The Bride Takes a Groom

by Lisa Berne

  “What’s so funny, then?”

  “I laughed because you said the very thing I came here to say to you.”

  She stared at him. “Are you joking?”

  “No.”

  “But—” She broke off. His admission made everything very easy, but why was it so painful to hear? At least he’d had the decency not to pretend he was madly in love with her. She took refuge in curtness. “Oh, do get up. You look foolish like that.”

  He only smiled, as if her words had no power to sting, then rose to his feet in a single lithe movement and sat again, with such easy self-assurance that despite herself she couldn’t help but think how Penhallows and thrones just seemed to go together. She recalled that brief, humiliating encounter with Mrs. Henrietta Penhallow, an imperious and queenly dame, who, you could tell, moved through life with effortless grace, as one to the manor born, without ever having to question where she belonged.

  Or if she belonged.

  Those lucky, lucky Penhallows.

  Then it blazed through Katherine’s mind, like a comet lighting up the night sky: this marriage could not only set her free, it would make her a Penhallow, too.

  Katherine Penhallow.

  She could practically hear herself saying, with a confident little toss of her head, Will I be going to Almack’s this evening, you ask? Yes, of course, all of the Patronesses have called and presented me with vouchers. The Queen’s Drawing-room? To be sure I am. The latest Carlton House fête? That also.

  Of course, her future in-laws would despise her, she was certain of that. She was no Ellena di Rosalba, the saintly, high-minded heroine of The Italian. She wasn’t angelically and perfectly beautiful, nor was there royal blood running through her veins. She was just—a person.

  But what did she care? To her came again an image of Henrietta Penhallow, this time one of her scandalized outrage when she received the news of Hugo’s betrothal to that dreadfully common girl whose parents had shoved her forward at the Royal Academy. Katherine smiled, just a little. She couldn’t blame Mrs. Penhallow for her reaction, but still, wouldn’t it be enjoyable to meet her again one day as equals?

  And wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a very different Season next year? A chance to do it all over again?

  How rarely in life did such an opportunity come along. Katherine’s breath caught in her throat with a fierce, terrible joy. She said to Hugo:

  “You need money.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got plenty of it. Or, rather, my father does.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Your name for Brooke money. That seems like a fair exchange.”

  He smiled ruefully. “I hope so. That’s all I’ve got to give you.”

  Oh, but you’re wrong, she very nearly blurted out, as helplessly her eyes traveled down the long length of him, then writhed as a hot, horrifying wave of shame flowed over her, much as she imagined lava might feel upon naked skin.

  “Are you all right?”

  Repressing the urge to frantically unbutton her pelisse, sorry she had left her fan behind in the house, Katherine gripped the marble arms of her seat, welcoming their hard inanimate coldness. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you? You reminded me of myself, when my leg’s troubling me.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked defensively.

  “I broke it a while back, and it hurts a little when I’m tired. You looked as if—”

  “How did you break your leg?” she interrupted, wanting very much to change the subject.

  “Oh, some mad American came leaping upon me with a bayonet, and after I clouted him with my musket I fell off my horse onto another American. Broke my leg, but it was a stroke of luck for sure.”

  “How was that a stroke of luck?”

  “Why, that second fellow was creeping up behind me with a tomahawk.” Hugo laughed. “I’m afraid he was rather done in after I fell on him. There’s so much of me.”

  Katherine eyed him in surprise. How lightly he spoke. He wasn’t bitter, nor was he boasting, as so many military men seemed to do. Among her parents’ acquaintance, for example, was a relic of the Maratha wars fought against India in the previous century, and his single subject of conversation was his prowess on the battlefield, the terror he struck into the hearts of the enemy, the vast numbers of them he slaughtered, his expertise in every weapon known to man, and on and on, until she’d wondered if he had actually bored the poor Marathas to death by talking to them.

  “A tomahawk is a type of axe, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ve read about it.”

  “Egad, have you? Nasty things—frightfully effective. Not well-known here in England, though. Where’d you read about it?”

  “Oh,” she answered vaguely, “somewhere,” and felt yet another awful flush coming over her. She had so much to hide from him. The books she read, the chocolates she ate, the kind of person she really was inside . . . Before Katherine could stop herself she said:

  “You remember my grandfather the miner, don’t you?”

  She waited for his face to change, for the look of revulsion, whether open or masked, but Hugo only said, “Yes. Joseph Bugle, wasn’t he? He used to terrify me when I was a boy. As I recall, he shouted more often than he spoke.”

  “That’s about right. But—he was a miner, Captain.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’re not worried about the taint to the Penhallow line?”

  She saw that he was looking at her curiously. He said:

  “Taint? Is that how you think of it?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. I expect there was that sort of talk about bloodlines when my father married a vicar’s daughter, but it’s all rot in my opinion.”

  Coming from a Penhallow this was hard to believe, but still she gave him one last chance to easily withdraw. “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

  “Very sure. You’re helping my family, and I’m grateful to you.”

  “I hope you won’t regret it, Captain.”

  “I won’t.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I just do.” In his deep, calm voice was obvious confidence, and Katherine envied him that. She, on the other hand, was still aflame with that hot revealing blush and her mind was skittering in a thousand different directions. She hardly knew what to say, or how to act. To her fevered imagination came a sound, the distinctive rasp of massive old gates swinging open, the noise Ellena di Rosalba might have heard as she was released from her lengthy confinement in the convent.

  And then the sound shifted somehow, to the little scratches of a quill moving across a piece of paper. She needed, now, to be a Cardinal Wolsey or a Thomas Cromwell, those towering, fiendishly clever figures from Henry Tudor’s time, writing their letters to kings and popes, to dukes and generals, masterfully negotiating pacts and orchestrating events. She wasn’t about to surrender herself entirely to Hugo Penhallow. If her parents’ marriage was anything to judge by, she needed to make certain of her sovereignty.

  She must be hard and sure. Could, at least, pretend to be. Even if she felt like blancmange on the inside.

  Katherine made her lips curve upward in a smile.

  “Very well then,” she told Hugo Penhallow. “I reiterate my offer. The bride takes a groom.”

  Chapter 4

  It was done. It was really going to happen. Hugo felt a huge wave of relief wash over him, and he bounded to his feet, more than ready to leave the ruins of Babylon and return to the comforts of 1811. “I’m glad. Very glad. I’ll do my best to make you happy, Ka—” He stopped himself, just in time. “Miss Brooke.”

  “It’s nonsensical to talk of happiness in an exchange of commodities. A business arrangement. Where are you going?”

  “Out. Aren’t we done here?”

  “Not yet. Before we seal our bargain, you must consent to my terms.”

  “Terms?”

  “Of course. I just told you, this is a business arrangement.”

>   He looked down at her curiously. He had spoken of happiness, she talked about business. “Go on.”

  “You’re to make your own, completely separate financial arrangements with my father. I’ll want my own money, to spend as I like.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You’re not to tell me what to do.”

  “Of course not.”

  “That includes—” The line of her mouth tightened. “—that includes our intimate life.”

  By Jupiter, he hadn’t even thought about such things—the delights of the marriage bed. But now that he was, it occurred to him how much he’d relish a stable arrangement. A wife, to have and to hold, someone with whom to give and receive pleasure across the decades. As a longtime soldier on the move, opportunities for sexual encounters had come to him all too erratically. Unlike the other men, he’d never actually had to pay a woman to lie with him—much to the envious derision of his fellow officers, but undoubtedly a benefit for one so perpetually purse-pinched as himself. However, given what Katherine had just said, it didn’t seem that this aspect of their marriage was going to be at all simple.

  A land mine of a different sort, evidently.

  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and quite an apt metaphor under the circumstances, wasn’t it? Affably, he said to Katherine:

  “What do you mean precisely?”

  “You must do as I say. I must be in control of—it. When it happens. What happens.”

  Her face, he saw, was as intense a red as her pelisse, and her big dark eyes had a fiery glitter in them. She reminded him of a pugilist against the ropes, on the verge of bursting out in a frantic rush of violence against a foe. He hoped—very much did he hope—that she didn’t think of marriage as a boxing ring, with a husband and wife approaching each other with fists raised.

  “Well, Captain? What do you say?”

  “I accept your terms.”

  “Swear it.”

  “I swear it, Miss Brooke.”

  Her shoulders, which had been lifted tensely high, relaxed. “I suppose you think me shockingly crude, mentioning such things,” she said, sounding defensive. “And to propose marriage in the first place.”

  “And I suppose,” he answered, smiling a little, “you think I should consider it crude.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m the wrong person to ask. As I said to Cousin Livia the other day, I’m barely fit to be around proper people. Been living the rough soldier’s life for a long time.”

  “Livia? Oh—you mean the woman who’s to marry your cousin Gabriel. You were with her recently?”

  “Yes, at Surmont Hall. Stopped there on my way home.”

  “I know all about the Hall, thanks to my parents’ obsessive interest in the beau monde. One of the country’s most magnificent old homes, the Penhallow seat from time immemorial, fifteen thousand acres of the finest land in Somerset, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.”

  “It’s quite a place,” he said. “Speaking of which, we’ll need to decide where we’re going to live.”

  “Anywhere but here. Anywhere else in England.”

  “Whatever you like. But I’ll want to also spend time in Whitehaven, with my family.”

  “Ugh. I loathe Whitehaven.”

  “Do you? Quite fond of it myself. Well, you needn’t come with me.”

  “Your place will be at my side, Captain.” Her tone was imperious, her face set in hard, determined lines. He answered mildly:

  “Then I hope you’ll join me.”

  “If I don’t want to go, then you shouldn’t either.”

  “Miss Brooke, my family is important to me.”

  “But they’re not to me. You agreed to my terms, remember?”

  Hugo felt as if that pleasant, all-encompassing wave of relief was abruptly, and all too rapidly, receding. He looked down at her face, tense again and very pale, at those fiery dark eyes, and thought suddenly, strangely, of an actress upon a stage. And then his gaze went to the rich ermine-trimmed pelisse she wore, and that velvet hat adorned with so many silky artificial flowers, so much frilly lace, that it seemed as if somebody had for some perverse reason set out to cram it as full of decorations as humanly possible. Hugo thought of Gwendolyn, who probably hadn’t had a new hat in quite some time. He doubted Mama had either.

  Oh, Lord, they needed his help. They all did. But a man had his limits; it would be a terrible irony to make them secure financially but be exiled from them forever. He said:

  “Then we may have a problem.”

  There was a new note in his voice, very subtle, but Katherine caught it at once and a terrible, creeping panic clutched at her. She had gone too far in playing her little Machiavellian game, had enjoyed too much the sudden and unusual feeling of power, and now he was going to change his mind. He was going to withdraw. And she’d be right back where she was. No, it would be worse, much worse, for she’d had an intoxicating glimpse of freedom. Oh, bother, why did he care so much about spending time with his family? An incomprehensible desire. Families meant nothing but arguments and demands, dissatisfaction and strife; she herself couldn’t wait to be separated from her own family. In fact—

  Katherine nearly gasped out loud.

  An idea had sprung into her head, brilliant, fully formed, wonderful and ingenious. She tucked it away for further rumination, later, when she was alone, but in the meantime, it was of the utmost importance to solidify the agreement with Hugo. An occasional visit to Whitehaven wouldn’t kill her.

  She said to him, “There’s no problem.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. And just so we’re clear. I want to go to back to London next spring. For the Season.”

  “Fine.” He smiled at her. “Anything else you’d like to discuss?”

  It was all right again. Thank God. The creeping tension that had gripped her so tightly now began to fade away.

  And something else came in its place. She tried to fight it down, but here it was. Something warm and exciting. Shivery and delightful. Shameful and wrong, just like those delicious secret meetings in the garden long ago. A pulsing, lovely heat seemed to fill up every empty corner of her being, and she was powerless against it. A little bit of driftwood swept along by the tide. “No,” she said slowly to Hugo. “Not to discuss, Captain. But . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to kiss me.”

  He looked down at her, surprise in his handsome face.

  Oh, what a forward girl she was, Katherine thought, her hands gone all clammy, what a bad, bad person. She could almost picture Lucifer writing in his book of sins—he would have one, wouldn’t he? St. Peter, at the gates of heaven, had his Book of Life, so surely Lucifer would also want to keep track of his prospective flock. 22 October 1811. Katherine Brooke coarsely demands kiss from a man she hasn’t seen in thirteen years. Another one of her episodes of lust. Thought she’d tamed it, but no. Am running out of space on her page already. Note to self: reserve special place for her.

  Suddenly it was as if all the light was blocked from her vision and her heart gave an odd frightened lurch within her breast.

  Darkness already?

  No, it was Hugo. So big, so very big he was. He’d come close to her, leaned down, and now his face was so close to hers—

  His warm fingers cupping her chin—

  Those incandescent blue eyes—

  Katherine stopped breathing.

  And then his lips were on hers, warm, firm, soft, gentle, utterly masculine, and her mind fell apart. Oh God, oh God. Her eyes closed of their own volition, she drew in an abrupt, audible breath of pleasure through her nostrils, her hands, which had been clenched, relaxed . . .

  All too soon it was over.

  So quick, so brief.

  She opened her eyes.

  Hugo was straightening, stepping away from her.

  Was that the best he could do? And why was he smiling? Had he seen her
vulnerability, was he glad he’d gained the upper hand over her?

  Unable to stop herself, Katherine snapped:

  “You call that a kiss?”

  He looked surprised again. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You should.”

  “I should beg your pardon?” Now he looked perplexed. “For kissing you? I’m sorry, Miss Brooke. But I thought you wanted me to.”

  “I certainly didn’t want to be kissed in that cursory way.”

  His face cleared. “Is that why you’re upset?”

  Already Katherine was sorry she’d been so frank. She slid down in her seat, ashamed all over again. “It’s not important,” she muttered.

  “It’s just that I thought—well, I assumed that’s how one would kiss a lady. Under the circumstances, you know. Wanted to behave as a gentleman should.” Now he looked rather mischievous. “I’d be glad to try again if you like.”

  His offer only deepened Katherine’s chagrin. “You needn’t patronize me, Captain,” she said tartly, and got up, ignoring the ribbons of pain dancing up and down her back. “Now that everything’s settled, let’s go.”

  “As you wish.” Hugo stepped aside with a courtly gesture, and offered her his arm which she also ignored, just as she had in the drawing-room. It was dangerous, dangerous, to be that close to him.

  Together they went toward the long bank of archways where, in a silent moment of confusion about which way to go, it ended up that they each passed through their own separate arch, and so reentered a world gone grayer and wetter; the drizzle that had accompanied them on the way here had turned into a cold, steady rain.

  “I say, Miss Brooke, you’re going to be soaked,” said Hugo, looking at her with concern. “Let me go on ahead, and come back with an umbrella.”

  Katherine shook her head. “There’s no need,” she answered, and began walking on the path that would lead them back to Brooke House.

  Hugo caught up with her in a single stride of his long legs. “Your clothes may be ruined.”

  “I don’t care.” Actually, now that she thought about it, she did care, in the sense that she’d be thrilled if they were spoiled. The brim of her hat was already sodden and drooping around her face, and her gown’s ruffled hem was getting just as muddy as her slippers. Hurrah.