Midnight Bride

by Marlene Suson

  “Before I go, I will make you a brew to help you sleep,” she said, going to her leather case for the ingredients.

  As Rachel made the herb drink, she hoped her return to Wingate Hall would be easier than her leaving it had been. After Kerlan had come into the drawing room to tell her that Cook must see her, Rachel had the devil’s own time getting away from Tony Denton.

  Insisting that he had something of utmost importance to tell her, he dragged her off to a corner where he warned her against the Duke of Westleigh, particularly of his elusiveness and his wicked reputation for breaking the hearts of nubile young ladies who made the mistake of falling in love with him. Denton had cautioned her that not even betrothal meant anything to the duke, citing as proof his jilting of the incomparable Cleopatra Macklin.

  How could Rachel hope to succeed with Jerome when so many others had failed? Small wonder then, when he had demanded to know whom she loved, she had been too distressed and embarrassed to confess to him that he was the one.

  When she had finally escaped the house with her leather case hidden beneath the folds of her voluminous brown cloak, Sam told her that she narrowly missed Denton who had slipped down to the stables only a minute or two ahead of her. Rachel knew that Tony must be going to the comely maid at the White Swan Inn whom he visited whenever he came to Wingate Hall. Tony, she thought scornfully, was no better than her grandfather.

  As Rachel carried the tisane in to Gentleman Jack, a flash of lightning illuminated the bedroom, accompanied by a crash of thunder so loud that she jumped and nearly spilled the drink.

  “That bolt must have struck very nearby,” Gentleman Jack observed.

  It was followed by a second, then a third, fourth, and fifth, all attended by the roar of thunder so violent that the cottage shook. Rain beat down in angry torrents on the roof.

  Gentleman Jack said, “You cannot go home in this storm, Lady Rachel. Even if the rain stops, you must stay until it is light. The woods will be black as pitch with downed trees and other obstacles in your path that you will not be able to see in the dark.”

  He was right, but Rachel hesitated.

  Gentleman Jack said, “I swear to you that you will take no harm of me this night or any other.”

  “Oh, I do not fear you, only what would happen should it be discovered that we spent the night together.” She was thinking of poor Lucinda Quincy’s unhappy fate.

  That teasing gleam that reminded her of Jerome danced in Gentleman Jack’s eyes. “Then I would have to marry you.”

  “But I do not want to marry you!”

  “What a pity,” he said ruefully. “I rather think I should like marrying you. So you still prefer the Duke of Westleigh.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Lucky man!”

  Jerome watched from his bedroom window as the first gray light of an overcast dawn crept over the land. Between the violent storm during the night and his rage at Rachel’s wanton perfidy, he had no sleep, and he was exhausted.

  A movement on the path that led past the maze to the stable caught his eye. It was Rachel in a brown cloak, sneaking back to Wingate Hall. Fury, as violent as any of the lightning bolts that had shattered the night’s quiet, ripped through Jerome.

  The damned little witch was as wanton as every other beauty he had ever known. If he had needed proof of that, she had just given it to him, skulking up the path, her beautiful ebony hair tumbling tangled and uncombed about her. She looked as though she had arisen from Anthony Denton’s bed no more than a few moments before.

  The thought of Denton making love to her made Jerome grind his teeth together in rage. Once again, the bastard had taken the woman Jerome wanted.

  As he watched, Rachel slipped in the side door, never suspecting that he was watching her. He cursed her viciously. Then he cursed himself for even though he knew what she was, what she had done, even knew that she had slept with Denton, Jerome still wanted Rachel.

  Wanted her more than he had ever wanted Cleo.

  Damn it to hell, Rachel had bewitched him. He had to get away from her and Wingate Hall. He would go straight home to Royal Elms and offer for Emily Hextable.

  Except that would require him to leave Yorkshire without accomplishing what he had come for: convincing his brother to give up his career as a highwayman. Jerome could not leave without doing that. But neither would he stay at Wingate Hall.

  He would have to tell the Wingates that he was leaving Yorkshire, but he would go only as far as the White Swan where he would stay until he could talk to Morgan.

  With that plan in mind, he lay down on his bed.

  When Jerome awoke, it was, to his shock, nearly three in the afternoon. “Why did you not awaken me?” he demanded of his valet.

  “Because Your Grace once informed me that the day I dared to do so would be the day my employment was terminated.”

  Jerome gave Peters an abashed grin. “Yes, I recall that but, hellsfire, I have slept most of the day away.”

  Too much of it, in fact, to announce now that he intended to leave Yorkshire that day. Although it would not take him long to reach the White Swan, he wanted everyone at Wingate Hall to think he was going to Royal Elms. No one would depart on such a long journey so late in the day. He would have to postpone his departure until tomorrow.

  After he had bathed, shaved, and dressed, he went in search of Sophia to tell her that he would be leaving in the morning.

  Kerlan thought that she was in the morning room but, when Jerome went there, he found Lady Rachel, looking particularly lovely in a pink silk gown, which emphasized the pale loveliness of her flawless complexion.

  He thought that he had steeled his heart against her but when she saw him, her smile, punctuated with those charming dimples, was so brilliant that he felt his resolve melting.

  And that infuriated him. Why, the damned wanton had spent the night in another man’s bed, and now she was smiling at him as though he were the love of her life.

  He asked coolly, “Where is Denton?”

  Her beautiful eyes widened in surprise. “I have no idea.” She sounded as though she did not care either. Had she found her night of lovemaking disappointing?

  “Your Grace, Kerlan said you were looking for me.” Sophia swept into the room.

  “Yes, I wanted to tell you I am leaving in the morning.”

  Jerome’s announcement seemed to have the same effect on both aunt and niece. They looked shocked and dismayed. Both exclaimed simultaneously, “Why?”

  “A pressing matter at Royal Elms requires my return.”

  Sophia batted her eyes seductively at him and cooed, “What could be that pressing, Your Grace?”

  Some devil within him prompted Jerome to reply, “The final details of my betrothal to Miss Emily Hextable.” He wanted to see Rachel’s reaction, but it was Sophia who blurted in accents found in London’s slums rather than its fashionable drawing rooms, “Who ‘n ‘ell is ‘er?

  Jerome was so nonplussed that he could only stare at Sophia, certain that she had just betrayed her real origins—and how low they were.

  Recovering himself, he glanced toward Rachel. She looked so pale and shaken that Jerome marvelled she could have cared that much about becoming a duchess.

  She said in a frayed voice. “You have my felicitations, Your Grace.”

  Then she ran from the room.

  * * *

  Rachel, frantic with shock and despair, galloped recklessly toward the lodge where Gentleman Jack was hiding.

  As she rode, she wondered how Jerome could kiss her so tenderly one day, then announce the next that he was offering for another female. And men thought women were fickle!

  Rachel plunged into the woods surrounding Gentleman Jack’s hideaway, oblivious to the twigs and brush that caught at her hair and clothes as she rode between the trees.

  She could not let Jerome leave. She loved him too much. She might be naive, but she sensed that what they had together was very special and not to be light
ly tossed aside.

  If he was not wise enough to see that, she was, and she could not allow him to ride out of her life. If he did, not only would she lose the man she loved, but she would be forced to marry Felix, and she would rather be dead than do that. She had to get Jerome to marry her.

  And she had conceived a wild plan to force him to do so.

  It was a brazen stratagem. She would be the first to admit it. But, with Gentleman Jack’s help, it would work. She intended to collect on the highwayman’s promise to help her.

  She halted her mare in front of his lodge and ran inside. The highwayman was sitting up in bed reading.

  When he saw her face, he shut his book with a snap. “Hell and damnation, what is it?”

  For an instant her courage failed her. What if he laughed at her plan? Or reneged on his earlier promise and refused to help her? Without him, her cause was hopeless.

  She forced herself to speak. “You... you swore to me that you would help me if I needed it. I hope you meant that, because I need it now desperately.”

  “Certainly I meant it.” He smiled at Rachel. “You have only to tell me what it is. What do you wish me to do for you?”

  “Help me abduct the Duke of Westleigh.”

  Chapter 13

  The highwayman stared with slack-jawed incredulity at his distraught visitor. Surely, Rachel had not just asked him to help abduct his own brother!

  “I fear I misheard you. I thought you said you wanted to abduct the Duke of Westleigh?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Hell and damnation, why?”

  Her guileless eyes met his without faltering. “Because I want him to marry me.”

  “You and a thousand other women,” Morgan muttered under his breath, thinking of all the females who had vied in vain to be Jerome’s duchess. “How will abducting the duke induce him to marry you”—he paused, then scowled—”unless I am also expected to torture him into doing so.”

  And knowing his stubborn brother, even that would not work.

  Lady Rachel looked horrified. “Oh, no, I could not bear to have him hurt! I only want to spend the night with him.”

  “Lucky him. But that will not induce him to marry you.”

  “Do you not see, he will have no choice if I abduct him? That is what Phillip Rutledge did to poor Lucinda Quincy. She despised him. But after he made her spend the night with him, she was forced to marry him even though he was the last man on earth she wanted to wed. So you see, if I abduct the duke, he will have to marry me.”

  Instead of pointing out the fallacy in her reasoning, Morgan asked, “Why do you want to marry him— because he is a duke and rich besides?”

  “Sweet heaven, no!” she exclaimed, clearly shocked that he could think that. “I do not care in the least about his title or money.”

  “Then why?”

  “I love him. I think that we are meant for each other.”

  Morgan thought so, too, but abducting Jerome was not the way to convince his brother of that.

  “What makes you think that Jer—the duke must be forced to marry you? In time, perhaps, he might make you an offer.”

  “Yesterday I thought that he would. I mean the way he kissed me…” Her eyes grew dreamy.

  Jerome was a damned fool. If this divine creature had wanted Morgan, he would have been on bent knee immediately.

  “But today he acted as though he hated me, and he is leaving Yorkshire tomorrow”

  Morgan knew how determined Jerome was to talk him into abandoning his career as a highwayman. The fact that he would quit Yorkshire before doing so told his brother that Rachel was proving more temptation than Jerome could resist. Morgan could understand that. A man would have to be blind, deaf, and a eunuch not to want Rachel. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever beheld.

  He asked, “What reason does the duke give for leaving?”

  “He is going home to announce his betrothal to Emily Hextable.”

  “Emily Hextable!”

  Rachel’s eyes widened in surprise. “Do you know her?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” And Morgan would be damned if he would have that humourless, Friday-faced bitch as his sister-in-law. He had long ago dubbed her Saint Emily for her sanctimonious, self-righteousness. It boggled Morgan how Jerome could consider marrying her when he could have a gem like Lady Rachel.

  Yet Morgan knew why Jerome would pick Emily over Rachel. He would assume that because of Rachel’s great beauty she must be another selfish, ambitious wanton like Cleopatra Macklin. Damn that woman for what she had done to his brother!

  Jerome wanted a woman of unimpeachable propriety and virtue, who would never succumb to the passions of illicit affairs.

  Nor was Emily likely to succumb to a husband’s passion either, Morgan thought grimly. Jerome deserved better than that.

  Morgan knew that his brother, who shared his own concern for the poor and unfortunate, wanted a wife who felt as they did and thought he had found her in Emily. She would be the first to assure him that he had for she talked endlessly about all the good works she did.

  But, in reality she parcelled out her charity in the smallest dabs possible. Lady Rachel did far more good than Emily, and she did it out of compassion. Emily, smugly confident of her own moral superiority, preached at great length to the recipients of her dubious generosity and expected them to be grateful for even the smallest dole. She had no idea how despised she was by the recipients.

  Nor did Jerome, who was isolated by his title and his responsibilities. He had not his brother’s—or Lady Rachel’s—ability to be at home with all manner of people.

  Jerome needed a woman who could break down his icy reserve and teach him to enjoy life. Yes, Lady Rachel was just the lively, fun-loving, yet kind and generous wife that his self-controlled brother needed.

  Morgan thought grimly of what Emily’s reaction would have been had she been asked to aid a highwayman as Rachel had. She would have summoned the sheriff and had him hanged.

  Furthermore, Emily would make Jerome miserable. If he could not see that, Morgan could. And he was not going to let that happen. He loved his brother too much. Jerome needed Rachel more than he realized.

  Morgan knew his stubborn brother too well to think for an instant that merely abducting him would get him to marry Rachel. But if it were done just right, Jerome might be brought around. Morgan had an idea of how to accomplish that. It would be an audacious gamble, and he was not at all certain it would succeed, but it was Rachel’s only hope.

  And Jerome’s.

  “Very well, I will help you,” Morgan said, “but only on the condition that you promise to do exactly as I tell you.”

  Rachel gave him a radiant smile. “I promise.”

  “Then here is what you must do.”

  Chapter 14

  Peters was busily packing for the early-morning departure from Wingate Hall. Jerome escaped the bustle in his bedchamber, taking with him a copy of one of his favourite books, My Philosophy by the Earl of Ashcott, and sought refuge in the quiet of Wingate Hall’s library

  He had scarcely settled in a comfortable chair there and opened his book when Rachel came in.

  “Kerlan told me I would find you here.”

  Jerome looked up, and his breath caught at the sight of her. She had on the same riding habit that she had been wearing when he first saw her—the violet that matched her eyes and displayed her full bosom and tiny waist to perfection. He felt his own body tighten. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Even knowing what she was, he still wanted her. Damn her!

  She shut the door behind her and came toward him, holding out a folded sheet of paper to him. “I was asked to deliver this to you.”

  He closed his book, set it down on the table beside the chair, and rose, taking the paper from her. He saw that his name had been written on it in Morgan’s hand. His head snapped up. “Where did you get this?”

  “From the man who wrote it.”

  �
��Do you know who he is?” Jerome asked tersely, hoping against hope that Morgan had not been such a fool as to tell Rachel his real identity;

  “Aye.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Read it and find out.”

  He unfolded the paper and quickly read the note in his brother’s unmistakable handwriting.

  Dear Jerome:

  Must see you immediately. Most urgent. Lady Rachel will bring you to me. It is important that you not tell Ferris or anyone else where you are going.

  M.

  Jerome looked at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “Tell me who gave you this.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Is it not signed?”

  “By an initial. What name did he give you?”

  “Gentleman Jack.”

  “How did you come upon him?”

  “I was called to treat his wound.”

  Alarm hoarsened Jerome’s voice. “How bad was it?”

  She was dearly startled by his anxiety; “Not bad. He was wounded in the thigh. It did no permanent damage, and it is healing well.”

  “Why does Gentleman Jack want me to come to him?”

  “You must ask him that.” She gave him an enigmatic smile. “I told him you were leaving on the morrow, and he said he must see you before you go.”

  It seemed to Jerome that they had been travelling in circles for a bloody hour. First, they had ridden south, crossing the River Wyn at the bridge where Jerome had rescued Ferris, then through the birch woods on the other side.

  Halfway to the White Swan Inn, they had turned west for a half mile, then north again, doubling back across the river at a narrow bridge farther downstream.

  When Jerome demanded to know where Rachel thought she was going, she told him that she was following Gentleman Jack’s instructions to take a circuitous route to his hideaway.

  She had refused to answer Jerome’s other questions, saying Gentleman Jack would do so after they reached their destination.

  They entered another woods, this one densely studded with oak, sycamore, and English elm. Jerome, riding Lightning, followed Rachel’s mare down a narrow trail, scarcely wide enough for a single horse.