by Rose Gordon
HER SUDDEN GROOM
Rose Gordon
HER SUDDEN GROOM
Amazon Edition
Copyright © 2011 C. Rose Gordon
Cover image copyright LFD Designs
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, events and locales are product of this author’s overactive imagination. If any name, event and/or locale did exist, it is purely by coincidence it appears in this book.
This book may not be reproduced by any means, including but not limited to, mechanical, Xerox, digital, auditorial and/or in print.
If you obtained this copy illegally, please respect the author and her time enough to purchase a copy.
It should also be noted, this book was not written with the intention of being submitted for consideration to be converted into a history textbook. Please do not treat it as such. If you do, your education will be sorely lacking.
Other Titles Available
SCANDALOUS SISTERS SERIES
(Now Available)
Intentions of the Earl (Book 1)
Liberty for Paul (Book 2)
To Win His Wayward Wife (Book 3)
GROOM SERIES
(Now Available)
Her Sudden Groom (Book 1)
(Coming Soon)
Her Reluctant Groom (Book 2)
Her Secondhand Groom (Book 3)
Her Imperfect Groom (Book 4)
For Grand Paw 1938-2011
Definitely the most unique individual I’ve ever met. One who could always be counted on for an outrageous story guaranteed to leave you doubled over in laughter and who often coined the most bizarre, yet fitting, words for all sorts of unusual situations.
And for my husband. One of the few who can put up with my scientific tendencies and doesn’t complain about my rocket talk or temperature conversions—especially during our first (and only) game of croquet!
Chapter 1
Watson Estate
April, 1814
Alex Banks sat paralyzed as the cold fingers of death closed around his neck, choking the life right out of him. Gasping for breath, he reached one tanned hand up and slipped two fingers under the cravat-turned-noose that hung around his neck, then jerked, loosening its suffocating hold. Who knew that little scrap of fabric he normally wore only to appease the females in his life could transform into such a deadly weapon?
Well, it hadn’t really, but it might as well have become a hangman’s noose for all it mattered to Alex. He’d just been given a death sentence, as far as he was concerned.
“Are you certain?” he rasped when he’d loosened the garment enough to catch his breath.
“Quite certain,” his father told him apologetically.
Alex took his spectacles off and rubbed his eyes, pressing them so hard bright shapes burst in front of him.
Edward Banks, Baron Watson, put his glass of water on the nightstand beside him. Readjusting himself in his bed, he blinked then reached for the stack of papers on the bed next to him. “Here.” He handed the papers to Alex.
Alex jerked the papers from his father’s limp grasp with far more effort than necessary. “Sorry,” he murmured as he thumbed through the life-altering—nay, life-shattering—documents.
Leafing through the papers, his panic didn’t ease like he’d hoped; instead it escalated with each page he scanned. There had to be a way out of this mess. He exhaled a deep, shaky breath and patted the ends of the papers against the tabletop to straighten them back into a neat, even stack.
Placing the papers on his father’s bedside table, he slouched in his chair and ran a hand through his unkempt hair, giving it a hard, painful tug to make sure he wasn’t in a nightmare. No such luck. The nightmare was a reality, and he was only at the start of it. He glanced to his father, who was having yet another nasty sounding coughing fit.
“There might be a loophole,” Father said when he was done hacking. His voice was weak and uneven.
Alex’s ears perked up, and he impaled his father with his eyes, waiting for him to divulge anything that would allow him to escape the equivalent of an innocent’s lifetime sentence in the Tower of London.
Father patted his aching chest and tried his best to swallow a gulp of water before looking at Alex. “You could marry another.”
Alex looked at his father, dumbfounded. He could have sworn he’d just read a betrothal agreement that linked his name to Lady Olivia Sinclair. How could he possibly marry another without: one, creating a scandal; two, being termed a cad; or three, being called out by her brother?
Father coughed again. “You only scanned the agreement. You missed the contingency part.”
“Thank goodness,” Alex muttered. “What page is that on?” He thumbed back through the papers.
“It’s on the final page,” Father said with a harsh cough. “This whole fiasco is all contingent on your being single on the date of your thirtieth birthday.”
Alex frowned. “Why?” He moved his eyes slowly over each word on the last page, making sure not to miss a single word.
His father at least had the good manners to look somewhat guilty. As guilty as one can possibly feign when one is on one’s sickbed, that is. “Well, you see, son.” He flickered a glance at the wall just past Alex’s left shoulder before meeting Alex’s eyes again. “Joseph, the former Lord Sinclair, and I were good friends. We went to Eton and Cambridge together and remained close ever since. We thought it would be ideal to have our children marry.”
“Without their consent,” Alex muttered, irritation bubbling inside him.
His father frowned. “Marriages oftentimes are arranged. Mine was.”
“I know.” Alex had always had sympathy for the plights of his mother and father. Neither of them had even had a chance to find a spouse of their choosing. Apparently, he was about to endure the same fate. How fortunate for them, his parents had received a much better bargain than he was destined to have.
“Anyway,” Father said, breaking into Alex’s thoughts, “when Lady Olivia was born, I joined Sinclair at his house to celebrate, and in a drunken state, we marveled at the irony that she was born on the same day as you. Well, eight years later, of course.”
“Of course.” Alex vaguely remembered the night of his eighth birthday. That was the night he’d snuck out to see his first mare and witnessed his father coming home foxed, singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and claiming to have some excellent news.
Hell’s afire The “excellent news” Father was exclaiming about had been this confounded betrothal contract, binding him to Lady Olivia for life. Lady Olivia. Nobody could be a worse match for him than Lady Olivia. He swallowed hard, trying to return the bile rising in his throat back to his stomach.
Father coughed. “Sinclair and I thought it would be a brilliant arrangement. My son. His daughter. Our grandchildren. However, none of us knew just how shrewish Lady Olivia would grow up to become.”
A shudder wracked father and son simultaneously. “No one could have known,” Alex grumbled. Looks were one thing; personality was another. Alex considered himself mature enough to see past her always-tangled, fire-orange hair, rotund figure, horrid teeth, and absurd fashion choices. Her physical appearance, however, paled in comparison to her personality, which was enough to test the patience of a martyred saint. She was whiny, clingy, hateful, and suffered more ailments than he was aware even existed. Everything she did was completely self-serving in one manner or another. If anybody believed otherwise, they were a fool.
Clearing his throat, Father said, “That’s of no account now, son. Either you’ll have to marry her, or go ask her brother if he’ll honor the last page of the agreement.”
Alex’s eyes flew to his father. “Why wouldn’t he?” It was right here, combined with all those other suicide-inducing papers. There was no reason for him not to.
“Because that was an addendum added some eight years later. It was the only page not originally part of the agreement, and it isn’t signed by a third party,” Father explained after a brutal coughing fit. “The originals—” he grabbed the stack of papers and pointed to the bottom of each page as he flipped through— “were all signed by Sinclair, me, and Richard Barnes. Barnes is a mutual friend who was there celebrating with us, and who happens to be a solicitor. As you can see, the last page has only mine and Sinclair’s signatures on it.”
“If he signed it, it’s legal,” Alex argued flippantly.
“Not exactly,” his father rasped. “It could be contested, and it might not stand. Now that Joseph is dead and Marcus has taken his place, it would be my word, which won’t mean anything in a few weeks, I’d wager, versus a court.”
Alex gulped. He hated to think that in a matter of weeks, or even days, his father might be gone. Six months ago, Father had become ill, and since then his health had been declining rapidly. After several fruitless attempts to cure him, the physician concluded his condition was internal and medicine wasn’t going to help. Father took the news in stride and continued to read, talk about science, go down to dinner, and even ride his horse. It wasn’t until the past week he’d taken to spending most of the day in his bed, too frail and exhausted to do much more than read and go down for dinner. Watching Father’s illness progress in the past months had been terribly painful for Alex. “All right,” Alex said softly. “I’ll see what can be done for it now.”
Father pulled the covers up to his chin. “Son, I’m sorry I made that agreement. But if you can get Marcus to honor the contingency, you’re halfway there.”
“Yes, then I just have to find a lady to agree to marry me in a month’s time.”
“Considering that you’ll have to marry Lady Olivia if you don’t, I think you’ll find a way.” His father flashed him his best attempt at a smile.
“That’s all the motivation one needs,” Alex said, twisting his lips. He removed his spectacles and rubbed his nose. “Why was I never told of his before?” His voice was flat and dry, almost disinterested, belying the nervous excitement coursing through him.
Father shrugged. “I always assumed you’d find a bride on your own, thus voiding the agreement per the conditions on the last page. With that assumption, I didn’t tell you when you were younger because I didn’t want to heap this upon your head then. As you both got older, I saw what kind of a girl Lady Olivia had become, and I assumed her father would let you out of the agreement altogether. However, since he passed away last year, I’m not sure you can count on that possibility. Her period of mourning ended less than two weeks ago and I received a letter from the solicitor yesterday. That makes me think the agreement has not been forgotten.”
Alex sighed. He couldn’t fault his father for not telling him this. The poor man must have been living in a delusion thinking Alex would somehow find a young lady who would actually want to marry him. When in reality, some would think marrying Lady Olivia was the only fathomable solution to marriage for a gentleman who had somehow acquired the nickname Arid Alex.
Smoothing the covers and rearranging the pillows, Alex did what he could to make his frail father comfortable before leaving his sickroom.
Dorset it was, then. He needed to go see Marcus post haste.
Chapter 2
Caroline Sinclair stared at her cousin Olivia in pure bewilderment. “Pardon?”
Olivia rolled her eyes and breathed an exaggerated sigh. “Caroline, have you considered investing in an ear horn?” She kicked her slippers off and propped her feet up on Caroline’s lap. “Could you pull those stockings off for me?” she fairly shouted.
Caroline looked at her quizzically. “Why?” She curled her fingers into the fabric of her skirt and commanded herself to breathe through her mouth if possible. She’d spent enough years in her cousin’s company to know that breathing through one’s nose once Olivia had taken off her slippers was a guaranteed way to make one’s last meal reappear.
“I can’t reach them.” Olivia wiggled the toes on her bunion-covered feet.
“Then perhaps you should decrease your body’s density,” Caroline muttered to herself. She used her thumb and forefinger to grab the top of Olivia’s stocking and pulled until five unclipped and slightly yellow toenails were exposed. Closing her eyes to the view in front of her, Caroline flung the stocking as far across the room as she could before doing the same with the other stocking. “All right, now what was it you were saying?”
“Hmm?” Olivia reclined on an overstuffed pillow. “Rub those, would you?”
“Not on your life,” Caroline retorted beneath her breath. She cleared her throat. “I can’t,” she lied. “I seemed to have hurt my hand yesterday.”
Olivia frowned.
“I was outside collecting—”
Olivia groaned. “Say no more. I don’t want to hear another word of it. You’re as much of a dullard as Arid Alex Banks. It’s unfortunate enough I’ll have to listen to him drone on and on about his scientific nonsense for the rest of my life. At least I’ll still outrank you and be able to tell you to stuff it.”
Stung, Caroline swallowed an unladylike retort and nodded. Olivia had always belittled anything Caroline found interesting. If they weren’t cousins and Lord Sinclair wasn’t her guardian until her twenty-first birthday, Caroline would have distanced herself from Olivia and her rude manners years ago. Unfortunately, she still had another six months to endure Olivia’s ill-treatment.
“So then you’re going to marry him?” Caroline asked to be polite.
“Yes.” Olivia curled her lip and sniffed as if marrying Alex Banks would be the worst fate on the planet. “Not that I want to. I’d rather marry just about anyone else.”
To Caroline’s way of thinking, Olivia was the more fortunate of the two. Not that she knew Mr. Banks well. In fact, she’d only met him once or twice. But having known Olivia all her life, it wasn’t hard to distinguish who’d been dealt the losing hand.
“I swear, Caroline, if you would do something about that hearing problem of yours I wouldn’t have to repeat myself on this matter. In less than thirty days, I shall be Mrs. Alex Banks, and shortly after that, I shall be a baroness.” Her tone was full of excitement, a stark contrast to the pout contorting her face.
Caroline tried not to show her disgust at Olivia’s tactlessness. Olivia should be happy some gentleman was going to marry her despite the title he would one day possess, or that he’d been nicknamed Arid Alex due to his slightly unusual personality. But what got Caroline’s hackles up more than that was Olivia’s excitement over the prospect that the current baron might die soon. Actually, it did more than get her hackles up. It made another round of nausea pass through her—one which outdid the wave she’d experienced earlier.
“You should be a bit more compassionate,” Caroline said firmly and a tad sharply. She may not be particularly fond of Olivia, and she really didn’t like it when Olivia got into one of her “moods,” but Caroline wasn’t going to sit idly by while Olivia planned her future father-in-law’s funeral in her head. If risking a black mood and a possible week of attending Olivia’s sickbed was the result of speaking her mind, so be it.
Olivia sniffed. “You should be more compassionate. I’m the daughter of an earl. I should be marrying an earl or higher, not a baron.” She crossed her arms and sneered. “He won’t even be a baron when we marry. He’ll only be a mere mister for who knows how long. Well, unless his father dies even sooner.” A small smile tugged on her lips.
“You’re heartless,” Caroline said without thinking.
Olivia shrugged. “No. I’m practical. I always have been. I never wanted to marry for love, and I shan’t. Nor do I have any disillusion that he has any such feelings for me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Caroline said tersely. “I was talking about the blackhearted way you’re speaking of his father as if his death means nothing to you besides gaining a title.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It does mean something. It’s going to mean a lot to Alex when his father dies, and as his wife, you’re going to be the one he turns to for comfort.”
Olivia shuddered. “He can turn elsewhere for any comfort he requires. Besides the consummation of our marriage, I have no intention of acting as an outlet for his ‘needs’.”
Caroline tucked a long tendril of her dark brown hair behind her ear. “You do know it will be your duty to give him an heir.”
Closing her eyes, Olivia said, “Then he had better hope he gets it right on the first try.”
Caroline nearly laughed at the absurdity of Olivia’s proclamation. “He has no control over that.”
“And how would you know?”
“I just do,” Caroline said evasively. “Some couples conceive right away, and some don’t.”
“If he wants an heir, he had better hope I conceive right away. I have no interest in the activity, and I’m only enduring it with him once.”
“Or what?”
“Either he’ll have no heir, or a cuckoo,” she said evenly, inspecting her nails.
“What?”
“You know, a child that he technically is not the father of.”
“I know what a cuckoo is,” Caroline said, closing her eyes and willing herself not to pull her hair—or Olivia’s—out in frustration. “But you just said you have no interest in the activity. Why would you want to do it with someone else?”
