When the Marquess Met His Match (28 page)

“Very wise of you,” he said gravely, taking it. “But how does this help me know she can trust me?”

“You’ll know if you read it.”

He glanced through it, and he only needed to reach the middle of the first page to know what she meant. He looked up, clearly stunned. “This gives me all your . . . er . . . her money. All of it. No conditions.”

“Yes. Her estate is worth seven hundred forty-two thousand pounds. Give or take a pound or two.” Belinda’s heart constricted, for she loved him so much, and she wanted that money for him, and she was terribly afraid that he was going to refuse it.

“I already told you, I won’t take it,” he said, confirming her guess.

“She won’t marry you unless you accept it. She wants you to have it, so you don’t have a choice. That is if . . . if you want to marry her.” She entwined her fingers together, more scared than she’d ever been in her life, and more hopeful and more in love. “Do you?” she whispered.

“I don’t know yet.” He tossed the marriage settlement to the floor, then he took her hands. Gently, he pulled them apart, held them fast in his. “There’s one more thing I need to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Does she love me?” He sank to his knees, looking up at her just the same way he had that blissful afternoon two days ago. “Because I love her. I love her more than my life.”

“Yes,” Belinda said on a sob. “She loves you.”

“I think she has to tell me that herself. She has to say it.”

“I love you.” Belinda fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing kisses to his face. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

When she finished, he bent his head to take her lips for a deeper kiss, but she didn’t want that. She wanted an answer. “Damn it, Nicholas,” she said, pulling back, “are you going to marry me, or aren’t you?”

“I believe . . .” He paused, and she watched in disbelief as he picked up the marriage settlement and ripped it in half. “Yes, Belinda, I will.”

“Finally! You took long enough to decide. And my attorneys did a great deal of work this afternoon when they drafted that document, by the way,” she added, nodding to the torn fragments in his hands. “Now they’ll have to write a new one. And as much as I appreciate the gesture you’ve just made—and I do appreciate it, honestly—we have to be practical. If you don’t take my dowry, what will we live on?”

“I do have an idea.” He tossed the marital settlement into the air and slid his arms around her, pulling her close as the pieces of paper floated down around them. “How would you feel about investing in a brewery?”

She laughed. “I hear it’s a sound investment.”

“Very sound.” He kissed her mouth. “When shall we have the wedding?”

She kissed him back. “Next week?”

“Next week?” He shook his head. “No, no, that won’t do. These things can’t be rushed.” He gave her a wicked grin. “To do things properly, I believe we shall have to have a long engagement.”

She groaned, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “No long engagement,” she said firmly.

“But Belinda, courtship rituals are important.”

“There’s only one that’s important to us.” She stood up, pulling him with her. “Take me upstairs, Trubridge,” she ordered, “kiss me breathless, tear my clothes off, and make passionate love to me, or this wedding’s off.”

“Oh, very well, if you insist upon flinging yourself at me in this shameless way, I suppose I must capitulate.” He wrapped one arm around her back and hooked the other beneath her knees. He lifted her into his arms. “I do have one more question,” he said as he carried her toward the door.

“What’s that?”

“Is it proper form for a marquess to marry his matchmaker?”

“Who cares?” she said, and kissed him.

Continue reading for a sneak peek

at the next novel in Laura Lee Guhrke’s

An American Heiress in London series

How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days

Available in Spring 2014

from Avon Books

R
oberts had barely brought the carriage to a halt before Edie was out of the vehicle and racing toward the station. “Bring the luggage, Roberts, would you?” she called over her shoulder as she ran up the steps and opened the door. Without waiting for an answer, she went inside, passed through the small station building, and emerged out the opposite side onto the platform. It was empty, save one man who leaned back against the pillar behind him in a careless pose, hat pulled low. Surrounded by stacks of luggage, he seemed to have no inclination to board the train, and Edie could only presume he had just disembarked from the first-class carriage beside him and was waiting for a porter.

Foreign, she thought at once, and passed him without a second glance or another thought, making for the ticket window. There, Mr. Jones was bent over that morning’s
Clyffeton Gazette
, and she gave a cough, causing him to look up.

“Your Grace,” he said and straightened to respectful attention at once, shoving aside the local newspaper. “How may I be of service?”

“My sister and her governess are to take this train to Kent, but we are terribly late. Could you perhaps persuade the conductor to delay departure until they have time to board?”

“I will try, Your Grace.” The clerk bowed with a tug of his cap, stepped out from behind the ticket window, and bustled off to board the train and find the conductor. Edie glanced back over her shoulder, but the others had not yet followed her to the platform, and because she did not want to think about her sister’s impending departure, she occupied her mind by giving the stranger nearby a more thorough study.

Definitely foreign, she decided, although she didn’t know quite why he gave her that impression. He was dressed for the country in well-cut, typical English tweeds, but nonetheless, there was something un-English about him. Perhaps it was his negligent pose, or the way his brown felt hat was pulled sleepily over his eyes. Or perhaps it was the mahogany and ivory walking stick in his hand, or the worn portmanteau of crocodile leather by his feet, or the brass-studded trunks stacked nearby. Or perhaps it was merely the steam from the train that swirled around him like mist. But something about the man spoke of exotic places far away from this sleepy little corner of England.

Her curiosity was aroused. None of the families in the county were entertaining this week and she couldn’t imagine what reason a foreigner would have for coming here, but she supposed she’d know before the day was out.

Clyffeton was a picturesque little village on the Norfolk coast at the top of The Wash, a place of strategic importance when Vikings were plundering England’s coastline, but nowadays it was nothing more than a sleepy by-water. Even its boast of having a ducal seat couldn’t save it from being quaint, insular, and hopelessly old-fashioned. Here in Clyffeton, a man like this would stick out like a pair of red knickers on a vicar’s washing line. Within an hour, she guessed, the village would be buzzing like bees about this stranger’s arrival. Within two, his bona fides would be established, his background unearthed, his intentions known. By teatime, her maid would probably be able to tell her all about him.

“You stopped it from leaving.”

Joanna’s voice, dismayed and accusatory, interrupted her speculations, and Edie turned, the stranger forgotten. “Of course,” she answered, pasting on a smile for her sister’s benefit. “Wonderful thing, being a duchess. They delay trains for me.”

“Of course they do,” Joanna muttered in disgust. “I should have known they would.”

Mrs. Simmons came bustling up. “I’ve secured a porter. He and Roberts are loading the luggage.” She lifted the pair of tickets in her black-gloved hand. “Best we go aboard and not keep the train waiting on us any longer.”

“All right, then.” Joanna lifted her chin, trying to put on an indifferent air about it all. “I suppose I have to go, since you’re both so determined.”

Beneath the nonchalance, there was fear. Edie sensed it, and though it tore at her heart, she could not give in to it. Desperate, she turned to the governess. “Watch over her. See that she’s settled in and has everything she needs before . . .” She paused and took a deep breath. “Before you leave her.”

The governess gave a nod. “Of course I will, Your Grace. Come, Joanna.”

The girl’s face twisted, broke up. Her defiance crumbled. “Edie, don’t make me go!”

Mrs. Simmons’ brisk voice intervened. “None of this, now, Joanna. You are the sister of a duchess and a young lady of good society. Behave accordingly.”

Joanna didn’t seem inclined to behave like a lady. She wrapped her arms around Edie, clinging to her like a barnacle. “Don’t send me away.”

“Hush, now.” She rubbed her sister’s back, striving to keep her own emotions in control as Joanna gave a sob against her shoulder. “They’ll take good care of you at Willowbank.”

“Not as good as you.”

Edie gently began to pull back, and though it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, she extricated herself from her sister’s embrace. “Go on, now. Be brave, my darling. And I shall see you at Christmas.”

“That’s forever away.” Joanna wiped at her face and turned angrily away to follow the governess onto the train. She boarded without a backward glance, but it wasn’t more than a moment later before she was sliding down the first window and sticking her head out. “Can’t you come visit me before Christmas?” she asked, folding her arms atop the open window as Mrs. Simmons continued on toward their seats further down the car.

“We’ll see. I want you to settle in without any distraction from me, but we’ll see. In the meantime, write to me and tell me everything. Who you meet and what your schoolmistresses are like, and all about your lessons.”

“It would serve you right if I don’t send you a single letter.” Joanna scowled, her face still damp with tears. “I shan’t write a word. I’ll keep you in suspense all year long, wondering what I’m doing. No, wait,” she amended. “I’ll do better than that. I shall cause so much havoc, they’ll expel me and send me home.”

“And here I thought you’d want a season in London when you turn eighteen,” Edie retorted, her voice shaking with the effort not to break into tears herself. “If you’re expelled from Willowbank, the only season you’ll get will be a place far more remote than Kent. I’ll send you to some convent in Ireland.”

“Empty threat,” Joanna muttered, wiping at her face. “We’re not Catholic. And besides, knowing you, I doubt I’ll ever have a season. It’d be too much for your nerves.”

“You’ll have a season.” Even as she gave the assurance, she found the idea of safeguarding her sister by putting her in a convent far more appealing. “If you manage to behave yourself.”

Joanna sniffed. “I knew you weren’t above blackmail.”

The whistle blew, signaling the train was about to pull out, and as her sister stretched out her hand, Edie reached up to give it a quick squeeze. “Be good, my darling, and please, for once in your life, do what you’re told. And I shall see you at Christmas. Maybe before.”

She knew she ought to stay until the train was gone, but another moment, and she’d fall apart. So she waved brightly to her sister and turned to leave before she started bawling like a baby.

Her escape, however, proved very short-lived. As she started back across the platform, the voice of the stranger calling her name stopped her in her tracks.

“Hullo, Edie.”

Even her beloved sister was momentarily forgotten as she turned to the man on the platform. Strangers did not speak to duchesses, and Edie had been a duchess long enough to be astonished by the fact that this one had spoken to her. So astonished, in fact, that she couldn’t think of a reply. And when he lifted his head and pushed back his hat to reveal his eyes—piercing, brilliant gray eyes that seemed to see straight through her—her astonishment deepened into shock. This man was no foreign stranger.

This man was her husband.

“Stuart?” His name was a startled cry torn from her throat, but he didn’t seem to notice that in it was none of the joy that a reunion between husband and wife ought to convey. He doffed the hat and inclined his head a bit, though it was hardly a bow. He didn’t bother to straighten away from the pillar, and that almost impudent gesture only served to confirm the ghastly truth that her husband was here, a mere half dozen feet from her, and not the thousands of miles away he was supposed to be.

Good manners dictated a greeting of some sort beyond the mere cry of his name, but though she opened her mouth, no words came out. Unable to speak, Edie could only stare at the man she’d married five years ago and hadn’t seen since.

Africa, she appreciated at once, was a hard continent. That fact was evident in every aspect of his appearance. It was in his tanned skin, in the faint creases that edged his eyes and his mouth, and in the sun-torched glints of gold and amber in his dark brown hair. It was in the harsh, lean planes of his face and in the long, strong lines of his body. It was in the exotic walking stick in his hand and in the assessing look in his eyes. He was studying her rather as a hunter might study possible prey, reminding her forcibly of his profession.

During the years of his absence, she’d wondered on occasion what Africa was like. Now she knew, for in the man before her she could see many aspects of that particular continent—its relentless nature, its wild, adventurous spirit, and the uncompromising toll it took on those who were merely human.

Gone was the carefree, handsome young man who’d blithely married a girl he didn’t even know, left that girl in charge of his entire retinue of estates, and gone off for parts unknown with happy insouciance. Returning in his place was someone completely different, someone so different that she’d passed right by him without so much as a glimmer of recognition. Never would she have thought five years could change a man so much.

But what was he doing here? She glanced past him to the black leather trunks stacked on the platform, to the suitcases and portmanteaus around his feet, and the implications of all that luggage hit her with sudden force. When she looked at him again and saw his mouth tighten, that tiny movement confirmed the awful suspicion forming in her mind more effectively than any words.

Home is the hunter
, she thought wildly, and her dismay deepened into dread as she realized the perfect life she’d created for herself five years ago might have just crumbled into dust.