Wedding Night Revenge (3 page)

Having been lax earlier, Ralph made amends by immediately doing his mistress's bidding. He launched himself into the driver's seat with a sprightliness that mocked his bowed legs and advanced years.

Lord Devane strolled over, seeming to accidentally arrest their departure by catching the bridle of the nearest grey in order to fondle its ears. The mare turned its head willingly into the deft caress. 'We've not had a chance to exchange a few words...' The casual address was at odds with the sharp blue eyes minutely examining Rachel's features.

With an amount of pique, Rachel realised that if it was Major Flinte, she had been a little arrogant in assuming
he
would know who
she
was. There was no discernible recognition in his eyes, just the steady attention of a man appraising an attractive woman. And she knew she was deemed pretty. Her parents told her so, Lucinda told her so, her mirror reflected their views.

Gentlemen who didn't know her at all sought introductions; gentlemen who

did
know of her, and her history of failed romances, still sought to charm her, vainly confident that they could be the one to turn the tables on her and break her heart. She found it faintly amusing that they believed her in the dark over their designs or their motives. She had heard the gossip that sums of money had been wagered in the past on who would successfully woo and win her, then unceremoniously ditch
her
in a very public way.

So, when in London, she allowed a few stupid fellows to come calling and take her for a drive in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour; she encouraged them to visit her parents' box at the opera or theatre. Just as gossip was fomenting over what seemed to be a particular attachment between herself and a town dandy, she would scupper it by snubbing him forthwith, thus reinforcing her reputation as a callous little tease. She had no regrets; and she had no conscience over it, she told herself, apart from the very mundane one of never having profited herself from a little flutter on the outcome of the gentlemen's puerile games.

The horses snickered, jolting her to the present. Her eyes flicked up, met a narrowed blue stare fringed by the longest lashes. Something turbulent...frustrating inside her stilled, became calm.

Oh, it's him...and he knows me; he thinks he knows what I'm brooding on too. He knows nothing of how I really feel. Do I know how he feels? Is he still angry at me? Still bitter and resentful at having been publicly humiliated? It must have been awful for him...so humbling... There's nothing in his face...no emotion at all. Why is he passing himself, off as a lord?

Simply to impress that weasel of a judge?

If so, the ploy had worked. The hackney carrying Arthur Goodwin to court passed close by on wobbly wheels, and the magistrate's face appeared at the window. A tentative, conspiratorial smile flickered at Lord Devane before he was borne away.

The dray and coal cart soon followed the hackney. His lordship inclined his dark head in acknowledgement of their waves and shouted farewells.

'Noblesse oblige,'
Rachel muttered sourly beneath her breath. It mattered little whether he was now a real aristocrat or afflicted by delusions of grandeur, he was simply Major Flinte to her and thus she need not fret over offending him. That, in all its terrible effect, was already achieved...

'Remove your hand, please, so we might leave,' she instructed coolly.

Lucinda, who had been quietly watching the tense, wordless interaction between the couple, spluttered out, T am Mrs Saunders, Lucinda Saunders. I am very grateful for your assistance, my lord. It could have ended badly had you not intervened. Thankfully, all has turned out well...' A meaningful look then slid to her friend, inviting Rachel to take up the conversation.

'And you are...?' a soft voice prompted.

Rachel swung her head about, looked levelly at him. 'Oh, I am...very grateful for your assistance, too, sir. And you are...about to be so good as to immediately step aside so that I might get along home.' Rachel tapped Ralph's arm and settled back into the squabs.

Ralph looked abashed. He looked at their Good Samaritan, he looked at his churlish mistress. He settled on looking off into middle distance. The horses remained idle.

'Shall I tell you what I think you are?'

Rachel felt the cheek turned to him prickle, her heart slowly thud. 'You obviously have time to waste, sir. I have none; but if you must accost me, please make it quick, for I am getting quite impatient.' She flicked her golden head, gazing past his broad shoulders encased in finest taupe material. 'As is your carriage companion. I believe she is trying to attract your attention.' Her flitting eyes had alighted on an olive-skinned visage peering at them over a sherbet-pale shoulder. The Italian woman was practically bouncing on the seat as she shifted back and forth in irritation, and her head turned every few seconds to stare at them. The diva had certainly lost her air of cool sophistication along with her trio of admirers: Lord Harley's curricle was just turning left at the top of the street.

Connor Flinte seemed little interested in his phaeton or its passenger. Just an idle glance arrowed that way and he seemed no more inclined to rush off than before. In fact, he waited until Rachel looked at him again before replying, 'You want me to be quick? Are you sure? It's been so long, too...'

The hard smile that followed that soft speech sent Rachel's pulse pounding.

'Very well. What I think you are...is little changed, Miss Meredith. That's my initial opinion.' He gave a small, lopsided smile while watching a few of his fingers smooth a languid path along the landau's glossy coachwork. Deep blue eyes mocked her beneath heavy eyelids. 'And that's fortunate for me.

But pretty disastrous for you...' he added in a voice as sweet as honey. Then he was walking back towards his phaeton. He'd taken up the ribbons and soothed the signora's ruffled feathers by the time Rachel gathered sense enough to choke at Ralph, 'Home, please! Now!'

He will not ruin what is left of my day, Rachel vowed silently as she banished persistently intrusive thoughts of Major Flinte from her mind and walked arm-in-arm with Sylvie along the carpeted corridor to find their sister June.

Truce! No baskets or garlands, Rachel had told her little sister moments before, with a rueful smile. Earlier in the day they had argued over their bridesmaids' bouquets and, in doing so, upset June, soon to be a bride. Now Rachel felt eager to restore harmony. 'A posy of gardenias dotted with laurel leaves and trailing ivy...that's a fair compromise, don't you think?'

Sylvie gazed up at her eldest sister with large, luminous eyes the colour of violent storm clouds. 'It sounds...tolerable, I suppose,' she sighed. Her cheeky lack of enthusiasm was belied by the wordless hug of thanks she gave her big sister. 'William is arrived to dine. He is terribly good looking, isn't he? I should have liked to marry him if only he would have waited a while and not fallen in love with June. Will you find someone like William for me, Rachel? Perhaps a bit taller, with dark hair instead of fair, and longer sideburns, and no freckles. I'm not sure I like freckles on a man, even just that little bit William has across his nose. I'm not sure I like them on a woman, either. Noreen doesn't like hers; she puts lemon juice on her face to try and whiten them, you know.'

Rachel smiled while her slender fingers combed through Sylvie's platinum curls. Once let loose, they rebounded immediately into supple coils. 'You, my love, will probably have no trouble in finding just the right man, and without any help from me when the time comes. I shall be approaching my dotage, you know, when you hit your prime, and probably be resigned to knitting, not matchmaking. I can see it now,' Rachel sighed. 'Seven years hence, you will be the bane of our poor papa's life and breaking the hearts of gallants with careless abandon.'

'Like you do now, you mean?' Sylvie innocently chirped up. She'd heard that her elder sister was called a nasty flirt. In fact, since she was six years old and the awful thing happened to Isabel, she'd grown used to overhearing whispers about Rachel's heartless treatment of gentlemen.

As no one ever told her much, still stupidly believing her a baby, she'd learned to glean snippets of interesting news by loitering out of sight when Noreen and her sister, Madcap Mary, were in a confab. She'd learned of Rachel's poor reputation that way, and of June's proposal from Mr William Pemberton. She'd looked suitably surprised, though, when her mother told her a few days later she was to have a brother-in- law.

The Shaughnessy sisters would pick things over while polishing silver in the back parlour or making the beds. Noreen did most of the picking and her block-head sister most of the nodding. But every so often Madcap might bark out her own rough idea on what's to do in the Meredith household. And sometimes, Sylvie thought, it wasn't as daft as it ought to be...

'No, please don't follow my example...' A throbbing solemnity to Rachel's words made Sylvie snap out of her reverie and angle a curious look up at her.

'I expect we might find the -lovebirds in here.' Rachel abruptly pushed open the door to their little library.

Their sister June and her charming fiance, William Pemberton, were nowhere to be seen. But the room
was
occupied: by her parents, seated either side of the table. So earnestly were they conversing across its leather top that it was a moment before they realised they were not alone. Both Mr and Mrs Meredith looked startled and a little discomfited at the sight of two of their beautiful daughters joining them.

Sylvie broke free of Rachel's sisterly clasp and ran, in a rustle of georgette and an unusual fit of demonstrative affection, to hug her papa. Edgar Meredith patted at his little daughter's white hands, clasped round his neck.

Rachel, cursed with a heightened perception of other people's moods—especially her parents'—felt her stomach flutter in anticipation. 'Is anything the matter? Has Madame Bouillon tendered yet more outrageous suggestions for our costumes next month?' The modiste making their wedding finery had lately been tendering increasingly bizarre designs for their approval. 'Never fear, I can deal with her, you know.'

Her papa sketched a smile. 'I've never doubted that, my dear. I took your good advice, Rachel. I hid well away until she was gone. No feathers and fronds for me...'

Rachel's exquisite powder-blue eyes skimmed the desk top. 'Has the post been while I was out?' she asked, noting the letter that seemed to lie portentously between her papa's squarish hands. The palms were flattened on the leather as though he might at any minute shove himself back from the table.

'No...not the post. This was hand-delivered by a servant. It's simply a reply to a wedding invitation,' Gloria Meredith volunteered in a tone that was far too airily dismissive to properly erase her eldest daughter's apprehension.

Every aspect of June's marriage preparations was treated very seriously.

Rachel sat in a chair by the hearth. It was not lit as the day was still warm enough to make the idea of a fire positively unwelcome. Instinctively she inclined towards the grate, recalling that earlier, as she had been on the point of setting off in the landau to go to Charing Cross with Lucinda, a smartly rigged servant had been on his way up the steps of their town house. She had supposed the errand that brought him was something to do with her papa's city affairs. As she believed all wedding invitations issued months ago and all expected replies long since received, she would never have guessed the true nature of his call.

Sylvie wandered away to an open casement and playfully hung herself over the sill. Stretching to a shrub just below, she proceeded to bat at a branch laden with lilac heads. A pleasing, delicate scent spread into the room on the sultry dusky air. Rachel frowned at the disturbance, for there was a disquieting atmosphere within the room her straining senses could detect but not quite fathom. 'Well, don't keep me in suspense,' she lightly chided. 'Who is this late-invited guest? A celebrity we must have? Or are we simply making up numbers? Have there been some recent cancellations? Whose company are we now to be graced with at Windrush?'

After a pregnant pause, in which her parents' eyes clashed, then skittered in opposite directions, her papa said with a sigh, 'It's from the Earl of Devane.

It's a refusal, or should I say, his lordship declines, with thanks, our kind invitation, for naturally he is too well- mannered to simply reject us. Jt is obvious he has given the occasion no real thought: he has responded far too quickly for that.'

'The Earl of Devane?' Rachel breathed, the shock of hearing that name again so soon quelling her feelings of indignation at the family snub. '
Lord
Devane?' Rachel repeated in a voice of strengthening incredulity.

'Yes,' her father confirmed with a significant look at his wife. 'You sound as though you know his lordship...'

'Do I?'
Rachel demanded in return.

'You...you spoke as though the name sounded familiar to you, my dear,' her papa ventured.

'That's because I spoke this afternoon to a man styling himself so.'

'You did?
Where?'
her parents chorused in surprise, unsure now whether to look glad or aghast on learning this news.

'The meeting was on the highway, brought about by a little carriage accident,' Rachel informed them, jumping to her feet. 'No; not the landau.'

She mistook her papa's obvious consternation on hearing this news as a reasonable anxiety over damage to his new coach rather than to his eldest daughter.