Читать книгу The Earl's Mistaken Bride - Abby Gaines - Страница 11

Chapter Three

“Who the blazes are you?” Marcus snapped the moment they attained the privacy of the carriage.

The girl—the woman—his wife, blast it!—shrank back against the seat, her bonnet with that veil, that—that instrument of deception, askew.

“You know who I am.” Her voice quivered as she rubbed her elbow where he’d gripped it to escort her from the church. “I am Constance… .”

She stopped. As if she had been going to say Constance Somerton, but that was no longer true, because now she was—

She could not be Lady Spenford.

Outside, the villagers cheered and shouted good wishes as the coach pulled away, headed for the rectory, for the wedding breakfast.

Thoughts and images whirled in Marcus’s head, blurred by fatigue. Could some artifice—cosmetics, perhaps?—have made her look so different last Monday? Her voice was slightly altered, but in the church he’d attributed that to nerves.

“Remove your bonnet,” he ordered.

She clutched it to her head. So much for that promise she’d made not five minutes ago to obey.

He leaned forward; she gasped as his fingers closed around the ribbon beneath her chin. Then she froze as he worked the knot, careful not to touch her.

He lifted the bonnet from her head, tossed it to the floor of the coach. Which elicited another gasp.

“Your bonnet is the least of your worries, madam,” he said roughly. His gaze raked her face. Not at all the same. Brown eyes, not violet-blue, a perfectly ordinary nose in place of the charming version he’d seen on Monday. Thinner lips, a chin that might be described by someone in an uncharitable mood as pointy.

Marcus was in a very uncharitable mood.

In place of ink-black curls, this girl’s hair was a drab brown, drawn up in a knot, with a few tendrils curling around her nape.

“What is this trick?” he growled. “You must have planned it before I even arrived in Piper’s Mead. I swear, if your holier-than-thou father played a part in this—”

“You will not say a word against my father,” she blurted.

And now she dared issue orders to him!

Well, that wouldn’t last, nor would this marriage. He’d been duped into marrying this plain-faced fraudster, and fraud was grounds for annulment. There’d been the case of Baron Waring, some years ago…Marcus couldn’t remember the details, but the woman involved had misrepresented herself, and the bishop declared an annulment.

The girl, Constance, or whatever her name was, picked up her bonnet. As she settled it on her lap, it slipped through her trembling fingers and fell to the floor again.

Instinctive courtesy had Marcus reaching to retrieve it at the same moment she did. His fingers brushed hers, and she flinched.

“I would like an annulment,” she announced.

Marcus jerked backward, the unfortunate bonnet once again hitting the floor. He hoped the infernal thing was damaged beyond repair.

“You want an annulment?” He’d heard of women hatching preposterous schemes to entrap a titled husband, but he’d never heard of a scheme that included a request for an annulment.

She tilted that chin—definitely pointy—at him. “On—on grounds of insanity.”

“You admit to a weakened mind?” So much the better!

She blinked and her brown eyes widened. “Sir, you are the insane one.”

Marcus’s mouth opened and closed, and he had the uncomfortable sensation that he looked like one of the carp in the Japanese pond at Chalmers, the main Spenford estate.

He suspected such an expression did not convey complete, calm rationality.

She knotted her fingers in her lap, which seemed to firm her voice. “I have heard married ladies talk of an illness that gentlemen can acquire as a result of—of dissolute living.” Her cheeks flamed. “It drives them mad.”

“You accuse me of dissolute living?” he said dangerously.

Her gaze dropped, then rose again. “Papa warned me your reputation is…not quite spotless.”

Marcus felt himself reddening. Outrageous! What kind of man was Somerton to talk to his daughters in that way?

She didn’t realize how perilously she trod, for she continued. “It occurs to me that perhaps you chose a bride from Piper’s Mead because…”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. Her implication was clear: because no lady of sense in London would have him.

“I am pleased to inform you my health is perfect,” he snapped.

“Which implies you are deliberately accusing me and my father of dishonesty,” she warned.

“I apologize,” he said, teeth gritted, aware that she hadn’t apologized for her suggestion that he lived an improper life. But he had to admit, she seemed as baffled by the situation as he was. Surely a parson’s daughter could not have cooked up this wild scheme. He breathed out through his nose, calming himself. “May we start this conversation again, in an attempt to untangle this confusion?”

“I suppose so,” she said dubiously.

As the coach swung into the lane that ended at the rectory, Marcus grasped the strap overhead. “What is your name?”

Her guarded expression suggested she still harbored suspicions he was a half-wit. “My name is—was Constance Anne Somerton.”

Marcus tipped his head back against the seat. “I met Constance Somerton in Piper’s Mead on Monday, and believe me, she looked nothing like you.”

She frowned, putting a little furrow in the middle of her forehead. “That’s not possible.”

“I suspect she was younger than you—” this woman looked all of her twenty years “—with dark, curly hair and eyes an unusual blue. She called herself Miss Constance Somerton.”

His bride pressed her fingers to her mouth, and he remembered how they had felt, fine and slender, in his grasp.

“Amanda,” she moaned.

He pounced. “Is that your name? Amanda?”

She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but only, he sensed, through heroic self-restraint. “I am Constance. Amanda is my sister. She is of somewhat…mischievous temperament.”

“You call passing herself off as you mischievous?” he barked. “I asked your father if I could marry her!”

She closed her eyes. “Of course,” she murmured. “It wasn’t me you wanted at all.”

He had thought that perfectly obvious from the moment he’d lifted her veil.

“How could I have been so stupid?” She sounded broken.

Marcus felt a twinge of concern. But he was virtually a stranger to her; she had no reason for heartbreak. This was likely part of her act. “Certainly one of us has been stupid,” he said bitterly.

To his horror, tears sprang to her eyes. Marcus averted his gaze as he offered her his white linen handkerchief.

But she held up her hand, palm out in refusal. “I want nothing from you.”

For the barest moment, her dignity impressed him…then he remembered, she’d already duped him once.

“Of course you don’t,” he said. “You can buy all the handkerchiefs you want, thanks to the generous settlement documents your father signed on your behalf this morning.”

Those tears clung to her lashes, held there by force of will, it seemed, not spilling onto her pale cheeks. Marcus stared at the ceiling of the carriage as she fumbled in her reticule, presumably for a handkerchief of her own.

Instead of a scrap of fabric, she pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “What’s this?”

“I hardly think I would know,” he said coldly.

She opened the note. “It’s Amanda’s hand.”

At the mention of her “mischievous” sister, Marcus plucked the paper from her fingers. “Allow me to read it to you.”

It wasn’t a request.

The opening words of the missive, written in a girlish hand, jumped out at him.

Forgive me!

Foreboding filled him as he began to read aloud.

“‘Forgive me! Constance, darling, I have done something very Dreadful, and you will think me Wicked. On Monday, I encountered Lord Spenford in the Village… .’”

His mouth tightened and his voice lowered as he read the shocking account. Afraid of discovery by her father, who had warned that if he heard of Amanda talking inappropriately to any more young men, she would be sent to Miss Petersham’s Seminary—an institution one of Marcus’s cousins attended, it was renowned for its austere discipline—she had supplied Constance’s name in lieu of her own. The moment she heard Marcus had offered for Constance she knew his mistake.

“‘Constance, dear, I could not marry a man so old!’” he read, before he realized where the text was going.

Constance muffled an exclamation, darting an involuntary look at him.

So old? He was in his prime!

Marcus read on.

“‘I do not wish to be a wife without ever having a Season in London. I wish to dance the waltz with handsome young men, to have them pay me compliments… .’”

He’d seen enough. “The girl’s a fool,” he said, as he handed the letter back.

Constance bristled in her sister’s defense. “You didn’t think her foolish when you flirted with her in the village on Monday. With a sixteen-year-old girl barely out of the nursery.”

“I did no such thing,” he retorted. “Your sister was engaged in heated discussion with the squire’s son. I offered my assistance.”

“And when you asked her name, despite having met her on at least twenty occasions, you did not notice her lie.” She sniffed and, thankfully, blinked away those tears that were starting to wear on his conscience. “My father taught me it’s common courtesy to remember the names of those I meet.”

Was she setting her manners above his?

“There are five of you, madam,” he said bitingly. Yet he found he could not meet her gaze, which annoyed him still further.

She pushed the note back into her reticule. “Amanda, you fool,” she murmured, seemingly forgetting she had just castigated Marcus for saying the same. Then she swallowed and that pointy chin went up in the air again.

Marcus braced himself.

“I apologize for suggesting you were insane,” she said, with a graciousness that in a true countess might have been convincing.

Marcus was not convinced. As the coach approached the rectory, he observed the garden had been decorated—bunting strung through the trees.

The wedding feast. Though there would be a private meal indoors, the entire village had doubtless been invited to the public celebration outside.

He’d never felt less like celebrating in his life.

A curricle passed the coach with less than an inch to spare: Severn, tooling his grays like the expert horseman he was. His closest friend had commiserated over the need for Marcus to marry a parson’s daughter, but he had understood entirely.

It would be hard to understand how Marcus had come to marry the wrong girl.

Even harder to explain to the reverend. Impossible to imagine the story wouldn’t spread around the village and thence to London. That Marcus, Earl of Spenford, wouldn’t end up looking a fool.

The carriage turned in through the rectory gates.

“Home!” Constance clasped her hands together, her eyes shining as she peered out.

“Might I remind you,” Marcus said sourly, “this is no longer your home.”

She recoiled. “But…you cannot mean to stay married to me? Not after Amanda’s trick.”

He took grim satisfaction from her shock. “I don’t know if your sister’s letter is true, or whether it’s part of some elaborate deception. Either way, your family has made a fool of me, and that’s something I cannot forgive.”

The carriage jolted over a bump in the driveway; she clutched the door handle.

Marcus pinched the bridge of his nose as he brought himself back to what really mattered. “But my mother is deathly ill. She awaits tidings of my nuptials. I will not disappoint her. We’ll attend the wedding breakfast for a minimum time, then leave for London as planned.”

Constance swallowed. “You mean…an annulment later?”

It irritated him that she asked with such hope. He was the one entitled to hope this was all a nightmare from which he would awaken.

“Since I am not insane,” he said coldly, “and since you are indeed, or were, Miss Constance Somerton and not a fraudster—” and since I have no stomach for telling the world I was duped by a sixteen-year-old chit “—there will be no annulment.”