Royal Regard (52 page)

As he tried to slide the ring on her finger
against her will, she pulled back her hand and fisted it in her
lap.

“No, Your Grace—I mean, Nick. No, I…”
Droplets fell from her eyes, leaving spots on her skirt, as she
said, “I cannot say I will marry you.”

She spoke gently, in part because the entire
subject was making her head hurt more than she wanted to admit. “I
do not feel comfortable making decisions about my future intentions
until I have paid Myron proper respect. I am certain he would not
want me to be hasty in my—”

His eyes were now as hard as she had ever
seen, so hard they froze the words in her throat. Even when
Malbourne had attacked her at Vauxhall, Nick hadn’t looked this
forbidding. He was gathering his ducal haughtiness and preparing to
unleash it on her, and for the first time since she had met him,
was frightened to be in his company.

“Huntleigh signed a marriage contract with me
with one foot in the grave, and he certainly didn’t specify a
particular mourning period. He, too, was afraid for your immediate
safety. No, Bella, as far as I am concerned, you are contractually
obligated to—”

“Contractually obligated?! Have you lost your
mind?!” She stood up, quickly enough she became dizzy and had to
balance herself on the side table, which, thankfully, he didn’t
see, as he was pacing again before the fireplace.

Once steady, she took a deep breath, rubbed
her temple, and moderated her tone. “I am not declining your
offer—which, incidentally, you have only just made and not given me
time to consider.”

He stared at her blankly. “Not given you time
to—? It has been more than four months since—” The clock chimed six
o’clock, reverberating through Bella’s skull, making her head reel
even more than the discussion.

“I do not intend to marry anyone else. I am
not even saying I do not welcome your attentions—those appropriate
to a widow, clearly, and once removed from London. I am only saying
that I cannot agree to marry before I am finished grieving my
husband. It is entirely reasonable, Your Grace.”

At that, he could no longer hold his temper.
“Do! Not! Call! Me! Your! Grace!” he yelled. “I cannot believe
this! Huntleigh and I made—”

“Oh, no,” she started, her voice dangerously
low. “Do. Not. Dare. Do not dare start telling me what you and my
husband decided for me. I will not be told what to do by you or by
a dead man. Nor by the king or the bloody House of Lords!” Her
anger gained intensity, as did her headache. “You have given me the
megrim again! Go away and stay away until you are prepared to
address a woman with a mind worthy of your exalted consideration,
not just a fortune you’ve contracted to inherit!”

He was suddenly contrite. “Bella, I—”

“GET OUT!” She strode to the pocket doors and
threw them open, leaning against the door jamb to still the
dizziness and sharp shooting pain in her head. “Corbel! Blakeley!
Alexander!” Her voice suddenly fell in volume as she lost a good
deal of strength. “Someone come remove this awful man…”

John’s booted feet came storming up two
flights of stairs with a drawn pistol at his side. “What is it? How
did someone get by—” He stopped short, looking around the room,
seeing only Nick trying to keep her from falling, not the intruder
she had led him to expect. “What awful man, sweetheart?”

She pointed at Nick, holding herself up while
she gathered a second wind. “This one! I want him to go away and
leave me alone!” The shrill tone in her voice knocked her off her
feet onto a nearby chair. Finally crying, the headache pounding
like military drums, she swayed in her seat, holding her head with
both hands to stop the vertigo, the room spinning like a
whirligig.

Nick stepped toward her, but John held out an
arm to keep him back.

“Time to go, Wellbridge.”

“But I—you cannot mean—”

“The lady wants you to go, so you are going,
now
. Corbel will send your things.”

Nick stopped on his way through the door,
taking a deep breath and closing his eyes as he intoned. “If I
leave, Bella, I will not be back.” His voice grew more gravelly and
hard with every word. “I have danced attendance on you for months,
sat at your bedside until I couldn’t think for being so tired. I
would have died to protect you from Malbourne and Michelle, and my
good name is in tatters since the day I met you. If you can say,
after all of that, that we are not even betrothed, so be it. But if
I go—”

John interrupted, his hand reaching for
Nick’s elbow. “You are going, Wellbridge. There is no question of
that. You can work out your differences later.”

Bella moaned, “Just go. Just go, Nick. We can
talk later. When I can think straight.”

“There is no
later
.” He yanked his arm
away from John, straightening the sleeve of his coat, and his ducal
voice boomed, “And you may both address me properly as ‘His Grace,
the Duke of Wellbridge’ until Beelzebub ice skates in Hell!”

Everyone else in the world
understood, in fact expected, Bella would retire from society for
at least a year, preferably two, to mourn her husband’s
death—perhaps forever, given the scandal. Charlotte, however,
argued incessantly as long as she didn’t marry in the next twelve
months, a betrothal would bring no dishonor to Myron’s memory.

In truth, there was no argument to be made
that Bella hadn’t told herself a hundred times. Just the memory of
the afternoon a month past in Charlotte’s drawing room made her
want to sit on the floor and sob like a child. Since then, she had
barely seen Nick, and she didn’t expect she would before she left
London. All that was left were memories of two men whom she still
loved.

As the days went by, Bella’s burden of guilt
grew heavier. She was not the only person paying for her obstinacy.
As she watched Nick descend into the worst version of the rake he
had always been, she worried he would never recover himself.

Within hours of their final argument, Nick
had thrown himself into the pursuit of pleasure with a sense of
reckless abandon that frightened everyone who knew him. Bella
refused to break faith with him. Even after she read in the gossip
columns he was pursuing yet another married woman and had bought
another house on Harley Street, that he’d lost almost fifteen
thousand guineas in one night, that he was ejected bodily from
Boodle’s for trying to start a drunken brawl, she still sent long
missives to Nick every day, never receiving a reply. She assumed he
was burning them.

As time went on and the chasm grew wider, she
heard from Alexander that even the king had tried to intercede,
summoning Nick to a formal audience, bringing to bear both their
friendship and the privileges of divine right. Demonstrating the
remarkable tenacity of both cousins in tandem, Bella and Charlotte
wore down Alexander’s gentlemanly objections to disclosing all that
had transpired.

Prinny had told Nick, “It is quite right she
mourn her husband, you hopeless lackwit, and after everything she
has been through, you must expect some feminine equivocation. If
you cannot wait for her to regain herself, you don’t love her as
much as you say.” Prinny looked at him with razor-sharp eyes.
“Unless she is with child. You haven’t been so loutish as that, I
trust?”

“No, Sire, there is no chance of that.”

“So, you’ve acted the gentleman a few months
of your life, instead of the rutting hound; that is something.
However, your mind and manners have now flown. If you persist in
chasing after Seldon’s countess, drinking blue ruin like
well-water, and risking your entire fortune in the St. Giles hells,
you’ll be killed or Lady Huntleigh will rightly reject you.”

“She has already done so.”

“She has not! She has only asked you to
restrain your passions while she pays entirely appropriate respect
to her husband, an exceptional man. And lest you think to insinuate
it again, I will not withdraw Sir John’s commission because he
offended your dubious sensibilities protecting his sister’s
interests.”

“I will not abide his—”

“I will not abide your unruly tongue in my
company! Attempt any revenge you like for the facer you deserved,
but you may not impose upon your friendship with me to do it. And
let me remind you, Sir John is a baronet whether he likes it or
not, and you have already killed a duke. Persist in that direction
and you will be executed, no matter how much money you lose to me
at cards. Now, remove yourself from our royal presence until such
time as you have regained your wits.”

Prinny visited Bella at Charlotte’s house to
pay his respects and was indulgent of her grief, speaking with only
mild censure. “My dear Lady Huntleigh, you are quite right to mourn
your husband, but I urge you to accept Wellbridge’s suit with an
eye toward marriage a year from now. An informal understanding, if
you will. I can insist you marry him, especially having sent the
full force of the monarchy to your defense and involved myself in
the inquiry, but knowing your temperament, you would only throw him
from the ramparts.”

“I might do that anyway, Sire,” she
grumbled.

Prinny ignored her outburst, but for arching
a brow. “I will only say this: You and Wellbridge are as fine a
match as I have seen, and I suspect the only one there will ever be
for him, but you are a fool to make him wait. He very nearly died
for you, my lady, and you should not take his life so lightly. The
man has his pride, and he will impale himself on it long before he
sees reason.”

She snorted, looking away to avoid his glare.
“His Grace, the exalted Duke of Wellbridge, see reason? When
Beelzebub ice skates in Hell.” She added belatedly, “Your
Majesty.”

Prinny sighed, but then straightened his
shoulders, as though to say
All men have trouble with women, but
I am a king and you, Madam, are not mine
. “Huntleigh made
Wellbridge wait far too long—”

Unthinkingly, she argued again, unwisely
interrupting a third time, “What, by living too long for the liking
of the high-and-mighty duke?”

“Yes,” he said, shutting down her brabbling
with nothing but a look, “and by raising the man’s hopes with a
contract it will cost you dearly to break. Should you continue your
intransigence, Madam, you may be sure I will see you feel the force
of your late husband’s last request.”

Bella’s unwelcome marriage contract specified
an enormous payment to the duke if she were in breach, and in the
event he chose to enforce it. The greater portion of Myron’s cash
accounts would be paid out by the estate, though she would keep the
income-producing properties. She could apply for relief from
Parliament, but it would go before The Lords, certain to rule
against her in opposition to the king and a duke on a decision the
body had already made for her benefit.

She was not sure which of the conspiring men
had decided to force her hand in the event she resisted their
intolerable scheme, but collectively, without her knowledge or
approval, they had agreed she would pay a hefty penalty for having
her own mind. For three men who all said they trusted her judgment
and had her best interests at heart, it was beyond
unforgivable.

“You may choose to be an ungrateful wretch
with respect to Wellbridge’s sacrifice, but not with respect to
mine.”

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish on a
hook, at the royal tone she had never before heard. The king had
always been unfailingly gentle and kind with her, against all
accounts of his temperament. When she stared at him, her face
paling, only just realizing how insolent she had been, he ordered,
“You are dismissed, Lady Huntleigh. Next time we speak—should there
be a next time—do not be so quick to gainsay your sovereign.”

Since her meeting with His Majesty, Bella had
hidden enough money in gold and jewels to provide a simple life for
thirty years at two hundred guineas per annum, even if she lost
Myron’s entire fortune. If need be, she could find respectable
employment, or for that matter, beg passage on one of her husband’s
ships to go somewhere it would cost less to live. She only hoped
she would not be forced to leave England, and any hope of
Wellbridge, behind.

The only thing in weeks to lift her spirits
was a half-expected caller who appeared at Charlotte’s door just
before the dinner hour three weeks after the row with Nick. Corbel
cleared his throat outside the door to Charlotte’s sitting room,
where the two women were embroidering a table runner on a raised
frame in front of the green brocade loveseat.

Bella accidentally poked herself with a
needle, and wiped the blood off on her black bombazine dress. When
Charlotte handed her a handkerchief, raising a brow, Bella said,
“It isn’t as though anyone will notice. Black is very good for
masking blood.”