To Catch a Bride (2 page)

Today Luke had pressed Rafe harder than ever, hoping that by the time they got to Harry’s wedding, Rafe would have burned away his anger and become his usual charming self again.

Instead Rafe remained wrapped in ice and burning with rage; his eyes held a curious blank expression that told Luke his mind was far away. Luke raced more cautiously, as if he could make up for his friend, who drove like a man possessed.

The entrance to Alverleigh came into sight, the high stone walls of the estate broken by an imposing pair of black wrought-iron gates, supported by two large stone pillars. Today they stood open to admit the earl’s guests on the occasion of his half brother Harry’s wedding to Lady Helen Freymore.

Rafe’s curricle hurtled down the slope toward the gates, the light vehicle swaying and bouncing with every bump and pothole.

He was going far too fast for the freezing conditions, Luke thought. “’Ware ice at the bottom of the hill,” he shouted.

Rafe made no sign. He seemed oblivious, wrapped up in dark thoughts.

Something, some small animal—a fox perhaps—darted across the road in front of the horses. One horse reared and stumbled, the other jostled it, the curricle swayed wildly, hit a patch of dark ice, and began to skid in a slow, inevitable arc toward the stone walls and the iron gate.

“Save yourself,” Luke shouted, certain Rafe was going to smash into the stone walls or be impaled on iron gates. “Jump!”

Rafe hauled on the brake with one hand and the reins with the other, forcing his frightened horses back under control. The brake sharpened the angle of the skid but didn’t slow it; there was no purchase on the ice.

Rafe thrust his team ruthlessly through the gates, hard and fast, and released the brake. The weight of the skidding curricle pulled the horses backward and to the right. They plunged in confusion and terror.

He lashed out with the whip. The horses leapt forward. There was a loud scrape of wood against stone or iron. The curricle lurched, bounced, and tipped sideways, balancing on a single wheel. Another second and it would overturn for sure.

“Jump, you fool, jump!” Luke yelled.

Instead Rafe hurled himself sideways over the edge like a yachtsman, using his weight as a counterbalance. For several endless seconds the curricle teetered on the brink, then lurched back with a loud thump onto both wheels.

He glanced back at Luke, tipped his whip in salute, and raced his sweating horses up the driveway.

Luke arrived as Rafe was instructing the Alverleigh grooms to cool his horses slowly, then give them a good rubdown, a hot mash, and the very best of treatment.

“You maniac,” Luke declared, jumping down from his curricle and tossing the reins to a groom. “You were nearly killed.”

Rafe’s mouth twisted in a mirthless smile. “That would have thrown the cat among the pigeons. The succession plans in ruins.”

“Harry and Nell’s wedding in ruins, more like!” Luke snapped. “I don’t give a hang about the Axebridge succession, either, but you’re among friends now, so get a grip on yourself.”

Rafe blinked and the hard glitter slowly faded from his eyes. In a much calmer voice he said, “You’re quite right, Luke. I wasn’t thinking of Harry and Nell.”

“You weren’t thinking at all,” Luke told him bluntly.

Rafe gave his friend a searching look and gave a rueful sigh. “That bad, was I?”

Luke, relieved the worst was past, relaxed. “Worst I’ve seen in ages. Think we both need a drink.”

“Agreed.” Rafe unknotted his silk scarf and removed his leather driving gloves. “And since I won, you owe me a monkey.”

“I know, blast you,” Luke said as they walked toward the front steps of Alverleigh. “Kills me to admit it, but that was a tidy piece of driving back there. Thought you were going to smash into those pillars. Your horses were magnificent.”

“Grace and courage under fire,” Rafe agreed. “What time is this ceremony? I don’t know if I have the stomach for a wedding just now.”

“You’d better find it, then,” Luke warned him.

Rafe gave him a faint smile. “Don’t worry, I will, for Nell and Harry’s sake. This marriage, at least, is one to celebrate.”

As he spoke, their friend Gabriel Renfrew, brother of the earl and half brother of the groom, strolled lightly down the steps to greet them. “How was your trip?” he asked after the greetings were concluded.

“Bloody hair-raising,” Luke told him.

Gabe raised an eyebrow. “All your races are hair-raising. What made this any different?”

Luke jerked his head at Rafe. “He’s just come from Axebridge.”

Gabe glanced at Rafe. “I see. You’ve finalized the wedding arrangements, I presume?”

Rafe did not reply. A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched.

“A drink,” Gabe decided.

“Several,” Luke agreed. “And make them large ones—he needs it.”

“Nonsense,” Rafe said coolly. “I’m perfectly calm.”

“I know, dear boy,” Gabe said. “That’s the trouble.”

 

 

 

 

A
few hours later Rafe sat in the church pew watching his friend Harry pacing like a caged lion, awaiting his bride.

There was a stir at the entrance of the church. Rafe didn’t need to turn his head to see who had arrived. Harry’s gray eyes, usually so bleak, blazed as he saw his bride. They were so filled with naked emotion that Rafe had to look away.

Rafe heard the quiet certainty and pride in Harry’s voice as he promised to love and cherish his lady.

He caught the fleeting intimate smile Gabe exchanged with

Callie, the princess of his heart, as they remembered their own wedding.

Rafe felt cold to the marrow.

Could he make promises like that? Not to Lady Lavinia. Not after what he’d learned at Axebridge.

But could he ever?

What did it matter? There was no love in Rafe anyway. There never had been.

He wasn’t like Gabe, who had taken love lightly and often until he’d fallen deeply and irrevocably for Callie.

He wasn’t like Harry, who’d fallen in love twice, the first time so disastrously he hadn’t cared whether he lived or died. Now, truly and deeply in love, he stood at the altar, gazing at his bride, a man transformed.

Rafe hadn’t understood it then and he didn’t now.

He’d never been in love like that, not once in all his twenty-eight years, not even for an hour, and at his age, he wasn’t likely to start.

Women, yes, but only on the strictest understanding that the relationship was purely physical. He treated them well and was generous in parting. They didn’t seem to mind. None of them had managed to pierce his essential coldness.

In the war the coldness had grown. It was useful, in war, to stay cool and coldly analytical, not to let yourself get carried away by passion. He’d found strength in it, keeping the world at bay, keeping heartache and grief from touching him. People could die of heartache and grief.

He thought he’d reached perfect control, a state where very little could upset him.

And then he’d come home. More accurately, he’d returned to Axebridge.

Rafe’s father, the former Earl of Axebridge, had died while he was at war, so Axebridge was no longer the hostile place it had been when Rafe was a child. And since the current earl, his older brother, had produced no children in ten years of marriage, Rafe understood that it fell now to him to marry and secure the succession. For the first time in his life Rafe was needed by his family, and he was prepared to do his duty.

His brother had even found him a suitable bride. Rafe wasn’t particularly enamoured of her, but he’d found no one himself, and Lady Lavinia Fettiplace was of excellent family—the best bloodlines and breeding in England. She came with a fine fortune and was even pretty.

He could do it, he’d told himself a hundred times.

Until this morning, when his brother had revealed the terms he and Lady Lavinia had agreed to, without reference to Rafe . . .

Cold rage welled up in him again. Rafe stamped down on it. This was not the place, the time. He was not a small boy anymore. His family could only hurt him if he let them.

 

 

 

 

T
he wedding was over, the celebratory dinner consumed, and they’d danced the night away. In the morning the bride and groom had driven off in a joyful cavalcade, Nell incandescent with happiness, little Torie in a basket beside her, and Harry so proud and with a light in his eyes that Rafe had never seen.

The remaining guests left soon afterward, hurrying to get home for Christmas, praying the clear weather would hold. Rafe and Luke, in no particular hurry, were among the last to depart. They’d said their good-byes, and hating to wait around after that, had wandered toward the stables to await their curricles.

“I’m not racing you back,” Luke announced as they crunched down the gravel drive. It was a cold, clear morning, the air dry, with just a light breeze. Perfect for a race.

Rafe inclined his head. “As you wish.”

“I know you,” Luke persisted. “Under that veneer of calm you’re still wild about whatever happened.”

Rafe shrugged. He could have reassured his friend that his driving would be back to normal now he’d made a decision, but he didn’t. Racing wouldn’t purge the anger within him this time. The betrayal. But he knew what would.

They waited in front of the stables, stamping their feet in the cold, watching as the stable lads hitched their teams up.

“Want me to come with you to Axebridge?” Luke offered.

“But it’s almost Christmas.” Rafe was startled. “What about your family?”

“Mother and the girls won’t mind.” Luke was the only living son in a family of girls. His mother was a widow, and all but the youngest daughter were married now, but they still doted on their brother.

Rafe smiled. “You are such a liar.”

“I’ll explain,” Luke said. “They won’t mind when they know it’s you. You know how fond Mother is of you—the girls, too.”

Rafe shook his head. “No. Go home and celebrate Christmas with your family. Give my best to them all.”

“Then come home with me,” Luke said. “Spend Christmas with us. They’ll think it the best gift of all.”

“I’ve already sent your mother a gift,” Rafe told him. As a boy, he’d spent many a happy Christmas with the Ripton family. It was a haven from his own family, a much older brother he hardly knew, and a father who barely acknowledged his younger son’s existence.

“You’re so stubborn,” Luke said, shaking his head. “Very well then, be miserable if you want to. I’ll see you at Axebridge in the new year.”

“Ahh, yes . . . The house party . . .”

Luke gave Rafe a searching look. “You sound suspiciously vague, Ramsey. Cold feet about getting betrothed to Lady Lavinia after all?” He gave Rafe a searching look. “Or is it all off?”

Rafe shrugged. “The house party is still going ahead as far as I know.”

“Well then, I’ll see—”

“I won’t be there, however,” Rafe finished, watching critically as a young stableboy buckled a harness.

“What? Where will you be?”

“Remember who I was seated with at dinner last night?”

Luke wrinkled his brow, trying to recall. “Some old lady, wasn’t it? Must say, thought it was a damned poor place to seat you—”

“Lady Cleeve. Very interesting old lady. Told me an interesting story.”

Luke stared at him. “What the devil are you talking about? Told you a story?”

Rafe nodded. “Seems she’s missing a granddaughter.”

“What do you mean missing? Gal run off with someone?”

“No, nothing like that,” Rafe said. “The old lady thought the girl had died along with her mother more than twelve years ago. Been grieving ever since. Her son died six years ago, and since then Lady Cleeve has thought herself all alone in the world.”

“Very sad,” Luke said, “but what has this to do with—”

“A few months ago, Alaric Stretton—you know, that artist fellow who travels the world and writes books about it—turned up on her doorstep after years in some far-flung corner of the world. Seems they’re old family friends—he used to visit them in India.”

Luke gave him a look as if to say, why are you telling me this?

Rafe continued, “Stretton told her her granddaughter was alive and well and with her father only six years ago. He even produced a sketch of the girl and her father—the one of the little girl is rather touching—he’s a damned good artist. So now Lady Cleeve thinks the girl might still be alive. She’s desperate to find her.”

“Sounds like a load of moonshine to me.”

“It might very well be.”

“But what’s this got to do with you not—” Luke broke off with a stunned expression. “Don’t tell me—this is why you’re going to skip out on your betrothal house party?”

Rafe just smiled. He’d been tempted just to not turn up to the house party; it was what they deserved, after all. But that wasn’t Rafe’s way. Instead, this morning, he’d sent a coldly polite note to Lady Lavinia and another to his brother and sister-in-law, giving his regrets.

Luke flung up his hands in exasperation. “To go on a wild-goose chase after some batty old lady’s mythical granddaughter? Based on a sketch done by some mad explorer who spends nine years out of every ten in the most godforsaken parts of the world?”

Rafe said nothing. He’d made up his mind.

Luke persisted. “I know you have a soft spot for old ladies, but—”

“Lady Cleeve was a girlhood friend of Granny’s,” Rafe said simply. “They corresponded all their lives.”

“Oh Lord, that’s all it would take, then,” Luke said, shaking his head in resignation. “So where was this granddaughter last seen?”