Stealing the Bride (6 page)

“His remedy, you ask? His remedy. Hmm.” Temple tapped his lorgnette against the wall of the carriage, each
thwack
making Cordell twitch that much more. “I believe he sent some likely fellows after you. Now if I can just recall their names.”

Cordell leaned forward, while Diana sat poised in her seat, her only sign of distress a slight furrow across her fair brow.

“Their names,” Temple said, continuing his thrumming beat. “I believe they were your latest conquests, Diana. What the devil are their names? Hmm…”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Do you mean Lord Harry and Baron Nettlesome?”

“Nettlestone,” Temple corrected.

“Yes…yes,” she said testily. “Nettlestone.”

“Well, I just thought that since he was a favorite of yours, you would at least know his name.”

“Believe me, my lord, I had it correct the first time.”

Temple grinned. “That you did. Pins and Needles it is. I do like young Penham.”

Diana’s eyes narrowed, and Temple was glad he was on the inside of the carriage and not outside on the road. Elton was loyal, but Diana had enough money to bribe even his stalwart heart to run him down.

“Good lad, that, Penham,” he continued. “So fresh-faced and full of honor. And Nettlestone. Now he’s a rare one as well. And good with the cattle and those of an obstinate temperament. I can’t imagine how we found you first, for he’s a dab hand with the ribbons.” Temple sat back, his gaze directed at Cordell. “Now the real question is: Which one of them do you want to be found by? Mark my words, they are both determined to discover you, for Lamden has promised Diana’s hand to whichever one brings her back to London.”

“He what?” Diana rocketed forward in her seat.

“He promised your hand in marriage to the man who saved you from Cordell.” He spared a glance at the viscount. “No offense, sir.”

“None taken,” the man muttered, his eyes now wavering like the Union Jack in a stiff breeze.

Meanwhile, Diana’s mouth fell open in a wide, indignant O.

Temple reached across and with one finger under her chin, pushed it closed. “You’ll have a mouth full of dust gaping like that.” Then he winked at her.

She brushed his hand aside, and glanced over at Cordell to see if he was going to protest Temple’s taking such liberties.

Cordell was too busy muttering to himself.

Temple swore he heard the man say, “Hadn’t expected this.”

Seeing his opportunity, he forged ahead. “Now, if I were you, my dear viscount, I think I would prefer to be found by Nettlestone than Penham.”

“You would,” Diana said, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Not for the reasons you might suspect, my lady. For you see, Penham is a crack shot. And when he challenges Cordell here, as any honorable man would do, he’ll shoot him dead. One shot, straight through the heart.”

Temple drew a deep, wheezy breath, and then placed his hand dramatically over his chest.

“Oh my goodness, no!” Mrs. Foston said, clutching her cane until her knuckles turned white. “Why, that’s horrible. Such a wretched, awful way to die. And so painful, from what I hear.”

Cordell paled further.

Diana’s gaze rolled upward as if beseeching the heavens, though Temple doubted she was saying a prayer for her intended’s life. “And what about Lord Nettlesome?” She finally asked in a tone that hinted that she really didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Nettlestone,” Temple corrected.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “You don’t think Nettlestone will challenge Lord Cordell to a duel?”

“Of course he will,” Temple said. “And he’s a crack shot as well. But Nettlestone still has enough blunt to afford a nice headstone, a real bang up job of marble and such. Yes, the baron will see you credibly buried, Cordell, whereas Penham appeared rather hotheaded about the matter. Quite out of character for Lord Harry, but I fear he’s a man thwarted in love. Likely to shoot you like a dog and toss you into the ditch.” He punctuated his last sentence with a few more taps of his lorgnette.

Like you deserve, you bastard
, he thought.

That was enough to send Cordell’s breakfast racing forth. He turned to his bride-to-be and proceeded to toss his accounts all over her gown.

Temple drew back his immaculately polished boots. “Tsk, tsk,” he mused, tapping his lorgnette once again on Cordell’s shoulder. “I say, my good man, are you unwell?”

Diana snatched the silver-framed eyeglass out of Temple’s hand and tossed it out the window.

“Good riddance,” she said, before turning her attention to Cordell and her ruined gown.

“Ah yes, true love,” Temple commented, as he knocked on the roof for Elton to stop the carriage.

As it pulled to a halt, Cordell’s hand shot for the latch, flinging open the door and then falling face-first into the ditch. Without even trying to stand, he began retching anew.

Temple sighed, and then extended his hand to Diana to help her out. “True love,” he mused again. “What was it you were saying about its course earlier, my lady? It seems for you it has hit a bit of a rough patch.”

T
hey passed through three small villages before they came to Geddington. A quaint, medieval-style town, it would probably have slipped into obscurity if it had not been for the fact that one night, some five hundred years earlier, the body of Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England, had lain in rest in the tiny hamlet during her long funeral procession back to London. For this moment in history, it proudly bore one of the legendary crosses raised by her grieving King and husband as monument to her selflessness and bravery.

Beyond the historical significance that put the town in Billingsworth’s learned tome, the village also boasted a wheelwright…and as luck would have it, a magistrate.

The wheelwright promised he would have the viscount’s coach fixed by morning. The magistrate was another matter.

They had all settled at an inn, aptly named The Queen’s Respite, where the innkeeper greeted them smartly, obviously seeing a tidy sum to be had from a lady, her companion, a viscount,
and
a marquis.

“Yes,” Temple said, looking around the common room. “I do believe I will stay the night with your party, Lady Diana.”

Just as long as it takes me to engage the magistrate and his constable in securing your betrothed in the nearest cell.

Diana frowned. “But you don’t have to stay on my account, my lord,” she said, her Bath manners coming to the forefront. “I couldn’t live with myself if
I
was the reason you delayed your attendance at this house party.” Her gaze narrowed. “I don’t recall hearing about any house parties being formed. Just where is it that you said you are going?”

“I don’t recall that I said,” he told her in a blithe, breezy manner. “Besides, you need someone here to safeguard your reputation, my lady. I would be remiss as a gentleman if I didn’t add my protection to your fair and unblemished virtue.” He bowed low.

She snorted, in that so very eccentric manner of hers. “At nine-and-twenty I don’t think I need worry about that.”

Temple rose and leaned toward her ear. “I wouldn’t go announcing your age so loudly. Cordell is lousy at numbers, and probably still thinks you are but in your third or fourth Season.” He grinned and left the room whistling a saucy tune.

Looking back, Temple wagered she was trying to decide which of the innkeeper’s tankards she could afford to break over his head. Before she counted out her coins, he continued out of the yard and into the town to discover where the magistrate lived.

Unfortunately for Temple, the town official was gone, away on business until the next morning, along with the constable and the constable’s assistant. All that was left standing between Geddington and lawlessness was the magistrate’s pimpled clerk, a lad who appeared too nervous and flustered even to read the writ Temple carried, let alone execute it. Instead, he offered his assurances that his employer would be back in Geddington first thing in the morning.

Temple muttered and cursed at this turn of luck, for there was nothing left to do but return to the inn and keep an eye on his quarry.

Cordell proved easy to find. The viscount was settled at a table in the common room playing vingt-et-un with a florid-faced wine merchant and a traveling vicar—who looked more dissolute than holy. The stakes were already starting to pile up, and not in front of the viscount.

Diana was nowhere in sight.

“Where is your bride, Cordell?” Temple asked, wondering if the man even remembered that he was supposed to be traveling swiftly for the Scottish border.

“Dunno. Went for a walk, I believe. Her and that wretched book of hers.” The viscount glanced up from his hand. “Thought tonight was going to be a dead bore, but as you can see I’ve found a fine set of company. I’d invite you to play, but as I recall you don’t.”

Temple tapped his forehead with his finger. “Haven’t the wit to keep my cards straight, I fear.”

Cordell’s companions looked up and eyed him as if he’d suddenly turned into a Christmas goose, stuffed with gold.

“That, and I’ve never had the extra money to toss about. I do so hate to disappoint you, gentlemen, but I’m a man without means.”

In an instant, the goose that had looked so fat and tasty suddenly became as appealing as week-old mutton in July.

“Yes, that is a problem, Templeton. No property you’d care to offer or family heirlooms to pawn off?” Cordell asked.

Temple had a feeling the man knew both means of funding only too well. “No, all entailed and still in my grandfather’s thrifty hands.”

“Hmm. Too bad. Perhaps the old boy will cock up his toes soon and you’ll be your own man.” The viscount chuckled and smirked at his companions.

Temple gritted his teeth, once again reminding himself that killing Cordell outright, while a favor to Society, would only turn this already ridiculous assignment into months and months of reports and paperwork, upon which he suspected Pymm would insist.

Not to mention the requisite duel with Cordell’s hotheaded and equally worthless brothers. He could hardly dispatch the entire lot of them because they had a horse’s ass for a sibling.

“Be a sport,” Cordell was saying, as he eyed the cards in his hand. “Go look for her, would you? I’ve almost run out of funds, and I believe she has a tidy little purse tucked away—for emergencies or some other foolishness. God knows where it is hidden because it isn’t in her traveling bag.” He turned back to his game, and nodded to the vicar to add another card to his already precarious hand.

So dismissed, Temple wondered if Elton was as good at forgery as he was at finding his way about the countryside on a moonless night. He’d have his adept servant add a few charges to Pymm’s writ to ensure the contemptible viscount spent the next few years cooling his heels in this little hamlet.

Temple strode out of the inn, something niggling at the back of his spine that warned him Diana shouldn’t be left to her own devices.

Though truly, he told himself, what ill fate could await her in Geddington? Then he saw her and wondered at the wry joke the Fates had in store for him.

Diana meandered around the triangular base of the town’s Eleanor Cross, her gaze never leaving the trio of statues that made up the middle section of the tall, stately monument.

He stood back for a few moments and just watched her, comparing her profile to that of the long-dead queen known for her determination and resolute heart.

Diana and the lady had a lot in common. And that was what had his chest hammering, his gut in knots.

Never one for conventions, she held her beribboned bonnet in one hand, and in the other, her guidebook. Her honey-blond hair sparkled in the last vestiges of sunlight. And as she tipped her head once more to gaze up at the long-lost queen, her mouth turned in a sad, lonely smile that prodded at Temple’s heart.

There is something not right here, he told himself. If he’d run away with Diana, he certainly wouldn’t be spending the evening playing cards in some lonely inn.

No, indeed. Why, he’d have her unbound and undressed and…

“So you found me, Temple,” she said without even turning around.

Her words held a second meaning that he wasn’t about to acknowledge. Any more than he wanted to continue his own silent reverie into the dangerous environs that she usually stirred inside him.

All he could manage to say was a tongue-tied, “Aye, Diana.”

She walked once again in a circle around the monument, her hand reaching out every so often to trail over the stone.

Temple crossed the distance between them, putting his arm up against the statue to block her path.

She came to a stop, her face set in an annoyed display, her blue eyes flashing in challenge. “My lord, if you are here to rescue me, you are sadly mistaken. As I said before, I’m of no mind to return to London.”

“As I said before, I have no intention of returning you to your father.”

Because my orders are to see you wedded.

Perhaps it was here in her company, he realized the enormity of what that meant.

It had been an easy promise to make in London, but now, as he stood before her, something inside him quaked at the notion of handing Diana over to another man.

Temple took a step back from her.

She cocked her head and stared at him. “Temple, why did you come after me?”

He knew what she wanted to hear—that he’d come after her for all the right reasons. That he’d come after her because he cared. And he knew damn well that if he said that, there would be no turning back.

So instead he told her, “I didn’t.”

She only smiled, and then continued circling around the steps.

“I didn’t, I tell you,” he said, following her like a rapid mummer. When she just shrugged her shoulders as if she knew better, he stepped around her. “Demmit, Diana. This isn’t a game. I didn’t come after you to stop you from being wed.”

One brow arched delicately and then she went back to her tour around the statue, Billingsworth in hand.

Temple ran his hand through his hair and let out an exasperated sigh. “Can we just discuss something else?”

She came up behind him and ducked around him. “Fine. According to Mr. Billingsworth, Eleanor bore Edward eleven children.”

Relieved for a change of subject, Temple said, “And you would like to have eleven children?” Suddenly he saw the roundabout track of her conversation.

She grimaced. “I think not.” Her hand reached out to touch the timeworn stone, her fingers trailing over the granite in a wistful brush. “A few would be nice.”

Her words held a touch of dreamy magic, for suddenly he saw her wish come into being.

There would be Diana, her shining hair braided and twisted in a glorious crown around her head. And at her feet, happy, laughing children played.

For a moment, Temple believed that such a world could exist. A place of love and happiness. Of honor and trust. Of family and hearth and home.

And then he blinked again, and there was nothing before him but an eccentric spinster and her flights of fancy.

By all that was holy, he needed to stay out of Diana’s dreams.

They weren’t his.

He went to reach for his lorgnette, to use it as he did in town, as a prop to distance himself from his heart. But then he remembered, she’d tossed it out the window.

So he resorted to the sly wit that made him so popular. “I imagine your Billingsworth forgot to add that Edward was a rather practical bastard. He used Eleanor’s dowry to pay for these crosses.” Temple regretted the words the moment he said them. Gads, he sounded as cynical and delighted as his grandfather would be to burst her romantic bubble.

Diana cast him an annoyed glance, then let out an exasperated sigh. “What a surprise! I should have known that
you
would find the crass version of such a romantic story.”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, don’t say another word.” She held up her hand to stave off his feeble excuses. “You just proved my theory that men can’t bare their hearts with any measure of honesty.”

Temple thought that was interesting. Here was a lady running off with the
ton
’s most disreputable bounder and she wanted honesty? “Ah, my lady, you wound me to the quick. To my very heart.”

She glanced at him, a sly, quick movement that caught him unaware. “But Temple, the last time we were alone, you swore quite vehemently that you no longer possessed one.”

His gaze met hers. “You remember that?”

She glanced away and began to circle the monument anew. “Yes, Temple. How could I forget the day you broke my heart?”

He groaned. She would have to bring that up.

When he caught up with her, trailing behind her as she went around the statue again, her gaze remained fixed on the woman above her, as if she were trying to learn some lesson from the serene face gazing down at her.

“According to Mr. Billingsworth, Edward wept for his queen for five days after her death, refusing to see anyone or leave his room.” Diana tipped her head this way and that as if gauging the other woman’s mettle. “I think they must have shared a rare and special love.”

“Hardly that romantic,” he said, feeling more than uncomfortable with the witchery she was spinning around him.

Diana had always had that ability to leave him feeling unbalanced. It was the precise reason he always avoided her in town. Better to pretend that Lady Diana Fordham never existed than to spend his evenings watching her from across a crowded room.

He did his best to undo her magic. “Does your Billingsworth also say that her brother brokered the marriage as part of a trade deal with Edward’s father? A rather commonplace arrangement, I gather, and not exactly simmering with romance.”

“Oh, but that’s what makes them so special,” she enthused. “’Tis rare enough when two people marry for love, but when two people are tossed together for all the wrong reasons and discover they love each other so very deeply, that is indeed a very rare gift.”

Temple shook his head. “How unfortunate that love can’t be like that now.”

Diana glanced up from her book where she was probably digging for more facts. “You don’t think two people can simply fall in love and marry?”

“Perhaps. But for us—in our situations, in our station, we marry for other reasons. Property, lineage…”

“Trade agreements?” Diana teased.

Temple laughed. “Still, I don’t think you can hope for love. You’ll just be disappointed. And love itself isn’t any guarantee of happiness.” His parents’ marriage was a perfect example of that.

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Diana said. “Besides, I haven’t waited this long not to have love.”

“And you love Cordell?”

Diana closed her book. “That is none of your concern.”

“I think it is. At least it is now.” Temple caught her by the arm. “Cordell? What can you be thinking? Why, I’d rather see you married to Penham or even Nettlestone than see you saddled to that wastrel. Who, by the way, is gambling away your dowry. Money he hasn’t got. You wouldn’t catch him erecting monuments to a loyal and devoted wife—unless it was a pile of coins piled high on green baize, and being offered in loving memory because he holds a handful of queens.”