The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne (3 page)

“Put your clothes on,” he muttered, gloved fingers tightening around his quirt. “You’re coming with me.”

“I most certainly am not.”

“Indeed you are. Before I take my whip to your behind.” He moved around the bed and eyed her warily, amused to see the supposedly fearless Ellie Vyne back up against the wall and hold that coverlet like a shield around her body.

“Touch me,” she warned, “and I’ll scream.”

He tried to relax his jaw and save the wear on his teeth. She stood very straight on the bed, like a woman defending herself in the dock—as he was certain she would one day. He was only surprised it hadn’t happened yet.

“Aren’t you supposed to be chasing after the count to get your diamonds back? He must be miles away by now, and here you are quarrelling with me, Hartley.”

James tapped his quirt lightly against the palm of his left hand. Why
was
he still there? Had that lacy sleeve just fallen another half inch from her shoulder? Good Lord, he could see the swell of her breast now above the ruffles. And her darker nipple through that fine silk. His throat went dry; a harsh breath stalled there as he felt the instantaneous quickening of his manhood.

Don’t look. Not at that.

She was an annoying little chit who did nothing but make mischief at every turn and constantly mocked him as a fool. Mariella Vyne was out of control. Tempting as it might be to consider reining her in, he’d long since decided some other man could have that strife. They were welcome to it.

Look at anything else. Anything—

Suddenly, he caught her sliding an anxious glance at the copper bed warmer. He hadn’t noticed it until now.

Curious, he moved toward it.

***

With nothing else at hand to use as a distraction, Ellie opened her grip on the coverlet and let it fall away from her body.

He stilled. Thick silence descended over the strange, lantern-lit scene. His sternly questing gaze abandoned all other subjects of interest and swept her slowly from head to toe, taking particular note of her naked legs. She knew the “count’s” shirt barely skimmed the top of her thighs.

The slight movement he’d taken away from her was now reversed. Unconsciously done, no doubt. Even men who had access to any number of willing women every night of the week could become dullards in the presence of a half-naked female. It was a primeval neediness, she supposed, some void in the male animal that kept them constantly on the hunt. Each slow, deliberate beat of his eyelashes fanned the tiny bumps now sprouting liberally across her skin. The silence became oppressive as he stared at her legs.

“I hope you mean to pay the good innkeeper for his door, Hartley.” Despite the tone of bravado, every pore on her body tingled with anticipation.

His regard hardened and cooled from August sky blue to a wintry steel gray. He shot her knees one last, lingering scowl—probably meant to shrivel her bones to dust, spun around, and stalked out, trampling the broken, jagged planks where once there stood a door.

“Give my regards to Lady Southwold!” she shouted.

But he was not leaving yet. She heard him arguing now with the innkeeper in the passage.

Thank goodness she’d distracted him from prying inside the bed warmer. Had he looked there, he would have found tonight’s winnings, his precious diamond necklace, and the count’s wig. But for now, the count de Bonneville had won a narrow escape. And so had the notorious Ellie Vyne.

Almost.

He reappeared in the broken doorway. “Get dressed, Vyne. I’m not leaving without you.”

“I told you, I don’t need rescuing. Go away.”

He looked at her steadily, his height and the breadth of his shoulders filling the doorway. “Who else will save you, if I do not?” She thought she caught a subtle lightening of his stormy eyes, but from that distance it was hard to tell. “No one but me is fool enough.”

Damn and blast. Stubborn, pig-headed brute.

She supposed she might as well let the villain escort her to her sister’s house as long as he told no one where he found her.

***

“Not tell where I found you?” he exclaimed, prodding her up into the hackney carriage with his quirt. “Why the devil should I keep your assignation with that crook a secret? Your family ought to know what you get up to. Again.”

“Do shut up, Hartley. Shall I write to your grandmama and tell her you gave the Hartley Diamonds to your latest harlot?”

He slammed the carriage door shut, his face white and pinched in the moonlight.

“Your family ought to know what you get up to,” she chirped, throwing his words back at him.
“Again.”

He had no answer to that, just a frustrated curse. Naturally, it was all well and good for him to enjoy love affairs before marriage. She, being a woman, was supposed to have no wicked urges and keep herself encased in iron drawers until she found a husband.

“Ever hear of uneven standards?” she shouted through the carriage window.

“No,” he quipped. “Is it a race horse?”

Quietly seething, she watched him mount his hunter to ride alongside, and then the carriage wheels rumbled forward.

In common with most of the world, which was always so eager to think ill of her, James must have assumed she was recently the Duke of Ardleigh’s mistress. She knew that rumor had flourished for a year or so, but her duties had actually been little more than those of a nurse. She’d traveled with the duke, made certain he took his tonic as prescribed by the physician, and amused him in the evenings with card tricks and ribald tales. Naturally, the duke enjoyed everyone thinking he still had the energy to misbehave, so he never bothered to correct the mistaken ideas about their relationship. For Ellie, it had been a very convenient way to keep any marriage-minded suitors at bay and travel with a degree of freedom most women never enjoyed.

It was the duke who first came up with the idea of disguising Ellie at a party and introducing her as the “count de Bonneville” for a jest at the expense of his peers. He was a fun-loving, larger-than-life fellow, and it was a great shock to many when the duke died suddenly in his bed. Most people assumed it was her fault, naturally.

That’s what happens,
she’d heard people say,
when
an
elderly
fool
takes
up
with
a
wayward
slip
of
a
girl
half
his
age.

Ellie settled back into the seat, her shabby, much-traveled trunk at her feet and the hatbox of concealed valuables beside her on the leather cushion. For a moment, she weighed the idea of giving his diamonds back with no further ado. Stealing another glance through the window, she observed him trotting beside the carriage, his noble profile cast in pewter moonlight. It was tempting to imagine he’d come to rescue her from the count’s lecherous clutches, and if she squinted hard, she could picture him in armor, a handsome, gallant knight ready to defend her from brigands on the road. She’d never been rescued from anything before; she was usually rescuing other folk.

Suddenly something plucked at her nerves with ice-cold fingers—the sense of being followed again. She twisted around, squinting into the dark through the tiny back window of the carriage. The lights of the inn had already faded, and the carriage was surrounded on all sides by the rattling shadow of naked trees. There was no sign of any other traveler, but the feeling of being stalked remained. It was a sensation she’d felt several times over the past six months, but for want of any proof, she always put it down to her unfettered imagination.

She turned again on her seat and lowered the sash window.

“By the by, Hartley, what
have
you been up to this evening? Your eye is swollen with a nasty bruise. You ought to—”

Before she could finish, he began another lecture he somehow felt entitled to give her. Ellie swiftly closed the window again and slid back in her seat.

Well, he can whistle in the wind for his damned diamonds then. He should never have loaned his treasures to a faithless woman like Ophelia Southwold to wear, so she’d let him sweat a while. He needed a lesson.

So much for a quiet retirement and the end of mischief. But it was hardly her fault that this man came and poked his nose into her business. James Hartley really ought to be more careful with his family jewels, or any notorious woman might get her hands on them.

As indeed, she just had.

“That Vyne woman is a danger to herself and to anyone who has the misfortune of crossing her path!” He rustled the newspaper angrily as he turned another page, not having focused on a single word of print that morning. “Truly, she is a menace, Grieves.”

“Goodness gracious, sir,” his valet replied with polite concern. “Women knew their place in my day. Alas, they’ve become quite unruly.”

“If one knew where she might leap out, some form of defense against the assault could be prepared, but her unpredictability is part of the horror. One never knows where she’ll turn up.” James shook his head. “To be sure, she will be under my feet again sooner or later.” Allowing the corner of his paper to bend inward, he peered crossly over it. “Do you know what she had the unmitigated gall to ask me?”

Grieves stopped pouring coffee and put on his attentive face, which was only two-and-a-half creases removed from blankly disinterested. “I shudder to imagine, sir.”

“She asked me if I’d heard of such a thing as uneven standards.
Uneven
standards!
As if men and women should be held to the same measure.” He returned his gaze to the newspaper and flicked the wilted corner to attention again with a sharp jerk of his wrist. “I begin to think she is unhinged.”

The valet finished pouring his coffee. “Was that before or after she hit you with the bellows from the fireplace, sir?”

“It wasn’t a set of bellows. It was a jug.” James ducked his head to show the small cut on his forehead, along the hairline, where a stray shard of pottery had wounded him.

“It is a good thing, sir, that you have a large, hard head, accustomed to having objects broken over it.”

James crumpled the newspaper in his fists before tossing it to the carpet. “Good thing for her, you mean, that I’m a tolerant fellow and did not have her arrested on the spot.” He couldn’t think about Ellie Vyne for too long, or he might start picturing her bare legs again. That could lead only to trouble.

“’Tis a pity, sir, that the scold’s bridle has fallen out of use.”

“Indeed it is.” Sighing, he leaned back in his chair. “My patience with women in general is not what it was, Grieves. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve become a mere plaything in their hands. An object of fun, to be used and then tossed aside with no regard for my feelings.”

“How dreadful to be thus powerless in the hands of females. And that reminds me, sir, you received another billet-doux this morning from the diminutive Lady Mercy Danforthe.”

“Good Lord! Does no one have charge of that creature?”

“It seems not, sir. If they have charge of her, they don’t appear to want it. This is the tenth letter she has sent in the space of one month, ever since you saved her life in the park.”

James stirred his coffee with an unnecessary degree of violence. “I did not save her life. I wish you would stop referring to it as such. It just so happened, I was the only one with the wits to ride after her pony when it took fright.” He now wished he’d looked the other way, because he was quite certain the girl was more than capable of controlling that pony herself. She brought back memories of his old bulldog. But not knowing any of that at the time, he’d acted purely on instinct to stop the runaway pony and save the little mite clinging to it.

“In the young lady’s mind, you are her savior, sir. She will brook no argument. I understand Lady Mercy is not often argued with successfully by anyone, even her brother, the earl. She knows her own mind, I am told, and is given rather more of her own rein than is good for her. Or for the world.”

“Disgraceful.” He shook his head at the horrid idea of young girls knowing their own mind. “What is she—twelve or thirteen?”

“Approaching the age of ten, I believe, sir. A very trying age to be sure. I daresay the worst is yet to come.”

James huffed into his coffee. Lady Mercy Danforthe was an endearingly freckled moppet with flame-red hair and a peculiarly stubborn nature. And also, apparently, a lurid imagination. Her love letters, penned to James almost every day, were as shocking in language as they were colorful—always decorated lavishly with painted hearts and arrows. “It is a sad state of affairs, Grieves,” he muttered, leaning farther back, resting all his weight on the groaning rear legs of his chair, “when no one has control over a chit of ten. It can lead only to tragedy.”

“I quite agree, sir. I’ve always maintained that young females should be locked away, out of sight and hearing, until they have survived their formative years.”

After swaying dangerously for a moment, James thumped the front legs of his chair back to the carpet. “Too many stray wenches running about the place, doing as they please, and somehow always underfoot. ’Tis a dangerous world out there, Grieves. How can a man turn a new leaf, amend his ways, with everything set against him? Not even my own grandmother has any faith in me that I’ll one day find the right woman.”

“The
right
woman, sir? Meaning one sanctioned by her?”

“Naturally.”

“That explains why she is holding a New Year’s Eve ball for you at Hartley House, sir. And inviting all her eligible acquaintances.”

“She’s
what
?”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Grieves bowed his graying head. “I thought you knew. Lady Hartley mentioned it to me when she was last in Town.”

Dabbing hard at his lips with a napkin, James snapped, “Wonderful! A cattle market.”

“It seems as if Lady Hartley has given up waiting for you to choose. She kept referring to your
Great
Mistake
, sir. How you cannot be trusted not to make another similar.”

James cooled his coffee with a hearty sigh. His grandmother was a meddling old woman, but he knew exactly what she referred to as his “Great Mistake.” Two years ago, he’d made a mortal fool of himself by proposing marriage, for the second time, to Miss Sophia Valentine, who finally rejected him in favor of another man. A humble farmer. The humiliation had wounded him to the core. But there were other mistakes he’d made, far more serious ones, of which his grandmother remained unaware.

A decade ago, he’d lost an illegitimate son. A housemaid with whom he’d enjoyed a brief affair became pregnant, but having been dismissed from her post, she didn’t tell James until she was ready to deliver. At that time he was away from London. He returned as quickly as he could, but the woman had disappeared from her lodgings by then, and no one knew where she had gone. He’d searched for her family, but found none. Ten years later, when Sophia Valentine threw him over forever, she accused him of having deserted the pregnant housemaid, of deliberately leaving her and her newborn son to die alone. James had been shocked, horrified. If he’d known about the baby before it was too late, of course he would have helped in any way possible. But the fact remained that a woman and child had died. James must be accountable.

He supposed, with hindsight, he should have known the truth when the maid was dismissed from her post—that there was more to it than the vague excuse he was given for her leaving. However, he was younger then, foolish and thoughtless, finding his pleasure where he could, turning a blind eye to the darker facts of life. And to the consequences of his sins. He’d never known the woman and her child had died until Sophia threw it in his face when she made her choice and left him forever. He’d opened his eyes that night and did not like what he saw in himself.

Forced to look inward and question, where previously he’d always assumed he knew best about everything, James had made the tumultuous decision to turn a new leaf.

Now, whenever he thought of that housemaid and her child—which was often—the cold heaviness of grief and regret settled in his stomach. A grievous mistake that he might have prevented, but it was too late to save them now. All he could do was make recompense in his own life.

He groaned, and his coffee cup fell to the saucer with a rattle that set his teeth on edge. “I must find my Marie-Antoinette.”

A low sigh slipped out between the valet’s lips. “The one from Brighton, sir?”

“Yes.” He’d been searching for months, looking for her in every pretty face, every sad smile.

“I thought we’d given up on that idea, sir.”

“Certainly not.”

“But we are not even sure she exists, are we, sir?”

He scowled hard at his cup. She existed. Somewhere. Yes, he’d fallen flat on his face and woken with a nightmarish headache, but he hadn’t conjured her out of thin air. His imagination was not that creative. She was real. Six months later, her kiss still lingered on his lips. If he was truly going to turn his life around, he needed her beside him, just as he’d needed her on that little stone bench to keep him upright.

It was positively infuriating that she refused to be found when he needed her so very badly, and while other saucy vixens, like Ellie Vyne, popped up all over the place, trying to distract him from his new course.

Grieves gestured at the egg before him and said somberly, “Shall I crack it for you, sir? Or do you feel up to it yourself this morning?”

James snatched the butter knife from the valet’s hand, muttering under his breath, “Up to it?
Up
to
it?
Here!” With one swing of the polished blade the eggshell was cracked in two, and a satisfying blob of bright golden egg yolk oozed out onto the tablecloth. James grinned, feeling slightly better.

Grieves set the silver toast rack beside James’s coffee cup. “And now, sir, to the business of the day. Shall you be dining in this evening?”

“I don’t think so—no—I have a party I must attend.”

“Ah, very good, sir. As it is Tuesday, I shall be out, of course.”

James glanced slyly at the valet. Grieves always had Tuesday nights off, and what he did with them was something he never discussed in detail. “Your club, is it?”

The valet hesitated. “Yes, sir. The Gentlemen’s Gentleman’s Club. We look out for one another.”

That was it—never any more explanation than that. “Grieves, I confess myself fascinated by your Tuesday evening excursions across town. What happens at your club?”

“Sir, as I told you before, I am not at liberty to discuss the matter. All members are sworn to secrecy.”

“I suppose you all sit around complaining about your masters, eh? Planning rebellion.”

“Yes, sir,” Grieves replied, his expression unchanging. “You have guessed our purpose exactly.” He moved around the table, hands at his sides. “And now I must remind you, sir—as much as it pains us both—that Mr. Dillworthy will be arriving soon after breakfast.”

There, alas, went his improved mood. “What the devil does he want?”

“He wishes to discuss the matter of escalating costs at the Morton Street—”

“Damn it all, Grieves!” James looked at the toast. “How many years have you been with me now?”

The valet sighed. “Almost five, sir. And it doesn’t feel a day over ten.”

There was a pause. Master and valet both perused the breakfast table, then each other. Finally the table again. Eventually, Grieves realized his mistake and hastily began cutting the toast slices into the preferred “soldier” shapes more suitable for dipping in runny yolk.

James gave a small grunt of approval. One must have toast soldiers with one’s egg or else the entire day was off on the wrong foot. There weren’t many reliable things in his life, but a few habits devotedly maintained kept his world from spinning too rapidly. He would feel dreadfully alone if not for those small, comforting reassurances. His valet had suggested it was a sign of old age advancing. James refused to believe it.

“Now that we have taken care of that pressing matter, sir, once again to the unavoidable and imminent arrival of Mr. Dillworthy regarding the Morton Street home.”

“Hmmm?” He was busy dipping a toast soldier into his egg yolk, anticipating the first comforting mouthful.

“He is, I understand, distressed at the rising costs associated with the renovations and—”

“Dillworthy’s been grumbling into your ear, has he?”

“It seems he cannot make you sit still long enough to grumble likewise into yours, sir.”

“No.” James smirked. “You ought to practice evasion a little more yourself.” He knew poor Grieves was frequently the target at which people—failing to capture
him
in conversation—aimed their arrows, settling for a circuitous route in hopes of eventually reaching his ear with their concerns.

“Mr. Dillworthy is concerned, he tells me, with the number of charities to which you’ve donated considerable sums in the past year. Lady Hartley disapproves your choices, sir, and as the Hartley family accountant for some years, he has—”

“Grieves, I am thir…over one and twenty, as you know.”

The valet raised a sharp eyebrow. “Quite well over, sir.”

“As a consequence, and disturbing as it might be to my grandmother’s loyal slave Mr. Dillworthy, I am capable of making my own financial decisions. For too long I paid no attention to my money and how it’s spent. Now I know where every penny goes. And it goes where I decide.”

“To a home for unwed mothers?”

“Precisely. I want those renovations in Morton Street finished as soon as possible, and cost is no object. I’ve told Dillworthy this many times. Then my grandmother corners him when she comes to Town, and he quivers like a spineless jelly.”

“Lady Hartley objects to the idea of young ladies giving birth out of wedlock, and she is of the opinion that charities like that one merely encourage sinful behavior. Such women, she says, should be punished and chastity promoted.”

“Grandmama does her bit to promote chastity, without a doubt,” he replied wryly. “I happen to disagree with her. Now I have control of all my money, I daresay I’ll disagree with her more often. I’m beginning to like the sensation.”

Grieves collected the scattered pages of newspaper, folding them neatly. “It is a great pity, sir,” he quietly observed, “that too many people are unaware of the good that you do.”

James shrugged. He didn’t take on these commitments for Society’s approval.

“I suppose most folk care to hear only about your failures, so they can feel better about their own lives,” the valet added. “Success makes for less interesting gossip.”