How to Deceive a Duke (5 page)

Chapter 8

F
lora was still crying when Meg descended the stairs the next morning, dressed for the wedding. She followed the sound of her mother’s sobs to the breakfast room, and opened the door. Hector was patting her hand and doing his best to comfort her.

He drew a surprised breath and leaped to his feet.

“Rose!” Flora slid to the floor in a faint. If she expected Hector to catch her, she was disappointed. He was staring at the bride before him, looking a little pale himself. Meg lifted the veil an inch and regarded her mother.

“What the devil do you think you’re playing at, Marguerite?” Hector bent to rub Flora’s limp wrists. “Look what you’ve done to your poor mother. We thought you were Rose.”

Meg folded back the veil entirely. “I’m not playing at anything. I’m going to marry the Duke of Temberlay in Rose’s place. He needs a wife and we need his money.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Hector dropped Flora’s hand and rose, stepping over her prostrate form to reach Meg. “This isn’t a game!”

Meg sat down and buttered a triangle of toast, though she wasn’t hungry. The butterflies in her stomach felt more like birds of prey. “Of course it’s a game. Temberlay has not once shown his face at the door, or sent a note or even so much as a flower, and we’ve been in Town for a fortnight. He obviously doesn’t care whom he marries, so I shall do as well as Rose. If he wishes to play games, then I will play to save this family from poverty.”

“But the duchess will care! Meg, I can’t let you do this—” Hector began, but Flora gripped his ankle.

She sat up and looked at her daughter. “You would do this, Marguerite? You’re willing to marry him in your sister’s place?”

Meg read the conflicting emotions in her mother’s blue eyes. There was fear there, and hope as well. The carrion birds circled her stomach again. “Yes, Mama. I’ll marry him. There’s no other choice. We can’t have Minnie and Lily growing up in debtors’ prison.” The jest sounded hollow.

Flora got to her feet, and her eyes moved over the gown and the veil. “You’re doing this for me? For your sisters? Marrying a stranger? I mean, managing the servants and selling off the silver is one thing, but this—” She looked at Meg as if she were seeing her for the first time.

Meg felt tears sting her eyes. She forced a smile. “I have no wish to be a spinster governess for the rest of my life!” If she married Temberlay, there would be no more need to sell Wycliffe’s valuables. Perhaps she could even buy back a few things, like Papa’s horses and her mare. Of all that they’d lost, they meant the most to her.

Flora blinked at her.

“I still say this isn’t a good idea. It will not be an easy marriage for you,” Hector murmured. “Rose would have managed it, despite her tantrums. Give her a shiny necklace to play with and she forgets everything else. You deserve more, my dear, and I’m not sure he’s the kind of man to give you that.”

Meg set the toast down, unable to even pretend to eat now. “It
will
be easy. I want nothing but his money,” she lied. “I shall simply lay down the rules from the start.”

“From what I know of Nicholas Temberlay, he’s the one who makes the rules,” Hector warned.

She raised her chin. “He won’t get his way this time. I will marry him and provide him with an heir, and I will make it clear that I won’t have daily scandals thrown in my face.”

Flora shook her head. “Pretty though you look today, you’re not the kind of woman to reform a rake. You haven’t the experience—the feminine wiles—it would call for. You’re clever, but he’s out of your league, dear.”

“Nonsense. Once I’ve given him a son, we’ll live apart. I will have a generous income to support you and the girls, and he will have his freedom. It should only take a few days, weeks at most. I was raised on a farm with horses. When a foal is wanted, it takes little time.”

Hector turned scarlet. “You think—”

Flora laid a hand on his sleeve. “Perhaps a mother is better qualified to handle this part, Hector.”

He looked relieved. “Fine, shall I leave?”

“Yes,” Flora said.

“No!” Meg countered.

“Marguerite, there is more to know about marriage than I feel comfortable saying in front of your father’s stepbrother!” she whispered.

“But he’s my godfather!”

Flora actually blushed. “You have had a very sheltered upbringing. Do you even understand how a woman gets with child?”

Meg raised her brows. “Of course. Papa’s Thoroughbreds did it all the time.”

Hector made a strangled sound and began edging toward the door, but Flora grabbed his arm, keeping him by her side. “It’s different between a man and a woman, Marguerite. Especially
that
man! You heard what the duchess said.” She was blushing again. She tugged Hector’s sleeve. “Tell her, Hector.”

“Tell her what?” he asked, looking horrified.

“What they
say
about him!”

Hector looked miserable. “She already knows he’s a rake and a gambler and a—”

Flora snorted like one of Lord Wycliffe’s horses. “Of course she knows that! She and Rose read Amy’s scandal sheets.”

“Mother! How did you find out?” Meg asked, but Flora refused to be distracted.

“You know what I mean, Hector. There are rumors about his
predilections,
his
prowess
as a lover. They say he is—” She broke off and held her hands in front of her, a foot apart. Meg frowned.

Now Hector was blushing. He put a hand under Flora’s elbow and firmly escorted her into the hallway.

Meg crept to the half-open door to listen.

“Flora, you can’t tell a virgin bride on her wedding day that her husband is—” He whispered a word Meg couldn’t hear.

“I wish Marcus hadn’t insisted the girls be raised in total ignorance of these matters. She needs to know, Hector.”

“Why? She’ll find out in her own good time. I trust he isn’t a savage. Just tell Meg the things your mother told you,” Hector advised.

“She told me to lie still and pretend I was asleep,” Flora murmured.

Meg opened the door. “Is that all there is to it? Lying still?”

Flora let out a nervous whoop of surprise. “Well, yes and no,” she began.

She was interrupted by a discreet cough.

“The Temberlay coach is here, my lord,” the footman said.

“Already?” Flora gasped, but Meg stepped forward.

“You may tell the coachman we’ll be ready shortly.”

Hector’s butler followed, bearing a bouquet of pink roses. Meg’s heart leaped, hoping they were from Temberlay. “With the compliments of Her Grace, the Duchess of Temberlay,” he told her.

“Oh.” Meg took them with a frizzle of disappointment.

“May I offer congratulations, my lady?” the butler said.

The birds flapped against her ribs again. “Ask me later.”

Chapter 9

T
he coach pulled up at the church of St. George’s Hanover Square, and Meg took a deep breath, and looked up at the gray facade of the old church.

The building stared back with sober disapproval of her deception. She lowered her eyes to the bridal bouquet.

Roses for Rose.

She tugged the makeshift veil forward, covering her face from her forehead to the tip of her nose.

“Lovely veil, dear, but I don’t recall buying it. Where did you get it?”

Meg leaned forward and whispered in her mother’s ear, and Flora’s hand flew to her mouth. “What do you intend to do, take it off and wear it later?”

“The veil we ordered for Rose was too thin. You could see right through it.” Her stomach fluttered. “Is he here yet?”

Flora scanned the street. “There’s not another coach in sight,” she said indignantly. “He should be waiting for you.”

Hector took their arms and hurried them up the steps. “Under the circumstances, I think it’s better that he’s late. Marguerite is not Rose, and that’s who he’ll be expecting.”

“As if he’d know one of us from the other!” Meg muttered, but her stomach quailed. Even if he hadn’t met either sister, surely the duchess would have told him of Rose’s legendary beauty the moment the betrothal was arranged. She swallowed. Temberlay, a man seen with only the finest London beauties on his arm, was about to marry the plainest Lynton sister. Her lips twitched. She was, no doubt, the first plain woman who even dared
speak
to him.

A coach turned the corner, and Flora craned to look. “Is that him?”

Meg’s throat was as dry as dust as the coach came toward them.

“Come on, Meg, there’s no time to lose. Temberlay may not know the difference between you and Rose, but the duchess will. If she puts a stop to this wedding the minute you walk in, we’ll look like even bigger fools than if we’d just admitted Rose ran away,” Hector said, tucking her hand under his arm, and placing the other firmly on Flora’s back to hurry them inside. “It’s bad luck if the groom sees the bride before the wedding. In this case, very bad luck indeed.”

He put them into a little room off the main porch. “I’ll come and get you when it’s time,” he said as he shut the door.

“Are you nervous?” Flora asked. She plucked a rose from the bridal bouquet and shredded it.

Meg pressed her knees together to keep them from shaking. “No, not in the least.”

“I was sick twice before I found the courage to walk down the aisle on my wedding day, and I knew your father. You’re about to wed a complete stranger, and—” Flora’s face crumpled. Meg caught her as she burst into tears.

“You’ll ruin the silk, Mama,” she said gently.

Flora dabbed at her eyes, and Meg looked around the tiny storeroom. It was filled with prayer books and hymnals in teetering piles. A small, round stained glass window high above the floor showed St. George gazing up to heaven. He looked much comforted by what he saw there, but Meg followed his gaze to the stone ceiling and saw only cobwebs.

“Mother, what did you mean about his prowess as a lover? What
do
they say about him?” she asked. “I don’t think it was in the scandal sheets, whatever it is.”

“It’s his
size
, he’s reported to be very—” She began crying anew.

“Is he tall, then?” Meg mused. “I’m a tall woman, and I’d like him to at least be as big as I am.”

Flora looked up through red-rimmed eyes. “He’s not
tall
, Marguerite. It’s his—”

A commotion on the porch broke the silence outside their hiding place. A horse cried out, and hooves clattered on the stone steps. The main doors of the church banged open and hit the wall with a terrifying crash. Flora shrank back, and grabbed Meg’s arm.

“Where’s my bride? Let’s get on with the wedding!” a male voice shouted.

Meg shut her eyes in dismay, and the birds in her stomach died of fright and dropped like stones, one by one. “I take it he’s arrived.”

Flora gripped Meg’s shoulders. “It’s not too late. We can slip out the door and down the steps. No one will notice if we hurry.”

For a moment, Meg was tempted. Other men were shouting now, and the horse was screaming its own objections. Someone was laughing. Her groom, no doubt, living up to his devilish reputation.

She stared at the door latch, then glanced up at St. George. He dared her to flee. She pursed her lips. She hadn’t run when her father had sold her beloved horses without even telling her. She hadn’t run when he died, and her mother collapsed into grief. She had gone forward, done what was necessary.

“You and I and Lily and Mignonette will notice when we have to leave Wycliffe,” she said.

There was a heavy thump on the door, and Meg crossed to open it a crack, only to be confronted by the horse’s panicked eyes as several Temberlay footmen hustled it down the steps. There was no sign of the animal’s rider. Her heart thumped and her stomach churned, and she knew exactly how the poor horse felt. She had no more right to be here than he did. “I will go through with this wedding,” she informed the horse, and her mother.

Hector arrived, breathing hard, looking angry.

“What’s he playing at?” Flora demanded. “Does he mean to carry her off over his saddle?”

Hector straightened his coat with an angry jerk. “If you wish to reconsider, Meg, I will be pleased to go and explain everything to the duchess.”

Meg’s heart climbed her throat. “Is he as bad as that?” she croaked, then held up a hand. “No, it doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving. He’s playing his game, and I’m playing mine. My stakes are higher.”

She stiffened her spine. She felt more like a soldier marching into battle than a bride. Hector squeezed her hand, and she read admiration in his eyes, and uncertainty. It made her shiver.

“I’ll escort your mother to her seat and come back for you in a moment,” he said.

Alone, Meg chewed her lip. She lowered the veil over her eyes with shaking fingers and picked up the bouquet. The overwhelming fragrance of roses filled the room like her sister’s ghost, reminding her she wasn’t really the bride. And yet she was. She squeezed the stems, and a thorn pricked her finger. She felt the sting, watched the blood bloom across the pristine white silk of her glove, and tried to block out the hammering of her heart. Then Hector was back again, and it was time to let him lead her into the cool dimness of the church.

“You look lovely, Meg. Your father would have been proud, and—”

She stopped listening to the murmured reassurances.

She was looking at the Devil Duke of Temberlay. Nicholas Hartley. Her groom.

He was indeed tall, and elegantly slim. He wore an odd emerald green coat, and a gypsy-striped waistcoat. His hair was dark, nearly black, and curling over his collar. It was impossible to tell the color of his eyes, but she imagined they must be an exotic shade of green to match the coat. Why else would a man choose such an outlandish outfit?

Her stomach fluttered as she drew closer. He was very big indeed, broad shouldered as well as tall. He wore black breeches and polished Hessians, and they outlined every muscular inch of his long legs. Her gaze traveled up to his face. Even from here, she could see the anger in the hard set of his jaw, the forbidding frown. The coldness of his gaze chilled her, made her tremble.

Hector shook her gently, and she realized she’d stopped walking and was standing in the middle of the aisle like a ninny. She swallowed, forced herself to take the last dozen steps forward, counting them as she went.

Hector bowed stiffly, and offered Meg’s hand to Temberlay. He waited a long, insulting moment before he accepted it, and she felt hot blood rush to her face. She stared down at his hand, tanned and brown against her white glove. A thin white scar ran up the length of his thumb to disappear under his cuff. How did a man get such a scar? It spoke of blood, and daring, but just as likely it was a love bite, or a fall he’d taken while drunk.

His grip was firm and impersonal as he led her the last few steps to face the bishop.

Meg turned her face forward, trying to ignore the tingle that raced up her arm from his touch. She concentrated on the churchman’s untidy ruff of white hair. He intoned the ceremony in a rich bass voice, and the words echoed through the church, daring anyone to decry the match that God had ordained.

Meg stared up at the saints in the stained glass windows, holding her breath, waiting for them to descend and denounce her as a fraud, but they remained silent.

She repeated her vows, her stomach knotted against her deception, stumbling only a little as she whispered her own name in place of her sister’s. She glanced sideways at the stranger by her side, but he was staring at the wall, looking thoroughly bored. Annoyed, she tried to withdraw her hand from his, but his grip instantly tightened like iron, though he did not move otherwise, or even look at her.

He spoke his vows in a deep growl that vibrated over her nerves. He promised to take someone named Daisy to wife. This time, when she glanced up at him, he had the audacity to smile, a grin of pure, breathtaking devilment. She drew a breath and almost forgot to exhale. This was the Devil of the scandal sheets, the rogue, the lover, the rake . . . and with the final “I will,” her husband.

She thought of everything that meant, and her skin grew warm, the heat radiating from their joined hands, spreading through her limbs like fire. It was too late for regrets. She swayed, and his grip tightened again, silently commanding her not to dare to swoon. She’d never swooned in her life, but if ever there was a time for it, this was probably it. She straightened her spine instead.

N
icholas felt her sway, and refused to let her faint. It was a silly female trick he detested. Her fingers were icy in his, and he could feel her pulse racing under his hand. She was nervous, perhaps even afraid of him.

Good.

He frowned at the heavy veil she wore, felt pity and dismay. She must be hideous.

All he could see of her face as she walked up the aisle was her mouth. She had full lips, sweetly pink, damp and parted. He watched in fascination as she caught her lower lip between white teeth the moment she saw him. He let his gaze roam over the rest of her. Her gown was a shade of pink that resembled a blush. It almost matched the color of her skin, making it appear from a distance that she wore nothing at all. She was tall, but her figure was impossible to gauge behind the massive bouquet of roses. His gut churned with frustration, and anger—at her, at his grandmother, at himself for agreeing to this sham.

He frowned, and she stopped in her tracks.

Hector Bryant tugged her forward, and her pretty mouth set itself into more determined lines as she came the last few steps toward him. The pulse in her throat throbbed, and the roses shivered against her bosom. In any other situation, he would have been sorry for her fear, done his best to soothe it.

But this woman had chosen to marry a stranger, and she was being well paid for it. She didn’t need his pity.

She glanced back at Hector as she put her hand in his, and he noted the slimness of her waist, the delicacy of her figure as she turned. He tightened his grip on her hand, and she looked up at him. At least he thought she had. He couldn’t be sure through the heavy layers of lace that fashioned her veil.

She took her place beside him and squared her shoulders like a soldier going into battle, finding comfort in her own courage since he hadn’t offered any. He felt a surge of admiration that belonged on a battlefield, and shook it off.

He could smell her perfume over the scent of the roses, something soft and enticing, slightly spicy, definitely intriguing. He turned away, studied the rear door, wondering what would happen if he bolted through it, left her here. He didn’t hear a word of her breathless vows.

When the time came to lift the veil and kiss her, he held his breath, steeling himself not to flinch, no matter what she looked like. Not for her sake, but because he wouldn’t give his grandmother the satisfaction. He could feel Granddame’s gaze on him like a blade at his throat.

He braced himself and lifted the veil.

He stared down at her. She wasn’t hideous.

She was beautiful.

He met wide eyes that held a kaleidoscope of colors, gold, brown, and green, set in a lush fringe of copper-tipped lashes. Her features were delicate, perfectly formed, her nose dusted with faint freckles that suggested she spent time outdoors and didn’t always wear a bonnet or carry a parasol. Under his scrutiny, she blushed. He was trying to recall the last time he’d seen a maidenly blush when his eyes found her mouth.

Her lips were parted slightly, perhaps in awe of him, perhaps in anticipation of the kiss that would seal their vows.

He lowered his head, intent on that unexpectedly glorious mouth, but the instant his lips touched hers, she slammed her mouth shut, and the kiss was disappointingly hard and unyielding, a virgin’s kiss. He frowned as she pulled away and dropped the veil back over her face. He felt as if a curtain had been drawn too soon on what he’d hoped would be a very tantalizing performance. Disappointment warred with anger as he turned to face the bishop.

M
eg barely heard the last few words the bishop spoke over them. She was trembling when Temberlay led her down the aisle, her wrist clenched in his fist. She had to run to keep up with his long strides. All she could think of were his eyes. They weren’t green. They were gray, and as cold and forbidding as the winter sea. A dozen emotions had passed through the depths of his eyes as he stared down at her—resignation, surprise, curiosity, and something she couldn’t name that made her intensely aware that she stood just inches from the heat and power of a male body for the first time in her life.

When he bent to kiss her, she felt the soft exhalation of his breath on her mouth, smelled the spice of his soap, the tang of leather, and she was more afraid in that moment than she’d ever been in her life. She slammed her eyes shut and puckered. He pulled back with a frown and she read confusion and anger in his eyes. Hot blood filled her cheeks, and she pulled her veil back over her face to hide her dismay.