The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance (83 page)

He forced his legs to move in her direction. Then he forced his spine to bend in a bow. “Lady Stourbridge. How do you do?”

She slapped him. “Is this some kind of joke, sirrah? I am not and never have been Lady Stourbridge. And who the devil are you anyway?”

Noel came flying into the room, shoving the butler aside. “He’s Ted. My brother, come home to be Viscount Driscoll.”

Millie fainted.

Ted caught her before she could hit her head on the cluttered furniture. He held her against him, remembering to breathe again. Not Lady Stourbridge?

Lady Cole screamed. Ned shouted, “Put my sister down!”

When hell froze over. Ted would have carried Millie right out of the house and into for ever, if the doorway was not filled with servants and children and barking dogs.

“Put her down, I say.”

The older woman picked up an ugly vase and threw it at Ted. “You’re dead. No ghost is going to steal my niece!”

Ted ducked, protecting the limp treasure in his arms, but the vase shattered on the floor. Now Lady Cole shrieked. Not about her sister-in-law in the embrace of a wild man in buckskins with a braid down his back, but for her ugly urn. The children chased the dogs, knocking over a table filled with a tea service. The dogs started gobbling biscuits and lapping tea while the older female begged them not to, because sweets gave them gas. Noel was laughing. Winnie was giggling. And the Baron challenged Noel to a duel for perpetrating such a hoax.

Ted smiled. How could he not smile with Millie against his heart? Millie who was not Lady Stourbridge.

“Don’t be a clodpole, Cole.”

Millie opened her eyes. She did not want to, because she was having the most wondrous dream. She thought she’d just wake up enough to tell all of her relatives to go to the devil, then go back to—“Red?”

She’d been called Miss Cole, Mildred and Millie, even That Woman, but only one person dared to call her Red. She hated her hair and the teasing she’d suffered, so she’d learned to fight back until the teasing stopped. Ted used to say he loved the colour: a welcoming fire, a perfect sunset, a hint of passion, a rose in full glory. His rose. Now the large man who was so tenderly cradling her in his arms called her by that awful, magical name.

She raised a hand to touch the thick dark beard that covered most of the man’s face. “Is it truly you, Ted?”

He lowered his lips to hers and kissed her. Gently, with the beard and moustache scratchy on her skin. But, oh, no man had ever made her feel that way, all soft and melty. “It is you, or I have died and gone to heaven.” Or hell from the feelings one simple kiss aroused.

“You did not die.”

“Nor you. You came home.”

“Now I am home.”

The others in the room were yelling. At Millie and Ted, at the dogs and the children, at each other.

“Out,” Ted ordered without taking his eyes off Millie.

“That’s dashed irregular,” Cole protested while his wife gasped at Millie’s morals, kissing in front of the children and her impressionable sister-in-law.

“If you don’t wish the infants to see a lot more,” the Viscount said with a growl of frustration, “I suggest you remove them on the instant. And although I’d wager young Winnie has seen more than her share of kisses, take her when you leave, too.”

One of the dogs jumped on to the sofa where Ted still held Millie on his lap. “You too, old chap.” Ted let Quinn sniff his hand and addressed Finn, who was snarling at him. “I won’t harm her, I swear.”

Aunt Mary picked Quinn off the sofa before Lady Cole could have conniptions. “Oh, I do like a man who talks to dogs. Come on, my dears. I am certain these two have much to speak of.”

They did indeed.

“You first,” Millie said when everyone had left and Ted shut the door behind them. She moved to a chair near the fireplace, away from his too-tempting arms.

Ted started pacing. “Lud, I wish the chaos hadn’t overturned the tea cart. My mouth is dry. Where to start?”

“Where you left me, seven years ago.”

“No, I’ll start with your father telling me that you were too young, that my offer for your hand was laughable. I was tempted to ask you to elope with me to Scotland, but your father was right, you were too young. You hadn’t seen anything of the world yet, or other men.”

“I would have gone with you.”

“Your father also said I was not good enough to marry his daughter and I never would be anything but a useless second son. That’s when I decided to prove him wrong by making my fortune in Canada.”

“I would have gone with you,” she repeated.

“Into who knew what conditions after a treacherous ocean crossing? How could I subject you to such peril?”

What she’d faced without him was far worse, but Millie did not say that. “Go on.”

He did, explaining that he and two other men, friends from Cambridge, founded a shipping and trading company in the British territory. The business kept growing, with more people moving to the north, more demand for the products. The company needed to expand, though, to make them all wealthy. Ted wanted to see more of the country before returning home, so he travelled along the frontier, establishing new outposts, signing new contracts.

Then war broke out, worse than the previous skirmishes between the British and the Americans. The Americans resented the English impressing their seamen to fight against the French. The British felt the colonists were trying to steal the best acreage for farming. Each had allies among the various native tribes, who had reasons of their own for defending their ancestral lands. The French were stirring up trouble, too, as usual.

Ted sympathized with the sailors and the settlers, but he was a loyal Englishman. So he volunteered to act as guide to the uncharted regions he’d been exploring. They made him a lieutenant, and soon sent him as a forward scout for a company of young, inexperienced soldiers. He was shot by men hiding in the woods, not Americans, not hostile natives. The marksmen spoke the King’s English, with Yorkshire accents. Ted knew because he was just barely conscious when they dragged him off the path he’d been following.

He heard the gunfire when his green troops marched right into the ambush. Every Redcoat was killed. Then the attackers came back for Lt Driscoll, who was still alive. So they tossed his limp body into a gorge above a turbulent river. Ted did not remember much of what happened next, just the cold and the clutching for branches, rocks, dead trees. He remembered waterfalls and rapids, but not how he survived. He awoke with no idea how many days had passed, to find himself being cared for by a native tribe that spoke no Indian language he knew. Besides the gunshot, the loss of blood, fevers from exposure and the near drowning, half the bones in his body were broken or bruised. He was in too much pain, delirious most of the time, to care if he was patient or prisoner, or where they were taking him, slung between two ponies.

Months passed. He had no idea how many, but his beard grew, and his wounds healed. He learned some of the natives’ tongue; they learned some English, which would help them in the white man’s world. Eventually he was strong enough to leave, but more months passed at the slow pace he was forced to travel, until he found a British village that had mail service, infrequent and unreliable as it was. He sent word of his survival. Before he reached his business partners or his army outpost, though, he heard rumours that a Lieutenant Driscoll had turned traitor. That he’d led his men into an ambush.

He was ready to march into the commanding officer’s headquarters and declare his innocence. But first he collected his mail from England.

“My brother wrote that the family had received an invitation to your wedding.”

“There was no wedding.”

“I did not know.”

“I did not know you were alive, either.”

Ted could only shrug now, years later. How to describe his despair? His dreams were dead. He might as well be too. What reason did he have to return to England? Why should he prove himself to someone who did not care?

So he disappeared. He was officially dead, except to a trusted few.

“I wasn’t one of those you trusted.”

“You were married.”

“No, but if I were, I was still your friend. I mourned for you every day.”

“As I mourned my loss of your love.”

She shook her head as if to say no, she’d never stopped loving him, but he stared out the window, not seeing.

He went on to explain that eventually he started to recover his ambition. After all, a man had to do something with his life. With a new name and new appearance, he conducted business away from the cities and the larger settlements. He also conducted a covert investigation into the circumstances of the ambush. He discovered that his death was no accident of war, but a planned and paid-for assassination. When that effort apparently failed, his enemies plotted his dishonour, counting on a firing squad to end his existence.

“Who would do such a dastardly thing?”

“Oh, it was easy enough to trace the orders, once I recognized one of the barbarians who tossed me off the cliff. I, ah, convinced him it was in his best interests to name his employer. He reluctantly but eventually named the commanding officer, Major Frederickson himself. Who happened to be first cousin to the only man in England who had reason to wish me dead.”

“Why did you not come home and bring charges against him if you knew his name?”

“Because my enemy was highly placed. No court would convict him. I would have had to kill him myself, instead.”

“The maggot deserved to die.”

“Yes, but I could not shoot your husband.”

Millie clutched the handkerchief from her pocket. “My husband?”

“Stourbridge wanted me out of the way so he could marry you. He needed your dowry and the other money it seems you recently inherited.”

“No,” she started to protest. But then she recalled the Earl’s greed, his implacable determination to get his way in everything. “But we never married.”

“Why? It is your turn to explain. A broken engagement is bad enough, but a cancelled wedding? That is unheard of.”

Millie started picking at the threads of the handkerchief she’d so tediously hemmed. She could afford to purchase store-made ones now, she thought, irrelevantly. Ted cleared his throat.

Millie cleared hers too. She wished for tea. Or wine. “I thought you were dead. I wished I were too, but one doesn’t die of a broken heart, it seems. As you said, a person has to do something with his or her life. So when Papa announced that Lord Stourbridge wished to marry me, I agreed.”

She knew she could never come to love the arrogant Earl or be happy under his domineering ways, but she hoped to have children to give her existence meaning. At first the Earl was courteous and complimentary. Then he started to show his true colours, in his eagerness to begin their family long before the wedding.

Millie tried to tolerate his kisses, but he wanted more. She could sacrifice much for her unborn babes, but not yet, not until she said her vows. The Earl turned nasty at her refusal which he took, rightly so, as her reluctance to share intimacies with any man other than Theodore Driscoll.

“He … he tried to force me.”

“Now I have to kill him twice.”

“He did not succeed. I used my knee, the way you taught me before you left. He let me go, but he vowed to make me pay for my insolence after the wedding. He would take pleasure in showing me who was master.”

“Three times.”

The handkerchief was in shreds now, pieces littering Millie’s lap. “I knew I could not go through with the marriage to that beast. Neither Papa nor Ned would listen. The contracts were signed, and they expected me to do my duty for the family. I was a silly goose, they said. I suffered bridal nerves, they said. But I knew better. So I ran away. On the day of the wedding.”

Ted whistled. “You left Stourbridge at the altar?”

“St George’s, with hundreds of guests. The Prince was invited. I do not know if he attended or not.”

Now Ted grinned. “That’s my girl!”

“No, I was no one’s girl. You were dead, remember? My father disowned me and sent me off with Aunt Mary to live in poverty near Bristol. Ned did not plead my cause. I hardly blamed either of them. The Earl sued for breach of promise, of course, and won my dowry plus a huge sum for his public humiliation. He took his revenge further by seeing that every door in London was closed to my family, and by claiming I was a slut anyway, most likely carrying another man’s child. We were all ruined by that evil man.”

Ted left the window and stood in front of Millie’s chair, brushing crumbs of handkerchief off her skirts. “Then come with me to London and we’ll both have our revenge. I have written proof of Stourbridge’s perfidy, and I have influential friends who will support my testimony. Come with me, Red.”

“What are you asking of me?”

He knelt down and took both of her hands in his. “I cannot ask you to marry me, not until my name is cleared. But I am asking you to follow me to town. I’ll leave tomorrow, open Driscoll House and fetch a special licence. By the time you arrive, I’ll have Stourbridge run out of London, or run through with my sword.”

“No, I cannot go. I would have followed you anywhere, to the ends of the earth, once. But I cannot marry you.”

“What, because this isn’t a proper proposal? I’ll have my mother’s rings waiting for you in town, and do it up right, I swear.”

“I am not fit to be your viscountess. Haven’t you listened? I am disgraced.”

“Worse than a traitor and army deserter? We’ll both disprove our guilt. And if people do not accept us, we can simply return to Kent and start filling the big empty house with our own family.”

Millie stared at their two hands, joined, without speaking.