Always the Wallflower (Never the Bride Book 5)

by Emily E K Murdoch

  There was still so much about Letty he was having to learn—announce it? Tell people that they had made love, that she had lost her innocence and therefore, her reputation?

  She was far smarter than he had given her credit for.

  Letty moved against him. As much as he would love to ravish her again, there was something far more appealing in curling up with her and falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  Edward grinned. By God, he had changed.

  It was only when drifting to sleep that he realized what it was. He liked himself for more with Letty than without her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Try as she might, Letitia was unable to keep calm at the breakfast table.

  How could she? Mere hours ago, she had been wrapped in the arms of the best gentleman she had ever met. Their skin had touched. His arms had stroked her back as she had drifted to sleep.

  And before that…

  Letitia shifted in her chair, hoping the salacious thoughts running through her mind could not be guessed by either of her parents. If they could read minds, how disgusted they would be!

  Her mother looked over her teacup and frowned. Letitia hastily plastered a smile on her face and picked up her own teacup. It was cold. She had left it too long, lost in her own thoughts.

  “You look…different, somehow,” mused Lady Cavendish, her forehead puckering into a concerned frown.

  Letitia felt the flush coming, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Taking a long sip of her tea, she hoped her mother would drop the subject.

  When she returned her teacup to its saucer, however, Lady Cavendish’s eyes were still affixed on her.

  “Different?” Letitia said, knowing she had to speak. “What do you mean?”

  Unable to hold her mother’s gaze, she looked down at the two fried eggs on her plate along with the sausage she had picked apart but not finished.

  If only she had any sort of control over her own features—if only she could prevent her cheeks from darkening whenever she felt any amount of embarrassment!

  In situations like this, when the last thing she wanted to do was speak the truth, she was immediately proven to be hiding something by her treacherous face.

  “Do you not think Letitia looks different?” Lady Cavendish asked her husband.

  Letitia glanced at the clock over the mantlepiece. Almost ten o’clock; far too early to leave the breakfast table without causing more questions to be asked.

  Desperation to escape flooded her veins, along with irritation. It was ridiculous she needed to ask permission to leave the table at her age—two and twenty!

  The morning’s newspaper was between her and her father, who had not yet read it. In a movement of daring, she reached out, took the newspaper, and hid behind it.

  It was not a cunning disguise. For one thing, she could feel the heat of her mother’s glare through the paper. For another, her father was at the head of the table, and at that angle, he could still see her.

  Letitia tried to concentrate on the words on the page, but it was some dull gossip about Miss Emma Tilbury—as though everyone did not know that already!—and an announcement about the Duchess of Mercia’s confinement.

  She could not help herself. Her eyes darted to her father.

  Lord Cavendish was a tall man with a stern expression that only his nearest and dearest knew actually belied a soft and gentle temper.

  He was looking at her, eyes narrowed. Letitia chanced a small smile and returned to her reading.

  “No,” Lord Cavendish said finally. “Letitia seems perfectly normal to me.”

  The tension in her shoulders melted away as she turned a page. It was rare that her father spoke out in her defense.

  Not that she often needed defending. Lord and Lady Cavendish knew their daughter well, Letitia thought wryly. They knew attention was perhaps the thing she wished to avoid the most.

  A wicked idea crossed her mind, surely any father or mother would know when their daughter had fallen in love with a gentleman who was not only the cad of the town but now engaged!

  “And when are we going to announce it?”

  “When the time is right, I am sure the right people will know about it.”

  Lady Cavendish sighed heavily. “Well, I must be wrong then.”

  The words were spoken with such finality that Letitia’s heart started to calm, and she lowered her newspaper.

  Lady Cavendish was eating a piece of toast but had not taken her eyes from her daughter. Letitia gave her a small smile.

  “Anything interesting in that paper?”

  Letitia folded it carefully and handed it to her father. “No, Papa. Here you go.”

  Lord Cavendish took the newspaper and promptly disappeared.

  Letitia knew better than to catch her mother’s eye again and so looked along the table for the post. Four letters had been placed on a silver platter by Bentliff, their butler, and she could see the uppermost envelope had her name on it. Picking it up, a footman immediately appeared on her right and handed her a letter opener.

  “And will you be attending the Axwick ball?”

  Lady Cavendish’s question cut through her thoughts, and Letitia jumped, placing the letter and knife both back on the table.

  “Do you not think it is strange,” Letitia said in reply, “that Richard—”

  “The Duke of Axwick,” her mother corrected her.

  Letitia blushed. “The Duke of Axwick,” she said hastily, “vowed so publicly never to dance, or drink, or gamble, or marry—and now he and his wife are hosting a ball?”

  “’Tis indeed a little strange,” Lady Cavendish admitted, finishing off her piece of toast. “But that was not the question I asked you, Letitia. I was inquiring whether you would be attending?”

  Letitia swallowed. Balls still held dread, even with the knowledge of Edward’s affections.

  To stand there unnoticed and unappreciated, to know she would spend the entirety of the evening wishing to dance and not being asked …

  She had had nightmares about it.

  “I have never been eager to attend balls, you know that,” she contented herself with saying quietly, as politely as she could.

  “Your interest in the matter is hardly the question here,” her mother said irritably. “You are a Cavendish. It is important to be seen, Letitia, and seen at the right places. Do you think we enjoy eating that disgusting fare Lady Romeril serves up?”

  Letitia smiled wearily. “No, Mama.”

  “No,” repeated Lady Cavendish magnanimously. “And yet, do we go?”

  It was like being a child again. Was this what every young lady in their twenties experienced? Letitia wondered.

  “We do,” she said quietly, knowing that was what her mother wanted to hear.

  “We represent the family honor and respectability,” said Lady Cavendish impressively. “And so, I ask you again. Will you be attending the Axwick ball?”

  Letitia sighed and gave the only answer her mother would accept. “Of course, Mama.”

  As she said the words, a thought crossed her mind. Edward, too, would surely be invited.

  Perhaps they would dance together, their first proper dance. Just the thought of being in his arms again, of receiving his attention in public, was enough to warm her.

  “And will you dance?”

  Her mother had been the most beautiful debutante of her Season, her father, the charming and younger Cavendish brother.

  And she was the result. Plain, awkward, and unable to provoke any gentleman in society to offer her his hand for a dance.

  But all that had changed.

  Edward’s dark eyes had brightened with desire last night when he had seen her, utterly naked. He had not recoiled or been unable to…to complete the deed.

  Letitia could feel her cheeks darken again, but this ball was different. Even if Edward were not invited, she was sure a quiet request in the ear of Tabitha, the Duchess of Axwick, would be enough to see him added.
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br />   “Yes, I think I will dance,” she said aloud to the visible surprise of her mother. “If…if anyone asks me. And I think they will. I…I believe Viscount Wynn will ask me to dance. He has already engaged me.”

  A smile crept across her face as she remembered her first meeting with him. Monty had dragged her to a pair of gentlemen, and at the time, she had not been able to think of anything worse—the Duke of Axwick, a stern man who reminded her of her father, and the gentleman she had secretly obsessed about.

  How much had changed. Kisses in the carriage, kisses on the sofa, and that special kiss, which made her cry out with pleasure.

  “Well, that is unexpected.” Her mother’s words broke into her thoughts. “Viscount Wynn, you say? Well, there will be plenty of handsome and eligible gentlemen at Axwick’s ball, my girl, remember. Perhaps it is best if you forget Viscount Wynn. After all, he will have eyes for no one except Miss Lymington!”

  Letitia’s heart skipped a beat painfully. Her mother’s gray eyes, so like her own, were staring kindly but unwaveringly.

  Did…did her mother suspect? Did she know? Was this a gentle way of attempting to warn her daughter away from the cad of the town who she believed would break her heart?

  And who was Miss Lymington, and why was her mother so convinced that Edward would wish to court her?

  The rush of painful emotions overwhelmed Letitia for a moment, but she finally collected herself to speak.

  “Really? A-And who is Miss Lymington?”

  Lady Cavendish snorted. “Oh, Letitia, I do wish you would pay attention to the gossip of society, it would save me so much time.”

  “You taught me not to gossip, Mama.”

  “I did not say you had to partake in the conversation, but listening would not do you any harm,” Lady Cavendish said tartly. “That Mariah Wynn friend of yours, I suppose, has no time for gossip either. Too busy attempting to read.”

  “Miss Wynn has a great intellect, Mama, and if she wishes to educate herself—”

  “Nonsense. No woman should seek to be so educated. Miss Wynn does herself a great disservice by seeking a university education.”

  Letitia waited, but no further words were forthcoming. “And?”

  “She is the heiress of the Honorable Lymington and is worth thirty thousand pounds at the very least!” Lady Cavendish said with exasperation. “Viscount Wynn is a rake with no heart at all. I would not put it past him to take Miss Lymington into the card room at the Axwick ball, if they have one, of course, and win—or woo—most of her money!”

  Heat blossomed across Letitia’s body. She should be defending Edward. She should be saying something—but what was there to say?

  Her mother’s words summed up perfectly exactly what she herself had thought of him just a few weeks ago—and now they were secretly engaged to be married.

  Letitia cleared her throat. “I…I do not believe he is like that.”

  Lady Cavendish stared in astonishment.

  “Now, why do you say that, Letitia?” her mother asked. “You hardly know him.”

  Letitia swallowed. Perhaps, with hindsight, she should have kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Over the last few weeks,” she said in a voice she hoped was calm, “I have been introduced to Viscount Wynn and spoken with him on a…a number of occasions. From my conversations with him, I do not think he is that sort of gentleman.”

  Letitia looked nervously at her mother, who did not look convinced. “He is a distant cousin of the Duke of Axwick,” she continued, a little more hastily, “and the duke has impeccable taste in companions. Viscount Wynn dined at the Devonshires’ a few weeks ago, and you have known Monty and Harry their entire lives.”

  Poor Edward was evidently not well regarded by many. How could she feel so differently about someone her mother were so unsure of? How many other people would not consider him an appropriate guest at their table, or match for their daughter?

  A seed of doubt had been planted in her heart.

  Letitia bit her lip. She had heard more stories about the rakish Viscount Wynn than any other person in respectable society. Why was she suddenly so unwilling to believe them, and her own parents because of one night of pleasure?

  Chapter Twelve

  The glass slammed onto the table, and red wine slopped over the edge onto the white tablecloth.

  Raucous laughter rang out around the dining room, but not loudly enough to entirely drown the groan from their host.

  “Damn and blast it,” Abraham Fitzclarence, Viscount Braedon, said as he threw up his hands in disgust. “You cannot control yourself for even one minute? My butler will have another word with me, and you can laugh all you like, but he is a fearsome man to behold!”

  The laughter increased, and even Edward could not help but chuckle at the mock distraught on their host’s face.

  “No, really, I tell you I have been given notice by him, warrant you—by my own butler!” Braedon spoke with a laugh, shaking his head. “Marsh, my butler, has informed me every single one of my dinner parties ends in ruin—not for my guests, but for his linens!”

  Edward laughed. By the looks of the other guests around the table, most of the red wine had flowed down gentlemen’s necks rather than across the table.

  The six or seven other men continued to chuckle as one of them threw out a comment about Braedon’s butler being a better host, but it all washed past Edward.

  Two days. It had been two days since he had last seen Letitia.

  How had the earth continued to turn? Other people had continued with their busy lives, hardly caring, not knowing that the most beautiful woman in the world was out there, and not with him.

  Two days. Forty-eight hours since his eyes had beheld her, since his lips had kissed her, since he had made her cry out with pleasure.

  Edward tugged at his cravat, untying it in the heat of the room.

  Every minute without Letitia felt hollow. As though the color had been washed out of the world.

  Boredom had never been his problem, for there had always been another woman, another bed, another challenge.

  “You need to get that butler in order!” Mercia spoke loudly, leaning back in his chair with a mischievous smile on his face.

  He did not know the duke well, but this evening had demonstrated to him that there were far more gentlemen of worth and note in society than he had previously known.

  Befriending Axwick this Season had been a wise decision. Why, if it had not been for that evening at Almack’s…

  “Oh, ’tis easy to blame me when finding a good butler is nigh on impossible these days!” Braedon protested. “Tell me, is there not a dearth of good servants in London at the moment?”

  “I completely agree,” said an older gentleman with a huge mustache. “Only last week, I had to let my valet go, and damned if I can find a replacement.”

  Edward stifled a yawn and glanced up at the clock. The ladies had only been gone ten minutes, and already he wished to join them.

  “Servants can be so disappointing,” someone else was saying. “I heard from Lord Rust…”

  Reaching for his wine, Edward brought it to his lips for something to do.

  Had society always been this dull? Had he simply not noticed? All this talk of servants and housekeeping.

  Edward shifted in his seat and tried once again, not to yawn.

  A wallflower. That had been Lady Letitia Cavendish’s reputation if you had asked almost anyone in London.

  But he knew better. There were so many sides of Letty, like a well-polished diamond. Every time she moved into a new setting, she sparkled.

  By God, she would be able to liven them all up—if she were able to overcome her shyness.

  Of all the women he could fall in love with, it was a woman who could not string three words together in the company of strangers.

  Too terrified to speak, hating any notice, happy to fade into the background, none of these descriptors could be ascribed to him. They would have
to learn from each other.

  Letty was all he wanted to think of, and he spent another few minutes in the privacy of his own mind remembering a rather delicious moment they had shared.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  Edward jumped. He had forgotten where he was, and the Duke of Axwick seemed to know it. Seated beside him, the duke was smiling.

  “No, I have little to add on the topic of badly behaved servants.”

  Axwick raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? What secret could you share with the rest of us?”

  “’Tis no secret, as far as I am aware,” Edward said quietly. “I have a good butler I can depend on, and I pay my servants well. Therefore, I do not worry about them robbing me, cheating me, or leaving me.”

  The conversation had gone quiet. Looking up, Edward saw that all eyes in the room were staring—and Braedon had a distinct look of discomfort and even perhaps anger on his face.

  “Are you saying,” Braedon asked coldly, “I do not pay my servants well enough, Wynn?”

  Other guests around the table were exchanging concerned glances. No one wanted a disagreement between gentlemen, especially when one was deep in liquor.

  But Edward smiled. His silver tongue was enough to get him through most situations. His charm had won many an argument, helped him escape from at duels, and opened doors to ladies’ bedchambers up and down the country.

  Surely it would suffice here, too.

  He raised his glass toward his host. “Quite the contrary, Braedon—I am saying I have had to pay my servants more, otherwise, they will leave me for you!”

  The tension disappeared. The entire table roared with laughter and glasses were raised around the room to Braedon, who was now grinning with self-congratulatory pride.

  “Well, I have no wish to brag,” Braedon began.

  “You could have fooled us!” Mercia quipped, and gentlemen banged their glasses on the table.

  “That was well managed.”

  Edward leaned back in his chair and smiled swiftly at Axwick. “Thank you. I have had to learn how to diffuse these types of conversations, ever since my father….”