The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne (4 page)

“Yes, Grieves, people are generally horrid, selfish buggers. Except you and I, of course.”

Grieves swept crumbs from the tablecloth with a tiny silver pan and brush. “Might I inquire, sir, if you were able to retrieve the Hartley Diamonds the other night? You left the boxing club in such haste when you heard that Lady Southwold had given them to—”

“No. I was not able to get them back. But I shall. That French crook will not get away with this.”

“And Lady Southwold, sir?”

James winced at the topic, but at least Grieves was distracted from further talk of the accounts. “Lady Southwold is quite evidently not my mystery woman from Brighton. Her knuckles are bordering on manly, and she breathes too hard.”

“Gracious, sir, how frightful. Audible breathing is such a terrible habit. One of many you cannot abide in women these days.”

He looked up, eyes narrowed. “Hmmm.”

“One wonders, sir, if your list of unacceptable traits might outweigh the acceptable ones to such a degree that the right woman will never be found.”

“Nonsense. I met her in Brighton.” Now if he could only find her again, his entire world would be put to rights. “She is my future wife and the mother of my many children. We must find that woman, Grieves. We simply must. She is the one for me, and none other will suffice.”

Grieves made a small sound that might have passed for gentle agreement, but was very nearly a skeptical sigh and could almost be an “oh no.” It was one of many similar noises in the valet’s repertoire, muted exclamations that could serve several purposes. “Although it pains me to bring the fact to your notice, sir, we have depleted the possibilities. All those ladies you once thought she might be have each subsequently proven unsatisfactory.”

“Then we must search further. Evidently, I’ve overlooked someone, although it seems impossible. I’m always most observant.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure nothing gets past you.” The valet moved to the window, his smooth stride barely a whisper across the carpet. After a moment, he spoke again, his tone jauntier. “Now that we know Lady Southwold is most definitely not your mystery lady, it is perhaps a good thing, sir—if I might venture—that the count de Bonneville has taken her off your hands.”

“
Count!
Ha! He’s a rotten confidence trickster. My grandmother’s lapdog has more noble blood in its veins.” James grabbed another toast soldier and rammed it headfirst into his egg yolk.

“And you say you found the redoubtable Miss Vyne in the villain’s bed, sir? One imagines that she’s quite enough trouble for one man to handle without poaching Lady Southwold away.”

He grunted, not looking up from his breakfast.

The valet began fussing with the drapes, chuckling under his breath.

“What strikes you as so humorous this morning, Grieves?”

“I was just observing to myself, sir, how you always said you would not wish Miss Vyne on your worst enemy.” Grieves coughed into his gloved hand, discreetly palming a smile, but not before James had seen it. “An odd coincidence, is it not, that she should now be in the company of your worst enemy?”

James frowned at his egg. His swollen eye was hurting. So was the cut on his brow. “Another female given too much rein,” he grumbled.

He wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Vyne woman knew exactly where the count might be found, and the Hartley Diamonds too. She could almost certainly get them back for him with little effort. James doubted many men were strong enough to refuse her anything she wanted.

There! Damn. Now he’d gone and thought of her legs again. Letting that woman into his mind was like setting a kitten loose in a basket of wool.

***

“It is impolite to read at the table, Ellie,” her sister Charlotte exclaimed in a frigid whisper.

Hastily closing the book, she slid it away out of sight on her lap.

“It seems you have forgotten all about manners these days,” Charlotte added.

Ellie really hadn’t thought that reading at the table would matter, since her brother-in-law ate his breakfast with the speed and elegance of an ill-tempered boar, not saying a word to anyone and with eyes fixed fiercely upon his plate. But pointing this out would upset Charlotte. Upsetting Charlotte was never a good idea, for she had ways of punishing the miscreant. Ingenious, dastardly ways.

“I managed to secure an invite for you to Lady Clegg-Foster’s party this evening. I hope you will be on your best behavior, Ellie. You do have an appropriate gown? If not, I suppose I can lend you one of mine, if you promise not to get it stained or torn. My maid will have to let out the”—she lowered her voice, glancing timidly at her distracted husband—“
bosom
, for yours is quite…but Simpkins is splendidly efficient, and I’m sure no one will notice you had to be squeezed into it, like stuffing into a goose. Sadly, I have nothing in a stripe, and my white muslin is a little too youthful for you.”

Very
dastardly. Just like that, for instance.

“Why do I need a stripe?” Ellie inquired sweetly.

“Why, because it has the effect of lessening a fuller figure. A downward stripe is most beneficial for a woman of middle age.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Yes, dear. We are all sadly aware of the fact.”

Ellie bit her tongue, banking her first response and settling for something more genteel. “I’d rather not go out, Charlotte. If you don’t mind, I will stay in.”

Her sister scowled hard across the table, apparently trying to freeze her to stone. Finally she snapped, “Of course I mind. I went to great lengths for that invitation. Have you no idea how difficult it is to have a sister who adamantly insists on shaming us all, floating about the country like a gypsy, doing as she pleases? You are lucky to be invited anywhere with your scandalous reputation—” She stopped, catching her husband’s grim expression just before he forked more kipper into his mouth.

“Surely I’ll only embarrass you further by going out into Society,” Ellie remarked, reaching for the butter. “You know how I am.”

“What you need is a respectable husband.” Charlotte lowered her voice. “And you won’t find one unless you go out to respectable parties.”

“Dear Charlotte, I know you mean well, but truly I don’t want a husband. I’d rather get a little dog for companionship. Much easier to train. If he tries to wander off, I can simply scoop him up and keep him under my arm.” After all her failed engagements, she expected her family to understand by now how unsuited her temperament was to the institution of marriage. But still they persisted in this idea that she could be tamed.

“It doesn’t matter what you want. It’s what you need.”

What
you
all
need
for
me,
Ellie thought as she buttered her blackened toast and wondered why, wherever she stayed, her toast was always burnt to a cinder. Probably because the staff were busy gossiping about her. At times like these, she especially missed the duke, with whom she might have shared a good chuckle about the toast.

It
seems
Beelzebub
had
his
way
with
the
bread, Ellie,
the duke might have remarked.
As
he
shall
have
it
with
me
in
time.

“Papa insists that Amelia and I help you find a husband before this Season is over,” Charlotte babbled onward under her breath, squeaking like a frantic mouse trapped in a biscuit jar. “He says at your age there’s no excuse not to be married, and it’s very awkward for him to explain to friends why you are not.”

Ellie’s stepfather worried about the embarrassment she caused him, but he never gave a thought to the trouble he made for her as she struggled to pay his bills every month, supplementing his stretched Navy pension with her winnings as the count. She wondered where the admiral thought the money came from. He never asked, probably preferring not to know. She’d hoped now that Charlotte and Amelia were married, their husbands might be able to contribute something to the admiral’s upkeep, but subtle hints had so far gone unheard. Ostrichlike, her half sisters stuck their heads in sand, just as their father did. Charlotte practiced this denial so thoroughly that she’d become enviably skilled. So far that morning she had not asked a single question about Ellie’s strange arrival on her doorstep in the small hours. Even roused from her bed while it was still dark out, Charlotte had kept her composure and her curiosity in check, shepherded her sister to a bedroom, and organized a fire as if this sort of thing happened every day. Ellie, knowing her sister must be bursting to ask who brought her to the house at such an uncivilized hour, had already prepared a gruesome tale of being kidnapped and manhandled by highway robbers. She was naturally disappointed not to have the chance to tell it.

“I suppose,” she said with a hefty sigh that blew toast crumbs across the cloth, “what I need is a very rich husband, on his death bed, with no other relatives to lay claim to his fortune. A man capable of overlooking my aged state and many sins. A rarity, indeed, I think you must agree.”

Charlotte’s lips tightened in an angry line. Ellie smothered a snort, aware of her brother-in-law’s stern, silent disapproval joining that of his wife’s as he glowered at her while wiping his mouth on a napkin. He’d never said more than three words to Ellie in the entire span of their acquaintance, and she knew his wife must have nagged him into letting her stay. She was not the sort of houseguest in which an earl’s son could take pride—even if he was only a younger son and had no title of his own. Ellie was a liability. Wherever she went, trouble frequently followed. And not all of it was even her fault. Not that anyone ever believed her.

Charlotte put down her teacup. “If you do not soon find a husband, Sister, who will look after you as you get old? You must think of these things, for Herbert and I can do only so much, and we will soon have the expense of children to raise. Amelia and her husband have only that small house in Grosvenor Square for now, until his papa dies, and I’m quite sure they haven’t room for you. Who else may provide for you in the winter of your years, when we cannot?” Her lips drooped with concern for the aging Ellie’s predicament—but probably mostly for her own misfortune in having such a sister. “I think you do not try hard enough. You
can
look pretty with effort, and I daresay some men find dark coloring quite appealing.” She patted her own blonde curls with more than a hint of smug satisfaction. “But hair like yours shows the gray much quicker. Time passes, Sister. Mark me, each year will add a half hour to the time spent at your mirror each morning. You must find a man now while you still have some hope, before your looks are utterly gone. If only you were less…less…” Waving her slender hand, she plucked at the air for a word. “Giddy!”

Ellie almost choked on her toast.

“You laugh too much,” her sister continued in a fraught whisper, so as not to disturb her husband again. “You always did. It is most off-putting for a gentleman to be laughed at.”

“I see.” Ellie nodded solemnly. “I shall try not to laugh from now on.”

“Be a little more serious, Sister, and for goodness sake, don’t argue. Men hate to be argued with.”

“I shall take your advice to heart, Charlotte. Thank you.”

“Soften your tone of voice, and always let the gentleman know you’re listening avidly to anything he says.”

“I see now where I went wrong all these years.” She could honestly say she rarely listened to any man for more than a minute. Frequently, far less time than that.

“And you will come tonight, for I called in a favor to get you invited, and if you cared at all about my comfort, you’d think of the inconvenience to me. Here I am with a child on the way.” Charlotte looked proudly down at herself as if she already saw the swelling that would not appear yet for months. “Don’t you think I would rather not be out in Society, either, in this delicate condition? But I put myself to the trouble for your sake.”

Ellie winced. “Of course.” She had only one more day until she escaped to precious peace and her aunt in Sydney Dovedale. She could put up with it until then, surely.

Her sister was content with her muttered reply, and breakfast resumed in utter silence but for the scraping of Ellie’s knife across her brittle, charred toast. Every charcoal crumb rolling from her plate to the tablecloth was observed by the dour gaze of her reluctant host and probably counted as a mark against her. When she pressed a little too hard with her knife and the slice snapped into three pieces, one of which whirled recklessly across the table and landed in his lap, he finally got up and left the dining room without a word. The fierce scowl he gave his wife communicated sufficiently on his behalf.

“Oh…
Ellie
!”

Apologizing to her sister, she scrambled to retrieve the broken pieces of toast and, in the process, banged her head on the table, spilling the tea and letting out a curse that was surely heard in the kitchen below.

James entered his carriage that evening in a hurry and a bad mood. The last thing he expected or wanted to see was the small shape already perched there on his seat, feet dangling and eyes peering out from the shadow of a fur-lined, hooded cape. Behind him the groom waited, a lit faggot raised in one hand. When James moved aside, the dancing light from that breeze-blown flame skipped over a small, pale face staring back at him, fearless. Even, it might be said, pugnacious.

“I’m running away,” the creature announced, “to Gretna’s Greens.”

James sat heavily and reached over with one hand, tugging her hood back to reveal a bright head of copper hair. “It’s Green,” he corrected. “Gretna Green. Not Gretna’s Greens.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“Positively.”

She glowered at him as if he might lie to her deliberately.

“And you, Lady Mercy Danforthe, are going directly home to your brother.”

“We could be married there at Gretna’s Greens.”

“If you were not young enough to be my daughter,” he murmured wryly. “And more irritating than a nest of ants at a picnic. Now kindly remove yourself from my carriage, young lady.”

“But it’s dark out. How will I get home?”

“The same way you came.”

She swung her booted feet, knocking her toes on the side panel of his carriage. “I sent my maid home already. I told her she needn’t stay.”

If he wasn’t mistaken, she had cake crumbs in her hair and strawberry jam smeared on her cheek. She’d at least had the sense to bring refreshments on her otherwise ill-conceived adventure. Opening his door again, he called for Grieves, who was on his way back to the house. The valet swiveled around on his heel and returned to the carriage. “See to it that Lady Mercy is safely delivered to the Earl of Everscham immediately. And tell him we would be grateful if he kept a closer eye on his little sister in the future. Failing that, manacles.”

“Mr. James Hartley, you’re being most unreasonable,” the obstinate chit exclaimed.

“Yes, I know. I’m good at it.”

She widened her eyes and squeezed out a tear that gleamed in the light of the groom’s torch. “And terribly cruel.”

“See? I can’t imagine why you’d want to waste your time with a man like me. Off you go.” He scooped her up under the arms and swung her carefully down the carriage step. As her boots touched the cobbles, Grieves solemnly took her by the scruff of the neck, held her at arm’s length, and steered her toward the house.

James tapped on the roof of the carriage, and it jerked forward at once. He sat back, grimly considering his misfortune in attracting the notice of that copper-headed imp. No wonder her brother, the earl, called her The Bad Penny. Perhaps he kept sending her off, hoping she wouldn’t come back. Inheriting his title at a young age, being only just one and twenty himself, Carver Danforthe was far more interested in his own entertainments than he was in keeping watch over his troublesome sibling.

James was certain that if she were
his
little sister, she wouldn’t be running about the streets of London at night and writing love letters with excessive use of hearts instead of dots above the letter “i.” Neither would she throw herself at disreputable rakes like him. Someone should warn her about men like James Hartley. Indeed, he thought sternly, once he had daughters, they wouldn’t be allowed out of the house until they were twenty, and then only in his company. No one knew the dangers that lay in wait quite so well as he did, of course.

***

James stood with his shoulder propped against the door frame and scanned the tightly packed drawing room, discarding faces with contemptuous haste, searching for only one in particular—the woman he knew to be the count de Bonneville’s mistress. His link to the missing necklace.

Ah. There she was.

His relieved gaze settled on a dark head of carelessly tumbled curls. A warm blush of candlelight accentuated a high bosom and the arch of a slender neck. He’d know those curls anywhere, and that throaty, mischievous laugh he felt all the way to the soles of his feet. A laugh that was usually at his expense.

Mariella Vyne.

He thought he’d heard her laughter within minutes of his arrival. Lady Clegg-Foster’s standards must have fallen, or else the old dear was desperate to enliven her usual dull party with a few stray fireworks. Then he recalled that both Ellie Vyne’s half sisters had recently married very well—to a baronet and the younger son of an earl, if he remembered correctly—thereby raising their status. His grandmother had read the marriage announcements out to him over breakfast one morning during her last visit to his London house, and commented with scorn on the ambitious conniving of certain desperate women.
Half
breeds
as she disdainfully referred to the daughters of Admiral Vyne and his—oh, the word itself caused her to tip sideways in her chair as if the room spun—
American
wife.

Tonight the scandalous eldest sister chatted amiably to a potted palm. James quirked a bemused eyebrow. The potted palm, of course, couldn’t answer her back. That explained it. She’d probably chat away to him too, in that pleasant manner, if he had no means to reply. As it was, they could never have a conversation without a quarrel.

Mariella Vyne was left unguarded for too many years, got away with too much. Now she’d entangled herself with the count, a man to further ruin her reputation. If there was anything left for salvage. How many times had she been engaged, exactly? No matter. She’d taken none of her fiancés seriously. One might imagine she caused scandal with her behavior merely to put the men off and get out of marriage. These days her reputation for being difficult was well known, and despite those tempting curves, most sensible men kept their distance. After all, her provenance was distinctly foggy. Nothing was known of her real father, and her widowed mother, plucked from the waves of the Atlantic by Admiral Vyne, had come to England with little more than the clothes on her back. Ellie was born seven months later and adopted by the admiral when he married her mother. After such an uncertain beginning, it was perhaps only natural that her life since should be full of ups and downs as violent as the waves from which her mother was once rescued. Only the elderly, widowed Duke of Ardleigh had the bravery to take her on recently, and then look what happened. The poor fellow died of a heart attack. In bed.

Where
else?
James carefully eyed the woman in the deceptively innocent white gown, measuring every treacherous curve.
Nurse
companion
indeed! Everyone knew what that meant.

Now James had caught her in the count’s bed—witnessed her brazen, unapologetic behavior with his own two eyes.

Unequal standards indeed! There were rules in this world, and women must follow them. At her age, she ought to know that. Clearly she hadn’t yet reached her maturing moment of clarity. The way he had.

He imagined his grandmother’s voice in his ear:
Look
at
her! Lurking in wait behind those leaves, ready to leap out on some unsuspecting fellow. That girl is completely without direction or guidance. Mark my words, she’ll come to a bad end.

His grandmother would urge him to stay well away, and he would do that too, if not for his diamonds. They were, he reassured himself, the only reason he planned to approach her tonight. What other reason could there be to seek her out?

Apparently her lover, the count, left her untended, but he couldn’t be far away. No man meaning to keep Ellie Vyne to himself should let her out of his sight for long. One never knew what she might do next. This was a woman who, ten years ago, loudly convulsed with laughter in the presence of the Prince Regent when the royal backside abruptly lost contact with a saddle and tumbled to the grass in the midst of an impromptu horse race. Not even the prince’s indignant fury and the incredulous glances of other onlookers had silenced her laughter, only increased it. The incident spelled the end of her chance of becoming a royal favorite and also closed many doors socially. Despite this, she was a woman who attacked life with a restless enthusiasm that, according to James’s grandmother, should have been safely exhausted in the decoration of bonnets and the sewing of petticoats or embroidered screens.

“A young lady’s fingers,” his grandmother commented sharply whenever anyone mentioned Mariella Vyne and her sins, “even those of an American, could not make quite so much mischief were they better occupied with a needle.”

Personally, James felt it was a mistake to give Ellie Vyne anything sharp.

Tonight most of the female guests snubbed her, and she looked as if she longed to be anywhere else. A few years ago she would have danced every dance, showing a grievous amount of ankle and bouncing about the room like an India rubber ball. But tonight she tried merging with the wallpaper. Why?

A few seats to her left, two frosty-faced matrons took no pains to hide their contempt as they critically examined her from head to toe quite openly. Meanwhile, she squeezed behind the potted palm, almost knocking it over. Another lady joined the two seated and began whispering behind her fan, but in such an obvious fashion that the only mystery remaining was the whereabouts of her manners. A light pink flush stained Miss Vyne’s cheeks, although she kept a merry smile on her face, and her eyes turned away from the gossiping harpies as if she hadn’t seen and couldn’t hear them. James frowned.

Young Robert Clegg-Foster made an ambitious beeline toward her from across the room, halted only by his mama, who suddenly wanted his ear for some reason.

Uh, oh. Better take the plunge or miss his opportunity.

James straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. Time to get his diamonds back.

And
try
not
to
think
about
her
damned
legs.

But with only three steps across the room he was intercepted. “James, darling!”

He could scarce believe that Ophelia Southwold dared approach him this evening, but she was, it became quickly apparent, tipsy. He recognized the glazed eyes and heightened color.

“James, I hope you don’t blame me about the necklace. I swear the count boldly removed it without my notice. I tried to see you this morning, but your stupid valet said you were indisposed.”

His way blocked, he stopped and looked down at her. Although his first instinct was to take the woman by the arms, lift her aside, and ignore her, twenty years of flirting with pretty women, charming them out of their drawers with the finesse of a magician pulling doves out of his turban, was too deeply ingrained. Tonight he went through the motions again. A slow smile, a tilt of his head, a partial lowering of his eyelids as he gave her gown a careful, appreciative perusal. “Ophelia—dear—can we discuss this later? I’m in rather a hurry.”

“But, James, darling—” she draped her hand over his sleeve—“what can be more important than me?”

There was only one way out. “I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. Too much punch.”

At once she drew back. “Oh!” Success. Now she made no more attempt to waylay him, but sent him on his way with a poke of her fan in his back.

***

Ellie was ten when she drew an elaborately curled ink moustache on a sleeping James Hartley’s face. Seventeen years later, she knew he still remembered the incident, particularly the humiliation of walking around for a full day with no one mentioning his strange appearance. Such a crime, to a man of his sizeable vanity, was unforgivable. Even worse than that, she was a Vyne. Since her disreputable stepuncle once ran off with James’s mother, for an adulterous affair that caused the scandal of the century, Hartleys did not speak to Vynes or even acknowledge their existence if it could be helped. And vice versa. The feud was fiercely adhered to on either side. Therefore, seventeen years ago, young Ellie, with her mischievous pen and ink, had upset her adoptive family just as much as his.

She’d been urged, many times, to stay away from James Hartley, and suspected he was warned the same about her. All good advice and possibly well intentioned. Now to be summarily dismissed. Again. They just couldn’t seem to stay away from each other. She watched his approach in her peripheral vision.

Standing beside the potted palm, she’d just begun to get that chilling sensation again, of being followed and spied upon. It must be the effect of Hartley’s blue gaze on her shoulders, she decided, and shrugged it off quickly.

He thrust his way through the crowd, bumped into her with one hard shoulder, expelled a tired breath, and grumbled in her general direction, “Are you dancing?”

Spilled wine stained her borrowed evening gloves and seeped through to her skin. She looked up and immediately felt the familiar shiver of annoyance. It was quite disgusting that one man should have so much in his favor—all of it wasted.

Ellie
Vyne or Ellie Phant?
She heard those mocking words again in her mind as if he’d just uttered them aloud. Even the laughter still echoed around her head as it did all those years ago.

“Do I look as if I’m dancing?” she snapped.

“Do you intend to?”

“I made no plans one way or the other.”

He smiled thinly. “Perhaps you can decide now.”

“Why do you want to know my plans?” She fluttered her lashes in feigned ignorance. “What interest can they be to you?”

A heavier sigh squeezed out between his lips. “You know very well, Vyne, that I am asking you to dance.”

“With whom?”

“With me.”

“Well, you might have said. It’s quite simple, but you always have to complicate things. In your tiresome, arrogant English way I suppose you assumed I was waiting in absolute desperation for you to ask.” Although she was born in England, Ellie considered that purely an accident. She liked to think of herself as an American, like her mother.

“I don’t intend to stand here arguing with you for another five minutes, Vyne.”

Not waiting for her reply, James swiftly removed the empty glass from her hand, gave it to a passing footman, and gestured with a stiff bow of his towering form, for her to exit the room and join the line of couples currently gathered in the hall, where lack of furniture made it more suitable for dancing.