The Next Best Bride (6 page)

Helena turned her face to the door. How could she convince him she would not marry him when she let him do such things to her?

"Don't be shy. A husband and wife should be able to speak of these matters. I will not be angry at having to delay consummating our marriage."

She mumbled her words into the solid wood of the door, afraid to turn to see the face that made all her resolve melt away. "I told you. I cannot marry you."

"Of course you can. You must."

Helena laughed weakly. The man was impossible to convince. Perhaps she should ask Ros — But no. There was someone who could stop this wedding, no matter what the earl wanted. With that knowledge, she had the strength to turn and confront the assured gleam in the green-eyed gaze fastened sharply on her.

"You can hardly force me down the aisle in this." She indicated her shift and dressing gown with a gesture. "And if you did, I should still refuse to marry you. I'm sorry, my lord, but you must find yourself another bride."

"I have found the bride I want." He said it softly, almost sweetly. Helena might have been convinced he meant it — might have let her heart lead her astray — if she had not noticed the way his hands clenched into fists at his side as he spoke.

"We shall see what the duke has to say about that." To her surprise, he made no protest when she opened the door and fled back to her room, where her sisters waited to help her into her wedding gown.

Miranda was the first to catch sight of her.

"There you are. I thought you were going to run away from your own wedding." Her sister's smile disappeared as she gazed more closely at Helena. "What is the matter?"

As if she knew what Helena was going to say and wanted to prevent it, Ros said, "Every bride looks like that just before she marries. Come, we need to get you into your dress and do your hair. There's no time to waste."

Miranda looked at Ros oddly, and then glanced back to Helena.

Before her courage fled, Helena said, "I don't want to marry. I have changed my mind."

Miranda frowned. "You intend to jilt the earl? Why?" As if she had just noticed Helena's half-dressed state, she blanched as her gaze took in the untied sash of the dressing gown. "What has he done?"

Miserably, thinking her sister would be horrified to know what the earl had just done — and would consider it a perfect reason to go ahead with the marriage — Helena said only, "I just know that I have made a mistake."

"Rosaline ... "

Helena could bear the deception no longer. "I am not Rosaline."

Confused, but determined to get to the bottom of things, Miranda turned to Kate and Betsey. "Girls — go fetch the duke. Tell him I need him urgently. And then you may sing for our guests. I think the ceremony may be delayed somewhat."

The two did not argue, evidently seeing the seriousness of the situation in Miranda's set smile. Dressed in their finest gowns, they scurried away to find the duke like the true hoydens they were.

Ros, an unreadable expression on her face, brought the wedding gown over to Helena and gestured. "Better get into this, unless you want to entertain the duke as casually as you did the earl."

"Hel — Rosaline!" Miranda scolded her sister unhappily, even as she helped fit Helena into the dress.

"Perhaps you should wear it," Helena muttered as her sisters tugged and fastened and fitted in haste.

''I'm not meant to wear a wedding dress," Rosaline demurred. Her fingers toyed with a button on the bodice for a moment. "Although the sword buttons that Raster Booth made for me don't suit you as well as they would have me, I admit."

Helena eyed her darkly. "Perhaps they suit me better than you think."

To her annoyance, her irate words spurred a grin from her incorrigible sister. A grin that quickly disappeared when the duke strode into the room, scowling.

Explanations seemed to muddle the matter even more for a moment, but finally, both Simon and Miranda understood what had happened. Neither looked happy.

"You will not marry him?" the duke asked Rosaline — the real Rosaline — at last.

She shook her head firmly. "I gave him to Helena. She agreed."

Miranda sighed. "You cannot give your sister your fiance, Rosaline. He is not a possession."

Like a wife, Helena thought, grateful that the duke would see the marriage did not take place. "Will you tell him so for me? And tell him I'm sorry."

"You've made the man a laughingstock, the pair of you." The duke glowered at them. "Don't be surprised when he refuses your apologies — and mine."

Miranda said sharply, "He should have had the sense to refuse Ros's suggestion, Simon. Or, at the very least, come to you about it before now."

He nodded. "Don't think I won't tell him so, the young fool." He left the room muttering and shaking his head.

Unfortunately, he had not been long gone before Kate and Betsey came into the room, still solemn faced. "Helena. The duke wants to see you in his study."

"In his study?" Helena glanced at Miranda. "Will he send us to Anderlin in disgrace, do you think?"

"Let us go and see," Miranda said briskly, but with no reassurances. She gestured to Ros to come along, but added to Kate and Betsey, "Go and sing another song or two for the guests."

Ready to be banished from London, Helena was unprepared to see the earl standing next to the duke, holding a glass of brandy. She would have halted at the doorway, but Miranda and Ros behind her impelled her inside against her will.

"Have you nothing to say to me?" Rand asked, his brows quirked up in question.

Helena stood frozen in disbelief. Did he still think to change her mind somehow?

Miranda, with a puzzled glance at her husband, said, ''I'm sorry, my lord, but it seems that the marriage will not take place."

"I understand." His smile held no hint of offense or anger. Indeed, he seemed all solicitude. His attitude seemed wrong to Helena, who could not understand his calm demeanor. Until he said to the duchess, "You see, Your Grace, when she came to my room earlier, Helena was so relieved to find she was not in a certain indelicate circumstance that she gave me no chance to assure her I still wished the marriage."

The room grew quiet. Helena thought she would die, right then and there.

Miranda's gaze settled upon her in distress. "Helena—"

Ros was no help at all. In fact, she had gone to stand beside Rand as if she supported his infamy.

Rand nodded to her traitorous twin, and continued spouting his poppycock to Miranda. "You understand, of course, that we meant no disrespect to Rosaline. It seems that I proposed to the wrong twin and we were all resolved to right the matter. I suspect Helena is simply feeling a bit guilty at stealing her sister's intended."

Outrage gave her a voice at last. "How dare you accuse me of feeling guilty —"

Rand crossed the room as she spoke and took her hands. Gazing into her eyes as if he were a lovestruck swain, he said, "Come, my love, do not tell me you would not have married me if you were to have the child as we first feared?"

"I —" She intended to tell the truth. Until she realized how it would sound to her sister and brother-in-law. She could not confess she had had another lover. No — a single lover. Somehow he had confused her into thinking that they had been lovers when all he had done was touch her ankle. Her ... Oh, he was a devil.

She turned to her sisters, to the duke, looking for support. But there was none to be found. Helena was shocked to realize that the earl had turned the entire room to his will with a few clever half truths and that wicked charm that seemed to come to him as naturally as breathing.

Chapter Five

Rand wasn't certain whether he had won or lost as he stood gazing solemnly down at the woman he was vowing to protect, honor, and cherish. She was gazing back at him in a way that many watching might describe as adoring. But he felt certain she did not see him.

Up close, he could see a panicked blankness to her gaze that suggested she looked into the future rather than at the present, at her groom standing before her. Her lips were slightly parted and her breath shallow and quick. She did not seem pleased with whatever future she was seeing for herself.

Had he misjudged? He had at first thought Helena would make an even more acceptable bride than Ros. She was more tractable. Ros would have shouted to the world that he was not her lover, rather than allow herself to be coerced into marriage. Helena merely tightened her lips into a thin line and unprotestingly allowed herself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter.

Slaughter. Not so amusing when he remembered the life he led. The life he was determined to lead. Ros would have joined him, dressed as a man, or amused herself with gusto as she traveled the world. He had thought it the perfect solution for them both, but he understood Ros's belated skittishness. Her nature did not lend itself to motherhood.

Helena was another matter altogether. He could picture her with a babe in her arms. She would know how to soothe tears and coax smiles. Surely she understood that he would not interfere with the child, or with her running of his household, once he had one. Wasn't that enough for a sensible woman?

Although, the only sensible woman he had ever met was Ros, and she was more like a man than a woman. The same could not be said for her sister, even though Helena swore she did not believe in love. He liked that Helena responded so easily to him. He would enjoy bedding her. But he must guard against letting her fall in love with him at all costs.

And he must guard against having her hurt … as much as he was able. She obviously put more stock in her reputation than Ros ever had. She might be hurt by the gossip that swirled around him. She might care what people thought of him — of her because she was his wife.

Wife. The very word caused his belly to knot. He had done it. He had married and soon he would have a child, and with it control of his life would be back in his hands. Unable to contain his elation, he grinned at Helena as she quietly repeated her vows.

Her eyes widened and she hesitated a moment as she uttered the word "obey." But she recovered smoothly enough to finish the vows that would bind her to him. She even gave him a tentative smile in return.

He shouldn't show his joy, not here, with his grandfather watching. That he knew. But he could not contain it. Most of his contemporaries considered marriage the end of their freedom, understandably enough. But to him, thanks to his agreement with Helena, and his life becoming his own again, it was not the end of freedom, but the beginning.

As the minister proclaimed them wed, Rand took Helena's hands. She looked at him in confusion, but did not pull away. No doubt she was afraid to cause a scene when every eye in the chapel was turned upon them. He wondered how long she would take to learn that very fear made her vulnerable to him? And how would she react to the knowledge?

He knew he shouldn't, but still he waited impatiently for the last words of the minister to conclude matters definitively and then swept her up into his arms for a full-mouthed kiss, which made their guests gasp with surprise — and murmur with envy, no doubt. They were already in the mood for scandal, as the duke had announced the change in brides before the ceremony began.

He kissed her until she stopped resisting and returned his kiss in full and then he laughed in her ear when she made a faint sound of distress as she looked out at the sea of faces watching them. Let another black mark rest on his reputation; what did it matter? He had a bride and soon would have an heir and control of his own destiny at last.

He pulled her to him and put an arm around her as he escorted her away from the chapel and into the open carriage that would carry them the few streets back to the duke's home and the magnificent feast that awaited them there.

She barely touched his hand when he helped her into the carriage, and sat stiffly apart from him. "Sorry?" he asked, when the horses were underway. "I thought I saw a distinct rabbit in the grip of a fox expression upon your face for a moment. Was it the word "obey"? For you needn't, you know. That was our bargain, after all."

Was she sorry? Helena sorted through the various emotions that roiled inside her. Worry for the future. A dreamlike sense of her life rushing past too fast for her to grasp hold of. Desire and fear to take what he offered and make her future her own. Seeing that he waited for an answer, she looked away. "Too late for regrets, my lord."

"Sensible attitude," he said with annoying heartiness. "Even if you don't entirely mean it at this moment, I have no doubt you'll come to see that this was for the best. Your lover may have shown you that love was fickle—"

She would have protested, but he put a finger to her lips as he said, ''I'm glad he did. Because now I may show you that autonomy and independence are the best gift a husband can give his wife."

She looked at him without masking her skepticism. "Or a wife her husband, my lord?"

"Indeed." He sat back, turning his face up so that sunshine caressed the strong beautiful lines of nose and jaw as the carriage horses trotted in a leisurely manner. "Indeed."

Husband. Helena itched to sketch him as he was then. The jumble of her feelings — ire, dismay, admiration, even fear — would give a strength and boldness to her strokes that would capture him perfectly. Elemental male at one with his universe.

She sighed. A sketch of him she could admire. The man himself, as husband, was another matter altogether. "I am not Ros, you know."

"I am glad of it. You are much more kissable." He gave no warning at all before he turned his face away from the sun, leaned in toward her, and kissed her soundly on the lips. His body molded against hers, the arm he had rested behind her head becoming a tight band holding her to him, preventing escape as his kiss deepened.

Helena stiffened, acutely aware they were in an open carriage on a public street. "You are no better than — than he was, to use me so," she replied, turning her head so that his lips moved down to press against the corner of her jaw. She pushed against his chest without leverage, her arms trapped between them.