Leah Ball - The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance

Gerard visibly swallowed. She’d never seen him so nervous. Not since the first time they’d … Heat flushed up from her belly. Oh why did she have to think of that now?

Gerard stared from her squared shoulders to her clenched jaw. The look in her eyes did not bode well for his mission. Anger rolled off her in waves. While he had scripted this play to save his friend’s cousin, he no longer knew the ending.

She gazed up at him. “The great Hawkworth, having once more altered the course of my life, is now here for what purpose? To gloat?” She lowered her gaze to her hands resting in her lap and bit her lip. “I would have been a good wife to Graves. I always wanted children.”

His legs felt weak. “Then why not have children with me?”

Her lips parted in shock. “With you? Never.”

The old anger rose to claim him. The deep bitterness of loss. “Don’t tell me you loved Graves. You don’t know what love is.” He couldn’t restrain his bitter laugh. “And neither do I.”

“You don’t need to tell me that,” she spat. “I know.”

“You must have thought a great deal of this Beauchere fellow to leave me for him.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, then glanced away. “There is no Beauchere. There never was. I could hardly come back claiming to be a maid.” She shot him a look that held more than mere loathing, it held heartbreak.

He recoiled. “Are you telling me you never married?”

“How could I marry? After we …” She made a small hopeless gesture with one hand. “Father is ill. He needs medical attention. Relief from his debts.” The stiffness in her back flowed away. She hunched her shoulders and turned her lovely face to gaze into the empty hearth. “Gerard, why are you here? You’ve won. Just like before.”

The defeat in the slump of her shoulders jangled every nerve in his body. Her words rang bells of alarm.

A cold feeling spread in the pit of his stomach. “What do you mean, ‘just like before’?”

She looked up, her eyes hopeless. “It is over with, Gerard. Let it lie.” She forced a smile. The pain in her lovely eyes knifed through the wall he’d built around his heart when she left. He wanted to gather her close, kiss away the crease in her brow, promise her the world. But he didn’t dare trust her. She’d lied about loving him. He was no longer a besotted youth and he wanted the truth from her lips. “What about before?”

A horrified expression crossed her face followed by a look of pained disbelief. “You must know. You sent your father to negotiate the terms of our alliance, a carte blanche as your mistress because marriage was out of the question. When he saw Father’s shock and horror, he apologised for what you’d done and offered help. He agreed to pay all of my father’s debts and give him enough money to take me abroad. To hide my shame. He knew about us. What we’d done. Only you could have told him.”

Bile rose in his throat. “I did not. I swear it.” He put out a hand.

She waved him off. “O’Mally had brought back tales of great riches to be had in the new gambling hells in France. The money was too great a temptation to my father, even though I begged him to refuse. What influence I had no longer counted. In his eyes, I was a fallen woman. And now he is ruined and near death. You knew it would happen.”

The nausea in his gut turned to icy anger. Cold fury against his autocratic father. He clenched his fists. “How could you believe I’d abandon you?”

“I didn’t at first. I sent you a note, begging to see you.” She got up and went to the bureau and pulled a folded paper from its depths. “You seem to have forgotten your reply.”

Gerard unfolded the note and read the contents. “The choice is yours.” His seal, cracked and flaking, clung to the bottom.

“Brief and to the point,” she said in brittle tones.

“I did not write this. The only note I received from you spoke of joining a lover in France.”

Her eyes widened.

He recalled his father’s glee at the news of Charlotte’s departure. Followed by a litany of suitable brides. But Gerard could never bring himself up to scratch. Could never quite put on the shackles of a loveless marriage.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“I cannot stay. I am ruined.”

The pain in her voice, the humiliation, battered his conscience. He felt physically ill. She was right. He had toyed with her, his pain making him angry, when all the time she was innocent.

His was to blame. The realization stole his breath. He should have gone looking for her instead of retreating into icy pride.

“I’m so sorry,” he said softly. “Is it too late? For us? Is it possible to start anew? Marry me, Charlotte?” He held his breath as if the weight of the air in his lungs could tip the scales against him.

Charlotte stared into his beloved face. He looked different today, younger, a little less sure of himself. Less like the hard-edged nobleman she’d seen these past few days and more like the youth she’d loved.

She’d let him kiss her and make love to her, because she couldn’t help the way he made her feel. But his father had taken her aside five years ago. He’d explained just what Gerard owed to his family name. The duty. The honour.

Nothing had changed. She couldn’t speak for the burn in her throat and the tears behind her eyes, so she gave him a watery smile and shook her head.

“Why not?” he asked, his voice thick and strange.

“A duke cannot marry the daughter of a drink-sodden gambler who can’t pay his debts. A criminal. He is in prison, Gerard.”

“Your name is as good as mine. Goes back further if I’m not mistaken.”

“And you are seventeenth in line to the throne.”

“Nineteenth, now. Believe me, it is not a consideration in my life.”

Misery rose up to claim her, leaving her numb. “It still wouldn’t be right. I’m a fallen woman in the eyes of society. Your duchess must have an impeccable reputation.” Another thing his father had said. “It is better if I leave. Lord Graves is a kind and generous young man. I thought I would make him a good wife and, somehow, with O’Mally’s help, manage to keep Father from being too much of a burden.”

“And now?”

“Graves deserves more.”

“And me?”

Tears blurred her vision. “You deserve more also.”

He looked at her with a gentle smile. “Dearest Charlotte, are you really going to decide what is right for everyone else — for me, for your father — and sacrifice your own happiness? Think about what you want for a change. Because I damned well want you. I’ll take your father, and Miles O’Mally to boot, as long as I can have you at my side. But only if you want me, too.”

It tempted unbearably. The thought of never seeing him again, never holding him, was tearing her apart. “You still want me as your mistress?”

Anger flared in his eyes. “No, damn it. I never wanted you as a mistress. I want you as my wife. Just as we planned. Do you think I didn’t know then what your father was like? My father had lectured me to death on the matter. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. It’s you I want. At any price.”

“Oh, Gerard.” Hot tears flowed down her face. “We can’t.”

“My love,” he said. He gathered her into his arms, drew her against his chest. “My little love.”

She dissolved against him, feeling wanted, beloved and terribly weak.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered against her hair. “I had no idea what my father had done. If he wasn’t already in his grave, I think I’d murder him.”

She gave a little sobbing laugh, joy and heartbreak warring for ascendency.

“Charlotte, marry me. Please.”

She sniffed. “After what happened in the library, they’ll all think I trapped you.”

He handed her his handkerchief. “They won’t. There are some privileges among the burdens of a dukedom. We will be married in St George’s, the Prince will attend, and no one will dare say a word. Now, I want your answer. And it better be ‘yes’. We have wasted too much time.”

So much time. Her heart swelled with the knowledge there was only one answer she could possibly give. “Yes. Oh, yes. Gerard, I won’t let Father—”

He silenced her words with a kiss. “Hush. You and I will deal with your father together. We will have the rest of our lives to solve his problems, and wealth beyond reason.”

She laughed through her tears. “Oh, I couldn’t.”

“But you will. I want the children you promised me. A boy who looks like you and a girl who looks like me. Remember?”

“Oh, yes, darling Gerard, I remember. Yes, please, I would like that very much.”

He claimed her mouth. In the heat of passion, she forgot everything but him.

The Ballroom at Frieth House, The Grange, North Baslemere, Surrey, England — 3 June 1815

By the time Alec McHenry Fall, who had been the third Earl of Dane for a very short time, made his way around the ballroom, Philippa was by herself. She sat on a chair backed up against the wall, her chin tipped towards the ceiling. Her eyes were closed in an attitude of relaxation rather than — Dane hoped — prayer.

Her position exposed the slender column of her throat to anyone who might be looking, which was almost no one besides him since the room was nearly empty. Her hands lay motionless on her lap with the fingers of one hand curled around an ivory fan. The other held the corner of a fringed shawl the colour of champagne.

He continued walking, not thinking about much except that Philippa was his good friend and he was glad to have had her assistance tonight. He stepped around the detritus of a hundred people jammed inside a room that comfortably held half that number. A gentleman’s glove. A bit of lace. A handkerchief. Silk flowers that had surely started the evening pinned to some young lady’s hair or hem.