by Julia Quinn
But the moment he shouldered his way past Captain Talcott and came to stand before her, her world righted. Well, no, actually it rather tipped in a most haphazard fashion.
For here, all the pieces fell into place. The wide chest, the solid jaw, the firm set of his lips. And his eyes, so blue and clear, as if they could see far beyond the horizon.
This was exactly how she’d imagined Christopher Talcott all grown up. But she’d never expected how the sight of him would make her feel—her mouth went dry, and her knees and resolve wavered.
For there was none of the spark to his expression that she remembered. That adventurous light to his eyes. Something, someone, had extinguished his grand curiosity, his bon vivant.
And worse, he stopped short of taking her outstretched hands, his hands moving toward hers and then, as if remembering himself, he let them drop back to their proper place at his side. “Miss Padley? Is it truly you?”
Such a stiffly formal greeting did not bode well. “Indeed, Kipp, it is me.” She pulled her own hands back, feeling horribly foolish. “How glad I am you remember.”
“Remember? How could I not?”
“Upon pain of death,” they both said at once.
And there it was, a spark of the Kipp she remembered from her childhood. A bit of mischief in his eyes, that is until the other man spoke up.
“Oh, this is going to be good,” he muttered, as he moved into the room.
“Leave us, Drew,” Kipp told him.
“Oh, I hardly think so. This is far more interesting than the morning paper.” He settled himself down on the settee and folded his hands behind his head, making himself comfortable. “Besides, I want to hear more about these services.”
“Drew—”
Cordelia turned toward the captain. “You’re Andrew?”
“One and the same. I still don’t know who you are though.”
Kipp intervened. “Drew, don’t you recall Cordelia from next door, or as you liked to call her, Commander Whey-Face.”
Drew’s expression widened and then he laughed. “Good heavens, Sir Horace’s scamp of a daughter, all grown up. Nicely done, though.” And then the rogue had the audacity to wink at her.
Why, he was as bad as Kate had said, perhaps worse.
Cordelia blushed, but she couldn’t let the record go uncorrected. “You were the one who christened me Commander Whey-Face, Kipp.” Then she turned to Drew. “You used to pull my hair and once dared me to eat a worm,” she replied. “Which was hardly the proper beginning for a future vicar.”
The rapscallion barked a laugh. “Oh good God! I’d nearly forgotten that was where I was intended. Yes, well, fate intervened and I was shipped off to sea,” he told her.
“Oh my, I am confused,” she confessed. She turned to Kipp. “All this time, I thought you were Captain Talcott.”
“Him?” From behind her, Drew laughed again, and she glanced over her shoulder at him. “Hardly. Nothing so pedestrian for my brother, Miss Padley, or as I recall you liked to call him, Major Pudding-Legs.” Now it was Kipp’s turn to flinch. With a flourish of his hand and a slight bow, he said, “You have the honor of addressing the most honorable and industrious Earl of Thornton.”
“Lord Thornton? Oh, but you can’t be,” she managed as she sank into a nearby chair. “Kipp, good heavens, that ruins everything! How could you?”
Kipp took a step back. How could he what? Not inherit? As if it had been his choice.
More to the point, what the devil was Cordelia Padley doing here? And today of all days.
“Truly, you inherited?” she asked.
She needn’t sound so horrified. Most people thought inheriting an earldom was a brilliant stroke of luck. Though if he was being honest, he rather shared her sentiment.
The abrupt change in the line of succession had overturned his entire future.
“I did. My older brother—perhaps you remember him—” She nodded at this. “Well, yes, he died in an accident not long after you left.”
“Oh, how dreadful,” she said, glancing between him and Drew.
“Turned everything upside down,” Drew added. “Instead of Kipp being shipped off to sea, I was hauled off to Portsmouth, and he got sent to Eton.”
None of that seemed relevant to the more essential question. Kipp straightened, an odd feeling of foreboding pressing at him.
Like his life was about to cast into the briars yet again.
“Miss Padley, whatever are you doing here? When did you return from Egypt?”
“Egypt, no, I wasn’t—” She shook her head. “I never went to Egypt. I’ve been in India.”
“India?” All these years he’d envisioned her sailing on the Nile and exploring ancient tombs with her scholar father.
“Yes, India. I fear it’s a long story and hardly matters right now, for I find myself in a terrible predicament, and didn’t know who to turn to—” She glanced from one brother to the other. “Oh, I know I am going to make a tangle of all this, but I suppose I should just say it.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I need someone willing to marry me.”
Behind them, Drew bolted to his feet. “Marriage?” His brows arched up in panic. “O-o-oh! That sort of predicament. Too rich for my blood. I’m out of here.” He strode past them, but not before he slapped Kipp on the back. “Best of luck to you and the little predicament.”
Cordelia’s cheeks flushed a rosy pink as she realized exactly what sort of trouble Drew was suggesting. “It is hardly that—”
“Yes, well, I only know of one sort,” Drew told her as he fled.
Of course he left. Drew might be able to face England’s enemies without batting an eye, but mention anything that hinted at “marriage” and the need for a hasty one at that, and he was the first one to drop sails and make a mad dash for open waters.
“Oh dear, that did come out rather badly,” she muttered, more to herself.
Kipp wasn’t too sure if there was a way it could have come out otherwise, but then again, he hadn’t the least notion of what she was suggesting, or rather asking him. And as she continued, he only grew more confused.
“It wouldn’t be a real engagement,” she explained, “just a temporary one. Until my affairs are in order. Or rather my aunts are in order.”
Aunts. He vaguely recalled them. A trio of crones worthy of Macbeth. Her father’s aunts actually, if he wasn’t mistaken. Why, they must be ancient by now.
And apparently just as meddling.
Meanwhile, Cordelia continued on. “Yes, well, I fear I am guilty of a bit of dissembling. I’ve been deceiving them for a number of years on a certain difficult subject.”
He only knew of one difficult subject. One he himself was mired in at the moment. “Marriage?”
She heaved a sigh as if relieved that he understood.
He certainly did not. But this was Cordelia. She’d always been high-spirited and rather nonsensical.
He took a deep breath and knew eventually all this would make sense.
At least he hoped so.
“My aunts kept putting forth the most dreadful list of prospects—men they were convinced would be a good and proper husband for me—and had become most insistent that I choose one. Especially after Papa . . .” She paused there and looked away. “After he . . .”
She didn’t have to finish; he could guess, having seeing the flash of grief in her eyes. Sir Horace was gone.
But the solution, it seemed to Kipp, was rather easy. “Why not refuse them?”
She made a rather inelegant snort. He doubted there was a miss in London who would dare such an unladylike sound, but here was Cordelia—the girl who had never quite fit in. “You don’t know my aunts. Now that I’m back—in England—they will insist upon me making a match, especially when they discover—” Then she bit her lower lip, holding back the rest of her admission.
Considering what she had confessed so far, he wasn’t too sure he wanted to wade in any further. He glanced at the door and
wondered if perhaps Drew’s instincts had the better of it.
“Discover what?”
Sighing again, she looked up and directly at him. “Well, you see, I’d written them—only to stop their interference—that I had already engaged in an understanding with a certain gentleman.”
Kipp sat back as he saw where this was going. At least so he thought. “And this certain gentleman has refused?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m rather in the middle of asking him.”
As her words set in, Kipp blinked. He couldn’t have heard her correctly, but as the seconds ticked by and Cordelia sat looking at him, rather expectantly, he realized he had. “Me? You told them we were engaged?”
Biting her lip again, she shrugged a little, made a tip of her head. “Well, it is terribly hard to find a willing man—at the very least, a tolerable one—and simply put, you are the only one I know. At least I thought I knew.” Her words ran together in a rush as if she hoped they might lessen the truth of the matter.
“You told them we were engaged?” He had to ask it again, because it seemed rather important to make sure he had the answer correct.
“If you insist on being precise about the matter, then yes.”
Yes, he did want to insist. And then he wanted to sit down. No, he needed to, he realized as he slumped into his favorite chair.
If this were nosed about town . . .
“You don’t have to marry me,” she added quickly. “Our engagement need only be for a few days.”
“A few days?” He shook his head. He had another matter that was about to take place in the next few days. Hours, to be exact.
At precisely three this afternoon, Miss Pamela Holt was expecting him to call.
And pose a certain deciding question.
Meanwhile, Cordelia did her rambling best to quell his obvious panic. “Then you can cry off and break my heart.”
She said it so matter-of-factly.
Cry off, indeed.
He’d never be so dishonorable.
Then he looked at her, her cheeks aglow, her lips slightly parted, and a look of desperate need in her eyes.
In that one glance, the strangest notion uncoiled in his gut. The last thing I would ever do is break your heart.
“I would never—” he began, and stopped in the blink of an eye, suddenly wary of whatever magic she seemed to be unspooling around him.
“Why ever not? It is most essential that you toss me aside. Leave me in a state of emotional ruin. Then my aunts won’t dare push some wretched country rector in my direction. At least not for a year. Mayhap even two, if I’m lucky. You see, I am determined that I will not marry for anything less than to follow my heart.”
Kipp straightened, as if tugged by her words. Oh, how they held a tempting lure to them.
But not one he could afford to latch on to.
“So write them that I have done so,” he told her. “Thrown you over and broken your heart.” That seemed the sensible choice. Why, then she wouldn’t have had any need to come see him.
Following one’s heart, indeed!
He stole another glance at her, that pointed chin, those blue eyes. Yet, for some unspeakable, maddening reason, he was ever so glad she had.
Need of him.
For the sight of her was like a distant candle on a dark, stormy night.
Though whether Cordelia was the candle or the storm was yet to be seen.
Storm, he would reason, for here she was, as madcap as ever, and still drawing him into her disastrous schemes.
Which, he reminded himself, had always led him into a raft of trouble.
Cordelia, on the other hand, was shaking her head at his suggestion. “No, no, a letter will simply not suffice. They need to see you. Meet you. Or else they will suspect that I’ve . . .”
She paused, biting her lower lip.
But he knew what she’d been about to confess, for apparently her aunts knew Cordelia for the romp that she was. “Fabricated the entire situation?” he offered.
She nodded quickly. “Yes, I fear so. If they have seen me with you, seen me terribly in love and then destitute over the loss of your companionship, they will believe the entire farce.”
Kipp groaned. She wanted him to pretend an engagement and then cry off. Why, it was utter madness.
Meanwhile, Cordelia continued on and he was only half listening until she got to one very essential piece of information. “. . . I must be there when Anne marries the duke. That, and Anne is ever so fond of my aunts—and they, her—of course she’s asked them to come to the wedding.”
That single word tolled though his own musings. “Wedding?”
“Yes, I explained all that. My dear friend Miss Brabourne—we went to Madame Rochambeaux’s school together—is getting married and I must be there. And you, of course.”
The web she was weaving began to tangle around him. “When is this wedding?” he dared to venture.
“Saturday.”
“When do your aunts arrive in London?”
“London?” She shook her head. “No, no, you misunderstand. The wedding isn’t in London.” Taking a deep breath, she continued on. “I fear this is where the favor becomes a bit complicated—”
At this, Kipp couldn’t help himself. He grinned. “More so than it already is?”
She laughed a little. “Yes, well, I suppose this sounds like a great coil to you. But truly it is rather uncomplicated. The wedding is at Hamilton Hall.”
“Isn’t that the Duke of Dorset’s—”
“—Yes. The duke is marrying Anne.”
“But isn’t Hamilton Hall near Bath?”
Again she nodded.
“That’s two and a half days from London,” he pointed out.
“Oh yes, I suppose it is.” She pressed her lips together and sighed. “Oh bother! I suppose my request does entail more than just a few days. But no more than a sennight . . . at the most.” She smiled, her lips quavering just slightly, and there was a wary cast to her glance. Then she came over to him and took his hand without any hesitation, much as she had when they were children.
He glanced down at her fingers twined around his own and had the sense that as improper as this was, as much as he should get up and leave before she managed to talk him into this madness, he couldn’t.
“Oh, Kipp, I know it’s been ages, and I know this is such an unexpected and most impractical and quite impossible thing of me to ask, but I need your help. Desperately. And if you haven’t anything of import in the next week, I would be forever in your debt if you could—”
Already he was shaking his head, pulling his hands free of her grasp, for the warmth of her touch was . . . was . . .
Beguiling. Tempting.
And Drew had been very right about one thing—his life had been entirely too dull for far too long. And predictable. And boring.
Up until he’d entered this room. “Cordelia, I don’t see how—”
“You’d be lending me grave assistance,” she rushed to add. “Which, you might remember, is the first rule of the RSE pledge.”
Those words, that pledge, sparked all the rest of his memories of her, of their charter for the Royal Society of Explorers. RSE. She’d been adamant that they would always come to each other’s aid. The very heart of a good society, she’d insisted.
And he recalled one of the other rules she’d insisted upon adding. And once again, some odd, impish spark ignited inside him.
“What of Rule 18?” he asked, if only to tease her. “Does that still stand?”
He hadn’t any idea why he’d just said that or why he’d even thought of it, but the result was seeing Cordelia blush quite prettily.
“I—I—I—I . . . I don’t see . . . That is, I don’t believe that rule is relevant to this particular situation.” She straightened a bit, as if gathering her wits and fortitude about her. “I only need your assistance. Not that.”
“How unfortunate,” he replied. “From my vantage p
oint, they seem to go hand in hand.”
“Now you sound like your brother,” she shot back.
“That’s hardly fair, nor will it gain you my help.”
“So you will—”
“Will I what?” He leaned a bit closer.
To his chagrin, her brows rose and she sat back. “Come with me to Anne’s wedding.” This time she smiled, a fragile little turn of her lips, and he could see that while most of Cordelia was brave and intrepid, she truly did see him as her only hope.
Which cut him right through the heart.
“If you refuse—” she was saying.
“Yes, yes, I know. Upon pain of death.”
But really, what choice did he have?
Chapter 3
Later that day, the Earl of Thornton found himself being shown into an elaborately decorated room—a showy display of Mr. Josiah Holt’s legendary wealth.
Now, Josiah might be shunned for still having a bit of dirt under his nails, but not even the snootiest matrons could deny that his finest treasure, his beloved daughter and only child, Miss Pamela Holt, was nothing short of the rarest of Diamonds. For even now, seated as she was beside the window, the sunlight streamed down on her fair head like a halo.
She’d created a tremendous stir when she’d made her debut—both for her beauty and for the depth of her dowry. But Pamela was also Josiah’s daughter, canny and smart, and had kept her affections close to her heart, so that suitors far and wide came to court her to see if they could claim this most coveted prize.
“My dear Lord Thornton, what a pleasant surprise to see you,” she said, smiling and nodding slightly, regally deigning to allow him into her presence. That her affections had fallen on him, an impoverished earl, would be a bit of shock to most of the ton, when it had been wagered at the beginning of the season that she would most likely start the summer with a duchess’s coronet on her fair brow.
Yet for some reason, Pamela had quietly and discreetly turned her discerning eye toward him, and Kipp, having passed all the trials to gain this prized lady, now stood at the last hurdle: asking that fateful question.
Just be done with this, he tried telling himself.
