“Asquith!”
“Asquith? I thought that was the tutor?”
For one moment more, Luc shut out that outside world with its shocked chatter. He took a deep breath and met Bianca’s wide-eyed gaze. Her smile was as tremulous as his. A man’s life can change in an instant.
“Ready?” Luc whispered.
She nodded and they turned to face the open door.
True to his word, Reggie had gathered a handful of people. There was Bagley and the Stanbury twins. Enough that no one could refute what they’d seen. Enough that reputations had been shot and scandal ignited.
“What is the meaning of this?” Bagley demanded. But there was a twinkle in his eye as he blustered.
Bianca let out a squeak and hid behind Luc’s back. He could feel the shaking of her body and her strangled laughter.
“Love, cousin,” Luc said as he started to laugh. “Love.”
Then he shut the door and shut them out. In a few minutes more, the news would have made the rounds and it would be time to face her father. But the deed was done.
He took Bianca into his arms. She smiled up at him brilliantly.
“I’m ruined,” she said happily. “You’ll have to marry me now.”
“You’re mine,” he said, mirth gone and emotion making his voice gruff. “I’ll never let you go.”
Two months earlier, he had spotted her across a street and fallen head over heels in love. And then he’d tumbled again and again. As he lowered his lips to hers, he knew that he’d always be tumbling, always falling, always be passionately in love.
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An Excerpt from
WED AT LEISURE
Chapter One
* * *
1809
Kate ran through the thicket, gasping, her face hot with suppressed tears. The governess would chide her for the stains and small abrasions to her dress once she returned to the house. But those monitions were nothing compared to her mother’s continued disdain.
The scent of moist earth and the sound of rushing water meant that she was close, that soon she could let go. Finally, she broke through the cluster of trees and bushes and made it to the water’s edge, where she dropped down to her knees, clutched at clumps of grass with her fists, threw her head back, and wailed.
“Ahem.”
Kate clamped her mouth shut and looked toward the familiar voice, embarrassment flushing her body. How humiliating.
The Earl of Bonhill sat under a tree, a book open on his lap, his trousers rolled up and his legs dangling into the stream that, a mile off, fed into the river, and that farther upstream offered her father a perfect spot for angling. The same stream that marked the boundary between the Colburns’ ducal seat and the Mansfields’ more modest estate. Here, however, titles hardly mattered. What did matter was that Peter had gotten there first and taken the best spot. And was now witnessing Kate in tears.
She hadn’t even known he was back from Harrow.
She scrambled to her feet, glaring at him, as anger was the only possible refuge from humiliation, and headed back to the thicket.
“You don’t have to run,” he said, the crunch of his footsteps on the fallen leaves growing louder as he came nearer. “I’ll go.”
For some reason that made her more upset and she stopped, whirled around to face him. He was sixteen, she knew. Four years her elder.
“It doesn’t matter if you do. It’s already ruined.” She wouldn’t be able to indulge in tears the same way anymore.
“Then maybe I can help.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Not anymore.”
“I’m—” She shut her mouth. It wasn’t worth arguing. After all, she had been crying.
“That’s right. The fearsome Kate Mansfield makes other people cry, but she’d never be caught with such lowering emotions herself.”
He was mocking her. Or needling her. Or . . .
“Just because you’re an earl, doesn’t mean you get to be cruel.”
“Someone didn’t do what you want? Didn’t let you have your way?”
Frustration welled up inside her. Why was he saying such things? Of course, it was just what everyone else echoed. Everyone but her mother.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said hotly, tears once again burning her eyelids.
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
And for some reason she did.
About her mother, who hated her, who said Kate was ugly because she was so dark, who criticized everything Kate ever did, and little Bianca could do no wrong. About how no one ever paid her attention unless she did something terrible.
“So you do it on purpose, then. All the fits and tantrums we hear about—you do that for attention.”
She flushed with mortification for the hundredth time that hour. She’d never thought about her reputation in the community. At twelve, her world barely existed beyond Hopford Manor. And then there was this suggestion he was making, and she wasn’t certain if it was a good thing or bad. But she knew one thing, she didn’t need attention, and his suggestion that she craved it made her seem terribly weak.
“As if I’d care what anyone thinks. Especially not you. Look at you. A spotted maypole!”
He flushed, which made those spots redden even more. There weren’t all that many, but anyone would be conscious of having such flawed skin. Kate’s was not. Not that one would know from the many admonishments her mother imparted about good care for one’s complexion.
“You’re a spoiled child, Kate Mansfield,” he pronounced, picking up his book from the ground. “Maybe someday you’ll grow out of it.”
She watched him leave in angry frustration, hands curled into fists. It didn’t matter that he was an earl and heir to a duchy, or that previously she had thought him nice and handsome and had even imagined growing up, falling in love with him, and becoming a duchess. From now on she’d stay as far away from him as possible.
1815
The prodigal son. Hah. How many men looked on their sons’ service to their country with pride, while his own father still refused to afford Peter even the slightest modicum of respect.
He took another gulp of the scotch in his flask. It was strong, much stronger than what he normally drank, but he was determined to like it. In any event, the more he imbibed, the better it tasted. There was a lesson in that surely.
He stumbled along the bank of the stream, perilously close to the edge, and as he reeled, arms out to balance himself, the thought that he might fall in made him laugh.
Why was that funny? He started laughing more.
Finally he reached the spot under the oak tree that had always been his favorite. Of course, the last time he’d been here he hadn’t yet left for the Continent. He’d been so young.
And that Mansfield girl had been there.
Catherine. Kate.
She’d grown up rather well. At church he’d seen her, long dark hair, dark eyes, ignoring everyone, including him. A bit too haughty for her own good, Reggie had said. And his brother should know, since he’d spent more time here in Waterford on Lew in the last five years than Peter had.
Reggie had had a good many things to say about Kate Mansfield. None of them good.
A pity.
He took another drink and then paused, flask to his mouth, and stared. At a pair of dark brown eyes in a pale face. She was what? Seventeen now?
“You aren’t crying,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“The last time I saw you here you were.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Not nearly enough.”
But maybe he was, because he couldn’t remember what they were talking about, or why Kate Mansfield was standing in
front of him, reaching for his flask.
She plucked it from his grasp and he stared at the air where it used to be before sliding his gaze to her.
She was sniffing at the opening.
“What is this? It smells horrible.”
“They call you a shrew, you know,” Peter confided.
“People say any number of things. Like your father.”
Yes, his father wasn’t particularly private about his opinion of his oldest son. Or his youngest, but Reggie didn’t seem to care.
He reached for the flask, found himself holding her hand. Which was smaller than his, with long, slender fingers, a tiny wrist, a soft palm.
Soft. She was so soft.
“Peter?” Her voice was soft, too, and he pulled her closer.
Closer.
Chapter Two
* * *
1819
Peter Colburn, the Duke of Orland, wasn’t entirely certain how he’d ended up in Brighton, standing on the side of the assembly room at Castle Tavern after having passed an uncomfortable night on the sofa in his friend Trumbull’s already crowded rented rooms. He certainly hadn’t intended to stop in the seaside town before heading home to his family’s country estate. First of all, it was the wrong direction. Second of all, if he had intended such a jaunt, he would have arranged for his own rooms months ago. He hadn’t stayed in such cramped accommodations since his days in the army. In three years, it was possible he’d gotten a bit soft. Or perhaps, he simply had raised his standards.
Nonetheless, here he was, nursing the sort of headache that came from reuniting with old friends, resulting in the need to recapture one’s younger and more inebriated days. After a too-long London season, in which he’d dutifully accompanied his aunt Winifred to events at which she attempted to match him to any young girl who possessed most of her teeth and a modicum of intelligence. Despite the complaints of his more marriage-minded friends, London’s ballrooms were populated with a fair number of personable, clever young women. Yet they were all utterly unexceptionable. Blending in to one another. All but one.
Kate.
Another touchstone from his youth.
It seemed she was everywhere, lighting up the ballrooms with her laugh and her sharp wit. Not to mention her beauty. He’d read about eyes flashing in bad poetry and Minerva Press novels (the officers had needed some amusement during the war), but Kate’s eyes did. Everything about her was intense.
Now, she flitted about the dance floor on Lindley’s arms, and for one brief moment she looked his way, and Peter caught the flash of recognition. A brightening that narrowed quickly to contempt.
That brief contact, as it increasingly had over the last few months, spurred him to be at her side when she exited the dance. To be where she was forced to acknowledge him. After all, for a woman of no title and only a respectable dowry, ignoring a duke, one who was considered a war hero no less, though Peter privately thought the epithet too easily given to a man who had done nothing any other man wouldn’t do, would hardly endear her to society.
“Your Grace, fine night, is it not?” Lindley said. His smile was affable and open, and his hold on Kate’s arm, proprietary. Interesting. Especially considering the man’s attentions to the Hightower girl earlier that evening.
“Your Grace,” Kate acknowledged with a nod of her head, but the curve of her lips and the tone of her voice were mocking.
“Miss Mansfield,” he returned, equally sardonic. “Lindley. I thought I’d steal Miss Mansfield away for a set.”
Her eyes widened and then narrowed. He didn’t know what continually possessed him to needle her, but this had been the way between them ever since that day by the river. Kate was a brat. And he had little doubt she was about to claim some prior commitment, whether it existed or not. She was popular enough for each dance to be already claimed.
“I do believe this dance is free,” Kate said, tilting her head in silent challenge. “But I am a bit out of breath. Would you settle for a stroll about the room?”
“Your wish is my command.” He steered Kate away from Lindley, oddly happy to have disentangled the two of them.
“I confess, I am astonished to see you in Brighton. I understood you to be a man of habit, and these last two years you have decamped home at the end of the London Season.”
“I am flattered that you have noticed my comings and goings.”
Her eyes narrowed and a surge of anticipation filled him at what she would next say.
“It is rather hard not to notice,” she said, pointedly perusing his form. Yes, her favorite form of insult, that of his tailor. Or more his valet, as it was not his tailor’s fault that these two patterns had been matched together. The more Kate noticed, the more determined Peter was to allow his valet his questionable taste. “Such a relief when your sartorial mishaps no longer offend my eyes.”
“Never fear, Miss Mansfield. I am only here for a week at most. I shall have to make the most of these few moments we have together.”
“Don’t make too much of them.”
“You wound me.”
She laughed. “The one thing I never have to worry about from you, Peter, is that anything I say could hurt you. You exist simply to torture me.”
Perhaps it was the use of his Christian name, so rarely said, but for one instant he was reminded clearly of why he was drawn to her again and again, acrimony aside. She was a part of his youth, a part of the green earth and the rolling hills. Yes, she had acquired that town bronze, but she was still the Kate he’d longed to kiss for more years than he could remember.
The thought startled him. But not so surprising really. She was a pretty young woman and he was a normal man who reacted to such beauty with the desire to possess it. Bodily.
“So silent, Your Grace.”
If she knew his thoughts, perhaps she’d be silenced, too.
She stopped walking, and accommodating, he stopped, as well. “And how do you do?” she was saying. He looked about. There was nothing there but a column, holding up the ceiling.
“Pardon?”
“Oh, there you are, Your Grace. I mistook this handsome and oh, so silent piece of marble for you for a moment.”
He shook his head even as he laughed. “I’ll tell you, Kate. I was thinking of your mouth . . . and how you use it in the most infuriating of ways.”
“You should be nicer to Orland.” It wasn’t the first time her stepmother had said such a thing, but as always, Kate ignored the hissed words. Henrietta had been a Mansfield for nine years now, married barely a year after Kate’s mother died of influenza. At first, Kate had resented the young, beautiful stepmother, but soon, they were best friends. Still, as close as they were, Henrietta couldn’t possibly understand. “After all, he’s a war hero and hardly difficult to look at. And he’s the one duke with whom we have a familial acquaintance. If you truly would never consider him, then surely something could be made of the connection.”
Never consider Peter? She had once upon a time. Girlishly, she had imagined marrying every eligible man in Waterford on Lew, and the future duke, as he had been at the time, above all others. Towering above her, he had always been kind and charming. Even that day by the river.
That had been the last day it was so.
Now they couldn’t stand each other. Peter, because he knew how horrid she truly was, and Kate, because she knew he knew.
Even if Kate were interested in the duchy . . . in Peter, he was certainly not interested in her.
There had been the year that he returned from Waterloo that had proven that.
“He has terrible taste,” Kate said with a mocking laugh. “Imagine a grown man pairing that waistcoat with those trousers? Say what you will about a good valet can change all that. The very fact that he doesn’t object himself is appalling.”
“That is ridiculous.” But Henrietta said nothing else on the subject.
“Perhaps,” Kate agreed, though it was an admission she made only out of deep respect and lov
e for her stepmother. “Nonetheless, I could never consider a man without the least sense of taste.”
“Remember, dearest, how hard you worked to overcome your reputation. Walk softly here.”
At that moment, she spotted Lord Lindley across the assembly rooms. Unlike Peter, Lindley was the epitome of sartorial elegance. The Viscount was charming, handsome, and a perfect dance partner. He was actively seeking a bride, and about to enter her third Season, Kate was finally ready to consider a match.
Despite a handful of proposals over the last two years, one or two brilliant enough to satisfy her competitive spirit, and best of all, seemed to show a preference for Kate.
And, unfortunately, for Camilla Hightower, whom he was leading out to the dance floor.
Kate refused to let her internal grimace reflect on her face. Camilla was everything Kate was not. Tall, blond, voluptuous. Known for her “sweet” disposition. In fact, she uncomfortably reminded Kate of her sister, Bianca. The perfect English beauty. Her mother would have approved.
Just as she had disapproved of Kate, who had inherited from her mother’s side and looked much like the feminine version of her dissolute uncle, the one nobody ever talked about except in hushed tones.
“Miss Hightower looks lovely tonight,” Henrietta observed. “Not as lovely as you, but it is best to be certain there is no comparison. That is, if you want Lord Lindley.”
Her stepmother was always astute, nearly more of a friend than a mother as only seven years separated them in age.
Did she want Lord Lindley? He was a handsome man. Not overly tall, which made them well matched on the dance floor. He had reddish-brown hair, warm brown eyes, and was solidly built. She had heard other girls speak of racing hearts and trembling skin at the mere nearness of a man, and while Lindley had no such effect on her, he was charming and amusing. Time spent with him was always merry.
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