Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 02] Page 6

  Everyone loved Lord Rafe, as he became known. The baker saved the best cakes for him, the storekeeper’s daughter flirted with him and ruffled his dark hair, the carpenter carved him a matched set of horses—one of which he tried to give to Calder, who refused it.

  It was so easy for him. Calder watched in envy shielded in scorn. He knew the successive kings and queens of England in order, could spout centuries of literature and tally sums into nine digits with ease, but he could not make a chambermaid smile, nor coax his father’s booming laugh with a story about falling into the river while flying a kite.

  That he outmatched Rafe in their studies was not cause for celebration, but only what his father expected of him. Rafe was quick to learn but just as quick to lose interest. Calder was the one who carried doggedly on, past the point of learning about the dashing battles won on to the politics beneath the war.

  There was only one area of study where Rafe surpassed him—when it came to Brookhaven itself. Rafe soaked up the family history as if he’d always known it and only needed reminding. For Calder, giving the estate over to Rafe’s care on his brother’s wedding day had not been hard. Rafe would never fail Brookhaven. He would be a good master.

  Yet for all his easy charm and quick likeability, Rafe had never presumed to be more than he was. Without affectation or pretense, he did not try to hide from where he’d risen. Down to the silver buttons on his coat—when most who could not afford gold tried to fool the world with cheaper brass—Rafe was without an ounce of shame for his low beginnings.

  What was it like to be so contented with oneself?

  Calder gazed stonily at his chilled breakfast and his tepid coffee. He was not his brother. He did not attract people like moths to his flame. He had to pay them well, like Fortescue, or, like his new bride, marry them into submission.

  He stood and tossed his napkin onto his congealing eggs. “I’ve work to do. Bring more coffee to my study.” He stalked away from Fortescue’s bow. The last thing he needed right now was the silent sympathy in his butler’s gaze.

  Chapter Eleven

  For her part, Deirdre had the sort of morning she had always dreamed of. She rose at her leisure, put on a silk dressing gown, and reclined upon her velvet sofa in her luxurious bedchamber, drinking the exquisite tea brought by her cheerful maid.

  She asked for her customary breakfast on a tray and it soon appeared. Toast and a small dish of berries. No cream, no butter, no jam.

  She was weak-kneed from lack of food the previous day, but the dry toast went down hard, squeezed by the knot of unease in her belly. She picked at it restlessly, the silence of her beautiful bedchamber oppressive on her nerves.

  She hated eating alone.

  Woolton had been an unfriendly place under Tessa’s rule. Any servant of quality had fled from her stepmother’s demands and infrequent salary. Even a scullery maid liked to be paid.

  That left the incompetent and dishonest ones, who resented Tessa openly—and put Deirdre into the same class. Being left with the evil Tessa when her father died, she ought to have become a sweet, compassionate survivor like Phoebe. Well, no disrespect to her cousin, but Deirdre had long ago decided upon a different solution.

  She built herself a shell of poise and pretty Society manners and flinty, unrelenting determination to get as far away from Lady Tessa as the borders of England would allow.

  Yesterday, she had done just that.

  She closed her eyes against a powerful jolt of missing Papa. How he would have loved to have been there yesterday, to give her away to the man of her dreams, to have seen her in that lovely gown. If only he could have given her away instead of the vicar. She’d chosen Phoebe’s father because he was at least someone’s father, and his tall, silver good looks set off her own golden beauty nicely, but it hadn’t been the same.

  Then she shut that door of memory with force. Papa may have partially gotten her into this mess, but there was no one to help her get out except herself.

  The letter to the solicitors had already been posted. She had only to wait out the months or possibly even mere days until she went from being the Marchioness of Brookhaven to the Duchess of Brookmoor.

  Twenty-seven thousand pounds would go a long way to fixing matters, wouldn’t it?

  STICKLEY AND WOLFE, partners in estate law, sons of more successful fathers, sole handlers of the significant Pickering fortune that was even now slotted to be bestowed upon Deirdre, Lady Brookhaven—as soon as old Duke of Brookmoor cocked up his toes and passed the title on to his nephew, of course—sat in their silent and somewhat grand office, face-to-face across the two desks their fathers had arranged four decades earlier.

  I wish the blackguard would drink himself in front of the first ale cart to come along.

  Stickley sat perfectly upright, of course, the very model of a proper solicitor, right down to the discreet gold watch fob and spectacles. Alas, the painful fact was that no matter how he squared his shoulders and kept his chin high, he would never approach his partner’s easy masculinity. Unlike Wolfe, he could never carry off sprawling listlessly in the opposite chair as if his spine had melted into the fine leather and would never come away again. Not without looking feminine and pathetic, at any rate, like an abandoned dolly.

  This only made Stickley’s spine stiffer and his indignant sniffs more incensed.

  “Stick,” Wolfe muttered without raising his drowsy lids or even properly opening his lips. “If you don’t quit your damnable sniffing, I’m going to twist your nose from your face and grind it under my heel.”

  “I cannot help it. You stink,” Stickley responded. “You reek of cheap perfume and cheaper gin.”

  The reminder only made Wolfe’s handsome lips curl in recollection. “Actually, I’m fairly sure the perfume was cheaper.” He leered, lost in memories all too apparently lurid.

  Stickley jerked his gaze away to contemplate the far less disturbing bookcases lining one wall. The spines gleamed despite the fact that no one had opened those volumes in his lifelong memory. “Say no more. I wish no accounting of your decadent misadventures!”

  Unfortunately, this time Wolfe took him at his word and sank back into his hung-over stupor without another word about the shocking but intriguing source of the cheap perfume.

  Which was hardly fair, since it had been Stickley himself who had supplied the coin for it—in a manner of speaking, of course. He and Wolfe might be equal partners, but there was no illusion of who did the actual work. Why, without Stickley’s efforts the Pickering fortune would not have grown so vast over the last two decades—which meant that Wolfe’s portion of the retainer had grown as well, enabling the fellow to live out his days in the pursuit of pleasure instead of putting effort into the partnership.

  The least the bastard could do—since he insisted on darkening the office door at all—was to relieve Stickley’s boredom with some outrageous tales to be properly scandalized by.

  “Why are you here again?”

  Wolfe gusted a bored sigh and lifted his boot heels to rest on the blotter as if he could scarcely find the strength to do so. “Damned landlord locked me out again.”

  Stickley raised the superior brow of a man who owned his own proper little house in a respectable neighborhood. “Stinted on the rent again, did you? I paid out your share yesterday. Did you waste all of it?”

  Wolfe shrugged. “Waste?” He gave a bad-dog smile. “I wouldn’t say it was wasted …”

  Stickley pricked up his ears, but Wolfe rumbled back to sleepy silence once again.

  At that moment, a tap came at the office door. “That’ll be the post.” Perhaps not a great leap of deduction, since no one else bothered to come to their office. Stickley rose and dug into his waistcoat pocket for a penny to pay the postage as he crossed the room. Of course, Wolfe made no move toward paying for something.

  There was only one letter, a crisp costly envelope with the Brookhaven arms embossed on the flap. “Ah, her ladyship!”

  When M
iss Deirdre Cantor had landed the marquis in a masterful play just after his lordship had given up his previous fiancée to his bastard half-brother in a ceremony that was still the talk of the town, Stickley had dusted off his hands, declared his meddling days over and had settled down to manage the vast fortune that the new Lady Brookhaven had promised to leave in his—their—capable hands.

  After all, what need had she for it, when Brookhaven’s own wealth outshone even old Pickering’s? The plan had worked nicely, even though it had been Wolfe’s idea. Together, they had made sure Brookhaven’s first engagement had failed.

  Of course, it was true that Wolfe’s information had been faulty and Brookhaven’s fortune was solid—and it was true that kidnapping Brookhaven had turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, especially when it hadn’t been Brookhaven after all, but his brother—and it was true that Miss Phoebe Millbury probably wouldn’t have had any more use for her inheritance than did Miss Deirdre—er, the new Lady Brookhaven.

  Well, however they had arrived at this point, it was a good place to be. Stickley had not nurtured and tended the Pickering thousands all these years to be happy about them being frittered away on alleged female “needs.” Now he wouldn’t have to be.

  With relish, he opened the flap and withdrew the thick, heavy paper within. He read aloud, although Wolfe didn’t seem interested.

  “‘To the firm of Stickley & Wolfe,

  Dear sirs,

  I hope this letter finds you well.’”

  Stickley smiled, a brittle twist of his lips. “Lady Brookhaven is a most well-bred young woman, is she not?”

  Wolfe grunted. At least, Stickley preferred to hear it as a grunt and not as some other, less savory exudation. Ignoring his partner, he went on.

  “‘I have decided not to inform my husband of my incipient inheritance—’”

  “Well, that is her prerogative, I suppose,” Stickley said with a judgmental sniff. “Although I shouldn’t allow a wife of mine to keep such a thing from me.”

  He ignored Wolfe’s muttered slur on his possibility of ever being in such a position in the first place—really, just because a fellow took a bit of care with his appearance didn’t mean—

  He read on silently until he came to a sentence that made his hand clench the perfect paper to a permanent crease.

  “Oh, no. Oh—oh—” There was no help for it. Only a curse would do at a moment like this! “Oh, blast!”

  This roused Wolfe from his stupor as if the cast silver wolf’s head on his walking stick had just risen up and bitten him. His boots hit the floor and he rose to his feet in a not-as-smooth-as-usual motion. “What? What is it?”

  Stickley couldn’t breathe. “F—f—” He waved the letter frantically at Wolfe. “F—”

  Wolfe raised his walking stick. “Spit it out, Stickley!”

  “‘Full withdrawal’!” he gasped. “‘Immediately upon becoming the Duchess of Brookmoor’!”

  Wolfe went pale beneath his greenish hue and sank slowly back into his chair. “Oh.” He took a long breath. “Oh, hell!”

  Stickley nodded hysterically. “Exactly! Precisely! Oh, Wolfe, what are we going to do?”

  Wolfe gazed into the glinting silver eyes of his walking stick for a long moment. Then he raised his head slowly. “The poor thing,” he said silkily. He shook his head. “So she’s realized what it means to marry the Beast.”

  Stickley gazed down at the brief note, trying to divine its source. “You think she wants to leave him?” He blinked rapidly. “So soon? But why?” A chill went through him. “Do you think she’s afraid of him?”

  Wolfe let out a heavy sigh. “Can it be anything else? She must have discovered his true nature right away. She is desperate now, I’ll wager, afraid she’ll end up just like the first Marchioness of Brookhaven.”

  Stickley shifted, uncomfortable with such dark imaginings. “Then, if she is truly in danger,” he said slowly, “perhaps we ought to simply give her the money. It is rightfully hers, after all—or at least, it will be soon.”

  Wolfe nodded thoughtfully. “That might be a solution—unless he took control of it. Then she’d be helpless.” He spread his hands. “And who would stop him? He’s already gotten away with murder.”

  That had always been Stickley’s personal belief as well. “What are you suggesting?”

  Wolfe pondered the head of his walking stick. “I’m thinking … what if we do more for her? What if we help her free herself from that dreadful marriage … permanently?”

  Stickley flinched at the hardness glinting in his partner’s eyes. He suddenly recalled those alarming moments during their last adventure when he’d been almost sure that Wolfe was contemplating … well, violence. “You don’t mean to—”

  Wolfe sharpened his faraway focus on Stickley’s pale face. The steely glimmer became shuttered and an easy smile took the place of the incipient snarl. “Don’t worry, Stick. I know exactly what to do.”

  Stickley shook his head, more worried than ever. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Once Deirdre had eaten and dressed, she found herself at loose ends. There was nothing to do in Brook House. The household already ran smoothly. Other than seeking out the lost kitten, she had no plans for the day, or any day soon, so there would be no choosing of gowns or dressing of hair later.

  She steadfastly refused the compulsion to look for a partner in crime in Meggie, for the act smacked a bit too much of obeying his lordship’s edict that she raise his daughter. Besides, her ladyship had every right to inspect her new domain, after all. She would work her way from the cellar to the attic, she decided.

  Unfortunately, the cellar was extremely dull, consisting of a rigidly organized storage area for root vegetables and the even more immaculate kitchens, where she didn’t dare step foot.

  The public rooms of the house, the parlors and drawing rooms and music room, she knew well already. His lordship’s study remained a mystery, but Deirdre was not about to brave the Beast’s very den—especially when she remembered the way he’d gazed at her last night!

  She would have to face him sometime if she wished to wage her battle, but perhaps not just yet.

  In the end, she found herself wandering the gallery, peering beneath the skirted tables and whispering allegedly cat-attracting noises. The hallway ran the front of the house, with inset windows looking out over the very best of London’s houses perched along the street below.

  Pausing in one of the window embrasures, Deirdre gazed out at the city she’d expected to own outright by now. Here she was, the Marchioness of Brookhaven, gripping the bars of her cage and staring out like the most forsaken Bedlamite.

  Activity on the street below caught her attention. Three men approached the door to Brook House. They moved with the lithe bodies and easy steps of youth. After a moment, she recognized a certain gaudily striped waistcoat.

  Ah, her worshipful faction had arrived. The waistcoat would be Cotter, the gray jacket would be Saunders and the dark blue … that would be Baskin.

  The fact that she’d been wed only the day before seemed not to give any of the three pause—and why would it? It had been obvious to the world that hers had been a marriage of convenience. Why would life not go on as usual, with gentlemen callers abounding?

  They were only a bunch of bored boys, anyway, with no real prospects of inheriting anything worthwhile and no real mission in life to occupy them. Flirting was their favorite pastime and, really, their only skill. Why should a little wedding ceremony slow them down a bit?

  Cotter and Saunders enjoyed her company well enough, but she would guess that it was Baskin who couldn’t stay away.

  Baskin was the failed son of a renowned poet. Deirdre spared a moment of sympathy for what it must have been like to grow up in the shadow of great expectations—among the artistic elite of Hampstead yet—but that pity evaporated like dew in the morning as she recalled the long hours of tedious verse he had subjec
ted her to in the past.

  Heaven help her, she almost wished Fortescue would let them in. Even Baskin’s dreadfully overwrought penning of passionate devotion would be a relief from the tension and boredom she feared would constitute the rest of her life.

  Or perhaps not. Baskin would insist on reading them aloud to her, until her eyes glazed over and her arse went numb. It was with mixed regret and relief that she watched them amble away, dejection in every step.

  She turned from the view. Right. It wasn’t as if she’d truly wanted to see any of them. After all, those days of attentive flirtation and sparkling conversation were over.

  The opposite wall of the gallery hosted great lifesized paintings of every member of the Marbrook family—apparently reaching back into the days when men thought they had the panache to carry off the wearing of slashed doublets and tights.

  Marbrook men did tend toward the satisfyingly muscular thigh, didn’t they?

  Were his lordship’s thighs so well-strapped? He was tall and long of leg, and his trousers were well-fitted—though not so tightly as that fop Cotter’s—so she knew that his buttocks were hard and his stomach flat, and it looked as though he might well have all the requisite family history for truly handsome thighs as well … .

  She came to the most modern paintings to see two young men at the last. Lord Raphael and Lord Calder Marbrook, the engraved plates said.

  Calder had not had his portrait painted since then, but he had apparently commissioned one of Melinda. She sat regally posed in an elegant chair, wearing a lace gown that was so stylishly advanced that Deirdre would not be ashamed to wear it tomorrow. Of course, but the young, beautiful Marchioness of Brookhaven had sparked the fashions, not followed them, hadn’t she?

  Deirdre knew she herself was beautiful in a bold, golden fashion, but Melinda had been something altogether rare and lovely. So slender as to approach frailty—except that on her it merely seemed exquisite and otherworldly—Melinda’s dark hair and mist-pale complexion gave her an air of another time.