A Marquis in Want of a Wife

Autore

Louise Allen

Letto da

15,1K

Capitoli

Autore

Louise Allen

Letto da

15,1K

Capitoli

Harlequin

Chapter One

The scent of hothouse flowers still hung heavy in the warm air. The moonlight still sent pearly gleams through the foliage and the distant sound of music from the ballroom still wove its dreamlike spell. And then, like the music of fairyland when the mask of enchantment slipped, it stopped, leaving a silence broken only by the splash of water from the little fountain.

Prue sat up, the bench that had seemed cushioned in swansdown only moments before now hard and cold against her legs. Her head swam, the scent of the forced jasmine was sickly now, warring with the unaccustomed glass of champagne, threatening nausea. ‘Charles?’

The man who had laid her down on the bench so tenderly, the beautiful man she loved, who loved her, looked up from ensuring his shirt front was once again perfectly smooth. ‘Yes?’ He sounded impatient. ‘For goodness sake, do something with yourself. Look at the state of you.’ He began adjusting the falls of his evening breeches with meticulous attention.

Prue looked down and gasped. Her skirts were bunched up to her waist. One stocking was around her ankle. Her breasts spilled out of the bodice of her gown in wanton abandon and she looked as though she had just... Which she had.

She tugged up the bodice, wincing as she forced abundant curves back into the tight fabric. There were red marks all over the pale skin, the beginning of bruises. She choked back a sob.

‘Oh, do be quiet, you silly chit. You asked for it—stop snivelling now it’s done.’ He turned away, a slender young man, the moonlight gilding his hair, but not before she saw the smile on his handsome face.

‘Charles? Where are you going?’

He glanced back; the smile became a sneer and the scales of romance and bedazzlement finally fell from her eyes.

‘You told me you loved me. You said—’

‘You really are as naive as you look.’ He stood by one of the climber-twined columns, pulling off blossom and shredding it on the tiled floor. ‘Who’d have supposed Miss Bluestocking Scott would be so foolish? I thought you were supposed to be intelligent. What makes you think a nobleman’s son is going to fall for a plain little nobody whose only assets are her bubbies? I wanted to get my hands on them, but it was hardly worth the effort. Still, it won me fifty guineas.’

‘You wagered on seducing me?’ Merciful anger had her on her feet despite her shaking legs, the pain where he had...he had been. ‘You are a cur, an excuse for a man, a coward and I will—’

‘You will what, little Miss Imprudence? Go crying to Papa? I wouldn’t if I were you, not unless you want all of society to know you open your legs for anyone.’ He turned away, then said, over his shoulder, ‘You stay quiet and my friends and I will keep your little secret. Can’t say fairer than that, now can I?’

‘I will castrate the evil little toad with rusty shears. I will scoop out his shrivelled little bollocks with a blunt spoon. And then I will fry the lot in rancid fat and make him eat them.’ Melissa Taverner swirled to a halt in front of the cold hearth and took a deep breath in readiness for the next tirade.

‘Richly deserved, but not very helpful just at the moment,’ the Duchess of Aylsham remarked with a smile for Prue who was sitting next to her on the sofa. Verity shifted her feet on the footstool and laid one hand on the slight swell of her belly. ‘Vengeance can wait. Prue has more practical concerns just now. Has he hurt you at all, dear? I have the most marvellous doctor, utterly discreet and sympathetic. It might be best if you consulted him. I could ask him to come here, you know.’

Prue shook her head. ‘Thank you, Verity. But it isn’t necessary. I went straight to my room and rang for a hot bath and that helped. I am still a little sore, but nothing else seems to be wrong.’ She managed a rueful smile. ‘Physically, at least. But I could not think what to do, how to go on with Charles still part of the house party.

‘Then I remembered that your letter had been delivered that morning, so the next day—yesterday—I told Aunt that you needed me because of the baby and she said she could see I was worried and hadn’t slept properly and I was a good, unselfish girl to want to help my friend. So she let me use the family carriage and said she was going to write to Mama and let her know of my change of plans.’

‘How long had you planned to stay with your aunt?’ Lucy Lambert, the quietest of all of them, asked. ‘Will Mrs Scott object to you changing the plans?’

‘It was supposed to be for some months. Aunt always has at least three house parties while the weather can be relied on to be good. Mama thought I was far more likely to meet someone suitable there than at home,’ she added bleakly.

‘So if I write to your Mama and ask if you can stay with me, and promise to take you out and about to parties and picnics and so on, she won’t object, will she?’

‘You are a duchess, Verity,’ Prue said, with the first flicker of amusement she had felt for two days. ‘Mama would not object if you had two heads.’

‘Very well. I will beg her to spare you to me. I’ll tell her that I am quite well, but sorely in need of female companionship and that I promise to introduce you to all the best people.’

‘That has got Prue safely away from that vile man and she is safe here, but that is no help with the other problems, is it?’ Melissa was still belligerent.

‘Which ones?’ Lucy asked innocently.

‘Whether I am pregnant and, even if I am not, what I am going to tell my future husband. If I ever have one,’ Prue said. She’d had two nights to brood on that.

‘When are your courses due?’ Verity was always the practical one.

‘In two weeks.’

‘That is going to seem like two months,’ Melissa remarked with her usual lack of tact. ‘If you are, what do you want to do? You wouldn’t...’

‘No, I would not. I couldn’t.’ She had thought about it, panicked about it. ‘I could tell Mama and I suppose she would send me away somewhere and then we would find someone kind to look after the baby.’

‘She is not going to be very sympathetic, is she?’ Verity asked. She was well acquainted with Prue’s mama.

‘No,’ Prue admitted. Her nightmare was that Mama would simply spirit away the child and dispose of it with ‘suitable’ foster parents and Prue would never know what had happened.

‘You could insist that Charles Harlby marries you,’ Lucy suggested tentatively.

‘I would rather marry a viper. A slug. To think I believed myself in love with the creature.’ She shivered. ‘I must have been mad.’

‘Ensnared.’ Jane, Countess of Kendall, rubbed absently at a smudge of oil paint on the back of her hand and spoke for the first time since the friends had gathered round to comfort Prue. ‘He is very pretty, one has to admit. And he has a most ingratiating manner. This is not the first time he has done this to some respectable young woman, I am certain.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I could ask Ivo to make him very sorry indeed.’ The relish in her voice was in total contrast to her gentle appearance. ‘Ivo is very good in a fight and this ghastly Charles Harlby creature doesn’t deserve something as honourable as a duel. Who is he, anyway?’

‘The son of Viscount Rolson. And please do not tell anyone, not even Ivo—I think Charles will keep quiet about it provided I make no trouble.’

‘That is blackmail,’ Melissa muttered.

‘Indeed. But we cannot deal with him effectively just now,’ Verity said firmly. ‘Prue does not want to marry him—and who can blame her?—so we must deal with the immediate issues: the risk she may be with child and the scandal that Harlby might cause. I know he said he would keep quiet, but I do not trust him one inch.’

‘Who would you like to marry, Prue? What kind of man?’

‘I did not want to marry anyone until I fell for Charles and now I like the idea even less. But I suppose I might have to, one day, because Mama and Papa are never going to stop nagging and scheming about it. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was someone kind who will let me continue with my studies and won’t be embarrassed that I’m a bluestocking. Someone with a large library,’ she added wistfully.

She looked round at her friends, all worried for her, all racking their brains to help, and gave herself a mental shake. It was time to take a more positive hand in this. ‘I would want a father for my child, if I am carrying one, and I imagine that the sooner I married, the more reasonable the dates will seem. But who would want to marry me? I would have to tell them the truth—I couldn’t lie.’

‘What do you think about children?’ Verity said, not answering her question.

‘I’m not...opposed to them. I mean, I like them. I just had not thought to have any myself. Before Charles I had thought I would like simply to be a scholarly spinster.’ Prue looked up from her intent study of the pattern in the Oriental rug. ‘I think children would be interesting.’

Perhaps I am about to find out.

‘And would you insist on a good-looking husband?’ Verity persisted. ‘I know Harlby the Slug is exceedingly handsome.’

Jane put down the sketch pad that never seemed to leave her side and looked intently at Verity. ‘Have you someone in mind?’

‘Possibly. I have been thinking about an encounter I had a few evenings ago and it has given me an idea... Prue, would you mind if I spoke to someone? Without naming you, of course, but I will have to spell out your predicament. It may come to nothing, of course.’

Prue made an effort to push aside the misery. Verity was always full of schemes, many of them enough to give the Patronesses of Almack’s palpitations, but as the wife of that pattern book of perfection, the Duke of Aylsham, she simply glided past criticism with the grace of an accomplished skater on a frozen lake.

‘I would be very grateful,’ she said. Perhaps some eccentric person wanted a librarian and had no objection to a female one, even a pregnant one.

‘Then I will go immediately when we have had our luncheon. Strike while the iron is hot.’ She put her feet firmly on the floor and sat up straight. ‘There, I expect you all to be my witnesses that I have rested enough to satisfy even the most nervous of expectant fathers. Please do not worry, Prue. Whatever happens, we will look after you.’

‘I know. Thank you.’ Prue dredged up a smile from somewhere. Her friends would do everything in their power to help her, she believed that totally. She only wished she hadn’t been so foolish as to fall for Charles in the first place.

It was all very well for the others to say she had been innocent, unused to the ways of town bucks and their wiles. But she should have seen him for what he was. Or perhaps she had: a nasty little suspicion lurked that she had been too flattered, too much in love with the idea of being loved to listen to her instincts. Foolish indeed. She would do better to stick to her Classical studies, to her books and her libraries. They contained nothing more dangerous than dust and dead spiders.

Ross Vincent leaned on the balustrade at the edge of the terrace and watched his son. Below on the small lawn Jon gurgled happily and waved his rattle at the nursemaid who sat beside him on the rug. They made a pretty picture in the spring sunshine, the rosy-cheeked child and the equally rosy, plump girl with her clean white apron and her ready smile. She was the perfect nurse for a motherless babe. But not a mother.

Society would call it shocking that he should be thinking of remarrying barely six months after the death of his wife, but Jon was able to sit up now, had begun to babble. He recognised people, knew everyone in his happy little world. His latest words were Dada, Mama, Gugu—although those seemed to be applied indiscriminately to his father, his nurse and his toy dog.

Jon needed a mother before he realised he was without one, but how the devil was a man to find a wife when anyone he approached—if they were well bred and respectable—would be shocked that he should do so while still in mourning? And how to judge character? He had hardly made such a good fist of it the first time around. Lady Honoria Gracewell, daughter of the Earl of Falhaven, had been pretty, accomplished, exceptionally well connected and apparently delighted to wed a marquis, even one with his shocking background, his looks. Apparently.

But there might be hope if the eccentric Duchess was right. Why on earth he had let his guard down so comprehensively at the Hendersons’ soirée he could not imagine, unless the woman was a witch and could read minds. She had moved smoothly from murmured sympathies about his wife to warm enquiries about his son and within ten minutes had him on his third glass of champagne and spilling out his desperate need for a mother for Jon. Champagne of all things, he thought bitterly. And him able to drink a privateer crew under the table on rum any day of the week.

Then she had arrived on his doorstep yesterday afternoon, pretty as a picture in a Villager hat and pearls that made him blink, and announced that she had just the wife for him—provided, that was, he would accept the possibility of a second child who was not his. When he had not replied immediately she had informed him coolly that the possible pregnancy was no fault of the lady in question who was of impeccable morals and behaviour and who had been deceived and betrayed.

The Duchess of Aylsham was a force of nature, he decided, and there was no more shame in giving way to her than to a hurricane or the changing of the tides. Although after a night to think it over he was having his doubts about the wisdom of this and his imagination was producing one disastrous scenario after another. But it was too late now; he had given his word and the Duchess’s friend was due at any moment.

‘The young lady you were expecting, my lord.’ Finedon, his new butler, was a considerable improvement on the one he had inherited along with the title, Ross acknowledged. Hodges had never recovered from the shock of discovering that his master’s grandson was a privateer and would visibly flinch if Ross raised his voice above genteel conversational tones.

‘Show her out here, if you please.’ He straightened, but did not turn fully to face the woman who was making her way across the terrace towards him. He had no desire to frighten her before she even had a chance to open her mouth. That would happen soon enough.

Not a beauty, was his first thought. But then neither was he. Ross thought her face pleasant and open, her expression more used to smiling than frowning. Blonde with blue-grey eyes, he saw as she came closer, apparently composed despite the length of the walk to his side. And a very fine figure, currently modestly covered in a modish gown. Or modish as far as he could tell—ladies’ fashions were one of his gaping areas of ignorance.

Slim, except for her bosom which he could now see was rising and falling with the agitation she was managing to keep from her face. Ross swallowed. Yes, that was definitely her finest feature. He got his imagination under control and waited.

‘My lord.’ Her curtsy was absolutely correct, her voice soft and pleasant, and he managed to keep his gaze on her face and not the lavishly distracting curves lower down.

‘Madam.’

He did turn fully then, watched her eyes and saw them widen, heard the soft sound that escaped her. But she stood her ground.

He did that deliberately to see how I would react.

The scarring was savage, as though something with talons had clawed at his face, dragging its way down through the right eyebrow, down the cheek, catching the corner of his mouth.

He had made her nerves flutter from the first glimpse of him, simply because of his size, as he stood there like a rock gazing down into the garden. He must have been well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, a deep chest. He looked as though he could fell trees and then haul the trunks without breaking a sweat.

Then she had seen that he was not a handsome man and that had been somehow reassuring. Mid-brown hair, unfashionably tanned skin, an undistinguished nose not improved by being broken once or twice, heavy brows to balance a strong jaw and unsmiling mouth. If Verity had wanted to find her a complete contrast to Charles, she could not have done better.

Verity had told Prue that he was a recent widower and nothing more. Now she wondered what this man might have to smile about, with his wife lost to fever only months before and a face he clearly expected people to flinch from. The brown eyes held hers, assessing, judging.

Not cruel, Prue thought. Not unkind—just unreadable. Cold.

She knew what it was like to have people make assumptions based on how you looked. Men stared at her bosom, the fact that they were mentally licking their lips all too plain to see. However modestly she dressed, women assumed she was casting lures and men assumed they had licence to leer and expected her to be flattered by the attention. When she was not they were unkind, dismissive or rude. But having a bountiful figure was nothing compared with what this man had endured. The pain must have been appalling, the fear that he might lose his eye, ghastly.

How did a lord come by such a wound? she wondered. And what kind of lord was he, anyway? Verity had been exceedingly discreet and Prue had not known he was one until his butler had announced her.

He expected her to shriek or recoil, she assumed. Instead Prue folded her hands neatly in front of her and waited. He narrowed his eyes at her and went from merely dour to downright sinister. She swallowed, kept her composure and wished she could sit down.

Then there was a gurgle of laughter from the garden below them and the left-hand corner of his mouth lifted a fraction, the right still dragged down by the scar.

The relief at having his intent gaze removed was almost physical. ‘Is that your son?’

They both looked down to the lawn where the baby was crowing with laughter now as he batted gleefully at a toy his nurse was holding out to him.

‘Yes. Jon.’

‘He sounds so happy.’ Prue waved until the child saw the movement, laughed and waved both his hands in return, fetching the nursemaid a blow on the chin. ‘I am so sorry!’ Prue called down and the girl smiled back. ‘You have a good nursemaid for him.’

‘You know about such matters?’

‘Nothing at all. But I know a cheerful, kindly face when I see one and he is clearly happy and thriving.’

His Lordship grunted and turned away from the edge of the terrace. ‘You have strong nerves, madam.’

‘My name is Prudence. Prue. You think so because I dare come to a man’s home alone?’

‘I mean because of this.’ He lifted his right hand to touch his cheek and she almost flinched then. The back of his hand was covered in a black design of a great claw, its talons extending down each finger. Tattoo, they called it. She had read about the practice in the writings of Captain James Cook about the South Seas, but she had never seen one.

‘It was a shock,’ she admitted. ‘I do not like to consider how dreadful it must have been to endure a wound like that. Who did it?’

‘A bird. An eagle someone had trained to attack.’

‘Goodness, I had no idea you could do that.’

‘He was a Swede—more a pirate than a privateer. They train golden eagles to bring down deer.’

She could only guess at the power of a bird that could do that. ‘You killed it?’

‘Why should I? It was a weapon.’ Those deep brown eyes locked with hers. ‘I killed its master.’

The country was at war. Perhaps he was a soldier, although which Frenchmen fought with live eagles? She was not going to meet his expectations and recoil. ‘And showed your respect for the weapon with a tattoo?’ Prue gestured towards his hand.

‘It seemed like a reasonable distraction while I was healing. One of my crew has the art.’ He shifted away from the balustrade. ‘Would you care to sit, Miss Prudence? We have more important things than scars to speak of.’

There was a table set out in the sunshine with two chairs, and Prue followed him, wondering about that reference to a crew. He was a sailor? A naval officer? But he was a lord of some kind.

She sat in the chair he held for her, waited while he settled in the other with that ruined cheek towards her. Testing her, she supposed. Well, she had recently seen worse things on a man’s face than the ridge and furrow of white scar tissue. She had seen betrayal and scorn and petty triumph. Honest injury was a clean thing in contrast to that.

‘I am looking for a wife in order that my son does not grow up without a mother,’ he said without preamble. ‘And I need to find him one before he realises the lack. The Duchess thought you might be interested.’

Prue found she was not put off by his plain speaking. At least she would know where she was with this man. ‘Will you tell me your name, my lord? As you must realise, I am in no position to gossip.’

‘Ross Vincent, Marquis of Cranford. Ah, I see that I have finally succeeded in shaking that remarkable composure.’

‘You are a marquis?’ He nodded and she made herself think. ‘Two years ago—I remember reading about it in the newspapers. The Privateer Marquis? The East End Aristocrat, they called you.’

He nodded, waiting.

‘And you want to marry me?’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said coolly. ‘But I think you might very well do.’