Rules of Engagement: The Reasons for MarriageThe Wedding PartyUnlaced (Lester Family)

by Stephanie Laurens

  Except when she was daydreaming about Bailey’s betrothal kiss, and wondering if there existed some sort of unspoken rule about not kissing her on the mouth again until they were married. She’d ask Kate, but if Kate laughed, or was shocked, well, Alana would simply expire of embarrassment.

  “Alana? You don’t care for blue? It doesn’t have to be blue. It probably has been blue for fifty years. It’s just that we’ve always called it the blue room. But we can change that.”

  She blinked, realizing her mind had taken her away from the moment, and the conversation. That had probably happened when Bailey, sitting beside her on the stone bench, had taken her hands in his and then…well, and then nothing. He’d gone back to speaking about their plans for the drawing room at Netherfield, and she’d tried to do her best not to grab him by the ears and kiss him square on the mouth. His warm, sweet, lovable mouth.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, feeling her cheeks growing hot. “I’m afraid I wasn’t attending.”

  He smiled that special smile that melted her knees and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I don’t blame you. It’s boring stuff, most of it, isn’t it?”

  Three kisses on the cheek. Alana added it to her tally.

  “Oh, no, not really. I suppose I was thinking about…about Sunday.”

  He squeezed her hands. “Our wedding day.” And then he frowned. “It isn’t too soon, Alana? Gideon assured me, since it will be only a simple, family affair, there was no need to—well, he said no reason to drag the bloody business out, but I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.”

  Alana smiled. “Yes, he did. Gideon has been my guardian these past three years, and he’s never been comfortable with riding herd on me. After Sunday, I’m your worry, as he explained it to me. Gideon is a wonderful man, Bailey, honest, and caring. He…he just hides it well.”

  “Ah, my betrothed is a mistress of understatement,” Bailey said, and then he kissed her cheek again.

  Four.

  “I love you, Alana.” He let go of her hands and slipped an arm around her shoulder, drawing her into his side. She rested her head on his shoulder. Sighed. This was nice. Very nice.

  “I love you, too,” she said quietly.

  They probably made quite the lovely picture, sitting there on the stone bench in the sunshine. Even romantical.

  She could wait until Sunday. She really could.

  She just wished Bailey couldn’t…

  * * *

  ELSEWHERE AT REDGRAVE MANOR, another young female was not quite so reticent about expressing her feelings.

  “You idiot!”

  Valentine Redgrave looked up from his frowning inspection of a small smudge he’d somehow collected on his buckskins. “Gone nearly a full year, far from the loving bosom of my family, and yet so little has changed. Including me, I suppose. I’m still an idiot? I’ve only been home a little above an hour, Kate—so how can you tell?”

  Lady Katherine Redgrave, who in truth had sorely missed her brother, shot back, “I know, you blockhead, because I happened to walk into the morning room to see that pernicious cat Sylvia Wise perched on Trixie’s favorite chair. And when I got over my shock and asked her how she came to be here, she informed me that you were kind enough to have invited her to come along with you. You idiot.”

  Valentine got to his feet and took hold of Kate’s shoulders, which put a stop to her angry pacing. “But she asked very prettily. Something about her new carriage not being delivered on time and not wishing to miss the nuptials of her dear friend Alana. That took me by surprise, let me tell you. You could have told a person, you know.”

  Kate pushed him away. “A person could have told a family that he had returned from Paris and was about to descend on his unsuspecting family. An idiot just shows up like some unannounced prodigal son, having invited sure disaster to trip off along home with him.” Kate cocked her head to one side as she glared at him. “You do perceive the difference?”

  “Much as I loathe disappointing you, no, I don’t. Is there something havey-cavey about the thing? The nuptials, I mean. Will Gideon be marching the groom to the altar with a pistol stuck to his spine?”

  Kate pressed her fingertips to her temples, attempting to keep her brains from exploding. “We did write to you. The letter is in Paris by now, while you’re here, ruining everything. The wedding is to be strictly a family affair. Or at least it was.”

  Valentine sat down beside his sister. “No, sorry, I’m still not seeing it. But wait, allow me a guess. Miss Wise is not a bosom chum of our Alana?”

  “She barely knows her,” Kate said, chewing on her full bottom lip. “It’s Bailey she’s after.”

  “Bailey? Bailey Armstrong? Alana’s getting bracketed to the Old Bailey? Sorry, that’s a weak joke, but it’s funnier if you’re half in your cups when you call him that.”

  “Oh, yes, very amusing. Please excuse me if I wait until I’m alone to indulge in unladylike sniffs and snorts of hilarity. But back to the point. Yes, Bailey. The thing is, he and Miss Wise were all but declared to each other when Bailey met Alana at the book repository and the two of them took one look at each other and tumbled into love. Quite romantic, when you think about it, I suppose, which I try not to do because I find it all rather soppy.”

  “And Lord knows we Redgraves are never soppy. Scandalous, but never soppy. Absurd. Reckless. Notorious. But never soppy.”

  “Never mind that now. Mark my words, Valentine, Sylvia Wise is the spurned woman, and sure as check she wangled her way here to make mischief. We have to get rid of her. And since you brought her, it’s up to you to take her away again.”

  Valentine sprang to his feet. “Well, why didn’t you just say so? I’ll simply nip off downstairs, toss her over my shoulder and tote her out to the coach—done and done.”

  “You’re not amusing, although I’d give a five pound note to watch you do it. And I suppose she’s brought her mother along with her? Lady Wise, best known for her utter lack of sensibility.”

  “Oh, good, I thought it was just me thinking that. Rather, um, rough around the edges for the widow of a baron, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Common as a dirt floor. That’s what Trixie would say—and will say if those two women are still here when she arrives on Friday, Lord help us.”

  Mention of their grandmother, Lady Beatrix, the dowager countess of Saltwood and one of the most outspoken women in the history of the ton, was enough to elicit both a smile and a small shiver of apprehension from Valentine.

  “You’re right. I’m no coward, but we’ve got to get the ladies gone. I mean, once she’s done with them, she’ll most naturally turn on me, because I brought them. Let’s put our heads together.”

  Valentine plunked himself down beside his sister, shoulder to shoulder, their chins rather resting on their chests, their legs raised to prop their feet on the low marble-topped table.

  The Redgraves rarely stood on ceremony, and they believed very much that one should be allowed to be comfortable in one’s own home—and anywhere else they were, if they took it into their heads to do so. Because they were Redgraves, and who was going to gainsay them? That was the one good thing about being known for being outrageous and shockingly scandalous creatures—you could continue to be shockingly outrageous and scandalous whenever the spirit moved you. In fact, Society very nearly expected you to be and, for reasons only Society could explain, rather delighted in watching the show.

  So the siblings reclined low on their spines with their feet resting on the tabletop. They both, at the same time, crossed their ankles, and then sighed. They stared at the fireplace for some moments. When Valentine next spoke, it was to inquire about Alana, who he liked very much.

  “So Alana loves Bailey?”

  “With all of her tender, soppy heart, yes.”


  “And he loves her?”

  Kate realized she was pleating her skirt into wrinkles and stopped, folding her hands together in her lap. “I’m convinced he does.”

  “Then, other than the business about dirt floors, I really don’t see a problem there, at least.”

  Kate shifted on the cushion. “Listen carefully. Sylvia Wise is one generation away from the shop. In her case, her mama’s father made some incredible fortune in coal, or peat, or some sort of fuel, not that it signifies, and then married her off to the baron—old and fairly deaf and probably the only person who would have her, no matter how large her fortune or dire their need of funds. Rumor has it Sylvia’s no more the baron’s daughter than she’s Prinney’s, but we’ll never know if it was the ancient fortune hunter or his valet who did the deed.”

  “God, but we’re a cruel bunch, aren’t we?”

  “There’s that tender heart of yours again, Valentine. It will bring you to disaster one of these days. But I’m only being honest. Yes, Society is cruel. However, as we both well know, we ignore it at our peril when the case is serious enough. At least we do if we care a rap what anyone thinks, which we Redgraves don’t happen to do very often, thank God.”

  “Yes, and how is our brother Gideon?” Valentine asked, and then raised his hand to rub away his words. “I know, I know, it’s over, and we don’t talk about it. There may still be whispers, but that’s all. Water off our backs, as Trixie says, and damn everyone else.”

  “But that’s us, Valentine. Alana’s different. She wouldn’t care about Society, I don’t mean that. But in this instance, she’d care. In her heart. Now, if I might continue?”

  “You’re asking my permission? Have you ever done that before? I don’t seem to remember any such occasion.”

  “That I will ignore. Now, the baron promptly cocked up his toes just after Sylvia was born, and the man’s courtesy title died with him, which well it should have, as he’d only gotten it, rumor has it, thanks to some nefarious thing he did to benefit one of the royal princes many years ago.”

  Valentine smiled at her. “I’m impressed. I had no idea you were so well versed in gossip.”

  “You’re forgetting Trixie. She keeps me knee-deep in the stuff, even when I beg her to stop. Now, Sylvia is passably pretty, odiously wealthy, ruthlessly ambitious, and she and her mother are hell-bent on marrying her off to a title that doesn’t expire upon death, for one thing, and that is connected with an old and respected family. Like Bailey’s.”

  “Respected? The earl is a drunk and a wastrel, and locked up for debt at least twice, I think.” Valentine’s eyebrows rose even as he said those last words. “Oh, now I see. Or at least I think I do. Miss Wise was chasing a title, and Bailey, poor bastard—and I mean that in the God-help-the-poor-bastard sense—was chasing a fortune.”

  “Exactly. He was gritting his teeth and doing his duty. Until he and Alana chanced to meet. Now do you understand?”

  Valentine got to his feet and began to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace. “I think I’m beginning to, yes. Alana, wonderful as she is, is also the orphaned heiress to her late father who amassed his fortune in—what was that again?”

  “Textiles,” Kate supplied quietly, happy her brother had at last seen the point, and wouldn’t have to be led by the nose through an entire sordid explanation.

  “And you—and Gideon, I’d suppose, since he’s her guardian—are certain Bailey didn’t just change horses in the middle of a race for solvency, or some such thing?”

  “Our brother isn’t a fool, Val. When he took on guardianship of Alana he did so with every intention of managing her finances and protecting her well-being. I was in the room when he interrogated Bailey—and there is no better word to describe that uncomfortable hour. Bailey knows how it must look, as if he’d simply changed horses—ladies—while retaining his motive for marriage. But he truly loves Alana.”

  “Not her money.”

  “I doubt he’ll dispense it all to the poor in order to prove that love, but no. He is not marrying Alana for financial gain. Nor, might I point out, is she marrying him in order to one day be the countess, as that knife cuts both ways, remember. Not,” she continued, “that the world will probably believe that any more than if Miss Wise and Bailey were to have wed. Society will see a mutually beneficial exchange of money for title. However, if our sweet, love-struck Alana were to think as much, even for a moment, if even a kernel of any notion that Bailey might have proposed to her inheritance and not to her should enter her sweet, innocent head?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Oh, Valentine, get that woman and her encroaching mama out of here before the dinner gong goes. Please.”

  Valentine drew himself up to attention and shot his sister a jaunty salute. “I will do as ordered, Captain Kate. I’m off, nipping down the stairs to the morning room, ma’am, to Do My Duty.”

  “And Trixie complains that country life is boring,” Kate said quietly as she got to her feet in order to follow her brother. “This should be fun to watch.”

  She’d taken no more than a few steps before she heard the dogs barking at the head of the stairs, followed by Valentine’s cheerful words of greeting to Duke and Major and his own favorite, the fat and fairly stupid aged spaniel, Tubby.

  “Val, grab Tubby,” she warned as the younger dogs crowded out the spaniel, backing him toward the top step. “The old fool is going to topple back down the stairs!”

  Tubby yelped in panic. Valentine cursed and made a grab for the dog…and a moment later Tubby and Kate were standing at the top of the staircase, watching as Valentine and the two hounds went tumbling head over heels together down the wooden staircase before coming to rest on the half landing.

  The hounds got to their feet unhurt, shook themselves, and ran off, seeming to suddenly remember they were not allowed upstairs. But Valentine didn’t move.

  “Valentine! Are you all right? Answer me! For God’s sake, say something!”

  He did.

  And Kate, who had been raised in the company of three older brothers and a more than slightly irascible grandmother, was surprised to realize there were still some utterances that could make her clap her hands over her ears.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALANA WALLINGFORD KNEW everyone thought her to be sweet and gentle, pleasant of disposition and possessing not a single bad word to say about anyone. And truth be told, everyone was probably correct in that assessment.

  Or they had been, until Bailey had come into her life.

  Now, Alana decided, she had become small and petty…and very, very vulnerable.

  It had been two days since Valentine Redgrave had unexpectedly returned to the bosom of his family. Two days since he had taken that unfortunate tumble down the stairs and broken his leg, so that he was now confined to his chambers, where he was, at the last she’d heard, scribbling an ode to the glories of laudanum.

  Two days since Alana had come down to dinner to see Miss Sylvia Wise and her monstrosity of a mother ensconced in the drawing room, the former smiling up at Bailey, the latter inspecting the underside of a lovely silver dish as if considering placing an offer on it.

  Kate had rushed over to her, quickly explaining that Miss Wise and her mother were at Redgrave Manor at the impulsive invitation of Valentine. He’d taken a romantic interest in Miss Wise, silly man that he was, and now was unable to take them away again after riding all the way from London with them, a journey that had sufficed to change his always quixotic mind on that particular head. Gideon, once he returned from Dover in two days’ time, would certainly make other arrangements, but for now there really was nothing else for it. The ladies were their guests, although they’d certainly be gone before the nuptials on Sunday (her brother Max was going to offer, but Kate had rather sensed that her ladyship would
expect the earl to do the honors, and who only knew what Max might say during the trip, since Maximillian Redgrave was not exactly known for his tactfulness when he believed himself to be in the company of fools).

  “And that’s all right, isn’t it, Alana?” Kate had ended rather nervously, squeezing her friend’s hands.

  Of course that had been all right with Alana. She would never say otherwise. She would never look her dear friend in the eye and say, “Pull my other leg, Kate, it’s got bells on.” She would never then go on to point out that Miss Wise and Bailey had been considered a sure match by the gossips until only a mere six weeks ago, even if everyone, including herself, pretended that she didn’t know that. She wouldn’t think to put forth the mean-spirited opinion that Miss Wise had somehow tricked Valentine into bringing her to Redgrave Manor. The words, “She’s here for Bailey,” would never pass her lips.

  But she would think them. She’d been thinking them. Every minute of those past two days and nights.

  And Bailey? Oh, Bailey. He had been so attentive, even more attentive than usual. He rarely left her side. He was constantly solicitous, more gentle with her than she could bear, as if he thought she might at any moment dissolve in tears or some such ridiculous thing, just because Miss Sylvia Wise was here to ruin her happiness.

  Or was it more than that? Was Bailey feeling somehow guilty? And if he was—for what reason? He’d sworn his love for her. On bended knee, which had been rather delicious to watch. So why was he acting so strangely? Was he having second thoughts now that his former…former love was under the same roof? Was he looking for some way to break off the betrothal without causing a scene?

  Or did he just think she was a big, stupid baby who needed to be constantly coddled and reassured—which, when she got right down to it, would be the worst thing of all. She wasn’t a child. She didn’t wish to be thought of as a child, treated as a child. She was a woman. Or at least, she thought, feeling her cheeks grow hot, she would be by Monday morning.