Royal Bridesmaids

by Stephanie Laurens

  He watched the seconds gravely mark out the field. Then Miss Renfrew guided Miss Sharp to her place. Bates, wearing a look of exasperation, approached and said, “You’ll stand here—and you had better pray that nobody gets wind of this.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Lovedon said.

  “How I wish that were ever true,” Bates said.

  He then proceeded to the halfway point between the duelists and asked if there was any possibility of reconciliation.

  Miss Sharp shook her head.

  Bates looked to Lovedon.

  He shook his head.

  The lowering sun gilded the fields. A gentle breeze caressed his face.

  What a splendid evening for a duel, he thought.

  Trust me.

  Amy put the pistol in Chloe’s hand. It was quite small and oddly shaped, double-barreled, and stunningly ornate: gold, with exquisite enameling, and set with pearls and diamonds. She stared at it.

  “It’s French,” Amy said. “You cock it with this.” She indicated a part. “Then it works the same as any other pistol, Mr. Bates said. But it has a very short range. I suspect it’s easier to injure somebody by hitting them in the head with the grip. In any event, we need to shorten the dueling distance. Do you mind? I pointed out to Mr. Bates that the minimum distance is no less than three yards. I do wish I knew what was in Lord Lovedon’s mind.”

  “He’s whimsical,” Chloe said.

  “Yes, everyone says so. And it’s mere form, of course. So many duels are, you know. One goes through the motions—”

  “Yes, yes,” Chloe broke in impatiently. “But we must do it Lord Lovedon’s way.” She’d called him a coward and no gentleman. She’d refused to apologize. That, Amy had said, gave him the choice of weapons and terms. And the first shot. “If he wants to dirty his pretty French pistols by shooting them off, that’s his choice.”

  Shoot straight at me . . . Trust me.

  Though she knew—she was positive—she had nothing to be afraid of, her heart was pounding very hard. She cocked the weapon as Amy had instructed and held it down by her side.

  She was aware of Lord Lovedon following the same procedure, but it was a distant awareness. So many wild thoughts raced through her mind that she couldn’t keep up with them, let alone make sense of them. Her heart wouldn’t slow. She knew nothing terrible would happen, yet she was panicking all the same.

  She was aware of Lord Lovedon coming much closer.

  This was too close.

  They were very small pistols, but small ones tended to be highly inaccurate. She might hurt him by accident. But no, they couldn’t be loaded. He wouldn’t shoot her and he couldn’t possibly want her to shoot him.

  Could he?

  This was absurd. He was doing it on purpose to aggravate her. Whimsical, indeed.

  Mr. Bates said, “Miss Renfrew will ask if you are ready, then count to two, and give the word to fire. Is that clear?”

  Lord Lovedon nodded.

  Chloe nodded, though nothing was at all clear.

  “Ready?” Amy called out.

  No, I’m not even slightly ready.

  “One.”

  Chloe sucked in air.

  “Two.”

  She let it out.

  “Fire.”

  Lord Lovedon raised his pistol and pointed it at her.

  Trust me.

  He fired.

  A little blue and green bird sprang up from between the two barrels.

  It twirled and fluttered its wings and sang, “Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet.”

  Her face was a picture. Lovedon had all he could do to maintain his composure.

  Then laughter spilled out of her, great gulps and whoops and funny little snorts.

  “Your turn, Miss Sharp,” he said.

  She turned away, laughing, holding her pistol to her belly.

  He stood watching her, marveling at the exuberance and joy of her. She laughed in the same way she’d defended her sister: with all her heart.

  “Miss Sharp,” he said.

  She went off into whoops again. Then she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her dress and returned to her dueling stance—body sideways, her glowing face straight on, pistol at her side. She brought up the pistol and fired.

  A little blue and green bird popped up between the barrels and fluttered its wings and turned its head this way and that, so wondrously like a real bird, and it tweeted in the cheerful, beckoning way of a bird seeking its mate.

  For a time, their birds tweeted and flirted with each other.

  She watched the birds. When they stilled, she looked at him.

  “I see,” she said in a trembling voice. “They’re French.”

  “I would say excessively so.”

  She held out the singing bird pistol. He took it from her, letting his hand graze hers. He put the birds back into their respective hiding places in the devices, then stepped away to return them to the pistol case, which Bates had left on the ground nearby. When Lovedon rose, he saw the two seconds walking back to the carriages, leaving the duelists to sort themselves out.

  He turned to her.

  She stood watching him. Her expression had grown serious, and he couldn’t read it.

  He grew anxious. If he muddled this part, he was finished.

  “I realize I made a very bad first impression,” he said. “But I can’t apologize. If I hadn’t behaved ill, you wouldn’t have behaved ill, and then where should we be?”

  “Not in Battersea Fields, certainly,” she said. “This . . . it . . .” Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled.

  She covered her face and wept then, great, racking sobs, as uninhibited as her laughter.

  Heart pounding, he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms about her and held her.

  The storm abated as suddenly as it had begun. After a moment, she tried to draw away. He didn’t let go. “I only want to know I’m forgiven,” he said.

  “I forgive you,” she said. “That was not what I . . .” She paused and swallowed. “My sister was going away, and I was so sure I couldn’t be happy again, for a very long time.”

  “And now?”

  She didn’t answer, but she pushed, harder this time, and reluctantly he released her. She’d felt right in his arms. She’d felt right, he realized, from the moment she’d slapped him with her glove.

  She started to turn away.

  “You did the right thing,” he said, “calling me to account.”

  She waved this away. “I was pot-valiant.”

  “You’d have done it even if you’d been fully sober,” he said. “You might have done it differently, but you would have acted—out of love and loyalty and . . . all the right things.”

  She turned back to him, surprised.

  “I want to make reparations,” he said.

  “You’ve done that,” she said. Her expression grew wry. “What a horrid waking up I had today.”

  “I’ve had my share of those,” he said.

  “You said you’d seen drunken friends home before,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.”

  “Perhaps I bring out something special in you,” he said.

  “I was mortified,” she said. “I was positive it would be years before I could look myself in the eye, let alone you.” She looked up. “I begin to understand why men do it. A duel clears the air and settles everything.”

  “And one can be friends again,” he said.

  “We can’t be friends again,” she said. “We weren’t friends before. Our worlds would never have overlapped if not for Althea’s marrying Prince Louis.”

  “The world changes on that if,” he said. “We met, we had words, we had a duel. And now that we’ve cleared the air, I should like to start over.”

  The color rising in her face told him she was beginning to understand what he was about.

  “I beg that you won’t judge me by my actions yesterday,” he said.

  She stared down at t
he toes of her purple boots. “They were not, all things considered, consistently bad actions,” she said.

  “I improve on acquaintance, people say,” he said. “Well, Bates wouldn’t say it, but one must bear in mind that he’s lately had a severe disappointment in love, which makes him bitter and quarrelsome. However, Miss Renfrew seems well able to hold her own with him, and really, I don’t care much about them. I only care whether you will do me the honor of allowing me to take you for a drive in Hyde Park tomorrow afternoon.”

  She stared at her boots for quite a long time. She bit her lip.

  He waited, calm on the outside, while his heart attempted to break all previous speed records.

  Finally she looked up. “Are you quite sure?” she said.

  Speeches wanted to tumble out of him, wild declarations. But that was mad. They’d met only yesterday. He would take this one step at a time, if it killed him.

  “Quite,” he said.

  Castle de Grey, four weeks later

  Lovedon drew Chloe into the passage between the drawing room and the picture gallery.

  “It was here, wasn’t it?” Lovedon said. “This was where you heard me talking rot about Prince Louis and your sister.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But this isn’t an immense royal wedding, only a dinner party, and we’ll be missed.”

  “Let them miss us,” he said.

  He’d arranged the dinner party with his cousin the Duchess of Marchmont. She would have a very good idea why Lovedon had slipped out of the drawing room with Miss Sharp. Being far from conventional, Her Grace would cover up for them.

  He wrapped his arms about Chloe and kissed her, firmly, so that there would be no question about it, and lingeringly, so that she wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. And yes, certainly, he did it because he needed to and had needed to for what felt like eternity.

  “There,” he said, when he was sure he’d done the job properly. She started to pull away, but she stumbled, and he caught her about the waist. Her perfect waist, that went with the rest of her perfect body.

  “I am not drunk,” she said.

  “I know that,” he said. “I shouldn’t have sneaked you in here if you were. You need to be completely in your senses.”

  “That’s impossible, after what you just did,” she said.

  Her voice was a little husky, and even in the passage’s dim light, he saw the soft glow in her eyes.

  “Somewhat in your senses will be sufficient,” he said. “But not dead drunk. That wouldn’t be fair. And I need you to answer more or less rationally.” He went on in a rush, “I meant to take this in slow stages, but I’m so stupidly in love with you that slow and steady is only going to drive me mad.”

  “In love,” she said softly.

  “Yes, of course. How could I not be? I meant to be romantic, but this was the best I could do on short notice. That is, I didn’t mean it to be short notice. I meant to wait until at least Tuesday next, but preferably until September. But there you were, sitting across the dinner table, and I was thinking how agreeable it would be if we could go upstairs to the same bedroom, instead of separate houses, and you could sit in my lap instead of all the way across the table on a chair. And then . . .” He trailed off because his brain was conjuring images that activated his breeding organs while deadening his powers of speech and clear thinking.

  He sounded, in short, like a complete nitwit.

  “I’m trying to decide,” she said, “whether this is meant to be an offer of carte blanche or a proposal of marriage.”

  “I adore you,” he said.

  “That declaration could take things either way,” she said.

  “My dear Chloe, if you don’t marry me, I’ll do something rash.”

  “By which you mean, I presume, hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with the singing bird pistols until you lose consciousness and I take pity on you and say yes.”

  “I will certainly do that if necessary.”

  “Oh, you’re the most ridiculous man. Of course I’ll say yes. I was saying yes, very likely, at the same moment I threw champagne in your face. And I think it’s the most romantic thing in the world, your proposing in this passage, instead of properly, on your knees in, say, our drawing room.”

  “I hoped you’d think that.”

  “You knew I’d think that,” she said. “It’s a tragic thing, but our minds are strangely alike.”

  “Yes, but I love you anyway,” he said. He pulled her close again. “And I challenge you to put up with me until death us do part.”

  She reached up and caught him about the neck. “My lord,” she said, “the satisfaction which your lordship has demanded, it is of course impossible for me to decline.”

  Despite Lord Lovedon’s impatience, the marriage had to wait for the bride’s dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses, and these things take time if they’re to be done properly. Since every item issuing from Maison Noirot was always done properly, it was nearly September before Chloe Sharp became Lady Lovedon.

  They were married, naturally, in the Gold Drawing Room of Castle de Grey, and the laughing way they looked at each other at the end—so obviously sharing a private joke—told all the world that yes, undoubtedly, they’d married for love.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Not only are the singing bird pistols based on historical fact, but they still exist. To watch these wondrous mechanical devices in action, please go to:

  http://www.christies.com/singing-bird-pistols-en-1422-3.aspx

  Keep reading for

  an excerpt from

  Loretta Chase’s

  next historical romance

  SCANDAL WEARS SATIN

  Available July 2012

  CHAPTER ONE

  For the last week, the whole of the fashionable world has been in a state of ferment, on account of the elopement of Sir Colquhoun Grant’s daughter with Mr. Brinsley Sheridan . . . On Friday afternoon, about five o’clock, the young couple borrowed the carriage of a friend; and . . . set off full speed for the North.

  —The Court Journal, Saturday 23 May 1835

  London

  Thursday 21 May 1835

  Waving a copy of Foxe’s Morning Spectacle, Sophy Noirot burst in upon the Duke and Duchess of Clevedon while they were breakfasting in, appropriately enough, the breakfast room of Clevedon House.

  “Have you seen this?” she said, throwing down the paper on the table between her sister and new brother-in-law. “The ton is in a frenzy—and isn’t it hilarious? They’re blaming Sheridan’s three sisters. Three sisters plotting wicked plots—and it isn’t us! Oh, my love, when I saw this, I thought I’d die laughing.”

  Certain members of Society had more than once in recent days compared the three proprietresses of Maison Noirot—which Sophy would make London’s foremost dressmaking establishment if it killed her—to the three witches in Macbeth. Had they not bewitched the Duke of Clevedon, rumor said, he would never have married a shopkeeper.

  Their Graces’ dark heads bent over the barely dry newspaper.

  Rumors about the Sheridan-Grant elopement were already traveling the beau monde grapevine, but the Spectacle, as usual, was the first to put confirmation in print.

  Marcelline looked up. “They say Miss Grant’s papa will bring a suit against Sheridan in Chancery,” she said. “Exciting stuff, indeed.”

  At that moment, a footman entered. “Lord Longmore, Your Grace,” he said.

  Not now, dammit, Sophy thought. Her sister had the beau monde in an uproar, she’d made a deadly enemy of one of its most powerful women—who happened to be Longmore’s mother—customers were deserting in droves, and Sophy had no idea how to repair the damage.

  Now him.

  The Earl of Longmore strolled into the breakfast room, a newspaper under his arm.

  Sophy’s pulse rate accelerated. It couldn’t help itself.

  Black hair and glittering black eyes . . . the noble nose that ought to have been broken a dozen times yet remained s
tubbornly straight and arrogant . . . the hard, cynical mouth . . . the six-foot-plus frame.

  All that manly beauty.

  If only he had a brain.

  No, better not. In the first place, brains in a man were inconvenient. In the second, and far more important, she didn’t have time for him or any man. She had a shop to rescue from Impending Doom.

  “I brought you the latest Spectacle,” he said to the pair at the table. “But I wasn’t quick enough off the mark, I see.”

  “Sophy brought it,” said Marcelline.

  Longmore’s dark gaze came to Sophy. She gave him a cool nod and sauntered to the sideboard. She looked into the chafing dishes and concentrated on filling her plate.

  “Miss Noirot,” he said. “Up and about early, I see. You weren’t at Almack’s last night.”

  “Certainly not,” Sophy said. “The Spanish Inquisition couldn’t make the patronesses give me a voucher.”

  “Since when do you wait for permission? I was so disappointed. I was on pins and needles to see what disguise you’d adopt. My favorite so far is the Lancashire maidservant.”

  That was Sophy’s favorite, too.

  However, her intrusions at fashionable events to collect gossip for Foxe were supposed to be a deep, dark secret. No one noticed servant girls, and she was a Noirot, as skilled at making herself invisible as she was at getting attention.

  But he noticed.

  He must have developed unusually keen powers of hearing and vision to make up for his very small brain.

  She carried her plate to the table and sat next to her sister. “I’m devastated to have spoiled your fun,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I found something to do later.”

  “So it seems,” Clevedon said, looking him over. “It must have been quite a party. Since you’re never up and about this early, I can only conclude you stopped here on your way home.”

  Like most of his kind, Lord Longmore rarely rose before noon. His rumpled black hair, limp neckcloth, and wrinkled coat, waistcoat, and trousers told Sophy he hadn’t yet been to bed—not his own, at any rate.