Captured by a Gentleman (Regency Unlaced 6) (2 page)

“I am Miss Darcy Ambridge.” She curtseyed. “Cousin to your late wife Millicent,” she added, as her name elicited no more recognition than her appearance had.

Darcy frowned her puzzlement as, if anything, Ranulf Montgomery’s expression became even icier at the mention of his late wife’s name.

She had attended Ranulf and Millicent’s wedding a year ago, followed by Millicent’s funeral a mere four months later. So perhaps Ranulf’s icy demeanor was a mask to hide the grief he must still feel at losing his wife so soon after they were married? He certainly no longer looked like the laughing and easygoing man he had been on his wedding day. He seemed to have aged far more than a single year since that happy occasion. The lines beside his eyes and bracketing his sculpted lips had certainly not been there then.

Darcy placed her hand on his muscular forearm. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

“I would prefer you tell me what the devil you were doing hiding in my carriage rather than offer me insincere platitudes regarding Millicent’s death.” His tone was as cold and unyielding as his demeanor.

Her eyes widened. “Insincere? I assure you, I am most sincere in my sympathies.” She and Millicent had not been particularly close, her cousin being several years older than she, but Millicent had seemed pleasant enough on the few occasions their two families had reason to socialize.

A nerve pulsed in Ranulf’s tightly clenched jaw. “Then you are very much alone in those feelings of regret.”

Darcy had no idea what he could mean by such a remark. Was Ranulf saying he felt no pain at Millicent’s unexpected death? No unhappiness for the loss of his wife?

Or perhaps he was merely adept at hiding his feelings? Preferred to keep his grief private?

After all, the married couple had only recently returned to Scotland, following their four-month-long honeymoon, when Millicent was killed in a riding accident.

Theirs had been a fairy-tale wedding, followed by three months touring the Continent, then another month spent enjoying the London Season. Darcy had seen the couple out and about together several times, as they attended the same social events. The two of them had seemed happy enough together.

“You may go, Graves.” Ranulf now spoke abruptly to his coachman. “I will call for you when Miss Ambridge is ready to return to London.”

“Return?” Darcy repeated sharply once the coachman had left and closed the door behind him. “I cannot go back to London! Oh please.” She grasped his arm. “Please do not send me back there!”

Ranulf found himself deeply irritated at the way this young woman was constantly touching and grabbing at him in a wholly inappropriate and familiar manner.

So, yes, he was deeply irritated.

And, to his chagrin, more than a little aroused.

Having enjoyed several robust sexual encounters during the month he had spent in London on business, Ranulf had no explanation as to why he should now find himself aroused by this young woman. Especially when knowing Darcy Ambridge to be related to his treacherous and adulterous wife should have nullified any such physical reaction on his part.

He could even see a look of Millicent about her, now that he knew of the association. In the arch of her brows and the curve of her cheeks. Her eyes were brown, where Millicent’s had been a guileless blue, but nevertheless, this woman looked at him with that same limpid—false?—innocence that her cousin had.

His traitorous cock obviously made no such distinction, now hard and aching uncomfortably in arousal at this woman’s undoubted beauty, the softness of her skin, and the hot spice of her womanly perfume.

Damn it to hell!

“You will most certainly be returning to London,” Ranulf informed her coldly. “As quickly as a carriage can be arranged to carry you there.”

He may have been played the fool once by Millicent. He was not about to be so again by her cousin.

Certainly not by the tears now trickling prettily down Miss Darcy Ambridge’s pale cheeks. Crocodile tears, Ranulf dismissed, of the kind Millicent had used to cry when she wished to get her own way over a new bonnet or gown.

He had not been deeply in love with Millicent, or she him, but they had seemed to like each other well enough for marriage. Ranulf had believed a deeper affection might grow between them and that their marriage would be a long and contented one.

At the time, Ranulf had political ambitions, and Millicent was the daughter of a powerful member of the government. While London would not have been Ranulf’s first choice of residence, he had been willing to spend at least half a year there, pleasing his wife while at the same time pursuing a political career.

While he had been making enquiries regarding buying a suitable house for them in London and organizing his political plans accordingly, Millicent had been throwing up her skirts and parting her legs for the man who was not only her lover but also the coconspirator in disposing of Ranulf’s cousin.

Whatever this young woman, Millicent’s cousin, was now up to, Ranulf was very much on his guard against it.

“No. Please,” Darcy choked, mortified at how desperate she sounded but quite unable to stop herself from begging. “I cannot go back there. I-I cannot.” She began to cry in earnest.

“Whatever foolishness you have become embroiled in cannot be solved by running away,” Ranulf informed her icily. “You must go back and confess all to your parents. I am sure they will not condemn you out of—”

“My parents are both dead,” Darcy informed him dully. “They were killed in the same carriage accident which took my Aunt Sugdon, who was my mother’s sister.”

Ranulf was aware his former mother-in-law, a woman whom he had pitied for her choice of husband, had perished four months ago, her carriage having overturned during the worst of the winter weather. He had not realized there had been others in the carriage with her. Darcy Ambridge’s parents, if she was to be believed. Which explained why she was currently shrouded from head to toe in black.

But not the reason she had been caught hiding in his town carriage.

“I am sorry for that,” he dismissed brusquely. “But you must have a guardian—”

“My Uncle Sugdon.”

Ranulf frowned. His former father-in-law was not one of his favorite people. “Lord Sugdon is your closest relative?”

She nodded. “It would appear so, yes. Although I did not really know him until recently. My father did not care for my aunt’s husband. Since the death of my parents and Aunt Sugdon, I have resided at Lord Sugdon’s home with him.”

There was something in the way she spoke…

Some hint of… Of what, Ranulf was unsure.

He only knew it was there. Beneath the surface. Unspoken, but lurking malevolently nonetheless.

Ranulf recalled Millicent had been slightly in awe, even a little afraid of her politically powerful father. Her last words before she rode to her death had been to beseech Ranulf not to send her back to her father. She had claimed it was because he would beat her for shaming him and their family, before having her locked away in an asylum for the rest of her life.

Ranulf looked searchingly at the young woman standing before him. Lord Cecil Sugdon’s niece by marriage. Now his ward. He could not help but wonder if Sugdon had threatened and beaten her too?

Had he frightened her enough that she had secreted herself away in Ranulf’s carriage?

Or was it possible Sugdon had a hand in her being here? If so, Ranulf could think of only one reason why the older man would have done such a thing. Sugdon, knowing Ranulf now had a vast fortune, had been embarrassingly ingratiating when Ranulf called on the other man yesterday evening.

His eyes narrowed. “Where is your maid?”

“I left her in London. She was employed by my uncle, not me,” she added defensively at Ranulf’s frown.

“So you are completely unchaperoned?”

“Yes.”

Ranulf breathed deeply through his nose. “Did Sugdon put you up to this?”

“Up to what?” Darcy looked genuinely bewildered.

“Hiding in my carriage,” Ranulf answered her impatiently. “I can think of no other way in which you could have known I was leaving London this morning.”

“I…I was standing in the gallery above the entrance hall when you said your good-byes to my uncle yesterday evening,” she acknowledged guiltily.

“Eavesdropping!” Ranulf snorted his disgust. He had visited Sugdon so that he might return Millicent’s dowry in full to the older man. He wanted nothing in his life that belonged to any of the Sugdon family. “Or is it possible you and your uncle have schemed together to compromise me into now marrying you?”

She recoiled back a step. “Marrying you…? Why on earth would you ever think such a thing?”

Ranulf snorted. “The Montgomery family is a powerful one in Scotland.” Which had been the reason Sugdon had granted permission for Ranulf’s betrothal and marriage to Millicent the previous year. “I am also now a wealthy man in my own right.”

By the sweat of his brow. Ranulf had invested the money he had originally intended using to buy a house in London. He had needed to do something to occupy his tortured mind and spirit. Perhaps because of that unhappiness, he had been completely ruthless in his business dealings and was now as wealthy, if not more so, than the cousin whom Millicent had plotted to kill for his fortune and title.

The irony was not lost on Ranulf.

As he was sure it had not been lost on Sugdon. “Having once lost that powerful and now very wealthy son-in-law, it would be just like Sugdon to arrange for his niece to take his daughter’s place as my wife,” he said scornfully. “Possibly he and another witness are standing ready to leap out and claim wrongdoing on my part before forcing me into marrying you?”

“I am running away from my uncle, not acting as his accomplice in some grand scheme to entrap you into matrimony,” she insisted heatedly. “Why would I? I barely know you, let alone feel any desire to marry you. And you obviously do not remember having met me at all. I was present at your wedding last spring,” she explained as Ranulf frowned.

His wedding to Millicent. When Ranulf only had eyes for his beautiful bride and thoughts for the wedding night ahead of them. Completely ignorant of Millicent’s true nature. He had been a fool living in a fool’s paradise.

No longer. Ranulf was now all too aware of the vagaries of human nature. The greed and ambition. The callous intent. The betrayal…

Having completely abandoned his political ambitions, Ranulf had no wish to become embroiled with any of the Sugdon family ever again. For any reason. He and his family had barely escaped unscathed the last time.

Even if it should transpire Darcy was telling him the truth, Sugdon was now her legal guardian. There was nothing Ranulf could do about whatever her unhappy situation was.

The rift, if there was a rift, between uncle and niece, was probably over something minor anyway, which this young woman had blown up out of all proportion inside her head. Sugdon had probably turned down a marriage proposal on behalf of his niece that she wanted to accept. Or maybe it was something as silly as her wanting a new bonnet her uncle disapproved of.

Who knew what manner of nonsense Darcy Ambridge had considered important enough to have run away from her guardian’s home so that she might now throw herself—literally—at Ranulf’s feet.

“My Uncle Sugdon—” She drew in a deep and shuddering breath before continuing. “Yesterday, he stated that, after my birthday next week, when I will turn one and twenty, it is his intention to start visiting me in my bedchamber and sharing my bed each night.”

Whatever explanation Ranulf had been expecting, it had most certainly not been
that
.

Chapter 2

He scowled his displeasure. “What nonsense is this—”

“I assure you, it is not nonsense to me!”

Ranulf’s frown deepened as he heard the emotional strain in Darcy Ambridge’s voice. Just as he could see the sincerity in her anguished expression. “Lord Cecil Sugdon is a much-respected member of Parliament.” He might not like the other man, but he could not dispute Sugdon’s power and influence.

“I think you will find he is feared rather than respected,” Darcy dismissed, having witnessed that fear in several of her uncle’s visitors during the months she had resided in his home.

“He has the ear of both the prime minister and the Prince Regent.”

She nodded. “Which is why he is feared.”

Ranulf gave an exasperated shake of his head. “I have no time for the man but… Are you sure you have not merely misunderstood his intentions?”

“It is impossible to misunderstand his inappropriate…fondling of me of late.” Darcy kept her chin at a proud angle. She was so embarrassed by the subject of this conversation, she wanted to hide her face in shame.

“Perhaps it was a fumbling attempt to show affection? God knows I’ve always found Sugdon to be a cold fish,” Ranulf added disgustedly.

Darcy drew in a shaky breath, very much aware of how important it was that Ranulf believe her. Her whole future depended upon it.

“At the beginning, he was everything that was considerate and kind,” she conceded. “Sympathizing with my loss. Understanding of my grief. But this past week, he has begun to…to touch me as he should not.” She moistened dry lips. “Yesterday evening, after you left, he called me into his study, insisted I sit upon his knee as he explained to me it has been four months now, and he misses having his wife available for his pleasure. That it is his intention for me to…to now take her place.”

Ranulf’s top lip curled back with distaste. “He actually said those things to you?”

She nodded abruptly. “And all the time he did so, his…his… I could feel it through my clothing… His… It was hard and pressing against my bottom.” Could someone die of embarrassment and shame? Because at that moment, Darcy dearly wished to do so.

“Such a relationship is incestuous!”

“Not quite. He explained that to me too.” Darcy grimaced at Ranulf’s frown. “My mother was sister to his wife, so the two of us are not related by blood.”

“He has been your uncle by marriage all your life.
That
is what makes it incestuous!”