The Wedding Game

by Christine Merrill

  He could see the lines of her face now, so classically pure in form that he could barely stand to look at them. She was beautiful. Not the equal of Belle, but her superior. Why had he not noticed before, when there had been more time?

  It was the eyes, he suspected. He’d been so caught up in their appearance that he’d never looked past them to the woman within. While Belle might have a sweet soul, it was childlike and untouched. But Amy had seen things and known them and been marked by them. She was ageing, like wine, and he longed to drown himself in her.

  ‘If you do not love me,’ she whispered, ‘then lie to save my feelings. I will not feel so foolish, then. I will tell myself it could not be helped because we were in love.’

  Light or dark, perfect or ugly, she had not changed from the first day he met her. He laughed. ‘You are not supposed to suggest such things. It is unfeminine.’

  ‘To request that you lie, or to pretend to believe you when you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Either, I think,’ he said. ‘And I am finished with lying, for all the good the truth is likely to do me. I love you, Amelia Summoner.’

  ‘Says a man who has no heart.’ She sighed.

  ‘It must have grown back, but it is beating as if it might break.’ He covered her hand with his and moved it so she could feel the thumping in his chest. ‘I love you,’ he said again, enjoying the sound of the words.

  ‘And I love you,’ she said, nestling closer to him. ‘Why does this not make everything easy?’

  ‘If we were the last people on Earth, it would.’ He laid a hand on her bare hip, wishing that there were more time so that he might love her again before they had to part.

  ‘Go to my father and tell him you cannot marry Belle. You must—’ She stopped suddenly, as if realising that she could not be the one to demand a proposal, she could only agree to it.

  He thought of the destruction it would bring to his reputation and to Belle’s should he cry off. The idea fascinated him. To be able to stand in the ruins of his old life and start again. ‘If I left her, would you be there, waiting for me?’

  ‘I could not love a man who hurt her,’ she said without hesitation.

  ‘So, your answer is no.’ He felt another part of him break. ‘You do not have to worry. There will be nothing left of me to marry. If I break the engagement, your father swears he’ll ruin me.’

  The sweet woman in his arms let loose with a most unladylike curse.

  He laughed, in spite of himself. ‘He wanted to protect your sister. He was afraid, once I knew about her, I would abandon her.’ The oath to Summoner was a growing weight in his gut, crushing the air from his body and ruining the moment. But, at least, now he understood the need for it.

  Swear that you will never hurt my daughter.

  Amy could fend for herself, but Belle needed protection.

  ‘If either of you had listened to me in the first place...’

  ‘You were right, all along,’ he agreed.

  ‘It would be better to be happy than right,’ she said.

  It was true, but it did no good to think about it. ‘I swore,’ he repeated. ‘And it would be better if my word had any value. But it does not. No matter what I swore, I cannot follow through on it.’

  ‘If you jilt her, she will be ruined as well.’ Amy’s voice was bleak as she realised the truth.

  ‘It would be even worse should I cast her off to marry you,’ he agreed. ‘But there is a way out.’

  For some of us, at least.

  ‘Let us take it, whatever it is,’ she said hurriedly.

  ‘First, I must tell you a story.’ And he had best do it quickly. The room was getting lighter by the minute. ‘Once upon a time, there was a foolish young man...’

  ‘Do I know him?’ she asked playfully.

  She still had hope that the ending was a happy one. He swallowed the shame that welled in his throat and went on. ‘He was the son of a cabinet maker. His father died leaving him without money or prospects and a widowed mother to care for.’

  She made no answer in response. It made him wonder if a horror of such an ordinary birth had stunned her to silence.

  ‘Then, one day, a beautiful and powerful woman caught sight of this young man...who was little more than a boy, really...’ Seventeen had been old enough for some things. Wisdom was not one of them. ‘And they entered into an arrangement.’

  ‘Who was the lady?’ It was barely a whisper.

  ‘You will know the truth soon enough.’ He tightened his hold on her hip, waiting to see if she shrank from his touch.

  She did not pull away.

  ‘And you and she...’

  ‘I came to help with the apple harvest,’ he said, ‘hoping to be paid in windfalls.’ His mind wandered back to the distant autumn day he’d first seen Cassandra. ‘She was taking an afternoon ride, when she saw me.’ And he had seen her, golden in the slanting sunlight. The memory of it still made his body quicken after fifteen years.

  ‘You must have been very handsome,’ Amy murmured, as if she could picture the scene herself.

  ‘And she was very beautiful. I loved her,’ he said. It had been true, at first. ‘I could not help it. She was magnificent. Charming and witty and not too many years older than I. And there were advantages to the arrangement.’ Other than one that his loins had noticed from the first.

  ‘You were not educated abroad,’ she said, her voice flat.

  He laughed in surprise. ‘If that is what you take from my confession, you are very innocent indeed. No, I was not formally educated, in this country or another. But it is amazing what can be accomplished when one wishes to impress a woman and has access to a library.’ He could still remember those early days, alone with all those books and the feeling, almost like hunger, for all the things he did not know.

  ‘I read,’ he said, simply. ‘And I questioned. And then I read some more. But there are still so many questions left unanswered. Why are some men dukes, and others common? Why do some men make the laws when others can only be punished by them? The system is not ordered by their innate wisdom or lack of it. I have seen that it takes little more than a decent tailor and a set of proper manners to pass amongst the upper classes unnoticed.’

  ‘But people think you are Cottsmoor’s son,’ she said, obviously still stunned.

  For a moment, he wondered if she meant to cry out the truth and see him cast down into the depths that had been his future, to work with his hands and keep his eyes and mouth tightly shut so that he might not upset a divinely ordained system. ‘It began as a joke between the Duke and his wife,’ he said. ‘He said I was there so much, I might as well be family. To spite him, she told someone I was his son. To spite her in return, he agreed and encouraged me in my studies.’

  ‘He knew about you and...’

  ‘...his wife,’ Ben finished for her. ‘He did not care. They loathed each other. Cottsmoor and I became quite good friends. But the better he liked me, the more she hated us both. And yet, she did not want to let me go.’ And then it had been too late for him to get away. ‘My love for her died, long before she did.’ He had stared down into the grave and felt nothing but relief.

  ‘By then the world was convinced that you were a duke’s son. You acted like one, at least.’

  He shrugged the shoulder that supported her head. ‘I am sorry to disappoint. But it is better to be thought a bastard than known as a paid satyr to a lady of importance.’

  ‘And the resemblance between you and the Duke?’

  ‘Purely coincidental,’ he replied. ‘But my family has lived on the Cottsmoor lands for generations. It is possible that a previous duke hid a natural son close by and there is some distant blood connection.’

  ‘And he encouraged you to exploit it,’ she said and then fell into silence.

&nbs
p; ‘If he’d thought I could carry it so far, he’d have been just as likely to see me swing at Tyburn. But he is not here and I am.’

  ‘And planning to stand for office,’ she finished.

  ‘After a long acquaintance with a member of the House of Lords, is it so surprising that I might want to use the education I gained to see that men like him are not the only ones making the laws?’

  To this, she had no response. If this had been enough to shock her, he did not dare tell her the rest of the truth. But he did not want her to be disgusted with him. He wanted to hear her reassurance that it did not matter who he truly was. Could she still love a man who had gained his current life by taking money for the use of his body?

  At last, she spoke. ‘You said before that there was a way out of our current predicament,’ she said, as if his past did not matter to her. ‘What did it have to do with what you just told me?’

  ‘I thought it would be obvious,’ he said. ‘I have given you all you need to betray me. If you go to Cottsmoor village, you will find someone who can corroborate what I have told you and give you some parts of the story I am honour bound not to divulge. I promise, they are more than enough to shock even the most jaded gossip.’

  ‘And what am I to do with this information once I get it?’

  He carefully disengaged himself from her caress, threw back the sheet and swung his legs out of the bed. ‘Get the whole truth and bring it back to London. Share the news and ruin me. Your father will be forced to break the engagement immediately and Belle will be free.’

  ‘But what about us?’ There was a plaintive note in her voice that told him she had still hoped for a future. But when she sat up, it was on the opposite side of the bed, far from him.

  He shook his head, wondering if she could see the denial in the dim light. ‘The truth will out and I will not have to break my oath to your father.’

  Or to Cottsmoor’s family.

  The thought actually cheered him for a moment. ‘And if I am not worthy of Belle, then I am certainly not worthy of her sister. There is no hope for us, my love.’

  ‘But Belle will be free,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘I will marry her, if that is what you think best. And I will care for her, just as I promised. But you have seen her with me. She does not want this.’

  ‘She does not,’ Amy agreed.

  ‘If we truly want what is best for her, we should not force her to accept it. Help me to end this farce of an engagement. Ruin me. But what we have...’ He shook his head again. ‘It is over, my love. Do what is right, I beg you, no matter how much it hurts.’

  Then he left her and walked down the hall to his room.

  Chapter Twenty

  Amy was gone before breakfast had finished, making mock apologies about a sick aunt. She must have explained to her sister, for Belle nodded along with the news as if it was the most natural thing to be left behind in the middle of a family crisis with the man who had walked out on their engagement ball.

  He gave her a reassuring smile across the table. ‘She will be back soon.’

  ‘Because we do not have an aunt,’ Belle said quietly. ‘Once she remembers that, she will come back for me.’

  ‘You are probably right. In the meantime, please, make yourself comfortable in my home.’ He tried to think of something that might interest her. ‘There is a fresh litter of pups in the stables. I am sure none of them is as nice as Mellie, but they might welcome a visit.’

  She smiled and rose from the table. ‘I will go see them directly.’

  Now there was nothing left for him but the waiting. Amy would find the truth and form her own opinions of it. Then, if she was wise, she would do what he hoped and spread the news about London, bringing a halt to this foolishness.

  If she broke the scandal, she would be seen as the brave rescuer of her sister. Belle would have survived a narrow escape from a duplicitous villain and not become the cast-off goods of a gentleman. The result would be the same. But in society, appearances were everything. At the end of the day, Arabella must be blameless.

  When he looked up, young Cottsmoor was standing in the doorway of the breakfast room, hands closed into fists and held out before him. Slowly he opened them, revealing the black and white kings of the library chess set. His expression turned hopeful.

  Ben pointed to black, as he always did, and smiled back. Then he led the way to the library.

  ‘You will regret giving me the advantage of the first move,’ the boy said with a grin, once the door was closed. ‘I have been practising since the last time we were together.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, Your Grace,’ he replied. ‘If only for the sake of the country. We need clever men to lead us.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Lovell,’ he said and broke out in snorts of laughter. ‘Can you not call me John, like you used to?’

  Ben smiled. ‘It would be a great insult for me to be so informal, Your Grace.’

  ‘I promise not to chop off your head, or whatever I am supposed to do to people who do not behave.’ He moved a pawn tentatively forward.

  ‘Ask your uncle. I am sure he will have the answer,’ Ben said.

  ‘He would say you should be whipped,’ the boy said, sounding slightly worried.

  ‘Because he does not like me,’ Ben agreed.

  Stay away from the boy. Now that Cassandra is dead, you have no business with the family, you worthless cicisbeo.

  Ben’s lips thinned in a bitter smile. Dislike was too mild a word to describe what old Cottsmoor’s brother felt for him. But it did not matter. They were only words, after all. He’d heard worse than that from Cassandra, towards the end.

  He stared down at the board. It was clear that what had seemed a hesitant beginning had been a ruse to draw his knight. He countered and took a pawn.

  ‘Then I will not tell Uncle when I visit with you. And I insist, as Cottsmoor, that when we are alone, I will be John and you will be Ben, just like it used to be.’ The boyish laughter had disappeared and the Duke stared coldly into his eyes, demanding obedience.

  ‘Very well, John,’ said Ben with an impressed nod. ‘You are becoming quite intimidating.’ Though still a cub, he was definitely a lion in the making. And the cub had just taken his bishop.

  ‘In a few years, I will care for nothing and no one,’ John answered in a surprisingly adult tone. ‘I will think no further than my own pleasure, just like the last Cottsmoor.’

  ‘You will not,’ Ben said, in a tone just as imperious as the boy’s had been. ‘You will think of your King, your country and the needs of its people. The Dukedom is a reward for the honourable service of the first Cottsmoor. His successors should prove themselves worthy by their actions.’

  ‘That is not what the last Cottsmoor would have said,’ John said. ‘Not to me, at least. He was too busy doting on the heir.’ Anger made John reckless. He had exposed his queen.

  Unfortunately, what the boy said was true. The Duke had doted on his first son to the exclusion of everyone else. Though John had been born into the most privileged of lives, the loneliness of his years was still sharp in both their memories. ‘Cottsmoor had his reasons.’

  John responded with a grim smile, ‘And if he can see me now, he regrets them.’

  ‘As do I,’ Ben said softly. ‘I know how difficult it can be to have no father.’ And yet he did not know at all what it must have been like for John. When Ben’s own father had died, the loss had nearly crushed him. But it was very different to share a house with one man who refused to acknowledge you existed and another who knew but was forced by circumstances to deny it.

  ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ John reminded him.

  ‘I should have found a way,’ Ben said. The regret lingered like a bitter aftertaste.

  ‘It was not as if you
were allowed in the nursery.’

  ‘It would not have been appropriate,’ Ben agreed. Even Cottsmoor’s extreme generosity had its limits. They stopped well short of his wife’s paramour dandling infants and playing at peekaboo.

  ‘And you did not leave me,’ John reminded him.

  He had been young and stupid. But he had known in less than a year that his love for Cassandra was a poisonous thing. As more years passed, even his lust had died. And yet he had stayed with her, serviced her, taken her money and hated himself for it. ‘I did not leave you,’ he said.

  John sensed the moment of sentimental weakness and took advantage, moving his bishop to attack. ‘Check.’

  Ben laughed and gave him a nod of approval before moving a knight to protect his king. ‘But you will be a better duke than he was, because of it. Hardship makes you stronger.’

  John sighed. ‘Sometimes, I wish I did not have to be quite so strong.’ Then he moved his queen and smiled again. ‘Check.’

  Ben moved a rook. ‘You might have to be stronger yet. There is something we must discuss.’

  ‘You mean there is something you wish to say that has not been said,’ John corrected, taking the rook. ‘Check.’

  This time, Ben moved his king. ‘Sometimes, you are too smart for your own good. In the near future, you will hear unpleasant rumours about me.’

  ‘And I am not to believe them?’ the boy said, contemplating the next move.

  ‘On the contrary, they will all be true,’ Ben said.

  John’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing recently,’ Ben assured him. ‘But Summoner knows I am not your brother. He has threatened to reveal it. Miss Amelia Summoner is on her way to Cottsmoor to talk to my mother.’

  ‘I will make them stop,’ John said, falling easily into the role of autocrat again. ‘Check.’

  ‘Do not bother yourself.’ Ben rescued his king yet again. ‘I have decided it is better for all concerned if I call his bluff. One cannot blackmail a man who has no secrets.’