by Mary Balogh
“You had better come for a week or two, then,” she said ungraciously. “We will contrive to quarrel at the end of it—it should not be difficult.”
Wulfric got to his feet. “I believe,” he said with distant hauteur, “you have neglected Lady Potford's guests for long enough.”
He strolled to the door and let himself out without a backward glance.
The marquess looked at Freyja.
“Good Lord,” he said.
“Triple damnation,” she said.
He grinned and then—quite predictably—laughed.
“So we live to kiss again,” he said, waggling his eyebrows and offering her his arm.
“Over my dead body,” she assured him, lofting her nose into the air and passing him on her way to the door.
“A cliché unworthy of you, sweetheart,” he said. “But I sincerely hope you do not mean it. I would be incapable of enjoying such a kiss—as would you too, of course—and I would hate that for both of us.”
CHAPTER XI
Two days later Joshua found himself riding along the king's highway in the midst of the impressively large entourage of liveried coachmen, footmen, and outriders escorting his grace's crested traveling carriage and baggage coach to Lindsey Hall in Hampshire. Who could have predicted the bizarre sequence of events that had brought him to this moment? He could not decide whether he should be quaking with terror or doubled over with helpless laughter.
But he was not a man much given to terror. And watching people in every village through which they passed gawking in awe and bobbing curtsies or pulling at forelocks and the drivers of every vehicle they passed respectfully pulling over to one side of the road until the procession had gone by was endlessly amusing. He could probably behave this way if he wished, he supposed—he was the Marquess of Hallmere, after all. The thought tickled his fancy.
He wished he could share the joke with Lady Freyja. But she, much against the grain, he suspected, was riding inside the leading carriage with the duke. Besides, it was possible that she was so accustomed to this form of travel that she would not see anything humorous about it. He wondered what they were talking about. Probably nothing at all, or else the weather or the passing scenery. Bewcastle had made no further mention of the betrothal since the evening before last.
Joshua was feeling perfectly cheerful as he looked forward to arriving at Lindsey Hall. It was true that he was fairly caught in parson's mousetrap until Lady Freyja in due course decided to set him free. He was entirely at her mercy. But she was a woman who would always play fair even if she also played rough, he believed. Besides, she had no more wish to marry him than he had to marry her. In the meantime he liked her. He had not yet tired of her company. Quite the contrary—he found her conversation and wit and spirit quite as stimulating as those of any of his male friends. And he found her dashed attractive. Maybe too attractive—he was going to have to tread carefully in the coming days or weeks or however long he was expected to stay in Hampshire.
They reached Lindsey Hall during the middle of the afternoon. Joshua followed the carriage through the gates and along a straight, wide avenue lined with elm trees. The house soon came into view at the end of it. It was neither medieval nor Jacobean nor Georgian nor any other single architectural style. It was a mix of many styles and clearly a mansion that had been in the family for generations and “improved” upon and added to many times. The result was surprisingly imposing and pleasing.
The wide avenue divided into two not far from the house in order to skirt about a large circular garden with a marble fountain at its center. There were not as many flowers blooming at this time of the year as there probably were in July, but the water had not yet been turned off for the winter. It spouted at least thirty feet into the air before spilling over into the wide basin like the sparkling spokes of an umbrella.
There was a young boy standing precariously on the edge of the basin, probably getting wet. A tall, solid-looking man with dark, forbidding countenance and large, hooked nose—the Bedwyn nose?—stood on the grassy verge of the avenue not far from the boy, a young girl perched on one of his shoulders and clinging to his hair. A slender, pretty, brown-haired young lady and a voluptuously endowed redhead were with them. All had turned to watch the approach of the carriage. The ladies smiled as it passed. The little girl waved. They all looked curiously at Joshua.
Three other people dressed for riding were walking out of the stable yard as the carriage made its final turn onto the cobbled terrace before the great double doors of the house. One was a slender, willowy, dark-haired young beauty. The other two were men, one tall, broad, fair, and dark-browed, the other dark, slim, and good-looking. Both had the family nose.
He was about to meet the Bedwyns, Joshua realized. He wondered how he would be introduced. He had not discussed with Bewcastle whether or not the family was to be party to the farce that must be acted out for decency's sake until the betrothal could be properly ended—if there was a proper way to end a betrothal.
There was a great deal of noise as everyone converged upon the terrace while the carriage door was opened wide and the steps set down. The big, fair-haired brother reached inside and swung Lady Freyja out without benefit of the steps. She proceeded to hug the ladies and the little girl. She shook hands like a man with the boy and her brothers. The duke meanwhile descended, nodded to them all, and looked faintly taken aback when the brown-haired lady hugged him.
Joshua dismounted and turned his horse over to the care of a groom who had come running from the stables.
Freyja came striding over to him when she had completed her flurry of greetings. Her chin was lifted proudly. There was a martial gleam in her eyes. It was not, perhaps, a moment she had anticipated with any great joy. She took him firmly by one hand.
“I want you all to meet the Marquess of Hallmere—Joshua,” she said, her voice raised haughtily. “My betrothed. There is no marriage date set. I daresay it will be next year sometime. Perhaps next summer.”
There was a chorus of sound, but she held up one hand and it subsided.
“Let me complete the introductions first,” she said and proceeded to name all the strangers about him. Lady Morgan Bedwyn, the dark young beauty, curtsied to him and looked him over with frank, dark eyes. Lord Alleyne, the dark-haired young man, looked amused. The fair-haired giant was Lord Rannulf, the gorgeous redhead, his wife, Judith. The pretty, brown-haired lady was Eve, Lady Aidan Bedwyn. Her husband was the dark, dour man, who looked as if he might have spent a year or ten in the military. The children, Davy and Becky, belonged to the latter couple.
“So that is why you dashed away to Bath without a word to anyone just when we were expecting Aidan and Eve and Ralf and Judith to arrive,” Lady Morgan said to her eldest brother. “You heard about the betrothal and went to see for yourself. Why is it that Wulf hears all the interesting stories and we do not?”
Lord Rannulf was shaking Joshua's hand with a warm, firm grip.
“This is sudden,” he said, grinning. “But we Bedwyns have a recent history of sudden betrothals and marriages. Why would Free be different?”
“Hallmere?” The dark, granite-faced Lord Aidan Bedwyn shook his hand with a nod but no smile.
His wife was hugging Lady Freyja again, tears in her eyes.
“I am so happy for you, Freyja,” she said. “I knew it must happen soon.”
The little boy had wormed his way between Joshua and Freyja and was pulling on the skirt of her carriage dress.
“Aunt Freyja,” he said, and tugged again. “Aunt Freyja, I brought my cricket set with me.”
“Hey, rascal.” Lord Aidan suddenly looked almost human as he reached down to scoop the child up and deposit him astride his shoulders. “Let your aunt get her foot inside the house before pestering her to play with you. Besides, this is not the season for cricket. We will find something else energetic to do tomorrow.”
“But cricket it will be first, in season or out,” Lady Freyja said, smili
ng up at the boy and even winking at him. “I want you on my team, Davy. I'll hit a six in my very first over at bat.”
Joshua looked at her with some interest. She played cricket? He might have known it.
“May I play too?” he asked. “I am a famous bowler and have been known to prevent a single six being hit for a whole inning—or even a four.”
“Ha!” she said.
The boy was laughing with delight and Lord Aidan made himself look entirely human by smiling.
“I suppose,” he said, “any season is good for cricket if the Bedwyns say it is.”
“Perhaps,” the Duke of Bewcastle said without at all raising his voice, though all of the boisterous Bedwyns fell silent to listen, “we should step into the house and gather for tea in the drawing room in half an hour's time?”
“The master has spoken,” Lord Alleyne said with a low chuckle after Bewcastle had preceded them all into the house. He set one arm about Lady Freyja's shoulders and hugged her to his side. “I am happy for you, Free, if you are happy. And you, Hallmere. We had better file inside like docile lambs.” He strode off ahead of them.
“Whew!” Joshua said, grinning down at Lady Freyja and offering her his arm.
“I have decided,” she said, looking at him haughtily as she took it, “that I will call you Josh. I refuse to ‘my lord' you, I do not wish to call you Hallmere, and Joshua is too biblical. You may call me Freyja.”
“Or Free, as your brothers do?” he suggested.
“Or Free,” she agreed. “But only as long as we are betrothed. Until Christmas at the latest.”
“I will make free with Free until then,” he said.
She cast him a sidelong look, which assured him that she had not missed either the pun or the double entendre.
They ascended the steps and entered the house. Joshua found himself in an impressive medieval great hall complete with an oak-beamed ceiling, a gigantic fireplace large enough to roast an ox in, whitewashed walls bedecked with coats of arms, banners, and weapons, a minstrel gallery above an intricately carved wooden screen, and a massive oak table filling up much of the floor space.
It looked like the perfect setting for a feast and an orgy.
The christening was to take place two days after her return home, Freyja discovered, and it was to be a grand affair indeed. After the church service late in the morning, all the guests were to proceed to Alvesley Park, home of the Earl of Redfield—and of Kit, Viscount Ravensberg, too—for dinner and a party that would probably last into the evening.
Rannulf and Judith had come all the way from Grandmaison in Leicestershire, where they lived with the Bedwyns' ailing maternal grandmother, whose heir Ralf was—he and Kit had always been best friends. And Aidan and Eve and the children had come because they were not far away in Oxfordshire and because, according to Aidan, he had been away at the wars for so many years that he had missed a decade and more of family and neighborhood events.
It was all going to be a severe trial, Freyja decided. She dreaded the day even with the added security of a betrothed to take along with her. It was stupid to have allowed herself to be so discomposed by an ancient passion—it was four years since she had fallen desperately in love with Kit Butler, and it had lasted for precisely one month. But, of course, there had been the added bother of last year and all its hideous embarrassment. She had behaved badly. She had made an idiot of herself. She had ended up practically begging Kit to give up Lauren in order to marry her and then slamming her fist into poor Ralf's jaw, perhaps because Kit's had not been available at that precise moment.
She would think of tomorrow when tomorrow came, she decided the morning after she arrived home. And she would think of the problem of Josh after tomorrow was over. He was in her debt, she had decided, despite all the walks and rides in Bath. After all, he had enjoyed those walks and rides too. So he owed her his escort for tomorrow. After that she would find some way of drawing him into a ghastly, very public brawl, and she would break off the engagement. She had no intention of waiting until Christmas or later, as Wulfric had suggested. It would be unfair. And she might find it harder to do if she allowed more time to elapse. He was quite alarmingly attractive. That was in addition to his good looks, of course, which had not escaped notice among her family.
“You have been in Bath for a couple of weeks, Freyja,” Morgan had said the night before when all the women had gathered briefly in Freyja's bedchamber, “and you have come home with a Greek god. All I will discover when I go to town in the spring for my come-out and exposure to the marriage mart is a whole gaggle of awkward-mannered, pimply youths. It is most provoking.”
Both Judith and Eve had laughed.
“But you will wait for your prince to arrive, Morgan,” Eve had said. “And he will, you know, just as Freyja's has.”
“Freyja's prince just happens to be absolutely gorgeous,” Judith had added, her right hand placed theatrically over her heart, her eyelids batting. “All that shining blond hair. Arghhh!”
“And those laughing blue eyes,” Morgan had added mournfully. “How will I ever find any man to match him for myself?”
“But one's own particular prince always appears more splendid than any ordinary mortal, Morgan—or even any other extraordinary one,” Eve had said kindly. “Aidan does to me, and I am certain Rannulf does to Judith.”
Freyja had looked at them both, slightly envious.
She would feel no negative emotion today, though, she decided after getting out of bed early and looking out the window to note that the clouds were high and might even move off by midmorning to offer a sunny day. The air coming through her open window was cool but not cold. It was a fine morning for cricket. It was a fine day for all sorts of strenuous outdoor activities.
How wonderful it was to be away from the confining atmosphere of Bath.
They all joined in the game of cricket after breakfast—all except Wulfric, of course, who disappeared into his study. Even Eve and Judith decided to play, though Rannulf tried to talk Judith out of it, directing all sorts of significant glances across the table at her, all of which she ignored.
Gracious heavens! Freyja thought. Was Judith with child? How very interesting that would be if it were true. She and Ralf had been married no longer than a month. Was it possible . . . But that was absolutely none of her business.
Freyja and Joshua were on different teams—deliberately so. He was determined to bowl her out; she was equally determined to hit a six off him. She had Eve, Morgan, Rannulf, and Davy on her team. Joshua had Judith, Aidan, Alleyne, and Becky on his.
Fortunately, Rannulf was a decent bowler. Although he went easy on Judith and very easy indeed on Becky, making sure that she hit a number of balls and scored a total of eight runs while all the fielders became remarkably clumsy and simply could not throw her out, Aidan hit one six and a couple of fours off him before Freyja caught him out close to the boundary, and Joshua hung in for a total of twenty runs. Alleyne went out ignominiously to the very first ball bowled at him—it shattered the wickets behind him while Davy went wild with glee.
Freyja's team needed fifty-two runs to win when they came up to bat. Rannulf scored fifteen before being caught out. Eve scored sixteen and Morgan eleven, both with very lenient bowling from Josh, who looked distractingly virile and handsome without his coat or waistcoat and with his shirtsleeves rolled halfway to his elbows. Davy, also the recipient of friendly bowling, was at nine runs when Morgan finally went out and Freyja came in.
Joshua's first ball came hurtling down between the wickets, a wicked spin making its course almost impossible to judge. Freyja could do nothing better with it than fiercely protect her wickets and then glare at a grinning bowler.
“Can't you do any better than that?” she yelled, and flexed her wrists and made a few showy air shots with the bat.
He could.
The next ball hopped awkwardly just in front of her, sending up a shower of grass and dust and almost taking her front teeth
out as it whizzed past her face.
“Can't you do any better than that?” he yelled, while his team catcalled and Freyja's clapped their hands and called out encouraging words to her.
She watched the next ball every inch of the way, saw it as if it were coming at half speed, judged the spin with clear, unhurried mind, adjusted the bat, gripped it tightly, and hit the ball with a satisfying crack. She watched it as it soared over the lawn in a beautiful arc and cleared Aidan's head at the boundary by a good three feet. Then she ran between the wickets, her bat in one hand, her skirts caught up in the other, laughing as she went, passing a wildly whooping Davy halfway down.
The game had been won by Freyja's team.
“I believe,” she said, when she had finished running, stopping not far from Joshua, panting, her hands on her hips, her hair in wild disarray about her shoulders—she had pulled out the last of the pins long ago, “I have proved a point.”
“You have,” he said, with a look of abject dejection belied by his laughing eyes. “You have won our wager, Free. I had better pay the penalty.”
And there, before her brothers and sister and sisters-in-law and the two children, he took two long strides forward, tangled his hand in her hair so that he was cupping the back of her head, tipped back her head, and kissed her with lingering thoroughness on the lips.
She was glad she had been running, she thought, when he finally lifted his head and she found herself the interested object of her relatives' grinning attention. It would account for her hot cheeks. It would be just too lowering to be seen to blush.
“I must be suffering from memory loss,” she said. “I do not recall any wager.”
“I will never again be able to hold up my head among my cricket-playing peers,” Joshua said. “I must confess that game was quite fairly won. I had no intention of allowing you to get a hit off me.”
