into an even bigger wart yourself.”
Lucius stood for a long moment, his jaw clenched, thinking longingly about smashing Mayne’s nose into the back of his throat.
But when he strode over to see if Mayne wanted to add a final insult that would tip the whole conversation over into violence, he heard a snore.
Mayne had spilled the rest of the glass of claret on the white linen of his shirt. His hair was tumbling over his forehead. He looked drunk—drunk and miserable.
Lucius stood for a moment, eyes narrowed, staring down at his friend. He stopped in the hall and told a footman that the earl was in need of assistance.
Then he went up to his own chamber and thought. About warts, drunks, and marriage.
Chapter
25
The next morning came all too soon. Tess woke up and stared at the canopy over her bed. She thought about running out to the stables and calling for her horse, but where would she go? What would she do?
Marrying Mayne made sense. She would be able to save Annabel’s and Josie’s future marriages. She would be married to a man of substance and worth. She and Mayne would have a civil, friendly, courteous relationship.
She got up, shivering a little in the chilly air. Her maid, Gussie, ushered in cans of hot water and a tin bath.
At some point the door popped open. “You simply cannot marry my dearest brother wearing black,” Lady Griselda Willoughby said. “So I’ve brought you one of my gowns. It’s half-mourning and really, quite quite gorgeous.”
Tess looked up, surprised. “Oh, I couldn’t!”
“Of course you can,” Lady Griselda said. “I can’t abide the idea that my brother would marry a crow. I’m sure it’s bad luck.” She thought about saying that the marriage needed every ounce of available luck to succeed and swallowed her words. Instead she bustled about the room. The important thing was that Garret had finally decided to marry. His bout of nerves the previous afternoon was irrelevant and nothing that his bride needed to know about.
She stole a look at Tess. The girl was truly lovely, especially with all that brandy-colored hair tumbling down her back. For a moment Griselda felt envious, then dismissed the emotion. To be envious would imply that she, Griselda, wished to marry, and she didn’t. She had quite enough of the married state when poor, dear Willoughby was alive, thank you very much.
Her maid was throwing the gown over Tess’s head.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking down at her low neckline. “Are you certain it’s proper?”
“Of course it’s proper,” Griselda said bracingly. “It’s half-mourning, and I wore it only once, for Lady Granville’s champagne breakfast. That was when we were all mourning for Sir William Ponsby, one of the heroes of Waterloo, you know—or perhaps you don’t, since you were in Scotland.”
“We did know of Waterloo,” Tess said, turning before the glass. The dress was designed in the very height of fashion: low in the bosom, with tiny sleeves that draped from her shoulders. Seed pearls clustered around the bodice and caught the light. “I don’t feel comfortable,” Tess confessed. “It seems odd to show quite so much of my bosom during my wedding.”
Griselda waved at Tess’s maid, and the girl slipped out of the room. Then she sat down on the bed, and said, “Dearest, I’m going to be absolutely frank with you.”
“Yes?” Tess asked.
“My brother is used to making love with the most exquisite women in the ton. He’s had them all, at least all those that are married and available.” She raised her hand. “You equal any of them in beauty and surpass most. The problem is—as I see it—that Garret has never been able to form an attachment to one particular woman.”
“Yet he’s never been married,” Tess said, making certain that she understood the subject of conversation.
“Of course not! And you’re right: that is the important point. The fact that his affairs have lasted only a few days needn’t affect your marriage at all!” Griselda said, beaming at her as if she were a particularly apt student of the marital state.
“Are you implying,” Tess said rather faintly, “that he—that his affairs—”
“Never lasted long,” Griselda said, nodding. “To this point, I do believe that the longest period he’s spent with a single woman has been a matter of a week or two.”
“The musical countess?” Tess asked.
“Less,” Griselda said promptly. “To the best of my knowledge, they had no affair whatsoever. She may h
ave toyed with the idea for a day or so.”
“Goodness,” Tess murmured.
“But it will all be different now that he’s married!” Griselda said, opening the door.
They made their way down the polished mahogany stairs. Brinkley was standing in the hallway. He gave a deep bow on seeing them and swept open the door to the sitting room.
The first person Tess saw was Lucius Felton. He turned about when she entered, and for a moment it was if she froze in the doorway, caught by his black eyes. Then Griselda peered over her shoulder, giving a shrill laugh, and said, “Your bridegroom will be here in a matter of seconds.”
Tess moved into the room and found herself curtsying before the bishop. He was very jovial, and kept pinching her cheek and telling her that his nephew was a lucky fellow indeed.
Tess smiled faintly and tried not to think. Annabel swept into the room, making a grand entrance.
“You are annoyingly lovely,” Tess heard Lady Griselda telling Annabel. They were laughing together.
Lucius was leaving the room, not that Tess was watching him in particular. It was just that he was so—well, somehow, to Tess, his quiet possession was just what she thought a duke ought to be. Or an earl, for that matter.
Not that it mattered.
She heard steps coming down the stairs outside; surely that was Garret.
“That’ll be your husband,” the bishop said in his deep voice. “Good! I’d like to get this ceremony on the way and make our way to breakfast. It’s a pagan thing, running a marriage before a man has even had his porridge.” He laughed, and his belly shook gaily.
The door behind Tess didn’t open.
“I’ll tell them to hurry up,” Griselda said, rushing out into the hall. Tess tried to take a deep breath, but she felt as if Griselda’s dress was too tight to allow her to take in air properly.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Annabel said, slipping her hand under Tess’s arm. “I just wish that Imogen were here. I still can’t believe—”
The door opened, and Tess turned around so sharply that Annabel’s arm fell away from her.
It was Rafe.
“Tess,” he said. “May I speak to you for a moment?”
An odd moment of silence fell over the group.
“I’ll come with you,” Annabel said sharply.
“No,” Tess said, moving toward Rafe. Suddenly she could breathe again. There was no one in the entrance, not Lucius, Griselda, or the Earl of Mayne.
Rafe led her into the library. “I loathe having to tell you such unpleasant news,” he said, looking, indeed, quite unhappy.
“Imogen?” Tess cried.
“No.” A wash of relief swept up her spine. “Then?”
Rafe swept his hand through his hair. “Your bloody bridegroom’s fled.”
“Fled?” She caught back a sudden smile. “That’s not a very complimentary way of phrasing it, Rafe.” She walked over and sat down in a large chair. For the first time in the last four days, she felt calm. As if her scalp were relaxing.
Rafe sat down opposite her. His eyes crinkled at the corners with worry. “If he were here, I would beat the stuffing out of him,” he said, running a hand through his hair again. “If I’d had any idea he would pull a stunt like this, I never would have introduced you to him. No less would I have promoted a match between the two of you!”
Tess smiled at him. “It’s all right, Rafe,” she said. “I don’t mind.” And she let her smile grow, just to show him.
But he wasn’t looking at her. “What a fool I was,” he said. “Mayne hasn’t been himself since this past spring. I knew it, and I ignored it. I’m not used to the responsibility of being a guardian. There can’t be a worse guardian in all Christendom than I!”
He looked so unhappy that Tess almost laughed. “You are not a failure!” she said cheerfully.
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Tess.”
“Yes I do. The Earl of Mayne has taken himself away and left me at the altar, so to speak.”
“Precisely.”
“But we weren’t really suited,” Tess noted.
“That’s irrelevant,” Rafe said. “The important fact is that the jackass has up and jilted you. Jilted you! I wouldn’t have thought it possible!”
“No one will know.”
“Everyone will know. The ton lives for this sort of gossip. Believe me. They’ll know.”
“Ah,” Tess said, not caring much.
“There is one solution.” Rafe paused. “It’s an odd one, and likely to cause as much scandal in its own way.”
“I don’t wish you to go after Mayne,” Tess said, alarmed.
“Never. No, no. It’s—well.” Rafe got up. “I think I’ll let someone else explain this particular possibility. But if you decide not to do it, my dear, I would be most happy to bring you out myself.” He walked over and touched her on the shoulder. “I’m sure you realized how little family I have. I am quite aware of my manifold failures as a guardian, but I am still glad to have you as my ward.”
Tess smiled up at him. “I’m so glad that Papa chose you, Rafe.”
He walked to the door and opened it. “One minute, then.”
When the door closed, Tess leaned her head back against her chair. She waited to feel tragic. The only thing she felt was stunned and rather pleased.
Of course, when the door opened, it was Lucius. She looked up at him. It was the oddest feeling: life had taken another sharp turn, as it had when her father died.
Lucius walked over, and then reached out a hand and brought her to her feet. His eyes didn’t even drift to her bosom, but suddenly her dress felt not tawdry, but dangerous, sensuous, and powerful.
“Miss Essex,” he said, “I have come to ask for your hand in marriage.”
“Why do you wish to marry me?” she asked, watching his face.
He flinched slightly. “You find yourself in an unenviable position,” he said, “due to my closest friend’s behavior. I am constrained, as an honorable man, to—”
“Is it because you wish to race Something Wanton in the Silchester cup?” she asked.
He looked surprised, and a drop of relief went down her spine.
“No,” he said.
“Doesn’t it seem rather a sacrifice, to marry only in order to ameliorate your friend’s ill deeds? You are not, after all, the earl’s brother.”
“No.”
She waited, but he wasn’t going to say anything else. Of course she would refuse him. She was no piece of firewood, to be delivered from hand to hand. She opened her mouth to give him a set-down, and a sharp one too.
However, she had made up her mind not to drift along like a leaf caught in a river eddy. She wasn’t merely an observer to her own life. The thought jumbled together with Imogen’s triumphant little note, and:
“All right.”
His eyes were on hers: blazing with a fallen-angel quality. “Why?”
She raised her hands to her mouth but her fingers were unsteady. So she shrugged instead. “I must needs marry.” She managed that fairly well. Her voice sounded light, almost uninterested, truly sophisticated. “You have no title, Mr. Felton, but…” Her voice trailed away.
“But I have the—the substance that you desire, is that it?”
“Something of that.” She had to get away.
“But—”
She turned back to him sharply. This was all too humiliating. “I shall be a comfortable spouse, sir. I promise you that.”
His hand fell from her arm. “I shall endeavor to be the same to you, Tess.”
“Thank you.” She said it coolly but with desperation. She had to leave now.
“Don’t you think that we should discuss our forthcoming marriage?”
Tess pressed her hands together tightly and said, “I don’t know much about marriage.”
He smiled slightly. “I shouldn’t expect you to have that particular knowledge.”
“Well, you know very little about me,�
�� Tess said with a slight edge.
He tipped up her chin. She felt herself grow pink. “I know a few things.” His voice was velvet dark.
She opened her mouth, but he was still talking. “Have you shared an intimate breakfast, a supper a deux, a…bedtime chocolate?”
Tess desperately tried to think of something to say that would be sophisticated, urbane, funny—the sort of thing Annabel would say without thinking twice. “Why did you ask me that question?” she asked instead, looking straight into his eyes and ignoring the laughter there. “Do you really want to know what I think of marriage?”
The laughter disappeared, as if extinguished. “With good fortune, we’ll be married a very long time.”
That was something of an answer, Tess supposed. “I have seen marriages in which the couple never speak. They just walk past each other. Mrs. Stewart, whose land ran next to ours in Scotland, talked of her husband in the third person only, even when he was standing next to her: ‘He doesn’t care for asparagus,’ she would say, with Mr. Stewart just at her shoulder. ‘He will only eat cottage pie, and that only on a second Tuesday.’”
The edge of Lucius’s mouth curled, and Tess realized with a horrible shock how much she wanted him to be amused by her. Because otherwise—she mentally shook her head.
“I hope we shan’t have a silent marriage,” he said, taking her hand. “I feel that if we have clear expectations of each other, we are far more likely to have a happy marriage. And I would very much like you to be happy with me, Tess.”
Tess noticed that he didn’t say anything about being happy with her, but she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“What are your expectations?” she asked. And then colored. Could this have something to do with bedroom matters? “I—I—”
There was that smile in his eyes again. “Simple things.” He was rubbing a thumb over her palm. “If we understand each other, I would hope that we don’t find ourselves in a chilly relationship.”
“What is there to understand?” Tess said, looking at him.
“I have an uneasy feeling that you know me so well already, just by watching me, that I can tell you nothing.”