by Anna Bradley
CHAPTER THREE
Natalia stomped through the woods that bordered her uncle’s estate and Lady Fortescue’s.
She could get no peace.
Her talk with Bea hadn’t helped. All it had served to do was make her even more anxious.
She missed her family. Of course she did.
For the first year at least she’d cried daily, wanting to return to her mama.
But Natalia had grown accustomed to life here. Had grown to love England.
What would she do back in Russia? Marry a man she barely knew because Papa considered him a good match? But what about what Natalia considered a good match?
No doubt Papa would think her a silly child, a romantic fantasist, but Natalia absolutely refused to marry someone she didn’t love.
A noise up ahead broke into her depressing thoughts.
Speaking of someone I don’t love, she thought wryly as the figure of Lord Staunton on horseback appeared in front of her.
Natalia glanced around, wondering if she could run away before he spotted her. But to her exasperation, he tipped his hat then dismounted.
The grimace on his too-handsome face served to irritate her further still.
What did he have to be grimacing about? She wasn’t the odious, arrogant cur at this particular meeting.
“Good afternoon, Lady Natalia.” He bowed, and Natalia annoyed herself by noticing the way the winter sun glinted off his light, sandy coloured hair.
He glanced up, his deep, golden eyes only a couple shades darker than the lock that currently fell across his brow as he gazed up at her.
“How do you do, my lord?” She curtsied because manners dictated that she did. Not because she wanted to.
“I believe you are to return to Russia after the seasonal celebrations.”
It was a statement, not a question, but she was obliged to respond in any case.
“Yes, my family will arrive next week for the festivities, and then we shall return home together.”
Or so my father thinks.
Natalia could never have accused Lord Staunton of being attentive to her before, but today he was positively rude, not even pretending to listen to her explanation.
His gaze was elsewhere, and judging from the distracted frown, his mind was, too.
And it annoyed her. Especially because she had far more important things to do than waste time idly chit-chatting with the cad.
“Am I boring you, my lord?” she asked, her voice dripping with acid.
He blinked at her as though in shock, then suddenly grinned.
Natalia was appalled at the fluttering in her chest at that expression.
What on earth did her chest think it was doing?
“Not at all, my lady,” he said, all charm.
She didn’t buy it for a second.
He’d never be charming to her. At least not on purpose.
“Forgive me.” He nodded his head apologetically. “I’m afraid that I have a lot on my mind at the moment.”
He looked worried of a sudden, and Natalia could only imagine that look was similar to one she’d been wearing herself when he’d come upon her.
“I know the feeling,” she said wryly before she could think to stop herself.
“You have something troubling you?” he asked.
Natalia didn’t particularly want to talk to Lord Arrogant about this problem.
But she found herself unable to keep her silence.
“I am returning home to get married, according to my father,” she said, looking up at him.
Natalia had always been on the tall side, but Lord Staunton still towered over her.
“He’s chosen a handful of suitable grooms, and I must pick one.”
Lord Staunton grimaced.
“And you don’t want to pick one?” he asked.
Natalia shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know any of them,” she cried. “I haven’t been back to Russia for eight years. How can I be expected to pick a husband the moment I arrive?”
“You have my sympathies, Lady Natalia,” he replied in an unusual show of kindness.
Since the time Natalia had been in short skirts, Benjamin Trafford had been nothing but mean to her. Why was he suddenly acting as if he cared?
“Well, thank you,” she responded rather dryly. “But as a man, you can have no real idea of my predicament,” she explained. “You will not be forced to marry with little or no say in your own future, your own life.”
The bark of laughter was bitter and unexpected, and Natalia blinked up at him in surprise.
“On the contrary,” he scowled. “I understand more than you know.”
“Oh?”
His golden gaze snapped to hers, and he studied her intently.
After an age, he spoke.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked suddenly.
“O-of course,” she stammered.
This was bizarre. Never had she and Lord Staunton shared secrets.
It was yet another odd happening on a truly odd day.
He heaved a sigh, his shoulders looking impossibly broad in his charcoal-grey superfine.
But that was entirely irrelevant, of course.
“I find myself in a most unusual position, Lady Natalia,” he said. “God only knows why I’m telling you this. But there we have it.”
Natalia was too curious to feel insulted.
“It appears that I need to find myself a fiancé,” he said matter-of-factly. “And fast.”
Natalia could only stare at him.
Surely he was joking?
Surely this was impossible! That he should need a fiancé right when she needed a fake betrothal.
“Why?” she blurted. “How?”
“It is – complicated, let’s say,” he answered, squirming a little. “But suffice to say my entire future, and the futures of all of the tenants in my care, depends on me finding a woman to marry. The problem being, of course, that I have neither the time nor the inclination to persuade a woman to marry me. And I certainly have no interest in marrying anyone.”
Natalia’s mind was racing.
“You need a wife? You need to be married?” she demanded brusquely, well aware that she sounded completely addle-pated.
Judging from Lord Staunton’s look of alarm, he likely agreed that she sounded quite mad.
But then he frowned, looking pensive.
“Now that you mention it,” he said carefully, as though mulling it over. “I suppose technically I don’t need a marriage so much as an engagement.”
Natalia could barely contain her glee.
This was it! The perfect opportunity had fallen straight into her lap.
Her throat was dry, her palms clammy, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to breathe properly again.
But Natalia gathered every bit of her nerve and looked her childhood nemesis straight in the eye.
“It just so happens,” she said, “that I have the perfect solution for you.”
He frowned, scowled really. Exactly like he used to when they were younger, when he took great pleasure in swatting her away like an annoying fly.
“And what’s that?”
“You and I—” she spoke clearly so there could be no confusion “—are going to announce our betrothal.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The chit was mad.
Fit for Bedlam.
He’d suspected it when he’d caught her with that shotgun all those years ago.
Or when he’d found her on the roof of an outhouse getting ready to jump onto a bale of hay because she’d seen him do it.
When she’d gotten stuck in that damned tree and he’d had to climb up to get her, lest Beatrice wake the dead with her caterwauling.
At least then she’d been a child.
But this?
This was lunacy the likes of which he’d never encountered.
And he hadn’t a damned clue what to say.
“I – you – what?”
>
Never in his life had he had as many shocks as he’d received today.
First, his aunt had offered to solve all his problems but attached impossible terms to it, then this beautiful bane of his existence had proposed to him.
The world had gone utterly insane.
“You need a fiancé,” she said excitedly, and he steadfastly refused to acknowledge how becoming she was when her cheeks flushed with excitement. “Don’t you? That’s what you said. You said you don’t need to be married, only betrothed.”
“Yes, but—“
“Well, I need a fiancé, too. At least for now. For Christmastide. Don’t you see?” She reached out and clasped his arm, sending an unwanted and inappropriate frisson of awareness down the idiotic limb.
“Tis perfect,” she cried, removing her hand from his person and clutching it to the other excitedly.
“Lady Natalia.” He struggled to find equilibrium, pinching the bridge of his nose as his head began to ache in its usual manner whenever she was within a five-mile radius. “Forgive my crassness, but what the hell are you talking about?”
If she was offended by his language, she gave no sign of it.
Merely sighed impatiently and eyed him as though he were a dimwit. As though she were making any bloody sense!
“My father wants to marry me off,” she said slowly and carefully, for all the world as if she were explaining something very, very simple to someone very, very stupid. “He wants to drag me back to Russia and hand me over to a complete stranger.”
Ben frowned at the uncomfortable feeling her speech evoked.
For as long as civilisation had existed, women had been at the behest of men’s wishes. She would marry whomever her father chose and have little to say in the matter.
It had never sat comfortably with Ben, this idea of women not being in charge of their own lives. And he was even more uncomfortable about it listening to Lady Natalia describe her own sad situation.
“And I don’t want to go,” she said, her ice-blue eyes shining in a way that would make her very hard to say no to. If one was susceptible to a pair of pretty eyes. Which he most certainly wasn’t.
“I like my life here,” she said wistfully. “And I want to be able to marry someone I choose. Someone I love.”
Ben ignored the tug on his heartstrings.
“And you – you said that you need a fiancé. Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” he managed. “But not you.”
Her eyes narrowed, and he felt like a heel. But if he thought she’d cry because he’d hurt her feelings, or swoon or any other nonsensical thing, he was very much mistaken.
She raised a disdainful, regal brow, making him feel about an inch tall, then continued as though he hadn’t even spoken.
“My lord, I have no more wish to be engaged to you as you do to me. Believe me,” she emphasised rather insultingly. “And if you think you can convince another lady to become engaged at short notice, in the depths of winter, with hardly any Society about, then by all means have at it.”
Ben scowled but she wasn’t finished, the little hoyden.
“And then of course there is the small matter of you not actually wanting to marry someone.”
She smiled sweetly, paused expectantly.
But he didn’t have a whole lot to say.
“As far as I’m concerned, you need a fiancé for the sake of your tenants, whatever that means. And I need one until I can convince my father to return home without dragging me along to marry someone in whom I have no interest.”
Her madness must be catching, for Ben was starting to see the merit in her madcap scheme.
“And what happens when we don’t get married?” he asked.
That gave her pause.
Not for long, however.
“We’ll simply call off the engagement,” she said breezily, as though that wouldn’t tarnish both their reputations.
“Just like that, hmm?” he asked sardonically.
She scowled up at him.
“Fine,” she bit out. “We will deal with that when the matter arises.”
“A well-executed plan then,” he drawled.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She stamped her foot like a toddler.
“You will get your bloody engagement, won’t you?” she swore, shocking him to his core. “And—and you will tell whomever it is that’s bribing you that I broke your poor, dear heart. They’ll feel too sorry for you to renege on whatever deal you’ve made.”
Ben frowned, not only at her sarcasm but at her description of the situation.
“Aunt Elizabeth is not bribing me,” he said.
It wasn’t until her eyes widened that he realised what he’d let slip.
“Lady Fortescue is forcing you to marry?” she asked curiously. “Why?”
Ben had told her everything else, far more than he should.
And he certainly didn’t care whether or not she had a good opinion of him.
Why then was the idea of sharing the embarrassment of his empty pockets anathema to him?
He’d rather walk over hot coals than admit his shameful secret to this hoyden of a woman.
For reasons he didn’t care to examine, he was loathe to have her think of him as a failure.
“It’s complicated, as I said,” he replied rather weakly. “It’s not bribery so much as — misplaced concern.”
She frowned at him but then shrugged her shoulders, clearly not that interested.
“That makes things even easier,” she said triumphantly. “Your aunt adores you, goodness knowns why, and she would never punish you for my breaking your heart.”
She grinned victoriously, clearly feeling as though the entire thing were a fait accompli.
He ignored her apparent disbelief that his aunt should love him, refusing to acknowledge it.
“And you?” he insisted. “What would you do with yourself with your reputation in tatters?”
She bit her plump, pink lip at his question, another thing he ignored. Or tried to.
“Ladies' reputations do not recover from such things, Lady Natalia, as well you know. Besides,” he continued loudly when it looked as though she’d argue. She’d argue with a bloody tree, this one. “Once your father heard of the end of your engagement, he’d be straight back to England dragging you off again.”
She was already shaking her head, her sable curls bouncing under the velvet bonnet. It was navy-blue, adorned with holly berries in a nod to the season, he assumed. Then he could only wonder at himself for even noticing such a thing.
“Yes, but if I tell my father that you broke my heart, he won’t force me to marry someone. He’ll give me time to mourn your loss. Perfectly believable.” She paused and ran a critical eye over his person. “As long as you don’t act like yourself around him.”
Ben muffled an oath under his breath.
She was the most insulting, irritating brat he’d ever met.
But he had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that her proposal, as mad as it was, could potentially solve all his problems.
The problem with Aunt Elizabeth’s condition was that it meant tying himself to a woman he didn’t love for the rest of his life.
He could possibly wait until the beginning of the next Season, hope that he miraculously fell in love with one of the many debutantes who paraded themselves around London every year, then announce the betrothal and receive his funds.
But another six months waiting meant another six months of uncertainty and financial instability.
Should he receive the money now, he could have his estates and his holdings not only in the black but positively thriving in that same amount of time.
Plus, her way, he didn’t land himself with a wife forever.
Though he wasn’t certain he could be civil to the chit for three weeks until her family returned to Russia, and he was damned sure she couldn’t be civil to him, his options were limited. As were hers.
And for reasons he couldn’t even begin
to understand, he wanted to help her so she wasn’t dragged to Russia, married off, and never seen by any of them again.
But she was just so damned difficult.
His circling thoughts were interrupted by an impatient sigh.
Ben looked over to see her black leather kid boot beating incessantly against the frozen ground.
“My father arrives in a week, Lord Staunton. Do you think you’ll be able to muddle through my idea and come up with an answer before then?” she asked, her voice dripping with saccharine acid. “I understand that you might be having trouble with the nuances.”
“The only thing I’m having trouble with is the idea of putting up with you for three weeks, Lady Natalia,” he snapped back, earning a scowl.
“But,” he continued, torn between thinking all his problems were about to be solved, and thinking that they were about to become infinitely worse. “As far as your idea goes—“
He paused and watched as she held her breath, her glacial eyes widening in anticipation.
God help us both, he thought before throwing his lot in.
“I’m in.”
CHAPTER FIVE
How bad could it be, really?
Natalia eyed her reflection in the mirror, wondering if she had taken complete leave of her senses.
Had she really gone ahead and asked the odious Lord Staunton to become engaged to her? Or at least pretend to?
It had been more than a little humiliating, she mused, practically begging the man.
And the horror in both his voice and expression had left a lot to be desired as far as she was concerned.
But it was done.
They’d agreed. Shook hands.
She still had time to change her mind, of course. Her family wouldn’t arrive for another week.
Lord Staunton had suggested they immediately discuss details, but it had been growing close to the dinner hour, and Natalia had needed to return home. Aunt Mary believed punctuality was next to Godliness.
Now she stood facing her reflection in a pink satin evening gown, wondering if she should skip dinner altogether and instead cart herself off to Bedlam. She might be locked up, but at least she could remain single.