by Amelia Grey
Ignoring his comment, Seaton said, “Her father was a vicar before the title became his, so I’m sure she’s a properly brought up young lady and will be a suitable match for you.”
“Her father was a vicar?”
“Well, up until he inherited the title from his older brother’s son, which was four or five years ago. Remember that’s when Viscount Wayebury became eligible and joined the Heirs’ Club? I think he came into the title himself shortly after that.”
“No, I don’t remember,” Bray admitted, realizing he felt a twinge of sorrow in his heart that the sisters had lost their father and their brother in the span of a few years. But Bray shook off the unwanted feeling before it had time to worm its way into his soul. He didn’t need to be reminded of his father’s favorite saying: Emotion is a weak man’s Achilles’ heel, and a woman’s daily sport. But his father also taught him that a man’s true worth was counted in how he kept his word.
His Grace would not be happy to hear about his son’s latest incident. Bray’s father gave him anything he wanted, allowed him to do anything he wanted, and then wondered why he was London’s most notorious rogue. There was no pleasing the man when it came to Bray.
He ground his teeth, making his head pound harder. “Perhaps I’ll send a letter telling her I’m obligated to offer for her hand and I’ll be around to meet her sometime after she’s had a year of mourning.”
An incredulous gleam lit in Seaton’s eyes. “A whole year to mourn? That’s outrageous.”
“Are you in a hurry to marry me off to a stranger, Seaton?”
“Of course not, but even six months for mourning would be considered overly long to most.”
“With any luck, she’ll find someone else to marry during the year, or with better luck, hopefully there already is someone and she’ll leg-shackle him instead of me. When you were at the club, did you find out anything about the uncle who inherited the title?”
“Nothing other than he is Mr. Willard Prim. He and the viscount’s father were brothers.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“No reason for you to. He decided against joining the Heirs’ Club when he became eligible.” Seaton handed Bray a piece of paper. “Directions to the man’s house?”
Bray stared at the writing without making sense of the words. How the hell had he gotten into this mess? “Damnation, I wish I had never gone near Rotten Row tonight,” he said, biting back the real words: He wished Prim hadn’t died.
“Where is Lord Wayebury’s dog?” Seaton asked.
Bray grunted another oath, grabbed his hat, and opened the door. “In the garden, where he belongs. If only dealing with a man’s sister were as easy as dealing with his dog.”
Chapter 3
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.
—Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 3
Two years later
Though Bray had never met her, Miss Louisa Prim made his life a living hell since he’d first heard her name. It was time he settled with her.
Bray stared out the carriage window as it rolled to a stop in front of the newest Viscount Wayebury’s Mayfair town house. A slow, steady rain fell to the already soggy earth. Bray had known this day was coming. He just hadn’t wanted it to come so soon.
Soon?
It had been over two years since Nathan Prim’s death on Rotten Row. Many would not consider that quick, but Bray did. He’d hoped Prim’s sister would find a beau and be the wife of someone else by now, but she was obviously waiting for him to make good on his promise.
Unfortunately for him.
For the past two years, he couldn’t go to a party, a foxhunt, or even to a club without someone asking him either when or if he was going to marry Miss Prim. Not even his snarls and swears could keep the ton’s hunger for gossip at bay.
Since his father’s death last fall, Bray had been settling in to the duties of being a duke. He’d never cared a damn about the title, though he always knew it would be his one day. He’d half-lived in a way that most men wouldn’t have survived. But he did survive, and despite his reluctance, he’d realized that along with everything else, his father taught him well how to handle the constant flow of decisions to make and questions to answer from the managers of all the estates, horses, lands, and the many companies presently entrusted to his care.
For now, with brooding resignation, Bray had come to accept the confining responsibility he inherited. And with the sense of responsibility, he had also come to the conclusion that because of what he learned were the underhanded actions of a cowardly uncle, it was time to make good on his pledge to Nathan Prim. It was time to tell Miss Prim they would be married.
But he would never like it.
Bray’s father had been a dashing, hot-blooded man who loved many women, and made no bones about being honored that his son had followed in his footsteps. Neither Bray nor his father checked their self-restraint when it came to something that brought them pleasure, be it a voluptuous woman or a new racehorse. Bray wasn’t about to let his duty to Miss Prim change that.
“Do you want me to go in with you?”
Bray grunted a laugh. He had been so intent on his thoughts, he almost forgot Seaton was in the carriage with him. “Hell no. I don’t even know why I agreed you could ride with me to Miss Prim’s house.”
“Perhaps because, like me, you feared you might have a change of heart at the last second and end up telling your driver to keep going right past the house without stopping.”
There was more truth to that comment than Bray wanted to admit. Deciding to willingly give up a portion of one’s freedom wasn’t an easy choice to make. However, those thoughts were best left in his own mind. “Have you no faith in me, Seaton?”
“None,” the old man answered with a twinkle in his midnight-colored eyes.
“As much as you would like for it to be so, I am not a boy who needs help from the schoolmaster to get his assignments accomplished. You are my friend, not my keeper.”
“Noted and accepted,” Seaton offered with an easy smile, “but you are late fulfilling your commitment.”
“I need no reminder from you. I had enough of them from my father when he was living. I’ve finally grown weary of the constant questions from the ton about Miss Prim, and men placing bets all over London about whether I would live up to my promise to marry her. Then, as if all that weren’t enough, I received that terse letter and the documents from her uncle last week. If I ever get my hands on that man, he’ll know damned well how I feel about his underhanded tactics.”
“That was sly of him.”
“Dangerous, Seaton. I’ll find a way to repay him for his cowardly acts.”
“I can’t say that I blame you. I can understand his wanting to force you to take on the responsibility of Miss Louisa Prim, but dumping guardianship of the other girls in your care is unforgivable.”
“And you can be sure it won’t be,” Bray said, his anger heating at the thought. “Even though the blasted blackguard gave me no idea which country he’d escaped to, I hired a runner from Bow Street to go after him immediately, find him, and drag him back here by his hair if necessary.”
“I agree going after him is the right thing to do.”
“I will see to it the blackguard lives up to his obligations to the other Prim girls.”
“Do you still plan to let the Court of Chancery appoint a different guardian for them?”
“You know I do.”
“No one would blame you if you did, except perhaps Miss Louisa Prim. I’m sure she is quite happy that a duke will be seeing to her sisters’ future.”
“I have no doubt of that, Seaton. The only allegiance I feel to her about it is to tell her before I do it. I don’t have the time, the inclination, or the know-how to oversee the welfare of bevy of females and make arrangements to ensure that they are all properly married.”
“It was most impertinent of Lord Wayebury to assume you would take guardianship of all of th
em, and damned clever of him to arrange to have the letter sent a month after he left the country so it would be difficult for you to find him.”
“Clever and calculating is what it is. I promised to marry Miss Louisa Prim, not to take on the task of caring for all her sisters.”
“That said, I doubt you would be here today if not for his taking these matters into his own hands.”
Bray agreed to Seaton’s words by way of a shrug. “I’ve always known I’d have to marry one day, but my view of marriage hasn’t changed. I don’t want to engage in it. I have a woman in my bed any night I choose. But now that I am a duke, I see the wisdom of having an heir and accomplishing it before one gets too old. So, since I must marry, I suppose Miss Prim will do as well as any other chit to give me a son. At least in her case, she couldn’t possibly expect this to be anything more than a marriage of duty, so I can forgo the wooing, the flattery, and the feigned devotion.”
Seaton laughed, causing Bray to remember that Miss Prim’s father was a vicar before he inherited the title. Bray didn’t relish the thought of marrying a vicar’s daughter. She was probably a timid, fragile little prude who would tremble in fear and revulsion every time he came near her. That type of bedmate held no desire for him, but Seaton didn’t care a fig about that. The aging heir held to the old school that a man and young lady didn’t have to know each other before they married and they didn’t have to like each other or live together after they wed. As long as the families agreed it was the best match, that was good enough for him.
Not even Bray’s father, on his deathbed, had been able to force Bray to commit to when he would ask Miss Prim to marry him.
“Have you met her?” Bray asked Seaton.
“No, I don’t think anyone has. From what I’ve heard, she arrived in London only a couple of days ago. It appears her uncle must have timed sending you the letter with her arrival.”
“No doubt she grew tired of waiting for me to come for her and she put her uncle up to this.”
“That could very well be true. I don’t know of a young lady who wouldn’t want to marry a duke. You mentioned the uncle said one of the younger girls is making her debut at the first ball of the Season. If she is more to your liking, marry her. I’m sure she would satisfy your debt to her brother just as well as the older one. Once you have an heir, you can feel free to never bother Her Grace again.”
“There is some rationale to that thought. It seems to have worked for my parents—and quite nicely, from what I could tell. They lived happily apart for many years.”
“True. But if your father had mended his wicked ways when he married, been more discreet about his mistresses and orgies, and spent more time at home with his wife than drinking in his clubs and hunting lodges, he might have lived longer.”
Bray remained silent. He couldn’t remember a time when his parents were ever in the same house at the same time. Separate was just the way they lived, and Bray never had a reason to question them about it.
He shook off the memories along with the emotion that always threatened to surface when he thought about them. “The prospect of marriage might be a bit more palatable if I had been allowed to choose my own bride.”
“There is that line from one of Southey’s works about ‘the chickens,’ that ‘always come home to roost.’ You’ve lived your life by your own rules long enough. And if truth be told, it is that life that got you into this mess.”
Bray clenched his jaw.
“Listen, my friend,” Seaton continued. “You are handsome, fit, and now you are a duke before the age of thirty. How many gentlemen have been given so much power, influence, and wealth at such a young age?”
Bray reached and shoved open the door of the coach and jumped down to the soft ground. He lifted the collar of his greatcoat against the rain and looked up at his driver. “Take Mr. Seaton back to the club or wherever he wants to go.”
Seaton raised a brow. “I’m not leaving until I see you enter the house.”
Bray chuckled and shut the carriage door. He turned and walked up the stepping-stone path to the front stoop. He rapped the lion’s head door knocker twice and waited. A few moments later, the door slowly opened, but only enough to allow the head of a blond-haired girl who looked to be around the age of eight or nine to peep from behind it. Her features were small except for bright blue eyes that appeared almost too big for her cherub face.
Bray had no experience talking with a child, so he just stared at her, wondering why she had opened the door. She was much too young to be a servant.
She stared back at him.
Finally he gathered what little patience he had at this point and leaned down toward the girl and said, “Good afternoon, miss. I’m the Duke of Drakestone here to see Miss Prim.”
A smile stretched across her narrow, sweet-looking face. She opened the door wider and gave him an acceptable curtsy. “Hello, Your … Your Highness?”
“It’s Your Grace.”
“Yes. Right.” She stamped her foot. “I knew that. I am Miss Sybil Prim, Your Grace.”
“Are you, now?” he said, knowing full well she was not the Miss Prim he sought. But if her older sister was half as pretty as this girl would be one day, maybe this ill-conceived liaison wouldn’t be so dreadful as he was expecting. “I’m looking for Miss Louisa Prim.”
She huffed, the smile disappearing. “She’s in the book room.”
“I see,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Prim, do you always open the door?”
A mischievous glow lit her eyes, and her smile returned, wider now. “No,” she said quickly. “Sometimes I close it.” And with that she slammed the door shut. He heard a girlish giggle from the other side of the door and her footsteps running away.
Bray didn’t know whether to be amused by the imp’s brazen behavior or suspect of a family that let such behavior occur. He could understand a boy pulling a devilish prank like that. Lord knew he’d been a hellion at that age, but a girl? That surprised him.
He knocked on the door again, louder, in hopes one of the servants would hear him this time.
The door opened once more, but this time to a different young lady of perhaps fifteen or sixteen years of age. She was also blond with big blue eyes but obviously too young to be the Miss Prim he was seeking. Where was the butler, or the housekeeper? Even a chambermaid would do at this point.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she said politely. “May I help you?”
Hopefully this girl had a few more manners than the last, though that was one wager he wouldn’t waste good money on. “I’m the Duke of Drakestone here to see Miss Prim,” he said.
A flush heightened her cheeks and she smiled prettily at him and then curtsied. “I am Miss Lillian Prim, Your Grace.”
Her innocent mistake made him smile, and straightaway he realized the error was once again his. “Of course you are, but I am looking for Miss Louisa Prim.”
She gave a disappointed sigh. “She’s one of my older sisters.”
A door at the back of the house slammed so hard, it rattled the windowpanes. Bray heard the running of feet and high-pitched, toe-curling squeals.
Bray swore silently. “What was that sound?” he asked the girl.
“Another sister, Your Grace.”
“What in the name of Hades is wrong with her?”
The young lady blinked curiously. “Nothing, sir.”
“There should be something wrong if someone is going to scream like that.”
More shrieks were followed by the appealing laughter of a young lady. It was genuine amusement and happiness. It wasn’t the fake feminine delight he’d heard through the years at the hundreds of balls, dinners, and card parties he attended. It was more musical, more irresistible. That sound tightened his stomach.
The noise of merriment came closer. He saw a girl younger than the two he’d already met burst out of a doorway and bound down the corridor. Right behind her he caught a glimpse of a young lady reaching to grab her prey but missing j
ust before the girl darted away.
“Give me that book right now,” the young lady called between bouts of laughter.
“No! It’s mine. You can’t have it!” The younger one screeched again and sprang across the corridor into another room with the lady on her heels. Bray didn’t think he had ever witnessed anything like it, girls running about like hoydens, banging doors and screaming in carefree delight. As an only child of two only children, he’d not interacted with females aside from his mother, his paramours, and simpering ladies at Society parties. He couldn’t imagine any one of them acting with such wild abandon.
Seconds later, the two ran out of another room and barreled into the vestibule where he and the other Miss Prim stood.
“Oh,” the young lady said as she skidded to a halt in front of him. Before she could catch her breath and speak, the younger child, who had kept running, crashed into her from behind, knocking her straight into Bray’s arms. He caught her by softly rounded shoulders before steadying her with his hands.
“Oh,” she repeated, this time after an intake of breath.
A whiff of her fresh-washed hair swept past him and he inhaled deeply the intoxicating scent. His gaze fell briefly on her breasts, and heat filled him.
Her blue eyes rounded in surprise when they met his. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, splaying her fingers on his chest while pushing away from him, clearly embarrassed.
Reluctantly, he let go of her.
She turned to the mischievous child behind her. “Bonnie, we owe the gentleman an apology.”
“You first.”
The older sister sighed and looked back at Bray. “My apologies.”
The little girl then turned a beautiful set of big blue eyes on him and said, “I’m sorry that you got in my sister’s way and forced me to run into her.”
The older sister glared at her. “Bonnie.”
Miss Bonnie Prim folded her arms across her chest and shrugged her shoulders in a pouting stance. “Sorry, uh, sir.”
The older one groaned.
Bray couldn’t be upset with anyone who pushed a beautiful lady into his arms. “No harm done.”
