Читать книгу Convenient Wife, Pleasured Lady - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 6

“How flattering, my dear, that you were so desperate to see me again that you could not even wait until our wedding tomorrow!” The icily disapproving tone of Daniel Wycliffe, earl of Stanford, as he entered the room where Alice Fortesque sat waiting for him, showed, however, that he was neither flattered nor indeed pleased to find her there. “At such a late hour too!”

Alice firmly refused to be intimidated by that tone. “The hour was not so late when I arrived, my lord…” She gave a pointed look toward the ornate ormolu clock on the mantel, which showed the time to be approaching midnight.

Almost their wedding day, in fact…

Daniel duly noted the slight rebuke in her tone, his lids hooded as he studied the young woman whom circumstances and expediency had allowed him to choose as his future wife and the mother of the future Wycliffe heirs. The Fortesque family, although members of the ton, admittedly were not major players in that elite circle. But Alice Fortesque’s mother had been a Hammond before her marriage, and the daughter of a duke, and so rendering her own daughter eligible to become the wife of an earl.

Alice Fortesque also had the benefit of being only nineteen years of age. Young enough, Daniel hoped, to accept the businesslike marriage he offered her in exchange for the privelege of becoming his countess. The accusation in green eyes beneath an abundance of dark, glossy curls did not give the impression those things were at the forefront of Alice Fortesque’s mind at this moment, implying that she would not be as undemanding a wife as Daniel had hoped.

He raised blond brows. “Your brother and stepmother will not be concerned by your absence?”

“My family believe me to have been abed these past three hours in excited anticipation of our wedding tomorrow!” his bride assured him with scornful dismissal.

Daniel gave a derisive inclination of his head as he accepted that as from tomorrow this young woman would be at liberty to come and go as she pleased in any of the Wycliffe homes and estates. “May I offer you a glass of brandy?” He did not wait for Alice’s answer before crossing to the tray of drinks on the large dresser to pour some of the expensively acquired French liquor into two glasses.

“Have you not already drunk enough for one evening, my lord?” Alice prompted tartly, well aware of the smell of brandy and cigars he had brought into the room with him. Along with the more heady scent of a lady’s perfume…

How dare Daniel Wycliffe go to another woman on the eve of their wedding? The fact that he had done so made it even more imperative that Alice talk to him tonight, that she make him aware of her condition for their marriage before that wedding took place!

Daniel had drawn in a hissing breath at the obviously intended rebuke. “Is it not a little unwise of you to attempt to tell me what to do before we are even wed…?”

Her laugh was hard, if not a little cynical for one of such delicate years. “I doubt I will be given the opportunity to do so after we are married.”

How right she was, Daniel acknowledged as he strolled across the room to place one of the brandy glasses on the table beside her chair before deliberately taking a sip from his own glass.

In truth, he had not been in the best of moods even before he arrived home and learned of Alice Fortesque’s presence in his drawing room. He had received a missive from Teresa, his mistress until his betrothal a month ago, begging to see him one last time, so that they might make their goodbyes in a civilized manner. In view of the scene that had taken place when he had ended their affair, Daniel had his doubts that would prove possible. On Teresa’s part, at least. His doubts, unfortunately, had proved to be more than justified.

His mouth twisted with distaste as he remembered all too clearly that meeting earlier this evening. “I sincerely trust there is an urgent reason for this unexpected visit?”

Dark green eyes sparkled brightly. “I would hardly be here otherwise.”

“Well?” Daniel prompted tersely seconds later as Alice added nothing to that statement.

“I—The truth is—”

“Yes?”

“I am not at all sure that I wish to marry you!” There. She had said it, Alice congratulated herself, relieved beyond words to have voiced the concern that had plagued her for the last month.

A month during which she had met the earl only twice. Once following his coming to the house and receiving her brother’s approval to his marriage proposal. The second time a week later on the eve of his departure to his estate in Bedfordshire, at a family dinner to celebrate the announcement of their betrothal, when again there had been no occasion for private conversation between the two of them.

Alice had composed several notes to him during the intervening weeks. Notes that had never been sent. The things she needed to say to Daniel Wycliffe could not be written in something as soulless as a letter.

“Your affections are engaged elsewhere?”

“Of course not.” Alice frowned her impatience with the question.

Daniel Wycliffe, arrogant earl of Stanford, shrugged broad shoulders in the superbly cut black jacket that he wore over a silver brocade waistcoat and snowy-white linen, an elegant diamond pin nestled in the meticulously tied cravat at his throat. “Then I fail to see any impediment to your marrying me tomorrow…?”

Alice gasped. “You fail to see—! Why did you offer for me, my lord, when it is perfectly obvious that you do not care for me at all?”

Why? Daniel mused bitterly. Because he had no choice. Because death had given Daniel’s father the victory over his son and heir that he had never succeeded in acquiring during his life. It was a victory that Daniel had done everything in his power to avoid for the last six months, but which he could no longer afford to ignore if the Wycliffe estates were not to fall into complete disrepair through lack of funds.

“I realize you are very young, Alice, but surely you must have observed this last two seasons that marriages amongst the ton are rarely made for love?” he drawled mockingly. “Other factors, such as money, land, or merely social standing, are of far more importance in a marriage than an emotion as destructive as love.”

Alice was well aware of the cold and often cynical reasons for marriages amongst the ton. Was aware of it, and deplored it. “I fail to see which of those three things could have prompted you to offer for me, my lord,” she taunted.

The earl sighed his irritation. “I suppose, as my future wife, you have the right to know my reasons for marriage—”

“You suppose…?” Alice echoed incredulously.

Daniel gave a haughty inclination of his head. “To put it simply, my father, in his infinite wisdom—” his mouth curled disdainfully “—saw fit to leave the earl of Stanford’s fortune outside of the estate, with the condition that I, as his heir, would inherit half that fortune if I marry within the year following his death, and the second half if a future heir is born during the first year of that marriage. Failure to do those things would see half, or all, of that fortune in the hands of a cousin who, I do assure you, is even less deserving of it than I am.”

Alice found that very hard to believe. Daniel, at the age of nine and twenty, had the reputation and handsome looks of a god fallen from Mount Olympus; his hair was the gold of ripe corn, his wickedly sensual eyes the blue of the sky in a face etched and hewn as if from granite, and softened only by a sinfully moulded mouth. His shoulders were wide, waist tapered, hips and legs elegantly muscled, his every movement a delight to a woman’s senses.

Was it any wonder that women of the ton, both young and old, so often fell into the snare of those sensuously golden good looks?

Was it any wonder that Alice, too, had fallen under the spell of that sensual attraction the first time she set eyes on him a year ago…?