And Then Comes Marriage

by Celeste Bradley

  Was that the real man, the man underneath? Was she mad, to think that she could understand someone’s inner thoughts just by the touch of their mouth on hers?

  She dropped her hands to her lap and clasped them there, her grip more desperate than firm. Pull yourself together! So your very nice friend has decided to see you as a woman at last.

  What of it?

  I am in such trouble here. No, nothing so minor as trouble. Danger. The promise of catastrophe only made it all the sweeter. Danger and risk and sweet, delicious possible reward.

  Perhaps she was mad, or had at least been driven temporarily insane. Or perhaps she was merely completely mistaken.

  It had been her very first kiss, after all.

  * * *

  Cas waited in the smallish—for a palace—receiving room he’d been shown into by a white-and-gold-liveried servant who had sized him up and labeled him with perfect accuracy with one lift of one brow.

  Not titled. Not moneyed. Not politically significant. Yet has an appointment for a quiet moment with the Prince Regent.

  Therefore, old acquaintance. Possible drinking companion, or worse. No need to be respectful. No point in being rude.

  Cas just grinned at the man and blew him a kiss.

  When the servant bowed and left the room, Cas inwardly chided himself for his cheeky act, then shrugged off his concern. He had come to speak to Prinny about something that was so important to him, he’d not breathed a word about it to another living soul. Even Poll knew nothing of the idea that had been swirling about in Cas’s mind for months.

  The time had come to take action. Enough fiddling about with toys and gimcracks! If he and Poll were ever to be taken seriously as inventors, they must put their combined ingenuity on one path and pursue it like rational—or at least coherent!—men of science.

  However, he was still a Worthington, and Worthingtons were intimidated by no one. With a family tree as old as Stonehenge, Archie Worthington liked to say, we’ve outlasted invasions and kings aplenty.

  So when the Prince Regent entered the room, moving as briskly as his bulk and his age allowed, Cas bowed with deep irony but didn’t bother to fawn any further than that.

  As he rose, Prinny snorted. Perhaps not the serious attention Cas sought, but Royal Amusement was preferable to Royal Boredom. Amusement he could work with.

  “Well, what is it, Square Root? I haven’t got all day.”

  Cas grinned at the nickname, a derivative of Worthington Squared, one of Society’s kinder sobriquets for him and Poll. “Why, what’s your hurry, Your Highness? Is she pretty?”

  Prinny grimaced. “Stout and bald, actually. The envoy from Brussels is in Our office, cooling his heels and drinking Our wine. Actual princely work, mind you. Tedious as hell and twice as annoying.” He considered Cas cynically. “Almost as annoying as you lot. Amuse Us or get out.”

  Cas’s grin faltered slightly. Then he stood straight and bowed a bit more seriously. “Your Highness, I have come seeking royal patronage.”

  “Ha!” The Prince Regent wheezed a laugh. “That’s a new one. Shall We allow you a stipend to go womanizing? Or shall We subsidize your scholarly pursuit of drinking? A study of whiskey versus whisky, perhaps? Brandy Demystified for the Masses?”

  “No, Your Highness.” Cas stiffened. “I, along with my brother, am an inventor. I wish to pursue some of our more workable designs in order to—” Hopefully, perchance, with any luck at all. “—to confidently bring them into public use one day.”

  Prinny raised a brow. “Hmm. It seems I heard of some strange contraption exploding in an alleyway in the vicinity of your family’s madhouse earlier today. Was that one of these alleged ‘workable designs’?”

  Cas gulped. “That was—” Fast. “—a mere glitch. We had hopes for it, but P—but we put it into operation too soon, without adequate testing. If we had research funds, we could bring our ideas into development more—ah—” Rationally, safely, sanely. “—sedately.”

  “Ha! That I’d like to see,” the Prince Regent remarked, finally dropping into informal address. “A sedate Worthington!” Prinny folded his arms across his paunch and leaned one silk-clad buttock on the arm of a great wingback chair.

  “So you’re telling me that you, Castor Worthington—one half of the Double Devils, middle son of the most demented family in the history of the Empire—wish to be taken seriously?” The Prince Regent leaned back for a good laugh at the very notion. The Royal Belly quivered. Prinny drew out a square mile of fine lace from his satin weskit and wiped the Royal Eyes, still chortling. “Inventors of what? Pandemonium? Havoc?”

  Cas cleared his throat. “Labor-saving devices.”

  The Prince Regent snorted another laugh, though Cas was relieved that the Royal Sense of the Absurd appeared to be winding down. Prinny dabbed at his eyes again and smiled wryly at Cas. “Ah, see? Now you have earned your keep! I haven’t laughed so in months!” He tucked the Royal Hankie back into his sleeve and leaned an elbow onto the chair back as he regarded Cas with what Cas hoped was fond exasperation. “What does a Worthington know about labor? The lot of you live on the sufferance of befuddled merchants, your finances hanging by a thread, occasionally supplemented by random outrageous luck!”

  Cas’s smile became rather fixed. “I daresay I know as much about labor as … say … a prince.”

  The Royal Gaze grew sharp. “Clever. It is true none of you lack for wits, mad as you all are. Yet the only thing that ever seems to hold your attention is a woman, and even that for not long at all—which of course ends badly, upsetting the lady, her husband, and stirring up my court. Every time I run across a scandal, it seems that one of the Double Devils is in the middle of it!”

  Cas lifted his chin. “My name is never in the scandal sheets!”

  The prince waved a hand. “Only because you aren’t rich enough for that sort of attention. It’s always An Unknown Gentleman or A Secret Paramour, but I know it’s you, or your slightly better half.”

  Cas flushed at that. Poll was a better man than he, true, but it wasn’t very polite of the prince to say so to his face.

  “However, should you two ever decide to turn all that considerable ingenuity and vigor to something other than climbing into the bedroom windows of married ladies, I daresay you would succeed indeed.” The Prince Regent’s smile remained, but his eyes glinted. “Think you have something good up your sleeve, do you?”

  Cas gazed back evenly. “We have several—” Mad, preposterous, dodgy. “—brilliant notions at present.”

  “Hmm.”

  A discreet tap came at the door. Cas cursed inwardly, knowing his allotted time was up.

  The Prince Regent clapped his broad hands together. “Ah! There we go, then. It’s agreed.” The prince straightened and dusted his spotless arse with one beringed hand, as if he’d been sitting upon the grass instead of a spotless silk cushion.

  “Er, what is agreed, Your Highness?” Hope stirred within Cas, but he remained wary. Best to get the specifics down when dealing with Prinny. Weasel-minded old … potential Royal Patron.

  Prinny smiled at Cas, and it wasn’t a particularly nice one. “One month. That’s the bargain. One full month without a scandal or an explosion or a screeching, wailing Society wife throwing herself at your coldhearted feet, and I shall grant your royal patronage. You two useless drones will have one year to come up with something useful, and I’ll foot the bill. It will be worth it just to gain a little peace and quiet amongst Our courtiers.”

  A year! It was several times what Cas had hoped for! “Yes, Sire!” This time when he bowed, it was just this side of fawning, but he was far too excited to care.

  Chapter Four

  Pollux Worthington, or Poll, as he preferred to be called—prepared to back up that preference with force if necessary—stood before his mirror and frowned at his waistcoat. For some time now, he and his twin brother had leaned toward a festive sort of weskit, or, in the words of his sister Elektra, “pois
onous and vile.”

  The little sartorial joke didn’t seem quite so amusing as it once had. He switched out the blinding lime and puce jacquard for one of his eldest brother Dade’s more somber ones in deep blue. No, better the forest green one, to bring out his eyes.

  He sighed. “Cas is right. I am a girl.”

  Poll looked up to see his own face in the mirror and effortlessly translated it to that of his twin. All it took was a bit more of a hardened jaw, less tendency to smile, an arrogant tilt to the head.

  Some might find it odd to look upon another and see oneself, and vice versa, but Poll had never known anything else. Cas was more than brother, more than friend. A twin was like oneself, except that private conversations did not make one mad.

  They were partners in every crime they could think of, and a few they’d made up. To Cas, women were simply meant to pass the time between one great adventure and the next.

  Until he met Mrs. Gideon Talbot, Poll had subscribed heartily to that philosophy himself.

  Until he met Miranda.

  Nothing juicy had happened yet. The pretty widow smiled and blushed and rose to his every sally, but she seemed content with naught but amusing conversation. Poll found himself reluctant to press her, for she brightened more every day, even in her pale half-mourning gowns. Yet he was sure her smile came more readily when she saw him, and her laugh rang sweetly through the parlor more and more often. Seduction by humor was a novel approach, but he truly enjoyed making her laugh with tales of his family exploits.

  She was particularly fond of Attie stories. His little sister would kill him if she knew that he’d used her as bait to gain a woman’s interest. Attie was not a fan of anything that might draw her family members away from her. Why, she’d very nearly murdered Callie while trying to murder Callie’s husband, just to get Callie to come home!

  He’d left that bit out of his stories to Miranda. He wouldn’t want her to think that true madness ran through their family.

  It stunned him that it even occurred to him to care. After all, he and his brother ate madness for breakfast.

  He had plans for the widow. From the first time he saw Mrs. Talbot, he’d wanted to do things, teach her things, show her all the things she’d been deprived of in her dry marriage to that desiccated husk of a man.

  Pretty Mrs. Talbot had been simply perishing to do something; it was true. She’d been dying to talk to someone.

  So he outdid himself. He’d never bothered to do much more than trade jousts or bestow compliments. He managed to fly by the seat of his pants the first week with Shakespeare. For the millionth time in his life, he thanked the stars that the ladies loved the Bard!

  However, by the second week, he found himself perusing the newssheet for interesting tidbits. By the third week, he was forced to read actual books, then casually lend them to her—“an old favorite of mine … perhaps you might enjoy it.”

  He’d never had to work so hard to get a woman on her back in his life. He probably ought to have moved on—after all, it had been a while for him and he could truly use a good rogering—yet he found himself there at her door, day after day, toting a gift—a book, a piece of sheet music for them to try out upon her pianoforte, a posy of simple country blossoms that he knew she preferred to the grandeur of roses or the severity of lilies.

  “Weddings and funerals,” she’d told him once. “Neither of which I am in any hurry to attend.”

  The deep green weskit looked too somber. He’d finally decided to make an evening call—one painstakingly calculated to be nothing more than a friend casually stopping by to bring a volume of poetry, “thought you might like to read them this evening,” and so on. Carefully timed to be invited for dinner without being so late as to appear to be crashing dinner.

  His smile returned as he recalled the day he’d saved her life on Bond Street.… Well, it hadn’t been quite so dramatic, although the freight wagon was going a bit fast and she was preoccupied by the heel of her shoe snagging in between two cobbles.

  Poll had simply swept her out of her shoe and onto the safety of the curb, and the wagon had clattered past. The offending shoe had been undamaged and he’d retrieved it with a swift move and returned it with a gallant bow.

  Her shy smile had brightened the very day around him. He’d begged an introduction, pleading heroism as cause to sidestep proprieties just this once. She’d solemnly agreed that his actions had been most selfless and allowed that his introducing himself was only right in the way of reward. Then she’d laughed, a bright bubble of light that made him want to make her do it again.

  And again.

  Poll hadn’t told his twin where he was disappearing to in the afternoons and Cas had not asked. It was understood that sexual adventures were to be savored over whiskey in the male retreat of the attic, a corner of which they’d carved out for themselves years ago in desperate retreat from the stern eye of their eldest brother, Daedalus, and the maternal exasperation of their eldest sister, Calliope.

  Many a wicked plan had been hatched in that attic room. All sexual conquests were shared, analyzed, and mined for answers to that mystery called woman.

  All except Miranda.

  * * *

  Castor Worthington sauntered into his family home, then paused in the foyer and listened absently. Off-key humming came from the family parlor. Mama was painting. He sniffed. Yes, turpentine. He reminded himself to sniff the tea before he drank. One never knew where Mama might clean her brushes.

  A screech of pure feminine rage echoed down the stairs. His second sister, Elektra. Since he and Poll hadn’t plotted against Ellie lately, it must be that their youngest sister, Atalanta, was at it again.

  Next Castor listened for the brooding silence of Lysander. Yes, one could hear silence that deep, especially in a raucous household like this one. The black mass of it followed Zander around like a cloud, leaching away the noise until it weighed the house down like lead. Castor loved his brother, but it was high time Zander dealt with whatever it was that had happened to him on the battlefield … or at least told someone what the hell it was so they could all understand!

  Orion’s study door was closed, which meant Cas’s investigative-minded brother was busy extrapolating the mathematical patterning of scales on a snake or some such. Boring. Fortunately, Rion was bloody good at explosives, which made him rather entertaining company, if one could penetrate his abstraction long enough to gain his interest.

  A fragment of King Lear drifted down the hall. Papa. Archimedes Worthington preferred to read the Bard aloud and at full volume. He claimed the words were meant to be decried from the stage. Castor had known every word of every sonnet and play by heart since he was nine, whether he liked it or not. Mostly not.

  Raising his head, he sniffed the air. Philpott was doing something delicious with pork for dinner. At least the family wasn’t pinching pennies any longer. Callie and her well-heeled husband, Sir Lawrence Porter, had made sure that there was food in the larder and coal for the fire, slipping them to Elektra past Iris and Archie’s insistence that such generosity wasn’t necessary, that everything was fine.

  With his family mostly accounted for and no impending explosions apparent—because they’d already done that today—Cas allowed his thoughts to drift back to his surprising afternoon.

  Miranda.

  Mrs. Gideon Talbot, of Breton Square.

  And then, the astonishing interview at St. James’s Palace. Cas felt inward to find that satisfying ember of accomplishment. In one month, he—and Poll, of course—would be more than just gossip fodder, more than the Double Devils, more than cocksmen-about-town—

  The front hall was quiet. Too quiet. “Come on out, Rattie.”

  His youngest sister, Attie—as usual, a right mess from her scabbed knees to her tangled amber curls—crawled out from behind the coat stand. “You’re clean.”

  He smirked. “I’m always clean.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “No, sometimes you come home clea
n like you’ve just had a bath and you sing that stupid song about the dancing maids. This time you’re all clean and you’re not singing.” She scowled at him. “Poll came in filthy and smudged and wouldn’t tell me a thing. What went wrong?”

  “Later, Rattie.”

  She screwed up her face at the nickname given her by their brand-new brother-in-law. The entire family had begun to use it, particularly when Attie’s behavior waxed most foul. Which was more often now, left as she was without Callie’s commonsense guidance and attempted instruction in the ladylike arts.

  “Where’s Poll?”

  “He’s had a bath.” Attie rolled her eyes. “Now he’s primping in his room. I think he has a new girl.”

  I don’t have a new girl. I don’t. “He’s likely using that newfangled invention of ours.”

  Attie brightened, which meant that her permanent scowl became slightly less frightening. “You’ve made something new?”

  Cas grinned. “Yes. It’s called a ‘hairbrush.’ You should try it.”

  Attie’s scowl became truly fearsome and she stalked away down the hall, all pointy elbows and stormy mutterings.

  Cas snorted. He’d best remember to check his sheets tonight before he climbed into them. Attie was a vicious prankster. After all, he’d taught her everything she knew. He climbed the stairs, whistling although he did not much feel like it. Ye merry maids come dancing.…

  Dancing with Mrs. Talbot would be intriguing. She had a languid grace that soothed his own restlessness.

  Not that he would be seeing her again. There was no need to allow her to think his stolen peck had been anything more than healthy male opportunism. All imagined sweetness aside, a kiss was just a kiss, wasn’t it? Just one of hundreds, after all.

  One month without scandal. No problem.

  He entered his brother’s bedchamber still whistling, then flung himself down on the worn chair before the fire.

  “I see you escaped the alley unscathed,” he commented without much rancor. He could hardly blame Poll for fleeing the scene, and he was glad his brother had not been apprehended by anyone interested in the prosecution of a little harmless inventing.