Bronwyn Scott's Sexy Regency Bundle

by Bronwyn Scott

Beldon snorted at that and Valerian knew he was thinking of the irony of that statement, thinking that Valerian had not felt he could tell Beldon his own great secret years ago. ‘Perhaps you’ll think differently about why I didn’t tell you, when you’re done with your questions,’ Valerian said softly, apologetically. There was so much he had to account for. Today would be a start.

  Beldon drew a deep breath. ‘All right—what do you plan to do about Philippa now that you’re home to stay?’

  Valerian chuckled, intent on the plant before him. ‘It’s not so easy as what I intend to do, Beldon. Philippa’s a stubborn woman. She’ll do what she pleases and I am afraid she’s not convinced I am in her best interest.’

  Valerian looked up in time to see Beldon’s brows furrow as he tried to work through his statement.

  ‘I don’t really understand the difficulty,’ Beldon began. ‘The two of you were in love once, she’s free to pursue her own interests now and you’re still in love with her. Beyond a little wooing, I don’t see the problem.’

  Poor Beldon, Valerian mused. He knew so much and yet so little of the details. Valerian took mercy on his friend. He set down his garden shears and leaned across the rough-hewn work table. ‘Listen, Beldon. The night you found her crying in the garden, she wasn’t crying because she had to forgo me and marry Cambourne. She was crying because I purposely broke her heart. She thought I was going to propose that evening.

  ‘Instead, I told her I wanted her to marry Cambourne, that what we shared together was nothing more than a young man’s dalliance.’ Valerian winced at the last. Surely, Beldon would forsake his seed sorting and send him a rounder across the jaw. He deserved no less.

  Beldon stopped his sorting, his fists hardening into tight balls, white at the knuckles. ‘Why would you do that?’ His voice was that of an angry older brother. ‘Philippa was never anything but good to you. She adored you and apparently in a way far deeper than I guessed. You were her hero.’

  Valerian nodded his assent, countless images of Philippa as a young girl, hair still in braids and skirts still short, tromping beside them during the long summers; Philippa slightly older, still coltish with her long legs, begging him to partner her during dance lessons.

  Oh, yes, Beldon could not be more right. He’d been her hero. Once upon a time, he’d revelled in her adoration. There had been a type of strength in knowing that someone believed in him so thoroughly. The power of her young girl’s adulation had got him through the darkest year of his life—the year his parents had suddenly died in a tragic hunting accident up in Scotland and he’d become the young Viscount St Just at the age of fifteen.

  Philippa had been a rock, listening to him grieve when he gave in to his blacker moods. Beldon had been the consummate friend, just as Beldon’s parents had been loyal to their son’s young friend. Valerian owed the family fiercely for what they’d done. They’d sheltered him, protected his inheritance when there had been concern over his young age, and, most of all, they had loved him. He’d no choice but to return that offering in kind when the time came, even if it meant hurting Philippa for the larger good.

  Valerian sighed, moving to a tomato plant he was growing indoors. He began checking the leaves for any fungus. ‘I’ve felt guilty enough over the years for what happened. I’ve wondered if I should have handled it differently. Mostly, I blame myself for starting it in the first place.’ It was easier to talk if he kept busy.

  ‘I am not so interested in how it started, Val, as to why it ended with a broken heart,’ Beldon encouraged.

  Valerian heard the unspoken message. Beldon understood how deuced awkward it was to talk about romancing one’s best friend’s sister. Those memories were too intimate, too private, memories that rightly should be only for him and Philippa.

  ‘Philippa was not wrong. I had meant to propose that evening. She’d only been out a little over a month, but I’d known long before her début how I felt about her. That afternoon, I went to speak to your father.’ Valerian hazarded a quick glance at Beldon.

  ‘My father refused you?’ Beldon’s reaction was incredulous. ‘He loved you.’ But something else was working in Beldon’s mind. ‘The money,’ Beldon said quietly. ‘I came today because I spent most of last night going over the Pendennys’s accounts. We would not have survived without the generous loan from Cambourne.’

  Valerian gave a slight nod. ‘Your father asked me to step aside. He said he was entertaining an offer from the duke.’ He didn’t need to say any more of the difficult words. Beldon was quickly piecing the rest of that interview together.

  Beldon’s voice was full of disbelief when he spoke. ‘What my father did was dishonourable. He sold his daughter in marriage when she loved another and that other was willing to marry her and give her a respectable life—’

  ‘Don’t be angry with your father,’ Valerian broke in. ‘I didn’t tell you this to drive a wedge between you and his memory. He was a good father to all of us. I do not think it is a sign of dishonour to try to protect your family from ruin.’

  Beldon protested. ‘It’s not as if you were disreputable or poor or untitled. You were Philippa’s equal in all ways.’

  ‘He did what he thought was best,’ Valerian said with finality. ‘I must take some of the blame. I knew Cambourne was interested. The betting book at White’s attested to the fact. But I went ahead and put your father in the position of having to refuse me. It might have been better for all if I had just let the romance dwindle, or I hadn’t started it at all.’

  Beldon shook his head. ‘It is so typical of you to bear the burden of another’s choices. At school, you were so quick to champion the underdog and to protect others, even when they should have shouldered their own responsibilities.’

  ‘Still, it had to be done. You know I couldn’t access my full inheritance until I was twenty-seven,’ Valerian reminded him. ‘If the family could have lasted five years, I would have thrown every pound I owned into seeing the family redeemed, but your father could not wait.’

  Beldon went back to sorting the packets. ‘I understand.’ But his tone suggested otherwise. Valerian knew it would take Beldon a while to come to grips with the realities of the past. He appreciated that, for Beldon, the past was being rewritten.

  ‘Your father asked me to break it off with Philippa in a way that didn’t place him as the villain or jeopardise her willingness to marry Cambourne. You know Philippa. If she thought there was any chance of coercing her father into changing his mind, she would have tried. She could not know about my offer.’

  ‘So you played the cad and told her this “affaire” meant nothing to you.’

  ‘Essentially,’ Valerian admitted, then added, feeling the need to clarify that there were limits to how much of cad he’d been willing to be, ‘It wasn’t an “affaire” in the truest sense of the word, Beldon. I left her untouched. You needn’t assume the worst about me, whatever the rumours have asserted about me since then.’

  ‘Rumours aside, I’ve always found you to be a man of honour,’ Beldon said, meeting Valerian’s gaze evenly.

  ‘Yes, well, you might, but consequently Philippa does not. The past and the present—the way she understands them—fit together all too well. My performance that night in the garden was quite convincing. Perhaps you can see for yourself the implications that now impede any courtship I might conduct with her at present.’

  Beldon tossed the last packet into a pile of violet wildflower seeds. ‘I absolutely see what a mess you’ve got yourself into. She thinks you really are a cad for using her so poorly in the past and now doubts that your affections are sincere.’

  Valerian gave him a wry smile. ‘It’s worthy of a Drury Lane farce.’

  ‘I don’t know if “farce” is the right word,’ Beldon replied. ‘Do you think your efforts will be in vain?’

  ‘If they are, we’ll call it a drama. If I am successful, we’ll call it a comedy. It can’t be a comedy unless the ending is happy.’ Valerian was glad for
a bit of levity. The conversation had been far too serious, but necessary. If his time abroad in diplomatic circles had taught him anything, it was that the past always came back to roost. He’d known the choice to come home would mean facing his old demons. But he’d chosen to do it anyway. There was only so far a man could run and only so long.

  Valerian set aside his work. ‘Let’s go up to the house and see if Mrs Wilcox can set out tea for us.’

  ‘I agree with the going up to the house part, but tea, Valerian?’ Beldon raised his eyebrows. ‘I suspect we’ll need something stronger before we’re through.’

  Valerian gave Beldon a chary stare. What else did his friend want to winkle out of him today? Certainly there were more secrets to impart, but he’d shared all he was capable of sharing in one day. Professing one’s soul took a lot out of a man.

  Beldon came around the table and slapped him on the back, laughing. ‘From the look on your face, you’d think I was the Spanish Inquisition, Val. I mean, we have plans to make. The way I see it, we have to convince Philippa that you were play-acting that night and all for a good cause, paint you as the noble fellow you are, and convince her to put her trust in you again.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy,’ Valerian groused, shutting the greenhouse door behind them. The weather seemed exceptionally cold after the humid warmth of the orangery.

  ‘Well, it would be easy if she was here to be convinced,’ Beldon drawled, stopping to stare at the back side of Roseland, looming impressively in all its sandstone majesty. They began the short trek to the back terrace. Beldon stopped shy of the granite steps. ‘Aha! I have an idea.’

  ‘Oh, no, your ideas—’ Valerian began.

  ‘Are good ideas,’ Beldon finished for him, fixing him with a stern stare. ‘Listen, here’s your “situation” as it were: you’ve just returned from years away and have never really lived here since you came of age. You find there is much to be done to make Roseland liveable, modernised.’ Beldon pitched his voice dramatically. ‘But, alas, you are a feeble man with no brain for interior design. If left to your own devices, you’d have striped chintz curtains with polka-dot-satin bed comforters.’

  ‘I see where you’re going with this.’ Valerian glared. ‘You want me to ask Philippa to redecorate Roseland.’

  Beldon shrugged. ‘She’ll do it anyway if you marry her. Might as well get a jump on it.’

  Valerian laughed at his friend’s practicality. ‘You’re an optimist.’

  Beldon sobered from his earlier jocularity. ‘I mean to see you both happy. She doesn’t have to choose you unless she wants to. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, to know all that happened, happened for me. I was the heir. You can’t sugarcoat the bottom line, Val. I was the one who benefited most from Father’s choices. It’s been a hard discovery, finding out that your sister and best friend gave up their personal happiness for your benefit.’

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Valerian put in, foolishly thinking for a minute that might ease Beldon’s guilt.

  ‘Ah, but she will. To win her, you’ll have to tell her everything,’ Beldon said. ‘Making a clean breast of it will probably make your road with her easier to travel.’

  Valerian scuffed his foot in the dirt in mild protest. ‘Since when did the shortest distance between two points become confession?’

  ‘Since confession was good for the soul,’ Beldon laughed, stomping the mud from his boots as they mounted the terraced steps of Roseland.

  Beldon was right. He did have to tell Philippa. He’d seen how painful the story had been for Beldon and he did not relish going through it again with Philippa. But it would go a long way in explaining things to her.

  However, Valerian was acutely aware that it might not go far enough. He acknowledged what Beldon had not yet realised. He’d led a very different life the nine years he’d been gone and he had a reputation to contend with from that life. Mr Danforth had made that blatantly clear at the dinner table. But there were other ‘pigeons’ too from his time abroad that would come home to roost, pigeons far more damaging than his wenching. It would only be a matter of time before they migrated north.

  Reputations could be damnable things, Lucien Canton reflected, rereading with ill-concealed glee the extensive missive that had arrived in the mails from London. He splayed his hands wide on the smooth surface of the cherrywood desk that denoted his power at the Provincial Bank of Truro.

  He came in daily to read the post and the week-old Times financial section and to conduct private business for the bank. The local squires and gentry found it comforting to apply directly to him for a loan. It lent an air of status to know that they were able to do business with a viscount’s son. Lucien traded on that cachet liberally and often.

  Danforth knocked and stuck his head in Lucien’s elegant, private office. ‘Good news, I hope?’ he asked solicitously.

  Lucien smiled and said only, ‘Yes, very good. Thank you for asking.’ He’d learned the power of information was a highly prized commodity. He had no intention of letting anyone, especially not that status-sucking, tailcoat-riding, self-fashioned banker, Danforth, in on his latest on dit. Technically, it wasn’t an ‘on dit’ yet, but it would be when he chose to let it out. And really, the gossip would be the aftermath. All the action would have occurred already.

  It was all Lucien could do to refrain from rubbing his hands together in unabashed joy. He re-read it a third time. It seemed the Viscount St Just had participated in an ill-fated rebellion in a town called Negush. There’d been a massacre, the town had burned. Women and children had died brutally. St Just had failed to quell the rebellion before such atrocities occurred.

  Lucien had no idea where Negush was and since he had no mining interests there, he cared very little what part of the map it was on. But St Just would care a great deal if such information got out. If the tale was told in just the right way, St Just could be made out to be a murderer of innocents, which he likely was, even indirectly. If Lucien spun the tale skillfuly enough, he could have the ton thinking St Just capable of treason for his part in the uprising. At the very best, St Just would hang. Not even peers were immune from treason, especially not if his father and cronies at Whitehall decided to make an example of them. At the least, the man would hang in a different way. The ton would not countenance a man capable of such actions either from his own negligence in quelling the rebellion before it got out of hand or from actual participation in such meaningless bloodshed.

  St Just would pay and Philippa would come running to him. Really, Lucien thought, he couldn’t lose. Philippa would shun Valerian and congratulate herself on avoiding being taken in by such a monster, or, if she had fallen for the man, she’d come running, willing to bargain all she had for his clearance. Lucien would be in a prime position to offer that protection, to call off his father’s watchdogs.

  Maybe he would look up Negush on the map after all, since apparently he owed the success of his future to the little speck. Lucien walked to the small sideboard and poured himself a brandy and toasted his imminent success.

  Chapter Eleven

  The conflagration was spreading rapidly. Soon the flames and smoke would reach the unprotected villagers caught between the oncoming Ottoman army and the burning remains of their homes. Surprised and unsuspecting, women and children had run into the night, giving no thought to where they ran, thinking only of immediate escape from the scorching inferno that consumed their village.

  A child fell. A woman screamed. The carnage of Turkish retribution had begun. Under the cover of darkness, Valerian did what he could to protect a few of them. In the heat of battle, who could say with any certainty that it was he who had killed an Ottoman soldier or a Phanariot revolutionary fighting desperately with whatever weapons were at hand?

  Through stealth and a warrior’s skill, Valerian made his way toward the burning huts, yelling her name. After all, he’d promised Dimitri he’d do what he could. The smoke sucked the very breath from hislungs, rendering his voic
e hoarse, the flames licking dry the cold sweat from his body. Someone cried out his name, barely audible above the roar of fire and the screams of panic.

  Valerian turned towards the sound. There she was, as foolish, as selfless as ever, a sword in one hand, her eyes wild, holding off two soldiers, using her body as a shield to protect the three children with her.

  She did not stand a chance. If she was lucky, the soldiers would cut her down before realising what a prized prisoner she’d make, sister to one of the Phanariot leaders. She deserved better. She’d not asked for any of this. She’d pleaded with her brother to take the peaceful surrender the Ottomans had offered.

  Valerian hefted his knife and drew his other dagger. He would need them both along with speed and surprise. He began to run, issuing a hoarse roar with the remnants of his voice. It was enough. The soldier closest to him looked in his direction. Valerian threw his knife, taking the man in the throat. He covered the distance, leaping over the fallen man’s body, and made quick work of his comrade.

  His hands were soaked in blood, but he took no time to wipe them off. Fire was his biggest enemy now. ‘Help the children. Give me the baby,’ he yelled hoarsely over the flames to Natasha, who had already grabbed the oldest child’s hand so as not to lose him in the tumult. The girl gave him the baby she’d so diligently cradled and took Natasha’s other hand. Valerian put the baby in his left arm, leavinghis knife hand free. He needed it twice before they gained the dark sanctuary of the forest.

  The horrors of the night were not over. Ottomans burst into their safe harbour, skewering Natasha in the side with a wicked curved blade. The beautiful young woman fell. Valerian charged like a bull, taking one man down by sheer force, his blade ripping into him in retribution. He fought like the devil himself, stabbing, slicing, killing, aware only briefly that the boy had picked up Natasha’s blade to help him. When he was done, the ground ran red from his efforts, the last Ottoman fighter slain from his beserk rage. But some time in the fight, the boy had fallen too and lay deathly still not far from Natasha. He had failed Dimitri. One of the children was already dead.