A Wedding by Dawn

by Alison Delaine

  She could perch on the bed and see if he reacted. But what if he joined her?

  She walked closer to the desk. “What are you working on?”

  His fingers tightened around the edge of the book. “The same thing I’ve been working on during this entire journey.”

  “I so admire your determination. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that once you have an idea of something, you don’t let it go.”

  He shut the book and stood up suddenly. “It’s been a pleasure, Lady India, but I need to go to sleep. We leave early in the morning.”

  He was close enough that she could reach out and touch him if she wanted to. “It isn’t dark yet.”

  “So it isn’t.”

  His green eyes regarded her evenly. His lips were at ease—not thinned, not pursed. No muscle worked in his jaw, and his arms hung at his sides, hands open.

  There was nothing—not one single thing—to betray even the slightest hint of desire.

  Would that change if she touched him? Or if he really had stopped desiring her, and she touched him, might he want her again?

  “Sleep well, Mr. Warre. I think I shall go ask the innkeeper about the stage to Marseille.”

  He walked past her, opened the door and held it for her. “Enjoy your evening, Lady India.”

  She went into the small corridor, and he shut the door behind her, and she squashed a mighty urge to give it a good kick. Enjoy her evening? That was all he had to say?

  She inhaled. Exhaled. Reminded herself that the point was not whether he desired her. It was whether he still intended to marry her. Which he did. And once they reached Paris, once she had Auntie Phil on her side, he would be forced admit it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “INDIA! DEAREST!” AUNTIE Phil’s voice rang out as she swept through the entry in a cloud of light perfume, while a pair of footmen carried India’s and Millie’s trunks inside. “You wicked, wicked girl,” she said, kissing India’s cheeks. “And Millicent—I hardly know what to say. What the two of you did is too despicable for words.”

  India felt Nicholas Warre’s eyes on her. Any moment, he would announce that he was actually taking her with him to the nearest church, where they would be married immediately. And then Auntie Phil would inform him that she would not stand for India to be forced into marriage.

  This was perfect. Who was the fool now?

  “And Lord Taggart.” Auntie Phil turned her attention to him now. “What a fascinating surprise this is.” She held out her hand.

  “Lady Pennington.” He bowed and raised it to his lips. “No doubt you are aware of my understanding with your brother.”

  “Lord Taggart, I cannot think of a soul who is not aware.” She looked back and forth between him and India. “Are congratulations in order?”

  “I’m afraid there’s been a change of plans,” Nicholas said.

  “Has there?” Auntie Phil’s slender brows rose, and she looked at India.

  “Mr. Warre has come to his senses,” she said breezily. Indifference? Even now? For shame, Mr. Warre, she silently scolded. “He has decided not to commit a grave moral wrong. But he has been kind enough to convey us here, for which I am very grateful.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure now you will be able to continue your journey to London with a good deal more haste and comfort. You are continuing to London, are you not?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Today?”

  “No.” His lips curved the tiniest bit. “Not today.”

  “Why ever not?” She cocked her head with false innocence. “Does Paris hold some interest for you, Mr. Warre?” Oh, yes, Paris held some interest for him. Only let him confess it now, here, with Auntie Phil to crush all his plans to dust.

  She thought she saw a tiny flicker of something in his eyes, and triumph leaped in her blood. The man had abducted her. Undone all of her and Millie’s efforts. He’d ruined her life.

  And now he wanted to toy with her by pretending he didn’t need her anymore.

  But before she could press the point, Auntie Phil tucked her hand into India’s arm. “I daresay respite from these horrid French roads holds some interest for him. Am I correct, Lord Taggart? But of course I am. Do not let us keep you from taking your ease.”

  He inclined his head. “Thank you, madam.”

  “In case we don’t see you again...you have my eternal gratitude for conveying my niece safely to me. You have only to let me know what I may do for you while you are in Paris.”

  * * *

  TAKING REFUGE WITH Auntie Phil should have brought relief, but it didn’t, because somewhere out there Lord Indifferent was not leaving Paris immediately, and it wasn’t because he needed a respite from the carriage.

  “I don’t know whether to turn you over my knee or embrace you for dear life,” Auntie Phil declared a few hours later after all had been told—well, most, anyhow. She sat in front of her dressing table in a froth of silk, ribbons and lace, while India perched by the window in a spear of sunlight.

  “So you see how it wasn’t all Millie’s fault,” India said.

  “Of course it wasn’t all Millicent’s fault. You are equally complicit in the entire affair. Reckless is what you are. And lucky to be alive.”

  India’s chin jerked up a notch. “We had no trouble sailing that ship.”

  “Of course you didn’t. But you are not Katherine, and I suspect you had more than a little trouble commanding a crew.”

  “Well I won’t be commanding a crew now, will I?” She exhaled sharply. Besides, Auntie Phil knew a great deal about many things—especially men. “Why did you tell Nicholas Warre to call on us? He lied when he told you he’s changed his plans. He’s been pretending indifference toward me practically since Marseille, but he hasn’t changed his mind.”

  Auntie Phil cocked her head and regarded India in the looking glass. “How do you know he’s been pretending?”

  “I know because I can see it in his eyes.”

  “Can you? How interesting. I confess I must have been too distracted by his physique. You must admit he is a very fine figure of a man.”

  “He is a man who is trying to force me into marriage. Surely you don’t approve of that. I find it makes him quite ugly.” On the inside, anyhow.

  “I never approve of a forced marriage, and I told my brother as much, but as usual he wouldn’t listen.” Auntie Phil leaned closer to the glass and touched a beauty mark by her lip. “Are you saying you don’t find Lord Taggart handsome?”

  “Handsome is as handsome does, Auntie Phil,” India said righteously, and was immediately confronted by the memory of Nicholas hovering over her in the hayloft with his hand between her— “But now that I’m here with you, I needn’t think about him anymore at all. I needn’t ever think about any man if I don’t want to.”

  Auntie Phil smiled. “Surely you don’t imagine you can simply never marry, dearest. Of course you will have to marry someone. The trick will be to find a man your father will approve of and that you will be satisfied with.”

  India stood up, alarmed. “Please tell me you’re joking. Nobody could possibly fit that description—” she would not think of Nicholas “—and there’s the matter of my freedom—”

  “Dearest, often freedom comes after the wedding. But there’s no need to worry—we are together in Paris again, and there is great fun to be had.” She pushed at one side of her sable-colored coiffure and smiled reassuringly in the glass. “Now. I want to hear everything about your relationship with Lord Taggart. If he is as determined as you say, how is it possible that he has managed to convey you this far and you are as yet unmarried? Has he never touched you? Not once in all these weeks?”

  “Of course he’s touched me. I practically forced him to touch me—” and she’d suffered endlessly since, wanting him to touch her again “—but only as part of my strategy, mind you, and I feel certain it would have worked had I been allowed to follow it through.” Almost certain.

  “Your strat
egy? How intriguing. What was it?”

  “Seduction.” She tried to make it sound offhand but failed miserably. “To distract him so that Millie and I might make our escape somewhere along the road to Paris.”

  Auntie Phil looked at her in the glass. “Ingenious.”

  “You’re laughing!”

  “Good heavens, no... But how can it be possible you weren’t allowed to follow through with a seduction, of all things?”

  India told her about the first inn where they stayed, and how Nicholas excused himself to go downstairs and make arrangements with the innkeeper.

  “Mmm,” Auntie Phil said. “Perhaps he had a crisis of conscience at the thought of consummating the marriage before the ceremony.”

  “Nicholas Warre? A crisis of conscience? Auntie Phil, if you had been there—” No. “What I mean is, he was definitely not having a crisis of conscience. He had me tied up, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Tied up!” Auntie Phil turned abruptly from the glass.

  Finally—progress. “Do you see?” India stood up. “He was so prepared to force me into wedlock that he tied my hands and feet.” She crossed her wrists in front of her for emphasis. “And now he acts as if marriage is the furthest thing from his mind?”

  “So I am to understand that you attempted to seduce Lord Taggart even though your hands and feet were bound?”

  “Because they were bound,” India corrected. “He would have had to untie me.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You don’t think it would have worked?”

  “Oh, certainly. Certainly.” Auntie Phil went to her monstrous jewelry box and opened the lid. “But since he left the room, I presume you eventually came untied some other way?”

  India told her about the maid, the firewood and the unexpected escape.

  “Gracious!” Her aunt paused with a sparkling emerald bracelet dangling from her fingers. “But clearly he found you.”

  “He was nothing if not motivated.”

  “Ah, yes. The money.” She clasped the bracelet around her wrist. “Let me guess. The second attempt at seduction occurred upon his finding you. And, as you’ve already indicated, he walked away again. My dear, there are only two reasons I can think of why a man in his prime would walk away from a woman in the middle of amorous pursuits. Either he knows he is doing the wrong thing and is making a desperate attempt to control himself, or...” She held out her hand and examined the bracelet. “Hmm.”

  “Or what?”

  Whatever she’d been thinking, Auntie Phil waved it away. “Nothing that could possibly have been the case, dearest. He must have been trying to control himself.”

  “What could not possibly have been the case?”

  Auntie Phil unclasped the emeralds, returned them to the box and selected a ruby cuff. “Only that he could have been trying to turn the tables on you. But if you say he’s actually changed his mind...”

  Turn the tables on her? “I don’t understand.”

  Auntie Phil slipped the cuff around her wrist. “No, of course you wouldn’t, which is why it would work so beautifully if that were what he had in mind, but it would take a man of great calculation and self-control to introduce a young woman to, shall we say, passionate embraces and then walk away, leaving her helplessly yearning for more.”

  Nicholas Warre was nothing if not a man of great calculation and self-control. And when he had left that hayloft, he had definitely left her...yearning. For more.

  “But of course,” Auntie Phil went on lightly, “it would only work on a young woman who found the man attractive, which you have already said you do not, thus leaving us with the conclusion that he must be a man of deep moral fortitude.”

  “Indeed,” India said tightly. “Unfathomable morals.”

  I want to taste you, he’d said. I want to lay you back and— He had been trying to seduce her—all the while letting her believe she was seducing him. “So everything he said was a lie?”

  Auntie Phil raised a brow. “I don’t know. What did he say?”

  “Nothing.” India’s cheeks felt on fire.

  “Men say all sorts of things in the heat of passion, dearest. Some true, some not, but all—and I do mean all—testifying to the simple truth that a man is incapable of touching a woman without falling prey to ravenous desire.” Auntie Phil came forward and squeezed India’s hands, while her blue eyes sparkled with wickedly amusing thoughts. “How scintillating to imagine that if he were trying to work a seduction against you, he would almost certainly have fallen into his own trap.”

  “He would?”

  “Of course!” She tipped her head back, laughing. “Regardless of his motives, there’s little doubt he lies awake at night positively burning for you, dearest. Isn’t that an amusing thought?”

  * * *

  NICK STOOD IN his friend Charles Vernier’s library, gripping a glass of cognac and forcing himself not to pace. He couldn’t quite bring himself to sit—too on edge for that—but there was no need to give his unhappy state entirely away, especially not with the Duke of Winston’s near-black eyes watching him lazily from an armchair.

  He would have preferred to speak with Vernier alone, but so be it.

  “I need a favor,” he told Vernier.

  “You have only to name it, mon ami.”

  “I need the name of a priest who would be willing to perform a marriage ceremony, under...less than usual circumstances.”

  Vernier raised a blond brow. “Intéressant.”

  “That would suggest Lady India is in Paris,” Winston spoke up.

  “Yes. At Lady Pennington’s.” Which was saving him the cost of room and board while he worked out the logistics of their wedding, and which—hopefully—would not turn out to be a serious miscalculation.

  Winston leaned his head back and laughed. “And so it comes full circle! The bewitching Lady Pennington and the fair Lady India, together in Paris again. Last time they were here, they set off for Italy and ended up on a boat to Egypt and from there wound up playing pirates on the high seas.”

  “Lady India’s days of playing pirate are over, I assure you.” And it was past time for her days as Lady Taggart to begin.

  “So you wish to...ensure that this marriage takes place,” Vernier said. “Regardless of her desires.”

  Lady India’s desires... Good God. He’d been seeing them in her virginal blue eyes ever since that disastrous night in the hayloft. His feigned indifference had worked beautifully, but his strategy also had unintended consequences, as illustrated two nights ago when she’d come to his room with that pitiful excuse of a question and spent the entire time watching him with innocent lust pinkening her cheeks.

  Nick cleared his throat. “Understand, the girl is mutinous even at her very best. She is naive. Headstrong. A danger to herself.”

  Vernier nodded thoughtfully.

  “When I found her, she was in a Maltese tavern preparing to bestow her virtue on a sailor.”

  One of Vernier’s brows shot up. “Dieu.”

  Winston laughed and sipped his drink. “A danger indeed. I would have happily obliged her myself without the need for half so much travel.”

  A sharp response leaped to Nick’s tongue on a hot lick of annoyance, but he bit it back.

  “No need to look at me like that,” Winston said, nonplussed. “I prefer my women to have a certain level of expertise.”

  Nick drained his glass and faced what he hadn’t wanted to admit: somewhere on that endless road from Marseille, he’d begun to think of Lady India as his. Had begun to want her, and not because of any damned money.

  He told himself it was the irresistible lure of her own obvious yearning. And he wondered, now, at what point her desire would intensify such that he would not be taking advantage of her if he actually seduced her. If he could pretend indifference a little longer, long enough to see where her own desires would take her...

  Perhaps a forced marriage would be unnecessary, and he could manage with a merely arrang
ed one. Besides which, it would be harder for her to object at the altar if he’d already claimed her virtue.

  The sooner she’s taken into hand, the better,” he said. “I want this business finished.”

  Vernier nodded. “Bien sûr, I am beginning to understand why.”

  “I will need a priest who will be deaf to her protests.”

  Vernier laughed. “And attentive to your money.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You have come to the right city, my friend. I can think of several possibilities. There is Père Bouchard, who shows up at Madame Gravelle’s more nights than not—” he ticked off one finger as if running through an easy list “—Père Valentine, who keeps a mistress in a small town house near the Pont-au-Change, and mon Dieu, Père Dechelle—”

  Père Dechelle.

  “—who has a daughter working in the laundry boats on the Seine. No, you will have no trouble finding one who will do as you ask. For the right price, bien sûr.”

  Père Dechelle. Yves Dechelle. The name had his pulse thundering in his ears.

  “Bien sûr,” Nick echoed.

  So the man not only lived, he ranked among Paris’s most corrupt men of the cloth. It should not have been a surprise.

  Vernier frowned. “Is something wrong? You look pale. Please, sit—”

  “No. Non. Merci.”

  A daughter working on the laundry boats. That meant...

  A sister. Nick had another sister.

  “You went pale as a ghost just now, as well you should,” Winston said. “Virgin or no, Lady India’s ruined herself beyond all recognition. Nobody would blame you for turning your back on your arrangement with Cantwell.”

  A bark of insane laughter pushed into Nick’s throat and sat there. He raised his glass to his lips, but it was empty. Winston thought Nick was second-guessing his decision to marry India? What would he think if he knew the truth?

  What would India think?

  Somewhere outside the walls of Vernier’s house, Dechelle’s existence taunted him with exactly what kind of man Nick was. His elder brother James thought Nick an obstinate fool for not repaying Holliswell out of the Croston estate. But Nick had no more right to the family money than a street urchin. Whatever kind of man he was, he was not the kind to take what didn’t belong to him.