The Bartered Bridegroom

by Teresa DesJardien

  Cullman reached up and after a brief struggle managed to bat Benjamin’s hands aside. “You could have told her prettier lies so that you need not look the complete cur in her eyes,” Cullman said as he straightened his cravat. “I think you a fool. But that is your affair, of which I will say no more. I prefer not to waste my breath on fools.”

  “Do not talk to your mirror then.”

  Cullman growled low in his throat, then turned to go down the few steps, but Benjamin stopped him with a call. “Cullman!” The dandy half turned, glaring. “Why did you come here this morning?” Benjamin demanded. “You had to have known you would be unwelcomed.”

  “The First Beau is welcome everywhere,” Cullman said haughtily. He gave one last tug to his cravat, then looked down his nose. “Unlike some I could mention.”

  The hands at Benjamin’s side formed into fists. “Do not call here again, Cullman,” he growled after the retreating man’s back, but he received no response before Cullman climbed into his waiting carriage and drove away.

  Benjamin took several deep, steadying breaths, and tried to comprehend why Cullman had come here at all. If the man wanted to be free of Miss Oakes, why call at her home the very day after he’d traded her away?

  Had the man tried to excuse his behavior to Sir Albert? Had Sir Albert asked the man to come, to see if Cullman’s story

  matched Benjamin’s? Benjamin had told Sir Albert the whole truth, for it had been the only way to win Sir Albert’s support of this sudden betrothal.

  No, it was more likely that Cullman had come to call on another occupant of the house: Miss Oakes herself.

  But why?

  Did he regret what he’d done? Could he have changed his mind so completely, now wanting to court Miss Oakes anew ... ? Unlikely. So what game did the man play at? Or was he just so arrogant he thought he’d throw the wine out and still somehow have it with his supper?

  Never mind. The cur had come, and now he’d gone, good riddance, and it was Benjamin’s turn to face the occupants of this house. He turned back to the front door and knocked a second time.

  The butler issued him into the spacious entry hall, took his hat and gloves, and left Benjamin long enough to announce his arrival. He returned promptly to lead Benjamin to a parlor at the front of the house.

  To Benjamin’s surprise, it was not Sir Albert he had been led to meet, but Miss Oakes. Another lady sat in the comer with an open book—a chaperone, to judge by the lady’s clothing and demeanor. Miss Oakes, on the other hand, knelt on the floor, a large book under one arm.

  “Have you fallen?” Benjamin inquired at once, as he rushed to her side.

  Color formed on her cheeks as she rose to her feet. “Langley, you are too quick by half,” she said to the butler, who murmured “Sorry, miss,” as he bowed himself out. Miss Oakes patted a hand to her coiffure of red curls, obviously flustered. “You caught me just putting aside my . . . my pastime,” she explained.

  Benjamin glanced down at the floor, seeing several different news sheets had been spread about the floor. “Are you training a puppy, Miss Oakes?”

  To his surprise, she laughed. “No,” she said. She opened the large book she’d had under her arm, hesitated, then turned the book to hand it to him.

  He ran a lingering glance down a list of names and figures, then glanced up at her again. “Racehorses?”

  She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, but there was something less sanguine hiding in her eyes. “I like to track how they finish.”

  “Racehorses?” Benjamin repeated as he handed back her book. Really, he could not approve, not if this pastime were for real. “A woman?” he spoke his thoughts aloud.

  Miss Oakes drew herself up stiffly, still some six inches shorter than Benjamin even though her aggravation made her seem to grow taller. “Yes, a woman. And it might surprise you to learn that I can also read and do sums.”

  “I meant no offense—”

  “Men never ‘mean offense,’ but they offer it all the time anyway,” she said with an angry toss of her short curls. Fashionably short, her curls were more of a fetching deep, dark auburn than he had remembered them to be—and her brown-eyed stare less friendly than he had recalled as well. Benjamin was at a loss to understand why she had taken such umbrage, but it was clear in the set of her shoulders. “So, now you know,” she went on crisply, “that I can be a bit of a bluestocking.”

  The chaperone made a disapproving sound from her comer, but Miss Oakes did not seem to heed her. “So, tell me, Lord Benjamin, will a bluestocking serve as a temporary fiancйe?” she demanded to know.

  “Ah! I begin to comprehend.” Benjamin folded his hands together behind his back. “You hope to put me off with all this bluster of yours. You hope to end this matter between us before it goes much further.”

  Miss Oakes looked startled, and her chaperone almost managed to hide a knowing smile behind the book she read.

  “If that were my intent, I would state it,” Miss Oakes said, not quite able to hide her pique.

  “It will not do, Miss Oakes. You have seen the morning papers, presumably?” He glanced around at the news sheets on the floor. “You do read the social pages as well as the bits on racing?”

  She nodded stiffly, with a tiny frown. The chaperone cast Benjamin a noticeably amused glance from her comer.

  “Then you have seen your papa’s announcement. For better or worse—” Benjamin paused, abruptly mindful of the unintended pun, and started anew. “Whether we like it or not, we are

  now committed to behaving as though we are betrothed. That is why I called today.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved a list, which he handed to her.

  Miss Oakes read it swiftly. “This is a list of our mutual engagements.”

  “You will note for yourself that quite a few of my invitations do not rank so well against those that you and your papa have received.” He did not lower his gaze, keeping it steadily fixed to hers, but he did give a small shrug. “My consequence in London is . . . strained. At present anyway. These are the places where we have both been welcomed. I hope they will suit you well enough.”

  “Well enough,” she answered at once, surprising Benjamin into a sensation that felt suspiciously like relief. She could have stood on ceremony, could have declared his acquaintances to be inferior, socially beneath her reach—and she would have been correct.

  Without doubt the Oakeses’ consequence surpassed that of any Whitbury, marquess’s sons or no, because the Oakeses were seen as being respectable. The Whitburys were collectively seen, at best, as eccentrics. The marquessate—the title and the money that Gideon had inherited—opened some doors, of course. But new and old rumors now sweeping through London—of familial insanity and Benjamin’s dismissal from the navy—had closed the majority of the most select homes to Benjamin. Acquaintances from his brief time in public school had not come to his chambers on a return call. Navy friends had failed to see him on the street, even though he’d lifted a hand in greeting. His birth was superior to Miss Oakes’s—but his place in the social stratum had slipped all the same.

  It was rather . . . gratifying to have Miss Oakes so easily concede to attend these lesser affairs he proposed—until it occurred to him that she might have readily agreed because they were lesser affairs. Those events on his list stood to host fewer of the “correct” people whom she would later wish to associate with—that is, when she was free of his company at her side.

  When she looked up, he wondered if his expression was as cross as hers was bleak. “But. . . there must be fifteen events listed here. Must we attend all of these?” she asked in a faint voice.

  This response was more like what he had expected, only now it carried the obvious sting that what she really objected to was so much time in his company. “That is a customary number of engagements in a month, I should think,” he pointed out, hearing the starch that had come into his own voice. “To do less would appear suspicious.”

  “Very well,”
she conceded, her frown remaining. “May I keep this list? Do you possess a matching one?”

  He nodded, once again ever so faintly pleased by her easy— if reluctant—capitulation. Perhaps she was a trifle more sensible than her reputation would have it, and had determined that anything—anyone—might be tolerated so long as it all was over in a month's time.

  “I truly must beg your pardon, my lord, and yours, Miss Irving,” Miss Oakes said, glancing between them, “for not yet making the introductions. Lord Benjamin, this is my chaperone, Miss Irving. Miss Irving, Lord Benjamin Whitbury, my ... my fiancй.”

  The woman stood to bob a curtsy, her lack of astonishment revealing she’d already heard the news. Benjamin offered her a bow of his head.

  “I pray you do not mind if I continue to read?” Miss Irving asked, not awaiting an answer before she sat once more and buried her nose in her book, or pretended to.

  Benjamin took advantage of Miss Irving’s discretion, pretend or otherwise, and took a step nearer to Miss Oakes. “You will be well enough?” he asked very quietly, so that only she would hear. “Say, for dancing?”

  “Well enough?” Miss Oakes also spoke low, looking puzzled.

  “Your side. Where Fallen Angel kicked you?”

  “Oh, my side,” she said, appearing relieved. “I have a bruise, of course, but it hurts less than I feared.”

  “Good,” Benjamin said. Really, when she was not frowning, Miss Oakes was pretty after a fashion. Her hair was a truly fetching color, deepest red, a color he’d seen in old paintings, a red that had darkened with time—only Miss Oakes’s curls had a vibrant shine to them, nothing dull about them at all. Her gown was just the right shade of pink to complement her hair color, where another pink might have clashed. Her eyes were a rich brown, her lashes so long he wondered how he had ever mistaken her even for one moment to be a lad, and although her nose was perhaps a shade too small for her face, a pixie’s nose, she had a fine mouth. Her lips were evenly matched and generous, a mouth made for smiling. Not that he’d seen her smile all but, what, twice?

  He took a step back, putting distance between them, and lifted his voice for the chaperone’s benefit. “You saw on the list that tonight we have the Bellord ball?”

  She gave a wag of the list she still held in her hand, wrinkled her pixie’s nose in a quick grimace, and nodded.

  “It will be a bit of a trial, with the news of our ... our betrothal so fresh,” he warned.

  She sighed. “I suspect you are correct.” Now it was her turn to drop her voice, while doubt clouded her gaze. “I suspect I am not much of an actress,” she cautioned him, barely above a whisper. ‘To appear delighted and all.”

  Benjamin glanced toward Miss Irving, who appeared to be mindful only of her book. He’d believe he could fly before he’d believe the chaperone was not noting with keen interest how closely Miss Oakes stood to her new fiancй. The thought, totally misguided, almost made him smile.

  “Nor I an actor, Miss Oakes,” he lowered his tone to match hers. “But we need not pretend at a love match. We must only appear contented, and the betrothal will be believed.”

  “Contented?” she echoed on a sigh, but the word was not really a question. Even if it were, he had no thought how to answer it.

  “It might be a trifle easier if we were seen together before then. Would you consent to walk in Green Park with me at four?” he offered.

  She nodded, her expression neutral but also notably lacking any open signs of pleasure.

  “Very good.” He took her hand, bowed over it as he murmured his farewells, and turned to leave. Out of defiance or ignorance of convention, Miss Oakes nearly let him see himself to the door, at least until her chaperone rose and murmured a few words to her charge.

  “Oh!” Miss Oakes said to him, blushing as she approached

  him once more. “We are very casual in the country, I fear. Please, do follow me.”

  It was a silly custom really, albeit a correct one, he thought as he gave her a nod and followed her to the threshold of her parlor. There she nodded in return, and then he murmured another farewell and turned to now follow her butler to the front door, to await his gloves and hat.

  Sadly, the rumors about Miss Oakes’s countrified manners seemed proved here today. She had not been demurely sitting when he was announced, but sprawled on the floor. And doing what there? Reading the racing results, for pity’s sake! And she had not rung for tea—but that might have been deliberate, a way of letting him know he was not invited to linger. Then she had not thought to see him to the parlor door, to hand him over to the butler as every other young woman of decorum would have done. Poor creature. She was unpolished here in London—and the chagrin in her eyes had told him that she knew it. She knew she did not fit in.

  The same could he said of you, Benjamin thought, before he thrust the idea firmly aside. He was untried in London, true, but hardly unpolished. He had even begun to cut a bit of a dash in the navy, had begun to think he might aspire to a lieutenancy did he but continue on as he had begun. Still, with such plans now destroyed, he told himself he would do well enough here in London, if only he could escape from under the clouds of the past. In fact, this connection, this “betrothal” to the respectable name of Oakes might even enhance his reputation. At any roads, it would do him no lasting harm, even when she cried off, unless she said something untoward about him by way of explanation for their falling apart. . . .

  He turned back, thinking to request what blame she meant to use in the deed of crying off—only to spy through the doorway that she had once again sunk to the rug, her pretty blush pink skirts billowed around her. She scanned the news sheets spread before her, and then stretched to fetch ink and quill off a nearby table. As she settled back, testing the quill tip with her thumb, utterly absorbed by what she read, Benjamin shook his head. Poor creature indeed, with so few feminine graces.

  Accepting his gloves and hat from the butler, Benjamin chose after all not to ask Miss Oakes the question that had occurred to him, but instead to thank heaven—for his own sake as well as the good of the family name—he would not truly have to marry such an unsuitable female.

  Benjamin was stopped before he could leave the house, causing him to wonder in a twisted humor if one was ever allowed to simply come or go in the Oakes home without being verbally halted. Certainly not at the moment, for it was Sir Albert himself who had hailed Benjamin.

  “If you could step into my bookroom?” Sir Albert asked. Without waiting for Benjamin’s assent. Sir Albert retreated down his own hall, leaving Benjamin to trail behind him. Benjamin pursed his mouth for a moment, knowing that before the naval debacle he would have been afforded more deferential treatment, but also knowing that only time could favorably shift that tide once again. He returned his hat and gloves to Langley, and sighed before silently following in Sir Albert’s wake. A month? It could not pass quickly enough to suit Benjamin.

  When he entered the bookroom, Sir Albert was standing before an unlit hearth that gave testimony to the fine spring weather. He had a glass of port in one hand and thrust another toward his guest.

  “Thank you, I believe I will,” Benjamin said as he crossed the room and accepted the glass. He tossed down a large gulp before lifting an inquiring brow.

  “'Tis this damned betrothal, of course,” Sir Albert said. The older man’s white hair was ruffled, as if he’d run a hand through it. “I mishandled telling my Katie things,” he said, a sheepish quality in his tone. “She’s got the wrong notion in her head, I am afraid, and it does not a paint a pretty picture of you.”

  Benjamin shrugged. “I could see at once that it would be . . . hurtful to your daughter to be told all.”

  “I asked you here to give you my apology for that, you see? And to ask a favor of you. A favor that I did not think of in my shock when you first came to tell me what Cullman had wrought.” Sir Albert’s stance changed subtly, as if he assumed a dueling position. Gone was the openness of entreaty, n
ow replaced by a cautious posture.

  “If I can grant it with honor, I will,” Benjamin said carefully as he put aside his drink on the nearby table.

  Sir Albert stared at him, as if he would read Benjamin’s soul, and at length he nodded. “I believe you are a man of your word. Unlike another I could name.”

  “I am glad you now know that Cullman is not trustworthy,” Benjamin said.

  “Now? Why do you think I brought my Katie to London?” Sir Albert said on a huff, any reticence fleeing. “I knew she was partial toward the rascal, but I never thought she’d make an understanding with him, not without first consulting me! She seemed so young to me, so unready for marriage ... well, I was blind, was I not? But, Lord Benjamin, I swear until she announced it last night, I never knew she’d pledged herself to that coxcomb.”

  Sir Albert scowled. “She’s a ... a forward girl, that one. Gets notions in her head.” He looked up, alarmed, as if he’d said too much. “She’s a good sort, though,” he hurried to add. “Perhaps too clever for a woman, but even the Bible tells us not to put a bushel basket over a lamp, eh?”

  Benjamin tried not to smile. “And some lamps flare higher than others.”

  “Exactly, my lord! You are a man of sense and reason, I see. Here then is the boon I would ask of you.” Sir Albert looked down into his glass, frowned a moment, then gazed once more directly into Benjamin’s face. “All I ask is that you do not woo her. Not unless you mean it! At the end of this whole sorry matter, her heart will have been played with enough. To be honest, Lord Benjamin, I fear she’ll not come out of this unscathed.

  “I fear her . .. repute has not seasoned well here in London. She’ll have wounds enough to lick when I take her back home to Bexley, let alone those from this whole sordid affair. So, my lord, I ask that you promise not to add to her burden by wooing her. I would beg that you not play the pretty ... er, to be franker yet, not seduce my daughter nor engage her heart.”