Virginia Heath - His Mistletoe Wager

‘I shall give him a stern piece of my mind later! Be assured of that!’ For the second time in as many minutes her father snapped his pocket watch open and stared impatiently at the dial. ‘It is the bride’s prerogative to be late, not the groom’s. To leave us here, hiding in the vestry like common criminals, is beyond the pale, Lizzie. I have no idea what the bounder can be thinking to insult us so grievously.’

She smiled reassuringly at him. At the Foreign Office he was used to being in charge and far too much of a stickler for timekeeping than was necessary, and he had been very vocal with his misgivings about her choice of husband. She had spent much of the last two months reassuring him that everything was destined to be wonderful and her Marquess was not at all what everyone believed. ‘Calm down, Papa. Nobody in the congregation is aware that we have arrived, so it hardly matters. There is probably a perfectly good reason Charles has been delayed. He will be here.’ Last night, just before he had crept out of her bedchamber window and scrambled down the wisteria, he had blown her a kiss and told her how he was counting the seconds until they took their vows. What difference did a few minutes of tardiness make in the grand scheme of things? Especially when they were about to embark on a lifetime together.

Instinctively, her hand fluttered towards her belly and she suppressed the grin which threatened to bloom. Her father would hit the roof if he knew what she had kept secret from everyone for the last week.

Later tonight, when they were all alone, she would tell Charles about the baby. Her wedding present to him. Made in love almost two months ago, when she had gladly given him her innocence as there seemed little point in prolonging the agony of withholding it unnecessarily. ‘We are engaged,’ he had said teasingly the first time he had clambered up the wisteria and surprised her in her bedchamber. ‘What difference do a few more weeks make? Besides, when a love is as deep and abiding as ours is, a wedding ceremony is merely a formality. I am already married to you in my heart.’ As was she. Lizzie knew he would be overjoyed by the news. The perfect end to the most perfect year of her life.

* * *

It was the ashen face of her brother Rafe, over half an hour later, which caused the first real doubts to creep in. He came in through a side door, quietly closed it behind him and simply stood, slightly slumped before her.

‘He’s gone, Lizzie.’

The finality in his voice made her fear the worst. Her darling fiancé was dead? Surely not. She could not bear it. ‘What do you mean he’s gone? What has happened?’ He had been in fine fettle a few scant hours ago. Ardent. No sign of illness or fever. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks as the panic made her heart hammer wildly in her chest. ‘Did he have an accident?’ Please God, make him not have suffered.

Her brother shook his head and it was then she saw the fierce anger in his eyes.

Anger and pity. For her.

‘No, poppet. Nothing so noble, I’m afraid. I don’t quite know how to tell you this, so I shall just say it straight out. The scoundrel is marrying someone else.’

Lizzie’s knees gave way and her father supported her as she stumbled backwards on to a chair. ‘You are mistaken.’ The walls started to spin as nausea threatened. ‘Charles would not do that to me. He loves me.’

‘He left a letter...’ A letter that her brother had obviously already read because the seal was broken and the open missive hung limply in his hand.

Callously, it was addressed to no one in particular and had been left on the mantelpiece in his bachelor lodgings at the Albany. Conversationally, it informed the reader that he was bound, with all haste, for Gretna Green with the Duke of Aylesbury’s daughter. A drastic step taken because her father had forbidden their courtship a full year before. Of course, they had tried to fight the fierce attraction which had consumed them. However, his love for the obscenely wealthy Duke’s plain and awkward youngest daughter was ‘deep and abiding’ and for the longest time he had already been ‘married to her in his heart.’ Their vows were just a formality because, and this was the most crushing blow, ‘his heart beat for her alone.’

The familiar words cut deeply, slicing through her initial disbelief and shock more effectively than anything else could have. What a dreadful way to discover words which had meant so very much to her had ultimately been meaningless to him all along.

‘If we act in all haste, Rafe, we might be able to mitigate the scandal.’

Ever the pragmatist, her father’s conversation wafted over her. A message was dispatched to the Duke of Aylesbury. Fevered plans were set in place. Her papa’s government connections and high place in society would all be utilised to make everything all right, they would close ranks around her to protect her flawless reputation—yet how could things ever be all right again? She had been jilted.

Jilted!

With every meticulous and carefully laid plan for her perfect future made so thoroughly for so long, she had failed to foresee this terrible scenario. Lizzie had been the silly fool who had fallen for the charming Marquess until a much richer prospect had come along. The pregnant, silly fool who had stood waiting patiently for him at the church, who had believed all his calculated seductions, all his blatant flattery, so blinkered by her love for him that she had not heeded all the well-meant words of caution from nearly everyone in her acquaintance including her own family. The trusting, needy, idiot who did not even warrant the courtesy of a letter of her own from the treacherous scoundrel who had deflowered her, nor a mention in the one her brother had found. Written by the same duplicitous hands which had been all over her body only hours before. Charles must have known he was eloping when he had climbed into her bedroom window, but had used her regardless. Like the true libertine and shameless rake he was. Their fairy-tale courtship and all of his apparently heartfelt declarations whispered intimately in her virgin’s bed stood for naught. It had all been a pack of lies and she had fallen for every single one.

Her hand automatically went to her belly again. All at once, the sickly smell of lilacs threatened to overpower her, or maybe it was the catastrophic ramifications of her now-dire situation. Or perhaps that was merely the bitter taste of humiliation and utter, complete betrayal. Total devastation. Willingly, she had given a man her tender, young heart and he had blithely returned it to her bludgeoned.

Shredded into irreparable pieces.

Chapter One

A London ballroom—St Nicholas’s Day,

6th December 1820

Hal twisted the sprig of mistletoe idly between his fingers and took another cleansing breath of the cold night air. The heat in the tedious Renshaw ballroom was stifling, but then again, as it was quite the crush inside no doubt everyone would laud the evening as a resounding success. There was nothing guaranteed to cause more excitement in town than two hundred sweating aristocrats stuffed into their winter finery and all forcing themselves to be cheerful in deference to the season.

For Hal, it also signalled the start of a month of sheer hell, as now he was the Earl of Redbridge he would be expected to attend every single one of the festive functions between now and Twelfth Night. It was, apparently, a Redbridge tradition, and the only one his mother was determined to continue even though her tyrannical husband was mouldering in the ground, and she had happily ignored all his other edicts since his death last year. In fact, she was so looking forward to it, Hal couldn’t bring himself to complain, even though it culminated in him hosting the final, most opulent and eagerly anticipated ball of all at his Berkeley Square house on the sixth of January. Twelfth Night. The official end of the Christmas season.