Authors: The Rogues Bride
“He’s married. And his wife’s family has all the money. He’ll deny to his dying day that the affair ever happened.”
The pit just got deeper and deeper. He suspected he knew the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “Does your family know the details of the situation?”
She nodded. “I’ve been disowned. Papa literally threw my things out onto the sidewalk for everyone to see. I’ve been trying to put a brave face on things, to hope for the best. But now … They’ve only gotten worse!”
God, what a mess. He met Noland’s gaze and cocked a brow in silent question.
Noland nodded and reached out to pat Sarah’s hand again and gently say, “If you would excuse Lockwood and me for a moment, Miss Sheraton, and let us see if we can perhaps come up with an acceptable solution for you.”
Sarah nodded, then buried her face in her soggy handkerchief and sobbed. Tristan walked silently to the door of the parlor and waited for Noland to join him.
“Damn, Lockwood,” his friend said in a hushed voice and casting a concerned look in her direction. “She obviously can’t return to San Francisco and her family. Do you have any feelings for her at all?”
“None that I’d be willing to make a marriage on if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ll gladly provide whatever financial support she needs in the months ahead, though. I’m not completely hard-hearted. At the moment, the most significant question seems to be where she can go.”
“Well, she can’t stay in London. That’s obvious enough. Given the lies she’s told Lucinda, she’s not safe.”
Tristan nodded. “Who’s in residence at your country house?”
“No one but the servants at the moment. It’s the Season. But come the end of it … My parents would laud my sense of Christian compassion and generosity. Then they’d kill me.”
“And if Lucinda wanted to find her, any of your family homes would be the next logical places to look after she’d canvassed mine. But if Sarah were to take up residence at a comfortable inn some distance from London…”
“An inn chosen completely at random so that there’s no following logic to her.…”
“Exactly. Perhaps something near the coast.”
“Leave it to me, Lockwood. I’ll choose the place and see her safely tucked into a hidey-hole.”
“I’ll have a letter of credit drawn up this afternoon and—”
“No,” his friend said, shaking his head. “It’s best to have no paper trail directly linking you and Miss Sheraton. I’ll pay the expenses and you can reimburse me after a suitable period of time. The longer there is between expense and repayment, the more difficult it will be for anyone to follow the expenditures to Miss Sheraton.”
“You really are amazing sometimes.”
Noland grinned. “Thank you for noticing. And as long as you’re in a mood to accede to my superior skills—”
Tristan chuckled. “Don’t let it go to your head, Noland.”
“Too late,” he replied with a grin. “I’m seizing command of the situation from this moment on. That way, if you’re asked where Miss Sheraton went, you can honestly reply that you don’t know. Once I have her situated, I’ll have her write a letter to Lucinda admitting the child isn’t yours and that she’s returned home to try to make the real father accountable.”
It made sense. And it should wrap the ends up nicely enough. Tristan nodded and looked back into the parlor, hoping that Sarah wouldn’t prove herself obstinate.
From beside him, Noland said quietly, “I think now would be the perfect time to let someone else step forward and play her White Knight. The sooner and more completely her ties to you are severed, the less complicated your life will be in the future. I can’t imagine that Miss Sheraton and Lady Simone could ever find common ground for a friendship.”
“They’re not a bit alike,” Tristan allowed.
“I’ve noticed that.” Noland clapped him on the shoulder. “There were a few dicey moments in this, but I’d say your part’s been done adequately. I’ll manage it from here, Lockwood. I’m sure you have other things to do with what’s left of the afternoon.”
Tristan nodded, extended his hand and his thanks, and then left the inn. It was odd, he mused as he climbed into his waiting carriage, how he felt about the whole thing. He’d expected to feel a huge sense of deliverance in having Sarah no longer stirring the pot. And while he did feel some relief at that, it was only a part of the swirl of his emotions.
Part of the mix was a sadness for Sarah having placed herself in such a desperate situation that traveling to England to play a loathsome gamble was not only necessary but also her only real option. He had hope, though. Hope that, in the end, Sarah would be all right and maybe even happy with the turn her life had taken.
But mostly he felt as though he’d been handed a rare and unexpected opportunity to begin his own life over again, too. What exactly he was supposed to do with it, though … Not mucking it up was going to be a challenge that was already—just mere seconds into the realization—weighing on his shoulders.
* * *
If she followed Fiona’s advice and acted on her instincts … Simone sat in the rear-facing seat of the Townsend family carriage and knew this was a mistake in the making; she could feel it in her bones. In hindsight, she could see that she really ought to have stopped the adventure in its tracks the moment Emmy had proposed it. But she hadn’t. Largely because in the seconds when her opposition would have made a difference, she’d been thinking about the likelihood of meeting Tristan in the course of it. By the time Emmy had gotten her coat, hat, and gloves and sailed out the door, it was too late to voice the doubts that were niggling past her initial sense of anticipation.
“You are a dear and true friend, Simone.”
Maybe it wasn’t too late after all. “If that were the case, I’d have refused to go along with this. You’re courting scandal.”
“I know,” Emmy admitted, grinning. “Isn’t it fun?”
Hell’s bells. What had happened to the shy little thing who preferred to hide behind potted palms? “You’re not going to think it’s all that much fun if your brother finds out.”
Emmy snorted. “Oh, please, Simone,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Mr. Gregory and I aren’t going to do anything but talk about shipping and account ledgers. Tristan could walk in at any moment and not be the least bit outraged. In fact, I think he’d be pleased to find me taking an interest in his company.”
“And you don’t think he would eventually figure out that your interest really lies in his company clerk and that the books he keeps are just an excuse?”
“Never,” Emmy blithely assured her. “Not in a million years. Tristan thinks I’m a complete innocent.”
“That’s because you
are
a complete innocent.”
“I am not.”
Knowing there was no point in arguing otherwise, Simone changed her tack. “What about Lord Noland?”
“What about him?”
“He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman in the British Empire.”
“I think he actually said that I was the fairest flower. No,” she quickly amended, “it was
rarest
flower.”
Taking it as a positive sign that her friend remembered the exchange in detail, Simone pressed on. “He could be considered a fine catch, Emmy.”
Again Emmy snorted. “By whom?”
“Society.” Deliberately adding a more upbeat note to her voice, she added, “He’s titled. And a member of Scotland Yard. He’s highly respectable.”
“You’re the last person on earth I would have ever expected to care about Society’s dictums,” Emmy charged. “I thought that if anyone would appreciate independent thinking, it would be you.”
She could appreciate independence more than most, but she wasn’t stupid about it, either. There were lines that she knew better than to cross. Lines that were vastly different for her than they were for Emmaline Townsend.
“I wasn’t born into Society, Emmy,” she began, hoping to make her friend understand. “You were. And that makes all the difference in the world. My presence is tolerated in its circles only because I’m the legal ward of a duke and they can’t exclude me without insulting Drayton. People stand around and watch me, expecting me to make blunders of epic proportion. It’s their greatest entertainment. And they allow my bad behavior only because they know that I’m, at heart, one of the great unwashed, untamed masses and that they can hold me up to their precious, perfect daughters as an example of how not to conduct themselves.”
“How very small of them,” Emmy said. The carriage rolled to a stop and she leaned forward, reaching for the door handle and saying, “I’d never do such a mean-spirited thing.”
Simone caught her hand and stayed her. “Let me finish, Emmy,” she said. “It’s important and you have to understand.” She didn’t give her a chance to refuse. “You aren’t accorded that sort of freedom, Emmy. No, it’s not fair, but there it is. You were born and bred to obey the rules. You’re one of the precious ones. You can’t carry on with a man in trade, however nice and handsome he is, without toppling off your pedestal. And that you’d willingly, deliberately, choose to fall would be considered an indication of low moral character. They’d never forgive you for betraying them.”
“Oh, pish,” Emmy declared, pulling her hand away and climbing out of the carriage.
Simone sat in her seat, pondering a completely unexpected sympathy for Caroline and Drayton. At some point in her life she was going to have to apologize for putting them through hell.
“Pish?” she repeated, following Emmy out. “Contemplating social suicide is not
pish,
Emmy.”
Her friend ignored her, lifted the hem of her skirt, and bounded up the steps of the Townsend Importers offices. Simone followed, stunned. “God,” she muttered under her breath. “I can’t believe I actually said that. I sounded just like Caroline.”
“Lady Emmaline! What a wonderful surprise!”
Simone paused on the office threshold just as Wade Gregory’s gaze skipped past Emmy to light on her. His smile faltered, but he managed to quickly and gallantly retrieve a bit of it to dip his chin and say politely, “Lady Simone. How nice to see you, too.”
Oh, such a lie.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Gregory,” Emmy said, bubbling and bright. “How are you today?”
“Considerably better than I was mere seconds ago, Lady Emmaline. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Unbridled curiosity. We were wondering if some of the crates had been unpacked yet.”
We
? We
didn’t give a damn about what was in the crates
.
“They have indeed,” Mr. Gregory answered. “And as a matter of fact, just as you arrived I was preparing to go back and check the contents against the manifest. Would you and Lady Simone care to accompany me?”
Simone’s heart jolted. Into the warehouse? Had Tristan disassembled the silk bower? Had he packed it all away? What if he hadn’t? Could she get away with pretending that she’d never seen it before? Oh, God, it could be even worse than that. Just how much did Wade Gregory know about his employer’s private life?
Emmy intruded on her panic, saying, “We would love nothing more, Mr. Gregory. Is there any way in which I can assist you with the process? I so enjoyed helping sort the crates as they were unloaded.”
Mr. Gregory beamed, removed his spectacles, folded them, and slipped them into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “How kind of you, Lady Emmaline. A partner is always appreciated. This way, ladies,” he said, taking up a portable desk and writing pen.
Simone went along. Slowly. Reluctantly. Wishing she were anywhere but there. Letting Emmy and Mr. Gregory forge ahead into the maze on their own, she paused and looked around. Soft afternoon light streamed in from windows high overhead, dust motes swirling and dancing in the shafts that fell onto the mountains of wooden boxes. The one great positive, she concluded, was that the addition of the newly arrived boxes and crates had necessitated the rearranging of the corridors between them. Not that she was very far into the space, but from what she could see so far, the warehouse only vaguely resembled the place Tristan had brought her that night.
Definitely a good thing
, she decided, meandering along a line of unopened boxes labeled:
FINE CHINA
. Odds were the bed had been undone. The last thing in the world she wanted was to see it again. Hoping for something you couldn’t have was so very pointless. Not to mention painful. Why the hope of seeing Tristan again kept springing up … Why she so enjoyed remembering the night they’d spent together …
“Because I’m a fool,” she muttered, peering absently into the top of an opened crate as she wandered past. “A damn ninny without an ounce of—”
She stopped as realization filtered through the haze of her self-disgust. Turning back, she looked down into the box again. Smiling, she brushed aside the wood shavings and fitted her hand through the guard.
“Oh,” she whispered in appreciation as she lifted the weapon out. She snapped her wrist, grinning at the sound of the blade whipping through air. “Fine. Very, very fine.”
She danced forward in pursuit of an imaginary and hapless opponent, then, pretending there was another at her back, pivoted to fend him off, too.
She froze, mid-stride, mid-parry, her silly heart skittering.
He smiled slowly, knowingly, making her knees go soft. “Hello, Simone.”
Chapter 15
Oh, Sweet Mother-of-Pearl.
He’d undone his tie and opened not only the buttons of his suit coat but also the one on his collar and the first two of his shirtfront. Leaning ever so casually against a crate, giving her that lopsided, bone-melting smile of his … Throwing herself into his arms occurred to her. So did slowly walking up to him and silently daring him not to reach for her. Pride saved her from acting on either impulse. Unfortunately, it didn’t offer up any ideas of what she might do instead.
“I found a set of foils,” she said lamely, lifting the weapon up in front of her face as though he might not have noticed her slashing and hacking the air with it a moment earlier.
“So I see.”
Damn that smile of his. And the way his eyes twinkled when he was laughing on the inside … She really should hate him. Or at the very least be righteously indignant. “Would you care to have a match?”