The School for Heiresses: 'Wed Him Before You Bed Him

by Sabrina Jeffries

  The night dragged on while she vacillated between worry about David’s motives for marrying her, and dreams of what marriage to him might be like. After 3:00 A.M., she gave up on sleep and wandered down the hall to the library. She was just choosing a book when she heard a sound coming from outside.

  When she went to look out the window, she smiled. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep. David stood below on the terrace—though his back was to her, she knew him from his atrocious dressing gown. Even in the dimness of moonlight, the stripes showed up well.

  She was just wondering if she dared to go downstairs and slip out to join him when someone else appeared. It was that flirtatious maid, Molly. The girl sidled up next to him, then slid between him and the rail to loop her arms about his neck.

  Tensing, Charlotte waited for David to put the girl aside. But he didn’t. Instead, he began to kiss her with the same ardent passion he’d shown Charlotte.

  Only he didn’t stop with kissing. As Charlotte watched in horror, he pulled up Molly’s skirts and lifted her legs on either side of his in the same vulgar position Charlotte recognized from when she’d once caught Papa with a whore. Then David began to move in a similarly vulgar fashion.

  Charlotte’s heart shattered.

  Blanching, she jerked back from the window, struggling to choke down the bile rising in her throat. How could it be? How could he do this to her? She’d thought that he might actually be falling in love with her.

  Oh Lord, how utterly wrong she’d been about him! And to think she’d been in his arms just hours ago! How dared he? They might not be betrothed yet, but they had an understanding. How could he kiss Charlotte with such passion and then the same night do…do that to some kitchen maid? It was unconscionable! Appalling!

  Unforgivable. This wasn’t acceptable—not before they married, not ever. If he could flit so easily from one woman’s arms to another, he wasn’t the man she’d thought.

  This was what she could look forward to if she married him. How long would it be before he was parading his women in front of her? How long before her life ended up exactly like Mama’s? It was no wonder Papa approved of him—wolves always ran in packs.

  Her stomach roiled, and she rushed back to her bedchamber just in time to lose the contents of her belly in the chamber pot. She stood over it, trembling, her skin clammy as she hugged her stomach. What was she to do?

  She had to break it off, that was all, as quickly and discreetly as possible.

  But how? If she didn’t give him a reason for changing her mind, he’d just kiss her and talk sweetly to her until she relented. And if she berated him for what she’d seen, he would dismiss it or deny it. Worse yet, he might bully her into marrying him anyway. Thanks to her, he now knew exactly how to do it, too—just go to Papa and let Papa do the bullying for him.

  He wouldn’t do that, her heart said. He’s not that sort of man.

  Tears stung her eyes. Her heart hadn’t thought he was the sort of man to dally with one woman while engaging himself to another, either. Her heart was a blind fool, ignoring all the evidence of his character. Even now, her heart protested the very evidence of her eyes, telling her that she must have seen a servant or Giles.

  She caught her breath. Might it have been Giles? Might she have jumped to the wrong conclusion?

  For a second, she clung to that hope. Then she remembered how that girl had always flirted with David. Not Giles, but David. Molly had even blushed at something he’d said this morning. For all Charlotte knew, he’d been arranging tonight’s assignation. He’d certainly acted as if he had something to hide. If he hadn’t, then why had he changed the subject when Charlotte asked him about it?

  There was that hideous robe, too. On their very first day, Giles had come down to breakfast in his own dressing robe, a faded blue silk thing.

  Her heart twisted in her chest. No, only David was so confident of his appeal that he felt safe wearing the ugliest stripes. And she’d fallen for that confidence, too! How could she have been such an idiot? How could she not have realized that David’s tender solicitations were false? Clearly he’d been acting a part the whole time, determined to gain her money.

  He said he didn’t care about your money.

  He’d said he didn’t want to marry either, but that had certainly changed once he saw that she was pretty! Apparently he could stomach marrying for money if his wife was handsome enough to tolerate.

  Tears now streamed down her cheeks. How could she have let herself be so deceived about him? What was wrong with her?

  She spent the next hour sobbing into her pillow. Even after she was cried out, choking desolation filled her. She lay in bed, clutching the damp pillow to her chest. If she could just keep herself together for another few hours, they would be leaving this place. She would be safe.

  Safe? A chill struck her. Perhaps from David and his two-faced lying and cheating, but not from Papa. He wouldn’t care that David had dallied with a maid. If she told him of it, he would just give her some nonsense about looking the other way, since that was precisely what he expected from Mama. And if she said she meant to refuse David…

  Her mouth went dry. She dared not tell Papa yet. Remembering his threats, she rubbed her arms feverishly in a vain attempt to banish the icy fear stealing over her. Papa wouldn’t accept her refusal. He would take her onto a boat and sail the seas until she begged him to stop, until she agreed to whatever he demanded.

  Oh, what was she to do? She could wait until they reached London to tell Papa, but that would only delay the worst. Eventually David would make a formal offer, and Papa would demand that she accept it. And if she didn’t…

  Icy tendrils of fear curled round her heart. The only way Papa would leave her alone was if David never made an offer at all. Papa would blame her for it, of course, but he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

  Her breath quickened. Yes, that would work!

  But how to manage it? Leaving the bed, she paced the bedchamber. She had to make David give her up. She would dearly love to throw his dalliance with the maid back in his face, but he would just deny it. So she had to convince him that she had simply changed her mind, but in such a way that he was glad of it. She had to provoke him into despising her.

  Spotting the writing table, she walked toward it. She would write him a letter detailing exactly why she was a bad choice for a wife, fortune or no. She would promise to make his life a misery if he married her. And since he hated having his pride pricked, she would do that, too. She would infuriate him to the point that he washed his hands of her and her whole family.

  Giving him a piece of her mind wouldn’t prove difficult; right now, it was all she could do not to throttle him for how he’d betrayed her. Her blood teeming with righteous indignation, she sat down and picked up her pen.

  It took two hours to perfect her missive. When it was done, she sat back, drained but feeling decidedly more in control. If he didn’t decide against marrying her within moments of reading this, then he was a fool. He might be a heartless, smooth-tongued cad, but David was no fool.

  Now she must manage her good-byes without showing her unhappiness, so neither David nor Papa suspected anything. And the letter had to be left for David without Papa learning of it and demanding to see what she’d written. After all, young ladies weren’t allowed to write to young gentlemen on their own.

  She hid the letter in her writing case, then stretched out on the bed while she decided how to deliver it. A servant? No, she couldn’t trust them not to tell Papa or David’s parents of it.

  Could she sneak it into David’s room? Hardly. He had probably returned to his bedchamber by now, and if she were caught with him there, she’d have to marry him or be disgraced.

  Perhaps she could wait until she reached home…

  It seemed like only moments later that Papa’s shouting made her start up in confusion. Lord, she’d fallen asleep! Papa was ordering the footmen about, trying to hurry them along
with taking down the packed trunks.

  The door edged open and her mother’s head appeared. “Oh, good, you’re awake. Your father is eager to be off. He’s worried about the weather. Are you packed?”

  Papa pushed into the room. “Never mind that.” He planted his hands on his hips. “How do you stand with young Masters?”

  A pity she couldn’t speak the truth: I detest and despise him, and I will never marry him!

  She sat up in bed. “I believe he intends to call on me in London, Papa.”

  Papa frowned. “So he hasn’t offered marriage?”

  “Not formally, no.”

  “But you think that he will.”

  She steeled herself for the lie. “Probably. It’s only been a few days.”

  “True. A young man like that—he has to be cautious.”

  She clenched her hands into fists behind her back. “Yes.”

  “Well then, missy, get dressed. We have to be off.”

  Thankfully, Papa was in such a hurry that she only had to see David briefly, and his mother kept them from having a private moment. Still, the way he looked at her made her blood boil. How dare he give her that smoldering glance after what he’d done?

  She fumed about it all the way back to London. By the time they reached home, several hours later, she’d figured out how to send her letter. She couldn’t use one of the servants, since they all spied for Papa, and she couldn’t mail it without Papa franking it. He would want to read it first.

  But David would be in London in a few days, and there was a lad who sold cross buns in front of the house every morning. She would pay him to deliver it. She’d just have to make sure that while David knew exactly whom it came from, there was nothing to tie it to her in case it fell into the wrong hands.

  She’d be careful, very careful. But one way or the other, she would get David Masters out of her life forever.

  Tom Dempsey couldn’t believe it. The young miss at 15 St. James’s Square had entrusted him with a letter to deliver. And she was paying him handsomely, too. It almost made him forget the rain as he hurried along the streets, the prized letter carefully tucked inside his breast pocket.

  Unfortunately, he was so busy congratulating himself on his good fortune that he didn’t see the older lad with a bag stuffed full of envelopes until he ran smack into him. It exploded to scatter mail around him like gigantic confetti.

  “You ass!” the other lad snapped as Tom stood gaping at the disaster. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” He boxed Tom’s ears. “Well, come on then, help me pick these up! Mr. Bowmar will have my head if I lose all these letters on account of you!”

  The two boys scrambled to gather them up as the rain beat down on their backs and the ink on the envelopes began to run. When the last one was in the bag, the other lad ran off without even so much as a thank-you.

  “Bloody sot,” Tom grumbled, now soaked to the skin as he hurried on.

  But when he got to the proper address, he reached inside his pocket to find that his letter was gone. Frantically, he patted all his pockets, then retraced his steps, hoping perhaps he’d dropped it on the path. After reaching the corner where he’d encountered the other fellow and still not finding it, he had to acknowledge the truth. Somehow it had fallen out and been mixed in with those other letters.

  He groaned. That scurvy fellow was gone, and Tom’s good fortune with him.

  The miss had said she would give him one of her ear bobs when he delivered the letter and the other when he brought back a note from the butler of the house saying he’d done so. Now he had nothing to bring her. And what was he to do with one ear bob?

  Blast, blast, blast.

  Meanwhile, in the offices of the Morning Tattler, Charles Godwin, a young reporter, was called into his editor’s office.

  “Listen to this letter that just came in,” Bowmar said, brandishing a sheet of paper. It sat atop a pile of woeful-looking missives with running ink. Bowmar read aloud a few lines of a rather sharp litany of some poor fellow’s sins. “I want you to use it in one of those editorial pieces that you’re so good at, the ones about the evils of society. It’s juicy stuff.”

  Bowmar tossed it to him, and Charles read it. It was witty, in a flay-a-body-alive sort of way, but he would swear it had not been meant for the paper. “You can’t publish this. It’s clearly personal.”

  Bowmar flashed his usual smarmy smile. “It came with the rest of the mail. And there’s no return address.”

  Charles turned the sheet over to see nothing but blurred ink. He thought he could make out an M, but that was it. “It doesn’t matter. You still can’t print it in good conscience. It’s obviously private, and someone will come after you for libel.” He handed the letter back to Bowmar, pointing to one particular line. “Why, it even mentions that the man is a viscount’s son.”

  “It hints at it, that’s all. Besides, there are any number of viscounts’ sons. And no one can come after the paper for libel unless what’s said in here is false. Even if they do, you simply point out that the letter begins with ‘Dear Garish Goer’ and is signed ‘Miss Monkey.’ No one could blame you for thinking it was meant for publication.”

  Bowmar’s blithe unconcern angered Charles. The two parties would surely recognize who was meant, even if no one else did. The letter was intensely private, clearly the result of a love affair gone terribly wrong. Somewhere a young lady’s heart was breaking because a scoundrel had misused her. It seemed wicked to profit from her misery.

  The fact that Bowmar didn’t care about that and expected him to do the dirty work roused his hot temper, something Charles was famous for. “Only a cad with no heart would print this letter.”

  Bowmar sat back and sneered. “Heart? A heart has no place in the newspaper business, sir. Material as juicy as this will sell papers by the hundreds.”

  “I won’t do it. It’s wrong.”

  Narrowing his eyes to slits, Bowmar said, “You’ll do as I say if you want to keep your position.”

  Since coming to work for Bowmar two years ago, Charles had suffered several moral dilemmas. He’d gritted his teeth and weathered every one without losing his job. But this one really stuck in his craw. And he’d had enough.

  “I don’t give a damn about my position, if this is what I have to do for it.” He turned toward the door. “I quit.”

  Charles walked out without a backward glance.

  Chapter Seven

  Five days after the Pages had left Berkshire for town, David rode toward home after his early morning gallop. Riding had been his salvation ever since Charlotte had left, though it didn’t keep his mind off her.

  A smile curved his lips. He was in love. No question about that. He could hardly sleep without thinking of her. And in only two days he would see her again in London. This time he would make her give him an answer. He might be young, and he might sometimes be a fool, but he was not going to let her get away.

  Of course, Father would be delighted. He sighed. He hated that he was playing right into Father’s hands, but it couldn’t be helped. If practicality and love just happened to coincide, well, who was he to question it?

  As soon as David entered the manor, the servant told him his father was calling for him most urgently. David hurried to his father’s study, surprised to find the man pacing and drinking whisky, never a good sign at this hour.

  “You wanted me, Father?”

  His father whirled to fix him with a look that would have frozen steam, then slapped a newspaper down on the desk. “Do you want to explain how this happened?”

  “How what happened?” David asked, utterly bewildered.

  “There is an article here that says scathing things about a gentleman who sounds an awful lot like you.”

  A chill coursed down David’s spine. Scathing things about him? In the bloody Morning Tattler?

  Grabbing up the paper, he began to read. It was an editorial full of pompous attacks against “wayward” gentlemen. As an example
, the editor had produced a letter from a young female whose dignity had been trampled by such a man:

  Dear Garish Goer,

  Recently I have come to understand that honor and good character are costumes of convenience to you—something you don whenever you wish to dine on a particularly juicy female. But we both know that beneath the costly striped dressing gown you’re so vain about lies a heart as fickle and deadly as the waters of the Thames.

  So while you are gambling and wenching with your debauched friends from Cambridge, busily counting the days until you become a viscount and can live a wild life with impunity, remember this: There was once a lady who saw you for what you really are. She saw the vanity behind your every remark and the falseness behind your every kiss. You lulled her good sense for a brief time with a rakehell’s sensuous spell, but in the end she recognized you for an unrepentant libertine who gains amusement from deceiving a feeling young lady, and pleasure from destroying female lives.

  If you should happen to ask for her hand, be clear on one thing. She might marry you if forced, but she will never look the other way for your dissipation, never countenance your bullying, and never give you what a man expects from his wife—loyalty and support. So you might want to think twice before taking an asp into your bed.

  Yours with contempt,

  Miss Monkey

  He couldn’t breathe, his blood roaring so loudly in his ears he thought he might faint like some stupid girl. Miss Monkey. It was by Charlotte? How could she have written this…this vile thing?

  Every word was a knife to his heart. He barely registered the rest of the editorial, in which the editor raged about the behavior of young gentlemen toward respectable women in the vicinity of Cambridge. He didn’t hear his father’s questions or even notice the room around them. He just stood there, impaled on her words.