Patricia Rice (3 page)

There was lovemaking, and there was animal mating. She wanted a husband who respected her and made glorious love to her. She didn’t want a husband who rutted to make screaming infants whether she wanted them or not. Her soul filled with horror at the thought.

“I think we need time to consider this,” she said placatingly. “This is very sudden.”

“We’ve been betrothed for years, Christina,” he said impatiently. “That’s time enough. Your father has agreed to a ceremony in the morning. I know your mother will want her frills and whatnot, but I’ve been assured that can be accomplished easily. All you need do is show up.”

Her romantic vision of wearing a trailing medieval wedding gown, walking up a grassy aisle with doves fluttering beneath a canopy of trees, shattered into crumbling bits. She blinked away a tear and sought for some way out.

She didn’t want out. She wanted her old Harry back.

“I won’t show up,” she said defiantly, standing again. “You know that if I decide to disappear, I can.”

“Dammit, Christina, grow up! This is neither the time nor place to play games.” Pushing back his long coat, he shoved his hands into his pockets and glared at her. “I’ll have you locked in your room and post a guard outside your window if I must, but we will be married on the morrow. I’m holding you to your promise.”

Only that flicker of uncertainty in his grim aura gave her courage to stand up to him. “Then we will marry tomorrow, and you can court me after.”

“
What?
”

Hurriedly, before he could come forward and throttle her, Christina added, “I want a husband who loves me. You’ve spent these last years dabbling with politics, making the rounds of clubs and gaming halls, dancing with every beautiful female in the kingdom. You’ve never courted
me.
How can you expect me to be a wife when I’m not even certain you know I exist? You don’t even believe in ghosts,” she added for good measure. “Or that I can see them. A man who loved me would believe in me.”

“That is the most ridiculous…” Harry paced in front of the window, his heels smacking loudly against the parquet floor. He drove his hand into his thick gold hair as if he’d grab his head to be certain it stayed on. He halted and swung to face her. “What blackmail is this?”

“It isn’t blackmail. It’s common sense,” she said indignantly. “I want you to make love to me, not make babies. Until you can do that, I suggest we forget about marriage.”

“Make love…” His voice trailed off as he stepped closer. “One can’t do one without the other.”

His greater breadth loomed menacingly, and Christina knew it was now or never. She had to be very persuasive or he’d ignore her wishes and ruin everything. “One can, but I’ll not ask it of you if you’ll only give me time to make you love me.”

She thought it must be shock that held him silent for a full minute. He stood half a head taller than she, and she was intimately aware of his strength to her weakness. He was a duke. She was promised to him. He could do anything he liked.

“What makes you think I don’t love you?” he finally asked in a voice somewhat less than a low roar.

“Instead of yellow and purple, your aura is all brown and blue right now. I don’t see one iota of love in it.” She crossed her hands across the front of her skirt and waited.

He growled. He walked away. He pounded the desk.

She didn’t flinch.

He swung around, glared, and radiated outrage and frustration. “Two weeks,” he said. “I give you two weeks to make me love you, and then you’ll be my wife in all the ways a wife should be.”

He strode for the door. “I’ll see you in church tomorrow.”

Christina expelled her pent-up breath as the door slammed. She had two weeks to find the real Harry—the only man she could ever love. What happened if he was truly lost?

Could she call the marriage off once the vows were said?

Would she want to?

Harry opened the door to his wall safe and removed a leather bound volume of velvet pages holding his coin collection. Carrying the heavy leather volume to his desk, he opened it, stroking with fondness the Roman nose on a gold coin he’d first found when he was but seven. Basil, the squire’s son, had found another soon after, and the competition had been heated between them until Harry had gone off to Oxford. He hadn’t seen Basil in years, and who had the best collection was no longer important.

“They refuse to leave, Your Grace. We can’t have those dreadful persons in the foyer when you bring your duchess home tomorrow.”

Harry grimaced at his manservant’s words. Settling back in his desk chair, he glanced around at his favorite room—the study. The town house belonged to the estate, of course, but he’d used it since attaining his majority and taking the election for one of his father’s pocket boroughs. He loved the intellectual stimulation of London and had many fond memories of all-night discussions in this room.

Besides this house and the one in Sussex, the Sommersville estate included barren wastelands in Wales and Scotland. Only the Sussex acres produced any income. He’d have to send Jack off to Scotland to see if they could sell the land and hunting box there, but it might take years to sell acres of rocks. The idea of raising cash by selling the London town house was repellent. He just needed a little more time until he straightened out this mess, then he and Christina could return here so he could take his new place in the House of Lords.

Turning a velvet page to reveal another row of Roman coins, Harry clenched his jaw but acknowledged the servant with a nod. The meeting with Christina had been unpleasant, but he’d set his path. Now he must follow in it. “Luke, carry these to Lord Scarsdale. He’s offered five hundred pounds for the lot. You may say they’re worth a thousand. You know what to do from there.”

Luke had been his manservant since childhood. He could haggle a Bedouin out of his robe. Having dressed Harry in his first coattails, he could also be as stubborn as any family.

“That is your Roman coin collection, Your Grace,” Luke protested. “You have spent a lifetime collecting those. There isn’t a more splendid collection in all the kingdom.”

“I know. That’s why I want at least seven hundred pounds for it. It will pay off the fools below so my lady need not be bothered with their ilk.”

Luke gaped but took the book of coins. “Your Grace, surely…”

Apparently seeing something in Harry’s face that brooked no argument, Luke compressed his lips, bowed, and walked out.

Harry felt horrendously guilty for pressing Christina into marriage. She’d had every right to protest his crude behavior. Sheltered by her wealthy family, she’d been pampered and spoiled all her life. He’d never meant to change that. He enjoyed her unfettered spirit and fanciful nature.

The thought of taking her to the abomination that was his estate raised all his protective hackles. He’d fought Jack’s advice for weeks, pooling all his available cash and selling some of his more viable investments to pay the first installment on Carthage’s damned mortgage. But he still owed a king’s ransom.

He’d haunted the estate solicitor’s office while the firm had pored over their records, looking for loopholes, searching for signed entails. The solicitors could not find Edward’s signature on an entailment anywhere, although they swore the document had been prepared and delivered to Sommersville a dozen years ago.

Harry had slipped bribes to judges, spoke privately with half the Lords in their clubs, but he had yet to discover a means of preventing Carthage from foreclosing on Sommersville if he didn’t meet the payments and couldn’t find the entailment.

The visit to Christina’s father today had been a last act of desperation.

As a younger son, he’d never been responsible for anyone or anything except himself. Suddenly, he was responsible for every relative that ever crawled in off the family tree. He’d no idea he had great-great-aunts still living in Northumberland or third cousins relying on the estate’s allowance in Cornwall.

He couldn’t order a pair of boot soles without a bootmaker producing a bill from the estate and demanding its payment.

And because he’d felt guilty as hell asking for Christina’s hand for her dowry, he’d agreed to her father’s monstrous suggestion—that if he could not keep his wife in the manner to which she was accustomed, he had to return Christina to her family.

If he couldn’t pay off the mortgage, he could lose his wife as well as his estate. He’d been more angry and ashamed at the marquess’s demand than Christina’s, if truth be told.

Slamming his hat on his head, Harry grabbed his walking stick to beat off the rabble at his door and strode out to set about his next unpleasant task—doubly unpleasant given Christina’s ultimatum.

He’d had every intention of paying off his mistress before he married. He took wedding vows seriously, and under the circumstances, he damned well couldn’t afford Melissa any longer.

When he’d gone to the marquess to claim his betrothed’s dowry, he’d had some thought that at least Christina would be an enchanting bride who would soothe his physical needs and comfort his aching soul in his time of trouble.

Instead, he’d confronted a romantic child demanding that he
love
her before she’d act as his wife. He had to assume that meant she refused to share his bed. Well, he’d see about that. He’d known Christina a long time. She was a capricious little thing. All the rest of the world might be out of his control, but Christina would come around soon enough.

Meanwhile, he’d have to give up the woman who had taught him all he knew about sex. He couldn’t imagine it would be a pleasant parting.

He couldn’t imagine anything pleasant happening ever again. The rest of his life stretched out before him in a long hard road of duty.

***

Wincing as another valuable vase smashed against the door he’d just closed behind him, Harry decided he needed a few more stiff drinks and the company of sympathetic comrades to ease his last lonely night of bachelorhood. Staggering from the quantity of brandy he had consumed while listening to his mistress’s wails, he directed his steps down the familiar path to his club.

Maybe he should have accepted Melissa’s pleas for him to spend the night, but it had seemed disloyal to Christina. Remembering his betrothed’s look of shock this morning, he figured he’d been a little hard on her. He hadn’t expected her refusal. He’d had some strange idea that Christina was different from the common run of women and would be sympathetic to his needs.

Of course, he hadn’t explained his needs. He couldn’t begin to admit the humiliation of bankruptcy.

The instant Harry walked through the door of his club, he regretted it. He could swear they’d all been waiting for him. Cheers rang out and glasses were raised as he entered the lounge, and someone pressed a drink into his hand.

Freddie, Viscount Sinclair, shouted for a toast. “To the next sacrifice to family and title, may his freedom pass on to us for many more years!”

“You want me to drink to that?” Harry muttered, but he needed the brandy and lifted the glass to his lips for a good gulp.

“Aren’t you afraid she’ll cosh you over the head with a broomstick if you stray, Harry?” some wit in the back of the room called.

He didn’t even question how word of his impending marriage had carried around London so swiftly. Servants tattled, and it wasn’t as if one could hide wedding preparations. He simply wasn’t in a humor to hear jests about Christina or her family of eccentrics, not so soon after being hit with the results of his father’s peculiarities.

“My betrothed is one of a kind,” he declared boldly. He meant it as a compliment, but his comrades hooted in derision.

“I saw her skulking around the crypts of St. Andrews just last week,” shouted someone from another corner of the room. “Does Sommersville have any graveyards for her to haunt?”

So that’s what she’d been about lately. Sighing, Harry figured he’d have to cure her of that propensity. The mother of future dukes did not generally go about exploring crypts, especially in cemeteries behind the old city walls in an area frequented by men, not all of them gentlemen.

“Lady Christina may explore Sommersville’s graveyard all she likes,” he said, although in his ill humor he preferred to ring her unconventional neck, “but I daresay she won’t have as much time for it once we’re wedded.”

“And bedded!” Freddie shouted.

Harry gulped the rest of his brandy and took another. Bedding Christina would certainly curtail her activities, but bedding her was the problem, wasn’t it?

“Don’t you fear she’ll have witchy daughters who will be as crazy as your old man and will haunt that mausoleum you call a home?”

Harry flushed and looked for the source of those fighting words, locating a man in rural broadcloth lounging against the fireplace, apparently as foxed as he was. “Basil? What the devil are you doing here?”

“What, you think I’m not good enough to belong to the same club?”

“Don’t be an ass, Chumley. You’ve never come to London before.”

Basil Chumley normally resided in Sussex where their estates ran together. The Chumleys hadn’t the wherewithal to send their son to university or keep him in London, so he and Harry had seen each other only briefly over the past decade or more. The differences in their circumstances had always created an element of competition between them, but Basil had never derided Harry’s family in public.

Only neighbors like the Chumleys knew of the late duke’s deterioration into senility these past years. Had his head not been spinning, Harry might have called his old chum on it, but he hadn’t the impetus left to question Basil’s spite.

“The family came up yesterday for my sister’s presentation,” Basil answered. “Seems we arrived just in time to see you tie the knot. I trust the lady’s dowry is large enough to pay for her eccentricities as well as what’s needed back home,” he added with a sneer.

“My lady will help me right the place,” Harry said stiffly. Knowing he had to take his bride to the absurdity that was his rural home instead of showering her in pleasures tore at his pride. Basil could go to the devil.

“I wish you well of the witch, then. Even if she brings you a fortune, I’ll wager she tumbles the castle on your head,” Chumley rejoined.

Considering how Harry’s father and brother had died, this produced an instant’s silence in the drunken camaraderie. Even Basil flinched when he realized how his words sounded.

Finishing off the brandy, Harry flung the glass at the fireplace. It smashed with a satisfying flare of fire from the dregs of the alcohol. Politely, he bowed to the man he now considered his ex-friend. “Thank you for your kind wishes. I am well aware of the spirit that prompts them, and I heartily return the sentiment.”

His audience erupted in nervous laughter as he wished Chumley the same fate Basil had expressed for him.

“I’ve heard you’re a gambling man, Harry. A thousand pounds and my Roman coins against yours that she’ll make you the laughingstock of all London by this time next year,” Chumley shouted over the laughter.

Chumley’s collection was nearly as good as the one Harry no longer had, but by the same token, he no longer had a thousand pounds. He wasn’t about to admit either in the face of his friends.

With a shrug, Harry accepted Basil’s challenge. “My betrothed will be a duchess who will grace the halls with more wisdom and refinement than you are like to see in a lifetime.” With that absurdly defiant prediction about an imp who chased brownies, Harry swung on his heel and marched unsteadily for the door.

All would be right once he had a little cash and time to uncover the source of the estate’s problems.

It would be even better once he had the delicious, capricious Lady Christina in his bed. To hell with Basil and his odd behavior.

***

“I wish Felicity could be here,” Christina murmured half to herself as her mother adjusted the white cape over the bodice of her yellow silk gown while they stood in the wings of the cathedral’s nave. She could hear guests murmuring as the church filled, and she kept glancing over her mother’s shoulder in hopes of seeing Harry.

A gold chain fastened the cape around Christina’s throat. The cape partially covered the low neckline and lace of her gown, but that wasn’t its purpose. Its purpose was steeped in Malcolm tradition and lost to the ages.

“You know your sister cannot travel so close to her time,” Hermione, Lady Hampton, said. “Although if she knew you were finally marrying Harry, she’d probably have the baby on the road trying to get here.”

“Ninian had a girl this time, didn’t she?” Heart racing as she stood in the shadows near the altar, Christina tried to appear nonchalant.

She didn’t fool her mother. Hermione pinned the circlet of rowan more firmly to Christina’s flowing hair.

“Your cousin has already provided the earl with his heir. It is only right that Ninian have a girl next to carry on our traditions. If Harry is not concerned, then you needn’t be either.”

But she was. She couldn’t imagine enduring Harry’s hatred if time after time she bore him girls.

She couldn’t imagine having a litter of babies. Or even one.

She was terrified. She’d never risked quite so much on her previous adventures. This adventure would endure a lifetime and likely affect generations to come. Gulping, she looked over the whispering crowd.

“Why are so many people here?” she asked. Malcolm weddings tended to be untraditional by society’s standards. Generally, only family attended.

“Harry is a duke and your father is a marquess, dear. It is the uniting of two great families. People are curious.”

People might be curious, but Christina didn’t think they had come to see two families united. She saw a preponderance of unmarried gentlemen gathering on one side of the church, and a very odd assortment of what appeared to be merchants in the back.

All her female sisters, aunts, and cousins filled the other side. She even recognized some of her Ives brothers-in-law with her half brothers. The sight of her family reassured her and gave her courage. No matter what happened she would always have family to rely on. That steadied some of her jitters.