Confessions From an Arranged Marriage (3 page)

The sweet heady scent of woman enticed him to explore further. He might not be in a fit state for the full performance—though that fact was now in dispute—but he could taste. And he knew the lady would appreciate his attention. Chuckling softly he raised the skirts and dove under until he was enclosed in a tent of silk petticoats. The soft skin of her thighs brushed his cheeks. Her fragrant heat was a siren call to his groin. The lovely duchess was going to receive double pleasure tonight.

She moved, stretched her legs out as though emerging from slumber. Then he heard the doorknob turn and remembered the existence of his old friend. Damn Lamb. He was early too.

“What?” The question was voiced in a blend of sleepiness and confusion, followed by a strangled shriek. Flailing hands beat at his head through the material of the gown and he hastily withdrew.

Sinking back onto his ankles he looked up to meet the outraged face of Miss Minerva Montrose.

“What are you doing?” she cried. She lay before him, her legs exposed to the knees.

His head swam and his mouth fell agape as they stared at each other in horror. Then in unison they turned to the door.

A parade that wouldn't have disgraced the fashionable hour in Hyde Park trooped into the library.

His mother, the Duchess of Hampton.

Lord Iverley, his first cousin, lifelong enemy, and Minerva's brother-in-law.

Lady Chase and Mrs. Compton, best friends of Diana, Minerva's sister, Sebastian's wife, and Blake's erstwhile fiancée.

James Lambton, looking surprised.

The Duchess of Lethbridge, looking amused.

And Lady Georgina Harville, the biggest gossip in London.

Chapter 3

B
lakeney stood before his father, who had risen at his entrance and faced him across the dark carved desk. In the course of a century or so the duke's study, much larger than the library, had received most of the men who'd wielded any power in England, up to and including future monarchs. The furnishings, in the colossal style, had never changed in Blake's memory; they made a statement of the permanency of the power of the Vanderlin family, starting when the first duke built the Piccadilly mansion. On too many occasions the fourth and present duke had received his son in this chamber, always to remind him of his inadequacy as the future standard-bearer of the family influence. Many of his friends boasted of the birchings they'd received from their sires, but the duke never laid a hand on Blake. Touching was not something he did, either in affection or anger. Blake had often thought he'd prefer a steel rod on his back to the lash of his father's tongue.

“In a lifetime of idiocies, you've just committed the worst.” The Duke of Hampton's tone emerged as dry and colorless as his face, pale from an existence dealing in the back rooms of politics, and capped by a head of hair Blake couldn't recall, even in his youth, being anything but gray, fading to white.

“You almost debauched a virtuous young lady. For all your
bêtises
I've never known you to be depraved.”

He couldn't disagree, but it didn't make the duke's scorn any less painful. His father's opinion had always hurt, all the more because it was deserved. He felt like the lowest worm.

“I was drunk.” He still was, he supposed, though he'd never felt more sober.

“That fact is the only excuse, and a poor one at that. I really thought, Blakeney, when you elected to spend two years away from London, that you'd grown up and had finally discovered an appreciation of your future duties. That I was wrong is a disappointment to me.”

Blake's hands clenched behind his back in the classic stance of the guilty schoolboy. He hated that his sire could make him feel ten years old again, much too young and naïve to be inebriated.

“Miss Montrose is not the wife I would have chosen for you. I expected you to ally yourself with one of the great families, as I did with your mother. To find a wife, also like your mother, who was up to the task of being Duchess of Hampton. But it can't be helped. I cannot allow you to be responsible for the girl's ruin.”

He wanted to argue, not because he disagreed with the duke's assessment of the position, but because it was couched in terms of his father's and his family's responsibility, and not his own.

“Miss Montrose's father is my closest neighbor and her sister is your cousin's wife. She was also a guest in my house this evening. The wedding will take place in a month.”

With the impending slam of the prison door Blake found his voice. “Why so long? Why not tomorrow?” he asked bitterly.

The duke gave his I-can't-believe-my-son-is-such-a-fool look. “If you get Miss Montrose with child during the honeymoon, I don't want any questions about her virtue, or danger of confirming that you did indeed debauch her in the library this evening.”

“Good lord, sir. Isn't talk of pregnancy a trifle premature?” Blake had scarcely grasped the fact he was to be a husband. His brain reeled from the identity of his bride. Fatherhood seemed too far-fetched.

“I hope not. We need an heir. There have been too few sons born to the Vanderlins during the past century. I have nothing against Thomas Vanderlin, but he's only a second cousin and I'd prefer to see the dukedom descend in the direct line. The best thing about Miss Montrose is the way the females in her family breed sons. Her mother has four, you know, and her sister two already, in only two years of marriage. And she is increasing again.”

Amazing how His Grace could voice the most indelicate of sentiments in the same tone he'd instruct one of his political clients how to vote on a bill in Parliament. The muted satisfaction in the duke's voice made Blake slightly sick. Little as he liked Minerva Montrose, surely she deserved better than to be regarded as a brood animal.

“Is there no way out of this?” he asked. He'd never changed his father's mind about anything he could recall, but he had to try. “I accept my own responsibility, but I have no reason to believe Miss Montrose wishes to marry me.”

“Not wish to marry you? I find that improbable.” Before Blake could make the mistake of reading a compliment in the duke's astonishment, his father shook his head decisively. “I'd be sorry to have such a poor opinion of the young woman that she'd be reluctant to wed the heir to the Duke of Hampton. Whatever she may think of you, she must respect your family and future position in life. Your mother thinks highly of her intelligence or she would never have offered to give the ball in her honor.”

“I wish she hadn't.”

“I will speak to Iverley about the settlements. Your allowance will be increased at once, and more so once we have an heir.”

“I'm permitted to take care of that piece of business myself? You mean there's something you and Cousin Sebastian cannot arrange for me?”

“I assume getting a son is within your capabilities. She's a very pretty girl.”

Blake couldn't deny his bride's beauty, but his role as a stud filled him with no anticipation. She left him cold with her English pink and white looks, all blond and blue-eyed perfection, not to mention her openly derisive scorn for his character and intellect. He thought about Desirée: dark, exotic, experienced, and admiring. Ruby bracelets or not, he was going straight to her house once he escaped from this interview.

“One more thing.” The duke hadn't finished with him.

“Sir?”

“Your mistress. Dismiss her.”

“Damn it, sir. Why?”

“People must believe this a love match. There's no other reason for you to wed such a girl. Breaking with the Frenchwoman cannot matter to you. You've only been with her a week or two.”

Three. Three weeks ago he'd managed to outcharm and outbid a dozen rivals for Desirée's favors in a chase almost as thrilling as a good foxhunt. But his dried-up old prune of a father would never understand. Blake had no idea if the old man had ever kept a mistress. Probably too obsessed by politics and power to suffer the weaknesses of the flesh.

If he obeyed his father, a grim future stretched ahead of him. Instead of Desirée's endless skill and creativity, he was sentenced to a lifetime of sleeping with a sharp-tongued little snip of a girl with no idea of how to please a man in bed, and doubtless little interest in learning.

M
inerva's future floated beyond her control as her ambitions threatened to crash into ruins. She was helpless to steer her own fate. It all depended on that tenuous and delicate abstraction, her
reputation
.

Diana had often warned her to guard it as though it were a small helpless child. There had been occasions in the past when she'd put it at risk. Not in a major way, but just enough to gets its infant toes wet. And she—and her reputation—had survived.

But nothing she'd done, or dreamed of doing, equaled being caught with a man's head up her skirts. She wasn't even to blame, unless she could be faulted for misjudging her dose of powder and dozing off under the influence of the opiate. The unfairness of it pierced her to the core.

She supposed there was a certain ironic justice in the fact that she had, on occasion, feigned such a headache for her own purposes.

Damn
.

The day after the ball her friends gathered around her in the morning room of Lord Chase's house. Everyone was willing to find a reason why she could survive Lord Blakeney's drunken advances without having to wed him.

“You don't have to marry Blakeney.” Sebastian was the most vehement, Celia Compton almost as much.

“We will always support you, won't we Tarquin?” she asked her husband, who agreed, but Minerva detected some reserve in his response. Not that he would personally repudiate her, but Tarquin Compton was a better judge of worldly opinion than anyone else in the room.

Juliana poured her a cup of tea and offered her silent sympathy. She'd already apologized profusely, and quite needlessly, for failing as a chaperone. There was, in Minerva's opinion, no one to blame but Blakeney. And she did. How could he have mistaken her for that woman?

Damn.

“I wish Diana were here,” she said. “She'd know what to do.”

“So do I,” Sebastian said. “If she hadn't stayed in the country we'd have held your ball at our house and this wouldn't have happened because,” and his voice gained a rough-edged savagery, “I wouldn't have let my bloody cousin Blakeney over the threshold.”

What he left unsaid was that he'd managed to get Diana with child a ridiculously short time after the birth of their second son, Nicolas Jenson Iverley. Thanks to him she was vomiting in Kent instead of chaperoning her sister in London.

“You don't have to marry him,” he said, as though repetition would make it true.

Juliana walked over to the window for the fourth time. “I see Cain in the middle of the square. Now we'll hear Lady Moberley's opinion.”

Lord Chase, always known as Cain to his friends, had gone to canvas the opinion of his aunt, a lioness of London society.

“Well?” Four voices, almost in unison, greeted his entrance. Minerva dared not speak. She had some inkling how a prisoner at the dock, facing the gallows, must await the verdict of the jury. She rose from her chair and fixed her eyes on the marquis.

Cain exhibited none of his usual cheerful charm. His blue eyes were sober and he shook his head.

“I'm sorry, Minerva.” She was grateful he didn't beat about the bush. “My aunt believes that you will never be received again in the highest circles unless Blakeney weds you.”

“Does she believe I
let
him do that to me?”

“It doesn't matter. There's not a soul in London who believes you either innocent or unwilling. Or rather, not a soul who wants to believe. It's just too good a story.”

“Lady Georgina Harville has been spreading it, I suppose. She always hated Diana.”

“The tale being told over the teacups is that you pretended to have a headache and went off to meet Blakeney in the library.”

“That's ridiculous. We don't even like each other. Surely there's something Blakeney can do to make up for this, besides marrying me.” She almost spat out the last two words.

Tarquin offered his ruling. “As a gentleman he can do nothing less. You can refuse his offer, of course, but people will remember. There'll always be a taint attached to your name.”

The walls of the Chases' spacious room seemed to close in on Minerva as she strode back and forth and contemplated her unwelcome future. She faced an existence utterly different than she'd planned since she'd first become enthralled by politics at the age of eight. Reading the account of Lord Byron's speech in the House of Lords in support of the Luddites had opened up a world of injustice beyond the peaceful backwater of Mandeville Wallop. Ever since, she'd burned to make her mark on the world. Instead of a worthwhile life spent supporting her husband in the betterment of their country, was she to wed a dissolute idiot with whom she had nothing in common?

That she would eventually be a duchess was of little consequence. The days of the aristocracy would pass, had perhaps already passed. Reform was in the air and could not long be postponed by the interests that fought it. In the future power would be with the bold, the brilliant, the self-made. Minerva wanted to be one of them.

Celia and Juliana gathered about her, trying to make the best of things.

“Blakeney was always amiable to me,” Celia insisted, “that summer at Mandeville. I never had the least reason to dislike him.”

“I never thought he was as brainless as people say,” Juliana chimed in, “even if he wouldn't know the Gutenberg Bible from a Minerva Press novel.” Lady Chase had a tendency to judge everyone in relation to antiquarian books.

Sebastian listened with disfavor to these excuses, which Minerva herself found quite unconvincing. “Women! Always ready to forgive a handsome face.” He had never forgiven Blakeney for wanting to marry Diana, or for boyhood bullying. “I should call him out for what he's done. Or I could just kill him.”

“I understand your sentiments, old fellow.” Tarquin placed a staying hand on Sebastian's shoulder. “But all you'd do is cause a bigger scandal and upset your family. And Minerva would be no better off than she is now.”

“What about that other fellow, Min?” Sebastian asked. “Parkes, was it? Doesn't he want to marry you?”

“Our courtship hadn't got to that stage. We've only known each other a couple of weeks.”

“Suppose I call on him? I'll offer him a large dowry and the support of every connection I muster.”

Minerva doubted Parkes would accept, and she wouldn't respect him if he did. “I thought I'd be able to assist him in his political career. Under the present circumstances I'd be nothing but a drag on his advancement.” She shook her head in amazed despondency. “Blakeney has ruined me. I have no other choice.”