His Unexpected Bride

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  “I was thinking how perfect it seemed to be for you.”

  “For me?” He shook his head. “Do not paint me with the glories of great heroes, Tess. I am not your knight in shining armor, nor your prince who has come to rescue you from that dragon.”

  “But you are much like that hawk.” She raised her hand. “Flying high above and considering the world, alone with your thoughts as you keep yourself apart from everyone and everything else.”

  “I doubt that is what my ancestors had in mind when this crest was designed.”

  “Mayhap, but mayhap not.”

  His mouth twisted into the caricature of a smile. “If you had the misfortune to meet my brother, you would know at least one Hawksmoor wishes to sample every bit of the world and its pleasures.”

  “Is your brother in London?”

  “He seldom leaves Town. Here, he has his club and his tie-mates and his mistresses.”

  “Mistresses? More than one?”

  His smile became more sincere. “You derided me for thinking of you as a bumpkin, but I suspect from that question you are more naïve than you wish to own to being. A man can have as many mistresses as he can afford.”

  “And what about you, Cameron?”

  She had thought he might not answer, but he said, “I never found it prudent to be involved with more than one woman at a time.”

  Tess was unsure if she should be comforted or uneasy at that comment. Cameron did not intend to become involved with her now. Did that mean he had a mistress or … she closed her eyes in despair. What if he had been coming to London to call upon his fiancée? She had not given thought to the idea that more lives than their own might be ruined by this marriage.

  As they climbed another set of stairs and stepped out into the upper hallway, which was filled with plants in pots of all shapes and sizes, Tess wondered if she was somehow dreaming the whole of this. Imagining she was married to a stranger made more sense than the jungle before her eyes. She could name only a few of the plants. The rest were ones she had never seen before.

  “This is incredible!” she exclaimed as she tried to take it all in at once.

  Behind her, Jenette was once again whispering, “Oh, my!”

  “I did not know,” Tess added, quickening her pace so she could walk beside Cameron, “that you enjoyed having flowers about.”

  “Why should you know that?” He did not slow his steps, but did lower his voice when a maid edged past them in the hall made narrow by the broad leaves of some flower Tess did not recognize. “What do you know of me other than I made a mistake that has upset our lives?”

  She grasped his sleeve, halting the procession. When she motioned for Jenette to go with Cameron’s valet along the hall to wherever they were bound, she did not let Cameron draw his sleeve out of her hand. “Would you please stop it?”

  “Me?” Genuine surprise widened his eyes. “Stop what?”

  “This constant grousing.”

  “I know you sing oh be easy, but I cannot.”

  “I what?”

  “You do not complain when you have every reason to. I forget that you are not familiar with Town cant.”

  She shrugged, but continued to hold on to his coat. “I do have many reasons to complain, and I would if I thought it would do any good. However, nothing can be done until you seek the advice of your solicitor. I believe that it would be easier on both of us to accept what has happened for now—”

  “I cannot accept it!”

  “I said for now.” She released his sleeve. “You might find, Cameron, that you can endure this with more equanimity if you would stop assuming I am delighted to be your wife. You may be the son and the brother of a duke, but you apparently find that fact far more impressive than I do.”

  He halted her from walking past him by putting out his arm. “Are you always this disagreeable?”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you trying to be at daggers drawn with me on the few occasions when you deign to talk with me?” she asked.

  “Because it is simpler.”

  “Than what?”

  His arm swept around her, tugging her toward him and giving her the answer she should have guessed. A hushed huskiness added fervor to his words as he murmured, “Do not think to use these airs of innocence to betwattle me.”

  “It is no pretense. Simply an unthinking question.”

  “Unthinking?” He laughed quietly. “Too often, I find myself thinking of holding you like this and even closer, Tess.”

  Although she longed to remain in his embrace, she put her hands on his arm and pushed it away. He did not release her gaze as willingly. Knowing she should look away, she did not. Her nails bit into her palms as she fought to keep her hands from reaching up to caress his cheek, darkened with the shadow of more than a day’s growth of beard. Her fingertips tingled as she imagined letting them sweep across his rough skin.

  “Ah, Lord Hawksmoor, I …” The butler gulped nearly as loudly as Jenette had yesterday in front of the inn. “Pardon me, my lord.”

  Tess dragged her gaze from Cameron’s to see the butler’s face fall with consternation. When she heard what most remarkably sounded like a chuckle from Cameron, she was amazed to see him smiling. She wanted to ask why, but was constrained by the butler’s announcement that the baggage was on its way upstairs.

  Cameron nodded, then walked toward the front of the house. Tess, her curiosity unsatisfied, for she suspected the butler had planned to speak to Cameron of other matters than the luggage, followed. When she reached the end of the hall, she was surprised that no window offered a view of the Square. Instead, a simple table almost invisible beneath the wild profusion of leaves sat between two doors facing each other across the hall.

  Opening the door to the left, Cameron motioned for her to enter. The light from the hallway was swallowed by the golden shadows of the walnut furniture arranged elegantly in front of an unlit hearth. Around the furniture and in front of the tall window and edging each wall between the two closed doors were more pots with plants. A few were blooming, but the dim light consumed the color. When he drew her through the door, her slippers nearly disappeared into the royal blue carpet. She paid no attention as she stared up at the painting hanging above the mantel. It was of an orchard with a grand manor house in the distance. Beneath one tree, a lad sat, reading a book that appeared to have pictures of apples, although it might have been meant to show he had picked the fruit from that tree. The lad had hair as dark as Cameron’s, and she wondered if it was a portrait of him as a child.

  He allowed her no time to admire the grand frescoes and the art parading along the walls of what she realized was a sitting room. He drew her through one of the other doors. She faltered, for, set in a shadowed alcove, was a magnificent bed. Curtains that gleamed like cloth-of-gold were draped around it, but could not hide the carving that climbed all the way up the testers and even along the façade of the wooden canopy. Stag, foxes, and rabbits ran before hunters who were giving chase on foot and on horseback. Over their heads swooped a trio of birds. Hawks, she realized.

  The bed was more than twice as wide as hers at home—at her father’s house. Trying to act nonchalant, instead of revealing how she could far too easily imagine sleeping in such a grand bed with the man who was now her husband, she looked out into the other room and saw Jenette had the third door, the one closest to the front of the house, open. From what she could see, it led to a dressing room. Odd that it would be on the far side of the sitting room, but it was built against the front wall of the house, so that might explain its location. There were so many puzzles in this room, but the greatest one was Cameron Hawksmoor.

  Untying her bonnet, she took it off. Setting it on the table beside the window that was as tall as the one in the sitting room gave her something to do with her hands instead of kneading them together as she had been doing since they entered the room.

  “I trust you will be quite comfortable
here, Tess.” Cameron pointed to a bellpull next to the bed. “That will ring in the kitchen, so you may let Mrs. Sheridan, the cook, know when you want a breakfast tray brought to you.”

  “There is no breakfast-parlor in the house?” Oh, how grateful she was to speak of everyday matters, even though they were standing in this splendid chamber.

  “There was one, but what use have I had for one when I have been living here by myself? It has been simpler for me to enjoy my coffee and the daily newspaper in the privacy of my rooms.”

  “I will make every effort not to intrude upon your habits, Cameron.”

  “You may do as you wish.” He walked back out into the sitting room, pausing to cup the leaf of one plant. He glanced at her and hastily dropped it. “It matters little, for I expect I shall soon be able to obtain legal assistance to end our marriage. Until then, you are to stay here and make yourself quite at home.”

  “Staying here with you might not be wise.”

  “Why not? Do you have someplace else to go?”

  “A guest’s chamber would be more appropriate.”

  He smiled tautly. “Ah, now I see your concern. You need not worry about your husband demanding his espousal rights in yon bed, Tess. This is your room while you are here. I will have my own chambers on the far side of the hall. That will satisfy your fear about my encroaching upon your virtue, I assume.”

  “Yes.” She was about to add more, then saw the intensity in his eyes. He wanted to pretend now that the kisses they had enjoyed last night had never happened, although she had been certain he would kiss her again if they had remained much longer in the hallway. That did not unnerve her as much as the discovery of how much she longed for him to kiss her again … and again.

  “Then you must stay here. Although it may not be to your liking, you are my wife, and it behooves me to take proper care of you until the proceedings are completed.”

  Tess nodded in resignation, but she wondered if a divorce would be as easy as he expected. If not, her life would be enmeshed with Cameron Hawksmoor’s for longer than either of them wanted.

  Eight

  “My lord, your—”

  A lanky form pushed Harbour aside from the doorway of the small parlor as if the servant had no more feelings than one of the velvet ottomans. Tess glanced at Cameron, who had been working on a letter to the solicitor while she had been writing a note of her own. She hoped Brenda Rappaport was in London. The woman who lived in the neighboring house of Tess’s late grandmother had always made Tess feel welcome. Would Mrs. Rappaport have some advice for her now?

  She folded the half-finished note and set it on the table beside her as she watched a man stride into the room as if it belonged to him. He smiled broadly and with obvious anticipation. His tousled, rabbit-brown hair had thinned to near extinction on his high forehead. His eyes were almost lost in the deep hollows of his face, and his expression pulled his thin lips into a parody of a grin.

  Tess did not flinch as his gaze settled on her. She met it evenly, but in silence. The elegant cut of the man’s dark coat and breeches bespoke a ready acquaintance with wealth and authority, yet they could not hide his spindly limbs. Bony hands emerged from the lace at the wrists of his sleeves. It was not a natural state for him, because his skin hung loosely on him. Mayhap he had been ill.

  “Russell, what are you doing here?” Cameron asked as he came to his feet, closing the letter he had been penning.

  Tess stared. This gaunt man was Cameron’s brother the duke? She looked again and saw only a passing resemblance. If Cameron had not spoken his brother’s name, she would not have guessed them to be related. Only their height and blue eyes were similar.

  The balding man smiled and held out his hand toward the door. A woman appeared by his side. Tess forced herself not to stare at a carrot-topped woman, whose full curves suggested too many chocolates and too little activity. The heavy paint on her face concealed her age but hardened every feature.

  “Are you going to forget your customary gentlemanly manners, Cameron? Come here and greet Isabel.” The duke’s scratchy voice resembled an unoiled shutter hinge being played with by the wind. “She is a very dear friend.”

  “Very dear,” seconded the garish woman. Her outrageous accent exposed her low class beginnings in one of London’s decrepit streets. Holding out her pudgy hand, she pushed it directly in Cameron’s face.

  Tess clenched her hands in her lap as she waited for the explosion of fury she could see tensing the muscles across Cameron’s jaw. She had not seen his anger explode, and she feared it would be fearsome. She could imagine no other reason why he struggled to keep all his emotions in check.

  “Miss—” Cameron glanced at his brother.

  “Miss van der Falloon.”

  Cameron almost smiled at the absurdly fancy name for this bit of fluff. He forced himself not to look at Tess. If she could not overcome her country manners and giggled at this ludicrous name, he feared he would lose any control over his own mirth. The temptation to grin vanished when his brother’s mistress waved her hand impatiently in his face, triumph oozing from every licentious angle of her sharp features. He had thought his brother, now that he held the ducal title, would have better taste in women than the she-cats that crawled through the alleys around Covent Garden.

  Miss van der Falloon—How had she devised that name?—smiled more broadly as he bent over her hand. Her expression, which revealed a pair of broken teeth, dimmed when he did not raise her hand to his lips. She might have his brother wrapped around her fingers, but not him. He released her hand and folded his own behind him as he regarded her without expression.

  Not willing to be defeated by a show of good manners, she put her hand on Russell’s arm and cooed, “My dear, dear Russell ’as been so anxious fer ye and me to meet. When ’e ’eard ye’d returned to Town, ’e positively leaped outta our bed to rush to call ’pon ’is little brother.”

  Cameron’s jaw tightened with the curses he wanted to let fly. How could Russell parade this tawdry woman through Cameron’s house and through Town? Did Russell believe Cameron would accept this strumpet when both of them knew Russell would soon tire of her and seek another bed? If Russell thought—

  “Please sit,” came a melodic voice from beside him, “and I shall ring for some hot chocolate. The morning air still has a chill in the wake of last night’s rain, doesn’t it?”

  He turned to see Tess coming to her feet. She was smiling, every inch the gracious hostess who would not be unsettled even if the Russian army marched through the parlor. As her hand swept out toward the settee, he caught it in his. Too tightly, he realized when she winced, her smile faltering.

  He let his gaze linger on her, pleased by how charming she looked in her simple gown of a soft ivory that added more fire to her glorious hair. Her pretty face had no need for cosmetics, and the scent that came from her was sweet, not thick with perfume like the woman beside his brother.

  Cameron’s pleasure vanished when his brother asked, “Wherever did you find this lovely creature? I had heard that you had returned to Town, but the on dits did not suggest you had brought such endearing company with you.”

  “I found her at her father’s house.”

  His brother chortled. “A bold move, Cameron, but one worthy of a great war hero, I must say.”

  Blast and double blast! He did not have to look at Tess to know she was regarding him with astonishment and that gentle aura of disappointment she showed each time she discovered he had withheld yet another fact from her. She had been reticent about the flowers and bushes in the hallway and in her private chambers, but he had seen the questions in her eyes. Could she guess he balked at explaining because to invite her into his private life even that small bit suggested she might remain there? That this whole debacle was real?

  The great war hero … Balderdash! He was a coward who had let brandy gain the better of him and steal his wits and his future plans from him in one drunken jest.

  �
��Will you introduce me to your delightful companion?” Russell asked with more than a touch of impatience.

  “This is Tess.” Cameron knew he should not hesitate, but he did before adding, “Tess Hawksmoor, my wife.”

  “Wife?” repeated his brother. With a chuckle, he walked across the room, steering his garish convenient ahead of him. “This is, indeed, a surprise, Cameron.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  “I did not expect to be meeting your wife today. I had not even heard you were betrothed. Father would have been very pleased to see you settled. He always said you would be wise and set up housekeeping with the proper woman, and I must say you chose a properly pretty one.” He seemed unaware of Isabel’s jealous scowl, and Cameron knew his brother would soon be giving the woman her congé if she insisted on being in a muff.

  “Not as pleased as he would have been to see you wed with an heir on its way.”

  “Ah, that is true.” Russell reached past him and grasped Tess’s hand. “Tess Hawksmoor, is it? I welcome you to the family, my dear.”

  His quick tug nearly pulled Tess off her feet. As he kissed her stoutly, Isabel fumed. That did not surprise Cameron. What startled him was his own reaction. Before he could halt himself, he jerked Tess away from his brother. Her whispered thanks would not reach any ears but his.

  “Do not be a jealous bridegroom.” Russell laughed as if he had made a great joke. “Then she will have the right to be jealous as well, and you would not want that, I know.”

  Cameron’s curse was silent, but he said only, “Tess, please ring for chocolate and coffee now.”

  She slipped around him, as ethereal as a wraith. When she reached the bellpull and gave it a tug, he could not miss the dismay in her eyes. He knew it was not because of his brother’s overly passionate kiss, but because Russell had suggested Cameron would soon give any wife cause to be jealous that his affections were not offered solely to her. Dash it! Did she expect him to be faithful to this mockery of a marriage?

  He could not ask that now. Not when his brother, who could not keep from repeating every bit of poker-talk he had ever heard, was within earshot. Instead he said, “I trust there is some reason for your call at this early hour, Russell. You seldom are up before noon. I collect you are in need of funds.”