Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (36 page)

“You cannot!” Eustace wailed.

“I just did.” He folded his arms across his chest, resisting the urge to begin grabbing people and shoving them out of the music room. “I suggest you also make certain that anyone who wasn’t in here also be informed that they are to leave.”

With indignant looks and sour-sounding muttering, twenty aristocrats filed out of the room and began clomping loudly down the portrait gallery. He could even make out a word or two comparing him to his wildly erratic father, and he didn’t give a damn. Instead, he walked over to Lady Caroline and took her aside. “I need to explain something to you, Caroline. I’m not going to offer for you,” he said in a low voice. “Th—”

She put up a hand. “Your Grace, if you
had
asked me to marry you, I would have declined.”

Slowly Adam closed his mouth again. “Not to complain, but why, precisely, would you have turned me down?”

“Because I have some pride, and I cannot see myself being second to a duke’s unacknowledged by-blow. A legitimate daughter, yes. But—and please don’t take this wrong, because I actually happen to like Miss White—I would not care to hear the gossip about the affair.” She put a hand on his arm. “I hope you’re able to make an arrangement that sees both of you happy, but I’m glad you understand that it cannot include me.” She leaned in closer. “And between you and me, your sister is a terror.”

“I … agree,” he said slowly, looking at her with a great deal more insight than he’d possessed a handful of minutes ago.

“I shall pack my things and leave with the others, then.”

“You may do so if you wish, but considering that you wished me well, wished Sophia well, and insulted my sister all in the same breath, I would just as soon you remain here.”

She smiled. “I would like that.”

Another chit he could consider an ally. Either Sophia had set the world on its ear, or she’d set him on his ear.

When he turned around, Eustace remained in her seat by the window. “Adam,” she said in a low voice, sending an annoyed glance past him at the remaining seven people in the room. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done? You have embarrassed yourself, and me, and the Baswich name.”

“I’m not interested in your opinion, Eustace. If you wish to complain about how I’m shaming the family, you may do so in a letter. I suggest you wait a month or two before writing me, however, because I won’t yet have returned from my honeymoon before then.”

His sister shook her head. “Caroline Emry. A marquis’s daughter, at least, but did you have to choose one who has an Italian opera singer for a cousin? You are determined to disgrace the Baswich name, aren’t you?”

Adam gazed at his sister. “I’m not going to marry Caroline Emry,” he said in a low voice. “I’m after a duke’s daughter.”

“A…” Her mouth snapped shut. “What does that mean?” she asked, her voice even more shrill. “I insist that you state precisely your intentions. No games, Adam. Your future—and mine—rests on this.”

He smiled. “And I insist that you use your imagination. Conjure the worst thing you can possibly imagine happening to the Baswich family name. Combine that with the realization that dear young Jonathan is not going to claim my fortune. Ever.” Adam waited, watching his sister’s already fair face turn almost gray as she blanched. “
That
is what I’m going to do. Exactly what you’re thinking.”

“Adam, for God’s sake! You can’t m—”

“You’re still here. Leave.”

“You can’t set me out of this house,” she protested, her voice shaking. “I am your sister.”

“What you are is a hateful vulture who’s been picking at me since I was born, and who just spent weeks doing everything possible to make a holiday miserable for a woman who only wanted to experience a pleasant Christmas for once in her life. Get your damned luggage and get out of my house. And be glad I’m not doing anything further.”

With a rage-filled squawk, she fled the room. When Adam turned around, the remaining occupants looked decidedly uneasy, with the exception of Keating. Blackwood looked rather amused. “You lot,” Adam said, straightening his arms and flexing his fingers. “I’m going to be leaving in the next day or so, but you’re welcome to stay. In addition, my holiday party next year is going to be much smaller. I would be pleased if you would agree to join me.”

“Is it going to be this exciting next year?” Lady Caroline asked, a smile touching her brown eyes.

“Anything is possible.”

“I say, that’s good of you, Greaves,” Henning put in. “I’m honored.”

Adam nodded. “No.
I
am honored. One would think I’m a bit old to be making self-discoveries, but evidently I still have some lessons to learn. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go set footmen in the hallways and tell the cook we’ll have fewer guests for dinner.”

He had some other arrangements to make as well, but for the moment he would keep those to himself. And he needed to figure out how to convince Sophia to trust him enough to agree to wed him rather than marry a vicar and simply … surrender.

SIXTEEN

By the time the snow of Yorkshire reached Cornwall, it had lowered into a stiff, blowing rain. Hefting a hat box in each hand and burying her cheeks into her stolen greatcoat, Sophia walked down the mud and stone main street of Gulval, her gaze on the old church at the end of the pathway.

Old gray stones with patches of moss around the north-facing window looked unblinkingly back at her. Black slate roof tiles glistened in the heavy rain, and a scattering of headstones leaned amid the winter-bare sticks and flattened grass. If she’d been visiting, she might have found it … quaint. Possibly. Knowing that she would be spending the rest of her life in the equally stony house located two dozen feet from the rear of the church, however, all she could do was stifle a shiver. The weather might have been colder in Yorkshire, but her insides had never felt as chill as they did now.

The woman at the inn, where she’d left the mail stage, had informed her that the vicar would be in the church all afternoon, preparing Sunday’s sermon. She wouldn’t be expected for a fortnight, but if she’d delayed somewhere else that might have given her a moment or two of hope again—and that seemed a cruel thing to do to herself.

In the same vein, she might have attempted to convince herself that Gulval, in the Penwith district of Cornwall, would have been less gloomy in better weather, that if she’d arrived with the sun shining and the birds singing she might have felt more optimistic about her future. But the weather truly didn’t signify. It was inside that she felt cold and lifeless and moss-covered.

Traveling to Yorkshire and Greaves Park had been a stupid mistake to begin with. No, she hadn’t expected to fall in love, much less with the least likely man in the country, but she’d been looking for more of that blasted hope. For fond memories. All that meant now, though, was that she had more regrets. And one maddening, amazing man she both wished she could forget and wanted to keep inside her heart always.

With Adam, she’d charmed a man most people were afraid even to speak to. Could the Reverend Loines possibly be as difficult as the Duke of Greaves? With measured footsteps, shoving hard against the feeling that she was walking to her own funeral, she pushed open the church door and stepped inside. Silently she moved up the center aisle, between rows of black-painted pews and toward the altar draped in white cloth and topped by a pair of candles.

“Hello?” she called, not seeing anyone within the main room.

A wooden door to the left side of the altar creaked open. A young man, hair brown and neatly combed, stepped inside. “May I help you?” he asked, brown eyes taking in her drenched greatcoat and the rivulets of water running down her face from her ruined blue bonnet.

Well, he didn’t look like Frankenstein’s monster, anyway. She mustered a smile. “Mr. Loines?”

“Yes.” His eyes narrowed, then widened. “Miss White.”

“Yes. I’m several weeks early, but—”

He backed into the side room and shut the door on her sentence. For a moment Sophia stood there, dripping. As that wasn’t even the rudest thing ever done to her, she set down her boxes again and made for the doorway. As she reached it, though, it opened again.

“You are to wait here,” the Reverend Loines said, as he pulled a heavy coat and wide-brimmed hat on over his simple black and brown attire. “I will fetch Mother, who will be your companion until our marriage.”

“Your moth—”

“I cannot be alone with you,” he interrupted, “as we are unmarried.” Moving past her, he hurried up the length of the church and vanished out the main door.

“Well.”

She couldn’t even remember the last time a man had decided he couldn’t be in a room alone with her. With a scowl, she sat in the front pew and practiced folding her hands in her lap. The bench was hard and far too straight-backed to be comfortable, though they had likely been so for years before Mr. Loines was even born. A few cushions, however, would do wonders.

For some reason she’d thought he would be older, someone Hennessy had deemed capable of keeping her in check. But he’d barely looked older than she was, herself. If he was merely four- or five-and-twenty, he couldn’t have been in this position for long. Perhaps he wasn’t as set in his ways as she’d feared.

The idea of Mr. Loines had haunted her for weeks. And whichever conclusions she wished to leap to now about his youth and his character had no more validity than her nightmares. She was here. The good or bad of it wouldn’t matter, except it would determine how she could best make do.

Nearly ten minutes passed before the church door opened again. A tall, round woman stepped inside and pulled a scarf from over her white-peppered dark hair. “Mrs. Loines, I presume?” Sophia asked, standing again.

“I am.”

“I’m pleased to m—”

“You surprised the vicar. Have a seat while I fetch some tea, and he’ll return momentarily.”

Sophia sat again. “Where did he go, if I might ask?”

The vicar’s mother vanished into the side room, then emerged a moment later with a pot and three cups. “To the house. He has some notes, he said.” The woman eyed her. “You’re going to behave, I hope. Gulval is a God-fearing village, and we won’t stand for a woman leading our men astray.”

“Please, Mother,” the vicar’s voice came from behind them. “You’re speaking to my betrothed. Miss White is not going to lead anyone astray.”

Well, that was nice—and unexpected. “Thank you, Vicar. I—”

“She is the example from which we all shall learn how better to serve our Lord and savior,” he continued. “Christ walked among lepers, and we shall follow his example.”

“I’m not a leper,” Sophia stated, frowning.

“Of course not,” he said, dragging a chair from one side of the room to sit directly in front of her. “You are Mary Magdalene, a fallen woman waiting to be raised to grace. And I shall raise you.”

“I didn’t fall anywhere,” Sophia retorted, the gleam in his eye somehow more troubling than if he had been a drooling, arm-swinging monster. “My parents are unmarried, which is no fault of mine.”

He smiled. “Yes, of course. And your employment at a den of sin? Your life in a house full of Jezebels? Is that no fault of yours? And your fraternization with men? You must acknowledge your faults in order to learn from them. And you must be the example for other women who teeter on the edge of damnation.”

Sophia sent a glance at Mrs. Loines, who’d taken a seat on the opposite pew and nodded. “Is there no woman in Gulval who’s caught your eye, Mr. Loines?” she asked. “You seem to view me as a poor choice for matrimony.”

“A vicar should marry so that he may more completely serve as an example to his congregation. You are a perfect choice for me to demonstrate the effects of faith and charity and repentance.”

Ice coursing down her spine, Sophia scooted back as far into the pew as she could. The degree of … hate the Duke of Hennessy must have had for her—and why? Because she’d been born? Every muscle, every sinew in her body tensed up, ready for her to run. She
wanted
to run. But she couldn’t. The Tantalus Club, the three dozen women who’d sought employment there for the same reasons she had—because they had nowhere else to go but the streets—would suffer if she fled.

“You seem very certain of my place in all this,” she ventured, attempting to keep her voice steady. In the back of her mind she could abruptly hear Adam’s voice, telling her that she was an unusual, extraordinary woman. She concentrated on that, drawing strength from the idea that someone else in the world found her worthwhile. “And yet, I don’t even know your Christian name.”

He nodded, folding his hands together. “Peter. But we must be proper in all things. I am to be addressed as Vicar, the Reverend Loines, or Mr. Loines at all times. Just as you will be Mrs. Loines.”

“But your mother is Mrs. Loines.”

His mother sat forward. “I have agreed to go by Mother Loines,” she said.

“Oh.”

The vicar rested his elbows on his knees. “I know a vicarage is frequently a … gift, given to an aristocrat’s younger son merely to provide him an income. That is not so with me. Mother says I was born for this. It is precisely where I’m meant to be.”

Sophia forced a smile. “It’s rare for someone to find their perfect place in the world.”

He tilted his head at her. “This is your perfect place as well, Miss White. Here you will join me in church every Sunday, sitting right where you are now, and twice a week when portions of the congregation gather you will confess your sins and we will pray for you. You will do good works, tending the poor and reading the Bible for the uneducated and the infirm. And of course you will contemplate your sins wh—”

The door at the back of the church creaked open. “There you are, Sophia,” came the familiar voice of the Marquis of Haybury.

Jumping, she whipped her head around. “What? What are y—”

“I’m glad I arrived early,” he cut in, striding forward to her side. “It isn’t every day I’m invited to give the bride away, after all.”

The vicar stood when she did. “My lord, I hadn’t realized you were still in Gulval. And I was under the impression that you didn’t care for the idea of this wedding.”