The Birthday Scandal (43 page)

“I don’t mind,” she whispered. “You were right. I like—”

“Isabel, why do you think I was so willing to promise you Kilburn?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Because you want an heir, and that was the price.”

“No. Because it doesn’t matter which one of us owns that property.”

She was trembling. “I don’t understand. If you didn’t mean to keep your promise—”

“It’s what I
didn’t
promise that’s more important, Isabel.”

She searched her memory, but she couldn’t find the hidden snare. She shook her head in confusion, and then an ugly suspicion reared up. “Unless…If you mean you don’t intend to let me even see my child…”

He said, “You can take the baby with you to Kilburn. I don’t mind.”

She frowned. That casual dismissal didn’t sound at all like the man who had trapped her in her own bargain, the man who had said his heir was everything to him.

“Because if you’re at Kilburn, Isabel, I’ll be there, too. I never promised I wouldn’t follow you.”

Isabel gasped.

“The morning after our wedding, when I came home to you—”

“It was hardly morning,” Isabel pointed out. “I’d heard all about the duel—and your part in it’
hours
before you showed up. And you’d been drinking.”

Maxwell nodded. “You’re right. And you were right then, too—about all of it. Philip betrayed us all. I understood why you were hurt, and I—well, the truth is I agreed with you. I was so in the wrong, to leave you on our wedding night. To automatically side with Philip rather than asking the difficult questions. How could I come straight to my bride after that and ask you to understand? Ask you to forgive me, when I couldn’t forgive myself?”

“You could have told me the truth.”

“I was still reeling from what Philip had done—I couldn’t even put into words what an ass I had been, how easily he had fooled me.” He rubbed a hand across his brow as if his head hurt. “Perhaps if I had courted you differently—if we hadn’t been so formal, if we’d gotten to know each other better before the wedding…”

“But it wasn’t that kind of an arrangement.” Her voice felt stiff. “It wasn’t as if ours was a love match.”

“No, it was a sensible one—though I expected with time we’d become comfortable together, as we built a family. I think you expected that, too.”

She nodded, jerkily.

“Even while we railed at each other that day—and while I felt your every word doubly hard because I had said it all to myself as I sat there on the ground while Philip died—I expected that our trouble would pass.”

“But it didn’t.”

“By the time I was thinking clearly again, it was too late. Your anger had hardened into hatred, and you couldn’t even bear to be in the same room with me.”

Isabel shook her head, more in sadness than in disagreement.

“The worst part was that I understood how you felt. So—much as I wanted things to change, and much as I regretted the mess I’d made of our marriage, before it ever had a chance—I didn’t know how to start. And though I hadn’t been wise enough to treasure you as I should have done from the beginning, once I couldn’t have you, I wanted you even more.”

She clenched her hands together, trying to still the tremors that rocked her body.

“Even though I expected this week at Weybridge would be more of the same, I couldn’t stay away. I had to try
something
. At least here you couldn’t run away from me.”

“I’d have liked to,” she admitted.

“Then over tea on the very first afternoon, you threw out a challenge.”

“I didn’t!”

“Oh, but you did, Isabel. You said you wanted only what was fair—and that’s what I wanted, too.”

“You wanted an heir.” The words tasted bitter.

“No—I wanted an opportunity to start over. And since behaving like a gentleman didn’t get me far last time around, I thought perhaps
not
behaving like a gentle-man—and showing you the benefits of marriage—might.”

She felt herself coloring.

“So yes, I’ll hold you to your promise, because it’s the best excuse I can think of to stay close to you. I will follow you wherever you go, whether you want me or not, because I love you, Isabel. I’ll spend every day for the rest of my life convincing you that we should be together.”

A wave of gratitude and confidence swept over her, and she stepped into his arms. “Then follow me,” she whispered. “Please, Max—follow me.”

As he kissed Emily, Gavin realized that the settee in front of the fire was looking more and more inviting—but the last fragments of his common sense reminded him that the smoking room wasn’t nearly private enough for what he’d like to do. After a particularly long and arousing kiss, he raised his head and said unsteadily, “Your room or mine?”

“Actually…” Emily said shyly.

He tried not to groan. “You don’t want to go back to the ball, do you?”

She shook her head. “Everyone would be watching us and talking. It’s just that ever since that first night with you, I haven’t been able to stop thinking.”

Gavin felt every danger signal in his body go off in a chorus.

“Someday, Gavin,” she said wistfully, “will you make love to me on the billiard table?”

As the ball wound down and the sky began to lighten in the east, the Duke of Weybridge—whose health and stamina seemed to have been miraculously restored—shared a glass of brandy and a cigar with the Earl of Chiswick in front of a hastily made-up fire in the library. The windows were open and the morning air was fresh and bracing. Harnesses jingled in the courtyard as the last of the carriages pulled away.

Weybridge rose to refill his glass and stretched luxuriously. “It’s a relief to be out of that chair.” With a hopeful wag of the tail, one of the dogs pushed his rope toy into the duke’s hand, and he set his cigar into a glass dish before dropping onto the carpet to wrestle. “Athstone almost caught me playing like this with the dogs this afternoon. The cub thought I’d fallen, but he wouldn’t even go call my man to help me—he insisted on picking me up himself and tucking me back in my chair. He’s a good man, my heir. Emily will be in safe hands.”

Chiswick said unsympathetically, “I told you it wasn’t necessary to tie yourself to a wheelchair and pretend you were decrepit in order to make the younger generation think about their futures. None of them can see past the ends of their noses anyway.”

The duke shook his head. “You may as well admit it, Chiswick. Your offspring positively enjoy thinking they’ve pulled the wool over your eyes.”

“Foolish of them to believe they can,” Chiswick muttered.

“On the other hand, they respect me too much to carry on if I’m watching—so I had to take myself out of the picture so they were free to act. Anyway, you can’t argue with the results.”

“Oh, now you’re taking all the credit?” Chiswick snorted. “If I hadn’t stepped in, you’d have had to make good on your promise—and a pretty penny it would have cost you to live up to those birthday-gifts-in-reverse you dangled over their heads.”

“They all received perfectly fine gifts in the end,” the duke said. “Not quite what they expected, of course, but far better for them than mere money—and exactly what I promised. Happiness for Emily; a much more pleasant life for Isabel; a proper place in society for Lucien.”

Chiswick swirled the brandy in his glass. “If you’re wise, Josiah, you won’t point out to Lucien that he could have held out for a curricle instead of a wife.”

The duke didn’t look at him. “You don’t mind that he’s to marry Chloe Fletcher? She didn’t touch your heart?”

“God, no. After I lost Drusilla…” Chiswick cleared his throat roughly. “I miss her—but I think she’d be proud of what we accomplished this week, you and I.” He drained his glass. “Anyway, what would I do with a teenaged bride? She’d have killed me within a week. Another brandy, Josiah—to celebrate?”

He topped off their glasses just as the sun rose over Weybridge Castle.

S
pecial thanks go to: writing buddies Elaine, Rachelle, Cecily, and Lynda Gail—you guys are wonderful. To my agent, Christine Witthohn of Book Cents Literary Agency, and my editor at Montlake Romance, Kelli Martin. To Shannon and Jenny, for your hard work and invaluable comments on the manuscript. To Margaret—I appreciate your friendship and our long, therapeutic walks. To the readers who asked for another Regency romance. And to Michael—just because.

Photo by Michael W.Lemberger, 2010

L
eigh Michaels is the award-winning author of more than eighty romance novels, which have been translated and published in 120 countries, and in more than twenty-five languages. She was born and raised in rural Iowa and was only a teenager when she wrote her first romance novel (which she subsequently burned, along with the next five books she would write). Since then, six of her novels have been finalists for RITA awards, and she received two Reviewer’s Choice awards from
Romantic Times
. She is also the 2003 recipient of the Johnson Brigham Award. In addition to her prolific writing career, Leigh also teaches romance writing, and is the author of
On Writing Romance
, which has been called the definitive guide to writing romance novels. Leigh currently resides in Ottumwa, Iowa, where she and her photographer husband enjoy watching white-tailed deer and wild turkeys that visit their property.