The Heiress Bride (2 page)

He agreed, and Sinjun thought:
At last I know his name.
At last. She wanted to shout her victory. At last. Thomas Mannerly happened to look at her just then and he sucked in his breath at the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen in his life. He forgot the lobster patty on his plate. He said something to her, something polished and just a bit intimate, and was chagrined when she didn't appear to have even heard him. She was, if he wasn't mistaken, staring at that damned Scot.

Sinjun was fretting within five minutes. She had to know more than just his name and the fact that he was a Scottish nobleman and why Thomas Mannerly had sounded a bit stiff about that. She didn't have much opportunity to find out more about Colin Kinross that night, but she didn't despair. It would soon be time to act.

 

Douglas Sherbrooke, earl of Northcliffe, was happily ensconced in his favorite leather chair in the library, reading the
London Gazette,
when he chanced to look up to see his sister standing in the doorway. Why the devil was she just standing there? She would normally come caroling in, speaking and laughing even before she had his attention, and her
laughter would make him smile, it was so carefree and lovely and innocent. And she would lean down and kiss him on the cheek and hug him hard. But she wasn't laughing now. Why the hell was she looking so damned diffident? As if she'd done something unbelievably awful? Sinjun didn't have a shy bone in her body, not from the moment he'd first picked her up out of her cradle and she'd grabbed his ear and twisted it until he'd yowled. He folded the paper on his lap. He frowned. “What do you want, brat? No, you're too advanced in age for brat anymore. My dear, then. Come in, come in. What is the matter with you? Alex said there was something on your mind. Out with it. I don't like the way you're acting. It isn't like you at all. It makes me nervous.”

Sinjun came slowly into the library. It was very late, nearly midnight. Douglas waved her to the seat opposite his. It was odd, she thought, as she approached. She had always believed Douglas and Ryder were the two most handsome men in the entire world. But she'd been wrong. Neither of them came close to Colin Kinross.

“Sinjun, you are behaving quite strangely, not at all like yourself. Are you ill? Has Mother been tormenting you again?”

She shook her head and said, “Yes, but she always does, saying it's for my own good.”

“I will speak to her again.”

“Douglas.”

She stopped, and he blinked to see that she was staring down at her toes and she was actually plucking at her muslin skirt.

“My God,” he said slowly, the light dawning finally, “you've met a man.”

“No, I haven't.”

“Sinjun, I know you haven't overspent your allowance. You're so tight with your purse strings that
you'll be richer than I am in a matter of years. Mother picks at you, but most of it bounces off. You pay her no mind, truth be told. Alex and I love you within the bounds of common sense, and we've tried to make you as comfortable as we can. Ryder and Sophie will be arriving in a week or so—”

“I do know his name, but I haven't met him!”

“Ah,” said Douglas. He sat back, grinning up at her, steepling his fingers. “And his name is?”

“Colin Kinross, and he's the earl of Ashburnham. He's a Scot.”

Douglas frowned. For a moment he'd hoped it just might be Thomas Mannerly she liked. No such luck.

“Do you know him? Is he married? Betrothed? Is he a gamester? Has he killed men in duels? Is he a womanizer?”

“You would have to be different, wouldn't you, Sinjun? A Scot! No, I don't know him. If you haven't even met the man, then why are you so damned interested?”

“I don't know.” She paused, and looked extraordinarily vulnerable. She shrugged, trying for a glimmer of her old self, and gave him a crooked smile. “It's just there.”

“All right,” Douglas said, eyeing her closely. “I'll find out all about this Colin Kinross.”

“You won't say anything to anyone, will you?”

“I will to Alex but no one else.”

“You don't mind that he's a Scot, do you?”

“No, why should I?”

“Thomas Mannerly had a touch of scorn in his voice, called him a barbarian, that kind of thing.”

“Thomas had a father who believed to the soles of his viscount's feet that a true gentleman must be born breathing the fine, just air of England.
It appears that Thomas has adopted his departed sire's absurdities.”

“Thank you, Douglas.” Sinjun leaned down and kissed his cheek.

As he watched her leave the library, a thoughtful frown settled on his forehead. He tapped his fingers slowly together. The only thing he had against a Scot was that if she married one, she would live very far away from her family.

He followed his sister upstairs not long thereafter. He walked into the bedchamber to see Alex brushing her hair, seated at her dressing table. He met her eyes in the mirror, smiled, and began to take off his clothes.

Her brush stilled. She put it down and turned to face him.

“You will watch me all the way to my bare hide?”

She just smiled and nodded.

“You are staring, Alex. Are you concerned that I have gained flesh? You wish to see that everything is still lean and all my parts are in good working order?”

She just smiled more widely, and this time she just shook her head and said, “Oh no. I suspect you are quite perfect. You were last night and this morning and—” She giggled.

When he was quite naked, he walked over to her, picked her up in his arms, and carried her to their bed.

When he was able to speak coherently again, he stretched out beside his wife and said, “Our Sinjun is in love.”

“So that's why she's been behaving so oddly,” Alex said on a huge yawn and came up on her elbow beside her husband.

“His name is Colin Kinross.”

“Oh dear.”

“What is it?”

“Someone pointed him out to me the other evening at the musicale. He looks very forceful, Douglas, and stubborn.”

“All this from just a viewing of the man?”

“He's quite tall, perhaps even taller than you. That's good, because Sinjun is very tall for a woman. Ruthless, that's what I meant to say. He looks quite capable of doing anything at all to get what he wants.”

“Alex, you can't tell all that about a man just by looking at him. Now, I will take away your clothes for two days if you don't stop speaking nonsense.”

“I don't know anything about him, Douglas.”

“He's tall and he's tough-looking. He's ruthless. A fine place for me to start.”

“Yes, and you'll see I'm right.” She laughed, her breath warm and soft against his shoulder. “My father despises the Scots. I hope you don't feel that way.”

“No, I don't. Sinjun hasn't yet met him, she told me.”

“She will, very soon, I doubt not. She's very resourceful, you know.”

“In the meantime I'll endeavor to find out all I can about our Scottish gentleman. Ruthless, hmm?”

 

The next evening Sinjun felt like dancing in her bedchamber. Douglas was taking her and Alexandra to the Drury Lane Theatre to see
Macbeth
performed. Surely as a Scot and a Kinross, with scores of cousins named Mac Something, he would also be there. It was opening night. Surely, oh surely he would be there. But what if he accompanied another lady? What if he . . . She stopped herself. She had spent an hour on her appearance, and her maid, Doris, had merely nodded, smiling slyly. “You
look beautiful, my lady,” she had said as she lovingly threaded a light blue velvet ribbon through Sinjun's hair. “Just the same color as your eyes.”

She did look well enough, Sinjun supposed, as she studied herself one last time in the mirror. Her gown was a dark blue silk with a lighter blue overskirt. The sleeves were short and puffed out, and there was a matching pale blue velvet sash bound beneath her breasts. She looked tall and slender and fashionably pale. There was just a hint of cleavage, no more, because Douglas felt strongly about things like that. Yes, she looked just fine.

Sinjun didn't see him until the intermission. The lobby of the Drury Lane Theatre was crowded with the glittering
ton,
who gossiped and laughed and whose jewels were worth enough to feed a dozen English villages for a year. The lobby was also very hot. Some unfortunate patrons were splattered with dripping wax from the hundreds of lit candles in the chandeliers overhead. Douglas took himself off to fetch champagne for Alex and Sinjun. A friend of Alex's came up, and thus Sinjun was free to search in every corner of the vast room for her Scot, as she now thought of him. To her delight and speechless excitement and horror, she saw him standing not eight feet behind her, speaking to Lord Brassley, a friend of Ryder's. Brass, as he was called, was a rake and kindhearted, a man who commendably kept his wife in more luxury than his mistresses.

Her heart speeded up. She turned completely to face him and began to walk forward. She bumped into a portly gentleman and automatically apologized. She simply kept walking toward him. She wasn't more than three feet away when she heard him laugh, then say quite clearly to Lord Brassley, “Good Lord, Brass, what the devil am I to do? It's damned painful—I've never in my life seen such
a gaggle of disasters, all of them in little knots or herds, giggling and simpering and flapping and staring. It isn't fair, no it isn't. I must needs wed myself to an heiress or lose everything I own, thanks to my scoundrel of a father and brother, and all those females I've met who fit the groat requirements scare me to my toes.”

“Ah, my dear fellow, but there are other females who aren't disasters,” said Lord Brassley, laughing. “Females you don't have to marry, just enjoy. You simply amuse yourself with them. They will relax you, Colin, and you certainly could use some relaxation.” He slapped Colin Kinross on his shoulder. “As for the heiress, be patient, my boy, be patient!”

“Ha, patience! Every day that goes by brings me closer to the brink. As for those other females, hell, they would also want to spend all the groats I don't have, and expect that in my undying gratitude I would shower them with endless baubles. No, I have no time for distractions, Brass. No, I must find myself an heiress and one that is reasonably toothsome.”

His voice was deep and soft and filled with humor and a goodly dose of sarcasm. Lord Brassley laughed, hailed a friend, and took himself off. Without further hesitation, Sinjun walked to him, stood there right in front of him until his beautiful dark blue eyes finally came to rest on her face and a black brow rose in question. She thrust out her hand and said quite clearly, “I'm an heiress.”

C
OLIN
K
INROSS
,
SEVENTH
earl of Ashburnham, stared at the young woman standing in front of him, her hand outstretched toward him, staring at him with utter sincerity and, if he wasn't mistaken, a goodly dollop of excitement. He felt knocked off his pins, as Philip would say, and stalled for time to get his brain back in working order. “Forgive me. What did you say?”

Without hesitation, Sinjun said again, her voice strong and clear, “I'm an heiress. You said you needed to marry an heiress.”

He said slowly, his voice light and insincere, still stalling for mental reinforcements, “And you are reasonably toothsome.”

“I'm pleased you think so.”

He stared at her outstretched hand, still there, and automatically shook it. He should have raised her hand to his lips, but there that hand was, stuck out there like a man's, and so he shook it. A strong hand, he thought, slender fingers, very white, competent. He released her hand.

“Congratulations,” he said, “on being an heiress. And on being toothsome. Ah, do forgive me, ma'am. I'm Ashburnham, you know.”

She simply smiled at him, her heart in her eyes.
His voice was wonderful, deep and smiling, much more beguiling than either of her brothers'. They didn't come close to this marvelous man. “Yes, I know. I'm Sinjun Sherbrooke.”

“An odd name you have, a man's nickname.”

“I suppose. My brother Ryder christened me that when he tried to burn me at the stake when I was nine years old. My real name is Joan, and he wanted me to be Saint Joan but it became Sinjun for Saint John, and so . . . there it is.”

“I like Joan. I prefer it. It is feminine.” Colin ran his fingers through his hair, realizing that what he'd said was ridiculous and not at all to the point, whatever that was. “This has taken me aback, truly. I don't know who you are, and you don't know who I am. I really don't understand why you've done this.”

Those light blue eyes shone up at him as guileless as a summer day as she said clearly, “I saw you at the Portmaine ball and then at the Ranleagh musicale. I'm an heiress. You need to marry an heiress. If you are not a troll—your character, of course—why then, perhaps you could see your way clear to marrying me.”

Colin Kinross, Ashburnham or simply Ash to his friends, could only stare at the girl who couldn't seem to look away from his face. “This is quite the oddest thing that has ever happened to me,” he said, a baffling understatement. “Except for that time at Oxford when the don's wife wanted me to make love to her with her husband teaching Latin in the other room to one of my friends. She even wanted the door cracked open so she could see her husband whilst she was making love to me.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what? Oh, make love to her?” He coughed, recalling himself. “I don't remember,” he said, suddenly frowning, his voice austere. “Besides, it is an incident better forgotten.”

Sinjun sighed. “My brothers would have confided in me, but you don't know me, so I can't expect you to be more forthcoming yet. I know I'm not beautiful, but I am passable. I'm in my second Season without even a betrothed, or even a remotely attached gentleman to my name, but I am rich, and I'm a kind person.”

“I can't accept all of your assessment.”

“Perhaps you have already found a lady to meet your groat requirements.”

He grinned at that. “Plain speaking, huh? No, I haven't, as I suspect you already know, having overheard my whining plaints to Brass. Actually, you are quite the loveliest young lady I have met. You're tall. I don't have to get a painful crick in my neck speaking to you.”

“Yes, and I can't help it. As to my loveliness, certainly my brothers think so, but you, my lord? This is my second Season, as I said, and I didn't wish to have it, for there is so much sheer boredom about, but then I saw you.”

She stopped talking but didn't stop staring at him. He was startled at the hunger in those quite lovely light blue eyes of hers. This was really beyond anything in his experience. He felt bowled over, off kilter, and really quite stupid. The vaunted control he was known for was gone. It was disconcerting.

“Come over here, out of the crush. Yes, that's better. Listen, this is difficult. It is also a highly unusual situation. Perhaps I could call on you tomorrow? I see a young lady walking toward us, and she looks quite purposeful.”

She gave him a dazzling smile. “Oh yes, I should quite like that.” She gave him the Sherbrooke town house address on Putnam Place. “That is Alex, my sister-in-law.”

“What is your complete name?”

“Everyone calls me Sinjun.”

“Yes, but I don't like it. I prefer Joan.”

“All right. It's Lady Joan, actually, for my father was an earl. Lady Joan Elaine Winthrop Sherbrooke.”

“I will call on you in the morning. Would you like to ride with me?”

She nodded, looking at his white teeth and his beautiful mouth. Unconsciously, she leaned toward him. Colin sucked in his breath and quickly backed away. Good Lord, the chit was as brazen as a Turkish gong. So she'd fallen for him the first time she'd seen him. Ha! He would take her riding tomorrow, discover why she was playing this insane jest, and perhaps kiss her and fondle her just a bit to teach her a lesson. Damned impertinent chit—and she was a Sassenach to boot, which made sense since he was in London. Still, he believed Sassenach young ladies to be more reticent, more modest. But not this young lady.

“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, and was gone before Alex could bear down on them.

Colin searched out Brass and unceremoniously plucked him out of the theater. “No, don't complain. I'm taking you outside, away from all these female distractions, and you're going to tell me what the devil is going on here. I think you're probably behind this absurd jest, and I want to know why you set that girl on me. The gall of her still has my head spinning.”

Alex watched the man, Colin Kinross, pull Brass from the huge lobby. She looked back at Sinjun to
see that she was also staring after him. She correctly assumed that Sinjun's thoughts about the man weren't nearly as prosaic as her own.

“He is an interesting-looking gentleman,” Alex said, getting the ball rolling.

“Interesting? Don't be ridiculous, Alex. That's utterly inadequate. He's beautiful, perfectly beautiful. Didn't you see his eyes? And the way he smiles and speaks, it—”

“Yes, my dear. Come along now. The intermission is over and Douglas is getting testy.”

Alex bided her time, but it was difficult. The moment they arrived back at the Sherbrooke town house, she kissed Sinjun good night and grabbed her husband's hand, dragging him into their bedchamber.

“You want me that badly?” Douglas asked, staring at her with some amusement.

“Sinjun met Colin Kinross. I saw her speaking to him. I fear she's been rather forward, Douglas.”

Douglas looked down at his hands. He then lifted a branch of candles and carried it to the table beside their bed. He studied it for a while, in meditative silence, then shrugged. “We will leave it be until tomorrow. Sinjun isn't stupid, nor is she a silly twit. Ryder and I raised her properly. She would never ever jump her fences too quickly.”

At ten o'clock the following morning, Sinjun was ready to jump. She was waiting on the front steps of the Sherbrooke town house, dressed in a dark blue riding habit, looking as fine as a pence, so Doris had told her firmly, and she was lightly slapping her riding crop against her boot.

Where was he? Hadn't he believed her? Had he just realized that she wasn't to his taste and didn't intend to come?

Just before she was on the edge of incoherence, she saw him cantering up, astride a magnificent black barb. He pulled up when he saw her, leaned down just a bit, and gave her a lazy smile.

“Aren't I to be allowed in your house?”

“I don't think so. It's too soon.”

All right, he thought, he would accept that for the moment. “Where is your horse?”

“Follow me.” She walked around the back of the house to the stables. Her mare, Fanny, was standing placidly, calmly accepting the caresses bestowed on her neck by a doting Henry, one of the stable lads. She waved him away and mounted by herself. She arranged her skirts, knew in her heart that she wasn't physically capable of presenting a finer picture, and prayed. She gave him a tentative smile. “It's early. Shall we go to the park?”

He nodded and pulled alongside her. She didn't say a word. He frowned as he neatly guided his stallion around a dray filled with kegs of beer and three clerks dressed in funereal black. The streets were crowded with hawkers, shopkeepers, wagons of all sorts, ragged children from the back streets. He stayed close, saying nothing, keeping a lookout for any danger. There was danger everywhere, naturally, but he realized that she could deal with most anything that could happen. If she couldn't, why then, he was a man, and he could. Whatever else she was, she was an excellent rider.

When they reached the park, he said as they turned into the north gate, “Let's gallop for a bit. I know a lady shouldn't so indulge herself, but it is early, as you said.”

They raced to the end of the long outward trail and his stallion, strong as Douglas's horse, beat Fanny soundly. She was laughing when she pulled her mare.

“You ride well,” Colin said.

“As do you.”

Colin patted his stallion's neck. “I asked Lord Brassley who you were. Unfortunately he didn't see you speaking to me. I described you, but to be frank, ma'am, he couldn't imagine any lady, particularly Lady Joan Sherbrooke, speaking to me as you did.”

She rubbed the soft leather of her York riding gloves. “How did you describe me?”

She'd gotten to him again, but he refused to let her see it. He shrugged and said, “Well, I said you were reasonably toothsome in a blond sort of way, that you were tall and had quite lovely blue eyes, and your teeth were white and very straight. I had to tell him that you were brazen to your toenails.”

She was silent for a moment, looking over his left shoulder. “I suppose that's fair enough. But he didn't recognize me? How very odd. He's a friend of my brother's. He is also a rake but good-hearted, so Ryder says. I fear he still tends to see me as a ten-year-old who was always begging a present off him. He had to escort me once to Almack's last Season, and Douglas told me in no uncertain terms that Brass wasn't blessed with an adaptable intellect. I was to remain quiet and soft-spoken and on no account to speak of anything that lay between the covers of books to him. Douglas said it would make him bolt.”

Colin chewed this over. He simply didn't know what to think. She looked like a lady, and Brass had said that Lady Joan Sherbrooke was a cute little chit, adored by her brothers, perhaps a bit out of the ordinary from some stories he'd heard, but he'd never noticed anything pert about her himself. He'd then lowered his voice, whispering that she knew too much about things in
books,
at least he'd
heard that from some matrons who were gossiping about her, their tones utterly disapproving, and she was indeed tall. But then again, she'd been waiting on the front steps of the town house for him to arrive, certainly not what the young lady of the house would do, would she? Wouldn't an English young lady be waiting in the drawing room, a cup of tea in her hand? Brass had also insisted that Joan Sherbrooke's hair was a plain regular brown, nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn't. In the early sunlight it was at least a dozen colors, from the palest blond to a dark ash.

Oh, to hell with it. He didn't understand, and he wasn't at all certain he believed her. More likely, she was looking for a protector. Perhaps she was the lady's maid to this Lady Joan Sherbrooke, or a cousin. He should just tell her that he had no money and all she could expect from him would be a fun roll in the hay, no more, no less.

“I have taken you by surprise,” Sinjun said, watching the myriad expressions flit over his face. On the heels of her calmly reasoned understatement, she said in a rush, “You're the most beautiful man I have ever seen in my life, but it's not that, not really. I wanted you to know that it wasn't only your face that drew me to you, it was . . . well, just . . . oh goodness, I don't know.”

“Me, beautiful?” Colin could only stare at her. “A man isn't beautiful, that is nonsense. Please, just tell me what you want and I shall do my best to see that you get it. I can't be your protector, I'm sorry. Even if I were the randiest goat in all of London, it would do me no good. I have no money.”

“I don't want a protector, if by that you mean you would take me on as a mistress.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, fascinated now. “That is what I meant.”

“I can't be a mistress. Even if I wanted to be, it wouldn't help you. Surely my brother wouldn't release my dowry if you didn't wed me. I suspect he wouldn't be pleased if I did become your mistress. He is very old-fashioned about some things.”