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

by Stephanie Laurens

  “It’s because of how I look that everyone treats me like a child, even Bailey,” Alana said aloud as she sat in the garden, having decided that Redgrave Manor, all seventy-two rooms of it, was too small to contain both her and Miss Sylvia Wise at the same time. “I am a Lilliputian in a land of giants.”

  She loved the Redgraves, she really did. Gideon, the earl of Saltwood, had taken her in three years previously when her parents had perished in that horrible accident—which hadn’t been Gideon’s fault, no matter what anyone said!—and she had instantly been clasped to the collective Redgrave bosom, as it were. She was a delicate rose among the thistles, or so Kate said, petite and blonde and well-mannered, as opposed to her new family, which was collectively tall and hearty and boisterous—and at times even a bit hey-go-mad.

  And she had felt protected, cosseted. Loved. Perhaps at times overwhelmed, but definitely loved. From the moment she’d bumped into Bailey at the book repository—literally bumped into him, so that he’d quickly grabbed at her shoulders so she wouldn’t fall—he had made her feel the same way.

  She barely came up to his shoulder, and she liked that. She could step into his embrace and all but disappear into his solid, sheltering arms. Bailey liked that, too. He’d told her so when they’d kissed that single time. He said she made him feel strong and powerful, and that he was certain he had been put on this earth expressly to always take care of her, and to love her all the days of his life.

  When Alana had told Kate what he’d said, she’d rolled her eyes comically and groaned as if in pain, but that was all right. Alana already knew that the Redgraves were the least romantical family in all of England. It was enough that she felt sure she had been put on this earth expressly to be with Bailey, and to love him all the days of her life.

  Or so she’d believed until she’d seen the look on his face two nights ago, when he’d turned away from Miss Wise to see his betrothed standing in the drawing room, probably looking very much like a stunned kitten.

  Was she out in the gardens because she wished to avoid Miss Wise? Or was she hiding out here because she wished to avoid Bailey? Was she now not only small and petty—and what was that last one? Oh, yes, very, very vulnerable—or had she also overnight become suspicious and distrusting of this man she loved so much?

  Alana swiped at her damp eyes with her handkerchief before quickly replacing it in her pocket when she heard footsteps on the path. “Alana? What are you doing sitting out here alone? I’ve been looking all over for you, sweetheart.”

  “And now you’ve found me,” she said as brightly as possible as Bailey sat down beside her on the stone bench. What a mess she was—she couldn’t even hide properly! “I thought you’d gone out riding with Max.”

  “Nobody rides with Maximillian Redgrave, Alana. They eat the dust that black monster of his kicks up until they decide there are more pleasant ways to spend a lovely afternoon.” Bailey lifted Alana’s hand to lightly touch his lips to her fingertips. “Like being with you.”

  Oh, how smooth he was, Alana thought, wondering where that particular revelation had come from. Never at a loss for something to say; making all the right moves, tossing off compliments with such ease.

  He was so handsome. Blond as was she, but his eyes were such a deep and lovely green to her own pale blue shade. His smile could melt stone, his manners were impeccable, and although he was quite tall, like the Redgraves, he was much more gentle-natured; his heart touched by a pretty verse, his voice never raised, his temperament even, no matter the situation.

  Her wonderful, dependable rock. Her safe harbor. He was everything she’d ever hoped for, everything she wanted him to be.

  Had he also been everything Sylvia Wise had wanted him to be?

  “Alana? Is something wrong? You’re…well, you’re looking at me as if I may have just grown an extra head.”

  “I am? Oh, yes, I suppose I am,” she answered, hating herself for her terrible thoughts. “Bailey? May I ask you a question?”

  He took her hands in his, nearly destroying her resolve. “You can ask me anything, sweetheart. I can see something’s troubling you.”

  She took a deep breath and asked her question. “If…if you and I had not met that day…would you have proposed to Miss Wise?”

  His grip momentarily tightened on her fingers. “Would I…what? Would I have married her, exchanged my title for her fortune? Is that what you’re asking me, Alana?”

  She lowered her head, no longer able to look into his eyes. “No, I don’t think it is. I think I already know you would have married her in order to repair your family’s fortune. That is your duty as the heir, isn’t it? I’m…I’m not a complete goose.”

  Bailey let go of her hands and got to his feet, clearly not able to sit still any longer. He knifed his fingers through his hair, leaving those smooth golden locks looking adorably disheveled and eminently touchable, which she would do her best to ignore.

  “There’s another term for that besides doing my duty, Alana. And that’s fortune hunter.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true,” she said, adding hastily, “but I fully understand that you had little choice. I mean, there’s the matter of your mother, and your three dowerless sisters all needing successful Seasons in a few years. And then there’s the estate, and all those who work there—I know you feel responsible for them as well. My fortune will solve all of those problems for you.”

  “God,” Bailey said, looking at her as if now perhaps she’d grown a second head. “I had no idea you were thinking things like that. You think I proposed marriage to you in order to take control of your inheritance?”

  Alana got to her feet. He was tall enough when she stood beside him, but when she had to look up at him while she was seated, she could easily develop a crick in her neck. “I’m sorry, Bailey, I’m not saying this correctly. I suppose what I want to know is this—if you were prepared to marry Sylvia Wise for her fortune, how do you know you aren’t marrying me for mine?”

  For a moment he looked as if she’d just physically slapped him, and she wanted to die, just die. But she had to know.

  “How do I know, or how do you know? Is that it, Alana? You’re doubting my affection for you?”

  Being closer to him wasn’t helping, so she sat down again. “Miss Wise took me aside yesterday, Bailey. I tried to avoid her—I’ve been trying very diligently to avoid her—but she…she cornered me in the music room. She told me she felt sorry for me.”

  Bailey muttered something pithy concerning Miss Wise, and probably best reserved for times he was in strictly male company. At any rate, it didn’t sound like a very pretty word.

  “Yes, I think you’re right. She’s not a nice person,” Alana agreed, still keeping her gaze directed down at her tightly clasped hands. “But she did explain why she convinced Valentine to bring her here. She said she felt it only fair to warn me that I am heading for heartbreak if I believe anything you say about…about having feelings for me.”

  “I do have feelings for you, Alana. Very deep feelings. Feelings I thought we shared.”

  She blinked back tears. “Thank…thank you. Miss Wise doesn’t love you, by the way. She made herself very clear on that point. She, um, she said she was just happy you were fairly young, and presentable, and that you had no bad habits such as…oh, dear…such as belching in public.”

  “No, she leaves that party trick to her mother,” Bailey said, dropping to one knee in front of the bench, so that at last the two of them were seeing eye to eye, at least physically. “Alana, Sylvia is here to make mischief between us. You have to know that.”

  Alana extracted her handkerchief from her pocket and tried her best to blow her nose daintily—sadly, a talent she had never quite mastered. “I know she didn’t wangle her way to Redgrave Manor to give us her blessing, Bailey. Give me some cr
edit.”

  Oh, dear. That had sounded more sharp than she’d intended, and not at all like her. But, then, she hadn’t been sleeping at all well, so perhaps she could be excused.

  “What else did she say to you? Let’s get this over with, sweetheart, so that we can put it, and Miss Wise, behind us.”

  “Very well, I suppose we should. I think you can most probably imagine what else she said. She doesn’t love you, you don’t love her, but you’d discussed the mutual advantages of your…your union. You were even going to send her mother on a lengthy voyage to Greece, I believe it was.”

  “In the hope the ship would sink somewhere along the way, yes. Pirates would have been too much to hope for.”

  “Oh, Bailey,” Alana said, very nearly smiling. “But the point is, you were all but declared to her, weren’t you?”

  He didn’t speak for several nerve-shredding seconds, and then sighed deeply before admitting, “Yes. Yes, Alana, I was fully prepared to declare for her. I didn’t see that I had a choice. But, if there is any credit in the thing for me, and there isn’t much, at least I was honest with Sylvia.”

  “Honesty is a virtue, Bailey.” Alana sniffed, or sniffled, she supposed, although sniffled sounded more delicate. “I can almost forgive Miss Wise for coming here. You greatly disappointed her, you know.”

  “I believe she’ll survive. I’m not the only penniless peer in the realm.”

  “I suppose,” Alana said, rather glad she didn’t have to feel badly that she didn’t feel badly for Miss Wise and her dashed matrimonial hopes.

  Perhaps she should stop now, not ask the question that still burned inside her head. It could only lead to trouble.

  But then she heard herself asking it anyway:

  “And…and if we’d met, and…and if you’d been…attracted to me…and if I was poor as some church mouse…would you still have declared for me?”

  He raised his hand to cup her cheek for a moment, and something melted inside of her. “That doesn’t signify, Alana, because it isn’t true.”

  “And yet I still would be most interested in your answer.”

  “I love you, Alana. With all my heart.”

  “That’s not an answer. Because there’s love, Bailey, and there is duty. So, please, tell me, and please give me the courtesy of the honesty with which you approached the subject with Miss Wise. If we’d met that day, and I was, oh, a parson’s daughter, come to borrow a book, would you even now be preparing for your nuptials with Miss Wise? Much as you say you love me.”

  Bailey took her hands in his and looked deeply into her eyes. “I can’t answer that, Alana, because I didn’t have to make that choice.”

  I shouldn’t have asked…I shouldn’t have asked. Now look what I’ve done.

  She disengaged her hands from his grip and got to her feet. “On the contrary, Bailey. I think you did answer my question, simply by refusing to answer it. Thank you for being honest.”

  And then she was off, running down the path to the house, her handkerchief clasped hard against her mouth to help stifle her sobs.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “HONOR’S A REAL BASTARD, isn’t it?” Maximillian Redgrave asked as he handed out glasses of wine to his friend Bailey and his brother Valentine. “As younger sons, Val here and I don’t have to tax our heads about it overmuch, do we, Val? No, don’t answer. We already know you don’t worry your head about anything. Miss Wise’s presence downstairs speaks sufficiently to your brainpower.”

  “I told you, Max, I thought I was doing the damned woman a favor. Can I help it that she lied to me?”

  “You’ll do one favor too many one day, Val, and end up hanged, or worse,” Max prophesied as he sat down beside Bailey, who had long since given up paying attention to anything the brothers said to each other.

  He’d heard that there were seven levels of Hell, and he believed he’d visited each and every one of them since he’d bungled his answer to Alana’s quite reasonable question. Except that it hadn’t been reasonable, because she wasn’t a parson’s daughter. But she could have been. She could have been the rat catcher’s daughter, damn it. And he still would have loved her with all his heart, forever.

  But there was still his mother, his sisters: Mary, the eldest, was already a full year overdue to make her Come Out. The hundreds of workers on the estate. He had a responsibility to all of them. There was love, and there was duty. Alana had asked him a reasonable yet impossible question. But he should have had an answer.

  “How could I have not answered her?” he asked the room at large now. “I knew what she wanted to hear. That I’d have tossed aside my mother, my sisters, the estate—everything—for love of her. That’s what I should have said, that’s what she needed to hear.”

  “So why didn’t you say it?” Valentine asked from his bed of pain (which wasn’t half so painful today, not that he’d tell anyone, or they wouldn’t continue being so nice to him). “It certainly was simple enough. ‘Yes, Alana, my dearest darling girl—I still would have married you cap over the windmill if you were poorer than a church mouse, and we would have lived together in abject yet glorious poverty as the estate crumbled all around us. Unless, of course, I’m clapped up in the Fleet for my inherited debts, at which time I would only ask that I could lower my basket down the outside wall each morning and you would fill it with whatever crusts of stale bread you might find in our humble larder.’ See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

  “I could smother him with one of his pillows, if you’d like,” Max offered, not all that helpfully. “Tell me again, why is the woman still here? Not to mention the mother, and nobody in his right mind would wish to mention that nasty piece of work.”

  “Gideon arrives late tonight from Dover,” Bailey explained, “before heading off again tomorrow morning to gather up your grandmother for the nuptials, remember? It would have seemed too much as if we—I—was afraid to have Sylvia and Alana under the same roof if we were to boost her out of here before then. At least that’s what Kate said.”

  “Ah, yes, our lovable old Tartar of a grandmother,” Max said, wincing. “And we’re all certain she wants to leave London in the midst of the Season? Surely she hasn’t managed to insult everyone in the ton already.”

  “Gideon’s the only one who can handle her. I didn’t even bother stopping off to say hello during the few days I was there. She asks such embarrassing questions of a person, you know,” Valentine told Bailey. “In any event, if Gideon can handle Trixie, he won’t have any trouble escorting the ladies back to Mayfair. Kate thinks like a general, you know. Very good at strategy. Maybe you should apply to her for help now, Bailey? Clearly we’re not of much use to you.”

  “Not if lying to Alana is your only suggestion, no,” Max said, looking at Bailey. “Could you at least try not to look so maudlin, old fellow? You could put a man off his drink.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bailey said, getting to his feet. “You’re right. I should talk to Kate. As confidants, you two are pretty worthless, you know.”

  “Not as if we didn’t tell you that,” Valentine pointed out happily. “Women are by nature more devious, and much better suited to whatever it is you’re going to have to do, whatever that turns out to be. But if you fancy a hand of whist later, we’ll be here.”

  Bailey thanked the brothers and went off in search of Lady Katherine, running her down in the music room, where she was attacking a tune on the pianoforte with much more enthusiasm than expertise.

  “Oh, good, a reason to cut my practice short,” she said, rising from the bench at the same time she gestured toward a pair of chairs near the fireplace, inviting him to sit down. “Although I did manage to roust Miss Wise and her mother with my joyful noise, as Trixie would term it, so we shouldn’t term the thing a total loss. Where’s Alana? I had assumed you t
wo were hiding together somewhere.”

  Five minutes later, Kate’s smile had completely disappeared, and her posture had stiffened somewhat, as if she might be girding her loins for battle, if Valentine’s description of his sister was to be believed. Lady Katherine was a striking woman, her tall, dark beauty quite singular in a world filled mostly by petite blonde misses of pale skin and blue eyes. But the late countess had been Spanish, and all four Redgrave offspring had been influenced in looks and spirit by that woman’s heated Iberian blood.

  Not that Alana’s looks were ordinary. She might possess the coloring (and, compared with Lady Katherine, at least, the petite stature of most Englishwomen), but her sweet, loving nature shone from her like a beacon, making her more than merely beautiful.

  His mind retreated from the music room, traveling back to that quite ordinary Tuesday that had somehow turned into the most glorious day of his life.

  He’d gone into the book repository because it was the closest open door when London’s always precarious weather had turned wet. He’d been idly inspecting the spines of books in the Modern History section, backing his way down the narrow aisle, when he’d inadvertently stepped on the hem of someone’s gown, turned about sharply to apologize, and nearly knocked Alana off her feet.

  He’d immediately dropped the book in his hands and took hold of her shoulders to steady her, prepared to apologize. But he couldn’t find the words. All he could do was look at her. She was the sun on a rainy day. She was an angel somehow come to earth.

  He should have let her go. Immediately. He should have apologized, bowed and asked if he could present his compliments to her mother or whoever had accompanied her to the book repository, so that they could be formally introduced. He should have done any number of things.

  Instead, still holding on to her shoulders, looking down into her huge blue eyes with his heart shining in his own, he’d said, “I’m Bailey.”