Tempting the Bride

chapter 6



Hastings had instructed his staff not to trouble their new mistress until eight o’clock in the morning. But she was awake at the crack of dawn, moving about in her room—so close, yet so inaccessible.

He bathed, dressed, and entered her room after a quick knock. She wasn’t in the bedroom, but in her sitting room, standing before a shelf of books in a visiting gown, examining the titles on the spines. Each title had been chosen either because she’d expressed a preference for it, or because he’d inferred, based on what he knew of her tastes, that it would meet with her approval.

Indeed, when she turned around at the sound of his approach, she wore a small frown of disorientation. “Who put these books here?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? The study probably became too crammed and the staff used the shelf to house the overflow.”

“I see.” She set back the book of Sappho’s poems that had been in her hand. “And what are you doing here?”

“I thought it would not be amiss to exchange a cordial greeting the morning after our wedding night—and to sacrifice a few drops of my blood to the sheets to preserve your reputation.”

“I already did that.”

“Did you?”

“Go look for yourself.”

He reentered her bedroom, lifted the covers, and grimaced at the drops of blood smeared onto the sheets. “It would look like this only if your hymen had been broken with a knife.”

She appeared in the doorway. “What do you mean?”

“When a hymen is disposed of by a cock, as it usually is, there is never just blood on the sheets.”

“There is nothing I can do about that.”

“I suppose I must do something about it, contribute my share to the stains.”

The corners of her lips turned down in distaste. “Suit yourself. I am going out.”

“Where are you going at this early hour?”

“To call on my family. They would like to know that married life has not disagreed too terribly with me—and I will lie accordingly.”

Something in her demeanor made him ask, “And then?”

She barely glanced at him, speaking to the doorjamb. “And then I plan to meet with Mr. Martin. At the offices of Fitzhugh and Company, preferably. At his home, if necessary.”

He felt as if he’d been slapped. “To finish what you didn’t have time for yesterday?”

“Mr. Martin will be worried about me. He will be blaming himself. I’d like to assure him that I am fine, public marriage notwithstanding.”

“He ought to blame himself. If he’d kept to his word, you would not be in your current predicament.”

“And if he did not, it was only because I convinced him otherwise.”

“Why do you keep taking responsibility for his actions?”

“I care about him and will therefore do my utmost to ensure his happiness, a concept I am sure is entirely alien to you.”

“One that is no less alien to Mr. Martin. What has he ever done for your happiness? And think carefully before you answer. His acquiescence to your wishes—and he acquiesces to everyone’s wishes—does not constitute effort on his part.”

He was glad to see a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but when she spoke again, her tone was as firm as ever. “I will decide whether Mr. Martin has done enough for me.”

“And I will decide,” he heard himself say, “whether a woman who arranges to see the man who compromised her isn’t too stupid and morally adrift to meet my daughter, let alone be an influence in her life.”

Hastings sat slumped in Fitz’s study, his hand over his eyes.

Fitz, thank goodness, drank his coffee and left Hastings alone.

For about a quarter hour or so.

“All right, David, enough moping,” said Fitz, setting down his coffee cup.

Reluctantly, Hastings removed his hand from his face and sat up straighter. “I haven’t formally congratulated you, have I, Fitz, on making the right choice in your marriage and being blessedly happy as a result?”

Fitz smiled. “Thank you. Although, looking back, it wasn’t just one choice, but the accumulation of many choices.”

Hastings sighed. “I’m afraid the same can be said about Helena and me, years of less than stellar conduct on my part, continuing to this very moment.”

“My wife would have you confess your love at the earliest opportunity and be done with it. But if you are reluctant to do that—and something tells me you are—then it might not be a bad idea to simply stop antagonizing Helena.

“I know she makes you lose your mind, but at our age, that is no longer a good enough excuse. If you want her admiration, you cannot keep aiming for her abhorrence. Let her ignore you. Give her time. Show her that you are more than merely an assemblage of insults and innuendos in bespoke boots.”

Hastings chuckled despite himself. “You are right, of course. And I needed the chastening.”

“Patience, my friend,” said Fitz. “Rome wasn’t built in—”

A knock came.

“Yes?” answered Fitz.

Cobble, Fitz’s butler, bowed slightly. “Sir, Mr. Andrew Martin to see you, sir. Are you at home to him?”

My poor girl,” said Venetia, Duchess of Lexington, standing at the window of her drawing room and watching Helena’s carriage pull away from the curb.

“She did seem quite defeated.” Her husband placed his hand on the small of her back. “Not that she wasn’t strenuously trying to convince us of the opposite.”

“I hope the dinner tonight won’t be too taxing for her.” She wrapped her arm around his middle. “And thank you, darling, for offering your place in the Highlands for their honeymoon.”

“They can have legendary rows there without anyone knowing,” said Lexington dryly. “Besides, I’m quite fond of your sister—if it weren’t for her shenanigans, you’d never have been at Harvard to hear my lecture. So if there is ever anything I can do for her, mein Liebling, you have but to say the word.”

“Hmm.” Venetia rubbed her cheek against the summer wool of his day coat. “I’m not sure what more we can do for her right now, other than to wait and see. But, my goodness, there is much that can be done for me, the delicate, expectant mother, thrust into the middle of such demanding circumstances.”

“Ah,” he said, a smile in his voice. “Do you know, I did receive a letter from the British Museum of Natural History yesterday afternoon. But with our entire evening consumed with your sister’s fate, I’d forgotten all about it.”

Her heart thumped with excitement. She was very, very fond of the British Museum of Natural History. “Really? What does your letter say?”

“Only that a shipment of tremendous saurian fossils have just arrived and they’d be pleased to let us have a private viewing. Shall I send a note and have them expect us at ten o’clock?”

“Yes. Yes,” she said. “Nothing pleases and soothes a delicate, expectant mother like crates upon crates of enormous dinosaur remains.”

He laughed. “I never thought I’d have a wife who is more excited about going to the British Museum of Natural History than I.”

“And aren’t you glad of it, darling.” She kissed him full on the lips. “Now go write that note, Your Grace. And I will get ready as fast as I can.”

Martin had come to self-flagellate. He was everything a penitent ought to be, humble, contrite, accepting of all blame. But Hastings was unimpressed. Martin should never have crossed the line in the first place. Then, after giving his word to Fitz, he should never have crossed the line again.

Or perhaps, reflected Hastings grimly, he was only angry because the next time Martin relapsed, he’d be lying with Hastings’s wife.

Martin was still talking. “Miss—Lady Hastings was adamant that I not make decisions on her behalf. She asked me to have a care not only for her reputation, but for her happiness. I was terribly conflicted. On the one hand, I’d given my word to you, sir. On the other hand, I’d also given my word to her, earlier, that I’d do everything in my power to make her happy. And here she was, demanding that I honor that promise. When I received a cable that seemed to be from her, I’m afraid her words—rather than yours—were the ones that rang loudest in my ears.”

He stopped, biting his lips and seemingly trying to gauge Fitz’s and Hastings’s reactions. Hastings said nothing; Martin had not come to see him.

“I cannot approve of your action any more than I can approve of my sister’s,” said Fitz. “I can only hope that the fact that together you’ve brought real consequences to her is rebuke enough to you, Mr. Martin.”

Fitz’s words were not kind, but they were just. Martin’s face turned beet red. Hastings looked away. He took no pleasure in Martin’s mortification. In fact, he felt almost as uncomfortable as Martin, at being “the real consequences” that had befallen Helena.

“But what is done is done,” continued Fitz. “My sister will be Lady Hastings—as salvageable an outcome as could have happened under the circumstances. I trust you will be the soul of discretion on the matter.”

“Of course, of course.” Martin all but bowed and scraped. “And many congratulations to you, Lord Hastings.”

Hastings declined to respond. Martin, ever more red-faced, mumbled a round of good days and showed himself out.

Hastings unclenched his fist. “What a wretch.”

Fitz sighed. “A wretch he may be, but remember, David, he is not what stands in your way. You are.”

Helena had just alighted before Fitz’s house when she saw Andrew disappearing around the bend. Her heart prickled with a hot pain. She picked up her skirt and started after him, only to have someone grip her by the arm.

“Let him go,” said Hastings. “It’s hardly becoming for my wife to chase another man in the streets.”

“You’ve only yourself to blame for that. Mr. Martin and I could have met in a civilized manner, but you had to blackmail me with your daughter. So if you think I won’t exploit an accidental meeting, you should be run over by an omnibus for your stupid arrogance.”

She yanked her arm free and ran, bittersweet memories flashing before her eyes: Andrew’s long-ago shy confession that someday he hoped to author a book worthy of being published by her; a shower of pressed flowers falling out of his letter to land at her feet, one for every day they’d been apart; walking along the Norfolk coast, Andrew telling her that it was his heart’s fondest wish to still amble those rough, beautiful cliffs with her when he was an old man, and, when they were too decrepit to walk, to be carried there in chairs to sit hand in hand as they gazed out to the North Sea.

She rounded the street corner but could not see him. Then, as if she’d conjured him, he materialized on the opposite side of the road.

She raced into the street, trying her best not to shout his name aloud. He was walking slowly. She was closing the distance between them. But he’d yet to become aware of her.

And now he was. He turned around. There were shouts. He, too, shouted, his face contorting with horror.

All too late she saw that she was directly in the path of a carriage-and-four. The coachman tried desperately to rein in his horses, but already those in the front reared, their screeches lost in the general din.

The last thing she saw was a hoof the size of a dinner plate coming directly at her face.