The Bride Behind the Curtain (13 page)

“Yes. Fortunately, I'm better at it than Pursewell.”

Do not smile
, she ordered herself.
Do not know that it was obvious he would be, because James is in every way the better man. The best man.
She leaned her head back against the seat. She'd crush her bonnet, but she didn't care. “Why did you do this? I know you lost some money, but how could it have been enough to make you play such a stupid game!”

He took a deep breath, gathering himself. “My father is in Paris,” James said. “He has been for years. He's been trying to regain the property that was stolen from us during the Revolution. But that takes time and money. More time and far more money than any of us realized. That was why I was so in debt, and why I took to the gaming tables,” he paused. “Why I sought a rich marriage.”

“Why didn't you tell me this?”

“Pride, and fear. At least at first. Then, I did not want to raise one more barrier between us. There were already so many.” He rubbed his hands together. Adele watched their movement, fascinated. She ached to reach out, to take them into her own. She needed his touch like she needed her heart to keep beating, but she could not.

“Last night, your brother and I talked, about you, Adele. About my intentions. I swore I would not come to you in debt. When I made that promise, I was sure I was only a few hours from erasing all my father's debts with enough left over that . . . well, we would not need to depend on your money. Then last night, I heard the ships were lost.” His voice faltered. “Another time I might have been able to regard it as just a delay, but . . . there at the ball, I saw you with all the beaux of London around you, and I was afraid I had no time left. I thought if I made you wait, one of them would steal you away from me.”

Adele heard this, and emotion beyond words lanced through her. Before either of them could draw another breath, she was across the carriage, lurching onto his seat. She was also beating on him with both fists. “You thoughtless wretch! You coward! You . . . you . . . idiot!”

“Adele!”

“You thought after all we did -- after all
I
did and said -- I'd turn away just like that! Just because the same idiots who ignored me for so long
finally
saw I was pretty!”

“Adele, that's starting to hurt.”

“Good!” she shouted.

“I deserve it. I deserve all of it and worse. I should have trusted you. I know that. I was a coward. I am a coward. I was ready to leave you rather than risk having to watch you leave me, or worse, be the ruin of your own hopes because I am not worthy of you . . . Ow!”

“You are not to say such a thing!
I
will decide who is worthy of me! Not society, not my aunt or my sister, and certainly not you, you
idiot
!”

“Ow! Adele!”

“Don't you dare laugh at me!”

“Never, never, only will you stop hitting me! Ow! What was that for?”

“Ordering me around!”

She was crying. Tears streamed down her cheeks. James caught her arms, not tightly, just enough to fend her off, and somehow that touch turned into an embrace, and then they were kissing, the hard, frantic kind of kisses they'd lavished on each other from the very first.

Adele cried out in fear and frustration and pushed him away. James stared at her, stunned at her wildly shifting reactions to him. But he could not be more stunned than she.

“I love you,” Adele whispered. “It doesn't matter if I should or I shouldn't. I do. I have since the first moment. Before, even. I think. I must have. It was so fast and so strong, and all I've wanted since then is you. All the work, all the hope, everything, I did it because at the end, you would be there. When I thought you'd left me, I couldn't see. I couldn't think. Nothing was ever going to matter again. I died, James!”

“You love me?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, James, I do.”

“And I love you, Adele, now and forever.”

Then James had his arms around her, and he was warm and real and solid and strong. He kissed her damp cheeks and her mouth, pulling her close until she was crushed against him. She could barely breathe, and she did not care. He loved her. He loved her.

Eventually, they separated, and now she could look into his magnificent blue eyes and see only the joy and the wonder shining there.

“I have to go to Paris,” he told her. “I have been running from my family's past. I have been afraid of a lost cause, of . . . of facing down my own father. He has been draining the family dry in his attempt to recover the property that may be lost forever. I need to confront him, I need to convince him that if this last effort, this last payment does not succeed, he has to come back to England. That our family does have a future here.” He lifted his gaze toward hers. “Do we have a future, Adele? Can you believe me when I swear that I love you, and that I am going to put matters right so I can be with you?”

“Yes, James. I swear it.”

“And I swear that the moment I come back, we will be married. No one and nothing will ever come between us again.”

“James.”

How long they kissed, she could not say. There was no time in James's embrace. Only the heat, the passion, the trust, and the hope. Love. There was only love.

Eventually, they did separate, and James touched her lips with his gentle fingers in that way she loved so much.

“We keep this secret for now.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he laid one finger across her mouth. “Hear me out,” he murmured, tracing her lips with that same finger, lightly, lingeringly. “We talked about this, and nothing has changed. I will be a distraction. You have great plans with your friends for this season. Because of who I am, what I have been . . .” She opened her mouth again, and this time he kissed her, thoroughly, and for a long time. When he pulled away, her eyes were entirely glazed over. “Because of who I have been,” he repeated. “The gossip will be about you and me, and whether you are a fool or not.”

She dropped her gaze. “I suppose . . . Oh, I hate this!”

“No. Don't hate it. You are helping your friends, and you are building a foundation for us both here. You must do that, as I must help my father. We will be together again. I swear it. I
swear
it, Adele. Because I love you, my beauty, my dearest. For now and forever.”

“For now, James, and forever.”

Keep reading for a special preview from
Regency Makeover Part II: The Stepsister's Triumph
, available from InterMix in April 2016.

It must be considered a ridiculous thing for a grown young lady to hide from her own brother. That, however, was exactly Madelene Valmeyer's intention when she ducked into the small side gallery of Somerset House.

The Royal Academy of Arts was holding its first exhibition of the season. The catalogue promised a carefully assembled collection of works by the finest artists from England and abroad. Madelene had come with her friends Lady Adele Endicott and Lady Helene Fitzgerald.

Helene, however, had stopped in the main gallery to speak with a cluster of girls and matrons and Adele was taking a closer look at a collection of French portraits, probably examining the dresses for aspects she might incorporate into her own designs. Their unconventional and somewhat alarming chaperone Miss Sewell had stationed herself in some corner from which, presumably, she could keep one eye on them all. So, for the moment, Madelene had the smaller gallery to herself.

Madelene, Helene, and Adele had become fast friends since meeting at the Windford's New Year's Eve party. They had all three remained unmarried for long enough that society had listed them in the category of the haut ton's disappointments, and shook its collective head at them. How, they wondered, could such girls be such failures? Adele was a duke's daughter. Helene's father was a viscount. Madelene herself was heiress of a considerable fortune that would be entirely hers in one year's time. Still, the world confidently pronounced them all spinsters in the making and had started to overlook them when it came to the matter of invitations and calling lists. But at New Year's, they had exchanged a mutual promise to change this dreary prediction. Together, instead of another year of disappointment and neglect, they would together create a triumph.

Madelene remembered the flush in Helene's cheeks as she spoke so confidently of the possibilities. Helene, though, was brave. Actually, she was more than brave. She was a radical bluestocking, and proud of it. But Madelene did not have the same courage. Maybe she had once, a long time ago, but somewhere during the years spent immersed in the simmering discontent that filled her father's house, that courage had dissolved, like sugar in the rain. As she'd listened to Helene and Adele talk about their plans, Madelene had felt the familiar shrinking inside.
No,
cautioned her inner voice.
Don't do it. You don't want to be seen. You don't want to be noticed. It'll all be ruined anyway. Why even try?

These were familiar thoughts, and they bore the bitter tang of long experience. What had given her the strength to push them aside this once? Whatever it had been, she had offered to give her fellow conspirators the one thing she possessed that they needed—money. Madelene had a trust and a generous monthly allowance from the interest. The capital would become hers in a year when she turned twenty-five.

Helene insisted her money was not the reason she'd asked Madelene to join their coterie. She meant it, but it did not change the facts. Madelene was painfully shy, plain, thin, unaccomplished, and red-headed as well. But she had money, and she knew full well the money was what the world wanted of her. The difference between the rest of the world and Adele and Helene was that Adele and Helene offered honest friendship in return, and in such generous measure that Madelene had begun to believe in it, and them.

Against all the odds, their plan was showing signs of success. Adele, it turned out, had a particular genius for style and fashion. Each of the girls now had a new wardrobe uniquely suited to her coloring and her figure, and, most importantly, to her personality. Today, for instance, Madelene's walking costume was a simple yellow muslin dress, neatly trimmed with cream ribbons. The matching straw bonnet had a broad brim that not only looked well on her, it allowed her to feel a little sheltered from the eyes of strangers. Adele knew how shy she was, and Madelene was sure she'd selected the style for that purpose.

When the girls appeared at the opening of the season just two weeks ago, women crowded around, admiring the creations, wanting to know who was responsible for such delightful new dresses. A trickle of invitations had begun to arrive as society's matrons decided to test the waters and see if the three members of the coterie might be regarded as something beyond mere afterthoughts.

It was exciting. It was terrifying. Because it couldn't last. Because it would surely be snatched away.

“Why should it?” asked Helene when Madelene whispered her fears.

“Because it always is,” answered Madelene.

“Not this time,” Helene said, firmly, as she said almost everything. “This time, we have taken matters into our own hands.”

Madelene tried to believe. At the same time, a part of her remained certain her particular hands were just grasping at straws, hoping they'd be strong enough to bear her out of the morass that was her life, and her family.

Wicked girl. For shame. To think that way about your own people!
The words and the guilt crawled together out of the back of Madelene's mind. She flicked her eyes from side-to-side, afraid someone might be taking note of her discomfort. But there was no one.

Don't think about that now,
she advised herself.
You are here now. You should enjoy the exhibition.

It was unusually hard to take her own advice. In general, Madelene looked forward to the chance to tour an art gallery. Each painting was a window into another place and time. She could stand in front of a wall of such windows and lose herself entirely in the myriad scenes. No painted person could look back at her. None of them would speak in words that had to be measured for the hidden meanings. Paintings could not ask for money or remind her of duty, or make themselves drunk at three in the afternoon and laugh so that everyone turned their heads to see who made so much noise.

Like Lewis was doing now, out in the main gallery. It was impossible to mistake the sound of his voice.

Madelene wished Helene was next to her, or Adele, or even Miss Sewell. She could go in search of them, but that meant Lewis might see her.

Of course her stepbrother could, conceivably, be here to see the paintings and meet friends. That he just happened to come to an art gallery on his own, without either of his sisters, or their mother, did not necessarily mean he planned to ask her for money, in public, where she'd be more likely to agree just to get him to be quiet and go away.

Madelene tried to shut out the sound of Lewis's voice and give her attention entirely to the paintings in front of her. She also tried to shut out the burn of anger that ran through her. The anger was pointless and always would be. Lewis was a member of her family, and her family was all she had.

Yes, they've made sure of that
, said another voice in the back of her head. This one sounded remarkably like Helene.

Madelene strolled across the gallery, trying to be calm, and trying to ignore all the feelings raised by her stepbrother's presence. Like the larger gallery, the red walls here were hung floor to ceiling with paintings in gilt frames with not even one inch of space between them. The ones toward the ceiling leaned out so that one could mostly see the details, even though one had to crane one's neck to do so. Madelene's eyes drifted up and down, slipping over colors, faces, skies filled with clouds, this lady's smile, that gentleman's pointer dog, that stretch of rolling slate gray ocean.

Herself.

What?

Madelene's wandering gaze darted back to a painting hung slightly below the wall's center line. This was the position reserved for artists who were considered good, but not of the very first water. It was not a large canvas, but the artist had managed to fill the space with an amazing amount of detail. The scene was a young woman dressed in white, sitting at her dressing table. The whole of it painted as if the observer were looking over her shoulder, so one did not see the girl's face directly. One saw her reflection. The artist had posed her in the act of reaching for a silver comb. Her unbound hair was delicate red-gold, its hue echoing the candlelight. She was not looking at her comb, though. She was looking into the mirror at the reflection of an open door, and a brightly lit corridor. That light was remarkable—a sliver of deep rich gold shining from the canvas, as if the painter had dipped his brush in a candle's flame. The artist had taken particular care with her features, showing the intensity with which she regarded that open door.

“Is it you?”

Madelene whirled, alarm jangling in every nerve. Behind her stood a tall, lean man. His chestnut hair was cut longer than the current fashion, but instead of being oiled and curled, it was tied into a neat queue that lay across his shoulder. His deep eyes were unusually large and lent a dramatic appearance to his sculpted face. He wore a simple green coat with a black cravat and breeches, defying the fashion for waterfalls of starched linen and spotless white legs set by the “Beau” Brummel.

She knew him. They'd never been introduced, but she knew him all the same. His gaze remained steady as stone, and fixed on her. “I'm sorry I startled you. Benedict Pelham, at your service.”

You mean
Lord
Benedict.
Madelene swallowed the words. This man was the second son of the Marquis of Innesdale. He was a widower, and . . .

And an artist
.

Panic seized her. All her blood dropped to Madelene's feet in a dizzying rush. The room spun. Everyone could see. Everyone was staring. Worse, Lord Benedict was examining her, comparing her to his painted girl. He must be thinking what a poor imitation she was to this lovely creation . . .

“It isn't true,” he said.

“I . . . what?” Surprise cleared some of the dizziness.

“Whatever you're thinking,” he said. “Whatever's turned you so pale. It isn't true.”

How would you know?
Not only had they never been introduced, he'd never even seen her before.

Or—Madelene's panicked gaze darted to the painting—had he?

It had been at the Windford's house party. She was looking for somewhere to escape her stepsisters and had found her way into the musician's gallery of the house's antiquated ballroom. There, concealed behind the curtains, she had watched Lord Benedict at work decorating the floor for the upcoming New Year's Eve ball. He'd knelt with his sketches and his box of brilliant chalks, drawing an extravagant confection of birds and wreathes and ribbons on the ballroom floor. Colors stained his graceful hands, making it look like he'd been sifting rainbows through his fingers. Every now and then he would pause, and stretch and she could catch a glimpse of his face, serious, distant, his attention focused entirely on his work.

Madelene desperately attempted to rally some sort of dignity. “You r-r-really shouldn't make personal remarks about ladies you've never met properly.”

Lord Benedict had folded his hands behind himself. The posture should have been relaxed, but was not. He practically vibrated, taut as a violin string. Madelene felt that vibration echo through her own self. Was he nervous? She'd never thought an artist might be nervous. She'd been sure such a man must be like her cousin Henry Cross, who was an actor, and who could stride onto a stage and take charge of a whole crowd just by smiling.

She was staring at him. She couldn't stop. She wanted to memorize every aspect of this man. She'd watched him from a distance only. She hadn't realized how tall he was. She hadn't known he smelled of sharp oils and soap, or that his eyes were so dark. She had not seen the thin, ragged scar on his temple, almost covered by his neatly trimmed side whiskers. She hadn't known his voice was so deep, or so calm. She wanted to stand and listen to him speak and feel the intensity of his presence. But she didn't dare. The warm tension spreading through her was too much like an attraction. She could not risk raising such a feeling in herself.

“It-t-t was very nice to meet you, sir, but you m-m-must excuse me. I should go find my friends.”

“I wish you wouldn't. I wish you would tell me what you think of her.” He nodded his head toward the painting, and the girl who sat at her table and looked at the open door like she was starving.

I can't.
That was her first thought, full of the familiar pain and the desperate wish to hide.

“Please,” he said, as if she'd spoken aloud. Madelene's heart gave a little quiver that should have been fear, but somehow wasn't. “Call it vanity if you will, but not one person has stood so long in front of this particular painting as you. I would very much like to know what holds you.”

Madelene was used to searching for the double meaning, for some hint as to the lie beneath the friendly words. But there was no dishonesty in this man's words, or his searching eyes.

She made herself take a deep breath and let it out slowly, the way Helene had her practice when she had one of her anxious spells in a crowd. She turned toward the painting.

“It's the girl,” she said. “She sees the open door and she longs to go through it. But she's afraid of something, or someone. The artist . . . you . . . have caught her contradiction. You understand. She wants so very much to go out, but she wants to remain hidden as well.”

“What is she afraid of?” He was standing very near her. Too near for perfect propriety. She should move away. A half-step to the side would suffice. “Why does she need to hide?”

He knew. There was no question. She knew she'd watched him in the Windford ballroom. She thought she'd been so careful and he'd known the whole time. He'd taken her fear and dragged it out for all the world to gawk at.

But he hadn't. He'd taken her fear, and he'd made something beautiful, something new. “Pelham! Thought that was you!”

Lewis
. Madelene drew back so hastily she tripped over her hem. Benedict's hand shot out to steady her and in that instant, the warmth of his touch blazed along every nerve.