The Duke's Reluctant Bride

by Lauren Royal

  And now they thought… “You think I bedded your sister? You must be mad!”

  “They are mad!” Lady Kendra railed. She turned to Jason. “You have to listen.” And to Colin. “It was only a stain. A wine stain.” And to Ford. “You’re always telling me I jump to conclusions—”

  Ford’s hand shot out to grasp his sister’s arm. “Come along, Kendra.” With a murderous look at Trick, he pulled her from the room.

  “We’ll call on you when the banns have been posted,” Jason ground out.

  “No,” Colin said. “It will have to be by special license.”

  “Confound it, you’re right.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck. “She could be with child.”

  With child? Trick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. One minute he was washing out a wine stain, the next he was accused of fathering a child. With a girl he’d never even kissed.

  Never mind that he’d wanted to.

  SIX

  KENDRA WAS soaked to the skin. Water streamed from her hair into her tear-blurred eyes. She was shivering. But she’d rip her own tongue out before asking her abominable brothers for one of their cloaks.

  Riding behind them, she heard the murmurs of a deeply involved conversation. She took slow, fortifying breaths, wishing she could make out their words. She couldn’t let them make her go through with this. But they wouldn’t, would they? Surely they didn’t intend for her to actually wed a highwayman. A highwayman she hadn’t so much as kissed!

  Which was a shame. Because she’d wanted to kiss Trick more than she’d wanted to do most anything else, ever.

  She knew full well he’d been about to kiss her, and she’d been ready—no, not just ready, thrilled—to cooperate. But it hadn’t happened. Not even a little.

  Besides which, a mere kiss hardly warranted a forced marriage!

  Still, heavens above, the real amber highwayman had turned out to be even better than her fantasy version. She’d nearly melted just looking at him, and when his arms came around her, her whole body had seemed on fire. What would it have felt like if he’d actually kissed her—something hotter than fire? The center of a volcano?

  It would have been the first time she’d kissed anyone.

  Oh, she’d been kissed, of course—she was eighteen, after all, and not shy—but she’d never kissed anyone back. She blamed those exasperating brothers of hers. Every time a gentleman managed to smuggle her into an alcove or onto a balcony, one of her brothers would materialize right at the crucial moment, staring daggers into the unfortunate swain’s eyes. And until now, she hadn’t been enamored enough of anyone to make an issue of it.

  Why did her brothers always have to turn up and ruin it all? Didn’t they have anything better to do?

  At long last, Jason sent the others ahead, then halted until she drew even with him. “I cannot believe you did that,” he said.

  “It was raining.” She was seething inside, but somehow she managed to sound calm. “All I did was come in from the rain.”

  “That’s not the way it looked,” he said as though that were the end of the discussion.

  She stared at his determined profile. A highwayman…her brother was letting—no, making—her wed a highwayman. Even if Jason was convinced the man had ruined her, the fact that he’d as good as pledged her to an outlaw was beyond belief.

  Her stare turned to a glare that drew his gaze. He blinked. “What were you thinking, riding out alone?”

  Ignoring that, she drew breath. “I cannot believe you expect me to marry a highwayman. You, who wouldn’t let Lord Harrison near me because he was only a baron!”

  For a moment, Jason just looked at her. Then his lips quirked into a smile before he threw back his head and laughed.

  Incredulous, Kendra watched, wishing the rain pouring into his mouth would drown him.

  “You—you—you don’t know who he is, do you?” he choked out.

  “Trick Caldwell. Patrick Iain Caldwell,” Kendra returned through clenched teeth. “Do you think you would have found me in a man’s bedchamber—never mind that nothing happened there—if I didn’t so much as know his name?”

  Jason only laughed harder. “Patrick Iain Caldwell What?”

  “What? What do you mean, what? That’s not his name?” Kendra bit the inside of her cheek. “I should have guessed he’d lie to me,” she muttered, more to herself than her brother. “He’s a cursed highwayman, after all.”

  “You don’t know who he is.” Apparently failing to notice her unladylike language, Jason actually snorted. “You really don’t know who he is.” With another shout of laughter, he dug in his heels and raced up to meet their brothers.

  Kendra could hear their loud guffaws through the distance and the driving rain.

  She rode behind them for another few minutes, listening to their whoops of laughter, hoping they’d expire from lack of air. A buzzard circled lazily overhead. Not exactly Ares’s bird, the vulture, but close enough. A fury was rising in her that would do Ares, the God of War, proud.

  At last she couldn’t stand it. She raced up to meet her brothers, nosing Pandora between Jason’s and Ford’s mounts.

  “He’s titled, isn’t he?” she demanded. “Or you wouldn’t even be jesting about this marriage. Who is he?”

  Ford looked at her, his blue eyes all innocence. “Who?”

  “The man you just betrothed me to! What’s his name, blast it?”

  “Oh, you mean Trick? Trick Caldwell?”

  “All right. Enough is enough.” She glared at them one by one. “I did nothing wrong. No matter what you think it looked like, we were washing a wine stain from my skirt. There’s no reason for me to marry him.”

  Her brothers stared at her and then at one another over her head. Individually they nodded.

  Then Jason spoke for them all. “Did you choose another of your suitors to marry, then?”

  “That again? I don’t believe this. None of my suitors are at all suitable, and I won’t marry any of them. You’re finished ordering me around.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “I’m finished. It’s time you wed, and Trick’s as good a man as any.”

  “But he’s a highwayman,” she wailed.

  “Not anymore,” Jason snapped. The brothers closed ranks, and nothing else was said for the rest of the ride home.

  SEVEN

  TRICK PACED around the cottage for a good fifteen minutes, huffing in disbelief, wondering how a simple errand to save his props from the rain had ended in such disaster.

  When pacing failed to resolve anything, he rode home to Amberley House to dismiss the rest of his houseguests.

  Compton, his butler, met him at the door. “Good afternoon, your grace.”

  “Is it?” Trick handed him his drenched cloak. “What happened while I was gone?”

  Compton frowned, one of his habitual expressions. “Lords Cainewood, Greystone, and Lakefield have taken their leave. A messenger arrived with word that their sister had disappeared. They went off to find you, to enlist your help—”

  “They succeeded.”

  And turned his life upside down in the process.

  Leaving the butler mid-sentence, Trick stalked into his card room. “My apologies, gentlemen, but the party’s over.”

  Peevishly, he waved a hand in a hopeless attempt to clear the smoky air. The four remaining guests, all aristocrats from neighboring estates, had apparently passed the time by smoking Trick’s small hoard of expensive Virginia cheroots, which were literally worth their weight in silver.

  He coughed and waved some more. “It seems I’m soon to be wed, and I’m in no mood for cards. Besides which, the Chase brothers won’t be returning, so we haven’t enough for two tables—”

  “Wed? As in married?” David Fielding interrupted in a puff of tobacco, blinking his brown eyes, which always looked a little crossed. “You cannot be serious.”

  “Aye, as in married.” Trick smiled mournfully. “And I assure you, I’ve never been
more serious in my life.”

  The only one without a cheroot between his teeth, John Garrick heaved his paunchy form from his chair. “Amberley, I…I don’t know what to say.”

  Garrick, speechless. Imagine that. The pompous fellow usually never shut up, especially once he got started on one of his tirades against gambling, drinking, smoking, or whatever vice he’d decided to condemn this month (shockingly, he never chose overeating). Trick was all in favor of purging men’s failings, but he’d as soon leave sermonizing in the hands of the clergy and judgment in the hands of God, for neither sat well in the greasy hands of a smug hypocrite.

  Garrick showed no signs of his usual smugness now. “I…I just don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say anything,” Trick suggested.

  Being the youngest member of the group but for Ford, Trick was usually respectful toward these men, but today distress made him bold. Striding across the room, he plucked a half-smoked cheroot from Fielding’s lips, then did the same with Robert Faraday and Thomas Milner. They sat there, their mouths in little Os where the brown cheroots used to be, while he stubbed out the burning tobacco in one of the crystal dishes he kept on the card tables for that purpose.

  “I’ll send servants to help you pack,” he informed them. “And someone else will have to host next month, as a lady will be living here.”

  “But…Amberley.” Robert Faraday finally found his voice. He skimmed the long brown hair from his face and rubbed his stubbled chin. “No surcoats, no shaving, no periwigs, no women. You laid down the rules when you set up the card club. And you said then that you’d marry the day the devil settled in heaven.”

  “He’s arrived, gentlemen.”

  At Trick’s grim pronouncement, Garrick narrowed his eyes. The other men rose, and they all drifted toward the door, presumably to collect their things.

  “Who will host?” Trick pressed. “Faraday, Milner? Blast it, you both have wives. Garrick?”

  “I’m…remodeling. No space at present.”

  Trick frowned; the man lived in a fifty-room manor house. Old, yes, and in dire need of renovations, but surely there was an area they could use to play cards and enough bedrooms in sufficient shape to accommodate seven guests.

  “We’ll ask Cainewood,” Milner suggested. “Lady Cainewood can go stay with his brother’s wife. I’ll drop by there later this—”

  “Cainewood has that sister,” Fielding interrupted. “Er…Lady Kendra, that’s it.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re right. He’d have to send her to Greystone, too.”

  “Nay, gentlemen. Lady Kendra will be here. Though you’ll address her as Her Grace the Duchess of Amberley.” When the men’s mouths dropped open again, Trick shot them a wry smile. “Aye, the Chases will host—it’s the least they can do. Till next month, then?”

  Before they could ask any questions he’d rather not answer, Trick grabbed a fresh cheroot and left to closet himself in his study, where he went straight to the carved walnut cabinet and poured himself a shot of strong Scotch whisky.

  Kendra. He couldn’t decide which he wanted more: to kiss her or throttle her brothers. Though it probably wouldn’t be wise to threaten the Chases. Greystone, especially. From what he’d heard, Colin was deadly with a sword.

  Trick sighed and dropped into his favorite worn leather chair. In the six months since King Charles had insisted he take up residence in his father’s absurdly ostentatious house, this was the only room he’d redecorated to his own taste—classic, familiar, and comfortable. Lifting a heavy silver candlestick, he lit the cheroot and stuck it between his teeth, then sat back and carefully inhaled as Fielding had taught him.

  Rolling the glass between his palms, he watched the candlelight glint off the faceted crystal. What was he going to do? What could he do? What did he want to do?

  The answer came to him, as clear as the flawless crystal cupped between his hands.

  He wanted to marry Kendra.

  He’d wanted to kiss her the moment he’d glimpsed her in the shadows of that carriage. At first, his mind had refused to recognize the strong, strange impulse—he’d never felt anything quite like it before. Why should Cainewood’s sister, of all people, affect him so?

  Part of it, perhaps, was a consequence of Cainewood’s status as the last bastion of respectability in a society where morals were meaningless. No one at King Charles II’s court was virtuous; no one, that was, except Lady Kendra Chase. The Chase brothers had sheltered her for all of her eighteen years. Even Trick knew enough of her reputation at court—although he made it a point to keep as far from court as humanly possible—to realize Kendra was the quintessential forbidden fruit. Was that the basis of her singular appeal? Had Trick merely been afflicted with a childish instinct to want what he couldn’t have?

  Well, he could have her now. In fact, he couldn’t avoid her.

  And yet she’d lost none of that appeal.

  Of course, the wedding would be a bit of a bother, but he may as well marry now as later—he had to sire an heir at some point. And Kendra would make as fine a wife as any. She was lovely, intelligent, and of suitable aristocratic birth. While she probably had no dowry to speak of—Cainewood was as cash-strapped as most of the Royalist nobility—the fact was, Trick didn’t need anyone else’s money. He had more of his own than he knew what to do with.

  He blew out a wobbly smoke ring and watched it rise to the Amberley crests carved into the oak ceiling. His vision blurred until he could almost see Kendra’s expressive face, with its unexpected, refreshing beauty. He didn’t love her, of course, but he did like her. He supposed he was lucky to find that in a wife.

  Aye, he would marry her. Smiling to himself, he sipped his whisky. The warmth of the liquor curled in his stomach. The more he thought about his impending marriage, the better he felt about it.

  But that didn’t mean he’d appreciated being bullied by his future brothers-in-law.

  “Pardon the interruption, your grace.”

  Trick jerked around, choking on a mouthful of smoke. He hastily stubbed out the cheroot and downed the whisky to soothe his throat—which made it feel worse. “Aye, Compton?” he forced out between coughs.

  “The Earl of Greystone is here to see you, your grace.”

  Trick was still uneasy with the formal address—your grace—despite having held the title for two years already. He’d never wanted it; heaven knew he’d never wanted anything that came from his father. But the old man had died, and now people—most especially Father’s former retainers, like stuffy Compton—insisted on addressing Trick formally.

  Swallowing and rubbing his throat, he blinked up at the middle-aged butler. Trick often wondered if the man had been born with a pike for a spine. Compton’s receding gray hair was combed straight back from his forehead, and his jowls sometimes shook when he spoke, making Trick want to laugh.

  But he wasn’t laughing now.

  Colin was here? Already? Could this family not leave him in peace for one evening? Trick half-feared his visitor meant to challenge him to a duel—which Greystone would surely win.

  Trick sighed expansively, causing Compton’s nostrils to flare in disapproval of such a show of emotion. “Bring him in,” Trick muttered, rising to pour himself another drink.

  “Congratulations, Amberley,” Colin Chase said from behind him. “Shall we toast your wedding tomorrow afternoon?”

  Trick paused, then selected another glass from the cabinet. “Tomorrow, is it?” Turning to proffer the drink, he met Colin’s eyes, which were a deeper green than Kendra’s. “Can you not give a man time to get used to the idea?”

  Colin sipped before answering, watching Trick over the rim. “Jason can pull strings if he wants to. And time is of the essence…your heir may be on his way already.”

  “We didn’t—”

  “I’m not judging you, Amberley.”

  Trick’s gaze went to the hilt of Colin’s ever-present sword. His reply was slow and measured. “I’ve t
old you, nothing untoward happened between Lady Kendra and me.”

  “You know, Kendra is claiming much the same thing. Doing her fighting best to convince us of it, too.”

  He’d bet she was. “You don’t believe her?”

  “Jason doesn’t know what to believe. Frankly, I suspect he doesn’t care. She’s absolutely refused to consider anyone suitable, so as far as he’s concerned, this circumstance is a dream come true. You know, she would never have looked at you twice if she’d realized you’re a duke. A stubborn one, Kendra is.”

  “And now that she’s realized?”

  “She hasn’t.” Colin laughed. “Thinks you’re an impoverished minor aristocrat forced to highway robbery, and she’s cursing us for condoning the match. To our faces, that is. I suspect that, privately, she’s walking on air. The girl’s clearly in love.”

  “Love?” Trick rolled his eyes. He’d forgotten about her naïve ideas on that particular topic. “Don’t tell me you’re another believer in love at first sight?”

  “It seems to be the Chase way,” Colin mused. “My wife, Amethyst, had me with a single glance across a jeweler’s counter.”

  “It’s insane,” Trick declared, and threw back the rest of his whisky. It burned his raw throat. “You’re all insane. This is utterly outrageous.”

  “You’re angry, then?”

  Trick considered that for a moment. “Yes,” he said slowly. “And no. I think your strong-arm tactics are obnoxious, but as to the outcome…I suppose I must wed, and your sister’s as good a choice as any.”

  Before long, he hoped—just as soon as he’d satisfied the king’s demand—he’d be back at the London docks where he belonged. Having Kendra here in the countryside, awaiting his visits and, eventually, raising his children, was not an unhappy prospect.

  “I haven’t the temperament for courtship,” he added, “so a business arrangement suits my purposes just fine.”

  “Business arrangement?” Colin raised a single eyebrow. “I know what a fellow looks like when he wants someone, and I saw that look in your eyes. You’d better not hurt my sister.”