Wedding of the Season (2 page)

Chapter One

H
e’d forgotten how beautiful a fine summer day in England could be.

William Mallory, Duke of Sunderland, removed his hat and tilted his head back for an appreciative glance at the dazzling blue sky overhead before turning his attention to the cart piled with his luggage. He studied it for a moment, then turned to the dark-skinned manservant who had just placed yet another valise in the vehicle. “You must learn to pack more lightly, Aman,” he said, tossing his hat to land atop the pile. “I don’t believe there’s room for me.”

“Sir?” His valet glanced at the empty place beside the driver and frowned in puzzlement, but he did not contradict his master’s words. “As Your Grace pleases,” he murmured, which was his usual response to Will’s teasing.

The driver of the cart, a gnarled old man who’d been transporting travelers from Stafford St. Mary’s tiny train station to various homes, inns, and Dartmouth beauty spots since well before Will’s birth, gave a chuckle. “A fine day for riding,” he commented, giving Will a shrewd, knowing look. “And for a race across the moor, perhaps?”

Will laughed. “You know me far too well, Mr. Robinson. Remarkable, given how much time has passed.”

“Some things don’t change with time, Your Grace,” the old man said. “I’ve a strong young gelding you might like. Not fully trained, mind, but full of spit and fast as the wind.”

That was more than enough persuasion for Will. He turned to his valet. “No need for you to ride on the dummy board, Aman. Step up on the box with Mr. Robinson here, and I shall ride to Sunderland Park. In fact,” he added, returning his attention to the old man, “I’ll hire that gelding of yours for a full week, if I may.”

“And have him fully trained by the time you return him, I’ll wager,” Mr. Robinson answered, and started to climb down as if to fetch the horse in question.

Will forestalled him. “No, no, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll have young Jim saddle the gelding for me. That is, if he’s still with you and hasn’t gone off to make his fortune?”

The old man shook his head at that reference to his only son and once again settled himself on the box as Aman climbed up to sit beside him. “Jim’s still here, Your Grace, though not for much longer, I expect. Filled with grand ideas, he is, about going to work in the factories up north, or in the shipyards in Plymouth. He even talks of going off to India. Or Africa, as you did, sir.”

“It’s not a bad life,” Will assured him, but Mr. Robinson seemed unconvinced.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but there’s no place on God’s earth better than Britain. Besides,” he added before Will could debate that point, “he’d break his mother’s heart if he goes.” Shaking his head at the silly dreams of the younger generation, Mr. Robinson snapped the reins, sending the cart into motion.

Will crossed the road to the stables, and fifteen minutes later, he was taking Galahad, Robinson’s fast young gelding, out of the village and along the road to Sunderland Park.

For the moment, he kept the horse to a slow, easy canter, glad to have arrived home on such a gorgeous day. It was warm for England, but even here, near Devonshire’s Torbay Coast, even on a summer afternoon, it didn’t seem particularly warm to Will. Not like Egypt, where temperatures could be beastly at this time of year. It was good, he thought in surprise, to be home. He hadn’t expected that.

Nonetheless, the surrounding landscape of rolling hills and hedgerows gave him a strange sense of unreality. He’d grown up here; he knew every bend in this road, recognized each pasture of Devonshire ponies and Jersey cows he passed. He could identify all the scents in the air—apple orchards and pastureland and the nearby tang of the sea all mingled in the unmistakable fragrance of home. Everything was just as he remembered it, just as it always had been. Yet it seemed almost alien to him, making him appreciate that Egypt, not England, was his home now.

He turned off the main road, memory guiding him as he crossed the stone bridge that spanned the River Stafford and turned onto the road that led toward Sunderland Park, Danbury Downs, and the wild moors beyond those neighboring estates.

The house at Sunderland was leased these days, of course, but the wealthy American family using the place was touring the Lake District up north, enabling him to have use of it for the rest of the summer. Not that he’d need the place that long. He hoped to have his business concluded and be gone again within a week or two.

Because he wanted to be here as short a time as possible, it occurred to Will that he ought to give the grounds at least a cursory survey instead of spending his afternoon gallivanting across the moor. He was the duke now, after all, and though he cared little for his title, it was his obligation to care for the acres he’d inherited. In the interests of time, estate business ought to come first.

The gelding beneath him, however, seemed to have other ideas. Galahad tossed his head with a contemptuous-sounding snort as if disagreeing with such tiresome priorities, and Will laughed. “No boring tours around the park for you, I take it?” he asked, leaning forward to pat the animal’s neck. “We’d both prefer a hard ride on the moor, I daresay.”

As he spoke, he realized how much he wanted that. He wanted to race across the moor at breakneck speed just as he and Paul Danbury used to do when they were boys home for summer holidays. Few people knew he was here, and he supposed even fewer would care. His parents were both dead, and with the exception of a married sister in India and a few scattered cousins, he had no family left. There was no one waiting at Sunderland Park to welcome him home. Even Beatrix wasn’t waiting anymore.

Not so fast
,
Will. Wait for me
.

Her voice echoed to him, bringing a memory from nearly two decades ago of a seven-year-old girl in a lacy pink pinafore, a girl with honey-blond curls and big brown eyes, who was running down to the stables on chubby legs, trying to follow him.
Wait for me
,
Will. I want to go
,
too. . .

He didn’t remember his reply from that particular day so long ago, but thinking back on it now, he was sure it had been as scoffing and derisive as possible. After all, what eleven-year-old boy wanted his friend’s little cousin tagging along?

Odd how things could change. Thirteen years later, he’d been the one pleading, trying for all he was worth to convince that golden-haired girl to accompany him on the adventure of a lifetime. He should have saved his breath.

Anger flared up from deep within him, sudden and hot, but as he’d done so many times before, Will tamped it down and buried it. He and Beatrix had made their choices six years ago, and they both had to live with the consequences.

A sound intruded on Will’s thoughts, a rumbling roar discernible even over the rhythmic drumming of Galahad’s hooves, a sound that seemed out of place in the bucolic Devonshire landscape.

He pulled on the reins to slow the gelding to a walk, and he listened, striving to identify the strange noise. It was rather like the drone of a bumblebee, only more abrasive and much, much louder. And it seemed to be growing louder with each passing moment.

Perceiving that the sound was coming from behind him, he turned in the saddle, glancing over his shoulder just as an automobile of white-painted steel, red leather upholstery, and polished brass fittings came into view, raising a cloud of dust as it came around the bend in the road.

The driver of the open-air vehicle was clearly female. Though the driver was swathed in a chin-high motoring coat, scarf, and goggles, her sex was evidenced by the coat’s enormous leg-o’-mutton sleeves and the scarf of sheer chiffon wrapped around her narrow-brimmed boater hat. Though she wasn’t motoring particularly fast, she seemed an impatient sort of female, for as she came closer, she sounded the brass horn attached to the vehicle’s seat in a loud, decisive toot-toot.

Galahad gave a violent start at the sound and tried to bolt, but Will pulled hard on the reins and managed to keep control of his mount, at least until the motorcar moved up on his right to pass him.

This loud, rattling horseless carriage coming alongside proved too much for the skittish young horse. With a whinny of pure terror, Galahad reared up violently, then came down on his forelegs and bucked.

Will went flying through the air and landed hard on the packed dirt of the road. Galahad bolted, giving him an accidental kick in the knee with one hoof as he ran for the woods.

It had been a long time since he’d fallen from a horse, he realized, so long, in fact, he’d forgotten how it felt. He grimaced as he rolled onto his back. He’d forgotten it was this painful.

The motorcar skidded to a halt in front of him, and the driver of the vehicle turned off the engine. “Are you all right?” a feminine voice called to him, a voice that seemed familiar. Too familiar, in fact.

Frowning, he lifted his head and watched as the woman stepped down from the vehicle. When he caught sight of a slim, booted ankle and the ballooning hem of a pair of Turkish trousers, he felt a glimmer of relief. Beatrix wasn’t at all the sort of girl to wear trousers, Turkish or not. Nor was she the sort to go bouncing along country lanes in a motorcar. He had to be mistaken.

The woman came hurrying toward him, her long motoring coat flapping behind her as she ran. But her steps faltered as she saw his face, and her lips parted in utter astonishment. “Will?” she murmured as she sank to her knees beside him. “Good God.”

She pulled down those goggles, revealing a pair of brown eyes he recognized at once, eyes that had invaded his dreams countless times during his years away. No mistake, he thought with chagrin. Only Beatrix had eyes like that; big, soft, dark eyes, like those of an English doe. Tightness squeezed his chest, and he forced his gaze down a notch.

Her face was just as he remembered it, with the same cupid’s bow mouth, the same absurdly tiny nose, and the same soft, round cheeks he’d always known. Faintly, he caught the scent of gardenia in the air between them. Six years, but the fragrance still seemed to be her favorite.

Yet, despite how similar she seemed to the Beatrix of his memory, there had been some changes in her while he’d been away. He glanced down her body, and then looked past her to the nearby vehicle. When had she taken to wearing trousers and driving a motorcar? It seemed strangely out of character, for there’d never been anything of the tomboy about Beatrix. If there had been, he might not have had to go to Egypt alone.

Will met her gaze again, and something fractured inside him, a crack in the layers of indifference he’d spent six years accumulating.

He’d worked so damned hard to forget her, but when this trip home was something he couldn’t put off any longer, thinking of Beatrix had become an irresistible temptation. Countless times during the past few months, he’d wondered how it would feel when he saw her again. Now he knew.

It hurt like hell.

Will jerked to a sitting position, sealing the dangerous fracture inside himself before it could open further. He hadn’t expected his first encounter with her to be easy, but no matter what happened, no matter what it cost him, he intended to act like he just didn’t give a damn.

“Hullo, Trix,” he said, proud of the carefree note he was able to put into his voice. “I say, you’re looking well.”

She glanced over his supine body, then back to his face. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same. You look awful. Life in Egypt is obviously just as arduous as I thought it would be.”

“Life in Devonshire seems equally fraught with difficulties these days, at least for people on horseback. I approve the motorcar, but who taught you to drive it? The devil?”

“No, Julia.”

He thought of her mad cousin and gave a nod. “That’s rather the same thing, I suppose.”

Beatrix folded her arms. “What are you doing here? Last I heard, you were still in Egypt, looking for King Tutankhamen’s tomb. Have you found it yet, or are you still digging up nothing but clay pots and cylinder seals?”

The derision in her voice was unmistakable as she mentioned the life he had now, the life he’d only dreamed of when he was a boy, the life he’d thought she would want to share with him if it ever came to pass; and the anger he’d worked so hard to vanquish flared up again before he could stop it. “The prodigal always returns,” he shot back, giving her a pointed glance. “If only to remind himself why he left.”

Those big dark eyes narrowed. “You’ve been gone six years. What’s brought you back after being so long away?”

He smiled wide enough to make his jaw ache. “You, sweet pea. What else?”

She made a sound of obvious skepticism. “I should have known not to expect a serious answer from you.”

“None of your business. Is that answer serious enough for you?” He tried to stand up, but pain shot through his knee, making him grimace. “Damn,” he muttered as he sank back down to the ground. “I really took a tumble this time.”

She seemed indifferent to his pain. “I’d have thought six years away would have given you some measure of maturity, but I was obviously mistaken.”

Will bit back the angry words that hovered on the tip of his tongue, and strove to maintain his careless air. “Six years?” he drawled after a moment. “My, how time does fly.”

“Doesn’t it? I’m surprised you would even bother to come back after all this time.”