Which may have been a mistake, because now he wasn’t pacing. He wasn’t ripping yet another lovely green leaf to shreds between his fingers. No, now he was standing quite still, his arms at his side. Glaring at her.
“It is my fault. Entirely my fault,” she said, advancing toward him cautiously. “I’d like to think it’s Francesca’s fault—most everything is—or that it’s your fault, which it most definitely isn’t. It’s my fault. And I cannot begin to tell you how very sorry I am.”
“And I cannot begin to tell you how very much I really don’t want to hear it.”
She stepped back, as if he’d slapped her. “Yes, certainly. You hate me, my lord. You have every right.”
“How wonderful, the chit agrees with me. Now there is a grand basis for a marriage. Yes, Miss Oglesby, I have every right to hate you. I’ve been stamping about out here for the last hour, adding up the reasons why I should hate you. I’ve come up with several. Would you care to hear them?”
Eleanor felt like melting into the ground. “I don’t know if they’ll hold a candle to the several dozen ways I have destroyed Francesca’s reputation, made it impossible for her to look her own husband in the face, and how I’m undoubtedly to be responsible if the Fiske heir is born with the mark of Cain on its forehead—whatever that’s supposed to mean. I doubt Francesca knows, either, but she repeated it, twice. Reverend Thorton is with her now, trying to console her. That should give me a few undisturbed hours, at least.”
“Rather volatile, your sister,” Nicholas said, walking over to a downed tree trunk and motioning for her to approach and sit down. “Do you often have the urge to choke her?”
Eleanor bit back a smile as she sat down, and he joined her on the log. “Quite often, yes. I do apologize for her, my lord. She had no right to call you a vile libertine, or a hardened seducer, a debaucher of virgins. I didn’t even know she was familiar with the terms.”
“And you are?”
“I read novels, my lord,” Eleanor said, feeling her cheeks growing hot, for she most definitely did read. And dream. But he wasn’t to know that. “But, all that put by the side for the moment—how are we going to uncoil this mess?”
“Reverend Thorton believes the solution to be a secret marriage this evening, with the bans then announced in London, and a second ceremony.”
“Yes, I know. That seems excessive.”
“Two ceremonies?”
Her head shot up. “No. I mean a marriage at all. After all, we didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t we? Oh, splendid. I’ll just toddle back to the common room and stand on a table, make a general announcement. I, Lord Buckland, being of unsound mind and even more feeble body, had a virgin in my bed last night, and she woke a virgin in the morning. That should do my reputation a whacking great lot of good.”
Eleanor hopped to her feet. “No, no, no. We can’t say I was ever in your bed. Think, man. We’re the only ones who know that. We have to say I got lost in the dark or something, hit my head, fell unconscious, and only woke up and came back to the inn moments before the reverend saw us together. My own door was locked, and so I knocked on yours, asking for your help.”
Nicholas shook his head. “Thought of and discarded.”
“Why?” Eleanor asked, hands on hips, for she had thought it a splendid idea.
“Because I wouldn’t believe it, that’s why. Besides, the good reverend saw you enter the inn last night, shortly after one in the morning. Remember?”
“I could have gone out again?”
“Or you could have been lured into my den of debauchery and been well and truly ravished, which is much jucier a story, and one that will be all too readily believed in Mayfair.”
“Everyone will believe that, anyway, even if we marry,” she pointed out, sitting down once more.
“Yes, I know, which is why you and I, Miss Oglesby, are going to crawl on our knees to your sister and confess that, shame on us, oh, shame, shame, shame, we have been meeting secretly this past month. I was to attend the mill, with friends, then follow behind you to Fiske Hall, where I would ask for your hand in marriage from my good friend and your brother-in-law—Walter, is it?—in the absence of your father. Imagine our surprise and delight when we found ourselves putting up at the very same inn. Giving in to our passions, and proximity, we wrongly anticipated our vows, but are now more than overjoyed at the prospect of an immediate nuptials.”
“That’s truly nauseating. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I’ll probably never be able to have food pass my lips again, yes,” Nicholas said. “Look, Miss Oglesby—Eleanor. We have to make the best of a bad business. Compromise is shabby, injurious to both our reputations. An anticipation of nuptials is to be winked at, and quickly forgotten. By some,” he ended, looking up into the branches above them.
“By some? Who won’t wink?”
“Miss Susan Halstead, I’d imagine. Everyone, including myself, has been assuming that I’d be asking for her hand before the end of the Season. I’ve all but told her brother of my intentions.”
“Oh,” Eleanor said, looking down at her toes. She knew of Susan Halstead. Tall. Blond. Blue-eyed. “Do you love her?”
He picked up a two-foot-long twig and began tracing a design in the dirt. “Miss Halstead is well-born, well-respected, very agreeable.”
“Tall, blond, blue-eyed,” Eleanor snapped, then turned away when he raised his head to glare at her.
“You believe me to be that shallow?”
Eleanor shrugged, still avoiding his gaze.
“You do,” he said, getting to his feet. “What else do you believe?”
“I believe you’d very much like it if I were to suddenly choke to death on a fish bone and solve all your problems, but if I don’t, you’ll actually marry me, just to save your reputation.”
“My reputation? Have you considered your reputation?”
Now Eleanor stood up. “I’m short, dark-haired and totally out of fashion. I’ve been in London for two months, my lord, and you never noticed me, but that’s all right, because nobody else has, either. You men are all too busy making cakes of yourselves by chasing every blonde in Mayfair, as if picking a wife by the color of her hair makes the least bit of sense.”
“Not just blond. A marriagable woman would also need good, sound teeth. For the sake of the children, you understand.” She heard a trace of humor in his voice, which just made her more angry.
“What an entirely stupid way to choose a wife. And the pity of it is, that’s just what happens. However, to get back to our problem. You shouldn’t have to worry about me. Being found in your bed chamber can only help my reputation. I’d rather be a fallen woman than an old maid tending cats or, worse, stuck at Fiske Hall with Francesca and a half dozen sniveling, sniffling brats.”
She glared up at him, as he glared down at her, and then he laughed.
“God, you’re an idiot,” he said, then turned on his heels and left her where she stood.
Which is where she should have stayed, if she had an ounce of self-preservation in her body. Instead, she ran after him, grabbed his arm.
“I am not an idiot. I just don’t want to marry you. Is that so difficult to believe?”
“Not if I imagine you feel as happy about our imminent nuptials as I am, no. Look,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her back to the fallen log, waiting until they’d both sat down once more. “You made a mistake, granted an innocent mistake, but even innocent mistakes have very real consequences. I, being a gentleman, have to do my best to rectify your mistake, and I would prefer to do that without facing your brother-in-law or father in the field and honorably holding my pistol at my side while one of them puts a ball through my heart.”
She opened her mouth to say he was being ridiculous again. But he wasn’t. She read novels. This sort of thing happened in them all the time. At last, after railing at her fate, shouting and denying and ignoring her fears, Eleanor gave in, gave up, and began t
o cry. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, handing over his handkerchief so that she could wipe her eyes. “Just think, Eleanor. You will be the Countess Buckland. Why, you will set the fashion now. Think of all the short, dark-eyed, dark-haired misses who will be forever grateful to you.”
Eleanor sniffed a small laugh, then looked up at him. “You can be nice, sometimes.”
“Shh, don’t let anyone overhear you. I wouldn’t want that bruited about, you know.”
“And you really don’t love Miss Halstead?”
He didn’t even hesitate, and she was being particularly on the lookout for any hesitation. “No, I don’t love Miss Halstead.”
Then, just as she was about to relax a little, he added, “You will find, Eleanor, that I don’t love much of anything at all.”
“JAMIE,” Nicholas said, waving his friend into the private dining room where he’d been sitting for over an hour, attempting to keep his mind mercifully blank. “Have you been assigned to make sure I don’t break out that window over there and scurry off to freedom?”
“Hardly, Nick,” Jamie said, pulling out a chair and settling his slightly pudgy frame into it. “I’m here to find out what really happened. I’m with you almost constantly, you know, so I haven’t swallowed this business the reverend is singing out, that you and Miss Oglesby have been in love all Season.”
“But you’ll swear to that lie on your life, won’t you, friend?”
“I already have, at least a dozen times. This small village is jammed full of London peers, all men, and if you think women have the corner on gossip you’ve never heard a bunch of gentlemen nattering on worse than an old biddy’s sewing circle.”
“How are Eleanor and I faring?”
“Eleanor? That would be Miss Oglesby? About half and half, I’d say. Half swallowing the hum, the other half certain you seduced the poor thing. You notice how men never blame the chit, leaving that to women, who will do everything but draw blood with their whispers about Miss Oglesby.”
“They would destroy Miss Oglesby, yes,” Nicholas pointed out, “but not my countess. They wouldn’t dare, for their husbands won’t allow it.”
“Not wanting to get on your bad side, yes,” Jamie agreed, nodding his head. “I see you’ve got it all figured out. But what about Miss Halstead? Her brother won’t be best pleased to hear the news, especially as he’s been quite heavily punting on tick these past two months, telling his creditors he is soon to be related to the great, and endlessly wealthy, Earl of Buckland. I checked and, thank God, Gregory isn’t here for the mill. But he’ll be calling on you the moment you get back to the city. Or are you going to hide out at one of your estates until the gossip dies down? That might be best.”
“And be thought a coward? I think not. No, best to head straight back to London and put a brave face on the thing. Delaying the inevitable will only have the gossips stirring the pot twice. I’ve already told Eleanor as much, although I’m not quite sure she was listening. She is attempting to be brave, but I’ve seen a few small cracks around the edges of that bravery.”
“You’re thinking about Miss Oglesby now, rather than yourself, because you don’t care a whit what anyone thinks of you, no matter what you might say about being thought a coward. How very like you, friend, although just the thought would amaze most anyone who thinks they know you,” Jamie said, nodding once more. “What is she like?”
Nicholas thought for a moment. “Cheeky brat,” he said, then smiled. “She has nearly stumbled, just once, since the start of this, but as I’ve already said, for the most part she’s quite the trooper. And not the least bit afraid of me.”
“Which would make her either very silly and unaware, or highly intelligent and insightful. Tell me, which would it be, Nick?”
“Actually, Jamie, I think she’s all of that and perhaps more. Certainly she has spirit. She’ll make a presentable countess and a fine mother, I believe, and as that’s all a man can reasonably hope for in a wife, perhaps this won’t be the disaster it started out to be this morning. It isn’t as if my heart would be involved, no matter who I marry.”
“True, Nick. First you’d have to have a heart.”
CHAPTER THREE
“I KNOW. I’ll tell Walter that the earl took one look at you and was instantly smitten. He paced the floor all the night long, then knocked on our door early this morning, while I was still asleep, and proposed to you, insisted on an immediate ceremony. He’s just mad with love for you.”
“Francesca, will you stop?”
“No, no, you’re right. That won’t work. Better to hold fast to the fib the earl is telling. You two met in London and have been mad with love for each other ever since, and then the two of you were naughty last night and anticipated your vows. Oh, Lord, how do I tell Walter that? I’d be too embarrassed.”
“Francesca, you’re married to the man. You’ve obviously been bedded by him, as you’re carrying his child. And you can’t tell him the earl and I have been lovers?”
“Then you have been lovers! Oh, I knew it, I knew it, I just knew it!” Francesca wrapped her arms protectively about her belly. “A shameless wanton! And to think I’ve asked you to stand as godmother to my poor, innocent baby.”
Eleanor finished brushing her hair and put down the brush, which was safer than holding it as she approached her sister, who was all dressed for the wedding, except for her shoes, which she swore wouldn’t go on her swollen feet.
“Francesca, think what you like. Let Walter think what he likes. It has been a long day, one way or another, and I really don’t care what anyone thinks. Now, open your eyes. How do I look? I know it isn’t my best gown, considering that all of those are in the portmanteau at the bottom of the coach boot, but it is white, and I was hoping to look…virginal.”
Francesca’s eyes popped open. “Virginal? Isn’t it a bit late to lock the barn door, Elly, now that the horse is so well and truly out? That’s what Papa is going to say, you know.” She sighed theatrically. “Among other things.”
“Thank you, dear sister. I knew I could rely on you to help me through these next hours, be my staunch advocate, my sympathetic and supportive prop in my time of need. And, goodness, how wise of you. Thinking about Papa’s reaction was just what I needed to calm my worries.”
Eleanor turned back to the dresser, picked up a length of white satin ribbon and slid it through her hair at the nape. But her fingers shook and she couldn’t manage the bow. “Oh, drat!”
“Here, let me help you,” Francesca said, tying the bow for her. Then she gave her sister’s shoulder a small hug. “I am happy for you, you know, even as I wish the circumstances could have been better. Why, you are to be Lady Buckland, Eleanor, walking away with the finest prize of the Season. I should even have to curtsy to you.”
“Not in your present condition, please,” Eleanor said, summoning a smile. “We’d need to employ a winch to get you back up again.”
Francesca frowned for a moment, then Eleanor giggled and she joined her. Giggling was better than crying, especially with the hour drawing fast on seven and the marriage of the Earl of Buckland and Miss Eleanor Oglesby, whose sole attendant would be standing up next to her in her pink-and-white-sprigged muslin gown…and baby blue slippers.
“MY SINCERE BEST WISHES, my lady,” Sir James Donaldson said, bowing over Eleanor’s hand, the one with the huge signet ring hanging loosely around the third finger.
“You sound as if I might need them, Sir James,” Eleanor said, looking across the private dining room to where her new husband was being soundly clapped on the back by Mr. Beecher Thorndyke.
The wedding feast was even now being carried into the room under the direction of Sylvester, the earl’s valet, who had commandeered the inn kitchen for several hours today. The smell of roasted chicken and ham reached Eleanor’s nostrils and she fought down a sudden nausea. That wouldn’t do! If she were to become ill, the way Francesca had done for several months, not only wo
uld she be a compromised bride, it would be whispered everywhere that she was already carrying the heir. People would be openly counting on their fingers when her first child was born and that—
“My lady, excuse me, but you’ve gone quite pale,” Sir James said, taking her hand and leading her over to a chair. “Are you all right?”
Eleanor looked at her sister, her very pregnant sister. As she had said earlier, her sister had gotten that way by—oh, dear God! Surely the earl wouldn’t…no, of course he…would he?
She turned to look at the earl again, to see him drinking deep from a glass Mr. Thorndyke had offered him. What was the man doing? Bolstering his courage?
Perhaps there was some ratafia somewhere, as that’s all she’d ever tasted in the way of strong spirits. After all, if he could drink, needed to drink, surely she needed at least a barrel of the stuff herself.
“No, no, Sir James, I’m fine,” she said, smiling up at the man. Trying to smile up at the man; in truth, she was sure it had come out much more closely resembling a grimace. “It’s just that I’ve only now realized I haven’t touched a thing all day, and my hunger is so deep that the aroma of all that food almost overcame me.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell Nick that your wedding supper must commence right now. Let me move your chair to the table, my lady. You’ll take the foot, and Nick will take the head.”
Oh, wonderful. That way, she could see him every time she lifted her gaze from her plate. That should certainly improve her appetite.
As the meal progressed, Eleanor’s apprehension grew, as the earl—her husband—seemed to be drinking his dinner, paying scant attention to the food on his plate. With each toast to the newlywed couple, he drained his glass, and when the Reverend Thorton finished his long benediction after the meal, having touched on matters of love and fidelity and fruitfulness and “cleaving solely one to another alone,” the dratted man had the audacity to pick up the bottle and drink from it directly.
The Wedding Chase: In His Lordship's BedPrisoner of the TowerWord of a Gentleman Page 4