Devil's Bargain

by Marlene Suson

  “Which is?”

  “Love and romance,” he said curtly. “Ours will be strictly a business arrangement.”

  Tia shivered, chilled to the marrow at the prospect of such a cold-blooded union as Castleton proposed. “Why marry at all?” she demanded.

  “It is my duty.” His face tightened in grim lines that proclaimed it one he abhorred. “I must produce an heir.” He turned abruptly to her father, who had been listening in stupefied silence to the exchange between her and their visitor. “Now, if we may be private.”

  Mr. Easton, looking quite as pale as his daughter, shut the library door abruptly, leaving her alone in the hall.

  The knocker sounded again, and she went to the door rather than make Lizzie come from the back of the house. Tia recognized the silver and green livery of the groom on the doorstep as her aunt’s even before he told her that the Marchioness of Mobry wanted to see her at the White Hart Inn.

  Tia wondered what more surprises this day could possibly hold. Grabbing her cloak from its peg by the door, she followed the groom without telling anyone where she was going. Her father’s antagonism toward Aunt Augusta was so intense that he would fly into the boughs if he heard Tia’s destination and try to stop her from going. Her aunt, in turn, so despised Mr. Easton that she would not set foot in his home.

  At the inn, which dated from Elizabethan times, Tia was escorted into a private parlour. The rough- hewn beams of its ceiling were so low that a tall man would have to duck his head to avoid them. Lady Mobry sat in a chair by a brick fireplace where a few pieces of coal glowed.

  As Tia crossed to her, she rose, and the two embraced warmly. Tia told her, “I have had such a shock. The Duke of Castleton is calling on Papa, and he is quite mad. He says he is considering marrying me.”

  “Castleton here already!” Her aunt’s long, thin face registered her dismay. “How unfortunate. I had hoped to talk to you before he came.”

  Shocked comprehension dawned on Tia. “Are you behind this, Aunt Augusta?”

  The marchioness assumed the determined look of one about to discharge an unpleasant duty. “It would be a brilliant match for you, better than you could have any expectation of making. You can aspire no higher than to be the Duchess of Castleton.”

  “I don’t aspire that high!” Tia said fervently.

  “Don’t be a fool, dear child. You would have position, wealth, power.”

  And that, Tia thought without bitterness, was what mattered most to her aunt. Lady Mobry thought she was doing her niece an enormous favour by promoting an offer from the duke.

  “My dear child, you will also have a far happier life as the Duchess of Castleton than buried here, no better than an unpaid servant, waiting on your wretched father.”

  “But I cordially dislike Castleton!”

  “All the better.”

  “All the better?” Tia sputtered. “You are as mad as he is!”

  The marchioness, forming a tent with her long, bony hands, rested her chin on her fingertips. “For the kind of marriage Marc wants, it is better that your heart not be engaged. He is marrying solely for an heir. You will need to see very little of him.”

  “I prefer to see nothing of him!”

  “Once you have given him a son or two, he may oblige you, but I think a clever woman could manage Marc.” She gave Tia a sly look. “Perhaps even win his heart. I suspect that there is nothing he would not do for a woman he loved.”

  “I am not that clever!” Tia cried. “And I don’t believe he has a heart to be won.”

  “You would not say that if you saw the love and care he lavished on his brother. Paul’s death devastated him.”

  It was hard for Tia to believe that anything could devastate the icy duke. The prospect of being bound to an arrogant, black-tempered man she intensely disliked chilled her, and she told her aunt so.

  “Marc is autocratic and lamentably set in his ways,” Lady Mobry agreed. “But you must understand what has made him that way. His father died when he was twelve, and he became the ward of a pompous, stiff-necked uncle who thinks all the world beneath the touch of his family. He constantly drilled into Marc that the rest of humankind owed his title abject deference and respect. Worse, his uncle’s wife is the coldest woman I’ve ever known. I doubt Marc or his brother received an ounce of affection from her. She is one of the reasons he is so contemptuous of our sex.”

  “What are the others?” Tia asked.

  Lady Mobry shrugged. “His title and fortune have made too many women easy conquests for him.”

  “In short, he is an odious rake,” Tia said in disgust.

  “Most men of the duke’s wealth and social standing are rakes—it is expected of them,” retorted her aunt, ever the realist. “You must consider the advantages to your family of marrying Marc. You can persuade him to buy Antony his commission, and the connection with the duke will enhance the boy’s military prospects.”

  More important, Tia thought, she had to save Freddie from the Navy where he would surely die before he reached manhood.

  “You will not receive another offer that will do so much for your family,” her aunt said. “It is your duty to marry him.”

  Tia, her mind awhirl, stared at the glowing coals in the brick fireplace. Only by marrying could she remove Freddie from her father’s house. If she spurned the duke’s proposal, she might never receive another, isolated as she was here in the country.

  “Very well,” she told her aunt, “I will accept Castleton if he will agree to let Freddie live with us.”

  “Don’t be a fool! You will ask nothing of Marc or he will cry off. Agree to all he demands of you and request nothing for yourself.”

  “But I am marrying him only to save Freddie,” Tia protested.

  “Never fear, an opportunity will present itself later to get him to take the boy in.”

  As Tia put on her cloak to return home, her aunt instructed her, “When Marc makes his offer, pretend shyness and hide your face from him. It betrays your every emotion, and he will not be flattered.”

  In the library at Birnam Wood, Marc studied Mr. Easton’s bloated features. He did not relish having this fool for his father-in-law, but he was more pleased with Tia than he had expected to be.

  The refreshing candour with which she had greeted the prospect of an offer from him had intrigued him even more than it had astonished him. He was accustomed to having women throw themselves at him. No female had ever before told him that she did not like him.

  He would find it vastly amusing to change her mind.

  Marc recalled what Paul, during a visit to Ashmore, had written him of Tia: “I thoroughly enjoy the chit. Both her understanding and humour are superior, and she never scruples to say what she thinks.”

  Although Marc could not yet attest to the first two qualities, he certainly could to the third.

  Yes, if he must take a wife, it might as well be Tin, provided she accepted his conditions, and he told her father so. Clearly Mr. Easton was not pleased, but he dared not refuse an offer from the Duke of Castleton. Glumly he called for his daughter.

  But she had disappeared.

  “No doubt she will be back shortly,” Mr. Easton said, seizing the opportunity to launch into a dissertation on his literary masterpiece.

  Marc, who had no taste for fools’ company, said smoothly, “I cannot in good conscience keep you from your great work any longer. I shall wait for Tia in the drawing room.”

  Making his escape to that chamber, Marc found it a shabby affair, sparsely furnished with a worn brown sofa, three lumpy chairs, and a few other nondescript pieces. Mr. Easton had appropriated Birnam Wood’s best furnishings for his library The pretentious name his host had given this wretched little property brought a derisive smile to Marc’s lips.

  Outside, the fog that had shrouded the land during early January had lifted at last, but the duke noted uneasily that the wind was rising and snow had begun to fall. He wanted to return to London as soon as poss
ible, and he hoped that he would not end up snowbound at Ashmore. The estate had never been a favourite of his, and it had become even less so after the incident five years ago involving Lady Fanny Dillon, the lovely young third wife of old Lord Dillon.

  She had conceived a passion for the duke. Although faithless wives filled him with contempt, he was happy to accommodate them when they were as delectable a morsel as Lady Fanny. To escape her jealous husband’s watchful eye, she proposed visiting her sister in Yorkshire, stopping at Ashmore on the way

  Marc and Fanny picnicked in the woods where, after a bottle of champagne, one thing led to another. They were making love on the picnic blanket when a hound burst upon them, growling menacingly as he sniffed and pawed at them.

  Marc clapped his hand over Fanny’s mouth to stifle her frightened screech. The dog began barking furiously, and Marc heard the voices of children, coming closer with every step, calling the beast.

  Cursing soundlessly he jumped up, grabbed his breeches, and scrambled hastily into them, considerably hampered in the process by the infernal hound’s leaping at him, alternately yelping and growling. Dammit, he could not even enjoy the privacy of his own woods without having trespassers intruding upon him.

  He looked down at Fanny lying on the blanket. “Get dressed and steal away while I distract them,” he instructed her.

  But my lady chose another way of escaping the scene.

  She fainted.

  Marc stared in dismay at her lying unconscious and unclad. He had to head the children off. Their innocent account of this bizarre scene would be the talk of the countryside by nightfall.

  Still fastening his breeches, he ran between the trees toward the voices, ignoring the pain of the fallen twigs and acorns that cut into his bare feet. He prayed that Fanny would not regain consciousness and begin shrieking her foolish head off,

  He burst upon the miscreants, two young boys who looked by their clothes to be the offspring of one of his tenants. The older of the two was a handsome, well-made boy, but the younger, who appeared to be about twelve, was slight and skinny beneath a loose shirt several sizes too large.

  Castleton had a colourful vocabulary of profanity and he used it upon the brats. The larger of the two turned and fled. The second tried to do the same, darting directly toward where Fanny lay.

  Desperately, Castleton grabbed the boy by his shirttail and hauled the struggling lad against him, wrapping one arm around his hips and the other about his chest. As he did so, the duke’s hand closed around the small mound of an unmistakably female breast.

  His earlier discomposure was nothing to that generated by the shocking discovery that he was inadvertently fondling a young female. He jerked her around to face him, and her hat fell off. Thick braids of dark hair wound around her head confirmed what his hand had already told him. Her startled expression revealed that she was an innocent who had never known a man’s touch, and she was puzzled by her body’s strange response to it.

  She couldn’t be more than twelve, and he felt like a damned pervert. A dull red flush of shame rose in his face. He was no better than the dog Sir Francis Pitson, the most notorious of those debauched reprobates of rank who revelled in the despoilment of innocents, the younger the better. Their sport nauseated Castleton. So did Sir Francis.

  Marc remembered in dismay the fluid stream of curses he had poured upon the ears of the little trespasser with the large, frightened gray eyes. Although clearly terrified of him, she met his furious gaze without flinching.

  Her pluck moved him. He had to smother an irrational desire to put his arms around her and comfort her. To do so would risk having his actions misunderstood by her family. He had already unwittingly given a suspicious—or cunningly avaricious—parent reason to challenge his conduct. His most prudent course was to frighten the girl away from Ashmore forever, and that was what he tried to do with his threats against her and her hound. Not that he would have ever carried out such cruelty. but it was clear from the speed of her departure she did not suspect that.

  A long case clock in the hall of Birnam Wood struck the hour, drawing Marc’s thoughts back to the present and his prospective bride. Where was the chit? Tia had left him to cool his heels for an infuriating length of time.

  As his wait continued, his thoughts of her grew scornful. His unexpected proposal had caught her by surprise, but once she had an opportunity to consider what a marital prize he was, she would eagerly welcome his offer. His mouth twisted into a cynical grin. When she came home, he was certain that he would see a very different girl, all too eager to please him.

  Chapter 4

  By the time Tia returned to Birnam Wood, Marc was pacing the drawing room floor impatiently. No one ever kept him waiting, and this novel experience had put him in a decidedly ill humour.

  “Waste no more of my time,” he told her curtly as she entered the room. “Is an offer from me acceptable to you?”

  She turned hastily to close the door behind her and, for a long moment, remained silent with her back to him. At last, in a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “It... it is acceptable, Your Grace.”

  Although her response was precisely what he had expected, he was disappointed. She was just like every other damned woman. How easily his title and fortune overcame her dislike.

  He had secretly hoped that she would continue to be as honest with him as she had been earlier, but that was too much to expect of any woman. Well, damn her, he would put her sudden biddability to a rigorous test by presenting his requirements for a wife in the bluntest, most insulting terms he could muster.

  “I am not going to humbug you with any nonsense about loving you,” he began in a voice that sounded harsh even to his own ears. She turned toward him, looking very pale. “As you pointed out earlier, I don’t even know you. Our marriage will he strictly a business arrangement.”

  Tia abruptly lowered her head and stared at the floor.

  He went on coldly, “I am marrying for sons, not romance. I do not want a wife who hangs on me!” The memory of how Paul’s wife had done that and then had betrayed him gave a razor edge to Marc’s voice. “We will likely see little of each other.”

  He paused, expecting a protest. No wife liked to be neglected. Yet no demur came. Her head remained down, her expression hidden from him.

  Tia, mindful of Lady Mobry’s instructions on how she was to act, kept her head bowed. Her aunt was right. Her face would betray her true feelings. Clenching her teeth, she choked down the protests that rose like bile in her throat. How she detested this arrogant, obnoxious man! It took every bit of determination she possessed to keep from flinging his odious offer back in his teeth. But for Freddie’s sake—and Antony’s, too—she dared not.

  Goaded by what he mistook for stolid acceptance, Marc said cruelly, “I spend most of my time in London. Once you are breeding, you will live at one of my country estates.” Promising to send her to the country where she would be ignored would surely provoke an outraged complaint.

  Instead she said, “Yes, Your Grace,” with a fervour that disconcerted him.

  Could it be that she already had a lover in mind? Marc thought of his father and brother. By God, he would not be cuckolded! She must be made to understand he would not tolerate that.

  “As my wife, you must be a pattern card of propriety,” he warned her icily. “No breath of scandal must ever attach to you. I will have other interests, but you will not. It is the price you pay for becoming my duchess. Do you understand me?” He sounded insufferable even to himself.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” she replied in a colourless voice, still staring at the floor.

  He should have been delighted by her agreeability. After all, he wanted a biddable wife, didn’t he? Instead he was furious at her easy capitulation. What had happened to the spirit she had displayed earlier? Was becoming a duchess that important to her? Angrily, he demanded, “Do you agree to my conditions?”

  Her gaze was still fixed on the floor so that he could not
see her face. A silent minute ticked by. Then another. Perhaps there was hope after all, he thought.

  But at last she whispered, “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You will never be able to complain that you were not fully forewarned about what our marriage will be like.” He was so disgusted at how readily—and undoubtedly mendaciously—she had agreed to his demands that he could not resist adding a sarcastic jibe: “Now that I have offered you marriage, title, and fortune, you have suddenly discovered that you like me after all.”

  “No, Your Grace,” she said politely, raising her head.

  He was shocked by what he read in her face. No wonder she had refused to look at him. She must know her face betrayed her every feeling. Her big gray eyes radiated fury like sparks from a flint. They were magnificent.

  So angry that she could no longer restrain her tongue, Tia said, “I have discovered that I dislike you even more than I thought. You are arrogant and overbearing and rude.”

  He had wanted candour, Marc thought ruefully, and now he was getting it. “If you dislike me so, why accept my offer?” he asked without heat, knowing that he deserved her biting assessment.

  “Liking you was not one of your stipulations,” she said acidly. “My feelings are of no real interest to you.”

  He could not deny the truth of that, and it made him feel like a cad. But he had been schooled since childhood that a duke of Castleton did not show shame or contrition, embarrassment or discomfort. He concealed such unworthy emotions behind a cold, unblinking demeanour, and he did so now. “You collect correctly, and I will require you to live up to every particular of our bargain. Do you truly think you can do that?”

  “I am a woman of my word, Your Grace,” she said with quiet dignity “I would not agree to it if I did not intend to do so.”

  To his amazement he, who never trusted women, believed her. But why should he?

  “What has suddenly made you amenable to marrying me?” he asked suspiciously. “Where did you go while I was talking to your father?”