The Next Best Bride (5 page)

Helena did not argue; she knew her sister too well for that. "Thank you for delaying your departure until after the ceremony. I don't believe I could go through with it otherwise. Do you think no one will notice the switch before the ceremony? Not even Miranda?"

Practical and unsentimental as always, Ros squeezed Helena's hand quickly before releasing it to rise from the edge of the tub. "If we deny it, what can they do?"

"You have so much more courage than I, Ros."

"Nonsense. You've just gotten lazy, with me around to fight your battles. When I'm gone —"

Helena gave a quick shake of her head. "Don't talk about it, please. Let me just get through this horrible day."

"You'll have to say good-bye to me soon."

"Not now."

"Very well." Ros handed her a drying cloth with a click of her tongue. "Now get out, before you turn into a prune. That's the one thing I envy, that you get a nice hot bath. Even the servants are treating you as if you were made of cut glass today."

"I feel as if I am. As if I could shatter at any moment."

"Don't get the vapors now. In a few hours you'll be in the position most young women desire above all — wife to a titled man who will leave you to your own devices in the coming years."

"You do not listen to the chatter of the young hopefuls, if you believe that. They all wish for a handsome man to sweep them off their feet and declare undying love."

"True. I suppose I listen more to the conversations of the women who've been married a year or two. "

"I had not thought to marry like this."

Ros looked pensive, as if she was not sure she should speak her mind. It was a most unusual state for her. Helena dreaded to hear her words, as her sister asked hesitantly, "Do you suppose you might love him, Helena? I would not want you to marry him if you wished he might ever return your love. It would be better to jilt him, then. For both of you."

Helena laughed sharply at the absurd statement, especially coming from Ros. "Love the man you have been set to marry? I would never have been so wicked."

"Wicked?" Ros smiled. "Rand is my best friend. I would wish him love, though I know it is the last thing he believes he needs." She shuddered theatrically. "I realize more every day how disastrous a marriage between us would have been."

Helena asked dryly, "Why, when you are both in agreement about the lack of necessity for love?"

"Perhaps because of it. Don't you think a marriage works better if at least one of the parties believes in love?" She shook her head as if shaking off an unwelcome insect. "I somehow thought you might love him, though. The way you always looked at him when you thought no one was watching you. The way you stored away every detail of conversation about him. The way you said his name, sometimes, when you denounced his behavior."

Helena clicked her tongue as if Ros's suggestion were ridiculous. She would not admit to a foolish infatuation with a dangerous man. "He and I have made a bargain, just as you and he did, Ros."

Ros looked at her oddly for a moment as she wrapped her body with the drying cloth. "Good. Then you will not be tempted to back out."

Tempted? Of course she was. But —"I cannot. Surely you have not forgotten why I agreed in the first place."

Ros glanced at the towel Helena held. "I think you no longer need worry of that, at least."

Helena glance down to see the spattering of pinkish stains. A rush of relief weakened her knees as she realized what they heralded. Her menses. She would not have William's child.

Chapter Four

Ros did not look completely pleased as she helped Helena dress. "I hope this doesn't mean you will jilt the man with all the guests watching."

Helena thought of facing him at the altar. "I don't know if I can go through with this switch. Not now."

"You promised," Ros reminded her relentlessly. "He is counting upon you."

"I only agreed to give my child a father. Now there is to be no child. We will both be better served if I halt things here and now."

Ros did not argue, although Helena knew she wanted to. "Well, then, you must tell him yourself, or let him face being jilted at the altar."

Face him? She could not. "You would have done so."

"I would never have left him to stand before the guests and face the humiliating recognition that his bride would not show herself. And I'm surprised you would."

True. "You tell him."

Ros bundled her into her dressing gown and tied the sash at her waist. "I will not. You are the one jilting him this time."

Helena made one last argument, weak as she knew it was. "The world thinks he is marrying you."

"You and he know differently, though."

She thought of the earl's unhappiness at her news. It could not be helped. "I don't have time to get into your man's getup—"

"Go like that." Ros pushed her toward the door. "I'll explain to the others," she whispered. "But hurry, or you'll be caught in his room and the duke will make you marry him anyway."

* * * * *

Rand had almost convinced himself that the wedding switch would succeed without a hitch when he heard the soft knock at the door to his room. As Griggson had gone down for some blacking for his boots, he answered the door himself.

Helena. He was certain, which surprised him. But there was a softness in her Ros had never shown. He did not allow her into the room, perhaps in a mistaken belief that she would not deliver her news standing in the hallway where anyone could overhear.

Her hands twisted in the material of her primly tied dressing gown as she stood staring at him, waiting for him to move and let her into the room. He raised his eyebrows at her in question, but said nothing.

To his dismay, his ploy was met with sheer panic by his bride-to-be. The color drained from her face as she glanced down one side of the hall and the other. She turned back to face him, her hands stilling. Softly, quickly, but alas all too clearly, she said, "I am afraid I have decided that I cannot marry you."

Before she had finished her sentence, he had jerked her into his room and closed the door. He stood uncomfortably close, so that she pressed her back to the door to avoid touching him. Good. He wasn't going to make this easy for her. "This sounds familiar. Are you running off to America with Ros?"

"Of course not." She was miserable with guilt; he could tell by the way she looked everywhere but into his eyes.

"Your lover has returned to beg your forgiveness and your hand?" He was astonished to realize that he found the idea distasteful. What should her poor taste in lovers have to do with him?

"No!" She did look at him then, a flash of humiliated blue before she closed her eyes. "I need no longer marry."

"You need no longer ..." Comprehension dawned, and he moved away from her a hairbreadth as he absorbed the information. "Well, I still need a bride, and we made a bargain. Surely you will not break it for this reason — you knew the possibility existed when you agreed to take your sister's place."

"I was not thinking clearly then. I'm certain you would not wish an unwilling bride, my lord." The fear that tightened her lips until they were white indicated that she was not quite as certain as she sounded.

Damn. "Are you absolutely certain you are not with child, then?" He reached out to stroke her flat stomach as he asked, needing the confirmation of his own senses. Her muscles quivered under his palm.

"Yes," she ground out as if she were admitting that she had the French disease. She grasped his hand in both of hers and held him away from her. "I am sorry that I could not give you more notice, but I only became certain this morning."

He needed to put her off balance so that he could think. He must find a reason for her to say the vows with him today. "Too bad. I had hoped you were already breeding."

She was growing stronger as he watched. She pushed away from the door a bit, dropped his hand, and chided him, "You do not mean that."

"But I do," he argued, desperate but not willing to show it. "If you had been with child, I would been assured of both a wife and a speedily delivered heir. "

"Who was not your own child!"

"What would that matter? To the world the child would have been mine. I would have treated it so."

"Most men would not be so sanguine."

Had his indifference to the parentage of his children somehow made her wary of the match? "Is that why you will not marry me now?" He raised his hand gently to her cheek and made her look him in the eyes. "Because I am not most men." He waited a moment before lowering his face close to hers to add, "Shouldn't that make me more desirable rather than less?"

She stared at him, her breathing shallow and rapid. The pulse at her throat beat frantically. She closed her eyes to shut out the view. "You are a reprobate." Her words were sharp, but he was too familiar with the ways of women to miss the sudden way her head tilted upward. She expected him to kiss her.

He didn't kiss her. Perhaps because he wanted to do so very badly. Instead he moved so that his mouth nearly touched her ear to whisper, "Many women find that attractive." He prayed that Helena did. That she would be seduced by her evident attraction to him. For he could think of no good reason why she should marry him. And several excellent ones why she should not.

"I do not find you attractive." But she did not push him away, he noticed.

"No?"

"Certainly not!" Her outraged denial sent a rush of warm breath against his neck. This time she tried to push him away and he moved back from her a half step. Not enough for her to escape. Just enough so that he could think more clearly about how to change her mind.

"You are not an innocent." To hold her indiscretion over her head seemed distasteful to him. But the time for the ceremony was approaching rapidly.

"I never tried to deceive you." He could see her trembling with the thought that he might threaten to expose her secret. But the threat seemed to make her stronger rather than weaker, and she met his eyes squarely.

He could see his defeat in her gaze. She would win if he could not show her the advantages to marrying him. "Do you think you will find a better man to marry you?"

"I will not marry. I am resolved to remain a spinster, as Ros has."

A spinster? Helena? He could not contain a grin, sure that he knew better than she did in this. "You will not."

"I will," she replied stubbornly.

"No, you are not like your sister. She has found herself able to resist the lure of taking a lover, no matter that she drinks, gambles, swears, and runs among the worst rakes in London in disguise. She is too afraid of the bonds of love. You are not."

"What do you know?"

He pressed her body, gently, relentlessly, between his own and the door. "I know that your pupils grow larger when I press you close like this. I know that your breath quickens if I touch you — like this." He untied the sash of her dressing gown and slipped his hands around to cup her buttocks.

She made an inarticulate cry, whether to encourage him or discourage him he was not certain. Knowing that he must make his case more persuasively than he had ever done in his life, Rand redoubled his efforts to seduce this woman who had agreed to marry him and now wanted to break the bargain.

He touched his lips to hers briefly. "I can feel your heart beating fast." Again. "Marry me." Again. "You took a lover, Helena. You are not made of stone, as Ros is."

A lover. Helena turned her head away so that the earl's next kiss fell on her shoulder. She had thought herself daring, independent, full of courage. Fool. "Then I will find a way to harden myself. I do not want to marry. I do not want to feel what I let myself feel with — I will not." His words reminded her harshly of how easily she could be deceived by the intoxicating feel of a man's desire for her.

"You have opened Pandora's box. How do you think you will close it now? His fingers tightened on her hips, smashing the silk of her shift against her. "I do not want to boast, but many women have declared me the best lover they have ever known."

Many women. The words cut through the fog of want that threatened to steal her breath and her sense. "Words to warm a wife's heart, my lord."

"Perhaps not her heart, then. But other regions." His fingers slid down to cup her bottom again and press her to him. "This is the way a man and woman should join, Helena. Face-to-face. Your lover didn't teach you that. I wager there are other things he neglected to teach you as well. I, however, promise to teach you one new thing a day — until you beg me to stop."

She shook her head at her own folly. At his. "There is nothing I need learn from you."

"No?" He backed away, and she thought she had convinced him at last. Until he knelt swiftly before her and lifted one of her legs so that her foot rested in his lap. He did nothing but smile at her shocked protest, as he traced around her ankle with only the tips of his fingers. "Has a man ever touched you here? Not your lover, I think."

She tried to pull her foot from his hands, but he laughed and ticked the sensitive arch until she stopped resisting, afraid the sound of their struggle would bring a servant to investigate. His gaze held hers captive as he kissed each of her toes, her ankle and played his fingers against her skin as if she were an instrument of which he was master. He trailed his fingers up over her calf, laying a tune at the back of her knee that made both her knees buckle. He rose and caught her against him in one swift movement.

She thought he might kiss her, but he did not.

Instead he held her tight against his body and lifted her slightly, as his fingers continued to stroke higher now, to the sensitive inner flesh of her thigh.

She began to resist him again, as she realized what territory his fingers reached for. "No. I cannot. I — I told you. I am certain that I will not have a child."

He released her, and suddenly she was standing facing him, her shift back in place, just as if he had never touched her. Except that her legs offered only uncertain support. She leaned against the door as he smiled and offered a slight bow. "I understand. There is only one way for a woman to be certain she is not carrying a child. We will have to save some games for when you are no longer indisposed."