The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (51 page)

An hour or so ago he had left the ladies to sit on the blankets. Being decorative. Being dignified. Behaving as ladies should behave. And the other three ladies had done just that.

“Bravo, Stephanie,” the earl called to her.

“Francis may never forgive you, Stephanie.” Lady Francis was laughing gleefully.

“Oh, Stephanie, your poor dress,” the marchioness called.

“We thought only Cora ever acted above and beyond the call of duty,” the countess said, and everyone laughed, including Lady Francis herself.

Stephanie scarcely heard them. She swallowed. He was coming toward her. He stooped to pick up something from the blanket as he passed it—her reticule. He looked at her unsmilingly.

“Your friend Mr. Reaves did not exaggerate about your bowling arm,” he said. “That was quite a show.”

“It was a game,” she said. “For the children’s sake.” In a sense it was true. It had started out that way. But quickly enough she had become one of the children.

Her dress was still tucked up awkwardly and covered with grass. She could see tendrils of her hair that had no business being visible. She felt hot and flushed. Goodness only knew how long he had been standing there, watching her. His words suggested that he had seen her bowl out Lord Francis at the least. That meant he had also watched the exuberant aftermath of the win. He had seen her roll and wrestle in the grass, laughing helplessly.

She could not feel more at a disadvantage if she tried for a thousand years, she thought.

“Your reticule,” he said, handing it to her. “Come. We will take a short walk.”

So that she could be scolded privately, she thought, taking his arm and not even looking back when he called to the others that they were going to take a short stroll before tea. To be informed that her behavior had just fallen far short of what was expected from any lady. That it was totally unacceptable in a lady who was to be a duchess within one week.

She wondered if he would turn her off. No, she thought immediately, he would not do that. It was too late. There would be too much dreadful scandal, for him as well as for her. Besides, he was far too kind to turn her off.

She was beginning to hate kindness.

And she was beginning to hate herself for hating it.

H
E WAS FEELING
rather as if he had been slapped across the face—the same sort of shock and humiliation—and pain.

He had scarcely been able to believe his eyes when he had returned from the walk with the other men and with the younger children, who would have given the ladies no rest if he had not devised a plan for taking them out of the way for an hour.

One of the ladies was playing cricket with Kneller and the children
.

It was Stephanie, of course. The words that damnably good-looking old friend of hers had spoken at the Royal Academy had returned immediately to mind. It was Stephanie with her elegant muslin dress pulled up to show far too much ankle for propriety, with no bonnet and auburn hair in an untidy halo about her head. It was Stephanie, flushed and exuberant and laughing and totally absorbed in the game.

He had never seen a woman look so startlingly beautiful.

And she was his. All that beauty and vitality and uninhibited joy in life was his. He had felt a rush of pure lust for her. Though he had realized as soon as the word formed in his mind that he was doing himself an injustice—and her too. It was more a feeling of delighted possessiveness. No, even that was not quite accurate.

He was in love with her, he had thought at last—delighted with her and proud of her. Proud that his closest friends were looking at her too and seeing what a very
right
choice of bride he had made.

He had imagined her playing thus with his children—with
their
children. And this time the feeling really was pure lust.

He had arrived toward the end of the game and had got himself positioned a little apart from the others just in time to see the lucky result of the rather wild over-arm pitch she made to Kneller. Kneller had been showing off too, of course, hitting out when he should have been protecting his wickets. Bridgwater had propped one shoulder against a tree and watched the children of Stephanie’s team bowl her right off her feet onto her back and pile on top of her. He watched her laugh and hug them and roll good-naturedly on the ground with them, making for them a perfect afternoon. He had even noticed her glance at Kneller and his losing team to make sure they were not dejected.

How wonderful she was, he had thought. He could not imagine any other lady of his acquaintance risking her appearance and her dignity for the sake of children who were not even her own. And for the sake of her own enjoyment too, he suspected. It saddened him somehow to think that exuberance, spontaneity, even laughter were stamped ruthlessly out of the lives of children of gentle birth as soon as they began to grow up.
Gentlemen and especially ladies were expected to behave with quiet dignity at all times.

He had, he realized, quite without any merit to himself, found just the right bride. Perhaps she would help him relax the habit of years. Perhaps she would help him enjoy life again. Perhaps she would teach him to laugh in public.

And then the children had scattered, abandoning their heroine in order to take the glory to themselves by boasting to their parents. She had got to her feet, had begun to brush herself off—and then had seen him.

She had changed in a flash. At one moment she was vibrant with laughter. At the next she was frozen-faced and tight-lipped. She looked incredibly untidy.

That was when he felt as if he had been slapped.

He had taken all the joy out of her day.

How she must hate him.

He could think only that she was also going to be embarrassed in another moment to be seen as she was. She needed to tidy up. She needed some privacy in which to do it. He acted from instinct, walking toward her, picking up her reticule as he passed the blankets—perhaps she carried a comb inside it.

He wanted to tell her how splendid she had been, what a good sport. He wanted to tell her how proud he was that she had made the children so happy. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked to his partial eyes. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. But he was hurt. He felt bruised. She did not like him. He merely commented on her bowling skills and took her arm and led her away toward some of the ancient oaks.

He felt stiff and uncomfortable. Rejected. Hated.

“You will wish to tidy yourself before tea,” he said.

“Yes.” They were already out of sight behind the trees. She slipped her arm from his and pulled at the waist of her dress. He could see then why so much of her ankles
had been showing. She had tucked up some of the fabric behind the ribbon under her bosom. She looked up at him briefly as he stood a foot away watching, his hands clasped at his back. It seemed to him to be a look of pure hatred.

“No
lady
would ever dream of doing such a thing, would she?” she said.

“Turn,” he said. “Your back is covered with grass.”

She turned obediently, and he brushed firmly with one hand, trying to make the action as impersonal as possible, but feeling her warm curves with every stroke.

“Your hair needs attention,” he said when she turned again. “Do you have a comb in your reticule?”

“Yes,” she said, more tight-lipped than ever. Perhaps she was embarrassed even with him, he thought. She probably was, in fact. Perhaps that was all this was—embarrassment, not hatred. He watched her take the pins from her hair and set them between her lips before combing quickly through her hair—thick and wavy. He remembered it from that first night at the inn and swallowed convulsively. She kept her eyes lowered.

“You have made the children very happy this afternoon,” he said.

“The
children
, yes,” she said around the pins in her mouth. She was knotting her hair at the base of her neck with sure, practiced hands, and he was reminded that she was a woman unaccustomed to the attentions of a maid. She slid the pins deftly into place.

He could not quite read her expression. He did not know quite what point she had been making with the three words. But they did not encourage him to continue.

Ah, God, and they were to be man and wife within a week.

She looked up at him with expressionless eyes. “Will I do now, Your Grace?” she asked him.

He could hear the hatred quite clear in her voice this time. Despite the pretty lemon muslin dress, she looked like a governess again—a hard-eyed governess who would stand for no nonsense.

“Yes,” he said. “You will do.”

And he felt suddenly and unaccountably angry. Though perhaps not quite so unaccountably either. What had he done to incur her hatred? He could think of a few things, perhaps, but they were in the past, and he had apologized for them and had tried to make amends. They were not the only couple the world had known who had been forced into a marriage not quite of their own choosing. She might give them a chance. She might try to like him at least. She might surprise herself and find that it was not altogether impossible. He was no monster, after all.

Without pausing to ponder the wisdom of what he was about to do, he took a few steps toward her, backing her up against the trunk of a tree. He set his palms against the trunk on either side of her head, brought his body hard against hers, and found her mouth with his own. It was not a gentle kiss. Unashamedly, he used his expertise to demand with his lips that she part her own, that she open her mouth. When she did so, he thrust his tongue inside to its full length and stroked back over the roof of her mouth with its tip.

And he lifted his head.

“Perhaps,” he said, and he was amazed and a little alarmed to hear the cold haughtiness in his voice, “you would do well, Miss Gray, to reconcile your mind to the fact that you will be my wife in less than one week’s time. The Duchess of Bridgwater. I will expect your attitude to change.”

He did not know where the words came from. He certainly had not planned them. He listened to their echo as if they had come from someone else. He was, he realized,
quite out of his depth. He had always been in perfect control of his own life. It was the fear of losing that control that had driven him into virtual hiding for the past six years. But it had happened anyway.

His dream had happened too, but it was a nightmarish parody of the dream with which he was to spend the rest of his waking life.

Her lips looked just kissed—itself an irony. “It will, Your Grace,” she said, her head still back against the tree, her arms and hands pressed against it at her sides. “I will not forget again.”

Her eyes brightened with tears, and he turned away, deeply ashamed. He seemed to have behaved at his worst with Miss Stephanie Gray right from the first moment.

“Come,” he said. “We must return to the others. I am supposed to be the host, yet I have abandoned my guests before serving them tea. You and I must learn to rub along together somehow. Shall we resolve at least to try?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, taking the arm he offered.

He would give anything in the world, he thought foolishly, to hear her call him Alistair.

HE HAD RARELY WORN WHITE
. W
HITE, SHE THOUGHT
, was a young girl’s color. Yet as a young girl she had worn more practical colors as the busy daughter of the vicar. Between the ages of twenty and six-and-twenty she had worn only gray and brown and black. In the past month she had worn colors that both she and the duchess agreed looked good with her hair.

Today she wore white—white satin, made heavy and stately with its pearl decorations. But no frills, no flounces, no bows. White flowers and green leaves were twined into her hair. She wore white gloves and slippers. She carried a posy of gold rosebuds.

The duchess looked her over carefully from head to toe and nodded. “You will do very nicely, indeed,” she said. “You are a bride fit for a prince, Stephanie.”

“Mother—” She was cold all the way through to the heart. Cold with terror—with the certain knowledge that she was doing the wrong thing. But that it was quite, quite unavoidable. Foolishly and suddenly, she wanted her own mother and her father too. She wanted to be hugged, cried over. She was so cold. She was surrounded by coldness and had been for a month. With kindness and ice, an unlikely but all too real combination.

But it was only her nerves that made her imagine such
things. That was obvious even as panic threatened to engulf her. Her Grace’s lips twitched, her eyes grew unexpectedly bright, and she stepped hastily forward—the only time Stephanie had ever seen her do anything that might be called impulsive.

“Oh, my dear,” she said, hugging Stephanie and laying a cool cheek against hers. “Make him happy. He is so very dear to me, my son. And be happy yourself.”

And then she was standing apart again, looking cool and regal once more. “There,” she said, “I risked squashing your flowers. Forgive me. Your cousin will be waiting downstairs, and I must be on my way to the church. In less than two hours’ time you will have my title, Stephanie. Carry it as proudly as I have. But I am sure you will. You have worked hard during the past month. You have surpassed all my most optimistic hopes.”