“Mama—” Rebecca tried again, a hoarse whisper. Lady Tremaine shook her head in warning. The tears were falling swiftly and silently now, and her voice had gone thick.
“And though you have a good heart, Rebecca, you have willfully resisted all of my teachings, which has caused me no end of distress. I am convinced that it is only through an accident of fate that you have not brought great shame down upon us. At this very moment, you can be certain that your father is securing your engagement to Lord Edelston. Your honor and the honor of your family will thus be protected, and Lorelei’s prospects will not be threatened. You may count yourself fortunate that instead of becoming a social pariah and a burden on your family, you will become the wife of a baron. You may go to your room now. We will talk further in the morning.”
An hour earlier . . .
It had been almost disappointingly easy to leave her bedroom just before midnight, creep down the stairs, tiptoe out through the kitchen, and dash across the back garden lawn to crouch behind the tall hedge near the fountain. Obviously, it had never occurred to her parents that one of their daughters might ever be tempted to do such a thing; they had retired hours earlier, and were no doubt already sleeping the sleep of the blissfully unaware. All the servants were safely in their beds and snoring, too; her own maid Letty, as usual, slept as though she’d been clubbed in the head. The entire estate seemed to be dreaming, dogs and horses included. Rebecca was satisfied that no one had witnessed her furtive excursion.
Her exultation at having successfully arrived at the fountain ebbed a bit, however, when she discovered that it was colder than she had anticipated. Although she had, quite cleverly, she thought, donned a pair of black gloves and a dark wool cloak and tucked her treacherously bright hair into a dark furry hat before she left the house, the chill was beginning to penetrate every last bit of her protective covering.
To distract herself, she exhaled extravagantly and admired the white cloud her breath made. There had been a very interesting article on vapor and condensation in one of her father’s scientific journals, and Rebecca had been happily engrossed in it this afternoon in the library until her mother herded her into the solarium, where she was forced to poke at the pianoforte for the rest of the afternoon.
The midnight trap she had planned for her sister had promised to more than make up for the torture of pianoforte practice, but the midnight chill, as much as she hated to admit it, was proving daunting. She hoped her sister Lorelei would hurry up and appear and fall into the arms of Anthony, Lord Edelston, who, no doubt, was creeping across the lawn to the fountain at this very moment. Rebecca planned to leap out from behind the hedge with a hearty “ah-HA!” and thus buy freedom from future extortion by her sister.
It was quite by accident that Rebecca had overheard the exchange between the tall, golden-haired Lord Edelston and her fair sister, Lorelei, who, by the age of eighteen, had done her duty to her relieved parents by growing into precisely the sort of pristine beauty the ambitious name “Lorelei” implied. Lorelei was very nearly unnerving, with her silver-blond hair, pale blossom of a mouth, and enormous crystalline blue eyes fringed with the most unfair dark lashes. Rebecca’s own lashes were a sort of pale chestnut, which she supposed matched her hair well enough and did nothing to detract from her own handsome gray-green eyes, but they simply lacked the drama of Lorelei’s. Rebecca sometimes feared her entire face lacked drama, which seemed to her a gross—or perhaps merciful—misrepresentation of what actually went on in her mind and heart.
Whereas Lorelei had inherited her mother’s smooth refined oval of a face, Rebecca had inherited her bones from some more rugged ancestor: her cheekbones soared, her mouth was wide and plush, her nose was straight and strong and resolute, and her firm little chin had a dimple in it, for heaven’s sake, exactly the size of the tip of her forefinger. When one considered them side by side, one could see that Lorelei and Rebecca were sisters, but Lorelei’s hair seemed like something spun from silk and moonlight, while Rebecca’s hair was merely numerous shades of red and rambunctiously curly to boot.
“Titian,” her mother described it, optimistically; “That unfortunate red” is what Lorelei called it when they were sniping at each other, which was rather frequently.
Rebecca did not dislike her older sister, and Lorelei did not dislike Rebecca. They were, in fact, very fond of each other. But Rebecca was widely loved by the servants and the neighbors, partially because she was everything Lorelei was not: she laughed loudly and easily, she was curious, she read far more than a decently bred girl ought to read, she galloped her horse hard (astride, no less) and came home happily sweaty. She was affectionate and kind and immensely opinionated about things she should really know nothing about, but then Sir Henry Tremaine was a trifle careless about where he left his scientific journals.
She was, naturally, the bane of her mother’s existence and affectionately tolerated by her father, who had taught her to shoot on a whim and then basically left her to her own devices, as she could never really be the boy he had always wanted. Both of her parents secretly despaired of finding a husband for Rebecca, let alone one with a title.
Lorelei, on the other hand, was typically regarded with the sort of nervous reverence her kind of beauty always inspired, and although she secretly reveled in the awe, she found herself increasingly unable to step out of her regal reserve. She had begun to regard her own beauty as something sacred that had been entrusted unto her safekeeping, and thus she felt obliged to treat herself with somber respect at all times. Lorelei was fully expected to make a spectacular titled marriage, and her mother never tired of pointing this out.
Consequently the Tremaine sisters were jealous of each other, which manifested in an ongoing exchange of blackmail threats that rarely reached their parents’ ears, although the possibility was always tantalizingly present. Yesterday afternoon Lorelei had threatened to tell Sir Henry, their father, that Rebecca had been poring over the anatomy book he purposely kept on a very high shelf in the library. This was a serious threat, indeed, as the book had been forbidden to Rebecca, and punishment would no doubt be severe—she might even be deprived of her horse for a fortnight. And doubtless the book would then be spirited away forever, safe from Rebecca’s voracious hunger for knowledge, and Rebecca would never learn the complete story of how blood circulates through the veins (it was much, much too late to protect her from the story of how babies were made).
In a sense, it was all her father’s fault. Upon retirement, Sir Henry had indulged his long-denied interest in science and medicine by subscribing to any journal that could be had on the subjects. Rebecca had happened upon the journals one day in the library and waded into them cautiously, keeping a wary eye out for her mother.
She had never been more enthralled by anything in her life.
Shockingly matter-of-fact debates regarding whether musket balls should be left in wounds if they could not be retrieved easily, the best methods of amputation, the uses of mercury, words like “laudable pus” and “trepanning”—the journals were both appallingly, titillatingly gory and strangely reassuring. Human beings were subject to a staggering array of illnesses and disasters, but the fact that learned men could discusses such things in dispassionate detail made human frailty seem less mystical and frightening and more a matter of course, of philosophy, essential to the pattern of life itself. Whenever Rebecca encountered a word or the name of a body part with which she was unfamiliar, she referred to her father’s anatomy book, and thus inadvertently gave herself a very unorthodox education.
As a consequence, Rebecca nursed a secret desire—or rather a semisecret desire—to be a doctor. She had broached the subject once at the breakfast table, and in light of the spasm of pain that had crossed her mother’s face and the condescending bark of laughter it had surprised from her father, she had thought it best not to bring it up again. However, the desire remained, and had only increased in poignancy, as is the habit of all secret desires. Thus, this newest
threat of Lorelei’s required momentous ammunition by way of counteraction, and she had prayed hard for the appropriate solution.
Rebecca’s prayers had been answered in an almost comically swift fashion. Anthony, Baron Edelston, who was staying with the nearby family of Squire Denslowe, had effortlessly and instantly fascinated all the young women in the area simply by behaving toward them the way every young rake in London behaved: politely resigned to boredom, ever-so-slightly tragic and languid, a slight hint of danger glinting in his eyes as he lingered a little too long over the hand of some lucky maiden. Rebecca thought he was handsome but somewhat repulsive. Why on earth anyone found his air of boredom and tragedy captivating was beyond her ken.
However, Lorelei was poised on the brink of her first London season and had yet to meet a man like Edelston. Her careful reserve soon proved no match for Edelston’s cultivated indifference. Edelston, indeed, behaved as though Lorelei’s sort was as common as the dandelions that sprinkled the garden lawn, and Lorelei found herself actually exerting herself in an attempt to charm.
As exertion was unfamiliar territory for Lorelei, she was in over her head rather rapidly. One moment Edelston was coolly surveying the room full of overly cheerful provincials over the top of Lorelei’s moonlight-colored head; in the next moment, he had dropped his voice to a fierce murmur, suggesting a tryst in the back garden at midnight the following night. Rebecca, surreptitiously moving through the room, heard her sister murmur a shocking acquiescence.
Because it would be ever so much more satisfying—and much more potent an arrow in her blackmail quiver—to actually catch her sister in the outrageous act of meeting a young man at midnight, Rebecca had decided to precede the pair to the garden. If the two of them didn’t appear soon, however, Rebecca decided she would return the way she came, as catching a chill was becoming a real threat. She clapped her mittened hands together to warm them and gazed up at the stars sprinkling the sky, picking out constellations to pass the time.
Sir Henry Tremaine had rheumatism in his left knee. It had made itself at home there after a hunting accident a few years ago, and every now and again, particularly on chilly nights, it plagued him mercilessly. It was plaguing him tonight, and he had lain awake long enough. Careful not to disturb his sleeping wife, he slid out of bed, slipped into his robe, and lit a candle to light his way to the library, which was where he kept the brandy. From experience, he knew that a quickly bolted glass would muffle the pain long enough to allow him to sleep.
But halfway down the stairs, Sir Henry caught a glimpse of a pale head of hair and a swirl of dark skirts. Astonishingly, Lorelei appeared to be exiting the house through the kitchen. At midnight. In seeming deference to his shock, his throbbing knee went quiet. Sir Henry decided the brandy could wait. He stealthily followed his daughter outside.
Tom Jenkins, the Tremaines’ gardener, was arriving home from The White Sow, the best place in the village for a glass of comfort and a relaxing chat with a large-busted barmaid, when he saw a dark figure dart across the back lawn. It was tall enough to be a man, and as he had only consumed two pints this evening—Tom liked his ale well enough, but he liked his job better—Tom was certain his eyes were not playing tricks on him. Thinking quickly, he armed himself with a spade from the toolshed, and cautiously glided across the frost-stiffened lawn toward the fountain, where the shadowy figure had disappeared.
Rebecca was deeply disappointed. It appeared that she had risked a great deal for naught, because no one had yet appeared near the fountain. She sighed and straightened her back, then stepped out from behind the hedge to return to the house.
Right into a pair of masculine arms.
“There you are, my sweet. I feared you had changed your mind,” said Lord Edelston in the same fierce murmur he had used to entice Lorelei here to begin with. Before Rebecca could register this astonishing turn of events, Edelston lowered his mouth to hers, slid his hands down to cup her bottom, and flicked his tongue at the corners of her mouth.
Rebecca was paralyzed by a number of conflicting realizations, including the fact that, for all intents and purposes, she was being ravished for the first time in her life and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, even if the loathsome Edelston was doing the ravishing. The curious part of her wanted to see what would happen next. The rational part of her was infuriated and frightened indeed. Her hands hovered in the vicinity of Edelston’s shoulders, undecided as to whether they should rest there and settle in for a while or shove him away.
The decision was taken out of her hands by a feminine scream, a masculine roar, and a dull thumping sound.
Rebecca leaped away from Edelston and turned slowly, her eyes squeezed shut. After a moment, because there seemed no other choice, really, she opened them.
There, frozen as if in a tableau, stood Lorelei with her hands clamped over her mouth, and Tom the gardener brandishing a spade. This was quite bad enough. But when Rebecca looked down and saw her father struggling to his feet, having apparently been felled by a spade blow to the thighs, she understood that she was doomed.
All three of them wore identical expressions of horror.
Sir Henry Tremaine gently divested Tom the gardener of his spade and tucked it meaningfully in the crook of his arm, the blade of it riding over his shoulder. It looked at home there; Sir Henry was an old soldier, after all, knighted in the service of His Majesty King George III, and skilled in the art of wreaking damage with musket, bayonet, and undoubtedly all similarly shaped objects.
“Take your sister inside, Lorelei,” Sir Henry said. He watched the girls scurry into the house, and then motioned with his chin for Edelston to walk in front of him. Edelston, wisely, obeyed. They followed the girls into the house and paraded past an aghast Lady Tremaine, resplendent in her ruffled night robe, to the library.
Sir Henry installed Edelston in a chair and then settled himself comfortably behind his desk. For a long silent moment, they regarded each other across the glossy expanse of oak.
“Would you like a drink, sir?” Sir Henry asked, finally.
Edelston, pale and stricken, had not yet regained the use of his voice, and so he simply nodded, trying not to appear too grateful.
Shaking his head pityingly, Sir Henry pushed a glass of brandy across the desk to Edelston.
Edelston toyed with the idea of asking for something stronger, but refrained. He curled his hand around the glass of brandy and held on to it for dear life.
“You do know,” Sir Henry began slowly, “that you now have a fiancée.”
Edelston swallowed hard. It was all working out rather too neatly, and as the shock of discovery abated, relief and elated triumph nearly sent him dancing out of his chair. It was all he could do to control his expression. He struggled to arrange his facial features into the blend of humility, rebellion, and reluctant honor that he thought appropriate to the situation, and wished he had a mirror so he could review the result.
“Drink your brandy, son,” Sir Henry said. “You look as though you may lose your dinner.”
Edelston dutifully took a large gulp.
As for the fact that he had managed to compromise the wrong girl—well, it was a bit of a disappointment, Edelston thought, but young women did wear long gowns, and they had been known to trip on them at the tops of staircases and tumble to their deaths. And if the cinch of a saddle came loose while a young woman was out riding and she took a deadly spill as a result—well, sadly, these things did happen. Edelston was fairly certain he would not find his rustic wife an encumbrance for long.
The marriage settlements, however, would be welcome indeed. More than welcome. They were desperately, quickly needed. One unusual and rather ingenious source of income was all that stood between him and the devastation of his mounting gaming debts. However, a decent-sized settlement—and Edelston knew that Sir Henry Tremaine had been quite fortunate in his investments, and that the Tremaine girls were endowed quite well—would resolve this issue once and for all. Edelston wou
ld obtain a disposable, anonymous, and well-to-do bride, the sort that was rather unavailable in London, he would settle his debts, and he would resume living his life precisely as he liked to live it.
“I will do my duty by your daughter, sir,” Edelston said humbly. “I appeal to your memories of yourself as a young man, when confronted by a girl whose charms surpass—”
“Please spare me the pretty speeches, Edelston,” Sir Henry interrupted politely. “You may hope to win a swift exit from this library through a show of capitulation, but let me remind you that your host, Captain Denslowe, is a crack shot. If you attempt to leave the neighborhood before the wedding, you will undoubtedly suffer an unfortunate accident.”
“Threats, sir, are hardly necessary,” Edelston protested. “Your daughter . . . er . . .”
“Rebecca,” Sir Henry supplied wryly.
“Yes, Rebecca . . . your daughter Rebecca is a lovely girl, and I shall be honored to take her to wife.”
“Indeed.” Again wryly. “Return Wednesday noon, Edelston. We will discuss the marriage settlements. Rebecca is heiress to a nice home in Collingwell, and I am not displeased that she will be the wife of a baron. You are dismissed, sir.”
Sir Henry, satisfied that he had protected his daughter’s honor and the honor of his family, watched as the handsome Lord Edelston squared his shoulders and took leave of the library.
Chapter Two
Connor Riordan, Sir Henry Tremaine’s head groom, was brushing Maharajah’s pewter coat with long strokes while Rebecca observed him morosely from atop the door of an empty stall. Her heels thumped the sides of the door in an agitated fashion while she viciously gnawed a straw.
Julie Anne Long Page 2