Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 01]

by Desperately Seeking a Duke

  Not to mention the danger that at any moment, this country vicar would emerge from the ballroom and demand a betrothal at the business end of his blunderbuss.

  Betrothal. Wed.

  Something rather interesting rolled through Rafe.

  Wed to pretty Miss Phoebe Millbury, unfashionable little nobody fresh from the wilds of Devonshire. Now, why did that thought hold him caught in its warm, generous, pliant embrace for so long?

  He very nearly opened his mouth to propose on the spot.

  At the last instant, he caught himself. He could hear Calder now, carrying on about the ills of impulsiveness. Rafe leashed the strange possessive urgency that this girl mysteriously incited within him and firmly tied it down. The Season had scarcely begun. There was plenty of time to get to know Miss Millbury better.

  Besides, the idea appealed. The thought of spending the summer in her company, courting her, surprising her with small gifts—just enough to delight her without turning her head, mind you—driving her through Hyde Park in his phaeton …

  He would do this properly. He would play the gentleman for her. There was plenty of time.

  A new calm descended, smoothing the jagged edges of his earlier frustration with Calder’s highhandedness. An unhurried courtship of Phoebe Millbury would be just the cure for his current restless dissatisfaction.

  And then, when his investments paid out and his ship came in, he would approach her very respectable father with gold in his pocket and his hat in his hand. Perhaps with Calder’s backing, that would be enough to convince such a man that his daughter should wed a bastard.

  Then, just in time for their seasonal return to Brookhaven he would wed her with all appropriate fanfare. Then he would wrap her up and stick her in his pocket to be his talisman against the stifling pressure of being forever in the shadow of the perfect scion, the Marquis of Brookhaven, Calder Marbrook.

  He smiled easily at his delightful Miss Phoebe Millbury. She smiled back, shyly at first, then with a growing confidence. Oh, yes …

  She was the one.

  Chapter Three

  It was simple enough for Phoebe to make her way unnoticed back to the spot where she’d first seen Marbrook. She arrived without attracting attention, and why would she? After all, she was one of many unexceptional girls garbed in white muslin with matching wistful expressions. Hopefully her own mien would be seen as bashful and overheated, not aroused and excited.

  What had she just done?

  She reddened further, thinking of his rather telling silence once she’d mentioned the vicar—and the way he’d respectfully guided her back into the ballroom, so different from his teasing manner before—

  “There you are!”

  Tessa. Phoebe took a fortifying breath and turned to face her chaperone with an innocent expression on her face. “Yes, aunt?”

  Lady Tessa was the niece of the current Duke of Eden-court and had been a great beauty in her day—which was not so long ago, come to think of it, since Tessa was but one-and-thirty years—but her stunning looks hadn’t been enough to compensate for her famously vicious personality.

  Polished and perfect and unkind whenever it suited her. Phoebe supposed that Tessa had gotten by on her beauty for so long, the woman simply couldn’t understand the concept of getting by on good character and kindness.

  Tessa made it a point never to frown or purse her lips. The muscles of her face never moved if she could help it. It preserved her beauty, just as she claimed, but it gave her an eerie quality, as if she had been turned to stone by Medusa. Lovely but cold as alabaster.

  She’d finally married not-so-well and had burned through her not-so-wealthy husband’s money in record time. Her much older husband, who had once been wed to Phoebe’s mother’s sister, had promptly paid her back by dying as quietly and unceremoniously as he’d lived, leaving her with pretty trappings, empty accounts, and his only child, his daughter Deirdre, to raise.

  This made Tessa, by some contortionist calculation, something like an aunt to Phoebe and, as such, she was a suitable chaperone for her launch into Society. At least, that was how Phoebe’s father, the vicar, had explained it. Phoebe thought the entire matter was a bit of a stretch and that the vicar would have been better off simply admitting that he wasn’t interested in the job and that he meant to gleefully fob her off on the caustic and sometimes offensive Tessa.

  “You stupid girl!”

  Very well, make that “often offensive.” Phoebe remembered to blink innocently. “But Auntie, what did I do?”

  “I saw you dancing! Who were you dancing with?”

  Quickly, Phoebe ran down the mental list of men she’d been properly introduced to. “Was it Sir Alton?”

  “No, he had dark hair and he wasn’t a stooping old heron like that idiot Alton. I didn’t see his face—but I don’t think I introduced you to—”

  “You introduced me to Mr. Edgeward.” Who was tall but not too tall, dark and fairly young. She hadn’t danced with him—but then again, she wasn’t claiming any such thing, was she? It was very important not to lie. Lying was a sin. She had enough of those under her belt so far this evening.

  Oh, my. What a rather intriguing image that conjured …

  Tessa deflated. “Oh. Edgeward. Well, don’t waste your time with that slow-witted farmer. You girls are here to attract dukes, not ditchdiggers.”

  “Aunt, Mr. Edgeward has more acres than most lords and he’s a very intelligent man—he is simply on the quiet side.” Nor did he have any interest in Tessa’s sort of sly gossip, which meant—in Tessa’s vernacular—he had nothing useful to say.

  Tessa let out an impatient noise. “Where is your cousin Sophie? If that girl has hidden in the library again—”

  “I’m here.”

  Both Phoebe and Tessa whirled in surprise to see the speaker, standing no more than a yard away.

  Unlike the other maidens on the marriage mart, Miss Sophie Blake was rather hard to miss, for she was fully as tall as any man in the room—with the possible exception of Mr. Edgeward—and as narrow and straight as a pencil. She had arrived only yesterday to join their party of competing debutantes, journeying alone from her home in the north, with one small trunk of clothing and one large trunk of books.

  Her unfortunate height might have been more easily overlooked had she possessed a handsome figure, or a lovely face, but Sophie had inherited all the worst of the Pickering trademarks. Her blue eyes were nearly as pale as milk and her hair was the ruddy sort of blond that made one think of runny marmalade. Her features were as bony as her figure and her nose … well, one truly needed a much bolder personality to carry off such an imposing ancestral feature.

  Combine that with a complete lack of interest in fashion or style, a tendency toward clumsiness, and a sharp mind that made most men feel a bit stupid, and one had the complete recipe for a wallflower of the first order.

  Sophie had been given the same small allotment of funds that the rest of them had, but Tessa had claimed it all for rent of their house and preordering the gowns.

  Sophie hadn’t cared. “I came here for the experience of travel, and to see the history and grandeur of London. I have no intention of wasting my time looking for a husband.”

  Now she stood before them in a ill-fitted ruffled concoction hastily purchased by Tessa. Her wispy hair was escaping its combs, her spectacles were slightly askew, and she had a smudge of dust on her chin.

  “You asked after me, Tessa?”

  Sophie might be retiring and a bit on the shy side, but she had a way of gazing evenly at people whom she found mentally deficient in some way—which compared to her was nearly everyone—that always seemed to cause Tessa’s hackles to rise.

  As they did now.

  Phoebe looked away as Tessa made clear her opinions on Sophie’s carriage, manner, and appearance, trying not to hear the hissed insults while at the same time remaining at the scene so Sophie might not be left a complete victim to Tessa’s ire.

 
After all, Sophie had distracted Tessa from Phoebe’s inexplicable disappearance from the ballroom, which was appreciated.

  Coward.

  Oh, yes.

  But there was no deflecting Tessa when she was in full fury. “And as for you, Phoebe Millbury—”

  Oh, dread, as Mr. Marbrook had so eloquently put it.

  “—I don’t think your father would approve of this tendency to wander! Must I write to tell him how you’ve taken to slipping away with strange men—”

  Phoebe gasped. “But that’s not—” Careful. Don’t lie. “I was most properly introduced to Mr. Edgeward. And I only stepped out for a bit of air.” Which was all true. Mostly.

  Tessa narrowed her eyes and leaned closer. “Phoebe, your father warned me to take great care with you. You do not want to cause an incident, do you?”

  Phoebe went cold. The Incident. That’s what the vicar always called it, when he could bring himself to mention it at all. The vicar wouldn’t tell Tessa, would he? No, surely her father wouldn’t reveal Phoebe’s humiliating secret to Society’s most vicious gossip—even if she was almost-nearly related to them?

  Phoebe closed her eyes against the possibility. God, if all these people knew! They might know, even now, right this minute! She opened her eyes to gaze around her in a panic.

  Those women over there, with their heads together—were they talking about her?

  She could almost hear them. “There’s that Millbury girl … the one that ran off with her dancing master when she was only fifteen … he ruined her and abandoned her, can you imagine that? Just left her there, half-naked in the inn room, for her father to find the next morning!”

  They would turn and gaze at her in a moment, all their scorn alive in their eyes …

  I’m sorry, she wanted to cry out. I didn’t mean to be bad. I was only left a bit too alone for a bit too long. I went a bit too far—

  No. No, she was imagining it again, just as she had so many times in the past ten years.

  No one had ever learned what she had done so long ago. The vicar had concealed every detail and Terrence LaPomme, musician and seducer of gullible young girls, had never been heard from again.

  She’d been the model vicar’s daughter ever since, never giving her father the least reason to worry about her behavior—

  Alone on the terrace with Mr. Marbrook, sliding down his hard muscular body, his large hands tight on her waist, his lips almost touching hers …

  —until tonight!

  Hurriedly, she covered her shock, hiding the wave of alarm that swept over her. Tessa knew nothing, and Phoebe intended to keep matters just so.

  But Tessa had abruptly pasted a sweetly welcoming smile on her face to greet the couple now approaching them. “Deirdre, my pet! Dancing has put the loveliest bloom in your cheeks! Is it not becoming, Your Grace?”

  Phoebe managed to curtsy before Tessa’s elbow made contact with her ribs, but Sophie was a bit late off the mark.

  “Oomph!”

  Straightening, Phoebe saw her other cousin, Deirdre, sweeping elegantly toward them on the arm of the only actual duke in the room.

  If Sophie had inherited the least attractive Pickering tendencies, then Deirdre had made off with all the good ones. She was just tall enough to be elegant and just slender enough to be stylish while still packing all those things men desire in a woman. Her hair was the color of sunlight and her eyes were a deep sparkling blue that made Phoebe, who had previously liked her own sky-blue eyes, feel as though hers had faded somehow. Even the Pickering nose, nonexistent on Phoebe and overly prominent on Sophie, on Deirdre took on an aquiline elegance that made Phoebe feel just a bit underbred.

  Of course, Deirdre, having been raised by the ruthlessly social-climbing Tessa, made the most of her good fortune. Every gown she owned was lovelier than the last, and all fit her excellent figure to perfection. Deirdre was here to win.

  So far she had the highest score. None of them had actually danced with an unmarried duke until now.

  There was the fact that the duke on Deirdre’s arm was over seventy years of age and was currently about to pass out from his brief turn on the dance floor, but one would never know it from the blazing look of triumph in Deirdre’s eyes.

  “There’ll be no living with her now,” Sophie muttered to herself. Phoebe had to agree. In the past week she’d learned that Deirdre was spoiled, selfish, and vain—and now it seemed she would be made all the more unbearable by this evening’s coup.

  Seeing Tessa and Deirdre side by side, Phoebe was struck by the pure resemblance that had nothing to do with facial features or hair or eye color. Every supercilious line of Tessa’s posture and attitude was perfectly reflected in Deirdre.

  This alternately annoyed and stirred pity in Phoebe. It surely could not have been easy to be a child in Lady Tessa’s house, yet Deirdre could be such an entirely selfish being that Phoebe sometimes had trouble holding onto her compassion.

  She vaguely remembered Deirdre as a child, for they’d played together on occasion when they were very young, until Deirdre’s mother had died and her father remarried Lady Tessa. Then the family gatherings at Thornhold had ended.

  Sophie’s family had never visited, for Sophie’s mother was bedridden from a riding accident years ago.

  Although their mothers were all sisters, it seemed that Phoebe, Deirdre, and Sophie had nothing at all in common … except the desire to win the Pickering trust.

  That was why they were here, in London, sharing this house to stretch their stipends and vying for the few dukes currently available on the marriage mart.

  “I’m glad it is you I share a room with,” Phoebe murmured to Sophie.

  Sophie blinked and turned to look at her in surprise. “You are?” A swift smile flashed across her bony face, then it was gone. “Thank you.”

  Phoebe gazed at her cousin in astonishment. For just a fraction of a second Sophie had looked … pretty? No, that wasn’t possible, was it? It was a trick of light and shadow and her first taste of champagne. Phoebe peered closer.

  “What is it?” Sophie dabbed at her chin. “Didn’t I get the smudge off?”

  No, Sophie was as she had been before—unfortunately plain.

  And she, Phoebe, was unfortunately wicked.

  Never again. No men. No trembling knees. No secret touches. Not until her wedding night, with her hopefully not-too-disgusting husband, who hopefully wouldn’t be very observant about a silly little matter like her mislaid virginity.

  Tonight’s episode had been a mere moment out of time, an uncharacteristic break spurred by a moment of panic. He’d saved her from an unfortunate scene and she’d been polite about it.

  Nothing more.

  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Marbrook were really a duke in disguise?

  Wonderful, but not likely.

  Chapter Four

  Back in the ballroom after smoothly inserting a blushing Phoebe back into the dancing throng, Rafe spotted his brother, Calder, holding up a column on the other side of the room.

  People sometimes asked Rafe if looking at Calder was like looking into a mirror. It always reminded Rafe of that astonishing moment when he was eight years of age, when the imposing man who’d taken him from beside his mother’s deathbed brought him to the grandest house he’d ever seen and showed him to a finely furnished nursery.

  “Calder,” the man had called out. A boy just Rafe’s size had emerged from a corner filled with books and had bowed to the man. “Yes, Father?

  Looking at that boy … yes, that had been like looking into a mirror. His eyes, his nose, even his curling dark hair—the other boy had taken them all!

  That seemed to be the very thought crossing the other boy’s mind as well. Long-lashed brown eyes had darkened and narrowed, focusing on the large, friendly hand resting on Rafe’s shoulder.

  “Calder, this is your new brother, Raphael. He is my other son.”

  Other son.

  Resentful fire flashed in the other
boy’s eyes, ending Rafe’s newly born hopes of having the brother he’d always longed for.

  “I am your son,” Calder had stated firmly, furiously, proudly. “He is nothing but your bastard.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t right to hold the words of a hurt and shocked eight-year-old boy against the man he’d become, but Rafe still heard them, still saw them in Calder’s gaze, still felt the blow to the grieving, lonely heart of a lost boy in a stranger’s house.

  Calder had been the first person in Rafe’s life to call him a bastard, but he was by no means the last. Now it was no longer news, of course. He’d known this world and its people for a very long time. He was nearly one of them, warily welcomed—as long as he remembered his true status.

  Rafe would never forget his first sight of Brookhaven. Rolling up that long drive with his head and arms hanging out of the carriage window, he’d seen that golden evening sunglow upon the white stones of the great house and thought perhaps he was seeing the gates of heaven itself.

  The marquis had smiled at his abrupt infatuation and later had taken him through the gallery. Hand in hand with the stranger now called Father, Rafe had gazed at the portraits of Marbrook men long gone and seen his own eyes painted on the canvases.

  It was as if he’d been lost, even happy as he was with his loving, teasing mama. She was a memory, a wisp, a feeling of warmth and happiness that would never return. What there was to take her place was Brookhaven. The very earth beneath his feet—and on his hands, for he never tired of playing in it—vibrated in harmony with his own heartbeat. The land, the trees, the fields, the stone walls twining over the hills like ancient, illegible writing … those were his skin, his bones, his flesh, the creases of his own palms.

  Father had watched that love grow, at first satisfied, then proud, then at long last—too late—worried.

  Little boys don’t understand inheritance law, don’t think in terms of legitimacy or illegitimacy. He’d learned that his brother would someday have Brookhaven. He’d assumed he would share it, as he shared the nursery and the governess, the toys and the books.