A Wicked Pursuit

by Isabella Bradford

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” she said. “I’ll be sure to relay your kind words when I write to my father about our betrothal.”

  “Writing won’t be necessary, my dear,” Father said, helping himself to the bowl of candied caraway seeds that had been placed on the table near him. “You may tell him yourself when he returns here later this week.”

  “This week?” Gus said, frowning a bit. “Though I should like to see him again so soon, I don’t expect him to return to the abbey until later in the summer.”

  “He’ll be here,” Father said confidently. “When I wrote to him earlier today, I told him I expected him here for the wedding on Saturday. I’ve no doubt he’ll oblige. What gentleman would dare ignore his own daughter’s wedding?”

  Gus’s expression clouded with confusion. “I do not understand, Your Grace,” she said slowly. “Surely you do not mean our wedding.”

  “I don’t believe there’s another,” he said, clearly delighting in his revelation. “I’ve also sent off to the archbishop for a special license so there’s no need for banns, and while I’ve had no response as yet from your local vicar about my request for an hour for the service, I’m sure he will accommodate us. You two will be wed on Saturday, no mistake of that.”

  “But I’ve only just accepted Harry’s proposal, not three hours ago, and we told you in less than two,” Gus said, perplexed. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but these preparations you’ve made do not seem possible.”

  At once Harry reached out to place his hand over hers, mentally blasting his father’s thoughtlessness. This was exactly what he didn’t wish to happen, and now it had.

  “You agreed that a long betrothal would not suit us, Gus,” he said, hoping she’d focus on their shared future, and not consider too closely what his father had just said. “I love you so much that I’ve no wish to wait a day longer than I must.”

  “But that’s only four days, Harry,” she said with a plaintiveness that struck straight to Harry’s heart. “That’s no time to make preparations.”

  “It’s plenty of time for whatever preparations need doing,” Father said with such heartiness that Harry wished he could throttle him. “It’s a wedding, not a coronation.”

  Gus glanced at Harry, making it silently clear that, to her, their wedding was every bit as important as any coronation.

  “If you please, Your Grace,” she countered bravely, “I should rather like a new gown to wear to my wedding, but four days—”

  “Plenty of time, my dear,” Father declared, sweeping aside her objections with a wave of his hand, his jeweled rings catching the candlelight. “Celia, what is the name of your mantua maker? That charming woman I tithe to? We’ll have her and her seamstresses brought up here tomorrow, and make whatever fancy Augusta desires.”

  “Mistress Wilkerson, in Bond Street,” Celia said. “Brecon, pray be aware that she will send you an astounding bill for her services. Mantua makers are not like ordinary tradesmen. They do not like to be hauled about on male whims, and she will expect to be paid accordingly.”

  “If you please, Your Grace,” Gus said hesitantly. “I would prefer my mantua maker in Norwich, a most agreeable woman who has made all my gowns and my sister’s, too, and she might be persuaded to—”

  “But this Mistress Wilkerson dresses not only Celia, but every other lady of rank in London,” Father said, basking in his generosity. “You’re going to be a countess, my dear, and a duchess in time. Harry will expect you to dress like one, not make do with some woman in Norwich.”

  “Brecon, please,” Celia said, her voice full of gentle warning. “The bride is always right, and Augusta’s wishes must be obeyed. Pray forgive Brecon’s ignorance, Augusta. He likes to arrange things, it’s simply his way.”

  Arranging things was a nice way of putting it, thought Harry grimly. Interfering and meddling might be closer to the point. For the sake of keeping the dinner relatively pleasant, he wouldn’t say anything—not yet.

  “But Brecon is correct in one regard,” Celia continued. “You should have a most splendid gown for your wedding, the very best that your woman can contrive, with pearls and brilliants and lace. Not only will you wear it to your wedding, but also when you are presented at court.”

  Harry glanced at Gus with growing concern. She was visibly fading away and growing more and more quiet as his Father and Celia made plans for her wedding and her dress. They meant only the best, but Gus didn’t know that, and all the confidence she’d shown earlier had vanished, just as it had when Sheffield had visited.

  “I want you to be pleased, Gus,” he said, gently turning her hand over on the table so their fingers were intertwined. “As far as I’m concerned, you can have your gown made by your own mantua maker in Norwich, and it will be exactly as you wish.”

  “Be reasonable, Harry,” Father said impatiently. “We’re doing her a favor so she will be properly attired for court, not—”

  “She’s not part of our family yet, Father, not until she marries me,” Harry said firmly. “If Gus wishes her gown for the wedding to be made to her own taste and by this other woman, then that’s what she should have. God knows she’ll have plenty of other clothes and nonsense made in the future.”

  Gus smiled at him, her fingers curling more tightly into his. It was hardly the first time he’d stood up to Father—they were far too much alike for it to be otherwise—but it was the first time he’d done it defending Gus, and her smile made him feel as if he’d just slain a dragon. Hell, a dozen dragons.

  “Harry’s right, Brecon,” murmured Celia, understanding. “It is the bride’s day, not ours.”

  Father frowned and shook his head. “Very well, then, very well. But next week, Celia, when we’re all back in London, I trust you and the other ladies will take Augusta about to your shops and make her known.”

  “In London?” asked Gus, her smile gone again. “London?”

  “To my house,” Harry said. He was certain he must have mentioned it to her before, an agreeable house on Grosvenor Square that had come to him through his mother’s estate. “We’ll go there directly after the wedding, in my carriage.”

  “But what of your leg?” she asked anxiously. “Sir Randolph hasn’t said you can travel yet.”

  “Peterson gave Harry leave to travel a fortnight ago,” Father said. “He told me so himself yesterday in London.”

  She frowned with confusion. “Is this true, Harry?”

  “It is,” he said, again wishing Father had kept this news to himself. “I could leave, but I haven’t.”

  “He’s been dawdling here because of you, Augusta,” Father said, stating the obvious. “I’ll grant that you are a very pretty reason for staying here in Norfolk, but he needs to return to town, to tend to his affairs and show himself about. And you as his new countess, too, of course.”

  “But why so soon?” she implored. “What is the need for such haste in all of this?”

  Father’s expression turned solemn.

  “Because of the circumstances of my son’s dalliance with you, my dear,” he said. “A swift marriage is the best preventive for scandal.”

  Gus flushed and whipped around to face Harry again, her eyes full of shock and hurt. There weren’t any dragons being slain now: instead he’d become the unfortunate dragon himself, and if he’d felt proud of himself before, now he felt like the lowest creature in Creation. Without a word she pulled her hand free of Harry’s and shoved her chair back from the table.

  “Pray excuse me, Your Grace, Your Grace,” she said as she rose, “but I—I am not well.”

  “Gus, please stay,” Harry said, holding his hand out to stop her. “Please.”

  But she slipped out of his reach, and without looking at him, ran swiftly from the room.

  “Well, go after her, Harry,” Father said. “You can’t let her run off in tears like this.”

  “She wouldn’t have run off, Father, if you hadn’t insulted her,” Harry said, furious. He pushed back his c
hair, knocking his crutch to the floor, and to his humiliation one of the footmen retrieved it for him. Finally he hobbled out to the hall, determined to find Gus.

  He didn’t have far to look. She’d only gotten as far as the front staircase, sitting on the second step and crying inconsolably with her face in her hands. He lowered himself onto the step beside her, and as he raised his arm to slip it around her shoulders, she scuttled away from him to the far side of the step. He sighed; this was not going to be as easy as his father had thought.

  “Here now, Gus, don’t cry,” he began. “My father had no right to say that to you, I know, but he—”

  “You shouldn’t have told him, Harry,” she said, lifting her tear-streaked face. “Not about—about us!”

  “I didn’t have to tell him, sweetheart,” he said. He liked being able to call her that, because at last she truly was his sweetheart. “He figured it out for himself. It wasn’t that difficult, not with the state of our clothing at the time.”

  “Not—not that, Harry,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “Though that was shameful enough. You—you told him we were going to marry even before you asked me. That’s what—what isn’t right.”

  “Oh, Gus,” Harry said, the safest thing he could think to say under the circumstances. He’d hoped she never would have realized this, but thanks to Father’s interference, it wasn’t much of a secret. The last thing he wished was for her to believe he’d been pressured into marrying her, and now, clearly, that was exactly what she did believe.

  “Is that all you can say?” she said, her face flushing with misery. “‘Oh, Gus,’ as if I were a child? As if that—that’s any manner of explanation?”

  She looked down at the diamond betrothal ring on her hand, and began to tug at it fiercely.

  “If that is all I am to you, my lord,” she said, struggling to pull the ring from her finger, “then perhaps we do not belong together. If I mean no more to you than ‘oh, Gus,’ then perhaps I shouldn’t marry you at all.”

  “Don’t, Gus,” he said as calmly as he could, placing his hand over hers. “Please.”

  She looked at him defiantly through her tears, her hands still fighting with the ring under his. “Why should I listen to you, Harry?”

  An excellent question, thought Harry, and if he offered the wrong answer, he had a distinct feeling that she might leave him. But what was the right thing to say? What excuse could he possibly offer that would make her stay?

  The truth, came a small voice in his head. Trust her, and tell her the truth.

  He was glad the small voice was so confident, because the rest of him certainly wasn’t. Truth telling was not a familiar gambit for him where ladies were concerned. But this was Gus, and the truth seemed to be the best he had to offer her.

  “Because I love you,” he said slowly, truthfully, “and because I always will love you. I think in a way I’ve loved you since I opened my eyes to find you looking down at me all serious and worried for my sorry, broken self.”

  Her hands stilled beneath his fingers. “You were sorry.”

  “I was,” he agreed. “And you saved me. I wouldn’t be here now without you.”

  She gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Then why did you tell your father we were going to marry before you’d asked me?”

  “Because Father informed me of it first,” he said, keeping to the truth. “Before he even asked after my leg, he told me that I must preserve your honor by marrying you.”

  Her face began to crumple with misery, and he quickly continued. “But that’s not why I proposed to you, Gus. If you love me, you know that. If I’d any brain at all, I would have asked for you weeks ago. Months. I’ve known it that long.”

  Unable to resist, he slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She came, but her body was still stiff, resisting, not trusting. Clearly more truth was needed, no matter how humbling it might be.

  “You do know me, Gus, better than the rest of the world,” he continued. “Which means you should know by now that no one, not even my father, could make me do anything as important as marrying if I didn’t want to.”

  She made a little hiccuping sound, which he took to be encouraging.

  “That is true,” she admitted. “You are wickedly stubborn.”

  “Indeed I am,” he said, “and so is Father. I come by my stubbornness through him. We both like to have our own ways. No, we expect it. He wants to think that our marriage is his idea, while I know it wasn’t. You should know it, too.”

  She twisted beneath his arm to gaze up at him. It was a good thing that he was sticking to the truth, because there was no conceivable way he could have done otherwise faced with those wide gray eyes, red-rimmed because he’d made her cry. If he wasn’t careful, he could drown in eyes like that.

  “If you’ve known for so long that I was the one you wished to marry,” she asked slowly, “then why did you wait until today to ask?”

  “Why,” he repeated. This was going to be the hardest truth to confess, but he knew he had to do it. He looked down at the step. Her slippers were pale blue silk with some sort of darker blue pouf of feminine foolishness above the toe, and neat curving heels, her feet impossibly small and dainty beside his huge, clumping, man’s foot. He adored her little feet. Hell, he adored all of her, a realization that gave him the last bit of courage he needed for truth telling.

  “Why,” he said again, and for what he hoped would be the final time. “Because I wanted to wait until my leg was as it should be again, and I didn’t have to rely on a piece of wood to prop myself upright. I wanted to be able to stand before you the way a man should, and not be some sort of pitiful cripple that you’d pity. That was why I was waiting, Gus.”

  He took a deep breath. “And, damn it, because I was afraid you’d turn me down on account of my leg. There. That’s why.”

  She stared at him with patent disbelief. “You would think that of me, Harry? That I would be so shallow as that?”

  “It’s not being shallow,” he said, the logic clear to him. “It’s being practical. No woman would wish to be shackled to a cripple. Consider your own sister.”

  “Your leg is not the sum of who you are,” she said firmly, “and I am not Julia. What if your leg hadn’t improved? What if it doesn’t progress further? Sir Randolph has never offered you any unqualified assurances.”

  “My leg will grow stronger, Gus,” he said with equal conviction. He had to believe it would; he refused to consider any other possibility. “It already has. I need more time, that is all.”

  She eased closer to him, her body softening against the hollows of his own. “It wouldn’t have mattered, Harry,” she said softly. “I still would have said yes.”

  He kissed her then, unable not to, her mouth warm and yielding. Kissing her also meant he wasn’t required to speak any more uncomfortable truths—though there was one more that likely needed saying.

  “I’ll speak to Father about being so heavy-handed, sweetheart,” he said, the words landing somewhere into her hair over her left ear. “God knows marrying in such haste isn’t what either of us wished, but I want you to enjoy it as much as you can.”

  She smiled wistfully. “I’d marry you this minute if it meant we could stay here together, just the two of us.”

  “I wish it could be like that as well, sweet,” he said, thinking of how if they were already married, she’d be in his bed tonight. “But I’m afraid our days alone together here are done.”

  Watching Gus with Father and Celia had been something of a revelation to him. She’d really no idea what she was getting into by marrying him. His life—and now her life with him—was crowded with people in London, and wherever they went, they would be noticed, remarked on, discussed. Because it had always been that way with his family, he’d never given it much real thought, but for a quiet, country-bred soul like Gus, becoming the Countess of Hargreave was not going to be easy, not for either of them.

  “Whatever may happen, G
us, you know I’ll look after you,” he said with a fresh seriousness. “I’ll always be by your side when you need me. You’ll be my love, my wife, my countess.”

  She made a breathy little chuckle of happiness, endearing and seductive as hell, because she didn’t realize it. “I’ll look after you as well, Harry. That’s what husbands and wives do for each other.”

  “Yes,” he said, the new responsibility of all this pressing heavily upon him. “I suppose they do.”

  He drew his arm more protectively around her. He liked that she trusted him as well as loved him. He liked that very much. That was how a wife should be. He loved her more than he’d thought possible, and he’d no regrets for anything. But at that moment, he felt at once very young, and very old.

  CHAPTER

  11

  The next three days passed in an excited blur to Gus, and she was the center of it, an unusual place for her to be. In addition to having a gown made and fitted for the wedding and as well as an elegant merino riding habit suitable for traveling to London, there were prodigious assaults on the ladies’ shops of Norwich with the duchess—who had now given Gus leave to call her by her first name—in command, for shoes and hats and gloves and handkerchiefs and every other garment and gewgaw of silk and lace that a lady-bride of her rank would require.

  There were meetings with the minister who was to marry her and Harry, and more meetings with Mr. Royce and Mrs. Buchanan to settle all the ledgers and household accounts before she gave up running the house and left. There were preparations for a wedding tea and a lavish bride’s cake to follow the ceremony. There were long walks in the garden with the duchess, who kindly explained what sorts of new responsibilities Gus would have as Countess of Hargreave, and offering sage, if daunting, advice about how best to take her new place in London society. There were calls to receive from well-wishers around the county, who showed as much curiosity about Gus’s husband-to-be as they did wishing her well. There was, of course, the sizable challenge of lodging and feeding two such important guests as His and Her Grace.