Rushed upstairs to a waiting hot bath and the attentions of the duchess’s personal maid, Adelaide had little time to contemplate these questions. A long soak and a change of clothes refreshed her sufficiently to tackle the matter. What had started as a random idea during her bath was now a full-blown suspicion. If her father’s mind was where she feared it was Marcus was in trouble.
“You are going to need my help, Your Grace,” she muttered. “Whether you want it or not.” She hoped she was not too late.
Once in the main hallway, she was about to ask the footman where she might find her parents, when a cacophony of voices left little doubt as to their location. She followed the noise to the drawing room and paused expectantly before the door. The footman appeared somewhat reluctant to do his duty. Wise man. She pushed the door open a crack and gave the young man in livery a wink.
“Perhaps we should wait and see what Miss Formsby-Smythe has to say on the matter.” The duchess’s voice had a muffled quality. Another sound in the room was attempting to drown her out.
“She will want to be married in St. George’s at the end of the summer. My dear Adelaide would not dare deprive me. I am her mother and I have looked forward to this since the day she was born.” These sentiments were punctuated with a pitiful sob. Ah yes, the sound of a weeping and pathetic Henrietta Formby-Smythe was capable of pushing a cavalry charge to the background, let alone a duchess’s quietly insistent tone.
Wait. Did her mother say wedding, married, and St. George’s all in the same breath?
“None of that matters, madame.” Marcus’s deep, slightly annoyed tone made Adelaide’s fingers twitch. “I am acquiring a wife and your daughter is acquiring a duke. I want it accomplished with all due haste, so we can all get on with our lives. The special license will be here within the week. Miss Formsby-Smythe will agree quick and quiet is better. She is, after all, very young. I am sure she will agree it is best to let me make these sorts of decisions.”
Yes, Marcus was going to need help to be sure. Adelaide was going to kill him.
Chapter Three
Her determined shove to the door revealed the entire unhappy scene. Mama sat on a lovely brocade sofa weeping into a handkerchief of what must be an entire bolt of Belgian lace. The Duchess of Selridge sat by her side and attempted to comfort her. Her efforts only succeeded in raising the volume of Addy’s mother’s wails to an ever more deafening level.
Marcus stood by the fireplace, one fisted hand on his hip and the other elbow propped up on the mantle in a pose of studied superiority and boredom. He had calmly announced his plans for her future and he had the temerity to look bored? She did not know how matters had arrived at this pass. It obviously fell to her to put a stop to it.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
A sudden silence fell as all eyes landed on her in an odd combination of shock and pity.
“My dear Miss Formsby-Smythe,” the duchess greeted her. “Are you quite recovered from your ordeal? Would you like some tea?”
Adelaide gaped at her in disbelief. Marcus and her father were ready to come to blows. Her mother’s weeping was well on its way to hurricane strength. The duke had, mere moments ago, announced their engagement without consulting her at all, and this woman asked if she wanted tea?
“What she would like is a marriage proposal and the posting of banns like any decent girl. And she shall have them or your son will suffer the consequences, my good woman.” Oh, for heaven’s sake. Her father’s friendship with the duchess and her late husband was an old one, or so she’d been led to believe. Her father had never addressed a lady, let alone a duchess so rudely. Worse, he actually favored this jumped-up marriage? She had timed her arrival perfectly, to say the least.
“My mother is the Duchess of Selridge, Mr. Formsby-Smythe. You would do well to remember it.” At least Marcus no longer looked bored. In fact, he looked furious. Good. Adelaide didn’t want to be spoiling for a fight alone.
“You are not helping, Selridge,” the lady in question warned him as only a mother could. “I am certain we can discuss this as civilized adults.”
“There is nothing to discuss,” Adelaide’s father snapped. “Unless there is a reason for haste other than expedience, Selridge? You assured me nothing happened last night. If nothing happened, why are you in such a hurry to marry? We all know this is not a love match.”
“Father, I hardly think—”
“There is nothing for you to think about, Adelaide Guinevere. You will have a husband to do your thinking from now on and about time too.”
Adelaide winced. No good came of her father using her full name.
“I assure you, I did not lay a hand on your daughter.” His quiet voice reminded Addy of the bone-shaking winds of a Yorkshire winter.
A look passed between them. They both knew it was not completely true. He had kissed her, held her in his arms whilst they slept. The memory of it warmed her like a down comforter. Still, nothing had happened that necessitated they be married. Such a precipitous act was nothing less than a monumental mistake for both of them. Wasn’t it?
“Do something, Wiliford.” Addy’s mother sobbed. She rose enough from her weeping swoon in the duchess’s arms to fix her husband with a piteous glare. “Think of the scandal of such a hasty wedding. I will never be able to hold up my head in good company again. And your poor, dear oldest boy, only gone six months, Emily. How can this one do this to my sweet, sweet girl?” The words poured out in an ever-increasing hysteria, punctuated by a dramatic collapse into the cushions of the sofa.
“Calm yourself, Henrietta, dear,” the duchess implored.
Adelaide turned away, her fists clenched to her chest. She stood on the narrow line between laughter and tears, and tried desperately to come up with the right thing to say. Her heart held entire orations, her head nothing at all. Of course, he couldn’t admit he’d kissed her. She didn’t expect a marriage proposal. However, this cold announcement with not an ounce of feeling, without a word to her, grated beyond bearing. She would be no man’s chattel and she certainly wouldn’t be rushed to the altar like some wanton debutante caught in the bushes with an unsuspecting duke. She dropped her hands and wiggled her fingers against her skirts.
Patience, Adelaide. Patience.
“Well, Your Grace, is there a reason you feel the need to insult my Addy by marrying her in a hushed-up wedding in the family parlor? When I gave you leave to court her that did not include permission to anticipate the wedding vows.”
Laughter and tears fled, quickly replaced by righteous outrage.
“You gave him leave to court me?” Adelaide stared at her father incredulously. Well, that certainly explained her parents’ permission for her to ride out in Marcus’s phaeton without a chaperone of any sort. For twenty years, they had watched her like a hawk. She should have known there was a reason for their sudden and uncharacteristic lack of judgment. When she turned to Marcus, his supercilious smile made her want to slap his face.
“Why do you think we came out here, girl?” her father asked, his unforgiving glare still fixed on the duke. “He wanted to look you over to see if you would do. I should have known he would do more than look with his reputation.”
“Father, this entire discussion is completely unnecessary. There is no reason on earth for His Grace to propose or to post banns.”
“The voice of reason at last,” Marcus said tightly. “She is absolutely right. There is no need for all of this romantic falderal. I had enough of that with Clementine. Adelaide and I will do quite well together without some big celebration. Romance has no place in a marriage, no place at all.” A chill fell over her heart at those words. His bitterness at the mere mention of Clementine’s name spoke volumes. The man who had held her so tenderly last night was gone, swept away as if he had never existed at all.
Adelaide swore she heard his mother groan. What she did not expect to hear was her own rather pointed response. “I am not my sister, Your Grace. However, hearing your thoug
hts on marriage, perhaps it is a mercy you were spared marrying her. Her romantic tendencies would have proved a trial for someone with your practical sensibilities, don’t you think?” She really must learn to control her unfortunate habit of speaking her thoughts out loud.
She adopted an air of disinterest, the very last emotion she was feeling. Battered and disappointed, yes, but never disinterested. The entire room held its breath for his reply. He appeared to be waiting for it as well. She had almost given up when he finally spoke.
“I am certain you are correct, Miss Formsby-Smythe.” Adelaide hated the sound of her name on his lips. “As you and Clementine are nothing alike, I daresay our marriage will be a model of civility.” As if he no longer cared to look at her, he turned to her father. “Given the notoriety of my last attempt to marry one of your daughters, you might reconsider your insistence on banns.”
When he glanced back at her, Adelaide’s face must have shown something of her thoughts. Marcus simply fell silent and stood there with his hands in the pockets of his hunting jacket. Then again, perhaps he’d finally noticed the silent movement of his mother’s lips.
The Duchess of Selridge appeared to be at prayer from the time Marcus opened his mouth. For what, Adelaide knew not. For her idiot son to shut up would have been Addy’s first guess. In their short acquaintance, the lady had presented herself as a capable no-nonsense sort of woman. It was a shame some of it did not rub off on Adelaide. Almost before she knew it the words simply burst out of her mouth.
“You kissed me, Marcus.” Definitely not sensible. Her dignity lay somewhere beneath her silk slippers, probably never to rise again. In spite of the painful ache in her heart she stepped closer to him and continued more quietly, in a tone only he could hear. “What was it, if not romance, when you kissed me senseless out on the moors before our little accident?” She winced at her mawkishness.
Her mother’s cries reached a level even slightly startling to her. Only the duchess’s expression grew more serene, as if something very important had come to her. Marcus’s face showed nothing, which stung most of all.
Addy regretted the disclosure of their kiss the moment she did it. She did not want Marcus to marry her out of a sense of duty. She hated the very thought of it. Someone once told her a wounded animal strikes out with whatever weapon it has. She understood now, but it did not make a marriage to Marcus under these circumstances right nor in the least fair.
What was it they said? When God wants to punish you, he gives you what you want. And Adelaide wanted Marcus. She had from the first moment she saw him standing across the ballroom in his cavalry uniform.
She did not want him like this, in some bloodless bargain of a marriage, a merger of their two families in which Adelaide was a mere substitute for her sister. She’d never planned to marry. Plain sisters of gloriously beautiful women seldom did, unless they had money.
Thanks to her Great Aunt Adelaide, she had money, but she refused to allow it or a hole in the ground and a passionate kiss to capture a husband for her. The maelstrom of dissonant words and accusations, punctuated by the timely swoons of her mother, faded to nothing when Marcus finally addressed her question.
“I have kissed dozens of women in my life, Miss Formsby-Smythe. Only someone as young and inexperienced as you would be so foolish as to believe it meant anything so maudlin as romance.” The other occupants of the room, even Adelaide’s father, gasped, but Marcus continued.
“My brother is dead, Miss Formsby-Smythe. He is not coming back. I doubt you will receive a proposal from another duke and none of the princes I know are in the market for a wife.”
“No one is more aware than I your dear brother is gone. If he were alive today, he would never allow this travesty of an engagement to pass.” What did Julius’s death have to do with Marcus’s proposal? She could not think at all, so disoriented was she by Marcus’s cruel words.
“If he were alive there would be no reason for this travesty, would there?”
A salty mist came over her eyes and prevented her from seeing Marcus’s face. She was grateful for that at least. A witty reply would be most welcome at this point, but nothing came to mind.
“You are quite right, Your Grace.” She chose her words with brutal care. “I was very foolish to believe anything you said or did. It is an error I won’t repeat.” She gathered her flattened dignity from beneath her shoes and addressed her still outraged father. “I am going upstairs to pack, Papa. I am inordinately tired of Yorkshire.”
“But Adelaide, dearest. What about the wedding?” Her mother’s wobbly smile and reddened eyes had no effect on her already broken heart.
“There will be no wedding, Mother. Not now. Not ever.”
She left the room without a backward glance. Her feet climbed the stairs and took her almost to her room before the tears started to fall.
The ormolu clock ticked along merrily whilst Marcus contemplated how suddenly chaos changed to silence. The Formsby-Smythes rushed out behind their daughter so quickly, he nearly forgot the presence of his mother. As if the Duchess of Selridge would allow anyone, especially her now only son, to forget her formidable presence. He waited patiently for her to begin. And waited. And waited.
Refusing to give in to her deliberate silence, he walked to the window and looked out over the gardens. The clock continued to tick. In spite of the lovely view, Marcus saw nothing save Addy’s face as she walked out the door. He rubbed the heel of his hand against the middle of his chest.
Unacceptable. He despised being manipulated. His life ceased to be his own the moment Julius died. No, before that. The moment he fell at Waterloo. He’d be damned if he would let an inexperienced young woman destroy his self-control and deny him the path he had set for his redemption. She would marry him, whether she wanted to or not. It wasn’t a terribly flattering thought, but he had no use for flattery.
“Mother, I —” Marcus turned to find his mother sitting, eyes closed, apparently talking to herself. “What on earth are you doing?”
The eyes that popped open to meet his were not those of a loving mother. They were more those of a lioness ready to eat her young.
“I am attempting to conceive of the proper way to address my son, who is also a duke, in terms that will not be an affront to either his title or mine.” She spoke with the bludgeoning precision of a trained boxer.
He hated it when she was precise. It usually meant she was trying to decide the ideal way in which to punish him without appearing to do so. Frightening.
“To hell with my title, Mother, what is it you want to say?”
“Yes, well.” She sniffed. “You have certainly done a bang up job of sending the title to hell, dearest. As I still have hopes of maintaining a scrap of a duchess’s decorum, I was attempting to arrive at a way to address you appropriate to this afternoon’s events.”
“Address me? What on earth do you mean? I am Marcus. Your son. Selridge. Will none of those do?”
“It may well take me a moment to get to those. The first words that come to mind are —You unmitigated arse. You addlepated bully. Or perhaps—I cannot believe I gave birth to such an idiot.”
“On the contrary, madam,” Marcus said as he collapsed into a chair before the hearth. “You seem to have arrived at any number of ways to address me.”
She smiled at him sweetly and moved to the teacart. After pouring a cup of tea, she added large portions of milk and sugar, and handed it to him before she resumed her seat on the sofa.
“As may be, my dear boy. However, addressing one’s son as an arse just isn’t done. Especially if he is a duke.”
“If memory serves ‘an arse’ was one of the more tender forms of address you used for Father.”
He took a long sip of the tea. She’d made it as Marcus, the boy, had taken it in his childhood. For some reason, it tasted just right for the man. Or perhaps, it was merely right for the circumstances.
“Your father was an arse a great deal of the time. I had h
igher hopes for you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, my dear.”
“Nonsense, Marcus. You never disappoint me. Confuse and confound me, yes, but never disappoint.”
“What is so confusing about my offer to marry Miss Formbsy-Smythe? It seemed a very straight forward proposition to me. Any number of women would be thrilled to receive such a proposal.”
“That may well be the problem, dear,” she suggested with a sly glance over the rim of her teacup. “Dozens of women?”
“Well.” He drained his cup and placed it on the hearth. “I cannot help it if women are attracted to me. I do have an old title and obscene amounts of money after all.”
“Thank God for that. Your skill with women certainly won’t attract them.”
That stung. Marcus gathered himself to respond, but his mother was not finished. She never was. She returned her cup to her saucer and sighed.
“I suppose I should thank God your skill with pistol and saber surpass that of your skill with women. You never would have made it through your first cavalry charge otherwise.”
“Perhaps you would prefer I have Julius’s skill with the fairer sex,” he replied, not at all certain from whence this continuing bitterness had come. “As I recall, he was ever surrounded by adoring throngs of them.”
“For all the good it did them,” she said serenely. “We both know Julius preferred men.”
Her calm announcement was a complete success. Marcus stared at her in utter amazement. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew, Marcus,” she said in a quiet but firm voice. “I was his mother.”
He saw the anguish of losing her eldest son in her eyes. She kept it hidden most of the time these days, but he knew it was always there. Just as his pain and resentment at the loss of his brother was with him, lurking in the shadows of his mind.
“Is that what this is all about, Marcus? Are you doing this out of some sense of duty to your brother?”
Was he so transparent to everyone, or just to the woman who had given birth to him?
Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1) Page 4
