Annette Blair - Scandalous Brides

Hawk found the lack more than frustrating. He found it ill-mannered, evasive, and downright exasperating. “My wards?”

“Your nieces, Claudia and Beatrix.”

“I know who you mean. I simply cannot imagine how two little girls can have any bearing on the matter.”

“You have been gone for nearly two years, Hawksworth. You must realize that Beatrix is now six, and Claudia, I will have you know, is due a season this year. She has some funds, but more beauty. With so small a dowry to her name, however, even something so simple as a separation in the family could be infamous enough an excuse for an ambitious mama to thwart a titled son’s unsanctioned attachment.”

“Then I take it that you will not be living in sin with Chesterfield… until after Claudia marries?”

“Do not push me, Bryceson.”

Feeling immeasurably uplifted of a sudden, Hawk nodded. “If Claudia is due a season, then so must you be. You cannot be more than two years older than she.” . . . and stuck with a beast. The intrusive thought sent Hawk’s spirits plummeting.

“Claudia is seventeen, and I am an old married woman of twenty,” Alex said. “There are many things I do need, but a season in London is not one of them, thank you very much.”

Hawk wanted to ask what it was she did need, but he might not like her answer.

Adoration, obviously, Chesterfield’s at least, but what about him? Would she accept his worship, if he were so foolish as to offer it?

At one time, he had thought she might.

And should he check himself into Bedlam today, or tomorrow, for having the idiocy to imagine it? Especially now.

The angel of death must surely scramble one’s brain, Hawk mused, hoping that rest and further recovery would set his bedeviled mind to rights. Until it did, however, he would tread warily and guard his heart. “I hope you do not expect me to adore you.”

Her easy laugh made Hawk see crimson. Was he still not good enough for her, then? Was the exalted Chesterfield an unexceptionable rogue? More attentive? Never more practiced?

“The family will be in alt,” she said, dismissing his ire, if she even noticed it, “in veritable transports, to learn that you lived. I am sorry to say that Jud is not much liked by any of them, except Claudia.”

“Jud,” Hawk said, giving the name a harsh, dull sound, “should be playing a crude musical instrument with his unshod feet in the remote reaches of America.”

Alexandra’s grin broke before she could stop it, and when she did, it was too late. She had warmed Hawk’s cold rogue’s heart in a way that organ had not been warmed since he left her. Unfortunately, the thaw made him deuced uncomfortable. “Wait a minute,” he said, pinning her with his look. “I would have expected you to try and defend your swain.”

To his entertainment, Alexandra raised that obstinate chin of hers, impaling him with narrowed eyes and glaring ire. She examined him so thoroughly that Hawk began to chafe with a disturbing need to hide his scars. Instead, he laid his head against the squabs and closed his eyes. Let her look her fill, and let him get on with being an object of horrified fascination. And, there, her reason for preferring Chesterfield came clear, for the knave stood handsome and unscathed.

Bedamned . Would his father not have a good laugh at this turn of events?

Once upon a fleeting time, Hawk’s many dalliances, a source of rare swaggering braggadocio to his father, had been legion and widely known.

If not for his sire’s deathbed promise of true pride, Hawk would not have gone to fight Boney, which turned out to be an idiotic reason to support a patriotic and worthy cause. Despite his injuries, Hawk was glad he had fought for England.

Before the war, however, he had not needed to walk with the aid of a cane. He had stood proud and strong, as prepossessing as any of the rogues in the Wakefield portrait gallery, as any London buck, including Chesterfield.

He had stood handsome, as well. A heartbreaker, women had once called him. A rogue, a ladykiller. He had been all that, and more. Even Alex had been fond of him then.

But he would slay the ladies no longer, not unless the women he gazed upon died of fright, as Alex had nearly done upon sight of him.

The doctors in Belgium had said one of his bayonet wounds sat close enough to his eye so only a miracle could save his sight.

Only a miracle could have saved his life as well.

Yes, he got his miracles, both of them, and for that he must give something back.

He must give Alexandra her future.

“Here we are,” he said, loathe to prolong his painful reverie. “Bond Street. I have rooms at Stephen’s Hotel until the end of the month. I think it best we spend the night here and travel on to St. Albans in the morning.”

Home in the morning. Alex could hardly believe it. With Hawksworth, her husband. To begin their life together. Finally. Though the bigger part of her rejoiced, a goodly part was still angry. He had used her… as she had used him, she must admit.

In the way he had needed a caretaker for his family, she had needed a home and medical attention for her aunt. Besides which, she loved him and had foolishly thought he cared for her. But the fact remained that if he had baldly told her his true reason for marrying her, she would likely have married him anyway. God knew, if she had known she would lose him, she certainly would have agreed to be his wife. Though then, she would have demanded to be a wife in deed as well as fact.

Lord, she was a love-struck fool, an idiot, a detestable weakling, who deserved what she got, because despite all of it, she was deliriously happy to have him back.

She loved him that much.

She only wished he loved her a fraction as much. She particularly wished that he had kept the fact that he did not love her to himself.

FOUR

DISGUSTED WITH HER calf-eyed self, Alex gazed out at Bond Street, a jumble of tall brick buildings with few courtyards or alleyways to separate them. Signs proclaimed establishments such as John Jackson, Boxing Salon, known to the sporting set as Gentleman Jackson’s. They passed Yardley of London, Smith Adam & Charles, Linen-drapers, and Mr. Weston, the tailor Bryceson had once frequented.

Alex’s heart sank as they passed Stedman & Vardon, Goldsmiths & Jewelers, which she and Bryce had visited on the day they wed, the day after he buried his father. As they passed, she wondered if he remembered the plain gold band he purchased for her that morning, and the wider one he had chosen for himself.

She had worn hers until she arrived at Holy Trinity Church earlier to marry Chesterfield, removing it in the carriage before going inside. Even now, the precious symbol of her marriage to her one true love sat tucked in a velvet box inside her reticule. What fate had befallen his wedding band? she wondered, as she regarded his unadorned hand.

Once they arrived at Stephen’s Hotel, Bryce seemed to struggle as he stepped from the carriage, though he did so in the same way his man helped him, without being obvious. Once he was down, Bryce turned to offer Alex a hand, and she took it, though she made certain not to burden him with her weight and quickly let go. She no more wanted him to lose his balance than to guess at her undying love.

The impressive hotel stood taller and less soot-stained than most of the Bond Street shops. On the Clifford Street side, there waited a score or more saddle horses and half as many tilburies. A six-horse dray—Barclay’s Brewery lettered in red on the side—was being unloaded of its delivery of wooden casks.

In the front of the five-story structure, men milled about in groups, talking, laughing raucously, reeling from overindulgence. Some of them were obviously dandies, but most wore the reds and blues of the military.