A Sinful Deception

by Isabella Bradford

  She nodded, unable to think of an acceptable reply. Once she was wed to Geoffrey, she’d be safely beyond her uncle’s machinations, and no matter what Grandpapa might wish, she’d absolutely no intention of ever saying a word in Uncle Radnor’s favor.

  Mistaking her silence for emotion, Grandpapa awkwardly patted her hand.

  “Strange to think how you’ll go into that church tomorrow as a Carew,” he said, “and step out a Fitzroy. But that’s the way of it with women, isn’t it? The leopard may not change his spots, but you ladies can change who you are in the blink of an eye. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, Grandpapa, it is,” she said softly, sadly, and with a hint of bitterness in her voice, too. “It is.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  Geoffrey stood near the front pew in the west chapel of St. Stephen’s, trying to hide his nervousness, and not particularly succeeding. It was his wedding day, and he guessed he was entitled to some degree of nervousness, but it was still not a pleasant sensation, and he would have given a great deal to have the entire ordeal already behind him, and Serena his wife.

  “I don’t know where they could be,” he said to his brother Harry, standing beside him. As discreetly as he could, he drew his watch from his pocket to check it once again. “It’s well past time for them to be here.”

  “It’s only five minutes past two,” Harry said mildly. “That’s hardly cause for concern. It’s the prerogative of brides to be late.”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “I cannot help but fear that that uncle of hers might have meddled again.”

  “What, to keep her away from marrying you?” Harry asked. “The Carews were the ones who pushed for this wedding. There’s no reason in the world for them to balk and turn tail now.”

  Geoffrey sighed, unconvinced, and shot his shirt cuffs again. No matter what Harry said, not even he could deny the proof: his father and stepmother sitting in the chapel’s front pew (Harry’s wife, Gus, was too close to her confinement to leave home, or else she would have been there as well), the minister in his vestments standing behind them, and not a hint of Serena or any of her family. It was just as well that they’d limited the ceremony to only the immediate family so that all his various cousins and their wives and children wouldn’t be here to witness his humiliation, too.

  “Then where the devil are they?” He worked his shoulders inside his stiff new wedding coat. Father had insisted on him having a new suit made for this occasion, with more gold embroidery than was his usual taste. He swore he could feel a scrap of wiry gold thread jabbing into his back, stinging him like the most annoying gnat in the world. “This is awkward, deuced awkward.”

  “Stop fidgeting, Geoffrey,” his brother said, poking at Geoffrey’s shoe with the tip of his cane for emphasis. “I’ll wager you a guinea that she’s here within five minutes.”

  “Five guineas that she won’t be,” Geoffrey said gloomily. Old Carew had insisted that they be kept apart until the wedding, and he hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of Serena since she’d accepted his proposal. For all he knew, they’d shipped her off to some convent in Belgium, just to spite him. He glanced at Harry. “How long did Gus keep you waiting when you wed?”

  “Gus?” Harry smiled smugly. Geoffrey had missed his brother’s wedding, having been somewhere off the coast of Madagascar on his voyage back from India. “Gus is always prompt. No, more than prompt. She was early.”

  “You told me every bride is late!”

  “Gus had more incentive,” he said. “She was marrying me.”

  “The devil take you, Harry, you—”

  “Their carriages are here,” said Rivers, hurrying up the aisle from the front of the chapel. At twenty-four, Rivers was the youngest brother; with three weeks’ notice, Father had arranged to have him brought home from Paris in time for the wedding, dragging him from the lovely arms of his current mistress, a tempestuous opera dancer.

  “They’ve just drawn up directly to the door,” Rivers continued. “They should be on the steps in a minute or two, if the crowds don’t block their way.”

  Geoffrey’s initial relief was stopped cold by this new complication. The fact that the wedding was small, a private family affair, had done nothing to end the interest of the public for anything related to the Duke of Breconridge and his family, and the scandal-sheets and other papers had been full of it these last weeks. When Geoffrey had arrived with his brother, the street outside St. Stephen’s had already been thick with curious gawkers, barely kept in check by the men his father had hired for the purpose. It would only serve to confirm the marquis’s worst suspicions about the Fitzroys, and for once Geoffrey couldn’t deny it.

  But it was Serena’s reaction that worried him. She was by nature reserved in public, and the last thing she’d wish on her wedding day was the attention of a boisterous crowd. All too well he could imagine her face, wideeyed and pale with panic, if the curious pressed too close.

  “I must go to Serena,” he said, but Harry caught him by the arm.

  “No, you can’t,” Harry said, holding Geoffrey back. “The last thing she’d wish now is to have you see her wrestling with her hoops and finery as she climbs from the carriage. Let her make her entrance.”

  “But the crowds,” Geoffrey protested. “We know how they can be—I want to save her from that.”

  Harry held fast. “Do you really believe Carew and Radnor and their footmen would let the riffraff come near her?”

  That was entirely true, but Geoffrey wasn’t in the mood to be rational. “That is very easy for you to say, Harry, when only a fool would—”

  “Turn around, and stop your babbling,” Harry said quietly, releasing Geoffrey’s arm. “She’s here, and she’s beautiful.”

  Quickly Geoffrey turned, and caught his breath. When he told the story later, he swore that his heart had stopped in his chest at the sight of Serena. Harry had called her beautiful, but that word didn’t begin to seem adequate for how she looked.

  She was standing beside her grandfather, turned slightly back toward the door as she waited for her aunt to join them. A single sunbeam slanted through one of the chapel’s arched windows to bathe her in a golden light, as if to set her apart from everyone else.

  Her golden gown caught every fraction of light of that sunbeam, making it dance and sparkle around her slender form even as she stood still. Her dark hair was pinned high, with lace veiling that trailed gracefully behind; the full curves of her breasts were also swathed, for decency, in more lace. He smiled to see her holding the bouquet of white roses he’d sent her; he wished they could have been jasmines, but not in London. As was the fashion for aristocratic brides, she was wearing a fortune in jewels that glittered, too, with diamonds pinned on her gown and in her hair, around her throat and wrist, and hanging from her ears.

  But while most such brides would rely on borrowing pieces from around her family to make an impressive show, he was sure that what she wore was hers: not only because of her father’s trade, but also because so many of the settings weren’t English, but Indian, with curving swirls of gold and silver, bright with colored enamel and studded with pearls. She was like a gorgeous, gilded, glittering statue of some exotic goddess, one which—he later claimed this, too—he would have worshipped happily, even there in the middle of St. Stephen’s.

  Then she turned toward him, creating the heart-stopping moment. She caught his gaze, and her eyes came to life with a warmth and fire that was just for him. She raised her chin a fraction, and slowly, slowly smiled at him.

  Oh, yes, his heart most certainly stopped, and his brain did, too. How could it not?

  For the last three weeks his brain had been engaged in a balancing act worthy of the most accomplished ropedancer. On the one hand was the weighty advice that his father had been giving him—almost without pause—about how a wife must be treated differently from a mistress. On the other was his memory of that last morning he’d been with Serena, when she’d behaved very much like a
mistress, and a favorite one at that.

  All this balancing had made him wonder if he was making the most enormous mistake of his life by marrying at all, when he still felt as if he’d so much of his life before him. He had never planned to marry this young, and Serena felt the same. Every unclever jest that he’d heard from his bachelor friends about nooses and legirons had only made him wonder more, and also had made the memory of Serena fade and flicker a little less brightly.

  But now, with a single smile, all doubts vanished. That smile was magically shy and seductive, knowing and yet innocent, all at the same time—much as Serena was herself.

  As smiles went, it had the power to make him stop thinking entirely, and only feel. And what he felt was the rightness of marrying her.

  That, and the rightness of being able to have her in his bed beside him for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, well done, Geoffrey,” Rivers whispered with unabashed admiration. “You have improved the family stock.”

  Under ordinary circumstances, Geoffrey would have knocked his younger brother outright for his insolence, simply on fraternal principle. Serena wasn’t another doxy; she was going to be his wife. But he was so lost in the sight of her walking toward him on her grandfather’s arm that he forgot his brother and everything else.

  She seemed very small beside her grandfather, small and solitary. While he had his brothers beside him, she had no sisters, and appeared to have no lady-friends to support her, as most brides would. He couldn’t wait to introduce her to his brothers and the rest of his own sprawling, extended family. As a newly minted Fitzroy, she would never again be alone or lonely, and she would always be protected—and not with the boorish heavy hand that her uncle, Radnor, had shown toward her, either.

  Her eyes hadn’t looked away from his since their gazes had first met, nor had his from hers. When at last they were standing before each other, she blushed, and he winked, by way of jovial reassurance. Geoffrey was vaguely aware of her grandfather making a grumble of disapproval at that, but he didn’t care. Serena was almost his.

  He was only half-aware of the service being read around them, of his own automatic responses to the questions that the minister was asking. When he took Serena’s hand in his, he smiled again at how her palm was damp and her fingers trembled with a nervousness that was at odds with her jewel-covered appearance.

  He wanted to tell her to trust him, and he wanted to say whatever would put her at ease. Instead he could only continue with the simple words that were required of him, and pray that she understood.

  And then, suddenly, it was done, and the minister was telling him to kiss her. She was blushing again, turning her face expectantly up toward him. As he bent down, he fully intended the kind of chaste kiss that was required under the circumstances.

  But the instant their lips met, he forgot that chaste intention. Her mouth was irresistible to him, sweet and ripe and full of heady promise, and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing her more deeply. With a tiny sigh of pleasure, she parted her lips for him, and reached one hand up to rest on his shoulder. Possessively he curled his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, against his chest and into the kiss. She dropped her bouquet and slipped her other hand to the back of his neck, beneath his queue.

  In front of them, the minister loudly cleared his throat.

  “Lord Geoffrey, Lady Geoffrey,” he murmured. “Please recall that you are in Our Lord’s house.”

  At once Serena slipped away, and sheepishly bent to retrieve her bouquet. Geoffrey reached down to help her back to her feet, and she rose with such seductive grace that he very nearly ignored the disapproving minister and kissed her again.

  But while a throat-clearing minister was one thing, his father was quite another. Before Serena had even risen, Father had stepped forward to forcibly offer his congratulations, seizing Geoffrey’s hand to shake it and kissing Serena’s cheek. The rest of the two families followed suit in a flurry of good wishes that continued back to the marquis’s house in St. James’s Square, and through the endless rounds of toasts that followed at the light collation in their honor.

  The only time Geoffrey released Serena’s hand was when she was taken by her aunt upstairs to change clothes, and the only reason he agreed to that was because it meant that they soon would leave, and finally be alone together. It was just as well, too. He’d spent the last two hours since the wedding in a haze of simmering lust that made him oblivious to everything else that was happening around him.

  It hadn’t helped that Serena seemed to feel much the same, twisting her fingers around his and touching her toes against his foot beneath the curtain of her skirts. Each time she glanced up at him sideways from under her lashes and smiled shyly, he seriously considered taking her back to that same infamous breakfast parlor and finishing what they’d started—except this time he’d lock the door.

  “How long can it take for her to shift from one gown to another?” he asked Harry impatiently. He held out his empty glass for a passing footman to refill. “I can assure you that I will be able to remove her gown faster than a half-dozen lady’s maids.”

  “You nearly did that in the church,” Harry said drily. “I thought Father was going to suffer an apoplexy then and there.”

  “Not our father, Harry,” Geoffrey said, once again scowling at the staircase as if that alone could bring her down. “You know he’s likely done far worse himself.”

  Harry chuckled. “Be grateful we live in modern times. A hundred years or so ago, and he would have lurked outside your drawn bed curtains to sing bawdy songs and make certain you took your bride’s maidenhead properly.”

  “The hell he would have,” Geoffrey muttered, wishing his older brother’s attempts at bonhomie weren’t quite so heavy-handed. “Where the devil is Serena, anyway? She’s my wife now. She should be here with me.”

  “Likely that old aunt of hers is imparting last words of womanly wisdom,” Harry said. “What to expect from your wedding night ravishment, that manner of rubbish. No doubt she has the poor lamb quaking in sacrificial terror.”

  Geoffrey emptied his glass again. He was already uneasy about their wedding night without jests like this. He had never been with a virgin, let alone a virgin wife. There were men he knew who boasted of taking maidenheads, relishing their partner’s fear and suffering. He didn’t want that for Serena; he wanted her to feel only pleasure.

  “Serena is no poor sacrificial lamb,” he said firmly. “Not in the least. And that is all I shall share of my wife’s private temperament.”

  “You needn’t tell me a word,” Harry said. “I had already guessed she must be of a, ah, warm nature, or else you would not have been compelled to marry her today.”

  Geoffrey swung around to face his brother. “It was my desire to marry her, Harry,” he said crossly, “and I’ll not have it said by you or anyone else that I’ve done this against my will. And as for speculating as to the warmth of her nature—”

  “Not that it will matter, dear brother, if you keep drinking.” Unperturbed, Harry plucked the empty glass from Geoffrey’s fingers. “She’ll be ardent, and you’ll be snoring.”

  “Don’t judge me by your own meager capacities,” Geoffrey growled. “I am serious, Harry. She is my wife, and I won’t stand for anyone slandering her, including you.”

  “There was no slander intended, brother,” Harry said mildly. “She is your wife now, but also my sister, and I’ll defend her just as you would defend Gus.”

  “Indeed.” Geoffrey looked back up the staircase once again. “Perhaps I should go upstairs to urge her onward.”

  Harry slung his arm over Geoffrey’s shoulders, effectively (and fondly) keeping him from doing anything so rash. “Trust my word as a married man, Geoffrey: there could be no worse way to begin your wedded life. Now, come, have a slice or two of old Carew’s veal pie to fortify yourself.”

  Upstairs, Aunt Morley was likewise urging Serena to eat.

  “At least have this pi
ece of toast with your favorite marmalade,” she coaxed, holding the toast up before Serena’s mouth as two lady’s maids bent behind her, arranging the looped-up skirts of her polonaise over her petticoats. “Heaven only knows when you’ll have supper.”

  “I’m sure that Lord Geoffrey’s household has a cook,” Serena said, taking the diamond drop earrings from the tray held by another maid. “He does not appear to be underfed in the least.”

  “That’s because most gentlemen dine at their clubs,” Aunt Morley said. “It will be up to you as his wife to make sure that his table at home is always agreeable, so that he’ll prefer being there than off among the other gentlemen.”

  Not more advice, thought Serena wistfully, so eager to be back with Geoffrey that she was nearly sick with it. To hear him speak his vows with such force, confidently promising so much on her behalf, had been one of the most joyful moments of her life, and one that had left her in awe.

  But when he had kissed her with passion enough to make her light-headed with desire, there before their families, she was quite certain she’d crossed into some sort of blissful, seductive Heaven on this earth. No matter the forced circumstances of their marriage: at that moment she’d truly believed they were meant to be together, and while there was no place for kismet among the marble saints of St. Stephen’s, the minister’s words about how no man should put their union asunder had sounded close enough for her.

  Impatiently she glanced at the little clock on her mantel. She couldn’t believe how long this ritual of undressing from her wedding gown, removing her jewels, and dressing again into more ordinary clothing was taking. Usually she and Martha could between them manage to make her presentable in ten minutes’ time, but with her aunt to supervise, three maids instead of one to assist, and her aunt’s dog, Fanfan, racing circles around her, the entire process seemed to be dragging on for the better part of an hour, and all of it time spent away from Geoffrey.