“I didn’t have time to stop and ask her entire Christian name, so I just wrote ‘Miss Frant.’ ” The viscount shrugged. “It served; the Archbishop did not question it.”
Julia waited for him to say more, but he returned to his own dark reflections, his attention sliding away from Julia all too easily. She sighed and pulled her mug across the crumpled license. Maybe the heat from the warmed metal would iron it out.
Her father had always taught her the importance of neatness. She smiled wistfully. Though he had died over five years ago, she thought of him daily. She especially missed his ability to see right to the center of the most difficult situation and point out the one logical answer. It always angered Julia when Therese sneered at her father. It was true he had left England and ignored the position his own father had wished for him, but he had acted with the purest, most noble of intentions. He had acted for love.
Love
.
An idea slipped into her head with an almost audible
thunk
.
“I know how to help you,” she said wonderingly.
Alec lifted his brows, his eyes the color of frosted glass.
“How?”
“Simple. Marry me.”
Alec blinked. “No need to look so astonished,” Julia said gruffly. “It makes perfect sense.”
He took her mug. “I’ll have that fool of a landlord bring coffee.”
“I’m not drunk.” She lifted her chin with sudden dignity.
“Just dizzy.”
“Dizzy, eh?” Alec swung his leg astride the bench to face her. Her hair hung to her shoulders in wild disarray and her spectacles sat slightly askew on her nose. He chuckled. “You were right. You can’t handle your liquor.”
Absurdly pleased, she nodded, her spectacles sliding even further. “I told you so.
Told you it was a family weakness, too.”
Her smile melted into a scowl. “You shouldn’t have made me drink.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You did, too. You kept drinking it yourself. I had to stop you.” She blinked like a befuddled owl.
He grinned. “Your concern is misplaced. I’ve had stronger libations with breakfast.”
“Liquor for breakfast and rum for dinner.
Bad thing to do.
But that doesn’t help you.” She leaned forward, her cinnamon-flavored breath brushing across his mouth.
“You have to marry, and it might as well be me.”
“Miss Frant—”
“Your grandfather’s will
says
you have to marry the daughter of the late Earl of Covington, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Does it expressly state it must be
Therese?
An idea glimmered. “The will doesn’t mention her by name.”
“I didn’t think it had, or you’d have filled in the special license correctly.”
Alec gripped Julia’s arms. Her eyes
widened,
the green almost mesmerizing. “Julia, listen to me. Was your father once the Earl of Covington?”
Her generous mouth parted in a happy grin. “Yes. For two days.” She held up two fingers and stuck them in his face. “Two. Count ‘em.”
Alec smothered his irritation and captured her slim hand. He’d never seen anyone succumb so thoroughly to alcohol. Under any other circumstances, he would have found it highly amusing.
“Why only two days?”
Her mouth quivered, her happiness evaporating into a mist of misery. “He died.” She swiped at her eyes with her free hand. “He never wanted the title anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Grandfather said some very unkind things about Mama.
Called her all sorts of names.”
Alec absently stroked the hand that rested so trustingly in his. “He thought of her as an adventuress, did he?”
“Oh, no.
As far as Grandfather was concerned, she was
worse
than an adventuress. She was a Methodist. He swore he’d never allow any in the family and threatened to disinherit us all. Papa refused to budge an inch, wouldn’t even visit him, though Mama wished him to.” Julia chuckled. “Mama used to say the only person more boneheaded than my grandfather was Papa.” She lifted her face to Alec to share her amusement, her eyes brimming with
merriment,
her cheeks flushed a delectable pink.
It was a look Alec had never thought to see on the Frant Dragon. He cleared his throat, wondering how she had so thoroughly escaped his notice. “Are you certain your grandfather didn’t disinherit your father?”
“Grandfather died before he could change the will, and Papa inherited it all. But he didn’t want it.” A shadow passed over her face. Behind her spectacles, her eyes slowly filled with tears, the green shimmering like a mossy stone beneath a crystal clear stream. “After Mama died, Papa didn’t want anything.”
The tears forcibly reminded Alec why he steered clear of virtuous women. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.
“Thank you.” She tried to wipe her eyes without removing her spectacles and only succeeded in knocking them further askew.
“It’s the rum,” he said, slipping her spectacles from their precarious perch on the tip of her nose. Folding them neatly, he tucked them into his pocket. “Even sailors cry when they’ve had too much.”
She gave him a watery smile and he realized how much her spectacles hid. Perhaps that was how she had remained invisible. When one looked at the Frant Dragon, one saw
what one expected-—plain clothing
, an unremarkable face and figure, and little else. Her disguise effectively removed any further desire to discover the color and shape of her eyes, the smoothness of her skin, the firm chin. Truthfully, she wasn’t a raving beauty like Therese, but there was a quality about her that was attractive… damnably attractive.
As if to belie his thoughts, she blew her nose into his handkerchief. “Papa was never the same after Mama died. He just sat in the dark for hours and hours and barely spoke
.“
An unfamiliar stirring of sympathy made Alec say, “Your father must have loved her very much.”
He was instantly rewarded with a tremulous smile. The wide mouth parted to reveal straight white teeth. He brushed her cheek and caught a single tear as it slid down the silken skin. Loosened tendrils of golden-brown hair gleamed in the soft light, framing her gamine face.
Of its own accord, his hand wandered down her cheek and hovered near the generous mouth. Just before he grazed the softness of her lower lip with his thumb, he caught her bemused expression.
Her gaze glimmered, so innocent and soulful that he felt as if a noose had tightened around his throat.
Though he knew the love he saw reflected there was for her parents and not for him, it was still unnerving to face such naked emotion. He dropped his hand.
Damn it, this was no brass-eyed paphian. Julia Frant was a straitlaced reformer who’d attracted his notice merely because she offered a way to fulfill the vow he had made his grandfather. If he so much as kissed her, an innocent gesture he had performed thousands of times with countless women, he had little doubt she would either swoon or indulge in a fit of hysterics.
As if she had read his thoughts, Julia blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to turn into a gudgeon.”
“No need to apologize,” he replied lightly, sliding away from her and standing. “If I’d had as much of that punch as you, I’d be muddled, too. I’ll call Bramble and have him bring coffee.” He went to the door and opened it.
A man stumbled into the room and sprawled headlong onto the floor, a tangle of muddied boots and livery.
Alec stared down with a stern frown. “Johnston! What were you doing with your ear against the keyhole?”
The groom stood and brushed himself off. “What did ye think I was
doin‘ with
my ear agin the keyhole? I was listenin’ to ye
gettin‘ caught
in the parson’s trap like a green ’un.” He glanced at Julia from under lowered brows and shook his head. “It’s a wild thing ye’re about to do, yer lordship. Ye’ll end up hobbernoled and not a whit closer to the money.”
“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it. Now, go and bring some coffee. We’ve only a little more than an hour left, and I don’t want to begin this marriage with rumors the bride was too tipsy to stand on her own.”
“I hope ye know what ye’re doin‘. I’d not bet on this scheme if ye franked me the whole amount.” Johnston gave Alec a last warning glare and shambled out the door.
Alec knew the groom was right. There was no guarantee that this wild scheme would work, but he had run out of options. It was Julia Frant or no one.
“Who was that?” Julia asked, still staring at the door.
“My groom,” Alec said shortly.
She peered at him suspiciously. “He didn’t sound like a groom.”
“Well, he is one, though he doesn’t remember it as often as he should.” He hoped Johnston would hurry with the coffee. He knew how to handle most women, but a slightly dizzy Julia Frant, her mouth folded in a prim line and her eyes still wet with tears, was a totally different matter.
“Are you going to marry me?” she asked.
He detected the slightest quiver of her bottom lip. “If we don’t, Nick will inherit the entire fortune. I cannot allow that to happen.”
For some reason, she appeared disappointed. “I see.”
Alec frowned. “Nick is depraved, Julia. He would do irreparable harm with such a fortune.” He dropped to the bench beside her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I stand to inherit seventy thousand pounds a year, Julia. Just think of it.”
“S-s-s…” She swallowed, looking more sober. “Pardon me. Did you say seventy
thousand
pounds?”
“It will be ours, Julia, if we make it to the vicarage before midnight.”
A frown marred Julia’s smooth brow. “But… the executors have to agree to the claim, don’t they?”
“If your father was the Earl of Covington for so much as a second, they will
have
to agree.”
She pinned him with a serious green gaze. “And if they don’t?”
Alec shrugged, unwilling to say more.
She stared at him for a long, searching moment. “I suppose we could get the marriage annulled if it didn't work out,” she offered.
“Of course,” he agreed smoothly.
Her brows lifted into a perfect arch that would have matched the curve of her spectacles. She looked like an especially virtuous schoolgirl, unsullied by the greed and corruption of the world. An uncomfortable flicker of remorse rose in his chest. She appeared so virtuous, so… drunk.
Alec pushed away the unworthy thoughts. He would honor the pledge he’d made to his
grandfather,
and to hell with everything else. Besides, it wasn’t as if he were forcing the chit into a life of drudgery. If anything, he was rescuing her. Hell, he would even allow her to use some of the funds for her charity work. In a way, that would almost make him as much of a philanthropist as her. He chuckled aloud at the thought of becoming a reformer.
Not bloody likely
.
At his laughter, Julia’s color deepened. She stood and faced him, her chin squared in defiance. “This is absurd. It would never work.”
The ticking of the mantel clock swiftly marked the time. There would be no soft seduction. Whether she knew it or not, Julia Frant’s fate was already decided. “You will marry me, love.
One way or another.”
She frowned.
“One way or another?”
“I could compromise you,” he said softly, staring at her tantalizing mouth. It was amazingly
sensual,
for all that she tried to press it into a straight, unexceptional line.
“You can’t compromise me.”
“Why not?” he
asked,
intrigued at her certainty.
“You don’t have time.”
He glanced toward the closed door. Somewhere down the hall came the firm tread of a heavy man. Alec pulled Julia toward him until her prudently buttoned pelisse fit smoothly against his waistcoat.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a breathless voice.
He knew what she wanted: soft words, a public declaration, all the noxious dance and parry that society demanded. It was laughable, really, when one considered how few members of the
ton
actually wed for love. Most were on the lookout for a title or fortune, and the practiced words and grandiose gestures were but a mockery.
Without warning, Alec sank his hand into Julia’s tousled hair. It
gleamed
the color of the clover honey his grandfather had so loved, and smelled just as wondrous. Ruthlessly pushing such thoughts aside, he covered her mouth with his.
He expected her to fight, to push him away and then scream. Instead, she moaned and threw herself against him, almost knocking him off his feet. It took a stunned moment to realize she was not going to call for help. She was kissing him back just as wildly, just as passionately, as he could have wished.
Astonished, he almost stopped the kiss right then and there. But she arched against him, her hands pulling him closer and yet closer. A delicious tremor raced to his groin and he felt himself swell and harden. Pure, hot lust slammed into him, causing him to ache with need and desire.
Alec gave himself over to the kiss, running his hands over her back and cupping her intimately against him.
Heat melded them together as he captured and recaptured her sensual mouth. God, she was incredible.
So hot.
So sweet.
So very— The door thrust open. “Here ye are, m’lord,” said Bramble in a cheery voice. “Martha’ll have the goose tarts and a nice side of—” The landlord made a choking noise.
Julia’s eyes flew open and she struggled to free herself, but Alec held her fast, his senses returning as a look of shocked dismay settled on her face.
The landlord’s mouth opened and shut before he stuttered, “P-pardon me, m’lord, I’ll just—” The door thudded closed and Alec released his captive, striving to still his harsh breathing.
With a muffled cry, Julia wrenched herself away. Gone were all traces of the rum punch. She shook with fury, her eyes flashing green fire. Putting a hand to her trembling mouth, she said accusingly, “You planned that.”