A Rake by Any Other Name (3 page)

Richard spared the nameless heir to the Goodnight fortune a moment of pity. Being polished by his grandmother was not a fate he'd wish on anyone. He leaned forward, balancing his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands.

“All this talk of money is so distressing,” Richard's mother said. “And it's tiring your father as well.”

She rang the bell pull for Lord Somerset's valet, Mr. Cope. He and the footman David appeared to carry the marquess's chair up to his chamber on the second story. “Put his lordship to bed, Mr. Cope. He needs rest if he's to meet our guests for dinner tonight.”

Richard looked up at his mother. “Guests?”

“Yes, dear, the Goodnights are coming to dine.”

“And while we dine, chew on this,” Gran said. “Your family is depending upon you, Richard. Think of your sisters. Think what parceling out Somerfield Park will mean when you try to arrange matches for them. For that matter, think what it will mean to me. Without my portion from the estate, I doubt I'll be able to keep Somerset Steading.”

Somerset Steading was the current dower house. It was large and ornate enough to serve as the main manor on most estates. No doubt it took at great deal to keep his grandmother in the style to which she was accustomed. At her age, she wasn't likely to settle for less with good grace, and heaven knew his mother wouldn't welcome having her mother-in-law move in with the rest of the family if any another option were available.

“And the folk of the village and your tenants. Don't forget them, my lord,” Mr. Witherspoon said.

His mother put a hand to his cheek. “Don't feel you need to do anything immediately, son. Just meet the young lady. You know I would never allow you to be forced into something you don't feel is right.”

Richard was tempted to abandon hope. Nothing would ever feel right again. How could he betray Antonia—his beautiful, laughing Antonia?

On the other hand, how could he let Somerfield Park wither and die? Or worse, be chopped up by creditors as ruthlessly as that girl at Barrett House had chopped up the roses?

He was coming home to a disaster of biblical proportions. And he hadn't even met the grasping commoner his parents expected him to sell himself to yet.

***

As soon as the footman left his dressing room, Hugh Barrett, the Marquess of Somerset, threw off the lap rug and stood, stretching hugely. “Put that wretched chair in the corner, Cope,” he told his valet. “It sickens me to look at it.”

His wife slipped into the room, taking care not to open the door wider than necessary, lest someone chance by and see that a “miracle” had occurred and the marquess was on his feet.

“You must keep your voice down,” she hissed at him and then turned to his valet. “Mr. Cope, does anyone else suspect?”

“No, milady. Not even Mr. Hightower knows his lordship is recovered.”

“Well, I daresay, that
is
quite a coup. Mr. Hightower knows if a mouse hiccups in the stable. Keep up the good work, Mr. Cope,” she said briskly. “That'll be all until it's time for his lordship to dress for dinner.”

The valet gave them each a quick bow and slipped out of the room as carefully as Lady Somerset had slipped in.

“Are you sure this is necessary, Helen?” the marquess said.

“It was your mother's idea, remember. Hart is so stubborn. She didn't believe our son would come around to our way of thinking if he wasn't made to feel the weight of things. So long as you're holding the reins of the estate, he's not responsible.”

“I suppose I'm fortunate that
Maman
didn't suggest I abdicate in a more permanent manner.” Hugh slipped off his shoes and paced the floor, taking care not to tread too loudly. He was used to being an active man and made use of the time he was alone to exercise as much as he could. “Pretending to a debility is one thing. Pretending to my death would have been quite insupportable.”

Helen chuckled. “I suspect it didn't occur to her after your accident, or she might have recommended it. The dowager is difficult to turn once she gets an idea in her head. I suppose that's where Hartley gets his stubbornness. But I think she's right this time.”

“There's an astonishing admission.” He drew her into his arms. Helen's waist was a little thicker than it had been when he first married her, but she'd given him four healthy children and still fit wonderfully into his embrace. “You and she are usually at loggerheads. I thought the best I could hope for was an armed truce.”

“We're allies in this. For good or ill, Hartley must marry Miss Goodnight, and this is the best way to help him see that he must.”

“So in the grand scheme of things, my falling off the roof was a bit of good fortune.”

“Bite your tongue.”

“I'd rather you did.” He claimed her mouth with a kiss full of passion despite years of practice. Helen still lit a fire in his belly. Just looking at his wife made him feel pleasurably male.

Hugh had been insensible for two days after his fall, and even now he couldn't remember exactly how the accident had happened. Someone else had been on the roof with him. Perhaps two someones. He was nearly certain of it, but for the life of him, he couldn't see their faces clearly in his hazy recollections. His memory of earlier times in his life was riddled with holes as well. He hoped it would all come back to him eventually. It was important that it did. Nothing was worse than a marquess who didn't have full command of himself and his own mind.

A mad king was enough for England to bear without a lunatic lord thrown in for good measure.

“So,” he said when he broke off their kiss, “how long do you think I'll have to keep up this charade?”

“You may safely plan on dancing at our son's wedding, but not before.”

“That long?” He fiddled with the buttons marching down the bodice of her day gown. “How about if you and I do a horizontal waltz before dinner, so I can keep in practice?”

Her brown eyes glowed warmly at him, and her lips parted in that sensual smile he loved so well. “You have one hour till the dressing gong sounds and not a minute more.”

“Madam, I shall try mightily not to take a minute less.”

Oh, the horrible importance of first impressions. It sets the tone for all future discourse. Try as one might, it is devilishly difficult to undo that initial effect.

—Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset

“Cheer up, old son.” Lawrence Seymour fell into step with Hartley as they trudged down the grand staircase. “If I were set to marry a great heiress, I'd try not to meet her for the first time with such a Friday face.”

Hartley adjusted his cuffs and flexed his fingers. “That's just it. I'm not set to marry this girl. I'm being forced to it.”

“No one is holding a pistol to your head.”

“No, they're holding something much more lethal—my conscience. They think they've arranged matters so that I can't say no. In truth, I don't know which way to turn. If I say yes to the Goodnight chit, I lose Antonia. If I say yes to my love, I lose Somerfield Park. Either way, I lose everything that means anything in my life.”

Lawrence thought Hartley was being a bit melodramatic, but he didn't see a good way out either. However, when a man is faced with no other choice, he might as well look for the strawberry in the situation.

And a wife with a dowry large enough to fund a small country was one delectable strawberry.

“You're thinking about marriage all wrong. For a woman, it's different. It
is
everything,” Lawrence explained. “To a man, marriage is merely a part of his life, as large or as small a part as he chooses to make it.”

Hartley shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. He might fool most people with his show of outward calm, but Lawrence knew him well enough to recognize barely contained frustration simmering in his friend.

Too much restraint was bad for digestion. Lawrence thought his friend would benefit from taking up pugilism to relieve the pressure of his tightly controlled temper. Punching his fist through a plaster wall might be hard on the house, but the release might help Hartley out of all knowing.

“Perhaps I'd feel differently if my parents' marriage wasn't a love match,” Richard said. “I've seen what it can be. And I'm not ready to settle for half measures.”

“Are telling me Lady Antonia is your love match?”

Hartley nodded.

“That puts you in a very slim minority, you know. Most of us wouldn't recognize our true love if she bit us on the bum.” Lawrence chuckled. “Though a lady would get my undivided attention that way, I assure you.”

“This is serious, Seymour.”

“Well then, seriously, here's some advice from one who believes in love as much as he believes in faeries. A man marries to get an heir, more lofty connections, or—let me see if I remember your grandmother's words as you relayed them to me—for ‘a pasha's ransom in cash.' Love doesn't signify in the slightest.”

“But what about Antonia?”

“What about her? As a wise man once said, you intend to marry, not enter a monastery,” Lawrence said. “With your new wife's wealth, you can set up Lady Antonia in a snug little love nest on the side.”

Hartley glowered at him. “I'll try to forget you said that.”

“But I predict you won't. The delicious seed will take root in your imagination and blossom at a later date. You may thank me then.”

They stopped on the landing as a party entered the foyer below and was announced by Mr. Hightower in stentorian tones.

“Mr. and Mrs. Henry Goodnight.”

If the butler, who was a stickler for observing the rules of precedence, felt any unease at announcing a couple whose blood was no bluer than his own, he gave no outward indication.

Mrs. Goodnight was a handsome woman with fine-boned features and a necklace of glittering emeralds above her modest décolletage. Judging by dress alone, she might have been a duchess, but Richard had met his share of duchesses. This woman's smile was too sweet, and she was too quick to drop a deep curtsy to Lord and Lady Somerset, who waited at the foot of the grand staircase to welcome them. Or rather Lady Somerset did. Slumped in his wheelchair, Richard's father was once again fascinated by his own signet ring.

If Mrs. Goodnight displayed the marks of graceful maturity, then Mr. Goodnight, on the other hand, showed signs of deteriorating health. His skin had a waxy pallor, and the whites of his eyes were yellowed. But he when he turned to the young woman who followed them into the foyer his face lit with a proud smile.

“And Miss Sophie Goodnight,” Mr. Hightower finished, his voice reverberating through the imposing foyer, whose ceiling soared up to the flying buttresses that supported the roof skylights.

The young lady pushed back the lace-trimmed hood of her pink pelisse, revealing a head of dark hair twinkling with gem-encrusted pins. When she removed her pelisse and handed it to Mr. Hightower, Richard saw that her matching gown was cut to bare her shoulders. Her skin was flawless in the light of the candelabra suspended from the distant ceiling. As if she felt his eyes on her, her blue-eyed gaze traveled up the stairs to where Richard stood transfixed.

“I say, isn't that the tasty little gardener?” Seymour whispered.

Richard nodded grimly.

“What did I tell you?” Lawrence said out of the corner of his mouth. “Nothing wrong with her that a bath wouldn't fix.”

“Yes, there is.” Richard forced himself to start down the stairs.
She's not
Antonia.

***

Look
at
him. All lordly and aloof and hardly deigning to glance at me.
Sophie wished she were skewering Lord Hartley instead of stabbing her fork into one of the beef medallions on her plate. They were both being coerced into this. The least he could do was acknowledge a fellow sufferer's presence.
Even
if
my
parents
weren't trying to force him on me, I'd despise him.

Mr. Seymour had been mildly diverting during the soup course as he tried to flirt with Lord Hartley's sister, Lady Ella. But Lady Petra kept deflating his remarks by pointing out that her sister's eyes weren't actually the color of bluebells. Anyone could see they were a changeable hazel, and was there something wrong with Seymour's vision that he couldn't tell the difference?

Mr. Seymour confessed to color ignorance and dedicated himself to his plate after that.

Since the marquess was incapacitated and his son seemed disposed to monk-like silence, the ladies were left to carry the conversational ball.

“After all those years in the East, how do you find England, Miss Goodnight?” Lady Ella asked.

“Empty,” Sophie fired back.

“Oh.” Lady Ella blinked slowly, not sure what to make of Sophie's assessment.

“By ‘empty' do you mean lacking in substance, that its society is frivolous and silly?” Lady Petra asked.

Sophie decided this bespectacled Barrett sister might just have a brain in her head. But before she could answer, her mother leaped into the fray.

“What my daughter means is that compared to India, there are far fewer people here. You can't imagine the press in the cities in the East. One can scarcely breathe.”

That wasn't what Sophie meant, and her mother knew it.

Dinner limped along, punctuated with uncomfortable silences filled only by the soft clink of silverware on fine china. Lord Hartley's sisters were subdued after that near conversational misstep, even Lady Petra. They discussed the weather, always a safe topic, with dogged determination.

Probably
been
threatened
with
the
prospect
of
no
new
gowns
ever
again
if
they
put
a
foot
wrong.

Their wardrobe, its care and increase, was the main concern of most English misses, so far as Sophie could see.

“And what about you, Mrs. Goodnight?” the dowager marchioness said to Sophie's mother. “However did you bear living in such an inhospitable place as India?”

Turning the conversation in this direction was another mistake. Sophie's mother was the charitable sort, dedicated to easing the suffering of the downtrodden. Recounting the plight of cholera victims and the squalor of the bazaars was not conducive to pleasant dinner conversation, let alone anyone's appetite.

Then the topic took a decided turn for the worse. Mrs. Goodnight launched into a recitation of her daughter's finer qualities. It was the low point of the evening.

Especially since she didn't deserve a bit of it.

***

Sophie Goodnight said nothing while her mother praised her. She didn't meet Richard's gaze across the table. And she plainly wasn't enjoying her meal, since she used her fork more to rearrange the food on her plate than to eat any of it.

“And of course, we saw to it that Sophie received a thorough education, despite being so far from England,” her mother was saying. “In addition to the usual subjects of study, she's an accomplished artist.”

Richard didn't think stacking beef medallions and rearranging asparagus shoots was evidence of an artistic temperament.

“Perhaps she'd like to see the gallery. We have a rather large collection here at Somerfield,” his mother said. “Hartley, why don't you take Miss Goodnight to see the portraits after dinner?”

“Why wait?” Richard pushed back his chair. “It's clear Miss Goodnight is finished eating. Shall we?”

She looked up at him, her gaze sharp and inquisitive. There was a hint of gratitude in her eyes as well. In a perverse way, he was comforted by the fact that she seemed as uncomfortable as he.

Richard came around the table and offered her his arm. She stood, rested her gloved fingers on his forearm, and allowed him to lead her from the room. Quite the proper lady when it suited her purpose. After their meeting over his grandmother's roses, he'd not have guessed her capable of such civilized behavior.

Once they cleared the threshold, she dropped her hand but continued to walk at his side.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “I was beginning to think that deadly dinner would never end.”

His thoughts exactly. “I always try to rescue damsels in distress.”

“Oh, I'm not in distress, but it's clear you are. What have they threatened you with to bring you to heel?”

He nearly choked in surprise. The mating dance done for profit was performed in drawing rooms all over England, but no one ever admitted to it outright. “It would be ungallant of me to say.”

She chuckled. “Poor man. Trapped as surely as if your foot were caught by steel, and you're worried about being ungallant.”

“Very well. If you insist on brutal honesty, Somerset's coffers are bare and my family looks to me to fill them with your dowry, Miss Goodnight.”

“That's better. So long as we don't pretend this association is anything other than what it is. I can abide anything but deceit.” She took his arm again and began walking. “You don't need to stand on ceremony with me. I shall call you Richard, and you may call me Sophie.”

His grandmother was the only one who called him Richard. Even his mother called him Hartley or Hart. He heard his Christian name so seldom, it almost didn't seem to belong to him anymore. “That's rather intimate for so short an acquaintance.”

“Yet not so intimate as our families would have us be.” She shook her head and sighed.

A unique scent tickled his nose—attar of roses with a spicy undertone of warm woman. The bodice of her gown was cut low enough to display the rounded tops of her breasts. Nestled in the shadowy hollow between them was cabochon sapphire pendant big enough to choke a horse. It drew his eye to her cleavage and he found himself wondering if her skin was as satiny as it appeared.

If he hadn't met Antonia first, he could have done much worse than Sophie Goodnight.

“Not that you're right, but what is it that makes you think I'm in distress?” he asked.

She lifted one expressive brow. “You have the look of a cornered stag. The hounds have you surrounded, and the hunters are lining up for the kill.”

“And I suppose you're the chief hunter?”

“Lud, no. I'm the wily vixen who slips away in the confusion, glad to escape her own hunt till another day.”

She
doesn't want to marry
me.

The astounding thought rattled through his brain. He'd had to fend off countless debutantes who'd set their caps for him during the Season he'd spent in London. Until he met Antonia, he'd walked warily around the young ladies he met on the Continent, not wanting to give them a chance to ensnare him in the parson's mousetrap. Now he was being trussed up and delivered to this one like a gaily wrapped parcel.

And she didn't want him.

He laughed so loudly the help must surely have heard him below stairs.

“What's so funny?” Sophie asked.

“Everything. Nothing.” He patted her hand, surprised to feel camaraderie with her over their mutual dislike of the union their families were plotting. “Why are your parents so set on this match?”

“My father has amassed enough riches to buy anything he pleases, yet what he really wants isn't for sale.”

“And that would be…”

“A grandson who'll be a titled lord.”

Most maidens would blush at the mention of having a child, but Sophia Goodnight's cheeks didn't pink in the least.

“If you don't want to marry me—”

“Dear me,” she interrupted, “do you think there's an
if
? My manner must be far more accommodating than I intend.”

He scowled at her. “Then why are you going along with them?”

“Who says I am?” Her eyebrow quirked again. “But if I was, well, you've seen my father. I'm afraid he'll never make old bones—he's given up quite a bit to provide for me and my mother. While we toddled off to enjoy the cool summers of Kashmir, he sweltered in the malaria-ridden cities of the south. It ruined his health, but he never complains. I try not to either, no matter how unpalatable my options.”