The Rambunctious Lady Royston (4 page)

"A pity, my lady," Royston told her calmly. "We shall miss him."

Samantha knew she didn't care a rap whether the Earl bedded the whole of London, but she was not about to sit idly by as he made his assignations in front of her. "I should like to retire, my lord, if you don't mind," she cut in coldly. "I was hungry earlier on, but I‘m afraid what I ingested upset my stomach. I never could abide
tarts.
"

With an exaggerated curtsy to Lady Foxx, who had flushed livid with fury, Samantha started for the exit. The Earl was forced to follow after her.

Once in the carriage she turned on him with a fury. "So that's why you stayed by my side all evening playing the loving fiance. You didn't wish your latest flirt to come too near me. Did you think I couldn't handle the likes of her? Personally, I think I did rather well," she said randomly, before allowing her anger to take control again. "But don't ever again imagine you can make arrangements to tumble your light-o-love in my presence. How dare you!"

The Earl was in no mood to answer her questions. "You stupid child! I leave you alone for two minutes and you succeed in insulting one of the most powerful hostesses in the city. How do you expect to be accepted in Society if you act the hoyden?"

Samantha shrugged her shoulders uncaringly. "I intend to be an original I have no doubt Society will take all I have to give it once I am your Countess. After all, it tolerates you, don't it?"

"Why you little minx, I have a good mind to break the engagement and send you packing."

She thrust out her chin defiantly. "Don't hesitate on my account, sir. I welcome your retreat and long only to wave you on your way."

The Earl decided on a change of tactics. "Why did it bridle you so much when Lady Foxx teased you? I thought you didn't care for me. What difference if I have a romance or two, if I'm discreet? Surely it would spare you my obviously unwanted embraces."

Samantha's expressive eyes flashed green fire in the darkness of the coach. "You're dead as a house, aren't you? It's enough that I have to wed you. I refuse to do the civil by your sluts, no matter what their station." At his warning glance she added impishly, "Besides, you said I entertained you. Were you entertained tonight?"

The Earl found himself caught between a need to strangle the child for her ill manners and a desire to laugh at Lorinda's discomfiture at the hands of a young chit supposedly green as grass. After all, the child had handled herself brilliantly in a thrust and parry with one of the most sophisticated women in London. He found himself slightly proud of the minx, and try as he would he could not keep a stern face. "I missed the part about the cat, child. Why on earth did you meow?"

Samantha relented and told him exactly what had transpired before he came on the scene. He chuckled appreciatively and declared, "We shall stand the entire
haut ton
on its respective ear, my pet. I congratulate you. I feel almost young again."

"Nonsense. You're a greybeard. I am only marrying you to amuse you in your declining years."

"For that, and to bear me sons. Don't forget that Samantha," he said with a returning note of gravity.

He moved closer to her and whispered a short apology in her ear for his earlier treatment. "I am much better at lovemaking than that kiss demonstrated. Would you like me to give you an example?"

"I believe I can live with my interest until after our marriage, my lord."

"That's another thing. My name is Zachary. When are you going to use it?"

Samantha looked over at him and tried to fit the face with the name. He looked younger when he smiled—as he was smiling now—younger and less forbidding. She had to admit to herself again that he was a handsome man, a very handsome man. "I will do my best, my—Zachary."

His smile widened and he returned, "And I shall continue to call you my Sam. But only in private. I feel it would not be understood in public."

"Thank you ... Zachary."

He tilted her chin up with his hand and studied her face for a few moments. "You are a pretty child, Sam. I shall enjoy bedding you." With that he lowered his mouth to hers and gave her a slow tender kiss.

Samantha did not sleep well that night.

As much as Samantha had hoped (and even, as time was fast running out, prayed) for another earthquake or Great Fire to strike the city, or for the Thames to overrun its banks and wash London downstream, her wedding day dawned disgustingly dry and bright and devoid of any such opportune calamity.

Even Mother Nature was on Royston's side. After one heart-sinking peek through the curtains at the rising sun, Samantha crawled back into her bed and pulled the covers up over her eyes.

Daisy entered with her mistress's morning chocolate and a cheery, "Good morning, Miss Sammy," only to make an abrupt exit moments later, the china cup and its contents only just missing her head as she hastily pulled the door shut behind her. "Well, I never!" she exclaimed as she beat her hasty retreat.

An hour later Aunt Loretta scratched timidly at her niece's door before tiptoeing in (carefully avoiding the dried chocolate and splintered crockery). Reluctantly she approached the lump of covers on the bed. "Samantha," she croaked in a fearful whisper. "Samantha, my pet, the hour grows late."

"The hour can grow whiskers for all I care," came the muffled retort from beneath the coverlet. And then, as if it were an afterthought, came a garbled declaration, "Go away, Aunt Loretta, I'm never getting up again. I shall just stay here. The Earl can stand at the church until cobwebs run from his miserable carcass or he drops dead, infant-chasing lecher that he is."

Aunt Loretta stifled a weary sigh. It wasn't that she was not extremely agitated by this latest start of her brother's child. It was just that the thought of racking her brains for an argument designed to budge Samantha from her quilted satin hidey-hole was very fatiguing. Over the years she had spent under her brother's roof she had tried everything from pleas to threats, bribes to punishments, dire warnings of bogey men and even—as a last resort—appeals to sweet reason. None of these ploys had ever resulted in even one small success, and she was loathe to expend any undue energy only to be met with another failure.

"Have it your way then, Sammy dear. You always do," she advised her niece resignedly. "Frankly," she added for no good reason she could think of, "I believe the Earl well out of it, if you must know. You'd never make more than a mediocre Countess in any event, what with being so cowardly and all."

After all the years and all the failures, Aunt Loretta had unconsciously hit upon the one way sure to get a reaction from Samantha: she had issued her a challenge. The bedcovers exploded into the air as a flame-topped jangle of arms and legs kicked and swatted its way out from under the coverlet and scrambled to its knees in the center of the bed.

"Mediocre, is it, Aunt?" the tousle-haired creature sneered as she bounced up and down on her knees in a fine temper, in her fury straining more than one seam in her lawn nightgown. "I'll have you know I'd make a damned good Countess. No! Better than good. I'd make a great Countess! Get Daisy in here at once and in an hour I'll show you a Countess fit to beat the Dutch!"

Aunt Loretta, chagrined that it had taken till the last day of her chaperonage to discover the way to gain her niece's cooperation, left the room muttering, "When you will she won't, when you won't she will." But finding the pondering of any problem too fatiguing for words, she promptly expelled her vexation in a prodigiously satisfying yawn and took herself off to rest on her chaise until it came time to dress for the ceremony.

The bride and her party were late arriving at the church, but not because Samantha had dawdled. Indeed, she had been gowned and coiffured and champing at the bit long before anyone else was even half-dressed. But the marriage of the Earl of Royston was, because of his wide acquaintance and due to his improbable choice of bride, an event to pique the interest of even the most jaded of persons. The roadway in front of the church was therefore clogged with a line of carriages that successfully blocked passage of the bridal coach for a full half hour.

At long last the organist pounded out an entrance hymn and an endless parade of bridesmaids inched its way with babylike teeterings down the long aisle. As they went, the bridesmaids, cousins Samantha couldn't abide in the best of times, cast their eyes about, flirting and simpering and generally behaving in a way that prompted the Earl to wish the floor would open and swallow the lot of them. The ridiculous spectacle served also to prompt his bride to inform her maid of honor, Isabella, that all this farradiddle was making her teeth ache.

Isabella—a hopeless romantic doomed to living with a family that seemed to harbor not a jot of sensibility—followed at the tag end of the bridesmaids, her angelic face alternately displaying trembling smiles, maidenly blushes, and affecting quiverings of her full cherry-red lower lip as she fought down her emotions. This last was a very effective touch, producing a jewel-like tear or two that announced to one and all that she truly loved her dear sister (even if that same younger sister had stolen a march on her to the altar).

From his assigned place at the foot of the altar, Zachary St. John observed all this display of pomp with a jaundiced eye. His groomsmen may have been content to stand at their ease and appraise the bridesmaids for a likely candidate for a dalliance behind the shrubbery during the luncheon planned for after the ceremony, but the Earl of Royston was mightily bored by the whole affair. He was, furthermore, unlikely to conceal his disinterest from the acutely observant
ton
, on the watch for any titillating
on dit
the ceremony might produce.

And so it was that the cream of London Society was privileged to see the coldly austere Earl in a rare moment of animation, when at last his eyes spied out a vision in white silk patterned with
peau de soie
lace as Samantha floated down the aisle on her father's arm. She was tall enough to carry off the heavily embroidered gown, which trailed a good six feet behind her—exactly the same distance as did her
peau de soie
veil, which fell from her seed-pearl encrusted cap. The cap rested lightly on Samantha's artlessly casual (but in truth painstakingly arranged) burnished curls that framed a face of much the same creamy ivory shade as the bride's gown.

The only colors to be seen, other than Samantha's copper hair, were the mauve of the orchids she carried and the sparkling sea-green splashes of her almond-shaped eyes. The choice of bride may have been a shock to Society, but everyone was forced to agree that the girl's beauty went a long way toward making sense of Royston's haste to get her shackled.

While the Earl watched Samantha and the guests watched the Earl, the end of the aisle was reached and Sir Stephen placed his daughter's ice cold hand into Royston's warm one. Quietly he wished them happy.

As they turned to face the minister the Earl whispered sarcastically, "And are you happy, my dear?" to which his "dear," her face hidden from all but Royston and the minister, promptly responded by crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue.

It was some moments before the astonished clergyman regained his solemnity sufficiently to begin the ceremony, never really recovering from his shock as the Earl's shoulder's persisted in shaking in silent mirth for the entirety of the service.

Later, during the bridal luncheon held at the Earl's residence, Zachary and Samantha St. John—the Earl and Countess of Royston—found themselves at table, alone together for the first time since they had joined their fates together.

"Well, my pretty prankster," his lordship drawled intimately, "the time has come to ask a question that has been on my mind the whole afternoon. Was the sight of that pretty pink tongue an attempt at protesting to the last moment that you would prove an unworthy Countess, an expression of distaste directed at yours truly, or—and I sincerely hope this last was the case—a tantalizing preview of the delights I shall taste and explore later this night at my leisure? I must say I would rather you forego the eye-crossing, however, as the sight puts me strangely in mind of a tutor I had in my youth. It was ever so fatiguing, you understand, trying to look the man square in the eye."

During the course of this blatantly teasing speech Samantha's green eyes had narrowed to slits and her full mouth had pinched itself into an angry pucker. As her sister, brother, father, maid, or Aunt Loretta could have pointed out, that well-known expression was a warning any prudent person was quick to heed—and one which any person sincerely committed to self-preservation avoided provoking at all costs.

The Earl, already slightly familiar with that particular storm warning, ye curiouslyt unafraid, merely leaned back in his chair, folded his arms (Isabella, if she were present, would have suggested safety would be better served by clapping them about his ears rather than placing them in that negligent manner across his chest), and waited patiently for the storm to break about his head. Ah, having this volatile, unpredictable child about was going to go a long way towards relieving the monotony of being surrounded by brainless ladies and dull-dog men. He sincerely hoped it might also blunt the raw edges of his pain over the loss of his beloved younger brother.

But ho! What was this? It had been a full minute since he had facetiously baited his new bride, and although her armed-for-battle visage showed no signs of softening she had not retaliated in any of the several ways her husband had suspected. Those ways, of course, ran the gamut from a verbal retort to an all-out physical assault on his person.

The Earl smiled, "Pardon my poor humor, Sam, but—er—cat got your tongue? I ask this tongue-in-cheek, of course," he concluded with a chuckle, extremely well pleased with himself.

At last Samantha roused from her silent contemplation. "Firstly, my lord husband, unless you are admiring of the appellation Zack—an unassuming enough handle that has served many a coal-heaver, swineherd, and chimney sweep for a lifetime, you would be advised to dismiss from your vocabulary any shortening of my name that you so unkindly employ to mock rather than as a term of affection."