by Gaelen Foley
He just looked at her, a veritable Stonehenge of a man. Silent, enigmatic, hard.
Her heart pounded with the sudden fear that she might never get out of here alive, after all. Maybe she’d seen too much! Maybe that hole with the rope had been a dungeon cell for visitors who went snooping . . .
She gulped. “If your purpose here is really serving your country, then surely you must acknowledge I’d never do anything to jeopardize the security of England.”
He lifted his chin slightly, but his flinty eyes gave away nothing; he merely let her continue to squirm.
“Do Daphne and Kate know about all this?” she asked, trying another hopeful tack. “They must,” she answered her own question, her heart pounding. “Well, there you are, then! If you can trust my friends, then obviously, you can trust me just the same!”
His answer was a snort. “The only reason we trust the other ladies is that they are married to our agents, Miss Portland. Do you comprehend me? They have a very strong, personal interest in their husbands’ survival, so we are generally confident we can rely on them to keep their mouths shut. This status does not apply to you. Besides,” he added, “they aren’t ‘ladies of information.’ ”
“Well—that is true. But I am trustworthy!”
“Trustworthy?” he exclaimed, finally showing a little emotion—namely, outrage. “Ha!”
“What? I am, too—trustworthy!” she insisted in wounded indignation.
“What an absurd claim! You’re nothing of the kind.”
She harrumphed.
“Everything you’ve done tonight refutes it.” He swept to his feet, an angry demigod looming over her in his half-naked wrath. “How could you do this, Carissa? I only brought you here to save your life! I cannot believe even you would go this far! I save your life, then turn my back on you for one minute, and this is how you repay me? Go trespassing where you don’t belong? What are you, a child? Can’t you ever leave well enough alone?”
She drew breath to respond, but when she parted her lips, no words came out.
Hang it all, the man was right.
She shut her mouth and lowered her head, well and truly scolded.
“What are you going to do with me, then?” she mumbled after a long moment. “Am I going to be arrested or something?”
“No, you’re not going to be arrested, you meddling little nit. There’s only one thing I can do with you,” he grumbled. “It’s obvious. We have to marry.”
“What?” She looked up at him, wide-eyed.
“Consequences,” he said in satisfaction, folding his muscled arms (one bandaged) across his chest, an irked Adonis.
“Marry?”
“It’s the only way I can personally make sure you keep your mouth shut,” he declared.
She gaped at him for another few seconds, then finally closed her mouth, shut her eyes, and pressed her fingers to her forehead.
Her skull was pounding once again; indeed, her head was spinning from his tyrannical solution.
She strove to keep a calm, soothing tone, though panic simmered just beneath the surface of her voice. “Don’t you think you’re being, oh, just a wee bit excessive, my lord?”
“Too bad.”
“You don’t want to marry me any more than I do you!”
“It does not signify. I made a mistake in bringing you here, and now I’ve got to pay for it.”
With a stunned scoff, she looked at him in astonishment. “What lady of my birth would marry any man on such insulting terms?”
“One who doesn’t have a choice.”
She rose, scowling, from her chair. “Don’t be silly! You are completely overreacting! You know where to find me if I should ever tell a soul about your secrets. Then we can talk about marriage—”
“At that point, it’s too late. The damage is already done. I can keep you in line more effectively when you’re by my side. Under my roof. Following my rules,” he added darkly.
“Now, hold on one minute,” she protested, backing away. “Marriage is not the sort of thing that’s meant to be handed down as a punishment. Besides that, we barely know each other—and what we do know starts with the other’s flaws.”
“So?”
“Think about it! Tonight, I caught you arranging an adulterous liaison and, believe me, I have no desire to marry a man who doesn’t see any particular problem with that! For my part, we both know I’d quickly drive you mad. I’m a very flawed person!”
“You don’t say.”
“It’s true! I’m cowardly. I snoop in other people’s business—”
“And you’re a voyeur,” he added with a cool, taunting smile. “Stubborn as hell, to boot. Typical redhead.”
“Well, thank you,” she retorted. “But you’re no angel, yourself, I’ll have you know.”
“No, I’m not,” he lustily agreed. “Nor do I have any plans of reforming.”
“Well, that settles it, then. We would never suit.”
“Then I suppose we are both destined for a life of misery, because I am marrying you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh, come on, Beauchamp!” She stamped her foot in growing alarm, for she could already feel herself losing this battle. “Half the ladies of the ton would die of heartbreak if you ever took a wife! Mass casualties! They’ll be stabbing themselves in the street!”
“Not my problem,” he said with a devastating twinkle in his eyes that seemed to call her bluff.
Carissa gazed wistfully at him.
Ah, bugger. If she were honest, she had been half in love with the scoundrel for weeks, never mind her disapproval of him.
How could she pass up the chance to make him her own? He was likable in his temperament, he was physically irresistible, and, in practical terms, the rogue would be an earl. Marrying him could turn out to be a good thing for her, though, to be sure, it had its risks.
The question of what sort of life she might have married to a spy was rather terrifying if tonight was any example.
On the other hand, she could get out of her uncle’s house, where she had lived like a poor relation for the past year and a half. As an orphan, she had been passed around among her relatives, rootless, with no settled home where she truly belonged. She’d never had that.
This could be her chance to be the mistress of her own household, and no one could ever hand her off again.
As to her shameful secret, she thought, staring at the floor, surely, if any man could ever understand about her fall from grace, it surely would be Beauchamp, sinner that he was.
“Well?” He waited.
Not that he was really giving her much choice.
Carissa stared at him, her heart in her throat. This match could quickly become a disaster for them both, since he was only doing it to keep her quiet.
His talk about heavy-handed rules sounded as if she would be worse off than if she had married the stupid poet.
But what else were they going to do? She had already spent nearly two hours alone with one of the most renowned seducers in London.
No young lady’s reputation could withstand that.
She should be glad he was willing to marry her to save her good name, in addition to saving her life. Lord knew she did not wish to subject her uncle’s family to another brush with scandal . . .
“Carissa, I want an answer.” He folded his arms across his chest with a bit of a glower on his face. “Will you cooperate, or do I have to drag you to the altar?”
Her heart pounded.
“You don’t have to drag me,” she forced out in a strangled voice. Then she cleared her throat and drew herself up to face her future husband. “I accept.”
His blue eyes narrowed slightly in satisfaction. “There. Was that so hard?”
She dropped her gaze, feeling woozy again from blood loss, or perhaps more from the fact that she had just agreed to marry a spy.
Beau reached for the clean shirt the butler had brought him,
lying on the nearby table.
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a bit of a chill. “Do you know what time it is?”
He nodded toward the longcase clock by the wall. “Little after midnight.”
The play would have just ended about a quarter hour ago. She pondered the implications of her failure to return to her seat. Her cousins, their governess would be frantic.
She was not looking forward to what came next.
He pulled on his bloodied coat. “Come,” he ordered, watching her with a wary eye. “I’ll drive you home. Let’s go tell the family our happy news.”
Chapter 7
Beau was just a little bit in shock at how difficult it had been to get the stubborn chit to say yes.
It had not escaped the notice of his ego that she had vehemently turned him down at first. Ungrateful puss! Did she think she was going to get a better offer from somebody else?
Well, he supposed, perhaps, that in the terms that he had used, it had hardly been a proposal to make a lady swoon. Still! He was Sebastian bloody Walker, by God, the future Earl of Lockwood. He was by all accounts a brilliant catch. Didn’t she know how many females of higher birth and greater beauty were chasing him on any given day?
This one, he could not begin to figure out. Each time he thought he had unlocked the secret mechanisms of her knotty female brain, she spun about in a new direction and went clicking and whirring off like some ingenious little automaton wrought by Merlin himself—for the purpose of driving men insane.
His male pride harrumphed. He supposed all that signified, however, was that at least he had procured her for his bride.
Neither of them said much as he drove her home to her uncle’s. He expected they would find the earl’s house in an uproar over Denbury’s missing niece. He was not looking forward to this meeting. Soon he pulled his horses to a halt outside the elegant town house on a garden square. They sat for a moment in the moonlight. The street was very dark.
Beau gazed at the glowing windows of the Denbury mansion, then he glanced over at her; he could tell by the nervous look on her pale face that she did not relish going in there, either.
She turned and met his gaze. “Here we are.”
“Ready? You remember what you’re going to say?” he murmured. They had discussed it before leaving Dante House.
She nodded.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” he assured her softly. “How’s the head?”
She touched her bandage with a self-conscious look. “Not too bad.”
“Let me see.” He reached over and turned her face to see if any blood was coming through the bandage, but there was no stain, no seepage. “I think you’re in good shape.”
She smiled wryly in the darkness. “You owe me a hat.”
“Right,” he agreed with a rueful nod. “Right, then. Let’s get on with it.”
They walked up to the front door, exchanged an uneager glance, then Carissa stepped in first, with Beau right behind her.
The activity in the house resembled that inside a chicken coop invaded by a fox. There were such squawks and cluckings and hysterical flappings-about of all the female inhabitants, the likes of which Beau had never seen.
Lady Denbury was beside herself; the governess was crying; the two famed termagants known as the Denbury Daughters were bellowing at the maids.
All of this chaos only intensified when the women saw the bandage around Carissa’s head and the blood on his coat. How could the old man bear it? Beau wondered, but when Lord Denbury himself came striding through the hubbub, the three of them fled into his study alone, and the earl shut the door. Whereupon, they jointly presented her powerful uncle with their excellent cock-and-bull story.
Side by side, they told the stern, patrician chairman of countless parliamentary committees how Carissa, feeling ill in the stuffy theatre, had stepped outside to get some air. She explained how she had been harassed by a few of the skulking footpads who lurked in the square across the street after dark.
Then Beau explained how he, while waiting for a “friend,” had heard her cry for help and rushed out to save her. But in scaring off the unsavory thieves who had been trying to snatch her reticule and her necklace—if not worse—one of them, while retreating, had turned and fired a pistol at him.
“As you can see, it hit me in the arm.” He nodded down at the torn and bloodied sleeve of his coat, proof that what he said was at least approximately true. “I was shielding your niece, but Miss Portland wanted to see what was going on—”
“Naturally,” her uncle muttered, raising an eyebrow at her.
“When she peeked out from behind me, the bullet grazed the side of her head. As I told her, she’s very lucky. She could easily have been killed.”
“So, you brought her to a surgeon?”
“No, sir. There was no time to find out. I tended her myself.”
“What?”
“She was already unconscious, and, I must say, there was a lot of blood. From my service in the war, I am well versed in tending these kinds of wounds. But I had to take her to where I had the necessary supplies on hand and the space to work without a theatre full of gossips looking on.”
“So where exactly did you take my ward?” he exclaimed.
“Dante House.”
Lord Denbury groaned, hiding his face in his hand. “Fortunately, I soon found the bullet had only grazed her,” Beau continued. “She needed a few stitches—as did I. As soon as I had her all bandaged up, I brought her here. I can assure you, sir, nothing dishonorable happened. You have my word on that. Unfortunately, we both know the ton won’t see it that way.”
“Quite.” Denbury lifted his head from his hand and eyed him warily. “As you are a gentleman, I trust you know what this means.”
“I do, sir,” he said firmly. “That’s why I’m here. I can provide your niece with a good life, and I see no reason why she’d be unsuitable for me.”
Carissa and he exchanged a cautious glance.
“Your family name is most august, and besides, my father is getting on in years,” he continued. “He has spoken to me on several occasions about his desire to see the future of our line secured.”
Lord Denbury’s angry expression changed at the mention of Lord Lockwood. “Yes . . . I know your father well. A solid man. His friends miss him in London. You should tell him so.”
“Thank you, sir. I will,” Beau murmured, lowering his gaze.
Lord Denbury looked askance at Carissa, studying her for a second. “Is this match amenable to you, as well? Despite his reputation?” he added dryly.
She kept her head down with a meek air that Beau found surprising. “It is, my lord,” she answered.
He began to nod. “Very well, Beauchamp. If you are a true son to Lockwood, I cannot withhold my consent. Especially under these rather dubious circumstances. I daresay the two of you make quite a pair.”
“Thank you, sir,” Beau replied, flashing a smile and ignoring the fact that it probably wasn’t a compliment.
Carissa watched the two men congratulate each other over a handshake and a glass of port, and with that, her fate was sealed.
And so it began.
The wedding preparations, starting with the marriage license.
The few days it took for the Archbishop of Canterbury to issue the special license so they could marry quickly brought on a whirlwind of activity, both parties scrambling to arrange all for the impending union.
Uncle Denbury was put in charge of the venue, while his wife took charge of the flowers, the music, and the cake. Beau went hunting for a ring and ordered his domestic staff to make everything ready for the arrival of the new lady of the house.
Carissa, meanwhile, fled to her favorite modiste’s shop, where she begged to see whatever formal gowns the famed seamstress might have on offer, anything that could be made ready within a few days. Haste was necessary to try to stay ahead of Society gossip. They wanted the marriage to be a fait accompli befor
e the ton started asking questions.
The savvy woman proved her savior, emerging from her sewing room in the back of the shop with an almost finished satin ball gown. It was a luscious creation in a very delicate pale pink, barely a blush tone, soft enough not to clash with her red hair.
Given the occasion, the modiste suggested adding white lace trim with seed pearls. Carissa eagerly assented, then sought out the rest of her ensemble. Her gloves and kid slippers would be white; her chemise would be the finest linen, and underneath that—as she supposed her bridegroom would discover on their wedding night—white silk stockings held up by rose-ribbon garters.
Giving the seamstress all of two days to complete the alterations, Carissa then turned her attention to the task of moving out of her uncle’s house.
It took the remaining two days to pack and organize all her clothes and books and possessions, even with the help of several maids.
Her cousins watched all this with little comment. They seemed oddly subdued about her leaving. Having complained about her since the day she had arrived, no doubt they’d be glad to be rid of her, she thought. But seeing their slightly elder cousin truly going off to start a new life with a husband, it appeared to sink into the girls’ minds that they would soon be doing the same in the normal course of affairs. They became strangely clingy to their mother, and Aunt Denbury must have been thinking the same things, because she did not question it but drew the girls to her bosom for frequent hugs and occasional kisses on their foreheads.
Carissa refrained from comment. She wondered what her own mother would have said about her future husband. Of course, she had been a toddler the last time she had seen Mama alive. She shrugged off painful memories and focused on the task at hand, organizing a second trunkful of her personal effects.
She did not wish to seem ungrateful, but in truth, it would be a relief to escape her uncle’s house. After fifteen years of being fobbed off on different relatives, she could not wait to have a real home of her own, at last.