The Earl's Marriage Bargain

by Louise Allen

  ‘Of course not,’ Althea said, ringing for a footman. ‘John, please have the small carriage brought round for Miss Newnham immediately. And I will tell Cook to be prepared to serve dinner for two whenever you and your young man return.’

  ‘He is not mine.’ She would not let herself hope, it hurt too much. ‘But thank you for warning Cook that I will be late back. And for lending me the carriage.’

  ‘There is no hurry to bring it back,’ Althea said. ‘No hurry at all.’

  * * *

  If she never saw Kensington High Street again, she would be a happy woman, Jane thought, as the carriage stopped lurching over the muddy ruts of the road from Knightsbridge and hit the cobbles again. Soldiers from the nearby barracks marched past, the Mail scattered an unwary flock of chickens as it headed for the White Horse Cellar on Piccadilly, the horses sweating now on this last stage before London.

  The memories this place held were too confused. Did she wish she had never seen Ivo, had missed the fight by seconds? Of course not, but...

  She made herself watch the slowly passing scene. It was a busy village and it had the inns to cater for that, she noticed now—the Duke of Cumberland, the Bunch of Grapes—and the Civet Cat. Once again the carriage slowed. She peered out of the window, trying not to look at the alehouse. No collision this time, but a herd of cattle emerging from Church Lane.

  A tall man was standing on the kerbside, just past the Civet Cat. Time slid backwards, then with a lurch of the carriage picking up speed she saw this was now and that was, unmistakeably, Ivo, arm raised to hail a cab.

  Jane jerked the check cord, dropped the window and leaned out. ‘Stop! Coachman, stop! Ivo, over here!’

  He swung round and for a heart-sinking moment his face was bleak, expressionless, then he ran, catching the door as she threw it open, catching her as she tumbled out of the slowing carriage.

  ‘Ivo.’ She was in his arms, safe against the solid strength of him, and it was wonderful. Somehow she managed not to throw her own around his neck and kiss him, but turn her instinctive embrace into a comforting hug. ‘I was so worried about you. Where is Daphne?’

  ‘I sent her to her aunts in my carriage.’ He looked around. ‘We can’t talk here—whose carriage is that you were in?’

  ‘My cousin Althea’s—Lady Harkness, Violet’s sister.’

  ‘They will not allow you to stay?’ He held the door for her to climb in, then said something to the coachman she did not catch.

  ‘Yes, of course, but I thought how awful you would be feeling when you saw Daphne’s note and realised what she had done and that she had been lying to you all the time. I thought you would need...need a friend.’

  ‘Is that what you are?’ He sat opposite her and she tried to read his expression.

  ‘I hope so. Are you very angry that I gave you the note and did not destroy it? I just felt that it was too awful a thing to have done and then deny it, that perhaps she was not at all the person you thought she was and might be... Well, anyway, I felt you had to know so you could talk to her about it.’

  This was harder than she had feared. Did Ivo think she had been acting out of spite?

  ‘You thought she might be dangerous to husbands? Frankly, I do not think she meant to kill him and I suspect that Meredith’s fall was a drunken accident, not what you fear it might have been. Daphne is a creature of impulse.’

  ‘I only thought that for a moment, but I did think you should know all the facts before you married her.’ Something was hard between her fingers and she looked down, found she was fiddling with the buttons on her glove and one had come loose. She stripped off the glove before she could do any more damage and made herself sit still.

  ‘Facts are, of course, important, but they are not everything,’ Ivo said. He glanced around the carriage. ‘No luggage?’

  Jane blinked at him. ‘What? No. I was going back to Cousin Althea, not on to my parents in Dorset. I only came to find you, to see if I could help. I should not have left like that.’

  ‘No, I understand. It must have been difficult.’ He reached out and took the crumpled glove from the seat beside her, turned it the right side out and smoothed it flat on his knee. ‘Did you think of simply tearing up her note?’

  ‘No. I knew you would find it hurtful, but some things have to be faced, dealt with.’

  ‘You are right, facts are important, but the feelings behind them, the emotions, they matter most of all.’

  ‘I see,’ she lied. She saw nothing, understood nothing except that she should be happy that Ivo was not destroyed by the revelation about the woman he had loved for so long. She need not have come, he was quite well without her.

  ‘Your feelings have not changed, then,’ she said, attempting to put some lightness into her voice.

  ‘My feelings for the woman I love have not changed, you are quite correct.’

  ‘So you will marry her?’

  She will break your heart. Oh, Ivo, my love, do not do it.

  ‘I have every intention of doing so,’ he said and, for the first time since she had seen him that evening, he smiled.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jane knew she should say something. Congratulations or I am so happy for you. Either would stick in her throat. She managed what was probably a very sickly smile. ‘She is fortunate that you are so loyal.’ That was ungracious, but it was all she was capable of. She wanted him to be happy. But she knew he could not be so with Daphne. She must try. ‘Are you quite certain? You have thought it through?’

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘Even though she jilted you?’

  ‘Even so.’ His smile was wry now. ‘That made me realise what my true feelings were, you know.’

  ‘Oh.’ She plastered the smile back on her lips and looked out of the window, bereft of things to say. The scenery in the gathering gloom was familiar, but it was not Knightsbridge. ‘Ivo, where on earth are we going? This is the road out of London. In fact—Ivo, that is the Pack Horse. We are in Turnham Green.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed as the carriage drew to a halt. ‘Shall we see if they can produce a decent glass of wine?’

  ‘Whatever are you thinking of?’ Jane demanded as Ivo jumped down without waiting for the groom to set the steps in place.

  ‘I was thinking that an elopement has a certain appeal with the right person.’ Ivo turned to speak to the coachman who was leaning down awaiting instructions. ‘Take it round to the stables, rest the horses, have yourselves a drink.’

  ‘Ivo!’

  ‘Good evening.’ Ivo was smiling at a maid who was staring back at him.

  ‘Why, I remember you, sir. The injured gentleman and his sister. Are you well now, sir?’

  ‘Excellently so,’ Ivo said, as though he had not taken leave of his senses. ‘We would like a snug private parlour and a bottle of your best claret.’

  ‘Of course, sir. This way, ma’am.’

  ‘Ivo.’ Jane slammed the door of the snug little room—one she recognised all too well—and leaned back against it. She needed support from somewhere. ‘What do you mean, an elopement? You are marrying Daphne.’

  He took her hand, led her to a chair by the hearth. ‘Sit down, Jane.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, because I am far too tempted to kiss you if you stand there glaring at me and we have things to discuss first.’

  The feather cushions were large and soft and she sank into them, floundering. ‘You said—’

  ‘I said I was marrying the woman I loved. I should have added, if she will agree.’ He sat opposite her. ‘You did once.’

  ‘Me? But you do not love me.’

  ‘I did not when we first agreed to marry,’ Ivo said. ‘It crept up on me, Jane. Crept so gradually that I did not recognise it for what it was because I had never felt it before. I thought I loved Daphne, but it was
not the same thing, just a shadow of it, simply calf love. If I had remained at home and not gone off to war, we would have never even thought it was more than a flirtation.’

  Jane managed a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Could this be real or was she imagining it all? Had she really woken up after that storm of tears or was this just a dream?

  ‘She was not waiting patiently and faithfully for me, so her aunts tell me now. There were more flirtations, one or two near-scandals. If I had not felt so guilty, and if I had not made that promise to Charles, then I would have seen clearly what my feelings were the moment I was confronted with her that first time.’ He grimaced. ‘Guilt is not a helpful emotion in circumstances like that, I find. It is like fog in the brain.’

  ‘But when...when did the fog clear?’

  ‘When she came to the Tower and I saw her as though through your eyes. I had been doubting for some time before that, but all I could see was Charles, dying and so anxious about her. I saw the way you dealt with her, the firm, practical kindness.’

  ‘I did not feel kind,’ Jane said with feeling. She still dared not hope. It would be too cruel if she was wrong.

  ‘Any other woman in your position would have shown her the door. You were worrying about me, about her, and then I realised that you saw everything we had crumbling into dust.’

  ‘Did we have something?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I think so. Something beyond friendship, something beyond a practical agreement. And when I saw the letters you had written to your friends, the shaky handwriting, the few smudges that looked suspiciously like tears, I was almost certain you felt it, too.’

  Ivo stood up, held out his hands and, as she took them, brought her to her feet. ‘Jane, I love you. I want to marry you. Am I right—can you love me?’

  ‘But you did not say.’ She shook her head, more to clear it than in denial.

  ‘You came to me and broke the engagement, seemed relieved that now you had an excuse. I was suspicious, but I had to be certain. And I could not abandon Daphne, not when she had done such a staggeringly foolish thing as to run to me. Time was short and there was none to spare for the quiet, honest conversation that you and I needed to have. We still do,’ he added, smiling down at her.

  ‘Ivo.’ She found she was in his arms, tight against him, his heart beating in time with hers, fast and hard. And true. ‘This is not a dream,’ she said, her voice muffled against his shirt.

  ‘No,’ he agreed, somehow hearing her. ‘It has seemed like a nightmare these last two days, but it is not a dream. If you want to be free, Jane, if what you told me when you released me was the truth, then say so now because I do not believe I can endure this suspense for much longer.’

  ‘You cannot?’ She leaned back against his arms so she could look up into his face. ‘Neither can I! Oh, Ivo, what if I had not been passing that awful alehouse when I did? What if those wagons had not collided and held up the traffic?’

  ‘What if you had not found a footman willing to pose for you and you had not been sent off to Bath in disgrace?’ he countered. ‘We were fated to meet. And now, my infuriating, stubborn, brave, adorable Jane—can you love me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, a second before he kissed her. ‘Always,’ she added when he finally lifted his head and they both could breathe again. ‘Ivo, can we stay here tonight?’

  His eyes were dark with a heat she had never seen before and his hands on her were possessive. For a moment she thought he was going to say yes, then, slowly, he shook his head. ‘For one thing, they remember us from before and think we are brother and sister, for another, your cousins will be expecting you home eventually and, thirdly, my Jane, I suspect that when I do have you in my bed we may not get out of it for some considerable time.’

  There was a knock on the door and they managed to step apart before the maid came in with the wine. Jane kept her face averted and pretended to be searching for something in her reticule although it could have contained anything from vipers to diamonds for all she could tell.

  ‘One glass to drink to the future.’ Ivo poured the deep crimson liquid with a hand that shook, just a little. That small, betraying movement made something warm and tender blossom inside her and it was an effort to keep her own hand steady as she took her glass from him.

  ‘To our future,’ she said and laughed as they both tossed off the wine. ‘I am going to be tipsy, although I do not think that I actually needed wine to make me feel so dizzy.’

  ‘We will go now, before we both become utterly irresponsible and drunk on love.’ Ivo tossed some coins on the table and took her hand. ‘Come with me now.’ He drew her close, his voice tender. ‘Let me take you back to your cousins tonight. Tomorrow I will go down to the Tower and when Miss Lowry can leave her sister you and she can return to Batheaston for the wedding.’

  ‘But we cancelled it,’ Jane realised. ‘How on earth are we to explain?’

  ‘I have a confession to make.’ Ivo looked at her quizzically and tucked her hand under his arm to lead her out. ‘I am going to tell you in the stable yard in the hope that you will not berate me too severely if we have an audience.’

  ‘You may confess to almost anything except a secret wife and I will forgive you,’ Jane said as they emerged into the yard.

  The coachman and groom were leaning against the carriage, tankards in hand, but when they saw them they drained their ale and ran to check the harness.

  ‘Very well,’ Ivo said. ‘No plans have been cancelled, no letters have been sent. The wedding is going ahead as planned. I took the risk that you might not truly wish to leave me.’

  ‘Just because of the traces of what might have been teardrops on my letters?’ Jane stopped dead and twisted round to look into his face.

  ‘That was a hint that gave me hope. Call it instinct, perhaps, or blind faith or wishful thinking.’

  ‘Oh, Ivo Merton, I do love you.’ Jane threw her arms around his neck, pulled down his head and kissed him fiercely, ignoring a whoop from the door to the taproom, a burst of giggling from the maids crossing the yard and an outburst of whistles from the stables.

  She broke off when Ivo swept her up and carried her towards the carriage. ‘Well, you had better marry me and make an honest man of me, because my reputation on the Bath Road has been quite ruined.’

  She heard him say, ‘Lady Harkness’s residence, if you please’, before the door slammed closed and they were rumbling out of the yard with her on Ivo’s knee and his laughter warm on her neck.

  ‘Tell me one thing before I kiss you all the way back to Mayfair,’ Ivo said. ‘Did you believe that I was still in love with Daphne when you agreed to marry me?’

  ‘I did not know you had ever loved her until I began to understand the hints and clues. Your grandfather was anxious that I was not expecting a love match, I would have had to be stupid not to understand what your aunt was hinting so very clearly—and then I found the inscription in the hermitage. I almost called it off, I lost a lot of sleep,’ she confessed. ‘But Daphne was married, I trusted you to be faithful and I thought that it might be as though you were widowed and one day you might come to love me as well.’ She snuggled closer and smiled to herself. ‘I thought you were worth being patient.’

  ‘And I was confusing nostalgia and guilt for love,’ Ivo said. ‘I think your patience would soon have been rewarded once we had married.’

  ‘My friend Verity says men are not very good at recognising their own emotions. But poor Daphne,’ Jane murmured.

  ‘You are very forgiving.’ Ivo sent her bonnet flying on to the opposite seat and was doing interesting things with the buttons on her pelisse.

  ‘I feel sorry for her and that, I find, helps. She is not very intelligent and she had been indulged and spoilt. I do not think she has much natural empathy for other people or has ever been encouraged to look at herself through the eyes of anyone who
is not besotted by her looks. She needs someone older, I think, someone who does not need her money and who admires her looks, but who has the strength of character to manage her moods and fancies. Perhaps, once she is out of mourning, she will find a beau,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘She can find him with my blessing and without our help,’ Ivo said firmly. ‘She is safe and you, my darling Jane, are in imminent peril of being ravished in a moving carriage.’

  ‘Is that...possible?’

  Ivo’s lips were on the swell of her breasts, her bodice was surprisingly loose and his tongue was finding its way under the edge. It was difficult to breathe, let alone speak. Then the tip of his tongue found the aureole of her right nipple and she squeaked, forgot the question and concentrated in getting as much inconvenient clothing out of his way as she could.

  * * *

  ‘Perfectly possible.’ To his own ears Ivo sounded as breathless as Jane was. ‘I have never tried it and I do not intend doing so now, but I am powerfully tempted.’ He caught her up more securely in his arms, sat back and looked at her in the shadows of the carriage as she sat, bare from the waist up, hair coming loose around her shoulders. Even in the gloom he could tell she was blushing, but she trusted him, loved him. The thought almost brought him to his knees because heaven knew what he had done to deserve her.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he said, meaning it. ‘Beautiful inside and out. And we are going to get you back into that gown, somehow, because the first time I lie with you, my love, I want us to have all the time in the world and every candle alight so I can see you properly.’

  The effort to find buttons and tapes and hairpins resulted in laughter and teasing, for which he was truly grateful because, for Jane, nothing but the best was ever going to be good enough and he had never found his self-control so shaken.

  At her cousin’s house he took her up the steps and saw her in, pressed one last, lingering kiss on her hand. Then he turned to walk to the Merton town house for the night, the last time, he told himself, that he would ever walk away from his true love again.