The Duke's Unexpected Bride

by Lara Temple

  The carriage pulled up outside the theatre in Drury Lane and for a brief moment as he helped Sophie alight he couldn’t resist moving in front of her, forcing her to look up, her eyes locking with his, and he didn’t move until he saw the flush rise once more over her cheeks. It was childish to need to feel that he could do that to her, make her respond, but it was undeniable.

  ‘You’re holding up the whole street, Harcourt!’ Cranworth said as he and Sylvie stepped down from another carriage and Max waved the driver to move on.

  ‘Sophie’s cloak was tangled in the door.’ Max said blandly and Sophie gave a quickly choked laugh.

  ‘That wouldn’t happen with a pelisse,’ she muttered under her breath and Max pressed her hand and drew her forward.

  * * *

  Sophie glanced around the throng of women entering and exiting the ladies’ retiring rooms during the intermission. She was waiting for Sylvie, but she was beginning to wonder if she had missed her in this chaotic and colourful press of silks and satins. She turned and caught the critical eye of Lady Pennistone and with a quick nod she hurried out before she was pinned. It was ridiculous to be so cowardly, but she still felt out of place and too fragile at the moment for an encounter with someone like Lady Pennistone. Besides, why should she have to deal with anyone she didn’t wish to? After all, she was not merely Miss Trevelyan of Ashton Cove any more, but would soon be the Duchess of Harcourt. She raised her chin. If she wasn’t careful she would end up like Miss Pennistone and she wasn’t like that, not inside. Come to think of it, neither was Miss Pennistone herself, but that was precisely the point. She liked people, but she had never bent over backwards to ensure they accepted her and she had no intention of starting just when she was about to embark on her new life.

  And where was she, anyway? She paused in the middle of a corridor, trying to remember if they had come down that way. There was no one else there and that probably meant she was heading in the wrong direction, so she turned and halted as a man appeared behind her.

  ‘Are you lost?’ he asked.

  He was tall and very thin and for a moment she wondered if he was one of the actors. He looked vaguely familiar, but it was an elusive sensation.

  ‘I think I am. I had no idea this was such a big place. I am trying to find my way back to the boxes.’

  ‘Come, I will show you the way to the foyer. This way.’

  She turned and followed him gratefully as he took her down a set of stairs to a passage at the end through which she could see the distinctive burgundy-and-royal-blue carpets of the foyer. At the end of the passage she turned to thank him, but he spoke before her.

  ‘I am Lord Morecombe, by the way. Serena’s father. You are Miss Trevelyan, yes? I saw you that night with Harcourt outside the Seftons.’

  She almost stumbled in surprise and he stopped, grasping her arm solicitously.

  ‘I apologise. I startled you. I did not mean to, but I have been looking for an opportunity to speak to you since I read of the engagement.’

  She stared up at him, caught between shock and guilt.

  ‘Lord Morecombe. I... I am so sorry...’

  ‘Why, my dear? You have nothing to be sorry for. You were not part of our tragedy and have no part in our guilt. I rarely leave my home any more, but I admit I was very curious to see who Harcourt had chosen. And a little surprised. You are so very different from my daughter.’

  ‘I heard she was very beautiful. And lively.’ She cringed at her choice of words, but he didn’t seem to notice, a soft smile suffusing his thin face.

  ‘She is. Even as a baby I knew she was...extraordinary. A queen.’

  His tone was reverent and Sophie’s heart squeezed. ‘I rarely leave my home any more’. This wasn’t like Aunt Minnie’s self-indulgent seclusion, but the kind of implosion of will that happened sometimes to people after a devastating loss. Like a widow she knew in Ashton Cove who had lost all three of her sons to the sea. Sometimes the woman would drag herself into the village and try to smile and be interested in people, then she would retreat again and no one would see her for weeks.

  ‘She does sound like an extraordinary person. You must miss her terribly.’

  She almost regretted her words when his eyes filled with tears and he pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his eyes with his fingertips before returning it to his pocket.

  ‘Every day. I think...if only I had been...stronger...but it is too late. It is unbearable sometimes. And no one will talk to me of her. Or let me talk about her. That is why I don’t go out. It’s the silence I can’t bear.’

  She nodded. She could understand that, in a way. Part of her just wanted to escape, but she stood there, wishing there was something she could do to ease this man’s pain. Somehow she felt she had become entangled in Max’s guilt and pain about Serena’s fate and that imposed a degree of responsibility on her as well.

  ‘I would be glad hear about your daughter, Lord Morecombe.’

  He reached out, his hand closing on hers rather convulsively.

  ‘I was so right, so right about you. I knew the instant I saw your face that you were kind. It worried me so. Would you come tomorrow? For tea? And please don’t tell Harcourt. He won’t let you come. He wants to put it all behind him like all young people and it would just drag everything up again. It will be our secret.’

  Sophie agreed that Max would probably not appreciate this particular charitable gesture on her part.

  ‘I will come tomorrow, then. If you like.’

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed. And not tell Harcourt?’

  ‘No, you are right that there is no need to tell him. Things are complicated enough as they are. Good evening, Lord Morecombe.’

  ‘Goodnight, my dear.’

  She turned and with a sharp kick of shock she saw Lord Wivenhoe standing at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the boxes, watching them. She hesitated, but headed resolutely towards the stairs. She had just decided she wasn’t going to let fear of other people’s reactions dictate her actions, hadn’t she?

  ‘Good evening, Lord Wivenhoe.’

  His gaze was on the man behind her and he did not move out of her way. They both watched as Lord Morecombe moved back into the darkness of the passage, then Wivenhoe looked down at her.

  ‘I didn’t know you were acquainted with Lord Morecombe.’

  ‘I wasn’t. He introduced himself just now.’

  ‘What did he want from you?’

  She frowned at the abrupt question and breathed in.

  ‘To talk. To have tea. He’s lonely. And guilty. I think he feels he didn’t protect her well enough.’

  ‘Her. Her name is Serena. You talk as if you knew her.’

  The charged anger in his voice clicked something into place in her mind and her conviction she had been wrong about him grew.

  ‘You didn’t give her that poison, did you?’ she said slowly.

  ‘Are you mad? I loved her! And that was my child! Of course I didn’t!’

  ‘Then why are you so guilty?’

  The words, low and tense, poured out of him, his amber eyes reflecting the hundreds of candles in the chandelier above them. ‘Because it was my fault she died. If I hadn’t got her with child she never would have sought the potion that killed her. Of course it was my fault. I’ve lived with that knowledge—’ He broke off. ‘But if it hadn’t been for Max she would have married me. I know she would have. He knew she didn’t love him and he sure as hell didn’t love her, but he held on to her. Out of his stupid sense of duty. If he had been a man he would have sent her packing and then there might have been a chance... If I’m guilty then he is a thousand times more so! He might as well have poured that poison down her throat himself! For all I know that is precisely what he did. He’s capable of it, the bastard, just to make sure the world fell into l
ine with him. You’re a fool to marry someone who has as much emotion in him as a block of ice! I know she was spoiled...and selfish, but she was so alive. It was amazing to see her. As vivid and beautiful as a sunset.’

  Sophie stood mute before his pain, pushing back at her own resentment and fears that his accusations about Max dragged up. She understood Lord Morecombe’s pain. Serena was his only child after all, yet there had also been that strangely adoring, almost impersonal passion that Wivenhoe was mirroring. As if loving Serena was more a religious than a human experience. It was not the kind of love she valued or sought, but she felt pity for these two men who had adored the vivid, flawed girl.

  ‘I hope you find someone else you can care for as much one day, Lord Wivenhoe. Both you and Max were very young then. And Serena was, too.’

  She had not meant to sound condescending and she cringed a little at her words, but contrarily he relaxed, the passion fading from his eyes.

  ‘So I was. Must you be so sensible? I was in full dramatic flight.’

  ‘I have had enough of that for this evening, thank you,’ she said primly and he laughed and reached out to grasp her hand. After a moment of surprise she pulled hers away, but not before she saw Wivenhoe’s eyes flicker past her shoulder and narrow. She turned, knowing what was coming.

  Max moved towards them with the swiftness and brutal focus of a panther and without thinking Sophie moved in front of Wivenhoe. Whatever the necessity for her move, it was probably not wise. Max did slow down, but his gaze fixed on her and there was something there that frightened her. Her own sense of fatality and fear that he would never come to care for her, not in any way that was close to what she felt for him, fed on what Lord Morecombe and Wivenhoe had said about him. She was a fool to think she knew this inscrutable, guarded man. All she knew was that they were all tainted by Serena’s legacy and that she was so tired of being in her shadow.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said quietly, but she could hear the desperation in her voice. ‘Nothing happened here. And I’m tired and I can’t take any more dramatics. Please. Just let’s go back to the box.’

  She didn’t know what might have happened if a large group of people hadn’t come down the stairs in a cloud of chatter and laughter. It dimmed somewhat as they noticed the tense trio at the foot of the stairs but then, thankfully, Wivenhoe turned and headed leisurely up the stairs. The crowd continued outside, letting a cool damp wind into the foyer. A porter came to secure the doors, but remained standing by them, looking impassively into the middle distance.

  Finally Max moved. His grip on her arm was too controlled to hurt, but it communicated tension and even disdain, holding her like something distasteful but inescapable. Sophie walked beside him, wondering if there was anything she could say to fix this. She knew that if she tried she would only get all tangled and just dig the hole deeper.

  And what she really wanted to tell him would probably only earn her one of his ‘that is not the nature of our relationship’ answers and then she was likely to sit down on the stairs and cry. She should just keep quiet and hang on to her rickety little dinghy and hope to weather the storm. Perhaps when he calmed down she might be able to explain how she came to be standing alone with Wivenhoe, again, her hand in his, again.

  She closed her eyes tightly. She had been so looking forward to coming to the theatre with him and his friends. How had she managed to ruin it so royally? He was right about her. She might mean it all for the best, but she just kept making things worse. She was paving her road to hell marvellously with her good intentions and dragging him with her. She knew he had never really wanted to marry her, of all people, but she hadn’t been strong enough to turn him down that fateful day and get on the first coach to Bristol and home. But neither was she strong enough to carry these emotions buried inside her. Or to live up to his expectations. She had begun to believe she could do it, become the right kind of wife that would satisfy his needs without losing herself completely.

  Yet it took no more than a simple slip on her part to ruin everything, to expose the weakness of her position. Whatever he might say to the contrary, she knew he didn’t really trust her and sometimes she didn’t know whether she trusted him either. When he was in these black moods, cut off and all drawbridges raised, it was easy to wonder if he had been the one to supply Serena with the poison that had killed her and if her death had been just an accident. Part of her...most of her knew this fear was nonsensical. She knew him. Even if she couldn’t reach him, if she could never gain access to the warmth she knew was there, waiting for someone to release it, she knew him. She would not believe he had been capable of destroying that girl on purpose, no matter what the circumstances. But there was still that small, wounded part of her that had no faith in herself and her ability to ever be accepted by the world, and that part wondered if she knew him at all or whether it was all a fantasy, as maudlin as the wish that he might come to care for her some day.

  They finally reached the box and she was grateful that the intermission was over and she slipped into her seat and stared straight ahead, avoiding all the curious glances directed at them and wishing she could disappear altogether.

  * * *

  Max had no idea what was happening on the stage. He had no idea how he managed to sit there, as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t come across her and Wivenhoe standing with her hand in his, her face raised to him so trustingly... And the worst wasn’t even the way she had come to stand in front of Wivenhoe, protecting him, a mocking reflection of that moment back in the Huntley parlour when she had stood between them in very different circumstances. It had been the sadness that had been so apparent in her beautiful eyes as she had come to stand by him once Wivenhoe walked away. She hadn’t even been able to talk to him. She had returned with him to the box and sat down, as subdued and silent as a chastened schoolgirl.

  He had no idea quite what had happened there, but his first savage instinct to grab Wivenhoe and drag him away from her had faded as soon as he had seen the stricken sadness in her eyes and he realised he had somehow failed her, again. He wasn’t even quite sure how. All he knew was that once again he had managed to depress her joy, turn it into sadness and silence. She had managed to keep hold of her warmth and individuality despite all her family’s attempts to subdue her, but he was succeeding where they had failed. It was a matter of time before she realised he had nothing to offer her beyond the physical and he would lose her, in spirit if not in body.

  He should have risked it and said something, but he hadn’t trusted himself to speak, to her or to anyone. Not that anyone had tried. They must have realised something was wrong. And then the second act had begun. He shouldn’t have even taken her back to the box. He should have left and sent his apologies or something, because this was unbearable. She sat inches from him—he could feel the heat of her leg along the length of his thigh and it pulled at him, like a magnet, and more than anything he wanted to close that distance, feel her, even through the layers of that shimmering dress. Connect back to her at the one level he had allowed himself to break free from his controls and where she met him so openly.

  He knew she wasn’t watching the play any more than he was. Her mouth drooped at the corners and her hands were held tightly in her lap and he fought against the twin urges of raging at her and taking those tense hands and twining them with his, drawing her to him, forcing her to tell him that her sadness didn’t mean what he feared, that she was despairing of him and regretting their engagement. It ate at him, burning him with the same intensity of the desire that wouldn’t let him go. It wasn’t even the jealousy that she had stood so comfortably with Wivenhoe despite everything the bastard had done, it was something else...despair. He couldn’t lose her. Sophie was his. She was the only thing he really wanted in this whole pathetic world.

  The realisation, finally released from the confines of his control, was stunning, like a blow from Jackson’s
hammer-like fist. He needed her. This wasn’t just lust and certainly not duty. He needed Sophie’s warmth and caring and the vividness that was utterly different from Serena’s draining force. He had no idea what he would do if she walked out of his life. She had dragged him out from some emotional cave and she couldn’t leave him now. It wouldn’t be fair. It was pathetic and selfish and undeniable. He needed her. And instead of taking advantage of their time together to try to make her truly care for him, he had been critical and unsupportive and tried to force her to behave like someone totally unworthy of her like Lady Melissa. He didn’t want her like that. He wanted just the girl who talked to pugs and who laughed at life and who was interested in people for their own sake and who tried so hard to do what was right knowing she was very likely to fail. He should have had the sense to go down on his knees and tell her she could make whatever terms she wanted. If only she could come to care for him beyond the amazing physical heat that flared between them. He wanted more. He wanted everything.

  The applause forced him back into the reality of the moment. He should take her apart, but he had no idea what to say. The fury that had possessed him was sinking under the weight of a corrosive ache, a sense of loss and fear. The urgent need to destroy something was already overshadowed by the urgent need to repair it, but he had no idea how or what or whether it was too late or whether there had ever been a chance. As they stood up he turned toward her, but she was already moving away from him towards Sylvie Cranworth.