An Unsuitable Bride

by Jane Feather

  “Right y’are, sir. I’ve a good burgundy from ’50. One o’ the best years for burgundy, if I may say so.”

  “Then bring it, if you please.” Perry nodded a pleasant dismissal and went to warm himself at the fire. The ease with which the gently bred Alexandra took to the life of seduction amused him as much as it intrigued him. She didn’t appear to have any scruples at all. But then, why should someone who was conducting a monstrous deception every moment of her life have any scruples about any other conventional issue of morality? It seemed that what exasperated him about her on the one hand benefitted him on the other. He shook his head in rueful amusement and kicked a fallen log back into the hearth.

  He turned at a light tap on the door and called, “Enter.” A young serving girl bobbed a curtsy in the doorway. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but madam says as ’ow she’ll be a while, so could you delay dinner?”

  “I’m sure I could, but is there a particular reason for the delay?”

  “Aye, sir, madam’s desirous of takin’ a bath. I’m to fetch up ’ot water.”

  Peregrine smiled slowly. “Is she, now? Well, you may tell madam that dinner and I will await her pleasure.”

  “Very good, sir.” The girl bobbed another curtsy and vanished.

  Alexandra was full of surprises, Perry reflected, still smiling. And she appeared to be learning the art of seduction with remarkable aptitude. The landlord appeared with a crusted bottle of burgundy and a decanter of Madeira. He set them on the sideboard and drew the cork on the burgundy, sniffing it with an air of reverence. “Will you take a drop now, sir?”

  “If you please, and put dinner back for half an hour. Madam is taking a bath.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, so Hester said. The boys are taking up jugs of ’ot water right now. I’ll serve dinner in forty-five minutes, if that’ll do, sir. The ladies do like to take their time over a bath.” He filled a wine glass and brought it over to his guest.

  “I’m sure you know best.” Perry inhaled the bouquet and took a delicate sip. “You’re right, landlord. ’Tis indeed a fine vintage.”

  The host looked pleased. “I’ll send up someone to lay the table, sir.”

  Perry filled a second glass with Madeira and left the parlor. He lifted the latch of the bedchamber door with his little finger and elbowed it open. Steam rose from behind a screen in front of the fire, and the scent of orange flower and rosewater perfumed the warm air.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Only me. Who were you expecting?” He stepped across to the fire screen and peered over the top, resting his arms along it, the two glasses in his hands. “What an entrancing sight.”

  Alexandra looked up and felt a moment’s self-consciousness that vanished almost as soon as she felt it. “Is one of those for me?” She reached up a hand, and her breast lifted above the water with the movement.

  A perfect breast, Peregrine thought. Rounded, creamy white, delicately blue-veined, rosy-tipped. He leaned down to give her the glass of Madeira. Her knees, drawn up in the copper hip bath, broke the surface of the water. Her hair was fastened on top of her head, revealing the slenderness of her neck and the graceful slope of her shoulders. He hadn’t really absorbed her body visually the previous night, but now he allowed his gaze to drift slowly over her, guessing at the hidden pleasures beneath the water.

  She took a seductive sip of the tawny wine and flicked her eyelashes at him. It was a gesture of such entrancing sensuality that it took his breath away. Where had this country virgin learned such a trick?

  He set down his glass and came around the screen. “May I help, ma’am?” He hung his coat over the screen and slowly rolled up his sleeves, before kneeling on the thick sheets spread beneath the bath. He reached for the cake of soap in the dish on the floor and lathered his hands. “Lean forward.”

  Alex obeyed, reaching for her toes as she bent forward over her knees, exposing the creamy length of her back. Her skin was tingling in anticipation, and she could feel once more that sinking, surging sensation of desire in her belly.

  Perry smoothed his soapy hands down her back, letting his fingers slide beneath the water in a more intimate exploration. Alex gave a little gasp of surprise and then moved seductively beneath the probing fingers. He chuckled and kissed the soapy nape of her neck, his hand slipping around between her thighs, finding her center. She closed her eyes as the exquisite sensation began to build, his fingers and the wash of the water working together to fill her with a confused delight. Her back arched, and her knees lifted as the wave crested, and she gave a little cry of pleasure, folding forward again into the water.

  Peregrine smiled and slowly withdrew his hand. Alex raised her head and turned to look at him. Her gray eyes were a little dazed, her cheeks delicately flushed, but she managed to say with a fair assumption of normality, “Is that the way you usually wash a person’s back?”

  He laughed and kissed the corner of her mouth, before pushing himself back onto his heels and standing up. “I can’t say washing a lady’s back in the bath is a habit of mine. But I find it a most pleasing activity.” He took a towel from the screen and shook it out. “Will you step out, ma’am?”

  Alexandra rose in a shower of drops and stepped over the edge of the tub, turning into the towel as he held it out. He wrapped it around her, saying, “I suspect I’m quite competent at drying.”

  “I think I should do this myself,” she said firmly. “But thank you for the offer, sir.” She wrapped herself tightly and bent to pick up her glass, which she had set beside the bath. That delicious little interlude had scrambled her senses, she discovered, making her movements unusually clumsy. She took a steadying sip of Madeira.

  Peregrine moved the screen aside and picked up his own glass. He regarded her towel-swathed figure with a raised eyebrow. “Have you given thought to what you might wear to dine in?”

  She grimaced. “Actually, I hadn’t considered the question, but I don’t want to put sweaty riding clothes on top of my nice clean skin.” She glanced around the chamber for inspiration. “Oh, I know. I’ll fashion something out of the bedsheet.” She pulled back the coverlet and extracted the top sheet. “This will do very well.”

  Peregrine watched with some astonishment as she wrapped, folded, tied, and tucked until she was clad in something resembling a Roman toga. “Ingenious,” he commented.

  “Oh, Sylvia and I as children often fashioned costumes from—” She stopped abruptly. That line of conversation could become dangerous.

  “From?” he prompted.

  She shook her head and went to the washstand. “It was nothing.” She brushed damp tendrils of chestnut hair from her forehead and then abruptly unpinned the knot and let the whole cascade to her shoulders, muttering, “I wish I had a brush,” as she ran her fingers through it, pulling out the tangles.

  Perry didn’t pursue the topic, fascinating though he found it. “Shall we go in search of dinner?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m famished.” Alex gathered up the folds of her toga and hurried to the door. “Can you bring the glasses? I daren’t let go of the sheet in case it comes loose.”

  “Which would be no disaster,” he murmured, picking up their glasses and following her into the corridor.

  “It would in the middle of a public passage,” she retorted, casting him a grin over her shoulder as she went into the private parlor, where the table in the window was set for two.

  Perry merely smiled. So, she and Sylvia had dressed up as children, wherever it was that they had grown up. Maybe that explained the ease with which Alexandra assumed her various parts. Could they possibly have come from a family of traveling players?

  It would explain so much, but not the education and her passion for intellectual interests. Traveling players, much like Romanys, never spent long enough in one place to acquire a decent education. He refilled his glass. “One might almost think you grew up on the stage, the ease with which you play so many parts.”

  Alexandra laughed, thinki
ng of her father’s horror. But then she thought of her mother. Luisa had much of the actor about her. She could play many parts, the apparently dutiful wife, the doting mother, the Society grande dame, the dilettante courtesan. Could her daughters have inherited that facility?

  “Why do you look puzzled?” Perry inquired, watching her expression. “Or surprised, is it?”

  She shrugged. “Neither. I just had a strange notion. But ’twas not important.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he murmured. “I doubt very much, my dear girl, that you have strange and unimportant notions.”

  She flushed, but reprieve came in the form of the landlord directing servants with laden trays, and in the bustle of setting dinner upon the table, she was able to recover her composure.

  Alex drifted up from a deep sleep much later that night. The curtains were still drawn around the bed, but the soft glow of candlelight illuminated the enclosed space. She blinked, confused. The candle was lit on the bedside table, and Peregrine was lying beside her, leaning on one elbow, watching her with an intensity that almost frightened her.

  “Is something wrong?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “No, I was just looking at you and thinking.”

  “Thinking what?” She pushed herself up against the pillows. “ ’Tis still the middle of the night.”

  “ ’Tis near dawn,” he responded. “And I was thinking that I don’t know who you are, or what you are, but I do know that I love you.” He moved a hand up to brush wisps of hair from her cheek. “I said once before that I would not ask for a response, but now I find I must. I love you, Alexandra.”

  She looked at him, her eyes misting as she shook her head with inarticulate distress.

  “Does that mean you cannot love me in return or you cannot say that you do?” His voice was very even, very quiet.

  There were some truths that could not be denied, she thought. The absolute crystalline truths that existed in their own solid bedrock of certainty. And she knew that she was facing one now.

  “I cannot, may not say it,” she murmured.

  He nodded and leaned sideways to blow out the candle. “I will be satisfied with that for the present.” He slid down in the bed and drew her into the circle of his arm. “Let us sleep awhile longer.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the doorstep of the house on Berkeley Square, Peregrine helped Alexandra dismount. He held her hand for a moment before saying, “Would you like to go to the theatre this evening? I can borrow a box at the Drury Lane Theatre. I assume you could find a suitable gown from the treasure in the attic?” He raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  Alexandra’s eyes glowed. “Oh, I should like it of all things.” Then a shadow crossed her face. “But there will be friends of yours there.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed easily. “And if so, I shall introduce you as Mistress Player, as we agreed.”

  “But will they not ask questions?”

  “Maybe,” he repeated. “But they will not ask them of me or of you. My friends are in general too well bred to show an impertinent curiosity.”

  Alex hesitated. It was very tempting. And once again, she told herself that no one would know her. She didn’t know anyone in London who would recognize her. “Then I should love to go. What play is it?”

  “I believe ’tis to be Garrick playing Hamlet.”

  Her delighted expression filled him with warm pleasure. She clapped her hands with all the excited eagerness of a young girl, and he had a glimpse of the lighthearted child she had once been. “I will come for you at eight. And after the play, we shall have a light supper.”

  “I can hardly wait.” She blew him a kiss and ran lightly up to the front door, raising the knocker.

  He watched her inside and then mounted Sam and rode to Blackwater House to return Griselda to her rightful owner and beg the loan of the theatre box from Jasper.

  Alexandra hurried into the house as soon as Billings opened the door for her. “Any post for me, Billings?”

  “Aye, ma’am. A few letters come for you.”

  “I’ll read them in the breakfast parlor. Please ask Mistress Dougherty if she could bring me some coffee.” She was hastening up the stairs as she spoke and remembered belatedly that she had not yet had a discussion about supplies with the housekeeper, so presumably, coffee was not going to be on offer yet. In her own chamber, she changed into a more workaday gown, deciding to dispense with the makeup until she knew she would have visitors.

  She found the housekeeper in the breakfast parlor setting a pot and a cup on a table. “You’ll not be wantin’ breakfast, then, ma’am?” Mistress Dougherty asked pointedly. “Seein’ as ’ow you’ve not slept in your bed these last two nights.”

  “I have relatives in town. I’ve been staying with them,” Alex stated with a haughtiness intended to thwart any further comments. Mistress Alexandra Douglas was unaccustomed to having her movements questioned by housekeepers.

  “Well, there’s no coffee in the pantry, but I’ve brought some ’ot chocolate. That do ye?”

  “Admirably, thank you. I’ll pour it myself.” She nodded dismissal and picked up the small pile of letters on the table. She riffled through them. There was one from Sylvia in the middle of the batch. Her heart leaped with pleasure at the thought of reading it, but she set it aside for later and sat down at the table, absently pouring herself a cup of chocolate as she slit the wafer on the first one.

  Dear madam,

  Lord Dewforth was most intrigued to hear that Sir Arthur Douglas’s magnificent collection is to go on the block. He was not well acquainted with that gentleman, but he feels it would be a great sadness for him to see such a carefully built and maintained library dispersed amongst different collections. I have the honor of acting on behalf of Lord Dewforth, who, as I’m sure you’re aware, is a bibliophile of distinction. I would be most grateful if I could view the sample volumes you mentioned in your letter, at your earliest convenience, in the hopes of coming to some arrangement.

  Yours truly,

  Andrew Langham.

  Alex nodded to herself and sipped her chocolate. Lord Dewforth would be a worthy recipient of her father’s treasure. She slit the wafer of the second letter and ran an eye over it, then put it aside. The writer was interested in only certain volumes. He would pay well for them, but Sir Arthur’s daughter did not intend the collection to be sold piecemeal. She continued her reading. Of the six responses, two were promising, two only interested in single volumes, and two, she suspected, were merely curious. She looked longingly at Sylvia’s unopened letter but resolutely set it aside and gathered paper and ink, sharpened her quill, and sat down to answer the inquiries.

  She offered to meet Lord Dewforth’s emissary at three o’clock the following afternoon in Berkeley Square and then offered an appointment at four o’clock to the learned Mr. Murdock, whose wealth was on a par with his insatiable appetite for rare books. If the visits overlapped, as she intended they should, it would be an incentive to the two prospective buyers to bring out their best bids.

  She penned politely vague responses to the other four, sanded her labors, folded and sealed them, and went in search of Billings. Instead, she found the lad pushing a mop over the parquet floor in the hall with remarkable lack of enthusiasm. “Ah, Archie, isn’t it? Could you take these letters for me, please? I’d like them delivered immediately, and wait for an answer in each case.”

  Archie looked pleased at the change of employment. “Right away, ma’am.” He dumped his mop unceremoniously into the bucket, wiped his hands on the back of his breeches, and held one out for the letters. He squinted at the writing on the top one. “This where I took ’em yesterday?”

  “Yes. One is to go to number twenty Albermarle Street, this one here.” She indicated the address on one of them, guessing that the boy was unlettered. “You see the number there.”

  “Oh, aye.” He tucked it into his waistcoat and peered at the next one.

  “This is to
go to number six Park Street.” She pointed out the number to him. He nodded, and Alex was confident enough that they would end up in the right place. But she decided to keep back the four less important ones. She didn’t want to confuse Archie too much. He could deliver them later that afternoon.

  She went back to the parlor, eager now for Sylvia’s letter. She had hoped that Sylvia would write to her here but hadn’t counted on it. Her visit to town was to be so short, and she had seen her sister so recently, but she knew she would have been disappointed if Sylvia had not written as usual.

  She settled by the no-longer-smoking fire and slit the wafer.

  Dearest,

  I hope things are going as planned in town. Everything has settled into the old routine here after the excitement of your visit, and I must confess, I find it sadly dull and can’t wait for an accounting of your activities and London’s glorious dissipations to liven our country existence. But I did have an unexpected visitor yesterday. Helene paid a call, something she very rarely does these days, although she is always sending little messages and gifts of fruit from the orchard or preserves and jams from St. Catherine’s kitchens. But her call was a little disturbing. I hope ’tis nothing to alarm you, but I thought you should know without delay. Helene said she received a visitor a few days ago. A gentleman by the name of Sullivan. He made inquiries about a Mistress Alexandra Hathaway; apparently, he wished to know if she was qualified to undertake a librarian’s work. Helene told me she assumed he was referring to you and that for your own reasons, you were using a different name. She simply answered that she would recommend you without hesitation. But she then said she was a little disturbed by the fact that this Mr. Sullivan had come across you in Combe, in Dorset. She asked if you were working at Combe Abbey for our cousin, under an assumed name. I told her the story we had concocted, that you had seen Sir Stephen’s advertisement for a librarian, and since you knew the library as well as anyone alive, we had thought it the perfect employment for you. Since you must, after all, have employment. But, for obvious reasons, you could not present yourself as yourself. I said something about your not wanting to appear the poor relation asking for charity, which I thought Helene might sympathize with. She didn’t say very much, just nodded when I’d finished, and said she must be on her way. All she said as she was leaving was that we should both know that if we are in need, she will do what she can to help, and there is always employment for you at St. Catherine’s. I don’t really know what to make of this, except that Peregrine has a close interest in you and, I would like to believe, for the best of motives. I don’t believe he is making inquiries to do you harm, but you will, I trust, by now be in a better position to judge. Write to me soon, dearest, and reassure me that all is well.