Lord Braybrook’s Penniless Bride

Some dangers were worth risking.

He drew her closer, one arm sliding about her waist, bringing her to him so that the small rounded breasts just brushed against him. A taste. Just one taste of those sweet berry-stained lips….

His lips touched hers.

Warm, firm lips feathered and caressed, promising ravishment and yet teasing with light touches before settling properly….

His control shook as he felt the flowering of her lips, the softening as they opened. Quelling the urge to ravish her mouth, he took it gently. Honey, sweet wild honey, intoxicating—and her very hesitance, even clumsiness, seemed to make it all the sweeter. All the more dangerous….

With his final, fading shred of sanity and control Julian pulled back, breaking the kiss.

“This,” he informed her, “is not a good idea.”

Lord Braybrook’s Penniless Bride
Harlequin
^®
Historical

For Joanna Maitland, who showed me such a good
time in Braybrook’s territory, and beyond.

J
ulian Trentham, Viscount Braybrook, bit his tongue, figuratively speaking, and reminded himself that his stepmother, Serena, considered tact the best way to deal with his wayward half-sister. Telling Lissy she sounded like a second-rate actress in a bad tragedy was not tactful.

‘But it
isn’t
fair, Mama!’ said the Honourable Alicia furiously. ‘Julian only met Harry for five minutes yesterday and—’

‘Half an hour,’ said Julian, sitting down on a sofa. ‘Long enough to ascertain that, apart from his post as Sir John’s secretary, he has no prospects.’ He eyed the tabby cat seated on Serena’s lap out of the corner of his eye. The blasted thing was convinced he adored cats. It couldn’t have been more mistaken.

‘Five minutes!’
repeated Lissy, ‘and poor Harry is declared
unsuitable
. Whatever that means!’

‘Amongst other things, it means you’d run the fellow aground inside of a month,’ said Julian, unmoved. ‘Have sense, Lissy.’

The cat stretched, brilliant green eyes fixed on Julian.

Lissy glared. ‘I would not!’

Serena chimed in. ‘Lissy dear, I feel quite sure that charming and pleasant as Mr Daventry may—’ She made a grab for the cat, but it was already flowing off her lap. ‘Oh, dear. Now, where was I? Yes, Mr Daventry, I am sure he is not at all well off, so—’

‘What does money matter? And anyway, he
has
an income!’ protested Lissy.

‘Two hundred a year?’ Julian suppressed a snort. ‘And, no, money doesn’t matter. Just as long as
you
learn to manage without it. Otherwise you will find it matters a great deal when the bailiffs take your furniture and the landlord kicks you into the street.’

‘Harry has his
own
house,’ said Lissy. ‘In Bristol. He told me.’

‘A man of property, then,’ said Julian. He watched, resigned, as the cat strolled with offensive confidence towards him. His setter bitch, Juno, sprawled at his feet, lifted her head and then lowered it with a doleful sigh.

‘Well, I wouldn’t marry Lissy,’ piped up six-year-old Davy from the corner, where he was endeavouring to put together a puzzle map of Europe. ‘I’m going to marry Mama.’

Somehow Julian preserved a straight face. ‘Excellent notion, old chap,’ he said. ‘Only not unless you want to land in Newgate!’

Lissy looked as though she might have giggled, had she not been trying so hard to look affronted.

The cat sprang into his lap and made itself comfortable. Very comfortable; its claws flexed straight through his buckskin breeches.

‘Never mind, dear,’ said Lady Braybrook to her youngest son. ‘You won’t want to marry me when you are old enough anyway.’

‘No, indeed,’ said Julian. ‘After all, Lissy no longer wishes to marry me. Do you, Liss?’

‘I never did!’ exploded Lissy.

‘You proposed to me when you were about five,’ said Julian, reminiscently. ‘It was most affecting.’ He turned to Davy. ‘Why don’t you trot off to the kitchens and see if Ellie has something for you to eat?’

Davy leapt to his feet, scattering Europe to the corners of the drawing room, and decamped before his mother could veto this excellent idea on the grounds of education or indigestion.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Lissy burst out again. ‘It isn’t fair, Julian! Why should you have any say in it?’

‘Probably because I am your guardian,’ he said. ‘For my sins,’
he added. ‘Calm down, Lissy. You’re too young to be thinking of marriage.’

‘I shall be
eighteen
soon!’ she cried, making it sound like a death sentence.

‘You turned seventeen less than three months ago,’ Julian pointed out. ‘You’re not precisely on the shelf.’

‘What if it were one of your rich, titled friends?’ she countered. ‘Like Lord Blakehurst?’

Julian blinked. ‘Since he’s married, I’d shoot him! Believe it or not, I would refuse my consent to any binding betrothal until at least next year.’ The cat in his lap rolled, displaying its belly in furry offering. Resigned, Julian kneaded the shameless creature.

Lissy stared. ‘But,
why?
’

‘Because you’re too young,’ he said. ‘And don’t tell me again that you’re nearly eighteen!’

Deflated, Lissy said, ‘But we
love
each other. It isn’t fair. Just because he isn’t wealthy—’

‘Lissy—Daventry can’t afford to marry you!’ He strove for patience and nobly squashed his instinctive, and more cynical, reaction. ‘Not with bills like the ones sent to me from Bath last month,’ he said.

Lissy blushed. He hoped some of his pithy comments on the advisability of keeping a check on expenditure had sunk in. ‘It
is
unfair, though. If we cannot see each other, then—’

‘I didn’t forbid him the house!’ said Julian irritably. ‘For God’s sake, Lissy! Stop acting as though you were in a bad tragedy!’

Serena coughed, and Julian gritted his teeth, remembering the tact. He added, ‘He seems pleasant enough, and I believe I can trust
him
not to go beyond the line.’

‘You mean, we may meet?’

He fixed her with his best steely glare. ‘If he is invited to the same entertainments, then of course you will meet. He may call here. Occasionally. But you may not meet him unchaperoned, nor exchange correspondence. And I would make the same conditions for any man courting you, even if he were a veritable Midas!’

‘I suppose you think you’re being generous!’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Now that you mention it, I do. And if at any time you are tempted to view me as a callous tyrant,’ he added, ‘you might care to ponder the fact that our father would have shown Daventry the door with a horsewhip, set the dogs on him, complained to his employer, and confined you to your room for a month. At least. And think—once you are twenty-one, I will be powerless to prevent your marriage.’

Faced with this very accurate summation, Lissy set her mouth in a mutinous line. In trembling tones she said, ‘If you had the least idea about
love
, Julian, you would understand the
agony
of being obliged to wait!’

She swung around and stormed out.

Serena, Lady Braybrook, said, ‘I thought we agreed to be tactful?’

Julian snorted. ‘Tactful? Lissy needs a dose of salts!’ He removed the cat from his lap. ‘What has she been reading, Serena?’

Ignoring that as wholly unimportant, Serena regarded her stepson. ‘Tell me, dear—when you were seventeen—’

‘Yes, all right, very well,’ said Julian hurriedly, recalling some of
his
youthful peccadilloes. He looked away from the cat, which was staring up at him indignantly. ‘At least I never wanted to marry any of them!’

At Serena’s choke of laughter heat flared on his cheekbones, and the cat took advantage of his distraction to reinstate itself with fluid ease.

‘So I recall,’ Serena said, still laughing. ‘Is Tybalt annoying you? Just put him out.’

He grimaced. ‘I think I can survive one cat.’ Even if it was stretching its claws on his breeches again. Serena was fond of the thing. ‘Was I that much of a nuisance?’

‘Worse,’ she assured him. ‘Whenever news of your misdemeanours at Oxford and then, after you were sent down, London, reached us, your father nearly had apoplexy.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘The worst was the rumour that Worcester was about to call you out for your attentions to Harriette Wilson.’

Julian blinked at this unabashed reference to one of his youthful follies. ‘Dash it, Serena! Where did you hear that?’

‘Oh, was it true, then? I told your father it was more than likely a silly invention and not to give it a moment’s thought. Was I wrong?’

‘He
told
you?’ He hadn’t even realised that his father
knew
!

Serena stared. ‘Well, of course! How else could he ask my advice?’

‘He asked your advice?’ Julian tried, and failed, to imagine his father discussing his son’s involvement with a notorious courtesan with Serena.

Grey eyes twinkling, she said, ‘Frequently. Which is not to say he took it very often.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘Not intentionally, anyway.’

Julian decided he didn’t want to know. ‘Hmm. Well, I’m here now for the rest of the summer, and Lissy and Emma are off to Aunt Massingdale in the winter. Surely we can keep Lissy out of mischief until then.’

‘You’re staying until Parliament resumes?’

He shrugged. ‘Mostly. I do need to see Modbury about some business. I’ll go to Bristol for a few nights next week. Since I’m meeting with him I’ll write first and ask him to find out something more about Daventry. This house, for one thing.’

‘Yes, that surprised me,’ said Serena.

‘Modbury should be able to discover something if Daventry does own property,’ said Julian. ‘Apparently, Alcaston is his godfather and settled the income on him.’

Serena frowned. ‘Alcaston? The duke?’

‘Yes. He recommended Daventry for the post with Sir John,’ said Julian. ‘Will you be all right while I’m away? Are you sure you don’t want Aunt Lydia to visit? Or—’

He broke off under the fire of Serena’s glare.

‘I may be stuck in this wretched chair, Julian, but as I’ve said before, that does not mean I require someone hovering over me the entire time,’ she told him. ‘And since that is exactly what Lydia would do, no—I do not want her to visit!’

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘No Aunt Lydia.’

He’d have to think of someone else, because with her daughters off to Bath for the winter Serena needed a companion. He looked at her with affection. Her confinement to the
wretched chair
, as she put it, limited her physical independence. While he could see her point in categorically refusing her widowed sister-in-law as a companion—Lydia would fuss mercilessly and bemoan ceaselessly the unfairness of fate—who else was there?

‘Julian—I don’t want
any
well-meaning relatives fussing over me.’

‘No. I understand that.’ Sometimes he wondered if she could actually read his mind…he’d have to think of something else. Meanwhile he’d best write to Modbury and ask him to find out what he could about Daventry.