Tempting the Bride

by Sherry Thomas

  “I am perfectly capable of disregarding the messenger when the message is worth my time.” But his reminder about Billy Carstairs did give her pause. She’d disregarded everything Hastings had said about that erstwhile favorite cousin, but time had proved her good opinion of Billy sadly deluded. “Go to my window and have a look.”

  “Fleet Street? I know what it looks like.”

  “Humor me. Look across the street to your right, second lamppost.”

  He crossed to the window. “There is a man reading a newspaper,” said Hastings.

  “He is there to make sure I do not climb down the exterior wall—before the crowd on the street, mind you—and escape to indulge in unsuitable shenanigans. And you know very well that my maid sits out by the other exit of this room to prevent me from walking off. On days I walk to work, she follows two steps behind. On days I take the carriage, the coachmen are instructed to never let me off anywhere except directly at work, where she is already waiting. And when I am dragged about various parlors and ballrooms, either my sister or my sister-in-law stands within three feet, even for my trips to the water closet.”

  Contrary to what she’d expected, her enumeration of the close watch under which she’d been placed failed to make an impression on him. “Is that all?”

  “Is that all? How will Mrs. Monteth catch me at any scandalous action when I can’t even sneeze without it being duly reported?”

  “I have more faith in you, Miss Fitzhugh. You haven’t broken free of this surveillance yet, but it’s only a matter of time before you spot an opportunity.” He paused and gazed at her for a moment. She was disconcerted by something that flickered in his eyes—something suspiciously close to true concern. “When that time comes, and an opportunity presents itself, I beg you to exercise wisdom and restraint and remember that not all opportunities are created equal. Some are nothing but steps leading down toward catastrophe.”

  And with that, he bowed and took his leave.

  Helena tried to reimmerse herself in Tales from Old Toad Pond. Miss Evangeline South was an accomplished illustrator with a deft, yet whimsical touch. The pond was a perfect shade of springlike green, the cottages laden with ivy and blooming window boxes, the large log that was the summer boat of the turtles—seasonal visitors from warmer climates—charmingly festooned with enormous bouquets of bulrush.

  But whereas earlier the drawings had made her smile, now she frowned at them. Surely…surely she could not possibly think that there were any similarities to be found between the cheerful innocence of Miss South’s illustrations and the blatant obscenity of Hastings’s.

  She took out Hastings’s manuscript again, flipping the pages, each pornographic image reassuring her that indeed, her mind had been playing tricks on her: There was not the slightest likeness between the artwork of Old Toad Pond and the filthy scribbles in The Bride of Larkspear.

  A few pages from the end of the manuscript, however, she came across an illustration that could not be termed indecent. This time the bride of Larkspear was clothed—properly clothed, in a dress that buttoned to her chin. She lay in a field of grass, the brim of her hat covering most of her face. Only her mouth showed, curved in a teasing—or perhaps mocking—smile.

  Without the distraction and discomfiture of the woman’s nakedness, the likeness in the artists’ styles leaped off the page and punched Helena in the lungs. She had not been imagining things after all: There was a marked resemblance in the use of color, the curvature of the lines, the weight and solidity of the shapes.

  Before she could quite take her thoughts to their logical conclusion, a knock came at her door. She hastily locked the manuscript away. “Come in.”

  Miss Boyle entered. “Another cable for you, miss.”

  “Thank you, Miss Boyle.”

  Fitz had sent a cable not long ago. Did he remember something else to tell her?

  But this telegram did not have the name or the address of the sender. The text was short and impersonal. Next Monday. The Savoy Hotel. Four o’clock in the afternoon. Ask for the Quaids’ room.

  Her breath suspended. Andrew. At long last. She pressed the cable against her heart, her mind running away with the imagined pleasure of this longed-for reunion. A few minutes passed before she let go of her elation and began contemplating the realities of arranging for such a rendezvous on her part, with all the surveillance that had been placed upon her.

  Well, if the Count of Monte Cristo could escape the Château d’If, it ought not be impossible for her to shake free of her watchdogs.

  Hastings’s words unexpectedly came to mind, echoing with an ominous, almost prophetic ring in her head. I beg you to exercise wisdom and restraint and remember that not all opportunities are created equal. Some are nothing but steps leading down toward catastrophe.

  She wavered for several minutes before she realized what she was doing.

  No one would stop her from seeing Andrew, least of all Hastings.

  CHAPTER 3

  Helena stumbled upon a piece of luck the next morning. Her maid Susie, hired to keep a close eye on her, resigned: A former employer’s housekeeper had died after a sudden illness, and Susie had been approached to become the new housekeeper—immediately. Helena was all too happy to let her go with extra wages and a glowing letter of character.

  To her sister, Venetia, the Duchess of Lexington, with whom she was staying, Helena recommended that since Fitz and Millie had gone off on a quick holiday in the Lake District without servants attending, Venetia could ask Millie’s maid, Bridget, to be the one sitting outside Helena’s office for a few days, until a satisfactory replacement for Susie was located.

  It certainly did not escape Helena’s attention that Fitz and Millie would return on Monday afternoon. Bridget would be eager to get back to her mistress, and Helena just might exploit that time gap to her advantage.

  In the meantime, Helena smuggled out a set of livery from the Lexington household and contacted a company that leased carriages.

  The board was set, the pieces moving. She awaited only the arrival of Monday afternoon to see whether her strategy would procure a victory on the field.

  Saturday evening the Lexingtons gave a dinner at their house. As was usually the case when one of her siblings played host, Hastings was invited to the gathering. He was, however, not seated anywhere near Helena, who’d long ago requested that he never be put next to her at dinner, so as not to diminish her enjoyment.

  But after dinner, once the gentlemen had finished with their port and cigars, they rejoined the ladies in the drawing room, and at such times there was no escaping Hastings. As inevitable as the day’s descent into night, he appeared at her side, sleek and smug, like a predator freshly returned from a bout of hearty slaughter.

  She wondered, not for the first time, whom he’d been bedding before he arrived at the Lexington house—and exactly what he’d been doing with her.

  “Miss Fitzhugh,” he murmured. “My dear, I don’t wish to impugn your toilette, but you look lonely and deprived.”

  “The recommended cure for which is no doubt a few hours in your bed, my lord?”

  “My dear girl of little faith, no one leaves my bed after only a few hours. Ladies clear their schedule for at least a week before they leap in.”

  When he lowered it just so, his voice practically purred, uncomfortably attractive. She had to tamp down an involuntary flutter in her stomach. “What do you want, Hastings?”

  He slanted a look at her. His eyes seemed to have shifted in color, a blue-grey tonight.

  “I’ve found a ring for you among my mother’s jewels, my dear, an emerald ring to match your eyes.”

  She arched a brow. “And since when do I take jewelry from gentlemen to whom I am not related?”

  “Oh, I believe we shall be related very soon, the way you are going. I can see it in your eyes: the machination, the impatience. You are scheming hard, Miss Fitzhugh, against everyone else’s better judgment.”

  He might be
a bastard, but he was a clever bastard.

  “I have been leaning on Mr. Monteth for news concerning his wife,” he continued. “Daily she calls on her sister, the wife of your beloved, and comes home excited and agitated. Mr. Monteth is convinced she is up to something. If I were you, I’d do nothing as long as Mrs. Monteth might be paying the slightest attention to her brother-in-law.”

  But if Helena didn’t take this opportunity, when would she have another one?

  “You are not listening, Miss Fitzhugh.” Hastings’s voice dropped even lower, a dark, smooth mellifluousness. “Think of wearing my ring and what that would entail. Does it not stop you cold that I may be the one to rescue you from a disaster of your own making? And remember, I already told you that I don’t want to be your husband. But if I must, out of duty, I will exact my price and make demands you’ve never even dreamed of.”

  She’d read snippets of his erotic novel—she had a very good idea of the sort of degrading lewdness he’d stipulate. It vexed her that she wasn’t as revolted as she ought to be. “That I am not concerned about a possible future chained to your bedpost—shouldn’t you take it as a sign that all my scheming is but a figment of your imagination?”

  “But you are concerned. Just now your voice caught and your shoulders recoiled.” He looked directly into her eyes. “And unless I am very much mistaken, your pupils are dilated.”

  “That is just how I react to finding a worm in my apple, my lord.”

  “Then think about how you’d feel finding such a worm—indeed, half a worm—in every apple you’ll ever henceforth bite into. Be careful, Miss Fitzhugh. More pieces are moving on this board than you think, and you may yet find yourself outmaneuvered.”

  Sunday afternoons Hastings and his daughter painted the wall of her tearoom at Easton Grange, his estate in Kent. Or rather, Hastings painted and Bea watched.

  The mural was almost complete. The sky, the trees, and a number of cottages along the edge of the pond had been painted. The pond itself, done the previous week, had dried to a glossy, sunlit green.

  “See?” He showed the palette to Bea. “I take some red and some yellow, and when I mix them I get orange.”

  Bea watched intently, but without comment.

  “Would you like to put in a few orange flowers among the red ones?” he asked. The window box he was adding to the cottage in the foreground was a riot of nasturtiums.

  Bea bit her lower lip. He could sense her desire to participate. Silently he encouraged her to say yes.

  She shook her head. He sighed inwardly—at least it was taking her longer and longer to decline.

  “Maybe another time, then. It’s quite fun, painting. You take a blob of color, you put it on a brush, and soon you have a picture.”

  He would have liked for her to join him. For a girl who spoke very little, and reluctantly at that, color and images could have become useful substitutes for words. But he didn’t start this mural to lure her to paint, just as he didn’t devote all the hours and days to the mural in his town house to impress Helena Fitzhugh.

  Painting had become a form of prayer. When he lurched between hope and despair, a brush in one hand and a palette in the other was one of the ways he dealt with sentiments too raw to be discussed and too big to shove away. And this mural was his prayer for Bea: that she would grow up strong, happy, and unafraid.

  He took up a new brush. “Now I am going to paint some leaves. You like watching me mix yellow and blue to make green, don’t you, Bea? Would you like to try your hand at it?”

  He waited the usual few seconds for her to say no. To his shock, she nodded and reached out for the brush in his hand. But then she didn’t move. He realized, after a while, that she meant for him to hold her hand and guide her.

  After what had happened when she was younger, he never felt quite worthy of her trust. But for some miraculous reason, she did trust him wholeheartedly.

  He wrapped his hand around hers, kissed her on the top of her head, and showed her what to do.

  At half past three Monday afternoon, a coachman dressed in the Lexington livery came for Helena at her office.

  “Well, there is my carriage,” she said to Bridget. “I know you must be anxious to get back and prepare for your mistress’s return. Take a hansom. Mrs. Wilson has already been instructed to add the cost of your transportation to your wages.”

  “Thank you, miss, I might then. I want to make sure everything is ready—Lady Fitzhugh won’t have much time to change out of her traveling dress before she is to head to the duchess’s for tea.”

  “Indeed she won’t.”

  And neither, after so much trouble, would Helena enjoy much more than half an hour with Andrew—she, too, was expected at the five o’clock tea. And she had better arrive before Millie, to avoid questions about why she’d taken so much time en route.

  She hopped into the brougham, directed the coachman to a nearby post office, and made a telephone call to the Lexington town house, letting the staff know she’d be coming home on her own, accompanied by Millie’s maid; no need to send the carriage.

  Now to the hotel—and Andrew.

  Inside the carriage with all its shades drawn, she fiddled with the drawstring of her reticule. She thought she’d done enough, but what if she’d underprepared? Granted, her presence at the Savoy would raise no eyebrows—the hotel’s terrace was a popular place for a cup of afternoon tea. But would it not have been even better had she disguised herself as a man with a big beard—or something of the sort?

  Damn Hastings and his incessant warnings of disaster. She ought to be exhilarated at the prospect of seeing Andrew again so soon, not fretting about everything that could go wrong.

  Enough with the troubling thoughts. She’d worked hard for this morsel of stolen time. She would clear her mind and relish her triumph.

  Or at least, she would do her utmost.

  Hastings did not expect to see Andrew Martin at the club. After Fitz had spoken to him earlier in the Season, Martin had avoided locales where he might run into any of the Fitzhugh siblings. But with Fitz away, Martin probably thought the club a safe venue for whiling away a few hours.

  Except he wasn’t exactly whiling away the hours. He seemed distracted and jumpy, getting up from his chair every few minutes to pace about the periphery of the room. At some point during each circle, he’d pull out a piece of paper from the pocket of his day coat, read it, stuff it back into his pocket, sit down, chew his lips for some time, and then repeat the procedure all over again.

  As his restlessness grew, so did Hastings’s. Why the hell was Martin so agitated? And why did he keep looking at that piece of paper?

  The next time Martin crossed the room, Hastings rose and bumped into him.

  He steadied Martin. “Sorry, there, old fellow.”

  “My fault,” said Martin meekly.

  Many children talked of running away with the Gypsies; Hastings had actually done so—more than once. His pickpocketing skills were rusty, but Martin was a spectacularly easy target.

  Standing before a bookcase, his back to the room, Hastings looked down at the loot in his hand. It was a telegram. Next Monday. The Savoy Hotel. Four o’clock in the afternoon. Ask for the Quaids’ room.

  He looked at the date on the telegram. Today was the Monday that had been specified—and soon it would strike four on the clock. Had Helena Fitzhugh sent the cable despite all his warnings to the contrary?

  Martin sucked in a loud breath. Hastings turned around to the sight of him frantically feeling his pockets. The telegram tucked inside his sleeve, Hastings meandered to Martin’s chair and dropped the telegram on the floor.

  “Something the matter?” he asked.

  Martin turned around and exhaled in relief at the sight of the telegram next to Hastings’s shoes. “Nothing. I dropped a cable—that’s all.”

  Hastings picked it up and held it out facedown toward Martin. “This one?”

  “Yes, thank you, sir.”

 
Martin pocketed the telegram. But this time, instead of returning to his seat, he bade Hastings good day and walked out of the room.

  The bastard was going to the Savoy Hotel.

  There was no inherent malice to Martin. But he was born without a spine of his own and always yielded to whichever person exerted the greatest influence on him. On the matter of his marriage, he’d deferred to his mother. Earlier in the Season, he’d obeyed Fitz. And now he’d let himself be once again persuaded by the forceful Helena Fitzhugh.

  Hastings didn’t know whom he wanted to punch more, Martin or himself. Why did he still care? Why did he persist in manning his temple in the Sahara, praying for rain, when all about him the evidence of his failure stretched as far as the eyes could see?

  On their own, his feet carried him toward the door. If he was going to drown his sorrows in whiskey, he preferred to do it at home, in the privacy of his own chambers, where his heartache would be visible to no one but himself.

  Someone pulled him aside.

  “You could be right after all, Hastings,” Monteth whispered. “I ran into Martin outside just now and tried to bring him in here, but he gave me all sorts of shifty reasons why he couldn’t have a drink with me.”

  “A man not wanting to have a drink with you, Monteth, is not exactly reason for suspicion.”

  “You don’t understand.” Monteth looked about the largely empty room and lowered his voice even more. “This morning I saw a letter the missus was writing. It said, ‘I will catch him in the act very soon.’ And guess to whom it was addressed? ‘My dear Alexandra’!”

  Alexandra was Mrs. Martin’s Christian name.

  “My goodness,” Hastings heard himself respond, sounding calm, almost detached. Or perhaps he was merely in shock, although a sharp cold was beginning to spread between his shoulder blades.