Slightly Sinful

by Mary Balogh

  “Yes, my lord,” the butler told him.

  Something was about to be celebrated in grand style. There was a state dining room at Lindsey Hall. The great hall was used only for the rarest of festal events. The last time it had been used was for Freyja’s wedding.

  A wedding?

  Bewcastle’s?

  But he would not take the simplest course of asking Fleming. He stood where he was, looking about him, more than ever thankful for the quiet comfort of Rachel at his side, her arm still through his.

  They thought he was dead. They had held some sort of funeral for him. And then life had carried on for them. Today, only two and a half months after Waterloo, there was some event grand enough to be celebrated in this sort of style.

  He asked himself if he felt hurt. How could life have continued on for them just as if he had never existed? But how could life have stood still for longer than two months? It had not for him. His life had moved on, and it seemed to him as if he had done more living, more growing, since Waterloo than he had done in all of the almost twenty-six years before it.

  He had found Rachel during those months. He had found contentment and happiness and roots. He had found love.

  He looked down at her.

  “It is all very magnificent,” she said. “I am quite awestruck.”

  He opened his mouth to say something in reply. But they both heard it together, over and above the bustle in the hall—the sound of horses’ hooves clopping up the driveway and the rumble of carriage wheels. He closed his eyes briefly.

  “I’ll stay in here,” she said. “Go out there alone, Alleyne. This is something you need to do alone. It will be something you will look back upon as one of the happiest days of your life.”

  It seemed unlikely to him when even now, several hours after he had eaten breakfast, he felt as if he were in danger of losing it. But he knew she was right. This was something he had to do alone.

  He stepped out onto the terrace.

  It was an open barouche, and there were two people sitting inside it, a man and a woman. At the same moment as they wrapped their arms about each other and kissed, heedless of anyone watching from the house, Alleyne saw the colored ribbons fluttering behind and the old boots dragging along the ground. It was a wedding carriage.

  Bewcastle?

  But as the conveyance turned onto the terrace and the couple drew apart, he saw that the man was not Bewcastle. He was—good Lord, he was the Earl of Rosthorn, the man who had hosted that picnic in the Forest of Soignés that Rachel had mentioned, the man who had been dangling after Morgan none too discreetly.

  But that realization and that suddenly returned memory came and went in a flashing moment. For his eyes had alit on the woman, on the bride, and she was Morgan, all decked out in white with lavender trim.

  He could no longer think at all. He could scarcely breathe.

  She looked at him with bright, laughing eyes as the barouche drew to a halt—and then the smile froze on her face, her complexion turned deathly pale, and she scrambled to her feet.

  “Alleyne,” she whispered.

  He had had a couple of weeks to prepare for the shock of this moment. But it was doubtful he felt it any less than she did. He opened his arms, and she somehow launched herself out of the barouche without first opening the door. His arms closed about her and held her to him for long moments. Her feet were not even on the ground.

  “Alleyne, Alleyne.” She kept whispering his name over and over as if she did not trust the evidence of her senses sufficiently to speak out loud.

  “Morg,” he said, setting her on her feet at last. “I could not miss your wedding, could I? Or the wedding breakfast at least. So you have married Rosthorn?”

  The earl was descending from the carriage the more conventional way. But Morgan was still holding Alleyne and gazing into his face as if she could never look her fill.

  “Alleyne,” she said aloud. “Alleyne.”

  Perhaps in a few moments more she would have recovered sufficiently to say something more than his name. But the bride and groom had not been given much of a head start from the church. A whole cavalcade of carriages was proceeding up the driveway. The first of them was already circling the fountain and taking the place of the barouche, which the coachman had drawn away from the doors.

  Everything was going to be all right after all, Alleyne thought. All the unfamiliarity, all the sense of disconnection, all the impersonality of his memories, had fallen away the moment Morgan had landed in his arms. He was back in his boyhood home, and by some strange chance he had arrived at a festive moment in his family’s life, at a time when they would surely all be here.

  He peered almost eagerly into the leading carriage and saw his grandmother with Ralf and Judith inside, and Freyja and Hallmere crowded in with them. Strangely, though, despite the fact that both Freyja and his grandmother looked fondly out at Morgan, neither of them looked at him. Ralf vaulted out and turned to hand down their grandmother, and Morgan called his name. He looked over his shoulder with a cheerful grin—and froze just the way she had done a minute or two ago.

  “My God,” he said. “My God. Alleyne!”

  And he left their grandmother to fend for herself, closed the distance between himself and Alleyne, and caught him up with a whoop and a great bear hug.

  There was a great deal of noise and confusion then as Rannulf’s strange behavior drew everyone’s attention to the man he was hugging with such enthusiasm. There were hugs and exclamations and questions and a few tears. Alleyne hugged his grandmother gently. She looked frailer and more birdlike than ever as she patted his cheek with one gnarled hand and gazed at him in wonder.

  “My dear boy,” she said, “you are alive.”

  Only Freyja had not been a part of that first flurry. But the others stood aside to let her through. She was looking at Alleyne with pale cheeks and haughty gaze. She strode toward him, and he opened his arms. But instead of coming right into them, she drew back her right arm and struck him hard on the jaw with her fist.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded. “Where have you been?” And she launched herself at him, headfirst, and hugged him hard enough to squeeze the breath out of him. “I’ll kill you with my bare hands. I swear I will.”

  “Free,” he said, flexing his jaw, “you don’t mean it. And if you do, I won’t let you. I’ll get Hallmere to protect me.”

  But suddenly Aidan and Eve and the children were there too, alighting from the second carriage, and both children launched themselves upon Alleyne with shrieks of delight while Eve stood with both hands over her mouth and her eyes huge. Aidan was not far behind the children.

  “By God, Alleyne, you are alive,” he said, stating the obvious as he drew his brother into his arms.

  Alleyne did not believe he had ever been hugged more in his whole life.

  He laughed and held up both hands as if to stave off the myriad questions that were being directed at him.

  “Later,” he said. “Give me a moment to enjoy the sight of you all again and to recover from Freyja’s blow. You still throw a mean one, Free.”

  He could see his Aunt and Uncle Rochester pulling up in a carriage with two ladies Alleyne did not know, and the look of shock on his aunt’s haughty, aristocratic face was almost comical.

  Where was Bewcastle?

  But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it and fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course—horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain—but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell.

  Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did n
ot stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother’s shoulder and felt at last that he was safe.

  It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparent impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self-sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric’s arms that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved.

  An extraordinary moment indeed.

  He blinked back tears, suddenly ashamed. And it was just as well he had not given in to the mortifying temptation to weep. Bewcastle took a step back and possessed himself of his quizzing glass again. Perhaps he too was feeling embarrassed by such a public display. He was looking his usual cool, haughty self again.

  “Doubtless, Alleyne,” he said, “you are about to offer an explanation for your long absence?”

  Alleyne grinned and then chuckled.

  “When you have an hour or three to spare,” he said, looking about at them all—his family, with more acquaintances and other guests arriving every moment. “But it looks as if my arrival has taken the focus of attention away from the bride, and that is unpardonable of me. I must beg your indulgence for a moment longer, though.”

  He looked toward the open doors of the house and could see Rachel standing just inside, in the shadows. He smiled at her as he strode toward her and held out one hand for hers. She was horribly frightened, he could tell, but she was outwardly calm as she set her hand in his and allowed him to lead her out onto the terrace.

  She looked incredibly beautiful, he thought, even though her pale green carriage dress and hat did not nearly match in splendor all the wedding finery about them.

  “I have the honor,” he said, turning back to face his family, “of presenting Miss Rachel York, niece and heir of Baron Weston of Chesbury Park in Wiltshire, and my betrothed.”

  There was a great deal of noise and fuss as Rachel smiled, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. But it was Bewcastle, as usual, who had the final word.

  He made Rachel a stiff, very correct bow.

  “Miss York,” he said, “I am acquainted with your uncle. Welcome to Lindsey Hall. Doubtless Alleyne will be able to regale us with many stories during the coming hours and days. But this morning there is a wedding to celebrate and guests to entertain and a breakfast that is awaiting us all. The Earl and Countess of Rosthorn will lead the way inside.”

  The Earl and Countess . . .

  He was referring to Morgan, who, now that the first shock of her brother’s return from the dead was over, was smiling radiantly at Rosthorn, and that gentleman was looking back at her with an answering look of adoration and offering her his arm.

  Wulf was bowing and offering his to Rachel.

  And she had been right, Alleyne thought as his grandmother took one of his arms and Freyja grabbed the other as if she intended never to let go. He would surely remember this day as one of the happiest of his life.

  But only because Rachel was with him, by Jove. Without her he might have procrastinated until he was in his eightieth year or beyond.

  SOME OF THE TREES ABOUT THE LAKE WERE BEGINNING to turn color. Rachel looked down on them from the window of her bedchamber. September had been a wet and chilly month, but yesterday had finally been sunny again, and today it felt almost as if summer had returned just for the occasion.

  Her wedding day would have been glorious in drizzle or thunderstorm or blizzard, but she supposed that every bride dreamed of blue sky and sunshine to greet her as she stepped out of the church with her bridegroom.

  She was ready to leave for the church. But she was early, of course. Geraldine had arrived in her dressing room at the crack of dawn, followed by two footmen carrying the hip bath and a whole stream of maids following with pails of hot water. Geraldine had insisted upon staying to wash her back and then help dress her in the ivory lace and satin confection of a dress Uncle Richard had insisted she have made for the occasion, in addition to a dizzying number of bride clothes.

  It was not fitting for the housekeeper to play the part of her maid, Rachel had said with a laugh. But Geraldine had insisted anyway.

  “Rache,” she had said, “I am going to be the bride of a valet—or a gentleman’s gentleman, as Will prefers to call himself—before Christmas, so that makes me more or less a maid by marriage, doesn’t it?” She stopped to laugh. “Did you hear what I just said? A maid by marriage. And me a maid. Anyway, no one can do your hair as well as I can, and today it has to look extra special for Lord Alleyne to look at all day and take down tonight when the two of you go to bed. I don’t suppose you need any advice for the occasion seeing as you don’t have a mother, do you?”

  The other ladies had ended up in her dressing room too before the morning was well advanced, though Phyllis had not been able to stay long because there were guests staying at the house and, in addition, she had insisted upon catering the wedding breakfast herself.

  “It should go well, Rachel,” she had said as she was leaving, “if I can just keep my mind off the fact that I am feeding a real live duke. I have seen him. He looks like Lord Alleyne except that it seems to me that if someone were to put an icicle in his hand it would just sit there and never melt.”

  “He bowed to me when I went to Lindsey Hall after Lord Alleyne summoned me there,” Bridget said with a sigh, “and asked me how I did. I nearly fell over, but of course he didn’t know who I really was, did he?”

  Flossie had arranged the veil over Rachel’s bonnet after Geraldine had set it carefully in place over her coiffure, and had stood back to assess the effect.

  “You are the loveliest bride I have ever seen, Rachel,” she said, “even though I thought I looked pretty good myself two weeks ago.”

  Rachel had hugged them all when it was time for them to be on their way to church. She could not go downstairs too soon. Alleyne was staying at Chesbury, though not, of course, in his old room. All his family was staying here too. She did not want to see any of them before she entered the church. Doing so would invite bad luck.

  Carriages were being brought up onto the terrace below, and she turned from the window before any of the intended passengers could step out of the house.

  She had spent almost a week at Lindsey Hall before returning with Bridget to prepare for her wedding. She had been horribly uncomfortable at first, and that was an understatement. The Bedwyns seemed to ooze aristocratic hauteur from every pore. And they were a forthright, boisterous family into the bargain. But she had grown comfortable with them. She had come to like them and even to be fond of them.

  Including the Duke of Bewcastle.

  He was powerful and autocratic and reserved to the point of coldness in his manner. He never laughed or even smiled. But Rachel had seen his face during that long minute while he had held Alleyne in his arms out on the terrace. Probably she was the only one who had seen it since he had had his back to everyone else.

  There had been raw and naked love in that face.

  Rachel had felt a particular fondness for him ever since.

  She had got to know them during that week, and they had accepted her without any apparent qualms. Of course, she thought, they would probably have accepted anyone under the circumstances. They had their brother back after believing for two long months that he had died while bringing the Duke of Wellington’s letter back to the ambassador in Brussels. The letter had been found abandoned in the forest.

  Alleyne had made it clear to them all almost from the first minute that she had saved his life.

  She could hear the sound of voices below and then the slamming of doors followed by the clopping of horses’ hooves and the rumblin
g of wheels. A few moments later there was a tap on her door and Sergeant Strickland answered her summons.

  “Everyone has gone to the church,” he said, “and the baron is waiting downstairs for you. My, you do look as fine as fivepence, missy, even if it is not my place to say so on account of I am only a gentleman’s gentleman.”

  “You may say so anytime you wish, Sergeant,” Rachel said, smiling and crossing the room impulsively to set her arms about his neck and kiss his cheek. “I will always, always be grateful to you. It was you who saved his life. I could not have done it without you. Thank you, my friend.”

  He beamed at her and looked horribly embarrassed.

  And then, just a few minutes later, she was sitting in the carriage beside her uncle, her hands tingling with pins and needles, her heart thumping, her head spinning. Even now—especially now—she could not quite believe in her happiness.

  She had gone into the forest to raid dead bodies. Then she had agreed to a scheme full of lies and deceptions. Then they had gone tearing off to Bath and he had recovered his memory—and left her. And then—oh, and then she had walked back from the lake and ended up running into his arms and into her present state of happiness.

  Her uncle took one of her hands and squeezed it.

  “I suppose I cannot say I am the happiest man in the world this morning, Rachel,” he said, “since it would be strange indeed if Bedwyn did not have that distinction. But I lay firm claim to being the second happiest.”

  She turned her head to smile at him. He was not looking exactly robust and in the best of health. But he had improved so enormously since that afternoon when they had arrived at Chesbury that it was almost difficult to realize that he could be the same man.

  There was a crowd of villagers about the churchyard gate. There would be several neighbors among the guests inside. Explanations had been tricky. They had been told of the memory loss, of Sir Jonathan Smith having been chosen as a suitable name until Lord Alleyne Bedwyn remembered his real identity. And since there was some question of the validity of a marriage in which the groom had signed the wrong name, and since both families had missed the first wedding anyway, then the decision had been made to repeat the ceremony. No one had asked about the estate in Northumberland and so no explanation had been made.