He moved to the right of the door, doing a fine imitation of a marble statue. Sure enough, the Earl of Mayne launched into speech without waiting for him to leave.
“I’ve brought along my uncle—”
“Much to my disapprobation,” put in the bishop, who collapsed onto the sofa as if he were a marionette without strings.
“There’s only one solution to this disaster.”
“There is—” intoned the bishop but shut his mouth when his nephew flashed him a look.
Smiley would have closed his mouth as well. The normally pristine earl looked like a rough customer tonight. Like the kind of man one avoided down at the docks. His hair wasn’t an elegant tumble: it was pulled straight back from his forehead, as if he’d dragged it back with a hasty hand. His face was shadowed with beard, and there was a black circle around one of his eyes.
But it was really the set of his jaw and his shoulders that gave Smiley pause. Mayne looked like a man bent on murder, rather than marriage.
Yet marriage it was. Because Mayne was explaining that the bishop was there to marry him to Miss Essex. And no protests changed his mind, not even the bishop’s protests that he was supposed to marry people between the hours of eight A.M. and noon.
Mayne just turned around and gave his uncle a look from those shadowed eyes that would have befitted Beelzebub himself. “I suggest you pretend the sun is shining.” He said it softly, but Smiley, still standing by the open door, heard every word. “Because otherwise, I shall be forced to tell Mama.”
“Ah, your mother?” the bishop said with a gulp.
As it happened, Smiley knew about the Earl of Mayne’s mother. She was the abbess of one of the few nunneries left in England, and by all accounts, she was a powerful woman, who controlled hundreds of acres and had the ear of the Queen herself.
The prudent thing to do at this point would be to summon Mrs. Felton. After all, Mr. Felton wasn’t doing much more than stand there, rocking a bit on his heels with that quiet little smile of his. Which told Smiley nothing more than that the master thought the marriage wasn’t such a bad idea. The Earl of Ardmore was looking properly thunder-struck; those Scottish types were always a bit slow on the uptake, to Smiley’s mind.
He retreated into the hallway and sent a footman to fetch the mistress’s own maid, Gussie. Gussie’s eyes grew wide when she heard his terse statement. Two seconds later Mrs. Felton and her sister, the Countess of Ardmore, came flying down the stairs in a flutter of silk.
Smiley opened the study door again, but Mrs. Felton wasn’t nearly as imperceptive as her husband; she smiled at him in a way that said he should retire.
A good butler knows that a footman spinning champagne bottles in a vat of ice will chill the wine quickly.
The baize door closed with a slap behind him.
30
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-first
The time had come for marriage. I steeled myself for the end of my amorous activities. From henceforth I would be confined to my wife’s bedchamber alone. Or so I told myself.
If you would just summon Josie,” Mayne was saying again, trying to instill even the slightest bit of civility into his voice, “my uncle will perform this ceremony and the entire business will be over.”
“But Mayne,” Tess said, “while my sister and I certainly appreciate your gallantry, aren’t you engaged to be married to Sylvie de la Broderie?”
Mayne’s jaw clenched. “Miss Broderie changed her mind. Earlier today,” he clarified.
“I doubt that Mayne would offer his hand in marriage if it were still promised to another,” Felton said. “Yet is his sacrifice necessary?”
“It is,” Mayne snapped. Damn it, hadn’t they talked to Josie? Hadn’t they seen the state she was in, and the condition of her clothing? He had no wish to discuss the ins and outs of what happened to Josie with anyone. Ever.
“We are grateful for you coming to Josie’s rescue,” Annabel said, looking sweetly at him. “She needs someone to rescue her. Of course it will be hard for her to allow a gentleman to press his addresses after such a distressing experience.”
Finally someone appeared to be appreciating the gravity of the situation. “Right,” he said. “So could you please ask Josie to come downstairs—or I will go upstairs and fetch her myself.”
“As long as you are quite certain that you don’t wish to mend fences with Sylvie?” Tess asked.
“She returned my ring,” Mayne said, hearing a cold knife-edge in his voice.
“I was under the impression that you were deeply in love with Miss Broderie,” Tess insisted. “A gentleman in that situation may well weather a small disagreement, and win his way back into his lady’s graces by the following evening.”
“Even if I weren’t marrying Josie,” Mayne said impatiently, “I haven’t the faintest interest in chasing after Sylvie de la Broderie like a tame lapdog. What happened was between the two of us, and suffice it to say that Sylvie has made up her mind that I am not to her liking. My feelings in the matter are quite irrelevant.”
“Except they are not because you are marrying our sister,” Tess said.
Mayne’s lips drew back and he almost snarled at her.
Annabel stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “Do forgive Tess’s sisterly anxiety,” she cooed. “Tess did not mean to imply that you would marry Josie if you still cared for Miss Broderie.”
“I don’t,” Mayne snapped.
Annabel smiled at him. “It is such a kind thing of you to do, to offer to marry Josie in this way. Almost chivalric, in fact.”
Mayne couldn’t even think what to say about that piece of idiocy. How could she twinkle at him when such a dreadful thing had just happened to her sister? His jaw clenched before he could tell her exactly what he thought of her smiling face.
Instead he bowed, turned around and opened the door. They were all a pack of weaklings, sitting around and talking of love and honor when Josie had been ravished. Why, they should be out beating the streets for the perpetrator. They should be holding Josie’s hand as she wept.
Josie wasn’t weeping.
She walked out of a bedchamber door just as he reached the top of the stairs. He came to a halt instantly.
“Josie.” Which was a stupid thing to say, but his mind seemed to have sunk into a bog. She looked pale, but composed and very beautiful. She was so beautiful that it struck him like a blow that anyone would touch her. Even looking at her made him feel like a madman.
“I came to marry you.” That didn’t come out right, Mayne thought. He was looking at her skin, what he could see of her neck, to see if there were bruises. Because he intended to repay the bastard, bruise for bruise…before he killed him, of course.
“To marry me?” If anything she turned even paler.
He cleared his throat. Josie may not have thought through the consequences. The possible child. Although surely women…
“Why would you want to marry me? Unless my sister—did you talk to Annabel?”
He scowled at her. “What the devil has Annabel to do with it? You need a husband. I intend to marry you. My uncle is here and he’ll do it.”
She was just staring at him, so he dragged a hand through his hair. “Look,” he growled, “I know I’m not the best bargain in the world. Sylvie just dropped me. In fact, I’m a pretty soiled piece of goods, if you want the truth.” A second later he was cursing himself. How could he bring up the question of soiling?
But she didn’t burst into tears, just stood regarding him silently. He squared his shoulders. “You need to marry, Josie. You are—are ruined.”
“I am? Are you sure?”
Of course, she was so innocent she probably didn’t even know what was entailed in being ruined. She probably didn’t even have the language to describe what happened to her. Mayne raked his hand through his hair again. “Yes.”
She seemed to shrivel a bit. Then her eyes narrowed. “Did my sisters tell
you I was ruined?”
“Josie,” Mayne said, “there’s no need for your sisters to confirm the circumstances. It must be tremendously painful for you to talk about.”
“I’m not the same kind of person as Sylvie,” she said after a moment. “Sylvie is beautiful—” She held up her hand when he would have spoken. “If we marry, it would be because you are struck with the wish to serve as a knight in shining armor. But you thought to marry Sylvie because you were in love with her. You told me so yourself. Would you not wish to look for that same emotion elsewhere?”
“No.”
“I won’t be a very good hostess. You are sophisticated and urbane; I do not understand the ton very well, and as you know, I have not been a success.”
“You will be,” he said stubbornly, “if you want to be.” They were talking about things that didn’t matter a fig, not with the huge yawning grief burning a hole in his chest because of what had happened to her. To Josie. His Josie, now. “If anything, I’m too old for you.”
She smiled a little at that and Mayne’s heart lightened. Because he’d been reading women’s eyes for years, and Josie, young though she was, didn’t think he was too old. He could tell that.
“We are going to marry now,” he said, taking her hand and turning around. He didn’t wait to see if she said yea or nea. She was going to say yes. He’d never known, with more surety in his life, that this was the right thing to do.
They reentered the library to find that his uncle was sleeping on the sofa. Josie’s sisters and their husbands swung around to look at him, almost with alarm, Mayne noticed with some disdain. Not Felton, of course. Felton had been his friend for years now, and Mayne could read his every nuance. In Felton’s steady gaze was approval. He, if no one else, understood exactly why this marriage had to happen tonight.
The rest of them were fools, but Felton was a man of honor who clearly grasped, with his usual logic, that Josie was utterly ruined and in need of a husband.
Mayne shook his uncle until he came awake with a tumble of expletives quite unsuited to a man of the cloth.
“If it weren’t for your mother, I wouldn’t do this for the King himself,” he roared.
“Mother will be grateful,” Mayne said.
A moment later he had everyone where he wanted them. His uncle was yawning over a book of common prayer and fumbling with a special license. Annabel was holding hands with her husband, and Felton stood beside Mayne.
“Where’s Griselda?” Tess asked suddenly. “Oh Mayne, you can’t marry without your sister’s presence. Griselda will never forgive us.”
“She’s busy at the moment,” Mayne said. “I’ll tell her what happened.”
He nodded to his uncle, who obediently began, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”
Mayne didn’t hear any of the rest of it. He just looked down at the dark chestnut of his almost-wife’s hair. She was looking down at their hands.
“In sickness and in health,” intoned the bishop. Mayne tightened his hands on Josie’s. I’ll take care of you, he promised silently. I’ll protect you, and no one under God’s great earth will ever hurt you again.
After the ceremony Josie suddenly looked up at him. Mayne’s heart was pounding violently; he hardly knew why. She was terrifyingly beautiful, this wife of his. Her dark hair was carelessly bundled on her head and still damp from a bath. Her skin had the glow of pearls seen by candlelight. But Mayne knew it wasn’t physical beauty that made his heart pound.
It was the Josie-heart of her, the intelligence and wit that she had so often used against him on their trip to Scotland. What had happened to her was all his fault. Not only did he lose her at the racecourse, but he took off her corset, and taught her how to kiss. She transformed before his eyes, and those of the male half of London. It was mesmerizing, seeing that erotic beauty come to the surface.
It was his fault that some bastard raped her. The words, the grim truth of it, steadied him.
Was he supposed to kiss her? No! After her experience…He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Something crossed her eyes, disappointment perhaps, but then she was turning to her sisters. Annabel was crowing with delight. Felton was at Mayne’s shoulder, smiling at him.
“It had to be done,” Mayne said in a low voice, because he was feeling a queer need to justify himself.
“For many reasons,” Lucius said, taking him in a rough—and wholly uncharacteristic—hug.
“An interesting night,” the Earl of Ardmore said, contenting himself with bowing to Mayne.
“In some ways,” Mayne said. He glanced over at the women. Annabel was laughing at something Josie had said, laughing so hard that she was shaking. He’d have to get used to that: laughter followed Josie wherever she went. “Has anyone discovered who the man in question was?”
Lucius’s face stilled instantly. “It may be that Josie has confided in my wife; Tess hasn’t yet told me.”
Mayne’s fists clenched involuntarily. “Tomorrow, then. I should accompany my uncle back to his lodgings.” The poor man had collapsed back onto the sofa with his eyes closed, and Mayne had to admit that he looked rather gray.
“Your uncle tells me that he drank three bottles of claret with his supper,” Ardmore said genially. “It’s remarkable that he’s on his feet at all. I think I should accompany him, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” Mayne said, and then the words dried in his mouth. Both men were looking at him with mockery in their eyes. “I collect that I was about to drive into the night without my wife.”
“One quickly grows accustomed to the state,” Ardmore said.
“Such a pity that Rafe isn’t here,” Lucius said.
“No doubt my mistake would have given him rare pleasure,” Mayne said. He turned to his wife. His wife! Could it be that he really had a wife?
And yet there was a young woman, shining chestnut hair, wide-flung eyebrows, laughing eyes, lovely lips: and the world would know her as the Countess of Mayne. The idea was so dumbfounding that he took the champagne thrust into his hand and drank it without thinking.
31
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-first
We married in a simple ceremony, attended by my family and hers. I thought to break the news to the ton that a notorious rake was tamed by matrimony after the fact. It wasn’t until we were in the silence of our matrimonial bedchamber that I realized…
Oh Dear Reader, I failed my dearest little wife when she most needed me.
Annabel couldn’t stop laughing all the way up the stairs, and saying in a low, wicked voice, “Don’t ever challenge one of the Essex sisters!” But Josie was beginning to feel a deep, swelling sense of panic.
Mayne was downstairs.
The Earl of Mayne.
And he had married her. Or she had married him, one or the other. Because—But she couldn’t think about because at the moment.
As soon as they reached Tess’s bedchamber, Josie turned to Annabel. “I have to ask you something terribly important. Did you tell Mayne I was ravished? Is that what he means by ruined?”
The laughter fell out of Annabel’s face. “Thank God you weren’t ravished.”
When Josie escaped from her hug, she asked it again. “But where did Mayne get the idea that I was, Annabel?” She looked to Tess. “Did you two tell him that so that he felt he had to offer marriage?”
“Darling, we would never do such a thing,” Tess said, with all the authority of an elder sister. “Never. That would be an untruth.”
Josie narrowed her eyes. “Then why does he think I’m ruined? Unless I am ruined, just because of that kiss. I was under the impression that there was a great deal more to ruining than a kiss.”
“Men,” Annabel said, “exist primarily to make mistakes. They don’t know it’s true, but it is. It seems that Mayne made a little mistake. He overestimated the unpleasantness of your experience. The truth is that he would never have
married you unless he wanted to do so.”
But Josie was having trouble breathing. Couldn’t a marriage be annulled under these circumstances? Wouldn’t Mayne feel that the whole thing had been a hoax to trick him?
Tess wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “None of us married in a conventional way, Josie. And we’re all quite happy.”
But Josie was launching into full-fledged panic. “I must have lost my mind! He really thinks—he thinks I’ve been ravished. Oh my God. I married under false pretenses.”
“He’ll be ecstatic to find that is not the case,” Annabel said, obviously trying in vain to school her face to gravity.
“The two of you are quite blithe when it comes to morality!” Josie cried. “What was I thinking?”
“You were thinking that you wanted to marry Mayne—what is his given name?” Annabel asked.
“Garret,” Josie said.
“There! I collect you are the only woman other than Griselda who knows his real name. The truth is that you wanted to marry Garret, and he wanted to marry you. And never mind what excuse he offered for the business.”
“Lucius put forward the excuse that Mayne had jilted me,” Tess said.
“It just doesn’t seem the same level of seriousness,” Josie said with a gulp. “I lied—well, in so many words—I lied to my husband. In order to get him to marry me.”
Annabel gave her a hug. “It’ll be all right by tomorrow morning. I promise.”
“I have to make him fall in love with me. By tomorrow morning!”
Annabel sat down on the bed. Tess was curled into an armchair by the fire, but Josie couldn’t calm herself enough to sit down. She just stood in the middle of the room, feeling panic roaring through her like a tidal wave.
“I wouldn’t discuss the question of your ravishment until after the wedding night,” Annabel said, after a moment.
“That’s what I need to know about,” Josie said tightly. “The wedding night. I understand the mechanics of the situation.”