Every Scandalous Secret (14 page)

Her dowry. She hadn’t even thought of that motive. Her insides seemed to sink within her body as another flood of shame suffused her. Of course it was her dowry—how had she not seen that? Had that been his real motive all along? No wonder he’d felt free to seduce someone like her! Had he given her glimpses of his intelligence as a method to lure a spinster like her? It wasn’t as if she had a great inheritance, so he must truly be desperate, or in such a hurry he couldn’t wait for the usual courtship of the daughter of a peer.

“He is a second son,” Caroline continued, “as are many men. They all have to marry to better their situation. You must not think too poorly of him because of that.”

Susan could only squeeze her eyes shut.

“It is done now,” Caroline finished in a quiet voice. “You can make the best of this. He’s a handsome young man. Don’t forget our friend Lady Blanche, who had to marry a man old enough to be her father—or grandfather!”

“My parents never asked such a thing of me,” Susanna said quietly. “In return, they expected me to honor them with my behavior. And I haven’t.”

“They’ll think it a love match, my dear. Everyone will, after what has happened this week, I promise.”

“And what am I supposed to tell Mr. Tyler?” Susanna demanded.

Caroline squeezed her hand. “You will find the words. I know you will. You and Mr. Wade were drawn together—surely that can be the beginning of a good marriage.”

“We are both furious with each other. That would be a bad start to any union.”

“Don’t think on it. Time will heal both of you.”

Susanna nodded, but didn’t say the words that would make her even more a liar. She wasn’t going to marry Leo Wade.

Chapter 11

S
usanna’s trunk was packed before dawn, and she wore a traveling dress that buttoned up the front, to make it easier for her to dress and undress herself. She’d debated leaving a note for Caroline and Mr. Tyler but did not know how to express herself. She would write to Caroline later, knowing she might never be permitted to associate with her again. As for Mr. Tyler—what was the point? He would be glad he’d escaped her unscathed. Leo would come to believe the same. She’d taken all the risks she was going to, and she’d failed. It was time to return to Cambridgeshire, to the ducal palace Madingley Court, where she could assist her father and remain in the country forever.

After the servants brought her baggage down to the luggage entrance, she asked the butler about borrowing a carriage for the drive back to London. He went off to take care of it while she went to the front portico to wait. The guests were surely beginning to stir, and she didn’t want to risk meeting any of them.

The sun was just beginning to emerge from the crest of a far-off hill. It was a peaceful sight, with a flock of sheep in the distance, and the first gardener trudging toward a row of bushes on the grounds of Bramfield Hall.

She was doing the right thing, she told herself, taking a deep breath. Mr. Tyler might be hurt, but he was better off. Her parents would be disappointed, but they would understand. They’d always supported her. And although she’d considered having children, she had always thought to content herself with those of her sister and brother. It turned out, she’d been right.

She heard the rumbling of carriage wheels before she saw the vehicle itself take the turn from the rear of the house. The marquess’s coat of arms was not on display, for which she was thankful. She wanted to disappear back into anonymity, hoping that someday she would live down the shame of her foolish impulses.

From behind her, a footman strode past her to open the carriage door and lower the stairs.

The coachman, bundled up in long black coat even in summer, touched the brim of his hat to her. “Good day, miss,” he said, his grin displaying a missing front tooth. “I’m John Coachman.”

A smile felt strange on her face. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir, but surely you have a name.”

He ducked his head shyly. “Bradley, miss.”

“Thank you for the ride, Mr. Bradley.”

The footman took her hand and helped her up into the gloom. She wasn’t certain why the windows were shut and the blinds lowered, but perhaps the coachman was leaving her the choice. Once she slid onto the bench, and her body no longer blocked the light from outside, the shadows in the far corner dissipated, leaving her to start with fright at the man who lounged there.

“Hello, Susanna.”

Shocked by Leo’s presence, she turned in panic, only to see the door close in her face.

As she touched the handle, Leo said, “Too late. Lord Bramfield knows all about my plan and agrees completely that you’re being a foolish female.”

She glared at him. “I cannot be forced to marry you, Leo Wade.” The coach jerked into motion, and she fell back onto the front facing bench. “You still have to purchase a Special License. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to escape in London.”

“We aren’t going to London,” he said.

She kept waiting for his smile of triumph or satisfaction, but he wasn’t offering one. In fact, he looked downright grim, dimples banked, eyes narrowed. She flung up the blinds on both windows, the better to see him, but his expression was unmoved, nothing like she’d ever seen from Leo before. Her fear ratcheted up another notch.

“I told the coachman . . .” she began, but trailed off.

He raised one eyebrow. “Lord Bramfield and I gave the coachman different instructions. I won’t expose you to the gossips of London without a wedding ring. We are eloping to Gretna Green.”

Though she was dazed, the efficient part of her brain remembered that Scotland allowed any couple to marry as long as they had witnesses. No banns had to be read, no expensive Special License needed to be procured.

“No!” She put her hand on the door handle again, but this time he didn’t protest. Through the window she saw the scenery flying by her. It was too late to jump. “Then I’ll stop Mr. Bradley. He’ll respond to a knock.” If she had to crawl across Leo to knock on the ceiling of the carriage beneath the coachbox, she would.

“Go ahead, delay us all you want, but the coachman knows what’s at stake, and he has his orders. We are romantics, Susanna,” he said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm. “Young lovers running off to marry, knowing no one can stop us because we are both old enough—or should I say mature enough?”

Ignoring the gibe, she slowly sat back, although her stiff shoulders never touched the back of the bench. “I won’t say the vows.”

“Then you’re a fool. Already the guests must know we’ve run off to be married.”

She flinched, eyes narrowed, saying in a low voice, “You dare much, sir.”

“I dare because it’s necessary.” He never leaned forward, but even his lazy elegance hinted at tension. “By the end of the day, whoever saw us last night will have spread the scandalous rumors of what we did. At least this way, the rumors are tempered by the knowledge that marriage followed that kiss.”

“It was more than a kiss,” she shot back. “If they saw what you did to me—”

“We were partially hidden by the sofa. And it’s not just what I did but how you reacted, let’s not forget.”

She blushed; she couldn’t help it. The night now seemed so far away, a bizarre moment out of a very sensible life.

“The party will break up today,” Leo continued firmly. “They’ll all flee back to London to see who can be the first to tell
both
our families what we’ve done.”

With bitterness, she said, “And yours will be relieved, for the scandalous black sheep can now take care of himself. It was the dowry all along, Mr. Wade, wasn’t it? I was so foolish not to see the truth for what it was. The wager, the painting, meant little, except as an opportunity for you to exploit.” He must have needed money quickly, for after all, why else would he attempt to seduce someone as plain and old as Susanna when he had all the beautiful young debutantes fluttering around him in London?

Leo clenched his jaw, holding back an outburst. He’d never shown much emotion beyond pleasure and happiness and amusement—there hadn’t been a need. And an outburst implied lack of control, and that had never been a problem. He’d always enjoyed his life, especially once he’d escaped his parents’ endless arguments. Even in the dark days of his brother’s pain and gradual blindness, the grief had remained hidden inside him for Simon’s benefit.

He felt a momentary stillness, a memory he couldn’t quite reach, but as he considered it with confusion, it fled.

Now he found his stomach roiling with outrage and anger, and was appalled by these emotions he didn’t want to feel. But he didn’t protest her conclusions. She would not believe him regardless, and he felt a surge of rusty pride; groveling was beneath him.

“Believe what you will,” he said. “It still doesn’t change what must be done.”

“I now realize that my dowry has been a sizable lure all along, or else you would let me go.”

“Your dowry? As if I couldn’t have had my pick of dowries anytime I chose.”

“I didn’t see fathers dangling their daughters like prizes in your face.”

“The fact that I don’t wish you ruined doesn’t matter to you?”

“You said you almost ruined a woman before—I certainly don’t matter, since if left alone, I would simply retire to the country and leave you to your outrageous life in the city. So now you’re trying to tie me to you, to make me bear the snickers of the
ton,
as you take mistress after mistress?”

“Whatever you think of my motives, give me some credit. I hardly wish your brother or cousins to be forced to come to your aid because of my behavior.”

“Fine, you’ll do your shameful deeds in secret, as you’ve done with me.” She paused. “I know many women are supposed to turn away from a husband’s infidelities. But—”

And then her voice broke, and she turned her head and looked blindly toward the closed window. To his surprise, self-righteous anger didn’t stop him from feeling a momentary sympathy for her.

“But I’d wanted a different sort of marriage,” she whispered, fisting her hand against her mouth.

“Respect and shared interests,” he said with sarcasm. “So you told me. I wanted a different marriage as well, to a woman willing to make a comfortable, peaceful home I wished to return to each night, to be at my side in Society, to come to my bed gladly and give me children.”

“You won’t get that from me,” she said in a low voice that sounded as hollow and grim as a brutal winter morn. “None of it.”

He knew—he hoped—she was speaking out of anger. “These protests will achieve nothing. Society believes us to have eloped. We will answer their expectations.”

And then she retreated into icy silence, looking out the window, but he imagined her eyes saw little.

I
t took a day and a half to reach Scotland at a fast pace, changing horses constantly through the night. At their first break for a meal, Leo watched over Susanna closely, but she seemed resigned at last to her fate—their fate, he reminded himself. It was one thing for her to return home having disgraced herself by kissing a man, and another to have supposedly married, then not. Her family’s standing might never recover from such a scandal. She was a sensible woman. At last he let himself doze now and then, but he had to time it for when she was sleeping. He felt . . . self-conscious sleeping when she was awake. He couldn’t know how he looked when he had those dreams of darkness and dread. The last thing he wanted to do was answer her questions about them.

During the last few miles before crossing over the River Sark, the border between England and Scotland, the barren land suited his mood. Meager huts were scattered near copses of fir trees, and even scruffy children worked the land. Leo’s head pounded from the stress and rough travel as the roads worsened this far north and west. Susanna’s face looked white and pinched, and she only spoke to him when necessary. Which wasn’t often. She dozed most of the time, so ladylike that her lips didn’t even part.

The dust on their boots covered the mud from the downpour that had hit as they’d ascended the Yorkshire dales. His garments felt stuck to his body after two days occasionally sweltering in the carriage. He was used to the freedom of traveling by horse, and felt confined and restless with this silent woman he would soon marry. He imagined she felt filthy as well, but she would have to share his suffering.

They arrived at the gate just over the river, and Leo listened to the coachman pay and insist to the toll collector they did not need to stop for a libation. Leo had heard that anyone could marry a couple in this place, and the man probably did good business persuading eager couples to come inside and do the marriage now, in case they were being followed by angry fathers.

That wasn’t the case with them—his father was dead, and Susanna’s father . . . This wasn’t the way he would have wanted to present himself to a father-in-law, but the deed was done.

He glanced out the window, knowing he needed his own distraction about now. As they entered Gretna Green, they passed thatched-roof cottages, a church, then the green itself that the village must have been named for. Beyond it rose a two-story mansion, with a long drive cut through a green lawn. This had to be Gretna Hall, where the majority of marriages took place, or so he’d been told at their last rest in Carlisle. Although he could have stopped at any number of marriage shops, he wanted Susanna to realize by the solemnity of the occasion that they were truly married—even if it was a blacksmith who performed the ceremony, as rumor had it.

But the rumor was wrong. No sooner had they entered the hall and been shown to a parlor for refreshments than the owner, Mr. Linton, on hearing they wished to marry today, offered to send for the Gretna priest—not a real priest, but one of their own, a man to whom the marriage duty had been passed down from father to son.

“I would like to refresh myself,” Susanna murmured to Leo as she removed her gloves listlessly.

He shook his head. He was not about to rent two rooms and give her a chance to escape him before the wedding. She glared at him but did not ask again.

The “priest” arrived soon enough, and Leo wished for the ceremony to be over. He was still worried that Susanna would foolishly risk her very reputation simply to deny him.

Quietly, with sad resignation that made him grit his teeth, she answered yes to the question of her willingness to marry, and glanced at him briefly in surprise when he produced a ring. She didn’t ask him where he’d bought it, so he didn’t bother to tell her. The priest himself put it on Susanna’s finger, and it was a close fit, Leo saw with brief satisfaction. The priest produced a marriage certificate, and Susanna filled out her name and place of residence without speaking, and Leo did the same. Their witnesses—the coachman and Linton, owner of the Hall—signed their names. With a smile, the priest declared them man and wife, and the simple ceremony was over.

Susanna blinked in surprise, looking around at all the men. “Nothing about God?” she asked with faint sarcasm.