Fed to the Lyon

by Lancaster, Mary

  “I meant your expectations of this place, which you clearly assume to be a den of…er—debauchery. Why complain of your daughter being here under my protection when you left her here quite alone less than a fortnight ago?”

  Color crept into Lady Wade’s face. It might have been shame or anger. He couldn’t tell.

  “If you had kept her at home,” Bill said evenly, “she would no doubt have met me within a few days in more respectable surroundings. Instead, she met me here, where she also met Eric Campbell, although he doesn’t know it. Through him, she met Harrington in your house, and he tried to abduct her. Being a resourceful young lady, she dealt with that herself, but it was Mrs. Dove-Lyon and I who dealt with the consequences.”

  “You will not make everything my fault!” Lady Wade said indignantly. “I was forced to do something to save all my family, including Diana, from the disgrace she had brought upon us!”

  “Well, that is another thing. She tells me that when Her Highness had left, she was too upset to send for you. But in God’s name, why did you not send for her? I heard the news that the princess had left London by seven in the evening. With your connections to her court, I’m sure you heard before that. Yet, you didn’t so much as send a carriage for Diana.”

  Lady Wade sat down abruptly. “I assumed the princess would have made arrangements. I assumed any daughter of mine would behave with proper decorum.”

  “A sheltered girl who imagines herself in love with a man who had just callously abandoned her? As had her mistress.” His voice hardened, and he let it. “And you. Not only did you abandon her there to the licentious rabble determined to drain the last of Her Highness’s hospitality, you let her walk home alone through the streets of London at night. Do you have any idea what could have happened to her there? And then, to top it all, your solution is to abandon her again, here? Can you really not begin to imagine how alone and frightened and despairing she felt?”

  The flush in Lady Wade’s cheeks had quite vanished, leaving her white and shaken.

  “I was angry with her,” she whispered. “I did not want her disgrace to contaminate my other children.”

  “Who are not even in London, but in the country,” he said contemptuously. “How could you despise this place as you do and yet leave your innocent daughter here?”

  “I did not think her innocent!” Lady Wade blurted.

  “Dear God.” He stared at her. “You thought her abused and still deprived her of her mother’s comfort?”

  Lady Wade jumped to her feet. “How dare you judge me? I did my best! I sent her to safety!” She waved one dismissive hand at him. “I thought.”

  He frowned, caught unaware for the first time. “Safety?”

  She lifted her chin. “Bessie Dove and I were friends once. But I disapproved of her marriage to Colonel Lyon—rightly as it turned out, for he left her mired in debt and scandal. Obviously, I cut the last connections with her when she began this…business. But I knew what she could do for Diana. And I knew she would prevent anything happening to my daughter.”

  Bill stared at her. “You still trusted her.”

  She nodded and turned away from him. Her shoulders heaved. “And I thought she would…understand better than I could, with my anger, and my anxiety for the rest of my family.”

  Nothing was ever black and white. “And your husband,” he asked. “Where did he stand in all of this?”

  “With his head in the sand, expecting me to deal with it,” she said tartly. “And so, I did.” Slowly, she turned back to him. “What do you intend to do about my daughter?”

  His brows flew up. “Marry her,” he said, then threw the special license on the widow’s desk.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Diana walked into the office, dressed and veiled, the tension hit her like a blow. Bill—wildly handsome in buff pantaloons and an exquisitely fitting blue coat—and her mother were glaring at each other. But nothing could dampen her spirits this morning, and she all but danced across the room toward them.

  Bill turned, his face lighting up with a smile that melted her heart and sent those butterflies soaring once more. Since she was veiled, he could not easily kiss her, but his greeting was hardly conventional. He seized her by the waist and spun her around with pure happiness before depositing her, laughing, in front of her mother.

  Dutifully, she touched her veiled cheek to Lady Wade’s. “Thank you for coming and bringing my things. I’m going to marry Bill—Lord Garvie—and I know neither you nor Papa will object, but I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before how I felt.”

  There was no time to hear her mother’s response, for the outer door opened, and Mrs. Dove-Lyon entered with a slightly nervous-looking clergyman, closely followed by Titan and Lysander, who would, she said briskly, act as witnesses.

  And suddenly she and Bill stood side by side before the clergyman. Bill lifted her veil and smiled reassuringly, and the wedding began.

  Dazed as she was by the speed of events, the hugeness of the moment almost overwhelmed her. She stood in a place of sin, according to most definitions, making solemn promises before God that tied her forever to the man at her side. Sheer emotion swamped her, causing her voice to shake as she made her vows and listened with awe to his. His ring slid over her finger, and just like that, she was the Countess of Garvie.

  The certificate was duly signed and vanished into Bill’s pocket, and the clergyman bowed and withdrew, escorted by the Den’s staff.

  Into the silence, Lady Wade said haughtily, “I hope, ma’am, you will not tell me that I owe you more money for this second match.”

  “This is the first match,” Mrs. Dove-Lyon said with equal stiffness. “Campbell was a mere ruse. Your fee is paid.”

  To Diana’s astonishment, her mother held out her hand to the widow, with a kind of teeth-gritting determination. “Thank you.”

  The widow blinked. For a moment, Diana was afraid she would actually turn away, unaware of what the gesture actually cost Lady Wade.

  But Mrs. Dove-Lyon reached out and took the offered hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Lady Wade blurted. “I could have done more for you than turn my back.”

  “Perhaps. But I made all my decisions with open eyes. We chose different paths and must follow them. I like your daughter.”

  Lady Wade swallowed. “Thank you for showing me I like her, too. I missed her when she was with you.”

  Their hands parted, and Lady Wade stalked to the door. “Diana.”

  “Wait, Mama,” Diana said, panicked. “We haven’t discussed what happens now!”

  “Pull down your veil,” her mother instructed. “Lord Garvie, you had better accompany us.”

  Obediently, he walked to the door, opened it, and bowed the ladies out. “You may call me Bill,” he drawled and smiled faintly. “Mama.”

  Lady Wade looked non-plussed, and Diana began to laugh.

  Matters were decided in a private conference in the library of the Wades’ Mount Street house, where they caught Diana’s father just before he planned to go out. He positively goggled when he was told his daughter was now a countess and had to sit down when he discovered where the wedding had taken place.

  Inevitably, it was Bill who made the practical suggestions.

  “It was a scandalous place to marry,” he admitted. “But it fulfilled the promise I made your daughter.”

  “And your sense of humor,” Diana pointed out.

  “And yours, my lady,” Bill retorted before turning back to her father. “That wedding will never be known to the world, sir, so I suggest we hold another at your country seat—Thretford Hall, I believe. I will journey there with you as your guest, the ceremony will be arranged as soon as may be, and you may send a notice to the Gazette to announce it.”

  “And then can we go to Scotland?” Diana asked eagerly.

  “Yes. Of course. Immediately after, if you wish. Or we could go to Europe for a couple of months first.”

  “But that would be wo
nderful! Can we leave for Thretford Hall tomorrow?”

  “It would be best,” Bill agreed.

  “No, no,” Lady Wade objected. “There are things Diana needs if she is to be married!”

  Diana laughed. “All I needed were these clothes you brought me.”

  They won in the end, perhaps because neither of her parents really wished to be around to explain to their acquaintances this new turn of events. Or perhaps because, in his own inimitable way, Bill was implacable.

  At last, her parents drifted off to order their packing and make whatever arrangements were necessary to shut up the London house for a few weeks. Bill sat on the sofa beside her, and she nestled into the circle of his arm.

  “I think I shall like being married to you,” she remarked contentedly.

  “I shall make it my life’s work to be sure of it.”

  “But not your sole work,” she said shrewdly. “You have other ambitions.”

  “Perhaps. I have it in my head a man should try and leave the world a better place than he found it.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I hope so.” He tipped up her face and kissed her.

  “Bill,” she said quickly, “you won’t ever doubt me, will you?”

  He frowned. “I can’t imagine doing so. But it’s an odd question.”

  “I have an odd mind. It begins to wonder about what might have been if things had happened differently. For example, if I had been assaulted at the princess’s house. If Harrington had managed to abduct me… I would not be your wife.”

  His frown twitched and cleared. He shifted, placing both hands on her shoulders and turning her to face him.

  “Yes, you would,” he said intensely. “I cannot bear to imagine you hurt, but I would still have fallen in love with you, still worked to make you happy.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “How can you love me, believing me to be so shallow?”

  “I don’t believe you to be shallow at all.” She touched his cheek. “You just think…differently from other men. And women. In fact, I believe you are rather wonderful.”

  His mouth hovered over hers. “Prove it,” he whispered.

  “Always.”

  About Mary Lancaster

  Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.

  Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.

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