The Danger of Desire

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “I’m widowed.”

  Niall’s gaze shot to her, and something flickered in his eyes that Warren well recognized. Hunger.

  Hmm. How very interesting.

  Clarissa narrowed her eyes on her brother. “You two know each other?”

  Niall started, then forced a smile. “We do. We did. A short while. Before I left England.”

  Mrs. Trevor seemed to have regained her composure, too, for now she looked her usual serene self. “His lordship and I met in Bath several years ago, when my father took the family there one summer.”

  “And Mother had gone there for the waters,” Niall said. “You were still not out as I recall, Clarissa, so you stayed at Margrave Manor with your governess.”

  “Oh,” Clarissa said. Warren could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “I think I remember that.” She shifted her gaze to Mrs. Trevor. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you knew my brother.”

  “It was only a brief acquaintance,” Mrs. Trevor said. “And I knew him as Lord Oliver, not Lord Margrave. I’m afraid I didn’t put together your being his sister and . . . I just didn’t connect you.”

  Clarissa snorted. Clearly she found that explanation as spurious as Warren did. “Well, I wish to hear more about this ‘brief acquaintance’ later, but we still have a wedding to finish planning, and very little time to do it in.”

  “I almost forgot,” Niall said, “that’s why I was sent out here to look for you lot. We gentlemen wish to take Warren to the tavern in town for his last night of bachelorhood.”

  Thank God. If he drank with the fellows, he wouldn’t have to endure the long night alone. “Sounds like an excellent plan,” Warren said jovially.

  Too jovially, apparently, for Delia frowned at him. “Now see here, I hope you don’t mean to show up foxed at our wedding in the morning.”

  “I’m not making any promises,” he drawled.

  “Warren!”

  He bent to kiss her forehead. “I’m joking, dearling. I’ll be sober as a judge.”

  Niall was now sizing up Delia. “I take it that this lady is the poor woman cursed to be your bride, old boy?”

  “Ah, yes, you haven’t met, have you?” Swiftly Warren provided the introductions, noting how Mrs. Trevor seemed to watch Niall furtively whenever the fellow wasn’t looking.

  Normally that wouldn’t surprise him, since Niall was a fine-looking chap, with a strong jaw, a good head of sun-bronzed hair, and a lean but muscular build. Women generally liked his looks.

  But Mrs. Trevor clearly liked more than his looks.

  “Sorry to tear your fiancé away,” Niall told Delia, “but it is bad luck for the groom to see the bride once night falls.”

  She smiled at him. “Thank heaven someone in your family appreciates the old traditions. My fiancé is oblivious to all of it.”

  “Yes, well, Warren has never been much for following rules,” Niall said with a chuckle.

  “Don’t let her fool you,” Warren put in. “She’s not much of a rule-follower herself. Now come on, coz, let’s go drinking.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice.” Niall tipped his hat to the ladies. “I promise to bring him home in plenty of time to sober up for the wedding.”

  “You’d better,” Clarissa said. As Warren and Niall headed for the stables, she called out, “Or I’ll sic Edwin’s dogs on you!”

  “She probably would, too,” Warren grumbled under his breath.

  Niall cast him a rueful glance. “My sister has changed quite a bit since I went abroad.”

  “Yes. For the better, I think. Edwin has done her a great deal of good.”

  “And she has done the same for him.”

  Now that they were well away from the ladies, Warren asked what he’d been dying to know since Niall had joined them. “What’s the truth about Mrs. Trevor and you?”

  Niall stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “Didn’t you hear her?” Niall’s tone turned acid. “Ours was only a ‘brief acquaintance.’ ”

  “Right. So brief that the two of you recognized each other instantly after seven years apart. That you called her by her Christian name. That she blushed so deeply at the sight of you that I thought her cheeks might catch fire.”

  “Did she?” Niall stared grimly ahead. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Right. “How is it that I’d never heard of your connection to her before today?”

  “Because there wasn’t one,” he clipped out.

  “Now that, coz, is a blatant lie if ever I heard one.”

  Niall rounded on him, fists clenching. “For God’s sake, will you shut up about it?”

  “Not until you explain yourself. The woman is going to be my sister-in-law, after all.”

  “Hardly. She’s the sister-in-law of your wife-to-be, which makes you nothing to her.”

  “I won’t debate that with you. The point is, I intend to keep an eye out for her and her son.”

  Shock darkened Niall’s hazel eyes. “She has a son?”

  Warren nodded. “Her bloody arse of a husband lost all their money at the card tables and then stumbled off a bridge drunk, leaving her with a newborn and an estate heavily in debt.”

  Niall stood there rigid, as if each revelation were a blow to his chest.

  “A lot can happen in seven years,” Warren added softly.

  Drawing himself up with a shuddering breath, Niall continued his march to the stables. “Yes, it can.”

  “Niall—”

  “I’m not going to talk about it,” Niall said firmly. “You can ask and wheedle and taunt all you want, but the subject is closed. Understood?”

  Warren took in the carved features of the man he’d grown up with and considered to be as much his brother as Hart or Stephen or any of them.

  Clarissa wasn’t the only one who’d changed. Niall’s forced exile after killing her attacker in a duel had changed him, too. Gone was the lighthearted youth who’d always taken life as it came, and in his place was a hard man who’d learned that life could be tremendously unfair, even for an earl with a fine estate.

  “Very well,” Warren said.

  But he suspected that if Niall wouldn’t talk, Mrs. Trevor would, at least to Delia. So he would learn the truth that way.

  Apparently having a wife included advantages he hadn’t considered. It never hurt to have a gossipy female in one’s pocket, after all.

  Eighteen

  Several hours after the ladies had parted from the gentlemen, Delia wasn’t terribly surprised to have a servant inform her that Brilliana had retired with a headache. She had begun to realize that her sister-in-law had been avoiding being alone with her and Clarissa ever since they’d met up with Lord Margrave.

  At first, Delia had thought it merely the result of their frenzy to finish plans for the wedding. As soon as Warren and his lordship had left, the servants had approached to help them with choosing flowers from the garden, and from then on, she and Clarissa and Brilliana had constantly been surrounded by others. Clarissa’s sister-in-law Yvette Keane had joined them, as had Aunt Agatha, and it had been one task after another in trying to get things ready for the ceremony.

  Yet when Delia had finally found a moment to be alone with her sister-in-law and had attempted to ask about Brilliana’s peculiar response to Lord Margrave, the woman had changed the subject and plunged into another task that would land them in the midst of a group of people.

  Now she’d gone to bed, which Delia found highly suspicious. Brilliana never retired without saying good night to her.

  “I’ll be right back,” Delia told Clarissa, then hurried up to her sister-in-law’s room. Something was wrong, having to do with Lord Margrave, and Delia meant to find out exactly what.

  But when she knocked at Brilliana’s door, there was no answer. And after knocking harder, then trying the door and discovering it latched, Delia realized there would be no response tonight. Apparently B
rilliana was determined not to talk about this afternoon’s peculiar meeting.

  She would let Brilliana play the coward for now, but her sister-in-law couldn’t avoid her forever.

  Clarissa came up next to Delia, having obviously followed her upstairs. “Is Mrs. Trevor all right?”

  “I don’t think so.” Delia raised her voice. “But I can’t be sure since she’s pretending not to hear me!”

  Even that got no response from inside the room.

  “Perhaps she really does have a headache,” Clarissa whispered.

  “I doubt it. Brilliana doesn’t get headaches.”

  “Well, I came to find out if you want a few rosettes sewn on that veil of your aunt’s, to make it look less plain.”

  With a sigh, Delia headed down the hall with Clarissa. “At this point, I’m so tired I don’t even care.”

  “Of course you are.” Clarissa halted outside the door to Delia’s bedchamber. “We’re fairly ready; you should go to bed.” A sly smile crossed her lips. “You’ll need plenty of sleep tonight to make up for your lack of it tomorrow night.”

  Delia bit back a smile of her own. She certainly hoped she would. Because her one experience of conjugal relations with Warren hadn’t been nearly enough. Why, she had yet to see him naked. That alone had her eager for her wedding night.

  Clarissa left her to the tender care of a maid, and by the time Delia was in her nightdress she was practically dead on her feet. Despite her desire to play her lovely time with Warren over and over in her head, she fell asleep as soon as she climbed between the sheets.

  It seemed like only a moment later that she was awakened by a commotion on the lawn. Singing? What in heaven’s name? Was someone actually singing on the lawn in the dead of night?

  No, it was more like a caterwauling, punctuated by loud laughter. Dragging herself from her bed, she headed to the window and opened it to look out.

  The lawn below was ablaze with torches held by stumbling gentlemen. And in the midst stood Warren, weaving along between Lord Margrave and Lord Blakeborough, who seemed to be holding him up. Well, sort of holding each other up, since all three were staggering, obviously in their cups. Mr. Keane was little better, though he was managing to smoke a cigar as he walked unsteadily behind them.

  His companions were singing, “With women and wine I defy every care / For life without these is a bubble of air.”

  Good Lord.

  “Would you gentlemen please be quiet?” cried an imperative voice from another window nearby. Aunt Agatha’s, of course. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  Warren glanced up, caught sight of Delia in her window, and broke into a grin. “Behold, what light through yon window breaks,” he said, slurring every other word. “It is the west . . .”

  “No, east!” Lord Blakeborough interrupted, in what he apparently thought was a whisper but was actually quite thunderous. “It is the east, damn you.”

  “Right,” Warren said. “The east. And Delia is the sun.” Pleased with himself for that comparison, which he obviously considered terribly original of him, he flicked his hand vaguely in her direction. “Arise, fair sun, and . . . and . . . something about the moon . . .”

  “Kill the moon?” Mr. Keane offered. “Can’t remember exactly.”

  “And you aren’t to look at the bride,” Lord Margrave hissed loudly. “It’s bad lush.”

  “Bad luck,” Lord Blakeborough corrected him. “And it’s ‘kill the enemy moon.’ Enemy, you sots.”

  “It’s ‘envious moon,’ ” Aunt Agatha called from her window, “and if you gentlemen don’t stop murdering Shakespeare, I shall empty my chamber pot on your heads!”

  That finally got them to shut up. For about half a minute.

  “Very well,” Warren said. “Then we’ll sing.”

  “Lord help us all,” Aunt Agatha muttered before she banged her window shut.

  Delia knew she ought to be horrified by their inebriated state—or at the very least, annoyed—but having watched men in their cups many a time at Dickson’s, she merely found it amusing. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be foxed for the wedding!” she called down to her hapless fiancé.

  “I’m not foxed!” he protested, then made a liar out of himself by stumbling into a stone bench and nearly bringing his companions down.

  After a few harrowing moments, they recovered their balance.

  He held up his arms. “You see? Not foxed a’tall!”

  Before Delia could do more than laugh at him, Clarissa was rushing out onto the lawn in her nightdress and wrapper, accompanied by an army of servants who each grabbed a gentleman and tugged him into the house. The last Delia saw of her groom-to-be was his gray top hat disappearing through the French doors downstairs.

  With a sigh, she glanced at the clock. Five a.m. And the wedding was to take place at ten. She ought to return to bed, but how could she? In only a few hours, she’d be marrying a man who, at least in his drunken state, compared her to Shakespeare’s Juliet.

  A smile tugged at her lips. There were worse things, to be sure. At least she wasn’t marrying a gambler.

  But other fears crowded in, making it impossible for her to sleep. Instead, she found a pack of cards and sat down to play Patience. She was still doing so an hour later when the maid came to wake her.

  “Is my sister-in-law up yet?” Delia asked the girl.

  “I believe so, miss. Shall I ask her to join you?”

  “No. I’ll go, thank you.”

  Delia slid out past the maid and hurried stealthily down the hall, then scratched at Brilliana’s door the way servants generally did.

  “Enter!” Brilliana called.

  With a triumphant smile, Delia did. She’d cornered her sister-in-law at last.

  Brilliana looked up and started. “Delia! You’re up?”

  “How could I not be, after that caterwauling earlier?” She strolled to the bed and sat down. “Didn’t you hear them?”

  “I tried not to, but it was no use. It sounded as if some of them were drunk.”

  “Every last one of them was drunk. Including your old friend, Lord Margrave.”

  Brilliana colored. “Not my old friend. I barely know him.”

  “Don’t lie to me, dearest,” Delia said. “The two of you clearly had more than a brief acquaintance years ago.”

  “If we did, it is well in the past,” Brilliana said firmly. “Notwithstanding that he’s the brother of your friend, he is not to be trusted.”

  “I don’t see why not. If you mean to marry for the sake of Camden Hall, you couldn’t ask for a husband better suited to handle Silas’s inheritance and help improve it.”

  The woman snorted. “Have you not heard why Lord Margrave ended up abroad in the first place?”

  Delia sifted through her store of gossip. “Because he dueled with a man over some woman?”

  “Over some soiled dove. A mistress the two men shared, apparently.”

  “Or so the gossips say.”

  “In this case, the gossips are right.”

  “You know that for a certainty?”

  Brilliana rose to go throw open the curtains. “I know enough. And having endured the results of Reynold’s ruling vice, I shan’t marry a man whose vice is even worse. Because the kind of men who become enamored of such women—”

  When she stopped short, Delia sighed. “You’re thinking that my husband is that kind of man.”

  To her shock, Brilliana rushed over to seize her hands. “Then don’t marry him. To the devil with the scandal. We’ll get through it all somehow.”

  Delia tugged her hands free. “He’s not like that now. And he says he’ll be faithful to me.”

  Brilliana’s expression grew troubled. “Reynold said he wouldn’t gamble, yet he did.”

  “I want to marry Lord Knightford. Mad as it seems, he makes me happy.”

  “Do you love him?”

  The pointed question startled her. She hadn’t thought about it, too ca
ught up in worrying over how much he knew of her circumstances and what he’d do about them. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “I enjoy his company and—” He excites me physically.

  No, she could hardly admit that to her sister-in-law.

  “Does he love you?” Brilliana asked.

  That was an even harder question. Somehow she couldn’t see Warren being the sort of man to fall head over heels for anyone.

  And I can tell you right now that I bloody well won’t ‘look the other way’ if you go hunting for some other man in your bed.

  Then again, did men say such lovely possessive things if they didn’t have some affection for a woman? “I don’t know that, either. It’s not as if we’ve been acquainted with each other very long.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  “Please don’t fret over it.” Delia rose. “He’s a good man at heart, I believe. Aunt Agatha said he gave me a most generous settlement, and he’s even promised to help with Camden Hall until arrangements can be made to keep it from being foreclosed upon.”

  Brilliana blinked at her. “He has?”

  “Oh, right. I haven’t had a chance to tell you about that yet.”

  But even as she started laying out what of Warren’s conversation yesterday she could reveal, her mind kept circling that one question of Brilliana’s.

  Does he love you?

  How she wished she knew the answer.

  By the time Warren stood at the head of the rows of chairs in the folly, waiting for his bride to come down the spiral staircase from the floor above, he was entirely clearheaded.

  Nothing like attending one’s own wedding to sober a man right up.

  And the gallons of coffee Clarissa and her servants had poured into them early this morning had certainly helped. So had delaying the wedding until noon to give the men a chance to sleep it off.

  He felt bad about that. All he remembered of last evening’s festivities was drinking himself senseless to hold back the dark, and then serenading Delia from the lawn.

  It had been Delia he’d serenaded, hadn’t it? Her aunt kept getting mixed up in that image, which was rather disturbing.