A Lady's Book of Love: Daughters of Scandal (The Marriage Maker 15)

by Louisa Cornell

  He closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath through his nose. This nonsense did not serve his purpose. He’d inserted himself into Sir Stirling’s ridiculous scheme for one cause, and one cause only. Reginald Peachum had bilked his men of their fortunes. Their monies might count as nothing to the average citizen of Mayfair, but it was all they had to make their way in the world after leaving His Majesty’s Navy behind them.

  The sailors who had faced death, spilled their blood alongside Arthur, had foolishly thought to double their pooled money in a lottery touted to be a sure thing. Peachum’s arrest, trial, and death in prison might be justice, but the fifty thousand pounds he’d swindled had never been found. After months of investigation, Arthur had only recently discovered the key to finding it. And Emmaline Peachum was all that stood between him and possession of that key. Marriage to her guaranteed him access to—

  “My library? Absolutely not.”

  Excellent. A fight was certain to becalm his unexpected carnal ideas.

  “My lord, perhaps you will explain the necessity of this arrangement to your betrothed.” Sir Stirling waved a hand at the documents on the table, his oddly assured smile firmly in place.

  Arthur fought the urge to grin as he turned to find himself the target of a fuming female, hands on hips and eyes on fire. Had she been a French corvette he’d be taking on water forward and aft. He crossed the room, his Hessians beating a rude tattoo on the bare oak floors.

  “You object to your book collection acting as your dowry?” he asked as he joined her over the marriage settlement papers. The scent of soap and faded lavender teased at his already insubordinate senses. He clasped his hands behind his back.

  “I most certainly do. The only reason I agreed to marry you was because Sir Stirling assured me it would save my library and perhaps salvage a bit of my reputation.”

  “And you’re rich as Croesus,” the maid added frankly.

  Miss Peachum silenced her with an exasperated half-growl. “These papers say my books become your property once we are married.”

  “And here I thought you’d succumbed to my charm and dashing reputation.”

  “Cut line, Captain. My father had charm and dash to spare. You can neither eat it nor pay the butcher with it.” She picked up the papers and shook them at him. “My library is all I have left of my mother’s inheritance from her father. What possible value could it have to you?” Her eyes glimmered emerald green beneath a sheen of tears. Something twinged in his chest. The last months had taken a toll on Reginald Peachum’s daughter. Damn the man. It took a painful sort of desperation to agree to marry a stranger. Especially for a woman determined not to show weakness, not matter how weary she might be of the fight.

  “The bailiff has taken your furniture, your household goods, and…” He glanced at her dress, “any of your clothes worth selling.”

  “So much for your charm,” Sir Stirling muttered.

  “Let us speak plainly. You are marrying me to protect your name and the little bit of property you have left.” He waved at the walls of books around them. “Even as your husband it would be difficult to protect your property. Protecting my property on the other hand is no trouble at all.”

  “This is not the bargain we agreed to, Sir Stirling.” Her eyes blazed even as her bottom lip trembled ever so slightly.

  Not that. Anything but that.

  “You aren’t marrying Sir Stirling. You are marrying me.” Arthur took the papers from her clutched hand and smoothed them onto the table. He slid the lone bottle of ink and the crumpled quill next to them. “I have neither the time nor the interest in your—” he turned a condescending eye from one bank of tome-lined shelves to another, “—unremarkable library to spend weeks fighting magistrates, bailiffs, and solicitors for your right to keep it. This is the best way.”

  “Unremarkable?” She squared her shoulders and tilted up her delicate chin. “What would you know about it, you philistine? Sailors read maps, not books. Even lordly sailors like yourself.” A spiral strand of burnished bronze hair slid from her coiffure and covered her eyes. She brushed it back and removed and then replaced a hairpin with a savage jab that held it in place.

  “Philistine?” Sir Stirling barked and then fell victim to a paroxysm of laughter.

  “Charm won’t pay the butcher, Miss Peachum.” Arthur snatched up the quill and set to work signing the settlement papers. He looked over his shoulder at her. “But neither will pride. Is yours worth more than your books? More than a good name?”

  “What good name? You are marrying a pariah, Captain Farnsworth. I would love to know why.” She pushed aside the quill he offered her.

  “Because it pleases me.” He dropped the quill on the papers. “The only reason I ever do anything. Once we are married you will have my name. And the first person to treat you as anything less than Lady Arthur Farnsworth will answer to me.”

  “Hmpf!” She glared at him, at the quill, and then back at him.

  “You are a stubborn chit to be in such an untenable position.” He schooled his features into the mildly disgruntled expression he used to discipline unruly young sailors. It helped him to fight the admiring grin he held back for fear of breaking her tentative grasp on her anger and indignation. “Need I remind you, you asked Sir Stirling to find you a husband?”

  Miss Peachum grabbed the quill and commenced to signing the settlements in all the proper places. “I should have been more specific,” she muttered.

  He leaned over and placed his hand on the pages to hold them in place. He pointed at the places she’d missed and quickly withdrew his finger lest she pin it to the paper with the quill. “Specific as to what, Emmaline?” he murmured close enough to her ear to stir the dainty tendrils curled around it. She shivered just enough for him to notice. Pleasing enough, if he didn’t feel the need to shiver right along with her.

  “I know what you are about, sir.” She made a great show of rereading the settlements.

  “What is that?”

  “You are tempting my temper to make it appear I have a choice in all of this.” She glanced at the library globe where her maid and Sir Stirling stood conversing in a poor attempt to give Arthur and Emmaline some privacy. “It is kind of you to want to preserve my dignity, but it went the way of my pride long ago.”

  “Your dignity has no need of help from me.” Arthur didn’t know which surprised him most—that she’d caught him out or that she didn’t see what he saw—a woman with more courage than many men of his acquaintance.

  “Don’t bother to curry my favor, Captain. I have none to offer. You have the whip-hand here, and well you know it.” She brushed past him to stand before one of the many bookcases along the walls.

  “Only if you hand me the whip.” Arthur followed her, standing just behind her left shoulder. She refused to look at him. “You don’t strike me as the sort of woman to surrender so easily.”

  “Some men think women are made for surrender. That we seek it so as not to have the burden of thinking or making our own decisions.”

  “I am not one of those men.”

  She snorted. “I am almost persuaded.” Her fingers ran along the spines of the books. He nearly sensed her touch on his skin. “Almost.”

  “I don’t believe it is in a woman’s nature to surrender. It is something she is taught or has beaten into her. The one who maintains her true nature will fight long past a single hope of winning. And when life forces her to surrender, she despises herself for it. The only person she despises more is the man who has forced her to submit to that state so completely counter to her nature.”

  She turned to face him, her back pressed against the shelves, a worn leather volume gripped tightly in her hands. “What would a man like you know of surrender?” She peered up at him, her eyes all too cynical and discerning to suit him.

  His mind froze. His ability to dissemble fled, so he gave her the truth. “Far more than I care to admit, Miss Peachum. I cannot recommend it.”

/>   “You? In war?” She gave him a subtle smile that threatened to take his breath away. “In love perhaps?”

  “In life.” Arthur took a step back. And then another. He’d said too much. “Shall we get on with it? The vicar and a special license await us.” He turned and strode briskly toward the doors.

  “Today?” she fairly shrieked.

  When he faced the room once more it was to two sets of incendiary female eyes and an entirely too amused Sir Stirling James.

  “Do you have another engagement which might take precedence, Miss Peachum?” From the corner of his eye, Arthur saw Sir Stirling shake his head. “Yours is the need for immediacy. If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.”

  “Macbeth was speaking of murder, Captain. Which is not on my schedule for today, but I can find time for it if need be.” She offered him a cynically sweet smile, accompanied by a shallow curtsey. “I cannot possibly leave until my books are packed and—”

  Arguing with her presented Arthur with sensations he had no desire to associate with the bride he intended to use and then tuck away in the country. A simple enough plan might go to the devil if he spent too much time in a battle of wits with Miss Emmaline Peachum. Especially when he wasn’t certain of victory. Time to take charge and begin as he meant to go on.

  “My man of business will be here momentarily with a number of men from my estate in Kent. They will take great care in packing your books and carting them to Berkeley Square.” He offered her his arm. Which she completely ignored.

  “Berkeley Square?” From her expression he’d managed to startle her. Finally. Her head twisted to and fro in a frantic study of the room. Ah! At last she realized. The last bastion of her former life was now lost to her. Arthur’s investigator had told him the Peachums had owned this house for the last fifteen years. This house had been her home since she was a girl of eleven.

  “Our home. It is customary for a wife and her possessions to reside with her husband. Unless you have another location in mind.” He’d never been one to goad a woman, but doing so turned her eyes a brilliant shade of green, like the sea just before a storm.

  “I hardly have a choice, do I? According to the marriage settlements, my books are no longer mine.” She plucked first one volume and then another from the shelves.

  “That isn’t precisely true,” Sir Stirling assured her. He tugged the books from her unwilling hands and gave them to her maid. “Run along and pack your mistress’s things.” He folded the marriage settlements and tucked them inside his jacket. “On his lordship’s death the library is a part of your widow’s portion. It will be irrevocably yours.”

  “The very reason I signed the papers, Sir Stirling,” she said over her shoulder as she retrieved the gun from the table and tucked it in the crook of her arm. “Birdie, come. I will show you how I wish my things packed.”

  “How you wish… You have four dresses and—eep!” The poor maid stumbled out the library doors, dragged by her determined mistress. The lady turned her green eyes on him one last time, assessing and more than a little interested. And damn his pride, a shard of heat flashed through his body, even as she ducked her head and made her retreat.

  Arthur stared at the open doors long after Miss Peachum’s hurried steps and urgent whispers disappeared up the stairs from the foyer to the first floor.

  “I suppose it would do me little good to ask once more your reasons for going through with this marriage,” Sir Stirling said as they walked into the foyer.

  “No more good than it would do for me to ask your reasons for arranging it,” Arthur replied. The Scotsman was a gentleman, a titled one at that by way of his own marriage. But even a gentleman was not above manipulating the lives of others for his own amusement. There was more to his matchmaking than an act of kindness, unless Arthur missed his mark. Or perhaps his suspicions of Sir Stirling merely reflected his qualms about his own motives.

  “If you hurt her, you will be made to answer for it,” Sir Stirling said quietly. “Even married to you she is under my protection.”

  “I have given you my word. I do not do so lightly.” Arthur watched his man of business step down from a sturdy dray. Arthur’s carriage pulled up behind it. “I doubt she needs either of our protection. Life as Peachum’s daughter has made the lady more than capable of defending herself.”

  “You have hit upon a truth there, Lord Arthur. Knowing that, are you certain you want to allow your bride custody of the gun?”

  “Isn’t one of a husband’s duties to ensure his wife has no cause to shoot him?”

  “It is at least a laudable goal to be sure and I truly wish you luck in it.” He laughed all the way out the door and was still laughing when he climbed into his carriage.

  “Is anything amiss, my lord?” Thaddeus Warren, his man of business asked as he entered the house.

  Arthur’s attention was drawn to the faint sound of feminine voices above them. Only four dresses. What lady of his acquaintance had only four dresses? Enough of this. Time to get on with it.

  “Nothing at all, Warren. I want these books packed up and moved to the Berkeley Square house immediately. Then we can begin our search.”

  Chapter Four

  Emmaline normally enjoyed having Birdie brush out her hair before braiding it for bed. In a life of so much shadow and uncertainty the nightly ritual drew some of the tension from her mind. It reminded her of her childhood, before Mama died and Reginald Peachum embarked on a series of schemes to maintain the life his wife’s fortune had afforded him, before he’d frittered the last of it away.

  Tonight, however, nothing eased her mind. Or, more precisely, eased the humming excitement and confusion which dotted her thoughts like stars winking into view as the sky changed from dusk to darkness. It was her wedding night. In less than twelve hours she’d shot a man—or his nice Weston jacket, at least—accepted his proposal of marriage, signed her library into his safekeeping, packed her meager possessions and her maid into his carriage, stood before a vicar in the beautiful library of said man’s magnificent Berkeley Square home, and married him by special license.

  A man she’d met twice.

  Once that very morning.

  Right after she shot him.

  “I hope you will be very happy, Lady Arthur,” Sir Stirling had said as he bent to sign the marriage registry and handed the quill to Birdie so she might do the same. “And if you are not, you will send word to me.”

  “And you will thrash the captain and make him a better husband?” Emmaline had replied as she watched the man in question speak with the vicar.

  Sir Stirling took her hand. “I will do what needs be done to keep you safe. If a thrashing is merited, all the better.”

  “You’ll have to wait your turn, sir, if his lordship hurts my lady,” Birdie assured him.

  They’d all laughed, which drew the captain’s attention as he handed the vicar a heavy purse. In a few long strides he’d moved to take Emmaline’s hand from Sir Stirling and placed it on his own arm.

  “Lady Arthur is mine to protect now.”

  “Indeed, my lord,” Sir Stirling had replied. “And I fully expect you shall do so.”

  Emmaline had rolled her eyes. Men. Then it struck her. Good heavens! “I have just realized you are a lord,” she’d blurted. He’d turned her into a blithering idiot in less than a day. After thirty years of marriage she’d be fortunate to be able to put on her own shoes.

  “Indeed. And you are now a lady… my lady,” the tall stranger she’d married replied. His lazy attempt at a smile annoyed her.

  “Precisely what is your title—other than captain, that is?” Had she truly been so desperate to marry she’d accidentally married an earl, or a marquess, God forbid? Only Emmaline would stumble upon a husband with a title and one ‘criminal handsome’ too. She’d been married five minutes, and if she’d unwittingly married a peer of the realm her marriage was already a scandal.

  “I have no title.”
/>
  Sir Stirling had stood there grinning, actually grinning.

  “My father, however, is the Duke of Mitford.” With that, he’d raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on it the tingle of which still had not subsided. Then he’d gone back to accept the vicar’s effusive congratulations and wishes for a long and fruitful marriage.

  Fruitful?

  Emmaline had not wanted to be a heifer at some marriage auction. Now she was a tree? And not just any tree, but a tree in a duke’s orchard.

  “Have you heard a word I’ve said, Lady Arthur?” Birdie dropped the brush on the polished rosewood vanity and, hands on hips, scowled at Emmaline.

  “I heard you call me Lady Arthur, which I have asked you not to do.” Emmaline rose from the dainty chair before the vanity and retrieved her book from the comfortable chaise longue before the fireplace with the intricately carved mantelpiece.

  “I won’t be calling you anything else,” Birdie declared. “Not when you’ve been clever enough to get yourself married to a duke’s son.” She fetched the bedwarmer from the hearth and passed it beneath the expensive sheets and counterpane.

  Emmaline circled to the other side of the huge mahogany canopied bed. Birdie had drawn the heavy, burgundy rose-patterned bed curtains on this side, so Emmaline had to fight her way through them to climb onto the heavenly over-stuffed mattress. After weeks of sleeping on a pallet of blankets and clothes they’d hidden from the bailiff, she had to admit she might have made this marriage bargain for the bed alone. Well, the bed… and the jovial housekeeper, Mrs. Christian… and the French chef… She stacked several thick pillows behind her back and stretched her legs in the direction of the heat wafting up from the foot of the bed. And the heat produced by an endless supply of coals.

  “Clever had nothing to do with it.” She opened her book and drew the spectacles she’d used to mark her place from between the pages. “I stumbled upon a pair of bedlamite gentlemen in a cemetery a few days ago and had the ill fortune to marry the one who’s a duke’s son.”