Slightly Scandalous b-5

by Mary Balogh

  He gazed at her with squinted eyes, the smile still playing about his lips. "It would be nothing at all, sweetheart," he said. "Are you sorry last night happened?"

  "Of course I am sorry it happened," she said. "And it was all my fault. I ought not to have suggested the gamekeeper's hut in the first place. With a little imagination I might have guessed the danger I was leading us both into. But I did not. I had not armed myself for resisting what proved irresistible. You had. You would have stopped me. But I would not be stopped. It is all quite, quite lowering."

  "You did not enjoy it, then?" he asked her.

  "Of course-" She turned her head and glared at him. "Of course I enjoyed it. I am a woman and you are a man-a handsome, attractive man."

  "No!" He grinned at her. "Am I?"

  "Of course I enjoyed it," she said again. "But that has nothing to do with anything. Do you not see that? I wish it had not happened. Not only are we not betrothed, but we are not even thinking of becoming betrothed. We have never cultivated any deeper relationship than a light flirtation, and we engaged in that only because we were both stuck in Bath and were horridly bored. We have never taken our feigned betrothal seriously, though we have both enjoyed it, I believe, as a sort of lark that will soon be over and will leave us quite unscarred. Last night spoiled all that. Of course I wish it had not happened. If we are forced to marry, that one mistake on my part will have ruined both our lives."

  "We had better hope that we are not forced to marry, then," he said, the laughter gone from his eyes. "But did last evening have at least one positive result? Have you now abandoned your hatred of Viscountess Ravensberg?"

  "It was high time," she said with a sigh, turning away to look back toward the house, which, with its long mullioned windows looked very Elizabethan from this angle. "My feelings had become an embarrassment to me-and to her and Kit. She is a perfect lady and kind and warm-hearted too-all qualities I have hated in her because I do not possess them myself. But, yes, we came to an understanding last evening. Perhaps we will even become friends. Who knows? Stranger things have happened."

  "And Ravensberg?" he asked her. "Have you forgiven him?"

  She sighed again and held her hair back from her face with one arm. "I could not help thinking all last night," she said, "that if he had come home last summer without Lauren, he would perhaps not have been able to resist the pressure of expectation from his family and mine. He might have married me simply because he could find no way not to marry me. And I would have known, if not immediately, then long before now. I would have been trapped in a living hell. There is nothing to forgive. He would have married me four years ago, but I would not marry him. He owed me nothing last year. And perhaps I have been clinging to something that never really existed. I was in love-desperately so, but I am not sure being in love is any closer to real loving than being in lust is."

  "Are you in lust with me?" he asked.

  She turned to look at him again and laughed when she saw the laughter back in his eyes.

  "Oh, now that," she said, "I will not deny. You must know it anyway as I know it of you. It certainly would not be enough to carry us into any future, though. And so it is dangerous and must be resisted at all costs."

  She was standing too close to him. His hands reached out to catch her on either side of her waist and draw her against him. He lowered his head and kissed her softly, almost lazily, with slightly parted lips. She rested her hands on his shoulders and realized with a terrible sinking of the heart that there was going to be a yawning emptiness in her life where he had been after this farce had finally come to its end.

  "Though why you lust after me," she said when he lifted his head, "I will never know. I am so ugly."

  "What?" His eyes were alight with merriment. "In any other woman that would be a far from subtle fishing expedition for a compliment. But you mean it. Let me see. Let me have a good look at you."

  His eyes proceeded to roam her face while she wondered what on earth could have possessed her to utter such stupid words aloud. She had long ago given up lamenting her looks and envying Morgan hers. She was as she was. Anyone who did not like looking at her might simply look elsewhere.

  "You are not pretty, Free, or beautiful," he said-at least he was not going to resort to lying flattery. "You are something else, though, over and above both. You, my sweetheart, are plain gorgeous. I think I may forever afterward find all the pretty girls somewhat insipid."

  "How foolish!" She laughed. "Any more of such blatant flattery and I may toss you over the battlements in dead earnest."

  "I am in fear and trembling," he said, and bent down to scoop her up into his arms.

  "Put me down," she demanded indignantly.

  But he stepped against the battlements with her and lifted her higher. She shrieked, wrapped her arms tightly about his neck, and then found herself laughing helplessly.

  "Don't struggle," he said, laughing too, "or I may d-d-drop you, Free. Oops!"

  She shrieked again as he pretended to do just that.

  He set her down at last and she stood close to him, her face against his cravat, recovering from leftover laughter.

  "You wretch," she said. "I will get my revenge. See if I don't."

  "Free," he said softly, his chin against the top of her head, "this needs to be said. If we have made a child, I was as much a part of the making as you. We will marry, and we will make the best of the marriage both for the child's sake and for our own. We will not waste energy resenting each other and blaming ourselves and making ourselves unhappy by imagining that the other must be unhappy. We will do our best to rub along together. Agreed?"

  She was considerably shaken. She felt warm and safe standing against him, and uncharacteristically she welcomed the solid safety of his body. His words had changed nothing-and everything.

  . . . if we have made a child . . .

  "Agreed," she said.

  They stood against each other, neither seeming to know how to proceed.

  "We had better go back to the house," she said briskly, stepping back. I am hungry."

  "I'll go down those stairs ahead of you," he said. "They are remarkably steep. You may take my hand if you wish."

  Freyja lifted her chin to a sharp angle and glared at him along the length of her nose.

  "Uh-oh!" he said, raising his hands theatrically as if to defend himself from attack. "Now what the devil have I said?"

  "Don't you dare try to protect me!" she told him, her voice cold and haughty. "I came up the stairs without the helping hand of any insufferably hovering male. I will go down the stairs the same way."

  "Deuce take it," he said, shaking his head and returning his arms to his sides, "one cannot even be a gentleman with you, Free, without arousing your ire. Go ahead. Break your neck on the way down and I'll stand behind you, thankful you are not taking me down with you. Better yet, you can break my fall when I trip all over my boots."

  Freyja smiled to herself as she started down the steep spiral stairs.

  Joshua liked the Bedwyns and regretted the deception that was being perpetrated against them-though of course it might not prove to be a deception if he and Freyja were forced to marry after all.

  Rannulf and Judith were to return to Leicestershire the next day. They lived at Grandmaison Park with Lady Beamish, the Bedwyns' maternal grandmother, but she was in poor health and they did not want to be absent any longer.

  "We will see you again soon, Joshua," Judith said when she was taking her leave of everyone, "so this is not good-bye. I just hope you do not set your wedding date for a time when I am unable to travel. But that is extremely selfish of me. I will be very happy for you and Freyja wherever I am on that day."

  "You must be made of stern stuff to have taken on Free," Rannulf said, winking at him as they shook hands. "It will doubtless not be a tranquil marriage. She is not easily controlled. But my guess is that she has met her match. It is sure to be an interesting marriage."

  "I do not believe,
" Joshua said, "she can be controlled, easily or otherwise. It is perhaps a blessing that I like her as she is."

  Rannulf laughed appreciatively and punched him in the shoulder.

  Aidan seemed dour and humorless until one got to know him. He was certainly reticent and slow to laugh, or even to smile, but it was soon evident that he adored Eve and was devoted to their children. He spent much of the day before the christening and the days after with the children-playing with them, taking them walking and riding, demanding courtesy and obedience of them, but otherwise keeping them on a very loose rein.

  "They experienced all the terrors of rejection and insecurity after their parents died," he explained after Joshua had supervised the boy on his pony while Aidan gave the little girl a riding lesson one morning. "Even when they had been with Eve for a while and after I married her, someone tried to snatch them away as revenge against Eve for marrying me. It took a court case and the ruling of a magistrate to establish the fact that we are their legal guardians. If I have to spend the next twenty years of my life helping them believe that they belong somewhere, that they are loved unconditionally, that their world is a predominantly benign place, that they can dare to be happy, productive adults when they grow up, then I will consider those years well spent."

  "They are fortunate children," Joshua said, remembering the bleakness of his own childhood.

  "They have every right to be," Aidan told him. "Of course, we face the possibility of their insecurities surfacing again when Eve bears a child of our own, but that time is not yet, and we will deal with it when it does happen."

  Alleyne reminded Joshua of himself. Cheerful and always active, he nevertheless exuded a certain air of restlessness and aimlessness.

  "I envy you," he said when the two of them were alone together at breakfast after seeing Rannulf and Judith on their way. "You have your home and your estate to go to now that you have the title and your services in France are no longer required. And a marriage with someone you love to help you send down roots. I think you must love Free." He grinned. "I cannot imagine any other reason a man would want to marry her unless it was her fortune, and you obviously don't need her money."

  "I do not," Joshua agreed. "You probably are not lacking in funds yourself, though, or any of the other attributes necessary to attract a prospective bride, if that is what you want."

  "The trouble is," Alleyne said, "that I do not know what I want. If I were poor, I would have no choice but to take employment, would I? I suppose I would have found my niche long ago and been reasonably happy in it. And if I were poor, there would not be so many females setting their caps at me. Perhaps I would have pursued and won someone who loved me for myself, someone for whom I would happily give up my freedom. Rank and fortune are not without their problems."

  "Once upon a time," Joshua said, "I had neither, and on the whole I would have to admit you have a point."

  "Having said which," Alleyne said ruefully, rising from his place to help himself to more food from the sideboard, "I am not sure I would give up either even if I could. I have been thinking-with a little prodding from Wulf-of running for a seat in Parliament or taking some government appointment. As for marriage, I am in no hurry. Bedwyns are expected to be monogamous once they do marry. More than that, they are expected to love their spouses. I am not sure I am ready for that sort of commitment yet, if I ever will be. I hope you are. Freyja will demand it of you-with her fists if necessary."

  "Now that is a threat to put the fear of God into me," Joshua said. "I have been at the receiving end of one of those fists-at least my nose has-on two separate occasions."

  Alleyne threw back his head and laughed.

  "Good old Free," he said.

  Morgan was young and beautiful and on the verge of making her come-out in society. She would be presented to the queen next spring and remain in London to participate in all the frenzied social activities of the Season. With all her advantages of birth and fortune and looks, she could not fail to take the ton by storm and to be courted by every gentleman in search of a wife and a good number who would think of matrimony only after setting eyes on her.

  But she was not living for that day. She was not a giddy young girl with nothing in her head but beaux and parties.

  "It is all remarkably foolish," she said at dinner one evening, "all this faradiddle of a come-out and a Season. And the whole idea of a marriage mart is distasteful and remarkably lowering."

  "You are not afraid no one will bid for you, are you, Morg?" Alleyne asked.

  "I am afraid of no such thing," she said disdainfully, "so you may wipe that grin off your face, Alleyne. I am afraid of just the opposite. I expect to be mobbed by silly fops and ancient roués and earnest, dull men of all ages. All because of who I am. Not a one of them will know me or even wish to know me. All they will want is marriage with the wealthy younger sister of the Duke of Bewcastle."

  "Fortunately, Morgan," Aidan said, "you have the power to say no to any or all of them. Wulf is no tyrant and could not force you into a marriage against your will even if he were."

  "You will meet someone next spring," Eve said, "or the year after or the year after that, and there will be something about him that is different, Morgan. Something that stirs you here." She touched her heart. "And before you know it, even if you never intended to love or even to like him, you will know that there is no one else in the world for you but him."

  "Eve met Aidan," Freyja said, sounding exasperated, though there was a certain fond gleam in her eye as she looked at her sister-in-law, "and has become a hopeless romantic."

  "Yes, I have," Eve agreed, and laughed and blushed.

  "Well, I certainly do not expect to meet my future husband at the London marriage mart," Morgan said with a contemptuous toss of her head. "I will wait until I am five and twenty if I must, just like Freyja. She waited until she met just the right man." She looked at Joshua, approval in her eyes.

  "Even if there were a few hiccups along the way," Alleyne added.

  Joshua found that he did not dislike even Bewcastle. The man was cold, austere, distant. He took his meals with his family and joined them in the drawing room during the evenings. But apart from that he kept very much to himself. He did invite Joshua into his library after luncheon the day Rannulf and Judith left. Joshua guessed that such invitations were rare. He sank into the leather chair Bewcastle indicated before taking the one at the other side of the hearth himself.

  "You have been presented to most of the members of our family," he said, setting his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepling his fingers, "and to almost all our neighbors while we were at Alvesley for the christening. It was my intention when I came home from Bath to host an evening party or even a ball here in honor of your betrothal. But you may consider such an event undesirable. The betrothal is still of a temporary nature, I assume?"

  Joshua hesitated and found himself staring into the pale, inscrutable eyes of the duke. It seemed for a moment that he could almost read in those eyes a knowledge of what had happened during the evening at Alvesley.

  "As you pointed out in Bath," Joshua said, "and as I explained to Freyja before that, my betrothal is very real to me. Only she can end it. She has not yet spoken the final word on that."

  He had noticed before that Bewcastle did not seem disconcerted by lengthy silences. There was one now.

  "If you wish her to speak that final word," Bewcastle said at last, "then I trust you will make it desirable to her to do so. Freyja may be the last woman one would expect to be susceptible to a broken heart, but that fate is not unknown to her."

  "I know," Joshua said.

  "Ah." The ducal eyebrows went up.

  "I will see what Freyja thinks about a party or ball," Joshua said, feeling that he had had a brief glimpse into a side of Bewcastle that he kept very carefully hidden even from his own family. He cared about Freyja-not just about her good name and therefore the good name of the Bedwyns, but about her. He was afraid she w
as going to be hurt again.

  The library door clicked open behind him at that moment, and the ducal eyebrows arched even higher while his fingers curled about the handle of his quizzing glass. Joshua looked over his shoulder and saw that the intruder was young Becky, who peered around the door for a moment before stepping inside and shutting it carefully behind her.

  "I just woke up from my nap," she said very precisely in her piping little voice, "and Davy was gone and Nanny Johnson said I could come down. But Mama and Papa and everyone else have gone outside and I do not want to go to join them there because it is cold today."

  Bewcastle half raised his glass to his eye. "It would seem, then," he said, "that the only alternative is to remain indoors."

  "Yes," she agreed. But she did not respond to the implied suggestion that she was free to make herself at home in any part of the indoors except the library.

  "Hello, Uncle Joshua," she said as she passed him on her way to examine the object that had taken her attention-Bewcastle's quizzing glass. She took it from his surprised fingers, examined it closely, turned it over in her hands, and raised it to her eye. She looked up at him. "You look funny, Uncle Wulf."

  "I daresay I do," he said. "So does your eye."

  She went off into peals of giggles before turning and wriggling her way up onto his lap, leaning against his chest, and resuming her game with his glass.

  The thing was, Joshua thought as Bewcastle began a determined conversation about Penhallow, he looked both slightly uncomfortable and slightly pleased. He also sat very still as if he feared frightening the child away. It was Joshua's guess that nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

  Freyja was adamantly opposed to any public celebration of their betrothal at Lindsey Hall, as Joshua had expected.

  "Gracious heavens," she said when he asked her about it as they played a game of billiards later in the afternoon, "whatever next? A mock wedding? Enough is enough. I am going to quarrel with you very soon, Josh, and very publicly, whether you like it or not. This whole business is becoming tedious and ridiculous."