DARE THE WILD WIND (31 page)

Polly set the pewter candlestick on the bedside table.  "Not so as I could see, miss."

Brenna felt a brief rush of relief.  But it was short
  lived.  Charles might only be late.  To his own wedding.  Brenna almost laughed.  How gladly she would fail to appear. 

"Help me dress," she said, sliding her legs reluctantly over the edge of the high bed.

Polly brought a satin wrapper instead.  "
M'lady, there's no time.  Lord Wittworth gave express orders to bring you posthaste."     

Brenna started to protest, then let the words trail away.  If Malcolm chose to rob her of this last small dignity, what did it matter?  Let the ceremony be seen for the travesty it was, with the bride in her nightclothes, dragged to say unwilling vows.

Her tangled hair hastily brushed and tumbling in a burnished mass down her back, Brenna tied the lace and cream satin dressing gown tight around her waist.  She followed Polly down the great staircase, the light from the candle playing a ghostly pattern on the
chiaroscuro
murals on the wall.  A footman waited, and the doors to the Italian salon swung open.  Brenna hesitated for a second, briefly dazzled by the blaze of the chandelier and the glow from the fireplace beyond her sight at the far end of the room.

The Italian drawing room was hung with brilliant wine
red Genoa velvet and furnished with giltwood chairs and settees.  A Florentine cabinet of
pietre dure
dominated the wall opposite Brenna, and Malcolm stood in front of it.  The mixture of satisfaction and rancor in his face made her straighten. 

Eleanore sat
en negligếe
on one of the delicately  wrought chairs, oddly sedate.  Geoffrey Wittworth stepped forward.

"I apologize for calling you downstairs a
t this hour, but the circumstances warrant waking you."

Brenna felt an icy chill crawl up the back of her neck.  What could shake the entire household from their beds?  Despite the hostility in Malcolm's eyes, nothing in his expression suggested disappointment.  Nothing untoward could have happened to Charles.   Brenna's dread took sudden form.  "Is it Fenella?" 

"No news of your friend, I'm afraid." 

The voice came from the far end of the salon.  Brenna turned to see Drake Seton lounging by the fireplace, one elbow resting on the high marble mantel.  Despite his careless pose, Drake's power
ful frame gathered almost imperceptibly as she faced him, and his hazel  gold eyes held hers for a second.

"I flatter myself
I'm the bearer of happier tidings," he said in his maddening, mocking manner.    Brenna turned back to Geoffrey and her brother.

"The Earl has done you a signal honor," Malcolm said stiffly.  "One I hope you'll have the grace to appreciate."

The glance he shot to the Earl was fawning, but his smile for Brenna was thin, and there was something warning in his look. 

"I don't understand," Brenna began.

Malcolm cut her off.  "The Honourable Earl of Stratford has offered for your hand in marriage."

Brenna blinked.  Her exhaustion and distracted state must have affected her hearing.  Utter silence fell in the room.

"At last I've had the pleasure of surprising you."  Drake's voice was dry and edged with irony.  "Come, Brenna, you're never at a loss for a retort."

Dazed, Brenna stared at him.  "My lord," she stammered, "you can't have considered the difference in our rank."

Drake's tall body uncoiled from his lazy posture next to the mantel. "I have the good fortune to be a position to ignore rank."

Brenna caught a glint of amusement in Drake's eyes at Malcolm's quickly suppressed offense, and Drake flashed her an unexpected smile.  Brenna felt suddenly lightheaded. 

"But the King..." she faltered.  By custom, peers of the Earl's birth required the King's permission to wed.

"The King has granted his blessing."

Drake strode across the room toward her.  His eyes didn't swerve from hers, and Brenna couldn't drag her gaze from his face.      

"His Majesty's good wishes occasioned the lateness of the hour.  I've only just ridden from a call on
Cumberland in Essex, and an audience with the King at Windsor."

"It appears the Earl
isn't entirely out of the Duke of Cumberland's favor."  Geoffrey's voice seemed far away.  His words had a gratified ring.  "His Royal Highness saw fit to add his support to the Earl's petition."

Drake's towering figure seemed to fill her vision.  None of his arrogance had diminished.  His deep
set eyes and hawkish nose gave him a predatory air that belied his civilized manner, and she hadn't forgotten the ruthless strength of his broad set shoulders and lean muscular body.

He took her hand, and lifted it with exaggerated ceremony to his lips.  "Can you devise any more objections?"  

Brenna stared into his unfathomable gold
flecked eyes.  He didn't love her.  Like Charles, he only wanted to possess her.  His back to Malcolm and the rest, he turned her hand over and kissed her palm.  A lightning shock of pleasure arrowed through her.  His sensual mouth twitched at the startled gasp that escaped her. 

"What say
you, Brenna?" he asked in a low soft voice.  "Will you have me?"

Brenna hesitated, her palm still tingling with the heat of his lips.  Married to Drake, she would be free of her brother.  The Earl's power and wealth were irresistible to Malcolm.  Nothing short of his greed and ambition could have turned aside his plan to wed her to Charles.  And nothing would deter him from tossing her to Charles if she threw D
rake's offer back in his face.

A small voice inside her cried out
Cam's name, but in spite of her grief, some irresolute part of her clung to life.  She had been given only one other means of eluding Charles Godwin.  And any man would be better than Charles, even Drake Seton.

Brenna met Drake's look with a certainty that surprised her.

"If the King has given his blessing," she said in a clear steady voice, "then I can hardly refuse."    

                            
*****

"Your wedding is the talk of London."  Eleanore gave a small wry laugh.  "There won't be elbow room in Saint Paul's today."

Brenna fidgeted under the comb and curling iron of the most sought
  after hairdresser in the city.  "I'd have much preferred a quiet ceremony with you and Geoffrey as witnesses."    

"And deny everyone the chance to see you at last?  After all, you've carried off the prize of the peerage." 

Brenna didn't relish being put on display, but the marriage of an earl to the daughter of an obscure Scottish baron invited speculation.  Drake had no need to wed an heiress, but the only surviving son of a great family rarely married so far beneath him.  Brenna was acutely conscious she would bring him little in the way of a dowry.  Even if Malcolm had been a loving and generous brother, Lochmarnoch could scarcely provide a dowry suitable to the occasion.  Alongside the Setons, the Dalmorals were nobodies from the country, with a purse as small as their influence at court. 

"Lady Brenna will dazzle
tout le monde
," Monsieur Toulon declared as he put a last touch on her hair.  Drawn loosely back from her forehead and high over her ears, her titian tresses had been caught into a spiraling cascade of long thick curls brushing the nape of her neck.  Seed pearls and dainty starred blossoms twined upward through her hair to catch at the gossamer lace of the veil Brenna would don for her journey to Saint Paul's Cathedral.

His glance sought Eleanore's approval.  "A goddess,
n'est  ce pas
?  The beauties at court pale beside such a bride."

Brenna swallowed a remark that flattery was a part of his art, but Eleanore inspected his handiwork with satisfaction.  He packed the implements of his trade and bade them farewell, eager to be on his way to his next client.  Eleanore caught her expression in the gilt
scrolled mirror, and placed her hands gently on her shoulders.      

"My dear," she said, "it's natural to have a case of nerves.  Monsieur Toulon is right, you know.  You are quite lovely."

Brenna's reflection gazed back at her, stiff as a dressmaker's doll, decked in all the trappings of the latest fashion at court.  When she dreamed of her wedding to
Cam, she had longed to look as she did now, afloat in a silver cloud of satin and lace.  But not pale, not torn by doubt.  Ready to go to the man she loved.

But she didn't go to
Cam today.  She went to Drake Seton.  It would be Drake who would claim her, Drake who would touch her as he had that night she had tried so hard to forget, when he had carried her to his bed and ruthlessly plundered her senses with such calculating and mocking skill.  The memory made heat rise in Brenna's face.  She had very nearly given way to blind, mindless instinct, to some primitive unnamed part of her beyond reason.  How he must have laughed at her protests of loyalty and fidelity to Cam.  And how he could laugh tonight.  Their wedding night.

She didn't trust herself to think of that now.

In the weeks since they were betrothed, she had rejoiced to see very little of Drake, that business at his estates in
Surrey and Cornwall had called him away from London.  But she couldn't postpone their reckoning any longer.

Brenna forced a smile for Eleanore.  "I'll be content if I don't disgrace you."

"Don't talk nonsense," Eleanore scolded.  "This is a day you'll look back on when you're eighty.  You have every right to outshine the entire court."

Brenna
meant to put this day behind her.  Drake might not want her as much once the novelty of conquest palled.  From the tales other women told, Brenna knew that a husband's interest could wane, that a titled peer was admired as much for the mistresses he kept as his exploits in statescraft and war.  Would she welcome that time when it came, or curse him for making her a laughingstock?

Wed to
Cam, she would never have lived her life in the bright sun of court intrigue and gossip.  But Cam had loved her, and he would never have held her up to ridicule, never have betrayed her.  Did she fear Drake more for the unexpected alchemy he could work on her, or because of the power he would hold over her, to use her or humiliate her?

"Don't  you realize you're the envy of half the marriageable girls in
London?" Eleanore said lightly.  "Not every bride can boast such a dashing effort to claim her hand."

Brenna glanced up at Eleanore.  "Drake can be persuasive when it suits him," she granted.

"Dear child, he personally rode to the country to petition the Duke for his support, and half the night back to
Windsor Castle to get the King's consent to the marriage.  A lesser man would have been content to send a messenger, especially one of the Earl's rank."

Brenna couldn't deny her impending vows with Charles had prompted his haste.  And that, once he had obtained the King's leave, Drake had made directly for Malcolm's lodging in Whitefriars.       

"I'd foregone all hope for sleep that night," he had told h
er in his offhand way.  "I saw no reason to let your brother snore peacefully in his bed until morning."

Brenna shrugged at Eleanore's hymn of praise.  "The Earl may be fond of exercise."

"God in heaven, the man loves you," Eleanore said in an exasperated voice.  "Loath as you are to admit it."

Arguing with Eleanore was useless.  Drake had spoken no word of love to Brenna in the month since they were betrothed.  There was no need for pretense between them.  What he felt for her was desire, and she was bound to him by gratitude for her escape from Charles.

"No one would take you for such a romantic."  Apart from all Eleanore had done for her, Brenna valued her as a friend.  It would do no good to tell her she had never seen Drake's bullying, taunting side.  "You will have to admit his timing was sudden."

"No more than your brother's scheme to marry you off on a day's notice," Eleanore retorted, fresh indignation surfacing.  "It was one thing to arrange a marriage for you, and quite another to rush you in front of a vicar with so little warning. 

"It was altogether indecent, and presumptuous of him to think holding the ceremony in our house could color the whole affair with respectability."  The heat of her words surprised Brenna. 

"Geoffrey and I were agreed on that score, and agreed that it would do no harm for Geoffrey to mention what your brother planned when he saw the Earl that evening at their club."    

Brenna stiffened in her chair.  Eleanore had remarked weeks ago that both Drake and Geoffrey were members of the same select club on
Leicester Square.  But Geoffrey was fonder of sitting before the fire at his own hearth than playing cards and gaming.  A fortnight could pass between his visits to Leicester Square. 

"You sent Geoffrey to Drake?" Brenna asked in shock.

Eleanore smiled.  "I simply suggested to Geoffrey that he might enjoy a game of whist.  Your future husband is known to frequent the club daily, and it was perfectly natural for Geoffrey to let drop the announcement your brother made that afternoon."