Truly, Madly, Deeply

by Romantic Novelist's Association

  There was fresh wreath of red roses lying at its foot and Joanna lifted her own from her neck and placed it beneath the inscription. Then she went and sat on a bench in the shade, so still that the little striped squirrels began to chase and chatter around her feet.

  In less than twelve hours she had met a man who, against all reason, had stolen her breath and her heart and it seemed he felt something for her also. Had they a future? Down there by the river it had seemed as simple as overcoming his caution by her own decision to stay. Then they would have time to know each other, to nurture this feeling, whatever it was. Love?

  But now she saw what she asked of him. He had been through this once, had lost a wife, an infant child. Could she ask him to face that pain and heartbreak again?

  There was a little fountain in one corner of the cemetery, its water cool. Once she was certain her eyes and face were serene she walked back to the gate and Alex. She stopped in the deep shade and held out her hand and, after a moment, he came to her and took it.

  ‘I could drown in a shipwreck returning to England.’ She raised her free hand when he tried to speak. ‘No, let me finish. I could break my neck in a fall from a horse. I could catch a fever in London or have a cut go bad and poison my blood.

  ‘In a week you and I may find we mean something to each other or that we have, in fact, nothing in common. I could go back to England and live to be eighty and regret all my life that I did not risk my heart and that I could not ask a man to make an even greater sacrifice and risk his.’

  Alex was silent, his gaze focused somewhere beyond her, down one of the dusty paths.

  ‘I choose to stay and to risk it. I know what I am asking you and I will understand if all I ever see of you again is a glimpse of Cousin George’s business partner.’

  He seemed to come back to her from a long way away. ‘We will go to the Athertons’ now. You will be tired from this heat.’

  She might as well have been discussing a visit to the botanical gardens. She had played and lost. She would not let him see that she felt anything that would be the worst kind of pleading. Training in deportment, honed in the polite shark pool of the London Marriage Mart, came to her aid. ‘Thank you, I confess I am a trifle weary now. I appreciate you showing me something of the real Calcutta.’

  ‘It was my pleasure.’

  The baby was so tiny. Far too small for the parade of names his proud papa had pronounced. Joanna met the unfocused blue gaze and smiled. ‘Yes, Georgie, it is a big confusing world out here. You go back to your nurse now.’

  She handed him to his ayah and watched as Cousin George shepherded them back upstairs to where his exhausted wife was waiting. Then she turned back to the open doors that led out onto the veranda.

  ‘You may come in now.’ She had heard the soft crunch of gravel, seen the long shadow fall across the boards ten minutes ago.

  Alex stepped over the threshold, hat in hand, and stood studying her gravely. ‘They are both well?’

  ‘So everyone says. You are come to tell me not to become too attached to little Georgie, are you not?’

  ‘I came because the Athertons are my friends. I lingered because I was watching you hold the child. I am here now because I have been thinking about what you said at the cemetery. You are right. If we do not have the courage to hope, to risk, what future is there?’

  ‘Is there a future for us?’ Strange how hard it was to speak, as though all the air had been knocked from her lungs.

  Alex smiled and sent his hat spinning away into the corner of the room. ‘Come here.’ He held out his hands. ‘Let us find out.’

  ‘I thought kissing was considered immoral in India.’ She closed her eyes and let her other senses guide her. His pulse was hard under her fingers. She could smell sandalwood and fresh linen and the now-familiar scent of the soap he used.

  ‘In public.’ His breath grazed her face as she tipped her head back and opened her eyes and saw the intensity and the emotion in his. ‘This is just us, Joanna. Alone.’

  I have come home, she thought as his lips found hers, gentle, questioning and, suddenly, certain. And so has he.

  The Marriage Bargain

  Nicola Cornick

  Nicola Cornick

  Bestselling British author NICOLA CORNICK writes historical romance for Harlequin HQN Books in the US and MIRA Books in the UK. She was born in Yorkshire and studied history at London University and Ruskin College, Oxford. Nicola is also a historian working for the National Trust at the seventeenth-century hunting lodge, Ashdown House. A three-time nominee for the Romance Writers of America RITA award, Nicola has been described by Publisher’s Weekly as ‘a rising star of the Regency genre’. Her website is www.nicolacornick.co.uk

  The Marriage Bargain

  Bath, England. January 1814

  There was a woman in his bed.

  Justin Blake lay quite still. This was inexplicable.

  He could remember perfectly the events of the previous night. He had been travelling down from London and when the weather had turned bad he had booked himself into Kennards Hotel in Bath. He had not been drunk, he had not purchased the services of a courtesan and he certainly had not won a young lady in a card game. And up until this moment he would have sworn that Kennards Hotel was the very last word in respectability and would never connive in insinuating a young woman into his bed. There was no logical explanation for her presence.

  He turned his head against the pillow. The linen was crisp beneath the morning roughness of his cheek. The grey of first light had barely penetrated the bedroom, suggesting that the freezing fog that had gripped the country so suddenly the night before had not yet lifted.

  The woman shifted slightly, making a small, sleepy sound like a somnolent kitten. Her back was turned to him and all Justin could see of her was one smooth, bare shoulder, a tangle of dark brown hair braided in a fat plait, and the lace neckline of a pure white nightdress. She smelled faintly of a summery fragrance –lily of the valley or lavender or rose. Justin was not sure. Gardening was not his forte. All he knew was that it was extremely seductive.

  He was sure that she had not been there when he had climbed into the bed the previous night. Or had she? Justin hesitated. He had not been drunk but he had been damnably tired. He had told Potter not to bother attending to him and had dispatched the valet to his own bed, consigning a wash and a shave to the morning. He had not even bothered to undress, merely discarding his jacket and throwing his boots carelessly in a corner of the room. And then he had slipped beneath the covers and fallen asleep before his head had touched the pillow. The room had been dark, lit only by one candle, and the tester bed was huge and wide; as big as a barn with its high draped curtains. Half of Wellington’s army could have been bedded down in there and he would probably not have noticed.

  Justin eased away, trying to slide from beneath the sheets without disturbing the sleeping girl. If he could leave the room before she woke he could avoid so many tiresome consequences. If she was a serving girl or a light skirt who had recognised him and decided to seize her chance, he could escape the obligatory pay-off and serve her right for being so sound a sleeper that her quarry had escaped her while she dreamed of fleecing him.

  If she was a lady…Justin shuddered. The word ‘compromised’ seemed to hang in the cold morning air, sending shivers galloping down his spine. Even if he had wanted to, he would not be able to offer marriage to make good her reputation: he was already married. God forbid that his wife should hear of this. Or his mother-in-law.

  He forced himself to calm. This could be no lady. No lady would be alone in a hotel in Bath –or indeed anywhere else.

  He was wasting time and she might wake at any moment. He slipped stealthily from the bed and stood up.

  With the redistribution in weight, the mattress creaked liked a foundering galleon. The sleeping girl rolled over but she did not open her eyes. Her face was serene in repose, her lashes dark against the line of her cheek, her lips slightly parte
d. Then she gave a small but unmistakable snore. Justin smiled. It was a very attractive noise but it was a snore nevertheless. He was sure she would be mortified if ever she knew.

  He inched backwards to the door, watching her all the while to make sure that she did not wake. He grabbed his coat from the back of the chair and his boots from the corner without even breaking step. He was adept at this. He had lost count of the number of ladies’ bedrooms he had reversed out of, usually while uttering platitudes about undying devotion and avoiding the hairbrushes and vases aimed at his head. That was all in the past –a long time in the past now –but it seemed that the skill of beating a hasty retreat had not deserted him.

  He groped behind him for the doorknob and it slid reassuringly into his hand. He turned the knob and opened the door a crack. There was a sudden loud groan of hinges so excruciating that Justin closed his eyes and almost groaned in sympathy. There was no possibility that his fair companion would slumber on through that: she was awake.

  He opened his eyes slowly and saw her sitting bolt upright, the sheets clutched to her breast in the time-honoured gesture of the shocked innocent. Justin’s heart sank.

  She was a lady. A young lady. Possibly even a débutante. Every inch of her spoke of quality; from the expensive lace edging on the pure white night dress to the sheen of privilege reflected in her pansy blue eyes. She would be most dreadfully shocked to see him there. She opened her mouth. He braced himself for her scream.

  ‘Close the door behind you,’ she said, ‘and pray be quick about it.’

  Justin stared. At first he wondered if she had mistaken him for one of the hotel servants but he had already noticed the way that her eyes had gone to the boots in his hand and from there to linger on the betraying dent in the pillow beside her. She was innocent but she was not stupid. She must realise that his was the telltale demeanour of a man who had spent the night in the wrong bed and was desperately trying to leave before that fact became apparent. The astonishing thing was that she remained so composed: he had assumed that ladies were brought up to have a fit of the vapours in situations such as this.

  He took another step backwards. She was offering him a way out, a simple means of escape. He should have grabbed the opportunity with both hands but for some reason he hesitated. It was nothing to do with the entrancing picture she presented –all tumbled and innocent-looking amidst the bed-sheets, the thick plait of chestnut coloured hair resting over her shoulder and contrasting so gloriously with those pansy blue eyes. He assured himself that it was definitely nothing to do with that, nor with the rounded smoothness of her bare arms or the sweet sensuality of her generous mouth.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ she snapped. She had the cut-glass tones of someone who habitually gave orders to servants, although her voice was softened by a betraying quiver of nervousness.

  Justin, who had not grown up with an unchallenged aristocratic sense of entitlement, recognised that neither had she; her autocratic dowager act was adopted to hide her vulnerability. He felt a curious sense of affinity with her.

  ‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘There is no need to nag.’

  For a moment a dimple flashed beside the corner of her mouth as she almost smiled, and he found himself smiling back.

  ‘I don’t want my husband to hear of this,’ she said. ‘He is unlikely to be understanding.’

  She was married. Justin felt a sharp pang of disappointment, inappropriate since he was a married man himself. It was followed by a sharper pang of indignation and protectiveness: the man was clearly an undeserving brute to leave his wife alone in Bath, at the mercy of any fool who walked into the wrong hotel bedchamber.

  ‘Your husband is a lucky man,’ he said.

  She raised a haughty brow. ‘And you are overstaying your welcome.’

  Justin grinned and raised a hand in farewell. He turned to leave and stepped backward into the arms of Potter, his valet. Potter was carrying a bowl of water and had a towel folded neatly over his arm. The contents of the bowl, which turned out to be scalding hot, splashed down Justin’s shirt and puddled about his stockinged feet.

  ‘My lord,’ Potter began, in tones of deep disapproval, as he knelt on the floor and dabbed at the faded Turkey carpet, ‘if you had but waited in your room –’

  The door was still half open. Justin could hear the sound of the bedcovers being thrown back, of someone moving about. He experienced a mixture of fear, frustration and extreme discomfort from his scalded feet. What was she doing? If only she would keep quiet he might manage to manoeuvre Potter away until she had had chance to make her escape…

  Potter looked up. From his position on the floor Justin estimated that he had just been afforded a glimpse of the hem of a white nightdress and a pair of very pretty ankles. Certainly his face wore the stunned expression of a man who had glimpsed something heavenly and doubted the evidence of his eyes. Then the valet’s face settled into the ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ look of disapproval that Justin was accustomed to from eight years’ experience.

  He could still recall the expression of utter dismay on Potter’s face when he had been assigned as his valet. Justin, orphaned young and packed off to school from the earliest age because his distant relatives had not wanted him cluttering up their family seat, had been a bitter and resentful eighteen-year-old stripling when Potter had taken him under his wing. Since then, they had been through much together: the hallowed portals of Cambridge University to the hellish battlefields of the Peninsular. Potter had disapproved of Justin’s hell-raising during his student years, he had deplored his recklessness in battle but he had saved his most severe disapproval for the day Justin had married, when he had gone directly from his wedding breakfast to his club and had got roaring drunk. Justin was obliged to admit that it had not been a mature reaction to his wedded state. Nor had been his departure to rejoin his regiment in the Peninsular the very next day.

  Justin swung the door closed with a sharp gesture. ‘You saw nothing, Potter,’ he said. ‘Is that understood?’

  ‘Naturally, my lord,’ the valet said resignedly. His eye fell on Justin’s boots, still clutched in one hand, and his coat still grasped in the other. ‘I take it that we are leaving, my lord.’

  ‘Yes,’ Justin said. ‘At once.’

  ‘The back stairs are that way, my lord,’ Potter said, with a jerk of the head down the corridor. ‘That is, if you are leaving the lady to pay the bill.’

  Justin looked at him. Potter had an uncanny knack for knowing how to make him feel particularly bad without actually saying anything for which he could be reproved.

  ‘Of course I am not,’ he said testily, ignoring the fact that that was exactly what he had been about to do.

  The door of the bedroom swung open abruptly and both men turned. Both men gaped. In the aperture stood a perfectly attired lady of quality. She wore a gown of sprigged yellow muslin with a pale lemon spencer about her shoulders. Her hair was confined with a matching lemon ribbon. She looked composed and neatly buttoned up: no longer the ruffled siren who had occupied his bed. Justin estimated her age to be about twenty, twenty-one at the most, and he experienced a sudden and violent pull of attraction and a need to get to know both the neat débutante and the tumbled wanton immediately, quickly, and intimately.

  If only he were not married already…

  ‘How the hell did you manage to get dressed so quickly without a maid?’ he enquired.

  He heard Potter give a small groan at the absolute inappropriateness of both his language and the question.

  As though on cue, a black-clad Abigail swept into sight. Like Potter, she was carrying a bowl of water and had a towel folded neatly over her arm. She did not have Potter’s sangfroid however. On seeing the tableau in the doorway she gave a shriek of shock. The bowl tipped in her hands and its contents joined the rest of the flood on Kennards’s Turkey carpet.

  Disaster. There was no possible way to maintain discretion now.

  ‘Do be quiet, T
russ,’ the girl said sharply. ‘There is no call for the vapours.’ She turned to Justin. ‘I will leave you to dress, sir. Good day to you.’

  Justin took her hand and raised it to her lips. ‘It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am,’ he murmured. ‘I have seldom spent a more enjoyable night.’

  She blushed and pulled her hand smartly out of his. ‘You are inappropriate, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I fear it has always been a failing of mine,’ Justin agreed.

  It was then that he saw her luggage: three shiny portmanteaux standing in neat ranks to the right of the door with his battered leather kit bag slumped next to them. The only thing that they had in common was the name embossed on them: Blake.

  Justin felt his stomach drop.

  He looked at her again. Those pansy blue eyes were decidedly wary now and she was biting her full bottom lip in vexation.

  It could not be. It had to be.

  ‘Paullina?’ he said.

  Her husband had spent the night in her bed and he had not recognised her. He had not even known she was there. It was the perfect illustration of their relationship.

  ‘Justin,’ Paullina acknowledged. She was not going to pretend that she had not known him. She was not going to pretend to be pleased to see him either. If she wanted to be fair to him –and she did not, particularly –she would have allowed that it was only the fourth time they had met. The first time had been in her parents’ drawing room when the betrothal had been agreed. Theirs was a marriage bargain, his title for her money, a common enough arrangement in the ton. He had been distant and civil; she had been tongue-tied and keenly aware that she had been sold.

  Their second meeting had been the following night when they had danced together at Lady Swanson’s ball. It was difficult to talk while performing the steps of a complex country-dance, and she recalled that they had had very little conversation. Justin had not asked for another dance, let alone the coveted and slightly scandalous third that would have indicated a genuine interest in her. Instead he had drifted away to the card room to gamble on the prospect of her fortune, leaving her to wilt like the wallflower she was.