Seducing Mr. Sykes

by Maggie Robinson

  He heard rapid thumping up the stairs. Without thinking, Tristan scooped up Lady Sarah, which wasn’t precisely easy in her current slippery-scarf state, and dropped her into a largish open trunk.

  “Not one word.” He tossed what looked to be the old blue dining room curtains over her.

  She pawed through the fabric like she was in the ocean coming up for air, her green eyes daggers. “How dare you?”

  “Really, are you deaf? If you continue to talk, I won’t be responsible for the consequences. Someone is coming. Do you wish to be discovered in dishabille? Fancy being Mrs. Sykes, do you?”

  Her mouth dropped open in what Tristan perceived as horror.

  “That’s right. I see I’ve gotten through to you. Good. Now, be quiet.” With one firm flip, he closed the trunk, fairly certain he heard a muffled yelp.

  One of the footmen appeared at the attic door. “Mr. Tristan, sir, you have a v-visitor.” The man looked scared to death.

  “I heard the commotion. Who is it?”

  “It’s a bloody—I mean it’s a blooming duke, sir! Lady Sarah’s father. I’ve never met a duke before. He’s not happy. And he’s come with luggage. Tons of it, all with fancy crests and a snooty valet and everything.”

  Bloody, blooming hell. It was expressly forbidden for family to interfere with a Guest’s course of treatment. Occasionally exceptions were made—the Marquess of Harland had even stayed in this house for a few days while his son was sequestered in Puddling last year.

  “Islesford won’t eat you. I don’t think. What does he want?”

  “To see Lady Sarah. They told him down in the village she’s here. But we can’t find her anywhere. He’s in—he’s in somewhat of a state, Mr. Tristan.”

  “I think I know where she is. Be a good fellow and go downstairs. Offer the duke refreshment. Tell Mrs. Anstruther to get his belongings settled in the best room.”

  “That’s where the l-lady is, sir.”

  “The second-best room then. She’ll know what to do. Hurry up, don’t just stand there gawking.” Lady Sarah might be suffocating even as he spoke.

  The footman took off and Tristan opened the trunk. Lady Sarah rose out of the curtains like a disheveled Venus.

  “You heard?” Tristan asked, trying not to notice that the shawl had slipped off completely and all of her throat and chest was exposed.

  Pillowy white breasts were barely contained under an embroidered ruffle. The corset tapered to her slender waist, and a few inches of shift skimmed her milky thighs.

  Milky thighs. Oh, Christ.

  “Damn it! I don’t want to see my father! Tell him to go away!” Her voice was not quite steady.

  “You’ll have to get downstairs to your room somehow,” Tristan said, ignoring her.

  “And then what? Wrap myself up in the coverlet? I have nothing to wear, Mr. Sykes. That’s why I was up here.”

  “Put on that sack you were wearing yesterday. Perhaps your father will see to a new wardrobe for you while he’s here.” Tristan rummaged through boxes, spilling unfamiliar female garments to the dusty attic floor. Surely in all this there must be something the madwoman could put on before he was turned into a madman. He seized a wrinkled pink striped dress and thrust it at her.

  Her nose twitched. “Pink? With my coloring?”

  “Heaven help me. Now is not the time to worry over fashion. Just get the damn thing on so you can go down the servants’ stairs to your room. I’ll keep your father busy until you’re decent.”

  Unable to help himself, he watched as she tossed the garment over her head. She was perfection, and even more perfect now that something was covering her muttering mouth. Her head appeared, and the mutters became clear.

  She stuck an arm through a sleeve with an ominous ripping sound. “This doesn’t fit. I’m strangling.”

  “It doesn’t have to fit,” Tristan said with impatience. “It only has to cover you.”

  The other arm followed suit, and she tugged the skirt three-quarters of the way down over her long legs, much to Tristan’s regret. “My hair is caught in the hooks.”

  Her hair was a complete tangle. Tristan had some experience undressing women—though not lately—but dressing them back up was not his area of expertise. He wished he had a hairbrush to smooth through Lady Sarah’s truly extraordinary hair.

  “Hold still.” The hooks were devilishly tiny, and even after he removed the long strands of her hair, there was no chance of doing them up. Lady Sarah, while slender, was too broad at the shoulders and the fabric gapped in the back.

  He could smell her perfume. Roses. He wondered if he could cultivate a rose that would match the color of her hair. “This will have to do.”

  “I’d be better off in your Eton suit.”

  Seeing her in it again would be the death of him. “You look fine. I’m sure you won’t encounter so much as a tweenie on the back stairs. Hurry up.”

  And for some reason, Tristan patted her bottom. By God, it was soft, so he did it again. And that act was how the ninth Duke of Islesford discovered his difficult daughter and her apparent lover.

  Chapter 11

  Her father was in a towering rage, but when wasn’t he? Sadie had locked herself in her room, but she could still hear him shouting at Tristan outside in the hallway.

  She looked at herself in the mirror. It was not difficult to see why her father thought she’d been compromised. Her hair was a Medusa’s nest, and the silly pink dress didn’t begin to cover her. She took it off with some difficulty and tossed it into a corner.

  Back into the brown dress she had been given by the housekeeper yesterday. The rough material made her itch. Damn it, why hadn’t they just gone shopping this morning as he’d agreed? Then she wouldn’t have been forced to forage for clothes in the attic, and Tristan wouldn’t have found her half naked.

  And he wouldn’t have looked at her the way he did. Sadie shivered. His gaze had been so direct before he threw a hand over his face. His entire body had straightened, practically vibrating with interest, when hers wanted to sink onto the floor. He’d reminded her of a hound on point. Obviously, she was the fox.

  It was one thing for her to see him in the altogether, not that she’d seen much under the soapy bathwater, damn it all. But she had been barely clothed, her every freckle exposed. She was most fortunate there were only a few on her nose which she covered with powder, but her body was dusted with little golden spots that were the bane of her existence. Despite her horrible governess’s every horrible remedy, they had remained.

  And now—well, goodness knows how this was all going to end, although she had a fair idea. Her father had blustered about Roderick and money and lawsuits as she’d fled barefoot down the servants’ stairs, her parent and Tristan Sykes in hot pursuit. She could still catch snatches of the conversation, not that she wanted to hear a word.

  She was doomed. Tristan had patted her derriere. Twice. That was certainly grounds in her father’s eyes for...something.

  Sadie wanted to scream, but on the whole she’d shown enough unbridled emotion since she’d been stashed away in Puddling. It was time to be calm. Rational. Mature.

  She wondered if she remembered how.

  The pounding on her door only solidified her determination. Taking a deep breath, Sadie opened it, standing as proud and tall as her hideous brown dress would allow.

  “You cannot escape me and the consequences of your hoydenish behavior this time.”

  Her father’s face was brick red, his gray hair askew as he pushed in to the room. Tristan stood behind him, his face betraying nothing.

  “Come in, Papa, why don’t you. You as well, I suppose, Mr. Sykes.” She hastened to pick up the offensive pink dress and stuffed it into the empty wardrobe. “Please take a seat.”

  The room she had been given at Sykes House was quite lovely. There was a sitting area before a bank of windows which overlooked the terraced gardens. Her father tossed
aside some fringed pillows and collapsed onto the plush cream-colored sofa. After a moment’s hesitation, she and Tristan sat opposite each other on the needlepoint chairs.

  Her father looked around the well-appointed room. “I might have expected as much. I suppose you burned down your cottage so you could make yourself comfortable here in all this finery. This is not at all what I had in mind for you when I enrolled you into the Puddling Rehabilitation Program.”

  No. Her father had wanted her to suffer in very modest conditions. Starve to death. Be so deprived of fun and food and company that she would be grateful to marry anyone.

  “Your daughter did not burn down Stonecrop Cottage. In fact, she was heroic, rescuing her housekeeper. I have explained this to you,” Tristan said, his voice wooden.

  “So you say. Perhaps you set it on fire, so you could put her under your roof and get your hands on her fortune as well as her bottom.”

  Sadie felt her face grow warm. “Papa! Don’t be absurd. There’s a perfectly good explanation—”

  “Don’t waste your breath. It’s not as if I’ll ever believe anything you’d tell me after your past history of prevaricating. Charlton has lost all patience with you as well.”

  “Good,” Sadie muttered.

  “Is it? He intends to sue me for breach of promise, you ungrateful chit! He loaned me money on his expectations.”

  “My dowry, you mean. Mama’s money. I don’t care if you both wind up in bankruptcy. Serves you right! I am not some prize cow to be traded between farmers!”

  Sadie saw Tristan’s lip quirk for just an instant. To be sure, she felt plenty cow-like in this dirt-brown bag of a dress.

  Her father appeared on the verge of apoplexy. “You should be married by now! I promised him!”

  “Well, I didn’t. I told you and told you I never wanted to marry any of the men you picked out for me.”

  He gave her an unsettling smile. “This was your last chance, my girl. This program. This godforsaken village. So much for their reputation for working miracles. You’ll go to Bedlam where you belong and I’ll get my money back for the treatment, which has certainly not worked. The Chancery Court will have no choice but to agree that you are insane once presented with years of evidence and your funds be released to me.”

  “Now, see here, Duke.” Tristan’s cheekbones as well as his ears were streaked with red. “Your daughter is no more mad than you. You cannot force her—”

  “Who are you to tell me what I may do with my own daughter? Some back-of-beyond baronet’s son? You’ve had your fun with her. I should horsewhip you!”

  “I have done nothing—” He broke off his denial. Tristan’s lips thinned.

  Oh, dear. He must be remembering the very naked encounter in his bath. That mistaken almost-kiss under the stars. Those recent playful pats. The sparks that had flown between them ever since they’d met in the Stanchfields’ store, hotter than the fire at Stonecrop Cottage.

  Tristan stood abruptly, looming over her father. “How much money do you need?”

  “I doubt you have enough,” her father sneered.

  “You might be surprised. I may be only a baronet’s son, but I am the grandson of a duke’s daughter and her principal heir. Grandmamma was very fond of me. I will pay you to go as far away as possible and settle your business with Charlton.”

  Sadie felt alarm course through her body. “Tristan! You can’t—”

  Her father’s mouth twisted. “Tristan. Just as I thought.” He pushed himself up from the sofa and glared into Tristan’s eyes. “You have compromised my only child and no amount of money will make up for that.”

  As if she meant anything to him beyond being a source of undeserved income. “Papa, don’t be ridiculous. I only met Mr. Sykes yesterday.”

  Gracious, it was only yesterday. Such a very lot had happened, none of it particularly good.

  “He’s a fast worker I see. You’ll marry her then.” Sadie watched in disbelief as her father poked Tristan’s broad chest with a stubby finger. “I’m sure we can come to favorable terms regarding her dowry and any other amount you may wish to settle upon me for my trouble. She’ll be your problem now.”

  “I am not a problem, and I don’t want to marry anyone. I certainly cannot marry Mr. Sykes. I—I barely know him, and absolutely nothing untoward has happened!” Sadie said wildly, lying only a little, rushing between them. “This is all a terrible misunderstanding.”

  “He’ll marry you if he knows what’s best for this little scam they’re running here. Who would send their vulnerable loved ones to be cured where they’ll only be debauched by one of the governors? My poor Sarah is probably just one of many young women you’ve ruined.”

  “He didn’t debauch anyone—and I’m not ruined, more’s the pity. Oh, damn it, Papa! You don’t even care anything about me.” Sadie felt her eyes fill with tears of frustration. She could not let her father win. Not like this. She would be ruined, married to a man who didn’t love her—who didn’t even like her except on the odd occasion when she was undressed in an attic. Her fists clenched, as they so often did when dealing with her disappointing father and men in general.

  Tristan Sykes touched her arm. “Be still, Lady Sarah, and don’t worry. I’ll have Mrs. Anstruther send up a pot of tea for you to settle your nerves. Your Grace, let’s go below to my father’s study. I’m sure we can work out the details like gentlemen.”

  Sadie dashed her arm away. “Tea? I don’t want any bloody tea! You can’t both decide what’s to become of me while I’m locked up here like a, like a—”

  Tristan raised a wooly eyebrow. “Like a lunatic?” His voice held warning.

  Sadie had no doubt her father was desperate. That he would indeed incarcerate her somewhere, use his ducal influence to get his hands on her inheritance. It was a wonder he hadn’t tried before now. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “I’ll take care of this. I’ll take care of you,” Tristan said with quiet resolve. “The jig is, I believe, up.”

  Chapter 12

  Tristan had known Lady Sarah Marchmain was trouble from the first moment he’d clapped eyes on her on as she howled on the Stanchfields’ floor.

  But he could never have anticipated precisely how much trouble, even after committing her dossier to memory, as all good Puddlingites did for every Guest.

  Tristan had a newfound appreciation for the Duke of Islesford. The man was impervious to reason, facts, and emotion. The duke wanted his pound of flesh and his money, and so would he get it, no matter the effect on his only child.

  And Tristan had no reason to doubt that the duke would do everything in his power to throw a spoke into Puddling-on-the-Wold’s wheel if he didn’t cooperate. Tristan was supposed to be restoring the village’s reputation as a place of sanctuary from everyday sin—instead, he found himself at the center of a potential scandal. He would deserve the uproar. He was a governor of the Puddling Rehabilitation Foundation, and had taken advantage of a Guest.

  Though who had taken advantage of whom was a sore point.

  He would have to marry Lady Sarah, damn it. He’d seen her long naked legs and touched her soft bottom, and had been caught at it.

  The duke was busy writing letters to his solicitor and the Archbishop of Canterbury in his room. Tristan was staring into the bottom of a brandy snifter.

  His father might be pleased. One didn’t get a higher-placed daughter-in-law unless Tristan were to wed one of the royal princesses. Linnet had been a mere viscount’s girl.

  At least there would be no legal impediment to marrying again in the church. Linnet was long dead.

  Tristan had thought himself dead to the idea of becoming a husband again. He had no interest in trying to soothe the histrionics of a high-strung woman once more. It seemed the gods were having a bit of fun with him. His life was about to become a living hell.

  He’d have to lay down the law. He could only imagine how receptive Lady
Sarah Marchmain would be to that.

  They wouldn’t have to cohabitate. He was perfectly happy in his bachelor quarters across the wide expanse of lawn. Sarah could have reign over the house, at least until his father came home from Paris. If he came home.

  Tristan would have to write to him, but there was no rush. He wasn’t anxious to explain how things had advanced this far and he had put the entire operation of the village in jeopardy.

  He poured himself another finger of brandy. It was early in the day for him to drink, but he didn’t usually sign his future away so soon after lunch.

  There was a rattle of doorknob. Tristan had locked himself into his father’s study to sulk.

  “Go away.”

  “I will not! You’ve just left me to rot upstairs. What is going on?”

  It was his damned fiancée. Delightful.

  With great reluctance, Tristan put his brandy aside and strode across the ancient carpet. Lady Sarah—or someone—had brushed her hair and braided it in a neat crown around her head.

  It seemed a pity to bind such beauty.

  She entered the room in a blur of brown homespun and flash of white ankle. “Well? Is my father still here?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s arranging for our wedding the day after tomorrow.”

  Lady Sarah rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake. Have you no backbone? We can’t get married.”

  “We must. I cannot allow our foolishness to hurt the Foundation’s mission. The entire village’s fortune depends upon our good name. Your father’s influence could ruin everything we’ve worked for since 1806.”

  “Poppycock. My father hasn’t a feather to fly with.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He is still a duke, and people will listen to whatever he has to say. You know what the ton is like. I cannot risk it.”

  She stalked over to his desk and picked up the decanter of brandy. “Have you another glass?”