But he didn’t want to. He wanted to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours, awaken and find that everything was as it should be. No, he wanted to kill his cousin.
Instead, Douglas, the man of normally fine-working mental parts and skilled strategies, said very calmly, “Tell me why you betrayed me.”
Tony’s hair still stood on end, the result of that other female’s attack. He was still wearing his dressing gown, now ripped beneath the right arm and hanging longer on one side than on the other. He kept his distance. “Will you listen to me without trying to kill me again?”
“I’ll listen. As for killing you, I dare say that will happen some morning soon at dawn.”
“God, Douglas, don’t talk like that! Damn, I didn’t mean it to happen, but it did.”
Hollis cleared his throat, saying gently, “Enough mea culpas, my lord. His Lordship is in need of facts. All this emotion is wearisome and not at all to the point.”
“I fell in love with Melissande the moment I saw her and she fell in love with me. I know all her faults, Douglas, faults you can’t begin to imagine, but I didn’t care. I understood her and I knew that I could handle her. We eloped. Upon our return to Claybourn Hall, the duke and I decided that I would wed Alexandra by proxy to you. She was willing and the duke was more than willing. Indeed, he had just heard his wastrel son had not only left England in the dark of night, he had also bequeathed his father a mountain of debts. The duke was frantic and thus agreed, for your settlement in addition to the one I made him would rescue him and his family from disgrace. Still, I wasn’t certain, Douglas, you must believe that, but there were so many good reasons for doing it, least of which Alexandra is lovely, she’s a lady, she’s not stupid, and you won’t have to go to London and start all over again to find another wife. You have one and she’s quite all right and here and you will get to know her and everything will be fine.
“Perhaps this angers you, perhaps you believe I did it just to try to placate you, perhaps everything I’m saying rings false to you, but I swear to you that I gave it great thought. I studied Alexandra thoroughly, and I swear she is worthy of you. She’s a good sort. She isn’t arrogant or vain. She’s kind and steady and loyal—”
“You make her sound like a damned horse, Tony. Or a panting hound. She isn’t Melissande!”
“No, lucky for you. Come, you saw how she defended you, her husband, nearly killing me! Truly, Douglas, you wouldn’t be pleased for long with Melissande for your wife.”
“Ha! You slippery sod, you make it sound as though you saved me from a fate worse than death. You want me to believe that you removed the plague from me and took it onto yourself, that you martyred yourself for me. You stole my wife, Tony! Damn you, it is too much, I have listened to your lame excuses and I—”
“My lord,” Hollis said softly, his hand once more on Douglas’s shoulder, “we must remain for the moment with the facts. Emotion is enervating and leads, evidently, to violence. I cannot allow more violence in Northcliffe.”
“Where is my sister? Where are Ryder and Tysen and my mother?”
“Master Ryder insisted they all leave Northcliffe until everything was sorted out. He is an intelligent young man. Once he understood what had happened, he had the family gone from here within two hours. They, ah, are staying presently in London, at the Sherbrooke town house.”
Lord, he’d very nearly taken Janine to the town house, but in the end, Lord Avery had seen to her lodgings. Douglas twisted about to look up at Hollis. “So, I’m alone in the house with this bloody wife thief?” Douglas rubbed his hands together and he smiled. “Excellent! That means I can kill him with no one the wiser, without Tysen preaching to me from his future pulpit, without Ryder laughing at me, without my sister and mother falling into a swoon. No, that’s not true, is it, Hollis? It wasn’t all Ryder’s idea, was it? No, you were afraid there would be disagreements and so you convinced Ryder to remove them all. Ah, I don’t mind, indeed I don’t. Thank God, you sent them away. Now, I am going to kill this damned bastard cousin of mine!” Douglas roared to his feet.
“Please, no more, my lord.”
Douglas stopped cold and stared at the same slight female who’d been upstairs in the midst of the fray. She was now standing in the open doorway, that same female who’d tried to protect him. The same one who was supposedly his cursed wife. He shuddered with the strangeness of it; it was absurd; it wasn’t real; he couldn’t, wouldn’t, accept it.
“Tell me your name, at least,” he said, his voice harsh, his fury boiling near the surface.
“My name is Alexandra Gabrielle Chambers. I am the Duke of Beresford’s youngest child, but I am not a child, I am eighteen years old and a woman.” She paused and he saw the strain on her face, really a quite pretty face, with rather luminous gray eyes that weren’t stupid. She’d pulled her hair back and tied it with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She had nice bones, a nice mouth, pleasantly arched brows and quite pretty small ears. It didn’t move him one bit, none of it. She fretted with the sash on her pale blue dressing gown, then looked up to face him again. “Don’t you remember me at all, my lord?”
“No.”
“I suppose I have changed a bit. I was plump then and even shorter. I even wore spectacles sometimes to read, my hair was always in tight childish braids, so it was likely that you disregarded me entirely, but now—”
“I really don’t care if you were bald and obese. Go away. Go back to bed. You can be certain that I won’t come to ravish you tonight. I am not in the habit of bedding women who are strangers to me.”
She paused a moment, drawing up, straightening just a bit more. She looked briefly at Tony, then nodded. “As you wish, my lord. I will sleep in the adjoining bedchamber if that is all right with you.”
“Sleep in the corridor! Sleep with Tony for all I care. After all, he appears to have married you too.”
“Really, Douglas—”
Alexandra turned without another word and left. She picked up a candle from a huge Spanish table in the entrance hall. She walked slowly up the wide staircase. What had she expected? That he would look at her and fall into raptures at the gift Tony had bestowed upon him? That he would compare her to Melissande and decide straightaway in her favor? That he would fall instantly and madly in love with her? That he would sing hallelujahs and donate his wealth to charities for what Tony had brought about? Or rather what her father had convinced her to do? Ah, her father . . . She remembered exactly what he’d said, how he’d begged her, pleaded with her, used her own feelings against her, how . . . Alexandra shook her head. No, it was on her head, no one else’s, all of it. If she had wanted to toe the line, had really wanted to refuse, her father wouldn’t have forced her to wed Douglas by proxy. But the money, he’d needed it so desperately, and he actually believed that the addition of both Douglas Sherbrooke and Anthony Parrish to the family would force his fatuous heir, Reginald, once he returned to England, to curb his wild, spendthrift ways.
Ha! She was doing it again, trying to find reasons to convince herself that what she’d done was right and just and really marvelous. When, in fact, there were no good reasons at all. Douglas had been betrayed by his cousin and by Melissande and by her father. And by her. She’d been hoping, desperately hoping that his reaction when he learned about her would be different, but now Douglas had come home and reality had presented a furious face. It will be all right. You mustn’t give up. It will be all right. Her silly litany, Alexandra thought, climbing the stairs. Stupid and immature and . . .
Melissande was waiting at the top of the stairs, clutching her hands spasmodically to her bosom.
“Well?” she said without preamble. “Have they started fighting again? Have they drawn guns or their swords? Will they fight for me?”
“Are you palpitating?”
“No, don’t be silly. What does that mean?”
Alexandra only shook her head. Nastiness toward the bone of contention between the two men was unworthy. “
He told me to go to bed,” she said, forcing all emotion from her voice.
“You knew this would happen, Alex. I warned you; I warned Father, but he talked you into going along with him. I warned Tony. All of you knew that Douglas wanted me desperately, not you. How could he ever want you or any other lady once he’d seen me? He doesn’t even remember you, does he?”
Alexandra shook her head.
“It isn’t that I mind you being a countess, Alex, though you certainly won’t be happy being one. If your husband hates you, if he can’t bear to look at you, if he leaves the room when you enter, how then can you be happy? No, I’m the one who should be a duchess or a countess, but here I am only a viscountess. But it is what I chose, isn’t it? I chose Tony and he had no choice once I’d chosen him. Poor Alex! Poor Douglas! Are you certain Douglas isn’t trying to kill Tony again?”
“Hollis will control both of them.”
“A butler giving the orders,” Melissande said. “I wouldn’t stand for it were I mistress here. It is beyond strange.”
“Yes,” Alexandra said as she passed by her sister. She said over her shoulder, very quietly, “He wants you, of course, you’re quite right about that. He probably will always want you.”
Melissande smiled. “I told Tony the earl wouldn’t forgive him. I told him, yet he chose to disbelieve me. I have found that men do not always accept the truth even when it is presented to them with sincerity and candor. They always believe they can rearrange things to suit themselves.” Melissande paused a moment, then marred her lovely forehead with a deep frown. “I begin to think now that perhaps I made a mistake. Tony isn’t the man I married. He wants to order me about, to treat me like a possession. He even told me he wasn’t the gentleman Douglas was. He actually wanted to take liberties with my person in a carriage, Alex, in broad daylight, and not an hour from Claybourn Hall! Can you believe that? I couldn’t allow such a monstrous sort of man-behavior. Perhaps Douglas isn’t so indelicate, so uncaring, about a lady’s sensibilities. Yes, I probably made a mistake. Why, do you know that he threatened to—” Melissande closed her mouth over further illuminations.
Alex stared in dismay at her sister. Melissande was now regretting marrying Tony? But how could that be? Tony certainly teased her, mocking her, but Melissande appeared to find this to her liking. Oh Lord. There were already too many untold ingredients in the pot. “Then why did you attack Douglas?”
“Because you had attacked Tony,” Melissande said matter-of-factly. “It seemed the thing to do. Before Tony went downstairs to speak again with Douglas, he hugged me and told me next he would send me a dragon to slay. It pleased him that I acted the hoyden, that I yelled and nearly pulled out Douglas’s hair. It is all very strange. He is quite unaccountable. Men are quite unaccountable.”
Alexandra could only stare at her sister. “Tony will make things right with Douglas. The two of them are very close. Hollis said so.”
Melissande shrugged. “I think Tony should suffer for what he did.”
“But you did it right along with him!”
“Tony is a man; it is his responsibility.”
“That’s drivel,” Alexandra said, and left her sister at the top of the stairs, peeking over the railing. She walked quickly down the long eastern corridor whose walls were lined with portraits of past Sherbrookes, many of whose faces and costumes sorely needed restoration. She went into the adjoining bedchamber and stood in the middle of the room, shivering. The bed was much smaller and shorter than the one in the master bedchamber. Alexandra supposed that since she was small and short, it didn’t matter.
She remembered when Hollis had shown her through the master suite and she’d stood there and just stared at that huge bed, realizing for the first time that husbands and wives sometimes slept together if they wished to have children, that this was the bed where a child would be conceived. She didn’t understand the process, but the thought of not wearing her clothing in front of a man made her brain clog and close down. Hollis, bless his astute soul, had said calmly, “I believe it wise to allow some time for His Lordship to accustom himself. You must be recognized as a wife, my lady, before you can be recognized as the Sherbrooke bride.”
It was just that this room was so very cold and empty, much more empty than before Douglas had come home.
She snuffed out the candle and climbed into the bed, shivering violently between the cold sheets. She wondered if she would remain in this room for the rest of her years. For the moment, she had lost a goodly portion of her optimism about this marriage. Was Melissande right? Would Douglas ignore her or treat her badly?
She wasn’t even a marriage of convenience, for Douglas Sherbrooke had paid dearly for her. Actually, he had paid dearly for Melissande and he had gotten her instead. And she hadn’t brought him anything at all.
Tony had spent hours telling her about Douglas, reassuring her, reeling off anecdotes at a fine rate. She knew all his questions to her were to judge whether or not she was worthy of his esteemed cousin. At least she’d passed Tony’s tests. He wanted her for a cousin-in-law, he said, and when she said she was already a sister-in-law, he’d gotten that gleam in his eyes that Melissande seemed to adore, and said, “Ah, then I shall have you so deep in my family that you’ll never escape.” Again and again he’d said Douglas didn’t love Melissande, that she was merely a quite beautiful convenience for him, that he didn’t know her at all, and would have been horrified to have found himself married to her, then hastened to add that he, Tony, most certainly did know her, but it didn’t matter because he was him and not Douglas. All quite confusing, really.
So Douglas Sherbrooke didn’t love Melissande. Ha! So now he was wedded to an unbeautiful convenience and he didn’t love her either.
Alexandra burrowed deeper into the sheets, seeing her husband bursting into the bedchamber. She hadn’t seen him for three long years. During the past two days she’d wondered if he’d changed, grown fat, perhaps, or lost his hair or his teeth, and then he’d appeared and she’d only been able to stand there gaping at him, utterly witless. He looked older, she’d thought, staring at him, a hard-faced man with dark hair and eyes even darker and a high-bridged nose that made him look utterly superior, utterly arrogant. As if to ruin the image of centuries of noblesse oblige, nature had added a cleft in the middle of his chin. Ah, but he was beautiful, this man who was now her husband, his body as lean and hard as his expression was severe, the most exquisite man she’d ever imagined.
Oddly enough though, Alexandra hadn’t realized she loved him completely and utterly, with every ounce of feeling within her, until he’d thrown his head back, yowled like a madman, and flung himself at his cousin.
He was the man she wanted. Her natural optimism surfaced a bit. It will be all right, she repeated to herself yet again. She was still awake many hours later when she heard him moving about in the bedchamber next to hers.
And what, she wondered, would happen on the morrow?
CHAPTER
7
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing here?”
It was seven o’clock in the morning, surely too early an hour for him to be here, in this precise spot, in the vast Sherbrooke stable. It was foggy, damp, and cloudy—all in all a dismal morning, a morning to match her mood and his too, evidently. The light was dim inside the stable and none of the half-dozen stable lads were about. The smells were comforting—hay, linseed, leather, and horse. Douglas was wearing buckskins, a dark brown coat, and Hessians that sorely needed polish. He looked tired, unshaved, tousled, and vastly irritated. To an objective person he would perhaps appear an ill-tempered dirty-looking brute. To her jaundiced eye, however, he looked immensely wonderful.
“I was going to ride, my lord.”
“Oh? Perhaps my vision has become suddenly deficient for I don’t believe I’ve seen any unknown horses in my stables. Where is this horse you were going to ride? I assume it is a horse. Even though I am apparently the ass in this drama, you cannot ride me.”
<
br /> Alex was silent a moment, then said calmly enough, “Mr. McCallum has given me Fanny to ride since I’ve been here.”
“Fanny belongs to my sister.”
“I know. She is a spirited mare with a sweet mouth and nice manners. I know how to ride, my lord, truly. You don’t have to worry that I cannot handle her properly. Or would you prefer that I ride another horse?”
He was frowning ferociously at her. “So you brought no horse of your own?”
“No.” Actually, her father had sold many of the ducal horses some two months earlier, clearing out the once glorious Chambers stables before he’d known about Douglas and his offered bounty, before he’d known he’d need more than Douglas’s bounty to save Claybourn.
“You’re wearing a riding costume, though it is not new nor is it even in last year’s style. I may assume then that your esteemed blackguard thief of a father sent you away with at least enough clothes to cover you until you could wheedle some more out of me?”
As a verbal blow, it showed promise.
“I don’t know. I had not thought about it.”
He actually snorted and she heard an answering snort from one of the closed stalls. “That’s Garth,” Douglas said absently. “So you don’t think about furbelows and ribbons and flounces—”
“Certainly, when it is necessary to do so.”
“I cannot imagine Melissande not wanting lovely clothes and furbelows and all those other things you females clothe yourselves in to attract males and make fools of them. Why would you be any different?”
“Melissande is beautiful. She needs beautiful things and admires them and—”
“Ha! She doesn’t need anything. She would look glorious in naught but her white skin.”
As a verbal blow, it exceeded the last one.
“Yes, that is also true. What do you wish me to do, my lord?”
“I wish you to leave and turn all this damnable debacle into a nightmare from which I’ll awaken.”
It was difficult, but Alex remained standing straight, remained with a fixed pleasant expression on her face, forced herself not to scream at him or make fists or fall to her knees and wail. “I meant, do you wish me to ride Fanny or ride another mare or not ride at all?”
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