Four Weddings and a Sixpence

by Julia Quinn

  “Not so. Lord Wetherby has already asked me to dance the next with him.”

  “That villain,” the earl pronounced at once, earning himself the duchess’s amused laugh.

  “You are a shameless flirt, Daventry. You always have been.”

  Ellie slid her foot sideways, delicately tapping her father’s toe before he could continue this playful badinage. Papa, thankfully, took the hint. “Then, since you have been so cruel as to accept Wetherby’s invitation to dance before even allowing me the chance to offer mine, you shall have to make it up to me by accepting a different sort of invitation. Supper and cards, let us say, on Monday next?”

  “It sounds lovely, but I couldn’t possibly accept. Not without the duke. Coming to a ball on my own is all very well, but supper and cards at the home of a widower? That is far too intimate an occasion to attend alone. My husband, you see, is the jealous type and quite possessive of me.”

  “Bring your husband along, then.” He paused to smile. “If you must. And that son of yours, too,” he added carelessly, “if he’s available?”

  “My dear man, I’m afraid it just isn’t possible. Neither of them will be back for at least a fortnight.”

  “Back?” Ellie and her father said in unison. They exchanged another glance, but Ellie was the one who asked for further elucidation. “But where have they gone?”

  “Somerset. Wilchelsey had an express letter this afternoon from his steward, recommending that he return to Crosshedges at once. He did so this afternoon, and Bluestone accompanied him.”

  Given the things that had been happening to her of late, Ellie wasn’t the least bit surprised. At this point, another hitch in her plans seemed almost inevitable. “Not bad news, I trust?”

  “Devastating. One of the tenant cottages caught fire. It spread to several more and burned two fields before a rainstorm came up and snuffed it out.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Fortunately not.”

  Grateful for that at least, Ellie returned to the subject preying on her mind. “Will it truly be a full fortnight before they return to town?”

  The duchess smiled. “Don’t fret, my dear. Long faces won’t bring them back any sooner. Now, I must be off, for I see Wetherby coming to claim me.”

  “Of course,” Ellie murmured, dipping her knees for a farewell curtsy as the older woman turned to depart.

  “You can have the next, Daventry,” the duchess added over her shoulder. “If you’re fit enough for a polka?”

  At the earl’s assurance that a polka was well within his physical abilities, the duchess took Wetherby’s arm and departed, leaving Ellie and her father staring gloomily after them.

  “Well, well.” The earl turned to offer her a smile, but Ellie saw it falter almost at once. “We’ve had quite the run of bad luck lately, haven’t we?”

  “Indeed, we have,” she agreed, and she wondered if that bad luck might actually be cause and effect.

  Could the sixpence be to blame? Surely not. And yet, Bluestone had been on the brink of proposing, and everything had been going along swimmingly, until . . .

  Her gaze slid to the man on the other side of the ballroom. This ridiculous string of mishaps and misfortunes had started with Lawrence and his act of blatant theft. But if the crazy notion in her head was true, if the loss of her sixpence was responsible for her inability to receive a proposal of marriage from Lord Bluestone, what could she do about it?

  She studied Lawrence for several moments, considering the question, but she knew there was only thing she could do, and when she watched him leave his circle of friends and move to the refreshment table, she knew this was her chance to do it.

  She turned to her father. “Will you pardon me for a few moments, Papa? I have some important business to attend to.”

  “Important business?” he echoed. “At a ball?”

  “Believe it or not, yes.” She moved to step around her parent, but his bewildered voice stopped her.

  “My dear child, where you going?”

  “To change our luck.” With that enigmatic reply, Ellie started across the ballroom.

  Chapter 5

  Lawrence surveyed the pale yellow liquid in the punch bowl before him without enthusiasm. Why, he wondered as he took up a glass cup, did warm lemonade always seem to be the only beverage available at a ball?

  “Lawrence?”

  The sound of that voice, once so dear and still so achingly familiar, caught him quite off guard. Despite how he’d teased her by waving her sixpence about, he hadn’t expected her to approach him or deign to speak to him. “Why, Ellie—”

  “I must speak with you,” she said, cutting through any attempt at small talk.

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes.” Without looking at him, she took a cup from the round refreshment table and moved to stand across from him, pretending vast interest in the punch bowl between them. “You have something that belongs to me,” she went on, ladling a measure of lemonade into her cup. “I want it back.”

  “I daresay you do.” He grinned. “You’ve been having quite the run of bad luck lately.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Her attempt to dissemble didn’t fool him for a second. “First, a sprained ankle and a three-day delay getting to London. Then your precious Bluestone catches a cold—”

  “How you know Bluestone’s state of health baffles me.”

  He shrugged. “I have my spies. It seems that your plans to secure Bluestone keep getting waylaid by circumstance.”

  Fire flashed in her dark eyes. “I want my sixpence back, Lawrence.”

  “What if I don’t want to give it back?”

  “I’m willing to negotiate for its return.”

  At once, his mind began envisioning tantalizing possibilities, but he forced them aside and took a sip of lemonade. “I’m listening.”

  “Not here.” She set the ladle back in the punch bowl and cast a quick glance around. “Meet me later, in the folly.”

  He was so stunned he almost dropped his cup, and it took him a moment to manage a reply that was sufficiently offhand.

  “Why, Lady Elinor, what a scandalous proposition.” He leaned a bit closer to her over the table. “Dare I hope,” he murmured, “you have something delightfully naughty in mind?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “I suppose that means no,” he said, and sighed. “How disappointing.” But as he spoke, he found, to his dismay, that his words conveyed none of the sarcasm he’d intended. She glanced at him, and he spoke again to divert her before she could discern what he felt. “What time would you like this rendezvous?”

  “Midnight. And for heaven’s sake, make sure no one sees you slip away.”

  With that, she used the tongs to place a slice of lemon in her cup, then she departed, leaving Lawrence staring after her as she moved to join a group of her friends.

  What can this mean? he wondered. By meeting him, she would be putting her reputation at enormous risk, jeopardizing her future and her plans to save her father. She must truly be desperate to get that sixpence back.

  How desperate? His gaze lowered speculatively to the creamy expanse of bare skin above the deep, square neckline of her pale pink ball gown, but after only a moment, he forced his gaze back up again with the reminder that he could not allow his body to do his thinking for him.

  The sixpence, he supposed, might simply be an excuse to get him alone, but he could see no reason for it, unless she intended to seduce him into stopping his investigation, and that was a notion he just couldn’t credit. As for the coin itself, it was just a sixpence, after all, and though it had a certain sentimental value to her and to her friends, it was hardly worth the risk she was taking.

  The only other possibility was that despite her denials to him the day of Thornton’s wedding, she must genuinely believe the myth from her girlhood about the coin’s power. If so, she would regard all the hitches that had occurred in her plans during the p
ast week not as a series of trifling coincidences, but as the result of the sixpence’s absence from her possession, which meant he had the upper hand in these negotiations.

  Lawrence grinned. He always did prefer having the upper hand, especially where Ellie was concerned.

  Ellie might regard him as a thorough-paced villain nowadays, but he had no intention of proving it by playing fast and loose with her reputation. He said his good-byes to his hostess and departed the ball, then he circled around to the back of the house, scaled the garden wall, and arrived at the little stone folly tucked away in a corner of Lady Atherton’s garden with a quarter hour to spare.

  The minutes seemed to crawl by, and he couldn’t help but remember the many times he and Ellie had snuck away for rendezvous like this one.

  No, he corrected at once, feeling a tinge of bitterness, not like this one.

  He leaned his back against the solid stone interior of the folly, his gaze on the open doorway that led into the circular structure, his mind going into the past.

  All the other times they’d met like this, they’d been mad with passion. Heedless, too, convinced that since they were to marry, the risks of being alone together were well worth taking. Now?

  Now, everything was different. Passion had given way to angry words and distrust, and they were no longer the reckless fools for love they’d been six months ago. Now they were two people standing athwart, their passion for each other torn asunder by their loyalty to others. There was no going back.

  Sometimes, he wanted to. He’d often wished he had never been assigned to represent the Crown against the arsonist James Sharpe or that he’d listened to his story or taken that story to Peel, or run John Hammersmith to earth. He could have kept it all to himself and buried Daventry’s secret, and though he’d have had a cur for a father-in-law, he would at least have Ellie.

  But he’d chosen to do his duty as a servant of His Majesty’s Government, and he’d tried not to look back or think of what he’d lost. Most of all, he tried not to question if the sacrifice had been worth it.

  A flicker of movement brought Lawrence out of the past, and he watched as Ellie paused in the arched opening of the folly, one hand on the stone casement. “Lawrence?” she called softly.

  The shaft of moonlight that fell through the open doorway behind her prevented him from seeing her face, but it shimmered along the lines of her pale silk dress and outlined the slender curves of her body, calling to the desire he still felt for her and making him long more than ever for the old days.

  “Lawrence?” she called again, more urgently this time, and he swallowed hard, forcing down memories and regrets. Straightening away from the wall, he emerged from the shadows. “I’m here.”

  At the sight of him, she came inside, but she halted midway across the round room, still half a dozen feet from where he stood. “We don’t have much time,” she said. “As I told you, I want my sixpence.”

  “And if I give it to you, what shall you give me in return?”

  “Why should I give you anything for returning my property?”

  “Because possession is nine-tenths of the law?”

  “Law?” she scoffed. “That’s rich. You picked my pocket, and now you dare to talk about the law?”

  “Is that argument meant to persuade me? Because if so, I’m afraid you’re failing. You’ll have to do better, Ellie, if you truly want it back. And you did say you were willing to negotiate,” he added when she didn’t reply.

  She studied him for a moment, then capitulated with an exasperated sigh. “Oh, very well. I’ll give you what you want.”

  “What I want,” he repeated, his gaze sliding down before he could stop it, igniting the arousal that he’d been keeping at bay for months.

  In the moonlight, her skin glowed like alabaster, pale and luminous, but he knew from experience it was more like soft, warm silk. His gaze caught at the shadowy cleft between her small, shapely breasts, calling to the desire inside him.

  “Stop it, Lawrence,” she said as if reading his mind. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He forced his gaze back up to her face. “More’s the pity.”

  “You said you’d give back the sixpence if I held off becoming engaged to Lord Bluestone. Very well. I agree to your terms. I give you my word that I will postpone any announcement of an engagement between us for one fortnight.”

  “I asked for two months, if memory serves.”

  “I’m offering two weeks.”

  He laughed. “Since Bluestone’s in Somerset for at least that long, I gain nothing by agreeing to your terms. Yes,” he added as she scowled at him, “I’ve heard he’s recovered quite nicely from his cold, and that he and his father departed London for Crosshedges this afternoon. Fire broke out and burned some of the tenant cottages, I understand. Hmm . . .” He paused a moment before going on, “You really are having deuced rotten luck these days. I wonder why.”

  She made a sound of impatience. “Don’t act as if you believe my sixpence has magical powers, because we both know you don’t.”

  “But it seems that you do, or you wouldn’t be out here, risking your reputation in a midnight rendezvous to get it back.”

  The fact that she’d shown her hand so plainly didn’t seem to sit well with her, for she folded her arms, and those gorgeous dark eyes of hers narrowed to absolute slits. But after a moment, she took a breath, relaxed her battle stance, and let her arms fall to her sides. “Even if Bluestone has gone to Somerset,” she said with a pretense of indifference that didn’t fool him for a second, “there is nothing to prevent him from proposing marriage to me by letter.”

  “True. But I know Bluestone of old. We were at school together, and I assure you he’s not the sort for letters, particularly those of a romantic nature.” He paused, donning a doubtful air. “I’m not sure he could even compose such an epistle.”

  “Don’t be absurd. Of course he could.”

  “If you say so.” Lawrence shrugged. “Nonetheless, I prefer to take my chances.”

  Despite her assurance of Bluestone’s talent at composition, she seemed unwilling to trust to it. “I could arrange an invitation to Crosshedges for myself and my father.”

  “A move that smacks of desperation and would make any man wonder why. You’re not engaged to him yet, you know. He might start asking questions, hear some long-forgotten gossip—”

  “I’m not agreeing to wait two months,” she interrupted, “so put that idea out of your mind. There must something else we can bargain for.”

  Irresistibly drawn, he lowered his gaze again. “There might be,” he agreed, and moved closer to her. “What else do you have to offer?”

  Her mouth opened to reply, but she didn’t speak. Instead, her tongue darted out to lick her full lower lip, and the arousal within him deepened and spread, even as he braced himself to be damned to perdition.

  But for the second time tonight, Ellie surprised him. “I think you already know the answer to that,” she whispered, and took a step toward him. “Don’t you, Lawrence?”

  Arousal flared into outright lust. He sucked in a deep breath, working to contain it, but with that sharp, indrawn breath, he caught the fragrance of lemon soap, her favorite, and memories again invaded his mind, memories of many other nights like this one, when she’d snuck out to meet him and he’d reveled in her sweet-scented skin and soft, willing kisses, and he knew it was too late for containment. So much, he thought in chagrin, for having the upper hand.

  She moved, closing the last bit of distance between them, her small breasts grazing his chest. “What about a kiss?” she whispered, a suggestion that set all his senses reeling. “Would that persuade you?”

  He opened his mouth to say it would not, but then she lifted her face and rose on her toes, and his refusal died on his lips.

  “Well?” she murmured in the wake of his silence. “Is it a bargain?”

  Desperate, he made one last effort. “Ellie,” he began, but she stirred agains
t him, shredding any notions of resistance, and he stood motionless, caught like a fly in treacle as she leaned in and pressed her lips to his.

  The contact was light, but the pleasure of it was so exquisite, it nearly sent him to his knees. He groaned against her mouth and capitulated utterly, his arms wrapping around her waist to pull her hard against him.

  Her hand lifted to his face, and the satin of her glove felt smooth and cool as her palm slid across his cheek. Her fingers raked through his hair as her lips parted against his and she deepened the kiss.

  Her mouth was hot and sweet, and Lawrence closed his eyes, savoring delights he’d thought he’d never experience again. Ellie, he thought, his heart yearning, his head spinning, his desire for her rolling in him like thunder.

  Her hand tightened in his hair as she tasted him. Her free hand slid beneath his jacket to touch his chest, her fingers fanning out over his thudding heart. Then she moved farther down, caressing his ribs. But when she paused at his waist and slid her fingers inside the waistband of his trousers, it was like a splash of cold water on his inflamed senses, for he suddenly understood her true intent.

  Anger rose up, smothering arousal, and he broke the kiss, grasping her wrist. “God, woman,” he choked, pulling her hand away from the pocket where he’d tucked her sixpence, “you are a devil.”

  “Why?” she demanded, trying to pull away, failing as he tightened his grip. “Because I tried to retrieve my property? Because to do it, I dared to use the same tactics you used to steal it in the first place?”

  He couldn’t deny that, and it stung. “No,” he shot back, “you’re a devil because you’re set on marrying another man when it’s clear you still have feelings for me.”

  She tried again to pull her hand free as her other hand pressed against his shoulder to push him away. “That is ridiculous!”