The Wedding Escape (2 page)

He stole a glance out the window. Amidst the crowd he now saw the imposing figure of Mr. John Henry Belford, her father, bellowing her name, whether with alarm or profound irritation Jack could not be sure. A heavily jeweled woman draped in pale peach silk trimmed with sable, which was utterly inappropriate given the blistering heat of the day, stood at his side, her face twisted into a mask of tightly affected calm. The bride's charming mother, he decided. And standing off to one side was pompous old Whitcliffe, his bulky, sagging form sweating in an ill-fitting wine-colored morning coat and trousers, his flaccid face nearly purple with apoplectic rage.

Perhaps her betrothed's arms were not so welcoming after all.

“I take it then, Miss Belford, that this match was not of your own choosing?” Jack ventured, not quite ready to abandon her to her fate.

Amelia shook her head miserably. “My mother was very determined that I marry an aristocrat of no lesser rank than a duke. But unfortunately there aren't that many dukes running about, and fewer still who are actually available for marriage. Lord Whitcliffe was the best she could find, and he was willing to take me on, despite the fact that he believes me to be common and foolish.”

“He told you that?” Jack felt a sudden overwhelming urge to grab Whitcliffe by his almost nonexistent neck and choke an apology from him.

“I overheard him telling my father. At first I thought he was only saying it because he was trying to get my father to pay him more for the privilege of my marrying him. It may surprise you to learn, Mr. Kent, that for an American girl to marry an English lord costs quite a bit of money. But then Lord Whitcliffe cited some examples of what he called my ‘crass and unseemly behavior,' and I knew he really did think that I was frightfully uncouth.” She lowered her gaze and made a halfhearted attempt to straighten the torn cocoon of satin and silk surrounding her.

Jack thought of her scuttling down the side of the church in her wedding gown. Whitcliffe would have probably had a heart attack had he been witness to that particular escapade. He repressed the impulse to smile.

“If you won't sell your carriage to me, Mr. Kent, would you consider permitting me to hire it for a day or two?” Amelia persisted hopefully. “I promise that I shall take very good care of it, and will send it back to you directly.”

Jack avoided her imploring gaze. His family had exited the church and was standing in a cluster, searching the crowd for him. His three sisters looked extremely pretty in their elegant outfits, which had been designed by Grace. Each of his sisters was happily married to a man of her own choosing. Although Jack was familiar with the practice of arranged marriages, particularly amongst the nobility, Genevieve's gentle upbringing had always stressed the principles of independent thought and freedom of choice, and she had instilled those values in her children. The idea of Annabelle or Grace or his beloved Charlotte being offered up like prized lambs to be purchased by the highest bidder was utterly abhorrent.

“Mr. Kent?” Amelia's voice was strained.

A party of men was fanning out to search the carriages. Jack noticed Simon and Jamie making their way toward his vehicle. Genevieve had probably asked them to take a look inside, not to search for the missing bride, but to see if their wayward brother had taken refuge within and fallen asleep. The minute they discovered Miss Belford, the carriage would be swarmed. His determined little heiress would be hastily extracted and marched into the church to meet her fate with Whitcliffe, willing or not.

And there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it.

“Please, Mr. Kent,” Amelia whispered.

She reached out and laid her hand upon his, beseeching him with her touch.

He stared at her hand in surprise. It felt cool and soft upon his skin, despite the sweltering heat of the day and the sudden closeness of the carriage. It was a small hand, made even slighter by the enormity of the ostentatious ring Whitcliffe had elected to bestow upon it. The fingers were slender and immaculately manicured, as one might have expected of a bride on her wedding day, and the skin was pale and silky smooth, indicating that it had spent much of its existence safely swaddled in expensive gloves. But it was the profusion of thin, scarlet scratches hatched across it that captivated his attention. They must have occurred during her fall, Jack realized, as she desperately struggled to cling to the vine before plummeting helplessly into the bushes below. He took her hand and slowly turned it over, only to discover a deeper cut slashed into the tender flesh of her palm. It oozed a thin stream of blood, which had smeared his own skin.

She had asked him if he had ever known what it was to be hopelessly trapped. The bitter truth was, he did know all too well. Until he saw that ruby stain of blood marring his own skin, he had not understood how desperate she was.

And suddenly he remembered with piercing clarity how it felt to be alone and terrified.

“Oliver,” he began, the steady calm of his voice belying the enormity of what he was about to do, “turn the carriage around and slowly drive away.”

The driver's aged eyes widened in disbelief. “With her?”

Jack nodded.

“But—she's the bride!” Oliver protested, as if he thought that Jack must have overlooked that particular detail.

“I realize that.”

“They'll come after us!”

“Only if they think that Miss Belford is hiding in the carriage,” Jack countered. “As long as we drive slowly and give no cause for suspicion, I believe they will continue to search the surrounding area and the remaining carriages.” His body tensed as Simon and Jamie drew near. “We have to go
now,
Oliver.”

The old man hesitated barely a second, then obligingly snapped his whip lightly over the glossy black hindquarters of his horses. Jack leaned out the window as the carriage rolled forward, blocking his brothers' view of the distraught, rumpled bride hidden within.

“Too bad no one had the wit to check upon the bride earlier,” he complained irritably. “I could have left for Scotland an hour ago.” He pretended to stifle a yawn.

“You're not going home now, are you?” Simon looked disappointed.

“Miss Belford is certain to be found shortly,” Jamie added. “She's probably just having an attack of nerves.”

“I don't really give a damn,” Jack replied, looking thoroughly bored. “I don't have time to stay for the celebrations anyway. I'm heading back to Inverness, and then I'm sailing for Ceylon. If you don't stay in England too long, I might see you before I leave. Tell Whitcliffe I'm sorry he lost his heiress,” he added, waving to the rest of his family. “Maybe next time he should try to find a bride who isn't American—I understand they can be trouble.”

With that he slouched wearily against his seat, folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. He didn't so much as look out the window as the carriage ambled down the shaded laneway, leaving the others to frantically continue their search for the elusive Miss Amelia Belford.

Chapter Two

T
O LONDON,” AMELIA DIRECTED OLIVER, NERVOUSLY
clutching at the tatters of her ruined gown. “Please.”

“To the train station, Oliver. We're going to Inverness.”

Amelia regarded Jack in confusion. “Isn't Inverness in Scotland?”

“Unless they have recently moved it.”

“But I can't go to Scotland,” she protested. “I must get to London at once—that is where my betrothed is!”

“Your betrothed is standing by the church seething with rage about a half mile back.” Jack suddenly wondered if perhaps Miss Belford was mentally unstable. “I am happy to have Oliver turn the carriage around and reunite you with him if you wish.”

“Not Whitcliffe,” Amelia amended. “He was only my betrothed in the eyes of my mother and father, but he was never my true love. The truth of the matter is, Mr. Kent, I was secretly engaged at the time my parents arranged my betrothal to Lord Whitcliffe. Of course, he wasn't a duke,” she quickly added.

“Of course not.” He felt a stab of disappointment.

Somehow he had thought there was more to Miss Belford's gloriously capricious escape than the mundane desire to be with another man. For a brief moment he had imagined he had caught a glimpse of something wild and free within her, a flash of spirit and independence that set her apart from all the other sheltered, gently bred women he had known. She had talked of finding another life. He had assumed she meant breaking free of the fetters of her womanhood and forging a new existence entirely on her own. Instead she merely wanted to exchange one keeper for another. He should have suspected as much, he told himself, suddenly annoyed at having become involved in her romantic escapade. Few women would flee from a life of extraordinary affluence and status unless they knew they were falling into a gilded nest of comparable luxury. The only woman he had ever known to do such a thing was Genevieve, and he had always understood that she was unique.

“His name is Percy Baring,” Amelia continued, her cheeks now flushed with excitement. “He is the fifth Viscount Philmore. No doubt you have heard of him?”

“No.”

She blinked in astonishment. “You haven't? How peculiar. Lord Philmore knows everyone in London, or so it seemed every time we met. He belongs to the Marbury Club, which is terribly exclusive, and was at all the important balls and parties of the season.”

I'm sure he was,
Jack thought irritably. “I'm from Scotland, Miss Belford. I don't go to London much.”

“I see,” said Amelia. “I suppose that accounts for your accent, then. I couldn't help but notice that it was different—but then, everyone sounds strange to me over here,” she quickly added, not wanting to offend him, “just as I know I sound strange to them. Lord Whitcliffe told me that I would have to work on that, once we were married. He said my accent was atrocious, and that he couldn't have a duchess of his walking around sounding as if she didn't know how to speak proper English.” Her pale brows twisted together in a frown. “He actually said that I butchered words. I thought that rather funny, because I always thought that it was he who was mispronouncing words, not me—but I never would have dreamed of saying anything to him about it, for fear of injuring his feelings.”

The idea of old Whitcliffe having his feelings hurt by Miss Belford struck Jack as highly improbable. “Lord Philmore doesn't mind your accent?”

“He finds it charming.”

Of course he does,
Jack reflected wryly. With the potential of millions of pounds in dowry payments dangling over his head, Lord Philmore would undoubtedly claim to find everything about Miss Belford charming. After all, a viscount could not afford to be nearly as discriminating as a duke. “But a viscount wasn't high enough on your parents' ranking of aristocrats?” His voice was edged with contempt.

“It sounds awful when you put it like that,” Amelia acknowledged. “But it isn't what you think. Both my mother and my father come from simple beginnings, and my father has worked his entire life to achieve his financial success. While he has been absorbed with his business, my mother has struggled to elevate our family's place in society. Money doesn't buy respectability, Mr. Kent, and there are many society gatherings in New York from which my parents are still excluded.”

“And if you married a duke, that would change.”

“I don't think my mother is naive enough to believe that it would change how society looks at her and my father,” Amelia replied. “She is thinking about me and my brothers, and any children I might have. Marrying Lord Whitcliffe would have guaranteed their place in society.”

“She didn't care that you wanted to marry someone else?”

“She thinks I'm too young to understand what will make me happy,” she explained. “When I told her about Percy, she forbade me to ever see him again or even to write to him to tell him that my parents had learned of our relationship. She denied that we were engaged, saying that since my father hadn't given his permission, it was not a proper betrothal. I told her that we had sworn ourselves to each other, and that a union of the souls can never be separated.” Her blue eyes sparkled with steely defiance. “Don't you agree, Mr. Kent?”

Jack shrugged. Genevieve had spent over twenty years trying to break him of that unrefined habit, among many others, with only limited success. “I suppose.” He didn't have much experience with unions of the souls. “What did your mother say to that?”

“She said that I was just a child, and couldn't possibly know what was best for me, but that one day I would thank her for arranging my marriage to Lord Whitcliffe. And then she never permitted me to be alone, and ordered the servants to intercept all of my correspondence, so that I would not be able to get word to Percy of what had happened, and would not have knowledge of any notes he tried to send to me.”

“So you don't know how your viscount reacted when he heard that you were now officially engaged to marry Lord Whitcliffe?”

“I know in my heart that he was devastated,” Amelia told him, “and that he would have realized that it was not by my choice.”

Jack arched a skeptical brow. “What makes you think that he hasn't just gone and gotten himself betrothed to someone else?”

“Percy swore to me that there would never be anyone else for him, ever. I'm positive he has been heartbroken these past few months, as I have. He will be thrilled to discover I have returned to him, and that we are now free to marry as we planned.”

His deeply rooted cynicism made Jack wonder if this viscount's first concern might not be that by publicly defying her parents' wishes and running away on the day of her marriage, Miss Belford had effectively destroyed her relationship with them, thereby severing any possibility of either a dowry or inheritance in the process. Lord Philmore might have originally hoped that with a secret engagement and marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Belford would eventually come to accept their daughter's union, and would have been willing to help the newly wedded couple get settled in a manner comparable to the lavish lifestyle in which their precious daughter had been raised. But there was a marked difference between quietly eloping with an unattached heiress and marrying a runaway bride who was now at the center of a mortifying scandal.

“Does Philmore have any money of his own?”

Amelia was taken aback by the question.

“Forgive me.” Jack realized Miss Belford had probably never been exposed to the tawdry business of personal finance, and might not realize that the men who had courted her so enthusiastically would have been attracted to more than her uncommon beauty. “What I meant was—”

“I know exactly what you meant, Mr. Kent,” Amelia assured him tautly. “Despite what you may think of me, I'm not a fool. I have spent the last year on the marriage market in London and Paris, and I'm painfully aware of the fact that most men—Lord Whitcliffe included—look at me first and foremost as a prodigious source of income. London town houses and country estates are expensive to maintain, and many English lords currently find themselves in a position where they don't have sufficient income to keep a roof over their heads that isn't about to fall down about their ears. Marriage to an American heiress, even one with an atrocious accent like myself, provides them with the means to instantly eradicate their debts and support their lavish lifestyles, all while pouring new money into their precious, decrepit ancestral homes.”

Her cheeks were heated with indignation. It was clear he had insulted her.

“I can assure you that Viscount Philmore is different,” she continued emphatically. “Although I do not know the precise nature of his financial affairs, I can tell you that he is a man of honorable means and he doesn't care about the wealth of my family. Each time we were together, Percy swore that my fortune meant nothing to him—it was only I who had captured his heart.” Her eyes flashed with challenge. “Do you find that so impossible to believe, Mr. Kent?”

She was an enigma, Jack realized. One moment she seemed as forlorn as an abandoned child, huddled amidst the ragged remains of her gown with her scratched hands and her red-rimmed eyes. And the next she was like an outraged angel, filling the carriage with her strength and her passion as she defended the man to whom she believed she had united her soul. If this Philmore had any inkling of the woman breathing beneath the shimmering trappings of wealth and cultivation in which her family had swaddled her, he would have been a fool not to want her.

Unfortunately, in Jack's experience, most men born to a life of privilege were utter morons.

He didn't have time for this nonsense, he reminded himself impatiently. He was scheduled to meet with the manager of his shipping company to review its finances and finalize the details of the shipments scheduled for the next four months. He planned to remain in Inverness for no more than three days before boarding his ship for Ceylon. He didn't have time to go traipsing off to London to deliver Miss Belford into the arms of her paramour. But what the devil was he to do with her? He could hardly drag her all the way back to Inverness against her will and then abandon her. By helping her escape her marriage to Whitcliffe, he had inadvertently assumed responsibility for her, at least temporarily.

The most logical course of action was to see Miss Belford safely deposited into someone else's trust. While that would inconveniently delay his business dealings by a day or two, it would absolve Jack of any further responsibility regarding her welfare. If Philmore was as happy to see her as Miss Belford claimed he would be, then Jack could leave her in his tender charge to marry or do whatever she bloody well pleased while he got on with his own affairs.

“Oliver,” he called, “we're going to London after all.”

Oliver abruptly halted the horses and turned to scowl at him, his white brows knotted in exasperation. “Are ye sure, lad? I can always just stop for a bit at the side of the road while the two of ye make up yer minds. After all, I've nae better to do on this blisterin' afternoon.”

“I'm quite sure, Oliver,” Jack replied, wholly untroubled by the old man's churlish attitude. “Just get us there as quickly as you can.”

“Fine. London it is.” He grumbled something more under his breath that Jack couldn't quite hear as he snapped the reins smartly over the horses' hindquarters.

“Is he always quite so—discourteous?” wondered Amelia, amazed by the rude tone the driver had taken with Jack.

“Frequently.”

“Then why don't you discharge him?”

“Because he has been part of my family for years.”

Amelia didn't know what to make of that. Her mother had discharged scores of servants for far less serious infractions than the impertinent manner Oliver had taken with Jack. Certainly none of them were ever thought of as part of the family.

“Was he always a coachman?” She couldn't imagine another employer tolerating the old man's insolence.

“Actually, he was a thief.” Jack was amused by the look of incredulity on her face. “And quite a good one, too.”

Amelia stared in fascination at the back of Oliver's snowy head. She had never met a criminal of any kind before—at least, not knowingly. “Didn't you check his references?”

“Actually, I didn't hire him,” Jack told her. “My mother employed him years ago. She took him straight from the Inveraray jail to her home, and certainly wasn't expecting him to have any references.”

“Wasn't she concerned about having a dangerous criminal in her employ?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Other than his sharp tongue, Oliver isn't dangerous. My mother likes to help people who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances.”

“Then it seems you and she have something in common. You both have very kind hearts.”

Jack said nothing. It wasn't often that anyone accused him of being kind.

“Forgive me,” Amelia apologized, stifling a yawn. “I'm afraid I didn't sleep very much last night—or the last few nights, for that matter.”

“It is several hours to London. You should try to get some sleep.”

“I don't think I could possibly sleep in this crowded coach. Not that you are making it crowded,” she quickly amended, although in truth Jack's immense frame and long legs were taking up much of the available space. “It's this ridiculous gown that is making it impossible for me to get comfortable. My mother ordered it from Charles Worth, the famous designer in Paris.” She valiantly began to beat down the expensive silk and satin exploding around her so that she might have more room. “I don't suppose you have heard of him,” she added, remembering that he had never heard of Viscount Philmore.

“Actually, I am familiar with the name. Although I don't take much notice of women's fashions, my sister Grace has a small dress shop in Inverness. She designs the gowns herself, and I have heard her mention Mr. Worth.”