The Infamous Bride (8 page)

He had to agree with Susannah. He wanted to be back in the bustle of Boston. He wanted to hear familiar accents, not the crystal condescension of the aristocrat or the docile, flat voice of servants. He could not imagine bringing a wife home who had belonged to this place.

He closed his eyes against the vivid memory of Juliet Fenster dressed in pale lawn, with the lamplight making a false halo in her hair as she sang at the Southington's musical gathering last week. A visit here was not utterly intolerable. But Boston — indeed, any state in America — was preferable to this ancient homage to a long-dead feudal system.

What he had seen in London had only made him more determined not to take an English wife. Only an American wife could appreciate a husband who believed in honest work. Only an American wife would understand that hard-won wealth should not be wasted on an excess of gowns — or buttons.

How could Annabel worry that he might have a secret desire to make Miss Fenster his wife? Though she was beautiful and sang like an angel, he had no doubt she was incapable of constancy. He had seen what harm a passionate, beautiful, and inconstant woman could do to a man. His father still suffered the wounds from marrying his mother, even long after her death. He was determined never to marry a woman he might come to hate so bitterly that he could not speak her name aloud — or bear the sight of her child.

"He has accepted our invitation." Juliet was astonished at how her heart beat so rapidly at the thought of Mr. Hopkins coming to spend the two weeks with them in the country. Or perhaps it was merely the result of her mad dash up the stairs to tell her sisters. She had interrupted Rosaline and Helena at their fencing lesson to deliver the news.

Rosaline, not one to concede defeat before absolutely necessary, raised her face guard and asked, "Will he bring his sister, then?"

Juliet glanced down as if to check, but she already knew the answer. "Yes, his sister and his stepmother will also attend." She glanced back up triumphantly. "I told you he would not refuse this invitation."

Unwilling to admit that she had been wrong, Rosaline flipped her face mask back down and replied, "No doubt he will still keep his sister as far from you as possible, Juliet."

"Only until I win him over." She was careful not to let her uncannily observant sister see how the thought of turning the stone-hearted Mr. Hopkins into an ally made her knees weak.

Helena lifted her mask and shot a worried glance at Rosaline before asking, "What plan lurks behind those wicked eyes?"

Juliet needed their help, but she sensed now was not the time to ask. "No plan, only fate itself."

Helena persisted. "What fate?"

Rosaline said dryly, "Better to ask whose fate, Hellie."

Juliet made a face to quiet her sister's laughter. "Do we not perform a play every year at this house party?"

"We do."

"And do we players not practice for hours and hours to get everything right?"

"Yes."

"Then don't you imagine, with so much chance to get to know me, that Mr. Hopkins will see that he has completely misjudged my good sense and judgment?"

"Or he shall learn that all his suspicions were correct," Rosaline teased her mercilessly.

Juliet shook her head. "Master Shakespeare's play is just the thing to bring him around."

The girls leaned forward eagerly. "What play?"

"Romeo and Juliet, of course." Juliet was proud of her scheme, certain of success.

Helena frowned. "Will the men participate in such a play? Or will we end with all women doing the manly parts?"

"Whyever would we?" Juliet could not imagine the men refusing to participate in her play. They had never done so in previous years.

"No man enjoys the swooning, lovesick Romeo." Rosaline shook her head as she lowered her face mask again and raised her sword to Helena. "You forget, sister, there are battles aplenty to be fought." She added with another laugh, "In addition to the one Juliet will fight for Mr. Hopkins's heart."

Helena nodded, dropping her face mask into place. "True enough."

She raised her sword to engage with Rosaline again but then hesitated and turned back to ask, "I suppose we needn't ask who you will choose to play Juliet."

Juliet smiled, pleased that Helena had seen her cleverness. Surely if her sister could see that no one else could play the role, so would those she must entice to act in her play. "It was fate, my sisters. Fate that made Father give me the name Juliet."

"What part will you give Mr. Hopkins, then? Romeo?"

Juliet shuddered at the thought. "I want to make a friend of him, not a lover. He shall be Tybalt."

Rosaline saluted with her sword. "I suppose poor Lord Pendrake will have only you to thank, then, for being cast as Romeo."

"I did promise him a lead role in our next production last year." Uncertain of whether he would still wish the role or, indeed, if he and his fiancee would attend at all, Juliet was determined to believe that all would be well. She did have a solution if things did not go the right way at first, however. Mr. Hopkins would no doubt dislike acting. If she persuaded him to take the part, he would fail miserably at portraying a passionate, lovestruck young man. Then she would be free to prevail upon Pendrake to take the role over with no one gossiping about her choice.

Rosaline and Helena looked at each other, then at her. Rosaline's tart answer was obviously meant to be from both of them. "I know that you have not always paid close attention to your lessons. You are aware that Juliet ended up dead at the end of the play?"

Helena added, "And Romeo as well."

Rosaline said softly, "Hellie, I don't think our present-day Juliet cares much about the fate of Romeo so long as he died loving his Juliet."

"My thoughts exactly, my wise young sister."

"Not so much younger-twenty minutes."

With muffled giggles, they engaged in their mock sword fight, giving Juliet no further notice.

Juliet dismissed them — and their comments — as childish. Ancient tragedies indeed. The play was just the thing to bring Mr. Hopkins around to become her friend and to help her straighten out the muddle with Pendrake. The American might seem unmovable, but she would find a way into whatever softness his heart held. She knew that she could convince his sister to help her cause. She had to.

For a moment she was troubled thinking of Helena's worry that the man might actually fall in love with her, and then she shrugged the thought off. She would never let it go further, even if the foolish man turned out to be capable of more than the brotherly affection he had shown his sister — which she very much doubted possible.

In the end, she realized, he would be much too sensible to allow himself to become overly attached. After all, Mr. Hopkins was well aware it was Pendrake's heart she meant to discover, not his.

R.J. had no idea it would be so exhausting keeping Susannah from Juliet's company during their visit. He had made an excuse not to go out on the hunt yesterday, but today he could find no reason to refuse. That would leave Susannah vulnerable to the impetuous Miss Fenster.

Or perhaps not. His stepmother did seem capable of taking care of the matter, focused as she was on ensuring an engagement for her daughter during the visit.

It was himself, he found, who could not seem to escape Miss Fenster's company. She had been seated near him at dinner. No amount of taciturn response stopped her chatter. He wondered what it was she wanted from him, only so that he could deny her. Unfortunately, in company he could not ask her.

"Do you Americans hunt?" she asked in yet another attempt to draw him into conversation.

"For food, not sport." His answer was not completely truthful. Some Americans still had the habit. Those who wished to be as idle as the English aristocracy. "In America we value hard work and discourage wasteful excess." Her buttons today, he noticed, were jade teardrops that clustered about the neck of her gown. A neckline he would have insisted be raised if he were the one paying for her gowns.

She pouted at him prettily. "Do you consider plays and other such entertainment wasteful, too?" He could see no sign that his words had offended her as he had meant them to, considering their previous conversations.

"No. A play, properly performed, can be an uplifting experience for the spirit and good for the mind as well." Annoyed that he had allowed her to goad him into more than a monosyllabic response, he added, "I prefer lectures to plays, of course."

"It is a shame that my sister Hero and her husband, Arthur, are not here this year, then," she said. For a moment he thought his sally had missed its mark. Then she added, "There is nothing those two enjoy more than sitting for an hour or two listening to someone drone on about some obscure culture or ancient history, too."

"You make it sound stultifying." He could not help but add, "But I assure you, to the properly trained mind, it is not."

She wrinkled her nose at him, and her voice rose slightly in mockery, though he did not think any casual listener would recognize it as such. "Give me a good, rousing play any day, Mr. Hopkins. Movement, laughter, tears."

"That reminds me," said the gentleman on her other side. "Miss Fenster, what play have you chosen for us to perform this year?"

"One of Mr. Shakespeare's greatest tragedies." She seemed much too pleased with herself, and he felt an uneasy sense that he was about to find out how she meant to get what she wanted despite all his determination to thwart her.

"Excellent. Then there will be sword work?" The young fop who asked the question barely seemed hardy enough to raise a sword. "I do so enjoy sword work."

"Enough bloodshed for Attila himself," Juliet assured him, but her eyes darted quickly to R.J., as if she had something planned that involved him. He was certain whatever it was, he would not enjoy it.

"You will have a play performed here?" The decadence appalled R.J. The duke was a wealthy man, but he thought him wiser in the expenditure of his fortune than this.

"We will perform a play for our own amusement, Mr. Hopkins. We have done so every year since my sister married the duke. It has become a tradition to honor our late father, who saw fit to name us each after a favorite Shakespearean character. Surely you will participate."

He opened his mouth to assure her that he would not waste his time playacting, not even in a Shakespearean masterpiece that had been esteemed by her dearly departed sire. He was not given the chance.

She laughed coquettishly. "You cannot object to the frivolity of a Shakespearean tragedy, now, can you?"

"I admire Mr. Shakespeare greatly," he admitted grudgingly.

"Wonderful." She clapped her hands with delight, and he felt as if she had closed the bars on an invisible cage. "I have just the part for you, then."

"Which of the tragic plays do you perform? Julius Caesar? King Lear? Hamlet? Surely not Othello?"

She shook her head and laughed with a soft musical sound that nevertheless sounded ominous to him. "None of those; we have ladies to please." She hesitated with a theatricality that would have served the greatest actress upon the stage and then announced, "This year we will perform Romeo and Juliet."

She smiled directly into his eyes as if expecting some reaction from him. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach. He had been prepared to find that she had concocted some foolish scheme, but not even his imagination had supplied this. Was she mocking him? Could she know about his misbegotten name? Impossible.

Annabel would never let the truth past her lips; it embarrassed her almost as much as it did his father. Certainly Susannah, who found it an amusing fact and one to tease him about mercilessly, had not spent enough time in Miss Fenster's company to exchange such information.

"Who will be Romeo, then?" He could see the eager attention from all at the table as a young woman at his right asked the question. He did not want to hear the answer but could think of no way to interrupt her without bringing attention to his own unease.

"I had promised Lord Pendrake last year that he might do the honor of the leading role." She seemed not to notice the hush that followed her pronouncement. But he felt strongly that she knew the line she trod so finely.

He saw her plan clearly; he could not doubt that others who knew her better saw it as well. He could not help goading her. "A promise is a promise. However, he might not insist upon the point now that he is to be married."

"I do not know. I shall have to ask him." Again, the collective breath was held, and the glances flew down the table, where Pendrake was mercifully oblivious of his fate.

"I'm certain he would be honored," he said, enjoying the surprise that widened her eyes for a moment. Until he added, "Only if Elizabeth might be Juliet, I suspect." How far would she dare go?

"Elizabeth does not like our amusements. She prefers the hunt, with the gentlemen," Juliet said brightly, though he fancied he saw a flash of pique in the hazel depths of her eyes.

He could not tell for certain, because she swept her lashes down and quickly hid any signs of irritation. To his relief, she showed no indication that she had chosen the play because she knew his secret and wished to torment and humiliate him. As long as he spoke to Susannah and warned her to say nothing of it to anyone, he should be safe enough.

Feeling on safer ground, he baited Juliet again with a careless shrug and a sip of the duke's excellent wine. "Then I suspect Lord Pendrake will choose the hunt as well."

To his satisfaction, her lips pinched together just slightly. He wondered if she knew that made them eminently kissable and then chided himself for the careless thought.

He glanced at the men around him, young and old. They could not take their eyes from her face. No doubt she was well aware of every effect her movements had on men and used her beauty to utmost advantage. He hoped she would drop the matter now. Then Pendrake would be safe from her designs for yet another evening.

Perhaps not, he realized, when she smiled and said, "True. No doubt I shall have to endeavor to find a smaller part for the pair of them — one they can manage even if they do spend a great deal of time at the hunt."