Beguiling the Beauty

by Thomas, Sherry

  Fitz frowned. “Helena, is that any way to speak to Venetia on her wedding day?”

  “You weren’t there,” Helena said impatiently. “You didn’t hear all the hateful things he said about her.”

  Fitz considered Venetia. His gaze dropped to her waist. It was a quick, discreet look—had Millie not been paying close attention, she wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Tell me the truth now, Venetia,” he said. “Did you enjoy your crossing?”

  The question seemed a complete non sequitur. To Millie’s surprise, Venetia flushed.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “And you are sure of Lexington’s character?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then congratulations.”

  “You can’t congratulate her,” Helena protested. “This is all a horrible mistake.”

  “Helena, you will refrain from speaking disrespectfully of our brother-in-law in my presence. If Lexington has risen enough in Venetia’s esteem, then it is time you set aside your prejudices and accept her decision.”

  Fitz rarely stepped into the paterfamilias role, but his quiet rebuke brooked no dissent. Helena bit her lip and looked aside. The glance from Venetia was grateful and surprised.

  “Will you be leaving on your honeymoon very soon, Venetia?” Fitz asked.

  “Yes, this afternoon.”

  “Let us not stand around, then,” said Fitz. “You will have a thousand details to see to between now and then. Shall we start with the luncheon?”

  As gentlemen did not wear wedding bands, Christian was not immediately accosted by questions from his stepmother. But she had to know that he would not have asked to see her alone unless he had something important to say.

  They both bided their time. He inquired into the comforts of the house she and Mr. Kingston had hired for the Season. She spoke of the delightful little garden that had come with. It was not until they’d come to the conclusion of the meal that the topic turned to his private life.

  “Any news concerning your lady from the Rhodesia, my dear?”

  He stirred the coffee that had been put down before him. “Stepmama, you know how I feel about those who do not keep their words.”

  She had sent a note the morning after asking about the dinner, and he’d told her the truth—that he’d been disappointed. He’d also said in the same note that he planned to find out the reason behind his lady’s nonattendance and would let the dowager duchess know as soon as he learned anything. On this latter promise he had not quite followed through.

  “Was that all it took to turn your affection? Did you not find out why she broke the appointment?”

  “Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.” The coffee, a very good brew, tasted far too much like the cup he’d been sipping when Mrs. Easterbrook had strode to his table that first night on the Rhodesia. Such an erotic charge she’d brought with her. He hadn’t been able to taste black coffee since without feeling a surge of the same anticipation.

  He poured a liberal amount of sugar and cream into the coffee. “Unfortunately, what I’d thought of as a life-changing event was but a game to her.”

  The dowager duchess pushed away the remainder of her Nesselrode pudding. “Oh, Christian. I’m so sorry.”

  You have no idea. “Let’s speak no more of it. It’s water under the bridge.”

  “Is it?”

  The passage of time had not dulled the pain and humiliation of it. If anything, now that the shock had worn off, now that he knew exactly how she had executed her plan, every memory was an open wound.

  “She used and discarded me; I’ve nothing more to say of her.” Except he had to go on speaking of her. “I meant to tell you: I am married.”

  “I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong. What did you say?”

  “Mrs. Easterbrook became my wife this morning.”

  She stared at him, her incredulity giving way to shock as she realized he had not spoken in jest. “Why was I not told? Why was I not there?”

  “We chose to elope.”

  “I don’t understand the haste—or the secrecy. In the time it took to obtain a special license you could have very well informed me of your plans.”

  She was the closest thing he had to a mother. He had worried her and now he’d hurt her, all because he’d been too stupid to know he’d been had. “I do apologize. I hope you will forgive me.”

  She shook her head. “You have not offended me, my dear—I am thunderstruck. Why this cloak-and-dagger elopement? And why Mrs. Easterbrook? I was not under the impression that you were particularly fond of her.”

  “I am not.” At least that was the truth.

  “Then why marry her? You have made your choice as if wives were items on a menu, taking the fish when there is no more steak left. I’m—you have baffled me completely, Christian.”

  And disappointed her. She did not need to say those words, he knew. For him to exclude her from one of the most significant events of his life, and to have entered into marriage so cavalierly—or at least give the impression of having done so—he must come off as someone she scarcely knew.

  He hardened his tone. “I’ve done my duty, Stepmama. I’ve married. Let us not inquire too deeply into the reasons.”

  She gave him a saddened but no less astute look. “Are you all right, Christian?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. Then, correcting himself, “I am fine.”

  “And your wife? Does she know about your lady from the Rhodesia?”

  He could not quite disguise his bitterness. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Does she mind?”

  “I do not believe she cares at all.”

  “Christian—”

  “I hate to be so rude, Stepmama. But my duchess”—saying the word felt like swallowing sand—“and I are departing for our honeymoon posthaste. I cannot linger.”

  “Christian—”

  He closed his hand over hers. “I am now the most envied man in all of England. Be happy for me, Stepmama.”

  Christian had no sooner seen off his stepmother than his butler inquired, “Earl Fitzhugh is here, Your Grace. Are you at home to him?”

  Of course, his new bride’s brother, here to make noises of displeasure at how unceremoniously he’d carried off the beautiful Mrs. Easterbrook. The former Mrs. Easterbrook. “I’m at home.”

  As Fitzhugh was shown in, he was struck by the family resemblance. What had she said? A brother and a sister—twins—both two years younger than I am. He should have suspected then and there—he knew very well the composition of her family. But the former Mrs. Easterbrook had been the furthest thing from his mind when she’d been lying directly beneath, beside, or on top of him.

  “Will you take some cognac to toast my wedding?” he asked as he shook Fitzhugh’s hand. He had no cause to be uncivil to this new brother-in-law.

  “Spirits interfere with my digestion, alas. But I’ll take a cup of coffee.”

  Christian rang for the beverage to be brought in.

  “We were all taken aback,” said Fitzhugh, making himself comfortable in a high-back chair. “Had no idea you’d been wooing my sister.”

  Neither did I, as a matter of fact. “We kept it quiet.”

  “I find it interesting that you said a great deal that was less than complimentary about her. Yet of the two of you, she is not the one who is angry; you are.”

  He didn’t have the luxury of a near-perfect vengeance. “You will forgive me for not discussing personal sentiments with a virtual stranger.”

  “Of course I did not expect you to confide in me, sir.”

  The earl’s eminently reasonable manner was beginning to surprise Christian.

  “My sister, too, prefers to keep personal sentiments personal. But sometimes a brother sees things and draws his own conclusions. Of course, without her express permission, I am not at liberty to discuss private particulars of her life, but I will step on no one’s toes in saying a few things about Mr. Easterbrook’s passing.”

&n
bsp; Mr. Easterbrook, her wealthy second husband who had died alone. “What of it?”

  “According to what Lady Fitzhugh has related to me, you seem to be under the misapprehension that my sister abandoned her husband on his deathbed. I was there that day. I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.”

  “You will have me believe she was at his bedside, holding his hand as he drew his last breath?”

  “Nothing of the sort. She was downstairs, along with my wife, holding his family at bay, denying them permission, as the lady of the house, to move a single step beyond the drawing room.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Because by his bedside, holding his hand, was someone Mr. Easterbrook desperately wanted to be present as he drew his last breath. His family would have removed said person and denied him his dying wish. Venetia was very loyal to Mr. Easterbrook. We all were. Lord Hastings and my younger sister were stationed on the staircase and I myself directly before the door of Mr. Easterbrook’s bedchamber, in case anyone got past Venetia.

  “Mr. Easterbrook’s family was not pleased. Afterward, they made a concerted effort to smear my sister’s good name. To protect Mr. Easterbrook even in death, she allowed it.”

  Christian set one finger at the midpoint of a fountain pen lying on his desk. “Mr. Townsend—are you not going to say something about him?”

  “He falls under those private particulars that she will not wish me to discuss.”

  “Did he kill himself?”

  “As I said, it is not my place.”

  The coffee tray arrived, but Earl Fitzhugh had already risen from his seat. “I should not take up any more of a man’s time on his wedding day.”

  They were all so young in the photograph—except the dinosaur skeleton, which was terribly old. Helena, at fourteen, had been the tallest of them all—this was before her twin had shot up and overtaken her in height. Fitz looked as if he was trying hard not to laugh—his pictures from those years were all full of the suppressed mirth of a boy who enjoyed everything about life. Then there was Venetia, as proud as a general who had won a decisive battle, her bare hand braced—perhaps somewhat indecorously—upon the remains of the Cetiosaurus’s rump.

  Had she been headed anywhere else, she would not have hesitated to take the photograph—she’d have packed it before anything else. But she was not sure whether she wanted it in Christian’s house. He would not appreciate the reminder that he’d so enthusiastically encouraged her—the baroness—in her pursuit, or that he’d offered her a place on his next expedition.

  She set the photograph facedown and turned around. Cobble, Fitz’s butler, stood in the open doorway of her bedroom, waiting to speak to her.

  “Yes, Cobble?”

  “The Dowager Duchess of Lexington to see you, ma’am.”

  So the duke had informed his stepmother. One could only wonder at her reaction.

  “I’ll be down in the green parlor presently.”

  Time to play the Great Beauty again.

  Sweeping into the green parlor, she smiled. “Your Grace, what a pleasure.”

  The Great Beauty had her desired effect. The dowager duchess hesitated—and squinted, as if too bright a light had been thrust into her face.

  Venetia took her seat with a flourish of skirts gracefully flounced aside. “Have you come to congratulate me, ma’am? I am beyond thrilled to be married to Lexington.”

  This, however, had a sobering effect on the older woman. “Are you, duchess?”

  Duchess. Venetia was now the Duchess of Lexington.

  “I enjoy fossils, especially those from the Cretaceous Age. The duke has quite a collection of them. I am excited to visit his private museum—and to perhaps someday curate it.”

  This was not an answer the dowager duchess had expected. “You married him for his fossils?”

  “Have you seen my dinosaur at the British Museum of Natural History, ma’am? A magnificent specimen. I’ve waited more than a decade for the chance to discover another one. By becoming Lexington’s wife I will be able to go on expeditions with him, something I’ve wanted to do my entire adult life.”

  The dowager duchess’s fingers dug into her skirts. “What of your bridegroom? Do you also care for him?”

  Venetia was at her most charmingly flippant. “How can I not love a man who will take me fossil-hunting?”

  The dowager duchess rose and walked to the Japanese screen at a corner of the parlor. A lady in a flowing kimono sat beneath a cherry tree in full bloom, her face in her hand, her melancholy as heavy as the flower-laden boughs that drooped almost to the bare ground.

  Tea was brought in. Venetia poured. “Africa, I do believe, shall be our next destination. The Karoo beds are a treasure trove for reptilian remains, from what I hear. Sugar and milk, ma’am?”

  The dowager duchess turned around. “Does it not matter to you that he has recently expressed some terribly unfavorable opinions of you?”

  “It was certainly heartening that he came to see the light so quickly.”

  “Even though he is in love with someone else?”

  Venetia set down the teapot and extended her hand toward the creamer. All the years of not digging for fossils had left her fingers slender and lovely. She made sure she showed them to their best advantage. “If you speak of the lady on the Rhodesia, I believe she has disappointed him terribly.”

  “And you are content to be his consolation prize?”

  If only she were any kind of prize to him. “That is for me to decide, ma’am, and I’ve already decided.”

  The dowager duchess at last took her seat again. The bewildered kinswoman, however, had disappeared. The woman who faced Venetia was a lioness. “He is much more than a mere collector of fossils, duchess. He is one of the best men I’ve ever met, and his happiness matters intensely to me. If you want him only for his ability to take you to the Karoo beds, well, most of the year he will not be anywhere exotic or exciting. Like any other good squire, he will be looking after his land and its people. And that is what he will require of you. Are you prepared to be a good wife to him?”

  Venetia felt a great tension in her draining away. Here was someone who loved him as fiercely as she did. Someone for whom she need not play the Great Beauty.

  “I’m sorry I have been so terribly flippant,” she said quietly. “In truth I am heartsick.”

  She could see her reflection in the large mirror above the mantel. She looked very much like the kimonoed lady on the Japanese screen, burdened and forlorn.

  The dowager duchess’s hands locked in her lap. “Are you?”

  “He hasn’t changed his mind about me at all—but I’ve fallen in love with him.”

  “I see,” said the dowager duchess, her tone politely incredulous.

  “Yes, it’s quite awful. Not to mention that he’d have preferred the lady from the ocean liner.” Venetia looked the dowager duchess in the eye. “I cannot promise to make him happy. But I can promise you, unconditionally, that his well-being will always be foremost on my mind.”

  The dowager duchess’s gaze turned thoughtful. “Those opinions he’d expressed at Harvard …”

  “About my late husbands? He is misinformed. But I’m afraid his mind is set.”

  The older woman made no response. They drank their tea in silence. Elsewhere in the house Venetia’s trunks were being lugged down the stairs. The brougham had already pulled up by the curb. Through the open window came her maid’s voice, cautioning the menservants to have a care with her mistress’s things.

  “I must not impose on you any longer,” said the dowager duchess, setting down her teacup.

  “Would you like me to give him your regards when I see him or would you prefer that I keep the meeting between ourselves?”

  “You may give my regards to him—he must know that I would not have sat on my hands after he gave me such news.”

  “Of course. It’s what we do for those we love.”

  They rose and shook h
ands.

  “If I may give you one piece of advice,” said the dowager duchess. “If you believe the duke is wrong about you, you must let him know. He can be quite formidable, but he is never closed-minded and never resentful at being corrected.”

  The baroness would not have hesitated; Venetia was not sure she had that sort of courage. But she nodded. “I will remember that, Your Grace.”

  There was a reason adolescent dreams usually remained in adolescence: They were extravagant and frankly dangerous at times.

  She—or rather, the possession of her—had been his adolescent dream. What did it matter that she was already married? In fantasies a husband was no barrier at all. He began to abandon the dream only after his fateful exchange with Anthony Townsend. And even then, not entirely, and not instantly.

  The events he’d narrated that day at Harvard University were the stages of his own disenchantment. The incredulity of listening to Townsend, the anger brought about by his untimely death, the disillusionment at her very advantageous second marriage.

  But it was not good enough for her that one man out of ten thousand dared to criticize her. No, for his transgression he had to pay with his heart.

  And now at this late date she had become his, by law and by God.

  His most costly possession sat opposite him in his private rail coach, immensely and imperturbably lovely. He could not imagine that he had held her, touched her, and joined his body to hers. Her beauty was staggering, excessive, as if she were not quite flesh and blood, but an artist’s conjuration, born of a bout of fevered ecstasy.

  A beauty with a gravity of its own that bent light. Sunlight slanted in from only one side of the coach, yet she was most assuredly lit from all sides, an even, soft illumination such as a painter might arrange in his studio when he wished to depict an angel—or a saint who came with her own personal nimbus.

  For some time she had been as still as an anatomy model; not a ruffle moved on her striped white and gold dress. But now she laid her hands upon the table that separated them and undid the first button on her glove. A blatantly immodest gesture. Or was it? They were not in public, and he, the only other person in the private coach, was her husband.