Rules to Catch a Devilish Duke (37 page)

The marquis offered a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Suffice it to say that when Miss White marries, I mean to be there.”

That sounded rather ominous, even to her. And considering that she hadn’t expected to see anyone she knew ever again, Sophia was quite proud of herself for not bursting into tears. But she hadn’t told Lord and Lady Haybury the details of this match. All she’d told them was that Hennessy had found her a husband, and that she had agreed to marry.

Lord Haybury took her hand and tucked it around his arm. “Have you settled on a date yet?” he asked, briefly squeezing her fingers. “I hadn’t expected to see you until just before the fifteenth of the month.”

“Neither did I,” Mr. Loines returned, a scowl knitting his brows together. “Nor did I expect that anyone from your previous … life would be in attendance. You are to begin a new life here.”

“Yes, I know,” Sophia said, far too flippantly. Considering that she was near to having an apoplexy, though, it would have to do. “But Lord Haybury is family.”

“I’m like a father to her,” Haybury seconded, clearly ignoring the fact that he was only six years her senior.

“I see.” The vicar looked from one to the other of them. “This is to be a small, simple ceremony, presided over by the vicar from Newmill. As you’re here, I see no reason to wait. The Reverend Matthews can marry us by Thursday afternoon.”

“Aren’t you going to have the banns read?” Oliver asked, frowning in turn. “It would be somewhat improper to ignore the custom under the circumstances, would it not?”

“I have been reading the banns,” the Reverend Loines returned. “Sunday will be the third occasion. I didn’t wish to have the wedding delayed after Miss White’s arrival. An unmarried female of her character roaming about the village would be … unfitting.”

“You’ve been thorough,” the marquis returned. “We will wait, of course, until after the third reading of the banns. I suggest a week from Saturday. That will give you ten days, Miss White, to find an appropriate gown to wear. Most of her things were lost in a carriage accident, you know. They went into the river. She nearly drowned.”

Mother Loines snorted. “You aren’t suggesting she wear white, are you, my lord?”

“Mother, please. Saturday next would be acceptable. And I shall use the metaphor of lost belongings to equate with the wages of sin being washed away.” He tapped a long forefinger against his chin in a gesture no doubt meant to look thoughtful. “There remains the matter of where to place you until we are safely wed. I suppose you could remain at my home, sharing Mother Loines’s bed, until the wedding. That would halt any talk of impropriety.”

There had been some lovely cliffs on the road down from London. Perhaps she could find one of them now and simply leap off. It would be less painful than a lifetime of this. How could she manage it? How could she manage not to run when that was all she wanted to do? When Adam had already given her a place to hide if she could stand this for a year or so?

“I’ve rented out the Oyster Shell,” Haybury countered. “There are four empty rooms there, and a staff. Surely that would suffice just as well.”

“I don’t believe th—”

“Yes, that will be lovely,” she heard herself say. “Do you think we might go there now, my lord? I find that four days in a mail coach has tired me terribly.”

“Of course.” Haybury nodded at the vicar and his mother, who looked at the moment like frowning mirrors of each other. “Perhaps Mr. Loines will call on us there at breakfast.”

“I … certainly will. There are rules you must learn before the wedding. And vows I’ve written for you to recite.”

Clutching the marquis’s arm, she dipped down to pick up one of her hat boxes, while he took the other. Then, before someone could lock the church door and prevent them from leaving, she made her exit. Haybury, of course, had an umbrella waiting outside, and he handed her the second box before he put an arm across her shoulders and lifted the umbrella to shelter both of them.

“The inn’s just over here,” he said, guiding her across the street.

Sophia nodded, not trusting herself to speak until they were safely inside. Safe—she doubted she would ever feel safe or secure again. Every moment of the rest of her life, with the exception of the next ten days, would be spent either in the company of her husband or his mother. And she would have to listen to every bit of her past being criticized, the act of a fallen woman, while they preached over her moldering carcass.

“Sit,” Haybury said, nudging her toward a table set beside a large stone hearth. He said something to the thin man who’d followed them inside the common room, and with a nod the fellow fled again. A moment later the marquis took the seat opposite her and poured them each a glass of whiskey. “Drink.”

She downed it all at once. The heat bit into her throat, sending her shuddering into life again. “What are you doing here?” she rasped.

Gray eyes assessed her. They were a shade or two lighter than Adam’s stormy gaze, she noticed, and though the two men shared a jaded cynicism, she would never confuse one for the other. The Duke of Greaves’s gaze lifted her heart, warmed her insides, filled her spirit, even when he was angry.

“I think the better question is, why are
you
here?” he finally returned, refilling her glass. “You neglected to mention a few details about your nuptials, I believe.”

Deliberately draining the glass again, Sophia shook her head. “Oh, no, you don’t. You knew about the coach falling in the river. And you’re here, when you have no reason to be. You need to tell me.”

“You know, my employees don’t generally attempt to order me about.”

“I don’t work for you. I worked for Diane.”

“Semantics,” he countered easily. “I received a letter. Two of them actually.”

“From whom?” It couldn’t have been from Adam, because the two men didn’t speak. Keating? Or more likely, Camille. But why? Cammy would have known that nothing could help the situation, and she knew quite well that Lord and Lady Haybury were not to know the details of this arrangement.

“That’s my business,” he answered.

“I need to know,” she stated, thumping her fist on the tabletop. “If Greaves has been corresponding with you, and told you to be here, then I have to be suspicious that he means to make trouble for me.”

He eyed her. “The days when Adam Baswich orders me to do anything are long gone. No, that’s not true. Those days never existed.”

That had the ring of truth to it. “When did these letters arrive, then?”

“Persistent, aren’t you? The first one arrived a week or so ago, directing me to travel here and meet your betrothed, and asking for my … assessment of his character. The second one arrived by courier this morning. That lad nearly dropped dead from exhaustion the moment he handed it off to me. And that’s all I’m saying about them.”

It must have been Camille, or her and Keating together. They, at least, would be worried over her vicar-to-be. “Very well, then.”

The marquis took a sip of his whiskey and then set his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his folded hands. “You made an agreement with Hennessy that day he came calling at the club. And it wasn’t merely about a marriage. I assume it was ‘Marry Mr. Loines, or I’ll destroy the Tantalus,’ or something equally naughty.”

“My reasons for marrying the vicar are my own. What did the second letter say?”

“Several very interesting things. Tell me about your holiday. How did you find Greaves Park?”

Though she attempted not to think about what he’d just said, the moment he uttered the words her mind conjured the snowy hills, the crackling cold of the air, and holly and mistletoe and ribbons in the drawing room. And Adam, smiling at her. A tear ran down her cheek before she could stop it. “It was very nice,” she said, wishing now that she hadn’t drunk so much whiskey on an empty stomach. Sophia squared her shoulders. “And you shouldn’t have delayed the wedding. Ten days? I just want to have it done with.”

“Because you’re so looking forward to being that zealot’s wife, I assume. Yes, I can see how very compatible the two of you are.”

“I agreed to marry him. I am a woman of my word. You’re only making things worse.”

“I do enjoy trouble.” He rolled his shoulders in his dark gray jacket. “Even so, a person generally only marries once. You should do it well.”

“I don’t have any money with me. And you can’t purchase me a dress.” Her heart broke a little bit more as she remembered having a very similar conversation just over four weeks ago. Heavens, had it only been a month? It seemed a lifetime ago.

“You have money in your account in London. I will lend you a sum against it. Because you cannot marry in that.” He gestured at her dripping wet blue walking dress, still half covered by Adam’s greatcoat. “And I would not suggest you walk into the church garbed in one of your Tantalus gowns.”

Sophia glanced down at her dress. The poor garment had survived her dunking in the river, four days in a mail coach, and now another soaking in the rain. The Reverend Loines would more than likely be delighted to see a bedraggled, drooping, heartsick bride, and he would use her appearance as proof that she was a sorry, broken soul. At this moment, she felt like one.

“I have a question for you,” Haybury asked, then paused as a servant hurried in with a pile of blankets. As the man left again, the marquis stood and walked around behind her to wrap one of the blankets around her shoulders. “Greaves.” He took his seat again.

She closed her eyes for just a moment, but that only made the images in her mind more vivid. “What about him?”

“He’s a cracking bad sort, a meddler, a game player, and a heartless fiend. But that’s merely my opinion of his character. What’s yours?”

Sophia huddled into the blanket, wishing she could disappear into it. “I don’t know what those letters said, but it doesn’t matter. I went to York for a … a new experience, a different sort of holiday. And it was lovely. Now I’m marrying Mr. Loines. In ten days, evidently.” She stood. “Where is my room? I’d like to change out of my wet clothes.”

“Up the stairs, first door on the right,” he returned, not moving. “I’m surprised you’re surrendering; it’s not like you, Sophia.”

“It’s very like me. You simply don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”

Oliver watched her up the stairs and through the door into her small, rented room. Then he downed the rest of the whiskey in his glass and refilled it. If he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did, and more importantly, if Greaves didn’t know her as well as he thought
he
did, they were all about to be in for a great deal of trouble. Well, they were in for a great deal of trouble, anyway. The only question was whether it would be worth it or not.

Regardless, at the moment he was a damned nanny. One who found himself in the dullest village in Cornwall, on the rainiest day of the year, and with the chore for the next ten days of keeping a duke’s illegitimate daughter from somehow finding a way to marry a man who would drain the life from her like a bloody leech. Greaves had owed him a great deal before. Now, well, he’d always admired the duke’s Thoroughbred. Zeus would do well—as a start.

*   *   *

If Adam hadn’t already been aware that the Duke of Hennessy wasn’t entertaining, the butler’s startled expression when a coach and four arrived at the front door of Hennessy House in Hampshire would have led him to the same conclusion. Aside from the fact that he couldn’t recall more than two or three soirees ever being held at Reynolds House, Hennessy’s London home, he doubted many people would voluntarily spend their holiday being constantly frowned at.

In this instance “House” was something of a misnomer; the estate wasn’t as large as Greaves Park—few homes were—but it was impressive. And cold and stifling, but then he’d thought the same thing about his own estate until Sophia had arrived there bringing sunshine where none had ever shone before.

“May I help you?” the butler asked, resuming a more disdainful expression.

“Is Hennessy in residence?” Adam returned, pushing back at his brimming frustration. The events of the past few days had sharpened his temper to a degree that even he found troubling, but the anger and frustration were also the only things that kept his mind focused on the task at hand rather than on the impossible one that still lay before him in Cornwall.

“And who may I say is calling? The household is presently abed and cannot be disturbed.”

Abed—what the devil time was it? He’d been measuring by days rather than hours, because all that mattered was that he hadn’t seen Sophia in six days. It felt longer, and shorter; he could conjure their last kiss—though at the time he hadn’t known it was the last—with no effort at all.

“The Duke of Greaves,” he said aloud, though he would have thought the large coat of arms painted on the large black coach would have supplied his pedigree just as well.

The butler blinked. “Please come inside and make yourself comfortable, Your Grace,” he said crisply, backing out of the doorway and leading the way to a rather formal-looking sitting room. Adam didn’t sit, however. Nothing about him had been able to relax for days.

He would have left Greaves Park sooner, but that would have meant shirking duties as both a duke and a landowner. The gifts of food to the poor the day after Christmas, the gifts and obligations to his servants, and a hundred other tasks that he traditionally saw to at this time of year. If he’d left without seeing to his people, he wouldn’t have felt … worthy of pursuing Sophia. Not after she’d reminded him that he was human.

Nearly forty minutes of silent, building annoyance passed before the sitting room door opened again. “Greaves,” a low voice rumbled. “What in the world brings you to Hampshire at this time of year? And at this hour?”

The Duke of Hennessy was a large man, stout and barrel-chested, with a gut that had expanded at approximately the same rate that his straight gray hair had receded toward the top of his head. He looked nothing at all like Sophia, thankfully, except perhaps for the slightly curved eyebrows and something he couldn’t quite name about the eyes.