“But you don’t understand, Miss Harcourt. It is essential that we marry; your father expects it.”
The poor earl looked so miserable, Maddy’s heart bled for him. She put an arm around his narrow shoulders and gave him a friendly squeeze. “Nonsense, my lord, we don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do, no matter who expects it—and plainly, neither of us wants this marriage. Just leave my father to me. I have a lifetime of experience dealing with tyrants.”
With her arm still encircling the earl’s shoulders, she looked up as the door of the salon burst open, revealing none other than the “tyrant” himself, looking like the cat that had not only swallowed, but thoroughly digested a particularly fat mouse.
“So, Maddy, my lord, may I be the first to wish you happy? I’ve a groom standing by ready to ride to London with the notice for tomorrow’s Times. I shall dispatch him forthwith.” Her father’s booming voice bounced off the walls of the small salon, and his triumphant grin spread from ear to ear.
Maddy felt the earl cringe as if he’d been dealt a severe blow. She had no idea what hold her father had over him, but the very thought of anyone terrorizing the dear little fellow made her hackles rise.
“No, Papa, you may not wish us happy,” she said with icy disdain. “The earl has made his offer, urged on by you, I’ve no doubt, and I have refused him. We simply would not suit, as anyone with no more perception than a barn owl in broad daylight could really see.”
“Not suit? The man is an earl without a feather to fly with; you are an heiress without a title. Where could you find a better match than that?”
Money. So that was what this was all about. Maddy gave the earl another friendly squeeze. The poor fellow’s pockets were to let and to save his beloved Winterhaven, he had put himself on the auction block. Apparently her father was high bidder. Maddy felt choked with anger and disgust. “I like the earl very much,” she said coldly, “but I do not love him, and he certainly does not love me.”
She glanced at the earl, standing mute as a stone beside her. “In fact, now that I think on it, I feel certain his heart is already engaged.” The sudden flush suffusing his pale cheeks confirmed her suspicion that she had read the sadness in his eyes correctly. “He may be trapped by his circumstances, but I am not. I will never embark upon a marriage founded anything other than true love.”
“True love!” her father sputtered. “Nonsense, girl, you’re well past the age when you should be believing in such romantic nonsense. I can tell you from personal experience that unless a marriage is a practical arrangement meeting the needs of both parties, it is doomed to failure.”
“I will believe in true love until the moment I draw my last breath on earth—and beyond that if there is a heaven,” Maddy declared stubbornly.
“Damn it, Maddy, I’ve let you ride roughshod over my plans to turn you into a proper lady because Lady Ursula begged me to humor you. But I’ll not humor you in this. I have looked the field over and the Earl of Rand is the man who most perfectly fits the requirements I set for a proper husband for you.”
“Requirements you set?” Maddy clenched her fists in frustration. “What about my requirements? Don’t they count for anything with you?”
Her father turned his baleful gaze on the trembling earl. “Leave us, my lord. I would have a word alone with my daughter.”
“You sorely disappoint me, miss,” he said as the door closed behind the hurriedly departing earl. “I had thought you had a few brains in your head. I see now you’re the same witless kind of creature as your mother.”
“And you likewise disappoint me, sir. I had foolishly believed you cared about me.”
“Of course I care about you. Why do you think I’ve spent thrice what I pay all my sea captains for a year before the mast on refurbishing Rand’s dilapidated townhouse and country manor if not because I intended you to be mistress of them? Think of it, Maddy, with my money and Rand’s title, you’ll be the darling of London society. Not one of those stiff-necked society matrons will ever dare snub you the way they did your mother—and your firstborn son will be a bona-fide earl with a seat in the House of Lords.”
Maddy eyed her father, shocked to realize for the first time how deeply wounded he’d been by her foolish mother’s defection. She shook her head sadly. “How ironic that a man who has accomplished all that you have with your life should consider an inherited title so important in the measurement of a man’s worth.”
“Don’t you see, girl—it is the one thing my money can’t buy. Oh, I’ve arranged to obtain myself a second-rate baronetcy by paying off Prinny’s debts, but that’s small potatoes compared to an earlship. My plan will ensure that you and your children will have the kind of prestige I can never hope for.”
“Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, Papa, and sorrier yet that you have wasted so many of your precious guineas, because I can see you are truly convinced you are doing what is right for me. But it is not right. I should be absolutely miserable in a marriage such as your suggest.”
“Nonsense. The earl is a fine fellow. A little shy maybe, but you’ve spirit enough for both of you. I’ll not be thwarted in this, Maddy, for I do know what is best for you.”
Maddy shook her head sadly. “No, Papa. Only I can determine what is best for me, and much as I care for you, I cannot let you rob me of the right to make my own decisions about the course my life should take. I shall be one and twenty in a fortnight and free to follow my own dictates, which I fully intend to do.”
“Humpf! Free to starve in the streets is more like it. You forget I hold the purse strings—a fact that sharply curtails this freedom you appear to think you have.”
Maddy raised her chin defiantly. “And you, sir, forget I am not one of your milk-and-water English misses. If a Frenchwoman like Madame Héloïse”—she crossed her fingers behind her back—“can make her own way in London, so can I.”
“So now you’re telling me you can sew a fine seam,” her father’s heavy brows veered upward. “Don’t try to bamboozle me, daughter. I have already heard from Lady Ursula that the simplest embroidery is beyond you.”
“True, but I have never aspired to be a seamstress. My talent lies in a different field. I am an excellent cook, Papa. A master chef, as a matter of fact. Who do you think has cooked all those superb French dishes that have graced your dinner table for the past three weeks?” She tossed her head defiantly. “Even Cookie admits I could easily earn my living managing the kitchen in any great house in London.”
“Cookie! By God, I’ll skin that traitorous little weasel alive and feed his carcass to the wharf rats.”
“For merely stating the truth? Don’t be ridiculous, Papa.”
“And what of you, miss? Would it not be ridiculous to choose to cook in another woman’s house rather than be mistress of your own?”
“Of course. Contrary to your opinion, I am not a fool simply because I disagree with you as to whom I should marry. I can think of nothing I would rather have than my own kitchen in my own house—but only if I can share it with the man who has won my heart.”
“Some prissy French Royalist your grandfather picked out for you do doubt. You know no man in England other than the earl.” His eyes narrowed. “Except his devil-eyed half-brother. By God, I knew I smelled something rotten in that quarter. If that slippery son of Satan has defiled my daughter, I’ll see him swinging from a yard arm.”
“Tristan has not defiled me. Nor has he done anything else of which he need be ashamed,” Maddy declared indignantly. “He is the most honorable of men.”
“He’s a penniless bastard, and one of Castlereagh’s spies to boot—the last man on earth I would allow my daughter to marry. Why, you’d be a social pariah married to such as that.”
Maddy faced her father squarely. “Please, Papa, let us be done with this pointless squabbling. We have spent too many years apart; let’s not allow a difference of opinion to separate us further. I know what I want in a husband, and the earl
is not it. I am determined to marry the man I love. He may not meet your standards, but to me he is everything that is honorable.”
“But will this honorable bastard of yours choose to marry you if you force me to send his brother to debtor’s prison and turn his stepmother and sister into the street? I doubt it. From what I’ve seen, he’s mighty fond of the lot of them, as well he should be, considering all they’ve done for him.”
Maddy stared at her father in horror. “You cannot mean you would do such a terrible thing just because you didn’t get your own way.”
“This has nothing to do with getting my own way,” he said grimly. “You may not believe it, but I love your dearly, Maddy, and I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you from making a mistake that would deny you everything I have worked so hard to provide you.”
Maddy felt consumed with a helpless, smoldering rage. “If you force me into a marriage that is abhorrent to me, I shall hate you, Papa,” she said coldly.
“That is a chance I will just have to take. Better that than see my only daughter ruin her life.” The ruthless set to his jaw warned her he meant every word he said.
“If you doubt I’ve the will or the way to destroy your honorable bastard and his precious family, try me,” he added grimly. “But think long and hard on it before you do. And you might think on this while you’re at it as well; Tristan Thibault has been part and parcel of the plan to save his brother’s bacon from the very beginning. All the while this ‘most honorable of men’ was winning your heart, as you so quaintly put it, he knew full well you were slated to be his brother’s wife.”
Like a condemned man heading for Tyburn’s gallows tree, Tristan wound his way through the labyrinthine halls of Winterhaven to the salon where Caleb Harcourt had told him Maddy was waiting to talk to him.
He had no doubt what was ahead of him; his ears were still burning from Harcourt’s version of what had transpired to abort his daughter’s long-awaited engagement announcement.
Now Garth was in a panic, Lady Ursula had taken to her bed with a migraine, and Caro was holed up in the library, weeping copiously. All had agreed with Harcourt that since Tristan was the “fly in the ointment,” so to speak, it was up to him to make Maddy see reason. But no one offered the slightest clue as to how he was to bring this about. Nor did anyone except Caro appear to realize his own aching heart.
He took a deep breath, knocked on the door of the blue salon, and entered to find Maddy seated on a fiddle-back chair, her eyes downcast, her hands folded in her lap. She raised her head, but instead of the anger he expected to see sparking in her eyes, there was only a dull resignation and the same, terrible sadness that had wrapped its stifling tentacles around his heart.
She searched his face. “Papa said you have known all along he intended me to be your brother’s wife. Is that true?” she asked, getting straight to the point as he’d known she would.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tristan reached back and closed the door. Propriety be damned. This was between Maddy and him and what he had to say was for her ears alone. “Your father had sworn me to secrecy before I ever left London. Had I known then what I do now, I would never have given my word to keep the knowledge from you.”
“As I thought. I could not believe you would willingly lie to me, even by omission. Now I know what you meant when you said honor forbade you from poaching another man’s preserves.” Her sad little smile widened the fissure in his wounded heart in a way anger never could have—even as her unquestioning belief in him felt like warm rain on his parched spirit. Once again she had surprised him with her brave and loyal heart.
“Was I terribly foolish and naïve to fall in love with you?” she asked, in a sad little voice that was nearly his undoing.
“No, Maddy, never think that.” He would give her up because he had no choice, but nothing—not even his loyalty to Garth—could make him lie to her. “If love is foolish, my love, then we are foolish together,” he said softly.
A single tear coursed down her cheek and dropped onto her hands, still clasped tightly together. “We have that, then, if nothing else. It will make the loneliness a little more bearable.”
She searched his face as if memorizing every feature. “I don’t suppose you had any more success dissuading my father from his course than I did?”
“I knew better than to try. He has a fetish against bastards, especially penniless ones. I could cheerfully kill the man if I were not so certain he believes he is acting in your best interests.”
“Papa is a fool,” Maddy said, “but a well-meaning one who holds all the winning cards in this particular hand—and I know him well enough to believe he will play those cards if I refuse to marry the earl.”
She shook her head, as if unable to believe all that had transpired. “Unfortunately, such well-meaning fools often create more havoc in the lives of those around them than men of a truly evil nature.”
Absentmindedly, she pleated a fold in her skirt. “I am fond of your brother,” she said. “Who could not be fond of such a kind and gentle person. I could no more be the instrument of his destruction than you could. But I shall make him a terrible wife, which is very sad since he deserves to be deeply loved, not merely tolerated.”
She smiled. “And I would have made such an excellent wife for you. I do not even think my waspish tongue would have bothered you overmuch, since I feel quite certain you would never have felt the need to take a mistress once we were married.”
She watched the knowing smile play about his sensuous lips, and knew he, too, was remembering the fiery kisses they had shared. “And therein lies the saddest truth of all,” she said with a sigh. “By the time my father realizes how wrong he has been, it will be too late to undo the damage he has wrought.”
For a long, silent moment she studied the face of the man she had come to love so dearly—as much for his unmistakable courage and honor as for the passion he had awakened in her. He looked tired and gaunt and his eyes held a haunted look that made her want to clasp him to her breast and comfort him as the countess had when he was a little boy.
“I love you, Tristan,” she said shyly. “Just once, I wanted to know the pleasure of saying the words.”
“I love you too, Maddy.” He held his body rigid, never moving from the spot where he’d stood since he’d entered the room, as if the tight control he’d imposed on himself would snap with the slightest variation of stance.
Maddy rose and walked toward him. “I would have my second kiss now, please.”
He stepped back, his fists clenched at his side. “Do not ask it of me, my little love. It would be like tearing my very heart from my chest to kiss you, knowing it must be for the last time.”
“But I do ask it of you,” Maddy said. “For the joy of remembering it will far outweigh the pain in the empty years to come.”
“Ah, Maddy,” he moaned, “what am I do with you…and whatever shall I do without you?” Without another word, he took her in his arms and covered her lips with his in a kiss so fraught with tenderness and longing, she felt as if he had lighted a candle deep in her soul that would burn hot and pure and bright all the days of her life.
The kiss ended, and gently she touched her fingers to his cheeks. “Go now, Tristan,” she said, “before I am disposed to collect my last kiss. For I am a merchant’s daughter and would keep you in my debt. That way, wherever you are, some small part of you will always belong to me.”
Chapter Thirteen
The engagement of Garth Ramsden, Fifth Earl of Rand, to Miss Madelaine Harcourt was the main topic of discussion in every fashionable drawing room in London on the afternoon following the announcement in the Times.
The Ramsdens were not the first noble family to bail out their sinking ship by bestowing a title on the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. With times so hard, a number of others had been forced to do the same in recent years. But the Earlship of Rand was by far the most distinguis
hed house to go such a route—and Caleb Harcourt the richest of the merchant princes. In the eyes of other indigent noblemen, this particular alliance gave the solution an air of respectability it had heretofore lacked.
As Beau Brummel laughingly remarked to his fellow diners at Waters, “It appears the stench of commerce becomes palatable to even the most noble of nostrils once they feel the pinch of poverty.”
At Lady Ursula’s urging, the visit to Winterhaven was cut short. “Much as I enjoy visiting with our darling Tristan,” she explained to anyone who would listen, “we have too many things we must accomplish before the wedding to waste our time in bucolic pleasures.”
“Not the least of which is the reading of the banns in St. George’s for three Sundays,” Caleb Harcourt added. “I want this wedding to take place as soon as you can make the proper arrangements, dearest lady.”
Maddy didn’t demur. As far as she was concerned, the event was like scheduling a tooth extraction—the sooner the painful business was over, the better. She had said her good-bye to Tristan. There was nothing left to hold her at Winterhaven.
Thus, one week to the day after the Ramsden Party left London, they returned—all except the earl, who elected to spend another fortnight at Winterhaven helping Tristan with the renovations.
To their surprise, droves of invitations for balls and routs, masques and musicales, picnics and Venetian breakfast, had already arrived at the townhouse addressed to the earl and his betrothed. Caleb Harcourt was ecstatic. “Now you see how right I was about this marriage,” he declared that evening when he, Lady Ursula, Maddy, and Lady Carolyn sat in a small salon in the second floor of the London townhouse.
He waved the sheaf of invitations in Maddy’s face. “The doors of the finest houses in London are open to you, Maddy girl. You’ll be hobnobbing with earls and dukes, maybe even a prince or two—everything that was denied you as a mere merchant’s daughter.”
The Misguided Matchmaker Page 20
