Duty Before Desire (14 page)

“Hear me out, Miss Parks,” Lord Sheridan said rapidly in a low tone. “Carlton House is just over there,” he said, pointing to a high wall edging the parkland. “If you scream, you'll have the Royal Guard on us.” He flashed her that charming smile. “Wales would find it endlessly amusing that my proposal of marriage brought a woman to hysterics, but let's not give him more ammunition to use against me, hmm?”

She blinked, for a moment taken aback by what he'd said. “
Wales?
Are you on such familiar terms with the Regent?”

The man shrugged. “My brother is a marquess, as was my father before him. I've spent more time at court than I care to remember. Our beloved quasi monarch sometimes finds me diverting of a dull evening. But returning to the topic at hand, will you please grant me the opportunity to tell you my idea? This was your secret meeting, do recall, and you're the one who asked my help. I'm trying to give it to you, if you'd leave off waving down those fellows over there long enough to listen.”

Arcadia lowered the hand she had been waving to catch the attention of the passing horseback riders. “Very well,” she said, huffing a sigh. “If I hear your plan, will you accept my rejection and return me to my uncle's house?” She had to think up a new way to hunt for Poorvaja, since Lord Sheridan had turned out a disappointment. There was no time to lose.

“Agreed.” Lord Sheridan nodded. “If you do not agree my suggestion is a staggering work of genius, then you shall be free to engage yourself to the Right Reverend Mr. Dullston.”

“Fisk.” Arcadia suppressed a laugh. She wouldn't be charmed by this lunatic. She wouldn't. “His name is Mr. Fisk.”

Waving away the correction as no consequence, Sheridan proclaimed, “The germ of my brilliant plan came to me the moment you revealed to me that you had lost a peacock.”

This time, she couldn't help but chuckle. “Oh? And why is that?”

He cut her a withering look and stopped. “Doubt me, do you, my little peahen? I see I shall have to prove myself at every step.” Fiddling at his waist, he soon produced the fob leashed to his ever-present quizzing glass, unhooked it from the chain, and held it out on his palm.

Arcadia took the silver object. It was round and light, hollow. On the face, worked in beautiful relief, was a crest featuring a peacock, tail fanned, surrounded by several words in Latin.

“Good gracious! That is quite a coincidence,” she allowed. “What does this say?” She pointed to the script.

“
Dum vivo ego serviturus,
” he answered. “
While I live, I serve.
The Zouche family motto.” His brown eyes danced with humor. “Perhaps I'm fated to be forever serving you, one peafowl to another.”

She scowled. “An avian device is hardly a sound basis for matrimony, my lord.”

“Indeed not,” he agreed in a tone that said he didn't
really
agree and was about to tell her why. He clasped his hands behind his back as he continued their walk. Arcadia's fingers closed around the fob and held it to her chest as they strolled. It felt good in her hand, warm from riding close to his body.

“And yet,” Lord Sheridan continued, “when our paths kept crossing, I could not help but think perhaps there was something … fated, if you will, about our meeting. The coincidence of the peacock bore out my supposition, and hearing your wish to return to India quite decided me on the matter.

“If I may be frank, Miss Parks, I've no more desire for a wife than you have for a husband. If you do me the great favor of marrying me, I will do you the favor of absenting myself from your life at the earliest opportunity. You may return to India, alone and unfettered. I'll stand on the quay and wave you off with a hurrah and a basket full of sweets for the voyage.”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“Because you'll be my wife,” he said as if that made things any more clear. When she shook her head, he huffed. “Don't you see, Arcadia?” She glanced up at the sound of her given name. It rumbled against her ear in his deep, cultured voice. So pleasant. “If we marry, then we're married. Legally bound, forever and ever, 'til death do us part.” He bobbed his head from side to side. “Or much sooner than that, if you go back to your side of the globe and leave me to mine. But it'll be done. Duty discharged, no one can make us marry anyone else, because we'll already be married to each other.”

She hated to admit it, but his idea did make a certain, deranged, kind of sense.

Leaning down, he peeked under the brim of her bonnet. “You agree with me.” He touched her jaw with a finger. “I see it on your face.”

He sounded far too sure of himself for her liking. “What about Poorvaja? You've said nothing of her. Since we're being frank, Lord Sheridan, your marriage problem is none of my concern.”

He scoffed. “And yet you'd like me to make your lost ayah
my
concern.” Beneath her right hand, his forearm tightened. He cut a tight arc, turning them around to face the other direction. His strides were longer than before as he led her back towards his carriage.

Suddenly, their time together was running out too quickly. After he deposited her back at Delafield House, then what? Arcadia had no other plan in place to rescue Poorvaja and escape England before her guardians forced her into marriage.

“Wait,” she begged, once more dragging her heels, this time to delay their return to the curricle. “Please. There's a stone in my shoe.” When his steps slowed, she darted to a nearby bench and sat, her right hand latched onto the seat beside her thigh to lock herself in place; her other hand still gripped his fob. Lord Sheridan stalked to where she huddled on the cold stone seat, lean and sleek, like a tiger on the prowl, his eyes locked on her as if she was the sambar he would fall upon and devour. Her shawl slid down her right arm, the rich colors giving way to the soft pink of her English dress, making her feel even more exposed and vulnerable.

Swallowing hard, she forced herself to hold his gaze. To crumble now would be to consign both herself and Poorvaja to bleak fates. “This is the price of your help in finding Poorvaja? Marriage?”

“Everything has a price, Arcadia. This is mine.” Slowly, he lowered himself to sit beside her, still holding her eyes captive in the snare of his own warm, brown gaze. It wasn't fair. He was too handsome, too enticing. With the back of his finger, he brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek.

“It might sound too high a cost, but I think you'll find my terms more than reasonable.” His fingers dropped to her shoulder and skimmed down her arm, lightly caressing, until he plucked her shawl from where it had fallen and tucked it back in place. “In exchange for your promise to marry me, you may keep whatever dowry you bring to our union. I assume you've some fortune you plan to live on back in India?”

“Six thousand pounds. It's to be mine on my next birthday, or given to my husband when I wed.”

His eyes bugged. “Six?” Groaning as if pained, he tipped his head back, giving her a clear view of the intricate knot of his pristine white cravat and the crisp points of his collar. He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, I don't need it. Keep it. I will begin at once to assist you in finding Miss Poorvaja. I will tell your uncle that, as part of our betrothal agreement, he must also help in recovering her, then continue to employ her until we are wed, at which time I will employ Miss Poorvaja myself. You shall not be parted from your ayah, my dear.”

“Can you really do that? Force my aunt and uncle to take Poorvaja back in?”

He raised a brow. “Ever the skeptic. Yes, my darling little Doubting Thomas, I can make them take her back in. For the chance to connect the lowly Delafield barony to the Lothgard marquisate, I believe your relations—her ladyship, in particular—would do a great deal more than employ a certain servant.”

“But … but what if they are cruel to her? My aunt …” Remembering how Lady Delafield had often wiped her hand after touching something Poorvaja had handled, how she called the Hindu woman a “brown heathen,” the casual cruelty with which the ayah had been discarded after years of faithful service, Arcadia hung her head. She felt small and ashamed of her family. Her friend should not be subjected to such acts of bigotry and meanness.

Lord Sheridan took her hand and simply held it for a moment. “If they are unkind to her, even once, you've only to tell me, and I will right the matter. Needs be, I'll bring her into my household at once. I'll need help preparing our new house ahead of your arrival, in any event.”

Arcadia drew a raspy breath, her throat suddenly thick with emotion. Her fist pulsed around the silver fob like the beating of her own heart. She choked on a laugh-cry. “Our new house?”

He gave her a lopsided grin, the one she'd already picked out as his real smile, distinct from the flawlessly charming one he presented most of the time. “I can't set up housekeeping in my bachelor rooms on Upper Brook. Not that I'd mind sharing cozy quarters, but poor French would expire of shame if I brought a new wife home to such mean circumstances, so I'll find a place to let.”

“French?”

“My manservant. Being elevated to the position of valet, with a footman or two to lord over, will swell his head beyond bearing, but I suppose there's no help for it. Poorvaja will be your lady's maid, of course—unless you'd rather she be housekeeper, in which case she can lord over French, as well.”

Arcadia laughed softly at his description of the servant, then caught herself being swept up by his pretty words of a new house with a toplofty valet and Poorvaja leading a household staff. Her gaze swung across the promenade to the grass on the far side, where a boy in short pants kicked a ball back and forth with an older girl. Could Arcadia really trust Lord Sheridan to keep his word? A plethora of
what-ifs
rattled through her mind.

“If I'm to leave, why go to all that trouble? A house, footmen … none of that is necessary.”

He shifted, stretching his legs out and crossing his booted ankles. Reclined so, he reminded her once more of a tiger, specifically the one Poorvaja's uncle kept, a large male called Zizu who had been taken in as an orphaned cub, his mother felled by English hunters. When Arcadia accompanied her ayah on trips to her family home, she'd loved to visit Zizu. Hour after hour, she watched the animal through the iron bars of his enclosure. Zizu's striped hide rippled sleekly over powerful muscles as he slunk through the trees. Even lounging in the shade, his ear occasionally twitching at an annoying fly, the great cat was fearsome, silently communicating feline disdain for the small human on the other side of the fence. When he yawned and stretched, claws like knives extended from his large paws.

Where, Arcadia wondered, did Lord Sheridan hide his claws?

Leaning back, the man beside her winked. “We've some work to do, peahen, to make them believe.” He spread his hands. “As well, there will likely be some bit of time before your departure. I don't expect we'll ride to the docks straight from the altar, so we might as well have the proper trappings. We must establish, beyond a doubt, that we intend a true union before you abandon your poor husband.”

She chortled at the idea of Lord Sheridan, the very pinnacle of masculine beauty and arrogance, ever being a poor
anything
.

Dipping his head, he
smoldered
at her. His lips pursed slightly, in a way that suggested kissing, she imagined. Not that she imagined kissing Lord Sheridan. Just generally, she meant. A general kissing fashion.

“Yes, well, we won't really be married. Not … not
really
.”

What a thing to say!
She didn't know why she'd done it, except his nearness, his warm scent, and the curve of that lip had scrambled her brains and had her wishing he'd hold her hand again, or even—heavens—kiss her.

At once, his expression sobered. “On the contrary, love, our marriage will be consummated. I'll not have you crying foul and asking for an annulment later, nor will anyone else be able to take this away from us. This will be a true marriage in every sense, even if only for one night.”

Her stomach rolled. So. This was the true cost. Not just her name on a marriage certificate to rattle in their families' faces, but her body, as well. She had to become his wife in deed, not just in name.

Dropping her head, she opened her hand and once more examined the fob in her palm. A pretty little bauble. Why couldn't it have portrayed a typical device, like a lion, or a griffin, or a … goodness, even a puffin. He wouldn't have thought twice about Arcadia and her peacock, would never have concocted this plan.

But then, he might not have been willing to help her find Poorvaja, either.

She hated England. It had taken everything from her—her home in India, her brooch, her ayah. Regaining what she'd lost could cost her the independence she required to live on her terms, to return to India and the life she'd loved.

With a weary sigh, she twiddled the fob, turning it over and around in her fingers. Along the edge, she spotted a hinge. Without thought, she located the latch opposite the hinge and pressed her thumb into it.

With a crisp
snick
, the fob popped open. She blinked, surprised by the smiling face of a girl set into one half of the silver shell. Beside her, Arcadia felt Lord Sheridan tense, but he made no move to take the miniature portrait away from her.

The child, who looked eight or nine, had rosy cheeks and a wide, happy smile, her bottom lip concealing her teeth. Her brown eyes were set unusually wide and tilted down at the corners.

“Grace. My little sister.”

Arcadia glanced up at the guarded tone in his voice, the caution something she'd not heard from him before.

Looking from the wary man to the child in the picture, Arcadia offered, “I see the resemblance. You've the same color eyes, and there's …
oooh
,” she cooed, “the sweet little lick of hair on her forehead.” She chuckled softly. “My hair never liked to cooperate at that age, either. Truth be told, it still doesn't, most of the time.” She passed the fob back to Lord Sheridan. “Grace looks like a happy child.”