The Reluctant Bride Collection Read online

Perhaps she didn’t love him, perhaps she never had. Perhaps what she’d thought was love was simply circumstance and she would have loved any man she’d been married to.

  She left the house, stomping down the stairs and sending the footman running for the carriage that had just been put away.

  She waited for a split second, then turned and began walking. She’d waited and waited, and she was sick of waiting.

  Ten years and he didn’t know her at all.

  Ten years.

  What good could come from waiting any longer than that?

  Miss Westin was hanging on George’s arm, being led around the room and chatting happily at him while they waited for the next set of dances to start.

  She was diverting. And beautiful.

  And he’d decided he would be tracking down her father tonight. George felt as good about it as any man who’d left another woman’s bedroom this morning could feel.

  And he didn’t know what would happen between him and Elinor when he told her.

  He was only slightly worried about what would happen to Miss Westin. Surely, Elinor wouldn’t. . .

  Surely, she wouldn’t do anything to either of them. Right?

  George shook his head. She’d got into his head this morning when she’d pecked his lips lightly and told him to have fun with his two dances.

  She’d said it so calmly and dispassionately that the hairs on the back of George’s neck had stood up.

  He didn’t think it said anything good about him that the thought of his two women scratching each other’s eyes out excited him.

  But he hadn’t seen Elinor all evening. He knew she was here, somewhere. He could feel it, could feel the prickles and the sense that she was watching. Watching him woo Miss Westin.

  Miss Westin, along with everyone else, had got the message. She’d shooed off her entourage and hung on him and his every word.

  She was lovely, and bloody hell, he’d keep telling himself that until it was engraved on his heart.

  Couples began lining up and George was steering Miss Westin toward the floor when he saw the countess sweep into the room.

  George stopped and stared. Her hair hung loose and her dress was wild. A dark green heavy velvet that left her shoulders bare but draped down both arms long enough to hide her hands. There was enough exposed bosom to make him, her brother-in-law, keep his eyes glued to her face, and there was enough length to the dress that it pooled behind her like a regal train.

  George thought she looked like an ethereal head floating over a wild forest. A wild and angry forest, and even Sebastian was eyeing her, clearly not knowing what to do with his suddenly ferocious wife.

  George cleared his throat, trying to figure out how to tell the woman beside him that he was needed, that there was a pressing problem that looked potentially explosive.

  “Er, Miss Westin–”

  And then he stopped, because there was Elinor, heading straight for the countess and the earl. Her eyes met his briefly and he relaxed. She would take care of the countess, whatever was wrong with her.

  He would dance his second dance with Miss Westin and then go get his brother a stiff drink. It really was the only cure for a man with woman trouble.

  Elinor bowed to the earl, ignoring how the confusion in his eyes turned to anger at the sight of her. She was an easy target, an acceptable scapegoat, and she didn’t wait for him to attack. She slipped her arm through Flora’s and led her away without a word to either of them.

  When they’d got away, Elinor said, “What a dress. You must tell me the name of your dressmaker.”

  “Her name is hate. Her name is broken dreams. Her name is bitterness.”

  Elinor laughed, saying, “How very poetic,” and Flora pinched her lips.

  “You do not know, Elinor, how a man can destroy a woman just by being his obtuse self.”

  Elinor said nothing because she did know it. Every woman learned it eventually.

  “It does make one wonder how they manage to rule the world when they are so blind.”

  “Blind! And stupid!”

  Flora’s bottom lip wobbled and even if Elinor wished she could hug her friend and tell her that this would pass, she said, “Tears will ruin this look completely. Avenging goddesses do not cry.”

  Flora sniffed, then tipped her chin up. “Not in public, at least.”

  No, not in public. Did they cry when they were alone?

  “Besides I’m proving to my husband that I am still alive. I’m proving it to myself, and tonight I will laugh.”

  Flora closed her eyes and tipped her head to the ceiling, laughing like her life depended on it.

  For a moment, Elinor froze, feeling head after head turn toward them and then she thought, How scandalous.

  She tipped her head up as well and laughed, and thought that if the sound of two women madly laughing didn’t scare every man in here, she didn’t know what would.

  Drinks were drunk, dances were danced, dice were rolled.

  The countess won and lost, and laughed and lived.

  And Elinor pretended not to notice when her friend would surreptitiously glance around the room, looking to see if someone in particular was paying attention to how much fun she was having.

  Sinclair took his sister-in-law out for a quadrille and when they returned, breathless and laughing, Elinor refused the same from him.

  “It’s only a dance, El– Lady Haywood. To thank you.”

  “No thanks are necessary. She is my friend.”

  “And I’m still wondering how that happened.”

  “If I knew, I would tell you.”

  He held his hand out. “One dance with the widow. Let’s be scandalous, Lady Haywood.”

  “What of your two with Miss Westin?”

  “Done and done.”

  Elinor knew. Knew it was all done for. Knew she was holding on to the last fleeting moments.

  Avenging goddesses do not cry. Not in public, at least.

  She looked at Flora, tipsy and glowing with exertion from the dance, and thought she had the right idea.

  Tonight, I will laugh.

  She put her hand in Sinclair’s and let him lead her out on to the dance floor. He never took his eyes from her face, she never noticed the other couples twisting around them.

  They danced; they smiled. He laughed too loud; she smiled too wide.

  Miss Westin watched, her lovely face trying to stay lovely.

  The countess watched, still tipsy. Still angry, and she wanted to walk up to her husband and shout, “See! Can you see this?!”

  The earl watched, and saw his irresponsible brother getting seduced by an impossible woman.

  St. Clair watched, and saw another friend dead in his grave.

  Alan Rusbridge watched.

  And saw everything he’d ever wanted in life, everything anyone could ever want, being handed to the sister he hated.

  Sinclair didn’t go home.

  He was tired but restless.

  He’d had a plan tonight, involving Lord Westin and a suitable proposal.

  And a glass of cognac. Mustn’t forget the cognac.

  And instead, here he was at his club, looking for a distraction.

  Because he could not reconcile where he needed to be with where he wanted to be.

  And when he stepped into the loud, smoky room and saw Lord Westin chatting with some cronies, he sighed.

  He said to no one in particular, “Yes, I see him,” and then headed to a different room.

  St. Clair was there, smoking in a quiet corner and talking to no one, and Sinclair made a beeline straight for him.

  “A friendly face in the crowd. And here I thought the fates were giving me a clear sign.”

  St. Clair puffed. “That you’re buggered?”

  Sinclair laughed. “That obvious?”

  “To the world.”

  Sinclair sat, breathing in the fragrant tobacco smoke of a fine cigar and listening to muted chatter. He nodded vigorously at the offer of
a drink.

  He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. He counted the nooks and crannies in the ceiling, only abandoning the task when a drink was finally placed in his hand.

  St. Clair watched him take a healthy sip and said, “Is she breeding?”

  Sinclair choked. “. . .No. If she was, there would be less trouble. Sebastian would have less to object to if there was at least a child.”

  “There is still plenty to object to.”

  “I think. . . I think that I love her.”

  St. Clair closed his eyes in pain and sighed so long and so loud that Sinclair started laughing.

  “My friend–” Sinclair laughed again and shook his head. “Tell me how you really feel.”

  St. Clair kept his eyes closed and said, “I’ve sat here before. Listened to one of my friends tell me he loved Elinor Rusbridge. And then I buried him.”

  “He died of putrid fever. You can’t deny that. You can’t think that she killed him, that she killed any of them.”

  “She’s unlucky.”

  Sinclair shook his head. “I don’t know how the most rational men I know, you and my brother, can be so. . . irrational.”

  St. Clair’s eyes opened and there was impatience and anger in them. “Fine. She’s trouble, then. She makes men lose their minds. She’s not a mistress pulling strings, Sin. She’s a dangerous woman playing a game.”

  Sinclair’s free hand had tightened into a fist and he looked down into his drink. “And if she wins? What’s the cost, George, because I can’t see it.”

  “Everything. You will lose everything. Do you think that the earl will welcome her with open arms? He will cut you off.”

  “Entirely likely.”

  “And children? Not for your brother, not for the earldom. For you. Are you prepared to be a man with no children, no legacy, no future?”

  Sinclair had never thought much about children before coming back to England, had always assumed that one day he would have them. And because the thought of not having any did prick him, he said flippantly, “Who knows, perhaps I already have a dozen. A man never knows, though he does try prodigiously.”

  He smiled at St. Clair, who did not smile back.

  “She’s not worth it, friend.”

  “You can’t know that. Perhaps she is.”

  “No woman is. No one is.”

  “Oh, George. I wish upon you a love that is worth everything. A life that is worth losing. Passion and need and everything that makes our short time here worth it.”

  St. Clair puffed. “I always knew you were a vindictive scab, Sinclair.”

  Sinclair smiled and laughed. “I am many things you are not. Romantic, optimistic–”

  “Silly, irresponsible–”

  “But you’re the one who is vindictive. You who won’t forgive a woman because she was married to a man when the fates cut his thread. If they had asked dear Bertie to choose, don’t you think he would have chosen to spend that last year with her?”

  “Are they asking you to choose?”

  Sinclair thought of Lord Westin in the other room and wondered if perhaps he was being asked to choose. He wondered if perhaps he already had.

  St. Clair leaned forward. “Truly, Sinclair. If the choice is one great year or a lifetime of good years?”

  “It would be one marvelous year, a year worth a thousand lifetimes, and you already know what I would choose.”

  St. Clair looked down at his boots, saying softly, “I know.”

  “Bugger the fates, St. Clair.”

  St. Clair sat back and stuck his cigar between his teeth. “If anyone can.” He raised his glass. “To Lady Haywood and her coup.”

  “She’s not like that.”

  “She is. We all are. It’s the way of the world.”

  It was the way of the world.

  But all he could think of was Elinor leaning over him and whispering, “It’s not the way of my world.”

  George had left his world once, been thrust into a place so foreign that nothing was familiar. His compatriots had tried to make that world into what they knew, what they’d left.

  But George had loved it. Had loved finally realizing that the way of the world was really just the way it was here, now.

  It didn’t have to be that way. It wasn’t that way, somewhere else.

  If.

  Eleven

  Her dogs heard him first, their growling waking Elinor from an exotic dream where the day was too warm and all the ladies bared their midriffs.

  She threw off the covers, the room still comfortably warm despite the gray of the morning filtering through the curtains. She’d built up the fire for Sinclair last night, thinking he would come. Thinking he couldn’t stay away after their dance.

  She’d fallen asleep waiting for him and been woken only a few hours later by a visit from her brother.

  What a perfect way to start the day.

  She heard the shouting, heard the stones pummeling the bricks and windows of her home, and she slipped on her dressing gown and slowly opened her bedroom door.

  Jones stood in the hallway, a lamp in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  The dogs tore around him, racing down the stairs and barking wildly now that they were free of her bedchamber.

  Jones pinched his lips together in disapproval, knowing she wouldn’t leave her brother to shout outside like the common folk they were.

  “I will not hide from him, Jones.”

  “Please, my lady. Some battles can not be won.”

  She sighed, heading for the stairs. “I have never agreed with that sentiment before but I am beginning to think you are right.”

  “Then let me and the dogs take care of him and you stay inside.”

  She smiled a little, thinking there were so many ways a man could be taken care of. So much implied in one little phrase.

  “I will take care of my brother. It is better to know what he wants, what is festering in his mind, than to pretend he is not hiding in the dark.”

  Jones muttered, “He wants you as miserable as he is.”

  That was true. That was as old as she was.

  He also wanted revenge. He wanted to best her. He wanted to have more and be the name the ton whispered.

  He didn’t want to be the widow’s brother. He wanted her to be Alan Rusbridge’s sister.

  When they came to the front door, Jones gave her one last look, but she ordered the dogs to sit and nodded at him.

  Her brother stopped shouting when the door swung open like he always did.

  He hadn’t been home from the night before. His clothes were rumpled, his hat lost, his hair disheveled.

  She could tell he’d been drinking from ten paces away, and the smell and the rage in his eyes reminded her of their father.

  Dead, but not forgotten, and she wondered what parts of her were his legacy.

  She who never gave anyone what they wanted unless it helped her somehow. She who single-mindedly charted a course to what she wanted. . . She knew what parts of her came from her father.

  Retribution butted his head into her hand and she petted him, feeling the tension in his body. Knowing he wanted nothing more than to be let loose upon Alan.

  She said, “Brother.”

  A laugh cracked from him. “Oh, sister. I didn’t know what heights you aspired to. Didn’t know I should bow and mince around you. Didn’t know you had it in you to aim for countess. Viscountess not high enough for you?”

  He threw a handful of stones onto the ground, startling both Jones and Retribution, and then smacked his hands together in a slow clap.

  “But tonight, when I saw that buffoon dancing under your spell, I realized.” He stopped, his eyes focusing far away. “I realized, and I have come to accept my place.”

  “I don’t think so, Alan.”

  He nodded. “I have. Brother to a countess? I accept. I bow down before you. I beg for your favor.”

  But there was no begging in his eyes, only hate and ange
r. And Elinor didn’t know why she’d allowed herself to feel some kind of connection to him. Why calling him brother had to mean anything to her when all it meant to him was hate and jealousy and revenge.

  Jones was right. Some battles could not be won.

  Elinor said, “Firstly, Mr. Sinclair is not an earl; he may never be.”

  If Sinclair had his way, he never would be, and Elinor hoped with all her might that he would not have to take on that responsibility. Hoped that he could live out his life carefree, a bright and joyous light shining upon everyone he met.

  Her brother shrugged carelessly. “Only an accident away. But you’re right. Must snag the brother first, before anything can happen to the earl.”

  Elinor thought it was no wonder that she’d become witless over Sinclair. Because when compared to her brother, when compared to most men, George Sinclair stood head and shoulders above the rest.

  She said, “Secondly, no one in their right mind thinks he’ll marry me. Including me.”

  “We all saw, Elinor. Last night, the two of you.”

  Everyone had seen. And yet, she’d woken alone this morning.

  They’d see Sinclair engaged to Miss Westin, too.

  She patted Retribution, gave him a hand command to stay, then walked down the short stairs to her brother.

  “And thirdly, there is no place for you. Whatever blood we share is worth nothing, whatever history we have is a nightmare better left forgotten.”

  She stopped on the bottom step, keeping her eyes level with his.

  “You’ve got what you wanted, Alan. You’re no longer the widow’s brother.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t let you take this, not when we’re so close. You and me together, think what we could do with an earldom. Think what Father would have done.”

  “I know exactly what Father would have done. He would have come to my house and screamed and threatened. He would have told me I owed it to him.”

  “Yes. You owe this to me. You’ve taken everything from me.”

  She laughed. “I’ve stolen it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve stolen nothing. Whatever I had that was yours was because you lost it. And everything else I have is in spite of you, not because of you. And that’s exactly what I told Father when he saw that I had something he wanted.”