Mistress by Midnight

by Nicola Cornick

  “But there may not be a child,” Merryn said eagerly. Hope and desperation warred inside her. “We can wait,” she said. “In a little while we shall see…” Her voice trailed away unhappily. She knew it would not serve even as she saw Garrick’s expression.

  “We wait what—a month, two?” His voice was extremely polite but the look in his eyes was not. It was furious. “Then if you are not pregnant we congratulate ourselves on a lucky escape, and if you are, we marry one another quickly, quietly, with everyone counting days and months and gossiping about us?” His mouth twisted. “That is too shabby. I will not do it.”

  Merryn looked into his dark, implacable eyes. She knew Garrick was correct—she could not take the risk of condemning a child to the stigma of illegitimacy, another bastard Farne offspring, like father like son. She pressed her fingers to her lips to hold back the hysteria that suddenly threatened her. Confronted with such cruel choices she felt smothered with guilt. She wanted to run.

  But she could not. She had to face what she had done.

  “You must marry me,” Garrick said. “Good God, Merryn—” Suddenly there was raw anger in his voice. “I already have your brother’s death on my conscience,” he said. “I have no intention of adding to the scandal by giving the gossipmongers ammunition to claim that I have destroyed your life, too.” He took her hand and she could feel the tension that gripped him. “This way I can atone,” Garrick said. His voice was rough. “I tried to do that when I gave back Fenners and your fortune. I righted one small wrong. If you wed me—”

  “It will not put right Stephen’s death,” Merryn said heatedly. “Nothing can do that.”

  “No,” Garrick said, “but it will right you in the eyes of the world. And that way we can present the marriage as a further step toward reconciliation between our two families instead of simply a way to prevent scandal. Have you thought—” he let her go abruptly and turned away “—that many people may well imagine that you have been my mistress for some time?”

  This time the silence was taut with emotion. Merryn sank down heavily onto one of the chairs. She had not imagined it for one moment. It cut her to the heart.

  She remembered Lord Croft’s carelessly cruel words in Bond Street. He had implied that she had been willing to overlook Stephen’s death in return for a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. How much louder, how much more salacious, would be the gossip that she was Garrick’s mistress. She could almost hear the whispers, the hiss of silken skirts withdrawing from her. She could see the flick of fans as the delicious on dit sped through the ton. Nothing could be more scandalous than the suggestion that she had turned to the bed of the very man who had ruined her family.

  Garrick was right. Marriage would at least put a respectable gloss on a deeply unrespectable situation.

  “Perhaps a marriage of convenience…” She started to say. “In name only. To promote the fiction that this is indeed an alliance intended to mend the breach between our families—” She stopped as she saw the look in his eyes.

  He took a step toward her, and another. “A marriage in name only,” he said softly, mockingly. He took her chin in his hand and turned her face up to his. His touch was featherlight but Merryn felt it echo through her whole body. She closed her eyes for a moment against the potency of it.

  “Do you think you could do that?” he asked in the same tone that had the shivers chasing down her spine. “For I could not. I warn you now—I would not even try.” He bent his head until his lips brushed hers. The heat flared inside her.

  “Could you do that?” he repeated, his lips an inch from hers. His mouth took hers before she could reply and he was kissing her with skill and a mastery that set her shaking from head to toe. Her body recognized the taste and the touch of him now and responded to him with an eager need she could neither hide nor deny, opening to him like a flower to the sun. It shamed her all over again that she could be so avid for his touch when her mind was so cloudy and confused with grief and misery.

  Garrick deepened the kiss and Merryn caught hold of his jacket to steady herself in a world that was spinning. The material of it slipped beneath her fingers and his arms came about her, steadying her, holding her close. His kiss was a statement of possession and intent, and Merryn recognized it as such. She would be his wife in every way possible. There was no escape.

  He released her and stood back. He was breathing hard and his eyes glittered with desire.

  “I already have a special license,” he said. “We will be wed within the week. Oh, and Merryn—” There was an odd pause. “I should be very grateful,” Garrick said, a little formally, “if you were able to honor your wedding vows.”

  Merryn stared at him for a moment uncomprehending. For all Garrick’s forcefulness and the blazing passion between them she had sensed raw anguish in his voice then. Her heart jolted to hear it.

  “Kitty,” she whispered. “You do not wish for another unfaithful wife.”

  “It would be most unfortunate,” Garrick agreed, and there was a thread of humor in his tone that did not quite disguise the hurt. “I fear I am most unfashionable in that regard. The somewhat…flexible…morals of some members of the ton do not suit my taste. Although,” he added bitterly, “I can see that it would also be the most perfect revenge for you to marry me and then betray me. Life comes full circle.”

  Merryn shook her head abruptly. She was shocked by this insight into Garrick’s pain. He had always seemed so confident and so supremely sure of himself, so unapologetic for what he had done in the past. In the dark intimacy of their confinement she had tried to provoke him by goading him about Stephen and Kitty’s love. He had responded by telling her that he regretted his wife’s betrayal of him every single day. She had heard his pain and disillusion then. Now, looking into his eyes, she felt it, believed it.

  She swallowed hard. “I am not the sort of woman to do that,” she said. “If I give a promise I keep it. I would never dishonor you.”

  She saw a flash of something in Garrick’s eyes, some emotion so profound that she felt shaken. “Yes,” he said. His tone had warmed a shade. “I believe you. You are too honest to play me false. You keep your promises.”

  “You did not wish to wed again,” Merryn said, watching his face. She felt as though she was learning something new, stumbling along a strange path. She knew that insight was not her strong suit. Tom’s betrayal had pointed that up rather painfully. But now with Garrick she found she wanted to learn and understand.

  Garrick shook his head. “No. I never wanted to marry again.”

  Merryn understood that now. It had not occurred to her before that Kitty’s unfaithfulness must have damaged Garrick so badly that he would never remarry. She had thought he had not cared. She realized that she had been wrong.

  “But surely you need an heir?” she said.

  “I have brothers,” Garrick said. He smiled at last. “I may not speak to them but I can count on them to continue the Farne line.”

  It seemed a cold world to Merryn, who had only that morning come to value the extent of her sisters’ love.

  Garrick was watching her with those dark, dark eyes. “Do we have an agreement, then?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” Merryn whispered. The word was out, no going back.

  She saw him smile with relief and triumph and possession. He kissed her again and she felt her head spin and her knees weaken as the pleasure rocked through her like a sweet, hot tide.

  He released her. “Thank you,” he said. “I will call on you later.”

  He bowed to her and went out and Merryn crossed to the window and sank down onto the seat, remembering the pressure of Garrick’s mouth on hers and feeling the heat still thrum through her body. Her lips felt impossibly soft and sensitive, swollen from Garrick’s kisses. Her belly was aching with a tight, hot sensation. She knew how that might be eased now. She knew what she wanted.

  With a groan she covered her face with her hands.

  How could she ma
rry this man and live with him as his wife when she hated what he had done?

  Garrick Farne. Her husband. She felt impossibly torn.

  JOANNA HAD DECREED that the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy was the event at which Merryn and Garrick would make their debut in society as a betrothed couple. The wedding was two days away.

  “You cannot hide away forever,” Joanna snapped, when Merryn objected. “Yes, there will be gossip but better to tackle it head-on. Trust me—I know a little about facing society’s censure.”

  “I did not enjoy social occasions before,” Merryn argued. “Why should it be different now?”

  “It won’t be,” Tess put in. “It will be worse.” She and Joanna were wrestling their sister into a brand-new yellow gown. Merryn felt like a tailor’s dummy, pummeled and pushed between them. “But you have to do it, Merryn,” Tess continued, “otherwise you will become even more of a hermit than you already are. They will call you the Reclusive Duchess, or something else snide and more alliterative than I can think.”

  “The Desolate Duchess?” Joanna suggested.

  “The Dismal Duchess,” Merryn said.

  “Oh, yes,” Tess said, smiling, “I like that one.”

  The sisters stood back, spun Merryn around and presented her to the mirror. “There. You look lovely.”

  Merryn thought that she looked like a very reluctant Cinderella with two beautiful fairy godmothers smiling behind her. Her hair had been curled and teased into precisely the sort of upswept arrangement she hated and could never maintain, even though the prettiest yellow bonnet secured it. The gown was… Well, it simply was not her style. But then she did not have a style. Shabby bluestocking was scarcely the mode and certainly would not do for the Royal Academy.

  She was about to dismiss her reflection, thank her sisters politely and make the best of a bad job when she looked again and felt a small frisson of excitement. She had never previously paid the slightest attention to her appearance, never had any interest in it and yet now, suddenly, she could hear Garrick’s words.

  I do not even notice your sisters when you are close by…

  A little shiver shook her. She looked again. Her hair, so glossy and golden, framed a face that had regained its color and gained also something of sensual knowledge and experience. Her eyes glowed deep blue. Her lips were parted on the edge of a smile. The gown skimmed her shoulders and fell like a golden waterfall from below her breast to spill about her feet. She was aware of the caress of the silk and the way it swathed her body with a soft cocoon like a lover’s embrace.

  She reached out one gloved hand and touched her reflection, trying to pin down the difference in her, the difference in how she felt. She thought of Garrick and the way that he watched her. She pressed her fingers to her lips in an unconscious echo of his touch. She felt alive.

  “I think Merryn has woken up,” Joanna said, a little dryly, from behind her.

  Merryn spun around. Just for a moment, lost in a world of new and sensual discovery, she had forgotten her sisters. They were both laughing at her. They were also both looking frightfully proud of her and a little bit anxious. She felt a pang of love and gratitude and caught their hands.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t hug you because it would crush the silk.”

  “Gracious,” Joanna said, squeezing her hand, her eyes like stars, “we will make a fashionable lady of you yet, Merryn!”

  “Pray do not set your sights too high,” Merryn said, laughing, and then they were all hugging each other anyway and she clung to Joanna and to Tess because everything had changed, she had changed and she was a little bit afraid, and because she had only just realized how much she loved them.

  “At least you will not have to run the gamut of Garrick’s family,” Tess said as she disentangled herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hear that they do not speak.”

  “Poor Garrick,” Joanna said. “That must be unconscionably lonely. I wonder why they are estranged?”

  “Well,” Tess said, “it could be because all his siblings are the most unconscionable snobs. Ghastly, you know. He is better off without them.”

  It felt odd to hear Joanna and Tess speak sympathetically of Garrick, Merryn thought, and yet on a purely human basis she had to agree with them. Garrick had always struck her as the most solitary of men and in some bitter way this marriage, borne out of necessity not love, might make him more solitary still. She had always deplored the cold business arrangements of aristocratic marriages yet at least in an arranged marriage there was usually companionship if not love, mutual support and sometimes respect. Garrick had offered her his name to save her reputation. She offered him nothing. It felt wrong to enter marriage on such a basis. She gave a violent shiver. She felt small and lonely, smothered by convention. For one terrifying moment she could see her life spinning out before her in a series of images of great country houses with huge, empty rooms, spaces where she would always walk alone.

  “Here…” Tess handed her the yellow coat that matched the silk gown. “You are cold.”

  “I am frightened,” Merryn said frankly.

  Joanna and Tess exchanged a look. “We will be with you,” Joanna said encouragingly, “and Alex, too, although he says he is too much of a philistine to appreciate art. But I have always thought Mr. Turner’s pictures most fine. I adored his painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

  Merryn bit back the retort that would previously have sprung to her lips, a blistering comment on Joanna’s appreciation of any picture that was fashionable and approved by society. Besides, that was not really fair to her sister who as well as being generous to a fault had a very fine eye for style that was all her own.

  I have been very unkind in the past, Merryn thought. I must try to do better.

  It was odd; she had thought she was happy before, keeping secrets, doing her work for Tom, harboring her hatred of Garrick Farne. Only now, with her past life in tatters and an uncertain future before her as Duchess of Farne, could she see that perhaps what she had thought was happiness had been something different, a partial life bringing interest and challenge through her work and her studies perhaps, but also devoid of love.

  Shrugging off the disturbing thought, she grabbed the fur muff that matched the trim on the bonnet.

  “Well,” she said, smiling at Joanna and Tess, “let us go and make them talk!”

  Despite her bravado, the journey to the Royal Academy in the Strand was accomplished in tense silence. The fact that the exhibition rooms were crowded with people also did nothing to soothe Merryn’s nerves. Alex offered her his arm and Joanna and Tess walked ahead, arms linked, terrifyingly à la mode, challenging anyone, Merryn thought, who dared to look askance at them. Even so there was absolute silence for a moment as they swept into the main exhibition room before a positive barrage of chatter broke out around them. Merryn unconsciously raised her chin in exact parody of her sisters’ nonchalant disdain but she was horribly aware of all the flutter of speculation and gossip, the whispers, the sideways glances. She could imagine all the unpleasant things they were saying, the comments about her fall from grace, her scrambled betrothal to save face, the delicious on dit of her being found naked in a bordello, a piece of scandal that surely could never be surpassed. Her face burned and the tears pricked her eyes but she was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how she felt. She had always hated to be the center of attention; this was hideous, her worst nightmare, as the fans flicked and the eyes followed her and someone tittered, a laugh full of lewd suggestiveness.

  “I wish Garrick had escorted me,” Merryn whispered impulsively to Alex. Although she appreciated her brother-in-law’s support a very great deal she felt bereft without Garrick at her side, an odd but undeniable sensation that she had not expected.

  “He is here now,” Alex whispered back, smiling.

  Merryn turned slowly, her heart in her mouth. Garrick had come through the main entrance doors and was walking toward them
flanked on one side by a man Merryn recognized as Captain Owen Purchase. Purchase seemed to be looking at Tess with the expression of a man struck dumb with admiration.

  “Another good man goes down under the onslaught of the Fenner sisters,” Alex was saying ruefully.

  Merryn was not paying attention, however, for on Garrick’s arm was a tiny elderly lady, very stiff and upright in rustling black silk, not a white hair out of place and a truly astonishing diamond necklace glittering about her neck. They approached very slowly and by the time they were within a few paces every single person in the room was watching and once again the gossip had died to a murmur and then faded altogether.

  “Is that not… Surely it is… I… Oh, dear…” Merryn was suddenly terrified.

  “Lady Merryn.” Garrick had stopped before her and executed the most immaculately perfect bow. He raised his voice a little so that everyone nearby could hear him. “It is my very great honor and pleasure,” he said, “to introduce you to my aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Steyne. Aunt Elizabeth, my fiancée, Lady Merryn Fenner.”

  The Dowager’s keen black gaze swept Merryn up and down as she made her curtsy and Merryn felt as though she was taking in every aspect of her appearance while leaving the verdict undeclared. The Duchess’s bearing was regal, her expression haughty. Around them the crowd bobbed and fluttered, waiting. The Dowager Duchess of Steyne was a high stickler, a relic from a previous age. She was a friend of the Queen, rarely seen in public these days but still wielding the most enormous social power. It was unthinkable that Garrick Farne would have introduced his father’s sister to a woman who had been his mistress, engaged in some shoddy affaire. All the same, the crowds waited in case the Dowager titillated their taste for gossip with the cut direct.

  Merryn held the Dowager Duchess’s unreadable dark gaze until she felt her nerves were at screaming point. Then something that might have passed for a wintry smile flickered across the Dowager’s lips and she said, “It pleases me greatly that the breach between the Fenner and the Farne families is soon to be healed by your marriage to my nephew, Lady Merryn.”