Patricia Rice (2 page)

“The reason you weren’t run out of town last time was because Harry laughed at the gossips,” Christina said matter-of-factly, unhooking her too-large bodice to slip out of the man’s shirt she’d worn under it. “Harry told everyone he met that Malcolms were always good for a little amusement, and he poked fun at their ‘superstition.’ He is such a popular fellow that everyone was too embarrassed to condemn you after he belittled their fears.”

“Oh, how thoughtful of him! I had no idea.” Sinda watched Christina with curiosity. “But that means he’s perfect for you.”

“Sinda, you aren’t
listening
. He doesn’t believe in our Malcolm gifts. He takes nothing seriously. When I tell him about my ghost hunts, he calls me his ‘imaginative little creature.’ I vow, he asked for my hand because it kept us both from having to seriously engage anyone else. He never intended to marry me.”

“But he’s a
duke
now,” Lucinda protested. “He must marry and raise heirs, and he’s betrothed to you. He must take that seriously.”

Christina dropped a lacy chemise over her head and reached for a white silk stomacher, ignoring the corset Lucinda held out. “And raise
heirs
, Sinda. Just listen to yourself and think for a change, will you?”

“Oh.” Lucinda dropped to a tapestried chair seat and looked pained. “Malcolm women don’t marry dukes who don’t already have heirs.”

“Right. Malcolms always have daughters, never sons. That’s why there are dozens of girls and no little boys running around.”

“Ninian had a boy,” Lucinda pointed out.

“To an Ives, who are a race of demons of their own. Harry isn’t an Ives. If both our mamas had nothing but girls, what are the chances I’ll be any different?” Christina stepped into her rose silk skirt and pulled the bodice sleeves over her arms.

Lucinda leaped up to fasten the hooks in back. “But he can’t call off a betrothal,” she wailed. “It just isn’t done.”

“He’s a duke worth thousands of pounds a year. He can pay my father off and buy any woman who catches his fancy. Can you imagine me as a duchess? His ancestors would fall out of their noble picture frames.”

Although she did her best to sound pragmatic, Christina’s romantic nature wished it could be otherwise. She probably didn’t love Harry, but he was the only man she’d ever met who didn’t scold her for her antics. Since her favorite pastime was chasing ghosts and other creatures invisible to the normal eye, this required a certain degree of open-mindedness that the rest of mankind did not possess.

She and Harry didn’t spend much time in each other’s pockets, but they saw each other regularly at London’s entertainments. One of her favorite memories was of the night at the Grosvenor’s ball when she’d grown weary of the overheated, smelly ballroom and had wandered out to the garden, certain she’d seen a brownie under a tulip leaf. She didn’t know if Harry had been conducting a liaison or if he’d followed her, but he’d found her sitting on a tree branch in her ball gown, waiting for the brownie to reappear.

He’d looked quite refined in his embroidered vest and plain ruffled cravat, when all others wore lace frothing from neck and cuff. Harry had a knack for dressing simply and looking richer than any other man in the vicinity. He’d leaned his elegant shoulders against the tree trunk, propped one polished shoe against the bark to display a splendidly sculpted leg in evening breeches, and twirled a rose in his fingers while he located her amid the leaves.

“I hadn’t realized nightingales wore silk plumage,” he said, as if he came across maidens in ball gowns sitting in trees all the time. “The yellow suits you.”

“Thank you,” she answered a trifle crossly. “If you came out here just to tell me that, your mission has been accomplished. You may leave now.”

“And return to that noxious ballroom? Do you despise me that much to banish me there?”

She could never be cross with Harry for long. Kicking her feet so that her petticoats bobbed, she gave up her pursuit of brownies in favor of dallying with a charming man. Just looking at Harry gave her pleasure. Out of respect for the occasion, he’d powdered his hair and tied it back in black silk to accent the white lawn of his jabot. Since he normally wore his thick blond hair in the same manner, it did not seem pretentious to see him so now. But it was his laughing eyes that always held her captivated.

“I cannot despise you,” she replied saucily, “but you have chased off all the brownies in the garden for the evening. They know they cannot compare to your magnificence.”

His deep rich laugh warmed her because she knew he wasn’t laughing at her but at her description of him. Harry did not suffer from an ounce of vanity.

“I apologize, my fairy lady. I did not know I surpassed brownies in elegance. Shall I attempt to be more shabby next time we meet?”

Enchanted by his romantic gallantry, she forgot brownies and auras and any of the other things with which she entertained herself. Instead, when he stepped up on the bench to help her down, she held out her arms to him and allowed him to swing her from her perch.

Standing there on the bench beside him, she probably whispered something unutterably foolish in reply, but Harry wasn’t listening anymore than she was. He kept his hands on her waist, and she kept her hands on his shoulders, and it had seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to lift her face and for him to tilt his head down and for their mouths to come together.

It had been bliss, pure bliss. His lips had been soft and warm and respectful, but she opened her eyes when she returned his kiss with all the fervency she possessed and saw the red aura of his passion heating. He’d stepped away then, just at the moment when she’d thought to learn more. Always cautious was Harry.

She’d spent many a night reliving that kiss, wondering where it might have taken them had they been anyone else but two people who preferred independence to the marital state.

“Christina! You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.”

Jolted back from her lovely daydream, Christina ran her hands over her face and into her hair, then spun to find the looking glass. Her lamentably light hair flew every which way, and she hastened to pin it into a respectable coiffure.

“If you’d wear a corset, you’d have a smaller waist than any lady in town,” Lucinda observed with her critical artist’s eye.

“In other words, I’m skinny, and you’d have me skinnier. Isn’t it enough that I’m tall enough to be a boy?”

“A short boy,” her cousin scoffed. “What will you do if Harry calls off the betrothal?”

“Congratulate him on his intelligence, of course.” Having spent the better part of her life stumbling into one adventure after another, Christina had learned how to put on a brave face for all occasions. She just didn’t think she’d ever faced such a sudden and crushing pain in her heart before.

Harry was hers. He’d always been hers. Even as youngsters, he used to take her on pony rides in the park. She’d thought when they grew old and tired of playing, they’d eventually marry and settle down into old age together. She couldn’t imagine doing the same with anyone else. She was twenty-two years old and well beyond looking for another mate. Her rosy picture of the future had been knocked cock-a-hoop, and insecurity crushed her usual optimism. What would become of her?

Putting on a brave face, she dismissed her foolish fears with a cocky smile. “I shall tell him I’ll dance at his wedding and ask who the lucky duchess might be.”

Christina’s father was a marquess, and Lucinda’s father was a duke—both men having taken Malcolm women as their second wives after their first wives gave them heirs. She and Lucinda and their sisters and cousins traveled in noble circles and were not mightily impressed by titles.

But they were expected to marry well and wisely. As a respectable second son of a duke, Harry had not been a grand match, but a sensible one as far as everyone was concerned. Christina’s boyishness didn’t “take” with most gentlemen, no matter how her would-be suitors had pretended otherwise. She could see it in their auras that they thought her foolish or sought her dowry out of avarice. Harry was the only man who adored her for herself.

And for his own sake, she would have to let him go.

Defiantly fighting the hot moisture of tears, she powdered her nose and faced the looking glass. She might disparage her appearance, but the rose silk over pocket panniers gave her confidence that she didn’t come off too badly. She teased a little curl down her neck from her hairpins and pronounced herself satisfied.

“I think if I painted you now, it would be in full battle regalia,” Lucinda whispered. “Would you prefer broadsword or longbow?”

Christina had no need for reply. A knock on the door warned she had been summoned. She hugged Lucinda for courage. “Don’t paint anything dangerous until I return.”

Back straight, chin up, she sailed out of her chamber before the footman could even ask for her presence.

The servant raced down the stairs ahead of her and opened the door to her father’s study, announcing her to the occupants as if this were a grand ball and she the lady of the hour. Christina winked at him as she swept past.

Inside the shadowed study, two men waited. Her father sat at his desk, his fingertips pressed together in a steeple across his lips, disguising his expression. Christina read an odd uncertainty in his aura. Her father was never uncertain.

Her wayward gaze flew to Harry.

He stood silhouetted against the partially opened drapery. Until that stolen kiss, she’d been more aware of Harry’s laughter and voice and eyes than the hard body beneath his elegant clothes. But now she was aware of his long, muscular legs and the wide-shouldered strength of him. He wasn’t overly tall or bulky, but in her eyes, he was the epitome of an elegant, idle gentleman. A perfect match for her. Until now.

“Christina, the duke would like a word with you. Since you’ve been betrothed these last five years and have behaved with all due respect, I’ll trust the two of you alone.”

She hardly saw her father depart. A ray of sun slipping past the heavy drapery revealed a Harry she had never seen before. His normally amiable features seemed etched in harshness today. His laughing lips pressed together in a thin line. She’d never noticed the squareness of his jaw or the determination in the lift of his chin. His eyes no longer danced but appeared shadowed and cold.

“It’s time we marry, Christina.”

She blinked. That wasn’t Harry’s voice. That was some stranger’s. Harry’s voice was chocolaty warm or laughingly charming. This man sounded cold and distant and—commanding?

She searched his aura, finding the familiar hues of passion and sincerity but grayer somehow than she remembered. She couldn’t always identify the patterns, but given the sound of his voice, she’d say his aura was currently colored with icy resolve. Definitely not a Harry color.

“We must do no such thing, Harry,” she scoffed, speaking to him as she had always done and not as the duke he was. “You are a wealthy duke now, and you’ll need a regal duchess to bear you heirs. I was sorry to hear about your father and brother. Such a dreadful accident!”

She had longed to go to him when she’d heard the news, but his family had been safely interred and his door wreathed in black before she’d known of the deaths. She’d been given no opportunity to offer condolences beyond sending a formal note of sympathy.

“That damned monstrosity of a house my father worked on ought to be pulled down,” Harry growled. “It isn’t safe.”

“Walking on parapets is seldom safe,” Christina said. “It is unfortunate that they were together when the stones gave way.”

The black of his mourning flickered darker, but Harry dismissed her comment with a wave of his gloved hand. “We cannot undo what’s done. We’re betrothed, Christina, and I find I need a wife. I’ve obtained the license. It can be done on the morrow.”

Blinking, not certain she had heard him right, Christina dropped abruptly to the wing chair beside the door. “Tomorrow? That’s not possible.” Her startled heart beat against her chest like a trapped bird. She had been prepared for anything but this.

“Of course it is,” he said angrily. “It’s just a matter of standing before an altar and repeating our vows. All the rest was done years ago.”

She didn’t like the sound of his voice or the dark colors ruling his aura. Had some demon possessed him? The Harry she knew would have gone down on bended knee and pressed kisses to her hand and said sweet words just to tease her.

This one was ordering her about as if she were his horse, dismissing the importance of marriage vows as if they were an agreement to buy a new coat. “We agreed,” she whispered. “We did not wish to wed until we were old and gray. What has changed, Harry?”

“That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” he asked with an edge of desperation. “I’m the last of my father’s line. I need an heir to carry on the title and to inherit the estates.”

“But I can’t give you that.” She hated the wretched sound of her voice, but she wasn’t accustomed to this pain eating up her insides. She had never thought to marry as a brood mare. She’d hoped for romance and love and happiness. Or at least a good friend.

This Harry wasn’t even the friend she knew. At her refusal, he looked almost dangerous, a golden blade prepared to strike, although she wasn’t certain of the direction he would take if he did.

“It’s not impossible.” He dismissed her objection with scorn. “Your cousin had a son. We’ll simply keep trying until it happens, that’s all. We’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

Oh no, this wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all. Panic fluttered about in her chest, replacing the pain. She wasn’t fond of babies. She’d never thought much about having them because she’d thought they’d wait until they were very old to marry. How naive of her. But even then, there were ways of preventing too many babies—

But this stranger who inhabited Harry’s body didn’t seem to care if she wanted them or not. Without his cooperation—

Oh dear. That could be ugly. She might be a maiden, but she knew all about lovemaking and babies. She had married sisters and cousins after all. And an entire Malcolm library to peruse when she was curious. And she was always curious.