When she’d been a small girl, she’d been tiptoeing back and forth over a fallen branch that extended out into her father’s lake. In one faulty misstep, she’d tumbled into the frigid water. Pulled down by her skirts, the water had muted her cries so all she heard was the panicky hum of silence and her own muffled screams. She’d fought her skirts, to scrabble her way back to the surface, choking and gasping until she’d grabbed that rough trunk and pulled herself back to safety. Her chest heaved in the same desperate rhythm of that long ago day.
“You may go,” Father said and dragged his ledgers forward.
There was a finality to his dismissal that numbed her. For if she wed Lord Tremaine, her spirit would die. She would become a lady to breed him babes and adorn his arm as a proper societal matron and the light would go out until all that remained was a shadow of a person…like her mother.
With stiff movements, Genevieve stood. “You may go to hell,” she seethed and took an unholy glee in the way he sputtered.
When she’d stepped out into the hall and had the safety of a closed door panel between them, Genevieve tore down the corridor. She raced so quickly through the halls, her lungs strained from the pace she’d set. Distance between herself and the future had laid before her, she collapsed against the wall. Her chest rose and fell and she borrowed support.
In all her reservations of returning to London, she’d been riddled with anxiety about being the focus of Society’s attentions. Never, had she anticipated…this. This absolute and total disregard for her wishes, and hopes, and dreams harkened to feudal times where daughters were chattel. A bitter-sounding laugh bubbled past her lips. But then, isn’t that what women ultimately were? Their interests and desires mattered not, but rather the wealth attached to their name. Gentlemen wanted docile, biddable wives to give them babes while they carried on as they pleased.
She pressed her eyes closed as her breathing settled into a calm, even rhythm. Given her father’s determination, nothing short of a miracle would prevent him from going forward with binding her to Lord Tremaine and Genevieve had long ago given up on—
“There you are, my lady.” The faintly out-of-breath tones of her father’s normally unflappable butler brought her eyes flying open. “You’ve a visitor.” She cocked her head. At this hour? No fashionable visits were made at this time. “Your maid has been searching for you. I’ve asked the gentleman to await you in the Blue Parlor—”
Her heart sank to her toes. “A visitor,” she repeated, her voice blank. As the butler spoke, her thoughts rolled together. The earl would come and put his formal offer to her and her father would expect nothing but her acceptance. I cannot do this. I cannot…
“My lady?”
She blinked slowly. With the butler staring perplexedly at her, she turned and marched onward to the Blue Parlor. She reached the edge of the doorway and nausea roiled in her belly. To steady her trembling fingers, she smoothed them down the front of her gray skirts. Yes, nothing short of a miracle would save her now. Schooling her features, Genevieve stepped inside. “Lord Tr…” Her greeting trailed off, as her gaze landed on a tall, broadly powerful, well-muscled gentleman who was most assuredly not the aging earl. “You,” she blurted.
Standing at the empty hearth, with his hands clasped at his back, Cedric, the Marquess of St. Albans, turned slowly. The patently rakish, and more than slightly charming, grin on his lips kick-started her heart. “Me.” He winged up a golden eyebrow. “Were you expecting another?” All the trepidation and horror at her father’s goals for her momentarily lifted. And for whatever reason that Cedric found his way in her home now, she would be eternally grateful in ways he’d never know or understand for the distraction he presented from the hellish situation her father would impose.
Avoiding his question, she slipped further into the room. “I am sorry,” she murmured. “I did not expect…” She bit off those additionally revealing words. She’d been closeted away in the country for so long she’d ceased to be the young lady to masterfully handle exchanges. Drawing in a deep breath, she shoved aside apologies for who she was. “I am surprised to see you here,” she admitted with an honesty that deepened his grin and set off a dangerously familiar fluttering in her belly, momentarily obliterating the horrifying intentions her father had for her.
He took another step closer and waggled his eyebrows. “A good surprised, Genevieve?”
She’d wager there was no other kind where this dangerously skillful rake was concerned. “Indeed,” she conceded with a smile of her own.
For, when Cedric, the Marquess of St. Albans, was around, she ceased to be the sorrowful, lonely creature she’d been all these years. She recalled how to smile, laugh, and talk again. Genevieve knew not why or how he elicited those carefree feelings inside her, better suiting the naïve girl she’d once been.
She only knew—she enjoyed it.
Chapter 13
Cedric really should be focused on the business that had forced him out of bed and into a respectable home at this ungodly hour. Yet, Genevieve Farendale had a smile to rival the song of a siren at sea, and as she settled her willowy frame into the King Louis XIV chair beside him, he froze, fixed on the sharp angles of her face, accentuated by the tightly drawn back strawberry blonde tresses. Desire ran through him. For with the passionate embraces they’d shared, he’d had a glimpse of those strands loose about her shoulders and was riveted with the possibility of seeing them fanned upon his pillow.
He took the seat nearest hers. And all of a sudden, a marriage of convenience presented more enticing for altogether different possibilities; ones that had nothing to do with the properties he’d acquire and freedom from his father’s machinations.
At his scrutiny, a pretty blush stained her cheeks. “What is it?” She patted that hideous chignon.
How very honest she was. That reminder drew him back to the reason for his visit. A woman who did not skirt or dance about words and inquiries was a perfectly practical creature who’d see the benefit of his offer.
Cedric stretched his legs out before him and hooked them at the ankles. “You were expecting another,” he observed, studying her through hooded lashes.
A sea of emotions paraded across her face; none of which he could sort out. She cast a hopeful look to the door. Alas, her maid, God love the woman, remained perfectly absent. When Genevieve returned her attention to him, she spoke hesitantly. “Yes.” She paused. “No.” Four endearing creases marred her brow. “Does it matter?” she turned a question, instead.
Carefully, Cedric tugged off one glove and then the other. He beat them together. “Yes, I rather believe it does.” It mattered for the plans he had for them together and not because of the pebble in his belly at the prospect of a suitor come to call. “Who is he?” he drawled, infusing a deliberate boredom into that inquiry, even as tension gripped him.
The lady’s smile slipped. Did she take umbrage with his bold questioning or that affected boredom? “I would rather not discuss him,” she said softly, glancing down at her folded hands.
The ladies he associated with, really no ladies at all, but bold, wicked creatures, would have, no doubt, taken his question as one borne of jealousy and delighted in goading him for it. With her truthful response, Genevieve was a manner of woman he did not have any experience in dealing with, and searching through his years of experience in enticing a lady, came up…empty.
Cedric dropped his half-grin, and uncrossed his ankles and sat upright. “Very well, then. Shall we discuss Aumere?” He asked the question that had dogged his thoughts from the moment she’d fled the countess’ dining table, until now.
Her lips twisted in a smile that was more a grimace than anything. “And I’d rather discuss him even less.”
This pressing need to know redoubled at her vague non-response. He folded his arms at his chest and continued to stare. “Did the gentleman offend you in some way?” Tension thrummed through his veins.
With a total lack of artifice, she dro
pped her chin into her hand. “Why should it matter to you?” she asked instead with a soft curiosity in her tone.
He shrugged. “It shouldn’t,” he said honestly and the lady stiffened. “Yet, it does.”
She met his gaze squarely. Then, she gave her head a befuddled shake. “I do not know what to make of you, my lord.”
“Cedric,” he gruffly insisted. He’d have his Christian name on her lips and his title, both present and future ones, could go hang. He lifted his shoulders again. “Nor is there anything to make of me.” He was, exactly as he was seen by Society. Unrepentant rake. Carefree rogue. Charmer.
An inelegant snort escaped her. “Come,” she scoffed. “Of course there is. You arrive here, unexpectedly and,” she waved a hand in his direction, “you wear that false grin.” He furrowed his brow. How did she see that? How, when no one else had ever delved underneath the surface of what he presented?
“Do you have a problem with my smile?” he asked, wholly unnerved by the depth of her awareness.
“Yes. No.” She threw her hands up and an exasperated sound escaped her. “I do not know. All I know, my…Cedric,” she amended when he gave her a pointed look. “Is I do not know what to make of you,” a rake, “showing up.” A panicky light lit her eyes as she darted her gaze to the door. When she returned her attention to him, she dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “Showing up in places where I happen to be and asking questions about me.” With the rapidity of her gesticulating, the lady was going to do herself injury. “What should I matter to you that you’d wonder about my former betrothed or the gentleman I’m expecting to call?”
He started. For people did not matter to him. Did they? He’d seen to it that he needed no one—not his mother, his bastard of a father, even his sister. Yet…
…the gentleman I’m expecting to call…
Which indicated there was, indeed, a suitor coming by and it mattered very much. Surely it only mattered because of Cedric’s own intentions for the lady?
Unnerved by that staggering revelation he couldn’t sort through, he reached inside his jacket and removed a small silver flask. “It matters,” he said at last and his revelation brought her lips faintly apart in a slight moue of surprise. As she proved remarkably unforthcoming, he altered his questioning. The lady’s eyes followed his every moment. “What happened with Aumere last evening?” He removed the top and took a quick swallow.
She opened her mouth and closed it. Then tried again. “Are you drinking at this hour?” The delicate shock there froze his hand halfway to his mouth.
He followed her disappointed stare to the drink in his hand. “Er…” He’d never mingled with polite Society. Of the people he kept company with, the least offense of which they were guilty was indulging in a spot of brandy in the morning hour.
“Would you drink in front of any lady, no less?” she asked tartly.
Offending the lady one intended to offer for, hardly proved favorable for said woman’s respective capitulation. As such, he put the stopper on and returned the flask to the front of his jacket. “I generally avoid ladies all together.” As soon as the words slipped out, he cursed himself. How was he, a practiced rake with a smooth tongue, bungling this so badly?
She narrowed her eyes but not before he detected a glimmer of outrage.
Fortunately for Cedric, Genevieve’s maid appeared at the entrance of the room.
“Delores, will you have tea readied for His Lordship and me,” she said, not taking her gaze from his.
Unfortunately for him, her obedient maid looked between them, spun on her heel and quickly darted off.
He told himself it truly only mattered for his intentions toward her. He told himself, as much…even as it felt like a lie. With her maid gone and not allowing Genevieve an opportunity to order him gone as well, he spoke. “You wonder about my motives,” he said with more solemnity than any topic he’d ever spoken of in the past. “You wonder why I should come here and put questions to you.” He leaned close, shrinking the space between them. “Given my reputation, you are, of course, wise to question anything where I am concerned. I’ve told you before, Genevieve, I like you.” And friendship between them was convenient for the marriage he intended for them.
She trailed her tongue over the seam of her lips and he swallowed a groan as lust slammed into him. Mayhap, a good deal more than friends, then. “I daresay you could have found all manner of details on my exchange with the duke in any of the gossip sheets,” she said and he clung to what had brought him ’round this morning and not on his body’s maddening response to her.
“Bah, scandal sheets,” he said slashing the air with his hand. “Rubbish that is best burned for kindling.” Her eyes softened. He’d not mention that he’d thoroughly read each scandal sheet for information about the lady that morning. Having been present and witness to her magnificent showing last evening, he recognized the rot printed on those pages.
She glanced to the open door and then looked to him. “The gentleman…” Crimson fired her cheeks, stirring his intrigue, all the more, “was indecent with his words and actions.” And now he had his answer, which was really no answer at all. Instead of being satisfied with at last a vague knowing what had resulted in her magnificent display, it fueled a thousand questions and wonderings. He gritted his teeth so tightly, pain shot along his jaw. As she continued speaking, he struggled to attend her, while his thoughts meandered down a path that entailed him bloodying Aumere senseless.
“Who were you expecting a moment ago?” he asked, neatly returning them to the question she’d sidestepped.
The earlier glimmer in her green eyes dimmed and left in its place a stark emptiness that chilled.
Desperate to drive back that melancholy, he stuffed his gloves inside his jacket. “A game of short answers then? Single syllable word responses with no limit to the number of words in your sentence, as long as they are single syllable words.”
His words rang a startled laugh from her. “Surely you jest,” she said as her shoulders shook with mirth.
“Why must I be?” he countered, shifting forward in his seat.
She pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “Because rakes do not simply show up unexpectedly at a lady’s home and ask her to take part in parlor games.”
It was hardly in his favor if the lady saw him as nothing more than a rake. “Do you eagerly await a suitor?”
She snorted. “Hardly.”
He made a tsking noise. “That is two syllables, love.”
For a long moment, the lady said nothing and he expected her to abandon the game as foolhardy. Then, she wetted her lips. “No. Not at all.”
A lightness filled his chest as she, with her words confirmed that there was no eager suitor in the wings. He clapped his hands slowly. “Brava. A splendid four points.” Cedric captured his chin between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed. “For my next question, then.” Dropping his palms onto his legs, he leaned closer. “Who is the person you’re waiting for?”
Her mouth tightened so that the blood drained from the corners of her lips, but a spirited glimmer sparkled in her eyes. “He’s an old peer who wants a wife. A friend of my…” She paused, chewing at her lower lip as she searched for her next response. Then her eyes lit and she jabbed the air with her finger. “Da.” As soon as the word escaped her, it was as though reality sucked her back, draining the sparkle in her eyes.
Cedric ran his gaze over her face as his mind turned over her words. Then the slow, horrifying truth trickled in—the reason for the lady’s upset. “Your father intends to wed you to one of his friends.” No doubt, a faulty bid to bury the gossip and be rid of his daughter. Given his own grasping, emotionally deadened father, her words did not shock. He gripped the arms of the chair. Nay, rather they stirred fury inside.
Genevieve glanced down at the tips of her slippers. “Thank you for the diversion,” she said softly and then coughed into her hand. “Now, I would truly wish to speak of something else.”
Ignoring the lady’s faint pleading underscoring that request, he shoved to his feet and knelt at the foot of her chair. Her little shuddery gasp filtered the air between them. “Wh-what—?”
Uncaring if her maid or mother happened by, he brushed his bare knuckles over her cheek, savoring the satiny softness of her skin. “Who is he?” he asked quietly.
She pursed her lips and, for a moment, he expected she’d ignore this question, too. “The Earl of Tremaine.”
He choked. “Tremaine?” Cedric sank back on his haunches. The man was sixty-five if he was a day. It would be a sin before God if this vibrant, spirited woman was bound forever to that old, fat bastard. Furthermore, he’d little intention of losing his match of convenience with Genevieve to that lackwit.
“Those were my sentiments exactly,” she muttered, with a remarkable calm for a woman whose father sought to sell her on the Marriage Mart to a man old enough to be her grandfather.
Yes, the lady was remarkably low of options. With a furious father determined to marry her off to an ancient lord, her prospects were limited. The lady’s desperation worked only in his favor and, yet, even as he would have a marriage of convenience between them, he wanted her to come to the union not because he was her only choice.
He gave his head a hard shake. Bloody hell, why should he care if desperation fueled her acceptance? All that mattered was that she said yes and agreed to the terms he’d lay out before her. In a contract that would see him forever bound to one woman; a woman whose happiness he would be responsible for seeing to. His palms moistened and he brushed them on the sides of his breeches. What did he truly know of another person’s happiness?
Genevieve tipped her head. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
He furrowed his brow.
“Like you’ve swallowed a plate of rancid kippers.”
“Is there any good kipper, though?” he put in with an effortful grin that raised another laugh from Genevieve.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 44
