An Unexpected Proposal (St Daine Family 1) (21 page)

U
SA Today Bestselling author Leighann Dobbs
has had a passion for reading since she was old enough to hold a book, but she didn’t put pen to paper until much later in life. After a twenty-year career as a software engineer with a few side trips into selling antiques and making jewelry, she realized you can’t make a living reading books, so she tried her hand at writing them and discovered she had a passion for that, too! She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, Bruce, their trusty Chihuahua mix, Mojo, and beautiful rescue cat, Kitty.

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E
dward Claybourne
casually lounged against the splendidly acquitted squabs inside the Earl of Vykhurst's carriage while his erstwhile coachman navigated the lane ahead, carrying him ever closer to Rothwyn House and the lovely Lady Phoebe St. Daine – his betrothed.

If Brendan were here, he would be furious. Edward knew his younger brother would curse him yet again for the uncanny luck he seemed to possess and his betrothal to Lady Phoebe would seem to be just that: Luck.

Marriage to the sister of a duke was advantageous in any number of ways, but that this particular duke's sister also held claim to the fortune Edward's grandfather had demanded he secure through marriage in return for not cutting off his funds, well, that made the match even more beneficial. It was quite the pity, however, that his grandfather had stooped to what amounted to naught more than pure coercion to arrange it.

An equitable trade, that was how Maren Claybourne – the current Earl of Vykhurst – saw it. Lady Phoebe's hand for his grandson and her dowry to shore up the much abused coffers of the earldom in exchange for his pulling a few strings with the magistrate to get the duke of Rothwyn's younger brother released from Newgate without a fuss.

His grandfather, it seemed, had given little thought to the fact he would be consigning his very own grandson to a future in which he would be married to the sister of a murderer. Nor did the earl care, or so it seemed to Edward, and thus neither did he.

Truth be told, Edward hadn't given a blessed damn about the woman his grandfather had arranged for him to marry. He had only wanted the old man's assurances that he would not cut off his allowance. It was bad enough he'd had to sneak around like a reprobate to make what few minor investments for his future that he had, but to be dependent on the rapidly dwindling and nigh minuscule trickle of funds his grandfather saw fit to allot him was far more lamentable indeed.

It wasn't as if he were the one who had squandered the family's finances at the gaming tables and brothels across England from shore to shore, yet he was the one being forced to realize how much truth his local vicar's warning that a father's sins were visited upon his son actually held. After his mother passed away, Edward's father's life had literally turned to hell – and now Edward was being made to pay for his many ill-thought transgressions.

The carriage rounded a particularly tight bend and Edward leaned forward to pull aside the heavy gold curtain covering the small, circular window in the center of the door. Rothwyn House, the grand, gray stone mansion located at the heart of the Rothwyn ducal seat, sprawled before him, its twin wings reaching far to both the east and west while the bulk of the main house ran north to south, creating a somewhat distorted cross upon the well-manicured grounds.

A circular drive curved close to the front of the manse from the end of the west wing to the beginning of the east, with a side lane leading to the carriage house and stables beyond. If one were a grand falcon, he thought, looking down upon the estate from above, the criss-crossing lanes must look like the slash of a thin scar through the arrogantly curved eyebrow of an adventurer or a pirate.

Safely within the confines of his own mind, Edward began to choose colors and brushes, to form ideas for the layers, first those which should be laid down behind and then the next, angles of light and varying hues of shadow until he could all but see the perfection of a well-wrought masterpiece before him.

With a snort and the muttering of a few well-chosen obscenities, Edward dropped the curtain back into place, mocking beneath his breath the rather fantastical bend his thoughts had taken. Rothwyn House was just that and nothing more. A shelter, albeit an elaborate one, in which a group of people had taken up residence. It would do little good to imagine its regally curved lines flowing from his brush onto a perfectly stretched canvas.

Now was not the time to think of painting.

There was far too much at stake, for one thing, and for another, his grandfather absolutely abhorred his penchant for desiring to paint whatever scene lay before him. He would not insult the St. Daine's by reducing the greatness that was the manor in front of him to what amounted to little more than hundreds upon hundreds of brushstrokes of muted colors upon cloth.

The carriage came to a rocking halt, surprising him out of his musings. Sitting forward, he stretched out one arm and then the other, straightening the short fall of ruffles at each cuff before pulling the edges of his newly tailored coat close. It was time to meet his future wife, the saving of Vykhurst, for their first outing as a newly betrothed couple.

His grandfather's footman opened the carriage door and Edward stepped smartly down onto the cobblestone path, casting a curious yet wary glance upward to the top floor of the manse as he did so. She was up there somewhere, his newly promised lady? Had she been watching for him? Did she even care that he had arrived?

He had last seen Lady Phoebe in this very house, he recalled. She had been hiding, eavesdropping on a conversation between her brother, the duke, and his friends. Edward had found her there in an alcove down one of the private corridors leading from the grand ballroom, her ear pressed solidly against the wall and, rather than give away her position, he had cupped a hand over her mouth and held it there until she quieted and he could lead her away from certain discovery to question her.

She had been furious, he recalled, because he had caused her to miss some vital piece of information. It had taken a bit of cajoling on his part to entice her to reveal exactly what she had been hoping to learn, but once he had, Edward had felt quite the heel. She wanted to save her brother. In fact, she seemed quite desperate to do so and
he
had thwarted her attempt at reconnaissance.

His apology in the moment had been genuine.

Peering into her lovely eyes, dark and awash with unshed tears, he had wanted nothing more than to soothe her hurt. He had kissed her. She had allowed it. And it had been a kiss so fraught with aching desperation Edward still could not banish it from his thoughts. Still, to hope that the lady in question might be eagerly waiting to see him was quite foolish, under the circumstances and Edward chided himself. Yet he could not deny a moment's weakness in which he wished it might be so.

Lady Phoebe had all but enchanted him during his last visit, though he knew she held no great love for him. She had acted no more or less seemly than a proper hostess might. It was no fault of hers that he found himself utterly captivated.

Still, even if she had been attracted to him before, it mattered not. All of that would have changed, he realized, now that she was aware she was merely being offered on the block of sacrifice as the St. Daine's only means of saving the prodigal, though somewhat tainted, son.

Breathing out a low sigh tinged with more than a little regret, Edward hurried up the front steps of the manor, eager now to have done with the matter entirely. The sooner his courting was done and the marriage well met, he could go back to his own life and leave the family's earl-ish woes, such as they were, to his grandfather.

U
pstairs in her chamber
, Phoebe St. Daine peered through the rose brocade curtains gracing the wide bank of windows that spanned the front of Rothwyn house, her bottom lip pinched firmly between her teeth while she stared down at the man to whom soon she would be married.

To save Tristan
, she reminded herself. She would marry Edward Claybourne, gentleman and heir to the earldom of Vykhurst not because she had fallen madly, coiffure over skirts in love with him, but rather because doing so, it seemed, was her family's only recourse if they wished to save her brother from the hangman's noose. But it was not her brother of whom she was thinking when the man upon the cobblestones below tilted his head upward, his gaze searching the upper floors of Rothwyn House as if he knew she was watching.

Most young ladies of her acquaintance would likely have fled, feeling anxious and perhaps even a bit threatened, by her situation if not the man, Phoebe realized, but not her. Rather, she felt...
empowered
...which was probably why, quite unlike any other young maid in her position would have dared, she took a bold step forward.

Was he thinking about the kiss they had shared? She wondered.

He started forward, shoulders confidently squared, and Phoebe felt heat fill her cheeks. Her heart jumped excitedly against her ribs and her free hand slid downward to cover the giddy little flutter which started in her stomach.

“He carries himself well, Phoebs,” her sister, Alaina, murmured over her shoulder from a place just slightly behind her. “Well enough for a
future
earl, I suppose. But then, the good Mister Claybourne could be an horridly grotesque cripple with a twisted, humped spine and you still would gainsay neither himself nor Lord Vykhurst, would you?”

Startled, Phoebe jumped and let the fabric drop. She had been so engrossed in watching the arrival of her betrothed, she hadn't heard the younger girl come into the room. The words she had spoken, however, could not be ignored even had Phoebe had so desired, because they were truth. Not that it mattered, Phoebe thought. As long as it meant Tristan would soon be safe and home again, she knew she might well agree to wed the son of Satan himself.

“Phoebe? Mister Claybourne has arrived. Your brother asks that you join them in the study,” Lady Claire Leighton, the new duchess of Rothwyn, announced from the doorway. She swept into the room, took one look at her new sister, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, my. You look stunning.”

A weak smile wavered on Phoebe's lips and she swept both hands down along the rich fabric of her pale violet gown before bringing her right hand up to toy nervously with the ivory overlaid chalcedony cameo brooch her maid had pinned to the fine, lace-edged velvet collar she wore. “Yes, well, we cannot allow the man to change his mind, now can we?”

Behind her, Alaina chuckled wryly. “As if he had so many better options.”

Phoebe flashed the girl a warning look over her shoulder. Sometimes Alaina's outspokenness worried her. Her sister was wise beyond her years, true, but someday soon that spontaneous yet rather saucy mouth of hers was like to land her in a right fine muckle of trouble. “Yes, well, let us ensure he has no wish to take himself off in search of those better options.”

After casting one last glance at her reflection in the tall, cheval mirror beside her bed, Phoebe turned to precede her sister and sister-in-law into the corridor while she tried to pretend her knees had not suddenly turned to warm jam, that her fingers did not lay quivering against her skirts, and that she was not intimidated in the least about the duty life had some-wise recently appointed her to.

Saving her brother was one thing, but spending an entire afternoon with a man about whom she knew absolutely nothing was quite another.

But you
do
know
, her conscious pressed.
You know the full shape of his lips and how nicely they can be fitted to yours. You know the rough texture of his fingers as they trace the contours of your jaw. You know the heat of his body surrounding yours and you know the pleasure of being wholly, completely immersed in his kiss
.

Aye, she did, indeed, know. And he knew the same about her.

Her cheeks flushed and she lifted a hand to her brow in consternation. If only she had used more of those first weeks of her debut chattering flirtatiously with the gentlemen to which her brother, Lucien, had allowed her to be introduced rather than chasing dead-end possibilities trying to discover Tristan's whereabouts...

Emily, her other sister and Alaina's younger twin, met them at the top of the stairs. Her expression appeared far more serious than the occasion warranted, and Phoebe drew up to allow her the moment she seemed to need.

With a smile rocked sideways by sympathy, Emily leaned in for a quick hug, and then, with a consoling pat to Phoebe's shoulder, she whispered, “He is someone's brother, too, Phoebs. Remember that.”

For reasons she could not fathom at the moment, Phoebe's bottom lip trembled. She clamped it between her teeth, hard. Pain flared, but she knew her eyes had already filled with the glossy sheen of tears because Emily, bless her, always seemed to know just what to say to bring things into perspective, and now she knew exactly how to approach the stranger who awaited her in her brother's study.

“...
I
could have loved you
.”

A slight, delicate hand reached upward to press faintly against his cheek, her pale, trembling fingers curving weakly against his jaw as she shakily drew in one slow breath and then another.

Don't die. Don't die...

The words marched through his thoughts like the most fierce of soldiers, hammering out a rhythm matched to the accelerated beat of his heart. He pressed his fingers against her chest, putting pressure on the wound to stall the bleeding, but there was just so much of it, he...

Tristan...

Biting off a curse, he scrambled across the rough-hewn floor of the captain's cabin to gather a handful of the first cloth he could reach – the sheets from the captain's bed. Uncaring of the repercussions, he ripped the fabric, shredding it to make a thick padding, which he pressed tightly against her side.

Don't die. Don't die. Don't die...

Her beautiful eyes, soulful and brimming with a watery mix of agony and so much regret, peered into his. Her breath rattled in her chest and panic slammed through him.

Don't you dare. Don't you dare die on me, damn it!

The words screamed past his lips even as the icy truth froze him. Tossing the remaining cloth aside, he lifted her in his arms and slid with her across the floor until his back rested against the low berth at the side of the room. For what seemed like hours, he held her close, rocking her in his arms while he waited for help to arrive.