Mia repeated her vows in a clear, calm voice. It was surprising, actually. He would have supposed she’d be in tears, having achieved a goal she’d yearned for since childhood.
She never met his eyes during the ceremony, just looked at her hands. Even so, he enjoyed sliding a ring that had belonged to his great-grandmother onto her finger.
The vicar pronounced them man and wife, snapped his prayer book closed and said, “You may kiss the bride.”
Vander hadn’t considered this part of the rite. His first thought was that he shouldn’t indulge in casual intimacies of that nature—his new duchess might assume that he would regularly engage in affectionate gestures. Mia looked up. Her gaze seared into him, even though there was no reproach there.
Before he could move, Chuffy bellowed, “Well, lad, if you ain’t going to do it, I will!” With that he rounded Mia into his arms and gave her a smack on the lips, making her laugh.
Vander forced himself to relax. For God’s sake, he didn’t give a damn if his uncle kissed his bride.
Thorn, India, and Villiers gathered around, offering measured good wishes. He watched Mia blink when she was addressed as “Your Grace” for the first time. She looked endearingly uncertain.
“Right,” Chuffy said, clearly having taken on the role of master of ceremonies. “I instructed Nottle to lay on the champagne and a decent wedding breakfast, so let’s get ourselves out of here. You can accompany your wife from the chapel, I trust?” he said, giving Vander a narrow-eyed glare that appeared surprisingly sober.
Vander didn’t answer, but simply held out his arm to his wife.
His wife.
Mia walked down the aisle next to Vander, in the grip of a tremendous sense of relief. It was done. No one—not even the despicable Sir Richard—could gainsay her marriage to a duke. It tied her to a man who loathed her, and to a lonely life after the marriage was formally dissolved, but Charlie’s safety was assured.
No more Sir Richard and his litigious, fault-finding ways. She would hire a tutor immediately and pay him double to accompany them to Bavaria. She would arrange to have the cottages in the village re-thatched; they had leaked last winter, but Sir Richard was of the conviction that cottagers should repair their own roofs, even if owners of those roofs had grown old in service to the Carringtons.
Furthermore, she would dismiss any servant who looked at Charlie as if he had two noses. Thinking of Charlie calmed the feelings cascading through her. She had promised him she would return by late afternoon.
Life would soon settle down to its usual quiet rhythm. She would get back to writing; perhaps she could finish the novel in a month or so. She would pretend this painful episode never happened. She had practice forgetting humiliations . . . this was just another one, albeit acute.
Throughout the wedding breakfast, the party discussed Twelfth Night, which kept them away from stickier topics.
“I didn’t like the play,” Lady Xenobia confessed. “I thought it absurd that the countess vows to remain in mourning for her entire life merely because her brother just died. But I have no siblings, and perhaps I underestimate the bond.”
“Siblings grow on you in insidious ways,” her husband said. “I count myself lucky to be related to every one of mine.”
“But would you go into mourning and declare yourself unable to marry if one of your siblings passed away?” Lady Xenobia demanded. “The whole premise of the play is absurd. Shakespeare created an improbability and hung the whole story on it.”
“Come away, come away, death,” Chuffy sang.
“The play is about the way grief can overwhelm reason,” Mia said. “Viola is a little mad with grief. When my—” She stopped short, wondering what on earth she was doing. She never talked about her feelings. It must be the champagne.
“I gather you lost your brother, which would explain why I was the one who walked you down the aisle,” Chuffy said. “Older or younger? Can’t say I’ve spent much time poring over Debrett’s.”
“My brother John was older than me. He actually died in the same inn fire that killed my father and the late duchess,” Mia told him, managing a weak smile.
“That was dashed bad luck,” Chuffy said, patting her hand. “I suppose that’s why you went a bit cracked.”
“Oh, did you crack?” Thorn Dautry asked, his eyes innocent, as if the question wasn’t astonishingly discourteous.
“Of course she did,” Chuffy said. “Look, she’s in this house, ain’t she? Marrying the son of her father’s mistress. If that ain’t mad, I don’t know what is. Like to like, they always say, and madness runs rampant in this family.”
After that charming observation, Mia glanced around and realized that everyone’s plates were empty. She and Vander needed to have the last conversation of their married life. Given that he couldn’t even bring himself to kiss her after the ceremony, he would surely rejoice at the news his wife planned to desert him before the wedding night. She might as well give him that pleasure now.
She rose, perhaps with a bit more eagerness than was truly courteous.
The Duke of Villiers’s eyes were wryly amused as he kissed Mia’s hand goodbye. “This has been a remarkably literary morning. I confess I find myself far more interested in you, my dear, than I was earlier. My wife will be truly regretful that she was unable to join us.”
Mia shook her head. “I assure you that there is nothing interesting about me, Your Grace.” She mentally crossed her fingers; some people might consider a secret identity as a writer to be fairly interesting.
“Just a minute,” Villiers replied, laughter running through his voice. “Literature is not my forte. And my memory is not what it used to be.”
“I see,” she said politely.
“O time!” Villiers declaimed, “thou must untangle this, not I.”
“I assure you that there is nothing to untangle,” Mia said, quite untruthfully, “though I applaud your Shakespearean fluency.”
“Marriage has made me more intelligent,” he said, looking almost friendly.
Mia quickly withdrew her hand. The last thing she wanted was to have these people think of her as a friend. She wasn’t. She had done a loathsome thing to Vander, for her own purposes, and she would be out of their lives very soon.
After they left, Mia turned to her husband before she could lose all courage. “Your Grace, we have much to discuss,” she said.
“The possibilities for conversation are endless,” Vander drawled. “Lear? Hamlet?” Unsurprisingly, it seemed he hadn’t enjoyed the literary conversation as much as she and Lady Xenobia had.
“I am serious,” she insisted.
“I can spare you a short time. I want to take off these clothes and get out to the stables. I have a new horse that is having trouble settling in.”
Mia decided on the spot that she was sorry for whoever ended up married to Vander.
The poor lady was going to have to steal minutes of conversation, given that horses were clearly more important than wives. Hopefully, the next duchess wouldn’t have trouble settling in, because Vander would be in the stables coddling a horse.
“Ten minutes,” she promised.
Chapter Nine
From the offices of Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, Publishers
September 9, 1800
Dear Miss Carrington,
I eagerly await your response to mine of August 27, but in the meantime, I am including here a number of readers’ letters. I have taken the liberty of opening them, given that unpleasant business last year with the gentleman who felt at a disadvantage compared to your heroes. I wish to bring to your particular attention the letter from Mrs. Petunia Stubbs.
With deep respect,
I remain,
William Bucknell, Esq.
Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, Publishers
Mia walked to Vander’s study, trying to ignore the way her heart quickened due to her husband walking beside her.
The worst part of this whole affair—oth
er than the fact she hated herself for forcing Vander to marry her—was Mia’s discovery that, even given all the despair and humiliation and the years that had passed since the poetry debacle, Vander was still able to make her feel . . . something.
It wasn’t infatuation. Of course not.
It must be animal lust. She had read about that somewhere. It was a natural constituent of being a healthy animal, which she was.
Vander was the most healthy animal—or man—she’d ever known. In fact, he appeared to be virtually bursting with life, his legs thick with muscle, his skin darkened by the sun.
Her father had been handsome in a way that Vander was not. Her husband—what an odd word—looked more like a boxer than a gentleman. He would never coax his hair into a smooth wave, the way her father used to. And his fingernails were not shaped and polished to a sheen. Instead, his fingers were callused from holding reins.
They had entered the study, and Vander was saying something to her. She looked up at him, confused. In that moment, watching his lips move without comprehending what he was saying, she understood something very important: her husband had the ability to break her.
Even though she had decided to loathe him after he mocked her poem, he had been her first love.
The weakness of a foolish girl, Mia reminded herself. The wanton side of herself, if she wanted to call a spade a spade. She was a woman now and knew a muscled stature was far less important than a kindly heart.
No one could call Vander kind. It took her a moment before she realized that he was waiting impatiently for a response.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”
“I asked when your belongings will arrive. I have an important race on the fifteenth, and I’d like to have you settled. I can send my men over to Carrington House to gather your possessions, if you haven’t already made arrangements. Oh, and I gather they should collect your nephew. My solicitor informed me yesterday afternoon that I now have a ward.”
The last was uttered in a jaundiced manner that suggested he’d also been informed that Sir Richard Magruder was likely to sue.
Mia swallowed a sigh and sat down. The time had come. “I am fairly certain that you did not read the letter summarizing my expectations for our marriage.”
“I didn’t bother,” Vander said, dropping down opposite her. “You should know, Duchess, that a man is the master of his household. If I decided that you should sleep in the attic, the butler would have a bed up there before nightfall.”
“There is no need to go to such extremes; the bed in the attic can wait for your next wife. We only need be married for six months, at which point Mr. Plummer, my solicitor, will arrange for annulment of our union.” The details tumbled through her head in perfect order, rather like one of her own plots. This was the cue for Vander to rejoice.
“What?”
“Mr. Plummer is a conservative man by nature, but he is hopeful that he will be able to end this marriage by early next year. I have asked him to pay a call on you tomorrow so he can explain the details.”
Vander leaned forward, eyes glittering. “What are you talking about? You forced me to marry you. You corralled me as deftly as I’ve ever broken a horse.”
He’s like one of the great Norse gods, Mia thought with a literary flourish. Acting as if he might whip out a lightning bolt and cleave her in two. She wouldn’t be surprised to hear a clap of thunder in the distance.
She pulled her attention back to the subject at hand. “We needn’t turn this into a Cheltenham tragedy. We can simply go our own ways. Divorce is allowed only in cases of infidelity or abandon—”
He cut her off. “You are planning to be unfaithful, before we’ve been married one day?”
When Vander set his jaw, he looked like a prizefighter about to take on an opponent. His gaze seared her, but Mia didn’t let herself be intimidated by his anger. She knew instinctively that his fists might curl, but he would never be violent.
“Of course not, Vander. I thought we could request an annulment.”
“Vander?”
His voice lashed her. This was awful, just awful. She had momentarily forgotten that while she thought of him by the nickname his friends gave him, he scarcely remembered who she was.
“I apologize,” she gasped. “Would you prefer Your Grace? Of course you’d prefer Your Grace. You are a Your Grace.” She was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “My mother died years ago and I have no idea how married couples address each other in private. Not that we’re truly married. I just . . . I’m sorry.”
A moment of ominous silence followed before he shoved a hand through his hair. “It is I who should apologize. You caught me by surprise. No one addresses me by that name other than my intimate friends.”
“Of course,” Mia said, forcing a smile. “You needn’t apologize. And as I said, my solicitor is fairly sure that he can have the marriage dissolved in a mere six months. There’s no need for us to become intimate in any fashion at all.” She drew out a folded sheet of paper from her reticule. “I drew up another explanation once I concluded that you hadn’t read the letter I initially wrote you.”
He took the sheet from her and skimmed it. “You want to marry me for six months, after which the marriage will end. And you expect no financial support either during or after the marriage.”
“Yes, that’s it,” she said, making her tone bright. Now that he understood, he could stop being angry. His eyes would probably fill with joy.
Instead, his mouth tightened, and slowly, methodically, he ripped her letter into pieces and dropped them on the floor.
“What are you doing?” Mia gasped.
“I plan to go through that farce we endured in the chapel only once in my life.”
“Why would you—what are you talking about?”
“Marriage. A mechanism by which two people are forced to remain in proximity for a lifetime. The truth is that your proposal made me see that a love match is the last thing in the world I’d want.”
“But—”
“As we have discussed, you are not who I would have chosen for myself,” he continued, his gaze drifting from her face to her shabby dress. “But there was always the chance that I would have made my father’s mistake, and married a beautiful woman who would collect lovers the way squirrels gather nuts.”
Mia could feel her face growing hot. There was part of her, the part that wrote love stories, that wanted to believe that not every man found her unlovely. The shallow, naïve side of her.
She raised her chin a notch. “Be that as it may, I don’t wish to remain married to you. You may not dream of a loving marriage, but I do hope for that someday. Your Grace.” The last two words were spoken with a touch of asperity.
He gave a crack of laughter. “You should have thought of that before you blackmailed me into marriage, Duchess. It seems your scheme has turned against you. I believe that is often the case.”
She stared at him, trying to find words. He was serious. He meant to keep her in the marriage. “Please,” she said, beginning to feel genuinely fearful. “I can see that you’re angry at me, and I know I deserve it. But mightn’t we be reasonable about this? I will happily offer proof of adultery, leaving both of us free to forget this marriage happened.”
“My mother spent the latter part of her life jaunting around the country with another man, incidentally, your father.” He leaned forward, his words clipped and furious. “I am neither mad nor incapacitated. My wife will live under my roof. She will never commit adultery.”
Mia took a deep breath. “But I don’t wish to live with you,” she explained. “I don’t consider us truly married.”
A grim smile touched his lips. “The vicar who just married us would not agree.”
Her heart was beating so quickly that she thought she might faint. “You don’t even want me around you. This is supposed to be a temporary arrangement!”
“But it isn’t.”
“You can’t mean t
hat,” she said desperately. “I’m sure that in time you will meet another woman, one whom you will love. Remember? You told me that it was likely to happen, and you’re right.”
“What difference will our marriage make?”
The cruelty in his voice lashed her again. She could hardly claim to be insulted that her new husband would take lovers, considering she’d blackmailed him into making his vows.
“Do you have a mistress now?” she whispered.
His eyes couldn’t have been colder. “That is none of your business, and it never will be. You made your way into my bed, but not into my confidence.” His lips curled, but only a fiend would call it a smile. “Four nights a year, Duchess. That’s what you got from me, in return for my father’s letter. You agreed to that. What you seem to have overlooked is the fact that those four nights will happen annually—for the rest of our lives.”
Mia could hear her blood pounding in her ears. This had all gone terribly, horribly wrong. “A marriage, a real marriage, between us would never work,” she said, her voice rasping with the shock of it.
In a flash he was standing in front of her, pulling her upright, his hands gripping her upper arms so tightly they would be bruised. “You’ve made your bed and you must lie in it four nights a year, with me. I think that’s enough to ensure we end up with an heir, don’t you? My parents didn’t bother with a spare, but in view of your brother’s demise, perhaps we should keep trying after our first child. Heroically, you know. For the good of the name.”
She told herself not to panic. “You can’t mean—”
He cut her off again. “You are my wife. My only wife, Mia. You may have married me on a six-month lease, but I married you for life.”
“We’re in a marriage of convenience!”
“No, we’re not. It’s inconvenient, for both of us.”
A wave of horror crashed over her. She couldn’t be married to Vander. Not forever. Not . . . not living in the same house.