Yankee Earl (33 page)

      
The question haunted him day and night, never more so than after their encounter in the stable yesterday. Did Rachel also dream of the kind of freedom he craved when he set sail? She had said she did not wish a husband because she wanted to run her estates without interference. But had she ever imagined more than a prosaic existence as the spinster mistress of Harleigh? Did she long for someone to share her life?

      
There he went again, delving into mysteries best left unsolved…unless he wanted to fall in with his grandfather's schemes and spend the rest of his life leg-shackled. The idea of life with Rachel did not bring the shudder it had when they had first hatched this scheme to outwit the marquess and the viscount. In fact, there were moments when it held surprising appeal. How did Rachel now feel about his leaving?

      
Before he could give further consideration to the thought, a knock sounded on the door to his room. Expecting it to be Roger, who had promised to stop and bid him farewell before heading out to hunt stag with a neighboring squire, he called out, “Come in, Cousin.” He was surprised to see Fox slip inside and quickly close the door.

      
“I was going to ask you to ride later this morning after my valet finished packing,” Jason said, smiling at the lad, who looked decidedly grave.

      
“That would not serve, Jace. Bradley and the new bodyguard Grandfather hired would only ride with us, and I need to speak privately with you before we return to Cargrave Hall.”

      
“I must confess, with all the excitement here the past few days, we've had little chance to visit,” Jason replied, sitting down in a large comfortable easy chair and inviting the boy to take the one across from him.

      
“Grandfather has had me guarded ever so closely,” Fox said.

      
“Yes,” Jason replied uneasily. Drum had reported with great relish the lad's questions about why Jason would not wish to remain married to Rachel. “Mr. Drummond explained everything to you, did he not?”

      
“One thing he could not explain…” His voice faded and he squirmed nervously.

      
Already Jason did not like where this conversation seemed to be headed. With a sigh, he said, “Go on, Fox.”

      
“Miss Fairchild—Rachel,” he corrected himself, remembering that she had given him leave to use her Christian name, “is such a beautiful lady…and she's smart and nice and ever such a good horsewoman. She can even shoot as well as LaFarge, and she knows lots and lots about everything from medicine to farming.”

      
"The lady is a veritable paragon," Jason interjected dryly. No, he was not going to find this easy at all.

      
“Then why don't you want to stay married to her?”

      
There it was. How could he answer the boy when he did not know himself any longer? “Fox, we…er, Rachel and I did not have a choice in the matter. We were both blackmailed into agreeing to wed because the marquess and the viscount wished to merge their lands and families. We simply do not suit.”

      
“You don't want to do it because you're being forced,” Fox said with a nod of his head.

      
The boy said the words as if they made perfect sense in twelve-year-old logic. Somehow that sort of agreement did not make Jason feel better. Indeed, it sounded rather churlish when put so baldly. “Fox, choosing a wife—or choosing a husband—is a very personal matter that should be decided mutually between the two participants. 'Tis not something to be done just because their hereditary lands happen to adjoin. Surely you remember the Shawnee way.”

      
“Yes, Jace, I do. And Grandfather has chosen the Shawnee way, although he does not realize it.” Fox sighed, impatient with the density of his older and supposedly wiser brother.

      
“Pray, enlighten me,” Jason asked.

      
“Rachel reminds him of his marchioness, and you are just like him. They were very happy. He told me so.”

      
“Whether or not Rachel has anything in common with our sweet grandmother is highly dubious, but saying that I am ‘just like’ Grandfather is downright insulting!” Jason snapped, leaning forward in his chair and pounding on the wide wooden arm.

      
Fox smirked. “See! Just like him.”

      
Jason quickly leaned back and took a deep breath. “Well, be that as it may,” he equivocated, “the fact remains that Rachel and I do not wish to wed. However, if you would prefer to remain with Grandfather, I will not ask you to leave.” As he spoke the words, Jason prayed that if he left Fox behind, the old man would not turn away from the lad. But gut-deep instinct told him that George Beaumont would never use Fox that way.

      
Fox slumped back in the chair. Sometimes adults were impossible to understand. As soon as Frederick Forrestal was apprehended, they would no longer have to worry about someone trying to kill Jace. To Fox's way of thinking, that left no reason for them to leave England. Except Jace's stubborn insistence that he did not want to marry Rachel. And Rachel's claim that she did not want to marry him. “If you run away after you're married, won't Rachel still be your wife?”

      
Now Jason was beginning to understand how Drum had felt when he'd had that talk with Fox. “I would not use the term ‘running away,’ ”

      
“What would you call it, then?” Fox shot back innocently.

      
Jason combed his fingers through his hair and prayed for patience. “I have responsibilities—business in America.”

      
“But you were going to stay here and be the earl until you had to get married. And now you're going to get married anyway. You might as well stay here and be the earl, too, as far as I can see.”

      
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Jason muttered, now the one squirming in his seat. “Going through with the ceremony is the only way we can hope to outsmart Grandfather and escape. As I said, if you wish to remain here with him, I'll understand.”

      
Fox's expression grew even more troubled now. He could not desert Jace. “I'll go with you, but do you think Grandfather will be angry with me?” he asked in a small voice.

      
“No. I think he'll understand.”

      
“I don't wish to hurt him. He's been so good to me, Jace.”

      
“You are a fine young gentleman, Fox,” Jason said fondly. “You could write him a note and invite him to visit you in America,” he suggested. “Or you could come here on visits as I did while I was growing up.”

      
“That might make him feel better,” Fox conceded. “Mama Beaumont understands about my being here, but my Shawnee family may not. I'll write to Grandfather and explain that, too. And I will promise to return some day.” That would be the way to get Jace to return as well.

      
“Good. If that's settled, what say we go for that ride so I can gauge whether or not you've become as expert as Bradley reports, eh?”

      
As they galloped across the rolling hills of the Dalbert estate, Jason could not get their conversation out of his mind. Was he doing the right thing, taking Fox away from all the advantages he would have here in England? The boy mentioned nothing about the marquess' plan to adopt him. Perhaps he did not know about it. If he told Fox, would it make him reconsider staying behind?

      
What a moral conundrum this had become. No matter which way he turned, Jason felt trapped, frustrated and guilty. If the old man's feelings for Fox were genuine, and Jason was beginning to believe they were, was it also possible that more than a dynastic alliance had influenced Cargrave's selection of Rachel? Did the old fool actually believe they could make a love match?

      
A voice inside his head reminded him that the ninth Marquess of Cargrave was many things, but a fool was not one of them. That explained why the issues Fox had raised about Rachel continued to plague him. She would be his wife, at least in the eyes of the law.

      
How do you feel about an unconsummated marriage? About leaving her behind? He forced the unpleasant considerations from his mind and challenged Fox to a race—this time over flat, safe terrain.

* * * *

      
“”I feel ready to faint.”

      
“Tis merely bridal vapors,” Harry said dismissively, arranging the long lace train of her sister's wedding gown.

      
“No, ‘tis the weight of this dress,” Rachel snapped back. “The seed pearls alone must weigh three stone. Lord, I feel as if I'm outfitted in chain mail.” She tried to move her shoulders and grimaced in discomfort.

      
“Why is it I think the gown has little to do with your taking and your groom much more, hmmm?”

      
“I am not in a taking!”

      
Harry only chuckled as she adjusted one of the pale pink hothouse rosebuds in her sister's elaborate coiffeur. “Ah, I hear the music. Come, dear sister. 'Tis time you became the Countess of Falconridge.”

      
She took Rachel's hand, which was icy cold in spite of the warm autumn morning, and led her out of the small anteroom into the large narthex of St. George's Church. “You are a most beautiful bride,” she whispered proudly. And it was nothing but the truth. The color of the gown was not at all what Harry would have selected, but thanks be to heaven that she'd been able to talk Rachel out of black! There were times when Harry thought her sister's sense of humor bordered dangerously on the macabre…or the deranged.

      
Their sister Sally, the middle gel of the trio of Fairchild siblings, waited with their father. When he saw his eldest, an expression of pleasure wreathed his face—or was it relief? He walked quickly across the stone floor, worn smooth by the pious and the politic who had worshiped here during the church's four-hundred-year history. Bowing before Rachel, he took her hand and tucked it around his arm, as if making certain she could not escape at the last moment. “You look smashing, m'dear. Don't she, Harry? Sally?”

      
Sally, petite and blond like her younger sister, nodded, faintly surprised that the tall, hoydenish Rachel could be turned into such a bridal vision. “You shall do us proud, dear sister,” she said a tad jealously. Sally had only managed to snare a viscount. Drat, her ape-leader of a sister would one day be a marchioness!

      
Just then the organ music swelled, giving them their cue to start down the aisle to the altar where Jason Beaumont, sixth Earl of Falconridge, waited. The moment she saw Jason standing beside the priest, Rachel found herself clutching her father's arm for support. Her groom looked grim and forbidding and more handsome than any man had a right to be.

      
His cutaway coat and trousers were made of the finest kerseymere and accented the breadth of his powerful shoulders and the length of his legs. He had chosen black, a dramatic complement to his deeply tanned face and inky hair. Rachel feared it might also be a statement regarding the marriage. The deep blue brocade of his waistcoat perfectly matched the color of his eyes. Eyes that pierced her with hunger…or anger. Sweet God, she could not discern which.

      
Rachel swallowed and held her head high as the music swelled in a crescendo, breaking the spell which held her in Jason's thrall. She looked away from him to Drum and Fox, who smiled warmly at her. Her lips curved in a faint attempt to return their encouragement, but her heart was not in it.
Damned if I let him see how shaken I am by this charade,
she vowed and forced herself to assume a veneer of serenity.

      
If only he were not so heart-stoppingly handsome that she wanted to reach out and stroke his harsh, dark jaw line, to brush her hand over his blue-black hair. But he stood ramrod straight with his hands clenched rigidly at his sides, remote and cold. There was no hint of the laughing, teasing man who had dared to kiss and caress her. The man who had boldly exchanged risqué double entendres with her. The wild Yankee who cared as little for the sensibilities of the ton as did she.

      
What are we doing here? This is a terrible mistake.
Yet she kept walking steadily down the endlessly long aisle toward the man she loved, whose name she would carry, perhaps whose child she would bear. The man who would leave her. She felt as if she were going to the block.

      
Jason stared at Rachel, unable to tear his eyes away from the vision of loveliness dressed in shimmering silk and lace. The deep, clear rose color of the gown was a perfect foil for her rich dark hair, which was piled high on her head and entwined with a garland of rosebuds. Hundreds of seed pearls covered the bodice of the dress in intricate patterns, woven lovingly around the gentle swell of her breasts. A heavy lace overskirt fell from the high waistline of the gown. A Watteau train worked with lace and seed pearls swept from her shoulders.