The Wedding Affair Read online

  The earl stretched. “No need. It’s fine there.” He stripped off his coat.

  Penelope felt her insides shimmer as she remembered seeing his bare chest this afternoon, and she told herself she was very glad she’d decided to hurry through her toilette rather than watch his performance again.

  All that warm, smooth skin… Even the memory left her feeling dazed. She wondered if the hairs on his chest were coarse or soft, and whether those well-defined muscles were as hard as they looked.

  A wiry lock of her hair sprang loose and tumbled down her neck. Penelope fiddled with another hairpin and tried not to watch in the mirror as the earl slowly unwound his neckcloth and laid it aside. She wondered if every woman within range was susceptible to losing her mind as the earl undressed; the maid had seemed no more immune than Penelope herself, the way she’d hared off to take care of his request.

  Trying to keep her gaze off her husband, Penelope looked instead at the small heap of clothing on the floor. A silk stocking trailed out of the pile, and a lace-edged chemise spilled across the Aubusson carpet. They were intimate items that, under other circumstances, she would have been embarrassed to have on display. But he seemed to pay no notice. As if there was nothing new to him about seeing a woman’s undergarments trailing across a bedroom floor…

  No doubt he was used to the sight, and perhaps that helped to explain why he had chosen not to share her bed. If he had a mistress…

  The idea had occurred to her before, of course, but for the first time she allowed herself to dwell on what that woman would be like. She would be tiny, beautiful, witty, and accomplished—all the things Penelope wasn’t. And her hair would fall naturally into glossy ringlets, not the wiry, uncontrollable mass that Penelope had to deal with.

  “You wear no jewels this evening?”

  “It would be foolishly showy to add gems to the simple styles I can manage myself. Like adding sweet icing to a loaf of coarse black bread and pretending it is cake.”

  She knew she sounded cranky, but she couldn’t stop herself from picturing the sort of woman he would take as a mistress. One who would look delicious draped in diamonds…

  She stabbed viciously at the back of her head with the hairpin. “This thing will not stay in.” She supposed pretending a snit was a great deal better than taking the chance he might guess something closer to the truth.

  He came up behind her. He was still wearing his shirt, though the front gaped open to display a tantalizing wedge of warm, smooth chest. His fingertips skimmed her shoulder blade just where the edge of her bodice met skin and then trailed up the back of her neck, scooping up the wayward lock of hair along the way. Gently he tucked the ends into the twist and smoothed the palm of his hand from her nape to her crown. Then he took the pin from her suddenly numb hand and anchored his work in place.

  Penelope’s breath had stuck in her chest until she couldn’t exhale, and her gaze seemed glued to his reflection in the mirror.

  “As soon as we return to town,” the earl said quietly, “I shall go to your father and tell him I am incapable of fathering a child. Then he must accept the facts and stop blaming you.”

  What he said wasn’t true, of course. Penelope knew he wasn’t incapable, simply unwilling. He had married her because he had little choice, but her noble husband was so reluctant to mix his blood with hers that he preferred to let the direct branch of his family die out rather than mate with her.

  Behind him, the door opened to admit a line of maids carrying cans of hot water.

  Penelope stood and gathered up her reticule and escaped.

  Six

  As the guests were summoned to the dining room that evening, Simon was startled when his mother announced she had given up the notion of a formal seating chart in favor of dining en famille. With the numbers of men and women so wildly uneven, and so many of the bridesmaids of roughly equal rank, arranging the order of precedence as etiquette demanded would have been a nightmare.

  But though he hadn’t been looking forward to having Lady Stone—who was the senior female guest and therefore entitled to the seat at his right—as a dinner partner tonight, he had expected to get a reprieve from the bridesmaids for the duration of the meal.

  He shot a dark look at his mother, who ignored him, and bowed politely to Lady Stone, offering his arm to escort her in to dinner. She surveyed the group of guests and then gave him a sly smile. “Are you a betting man, Somervale?” Her voice was low. “Five guineas says the tall brunette and the little blonde will trample their friends to claim the seats next to you.”

  He looked at the two—already quivering like racehorses beside the drawing room door—and said firmly, “I would win the wager, my lady.”

  “Then it’s a bet,” she announced. “How do you plan to keep them from it? Make me sit beside you instead?”

  “Nothing so crude, ma’am. Since my mother has suspended the rules, I will seat you in my chair at the head of the table between the young ladies, and I’ll take a place elsewhere.”

  She gave a great rusty laugh. “I like you, Somervale—but you don’t play fair.”

  “Backing out of your debt of honor, my lady? I think you owe me five guineas.”

  “We’ll go double or nothing next time. Where will you sit instead?”

  In the kitchen, he wanted to say. “I think anywhere beneath the salt should be safe.”

  In fact, however, he enjoyed the evening far more than he had expected. Andrew Carlisle flirted impartially with every bridesmaid within the reach of his voice, and Colonel Sir Tristan Huffington told Kate Blakely about his war service and how much he appreciated a woman who was old enough to understand what he was talking about.

  When Lady Stone interrupted with a sniff, saying, “There are no women old enough to understand what you’re talking about, you old goat. Miss Blakely is merely more polite than most,” Simon surprised himself by laughing.

  But most of all, he passed the time in looking forward to the end of the evening—when the company would have dispersed enough that he would no longer be missed and could leave Halstead for his visit to Lady Reyne. To Olivia. A beautiful name, as smooth and as sweetly rounded as she herself was…

  Simon kept one eye on the clock as the port went round the table after dinner. As soon as he decently could, he broke into the colonel’s monologue about everything that the War Office had done wrong in the most recent conflict and suggested the gentlemen move to the drawing room.

  “Fine by me,” Andrew Carlisle said. “But you amaze me, Simon. I thought you invited us because you didn’t want to spend time with the ladies. If you tell us now that you’re trying to fix your interest with one of them before the rest of your unmarried friends arrive tomorrow…”

  Simon muttered something about wanting to get the evening over with. Andrew’s knowing smile was no worse than Simon’s mother’s; when the gentlemen appeared in the drawing room, the duchess’s self-satisfied expression set Simon’s teeth on edge.

  Eventually the ladies began to trail off upstairs. Charles suggested to Andrew that they play a game of billiards; Sir Tristan cornered Kate Blakely and Lady Townsend to finish his dissection of the war; and Simon was finally able to escape.

  As he entered his bedroom, he was thinking only about how quickly he could change into riding clothes and leave the house, and it took him a moment to realize the room wasn’t empty.

  Damnation. He’d let his guard down—he’d been thinking about Olivia again instead of the danger now ever present in his house—and he had only seconds to act before whichever bridesmaid who had laid a trap for him made her move.

  He started to back out of the room, but as a figure shifted in the shadows, Simon’s gut relaxed. He knew that shape—and it wasn’t a bridesmaid. “Hemmings, I thought I told you not to wait up for me tonight.”

  His valet bowed his head. “I felt it wise to remain until you were safely returned, sir.”

  “I’m not three years old, Hemmings,” Simon said d
ryly. “I don’t need a nursemaid.” Of course, he thought, thirty is no safer than three, in some circumstances.

  “Exactly, Your Grace. However, as I was gathering up your things earlier, one of the young women tried the door. She said she’d taken a wrong turn in the corridor while trying to find her bedroom.” His sniff made clear exactly what Hemmings thought of the excuse.

  “You’re certain she wasn’t headed right next door? My mother didn’t assign one of the bridesmaids to that room, did she?” He’d almost forgotten the other bedroom in his suite, the one reserved for a duchess. His mother was capable of putting whichever girl she favored directly under his nose. And Greeley had warned that every room in the house was in use…

  “No, sir. I have locked the room reserved for your duchess. As soon as I have helped you into bed, I shall make up a pallet on the sitting room floor for the night. Just in case.”

  Now there was a picture—his valet sleeping across his doorway like a faithful hound on guard. Simon scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “You see, Hemmings, I’m not planning to retire just yet. In fact, I’m going out for a ride. Excess energy, you know.”

  “I shall keep watch as I await your return,” the valet said stolidly.

  Well, there’s a problem. What good was being a duke, anyway, if he was unable to come and go as he pleased? He could hardly have Hemmings waiting up for him when he might not be back till dawn…

  “Also,” the valet went on, “it appears someone may have been inside the room earlier, because the sapphire stickpin you were wearing today seems to have gone missing.”

  “I lost it,” Simon admitted. “Er—if you’ve been protecting the sanctity of my bedroom all this time, have you had dinner?”

  “No, sir, but it was a small sacrifice to make for your safety.”

  “Then you must go down and raid the kitchen, for I can’t have you getting weak and sickly just now. The key to this room must be somewhere around here. I’ll lock the doors when I go out so no one can possibly invade. You can go to bed and not fret.”

  The valet resisted. He insisted on helping Simon to change into riding garb, and he was still making his disapproval clear when Simon turned the great key and went down to the side door nearest the stables.

  The sooner everyone knew he was courting Lady Reyne, Simon thought, the better.

  But first, he intended to enjoy tonight.

  ***

  Kate found dinner to be the most pleasant part of her day. Though there was no controlling what the bridesmaids might say, once all of them were seated at the long table, there was a limit to what they could do to get themselves into trouble.

  She didn’t realize she’d loosed a long breath until the colonel said, “No wonder you’re relieved. I thought myself that two of them were going to get into a hair-pulling contest right there in the drawing room. What did Lady Stone say to stop them cold? I couldn’t quite hear.”

  “She congratulated them for finding a way to make themselves memorable to the duke.”

  “Humph. I would have thought Lucinda could come up with an interesting strategy.”

  “You know Lady Stone?”

  “Since long before she became a Stone. Back when she was only the size of a pebble, you might say.” He gave a rusty laugh. “Before I joined the army—a good many years ago.”

  Politely, Kate asked him about his career. As he droned on about life in the quartermaster corps, she listened with half an ear, keeping the other half tuned for the bridesmaids.

  Beyond the colonel, a few places on down the table, where she couldn’t quite avoid seeing him, Andrew Carlisle was surrounded by young women who hadn’t been able to push closer to the duke. A couple of them had been on the walk this afternoon, and Kate noted they seemed much less interested in their dinner companion than the two who hadn’t—and who seemed to be quizzing him. One of them said, “How are you related to the duke, Mr. Carlisle?”

  “Not at all,” Andrew said cheerfully. “Though I do have a relative who’s a viscount.”

  The girl’s face brightened, and Kate could see her mind working. A viscount wasn’t high on the list of nobility, so marrying one was nothing like the coup of snaring an earl or a duke. Still, it was a title, higher on the scale than a baronet…

  Kate wondered if the bridesmaid would work out a way to tactfully ask Andrew whether he was close enough in the line of succession to be worth cultivating.

  Andrew let an instant pass while he contemplated the platter of roast beef that a footman was offering to him. “But he—the viscount—is on my mother’s side of the family.”

  Kate had to hide a smile behind her napkin. Obviously Andrew was aware of the duke’s reason for inviting him, so he was making clear to the girls that he was no catch at all in the marriage stakes. On the other hand, he seemed to be saying he could be a great deal of fun if they didn’t have marriage on their minds.

  But then, Andrew Carlisle had always been fun. Kate wondered if her own face had been as horribly transparent as the bridesmaid’s was, during the summer when she’d been seventeen. Andrew had been staying at Halstead that year as Simon’s guest, and both had come each day to the village for extra lessons with her father. Kate had been much more innocent back then than the bridesmaid was—and Andrew had been much less smooth than he was now. But she had been head over heels in love with him, nevertheless…

  She turned quickly back to the colonel. “And then?” she prompted. “Where were you sent after your service in the American colonies?”

  No sooner had the last course been removed than the duchess rose to sweep out of the room, pausing beside Simon’s chair as he politely stood to see the ladies out. Kate was just close enough to hear her murmur, “Don’t be too long before you join us, dear.”

  Simon gave his mother a suspicious look.

  Lady Stone added blandly, “Iris only means too much port isn’t good for the colonel’s gout. She’d never be clumsy enough to admit she’s anxious to give the girls another shot at you, Somervale.”

  Once in the drawing room, with no gentlemen to impress, the bridesmaids drooped until Lady Daphne gathered them up in a corner to plan the morrow’s activities. “We’ll ride in the morning.” Two of the girls whined, but Daphne cut them off. “I realize some of you look a great deal better on horseback than others do, but everyone must have a chance to shine. Besides, if all of us go, then every gentleman will be required, in order to properly escort us. We can have a picnic in the abbey ruins down by the river.”

  Ruins, Kate thought, which would offer a magnificent opportunity for one or more of the girls to wander off and have to be rescued by a gentleman…

  Kate made a note to send word to the stables and the kitchens—for it would not occur to Daphne that horses, saddles, and picnics did not appear simply because she wished for them.

  “A morning on horseback,” Lady Stone said. “Fresh air, fresh horseflesh, and fresh young women. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Kate tried in vain to fight down a hysterical giggle. “What could go wrong? My lady…”

  Lady Stone stared at her, one eyebrow raised.

  Kate had already marked governessing off her list of possible careers, and now it had become apparent that she was missing the necessary skills to be a companion, if she couldn’t stop herself from laughing at odd statements made by elderly ladies.

  Perhaps it was time to remind herself of the advantages of marrying Mr. Blakely. If I could only think of some.

  In the moments when her attention was diverted, one of the bridesmaids had begun to entertain the rest with a cruelly accurate imitation of Andrew’s voice as he’d left them at the door of Halstead that afternoon. “Yes, indeed,” she drawled, “my horse Dobbin is my very best friend, don’t you know.”

  Suddenly all urge to laugh was gone; how dare this privileged young woman make fun of someone who was unable to strike back? Kate was about to intervene when she realized that for once, the duke had obeyed his mother—at l
east it seemed the gentlemen had sat over their port for only minutes before coming to join the ladies.

  The bridesmaids weren’t expecting them so soon—especially the one who, with her back to the door, was so caught up in her performance that she didn’t notice the newcomers. “Don’t you think I even look like my horse?” she asked earnestly. Her voice was slightly husky, with a wicked similarity to Andrew’s accent. “He’s the more handsome, of course.”

  The girl standing next to her gave her a hard poke. The bridesmaid turned round so fast she lost her balance and stumbled into Lady Daphne, who said something under her breath about clumsy oafs.

  Andrew laughed. “You’ve quite a gift for mimicry, Miss… what was your name again?”

  The erring bridesmaid flushed a most unbecoming shade of scarlet and dropped a ragged curtsey.

  Kate was nonplussed. In one lightning-fast stroke, Andrew had disarmed the young woman’s jest while making clear she wasn’t important enough for him to remember her name.

  “Well played,” Lady Stone murmured. “How I wish I’d had a bet riding on the outcome of that little stunt!”

  Andrew Carlisle was in no need of Kate’s meager attempts to defend him. In fact, she thought, she could do worse than to learn from the master.

  ***

  Without Kate’s cheerful chatter and Maggie the housemaid rattling around as she carried out her duties, the cottage seemed very quiet. Or perhaps, Olivia admitted, the silence was inside her head and came from the oppressive knowledge of what she had committed herself to do. She managed to behave normally through the evening, but only because she knew the duke would be too busy with his guests to arrive on her doorstep anytime soon.

  She helped to give Charlotte her supper, tucked her in, and offered a story. Her little girl considered. “Tell me Cinderella, Mama.”

  Olivia wanted to howl at the irony of her choice. A heroine wearing rags, a hero who possessed even more arrogance than wealth… How could anyone over the age of three believe two such different people could ever achieve a truly happy ending? “How about the lady and the duke instead?” she muttered. “Only the names and the ending have changed.”