The Bargain Bride (32 page)

He was the luckiest man on earth, despite the cold rain that started to fall and the wind that carried away his hat. The bad roads did not matter, nor the hurried meals, or the mean gelding that tried to take a bite out of West's leg at every chance. “I don't blame you for taking out your frustrations, old chap,” he told the horse. “I'd bite, too, if I never got the chance to make love to my wife again.”

He wanted his wife, and no other woman would do. West was amazed at that change, too. He found himself not the least interested in the barmaids, the pretty females at the various inns, the dimpled salesgirls at the bakeshops where he stopped for food. For the first time since he could remember, he barely looked at the women, and not just because he was in a hurry. None of them mattered; only Penny did, and getting back to her bed.

Soon. By tomorrow night, he swore, the night of the party, he'd celebrate his return. Gad, he hoped her new ball gown was easy to unfasten, or he'd have to rip it to shreds, so that he could see her skin, the blond curls between her legs, the blush of passion that covered every inch of her luscious body. Of course, he'd have to wait until the guests left, unless he could entice her out to the garden, or the butler's pantry, or—no, Penny was bound to take her hostessing duties too seriously for that.

Maybe no one would come. He could hope for that, or that the guests all left early to go on to another party. Damn, that would not work, either. He and Penny had to find matches for the misbegotten Entwhistle misses before they could have a life of their own. Very well, he'd look over the bachelor ranks, find some likely fellows, and twist some arms if need be.

He and Penny had to come to some kind of terms about the money, too, her fortune and his lack thereof. Between repairs and improvements to Westfield, the extra men, and the reward money, his coffers were coughing up dust. He was going to find it deuced hard to swallow his pride and ask for a loan, after swearing he'd never live off his wife, but he needed funds immediately and Penny's fortune was sitting in a bank. As soon as the property showed a profit again, he'd put her money back, for their children's futures.

Should he ask before or after telling her he loved her? Before or after loving her witless? Damn, either way, she'd think he was using her, the same as her relations used her, the same as half the
ton
supposed he was using her.

He decided to ask her the morning after, when she was all soft and sleepy and sated. Yes, definitely after, when he'd proved how much he loved her in the best way he knew how.

What if she said no? She had every right to, especially since he left so abruptly. Well, he'd just have to make love to her until she changed her mind.

“Giddyup, you jug-headed jade. My wife is waiting. My life is waiting.”

—By Arrangement,
a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber

 

 

 

W
hatever happened to the woman she used to be? Penny wondered. The one who ran a household, managed an orphanage, organized six different committees with confidence and poise. The one who had learned to rely on herself to make her own satisfactory life. The one who did not need a man to fill her days, her thoughts, her bed.

That female was long gone, lost, or lamentably hard to locate. Instead Penny's mind was in a constant muddle of wanting and needing and missing West. She needed him, here and now, and not simply because the ball was tomorrow. She needed his strength, his assurance, his warmth, his promise of loyalty. Dash it, she needed her heart back!

Curse him, he'd done this to her, despite her best intentions. He'd made her love him, the cad, and depend on him for her soul's well-being, instead of being the comfortable, self-sufficient woman she used to be. Even after the wedding, she had made her own decisions for the most part, and could go her own way. She'd made certain of that. Persephone Goldwaite was not going to be anyone's chattel, anyone's handmaiden, to be used and discarded like a frayed handkerchief.

Now? Now she was all muckle-minded, wondering what West would do: how he would deal with Nigel, Nicky, her money in the bank . . . and Lady Greenlea.

Meanwhile, she still had to find husbands for her stepsisters. Mavis had already attracted three men with titles, to her mother's delight. To Penny's dismay, they were a rake, a rogue, and a reprobate. Good grief, they would make wretched husbands, worse than West, if possible, if they deigned to marry Mavis after ruining her. Fortune hunters, all of them, according to Lady Bainbridge and Mr. Cottsworth, they were as interested in dalliance as dowries, no matter how large.

As for Amelia, she had been winkled out of her shell by Nicky's charm. Penny paused in her musings, considering the possibilities. No, she decided, that match would never do. Nicky was polite enough to speak of the girl's interests. He would be bored to tears in a week, listening to her enthuse about poetry and romantic novels. For that matter, Nicky was not suitable husband material, although a bit of responsibility might steady him. If not West's brother, however, who would be kind enough, patient enough, dreamy enough for Amelia, while satisfying her mother's ambitions? West would know.

Where was he when she needed him? Botheration, the most important party of her life was a day away, and everything was falling apart.West was supposed to be her support, her helpmeet, not cause her so many sleepless nights. Gracious, she had slept alone for six and twenty years. Surely she could not miss him so badly that she lay awake worrying where he was sleeping, wishing for his touch, his breath, his warmth next to her, his waking smile, his good-night kisses that lasted all night.

He should be in her bed tonight, now that he'd shown her the pleasures and promised her more. She'd discovered sex was not something one did once, to make a baby. She had not conceived, and she had not satisfied her curiosity, either, or the new burning she felt in her innermost parts, just thinking of West and his interesting parts. She could feel her body heating and tightening, just at the thought of his touch. No, she needed only his smile to start breathing faster, leaning toward him, like a flower to the sun. West had become her light, and she felt cold, dreary, and denied without him.

He should be getting ready for the ball, not leaving her to face his circle of friends without him. Instead of having his strength to buttress her, Penny was so anxious she was bound to make a hash of the whole thing, like spilling her wine on the prince. Goodness, was His Excellence actually coming? What if Nigel came, too? West would know how to act. Penny knew how to panic.

A pox upon him for being a blasted viscount in the first place, for making her love him, for being gone. Especially now, when, instead of the man she wanted, she had to deal with a handful she did not.

 

First was Nicky. He still looked like the loser in a bar-room brawl, which he was, but he was back to being a superior man about Town, which he was not. He looked at the vouchers in his hand; then he looked at Penny through his one open eye and accused her of dishonor able deeds. “You cheated Entwhistle to get them back?”

“No, I was ready to pay. He reneged on his word, making demands I could not accept, so I reneged on mine.” She told him how her new bank had instructions not to honor any checks from Nigel.

“Then I still owe him.”

“Do not be a goose. You cannot owe a thief for stealing back what he took in the first place. He practically admitted to plucking a pigeon—that is you, in case you thought you ever stood a chance against a hardened gamester like Nigel—just to get to my money.”

Nicky glanced at the chits again. “So the bills are not due?”

“You have them in your hand, don't you? I believe Nigel negotiated with the madam and the innkeeper, so those debts are now his, if they existed at all. Neither of those upstanding citizens is liable to go to Bow Street in complaint. I suggest burning the markers. Or keep one as a reminder to use your head occasionally, as more than a target for someone's fists.”

“And I do not owe you the blunt now?”

The look she gave him could have blackened his other eye. “You owe me, but not in coins.”

Penny went on to relieve some of her frustrations by enumerating his defects in character, intelligence, and common sense. Then she switched to the sins of every male on earth. Without giving Nicky the chance to defend the indefensible—West wasn't where he belonged, was he?—she finished by demanding Nicky's instant reform, his attentiveness at her ball, and the appearance there of the poet Culpepper.

Nicky was willing to promise anything, especially keeping out of the rookeries. He had no desire to face the Butcher or any of his brethren. He would be at the ball, sober and at her side, he swore. Culpepper would come, and other chums who owed him, for abandoning him to a scoundrel like Entwhistle. He would not have left any sick friend in the hands of an ivory turner, he told her indignantly, shifting the blame for the debacle to other shoulders.

Which Penny did not accept, not for an instant. “You went. You lost. You could have been killed, you jackass! And West would have blamed me. So learn from this—learn that you alone are responsible for your own actions! No one else is.” That was why she was not going to tell him about Nigel's threats or his assault on her. The cawker was liable to go off in a storm of righteousness, challenging the dastard to a duel. Wouldn't West be happy with her then? In fact, she demanded Nicky's silence about the whole affair.

“There is no reason to discuss any of this with your brother, when the oaf bothers to return.”

“Lord, no.” The last thing Nicky wanted was another lecture. As angry as West would be over the gambling debts, he'd be furious that Penny was involved. A man did not send a frail female into the fray of swindlers and swine, even if she was stepsister to one of them. “My lips are sealed.” And swollen, so West would know something had occurred, but they'd come up with some story to tell him. “So should I drag the other fellows to your dance? They'll do the pretty by the Entwhistle gals, I vow. Or I'll darken their daylights, too.”

She sighed, giving up. “Yes, bring them. Polite young gentlemen are always welcome.”

 

Her father was next. “What's this I hear?” he demanded, before the footman could shut the library door behind him.

“Whatever you heard was not true. I did not kiss Nigel.”

“Feh. You would not marry the feckless fool when you had the chance. Why would you kiss him?” Sir Gaspar lowered himself into a comfortable chair and accepted a glass of Mr. Littleton's finest. Then he sighed in contentment, enjoying the spirits, the silence, the restful atmosphere of his daughter's house. “I do not listen to foolish gossip. Although Nigel's mother is in a taking over his black eye. A carriage door opening as he walked by, my foot.”

“No, that was my fist, although I found another place for my foot.”

He nodded, savoring another swallow of the excellent brandy. “Good girl. I always knew you could take care of yourself.”

Penny was confused. “If not the gossip, then what brings you here? Not that you are not welcome, of course. But with the ball so soon . . .”

“You took your money out of my bank, closed your accounts. Doesn't look good to the investors. Word gets out that my own daughter, a viscountess, won't do business with Goldwaite's Bank, the rest of the nobs are bound to wonder why. I do myself.”

So she told him about Nigel's plan to blackmail her, to see her ruined. Glossing over Nicky's role in the con tretemps, she explained how her reputation might be already destroyed, and the success of her ball—and his wife's daughters' come-outs—in serious jeopardy. “If you think moving my accounts to my husband's bank reflects poorly, think how Nigel's assaulting me in the street looked to strangers. I would not be surprised if none of the high sticklers attend the fete, or mothers with their innocent daughters who might be contaminated by my soiled name.”

“They'll come,” her father insisted. “To drink your wine and speculate on the size of the fortune I'll be leaving you. And I'll dance with you, puss, if that ham-fisted husband of yours doesn't come back in time.”

“He promised to be here. But can you not do something about Nigel?”

“I've tried. The boy has bad blood, that's all. I'll make sure he knows he's not getting a shilling when I stick my spoon in the wall, no matter whom he disgraces, but his mother is too fond of the chap for me to have him, ah, disappear. You should have heard the caterwauling over his black eye.” He sighed again, thinking of the difference between Westmoreland House and his own chaotic establishment.

“Can a man change?”

“Nigel won't.”

“Not him.”

Sir Gaspar set his glass down and scowled at Penny. “What, married a month and trying to change Westfield? Damn if that ain't like a woman. On the other hand, maybe he wasn't the right man for you after all, going off and leaving you vulnerable to every lowlife in London.”

“Not every scoundrel. Only Nigel.”

“But he left you, with rumors about his former interest. That's not what I like in a new husband. How are you going to get with child if you don't get together with him? That's what I want to know.”

West's leaving was nothing she could like, either, but she would not admit that to her father. “He had to go north, after the fire. Furthermore, I would not wish a husband who was careless of his dependents or his investments, or content to live off my fortune without an income of his own.” Good grief, she thought. She was defending West! Well, he was hers to criticize, no one else's. “And no, I am not thinking of changing him. He is quite superior as is. I was speaking of his brother. Nicholas Westmoreland needs to do something with his life.”