The Wicked Wedding of Miss Ellie Vyne (7 page)

Found
you!

Wretched woman! How dare she do this to him? That it should be her—his nemesis—of all people.

With massive effort he made his voice calm, steady. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you I mean to reform my old ways.”

Her eyes sparkled with more merriment. She was enjoying their scandalous dance, obviously, although she would never admit it.

“You are amused, Vyne, by the idea of my reformation?”

“Should a reformed rake manhandle a woman in this fashion and dance obscenely close?”

“With one woman, he might. The one woman for whom he is willing to give up all the others.”

She looked away at the passing dancers. “Well, I suppose pleasing so many ladies at once must become tiring at your age, Hartley. But I have faith in you”—she patted his shoulder—“not to let them down.”

It seemed hopeless. She never listened. Therefore he’d simply have to show her. “I’ve decided to concentrate all my efforts on just one, Vyne.” Her eyebrow curved upward, and her lips parted, but before she could speak again, he added, “You’ll do.”

Her mouth snapped shut, but the peace was brief, and when she opened it again, prickles shot out to wound him. “Do you think me any less tiring? You’d best stick with your arrangements, and I’ll stick with the count.”

Another hot spark quickened to life somewhere deep inside James Hartley, this one a very wanton flame of rebellion long since repressed. Now it was freed and running wild. She’d poked a hole in his carefully erected barriers, somehow, with one of those naughty fingers that, according to his grandmother, needed more ladylike occupations to keep them busy. Fingers that she’d just readily confessed brought her trouble when idle.

Aware they were the focus of almost every eye in the room, he leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Tell me where the count is tonight, or I’ll lure him out with any means at my disposal.” She pulled back. He held her tighter. She’d have to cause a scene by struggling harder, if she wanted escape.

But her gloves were too large, and it made her hand slippery, difficult to keep.

“For once take me at my word, Hartley,” she exclaimed, breathless. “You’ll never find the count, and you’ll never flush him out by using me—pretending to flirt with me.”

“Well, if you haven’t done away with the Frenchie, I can guarantee he won’t have gone far.”

“What makes you say that?” Her eyes darkened as he leaned over her.

“Because I wouldn’t leave you unguarded, madam.”

Light danced and spun along the delicate shape of her cheek, reflected by the small pearls hanging from her ears. Overcome with the need to taste her, he lowered his lips until they almost touched the tip of her nose. “And I wouldn’t stand by and watch another man do this.”

In full view of the other guests, he made up his mind to kiss the enemy, another man’s mistress, directly on her quarrelsome lips.

This too, like a spanking, was long overdue.

He could almost taste her lips already. In that moment he completely forgot where he was and the presence of other people. But she, apparently, did not. Pulling her trembling hand from his, she swept away into the crowd, leaving him holding her empty glove. He shouldn’t have let her know his intentions, he realized, slightly dazed. One should never give a woman like her any warning.

She stumbled through a cluster of open-mouthed, wide-eyed guests—some pretending very badly that they’d seen nothing untoward—and along a candlelit corridor, until she found a book-lined library. There she took sanctuary and, forgetting about the custard on her gown, dropped to a couch beside the low-burning fire. At once she felt the cold, wet creeping through her clothing and even her drawers. Cursing under her breath, she looked around the room for something to clean up the mess she’d made. There were several cushions, but she was certain the Clegg-Fosters would not take any kindlier to having those stained with trifle than they would to finding their leather couch soiled.

Alas, now she’d better just sit here and not move, because she’d only get herself deeper into trouble. Hopefully her sisters must come looking for her, and she could send one of them for her coat. In the meantime, she waited for her pulse to settle and lamented that lost glove. Charlotte would not be pleased. Those gloves belonged to her, and she’d lent them under strict guidelines only. Like the gown.

An icy-cold draft grasped her by the ankles. A coal dropped in the hearth, and Ellie’s pulse skipped a beat. Keeping her head very still, she swung her gaze sideways to a particularly dark corner. She could have sworn there was a movement. A billowing curtain perhaps? Her fingers curled around the fan in her lap. Someone was there, breathing, watching. She’d been followed again.

Ellie couldn’t move. Her limbs were frozen, heart stalled.

Something creaked behind her. She closed her eyes tightly and held her breath. Perhaps this spy, whoever he was, knew the double life she’d been leading. Now they’d caught her. The truth would come out. When she was exposed, those who had lost money to the “count” would come braying for blood. She had sunk herself forever and harmed the family she sought to help.
This is what happens when one leads two lives
, she thought in anguish. Sooner or later, those two worlds collided. If she’d only given up the masquerade sooner, quit while she was ahead. But instead, there was always another game, another irresistible mark. It had become a sickness in her, she realized. And as the count, she could get away with a great deal, far more than she ever could as plain—

“Mariella…Miss Vyne…there you are!”

Her eyes flew open, and she exhaled in a rush. It was Walter Winthorne—Captain Winthorne as he was now, she remembered hastily. He came into the dimly lit room, stubbing his feet on furniture but apparently intent on spoiling her solitary reverie without the slightest encouragement.

In the dark corner across the room, all was still. Had she imagined that other presence? Perhaps the curtain had moved in a draft. Yes, that was all. A draft. How stupid she was!

“I am glad to see you looking so well, Miss Vyne,” Captain Winthorne blustered as he moved around the couch and into her sight. She supposed he expected her to be pining away on a chaise lounge somewhere, consumptive and incapable of controlling her sobs because he threw her over nine years ago for another woman. Clara Shackleford, of all people. A creature with the density, wit, and conversation of a suet pudding. A very rich suet pudding.

“Captain Winthorne—always a pleasure.”

He glanced at the couch beside her, but she did not invite him to sit. Instead, she opened her fan and used it violently, exclaiming at the heat of the party.

“You misplaced your glove.”

She looked down as if she’d only just noticed.

“I saw you dancing with Hartley.” With one hand, he stroked his coat buttons. They winked in the firelight as they strained to control his flourishing girth.

Dancing? Is that all he saw? What could she be thinking to let James Hartley flirt with her? And what could
he
be thinking to try and kiss her on a crowded dance floor?

Alas, there was Brighton. She couldn’t forget it—an impulsive kiss taken from a man who didn’t recognize her. The scent of gardenias, a hot summer evening under a velvet, starry sky, and James in the guise of a highwayman. A stolen encounter that had troubled her all these months. She knew kissing him had been a terrible mistake. How could she have done it? What did she hope to gain from it?

Sadly, she knew the answer to that. She’d hoped, in some silly part of her being, that it would be vengeance. That he’d suddenly open his eyes and notice her without instantly seeing whatever was most at fault about her in that moment. Then he’d be sorry he ever ignored her, ever slighted her.

Why, Miss Vyne, you are beautiful! How wrong I was. Can you ever forgive me?

Ha!

She must have been suffering some temporary madness that night in Brighton, because she knew it was impossible to make him feel anything like regret. He was too damned vain, arrogant and, supposedly, still in love with the woman who’d twice jilted him—Ellie’s good friend Sophie Valentine.

For at least seventeen years he’d been in love with Sophie. He played with others, sowed his wild oats, but his heart was always held in reserve for that one. The one who ultimately left him for another man, which was exactly what Ellie could have told him would happen, had he ever asked her opinion. As for Ellie, he’d never properly looked at her, never considered her as anything other than a nuisance.

Now he proposed marriage. It was incredible. No doubt he thought it was all very amusing. As indeed it was. Her stomach hurt from laughing.

Still…one day, she supposed, the fool must marry. It was inevitable. He needed an heir. Then, once he had a wife, they could never argue with each other again. Ellie could never again call him a great blithering ass, and he could not remind her that she was the world’s most impertinent, flighty, contrary woman.

Nothing would be quite the same without Hartley grumbling at her, she realized. And without her insults to keep his head from becoming too big, his future seemed destined for ever-expanding hats. He would marry a wooden-pated creature too in awe of him to put him in his place. Just as Walter Winthorne did.

Oh yes, Walter…

“I feel it incumbent upon me, in light of our previous association, to remind you, Mariella, that James Hartley is an utter rogue.”

She lowered her fan. “In light of our previous association?”

There was no blush of shame, just a wobbling of new-grown jowls, a subtle flaring of nostrils as he drew himself up, hands behind his back. She feared one of his shiny buttons might soon give up under the strain, spring free, and take her eye out. “I still feel some responsibility toward you and hate to see you make a terrible mistake.”

Another
terrible mistake, she mused. Something along the lines of letting a man make love to her before he changed his mind and chose to marry another woman—a sixteen-year-old heiress with no discernible brain?

“Never fear, Captain. Any mistake will be my own to make. They always are. I am not the sort to blame anyone else, whatever happens.”

He stared at her, fat lower lip jutting out. “Why dance with Hartley? You know how he treats women. He never has a pleasant thing to say about you. The man’s an out-and-out bounder!”

Pot
meet
kettle.

“I have known you many years, Mariella, and just because I married another does not mean I will stand by and see you ill used.” Once, years ago, his eyes were clear and gray; they were now dull, the whites jaundiced, peppered with a pattern of miniature red darts. In youth, he was lively, always active, full of good humor and wit. That was what attracted her to him. Now he moved sluggishly, his neck stiff, his breathing too heavy. “I am surprised at your sisters, allowing you to dance with a rake like Hartley. They are surely anxious to save your reputation before it is irretrievably lost.”

“Oops, too late.”

“Don’t be flippant, Mariella.”

Looking up at Captain Winthorne’s bloated face while he grumbled about women led astray and the stringent measures required to set them straight again, she felt sick with anger. This was the hypocrite who took her virginity one afternoon in her stepfather’s rose garden. He had the audacity then to think it was his for the taking since they were engaged. But within a few weeks, he’d switched his attentions to another woman.

She felt the sharp urge to kick him in the shins and sink her teeth into his kneecaps.

Even better was the second idea. She smiled with anticipation. “But I’m going to marry James Hartley. Did you not know?”

She thought he might explode. His face became very pink and puffy. “Marry?
Him?
Hartley?”

“Oh yes.”

“You cannot possibly be in love with him, and he has no regard for you. He’s in love with another woman—has been for years. I hear he holds a torch for Sophia Valentine still, even now she has a husband.”

This fact thrown in her face was the last straw. “Ah, but there are other important, practical matters to consider in marriage.” She stood quickly, fan clasped in both hands. “As you once told me, Walter, one cannot always marry where one loves. One must consider the future and one’s financial situation and not be distracted by love.”

Nine years ago he recited those words to her, when, having discovered the true state of her step-father’s finances, he ended their engagement. Now she tossed them back again. Captain Winthorne didn’t know where to look. But he was angry. Veins visibly pulsed in his shiny brow.

Excellent.
This previously dull party, where the only being worth conversing with was a potted palm, had turned out to be quite inspirational.

A sudden shout interrupted their conversation. “Vyne! Are you in here?” James Hartley appeared in the library doorway, waving her glove, bellowing her name as if he summoned a hound to heel. “Vyne!”

“
Jim
,” she exclaimed. “You found my glove!” Never had she been so pleased to see that wretched man, and her feelings were in such disarray she hadn’t time to hide the sheer relief.

A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face when he saw her eager expression and heard that unlikely tone of welcome. Then as his eyes adjusted to the weak light given out by the smoldering fire in the hob grate, he must have seen Winthorne standing beside her. He was across the room in the next beat of her heart.

“Do you know Captain Winthorne?”

“Of course.” He thrust the errant glove at her. “Winthorne. They let you in, did they? Standards
have
dropped it seems.”

The captain drew himself up, inflated again with pompous hot air. “What are you up to with this lady?”

“A great many things,” James replied. “All extremely scandalous. None of them your business.”

Ellie swallowed a chuckle and pressed her lips together. James was a curious mix of naughty little boy and grumpy, pontificating old man, but when his mischievous sense of humor broke its way through the superior starchiness, he was almost tolerable company. For a Hartley. She supposed that playfulness was a part of James that had once drawn her dear friend Sophie to his company. Ellie, being a very insignificant, unworthy person in his eyes, was seldom allowed to witness that side of his nature. Instead, she usually got the disapproving side, the side coached by generations of supercilious Hartleys to look down on anyone less fortunate.

“She tells me she plans to marry you,” snapped Winthorne. “It cannot be true.”

She?
The Cat’s Aunt, presumably.

James turned his steady gaze to her. The Cat’s Aunt managed a taut smile.

“I fear it is,” he muttered thoughtfully. “It seems Miss Vyne…has accepted me.”

She was busy winding her recovered glove into a sweaty knot and couldn’t quite meet his eye.

“You cannot possibly have Miss Vyne’s best interests at heart. It is obvious you have no serious intentions toward her.”

“Is it?”

“Don’t think to toy with her as you do other women. Despite a wayward temperament and a lack of fatherly supervision, she is not friendless.”

Ellie choked on another gulp of laughter and quickly opened her fan again to flutter it wildly before her lips.

Hands behind his back, James tipped forward. “I wonder why you dally here with my fiancée, Winthorne, when your wife seeks you out there. Quite loudly seeks you, in fact. I declare she has shaken all the wax loose in my ears.”

Buttons ready to pop, his cheeks crimson, lips trembling, Walter took one last look at Ellie and then stormed out. Heavy footsteps faded away down the corridor.

Now the room was quiet again but for the gentle crackle and spit among the coals in the hearth. James watched her warily, hands still behind his back, clearly waiting for her to speak first.

“He and I were once engaged,” she muttered.

“Yes. I know. Another of your mistakes.”

“He broke it off when he came to his senses and realized how much trouble I’d be. Much the same discovery as my friend Sophie made before she threw you over.”

His left eyebrow—always a somewhat restless creature—lifted high. Ellie looked away again and quietly cursed herself for mentioning that. Oh, why was her first instinct always to lash out at him? She didn’t mean to cause hurt, and it was deeply regretted the moment it was done. But she couldn’t stop herself with him. She felt as if she had to attack before he could do the same to her.

She exhaled wearily, and her shoulders sagged. “Look at us. We make quite a pair. You with your black eye and me with trifle on my behind.”

“Yes. I suppose I’d better marry you before you get yourself in another pickle. Or another trifle.” Flickering firelight revealed a sudden, brief grin. She would have missed it had she not returned her wary gaze to his face at the exact second it happened. He winced and touched the bruise under his eye as if it hurt to smile.

“Don’t worry, Hartley. I hereby release you from the obligation.” Surely he hadn’t taken it seriously.

“But you just called me
Jim
. No one gets away with that unscathed.”

She began turning away, and then, as she remembered her stained gown, decided to back away instead, just to save a little of her tattered pride. “I’m returning to the party.”