Mary Balogh

by A Counterfeit Betrothal; The Notorious Rake

  The two of them were in the dressing room adjoining the bedchamber where Lord Francis had spent the night. It was at the home of a neighbor of the earl’s, it not being at all the thing for bride and bridegroom to spend the night before the wedding beneath the same roof or to set eyes on each other before they met at the altar. Claude had ridden over early.

  “I am glad you use past tense,” Claude said. “You are crying off all women except Sophia for the future, Frank?”

  “Good Lord, yes,” Lord Francis said. “She would make a road map of my face with her fingernails if I should take it into my head to start looking about me.”

  “For no other reason?” his brother asked.

  Lord Francis thought a moment. “I intend to start setting up my nursery,” he said. “It would be too confusing to be setting up more than one. And far too expensive.”

  “The same old Frank,” his brother said. “One never gets a straight answer out of you. It’s not that Sophia kept on pursuing you and you just got tired of running? Bertie and Dick and I were talking last night. We were a little worried.”

  “The chase continued until quite recently,” Lord Francis said, pulling on his shoes and wincing. “Until two days ago, in fact. But the direction changed. Have you ever watched a cat deciding in the middle of a wild flight from a dog to stop and face the battle? Almost inevitably the dog takes fright and flees with the cat in hot pursuit. Let us say that I am the cat of the story. Devil take it, but these shoes must be a size too small.”

  His brother laughed. “Time to go, Frank,” he said. “It would not do to keep the bride waiting, you know.”

  “Soph?” Lord Francis said. “Oh, Lord, no. I would never hear the end of it. We would quarrel over it all the way to Italy. I would far prefer to quarrel over something I knew myself in the right over.”

  “You aren’t intending to spend your married life quarreling, I hope?” Claude said, frowning as his brother passed a hand nervously through his hair and turned to the door.

  “I intend to be happy,” Lord Francis said. “I shall see to it that I quarrel with Soph every day of our lives, Claude. What was that you said about cooks poisoning breakfasts? Were you serious? I hope my stomach is not going to continue this gurgling when I have it inside the church. It could be a trifle mortifying, don’t you agree?”

  “The poison loses its effect as soon as you clap eyes on your bride,” his brother said.

  “Ah.” Lord Francis opened the door.

  “HOLD STILL ONE more minute, Sophia,” Olivia said, down on her knees in the middle of her daughter’s dressing room. “There, it is perfect.” She sat back on her heels and looked up. “Oh, you look so very beautiful.”

  Sophia’s wedding dress was of a very pale blue muslin; the silk sash and the embroidery at the neck, short puffed sleeves, and scalloped hem white. The housekeeper, with the assistance of one of the gardeners, had woven a posy of flowers for her hair and a smaller one to wear at her wrist. Altogether she looked exactly what she was—a young and innocent bride.

  “Mama,” Sophia said, her eyes wide and frightened. “Oh, Mama.”

  Olivia got to her feet, smiling. “We talked yesterday, Sophia,” she said, “for an hour or more. You know exactly what is facing you and appeared very eager—yesterday. But a wedding day, of course, is different. There are so many conflicting emotions to be dealt with, are there not?”

  “He says he loves me,” Sophia said, her eyes large with tears suddenly. “He has said so over and over again in the past two days. Do you suppose he means it, Mama? One never quite knows with Francis. He always has that annoying twinkle in his eye.”

  “He must have been saying so for far longer than two days, Sophia,” Olivia said. “And of course he must mean it. Why else would he be marrying you? He has been under no pressure, as far as I know, to find himself a bride.”

  “Maybe there are other reasons,” Sophia said. “Maybe he felt himself trapped and decided to be gallant about the whole thing. Though it is quite unlike Francis to be gallant. Oh, Mama, what if he does not love me?”

  Olivia took her hands and squeezed them. “Before you panic, Sophia,” she said, “look inside yourself. Deep inside. That is where you know the truth. You know whether he loves you or not. Does he?”

  Sophia looked down at their hands. “Yes,” she said at last. “He does. Mama, he does.” She looked up again, her eyes shining. “He loves me and I did not even suspect it until two days ago. I thought he hated me. He always used to say the most lowering things about me and about the possibility of being trapped into marrying me. But he was doing it just to have fun with me, just to goad me. He likes to see me angry. He likes to quarrel with me. He says we are going to quarrel every day for the rest of our lives. He loves me. Oh, Mama, he loves me.”

  “Sophia?” Olivia smiled and frowned simultaneously at this strange speech. But there was a firm tap on the dressing room door and it opened before she could say more.

  “Ah,” the Earl of Clifton said, “my two ladies. A haven of sanity in the middle of a madhouse. Rose is weeping already; half the children have escaped from the nursery and are playing some sort of spirited game that necessitates a great deal of running and shouting on the stairs; Claude’s wife is trying to herd the children back to the nursery; Wheatley has inexplicably lost his coat; there have been no fewer than three inquiries from the stables about the exact time we want the barouche brought around; and Cynthia is reputedly having the hysterics because as bridesmaid she should be with the bride but instead has to stand still to have her hem turned up because it is too long after all. Need I continue?” He grinned.

  “Papa,” Sophia said. “Oh, Papa, I am so frightened.”

  “Well,” he said, “perhaps a very little haven of sanity. What is it, Sophia?”

  “It has all been so sudden,” she said. “Everything has happened so fast. And now it is my wedding day before I have had a chance to think.”

  “The month has gone fast, has it not?” he said. “But both you and Francis were adamant that it not be delayed any longer, Sophia. Has it not been long enough?”

  “But we decided to get married only two days ago,” she said.

  The earl and his wife exchanged glances.

  “It was a pretend betrothal,” Sophia said. “A counterfeit passion, Francis called it. To bring the two of you together, to give you a chance to patch up your differences. We were to put an end to everything once we had succeeded. And it worked, did it not? I will never be sorry that we did it because it worked. I was not quite sure until two mornings ago when I went into Mama’s room and saw you …” She blushed. “Then I was finally sure. But then when I told Francis that we must call everyone together to tell them that there would be no wedding, he said that yes, we must marry because it would be too troublesome to stop all the preparations at such a late date.”

  “Sophia!” the earl said.

  The countess merely looked at her, aghast.

  “And he said he loved me,” Sophia said quickly. “He said that he had planned it all from the start, that he had known all along how it would be, and that he had always planned to marry me no matter what happened with you. He said he loved me and so we decided to marry after all.”

  “Sophia!” the earl said again.

  “And I love him, too,” she continued, the color high in her cheeks. “I always worshiped him when we were younger, but I did not know that I still did so until I started to wake up at nights with my cheeks wet because I had been dreaming of our betrothal ending and of never seeing him again.” She was breathless with the speed of her confession. “I would die if I never saw him again.”

  The earl passed a hand across the back of his neck. “Perhaps no haven of sanity after all,” he said. “I am speechless. I do not know what to say.” He looked to his wife for help.

  But Sophia had darted between them and had taken an arm of each, being careful not to squash the flowers at the wrist she had passed through her father
’s arm. “It is all like a fairy tale, is it not?” she said, looking at first one and then the other, her face alight with love and happiness. “You are together again as I have always dreamed of your being and I am about to marry the man I have loved for as far back as I can remember. And he loves me. And we are to marry in the very church where you married. And the sun is shining after all the unsettled weather of the past week or so. And … oh, and, and, and.” She laughed excitedly.

  “Yes, the three of us together again,” the earl said, covering her hand with his own. “You are right, Sophia. It is a wonderful day—despite the most hair-raising scheme I have ever heard, you little minx. We are going to be having Francis pacing at the altar if we do not get moving, you know. I have a little gift for you before we leave the room.”

  She looked up at him expectantly.

  “I had them sent especially from London,” he said, “since a young lady should graduate from pearls on her wedding day.”

  He drew a delicate necklet of diamonds from a pocket and clasped it about her neck.

  “Happy wedding day, sweetheart,” he said, turning her and kissing her on the cheek.

  “Oh, Papa,” she said, tears in her eyes. “In many ways you will always be my very favorite man.”

  “You had better say your favorite father,” he said. “That way you will not create any misunderstandings. And a small gift for you, too, Olivia.” He turned his eyes to his wife. “I twisted the arm of your maid and discovered that you would be wearing green today.” He looked appreciatively at the rich green of her silk dress and drew an emerald necklace from another pocket. “Do you want to wear that silver chain, too?”

  She looked at him mutely before fumbling with the catch of her silver chain and removing it. He replaced it with the emeralds while she bit her lip and leaned her head forward.

  “A gift for our daughter’s wedding,” he said, turning her by the shoulders as he had done with Sophia and kissing her on the lips while their daughter looked on, her eyes shining.

  “Thank you.” Olivia looked up into his eyes and fingered the emeralds at her throat. “Thank you, Marcus.”

  The door burst open suddenly without even the courtesy of a knock.

  “Sophia,” Cynthia said, her eyes as round as saucers, her dark blue dress now indisputably the perfect length. “Everyone else has left and the barouche is at the door and I could have died when I tried on my dress and found that I tripped over the hem whenever I moved and you have managed without me anyway and look even more lovely than I expected and Lord Francis is going to burst with pride when he sees you and …”

  “And we had better not keep the horses waiting any longer,” the earl said firmly. “Or the groom, either.”

  “Oh, Cynthia,” Sophia said, taking her father’s arm to be led down the stairs, “I have told them. And I am so happy I could burst. And my legs feel like two columns of jelly. I do believe I am going to be sick.”

  THE CHURCH WAS full. Olivia saw that as the Viscount Melville escorted her down the aisle to her seat at the front. It was also looking at its most beautiful, the sunlight glowing through the stained-glass windows, the floral decorations bringing the summertime inside. She was not sure how the church had looked at her own wedding. She had had eyes for nothing and no one except her bridegroom.

  Lord Francis, looking very slim and very young and very anxious, was standing with his brother and glancing back to the doorway where Sophia would appear soon with Marc.

  Sophia. She felt like crying. Her daughter was about to be married. The sole person she had had to live for for fourteen years. She was to be married. For love. Despite that strange, bizarre story she had told less than an hour before, she was marrying for love.

  As she, Olivia, had married for love nineteen years before. In the same church. And suddenly the years rolled back and it was Marc standing there looking pale and nervous and then fixing his eyes on her as she approached with her father. And it was she approaching, feeling that her legs would surely not carry her one inch farther, and then focusing her eyes on the man waiting for her at the altar. Marc. The man she loved. The man she was going to spend the rest of her life loving.

  Lord Francis’s eyes stilled and lit up suddenly and there was a stir in the church. Olivia, getting to her feet, found herself fighting an ache in her throat and blinking her eyes. And there they were, long before she had won the fight, Sophia’s face bright and glowing, seeing no one but Lord Francis. And Marc, looking broad-shouldered and calm and capable. The organ was filling the church with sound.

  He sat beside her after giving away their daughter to the man who was about to become her husband. His shoulder touched hers. And she thought quite vividly, distracted from the wedding service for a moment, of what Sophia had told them in her dressing room. She had done it for them. She had betrothed herself to Francis so that they would come together and sort out their differences. And she had seen them together in bed—three mornings before, the last time they had been together—and had concluded with joy that her scheme had worked. Dear naive Sophia.

  “I will,” Lord Francis said.

  Olivia’s hand was taken suddenly in a strong clasp, and he placed their joined hands on his thigh.

  “I will,” Sophia said.

  They squeezed each other’s hand almost to the breaking point. She pressed her shoulder against his arm. Someone was sniveling—doubtless Rose.

  “What God has joined together,” the rector was saying, “let no man put asunder.”

  He squeezed her hand even more tightly, if that were possible, looked down into her face, and then laid a large linen handkerchief in her free hand. She dabbed at her eyes with it.

  What God has joined together, … She clung to his hand … let no man put asunder.

  He had kissed her at the altar—she could remember the heat in her cheeks at his kissing her in full view of a churchful of people. He had checked her steps as they walked down the aisle together, preventing her from running with the exuberance of the moment. He had forced her to smile at all their relatives and friends beaming back at them from the pews. And then they had stood on the steps outside the church, shaking hands and being kissed, shaking hands and being kissed, on and on for what had seemed like an eternity. She could remember the bells pealing.

  And then he had taken her hand and raced with her along the twisting path of the churchyard to the waiting carriage before anyone else could get there. And he had drawn the curtains across the windows of the carriage and taken her into his arms and kissed and kissed her until the carriage had stopped outside Clifton and the coachman was coughing outside the closed door.

  Nineteen years ago. And fourteen of the years since lived apart.

  There was a stir and a murmur in the church. A smattering of laughter. Lord Francis had his hands at Sophia’s waist and she had her face turned up eagerly for his kiss.

  Olivia’s hand was raised to her husband’s lips and held there for a long moment.

  And then somehow they were all outside the church and Sophia launched herself into first her mother’s and then her father’s arms, looking so eager and so happy that Olivia ached for her innocence. And then Francis was hugging her and calling her Mama and laughing. The duchess was weeping into a large handkerchief and uttering incoherencies about her baby. It was the happiest day of her life, she told anyone who cared to listen—all her babies were happily settled.

  The church bells pealed out their glad tidings.

  And then Olivia’s hand was being shaken and her cheek kissed by a whole host of relatives and houseguests and neighbors. She and her husband were being congratulated on having produced such a beautiful bride. She realized that he had one arm tight about her shoulders and she one arm about his waist only when she found that she was shaking people’s hands with her left hand.

  “Yes,” Marc was saying, “we are the most fortunate of parents. Aren’t we, Olivia?”

  “She has been the joy of our life,” she said.


  But suddenly there was no one else to greet, though there was still a great deal of noise and laughter and milling about.

  “Francis is not as wise as I was,” the earl said, looking down at his wife, his eyes twinkling. He still had an arm about her shoulders. He nodded to the roadway beyond the churchyard. “It could take them ten minutes to get away.”

  Francis and Sophia were in their carriage, but the door was being held open by laughing guests and flowers were being pelted inside and Richard and Claude were actually trying to unharness the horses while their brother’s attention was distracted. But Francis had been to a few weddings in his time and participated in active mischief. He poked his head out of the doorway, his face wreathed in a grin, and yelled at the coachman to start and run the rascals down. He closed the door when the carriage was already in motion.

  “Ah,” the earl said as a hand inside the carriage pulled the curtains across the windows. He turned and smiled down at his wife.

  “Oh, Marcus,” she said, “can she really be all grown up, then? Is it all over already?”

  SOPHIA WAS WAVING tearfully from the window of the carriage later the same afternoon. But there was no one to be seen any longer. The carriage had turned a bend and the house was out of sight. Her husband, she saw when she turned to look, had already settled back against the cushions. He was smiling at her.

  “Tears, Soph?” he said. “You are sorry to be leaving your mama and papa?”

  “We will not see them for months and months, Francis,” she said, blowing her nose and putting her handkerchief away resolutely. “Perhaps not until Christmas.”

  “Perhaps you should stay with them,” he said, “while I go to Italy alone. I can tell you all about it when I return. I’ll even tell you if the Sistine Chapel is still in Rome.”

  She looked at him a little uncertainly. “Perhaps you would prefer to go alone,” she said.

  He grinned and stretched out a hand to her. “Don’t make it this easy for me,” he said. “And what are you doing all the way over there? Trying to create a bulge in the side of the carriage? You aren’t afraid of me by any chance, are you?”