The Lure of a Rake (21 page)

His friend choked on his swallow. “If you believe
that
then you know a good deal less about ladies than has been credited. No lady happily tolerates her husband’s carousing.”

“The lady has little interest in my faithfulness or how I spend my days,” he argued with a frown. Didn’t she?
“…In marrying, I will be turning my funds, my children, my very happiness over to a man. How could I trust…?”
A frisson of unease ran through him. He’d been quite clear that they’d carry on their own existences. He shrugged, thrusting aside the doubt his friend had raised. “I was quite clear in my requirements and she was equally clear.”

Montfort kicked his chair back on the hind two legs. “Oh?” he drawled. “And just what requirements would a lady have to agree to marry one such as you?”

The insult easily rolled off Cedric. With their lifelong friendship, no one knew better than Montfort the dissolute bastard that Cedric was. “It matters not why she agreed.” Just that she had. She’d be taken care of and through that, they’d both be spared the wills their own sires would have imposed on them.

At the memory of meeting with her coldhearted bastard of a father, he gripped the crystal snifter. Cold. Condescending where his daughter was concerned, her father had proven himself remarkably like Cedric’s own ruthless parent.

“Yes, I suppose it doesn’t,” Montfort agreed, righting his chair. He took a swallow of his drink. “Then I suppose you’d meet little resistance from the desperate Farendale doxy.” With that dismissive statement, Montfort looked about the club. “Few options for that one.”

An unholy fury rolled through Cedric and the crystal snifter cracked under the pressure of his grip. “She is to be my wife,” he bit out.

His friend returned his attention to Cedric. “Beg pardon?” he blinked several times.

With a growl of annoyance Cedric swiped his free hand through his hair. “Nothing,” he snapped. He was not one of those respectable gents who was offended or bothered on anyone’s behalf—not even his own. So what accounted for this urge to drag his friend across the table and bury his fist in said friend’s nose?

Montfort swirled his drink. “Why the reason for meeting at this ungodly hour?” he asked, thankfully diverting Cedric’s attention from his confounding thoughts.

“Is it early?” His gaze found the long-case clock at the opposite wall. Ten o’clock. Yes, certainly not an hour he’d generally be awake, after late night carousing. Except he’d not partaken in those scandalous revelries into the early morn hours…for nearly a week. Peculiar stuff.

“Oh, undoubtedly.” Montfort followed that with a loud yawn.

“I had business to attend to.” An early morn visit to secure a special license from the archbishop. Said paper now burned inside the front of his jacket for what it portended. He waved over a servant and put in a request for an unbroken glass, which Cedric promptly filled.

A sharp bark of laughter split Montfort’s lips. “You had business to attend to that wasn’t wagering or whoring?”

“I’m to marry this morning. Eleven o’clock,” he added. In short time, he would break every silent vow he’d taken to thwart his father’s wishes and forever bind himself in marriage to one woman. Anxiety roiled in his gut. That ultimate sense of failure he’d bring to a woman, just as his father had brought countless women.
Genevieve is different. She requires a husband. I require a wife. This is practical…
Thrusting aside the whispering of misgivings churning in his mind, he spoke quietly. “I would ask you to stand up with me this morning.” Ultimately, he’d deny the bastard that which he desired above all else—that beloved heir and spare to carry out his polluted line. For what his father had never expected was for Cedric to find a bride content to settle for a practical arrangement where both benefited.

“Of course, I will be there,” Montfort spoke with a seriousness that Cedric had thought him incapable of. The earl’s amusement faded and his eyes reflected back the same horror and regret Cedric had felt one week earlier over the expectations his father would have thrust on him. He propped his elbows on the table. “I am sorry,” he spoke the way one would at the passing of a loved one. “I know you’d rather dance in the fires of hell than shackle yourself to one woman.”

Cedric remained silent. Yes, his friend was, indeed, correct. Yet, there were certainly worse things than wedding a lady unafraid to challenge him, one who kissed with a wild abandon that promised a spirited wife who delighted in the marital bed. Lest his friend note that grin and make more of it than was there, he took a long swallow to conceal it.

“No need to be so glum, old friend,” Montfort said misinterpreting the reason for his silence. “There is some good to come in marrying the lady,” he continued, following Cedric’s own thoughts. “The duke is no doubt enraged by your selection in a bride?”

“Undoubtedly,” he confirmed, lifting his nearly empty glass in salute. As elated as Genevieve’s own miserable father had been after they’d worked through the formal arrangements, was as livid as Cedric’s own father had been when he’d visited him yesterday afternoon. His mind still resonated with the furious bellowing his pronouncement had met. A surge of triumph gripped him.

“Which, in itself, makes her the perfect bride,” Montfort added.

Yes, at one point that would certainly have been true. And even as his friend’s words were steeped in logic…there was…more that made Genevieve perfect.

“…Do you believe because I am a woman, I should favor pastel, peaceful landscapes…?”

Unsettled by the irrational sentiment, he cleared his throat. “My family is assembling at eleven o’clock in Kensington Gardens.” That particular detail had not come only because of his father’s insistence that the hasty affair be conducted in his ducal office, but for the significance of that location for the meeting place it represented.

Montfort erupted into another bevy of laughter. “Kensington Gardens.” He leaned forward and slapped Cedric on the arm. “If you believe a romantic lady who insists on getting married outside in a garden is the logical sort who’ll allow you to carry on as you’ve done these years, then you’d be wise to turn tail and run as quick as Aumere did, years earlier.”

His jaw tightened reflexively with such intensity his teeth ground together at the mention of Aumere. The bloody fool. Regardless, Genevieve was better off without that one.
And do I believe she is better off with me?
“The place where the wedding takes place is neither here nor there,” he grumbled under his breath. He’d certainly not point out that he’d decided on said location.

His friend inclined his head. “Given the hour, we should be along, then? Wouldn’t do to be late to your own wedding.”

Cedric swung his attention to that clock once more, and squinted at the numbers. Fifty minutes past ten. He’d but ten minutes to find his way to Hyde Park.

Bloody hell.
With a curse he shoved back his chair and sprinted through his club.

*

Never more had Genevieve been so grateful for the shelter afforded by the high hedge maze of Kensington Gardens.

Looking past the vicar, she trained her gaze on the green boxwood. Anything but the cold, unspeaking Duke of Ravenscourt, or on the concern radiating from her sister’s eyes, or her flushed and furious father. Or Cedric’s sister and brother-in-law, the Marquess and Marchioness of Grafton.

Especially
that united pair.

Except… From the corner of her eye, she took in the flawlessly perfect golden-haired lady, and the chestnut haired stranger at her side, their hands twined together. She swallowed hard and redirected her attention forward.
I did not even know he had a sister.
He was a stranger in every sense of the word, this man she’d so quickly agreed to wed.
I know nothing more than his love of art and the liquefying power of his kiss.
Genevieve pressed her eyes closed a moment. And she knew his own self-profession of being a rake.

“He is not coming,” her father spat a third time.

Mother patted his hand and murmured placating words. “I am certain the marquess is just detained.” She looked to the duke as though hoping, expecting, he’d concur.

Genevieve’s stomach dipped. This moment was so eerily similar to another that a dull buzzing filled her ears, muffling her parents’ exchange. Not again. Surely, Cedric would not so humiliate her in this way. Surely, he’d not leave her standing at this altar of flowers and greenery.
But what do I really know of the gentleman?
He was a rake and risky and all things to be avoided and, yet, she’d been swayed by the promise he’d dangled before her. Freedom. Control. What happened to a lady twice jilted? A nervous laugh escaped her, capturing the attention of Cedric’s sister.

“He will come,” Gillian interrupted her fast careening thoughts.

Blankly, she looked as her sister wove her fingers through Genevieve’s. “I—” She struggled to drag forth suitable words, with her own self-assurance, but then her gaze landed on the duke as he yanked out his watch fob and consulted his timepiece. The austere lord gave his head a disgusted shake and stuffed the gold piece back inside his jacket.

Genevieve swallowed past a tight throat. “I know.” That faint whisper barely reached her own ears. Only, she knew nothing of the sort. She scanned the area for a hint of his tall, powerful frame.
He is not coming.

“It is nearly thirty minutes past the hour,” her father snapped at the duke. “Your son is late. I expect him t-to…” The graying Duke of Ravenscourt leveled him with an icy stare and the remainder of those words went unspoken.

A pall of silence fell over the collection of gathered guests. The muffled whispers of Cedric’s sister and brother-in-law reached Genevieve’s ears and her gaze went to the young couple. The gentleman leaned down and whispered something close to the lady. Then, with a white-gloved finger, he tucked a pale, blonde strand behind his wife’s ear.

The tenderness of that act slammed into her like a gut-punch and she folded her arms at her waist. That beautiful display of warmth and love, all gifts she’d given up on… Or had she? Seeing that couple now, she realized the dream was just as alive and strong as it had ever been. For even with Aumere’s betrayal all those years ago and her subsequent exile, she’d lived with the secret hope that there would be a life of joy and laughter with another. The secret she’d kept so well, even from herself, that she’d not truly considered the implications of a marriage of convenience to Cedric. Genevieve’s belly churned with unease.

As though feeling her gaze, the young marchioness looked to Genevieve and she hastily averted her eyes, retraining them on the empty entrance of the gardens.

The vicar cleared his throat. “Perhaps the marquess is not coming?” he ventured, the first to vocalize the thoughts everyone had surely been thinking that morning.

The duke tapped his fingertips on the side of his leg; that movement so very much Cedric’s that emotion went rolling through her.

“He will be here.” She stilled, startled by the sound of her own voice.

“If you humiliate this family again, Genevieve Grace…” Her father let that threat trail off.

If I humiliate this family?
A healthy dose of fury drove back the pained dread of waiting for one’s absent groom in the middle of Hyde Park. After all, what threat could her father make now? He’d already cut her out of the fold of the family five years earlier? What did one do with a daughter a second time?

“Mayhap he is lost?” Gillian put in helpfully.

She smiled at her sweetly innocent, hopelessly optimistic, sister. “Perhaps,” she agreed, unable to muster any real conviction. Genevieve looked to the wrought iron bench they’d occupied two days earlier.

…I’ll not lie and say I don’t desire you, Genevieve, if that is what you’re expecting. For I do—want you…

Was desire enough to bring Cedric ’round to do the honorable thing? Yes, by his admission, he stood to benefit from the funds and properties that came when he married, but as a marquess and future duke, he was in possession of some wealth. A confirmed rake who had no interest in marriage, he’d no doubt had compunctions about tying himself to one woman. And she was certainly not the manner of beauty to hold a gentleman such as him in thrall.

As though in agreement, the late spring breeze stirred the fabric of her very gray skirts. The one loose curl she’d insisted her maid drape over her shoulder played in the wind; that one fragile, but important, control on this, her wedding day.
And now, just as before, I am powerless.
Subject to the whim of a—

The heavy tread of footsteps drew her eyes to the front of the gardens. A sheen of perspiration on his olive-hued skin and his gloriously long, blond hair disheveled as though he’d run a distance and he’d never looked more magnificent. His gaze caught hers and at the small, repentant half-grin on his lips, emotion swelled in her throat. No man had a right to such golden perfection. Cedric bowed his head and then started forward.

Ignoring her family’s collectively relieved sighs and her father’s muttering thanking the gods above, Genevieve walked off and met him halfway. They stopped a hands-breadth apart. She opened her mouth, when a tall, dark-haired gentleman, far less rumpled and slightly bored, entered the gardens. She recognized him from the duke’s ball as the man who’d been conversing with Cedric. The more than slightly handsome gentleman sketched a bow. “Never mind me, love,” he said, and walked promptly past her. Bemused, Genevieve stared after him a moment as she was reminded once more of just how much she did not know about Cedric and, more, this desire to know everything of him.