The Bride Says No

by Cathy Maxwell

  If she’d heard any of the argument between the sisters, she didn’t let on, but then the housekeeper was a sly one. She knew secrets about the family that Aileen could only imagine.

  “Will there be anything else?” Mrs. Watson asked.

  “That is all,” Aileen and Tara both started to answer and then exchanged glances. Here, too, was another battle brewing between them, one for authority of the house.

  Mrs. Watson gave a small curtsey and left.

  There was a moment of silence, then Tara said, “I’m accustomed to being the hostess for Father. That is the way it was in London.”

  “Well, I plan the menus here,” Aileen answered, needing to exert her authority.

  Tara sat on the settee and poured sherry. “I shall remember that the next time I make a request for a guest,” she murmured, using Mr. Stephens as her excuse to tromp on Aileen’s role at Annefield.

  “Perhaps we should discuss the matter with Father?” Aileen dared her, albeit certain the earl would rule in favor of Tara.

  Tara flounced back against the settee, holding her sherry. “No, Aileen, don’t. And I don’t want bad blood between us. I won’t be here that long. Mr. Stephens will take me back to London as soon as we are married.” She pushed a loose curl back in place. “I can’t wait.”

  And she would leave, very soon, Aileen realized. Life would always take them in opposite directions. She sat in the chair opposite Tara. “I don’t mean to lecture.”

  Tara frowned at some point in the far corner.

  “I just fear for you,” Aileen confessed.

  “You needn’t. Blake is not Geoff.”

  “I know that . . . but marriage is hard.”

  “For some,” Tara said, bringing her full attention back to Aileen. She ran her free hand over the textured brocade of the settee cushion. “I know what is expected of me. You needn’t worry.”

  “But I shall.”

  “Only because you choose to do so. Aileen, we are sisters, but you are not responsible for me. Not any longer. You haven’t been for years.”

  “There is still a connection between us. There always will be.”

  Before Tara could comment, a sound of shuffling feet and the grunts and groaning of their father came from the hall. He sounded like a bawling calf.

  Both women hurried to the door in time to see the earl being carried by Ingold and Simon up the stairs. Mr. Stephens stood by the dining room door. He was wiping his hands with a napkin, as if he had helped with the earl.

  Aileen looked to him in askance. “The port did him in,” Mr. Stephens said diplomatically to her unspoken question.

  Bodily suspended between Ingold and Simon, the earl roused himself enough to slur, “Aileen, I’ve decided we are going to treat Stephens to a hunt. I need it organized.”

  “Pheasant? Deer?” she asked, needing direction.

  “Fox,” her sire said grandly. “Stephens likes being out with the horses. And what better way for us to introduce him to the locals than a hunt. Plan it all, plan it all. Highland wedding and all,” he babbled before being carried to the top of the stairs and around the corner.

  “Pheasant and deer would be fine,” Mr. Stephens said quietly. “Anything, truly.”

  “Good,” Aileen answered, more concerned for her parent than hunting.

  “He had a seizure,” Mr. Stephens explained. “It was momentary, but not a good thing to happen.”

  “Seizure?” Tara asked.

  “Yes, he started shaking and then seemed to lose consciousness for the briefest moment.”

  Aileen nodded numbly. The eating, the gambling, the drinking . . . the earl’s behavior was not wise. She told herself her alarm wasn’t because she cared for the earl. She wanted to think her motive selfish; after all, if something happened to him, what would happen to her?

  His heir was her uncle, her cousin Sabrina’s father. As kind as Sabrina was, he was the opposite. Since the scandal of the divorce, he was one of those in the valley who refused to speak to her.

  Then again, the way her father was going, there would be nothing left of the estate to inherit.

  Mr. Stephens walked past her into the sitting room. Tara stood to one side of the door, her head bowed and her thoughts her own.

  “Thank you for seeing to Father’s welfare,” Aileen said.

  “Not a problem.” Mr. Stephens had wandered over to the chessboard. He studied the board a moment, then asked, “Whose game is this?”

  But before Aileen could answer, Tara roused herself from her contemplation to say, “I believe I am for my bed as well. It has been an exhausting day.” Without so much as a by-your-leave to Aileen or Mr. Stephens, the man she vowed she wanted, she muttered, “Good night,” and was gone.

  And Aileen was left with their guest.

  “I imagine with your travel from London you are fatigued as well,” she said.

  He looked up from the chessboard with a distracted air. “Ah, yes, well, of course . . . except this game is almost a draw. At least it was until I threatened the queen.”

  “You moved a piece?” Aileen’s attention had been on Tara’s leaving and not on him.

  “It seemed sensible.”

  Aileen felt annoyed. “That is not your game, and moving a player without permission is rude.”

  “Ah, rude,” he repeated offhandedly. “You have accused me of that already once today. Or has it been twice?”

  “I’ve not spoken those words,” Aileen countered.

  “You don’t need to, my lady. Every thought that crosses your mind can be read plainly on your face, especially when you are annoyed.”

  “I have not been annoyed,” she retorted, disconcerted by the accuracy of his accusations.

  “Irritated then,” he amended, his attention already returning to the study of her chess game, his hand moving toward a piece.

  Seeing what he intended, Aileen rushed forward. “If you take the queen, you place the black king in jeopardy.”

  “Your game?”

  “Yes, on both sides.”

  “You are playing yourself,” he said with a touch of respect. “No wonder the board appeared evenly matched. Well, it isn’t any longer. If I follow your thinking, I move this bishop—”

  “Unnecessarily risking him,” she pointed out.

  “He is worth the risk,” Mr. Stephens said and moved the black player.

  “And I take him with a lowly pawn,” she answered in triumph, claiming his piece.

  “He’s not a loss. I’m not fond of church members,” he said as he moved his rook.

  She smiled, she had anticipated this move—

  No, she hadn’t.

  Aileen stared at the board, frowning. She started to move a piece and couldn’t.

  “Check . . . and mate,” Mr. Stephens said in a low, satisfied voice.

  Aileen frowned. “I’ve studied this board for hours. That move was not there.” He had to have moved some of the pieces when she hadn’t noticed.

  Then again, all looked as she had left it.

  “Playing one’s self is never a challenge,” he observed.

  “And you know this because . . .”

  “It makes sense. But also,” he continued, resetting the board, “I’ve done it often enough.” He looked up at her, and she realized that in her surprise over losing the game so easily, she had moved close to him. Too close.

  Almost without conscious thought, his gaze drifted over her, to her shoulders, her breasts, her mouth . . . and there it lingered.

  A bolt of lightning could not have been more devastating to her.

  She’d struggled so hard to tame yearning needs—and yet here they were, hungry from a long famine of denial and responding to just the hint of desire from him.

  There was a darkness in his brown eyes, a mystery that appealed to something deep inside her. Something best kept buried.

  She knew what she wanted, and she knew he was open to her as well. The pull of attraction had been swirling around t
hem from the moment they’d met—but this man belonged to her sister.

  The thought brought her to sanity.

  She practically fell back, as if needing to physically pull herself away from him.

  Mr. Stephens gave a start and reacted as if he was startled by his response as well. Or, at least, that is what she wanted to believe, and she knew she shouldn’t. Men were wolves. She must never forget that.

  “You are to marry my sister, sir,” she whispered. “Do not insult me.”

  He shook his head as if her charge offended, yet he did not refute it. “I don’t plan seduction. I assure you, Lady Aileen, that was a momentary lapse on my part. I’m as taken aback as you are.”

  She denied his words in her own mind. How many men had assumed she would be easy prey? Many had tested her. Of course, that was because they’d all believed the evidence that had been presented at the Crim Con trial. It had never crossed anyone’s mind, including her friends’ and confidantes’, to doubt that which had been presented in court or the adultery to which she’d been pronounced guilty.

  Then again, they could never have imagined how far a woman would go to escape a marriage that had become prison.

  Aileen backed away from him. He watched her, a question in his eye, but he did not follow. He did not command . . . and, to her incredulity, she was not afraid of him.

  At the door, she said, “Good night, Mr. Stephens.” She spoke as a formality, a civility.

  Instead of answering in kind, he responded, “I will tell you something, and you will not thank me for it.”

  Aileen didn’t know what to do with such a claim. She had one step out the door. She was ready to leave. “Then don’t tell me,” she replied, proud of herself.

  “Very well—”

  She raised a hand. “Tell me.” She couldn’t help herself. Curiosity was one of her sins. Besides, he’d expected her to ask.

  He smiled. He’d anticipated her reaction, but his gaze was serious as he said, “You are not responsible for the world.”

  He was wrong. “I know that.”

  “No, you don’t—yet. Your sister will do as she wishes. Your father will be who he is. The only person you must please is yourself.”

  “And what of the bonds of family, Mr. Stephens? Of clansmen?”

  “By all means, continue to worry about everyone else,” he said, raising his hands as if to show he played no tricks. “You obviously have complete power over each and every one of them.”

  Of course, he knew she didn’t. Tara had become a willful minx, and the earl was as he’d always been—careless.

  “But I must try,” she found herself saying. “Without family, what are we?”

  “A bastard,” he commented, the word heavy with self-irony.

  Aileen could feel the frown on her forehead. He didn’t understand. He was male, and he couldn’t begin to comprehend the weight resting on her shoulders.

  But for a mere second, a part of her wanted to embrace his advice, to allow Tara the freedom to ruin her life if she chose or to even allow herself to forgive the earl for all the things he wasn’t and never could be.

  However, if she did that, if she released the tension that had become her constant companion for so long and tossed aside the regrets etched on her soul, who would she be then? A person could not escape her past . . . although Penevey’s bastard had. She’d known the duke had rescued him from the streets. However, the man who stood in front of her was accepted in most of London’s drawing rooms.

  “We can’t all be like you,” she replied, sounding petulant to her own ears, although that was all she could offer. She left the room and half expected him to pursue.

  Perhaps she wanted him to pursue.

  But he didn’t.

  No footstep fell in the hallway behind her. And once she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom, she did not have a sense that he was lying in wait, breathing against the door, ready to attack.

  Ellen did not wait up to undress her. Aileen never expected her maid to do that, especially in the country. As she unlaced her dress, she caught a glimpse of herself in the candlelight reflecting off her looking glass. Her color was high, her eyes large, wondering.

  Mr. Stephens’s advice echoed in her ears. Or was it her own far too passionate nature pushing her toward him and disaster, and consequently giving his opinion more importance than it warranted?

  She’d learned the hard way not to trust herself.

  Aileen climbed into her bed and pulled the covers over her head. A few moments later, she surprised herself by falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, the deepest she’d had since those days when she had been an innocent girl who had still believed in love.

  Blake held the white queen up to the light.

  What the bloody hell was the matter with him?

  He could be as great a rascal as any other man, but he had some sense of honor and a code of conduct. He didn’t like affairs. They involved too many loose ends, and he was not a rash man. He prided himself on always being in control.

  There had been a time in his life when he’d been treated as if he’d been of no consequence. Even now, there were times when he was dismissed as a by-blow, an afterthought. It rankled that the duke’s acknowledgement of his parentage opened doors that Blake felt should have been available to him on his own merit. He was Penevey’s oldest, damn it all.

  And a bit of his need to prove himself had been behind his pursuit of Lady Tara.

  But it was her sister that captured his imagination . . . in a way no other woman had before.

  And he’d just met her.

  Blake carefully returned to what he had started, setting up the chessboard, but with one difference. He placed the white queen in the middle of the game.

  In the square confronting hers, he positioned the black king.

  For a second, he debated moving the two pieces, then he decided to let them stay.

  He would not act upon his attraction to Aileen Hamilton. He would marry her sister because that was what was expected of him. He’d fought to be considered a gentleman. A man’s reputation was the most fragile thing he owned.

  And no woman should matter that much.

  Especially one he’d just met.

  Blake went to bed then. What else was there to do here in the wilderness of Scotland?

  He expected to fall asleep. He was tired from travel and the weary contemplation of his future. He would have a beautiful wife, and his children, his sons, would be accepted everywhere. Besides, he always slept well, the result of a clear conscience.

  Except this night, his peace was broken by fitful dreams of a pair of gray-blue eyes and the possibility of scandal.

  Chapter Seven

  A rush of sunlight woke Blake.

  He roared his disapproval and pulled the feather pillow over his eyes. “Shut the drapes,” he snapped.

  “I wish I could, sir,” his valet, Jones, said, “but you are to go to church with the earl of Tay this morning.”

  Church?

  “I never go to church,” Blake mumbled into his pillow. His friends doubted if he would go to one for his own funeral.

  It wasn’t that he had anything against honest prayer. He’d been known to indulge in it a time or two, usually in times of great crisis and with very choice words. But the discipline of rising in the morning to listen to a man who was probably no more holy than he carry on about “should and should nots” was not high on Blake’s preference of morning activities.

  But then the word “Tay” registered in his still sleepy, and, yes, drink-befuddled memory. The first of his marriage banns was to be announced this morning.

  He tossed the pillow aside and opened one eye. Jones was laying out the shaving equipment. The servant had also cracked open the window.

  “What is that sound?” Blake asked.

  “Birdsong, sir.”

  “I’ve never heard it.”

  “That is because you rarely leave London. The birds are quite happy this mo
rning after our last few days of rain.”

  “We have birds in London.”

  “Pigeons and gulls, not songbirds.”

  “So you say.”

  “I do, sir. I like the sound of the thrush. Makes me content—”

  “I should never have left the city,” Blake declared, overriding his valet. Jones’s talking of songbirds aggravated the foggy numbness in his brain. “Or drink with Tay. Ever. The man is a fish.” Blake had always believed he had a good head for spirits, but he could not keep up with Tay. He raised a hand to his pounding brow. “Good God.”

  Jones was an independent-minded chap and rarely refrained from letting his opinions be known. “Are you praying already, sir?”

  “More than you can imagine,” Blake muttered. “The last few days have been a bloody challenge. I’m pretending I’m a happy guest, but my patience is stretching thin.” Especially around Tara.

  In London, Blake had had business to attend to, and he’d only dealt with Tara during social obligations. She’d been a pretty bauble who had flattered his standing amongst his contemporaries and made his half brother Arthur jealous. He’d never spent too much time with her alone.

  He now realized that his betrothed was a bit of a child. She was like Penevey’s legitimate sons, with their slack jaws and vaunted sense of importance. They were coddled and cossetted and knew nothing of the world.

  Ten minutes with one of them always made Blake thankful he’d grown up in the gutter. He’d learned in the hardest school any man could ever know how dangerous it was to waste time twiddling his thumbs or taking opportunity for granted. He valued purpose, something that Tara did not seem to possess—although that was untrue of her sister.

  Lady Aileen was apparently a cornerstone in country society. She seemed to be out and about visiting her neighbors and seeing to sick crofters and the like. A true Lady Bountiful.

  He admired her industry, although he suspected her real motive was to avoid him—something she would not be able to do today. She had to go to church. It would be expected, especially since her sister’s banns would be announced.

  The thought of seeing her again was the impetus he needed to rise. He threw back the covers and put his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up. Immediately cold air hit his skin and he regretted the action.