Not Quite Married (14 page)

Brien laughed contentedly, a melodious sound that the earl had just seen entrap members of Parliament and peers of the realm.

The next morning, news of the beautiful young widow spread like sparks in dry grass. Discreet questions about her to old family friends elicited the tantalizing story of her handsome, lusty, young husband and of a great love dashed by his tragic death.

When it was learned that she had accepted the New Year’s Ball at the duke of Hargrave’s, half of London society made inquiries about attending.

OVER THE NEXT weeks, as Brien worked on rebuilding Byron Place and launching her new life in society, the earl received disturbing news concerning his business dealings in the colonies.

The local economy, inflated with nearly worthless paper scrip, was sagging badly. Defying the terms of the treaty that ended the war, several colonial assemblies had declared debts owed to British merchants null and void. Merchants who had speculated heavily by allowing liberal credit in the postwar buying spree, were now driven to the edge of bankruptcy by their inability to collect on the notes they held. Weston Trading, while still solvent, suffered huge losses.

They could look for no relief from the new Congress in the colonies, which was pressed hard by debts of its own and was occupied with the matter of a constitution and consolidating its own power. Complicating matters, communication with the colonies was slow and awkward; documents were often subject to close scrutiny by several pairs of eyes before they reached their destination. Most dealings with British merchants were conducted in an atmosphere of suspicion, despite mutual needs for continued commerce.

Weston’s agent in the colonies, Silas Hastings, had forestalled catastrophic losses, but his attempts to collect outstanding debts had been unsuccessful. More worrisome was the news that he was having difficulty insuring the safety of the goods and stores that remained in the warehouses. Vandalism and outright thievery aimed at British-owned enterprises was all too common.

The news came at a singularly awkward time for the earl. He had advanced a sizeable sum to Raoul Trechaud upon the signing of the marriage agreements and after the fire was unable to find any trace of investments his son-in-law might have made with the money. Some of Weston Trading’s French properties had been seized and looted in the rioting that had broken out in several French cities, and it looked as if there would be more losses if political and social conditions in Paris didn’t improve. Such shortfalls might have been overcome by stringent economies . . .

if the cost of the reconstruction of Byron Place hadn’t also begun to soar . . . and the cost of Brien’s new wardrobe hadn’t bloomed

. . . and they hadn’t begun to entertain again during the holidays.

What had once seemed to be a bottomless dynastic purse suddenly had very finite dimensions.

At first the earl shook off warnings of accumulating losses. Such things came and went, he declared. But as the holidays passed and there was no news to brighten the outlook, he realized he would have to take more direct action.

For the first time in many years holly, candles, ribbon, and pine boughs decked the halls of Harcourt, and new friends were frequent guests. The earl savored the sight of his daughter presiding over a drawing room filled with London’s first tier of society and vowed that nothing would interfere with that hard-won pleasure.

Brien was content with her life now and knew she had much to be grateful for . . . new friends, watching Byron Place rise again, the stimulation of studying commerce, and especially her deepening relationship with her father. These past months she had grown very close to the earl and cared deeply for the man who indulged her so shamelessly and tutored her so expertly.

At last she had everything a woman could desire.

THE BALL GIVEN by the duke of Hargrave to welcome the new year was intended to be a fitting climax to a perfect holiday season. When Brien and her father arrived, the great house at the western edge of London was ablaze with lights and awash in the scents of beeswax candles and a richly perfumed society. The entrance hall was as big as a ballroom, and all over the house, double doors separating the rooms had been thrown wide to permit the free flow of music and merriment. Reaction to her presence among them was visible and immediate; heads turned and necks craned.

After they greeted their host and hostess, a series of Brien’s admirers appeared to claim her for dances. Ladies whispered avidly behind fans and men stared in open appreciation as she glided around the ballroom floor with a succession of partners that included Edward MacLeod, member of Parliament, and Reydon Hardwick, heir to the fabulous castle and fortune.

It was with Hardwick that she left the ballroom to seek refreshments. They were stopped along the way by a number of acquaintances and others seeking introductions, so that by the time Brien was handed a cup of punch, she was desperately thirsty and drank it too quickly. Hardwick obligingly refilled it, and she drank the second too fast as well.

Then it happened.

As she gave up following Hardwick’s discourse on the latest sensation in the racing world, something in the next room caught her eye.
Someone.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, and as he turned slowly toward her there was something familiar about the line of his jaw and profile. She smiled distractedly, her attention focusing, being drawn taut like a purse string. The man in the dining room talked casually with his companions and made gestures with his broad shoulders that stopped her breath.

As if responding to her intensifying gaze, he looked in her direction and their eyes met. Her knees weakened. She stood transfixed for what seemed an eternity. Her companions sensed her withdrawal from their conversation and expressed concern as they watched her face drain to ghostly white.

Those hot golden eyes scorched her across the distance. She sank slowly beneath the impact of recognition. Reydon Hardwick caught her as she fell, and in the commotion that followed, carried her through the entry hall and up the stairs.

A swooning lady was not uncommon at these affairs, but Brien Weston Trechaud was not just any lady. Speculation swept through the crowded rooms at the sight of the dashing Hardwick heir carrying the unconscious widow up the steps, followed closely by her father and one of society’s prominent doctors.

When she was safely deposited on a bed in the duchess’s suite, the physician ordered everyone out of the room except the earl, and proceeded to examine her. He quickly concluded that her condition was not serious and rolled her over onto her side to loosen her corset. He seemed a bit confused to discover that she was hardly wearing lacings at all.

Downstairs in the grand salon, the cause of Brien’s discomfort leaned his shoulder casually against a marble mantelpiece and sipped from a crystal goblet. His attention was fixed on the man beside him, absorbing every word Edward MacLeod spoke.

“Breathtaking, that’s the word for her. There’s not a man here, including the duke, who wouldn’t give a year of his life for one night with her.”

“You say she’s a widow?” Aaron Durham scowled, clearly unsettled by his visual brush with the sensation of the London social season. Brien Weston Trechaud.

“Indeed.” MacLeod drew deeply from his glass and continued,

“Not a merry one, however. She was only a bride of a month or so before her husband died.”

“A
Frenchman
?” Aaron was momentarily confused. But the name was right . . . at least part of it.
Brien Weston.
But
Trechaud
? His friend insisted she was both the earl of Southwold’s daughter and the widow of some French nobleman.

“Damned Frenchmen. What is it about those poncy wretches?”

MacLeod expelled a huff of disgust. “He must have had quite a month. She’s not overeager to replace him.”

“Perhaps she developed a distaste for that side of wedded life.”

“Cold, you mean?” MacLeod shook his head with a wry grin.

“Just one dance with her in your arms and you’d see . . . she’s so warm she fairly melts. Her Frenchy was a nobleman with a reputation for getting whatever and whomever he wanted. The ladies say he was devilishly handsome. Gossip says it was a great love. Whatever it was, she hasn’t got it out of her system.” He caught the intensity in Aaron’s face. “Hang on—you’re not thinking of having a go at her, are you?”

“Tempting notion, MacLeod, but I won’t be staying long enough to give the idea my full attention. I have a ship due to be launched in a fortnight, or have you forgotten? I have a million and one details to attend, and I’ll be headed for Bristol soon.”

Aaron straightened and gestured toward the food tables, heading for them.

“I’ll never understand this mad yen of yours to risk your neck at sea,” MacLeod said, joining him at the buffet. “You could be sitting safely at home, inheriting a fine title and charming countless females out of their closely-held virtue.”

Aaron gave a sardonic laugh. “As for virtue, I’ve had my share.

Overrated, I can tell you. And as to my father’s precious title . .

.”

“Speaking of your father”—Edward turned to him with a slice of ham dangling from a fork—“have you seen him of late?”

“No.” Aaron’s flat reply closed the matter.

“What’s this?” Edward looked up and came to stand beside Aaron, staring through the doorway into the great hall and beyond. Brien Weston Trechaud, wrapped in a beaver-lined cloak, was being carried down the stairs by a contingent of household servants commanded by her father. They moved through the parting guests on a direct course for the front doors.

“Must be more serious than we thought. Sorry, old man.” He thumped Aaron’s arm. “You won’t meet the beauty of London this night.”

Aaron stood in the archway watching the woman he had wedded and bedded more than a year ago disappear through the front doors. His sun-bronzed face was tensed with concentration on a decision he thought he’d never be required to make. He knew who she was. And he knew her secret. The question settling like lead in the pit of his stomach was: What in the devil was he going to do about it?

BRIEN ASSURED HER father she would mend. “No food all day . . . too much dancing and too much punch . . . I’ll be fine in the morning.” She went straight to her rooms when they arrived at Harcourt, and as she prepared for bed, a servant arrived with a hot milk-and-brandy toddy and orders from her father that she drain the cup.

The warmth of the brandy spread quickly through her, prying the grip of panic from her throat and pouring some warmth into her icy limbs. But when she climbed into bed and Jeannie extinguished the candles and left her, the fear that had felled her earlier came surging back in a cold, breath-stealing wave.

He was there, at the ball. Those eyes— There was no mistaking those golden eyes. And the scar. He had seen her, too; she would swear there had been a jolt of recognition in his face just before she fainted. What on earth would
he
be doing at the duke’s ball?

Common sense rebelled. It couldn’t have been the same man.

Perception refused to be set aside. Why couldn’t it be him?

What did she really know about the man she thought she married? At the time, his name was all that it seemed relevant or prudent to know. She had intended to retire to a modest country house for the rest of her days; encountering him again hadn’t seemed even remotely possible. How could she possibly have guessed, when she paid him to wed her down by the docks, that both she and he would show up eighteen months later at the most coveted event of the London season?

It was too horrible to contemplate. Her fatigue and the wine punch conspired to make her see his face, his eyes, instead of those of the stranger. It was just a resemblance.

But as the night dragged on, she couldn’t dismiss the possibility that the man who pretended to wed her, the man who swindled her, and the man standing in the duke’s dining room were one and the same. Once admitted, that thought begat a litter of ugly, pugnacious threats to her safety and sanity. How could she ever have put herself into such sly, opportunistic hands? What would happen when he learned who she was? What if he threatened to tell what she had paid him to do? What price would he exact for his silence?

The sight of him as he stood in the duke’s dining room came flooding back. Aaron Durham, with his strange golden eyes, coppery hair, and rakish smile. Aaron Durham, with his gentle hands and hard-soft lips and tantalizing tongue. She had known he was a gentleman the first moment she set eyes on him.

Self-assured. Well-spoken. Entirely too perceptive. Why should it surprise her that he had access to the upper strata of a society in which good looks, fine manners, and quick wits were coveted commodities?

Through the long night, she wrestled with the threat that he posed in her life, and with the memories of a taste of pleasure that had disturbed her dreams too many times in the last year and a half.

Beset by unanswerable questions, she finally drifted into a fitful sleep and she was again transported to that room, that bed in East London where Aaron Durham had deflowered, delighted, and ultimately deceived her.

The next morning, she sent her regrets to half a dozen hostesses, pleading indisposition. It was two very long weeks before she convinced herself that he might have every bit as much to lose at the revelation of their fraudulent marriage as she did, and began to venture out into public again. But it would be a great deal longer before she could sleep at night without suffering steamy, Durham-filled dreams that left her edgy and quarrelsome the next morning.

THE EARL NOTED his daughter’s distraction, but seeing her glowing good health, assumed she had simply been afflicted by the vagaries of the female condition. The word from the colonies was worse each fortnight, and he resolved to hold it from her no longer. She took the news hard, outraged by the injustice.

“Scoundrels,” she fumed. “Biting the hand that feeds them.”

“I was afraid you’d take this hard.” The earl wagged his head.

“You must realize that this is not a vengeful act. Their economy suffers terribly. They simply cannot raise the funds. There are times when the wisest counsel is that which tells us to do nothing.” He opened his hands in a stoic gesture. “We must be patient. Our claims will wait.”