How to Entice an Earl (25 page)

Fourteen

“Oh, dear,” Maddie said with a mixture of sympathy and amusement as she sipped her champagne. She and her cousins were huddled in a corner talking among themselves as the crowd in the ballroom drank champagne and made merry. “I knew Amelia disliked me, but I had no idea just how much until now.”

“It’s not just you,” Cecily said with a shake of her dark head. “It’s all of us. Imagine what she would do if she knew about the…” She leaned in and whispered in a low voice, “The dance card.”

“I know!” Juliet said, also keeping her voice hushed. “If it weren’t for the dance card I would never have gotten the courage to dance with Alec.”

“And I know I wouldn’t have made the push to speak to Winterson,” Cecily agreed. “Indeed, though Maddie seems to have sent Amelia over the edge, she is the one who has needed the you-know-what the least. After all, she snagged Gresham without it. And they are just as besotted as we are.”

“Don’t,” Maddie said before she could stop herself.

“Don’t what?” Cecily asked, puzzled. “Don’t talk about the dance card?”

“No,” Maddie said impatiently, “don’t speak about my relationship with Gresham as if it is the same as yours with Winterson, or Juliet’s with Deveril.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Maddie?” Juliet asked, wrapping an arm around her cousin. “Of course it’s the same.”

“No,” Maddie insisted, “it isn’t. You two are blissfully in love with your husbands. Whereas Christian and I are … well, I’m not sure what we are, but I know we aren’t blissfully in love.”

Cecily and Juliet exchanged a look.

“So,” Cecily said quietly, “he loves you but you don’t love him. Like I was with Winterson.”

“Not necessarily,” Juliet interjected. “They could be like Alec and me. She could love him but he doesn’t love her. Yet.”

“Is that it, Maddie?” Cecily asked.

“No,” Maddie said impatiently. “You both have it all wrong. Christian and I are marrying because it’s known we kissed publicly at Lady Emily Fielding’s card party. I am compromised and he is marrying me to save my reputation. What is left of it, I mean.”

“Oh, I see,” Cecily said her voice heavy with irony. “You are right, that’s nothing like my match with Winterson.”

“You don’t understand,” Maddie said impatiently. “You were overcome by the heat of the moment. The passion. When Christian climbed the trellis into my bedchamber—”

“Madeline Honoria Essex!” Juliet hissed. “Never say that you have anticipated your vows!” She held a mocking hand to her chest. “I, for one, am shocked! Shocked!”

“Forget about being shocked,” Cecily said. “I want details!”

Maddie felt herself blush. “Of course I won’t go into detail,” she said impatiently. “What I was trying to say is that our match is not the product of irresistible attraction. It is the result of a scandalous situation and a bit of gallantry on his part.”

“Gallantry?” Cecily asked. “My dear, a man does not marry out of a sense of gallantry. Yes, a gentleman will marry a young lady whose reputation he has compromised, but I hardly think that is
all
there is between you.”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Maddie,” Juliet said softly. “When you aren’t watching. He is fond of you. He may well love you.”

Maddie looked at the floor. “I know he holds me in some affection. As I do him. But we are not hopelessly in love as you two are with your own husbands. True, there is passion. But from what I can tell, that is possible even when there is no affection at all.”

Impulsively, Cecily hugged her. “I know you think it’s different for you. And perhaps it is. But do not set yourself up for failure before you’ve even said the vows. What would one of the heroines of your novels do? Surely she would not resign herself to a loveless marriage.”

A half smile quirking her lips, Maddie conceded the point. “You are right. She would not.”

“Show a bit of the spirit you are known for, Mads,” Juliet said, hugging her as well. “If he doesn’t love you already then you need to demand that he do so at once!”

At the mental image of Christian’s face should she tell him such a thing, Maddie bit back a laugh. Perhaps she did need to look at this marriage business from a different perspective. After all, she and Christian were friends. Surely they could find their way to love along that path. Her match was different from her cousins’, true, but that did not mean that it must necessarily be inferior.

“All right,” she told her cousins, drawing strength from their support. “I will not give up on the idea of finding love in my marriage just yet.”

“Good girl,” Cecily said with a grin. “Just remember to tell him plainly what you want.”

“And,” Juliet added with a wink, “a whisper-thin night rail might not come amiss, either.”

*   *   *

The morning of the day before his wedding dawned cold and gray. Late spring in London, Christian reflected as he navigated the streets of the city on Galahad, making his way to his sister’s grave.

As a suicide, she was technically not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, but Christian’s uncle the archbishop had arranged for Clarissa to be interred in the Bunhill Fields Cemetery north of London, in Islington. The site of burials for a large number of dissenters and members of other faiths than the Church of England thanks to its unconsecrated grounds, Bunhill Fields was open to the burial of anyone who could pay the fees.

Tethering his horse to the fence surrounding the graveyard, he stepped through the gates and wended his way toward the east corner of the cemetery where a small, unprepossessing headstone marked the last resting place of the sister that Christian had adored.

Kneeling, he brushed a climbing vine from the stone, in a gesture reminiscent of the teasing way he used to brush her hair from her eyes.

It had been months since he’d come here. He knew well enough that the remains buried here were no longer Clarissa. And when he’d first returned from the Continent he had avoided coming here for that very reason. Haunting a dead sister’s graveside would hardly bring her back, or right the wrong that had driven her to this place.

Still, on this, the day before he would wed the girl whose own brother had abandoned her to her fate, Christian had felt the urge to confide in Clarissa. As he had done when they were children together. Before she succumbed to the melancholia that had ultimately killed her.

He had come here to talk about Madeline, but it was his sister who filled his thoughts now. “Clarey,” he said aloud, feeling foolish, but needing to vent the feelings that threatened to overwhelm him. “Why could you not wait for me? You know I would have set things right. Like I always did. Why couldn’t you wait?”

Turning, he saw a straight-backed older lady approaching. Her light brown hair, so like his own, was escaping its pins, hinting at a liberality that did not, unfortunately, apply to her personality.

“So,” Mrs. Elizabeth Monteith said, approaching her son, “you are as unwilling to accept her guilt as ever, I see.”

Christian bit back the curse that threatened to escape him as he watched his mother approach. It was an old argument between them. Going even as far back as his childhood when he had watched his mother castigate Clarissa for some meaningless infraction. For some reason, she had never been able to give her youngest daughter the benefit of the doubt. She saw Clarissa’s moods and melancholy as a weakness. And weakness was something Elizabeth could not, would not, tolerate.

“I am surprised that you are here,” he said finally, noting with amazement that his mother carried a posy of violets, which had been Clarissa’s favorite flower. “I thought you were in Scotland with Deirdre and Eleanor.”

His mother looked down at the bouquet and then up at Christian.

“Just because I am able to admit that she did this to herself does not mean that I don’t mourn her, Gresham.” Her words were chiding, but Christian saw genuine emotion in her eyes. “I do. Every day.”

“You’ll excuse me for not recognizing your constant criticism of my sister as motherly devotion,” he said bitterly. “It’s a wonder she lasted to the ripe old age of twenty-five before she threw herself into the arms of the first bounder she could find.”

“That is unworthy of you,” his mother said curtly. “She was ill, Gresham. Perhaps it was too late before I realized it. I do not claim that my handling of her was always the most effective. Clearly it was not, or she’d be here to argue her own case. But I did love her. As I love all my children.”

She paused and met his gaze. “Even the ones who call me everything but a murderer.”

Turning away, Christian pinched the bridge of his nose. He was probably being unfair to her, had known as much for some time now. But he was so damned racked with guilt at the thought of Clarissa thinking that a bottle of laudanum was the answer to her predicament. If he’d not been on the Continent he could have been here to stop her.

“She knew you loved her, Christian,” his mother said, diffidently laying her hand on his bowed back. “She did not blame you for your absensce. She was proud of you. So proud. I sometimes thought that the only time she smiled was when she spoke of you and your heroism during the war.”

“I should have been here, Mama,” he said, staring down at the grave marker. “I should have been here to stop her from getting caught up in that business with Selford.”

He would have been up on murder charges himself if Lord Selford hadn’t left for America shortly after Clarissa’s death. Christian had been told by the man’s solicitor that he had done so primarily out of fear for what his abandoned lover’s brother the war hero might do on his return.

“She was unpersuadable on the matter, my dear,” his mother said quietly. “She was in love. Or thought she was. He was handsome enough. And had manners that fooled even me for a while.”

Christian turned to frown at her. “Really?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. “I thought you forbade her from seeing him.”

“That was after I found him trying to bribe her maid to leave the back door of the house unlocked for him.”

Thinking of his own trip up the trellis at Essex House, Christian felt a pang of guilt. The difference, however, was that he was prepared to marry Maddie. Selford had seduced then abandoned Clarissa. Leaving her with child and a broken heart. And a volatile temperament and an impulsive nature that was almost guaranteed to lead to a bad outcome.

“I doubt you could have done much to stop them,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Clarey was hardly a biddable daughter. And once she’d decided to have him, she would probably have done anything to see him.”

“Still,” she said quietly, “I should have tried harder. I should have seen through his charming manners to the man underneath.”

Silently, he took his mother’s hand, and they stood thus for a moment, in a rare bit of solidarity.

“From what I’ve heard,” Mrs. Monteith said, “Clarissa would have liked your Lady Madeline.”

Christian turned to look at her quizzically. “What do you know of her?” he asked.

“Only what I’ve heard from the bit of gossip that reaches Edinburgh,” she said with a slight shrug. “That she is a most determined young lady who refuses to be cowed by the strictures of the
ton
.”

He smiled at the description. “You don’t know the half of it,” he said with a grin. “She is all that and more.”

“Do you love her?”

Christian felt his ears redden. “Well, I … that is to say … I have…”

His mother’s laugh rang out in the empty churchyard. “I am only raking you over the coals a bit, Gresham. What you feel for the young lady is your own affair.”

He relaxed a bit. “Thank you for that, at least.” Whatever it was he felt for Maddie, it wasn’t something he was comfortable discussing with his mother.

Reminded of the wedding, he turned to her. “Why are you in town? You cannot have gotten word of my betrothal.” Despite his anger with her over his sister’s death, he had sent a note to his mother in Scotland informing her of his pending marriage earlier in the week. But there was no way the missive had already reached her. They’d probably crossed paths on the road.

“No,” she said, her eyes keen. “I only learned of that when I arrived at your aunt Harrison’s this morning. And was rather surprised, I might add.”

“By the circumstances?” he asked.

“By the circumstances,” she affirmed, “and by the fact of it. I had no idea you were looking to marry.”

Christian stared at the toe of his boot. “I wasn’t, but things have changed. And I am fond of Lady Madeline,” he offered.

“So I guessed,” his mother said, smiling. “I hope that you will allow me to attend the wedding.”

This last she added almost as an afterthought. Christian wondered for a moment if his mother, whom he’d always thought of as invincible, was feeling shy. The notion made him feel like a churl for his earlier temper at her. But she doubtless understood that the strong emotions they both felt over the manner of Clarissa’s death was what had caused his outburst.

“I would like very much for you to attend the wedding, Mama,” he said. “And for you to meet Lady Madeline.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I would like that.”

“So, why are you in town?” he asked again.

She looked down at Clarissa’s headstone. “It was time,” she said, bending to smooth a gloved hand over the curve of the stone’s top. “I’ve hidden myself away for long enough.”

Reflecting that he’d misjudged her on many counts, Christian slipped an arm around his mother and walked her back to her waiting carriage.

Fifteen

The week of Maddie’s wedding was spent in a whirlwind of activity as she, Cecily, Juliet, and Lady Essex set about putting the preparations in place. Not only was there a new wardrobe to order but also the packing and moving of Maddie’s belongings to the Gresham town house in Berkeley Square. As a result, by the time the actual wedding arrived, Maddie was exhausted, and doubted her ability to remain awake when she was finally afforded the opportunity to stand still. Which, as it happened, was in the church standing before the archbishop.