“No, now off with you,” was the innkeeper’s implacable reply.
The girl stared at the landlord through a pair of hideous spectacles and somehow managed to look down her nose at the man while looking up at him. The duke found himself admiring her tenacity. The sensation surprised him.
As she turned to leave, Derringer called her back, his mind racing with possibilities even as he opened his mouth. Despite her hideous clothing and plain features, he wasn’t appalled at the idea of her in his bed. Quite the opposite, actually. Strange thought, that.
And she was desperate. Desperate women were known for all kinds of unusual actions, such as marrying a complete stranger. He almost smiled.
She eyed him warily, spine straight and fingers clenched before her. “Yes, sir?”
“A moment, if you will.” Derringer turned away, catching the landlord’s eye. With a tip of his head, he indicated his immediate need of a private parlor. When no objection was forthcoming—how could there be when the man was far too busy with two drunks who were intent on spilling each other’s blood?—Derringer offered his arm to the young woman, just as if he were in the habit of such gentlemanly behavior, and led the way.
At the doorpost, she paused, clearly unwilling to enter a room alone with him. She had a care for her reputation then, a further indication of her breeding.
Derringer settled his dark gaze on her. “Follow me,” he ordered, gentling his tone. Yet she hesitated still. “Come, girl, I won’t eat you,” he muttered in exasperation.
“That’s not what I’m afraid of.”
Her candor caught him unaware but only for a moment. Then he leaned down. She stared up at him suspiciously, her hazel eyes huge behind her spectacles. “I will not ravish you either, my dear,” he murmured. Her suspicious look did not waver one whit. “I only ravish blonds and I only eat redheads,” he couldn’t resist adding, though he couldn’t tell exactly what color hair she possessed.
The girl released a giggle and clapped a hand over her mouth. She nodded once and Derringer led her to a chair. “Are you hungry?” he asked brusquely.
“Famished,” she replied.
“Springs!” Derringer bellowed. The landlord appeared before him as if by magic. “Dinner immediately. And brandy. Your best, Springs, from that personal stash I know you keep. None of that bilge water you foist on your other customers. Now!”
Springs scurried off without a word to do the duke’s bidding. Derringer sat down at the table.
The young woman sat stiffly on the very edge of the chair opposite. She folded her gloved hands demurely in her lap and bowed her head meekly, giving him a great view of the top of her ugly bonnet.
“Take off the hat and the cloak,” Derringer commanded. Her eyes flew up to meet his. She had a stubborn chin. “Trust me. We have much to discuss and you will be more comfortable. And none of this false meekness, my dear. I won’t stand for it.”
She hesitated before complying with his demand. She smoothed her hands over her dull brown hair, tucking a few straying locks back into the severe knot at her nape. Then she sat with her hands folded in her lap and her head up, watching him.
Silence reigned until the landlord returned with their meal. He bowed and scraped as usual and Derringer studied his companion while she studied him with equal curiosity.
Being a connoisseur of beauty, it came as something of a surprise to Derringer to realize that the girl sitting opposite him was not plain. Her features were not fashionable, true, but he’d never found fashionable beauty very appealing. Her regular, ordinary features were somehow pleasing. If not for the spectacles perched on her retroussé little nose, she’d even be pretty.
Her hair he couldn’t help but wonder about. Would it be long and straight or curl in riotous abandon? The sudden image of silky brown curls spread over his pillow and streaming over a pair of naked breasts taunted him. Which only led to the obvious contemplation of her form under all that sensible dark wool she sported as a gown. His imagination caused him some distinct discomfort. It took some considerable willpower not to shift his position in his chair.
It was too long since he’d visited his mistress, he thought with a measure of disgust.
“I have a proposition for you,” Derringer began as soon as their meal was laid out before them. He waved Springs from the room before the man could even open his mouth. Obsequious pandering was tedious at best.
He poured himself a glass of brandy and swirled it around, watching the ripples in the liquid. “How old are you?”
“I am twenty,” she replied softly.
“Blast,” the duke muttered. “I don’t suppose you will turn twenty-one within the next six days?”
“No,” she said. “Not until February.”
“Damn and blast,” he muttered. He studied her round little face. What the devil was she doing at an inn alone? “Are you an orphan?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“Are you a lady of gentle birth or merely an upper servant with aspirations above her station?”
The girl set her fork carefully beside her plate. She took a sip of wine and smoothed the hair back from her face. He realized she was trying to compose herself.
“That was rather blunt, I must say. I am not a servant. I am of gentle birth but I would not be considered a lady,” she finally said evenly.
A whore? He looked her over carefully and decided she was not a whore. Fallen from grace perhaps, but not an actual courtesan. “Who is your father?”
“The late Earl of Harwood.” She picked up her fork and began to eat steadily again.
“The late earl? When did Harwood die?”
“Almost a sennight past.”
A week ago? The devil. “Oh. Is the countess dead as well then? You said you were an orphan,” he pointed out as he refilled his glass. He was quite sure the countess was not, but he hadn’t known about Harwood, damn his spies, so it was conceivable that yet another useless detail had slipped his notice.
“The countess is alive and well. My mother, however, died nearly one-and-twenty years ago.”
She was a bastard. Perfect, Derringer thought with a certain amount of glee. That should set Grimsby on his ear. The wealthy, powerful, and handsome Duke of Derringer throwing his life away on a penniless bastard would give that milksop something to fret about. Marvelous!
“You sound like a gentlewoman,” he remarked lazily.
“I was raised in my father’s house. I was sent to Miss Forester’s Select Seminary for Young Ladies when the time came and given every benefit of a daughter of the house. Then Papa died and his wife threw me out after the will was not found. Everything of Papa’s went to his son, the new earl.” All this was said in the most prosaic, matter-of-fact tone Derringer had ever heard.
Her voice changed subtly as she continued. It might have gone unnoticed by anyone but him. “I was told he left nothing for me but I refuse to believe my father would not take care of me. We were very close and he assured me I would always be taken care of, that I need never fear poverty. Well,” she shrugged fatalistically.
“And you had no one else to turn to when you found yourself in straitened circumstances?”
She hesitated. “I first went into the village to see my beau, Mr. Hubbard,” she confessed, a shade of reluctance coloring her tone while an embarrassed pink colored her round cheeks. “He had heard about the lack of will and let me know that he was no longer interested in marrying me. But he was more than willing to give me a much different position.” She shook her head and shrugged. “So now I am alone and apparently at your mercy, sir.”
“So you are,” he agreed with an assessing look, uncomfortably surprised at his sudden desire to tear Mr. Hubbard limb from limb. “Marry me.”
Leandra dropped her fork. It clattered onto her plate and her eyes flew up to stare at the crazy man sitting across from her. “Are you daft, sir?” she asked with her normal candor. “I mean, are you an escaped Bedlamite?”
; She didn’t give him a chance to reply. “You are kind, sir. I thank you for the meal and the sympathetic ear, but you needn’t feel that such desperate means are called for in helping me. I’m certain you like to help people, but marriage? Is that not going much too far, my lord? I assume you are a lord of some sort based on the landlord’s attitude but perhaps you are escaped from your keeper? I mean, even lords can lose their minds. The newspapers overflow with such stories...” Her voice drifted to silence.
He didn’t smile, but she didn’t expect him too, either. He just gave her that same blank look that he had been giving her since the first time she had seen him. It was a probing look that made her uneasy. As if he was trying to read her mind.
“I assure you, I am not mad nor do I jest,” he said in a tone that supported his avowal. Then, with a look that was almost amused, he admitted, “And helping people is not something I am known to do.”
“I don’t even know who you are. Everything about you suggests that you are a peer. Yet, you know I am baseborn and you still ask me to marry you. Why?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder and then unashamedly contradicted what he had told her no more than a few seconds earlier. “You need help; I need a wife. It sounds like a fair exchange to me.”
Leandra’s eyes widened. The gentleman was very handsome in a non-fashionable way, very elegant…and very dark. Everything about him was dark. He wore a black cloak over a black jacket, a black shirt, and black buckskins with black topboots. Even his cravat was black. His gloves, tossed on the table beside his plate, were black leather. His black hair was worn long and tied back with a black velvet ribbon. His eyes were black and his skin was tanned dark. She wondered a trifle breathlessly if his handkerchief and smallclothes were black as well. He quirked a black brow at her even as she assessed his appearance.
“Do I pass muster on a purely physical level?” he asked, voice tinged with sarcasm.
“Do you have a black horse?” Leandra heard herself asking before she could stop herself.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped him. “As a matter of fact, I have several black horses as well as a black cat and a black dog.”
“Oh, my,” she murmured.
Silence.
“Are you going to marry me or not? I have no time to persuade you to change your mind,” he said as he tired of the novelty of baiting someone new. He was sick of the inn, sick of being stranded, and sick of her odd silence.
She thought quickly. He could be one of those depraved lunatics that preyed on young defenseless women. Or he could be sincere in his need for a wife. Leandra wondered how many more times an opportunity like this would come her way. She stared into the gentleman’s eyes, looking for…something.
And then she saw it. It flashed through his dark eyes and she actually saw it. He was human after all, she thought with satisfaction. She saw a glimmer of uncertainty in his gaze.
“I have one question, sir,” she said determinedly. “You have not mentioned whether you need an heir.”
Derringer gave her a benign look. “I will eventually. I see no reason to force you to do anything you find distasteful,” he added dryly.
She blushed. “I did not mean to imply that I find you distasteful, sir,” she replied, thinking quite the opposite. “I merely wondered if you wanted a true marriage or one in name only. You do not know me after all and I would be very much surprised should you find me in the least attractive.”
She met his gaze squarely and had not the least bit of self-pity on her round face. She appeared…accepting.
“Truly?” was all Derringer drawled in reply to her self-deprecating comment. He could have told her that there was something about her that attracted him like a fly to honey. He remained silent on that score and allowed her to think what she would. “Are you accepting my proposal, then?”
Leandra took a deep breath. “Yes.”
Springs tapped on the door, not allowing the duke any time to actually be surprised at her relatively easy capitulation. He snapped distractedly at the landlord to enter.
The slimy little man bowed low and said obsequiously, “The blacksmith is ‘ere, yer grace. Shall I send ‘im in?”
“No, I will take him to my curricle myself in a moment. Leave.” The man was gone before the command had fully left Derringer’s mouth.
“Your grace?” Leandra whispered. “Oh, dear God.”
“Did I not mention I hold a dukedom?” he asked far too innocently.
“No,” Leandra breathed, feeling just a trifle put out and more than a little unsure of herself. “I’m sure the fact just slipped your mind, your grace.”
“Do not be a shrew,” Derringer remarked, his own nerves frayed to the breaking point from his hectic day. He stood to take his leave.
She inhaled, the movement swelling her chest and drawing his grace’s eye to her not insignificant bosom. Ignoring his ungentlemanly reaction, she asked, “Which dukedom do you hold?”
“Derringer.”
He stared at her as if expecting some sort of reaction but all she could do was stare back. She’d never heard of the Duke of Derringer.
He straightened, his fingers tightening around his black gloves. “My mother’s cousin is a bishop. I’ll see him tonight about a special license. We’ll marry tomorrow.”
He was a wee bit irked that she didn’t seem to know who he was. Everyone knew of the Duke of Derringer. He was infamous and feared throughout the kingdom. Where had she been that she’d not even made the connection that he was Lord Heartless?
“Tonight? Tomorrow?” she sputtered. “How is that possible?”
“I have to marry by the twenty-ninth, my dear. We will marry tomorrow just to make sure everything is legal and legitimate. And cousin Horace has been after me to marry this age so getting the license will not be difficult to obtain. I am a duke with connections, after all.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. She stiffened her spine. “Very well, your grace. We shall marry tomorrow.”
“Good. I’ll arrange a room for you tonight. We’ll marry from here and I will escort you to the Crescent after the wedding.” He walked to the door and turned the knob. Then he paused and turned back to the young woman at the table.
“By the way, what is your name?”
Heartless
Available at the following links:
US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001IZZ2RC
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001IZZ2RC
About the Author
Jaimey Grant, a pseudonym for Laura Miller, was born in Michigan in 1979. After a fun-filled childhood interlaced with moments of emotional trauma and an insatiable curiosity about the reasons people act the way they do, she became a writer.
Primarily a Regency romance author, Jaimey has also dabbled in fantasy of a non-romance variety. A comprehensive list of works and where to find them can be found on her website, www.jaimeygrant.com. There are more Regencies and fantasies in the works.
She currently lives in Michigan with her husband and two children.
To learn more about Jaimey and her work, visit any of the sites below.
Website: http://www.jaimeygrant.com
Blog: http://jaimeygrant.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jaimeygrantauthor
Email: [email protected]
My Lady Coward: An Episodic Regency Romance Page 6
