Captivated by a Lady's Charm (Lords of Honor Book 2) (26 page)

Sin held his arm out. “Under the circumstances, I’ve asked Mother to remain behind.”

For this was to be no happy joining of two families. Her mother and sisters would not be present this day. She managed a nod, even as hurt lanced her heart. As she allowed him to lead her to Christian and their wedding, fear churned through her.
What if he’d made that wager?

Christian rubbed his hands together to ward off the winter’s chill. Not for the first time since he’d arrived in Hyde Park that morning, he tugged out his watch fob and consulted his timepiece. Thirty minutes past nine.

Perhaps in the three days since he’d seen Prudence, she’d put proper thought in to the folly of her decision to forever bind herself to a worthless bounder who offered her nothing. Three days was a good deal of time for her disapproving brother to talk reason into her, and yet… He glanced up at the hideous elm, the one captured upon her pages…and yet, Prudence was not a woman who would ever do as she was bidden. His heart lightened. That undaunted strength and originality set her apart from all other women before. And that tree that so often drew him back to his days of war now contained altogether different memories; those different from death and dying and Lynette’s betrayal. Now, the thoughts were of her.

At his side, Maxwell, chuckled. “A lady so determined to wed you does not strike me as one to jilt you at the altar.” He glanced about. “Or in this case, a tree.”

The lean, tall, ancient minister who’d agreed to the rather unconventional ceremony, however, looked a good deal less confident than Maxwell. With a beleaguered sigh that stirred a puff of winter air, the man flipped through his pages. “Perhaps she is not coming?”

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” His mother’s panicked tone cut across his own fears. “Never say that.”

He cast a glance at the two cloaked figures of his mother and sister. And then fixed a glare on Maxwell for worrying Christian’s always cheerful mother. His friend mouthed a silent apology.

“Do you think she’ll not come?” Lucinda looked about the park. “That would be quite despicable of her.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I did not take her for a lady without honor.” Concern underscored her words.

“She will be here,” Christian claimed. Though he wasn’t sure whether he sought to reassure the vicar who wanted to be here not at all, his mother and sister, or himself. He checked his timepiece once more.

“But what if she does not come?” Lucinda pressed with a temerity that made him grit his teeth. “Will you gallantly fight for her love? Will you set out after her?”

“It has only been another three minutes,” Maxwell supplied. “Perhaps she does not know the particular tree to meet at?” That momentarily silenced the fretting Villiers women.

At his friend’s suggestion, a frown turned Christian’s lips. Granted, the desolate barrenness of Hyde Park was filled with a vast number of leafless trees. He looked up at the oddly shaped branches extending out like angry limbs. A strong gust of wind shook them overhead and a lone brown leaf fluttered down, dancing a twisted, sideways path to the frozen earth. The elm upon her page. “She knows,” he said at last. The greater likelihood was she’d either come to her senses or had been locked away by a determined to protect her at all costs brother. Christian stooped down and picked up one of those crisp, brown leaves. He trailed the tip of his finger along the veins.

His mother worried her hands together. “Most women do not dream of getting married in the dead of winter beside a dead oak tree.” She gave him a reproachful look that said she expected more of her son.

…You see, some of the magnificent tree might be aged and even dying, but it still lives and should be celebrated for that…

Christian shoved himself to his feet. “Elm.”

His mother cocked her head.

“It is an elm tree and the lady will be here.” Had they awaited any other young lady, his friend would indeed have proven correct, and yet Prudence was unlike any other woman he’d ever known. She craved more than the material world sought after by title-grasping ladies of the
ton
.

“Whatever is Terry doing here?”

At his sister’s puzzling tone, they all followed her stare.

Maxwell scratched at his brow. “Deuced odd for a man’s footman to attend his employer’s wedding ceremony.”

What in blazes…? His hulking servant moved with the steps of a military man, even with his crutches. Only his pronounced limp that was eased with the use of the crutches spoke of the scars he’d carried from that battlefield experience. Without a hint of regard for courtesies, Terry forwent bows and greetings and held a paper out to Christian. “You need to see this, Your Lordship.” He skittered his gaze about the people present and then returned his attention to Christian.

“What is it?” A frantic edge underscored his mother’s query.

Christian’s stomach dipped, as for one horrifying, too-long moment the niggling possibility slipped in.

She changed her mind.

“What is it?” This time his mother’s words emerged as a demand, more than anything else.

Panic licked at the corners of his mind; a numbing haze that had nothing to do with losing Prudence’s dowry and everything to do with the possibility of losing her. His servant spoke. He knew for the man’s lips moved as he waved a copy of The Times about. But by all the saints in heaven, Christian could focus on nothing beyond the staggering truth.

I love her.

He loved her smile and her spirit. He loved that she was rubbish at dancing and sketching and that she did so with such abandon. For years he’d resolved to never trust his heart again, and yet Prudence was a woman worth turning that organ over to.

“St. Cyr,” Maxwell said sternly, slapping him on the back and pulling him from the fog of his muddled thoughts.

“Hmm?” Christian alternated his stare between the guests present.

“You need to see this, Your Lordship,” Terry repeated.

Christian cocked his head. “The Times?” A wave of relief slammed into him with a dizzying force. “You came to bring me a copy of The—?” His gaze snagged upon the damning words about the page and his words trailed off.
The Wager that Led to an Heiress. “
Oh, God,” he whispered. With nausea churning in his belly, he read. He read every ugly, partially true, mostly distorted word about him and Prudence. As with a writer’s pen, everything from their first dance to this very moment, their wedding day, was cast in a black, ugly light, forever tainted with half-truths. His eyes slid closed.

“What is it?” Lucinda demanded, tugging at his sleeve. She leaned around his arm and he quickly shifted the page from her focus.

Christian gave his mother a look. “I need you to return home and take the carriage to the countryside with Lucinda as we’d discussed.”

Only those plans had been that of a new bridegroom, sending off his family so he might be alone with his new wife. Now, he sought to hurry them away from the gossip.

“Christian,” his mother cried. “What of the wedding?”

A spasm wracked his heart. What of the wedding? “The wedding will continue,” he said with a conviction he did not feel.

“Then why do we have to leave?” Lucinda demanded, stamping her foot on the snow-packed ground.

He braced for his mother’s histrionics. But then with the same remarkable poise she’d shown after her husband’s passing, she took Lucinda by the arm. “Come along. Don’t you know by now you should trust your brother?”

Guilt slashed at his conscience as with those undeserved words, his mother proved her loyalty once more.

“Go, Lucy,” he urged gently.

Hurt seeped from his sister’s eyes. “Very well.” She gave a flounce of her curls and then followed their mother and Terry back to the carriage.

When they’d disappeared on the horizon, a black curse exploded from Christian’s lungs. The vicar shot his eyebrows to his hairline.

“You just need to explain to her,” Maxwell said matter-of-factly at his side.

He stared unblinkingly at the earl. How could his friend speak with that same blasted insouciance about…
this
?

Maxwell glanced beyond his shoulder and Christian froze as a sense of knowing filled him. He glanced up to where Prudence walked alongside her scowling brother. But it was not the earl who commanded his notice, but rather the lady with her ravaged eyes. His heart dipped to his stomach. Oh, God. She knew. Of course, she knew.

His friend hastily collected the damning newspaper from him and stepped aside.

Christ.
Perhaps she did not know. Then where is her smile, you bloody fool? Agony knifed through him as he took in her parted lips. A flash of shocked hurt glinted in her cornflower eyes, killing any such hope. “Prudence,” he said, his tone gruff.

“St. Cyr, Maxwell.” The Earl of Sinclair stretched out their names in a slow, threatening whisper. At his side, Prudence stood stock-still and Christian damned the handful of witnesses present who prevented him from speaking to her and… What? Telling her that Maxwell had been correct and that he’d first waltzed with her on a wager.

Prudence took several hesitant steps toward him. Faltering when she never moved through life with anything but limitless abandon. “Prudence,” he began, his tone hoarse. His gaze shifted to that familiar paper clutched in her gloved fingertips.

She held it out between them. “Is it true?”

Her whispered words were so faint he strained to hear them. And for a moment borne of cowardice, he yearned to pretend he’d not heard them.

But he’d been a coward too long.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth and then lowered his shaking palm to his side. “Only part of it.”

She went stock-still. And even as the words left his mouth, he knew how empty and weak they were.
Tell her you love her. Sort out the lies from the truths
. Except the words would not come. To utter those words now would ring hollow and she deserved more.

Of all the women he’d been with through the years, Prudence had been the only one of them who’d been completely lacking in any and all artifice. It was why, with her brother and the minister standing silently on, he knew as her gaze slid away from his, that with the uttered truth, he’d managed to rob her of that unadulterated belief in life, in happiness, in him. For the jubilant sparkle that lit her eyes and filled him with light in his dark world, was extinguished. Panic unfurled within him, sucking at his breath, and taking with it his thoughts.

“Shall we begin?” the minister whined, slapping his book in a most unholy way against the side of his leg.

Prudence fiddled with the fabric of her cloak, twining and untwining her fingers in the blue muslin. The Earl of Sinclair gently took her by the arm and escorted her several steps away. He leaned down and whispered something close to her ear. She alternated between periodically nodding and shaking her head.

Maxwell returned to Christian’s side. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.

Christian gave his head a distracted shake. This was not Maxwell’s fault. This belonged to Christian.

Time seemed to stretch to eternity and his entire body went tense with the rapidly spreading panic that she would leave, that she would turn on her heel and march away from their elm, past her sister’s boulder, and on to a man who’d always been more worthy than Christian Villiers and his debt-ridden marquisate. A panic that had nothing to do with her dowry and his own finances gripped him. Yet he’d always put his own self before others, for as her brother very clearly spoke to her and attempted to sway her from this act of permanency, he didn’t think of his mother or sister or Mac or Martin or any other man in his employ. He thought of her.

The Earl of Sinclair ceased talking and then trained a lethal glare on Christian. If looks could kill, he would have been dead before them, with the minister officiating over his funeral and not his wedding. Though in this moment, it was remarkably hard to tell the difference between the two.

“Shall we begin?” the minister asked once more.

Then it began to snow.

Lesson Twenty-one

Never allow a man to try and send you off like a recalcitrant child

E
verything had been perfect.

Though she’d not had the approval of her mother or sisters or brother on her wedding day, Prudence had not needed anyone but him.

For in all the dreams she could have imagined for her wedding day, those thoughts had never once included a small country church or grand cathedral. Nor had it been the parlor where her brother had wed his wife. Rather, she’d imagined precisely a spot beside her elm. And Christian had known that. And she’d loved that he knew that. In a world where people thought they knew Prudence Tidemore and found her to be remarkably untalented in all ladylike endeavors and one to seek and find trouble, she was more than that. And Christian had been the only person to look within and know precisely what her heart had dreamed based on one passing conversation some days past alongside the very tree.

It had become their elm and staring at him framed under the aged overhanging branches, the other part of her heart that had not belonged to him, was lost. A silly sheen of tears blurred her vision. Until everything had become so very un-perfect.

Lies. All of it.

From her position upon his carriage bench, she discreetly brushed the tear back and shifted so that her shoulder was presented all the more to Christian who sat across from her. Her lips twisted with a bitter smile. Or some of it had been a lie, according to Christian. Nay, her husband. She was, after all, married now. To a man who’d danced with her on nothing more than a wager. Another tear slid down her cheek, followed by another, and another.

Even as her brother had insisted she leave him at the proverbial altar of what had, for a too-brief moment, been
their
elm, she could not do that. To have walked away from Christian and the rushed nuptials would have only further cloaked the Tidemore family in gossip, and she could never, would never jilt a gentleman and subject her sisters and his to the same miserable time she’d had of it.

“I wanted to dance with you,” he said quietly. “That much was true.”

Must he know her silent thoughts and unspoken wishes so? She stilled as his quiet baritone rumbled from within his chest and filled the small space of his carriage. She grasped on to the hope that she’d merely misheard those casual words tossed out by Lord Maxwell. “Did you dance with me on a wager?” How was that question so steady when her world had been shaken with the truth that the dance which had meant so much to her had been nothing more than a game to him? At his silence, she swung about to face him.

He landed his gaze on her tear-dampened cheeks and recoiled as though he’d been struck. And surely any man who could be so sincere in his regret could never have hurt her in this way, could not have started their relationship—their marriage—on a wager. “I did.”

Those two words were so quietly spoken she may as well have imagined them. “You did,” she repeated numbly, demanding with her eyes more than that succinct utterance. He owed her more. She deserved more. Yet, it became apparent with the rattle of the carriage wheels, he intended to say nothing else. Prudence borrowed one of her brother’s favorite curses which caused her husband to flush and then presented her shoulder to him once more.

She sat huddled in the corner of Christian’s carriage, nay her
husband’s
carriage, with her gaze trained on the ripped red velvet curtain. That tear an indication of his dwindling wealth, his need for her dowry, and his only use for her. A swell of bitterness worked up her throat and threatened to choke her as she lashed at herself with the humiliating words uttered in that flippant manner by Lord Maxwell. That unintentional revelation had proven the entire beginning of her relationship with Christian had been built on a wager, which may as well have been nothing more than a lie.

Prudence gave silent thanks as the carriage rocked to a stop before his townhouse. Her new home. She peeled the curtain aside and looked out the window. A servant limped over to the carriage and without knocking, jerked the door open. Momentarily taken aback once more by Christian’s unconventional servants, she welcomed the momentary diversion from her own miserably dreary thoughts.

The coarse stranger with a vicious scar on his right cheek grinned up inside. “My lord. Congratulations are in order, I understand.”

That would depend on which party the burly stranger happened to ask.

Christian murmured his thanks and when the servant stepped aside, he climbed down and reached his hand inside the carriage. Prudence eyed his long, powerful fingers cased in immaculate gloves a moment. Those hands that had caressed her and stirred desire within her she’d never dreamed she would know. Then with a disgusted shake of her head, she ignored his outstretched offering. As she came down hard on the pavement, she pitched sideways and threw her arms out to prevent an undignified fall. Her husband easily caught her against him, drawing her close to his chest.

Her heart kicked up a quickened tempo and she damned her body for responding to him as it did. With hesitancy in his movements, Christian set her upon her feet and held out his arm. For a long moment she eyed it, and, realizing that any gawkers would love to be the first with a juicy morsel of gossip on the latest, hastily married Tidemore sister, Prudence placed her fingertips upon his sleeve. The muscles of his arm jumped at her touch.

As they climbed the handful of chipped steps, she paid attention to those details she’d failed to note the evening of his ball—the broken door knocker, the chandelier with cracked crystals at the center of the foyer ceiling.

She skimmed her gaze over the generous area, aware of her husband’s eyes on her, taking in her silent perusal. Did he expect her to turn her nose up at his lack of wealth? She’d always known what he had. She’d merely deluded herself into thinking what had brought him into her life had been something more honorable than a lost wager.

“My lord, my lady, congratulations!”

Prudence started at the booming voice and followed it to the burly man in black who rushed toward them.

In a move that would have shocked her proper mother, the butler stuck his hand out and pumped Christian’s. She took in the butler’s missing ear and, for a moment, she set aside her own misery as an involuntary pang of sympathy struck her for that loss.

“Thank you, Dalrymple. May I present my wife, the new Marchioness of St. Cyr. Prudence, my—our—butler, Dalrymple.”

From under her lashes, Prudence assessed her husband’s body language. He presented his mouth as he spoke so that the hard of hearing servant could read his lips. She wrinkled her brow. How did this considerate man who’d hire this disparate staff fit with a coldhearted dastard who’d trick her into marriage? Prudence cleared her throat. “It is an honor.” She unfastened the grommets of her cloak and shrugged out of the garment. A young footman rushed forward to collect it and she froze momentarily at the man’s missing right hand. She quickly lifted her gaze and mustered a smile.

“You have married a good man,” Dalrymple thundered. “One of the most honorable—”

Christian winced. “Dalrymple, if you will escort Her Ladyship abovestairs? I have business to see to.” And avoiding her gaze, but not before she detected the flash of regret in their brown depths, her new husband, still wearing his cloak, turned on his heel—

She shot her eyebrows up. By God. He was leaving. He would simply walk off and have her escorted abovestairs? “Where. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Going?” she bit out.

Her words brought him to an abrupt halt. Christian turned slowly around to face her once more.

From the corner of her eye, she spied Dalrymple looking between her and his employer and then make a hasty retreat with the footman.

Smart men. Too bad the same could not be said for their employer.

“What am I doing?” Christian asked slowly. Now it was his turn to repeat back words. Good, he should be unsettled. The blackguard.

She folded her arms at her chest. All the while her fingers itched with the urge to slap his expressionless face. “I will not be sent abovestairs without so much as the benefit of a discussion from the man who trapped me into marriage.”

He winced. “I did not trap you.”

Prudence narrowed her eyes. Yes, she’d made him the offer. But that had been when she’d believed he’d been honorable and good…and more, that he’d appreciated that she was not a copy of all those perfect, practiced, English ladies. Pain pulled at her heart. She swallowed back a wave of hurt and fed her fury. “You have already demonstrated loose lips where others are concerned,” she snapped taking some small pleasure when he blanched. “I’ll not have this discussion in the midst of your foyer before your servants’ peering eyes.”

“My servants would not—”

She withered him to silence with a glare. Snapping her damp skirts, she spun on her heel and then came to an abrupt stop. Talk of a deuced way to ruin one’s exit. Prudence spun back. “Where are your damned offices?”

Wordlessly, he held out his elbow. Prudence eyed it. By God. Was he mad? Christian let his arm fall to his side and then with a sigh, motioned for her to follow him. With each step that carried them closer to his office, hurt warred with anger so that when they reached his office and closed the door behind them, a swell of volatile emotion robbed her of any eloquent words.

Her husband strode over to his sideboard and poured himself a snifter of brandy. She took in his long, steady fingers as he raised that glass to his lips. He could be so coolly unaffected when her world had been pulled out from under her. “Well?”

He froze with his glass raised halfway to his lips. “What is there to say?”

Prudence planted her hands atop her hips. “The truth. Some of it was true and some of it was not, you said. I want those truths. Y-you owe me that.” The faint tremble to those last words ruined all strength in that sharp command.

Christian abandoned his untouched drink on the mahogany sideboard. “You know the truth.” He swiped a hand over his face. “I am…was destitute.” And now because of her, his staff and family would cease to struggle. “I—”

She strode across the room. “I am talking about the wager and the dance and what preceded the wager.” Would he deliberately skirt around that which mattered? “You said you wished to dance with me.” Her words came fast and furious. “Was that not true?” With a cry she tossed her hands up. “The dance meant something to m-me.” Her words caught and she momentarily slid her eyes closed. When not a single gentleman had bothered to partner her in so much as a quadrille, her husband had been the one man who’d not given a jot that she couldn’t dance or whether she was a Tidemore. And it had all been nothing more than a dare between two gentlemen. A viselike pressure squeezed about her chest. “That moment, that waltz, set you apart from every other man who was too cowardly or disinterested to dance with me. Yet you were merely there because of a dare.”

Christian’s heart hitched at the agonized tremble to her words. From the moment he’d stumbled upon Prudence in the streets of London, an unfettered smile had adorned her lips. Through the misery of the
ton
events she’d suffered through and the gossip she lamented, not once had she wavered in her effervescent joy. Until now.
Until me.

The muscles of his stomach twisted until he wanted to throw his head back and hurl insults at the mocking fates. Once again, Christian had proven himself capable of nothing but destruction. Blackthorne’s life, Prudence’s happiness.

His wife took a sure step toward him. “You have nothing to say to me, Christian?” The hurt bleeding through her eyes belied that bold, unwavering move she made.

He had a thousand and one things to say to her but none of which could ever make this right.

“I was not only there on a wager. I was there—” Christian froze and the air left him on a slow hiss. He stared unblinkingly at his wife’s ravaged features.

You bloody fool.

He’d been there because that was where he was supposed to be in that moment. Their paths were meant to connect. From Bond Street to Lady Drake’s ballroom. Only, he’d not realized as much—until now. How could he not have realized that this slip of a woman had been destined for him when fate had only held ugly in store for him before?

She made a sound of disgust and made to step around him.

He held his hands up in supplication, willing her to see that, in this, he offered the only truth he was capable of. “I was there because of you.” Emotion graveled his voice.