“I beg to differ and as a duke, am better equipped to judge.”
Poignant tears prickled at the way his conceit always came firmly to the fore when he was frightened, angry, or confused. Right now, all three. He crossed the room to come back to her, taking up her hand again. A weak smile creased his handsome face, and she looked her fill of his green eyes, sharp cheekbones, and patrician nose, brushing away the blond curl that always seemed to grace his high forehead. Finally, she squeezed his fingers, forlorn and trying to draw strength from his touch, slowly going cold along with his eyes.
As he tried to slide the ring on her finger against her will, she pulled back her hand and fisted it in her lap.
“No, Your Grace—I mean, Nick. No, I…” Droplets fell from her eyes, leaving spots on her skirt, as she said, “I cannot say I will marry you.”
She spoke gently, in part because the entire subject was making her head hurt more than she wanted to admit. “I do not feel comfortable making decisions about my future intentions until I have paid Myron proper respect. I am certain he would not want me to be hasty in my—”
His eyes were now as hard as she had ever seen, so hard they froze the words in her throat. Even when Malbourne had attacked her at Vauxhall, Nick hadn’t looked this forbidding. He was gathering his ducal haughtiness and preparing to unleash it on her, and for the first time since she had met him, was frightened to be in his company.
“Huntleigh signed a marriage contract with me with one foot in the grave, and he certainly didn’t specify a particular mourning period. He, too, was afraid for your immediate safety. No, Bella, as far as I am concerned, you are contractually obligated to—”
“Contractually obligated?! Have you lost your mind?!” She stood up, quickly enough she became dizzy and had to balance herself on the side table, which, thankfully, he didn’t see, as he was pacing again before the fireplace.
Once steady, she took a deep breath, rubbed her temple, and moderated her tone. “I am not declining your offer—which, incidentally, you have only just made and not given me time to consider.”
He stared at her blankly. “Not given you time to—? It has been more than four months since—” The clock chimed six o’clock, reverberating through Bella’s skull, making her head reel even more than the discussion.
“I do not intend to marry anyone else. I am not even saying I do not welcome your attentions—those appropriate to a widow, clearly, and once removed from London. I am only saying that I cannot agree to marry before I am finished grieving my husband. It is entirely reasonable, Your Grace.”
At that, he could no longer hold his temper. “Do! Not! Call! Me! Your! Grace!” he yelled. “I cannot believe this! Huntleigh and I made—”
“Oh, no,” she started, her voice dangerously low. “Do. Not. Dare. Do not dare start telling me what you and my husband decided for me. I will not be told what to do by you or by a dead man. Nor by the king or the bloody House of Lords!” Her anger gained intensity, as did her headache. “You have given me the megrim again! Go away and stay away until you are prepared to address a woman with a mind worthy of your exalted consideration, not just a fortune you’ve contracted to inherit!”
He was suddenly contrite. “Bella, I—”
“GET OUT!” She strode to the pocket doors and threw them open, leaning against the door jamb to still the dizziness and sharp shooting pain in her head. “Corbel! Blakeley! Alexander!” Her voice suddenly fell in volume as she lost a good deal of strength. “Someone come remove this awful man…”
John’s booted feet came storming up two flights of stairs with a drawn pistol at his side. “What is it? How did someone get by—” He stopped short, looking around the room, seeing only Nick trying to keep her from falling, not the intruder she had led him to expect. “What awful man, sweetheart?”
She pointed at Nick, holding herself up while she gathered a second wind. “This one! I want him to go away and leave me alone!” The shrill tone in her voice knocked her off her feet onto a nearby chair. Finally crying, the headache pounding like military drums, she swayed in her seat, holding her head with both hands to stop the vertigo, the room spinning like a whirligig.
Nick stepped toward her, but John held out an arm to keep him back.
“Time to go, Wellbridge.”
“But I—you cannot mean—”
“The lady wants you to go, so you are going, now. Corbel will send your things.”
Nick stopped on his way through the door, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes as he intoned. “If I leave, Bella, I will not be back.” His voice grew more gravelly and hard with every word. “I have danced attendance on you for months, sat at your bedside until I couldn’t think for being so tired. I would have died to protect you from Malbourne and Michelle, and my good name is in tatters since the day I met you. If you can say, after all of that, that we are not even betrothed, so be it. But if I go—”
John interrupted, his hand reaching for Nick’s elbow. “You are going, Wellbridge. There is no question of that. You can work out your differences later.”
Bella moaned, “Just go. Just go, Nick. We can talk later. When I can think straight.”
“There is no later.” He yanked his arm away from John, straightening the sleeve of his coat, and his ducal voice boomed, “And you may both address me properly as ‘His Grace, the Duke of Wellbridge’ until Beelzebub ice skates in Hell!”
Chapter 33
Everyone else in the world understood, in fact expected, Bella would retire from society for at least a year, preferably two, to mourn her husband’s death—perhaps forever, given the scandal. Charlotte, however, argued incessantly as long as she didn’t marry in the next twelve months, a betrothal would bring no dishonor to Myron’s memory.
In truth, there was no argument to be made that Bella hadn’t told herself a hundred times. Just the memory of the afternoon a month past in Charlotte’s drawing room made her want to sit on the floor and sob like a child. Since then, she had barely seen Nick, and she didn’t expect she would before she left London. All that was left were memories of two men whom she still loved.
As the days went by, Bella’s burden of guilt grew heavier. She was not the only person paying for her obstinacy. As she watched Nick descend into the worst version of the rake he had always been, she worried he would never recover himself.
Within hours of their final argument, Nick had thrown himself into the pursuit of pleasure with a sense of reckless abandon that frightened everyone who knew him. Bella refused to break faith with him. Even after she read in the gossip columns he was pursuing yet another married woman and had bought another house on Harley Street, that he’d lost almost fifteen thousand guineas in one night, that he was ejected bodily from Boodle’s for trying to start a drunken brawl, she still sent long missives to Nick every day, never receiving a reply. She assumed he was burning them.
As time went on and the chasm grew wider, she heard from Alexander that even the king had tried to intercede, summoning Nick to a formal audience, bringing to bear both their friendship and the privileges of divine right. Demonstrating the remarkable tenacity of both cousins in tandem, Bella and Charlotte wore down Alexander’s gentlemanly objections to disclosing all that had transpired.
Prinny had told Nick, “It is quite right she mourn her husband, you hopeless lackwit, and after everything she has been through, you must expect some feminine equivocation. If you cannot wait for her to regain herself, you don’t love her as much as you say.” Prinny looked at him with razor-sharp eyes. “Unless she is with child. You haven’t been so loutish as that, I trust?”
“No, Sire, there is no chance of that.”
“So, you’ve acted the gentleman a few months of your life, instead of the rutting hound; that is something. However, your mind and manners have now flown. If you persist in chasing after Seldon’s countess, drinking blue ruin like well-water, and risking your entire fortune in the St. Giles hells, you’ll be killed or Lady Huntl
eigh will rightly reject you.”
“She has already done so.”
“She has not! She has only asked you to restrain your passions while she pays entirely appropriate respect to her husband, an exceptional man. And lest you think to insinuate it again, I will not withdraw Sir John’s commission because he offended your dubious sensibilities protecting his sister’s interests.”
“I will not abide his—”
“I will not abide your unruly tongue in my company! Attempt any revenge you like for the facer you deserved, but you may not impose upon your friendship with me to do it. And let me remind you, Sir John is a baronet whether he likes it or not, and you have already killed a duke. Persist in that direction and you will be executed, no matter how much money you lose to me at cards. Now, remove yourself from our royal presence until such time as you have regained your wits.”
Prinny visited Bella at Charlotte’s house to pay his respects and was indulgent of her grief, speaking with only mild censure. “My dear Lady Huntleigh, you are quite right to mourn your husband, but I urge you to accept Wellbridge’s suit with an eye toward marriage a year from now. An informal understanding, if you will. I can insist you marry him, especially having sent the full force of the monarchy to your defense and involved myself in the inquiry, but knowing your temperament, you would only throw him from the ramparts.”
“I might do that anyway, Sire,” she grumbled.
Prinny ignored her outburst, but for arching a brow. “I will only say this: You and Wellbridge are as fine a match as I have seen, and I suspect the only one there will ever be for him, but you are a fool to make him wait. He very nearly died for you, my lady, and you should not take his life so lightly. The man has his pride, and he will impale himself on it long before he sees reason.”
She snorted, looking away to avoid his glare. “His Grace, the exalted Duke of Wellbridge, see reason? When Beelzebub ice skates in Hell.” She added belatedly, “Your Majesty.”
Prinny sighed, but then straightened his shoulders, as though to say All men have trouble with women, but I am a king and you, Madam, are not mine. “Huntleigh made Wellbridge wait far too long—”
Unthinkingly, she argued again, unwisely interrupting a third time, “What, by living too long for the liking of the high-and-mighty duke?”
“Yes,” he said, shutting down her brabbling with nothing but a look, “and by raising the man’s hopes with a contract it will cost you dearly to break. Should you continue your intransigence, Madam, you may be sure I will see you feel the force of your late husband’s last request.”
Bella’s unwelcome marriage contract specified an enormous payment to the duke if she were in breach, and in the event he chose to enforce it. The greater portion of Myron’s cash accounts would be paid out by the estate, though she would keep the income-producing properties. She could apply for relief from Parliament, but it would go before The Lords, certain to rule against her in opposition to the king and a duke on a decision the body had already made for her benefit.
She was not sure which of the conspiring men had decided to force her hand in the event she resisted their intolerable scheme, but collectively, without her knowledge or approval, they had agreed she would pay a hefty penalty for having her own mind. For three men who all said they trusted her judgment and had her best interests at heart, it was beyond unforgivable.
“You may choose to be an ungrateful wretch with respect to Wellbridge’s sacrifice, but not with respect to mine.”
Her mouth opened and closed like a fish on a hook, at the royal tone she had never before heard. The king had always been unfailingly gentle and kind with her, against all accounts of his temperament. When she stared at him, her face paling, only just realizing how insolent she had been, he ordered, “You are dismissed, Lady Huntleigh. Next time we speak—should there be a next time—do not be so quick to gainsay your sovereign.”
Since her meeting with His Majesty, Bella had hidden enough money in gold and jewels to provide a simple life for thirty years at two hundred guineas per annum, even if she lost Myron’s entire fortune. If need be, she could find respectable employment, or for that matter, beg passage on one of her husband’s ships to go somewhere it would cost less to live. She only hoped she would not be forced to leave England, and any hope of Wellbridge, behind.
The only thing in weeks to lift her spirits was a half-expected caller who appeared at Charlotte’s door just before the dinner hour three weeks after the row with Nick. Corbel cleared his throat outside the door to Charlotte’s sitting room, where the two women were embroidering a table runner on a raised frame in front of the green brocade loveseat.
Bella accidentally poked herself with a needle, and wiped the blood off on her black bombazine dress. When Charlotte handed her a handkerchief, raising a brow, Bella said, “It isn’t as though anyone will notice. Black is very good for masking blood.”
“I do not want to hear the story.”
“Yes, you do. And you would rather listen to it now than the next time I have a caller.” Even though Charlotte clucked her tongue, Bella only sighed, “I suspect I will be very, very tired of black before long.”
Charlotte’s forehead wrinkled with unspoken condemnation and commiseration, and a few moments after the sharp knock that followed the cough, while Bella was sucking on her fingertip, the butler made his presence known.
His long leg stretched into the room slowly, a stage player’s larger-than-life tiptoe, allowing the grieving widow ample time to straighten her dress, dry her tears, or stifle her conversation. When his head finally drew parallel to his feet, he nodded to Charlotte, but addressed Bella, “Lady Huntleigh, the Viscountess Lady Allison Nockham to see you. I’ve explained you are in seclusion, but she is most insistent.”
Charlotte stood, almost knocking over the embroidery frame, preparing to tell Lady Allison, as she had everyone but the king, that Bella was not receiving, no matter who the caller thought she was, but Bella grasped Charlotte’s wrist.
“No, Charlotte. I have to see her sometime; it may as well be now.”
“But you are in mourning, and the only reason she is here is to—”
“I will be in mourning at least a year; I can’t shut out everyone all that time. And it is unfair I can make a full retreat against the scandal, and none of the rest of you can.”
“But—”
“The duke is her brother, every bit as deserving of her defense as I am yours, and I have more than earned every horrible thing she is about to say, far more than His Grace deserved John’s fist to his jaw. At least Allison is a lady and will most likely remain polite.”
Charlotte’s shoulders squared. “I will not allow her to mistreat you in my home. Corbel, please show Lady Allison into the drawing room, and I will be there directly.”
Corbel cleared his throat nervously, “My lady, she asked quite pointedly for a private audience with Lady Huntleigh.”
Bella sighed, “I’m sure she has. I will see her in the drawing room, please, in five minutes. I would be grateful if you would have tea sent up. And some of the ginger biscuits. The duke said she has a sweet tooth. Perhaps this may yet be civil. Lady Allison and I were friends not so long ago.”
“I will arrange it immediately, my lady.”
Charlotte started, “Bella—”
“You cannot protect me from the whole world. I will return before you can finish sorting silks.”
Making her way to the drawing room, Bella castigated herself again for Nick’s downfall, preparing for the chastisement to come. As she had said to Charlotte several times, Bella might think less of Allison if she didn’t defend her brother. Still, that was no comfort in view of the entirely warranted telling-off of which she was about to take the brunt.
When Bella entered the drawing room, Allison rushed over and took up her hands. “Oh, dear Lady Huntleigh—may I still call you Bella?” Before Bella could even nod, as she motioned her guest to the lavender-striped settee and took a seat o
n a pale-green flocked chair, Allison continued, “And you must call me Allison. We were Bella and Allison before all of this, were we not? I do hope you have recovered from your shocking ordeal. A peer abducting a lady. One can hardly credit it. It is outrageous!”
“Oh, er, quite,” Bella said, not sure how to respond.
“Nicky said you were having headaches, and my abigail has the most wonderful tisane. I’ve brought you a packet, and you are to send word if you need more.” She pulled a blue silk drawstring pouch out of her reticule and handed it to Bella. “She won’t say what is in it, but it has never failed, and I have the worst megrims. You have nothing but sympathy from me.”
Bella dropped it into her lap. “Thank you, my lady. That is very kind. I had assumed you were here to ring a peal over my head.”
“What, over Nicky?” Allison dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t be silly. He has no business pretending to be a gentleman at all. I’ve told him and told him that he must respect your mourning. I wouldn’t be here invading your privacy now if it weren’t for this remedy. It is quite the best in England.”
“I am sure.” Bella was sure of many things; foremost at the moment, Allison was not here about a headache cure.
“No, you are better off without my wretched brother. You won’t believe the things he has done in the name of ‘recovering from his distress,’ as though a proper Englishman is ever distressed. My mother told me he was a reprobate, and my eldest brother, too. I wash my hands of him.”
Bella found herself twisting the pouch of herbs in her hands, silently beseeching her caller for mercy toward the man at whom Bella would scream, were he in the drawing room. The thought that he might have no one to ease him left her cold.
“Oh, my lady, you must not abandon him. Please. He is in horrible pain, and I hate to think I am the cause. If he has no one to turn to in his grief, it will just break my heart. Please say you will take care of him as a sister should. Please, you mustn’t leave him alone with no one to look after him.”
Royal Regard Page 37
