Bad Brides (4 page)

Brianna Jade wasn’t frowning any more; in fact her lips had parted further into a lovely smile, her teeth flashing in a ray of late afternoon sun.

‘You can call Mom bossy if you want,’ she said cheerfully. ‘She is! But she loves me way too much to push me into something that would make me unhappy.’

It wasn’t exactly a passionate declaration of love, but neither was his, and it certainly told Edmund that Thunderbirds were Go. He sank to one knee, simultaneously bringing his right arm
round in front of him, so that it ended up just above his eye level. Should he have opened the box first? Probably, but then the ring might have fallen out. He really should have rehearsed this;
but then, he’d wanted to be authentic, honest, not over-polished. Luckily, regular winter skiing meant that he had decent enough balance to stay on one knee without wobbling while he held up
the box with his right hand and opened it with his left.

‘
W
ow
,’ Brianna Jade breathed out on seeing the ring, a long, slow exhalation of sheer delight.

‘Brianna Jade,’ Edmund said, ‘will you do me the very great honour of becoming my wife?’

‘I
will
!’ she said, her eyes sparkling now as brightly as the enormous pink diamond. ‘I
definitely
will!’

Should he stand up first? No, she was already holding out her left hand, each finger tipped with pale pink nails whose own tips each had a white crescent painted onto them, so perfectly executed
that they were like miniature works of art. She had slightly separated the third finger from the others to make it easy for him; in a moment, he had detached the ring from its velvet slot and slid
it onto its allotted place. He came to his feet as she turned her hand from side to side in the approved brand-new-fiancée fashion, marvelling at its lavishness.

‘You carry that off wonderfully,’ he said with complete sincerity. ‘It looks superb on you.’

She beamed up at him and raised her arms to wrap around his neck, the ring flashing streaks of colour across the stone pillar next to them; he encircled her waist and bent to kiss her for the
first time. His cock stiffened almost immediately. She felt delicious in his arms, her body taut and toned from the runs she took every morning, but her breasts were soft against him, pressing
seductively against his chest, her lips equally soft and pillowy beneath his, parting to let his tongue slip in, kissing him back with not a shred of false modesty. His hands tightened around her
slim waist, pulling her closer, and she tilted her head up more and slid her hands down his back.

Her breath was fresh and pepperminty; she must have not only brushed her teeth before this crucial encounter, as he had done, but surreptitiously sucked on some sort of mint as well. Neither she
nor her mother did anything as vulgar as chew gum, thank goodness. His cock was fully hard now, pressing against her lower body, and he was both mortified – they had barely got engaged and
here he was, acting like a rampant bull! – and relieved that the attraction was fully there, that he had committed himself to a woman to whom it would be a positive pleasure to remain
faithful. He shifted back fractionally, but she followed him with a lean of her body so his cock was still sandwiched between them, showing him that she, too, was relishing the proof of his instant
reaction to her. When he eventually raised his head, they were both breathing fast, pink-cheeked, and smiling rather goofily at each other. Edmund dropped a kiss on her forehead and took a step
back, clearing his throat.

‘Well,’ he said idiotically, ‘um, that was very nice indeed.’

Brianna Jade burst out laughing.

‘You’re not kidding!’ she said. ‘Wow, what a relief! I mean, I think you’re really cute. Mom promised me she’d googled you and you were a hottie before she
set us up to meet – but you know, you don’t know until you
know
, if you see what I mean.’

‘I
do
see what you mean,’ Edmund said, grinning and telling his erection firmly to go down. ‘Firmly’ perhaps wasn’t the right way for him to think of that,
dammit . . .

‘Let’s go back to the house and tell Mom we’re all done and dusted,’ Brianna Jade said, winding her left arm through his and admiring her ring once more.
‘She’ll be dying to know it’s all okay.’

‘She loves you very much,’ Edmund observed.

‘Yeah, but don’t worry. She’s going to be fine letting me go,’ his fiancée said with that quick perceptiveness of hers, combined with her American frankness: he
was deeply grateful for both qualities. ‘Mom’s had to look after me since she was just a kid herself, you know? She’s due a whole lot of “me” time, and now she’s
gonna take it. She won’t be hovering around here, checking that you’re treating me okay, or any shit like that.’

‘Don’t mince your words on my account,’ Edmund said, laughing. ‘Do feel free to express yourself.’

‘Oh yeah, British humour, I get it,’ Brianna Jade beamed. ‘You say the opposite of what you mean. Anyway, Mom isn’t going to be a hover mother. She said last night
she’d been running my life for way too long and she just wants to see me happy and settled. And she wouldn’t want to move in here or anything. Mom
loves
London. She wants to
buy the house we’re renting there.’

Edmund briefly tried to compute what Tamra’s Chelsea mansion might cost on the open market. It came complete with a ballroom whose floor slid back to reveal a swimming pool, a
climate-controlled wine cellar, billiard room, climate-controlled cigar storage room, cinema, a fully equipped gym and four underground parking spaces accessed through a private tunnel . . . He
shook his head in disbelief at how much money there obviously was in fracking. It certainly made spending forty thousand pounds on Brianna Jade’s ring look like a mere bagatelle. Tamra had
wanted to spend six figures, but Edmund had told her that countesses did not wear engagement rings that looked as if they belonged to pop stars, and she had reluctantly yielded.

He was looking at the ring as they strolled arm in arm out of the gazebo, and his fiancée followed suit.

‘I didn’t—’ he started, wanting to be honest about everything, but again, she knew what he was thinking.

‘I know Mom picked it out and bought it,’ she said simply. ‘That’s totally cool. Men aren’t as good at this kind of thing, and Mom knows just what I
like.’

‘I wanted you to have an heirloom,’ he said. ‘We do have some fairly decent family jewels. I was thinking about getting my mother’s engagement ring reset.’

‘Aww, that would have been lovely!’ Brianna Jade said sympathetically. ‘Let me guess – Mom nixed that idea?’

Edmund nodded, amused.

‘Hah! I know – it wasn’t big enough for her, I bet,’ Brianna Jade said, grinning. ‘Look, I get how things work here. People don’t buy stuff, ’cause
their families have loads of antiques and they pass them on. But there’s no way Mom could give up the idea of me having a big shiny ring.’

She squeezed his arm empathetically.

‘I’m sorry. I hope you’re not offended. I’d love to wear your mom’s ring, if you’d like. Would that be okay? It would mean a lot to me. And I’m sorry
you’re an orphan, too. I can’t imagine what I’d do without Mom in my life. I know you don’t like to talk about it much – the whole British stiff upper lip thing
– but I’m here if you ever want to.’

Her sincerity was so evident that Edmund, very touched, stopped for a moment, reached for her other hand and pressed a kiss onto it.

‘I truly am so lucky to have met you,’ he said with equal sincerity. ‘And I would be honoured for you to wear my mother’s ring. I’ll make sure to pull it out of the
safe as soon as we get back to the Hall, and if it needs resizing we can easily organize that.’

‘That’s lovely,’ Brianna Jade said happily. ‘I’d really like that. Thank you.’

They fell into an easy, companionable silence as they rounded the overgrown shrubbery and started up the path that led back to Stanclere Hall. Edmund, who had been mulling something over,
decided that he and Brianna Jade seemed able to talk about things so comfortably that he should raise a nagging concern he had about how their marriage would work.

‘I’m wondering though – you must have thought this through already, but you know that I’m basically a farmer, don’t you?’ he started. ‘I spend most of
the year here, at the Hall. Not, you know, jetting off to Venice for the weekend or anything like that. I’m very fond of London, and I go to the races, of course, but really, my place is
here. And we’re in Rutland, not Sussex – you can’t just pop up to London for a day.’

‘Well, you can if you hire a helicopter,’ his fiancée suggested.

‘Yes! Yes, I suppose so.’ It was an entirely new concept for Edmund. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised the Fr— your mother hasn’t done that already, instead of driving
from London.’

‘She loves the countryside here,’ her daughter explained. ‘She’s really into looking at it. We get the chauffeur to take the back roads to see little villages and stuff
like that.’

‘I had no idea . . .’

‘But Edmund—’ It was the first time that Brianna Jade had said his name as his fiancée, and it made her feel happily cosy and intimate. ‘You don’t need to
worry about me being bored here. I love the countryside even more than Mom does. I like London, but I’m not a city girl. Cities are crowded and dirty, and after a few days’ shopping I
want to get out and breathe some fresh air. Remember, I grew up in pig and corn country. I’d’ve been a farmer’s wife back home, probably.’ She sighed in nostalgia.

‘Do you miss Illinois?’ Edmund asked understandingly. ‘I’d miss Rutland more than I can say if I had to leave.’

‘I do,’ she said frankly. ‘Feeding the pigs and chickens, running round finding where they’d laid their eggs . . . I really loved it. But it’s way prettier in
England! Where I come from, it’s wide-open country, but here all the little fields are so green, with the hedges and the trees . . . I’m going to love seeing the seasons change, I
know.’

‘And we have pigs and chickens here too,’ Edmund teased her. ‘Plenty of both. You’re welcome to help with either any time you like.’

‘I might just do that,’ she said. ‘Seriously, no kidding. I’d really like it.
That
would make me feel more at home than almost anything.’

‘Well!’ He grinned. ‘I see I didn’t have to worry about you minding the prospect of being a farmer’s wife. We should probably have talked about all this before
– actually, we should
definitely
have talked about this before. I suppose I took a lot for granted. But things were moving so fast . . .’

‘That’s Mom,’ his fiancée said reassuringly. ‘It’s not your fault. She kind of only has one setting, and it’s hyperspeed.’

She squeezed his arm again. ‘Don’t worry – I haven’t inherited that from her. I’m much more laid-back. I’m not going to shoot round Stanclere Hall on
hyperspeed, driving everyone crazy.’

‘Oh, she doesn’t drive everyone crazy,’ Edmund demurred politely, but he couldn’t help but be grateful for Brianna Jade’s promise that his married life would be
what she called ‘laid- back’ and he would describe as restful.

They had fallen into a pleasantly even pace, their steps nicely synchronized, as they crested a rise in the gravel path and Stanclere Hall appeared before them. The view of the house was partly
obscured by overgrowth and trees that needed pollarding, another of Capability Brown’s vistas which required regular maintenance for full, stunning effect. Still, the Hall, its soft golden
stone glowing at sunset, its two wings stretching out nobly from the central edifice with its double flight of steps leading up to the massive front door, was still a sight so beautiful that,
despite its familiarity, Edmund caught his breath.

‘You really love it,’ Brianna Jade said, a comment, not a question. The breeze caught the pleated skirt of her dress, lifting the chiffon slightly; she lowered one hand to hold the
folds down, her other still linked through Edmund’s as they strolled down the path to the Hall, lush green swards spreading out on either side. Like the rest of the gardens, the grass needed
urgent attention; the croquet lawn was pocked with mole holes and had gone to seed years ago. But from a distance it was serene, verdant, the perfect setting for a perfect English stately home.

‘I do,’ Edmund said, his voice quiet as he let his breath out. ‘But I’m not a monomaniac.’

‘Uh—’

‘I’m not someone who’s mad about only one thing,’ he elaborated quickly for her benefit. ‘I really do hope that you and I will come to love each other too, Brianna
Jade.’

‘Oh, go ahead and drop the Jade!’ she said easily. ‘It’s way too long for everyday use. Brianna or Bri is just fine.’

‘Phew,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘It
is
a bit of a mouthful.’

‘Edmund—’ She felt the same frisson using his name as before, which was really nice – ‘talking about names, now that we’re engaged, do I get a title? I was
wondering. Do I get to be a Lady? Or an Honourable, like Minty?’

This is why it’s such a good thing that we were honest and direct with each other,
Edmund told himself.
We haven’t pretended that part of her appeal for me isn’t
her money, nor that mine for her isn’t my title. So no one needs to be embarrassed by this at all. Not in the least.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said with regret. ‘You have to be born into the peerage to have a title like that. On our marriage, you become the Countess of Respers, and people
will call you Lady Respers. Except, I
think
, on legal documents, where you’re the Right Honourable Brianna Jade, Countess of Respers. But the lawyers deal with all that sort of
thing, so you don’t need to worry about it.’

‘Oh! I don’t get to be Lady Brianna Jade?’ she asked naïvely. ‘I was sort of hoping I would.’

‘Sorry,’ Edmund said, charmed despite himself at her lack of pretence. ‘It isn’t in my power to give you that. Not even King Stephen could. You have to be born into the
peerage, you see.’

‘Ooh! So our kids—’

‘If we have a son, he’ll be Lord and then his name,’ Edmund informed her. ‘Younger son’s are Honourables. And daughters are Lady, and then their name.’