Marry in Haste
Page 1
PRAISE FOR ANNE GRACIE AND HER NOVELS
“The always terrific Anne Gracie outdoes herself with Bride By Mistake . . . Gracie created two great characters, a high-tension relationship and a wonderfully satisfying ending. Not to be missed!”
—Mary Jo Putney, New York Times bestselling author
“A fascinating twist on the girl-in-disguise plot . . . With its wildly romantic last chapter, this novel is a great antidote to the end of the summer.”
—Eloisa James, New York Times bestselling author
“With her signature superbly nuanced characters, subtle sense of wit and richly emotional writing, Gracie puts her distinctive stamp on a classic Regency plot.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Anne Gracie’s writing dances that thin line between always familiar and always fresh . . . The Accidental Wedding is warm and sweet, tempered with bursts of piquancy and a dash or three of spice.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Threaded with charm and humor . . . [An] action-rich, emotionally compelling story . . . It is sure to entice readers.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Another [of] Ms. Gracie’s character-rich, fiery tales filled with emotion and passion leavened by charm and wit.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“The main characters are vibrant and complex . . . The author’s skill as a storyteller makes this well worth reading.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Berkley Sensation titles by Anne Gracie
Merridew Sisters
THE PERFECT RAKE
THE PERFECT WALTZ
THE PERFECT STRANGER
THE PERFECT KISS
Devil Riders
THE STOLEN PRINCESS
HIS CAPTIVE LADY
TO CATCH A BRIDE
THE ACCIDENTAL WEDDING
BRIDE BY MISTAKE
Chance Sisters
THE AUTUMN BRIDE
THE WINTER BRIDE
THE SPRING BRIDE
THE SUMMER BRIDE
Marriage of Convenience
MARRY IN HASTE
BERKLEY SENSATION
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Anne Gracie
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY and BERKLEY SENSATION are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN 9780698411630
First Edition: May 2017
Cover art by Judy York
Cover design by Sarah Oberrender
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Libby Barker and Rita Al-Mourani—
friends, colleagues and enthusiastic readers.
Contents
Praise for Anne Gracie and Her Novels
Berkley Sensation titles by Anne Gracie
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
No, ’tis slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, CYMBELINE
Berkshire, England, 1811
“I’m sorry, my dear, but you really have no choice!” Sir Humphrey Westwood’s voice was quiet. Sad. Somehow it made his words cut deeper, shaking her fragile composure more than if he’d shouted and threatened to beat her.-
She grasped his sleeve. “Papa, who told you these things—these terrible lies! Who?”
He shook off her hand, dismissing her with a flick of his arm. “It’s common knowledge. Irwin says everyone—the whole parish, even the vicar—the vicar!—has known for weeks but were too embarrassed to tell me.” His face crumpled in weary anguish. “They say the father is always the last to know.”
He picked up his hat. “I’m going to church. No, my dear, you’re not coming. You’ve made enough of a spectacle of yourself. I can barely hold up my head in public as it is.”
“But, Papa, it isn’t true. None of it!” Shaking, sick with bewilderment—and betrayal—she watched him shrug on his coat and wrap his scarf around his neck. She went to help him tuck it in, as she always did, but he shook her off as if he couldn’t bear her to touch him.
“Don’t try to cozen me, Emmaline! It won’t work this time.”
Her hands dropped. She stepped back, unbearably hurt.
“Despite everything, Irwin is willing to marry you—for my sake and yours. Be grateful for that, and do as you’re told.” The expression on his face near broke her heart. Her father was as hurt, as devastated by this thing as she was.
But she wouldn’t, couldn’t—would rather die than marry her father’s friend, their neighbor, Mr. Irwin.
“Papa, I promise you I didn’t do what they say I did.”
But her father’s mind was blocked, blinded—shamed—by the lies he’d been told. And because of the mistake she’d made once before.
He shook his head in sorrow. “To be so utterly without shame . . . I have failed you as a father.” He opened the front door. “I am going to church now and will make arrangements with the vicar to have the banns called. Irwin has invited me to dinner afterward. When I return you will agree to marry him, or I will wash my hands of you forever.”
The cold implacability of his words scalded her to the bone.
She said in a low voice, “I won’t agree, Papa. I wish to marry for love—like you and Mama—”
“Don’t speak to me of your mother!” His voice shook. “For the first time in my life I’m glad—yes, glad!—she’s not alive to hear what has become of her daughter.”
“I’m sorry, Papa,” she half whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “But I have done nothing wrong, not this time. And I won’t be forced to marry a man I don’t care for.”
Her father said bleakly, “Then you are no daughter of mine.” And he closed the door.
Chapter One
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
London 1818
“What did you call me?” Major Calbourne Rutherford stopped dead, two steps into the Honorable Gil Radcliffe’s discreet government office in the heart of Whitehall.
Radcliffe’s brows rose. “You didn’t know?”
Cal shook his head. “Are you telling me something’s happened to my brother Henry? And that I’m now Lord Ashendon?” Cal’s father had died a year ago, and his older brother Henry had inherited the title and estates.
“I assumed that’s why you’d returned to London, after what is it—ten years?” Radcliffe waved Cal to a seat and ordered his clerk to bring tea and biscuits.
“Damn!” Cal sat down heavily. It wasn’t grief he felt—he and Henry had never been close. “Henry wasn’t even forty. What happened? How did he die?”
“Tried to ride his horse full pelt across a fast-running, rocky stream. The horse stumbled, your brother fell and broke his neck—he was drunk at the time, of course.” There was a short silence, then he added, “The horse had to be put down. Damned shame—it was a fine beast.”
Cal snorted. What an irony. Henry had lived almost the whole of his life leading a sybaritic life in the fleshpots of London, while Cal had been sent off to fight for his country at the tender age of seventeen. If anyone had been expected to die young . . .
Radcliffe leaned back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. “So if you’re not here to resign your commission, why did you come?”
Just then the clerk came in with the tea and ginger biscuits. Cal waited until the man had left. “Well?” Radcliffe prompted.
Cal sipped his tea. Hot, strong and sweet, just as he liked it. He took a biscuit and crunched through it, enjoying Radcliffe’s tension. “I’m pretty sure El Escorpion is English.”
“The Scorpion is English?” Radcliffe stiffened. “No! He can’t be! Are you certain?”
Cal grimaced. “Not certain. Just a feeling I have.”
“A feeling.” Radcliffe snorted, and sat back. “Really.”
Cal wasn’t annoyed by Radcliffe’s skepticism. He’d be impatient too if one of his officers, after hunting a notorious assassin for two years without success, came to him with nothing more than a feeling in his bones. But vague and insubstantial as it was, Cal felt that he was finally onto something. “This last killing, as he raised his rifle to shoot, I saw him silhouetted against the night sky and—”
Radcliffe leaned forward. “You recognized him?”
“No, he was too far away. But later, when I was mulling it over, I realized there was something familiar about his action.”
“His action?”
Cal nodded. “I fought alongside men of the Rifle Brigade a number of times during the war, and something about his stance and the way he brought his rifle up to shoot reminded me of one of those fellows. I know I’ve seen him before. I can’t tell you his name, I probably wouldn’t recognize his face, but I’m as sure as I can be that he’s English and was a sharpshooter during the war. I think he’s using a Baker rifle too; if he can shoot a man in the head from more than two hundred yards away—well, not many weapons have that capability.”
Radcliffe nodded thoughtfully. “It’s possible, I suppose. And you think he’s returned to England?”
Cal shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s gone to ground, as usual—could be in any one of a dozen countries. But I thought I’d go to Rifle Brigade headquarters, get a list of sharpshooters who’ve left the regiment and see what they’re up to now. It’s not much to go on, but it’s—”
“More than we’ve had so far,” Radcliffe said with satisfaction. He drew a pen and paper toward him. “I’ll draw up your leave papers.”
Cal blinked. “Leave papers? But I’ll be working.”
“You have personal matters to sort out—a title and inheritance to deal with, papers to sign, matters to arrange. Personal matters.”
There was no point pushing him. Radcliffe enjoyed being enigmatic. At school he’d had been brilliant, but devious, and even then he had a reputation for collecting information—all kinds of information, political and personal. It made him perfectly suited for his current position, sitting at the center of a web of intrigue that stretched from London halfway around the world, directing things from behind a desk.
Radcliffe completed the document with a flamboyant signature and dusted it with sand. He reached for his official seal, without which the papers would be invalid, pressed it into a blob of hot scarlet wax then handed it to Cal.
Cal glanced at it. “Four weeks’ leave? I hope it won’t take that long.”
Radcliffe gave a faint smile. “I recommend you call on your lawyer first.”
* * *
Cal headed straight for the office of Phipps, Phipps and Yarwood, his late father’s lawyers. The news that he was now Lord Ashendon had rocked him. But he was determined it would not make any significant difference to his life.
Grand estates and great wealth brought responsibilities with them, and with the title came other duties of the kind Cal, as younger son, had never been prepared for. And absolutely didn’t want.
He’d always done his duty, been a good soldier, even though he’d hated the waste and destruction of war. Now, in peacetime, he’d discovered that working through tangled European affairs on behalf of his country suited him. Napoleon’s activities had erased borders and smashed alliances. A new Europe was forming and the intrigue was endless. And fascinating.
Cal went where he was ordered and did the jobs that Whitehall, in the guise of Gil Radcliffe, sent him to do. His current task was to track down and capture or kill the assassin known as the Scorpion.
And after the Scorpion had killed Cal’s friend Bentley, the hunt had become personal.
He didn’t need—or want—any distraction from that.
* * *
“What do you mean you don’t have a copy of Henry’s will? You’re the family lawyer. You should have it on file.”
The lawyer, Phipps, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Your brother parted company with this firm more than eight years ago, after a . . . a difference of opinion with your father.”
“I see.” Cal was well able to read between the lines. Henry had ever been the quarrelsome sort, and his father had had the same hasty, choleric temper. And both of them had a tendency to nurse a grudge. “I suppose they never made it up.”
The lawyer inclined his head. “That is my understanding, my lord. And from what little I can gather, your brother was . . . not a worthy successor to your late father’s position. The family affairs are in . . . somewhat of a tangle. Until we find his will and apply for probate, nothing else can proceed.”
Cal swore under his breath. Trust Henry to leave things in a blasted mess.
“Of course you’ll resign your commission, my lord.”
Cal shook his head. The whole thing was a wretched nuisance, but he was damned if he’d resign. “I’ll extend my leave if necessary, but once the business is done, I intend to return to Europe. I have responsibilities abroad.”
Phipps gave him a shocked look. “But now you have responsibilities in England, my lord.” His tone implied that no foreign responsibilities could compare with English ones.
Cal shrugged. “Agents can be appointed to see to the day-to-day running of the estate.”
Phipps pursed his lips. “At the very least, my lord, you must make immediate arrangements for your dependents.”
“Dependents?” Cal frowned. “I have no— Oh, you mean my half sisters.” Of course. He hadn’t seen the girls for years, but he remembered them as sweet little things who used to follow him around like puppies. “Where are they at the moment?”
“Bath, my lord.”
“Still in school, then.” Some exclusive seminary for girls, as he recalled.
“No, my lord, they are currently in the care of Lady Dorothea Rutherford.”
“They’re i
n good hands, then,” he said indifferently. Aunt Dottie would have taken the bereaved little girls under her wing, and after a suitable period of mourning they could return to their school. “Now, is there anything I need to sign?”
The lawyer’s lips thinned. “I feel obliged to remind you, my lord, that under your father’s will, your half sisters were left a substantial sum in trust for when they marry or turn five-and-twenty. They are considerable heiresses, in fact, and, as such, need to be protected from fortune hunters.” He paused. “Whether your aunt is up to that task, I could not say.” His tone made it clear he had grave doubts, but discretion held him back.
Cal said nothing. Phipps was clearly something of a fusspot.
“Your aunt is also your dependent. Unlike your sisters, your father made her no allowance—yes, my lord, I also thought it quite irregular—his only unmarried sister, and with no fortune of her own—but against all my advice, he left her welfare to your brother’s care.”
“Good God! Left to Henry’s tender care? It’s a wonder Aunt Dottie isn’t starving in the streets. What possessed the old man?”
“My sentiments exactly, my lord.”
“Make her an immediate allowance out of my personal income, then,” Cal said. “A generous one. When probate comes through we can make a more permanent arrangement through the estate.”
He had a soft spot for Aunt Dottie. She’d knitted him endless pairs of warm red woolen socks ever since he’d gone off to war—red because she thought they ought to match his scarlet regimentals. She’d kept sending them as fast as she could knit them—enough to supply Cal and half his friends.
His friends, at first inclined to laugh at the color, had accepted them gratefully during hard winters in the mountains. Aunt Dottie’s scarlet socks had saved many a toe from frostbite.
They’d also turned many a washtub of white underclothes pink, but as neither the socks nor the underclothes were visible, nobody much minded.
He didn’t need them now, working in more civilized conditions, and no longer wearing a uniform, but parcels of thick scarlet socks still followed him through Europe, even though he’d told her several times he had no more need of them.