Trouble at the Wedding (11 page)

He grinned and moved a bit closer to her. “You say that now, but those cold nights in the castle might change your mind. Don't be surprised if you're dipping into the brandy by Christmas. Still, if you don't like spirits . . .” He paused, looking down. “There are other ways to keep warm.”

His gaze skimmed over her and his mind began to imagine various methods of applying heat to those luscious curves of hers, a flight of fancy that had the warmth of arousal spreading through his own body quick as lighting a match. But there was no acting on that, unfortunately, not with half a million dollars at stake. With reluctance, he brought his baser nature under control and forced his gaze back up to her face.

She was frowning at him. “Listen, sugar, I don't have much time here, and I don't need you looking at me like you're a cat and I'm the cream jug.”

“Sorry,” he said. He wasn't sorry, not really, but she did have a point. This might be his only chance to talk her off the cliff she was about to jump from. He couldn't allow her luscious body to distract him.

On the other hand, he reflected, perhaps his best way of changing her mind was by making her see there were more fish in the sea than ever came out of it. A bit of harmless dalliance to show her she was an attractive woman who didn't have to marry Rumsford, who could take her time about marrying. He rather liked that notion. He studied the generous swell of her breasts beneath her pristine white shirtwaist and decided this was an idea worth exploring.

Still, when she folded her arms and he returned his gaze to her face, he knew it wasn't one he could explore at the present moment. She was watching him through narrowed eyes, those full lips pressed in a disapproving line.

He improvised for something innocuous to say. “It's just that I don't know quite where to begin. There are so many ways you could ruin your chances.”

Her lips parted and her resentment vanished, replaced by a hint of alarm. “How many ways?”

“Hundreds. Thousands.”

“Heavens,” she said, her voice a bit faint, the first sign of apprehension he'd seen yet. “Maybe it'd be best if you put these rules in order by importance then. What is the most important rule?”

“Producing a son,” he said at once.

“That's hardly something I have any control over!”

“Fair or not, it's in your best interests to see that you have a son. That goes a long way toward social acceptance. And there's also the fact that until you have a son, you are constrained by absolute fidelity. You must remain faithful to your husband.”

“Well, I should hope so. I don't need you to tell me adultery is wrong and that a married woman should be faithful!”

“It doesn't work both ways, I'm afraid. You must be chaste, but Rumsford is allowed as many mistresses as he can afford, so long as he is discreet and doesn't flaunt them in front of you.”

She didn't react to that quite the way he'd hoped she would. “Men have mistresses sometimes,” she said, not seeming the least bit shocked. “It happens.”

He lifted his fist to his mouth and gave a cough. “Yes, but Rumsford is allowed to use his income from you to pay for his mistresses. He can use your money to buy them houses, clothes, jewels.”

She set her jaw. “Over my dead body.”

“How shall you prevent it? Did you put a clause in your marriage settlement cutting off his income if he acquires a mistress?”

Clearly taken aback, Annabel opened her mouth, then closed it again, and it took her several moments to answer. “Of course I didn't! That never even occurred to me. But surely—” She stopped. Her tongue touched her lips, a gesture of uncertainty and apprehension, the most hopeful sign he'd seen yet. “Surely, I don't need to do that. Bernard wouldn't . . . he wouldn't use his income from me for . . . for other women.”

Pressing his advantage, Christian gave her a look of deliberate pity. “Believe that, do you?”

“Yes!” She scowled, on the defensive. “Yes, I do.”

Christian shrugged, playing this hand as if he had no stake in the game. “He's your fiancé. You know him best, I suppose. Still, what income would he use, if not yours? He has no other. And besides, these arrangements are the norm in Britain, and no one thinks anything of it. In fact, you would be ridiculed if you complained about him spending your money on his mistresses. We British hate a fuss. So you have to bear up and smile and act the part of the contented wife no matter what.”

Her chin lifted, a gesture he suspected was quite familiar to her family. “I don't believe you,” she accused. “Paying for mistresses with a wife's money is acceptable? It's abominable. It's indecent. Why, it's . . . it's just plain unfair! You must be lying.”

Sadly, he wasn't. He might be exaggerating things a bit, but that wasn't the same. “Fair?” he said, forcing amusement into his voice. “Love, if you think there's anything fair about English marriage, you'd best cry off now, while you still have the chance.”

“Why?” she countered, one auburn brow arching up in skepticism. “Because you're the sort of man who'd never lie to a girl?”

Strangely, that hurt. It shouldn't, for he'd proved himself quite skilled at lying years ago, but it did. Still, he wasn't going to lose his advantage by showing it. “I'm not lying about this, Annabel. I know I make light of things, and most of what I say is utter rubbish, but not this. If you go into your marriage thinking it'll be different for you—better, happier, more fair than the marriages of the American girls who came before you—you'll only end up being more miserable, because the greatest unhappiness a person can feel in life is unmet expectations.”

She sucked in her breath. “Bernard wouldn't spend my money for his mistresses,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to believe it. “He would never treat me that way.”

Behind the positive words, Christian heard her doubt, and he played it for all he was worth.

“If that's true,” he murmured, “then he must love you a great deal.”

She winced. He was watching her closely, and he saw it. She turned away, hiding it almost at once, but not before he'd seen it. “He doesn't, does he?”

She didn't look at him. Instead, she started to leave, but she saw the heavy crate blocking the door, and she once again faced him, but she looked decidedly uneasy.

“He doesn't love you,” Christian said, pushing his advantage. “And what's more, you know it.”

“Bernard,” she said primly, “is very fond of me.”

“Fond?” He laughed low in his throat. “Well, that's sure to make him treat you with respect.”

Pain shimmered across her face, and too late, he remembered the deep need she had for respect. She took a step back and hit the wall behind her, but even hurt, even cornered, she wasn't the sort to admit defeat. “I don't need any mockery from you.”

“I'll accept for the sake of argument that he is fond of you,” Christian said, gentling his voice. “But it won't stop him from spending your money any way he likes. He can pay for his mistresses and his bastards. He can drink, gamble, and travel the world without you. And he will.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Men are men,” he said with a shrug. “Call it another rule.”

She glared at him as if he was the one who'd invented all these rules in the first place. “Not all men would disrespect their wives the way you describe!”

“I hate to destroy any romantic illusions you may have about my sex, but for the most part, we do what we want as long as there are no unpleasant consequences to consider.”

“Did you?”

Startled by the question, he blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You were married to an heiress. Did you spend her money on other women?”

He looked away, an image of Evie flashing across his mind—of an angelic, heart-shaped face and golden hair, and blue eyes that gazed at him with far more adoration than he could ever deserve.

He took a deep breath. “No,” he admitted, grateful for that one grain of truth in a marriage based on a slew of lies. “I spent it on a lot of other things, but never on other women. Hard to believe, I know,” he added with a laugh, looking at her again, driving the image of Evie back into the past. “I am such a scoundrel. But then, my wife died only three years after we were married, so I didn't have much of a chance to be unfaithful. Eventually, I probably would have been,” he added, striving to make himself out as callous a brute as possible. “I did all the rest. Why shouldn't I? I'm a gentleman of the aristocracy, with an enormous income at my disposal, access to a vast array of distractions, and a moral code that is, I regret to say, woefully inadequate to resisting temptation. What was there to stop me? Love? Hell, my wife and I weren't in love. At least—” He stopped, and then for no reason at all, he blurted out the rest, a truth he'd had no intention to reveal. “I wasn't.”

“I see.” Her animosity seemed to have gone, for she was studying him with a thoughtful, assessing gaze, and he had the sick feeling she did indeed see, that her gaze had penetrated the glib, devil-may-care show he put on and seen the real truth: how much he loathed himself.

“Good Lord,” he drawled, forcing out light, careless words to cover the sudden, terrible silence. “How do we keep veering off the subject? We were discussing your future matrimonial success, not my matrimonial failure. Now—”

“Was it a failure?”

There was something in that question—something doubtful. Something reluctant, as if she didn't believe him.

This girl wasn't like Evie. She was strong willed and hard-boiled, without any trace of Evie's soft romanticism, and yet in both of them was the same fatal flaw. Vulnerability.

It was in every line of her upturned face. It was in those big, caramel-brown eyes and that vividly expressive mouth, in the little crinkle of doubt between her auburn brows and in the determination of her delicately molded jaw. Once a chap got past the heart-stopping beauty of it, Annabel Wheaton's face was as easy to read as a book. She cared too much what people thought of her. She believed too strongly that she could make life into what she wanted it to be. She felt too sure that people were intrinsically good and would do what was right. But most important, she believed, in her heart of hearts, that a rake could change. Girls like her were a fortune hunter's dream.

Christian took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said at last. “My marriage was a failure. I didn't love my wife. I married her for her money.” He paused to let that ugly truth sink in, then he added with calculated brutality, “And that's why Rumsford is marrying you.”

He expected her to hurl a spate of furious denial at his head, but she did not. “I know that's partly true,” she admitted. “He wouldn't have married me if I'd been poor, that's for sure.”

It wasn't just partly true. It was the whole truth. “That doesn't bother you?”

He watched her jaw set. “Not particularly.”

That surprised him. Didn't a girl always want true love and happy endings? It went with the castle and the earl like peas went with carrots. “Every marriage ought to be based on love, Annabel. At least at the start. Don't you want love?”

She made a sound of impatience. “You seem to think I'm some naive little fool with stars in her eyes, but I'm not. As I said, I know Bernard doesn't love me, but he's fond of me—”

“What about you?” he interrupted. “Do you love him?”

She paused, a pause that was a fraction of a second too long. “Of course.”

“How much?”

She met his inquiring gaze head-on. “Enough to be faithful.”

“Which means not at all.” He leaned toward her, close enough that his breath stirred the delicate corkscrew curl that grazed her cheek, close enough to catch the elusive scent of her French perfume. Almost close enough for his lips to touch hers. Desire began thrumming through his body again, even as he sensed her hardening resolve and felt his chance to change her mind slipping away. Hanging on to his control, he tried one more time to make her see how wrong it would be to marry Rumsford. “You don't really want to marry him, do you?”

“Of course I do,” she whispered, and her tongue touched her lips. “Why wouldn't I?”

“You might be making a mistake.”

“Why?” She tilted her head back, her full pink lips curved in a knowing little smile. “Because I ought to marry you instead and give you all my money?”

“I told you, I'm not a marrying man.” He strove to think, but lust was quickly overtaking him, coursing through his body, almost impossible to resist, making it difficult to think. “But I'm one of the many men you could enslave if you chose to.”

“Really?” Her lips parted. Her lashes drifted down until those dark eyes were half closed. Her voice, when she spoke, was a soft, honeyed hush. “Somehow, I don't get the feeling that's a proposal.”

“There are different kinds of proposals.” He moved, not even realizing his own intent until she jerked as if coming out of a daze and he felt her palm flatten against his chest, stopping him before he could kiss her.

“What in Sam Hill am I doin'?” she muttered, staring at him in horror.

He smiled. “I think you were about to let me kiss you.”

She didn't deny it. “I must be the biggest fool in the entire U.S. of A. Get back,” she added, her palm pushing against his chest.

He should. Safest thing all around, and yet, he didn't. His gaze slid to her mouth, but before he could even move, her hand slid upward between them, her fingers pressing against his mouth.

“Listen here, sugar,” she said, and despite the fact that his body was on fire, he almost wanted to smile. She was striving to seem confident, as if she had the situation well in hand, but the breathless rush in which she said those words gave her away. “I appreciate the information you've given me, I really do. I'm sure I'll find it very useful. But . . .” She paused, her warm fingertips sliding away from his mouth. “Information's all you'll be giving me, and I hope that's understood.”