Brandywine: Regency historical romance (The Brocade Series, Book 1)

Copyright © 2013 Jackie Ivie

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Cover design by The Killion Group

Interior format by The Killion Group

http://thekilliongroupinc.com

Dedication

To Kim Killion,
 her creative genius, and a magical span of four weeks I will never forget.

Thank you.

PART ONE

Brandy

CHAPTER ONE

The plan was stupid, it was wicked, and it was absolutely perfect.

Brandy held her tongue as the two women argued, but she kept her eye on
the burly man they’d brought with them. Laws, but her neck ached. A little
movement to one side would help. But she knew without being told, what would happen if she so much as flinched, so she kept her eyes glazed over and
concentrated while Helen and her maidservant gestured.

“It will not work, Madelaine! Look at her! She’s nothing! Worse! God, but I need a stiff drink even to look at her. She looks like...like a banshee!”

Brandy smiled inwardly at Helen’s compliment - she’d worked long and hard to achieve that effect.

“It’s your only hope, Mistress.”

“You French. So stubborn. I should....”

Brandy moved her eye a fraction to see how the maidservant named
Madelaine took the words and saw the woman’s lips tighten. French servants
were all alike - way above their station. Her cousin shouldn’t employ one if she
had no idea how to treat them.

“You payin’ attention?”

Their brute shoved her, and she stumbled clumsily into the wall,
swallowing a groan as her shoulder hit.

“So, Helene? What do you say? Isn’t it the best idea you ever heard?”
Helen came into Brandy’s line of vision to ask it.

“Ever heard?” Brandy mimicked her exactly, and she received the brute’s
hands on her again for her trouble.

“See Madelaine?” Helen tossed a hand into the air. “She’s crazy, and I
was even crazier to come here.”

“Calm yourself, Mistress. Of course she’s crazy. Isn’t this the place for it? She’ll do it. You’ll see. Really, you have no other choice, for the ceremony begins
in two hours. We’ll have our hands full accommodating your schedule as it is.”

Madelaine’s cool words, spoken with a touch of insolence, were said just
the way Brandy remembered. Then, the maid came near her and began speaking. “You see how it is, Miss? Your cousin, Helen? She needs you desperately right
now, and, after all, you’ll be away from this dreadful place and married to a
handsome man...a very handsome man.”

Brandy shuddered and instantly regretted it as her shoulder stabbed at her
neck. She felt the familiar pulling on her face again as it fell. She’d give anything
to have her face work again.

“Good God, Madelaine!” Helen
exclaimed. “What’s happened to her
now?”

Brandy faced them evenly, focusing on nothing in particular. Helen’s face
told her everything a mirror couldn’t.

“It’s nothing. She’ll wear a veil, Helen. Besides, she’s about your height.
Bring her, Gaston.”

They could’ve asked her. She would’ve joined them at the door. They
didn’t have to ask the man to shove her, making her chin throb as her collarbone
hit it.

“She’s too thin!” Helen wailed. “What shall I do?”

“Too thin!” Brandy wailed with her in exactly the same tone and inflection. “Much too thin!” She didn’t see Gaston’s fist coming, and, if he really
wanted to hurt her, he had to hit the unparalyzed side of her face - the idiot.

And
they
called
her
mad!

“Jesus, Gaston! You split open her cheek. I have enough to do to keep
from losing my breakfast as it is. Ugh. She drools!”

Brandy ignored Helen’s gagging. She knew without looking what the
moisture on her shirt front was. Although it was bloody now, it would mingle
just as well with the other stains.

“And she’s filthy.
Ouí,
Helen, I begin to think we have wasted our time.
Gaston?” Madelaine gestured for him to follow.

“Wait for me.”

His words turned Brandy’s blood to ice, and she watched the women turn
at the door.

“You can’t possibly want her, Gaston. She’s disgusting! Revolting! Why,
she isn’t even human, any longer.”

“Aye.”  He grinned, and Brandy’s throat choked with bile. “But she’s available, she’s cheap, and she can’t fight me.”

He lifted the front of her straitjacket, moving her arms forward. The pain
that enveloped her made dots dance before her eyes.
Quick breath, Brandy,
she
thought. She couldn’t stop him if she became unconscious. As soon as her vision
cleared, she let out her banshee call, ending on a howl punctuated with dog-like
barking. It rarely failed her before, and it didn’t then.

He dropped her arms, almost a worse fate, and stepped back as if she were
truly insane.

“I’ll do it, Helen.”

They froze in shock at Brandy’s whisper, but she couldn’t have known why
for certain, because blood came from her mouth with the words. That could have
been it, just as easily. Brandy didn’t care. Whatever Helen wanted, it had to be better than this hell-hole.

Madelaine’s eyes narrowed. Brandy knew instantly that the maidservant
was more cagey than her mistress. “Helene? You’ve come back to us?”

“Back to us?” she mimicked instantly.

Madelaine slapped her, opening a cut in her cheek. Brandy barely it, because her neck had rocked at the woman’s action, and that pain was excruciating.  

“Gore! She’s mad, Miss Helen.” Gaston crossed himself uneasily. If she
could’ve gotten away with it, Brandy would’ve smiled. As it was, she could only
focus hazily on the wall beside them.

“Wouldn’t you be after a year in this place? Ugh. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill her, but look at her hair, Madelaine! What a disaster. The veil has been in the Tremayne family for generations, and it can’t hide such a sight. Honestly,
Helene, what have you been doing to your hair?”

“I wash and oil it daily, M’Lady, but my comb’s a-missing today. Could be
I mistook it for bread and ate it.” She answered in Helen’s strident voice, the one reserved for servants, not her many beaux.

Curse her stupidity in answering flippantly! Gaston made her moan as he
yanked on her tied arms again. He’d better guard his back for that - no one was
allowed to make her show weakness.

“I’ll make her pay, Mistress?”

Brandy heard the hope in his voice and started carefully blanking her
mind. She’d done it so often in the past, it came easily.

“No, Gaston. You’ll mark her so she’ll bleed through the entire ceremony,
and we’ve already lost half an hour. She’ll never be clean enough.”

“Only her hands have to show, Helen. Calm yourself and slip out of your finery,” the maid replied.

Brandy ignored Helen’s movement as she shed the expensive-looking
wedding gown in which she’d arrived, but she knew Gaston watched, because his
hands started trembling, and Brandy knew Helen enjoyed that. It showed in her
eyes and in her face as she gave him the harlot’s smile.

“She’s a bit thinner than you are, but I brought extra nightgowns to make
up the difference.”

“Whose nightgowns?” Helen stood in her chemise and stockings, and
Gaston’s hands on Brandy’s arms made the pain worse as he shuddered.

“My own, of course. I’d never use yours, Mistress. It’d be a waste of such
finery. Now turn, Miss Helene, and we’ll see how your own beautiful...uh...gown
unfastens.”

Brandy waited passively enough as Madelaine’s fingers slipped through
the lacing behind her, hoping she could handle the pain the restored circulation
in her arms would cause. She had never been more thankful to Helen in her life—because of her cousin’s near-naked state, the brute, Gaston, never again looked at
Brandy.

CHAPTER TWO

She’d done it! Brandy had survived as she’d known she would, and the
absolutely gorgeous man sitting opposite her didn’t even know how grateful she was. Of course, she couldn’t speak with the side of her face falling as it was and
through not one, but three layers of chiffon veiling her face. Still, she thanked him all the same.

It didn’t surprise her to watch him drinking straight from the bottle
without asking his new bride why she hadn’t spoken since the wedding vows nor
attended her own reception. She knew he drank, because he thought he’d just
married Helen.

She almost snickered at the thought.

“Merci, ma Mere.”
She whispered the prayer softly and knew that,
wherever Mama was, she was still watching out for Brandy, as she always had.

She watched as Gillian Tremayne shifted one long leg over the other, looking as uncomfortable on his side of the coach as Brandy was. It was easy to tell why - a worse-sprung vehicle would’ve been hard to find. Why if she weren’t
a-wash in thankfulness, she would have let reality intrude enough to scream her
agony at how the bench’s movement rocked her shoulder. It was better to be thankful. At least rats weren’t nibbling at the toes of her socks.

“You think you won easily, don’t you, my fine wife?”

He slurred the words, but even besotted, he was absolutely gorgeous. He
was well over six feet of strength and masculine beauty, and Helen had run from
him? Brandy thought her cousin had better sense.

“Christ, but my head hurts. And did I give you permission to sit there?”

She glazed over her eyes as he lifted his tawny head to ask it. She couldn’t
think of a suitable reply. She didn’t have permission to lean against the corner?
Lord, that was the only way she could survive the jouncing.

She struggled to sit upright in the center again, and he smiled.

“That’s better. I want to make certain you give it your best shot, My Lady.”

When he said the title, it wasn’t with affection. It wasn’t a surprise.
Brandy had noticed how cold he was earlier when she’d put her cleaned hand in
his to be pronounced his lawfully wedded wife.

“My best shot...at what?” Brandy mimicked Helen perfectly, but she almost forgot to finish the sentence, and then he might have looked closer at her
than he’d done all day.

“Losing that bastard you supposedly carry. What else?”

If she could have perished from the venom in his eyes, she would have.
She’d never seen such ugliness as he had in his blood-shot, light-blue eyes, but
she could understand his hatred. And since it was directed at Helen, and not at
her, she actually longed to salute it.

So...Helen was expecting a child, and she’d gone and trapped this man
with it, only to run at the last moment? Cor, but her cousin was the most stupid women Brandy had ever met. If she didn’t have that Madelaine to guide her, she’d have sunk long ago. She was nothing like Gerard, her brother. Despite her
own injury, Brandy trembled before she could help it, and suffered the ache it
caused. No,
Helen was nothing like Gerard. Well...maybe a little.

“Well? No surprised gasp of shock? No fancy words of rebuttal? You’re a
bigger whore than Reginald said, and now I’m a laughingstock.”

Gil took another long draught of spirits and Brandy cursed the weakness
that made his image dance before her eyes. She didn’t know what was wrong
with her. She’d faced worse than a bumpy carriage ride, but that was before—

She wouldn’t think of it.

“You’d best lose that child. And soon.” He was snarling as he said it. “For
we arrive at my Grandmama’s little hunting cottage in no time, and I mean it
when I say I’ll see your throat slit before I’ll let a bastard inherit from me. Do you
understand what I’m saying?”

Little dots filtered through her vision of him, and it was a shame how his
image blurred. Brandy decided Helen was stupid. That was it. She could have
used any number of potions and items to prevent a pregnancy. She didn’t have to get herself into such a predicament. Then again, Helen had definitely managed
to trap a very impressive, wealthy-looking, stunning fellow into marriage...and
then she’d gone in search of her long-lost, supposedly insane, cousin to replace
her in the ceremony.

And they called Brandy mad.

“I told you already, you’re not to lean there!”

Hard hands gripped her wrist, hauling her back to the center of the seat.
Brandy barely kept from crying out. His hold threatened the blood supply to her hand, but, since her unhealed collarbone made her shoulder feel like fire was
eating at it, it was doubtful her hand got any blood, anyway.

“Your hands are like ice, Helen, my love. Do I frighten you so much, then?
You should have thought of that before you threatened me. You should have
thought of a lot before—”

He reached to rip off her veil, surprising her with his swiftness, and the
look on his face was comical once he got it off.

“Bloody hell!” 

He fell back to his side of the carriage, his hand trembling
on the liquor bottle.
Brandy smiled with the working side of her face as he crossed himself.
Her action made him pale.

“Who...? What the hell are you? And where...is my wife?”

“Ah, Gil, darling,” she said in Helen’s false, soft-throated voice. “I
am
your
wife.”

“But...but....”

“Allow me to introduce myself, properly. I’m Helene Marguerite, the new
lady of Tremayne.” She winked as his healthy complexion whitened. “You’ve got
yourself a prize, Your Lordship. You have. You’ve up and wed with the insane Bingham, the one from...Bedlam.” She whispered the last word conspiratorially
and watched him gulp, wide-eyed. It was a shame, truly it was. He was such a
big, strong, powerful man, but he was frightened of a mere slip of a girl like
herself? Shameful.

“Are...are...?”

At the rate he was stammering, he’d never ask the question. Brandy
decided to help him.

“Am I insane, you ask?” She lifted both eyebrows several times. “But, of
course.” Then, she gave her banshee scream.

The coach stopped swiftly, as if the coachman had orders to drive as
roughly as possible. The move slammed her new husband’s head into the wall with a resounding thump. She watched him crumple forward, before sliding unceremoniously to land in a heap at her feet. Odd.
She’d never seen a grown man in a swoon before, but it wasn’t near as amusing
as she’d thought it should be.

Brandy wished she had the same unconscious freedom. The abrupt halt hadn’t done her shoulder any favors. She bounced off the padded backrest while tears of
agony flooded her eyes. She sucked in breath to send them back, ignoring pain. Agony. Hellish fire. She wouldn’t cry! Not over such a small thing as
a shoulder injury. Hell had fury a-plenty for
anyone so weak.

“What have you done to His Lordship?”

The door opened, and Brandy barely had time to hide behind the torn veil before the servant glared at her. She watched him lean over His Lordship.

“He’s out cold,” he said. “And I heard a demon cry.”

He looked at her
hard, trying to pierce the secret of her veil, but she’d had enough reaction for the
moment. She would let Gil decide who to favor with her beauty, or lack thereof,
next.

He stirred, and the coachman released her from his
glare to attend him.

“I saw...! I saw...! Thompson? Tell me I’m dreaming,”

“You’re dreaming, My Lord,” the man dutifully replied.

Brandy almost rolled her eyes, but that would have caused even more pain
in her body than she could handle.

His lordship looked shaky as he reseated himself, then found his decanter to gulp some more liquid. Thompson eyed her again. Gil could spare his health -
spirits weren’t going to make her disappear.

“Start up again, my good man. And Thompson?”

“Yes, My Lord?”

Ever the obsequious
English servant, this Thompson awaited orders like a
lap dog.

“You can slow the pace. It was a mistake.”

Brandy could have kissed him for that, if it wouldn’t cause another faint. After
one more, long, considering look at her, Thompson shut the door, and she
waited. At least, her new husband would probably let her lean against the wall now. She did so, easing
slowly into the corner and waiting for the infernal throbbing in her neck to calm into a manageable ache.

“All right. You’ve had your fun, Miss.” 

He probably fortified himself with another swallow for another look at her face. She waited until he was finished before pushing
the veil aside and turning to him again.

“I’m sorry, Lord Tremayne, but I’m no miss. I’m your wife, you
lucky man, you.”

He flinched at hearing her use Helen’s voice.

“Stop saying that and stop
using her voice! I hate it when she uses it, damn it!”

“She uses it, damn it!” Brandy parroted him perfectly and almost enjoyed
the flush that rose up his neck.

“You’re not my wife, and I’ve tired of looking at you. You’re getting off at
the nearest posting house.”

“For shame, Lord Tremayne. Tsk. Tsk. Sending your wife straight to the
gossips in less than twelve hours. Helen may never live it down.”

“You admit you’re not Helen!” He pointed an accusing finger at her, and
she pointed right back.

“Not Helen!” She used his voice that time, making him blanch.

“What in God’s name are you?”

She almost giggled, but that would cause her ribs to join the agony
parading within her. As it was, she was taking small breaths to save herself more
pain. Damn that mutton-chopped fool of a guard at the sanatorium! He didn’t
have to hurt her so badly. He could have repaid her in kind for the slap she’d
given him, but no, he’d had to fling her against the wall hard enough to break
fragile bones.

Brandy sighed softly. What was she still lamenting for? The guard, Regis,
had done his filthy deed three weeks earlier. She’d had plenty of time to live with, and accept, the pain. “I already told you,” she said. “I’m...your wife.”

“Blast it all, I heard the vows! I married Helen Margaret Bingham in front
of three hundred bloody witnesses! You, Madame, are a complete loon!”

“A complete loon,” she agreed.

“Well...obviously Helen can get you to do something other than repeat everything. If anything, you’ve met the girl.”

“Met the girl.”  She nodded.

He leaned toward her, and she froze, sending numbness to every part of
her he could reach. That was the only way she could withstand a blow from one
like him. She could do it, although she was already in pain, and he was one of the
largest men she ever saw. She’d done it for years, for the same reason. She owed
Sherry that much.

When he parted the veil and pushed it from her head, Brandy looked away. She didn’t know what it meant, but she didn’t want any kindness, and she didn’t want to see his reaction, either.

“Good God. I really do believe you’re from the sanatorium.”

“The sanatorium,” she mimicked.

“You’re very good at that, you know,” he replied.

Brandy glanced at him. He was smiling! If she detested anything, it was that. The act slipped and with it the numbness.

“What...do you...want to know?” she whispered, spacing her words through the agony.

His smile widened and she had to look away, catching a glimpse of herself
in the carriage window. The sight almost made her cry out. Hair stuck up and
out everywhere, and it looked to be a filthy gray color and matted in clumps. She looked worse than a banshee - more like a nightmare come to life.

“Did you escape?” he asked, in a gentle tone.

“Yes.”

“That was brave of you.”

Rivulets of shivers raced her limbs, unpleasantly reminding her of emotions that didn’t belong to her. Brandy swallowed to make them back down.

“Brave? No. It...was cowardly,” she replied, finally.

“Why do you insist you’re my wife?” he asked. “You must know it’s not
legal.”