Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride

by Christi Caldwell

  Drake snapped out a blanket and Sir Faithful playfully grabbed a corner and shook it with his teeth. “I know your just-happy smile. That was not it.”

  Her maid, Grace, rushed forward to assist with the blanket, but Emmaline waved her off. “Grace, I assure you, Lord Drake can handle both Sir Faithful and seeing to the blanket. Why don’t you take a short walk?” It was more an order than request.

  Her words were met with a loud rip.

  “Cease,” Drake commanded and the dog immediately sat, and bowed his head.

  Grace shot a skeptical look from Drake to Sir Faithful. “As you wish, my lady.”

  Sir Faithful made one last attempt at tugging the corner of the blanket, but Drake snapped the palm of his hand to the side of his thigh and the dog, dutifully sat at his master’s heels, watching expectantly as Drake set the basket down upon the blanket and helped Emmaline to the ground.

  “He is a troublesome little thing, isn’t he?” She scratched the sensitive spot along the bridge of Sir Faithful’s nose.

  “Not very little anymore, either.” Drake looked at the rapidly growing mutt. “He is, however, true to his name. I would have thought you would find me a pug or Shetland sheepdog,” he teased.

  Emmaline laughed. “A Shetland sheepdog would have been just the thing. Though after reflecting on the fact you had no sheep, I decided Sir Faithful would do nicely.”

  He waggled his brows. “Not yet. Perhaps the sheep will come later. How do you feel about becoming the wife of a sheep farmer?”

  The image of Drake galloping about the countryside with a Shetland sheepdog, herding a flock of sheep about, was just so ludicrous that she laughed until she developed a stitch in her side.

  Then she processed what he’d said.

  She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “I’m dreaming.”

  The blanket rustled as he sat down beside her. “You are so beautiful,” he said. There could be no question of the quiet sincerity of his words.

  Never, ever in her life had she before felt beautiful—until that moment. He made her believe she was more than just tolerably pleasing, as the papers had labeled her

  “Do you know where I found Sir Faithful?”

  Drake scratched the dog under his belly and waited for her answer.

  “I visit the soldiers at London Hospital each week. There is a black dog who lives there and wanders the halls. No one is certain what line of dog she is. The soldiers named her Alice. A few months ago, Alice disappeared for three days. For three whole days, the soldiers and nurses were devastated, no one knowing what had happened to the dog. But she returned, and it wasn’t long until we realized she was with pups. Sir Faithful is one of those pups.” Sir Faithful licked her hand once, twice, and a third time.

  “It really should come as no surprise to me that you give your time at the hospital.”

  Emmaline shifted under the uncomfortable weight of his praise and gave a tiny shrug in response. “It is not a chore to visit the men. Seeing them fills me with great joy.” She’d always looked forward to sitting with the soldiers who’d courageously dedicated their lives, who’d risked their physical safety for such a noble cause.

  “I imagine you bring them great joy as well.” Drake opened the wicker basket and pulled out a thick loaf of bread neatly wrapped in a cloth, along with sliced cheese, and plump red strawberries. He began arranging a dish for her.

  Emmaline rested her chin atop her knees and studied his movements. There was something beautifully domestic about his simple actions. She accepted the plate he held out to her with a murmur of thanks. Picking up a piece of bread from her plate, she nibbled at the corner and continued to watch him.

  After the way he’d barged in on her brother’s dinner party, she’d been at a loss to understand what exactly was her relationship with Drake. The corner of her heart, where she’d buried the dream of being his wife, stirred to life. A man could not humble himself as Drake had in front of her brother, mother, and Lord Waxham, baring his most intimate thoughts, if marriage was not his intention?

  Drake plucked a strawberry. He made to pop it into his mouth.

  “When you imagine the future, do you see me as your wife?”

  For an infinitesimal moment, he paused, before he finally ate the red berry.

  A long stretch of silence met her question.

  ***

  The fine linen of his shirt did little to conceal the heat of his mother’s emerald and diamond ring, warm against his chest. Since the moment he’d decided to ask Emmaline to wed him, he’d rehearsed any number of poetic, appropriate speeches, grimacing at the lackluster attempts. However, even the paltry efforts he’d managed, fled.

  Drake jumped up and began to pace.

  Emmaline cocked her head. “Drake?”

  “Hmm?” He continued his path. Back and forth. With as close as he’d come to losing her, Drake would imagine he should have found if not the perfect words, then something suitable.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Uh-, I…fine. Fine.” He stopped abruptly in front of her. With a jerky movement, he leaned down and tugged Emmaline upright.

  She pitched forward landing hard against his side. “Oomph.”

  Emmaline pulled back and eyed him with a healthy dose of concern. “Uh-are we done with the picnic?”

  Drake directed his eyes skyward. He needed Cupid’s intervention to salvage this sorry, sorry proposal.

  Sir Faithful chose that moment to sidle over on his belly, effectively wedging himself between Drake and Emmaline.

  Apparently Cupid was otherwise busy.

  “The moon is in the sky…”

  Emmaline looked up in confusion, and shielded her eyes against the glaring sun high in the cloudless blue sky. “It is? Where?”

  “Uh-no, not now. That is to say, it is not in the sky at this precise moment. What I intended to say is…” A black curse fell from his lips. Mayhap Sin was right and he should forget all the nonsense with poetry.

  Emmaline’s eyes widened the size of saucers.

  This was certainly not a proposal for the ages. Frustrated with the debacle he was making out of the moment, he dragged a hand through his hair. “My apologies,” he muttered. “What I meant to say is—”

  Except those words also eluded him and Drake was once again left with a dry mouth and incoherent thoughts. Who would have imagined he, the otherwise unflappable Marquess of Drake, should find himself bumbling his way through a marriage proposal?

  “I need to speak to you about the day your father died.” He winced. Hardly the stuff a young lady preferred to hear when a gentleman was asking for her hand. Maybe he should go back to the stuff about the moon and the stars.

  “Drake?”

  Suddenly the prospect of facing down a line of French soldiers seemed vastly less terrifying than sharing the truth with Emmaline and risking rejection at her hands.

  Emmaline slid her hand into his and from the gentle squeeze she gave, found strength and courage. “I don’t want to dwell on the past. I—”

  As tempted as he was to bury the story that had haunted him since he’d returned from the Peninsula, he would not be able forgive himself if he withheld this truth from her. “No. I need to have out with it.” He drew in a deep fortifying breath. “I was coming to see you. I need you to know that.” The words were guttural, wrenched from somewhere deep inside him. “I became used to walking during the war. When I returned, I walked everywhere. I was coming to your residence that morning. There was a carriage accident. A broken axle, I suspect. I heard shouts and cries. Something happened to me in that moment. I forgot where I was. I came to hours later, in an alley, not knowing what had happened. That is why I did not go to you the day your father died. And I am sorrier for that than you can ever know.”

  The only indication Emmaline had heard his confession was the subtle pressure she applied to his hand interlocked with hers. Time crept by. He awaited her rejection, her pity, and what was more, he would
understand that rejection.

  Her eyes flitted back and forth across his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  His words emerged on a hoarse whisper. “How could I have shared that with a young lady I barely knew?”

  Emmaline sat back on her heels. “I thought it was because of me. I thought you didn’t want to see me.” It seemed those words were directed more to herself. “I thought…” She shook her head and gave him a sad little smile. “To think, I took your absence as a personal slight. I believed you were too engrossed with your own merriment, that you couldn’t take time to pay your respects. How odd, to now know, you needed me just as much as I needed you.

  Drake stared at a point over the crown of her hair. He inhaled the faint scent of lemons, which always clung to her. It represented purity and filled his senses with the heady aphrodisiac of hope. “How many what ifs there are. What if you had sent your letters? What if I had written you? What if I had shown up and paid my respects the day your father passed away? What would our life be like at this moment?”

  The amount of regret he carried seemed enough to fill the Thames River.

  But he had to tell her the whole of it. He could not offer her marriage without the truth laid out between them. Even if the truth could cost him—her.

  “I still have nightmares…and as you witnessed, the episodes.” He studied his hands a moment. “They come less frequently than when I first returned from the Peninsula, but they are still there. I…” He swallowed. “Fear the war turned me into a madman. The day I visited you in your garden, I put my hands on you and it almost killed me. I cannot make you my wife, without you knowing everything there is to know.”

  She reached a tremulous hand out and with a fleeting caress, stroked his tense jaw. “I wrote you a note. It was about a dream I’d had. The war was over—”

  “I was wandering about a field, lost.”

  “I wrote, if you are lost—’”

  “I will help you.” He finished and felt his throat bob up and down under the force of his emotion.

  Emmaline brushed her lips against his. The soft meeting was like the fluttering whisper of a butterflies wings. It tasted of love.

  “I will help you,” she promised and brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across his brow.

  Drake pressed his forehead against hers.

  He was so close, his toes peeked over the cliff of possibilities, desperately wanting to leap with her. But he’d held back so long, capitulation was far too hard. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  Emmaline rose up on her knees and brought her eyes level with his. “Oh, you silly man. Don’t you yet know, the only way I’m hurt is when I’m not with you? I love you.”

  Drake dropped his attention to where her hand rested in his. Clearing his throat, he reached into the front of his jacket and pulled out the emerald ring that had belonged to his mother; a ring given in love by his father. And now, if she didn’t have the good sense to run the either way, would belong to Emmaline. “Will you marry me?”

  Emmaline gasped. “It’s a ring,” she blurted.

  A smile played on his lips. “I hope your answer is yes, because I am fairly certain your brother’s answer will be no, and I’d like one yes for the day.”

  Drake grunted as Emmaline threw herself into his arms. The unexpected movement sent him tumbling backward. She landed on his chest. The ring landed somewhere alongside them.

  Sir Faithful jumped up and ran in circles about them, yapping his excitement.

  “Yes, you foolish man. A million times yes!”

  Chapter 34

  For the third time in Drake’s life, he crossed into the Duke of Mallen’s office for a meeting that would determine his future. It did not escape his notice how Mallen failed to rise when Drake entered the room. Nor did the stoic man offer any greeting. Instead, he watched Drake with a hawk-like intensity, as if he feared Drake were a thief from the Seven Dials with intentions of absconding with the family jewels.

  Which, come to think of it, wasn’t too far from the mark.

  When it didn’t seem as though the duke had any intentions of offering him a seat, Drake motioned to the leather-winged chair in front his desk. “May I?”

  Mallen rapped distractedly on the desktop, the first indication of the other man’s unease. “As you wish.”

  Drake settled into the seat and folded his ankle at the knee. He could easily understand Mallen’s dogged protectiveness of Emmaline. Though Drake had no siblings, he imagined if he did, that the last thing he’d allow was for his sister to wed a rogue like himself; especially after she’d been hurt by said rogue. In fact, in thinking on it, Mallen had been far more magnanimous than he Drake would have been. Hell, Mallen would have been justified calling him out.

  Mallen’s fingers ceased their distracted movements. “Have you come to sit and stare at me all day?” Mallen’s words dripped with heavy sarcasm.

  Drake shifted in his seat. “No, not at all, Your Grace.”

  Mallen fixed him with a hard stare. “So, of a sudden, it’s Your Grace?”

  This wasn’t going as Drake had planned. Might as well come out with it. “I’ve come to discuss your sister,” he said evenly.

  A muscle ticked at the corner of the duke’s right eye. He leaned across the desk. “Oh? To discuss my sister?”

  He took a fortifying breath. “I want to ask for her hand—”

  “You are either mad, arrogant, or both.” Mallen pointed a finger in Drake’s direction. “For fifteen years you haven’t paid Emmaline any notice. Not until she asked me to sever the arrangement did you decide to court her and that is only after the gossips dragged her name through the scandal sheets. Tell me, why would I ever consent to turning the person I love more than anyone else, over to you?”

  “Because I…” Drake tried to force out a suitable response.

  But no words emerged.

  That was the rub of it—Drake couldn’t give one bloody reason Mallen should allow him Emmaline’s hand in marriage. Mallen possessed one of the most revered titles in the kingdom and therefore wouldn’t be impressed by Drake’s status as heir to a dukedom. Nor could Drake drum up one redeeming quality that he possessed to garner the other gentleman’s respect.

  Nor could he come here and believe that he might erase fifteen years of neglect.

  He did know that his only desire was to spend every minute of the rest of his life married to her. That thought consumed him like a conflagration. He wanted her, nay, needed her, and even if it meant spiriting her off to Gretna Green, he was determined to wed her.

  “I’m waiting,” Mallen said.

  No argument would ever be sufficient for the other man.

  He settled for honesty. “I need her.”

  Mallen scoffed. “You need her.”

  She had become his sustenance. “Yes, I need her like I need water and air to breathe.”

  The Duke groaned. “Please spare me any further of your meager attempts at poetry.”

  Drake’s collar grew unbearably tight at mention of his recitation the prior evening, and he gave his cravat a tug. In spite of Mallen’s scornful words, he forced himself to press on. After all, he hadn’t expected to saunter into the Duke’s office, request Emmaline’s hand, and receive the other man’s blessing. He steeled himself. “I’m not being poetic. I need—”

  Sebastian swiped the air with an angry hand. “You think I care what you need? I care about what she wants and needs. And as her brother, I can say with great confidence that you sir, are not it.” Mallen’s voice had climbed in volume.

  Drake remained quiet. Mallen’s tightly coiled frame indicated he was spoiling for a fight. Drake wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. To do so, would invite Mallen to toss him out.

  The duke slammed his fist on the desktop. “Damn it. Say something.”

  Uncrossing his knee, Drake leaned forward. He held his palms up. “Listen, Mallen. You don’t like me. Which is fine because I don’t much like mysel
f. With the exception of a handful of moments in my life, I am hardly proud of who I am. I’ve got a surly disposition, I’ve carried on with more widows and opera singers than I can list.” He plowed ahead of the Duke’s black expression. “I can go on and on. But Emmaline makes me wish I were a better person. More than that, she makes me want to be a better man— for her.”

  Silence descended, punctuated by the tick of the mantle clock. Mallen scrubbed his hands over his face looking like a man twenty years older. “Damn you and that argument.” He dropped his hands and continued to eye Drake with a hard look. “Do you love her?”

  Drake paused, frozen by the other man’s question. There it was, again. The question—did he love her? Did he love her? He couldn’t fathom life without her; knew it would be a desolate existence. Before Emmaline he’d hardly managed a sincere laugh or smile. Having grown up motherless and then living the life of a soldier, he’d never really given much thought to the sentiment.

  “That isn’t your business.”

  Mallen jumped up from his seat and stormed out from behind his desk, clearly prepared to argue the point with Drake.

  Drake walked over to the duke. Only a hairsbreadth separated them. “Let me stop you, Mallen. It is my intention to wed your sister and I assure you it is her intention to wed me. Emmaline wants your blessing and because of that, I’m asking you to accept my suit. But, I’m going to marry her with or without your approval. Is that understood?”

  The door opened and both men spun around at the intrusion.

  The duchess stood framed in the doorway. “You will most certainly give your blessing, Sebastian.”

  “Mother, I am handling this—”

  “Poorly,” the Duchess of Mallen cut in. She claimed Drake’s hands. “So you’ve finally come to your senses, I see.”

  He nodded solemnly. “Yes, Your Grace. I’ve been bewitched by your daughter.”

  It was the truth, but it was also the right thing to say. A smile reminiscent of Emmaline’s played about the duchess’s lips. “I wondered when you would at last realize that.”

  Mallen raked an angry hand through his hair. “If it weren’t for my mother and my sister, the answer would be, no.”