by Julie Kenner
The baron looked anxiously to St. Lawrence, who frowned at this new wrinkle and studied her openly.
“And if you refuse all of the men on this list, what then?” he asked.
“We must have some assurance,” the baron said, mopping his lip again, “that you will show good faith in seeking a husband elsewhere.”
“I give you my word, sir, that I will. If that is not enough, then you must return to the prince and explain to him your predicament—that you do not believe the woman he selected as a mistress is worthy of your trust.”
There was an awkward silence as they grappled with her demand.
“A time limit, then,” the baron said, proposing a compromise. “Say, a fortnight. You must pledge to find and accept a husband within a fortnight.”
She looked from one man to the other, turning it over in her mind.
“I think two weeks should be sufficient.”
“Excellent.” The baron’s smile was full of relief as he rose and reached for her hand. “I’ll be off, then, to deliver the good news to the prince. St. Lawrence here will see to the details. He has access to funds and the special license and will ensure that you have whatever clothing and incidentals you desire.” There was a hint of challenge in his tone. “He will see to it that you are wedded within the agreed-upon time.”
4
JACK WATCHED with an unsettled expression masking pure inner turmoil as the baron took his leave.
Damn and blast Marchant, saddling him with marrying off Mariah Eller! He had agreed to compile a list of suggested men for her to marry when it became clear that the prince was determined to go through with this idiocy, but he had never imagined it would come to this.
She’d already declared her opposition to the whole notion. What in hell made Marchant think she would actually do the deed? When he looked back at Mariah, she was settling at the table and reaching for the teapot. He sat down opposite her, gripping his knees under the tablecloth.
After pouring in silence and serving him, she reached for the envelope on the table and opened it to peruse the names inside with a frown.
“So, you’re to be both minder and matchmaker.” She didn’t look up.
“And you’re to be cooperative.” He sipped his tea, wishing to hell it was Scotch whiskey.
“I intend to be, Mr. St. Lawrence. I must say, that name sounds wrong to me. I feel I should call you Jack.”
His smile faded, then returned as if force-marched back.
“You may call me that if you wish, Mrs. Eller. Most do. In truth, I was the one true ‘Jack’ in the room that night.”
“You could have saved me a great deal of grief if you had been truer still.” She sipped her own tea with an accusing expression.
Those damnable blue eyes. Don’t look, he told himself.
“Men loyal to the future king—” he began, focusing purposefully on the wheezing hearth.
“Refuse to tell him the truth?” she inserted. “His reign won’t be one for the history books if that is the kind of counsel he depends upon.”
He straightened and met that gaze full-on.
“You were in the room and clearly willing. What does it matter that your kiss found lips other than his?”
For a brief moment he thought he saw actual flame in the dark centers of her eyes.
“Yes, of course,” she said with a razor edge. “A woman who will kiss one man will surely not scruple about kissing another. And a woman who enters a man’s sleeping room will surely bed any man she finds there. For men are all the same in the dark, are they not?”
He scowled at her twist on the well-known saw: Jane is the same as milady in the dark. She meant to torture him with verbal thumbscrews. Lord, how he hated clever women.
“I did not mean to imply that you have no discrimination, Mrs. Eller. I merely pointed out that it could as easily have been the prince you kissed.”
“No, it could not,” she said, her cheeks pinker. “It may shock you to hear, sir, but I actually have standards. And bedding married men destined to rule my country is definitely outside them.” She reached for the list of potential husbands and scowled at it. “With such an attitude, I am surprised that you bothered to include so many names.” She set the paper down and picked up her cup, giving him an arch look.
“I wonder…what was your criteria for selection? What about these men made you think any of them would be suitable as a husband for me?”
He expelled a quiet breath, feeling her gaze roaming him as his had just wandered her. An unwelcome heaviness was settling in his loins.
“All are unmarried and have an income of two thousand or better.”
“And?” she prompted.
“And all would be willing to marry a comely young widow if it would win for them the future king’s favor.”
“So, I marry one of these men and serve both the prince’s and this husband’s carnal demands?” She seemed genuinely taken aback. “If so, I am going to be one very well-buttered bun.”
He was jarred by her blunt language. “I believe it is understood that the marriage will be in name only until the prince foregoes his relationship with you. Your husband will be free to enjoy his marital rights at that time.”
“Oh. Well. How fortunate for him. I am on loan to the prince for as long as he wants me to pleasure him, after which I am given back to my legal lord and master to serve his pleasures.” She leaned forward, searching his face. “Forgive me, Jack, but I’m having trouble figuring out just what I get out of all this pleasuring.”
Pleasuring. The way she said the word sent a tongue of heat licking up the inside of his belly. A phantom vignette of burying his face in her hair and sliding his hands over her warm breasts flashed through his senses.
“I believe you know very well what you will get, madam. Income…gifts…connections…” Running out of benefits, he grabbed a tea sandwich and stuffed it whole into his mouth.
A foul, vinegary taste filled his head, and he feared he might be sick. It must have shown, for she handed him the baron’s unused napkin.
“Aggie’s tripe ’n’ turnip sandwich—not her best work,” she said as he disposed of the bite and rinsed his mouth with tea. She offered him a jam tart. “This usually kills the taste.”
“Good Lord.” His eyes still watered as he stuffed the entire tart in his mouth and felt the beastly taste subside. “She’ll poison somebody.”
“She’s better with more ordinary fare. She doesn’t get a chance to produce her specialties often.” Her smile was nothing short of taunting.
“Then you will have to make changes to your staff and upgrade your cellar. You will be expected to provide food and drink for the prince and the occasional dinner for some of his intimates.”
“Oh? And will those ‘intimates’ include you?” she asked, freshening his cup.
“I doubt it,” he said, downing more of the brew and vowing never to set foot in her presence again once this business was finished.
“You are not considered one of his ‘intimates’?”
“I am pleased to say that he counts me a loyal friend. We hunt together. My family’s land borders the prince’s at Sandringham, and for years the prince has taken birds from our fields and dined at our table. While I am in London, I generally attend social functions with him. But as for being an ‘intimate’—”
“I should think that negotiating for a mistress would certainly qualify you as one,” she said with excessive sweetness. “How fortunate for him to have an ‘acquaintance’ willing to see him to his bed when he can no longer find it and kiss women for him when he can no longer muster a pucker.”
He swallowed repeatedly—the damned tart was stuck in his throat—and then drained his cup.
“The men who hunt with the prince are charged with his welfare, madam, and do not take their ease before seeing to his safety.” He smacked the cup back onto the saucer. “And since you raised the topic, I kissed no one. I believe it was you who did the kissing.”
She regarded him fiercely for a moment, probably deciding whether to unleash a bit of temper, then to his surprise gave a reasonable nod.
“So it was.” The smile that bloomed from her thoughts sent a cool trickle of anxiety up his spine. “And look where it’s brought me. I shall have to be much more careful about whom I kiss in the future.”
He rose and went to the window to find cooler air. Every time she said the word kiss, his damned collar seemed to grow a bit tighter.
“It hardly seems fair that one of these men—” she joined him there, brandishing his list “—will receive such benefit without so much as raising a finger.” She glanced from him to the names, and back. “Tell me, which man do you think would suit me best?”
“I have not the temerity to suggest, madam.” He clasped his hands firmly behind his back and stared past her out the window.
“But you have had the temerity to suggest, sir. You put four men on this list, so you must have some opinion on their suitability.” She motioned with the paper, inadvertently brushing his vest with it. His abdominal muscles snapped taut. “This Thomas Bickering, is he a tall man?”
“I couldn’t say, madam.” He refused to look at her.
“Do you know if he is portly or balding or has snuff-yellowed teeth?”
“I do not. I am not personally acquainted with the fellow.”
“Yet you would marry me off to him without a blink. What about the others? Richard Stephens, Winston Martindale and Gordon Clapford?”
“Clapford lives near Grantham, but is heir to a barony somewhere in Ireland,” he rattled off. “Stephens’s income is from some cotton mills south of London. Martindale is a friend of the Earl of Chester’s son…comes recommended by the earl. Bickering is a solicitor in Lincoln. That and the men’s income is all I know about them.”
Silence fell as she looked between him and the paper in her hand.
“You honestly expect me to choose one of these men to share my bed and partner my life, but you cannot tell me which is tallest, which dribbles gravy on his shirtfronts and which is stingy with his household allowance…all matters critical to the success of a marriage?”
“How on earth is a man’s height significant to wedded success?”
“It is easy to see you have never been married, sir.” He glanced down to find her eyes lit with feminine superiority. “Otherwise you would know how a man’s dimensions enter into his wife’s contentment. How can I be expected to choose without seeing, much less experiencing these men?”
She leaned against the windowsill, her eyes darting over some private vision, running her hands up her arms. Nice hands. Long-fingered and graceful. Probably strong enough to—damn it!
What was he thinking, giving her more than one name at a time? Women took weeks to make up their minds about a damned hat. But Bertie had said for him to cast about and come up with some names, plural. He had done so, never guessing that he would be the one to present them to the wily, audacious wid—Wait—what? He found himself bracing, scrambling mentally. Experiencing men?
“I shall just have to see them for myself,” she said calmly.
“Beg pardon?” He shook himself more alert.
“I said, I shall have to see them for myself in order to decide which to marry. Where do they live? Surely you will be able to learn that much.”
“What are you proposing?” Every inch of his skin contracted. He had gooseflesh all the way down to his John Thomas.
“To visit these men, compare them and perhaps…sample a kiss.”
“The devil you will.” He stepped closer, reaching for her before he checked that reaction and curled his hands into fists at his sides. “You cannot go gallivanting around the country demanding kisses from strange men.”
“But they’re not strange men. They’re men who were selected for me. By you.” She edged closer, her face raised, her eyes bright with challenge. “I doubt they would shrink from providing a sample of their amorous skill. Men are usually eager to oblige in such matters.” She raked him with a look that could have ignited a wet lump of coal. “Most men, anyway.”
His mouth opened, but after a moment shut. Heat was thundering through his veins. Frustration, annoyance and outrage, he told himself.
“You managed to survive one of my kisses.” Her gaze landed on his lips as she wetted her own. “Can you honestly say it was objectionable or an imposition?”
She was mere inches away, her eyes glistening, her cheeks rosy. Her lips—soft lips that had moved with such exquisite provocation over his—were moist and succulent and so very, very near.
It was all he could do to do nothing at all.
“I thought not.” Her voice seemed thicker, sultrier as she stepped back. “Then tomorrow morning we shall leave for Lincoln to find this Thomas Bickering, Esquire. You did come by coach, did you not?”
He jerked a nod, realizing only now the full scope of the task before him. He was stuck husband-hunting with a woman who had beguiled and disarmed half a dozen men hell-bent on dissipation, with nothing more than a fiddle and a punch bowl. She was striking, sensual, self-possessed and had already proven she had as much command over his body as he did.
“Excellent.” She caught his gaze and held it in triumph. “While there you can visit Barclay’s Bank and arrange the funds to cover my note.”
She paused, waiting for a response that he refused to give her. With a growl, he turned on his heel and headed for the door.
“Cheer up, Jack B. Nimble.” The satisfaction in her voice scraped his broad back like cat’s claws. “By tomorrow night you might be celebrating my upcoming nuptials.”
5
A GLOSSY, black-lacquered coach arrived at the front door of the inn the next morning at nine in sunny weather that belied the tightening chill of the season. Mariah sent her trunk out with Old Robert while she waited in the hall with Mercy, whom she had drafted to accompany her.
The old woman tugged at her straining jacket, grumbling that it had somehow shrunk since she wore it last. Mariah smoothed her own navy woolen skirt, resettled her military-style jacket at her waist, and drew her kidskin gloves higher on her wrists. After a moment, she stepped back to check herself in the hall mirror. The vivid blue of her eyes and pink of her cheeks surprised her. She was positively glowing.
Stop that, she ordered herself.
An instant later, the sunlight coming through the open door dimmed. She looked over to find Jack St. Lawrence’s tall, broad-shouldered form silhouetted against the brightness. Her heart dropped a beat.
“A steamer trunk?” His irritation seemed to push some of the air out of the hall as he leaned inward.
“Who knows how long we’ll be gone?” she said, forcing a deep breath as she retrieved her reticule and lap blanket from the hall table.
“One and a half days,” he declared. “Thirty hours, give or take. How many changes of clothing can you possibly need in thirty hours?”
He was eager to be rid of her. Too blessed bad. She was in no hurry to select one of the men on his list as her lord and master. Her only hope, she had realized, was to draw out the process either until she could find someone she could bear to marry or until she exhausted the prince’s patience without simultaneously invoking his wrath.
“That is an absurd time estimate under the best of circumstances,” she said. “Should Mr. Bickering prove suitable, there will be certain formalities to conduct, some of which may require days to complete. To say nothing of the shopping that will be required.”
“Shopping?” His horror was palpable.
“I believe the baron mentioned new clothing.” She lowered her voice and gestured to her serviceable but uninspired skirt and jacket. “I simply cannot undertake my new role in such garments. And should Mr. Bickering prove unsuitable, we shall have to go on to the next candidate.”
Muttering something unintelligible, he turned and stalked down the steps to the coach. When she approached the vehicle with Mercy in tow, h
e suddenly registered the old girl’s hat and traveling gear.
“What’s this?” He looked to Mariah in exasperation.
“My maid.” She met his incredulity full-on. “A respectable woman never travels without assistance.”
Mercy lifted her chins with exaggerated dignity and held out a hand for assistance in mounting the steps. Jack first extended his arm and then hefted and grappled and finally pushed her substantial frame through the door. Red-faced, he collected himself and then helped Mariah up.
Mercy, unused to coach travel, had ensconced herself on the forward-facing seat. Mariah settled beside her without correcting her gaffe, leaving the rear-facing seat for Jack, who bit his tongue, settled back against the tufted leather, and rapped the upholstered roof of the coach with his walking stick. The vehicle lurched forward, pulling a gasp and giggle from Mercy.
As it happened, Mariah needn’t have bothered with the lap blanket; the sun coming through the windows warmed the coach…too well. The smell of naphtha soon permeated the air, courtesy of Mercy, who had pulled her traveling clothes out of storage only that morning. The combination of riding backward and the smell of mothballs soon had Jack looking a little green. He let down one of the windows for some fresh air and it wasn’t long before Mariah was spreading that lap blanket after all.
“Never been all th’ way to Lincoln.” Mercy gawked out the window as they rolled past dun-colored fields bounded by meandering stone walls and clusters of cottages with smoke curling out of squat stone chimneys. “The old squire stayed to home. Said he’d done his travelin’. At least, after Miz Mariah come. A’fore that, he went to Lincoln regular an’ come home all wrung out, like he—”
“Mercy,” Mariah said with an edge, hoping to head off a trip down memory lane, “are you cold?”
