Her Wicked Proposal: The League of Rogues, Book 3 (3 page)

“Decently happy? Cedric, you deserve love, great love, not decent,” Godric replied with surprisingly deep emotion. Lucien murmured his agreement with this.

Cedric shook his head. It was so easy for them to believe that. They had both been lucky to find women who loved them. He was not so fortunate. His past was shadowed with far too many regrets and poor decisions. Fate held no such love for him, and decent was in itself a gift.

“It is kind that you think so, Godric, but I do not agree. I’ve hurt both my family and my friends too often of late and have been a selfish bastard most of my life.” He held up a hand to silence the murmurs of disagreement. “I plan to marry Anne in a week, and I wish you all to attend.” He let the invitation slip out a little more quietly, suddenly afraid that his friends would desert him.

“I shall be there,” Ashton said, putting a hand on Cedric’s shoulder.

“Horatia would have my guts for garters if we missed it.” Lucien’s reply made Cedric snort. His little sister would no doubt have Lucien trussed up in the finest clothes of her choosing and sitting on the first row of the church pew.
If only I could have my sight back for one moment to see that.

Godric and Jonathan assured him they too would come.

Charles was the last to speak. With an exaggerated sigh he said, “I
suppose
I ought to go, if only to make sure you don’t trip and knock out the archbishop. That sort of thing is likely to bring lightning down on us all, and Christ knows I’ve got enough bolts of wrath thrown at me every day.”

A rough pat on the shoulder shook Cedric as Godric spoke. “In honor of your announcement, would I be able to tempt you to dine with us tonight? Emily will send Anne an invitation as well. It would be good to have everyone together again.”

“If you wish. Just send word to me when dinner is and I shall be there.” Cedric fumbled for his cane where he’d set it down. Another hand touched his as it found the cane and pressed it into his palm.

“Thank you,” Cedric said.

“You’re welcome.” Jonathan cleared his throat. “And how does Miss Audrey fare, if I might ask? I was told she and Lady Russell are currently in France?”

“Yes. They are somewhere near Nice the last I heard,” Cedric said.

He had sent his youngest sister, Audrey, on a European tour with Lucien’s mother just a few weeks after Lucien and Horatia married in early January. Audrey was eighteen and a pretty, vivacious girl. She’d managed to do well growing up without their parents, having only Cedric as her guardian. This year should have been her second season, but Cedric’s blindness had left him unable to escort her to balls and parties, her lifeblood for entertainment. Audrey had been moping about for nearly two months, and he’d felt like he’d lamed a favorite horse. She needed to be out in the world, experiencing life, so he’d asked Lucien’s mother to take Audrey abroad to Europe for half a year.

Next year would be soon enough to unleash Audrey onto the world. She was innocent and naïve, but also determined to get a husband, a deadly combination for her virtue and Cedric’s nerves. Therefore, he had proposed her trip with the promise that as soon as she returned he would have a potential husband waiting for her. He would collect a smattering of men he approved of and would present them to her and let her choose.

It turned out Audrey’s absence had been a blow to Cedric’s social tendencies. He missed her morning chatter about the latest Parisian fashions over breakfast, missed her insistence that they go driving in Hyde Park in his phaeton so she might see the handsome bucks of London. He missed her hugs and the patter of her slippers on the stairs. He’d sworn long ago that his sisters were a damned nuisance, but he’d since eaten those words and enjoyed the pair of sisters he’d been gifted with and had stopped cursing his luck for having no brothers. Horatia and Audrey were everything to him, the only family he had left. Horatia’s marriage and Audrey’s trip had left him very alone in his townhouse.

“Well, I had best be off. Er…Ash, would you assist me to the carriage?” Asking for help wounded his already battered pride, but the embarrassment of asking his friends was lessening slowly. They did not offer pity, and once he realized this, he was thankful. They merely helped him, and that meant a thousand words he’d never say to them.

“Of course.” Cedric felt Ashton’s hand take his arm and guide him toward the door.

“I’ll send word on dinner to everyone,” Godric called out cheerfully before the parlor door swung open.

“Now, where shall we go?” Ashton asked Cedric politely. He never seemed to mind accompanying Cedric on his errands about London.

Cedric grinned. “To see my future bride.”

Chapter Three

Anne Chessley stood in the entryway of her townhouse on Regent Street. Her back and neck were tense as she fought to remain poised and cool, hoping to hide her racing heart and the creeping flush in her cheeks. Had it only been yesterday that she foolishly sought out Viscount Sheridan and convinced him to propose to her?

God, please don’t let this be a mistake
. What if he didn’t come? What if he changed his mind and didn’t go through with the wedding? Anne shoved the thoughts aside, though not easily.

How much difference one day can make,
she thought. Since her father had passed the week before, sleep had eluded her, but last night…she’d drifted to sleep with thoughts of Cedric and that wicked kiss he’d given her. No, not given,
shared
. As much as it embarrassed her to admit it, she’d kissed him back.

Anne smoothed her black crepe gown over her hips and sighed. The ripples of the stiff fabric were an uncomfortable reminder of her mourning and her grief. Her father, Archibald Chessley, was dead, and she was alone in the world.

She was too logical not to be aware that part of her still denied he was dead. She had witnessed his lifeless body when she’d found him in his chair in the library, cold as marble, after a chambermaid had rushed to her bedroom to tell her he was gone.

The emptiness of her home had cut her deeply and driven her to action. She couldn’t stand the silence anymore. A part of her still expected him to emerge from his study, cigar smoke wafting from him, or to have him join her outside and offer to go riding together in Hyde Park. It had just been the two of them since she was four when her mother, Julia, had died from pneumonia.

And mere days after his death, she’d been forced to endure suitor after suitor leaving their cards on silver trays, hoping she’d give them a chance to court her. All for her blasted inheritance. If they acted this way while she was still in mourning, the fortune hunters would become more determined to compromise her, even at the risk of scandal, in order to coerce her into marriage. Such a marriage was an unimaginable fate that she needed to avoid at all costs. She could only think of one person who wouldn’t care about her money and whom she could stand to marry. Viscount Sheridan.

She smiled faintly. He was a tall, handsome gentleman with brown hair and warm brown eyes. A stubborn jaw and aquiline nose gave him a rebellious and imperious look, but his full, sensual lips revealed his humorous streak. She loved to watch him grin. His smiles always sent her pulse dancing and erased her rational thoughts.

She’d gone to him because she knew she could be honest with him, let him know the truth about why she needed to marry with haste. What she hadn’t realized until last night, when she’d returned to an empty house, was how desperate and lonely she was. No more late-night conversations by the fire with her father, no morning breakfast chatter. Just deafening silence.

She assumed that a man like Cedric would not understand her wish to marry out of loneliness and it might not engender his sympathy. Yet he was the only man she could stand the thought of marrying. They shared a surprising number of interests, and could likely make a go of it, if he went through with it.

It was why rushing to him had seemed so natural. He always had something of interest to say, even when he wasn’t trying to shock or seduce her. Being around him, she’d never felt alone.

But seeing him yesterday had been unexpectedly painful. He’d been sitting by the fountain, hands cut and bleeding, trousers and shirt dirty all along the front. It had been obvious he’d fallen shortly before she’d arrived. Seeing the blood on his hands and the almost casual way he’d forgotten about it jolted her heart. It seemed he’d grown used to falling, to getting hurt. No one should be in such constant pain that they grew accustomed to it like that.

Anne had wanted to wrap her arms about the wounded viscount’s neck and comfort him, but she resisted. They knew so little of each other, and he didn’t know her well enough to see the difference between pity and compassion. He would despise her if he thought she pitied him. She only desired to comfort a man who had been deeply hurt. She couldn’t begin to imagine what he might have endured since he’d lost his sight.

It had been ages since she’d seen him. All the balls she attended, the dinner parties, were empty without him there. He’d closeted himself up in his house and no longer participated in life. It was as though he’d given up, and something about that made her chest tighten. A man like him should be experiencing life, not closeted at home. Perhaps if they married he could find some peace and she would ease the sting of her lonely heart by keeping him company, perhaps even easing him into some activities again.

Yes, I’ll convince him to live again.
Why that mattered so much, she didn’t want to consider too deeply.

So here she stood, waiting for him to arrive so they could discuss the details of their new life together. But try as she might to focus on the future, her mind kept reliving their kiss from yesterday. In all of his seductions last spring he’d never kissed her. He’d teased and hinted about it, but she’d politely rebuffed him each time. Then yesterday he’d taken control and changed her life with one fiery meeting of their mouths. After that Anne knew she
would
marry him. The hunger tinged with desperation in his kiss sent her spiraling with mirrored longing. It was as though something ancient and soul deep had stirred to life, and she couldn’t deny the urge to satisfy that hunger any longer.

It hadn’t been her first kiss. Her first had been taken—stolen—by a man she despised. A man who still frightened her. And he’d stolen more than just a kiss. He’d taken something that she could never reclaim. At only eighteen years old, she’d lost any right to a marriage like her friends. Any potential bridegroom would have realized she was no longer a virgin, and the scandal it created would be unbearable.

She would have to tell Cedric, but not yet. Not until after they were married. It felt wrong to conceal such an important truth from him, but she couldn’t risk losing his agreement to their union.

She’d learned firsthand that men had but one goal, to pleasure themselves, often at a woman’s expense. But Cedric’s kiss had promised something different. It had teased, then instructed and then encouraged her to seek her own pleasure from him. He’d then said that he would only marry her if she promised to respond to him like that. He wanted a willing bed partner, a willing lover.

To Anne that meant he wanted a woman who would seek her pleasure back and not expect the man to leave when he alone was satisfied. That kiss told her Cedric would be a generous lover, one who would care for her passion in return. As nervous as she was about her future wifely duties, somehow that kiss had rekindled a fire that had died when she was eighteen. That was why she had agreed to this.

Horse hooves pounded on the driveway and the clatter of carriage wheels jolted Anne out of her musings. Cedric was here. Her heart gave a traitorous flutter, and her hands trembled.

She hastened away from the door and ran up the stairs to the parlor, where she checked her appearance in the small framed looking glass. She studied her face with a frown. Her cheeks, too sallow from her grief in the past week, made her look exhausted to the point of ghoulish. With a muttered curse she pinched her cheeks, hoping to liven up her coloring. Then she smoothed her brown hair back, relieved to see the hints of gold still there when the sunlight hit it just right. Her hair made her passably pretty, as did her eyes, but she was nothing compared to the ladies she’d seen Cedric spend time with over the years. True beauties.

She sighed, her heart stinging. Then she froze.

What am I doing? He cannot even see me.

She could probably wear a cloth sack and he’d never know unless he touched her…

But he
would
touch her. The very thought of how he might do that made her body flush and suddenly she was a little dizzy. Taking a seat in a wingback chair in the parlor close to the front entrance, she waited. A minute or so later a footman announced Baron Lennox and Viscount Sheridan’s arrival. As she had been expecting him, she’d given the footman orders to bring them to the parlor directly.

Lord Ashton Lennox entered first, his left arm dropping from Cedric’s side as though neither man wanted her to see he’d been guiding Cedric like a child on leading strings. Anne rose at once and smiled at them as she approached. She took Cedric’s outstretched hand and without a word led him to a chair.

“I am glad to see you are in good health, Lord Lennox,” Anne remarked.

Ashton chuckled pleasantly. “Thank you. I ought to have made my apologies again for the nature of our last meeting.” Anne had to admit, Lennox was quite dashing when he wasn’t gazing at someone with that frightening intensity she so often saw him use. It was as though he was analyzing everyone and everything around him—for what purpose, she could only guess.

“I take it you have fully recovered?” Anne asked, thinking back to last December when she’d seen Ashton at Emily’s house, bleeding from a gunshot. He’d been wounded while he and Godric had been at a house of ill-repute. Given the time of day, and the happily married status of the Duke of Essex, Anne suspected there was something more behind why the men had gone to the Midnight Garden midmorning, and it had nothing to do with bedding women.

It was an awkward thing to see Lennox again after she’d seen him bare-chested. Under other circumstances that might have been considered compromising. Thankfully, they’d been at the Duke of Essex’s house and Emily wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone about what happened. Still, Anne wasn’t going to forget seeing Ashton’s bare, muscled chest, wound or no. It made her wonder what Cedric’s bare chest would look like…

Heat crept into her cheeks. When Ashton raised a brow, she glanced away until he spoke.

“I have, thank you. May I offer my condolences on your father’s passing?” Ashton was ever the gentleman, and Anne smiled warmly at him.

“Thank you. He is greatly missed. And how are you, Lord Sheridan?” Anne turned to Cedric, who had been silently facing her. His once vibrant and warm brown eyes were blank, but the rest of his face held the nuances of his expressions. He looked intense and focused with his brows knit together. She couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about.

“I am well, and you?” he replied.

“Very well.” Damn, this was all too formal. But what had she expected? She had put so much effort into pushing him away the last few years that bridging that gap to form a friendship seemed almost impossible. She also feared that if she showed any warmth toward him he’d treat her motives with suspicion and not trust her when she asked for his help.

Cedric cleared his throat. “As my letter informed you, I have procured the special license and set a date at St. George’s five days hence. Is that amenable to you? I do not wish to rush you if you need time to have a gown made or…” His voice trailed off.

It was clear he had no knowledge of a woman’s requirements for a wedding. Fortunately for the both of them, she was going to wear a gown she already owned and did not desire any unnecessary amount of fanfare.

“A Saturday wedding will be lovely,” Anne assured him.

The subtle lines of tension about his mouth relaxed. “Good. That is good. Oh, I mustn’t forget. Godric has invited me to dine with him this evening, and I believe Emily will be sending you an invitation shortly. I hope you will consent to come.”

She was surprised by his eagerness, though he quickly struggled to veil it in his expression.

“I will be happy to come, of course,” she answered.

Emily St. Laurent, the Duchess of Essex, was Anne’s close friend. When Anne had been eighteen, she’d had her come-out in London and met Emily’s mother. The lovely Mrs. Parr had helped her enter society smoothly. Anne had vowed to return the favor for Mrs. Parr’s daughter when Emily’s parents had been lost at sea over a year ago.

Of course, Anne had little actual time introducing Emily to London because Godric, Cedric, and the other rogues he called his friends had abducted the poor girl on her second night coming out in London society.

None of that mattered now, however. Emily had tamed the darkly handsome Godric, and the two were so madly in love that Anne was often sad and jealous when she had to be around them. Admitting that wasn’t something she was proud of, but it was the truth. She did envy her friend for her happiness, but she was also glad Emily was so blessed.

Tonight she could dine with them and enjoy the glow of her own upcoming wedding. She and Cedric may not be in love, but they seemed to share an equal eagerness for their marriage and that in itself was a pleasant surprise.

“Oh, Cedric, I’ve just realized I’ve left my riding gloves in the carriage. I will go and fetch them.” Ashton rose quickly and departed the room, leaving Cedric and Anne alone.

“Did he just make up an excuse to abandon me?” Cedric started. Anne stifled an uncharacteristic giggle.

“I believe he did…”

“Does he think we’re too stupid to realize he came in a coach and therefore has no need for riding gloves?” Cedric stood up as he spoke and held out a hand toward her. “May I sit with you?”

“Oh. I’m in a chair. If you wish, I could come to you on the settee?” Anne offered.

“I would like that.” He sat back down and waited for her to join him.

Anne took a seat next to him and was startled when Cedric reached into his coat pocket for a small velvet box.

“This was one of my mother’s favorite rings. I would like for it to be yours.” He opened the box and Anne gasped. The ring was lovely. A stone was nestled there, a gem that seemed to change color in the light.

“It’s beautiful! What gemstone is that?” Anne asked.

“It’s a very rare gem found in Russia. It changes colors by reflecting whatever shades are closest to it. It reminded me of your eyes. I think I chose it for that reason rather than buy you a new ring. Do you like it?”