Tempting the Bride (8 page)

“My pride is nearly infinite,” said the duke dryly.

Venetia motioned the gentlemen to sit. “Tomorrow the news will be all over town—ladies Avery and Somersby will do the trumpeting. But we wanted all of you to know first.”

“I take it that in the face of your marvelous news, nothing else has been discussed?” asked Hastings.

Helena’s stomach tightened. “No.”

Hastings glanced at her. “I see that I have arrived too soon.”

Fitz, always perceptive, frowned. “What do you mean, David?”

“Do you wish to tell them, Miss Fitzhugh?” asked Hastings, his expression a wall of amiability. “Or shall I?”

The point of no return—they’d come to it all too soon. The dull burn in her heart was now replaced by the sheer void of inevitability. “I assume it will be no surprise to anyone in this room that Mr. Andrew Martin and I have been seeing each other in a manner that would not receive widespread approval.”

There was a collective intake of breath. Instantly, the atmosphere turned tense.

“But don’t fret. I am still a lily-white virgin.”

They’d been surprised by her admission of the affair, but
this
shocked them—especially Hastings, it would
seem. Why, did he think she’d be so stupid as to risk a pregnancy? Or that Andrew was so lacking in honor and responsibility?

“But I did something unwise today. I agreed to meet Mr. Martin at the Savoy, not realizing it was a plot by Mrs. Monteth to expose us. I wish to stress that my mobility was not due to negligence on the part of either Bridget or the gentleman who has had the unenviable duty to stand watch beneath Fitzhugh and Company. I played a trick to get free—and walked into Mrs. Monteth’s trap.”

Millie gripped Fitz’s arm. Venetia gripped the armrests. Lexington rounded behind his wife’s chair and placed a hand on her shoulder. Only Hastings, now that he’d recovered from his earlier astonishment, seemed entirely unaffected. He sat sprawled in his bergère chair, for all intents and purposes twiddling his thumbs as he waited for her to continue.

“Lord Hastings arrived in the nick of time. To save Mr. Martin, we hid him out of view. To save me, Lord Hastings told Mrs. Monteth and the senior Mrs. Martin that we have eloped.”

“Good gracious,” mumbled Venetia.

Millie and Fitz exchanged a look.

“It was quick thinking on Lord Hastings’s part and I am indebted to him.”

The words were grateful enough, but she could not make her voice sound anything other than lifeless, as if she were reading her own obituary aloud.

Hastings crossed his legs at the ankles. “We will, of course, marry as soon as possible. In the meanwhile, it is advisable for Miss Fitzhugh to be addressed as Lady Hastings—and for her to remove to my house today, to
keep up the appearance of having eloped. The news of our ‘elopement’ will spread with the speed of a wildfire; we do not want anyone to question its veracity.”

Remove to his house
today
? The possibility had not even occurred to Helena. She’d counted on a few days of privacy, at least, to come to terms with what was to become the rest of her life.

“We will, of course,” added Hastings, “conduct ourselves with the utmost decorum.”

There was nothing objectionable in his reassurance to her family. All the same, Helena shivered.

Fitz sighed. “Are you sure about this, Helena?”

It dawned on her that he was offering her a choice, letting her know that she did not need to force herself into marriage if it made her unhappy. Tears welled in her eyes. Before they could fall, she blinked and set her face to a blank nonchalance. “By tomorrow morning the news will be all over town—there is nothing to be unsure about anymore. Lord Hastings and I have known each other a long time. We will deal favorably together.”

Perhaps her nonchalance wasn’t quite nonchalant enough, for a heaviness settled over the room, which only made her angrier with herself for having ruined what should have been a buoyant celebration.

She turned to Venetia. “Enough about Hastings and me. Let’s talk more about the baby. And do tell me why ladies Avery and Somersby knew about your condition before we did. I smell something juicy.”

U
nfortunately, the topic of conversation was not so easily changed. Venetia’s baby would not need any special consideration until it was born, but Helena’s “elopement” was very much a problem that had to be dealt with here and now.

Venetia sent an announcement to the papers right away. Millie and Fitz, who happened to have scheduled a dinner for the following evening, decided they would use the occasion to fete the “newlyweds.” Lexington, who’d originally intended to hold only a small house party in August, said he would now open the invitation list and throw in a country ball to mark Hastings’s entry into the family.

Their kindness made Helena feel twice as wretched. She’d not only betrayed their trust, she’d done so in the most incompetent manner possible. But they did not
censure her; instead, they were throwing their combined influence behind her, so that no one would dare question her actions or her place.

None of it would have been necessary if only she’d—and this was the worst realization of all—if only she’d listened to Hastings’s repeated warnings.

When her siblings were at last satisfied that they had a workable strategy, Helena was allowed to leave with Hastings in the duke’s best town coach, a large portmanteau of her belongings having already been sent ahead on a lesser vehicle.

“You will need to do better at my house,” said Hastings as the carriage rolled away from the curb. “My staff, unlike your family, do not know you have been carrying on with someone else. They will expect far more enthusiasm from a pair of eloped lovers.”

He sounded bored, as if the novelty of having her for a wife had already begun to fade. It struck her: In three months’ time he’d grow entirely weary of her.

The thought should have brought her relief, yet it filled her with something akin to horror. “I will give every impression of being happy,” she said through gritted teeth.

“See that you do. I have a reputation to uphold: I am never seen with reluctant women.”

“No, those you save for fiction.”

“And closed doors, perhaps,” he murmured. “But you won’t be reluctant. You’ll like it too much, if anything.”

Not for the first time did the memories of their kiss resurface in her mind. She had not wanted to acknowledge it then—or ever—but her body had liked his, had enjoyed their contact most mindlessly.

She was afraid of that mindlessness, her own hidden
sybaritic nature that would allow her to be enthralled with the intimate touches of a man whom she disdained intensely.

“Oh, I’m sure I shall enjoy myself well enough by pretending you are someone else.” She made her tone cutting.

He flicked away an invisible mote of dust from his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll take you only under strong light and with your eyes wide-open.”

He raked her with a slow, heavy-lidded glance. A point of infinite heat flared low in her abdomen—while chills spread everywhere else.

H
elena had stepped into Hastings’s town house several times before—he hosted a dinner every Season and her siblings always dragged her along. It was a good house at a fine address, eminently respectable, well proportioned, and it gave an impression of comfort and durability rather than magnificent wealth, even though he did possess a great fortune. Or rather, he’d inherited one; he could have squandered it in the years since, for all she knew.

She entered the house on Hastings’s arm. His staff, lined up to congratulate and welcome her, was half bewildered and wholly curious. She acquitted herself with nods and a few half smiles, leaning into him the entire time—and becoming increasingly and uncomfortably aware of his body. Beneath her hand, his arm was hard as granite. From time to time, he placed his hand over hers with a possessive familiarity, the heat of his touch penetrating her glove. And worse, whenever he had something to say,
he did so with his lips almost touching her ear, the caress of his breath broiling her nerve endings.

The housekeeper, Mrs. McCormick, informed her that her portmanteau awaited her in her rooms. She seized upon the opportunity to let go of Hastings. “You will excuse me, my dear, won’t you? I must see to the placement of my wardrobe.”

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her wrist, a very slightly moist kiss that shot a sensation that was almost pain into her arm socket. “Of course, my dear. Do get yourself settled in your new house. I will have supper sent up for us.”

She escaped, knowing her reprieve would be brief—that henceforth her reprieves would always be brief. With Mrs. McCormick in front of her, and two upper maids trailing behind, Helena made her way upstairs, her face frozen in an expression of counterfeit pleasure. But as she stepped into her bedroom, that counterfeit pleasure swiftly gave away to a groundswell of genuine delight.

Above the wainscoting, the walls of the room were not papered, but painted. For a disorienting moment, she felt as if she stood upon the rampart of a high castle, surveying her own private kingdom. Green, terraced hillsides sloped away from her, vineyards and orchards in full cultivation. Streams and rivulets tumbled toward a blue, distant lake. Drays piled high with wine barrels and bales of hay wended their way along meandering roads.

On one wall, golden and glowing, the sun peeked just slightly above the horizon. The color of the sky, just like that of dawn—or dusk, for that matter—changed as one’s gaze marched across the ceiling, to a twilit blue on the opposite wall, upon which a few faint stars twinkled.

“My goodness,” she murmured. “Who painted this?”

“The master, my lady,” said Mrs. McCormick.

Helena’s pleasure wilted instantly. Not him.

“Very nice,” she said stiffly. Then, realizing she sounded insufficiently enamored, she added more truthfully, “Breathtaking.”

She spent the next hour with Mrs. McCormick and a pair of upper maids, directing them in the arrangements of the various dresses, blouses, and skirts that had arrived in the portmanteau that Venetia’s maid had packed for her—when there was nothing she cared for less now than the whereabouts of her clothes. But she kept at the task doggedly: It was one of those overwhelmingly feminine flurries that kept away any masculine presence.

After there was nothing more to be done for her wardrobe, she bathed and emerged to find her supper. To her surprise, it had not come with Hastings’s company. She didn’t know whether she was further relieved or insulted.

The food she barely tasted, but the mural she could not help study with a scowling concentration. She supposed she ought not be so surprised. Hastings drew well. No reason he couldn’t have also studied oil painting. But the sheer scale of the work, the grandeur and fineness of it, spoke of a dedication she found difficult to ascribe to him.

A sense of déjà vu stole upon her. She was certain she’d never set foot inside this room before. Yet with her initial astonishment fading, the murals began to feel like dear old friends whom she had not seen for quite some years.

The panorama was that of Tuscany, made familiar by Renaissance masters who substituted the vistas of their native country for those of the Holy Land. It wasn’t, however, a generic sweep of hills and cypresses. The ocher-colored
house with those green-framed windows, where had she seen it before? The same was true of the line of pristine washing, and the small roadside shrine with bouquets of marigolds laid at the Virgin’s feet.

A maid entered and took away Helena’s plate. Helena repaired to the vanity and ran a brush through her hair. On the vanity was a framed photograph the size of her palm of a small, fair-haired girl in profile. She puzzled over it for a moment before she realized the girl must be Hastings’s daughter.

It was, she supposed, commendable enough of him to see to the child’s welfare. But at the same time, it infuriated her that he could have so many sins under his belt—the fathering of an illegitimate child with a Cyprian included—and still be accepted in every drawing room in the land. Whereas she had to marry the first man who would have her, or be sundered forever from the bosom of her family.

“Lovely sight,” came Hastings’s voice.

She glanced sharply at the connecting door. He stood in the doorway in a black dressing gown, one shoulder leaning against the doorjamb.

“It has been a long time since I last saw you with unbound hair.”

“You speak of the occasion when I found you loitering outside my window and pushed you off?”

“You were murderous. I could have fallen to my death.”

“Instead you lived to enjoy the rosebushes’ thorny embrace.”

“I must have a yen for thorny embraces—I daresay there is no embrace thornier than yours.” He pushed off
from the door and stalked toward her. “Let me brush your hair for you.”

Her grip tightened on the hairbrush. “No, thank you.”

She’d gladly whack him if he dared to take the hairbrush from her hand. But he only walked about her, unsubtly inspecting her from all angles.

She took a deep breath. “Is there something you wish to say to me?”

“Why speak when I can look?”

The slow drawl of his words, the light in his eyes, the closeness of his person…Her throat constricted.

He settled a hip on the vanity table. “Actually, let me contradict myself. I do have something to say. What do you mean, you are a virgin?”

She rose and marched to the window to put some distance between them. “What any woman means when she says she is a virgin.”

He snorted. “What then were you doing all those nights you spent with Martin?”

“Pleasurable activities that did not impact my virginity.”

His brow rose. “Did those pleasurable activities include buggery?”

Another woman might have flushed. She was only further offended. “No.”

“I find it inconceivable that Martin has that sort of self-control. How could he have you in his bed and not profit from it?”

“We remained clothed, both of us.”

“At your insistence or his?”