Courting the Countess of Cambridge (Secret Wallflower Society Book 2)

by Jillian Eaton

  Now she was stuck in a nightmare, except no matter how many times she pinched herself she couldn’t wake up. In three months – two, if her parents had their way – she would become the Countess of Cambridge. Three unfortunate souls had borne the title before her. All dead now, two in childbirth – Stephen’s mother among them – and one from wasting sickness. No surprise, as Cambridge seemed to favor young brides. At nineteen, Helena was poised to be his eldest wife.

  And there was nothing she could do.

  “I need fresh air.” Wrenching free of her mother’s grasp, she ran out of the room, down a long hallway, and burst out a servant’s door onto the side lawn of the earl’s large estate.

  A light misting rain fell from a gray, restless sky, mixing with the tears that threatened to spill down her face. She wiped them violently away, scrubbing at her eyes until they were as raw and aching as her heart. When her vision cleared, she looked up, startled to see Stephen looming over her. He’d moved silently as a cat, and she gasped and shrank back when he brushed his knuckle across her cheek.

  The touch was unexpectedly tender.

  The words that followed were not.

  “Poor sweet lamb,” he said quietly, his breath stirring the hair tucked behind her ear as he leaned in close. “Tell me, is wealth and a title really worth the price of your soul?”

  Helena jerked away as if she’d been slapped. “How can you ask me that?”

  “One more month,” he said through clenched teeth. “One more month, and I would have returned. But you didn’t even wait a week before you turned to my father, did you?”

  “I tried to–”

  “Yes,” he sneered, cutting her off. “I can see by the engagement ring on your finger just how hard you tried.”

  She followed his glare to the large sapphire on her left ring finger. Cambridge had shoved it on himself, and no matter how many times she twisted and pulled, she’d been unable to remove it. Like a wolf with its paw in a trap, she’d considered gnawing off her own hand, such was her revulsion for the piece of jewelry that had been forced upon her. Because it wasn’t just a ring. It was a collar. It was a cage. It was a prison sentence for which there’d been no trial.

  “You don’t understand.” And she wanted Stephen to understand. She dearly, desperately wanted him to. Daring his wrath, she gently placed her hand upon his chest, searching for the heart she knew was in there, somewhere. “I didn’t want this. I don’t want this. My parents–”

  “Do you think to play me for a fool?” he asked, knocking her arm aside. “On the night we met, I knew there was something special about you. I just didn’t know it was your remarkable acting skills. Tell me, was this your scheme all along? Seduce the son, and marry the sire?”

  “No!” she cried. “That isn’t what happened at all. If you’d just let me explain–”

  “I have all the explanation I need,” he interrupted.

  Helena parted her lips to argue, only to be struck with a wave of inexplicable exhaustion. She was tired of fighting. Tired of yelling. Tired of beating her fists against a wall. What did it matter if Stephen saw her side or not? It was clear he’d already made up his mind. Clearer still that their kiss had never meant as much to him as it had to her.

  “Please go away,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She was being made to marry Cambridge, but there was no reason she had to stand here and take the abuse of a man she’d once fancied herself in love with. If Stephen’s only intention was to hurt her, then he could go to the devil along with his father. In that moment she hated both of them equally, and she wished she’d never met either one.

  “Go away!” she shouted, driving the heel of her shoe into the soft, wet ground when Stephen refused to move. “I’ve nothing else to say to you. I wish I didn’t even know you.”

  “That makes two of us,” he sneered.

  “I honestly believed you were different.” The words spilled out before she could stop them. Green eyes glassy with unshed tears, she jabbed a finger at his chest. “I thought you were kind, and genuine, and that you understood me. More than anyone else ever has. But you’re just like the rest of them. No, that’s not true.” She shook her head with such vehemence an auburn curl came loose and bounced across her temple. She shoved it behind her ear. “You’re even worse than the rest of them because you pretended to be different. But it was all a lie.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You’re one to lecture me on lies.”

  “Do you really think I want this?” Short of beating him over the head with it, Helena had no idea how she was supposed to make Stephen see the truth. Arrogant, stubborn bastard. Why couldn’t he just listen to her? “Do you think I want to marry a man who could be my grandfather? Do you really think that little of me?”

  He studied her; his cold blue eyes impossible to decipher. Then his shoulders lifted in a careless shrug. “Truth be told, I haven’t thought that much about you at all.”

  A gunshot would have been kinder. At least then she’d be put out of her misery in one fell swoop, instead of enduring one painful cut at a time. As her bottom lip threatened to wobble, Helena made herself lift her chin. She might have been breaking on the inside, but she’d be damned if she let Stephen see a single crack.

  “You’re nothing more than a bully,” she said loudly. “Just like your father.”

  A muscle leapt in his jaw. “I am nothing like my father.”

  “Oh, really?” she taunted. “You certainly could have fooled me.”

  “I’m done with this. I’m done with you.” After one last, hateful glare, he turned on his heel and started to walk away.

  But before Helena had taken a single breath, he whipped around, and she let out a startled squeak when he stalked up to her with all the ferocity of a tiger about to sink its fangs into its next meal.

  She backed up instinctively, her courage wavering in the face of such bristling animosity. She didn’t think Stephen would ever raise his hand to her. But then she’d never thought he would break her heart, either.

  Crawling ivy, wet from the rain, tickled her neck as she backed up against the side of the manor. She had nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to run. Nowhere else to hide. Nothing to do but confront the blue-eyed devil in front of her.

  “Stephen–” she began.

  “Why couldn’t you have waited seven months for me?” he said hoarsely, and the raw torment she saw in his gaze tugged at her own wounded heart. “I would have waited seven lifetimes for you.”

  She swallowed hard. “We’re both here now.”

  For a moment, he softened. For a moment, she thought he finally saw the truth.

  Then his eyes flashed with contempt, and his mouth curled in a sneer, and she knew she’d lost him.

  If she’d ever really had him to begin with.

  “Feeling regret, are we? Good.” He reached out and grabbed her arms, his hands closing like steel manacles just above her elbows. “You should be. But never forget this is what you chose. This is who you chose.”

  Her breasts threatened to spill free of her bodice as she struggled to break his grip. Head thrashing from side to side, she gasped when he caught her chin. Freezing beneath the intensity of his icy gaze, she inadvertently glanced down at his mouth, and they both stiffened as a new potent emotion entered the fray.

  “No,” she whispered as his other hand began to slowly glide up her arm. Like a bow string drawn taut, she quivered when he pressed his thumb just beneath her ear. “No. This – this isn’t what either of us want.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said silkily.

  Yes. Oh, yes.

  She’d waited months to kiss him again. Months that now felt like years. Years that felt like small eternities. Being this close to him again, touching him, breathing in his scent…it should have been heaven after so much hell. Instead, it was only a cruel reminder of everything she was giving up.

  Because Stephen was who she would have chosen if she’d been given a choice.

  And if she ki
ssed him now, it was going to kill her.

  “Let me go,” she said, closing her eyes. “I – I don’t want you.”

  The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. She didn’t know if Stephen would believe it, but then he released her and stepped back.

  “But of course,” he said, his voice lightly mocking. “Countess.”

  As he walked away into the mist, Helena realized two important facts. The first was that Stephen was far more dangerous than the man she was being forced to marry. And the second…she was still helplessly, hopelessly in love with him.

  On a long, heavy sigh, Helena opened her eyes. Her mood pensive, she carried the vase filled with yellow flowers up the stairs and into her room. Ives was gone, and even though she hadn’t expected him to linger, the pang of loneliness she felt as she was confronted with her empty chamber came as a surprise.

  This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be by herself. To direct her own destiny. To control her own future. Although a point could be made it was her benefactor who really controlled her future. Money might not have bought happiness, but it had bought food and clothes and charming little townhouses in the middle of Berkley Square.

  She placed the vase beside her bed, then sat down on the edge of the mattress, chin cupped in the palm of her hand as her fingers drummed along her cheekbone. She supposed she should be grateful she didn’t know the identity of the benefactor, for surely, it would only breed complications. But there was another part of her – a far more hardened part – that was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because if there was one thing she had learned about men, it was that they never gave anything away for free.

  There would be a price to be paid.

  She just didn’t know what it was yet.

  Chapter Three

  Stephen Darby, Earl of Cambridge and Viscount Ware, knew all about prices to be paid.

  And debts to be collected.

  He kept track of everything he was owed in a slim leather-bound ledger that never left the inside pocket of his favorite tailcoat. The majority of the arrears noted within were for small, inconsequential things. A five-pound note Lord Gately owed him from a wager he’d lost. A particularly old bottle of brandy Mr. Harrison had broken in one of his drunken stupors. A ten-acre parcel of land abutting a neighboring duke’s property that had been in dispute for decades.

  But there was one debt of greater significance than all the others. One that had been circled, and then circled again. One that wasn’t money, or alcohol, or land.

  It was a person.

  A woman, to be precise.

  Lady Helena Darby, Countess of Cambridge.

  Side-stepping around a wagon loaded with fish barrels bound for market, Stephen navigated the chaotic London docks with ease. The ship he’d been traveling on had arrived a day late, courtesy of a storm that had caught them unawares in the Bay of Biscay, but after a tumultuous night of howling winds and raging waves, it had successfully made port.

  Moving past other departing passengers who were glassy-eyed and green-faced, Stephen hailed a hackney and gave the driver an address, then leaned back against the threadbare cushions and stared blindly out the window at the city he’d done his damndest to avoid.

  When was the last time he had been in London? Three years? Four? He hadn’t bothered to return for his father’s funeral. Why waste a month of his time on a man who hadn’t given him a minute of his?

  He would have been well within his rights to despise his sire. But for all the sins Cambridge had committed against his only son and heir, Stephen didn’t hate him. He didn’t love him. He was…indifferent. And in the two years and three months since the earl had died, Stephen could count on one hand the number of times he’d bothered to think about him.

  But he’d thought about Helena.

  He’d thought about her a great deal.

  The carriage slowed as it rounded a corner and turned onto a tree-lined street. Here the houses were narrow but tidily kept. Shutters were freshly painted, cheerful daffodils sprang from window boxes, and the pavement had been swept clean. Stephen smelled lilacs as he descended from the hackney; a distant reminder of boyhood memories best forgotten.

  He tipped his hat at a trio young ladies as they walked past, then gave himself a deliberate moment to conceal his emotions behind a steely façade before he opened the gate guarding 310 Cherub Lane – ironic because the woman he’d come to see was no angel – and strode up the footpath with the regimented steps of a soldier ordered to the frontlines. He wrapped his knuckles against the door and had only a moment to wait before it swung open and a footman peered out.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yes. I have come to see her ladyship, the Countess of Cambridge.”

  “I’m sorry, Lady Cambridge isn’t in at the moment.” The footman started to close the door.

  Stephen slapped his hand against it.

  “Do you know when she will return?” He hadn’t traveled over five hundred miles and spent the past eight hours being tossed around the hull of a ship for Helena not to be in. And even though he hadn’t announced he would be paying a call, it annoyed him that she wasn’t where he wanted her to be. Where he expected her to be. Where he needed her to be.

  For no matter how hard he tried or how far he traveled, Stephen had been unable to break the inexplicable connection he felt for the woman he hated. A connection that had endured far longer than it should have. A connection he’d come to severe once and for all. Except Lady Cambridge wasn’t in at the moment.

  “I don’t know,” said the footman, shaking his head. “The countess does not keep to a specific schedule.”

  Of course she didn’t.

  “I will return later then.” Stephen turned to go, but the footman’s next words stopped him cold in his tracks.

  “Best come back after the wedding. I’m sure she’ll have time to take callers then.”

  Everything inside of him went impossibly still, except for the thud of his heart pounding against the wall of his chest. The Runner he’d paid handsomely these past twenty-four months hadn’t mentioned a wedding. Or a groom, for that matter.

  His jaw clenched. Helena couldn’t be getting married. Not now. Not when he was this damned close.

  “What wedding?” he snarled, and the footman’s eyes widened with alarm.

  “I…uh…that is to say, Miss Haversham and Lord Winchester,” he blurted. “Miss Haversham is a close friend of Lady Cambridge. They’ve known each other…for…where are you going?” Perplexed, the servant watched as Stephen whirled around and stalked back down the footpath, slamming the gate shut behind him.

  “To get a bloody drink,” Stephen muttered before he proceeded to do precisely that.

  “Oh Calli, you are beautiful,” Helena breathed as she took in the sight of her friend in the gown she was going to wear for tomorrow’s wedding. Beside her the modiste, who had designed the pink dress, nodded in agreement.

  “Très magnifique,” she chimed in her native language.

  “You look like a princess.” This from Penelope Stillwater, the Duchess of Glastonbury, or Percy, as she was fondly known by Helena and Calliope.

  They’d discovered the diminutive, dark-haired beauty one rainy night huddled in an alley. She’d been soaked to the skin, her face covered in bruises, courtesy of her husband’s violent temper. Helena hadn’t hesitated in her decision to take the duchess into her home, and she’d been looking after Percy ever since.

  Collectively, the three ladies had formed what they’d named the Secret Wallflower Society. A formal name for an informal group of women who had bonded over old hurts and unconventional eccentricities that set them apart from the rest of the ton.

  “It’s just a dress,” Calliope said even as she blushed with pleasure from the compliments. “Do you think Leo will like it?”

  “He’s going to love it,” Helena promised. “You’re still leaving for Scotland right after the ceremony?”

  Calliope held up her arm
s as the modiste started to remove the pins she’d placed after making a few small, last minute adjustments. “Yes. Leo is very eager to spend some time alone.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Helena said, a mischievous smirk dancing around the corners of her mouth. Then she thought of her own wedding night, and the smirk abruptly disappeared.

  The consummation of her marriage was something she hadn’t shared with anyone. At least not in its entirety. It was an ugly secret she’d put in a box and locked away. A secret shame she couldn’t even think of without experiencing an unpleasant flush at the back of her neck and a queasy tightening to her stomach.

  “It’s going to be so very romantic,” Percy sighed. “Just the two of you in a charming little cottage in the middle of the woods. Like something out a fairytale.”

  “As long as we’re not eaten by a bear,” Calliope grimaced.

  “A bear wouldn’t dare.” Swallowing hard, Helena shoved all her memories of Cambridge, and that night, back into the box where they belonged. “And if it did, he’d have me to reckon with.”

  “And me,” Percy added loyally.

  Calliope smiled at her friends. “I can’t believe the day is finally here.”

  “Almost here,” Helena corrected. “We still have to get you to the estate.”

  The wedding was to take place in a small village church within walking distance of Winchester Manor. As the sprawling country estate was only a two-hour journey from London by carriage, the women had decided to remain in town until tomorrow so as not to risk Leo seeing his bride before the nuptials. They were all spending the night with Helena, then making the short trip together first thing in the morning.