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

by Stephanie Laurens

  “I’m Alana,” she’d answered, demurely lowering her eyelids, but then looking up at him again through her dark lashes, at which time Bailey had felt fairly sure his legs were going numb.

  It had been Fate. That’s what it had been. The rain, the book repository, all of it. Nothing planned, nothing premeditated, for God’s sake. Love wasn’t like that…and this was love. He’d known it from that first instant…and thought Alana had as well.

  Bailey shook himself from his thoughts, allowed time to grow thanks to Kate’s unnerving silence, when she at last spoke.

  “Well? Have you come up with an answer, because I believe I’d like to hear it as well? Would you be about to marry my good and dear friend this coming Sunday if she were to come to you without a groat to her name?”

  He thought about repeating what he’d said to Alana, but one look at General Kate, and he decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. “I don’t know,” he said at last, hating himself. Truly loathing himself.

  “All right,” Kate said consideringly. “At least you’re being honest now. You have been raised to do your duty, haven’t you? Not by your spendthrift father, I’m assured, but by your mother, who has drummed it into your head that you and you alone are responsible for your sisters and, indeed, everything and everyone connected with the Armstrong name and the title of Earl of Sandling that will one day be yours. Hopefully soon, before your father can ruin you all beyond salvation.”

  “Knowing that I was seriously pursing Sylvia Wise is answer enough to that question, isn’t it?”

  “God, yes. That doesn’t simply smack of desperation—it all but shouts it from the rooftops.” She looked at him sorrowfully. “You poor thing.”

  “Max says honor’s a bastard,” Bailey said, beginning to believe he was on the verge of sliding into a sad decline, which was not at all like him. Or at least he had never considered himself the melodramatic sort.

  “Ah, yes. And said, I’m quite certain, with all the fervor of a younger son, who doesn’t have to worry about such things. So Alana is crushed, I’ll assume?” she added, again surprising Bailey with her candor.

  He hadn’t blinked when she’d mentioned his father, but it was rather amazing to know that others felt as he did; his father was a total loss. He’d lived his life determined to never do a single thing his father had done. He’d always considered himself an upright man, doing his duty. And as his reward, the gods had smiled on him, and sent him Alana.

  He spared a moment to wonder who had sent him Sylvia Wise.

  “Yes, I’m certain she is.” Bailey looked into his wineglass and then put it down without tasting its contents. “I can’t say that I blame her. Why should she believe I love her?”

  “Pity there aren’t any fire-breathing dragons about for you to slay. To save her, you understand, with some grand bit of derring-do,” Kate said, and then gnawed on her lower lip for a moment. “I mean, the closest thing we have to a fire-breathing dragon is my grandmother, and she adores Alana, so that wouldn’t work.”

  Bailey looked at her levelly. “Max and Valentine said you’d help. That doesn’t sound like help.”

  “No, but it does give me an idea. We should think of what Trixie would do.” Then she frowned.

  “What?” Bailey leaned closer, rather like a drowning man reaching for a bit of floating straw.

  “No, you can’t do that. I can’t even say it.” Then Kate waved her words away. “Well, I could certainly say it. I’m not missish, for pity’s sake. And it could work. I mean, it should work. The way I’ve heard it, in one way or another it has worked for a thousand years.”

  “Kate…”

  “Oh, all right, don’t glower. Alana loves you because you’re sweet and wonderful and kind and all sorts of other laudable attributes that make my teeth itch, but to each his own, I say.”

  “Thank you,” Bailey said, fairly certain he wasn’t feeling all that sweet or kind at the moment.

  “You’re welcome,” Kate said absently, or perhaps the proper term would be obliviously. “Now promise me you didn’t hear this from me, because I’d deny it in any case. Remember that. It’s Trixie. She’s…she’s speaking through me. Yes, that’s the way of it. You’ll never say I was the one to suggest such a thing.”

  “I’ll swear that on your family Bible, if you just tell me where it is. For God’s sake, Kate, tell me. I love Alana. I’d do anything to make her see that.”

  Kate didn’t blush. It wasn’t in her nature, but she did say the words rather quietly. Still, they seemed to echo all around the room, bouncing back from the walls as Bailey sat there, rather stunned.

  “Bed her, Bailey. That’s what Trixie would say. If you truly love her, show her.”

  * * *

  JUST AS THE LARGE CLOCK in the grand foyer was striking ten the following morning, Kate entered Alana’s bedchamber. She carried with her a tray holding two china cups and a squat ceramic teapot, the favorite receptacle for Redgrave hot chocolate for the past decade…replacing the pot that had been the favorite before that, thanks to Trixie having tossed that one at Valentine’s head for one reason or another.

  “Alana? You’re not still asleep, are you?” she asked, squinting into the dimness in the general direction of the bed. “Up you get, slugabed, I’ve brought hot chocolate. And biscuits.”

  There was some slight rustling of bedclothes and then Alana raised her sleep-mussed blond head from beneath the covers as she pushed herself back against the headboard. She wanted to be alone. She’d ask Kate to leave if she thought her friend would obey her, but since she already knew Kate obeyed no one, she didn’t bother. “I’m not hungry, thank you. Or thirsty.”

  “Good, more for me,” Kate said, sliding the tray onto a low table and seating herself on one of a pair of facing chairs placed in front of the fireplace. “Do you know what’s wrong with Bailey?” she asked as she poured two cups of the steaming chocolate. “I saw him downstairs just now in the breakfast room, and if his chin got any lower, he’d be dragging it along the ground when he walks.”

  What had she said about Bailey? All right, so perhaps she didn’t want to be alone. Alana turned back the covers and carefully aimed her feet toward the floor. The beds at Redgrave Manor were all built for giants. “He is? I mean, it is?”

  “Hmm?” Kate asked, looking up from her pouring. “Oh, we’re talking about Bailey, aren’t we? Never mind. I’m sure I was mistaken. The man’s to be married in a few days. He can’t be anything but happy. You’re happy, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

  Alana slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown and sat down on the facing chair, wrapping the soft white material around her. “Brides are always happy,” she replied, going on her guard. Kate wasn’t the sort for idle chatter.

  “Oh, I seriously doubt that. Her Royal Highness Princess Caroline certainly wasn’t, or so it’s said. I doubt any of King Henry Tudor’s wives were happy, always wondering how long it would be before their heads were separated from their shoulders. Then there’s—”

  “In general,” Alana said quickly. “I was speaking of brides in general. As…as a species.”

  Kate looked at her and smiled. “Brides are a species? What a singular idea. In any event, you’re happy, and that’s all that concerns me.”

  At which point, Alana burst into tears.

  But that was all right. That was probably very good. She’d wanted to speak with someone about what had happened the day before in the gardens. Needed to speak with someone. She loved Bailey, and she had hurt him. She had asked him a question she should not have thought, let alone asked, and now she didn’t know how to fix what she very well knew was her obligation to correct.

  Kate was her best friend in the entire world. Who better to unburden herself on, who better to advise her as to what she should do n
ow that she’d made such a horrible muddle of things?

  Because there had to be a way to make things right, there just had to be, or else she would simply die. She had to find some way to convince Bailey that she understood the great pressure he was under to rescue his family, and how he would not wish her to spend her life in perilous poverty simply because he loved her, and that she shouldn’t have asked a question that had no basis in reality in the first place. Because, in the second place, she was wealthy, and he did love her, and she did love him, and what was wrong with any of that, for pity’s sake? But how could she convince Bailey she understood all of that now…now that she’d made such a muddle of things?

  “I think I’m feeling the beginnings of a headache,” Kate said some half hour of such muddled and at times tearful statements later, rubbing at her left temple as she stared into her empty cup. “But I think I have a solution for you. Well, not precisely me, but you know how brilliant Trixie is, and I think I know just what she would say to do. But perhaps not. It’s—it’s rather, well…no, I probably shouldn’t say.”

  Alana leaned forward in her chair. “Yes? Please, Kate, don’t hesitate now. Tell me.”

  That was just before her innocent blue eyes got wide as saucers.

  “But first, Alana, I think you need to speak with somebody else,” Kate said when Alana at last recovered enough to reach for a biscuit. Not that she was hungry; she might never eat again. But she had to do something, or else Kate might repeat herself, or worse, go into embarrassing detail.

  “I scarcely think I should go from person to person, presenting your solution for their opinions,” she said, and then took another large bite of biscuit.

  “That wasn’t what I meant, but all right,” Kate said, shrugging her shoulders as she got to her feet, clearly having decided this conversation was over. “You aren’t me, and I’m not you. I’m probably even mean. But if I were you, I’d get dressed, go downstairs and put a flea in Sylvia Wise’s ear before Gideon comes to take her away, at the very least. Just to make myself feel better.”

  Kate’s final words on the subject repeated themselves in Alana’s ears (both of them) as she bathed and dressed and made her way downstairs an hour later.

  She went first to the main drawing room, and then to the breakfast room, and finally to the music room—not that she was actively looking for Sylvia Wise. She was simply wandering about aimlessly, a lady of leisure, a—oh, all right, she admitted to herself. She was hunting, and all that was missing was enlisting one of the Redgrave hounds to help point the way to her quarry.

  And there she was, sitting like Little Miss Muffet, all snug on her tuffet…or at least looking very much at her ease on the settee.

  “Good morning, Miss Wise,” Alana said with more confidence than she felt.

  Sylvia Wise slowly turned her head to smile at Alana. “How wonderful of you to join me, Miss Wallingford. I had so feared I might have abused your sensibilities with my candor of the other day. I’m being banished, you know, even though my intentions were entirely honorable.”

  “Oh, they were not,” Alana said, quickly losing her discomfort as she mentally took off her gloves, more than ready for some plain speech. “Bailey chose me over you, and you wanted to get some of your own back for the slight by making me feel terrible and perhaps even withdrawing from the betrothal. Did you really think he’d then come running back to you?”

  Sylvia’s startlingly blue eyes narrowed as she slowly got to her feet and faced Alana across the expanse of carpet. “Come running back to me? You foolish little girl. He’s never left me. I…do things for him you could never do. Your fortune is larger, that’s all. But we have an understanding, your betrothed and I. I even prefer it, as marriage is my mother’s idea, not mine. I enjoy my freedom, and a variety of lovers, each with his own talents.

  “Indeed, your marriage is to my benefit, as long as Bailey continues to pleasure me when I call for him. I admit to some worry, initially, but having seen you for myself, pasty-faced little innocent that you are, I’m no longer concerned that we won’t simply continue on as we began so many months ago.”

  This was it: the moment. The moment when Alana would either crumble or soar, the moment when what she wanted to believe and what she believed would war with each other, with only one feeling emerging the victor.

  She blinked a time or two.

  She smiled.

  And then she laughed. Laughed in real amusement, and not a small portion of relief.

  Sylvia Wise’s cheeks turned an angry red. “It’s true! Every word! What are you laughing at, you silly twit?”

  Alana sobered, not without effort. “You,” she said frankly. “I’m laughing at you, Miss Not-So-Wise. And myself, for ever being so silly as to think you were anything Bailey could ever care for, even if you were covered in gold and your teeth were made out of diamonds. He never proposed marriage to you because he couldn’t love you, much as he loves his family. I doubt he even much likes you; I know I certainly don’t. Good day to you, madam, I’ve wasted more than enough time on you.”

  “Wait! You can’t—”

  Alana turned back to the woman. “Oh, and one thing more. You will kindly complain of illness and take to your chamber until such time as my guardian boosts you on your way back to London, you and your mother both. Because you won’t care for the public stagecoach, which is where you will find yourself if I see you again. Understood?”

  Alana didn’t wait for the woman’s answer, because she didn’t need to hear it, but only lifted her chin and walked out of the room, slowly and deliberately…before all but skipping down the hallway to the French doors leading out to the gardens.

  Sunday evening she would become a woman, yes, but she believed she might already be halfway there.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BAILEY HADN’T REALIZED how uncomfortable he’d been with Sylvia Wise and her mother in residence until they’d gone. He knew he hadn’t been happy, but never had a leave-taking made him feel more ebullient. He wondered how Sylvia would feel if she knew how much she brightened a room just by leaving it.

  Gideon Redgrave had been and gone, but not before delivering a pithy, ear-burning bedside lecture to his brother Valentine on the merits of his mouth consulting with his brain before it opened, especially when it was a beautiful woman seeking his assistance. He’d then imperiously—Gideon was brilliant at being imperious—gathered up Sylvia Wise and her reluctant mother, and surprised everyone by ordering one of the lesser coaches for them, saying that he’d planned to travel to London by horseback in any case, and then escort his grandmother to Redgrave House in her own coach.

  So much for any of Lady Wise’s possible thoughts about bracketing her Sylvia to the infamous Earl of Saltwood (she’d actually said she never believed those rumors about him murdering people anyway, or at least not enough to toss away the chance to be mother to a countess).

  In any event, this outstanding tactical maneuver on Gideon’s part prompted Max to say in some awe as he stood at the window and watched the earl ride off, “That’s why it’s so convenient that he’s the earl. He thinks of things. All I could think was how I’d have been stuck inside the coach with those two all the way back to Mayfair, and how I was going to make Valentine pay for that indignity the moment his leg was mended. Still, we should have thought of something like that.”

  “We shouldn’t have had to,” Kate responded, at which point she and Max and Bailey turned to stare at Valentine, who was pretending a great interest in the bit of orange marmalade slowly sliding off his piece of toast and heading for his nightshirt.

  In any case, Sylvia Wise was halfway to the city by now, and while Bailey wasn’t breathing all that easily, he at least no longer felt as if a noose was slowly tightening around his neck.

  And in just a few days’ time, he and Alana
would be wed, and the unfortunate interlude with Sylvia Wise would be a thing of the past.

  Unless Kate was wrong, and Alana was about to ask him to release her from their engagement.

  Unless Kate was wrong, and Alana was in no mood to be spoken to, let alone…seduced.

  And how in bloody blazes did a person go about seducing someone in the first place?

  Bailey was young, only four and twenty, but he wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears looby. He’d bedded his share of women. Granted, the evenings all ended with coins leaving his pocket to reside in the woman’s purse, but still—he wasn’t inexperienced.

  It was just that Alana was…different. She was young, only just nineteen, and innocent. He’d written her poems. He’d brought her flowers. He’d kissed her fingertips. They’d shared only one brief, chaste betrothal kiss. He…he cherished her. Yes, that was the word: cherish. She was a lady. Innocent. Virginal.

  In point of fact, he’d been more than a little concerned that their wedding night might prove something of a shock to her.

  Her mother had died just as Alana had left the schoolroom; she was scarcely a woman of the world. The only female influence she’d encountered before entering her first Season had come from the Dowager Countess and Kate. Bailey felt certain Kate wouldn’t have educated Alana in the way of wives, and he could only pray the dowager hadn’t.

  He, her husband, would be cast in that role. Teacher. He’d planned to be gentle. Seduction wasn’t a word that went well with gentle. One didn’t have a gentle seduction. Seduction was wild, impetuous, fraught with impatience and heavy breathing…and often indulged in sans bed.

  While the notion appealed to him very much—he had to be honest with himself and admit that—Alana had never experienced real, womanly desire, he was certain, and his prenuptial ardor might frighten her.

  “It’s the only way,” Kate had told him again just that morning. “Saying you love her is one thing. But those are just words. Anyone can say the words. Saying you would have tossed away her fortune is nothing but mouthing words that even I find hard to believe, considering your circumstances. It doesn’t matter how you found each other, things like fortune don’t matter when there’s real love—I do truly believe that. What matters is that you did find each other.”