by Jaimey Grant
Leandra dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate and her eyes flew up to stare at the crazy man sitting across from her. “Are you daft, sir?” she asked with her normal candor. “I mean, are you an escaped Bedlamite?”
She didn’t give him a chance to reply. “You are kind, sir. I thank you for the meal and the sympathetic ear, but you needn’t feel that such desperate means are called for in helping me. I’m certain you like to help people, but marriage? Is that not going much too far, my lord? I assume you are a lord of some sort based on the landlord’s attitude but perhaps you are escaped from your keeper? I mean, even lords can lose their minds. The newspapers overflow with such stories...” Her voice drifted to silence.
He didn’t smile, but she didn’t expect him too, either. He just gave her that same blank look that he had been giving her since the first time she had seen him. It was a probing look that made her uneasy. As if he was trying to read her mind.
“I assure you, I am not mad nor do I jest,” he said in a tone that supported his avowal. Then, with a look that was almost amused, he admitted, “And helping people is not something I am known to do.”
“I don’t even know who you are. Everything about you suggests that you are a peer. Yet, you know I am baseborn and you still ask me to marry you. Why?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder and then unashamedly contradicted what he had told her no more than a few seconds earlier. “You need help; I need a wife. It sounds like a fair exchange to me.”
Leandra’s eyes widened. The gentleman was very handsome in a non-fashionable way, very elegant…and very dark. Everything about him was dark. He wore a black cloak over a black jacket, a black shirt, and black buckskins with black topboots. Even his cravat was black. His gloves, tossed on the table beside his plate, were black leather. His black hair was worn long and tied back with a black velvet ribbon. His eyes were black and his skin was tanned dark. She wondered a trifle breathlessly if his handkerchief and smallclothes were black as well. He quirked a black brow at her even as she assessed his appearance.
“Do I pass muster on a purely physical level?” he asked, voice tinged with sarcasm.
“Do you have a black horse?” Leandra heard herself asking before she could stop herself.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped him. “As a matter of fact, I have several black horses as well as a black cat and a black dog.”
“Oh, my,” she murmured.
Silence.
“Are you going to marry me or not? I have no time to persuade you to change your mind,” he said as he tired of the novelty of baiting someone new. He was sick of the inn, sick of being stranded, and sick of her odd silence.
She thought quickly. He could be one of those depraved lunatics that preyed on young defenseless women. Or he could be sincere in his need for a wife. Leandra wondered how many more times an opportunity like this would come her way. She stared into the gentleman’s eyes, looking for…something.
And then she saw it. It flashed through his dark eyes and she actually saw it. He was human after all, she thought with satisfaction. She saw a glimmer of uncertainty in his gaze.
“I have one question, sir,” she said determinedly. “You have not mentioned whether you need an heir.”
Derringer gave her a benign look. “I will eventually. I see no reason to force you to do anything you find distasteful,” he added dryly.
She blushed. “I did not mean to imply that I find you distasteful, sir,” she replied, thinking quite the opposite. “I merely wondered if you wanted a true marriage or one in name only. You do not know me after all and I would be very much surprised should you find me in the least attractive.”
She met his gaze squarely and had not the least bit of self-pity on her round face. She appeared…accepting.
“Truly?” was all Derringer drawled in reply to her self-deprecating comment. He could have told her that there was something about her that attracted him like a fly to honey. He remained silent on that score and allowed her to think what she would. “Are you accepting my proposal, then?”
Leandra took a deep breath. “Yes.”
Springs tapped on the door, not allowing the duke any time to actually be surprised at her relatively easy capitulation. He snapped distractedly at the landlord to enter.
The slimy little man bowed low and said obsequiously, “The blacksmith is ‘ere, yer grace. Shall I send ‘im in?”
“No, I will take him to my curricle myself in a moment. Leave.” The man was gone before the command had fully left Derringer’s mouth.
“Your grace?” Leandra whispered. “Oh, dear God.”
“Did I not mention I hold a dukedom?” he asked far too innocently.
“No,” Leandra breathed, feeling just a trifle put out and more than a little unsure of herself. “I’m sure the fact just slipped your mind, your grace.”
“Do not be a shrew,” Derringer remarked, his own nerves frayed to the breaking point from his hectic day. He stood to take his leave.
She inhaled, the movement swelling her chest and drawing his grace’s eye to her not insignificant bosom. Ignoring his ungentlemanly reaction, she asked, “Which dukedom do you hold?”
“Derringer.”
He stared at her as if expecting some sort of reaction but all she could do was stare back. She’d never heard of the Duke of Derringer.
He straightened, his fingers tightening around his black gloves. “My mother’s cousin is a bishop. I’ll see him tonight about a special license. We’ll marry tomorrow.”
He was a wee bit irked that she didn’t seem to know who he was. Everyone knew of the Duke of Derringer. He was infamous and feared throughout the kingdom. Where had she been that she’d not even made the connection that he was Lord Heartless?
“Tonight? Tomorrow?” she sputtered. “How is that possible?”
“I have to marry by the twenty-ninth, my dear. We will marry tomorrow just to make sure everything is legal and legitimate. And cousin Horace has been after me to marry this age so getting the license will not be difficult to obtain. I am a duke with connections, after all.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. She stiffened her spine. “Very well, your grace. We shall marry tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll arrange a room for you tonight. We’ll marry from here and I will escort you to the Crescent after the wedding.” He walked to the door and turned the knob. Then he paused and turned back to the young woman at the table.
“By the way, what is your name?”
2
Leandra Merrily Harcourt married the third Duke of Derringer one early morning in late October. Shivers threatened to send her to the floor, the enormity of what she’d just done closing in on her. She knew so little about this man she now called husband.
The local vicar ended the ceremony. Leandra barely managed a full breath when the duke suddenly pulled her against his tall form and pressed his lips to hers. Shocked gasps came from the vicar and his curate.
For Leandra, time slowed. The embrace shocked her as much as their audience but for a very different reason. This man she’d known for mere hours manhandled her and she felt...excitement. She gasped and he released her with a mocking grin.
“Thank you, vicar,” the duke said as he escorted Leandra from the room. He tossed a few gold coins at the man as payment for services rendered and then handed the curate several pound notes as a donation to the church. “I have money to spare now,” he said carelessly to Leandra’s questioning look. “Thanks to you, wife.”
His voice held a note of something that made Leandra shiver uneasily. Oh, Lord, what had she done?
She knew exactly what she’d intended. She had leapt at the chance to become somebody’s—anybody’s—wife. Seduced by his manner, all ease and power, she’d craved the same feeling. She wanted to be able to act in any way she pleased without fear or threat. The penniless bastard daughter of a deceased earl had very little actual freedom.
Derringer settled his wife into
his repaired curricle. He pondered the conversation he’d had with the blacksmith just moments ago.
“Been cut, yer grace,” the large man said confidently.
“What the devil do you mean it’s ‘been cut?’”
The blacksmith didn’t even blink at the duke’s anger. “That there wheel’s been cut, yer grace, sawed near through. I would say as ‘ow someone ain’t wishful of yer safe return.”
“Of all the…” the duke muttered. First, he had to marry to get a fortune that rightfully belonged to him and now that certain someone who was trying to kill him had struck yet again. “The devil!”
“Are you quite well?” his wife asked suddenly, ripping him back to the present.
He glowered at her bespectacled face. “Yes,” he growled as he swung himself up onto the seat next to her.
The girl nodded in apparent satisfaction. “Why have you no valet, your grace?” she asked, eyebrows raised in avid curiosity.
“What the devil do I need one of those whiny, sniveling creatures for? Bleeding milksops, all,” he muttered as he urged his perfectly matched blacks into motion. Personal servants knew a man’s every secret, he reminded himself.
“Perhaps you should try for a little calm, Lord Derringer,” she suggested, her mild tone having the opposite effect.
He pulled back on the reins, bringing the horses to a standstill. They had yet to leave the innyard and he saw they were drawing a crowd of curious onlookers. He didn’t care.
“And what good, wife, will calm do me, hmm?” he inquired silkily. “I have not the least reason to restrain my temper and no Friday-faced shrew of a wife is going to convince me otherwise!”
Leandra stared at her husband with rising indignation and dismay. He really was as devilish as his black garb suggested. This was not a very promising start for their married life.
“You are behaving like a child, your grace,” she retorted with the same unruffled calm she’d endeavored to display every moment since she had met him.
The duke’s mouth dropped open. He made as if to say something, snapped his mouth shut, and gave the horses the office to start moving. The first ten minutes of their journey was accomplished in silence. Leandra used the time to study her husband with unabashed curiosity.
His facial features were really too harsh for actual handsomeness but she was sure that he was very popular with the ladies despite his looks. The thought of her husband in the arms of some other lady caused a strange stirring of disquiet in her stomach. She didn’t want to imagine any such thing but she was nearly positive that he had a mistress tucked away somewhere.
“Do you have a mistress, your grace?” she asked with a benign look. She met his gaze, one brow tilted slightly.
“Pardon me?” His wife’s candor was going to be a constant trial, he suspected. “That is not a topic for gently bred females,” he snapped. Perhaps he should have married a woman who had at least heard of him. She’d not have the courage to talk back.
“You are a one to talk about propriety,” his wife scoffed. “Besides, illegitimacy is not a topic suitable for drawing room conversation and yet that’s precisely what I am.”
“That has nothing to do with my mistress,” he snapped. Really, why did the chit want to know something like that?
“Very well, your grace,” she returned equably. “I will desist from questioning you about her. Perhaps I will meet her one day,” she mused.
“Over my dead body,” Derringer muttered.
“Oh, never say such a thing, your grace!” Leandra exclaimed with feigned horror. “I would hate to see you die just so I could meet your light-o’-love.”
Derringer’s eyes narrowed. His bride of only a few hours gazed back with wide-eyed concern, but he thought a twinkle of mirth lurked behind her thick spectacles.
“Why do you wear those ugly things?” he grumbled.
“What ugly things?”
He pointed his whip at her face and nodded.
“My spectacles, sir?” She laughed delightedly, a dimple peeking out of her left cheek. “I can’t see without them, your grace.”
“But they’re ugly,” the duke insisted stubbornly.
“What is that to the point?” she asked with a twinkle. “It is not as if my own looks will be improved overmuch with their swift removal. And I find I much prefer to be able to see where we are going and where we’ve been.”
Derringer looked around at the boring pastureland through which they were currently passing and wondered if perhaps she needed stronger lenses in her spectacles. He glanced at her again and was a trifle disconcerted to realize she watched him very closely. He frowned at her. She smiled back.
He went on the attack as he always did when he felt cornered. He let his dark eyes slide over her insolently until her smile disappeared and she flushed. How he managed this and kept his team on the road had everything to do his exceptional skill as a first rate whip.
With just the right amount of contempt in his deep voice, Derringer inquired, “And the ugly bonnet and cloak? I noticed your dress is about as becoming as a flour sack. If you were raised as Harwood’s daughter I would have thought he would dress you as such.”
Leandra experienced more hurt by his slur on her father than his assessment of her appearance. She knew she was a drab goose compared to the beautiful swans her new husband was probably used to in Society, but he implied that her father didn’t love her enough to outfit her properly. It brought tears to her eyes.
Damming the torrents that threatened to destroy her carefully maintained composure, Leandra replied, “I was told to leave my pretty frocks behind, your grace. The countess would not allow me to take anything given to me by my papa.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Not even the locket with his picture and my mama’s. It is the only thing I had that showed how he loved my mama.” Her voice broke pitifully and she turned away from the duke lest he think she was trying to win sympathy from him.
Derringer felt like the beastly cad he was. He’d not intended to make her cry. And she was trying to hide it from him. He was an unfeeling cad, though, and it was best she learn that early on in the marriage lest her expectations be raised. He ignored her until she regained her poise and sat like a statue beside him. Guilt pricked his conscience. He’d had no business dragging an innocent girl into his bumblebroth.
But what did he care? He really was the heartless knave Society had dubbed him. Lord Heartless, he thought with mocking contempt. How apt. And he was about to prove to himself once and for all that he had no conscience, that he didn’t care, and that he was the worthless creature that his father had told him he was.
Leandra’s first view of her new home was misleading. She beheld the outer wall of Derringer Crescent, a medieval-inspired castle complete with crenelated towers, rat-infested dungeons, and Gothic arches. The wall that surrounded the keep and the living areas of the estate was actually in good repair. The edifice sat on a high cliff complete with crashing waves below and phenomenal views above, like something from an Ann Radcliffe novel. Or Northanger Abbey, Leandra’s personal favorite by Jane Austen.
Her mouth formed an O of amazement as the portcullis was raised at a shout from the duke. It creaked and shook as it went up and the carriage went under the great spikes that lined the bottom of the contraption. She gazed around her eagerly and her rapt expression faded as if it had never been.
The front gardens were a disgrace. Tangled vines and weeds ran riot. The statues that were meant to be various sprites and goddesses of Greek and Roman mythology were so decayed as to be unrecognizable. It was late autumn but it appeared that the garden wouldn’t look much better in the warmer parts of the year either.
She glanced at her husband from the corner of her eye and noticed his rather pained expression. How much time did he actually spend at the Crescent? He looked as if he was as disappointed as she.
A groom scurried out from behind the castle and took charge of the horses. Leandra looked up at the high walls
and released a dismayed sigh. He expected her to live here? The walls were covered with ivy and lichen to the point that the gray of the stone was nearly invisible and many of the windows were blocked, allowing no light to enter.
Derringer looked down at the diminutive female at his side. She looked up at him in that moment, hazel eyes filled with sympathy. He tried to smile but found it impossible to do so. He had to leave her here, too. He couldn’t accomplish the many things he had set in motion with a wife riding his coattails.
“Come,” he ordered, holding out his hand. Her fingers wrapped around his. Her lack of hesitation sent a strange, warm sensation up his arm, a sensation he couldn’t name. She smiled up at him with what he assumed was encouragement. Did she realize he’d been from home for some time? She was proving to be a very observant young miss.
That could be a problem.
And she was his wife. The thought seemed to slam him in the stomach, robbing him of breath. Good God, he was married!
The Starks met them in the Great Hall. He gazed around, sharp eyes missing little. At least the interior of the castle was presentable. But why should he care when he was just going to abandon his new bride anyway?
“What do you think?” he asked in low tones that were unnecessary since his voice echoed around the vast area regardless.
“It’s…interesting,” Leandra offered with a grimace. Suits of armor lined the walls of the Great Hall, above which hung various weapons and instruments of torture and destruction. She shuddered at the barbarity of the décor, but at the same time, she thought it suited her husband’s volatile temperament.
“I can tell you hate it,” the duke mocked. “But get used to it, my dear, for this is where you stay.”
Stark cleared his throat and bowed. “Welcome home, your grace,” he solemnly intoned.
Mrs. Stark, the housekeeper, smiled uncertainly at Leandra and curtsied to her employer. “Your room is in readiness, your grace.” She sent an inquiring look to Mr. Stark.