Ladies did not drink brandy. Why was Tristan even surprised at her request? He went to the cupboard and selected a glass. He knew better than to offer to pour.
She filled half the snifter and downed it in one gulp. Was the prospect of becoming Mrs. Sykes really so ghastly?
Apparently so. She set the glass down with a clunk. “You don’t have to do this. If you help me run away, my father won’t find me. I’ll need some of your grandmother’s money, though. I have nothing. Not even clothes, as you know.”
Run away? How on earth could she survive? She was for all intents and purposes practically certifiably crazy, and didn’t even have a maid.
“Out of the question.”
Her bronze brows scrunched in irritation. “Why? Because I thought of it?”
“It’s a ridiculous idea no matter who thought of it.”
“More ridiculous than attaching oneself for life to someone who is completely unsuitable?”
“My birth may not be as high as yours—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I am not talking about our standing in society. It’s all rubbish anyway. My father doesn’t deserve his exalted status—it’s an accident of birth. He’s made a hash of everything he’s touched. If it wasn’t for what’s left of my mother’s fortune—who was the daughter of a woolen mill owner, by the way—he would be living in a hovel on the Continent to avoid his creditors.”
Ah. Tristan felt somewhat mollified. But she was right—he wasn’t suited to be anyone’s husband. His marriage to Linnet had proved that.
And the thought of Lady Sarah as a docile, compliant wife was risible.
He shook his head. “I will not help you run away. I’m sure we’ll muddle along somehow.”
“I don’t want to muddle along! You don’t want to marry me—you think I’m a disgrace.”
“You can’t deny you’ve gone out of your way to develop a difficult reputation,” Tristan reminded her. Certifiable, yes indeed.
“Yes! So no one would want to marry me!” She threw herself down on a leather chair and clenched the fabric of the ugly dress between her fists. “Really, I won’t need much money to escape. I can disguise myself as a man and wear your old clothes. Cut my hair.”
Tristan could do nothing but laugh. Anyone less masculine was hard to imagine.
“Lady Sarah, I’m afraid we’ll have to accept our fate. I cannot allow you to go racketing through the countryside in trousers. That’s how we got into this fix, if you recall.”
“Allow me? If you hadn’t been such a prig we would be in Stroud shopping right now.”
“Do not blame this predicament on me,” Tristan said, annoyed. “You’ve dug your own grave.”
“And I’ll wish I were dead, being married to a man like you! So, so judgmental. So officious. So mean!”
Unfair and untrue. Tristan knew himself to be a perfectly ordinary gentleman. He was not prone to fits or flights of fancy. He was steady. Solid. A great catch.
If he had wanted to be caught.
“There is no point to us arguing. The arrangements are being made. I have a responsibility to Puddling, and now a responsibility to you.”
She picked up the empty snifter. “I don’t want to be some sort of duty. An albatross.” She wound up her arm and smashed the glass into the fireplace.
Tristan should make her clean the mess up herself. The servants would have enough to do organizing a wedding. “Don’t be childish. Destroying things will not change our circumstances. Your father is set on this marriage, and I cannot blame him. You know we have overstepped the bounds of propriety.” You especially, he wanted to add.
“I don’t care,” she said, stubborn as usual.
“Well, I do. Though you needn’t worry I’ll expect to exert my husbandly rights. We’ll have a marriage of convenience.” Inconvenience was more like it. “You’ll have your independence—within reason.”
Her mouth opened, then snapped shut. Good. He had finally robbed her of speech. Tristan had a feeling that didn’t happen very often.
Chapter 13
Insufferable. Insupportable. Insolent. And all the other “in” words she couldn’t think of at the moment. If anyone was going to make the rules about their relationship, it should be she. It was her life that was officially ruined.
A white marriage. Devoid of all physical contact and comfort. Sadie supposed she should be happy that Tristan Sykes wouldn’t be pawing at her night after night, but for some reason she wasn’t.
Did he find her so unattractive? She didn’t believe it. At twenty-one, she’d been the recipient of men’s speculative looks for too many years. She recognized lust when she saw it, and Tristan was just loaded with it—when he wasn’t being disparaging and oh-so-chilly toward her. If she was going to marry him, she’d have to find out more about his first wife. No doubt the woman was responsible for Tristan’s grumpy reserve.
Oh, hell. What was she thinking? She wasn’t going to marry him, and she didn’t care anything about his divorced-then-dead wife. Sadie was going to run away, with or without his help.
She plastered a smile on her face. “Excellent news. As if you ever had a choice.”
His lips twitched. “I should think you’d be grateful for my sacrifice.”
“Oh, please. Let’s not out-martyr one another. Can I go shopping now? I cannot get married the day after tomorrow in your maid’s best dress.”
Sadie’s mind was whirling like the inside of a well-made watch. There was a train station in Stroud. If she could somehow get away during a shopping expedition, she could escape this insanity. The only one who deserved to be institutionalized was her father. She was being forced into a marriage just because she had been caught half-undressed and her bum patted! Surely grounds for a lifetime of misery had to be more substantial than that.
She knew the real reason. Her father had come to financial terms with Tristan. He would get sufficient funds “to give his blessing,” and would no doubt be bleeding his unwilling son-in-law dry for the rest of his life. No matter how much money Tristan had inherited from his grandmother, it would never be enough to assuage Sadie’s father. The duke was a very expensive man.
That was another reason to run away. Tristan might be a little grim, but he didn’t deserve to be saddled with the Duke of Islesford for a father-in-law.
“I cannot take you shopping. There is the matter of the special license which must be obtained in London. I leave tomorrow.”
If Tristan was going to London, she’d have to go in the other direction.
“Very well. What about Mrs. Anstruther? Or Miss Churchill?” She clapped her hands. “I have it! Mrs. Fitzmartin! You surely cannot object if I am chaperoned by the vicar’s wife.”
Tristan’s eyes narrowed. “The woman is a million years old. I don’t trust you not to try and trick her.”
“I would never do such a thing!” Sadie lied.
“Let me give it some thought. I will see you at dinner.”
The last thing on earth she wanted was to sit across a table from her sputtering father. “I’ll have a tray in my room.”
“No, you won’t, you coward. We will face your father together.”
Sadie was not a coward. She had done any number of courageous things in her life, things that had required intestinal fortitude and her celebrated cunning. Hadn’t she just tried to send a message to the outside world just yesterday? She supposed she could face her parent, but it would be nice to do so in proper clothing.
She’d go back to the attic and see what could be found for tonight. Also, she would sneak Tristan’s old suit and other disguising items down for her next adventure. While she couldn’t leave for Stroud with a suitcase, there was no reason why she couldn’t layer some clothes underneath this hideous baggy dress.
“Why are you smiling like that all of a sudden?” Tristan asked, suspicious.
Sadie schooled her face. It wouldn’t do to reveal her plan. Tristan
seemed fiercely intelligent even if he couldn’t figure out how to wiggle out of an unnecessary betrothal.
But then, her father could be most persuasive. Dukes did seem to get their way more often than not, as did their daughters. “Tell me about your grandmother.”
“What?”
“Your grandmother. The one who left you the pots of money you tried to bribe my father with.”
Tristan sighed and poured himself more brandy. “She was a scandal. Like you.”
“Thank you very much,” Sadie said sweetly. “What were her crimes?”
“She refused to marry the man her father picked out for her. See, I told you she was just like you.”
“And the poor girl was sent to Puddling. What else?”
“Isn’t that enough? Disobedient daughters are the very devil. Thank God we will have none.”
Sadie bit her tongue. It was far too soon to tell about that sort of thing. One day she might quite like to be a mother, although the thought of crusted nappies and spit-up was less than appealing at the moment.
“Is that her portrait over the fireplace? I saw one like it at the parish hall.” She’d asked some questions then and had gotten an earful from Mrs. Fitzmartin. Tristan’s grandmother was a byword of bad behavior.
Tristan looked up. “Yes. One of the proper ones. I believe there are some nudes in the attic.”
Sadie clapped a hand over her mouth. She had never dreamed of posing without clothes, but then again she didn’t know any artists who might have helped immortalize her.
“How did she come to marry your grandfather?”
“Oh, the usual way. They were caught in a compromising position, and Bob’s your uncle. It was a fait accompli, and entirely engineered by my grandmother. Evidently my grandfather never seriously objected.”
No wonder he seemed sanguine about their sudden marriage. He was repeating family history. But it still was ridiculous.
“They had a love match, although Granny Maribel never really settled down. Ran my grandfather ragged.” He took a sip of his drink. “You would have liked her.”
“She sounds fascinating.” Lady Maribel had welcomed her wedding and never thought to run away.
Sadie was no Lady Maribel.
She stood up. “I’m bound for the attic again. Please see that I’m not disturbed. That includes you. You’ve seen quite enough of my legs for one day.”
She enjoyed the beginnings of Tristan’s blush. He rose and opened the study door for her, and she sailed out, nose high in the air.
That worked until she had to climb all the stairs to the attic and had to watch where she was going. A loose carpet on a stair tread was almost her undoing. She couldn’t run away if she was bedridden with a broken leg.
Aha! If she couldn’t escape tomorrow, she’d have to pretend to be ill. Maybe she could even enlist kind old Dr. Oakley’s help. Surely he wouldn’t want her to be forced into a marriage no one in their right mind would want.
And that was a problem. Tristan would suspect she was just playacting again. He’d probably send for a doctor from London. A hospital full of them: Specialists who would look straight into her eyes and down her throat and know that she was faking.
Lots of things to consider. Sadie had a headache already and she hadn’t even dined with her father or the man he insisted she marry.
But maybe it was the damned brandy. She’d never had any before today, and still couldn’t see what the fuss was about.
Chapter 14
“Fucking hell.” Tristan usually tried not to swear, or to show any emotion, really. He’d had enough of unfettered emotion—ducking vases and crockery and flying books for the five miserable years of his marriage and even after when Linnet had come to weep and plead for him to cease the divorce proceedings. When the tears hadn’t worked, she’d resorted to her old tricks, and Tristan bore a scar in a very private place to prove it.
But he was not going to have a bastard carry the Sykes name, and the way Linnet had been going, that was all too probable. He’d been as hard-hearted as he knew how to be.
He had no way then of knowing she had a cancer of the womb, and that conception would never have been possible. She’d died, alone and in disgrace.
Tristan carried the guilt still. If he’d somehow been able to please her—
No. It was pointless to try to change history. To change his nature, or hers, for that matter. Linnet had been a born coquette—flighty, irresponsible, impassioned. Perhaps she’d somehow known her life would be cut short and tried to experience all of the forbidden. She had been much too young when they married, barely seventeen, and had never really grown up.
But by God, he had to change the present, because, according to the furious telegram from the Duke of Islesford, his fiancée had done a bunk.
Tristan knew he shouldn’t have trusted Lady Sarah to behave in his absence. A shopping trip to Stroud for bride clothes indeed. With three blasted chaperones he’d deputized—a maid, the Reverend Fitzmartin, and his wife. Five if Old Fred the coachman and his son, Young Fred, were counted. He would have been better off shackling her to Anstruther, although the sight of a woman’s unmentionables in a dressmaker’s shop might have caused the man an apoplexy.
A wasted day. All those papers he’d signed at his solicitor’s and bank, so many his hand grew tired. The useless special license in his pocket. Tristan looked around his London flat to see if he’d overlooked anything. A hansom cab was waiting downstairs to take him to the railway station. He’d arrive on the very last train as planned, in preparation for tomorrow’s wedding-that-would-not-be.
He raked a hand through his hair and clapped a hat on his head. Where in hell could she have gone? Lady Sarah had no money and no clothes. As far as Tristan knew, she had no friends in Gloucestershire to help her. Stroud was unfamiliar, although the station was easy enough to find. She could have boarded a train to anywhere.
Damn it. As head of the Puddling Rehabilitation Foundation’s governors, Tristan was responsible for her well-being. The Duke of Islesford would make a stink that would impossible to cloak with all of the Sykes House’s garden flowers.
But the duke was right there in Puddling. He should have been in charge of his own daughter, shouldn’t he?
Fat chance. No one was in charge of Lady Sarah. Tristan wasn’t going to skate away so easily.
The dark trip home seemed endless. He tried to distract himself by reading the architectural contracts he’d brought with him by the train carriage lights, but all the words and numbers fuzzed together.
The madwoman would be the death of him. If he couldn’t concentrate on his work, what would become of his reputation? It had been difficult enough to redeem himself in the eyes of society after the divorce. A man who couldn’t control his wife—well, how could he be trusted to oversee the building of a house? Workmen were known to be wayward too.
Tristan was met at the station by Old Fred and his son, who practically pulled their fetlocks and apologized profusely for letting Lady Sarah get away this morning. He checked his watch—a long twelve hours ago. Twelve hours was a lot of time to get up to mischief.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I should have locked her up,” Tristan said, halfway meaning it. The princess in the tower—he imagined her shouting the walls down, or worse, donning trousers and descending efficiently to her escape.
Puddling was quiet as they passed the locked gates that closed the town off from the main road. If the other governors had been notified of Lady Sarah’s disappearance, there was no obvious sign of distress. No villagers with flambeaux were beating the bushes or marching off to Stroud.
Less than a mile beyond, Old Fred turned into the long avenue that led home. Tristan saw that Sykes House was ablaze again, every window lit. These damned Marchmains were costing his family too much money.
He’d steeled himself to deal with the duke, or so he thought. But he hadn’t expected the man to burst fr
om the house as if he’d been shot out of a cannon, if one wore a paisley dressing gown to fly across the air.
Tristan didn’t wait for the carriage steps to be put down before he dropped to the driveway. “Any news, Your Grace?”
“Not a word! What are you going to do to bring my daughter back?”
“I’ll go in to Stroud first thing tomorrow morning.” The station master’s office had been closed when Tristan got off the train, otherwise he would have asked questions.
“Your man already did that. Made up some story, but I didn’t believe a word.”
“Anstruther?”
“I have no idea what the man’s name is. Looks like a ghoul.”
“I’ll go home and speak with him.”
“What do you mean?”
Tristan attempted to be patient. “I already explained I do not live in my father’s house. I have a cottage on the property. And if you don’t mind, it’s very late.”
The duke’s face flushed in the lamplight. “You dare to talk of sleep when my only child is missing? She could be lying in a ditch this very moment! Dead or, or decapitated!”
The duke’s imagination was working overtime. Frankly, after the things Lady Sarah had said about the man, Tristan was surprised Islesford was as upset as he appeared to be. If Lady Sarah was indeed unhappily headless, her fortune would go to her father, wouldn’t it?
“Lady Sarah is a very resourceful young woman. Let’s not borrow trouble. I will do my utmost to find her—you have my word.”
“Pah. As if your word means anything. You all promised to protect and fix my little girl, and where is she now? You don’t know; no one knows. What kind of a place are you running anyway? I’ll see to it no one of quality is ever snookered by any of you again! I’ve cabled my solicitors again, and a detective agency in London. Their man should be here tomorrow.”
“Excellent,” Tristan lied. Damn. If word got out that Puddling had lost a Guest, it would harm their entire operation.
Seducing Mr. Sykes Page 8
