Bright morning light nudged Louisa awake. At first she blinked and then rolled away from the window, covering her head with a pillow.
Dear heavens, when had the sun started rising so early?
The unfamiliar ache between her legs wrenched her fully awake.
Oh, yes. She remembered the previous night with as much clarity as the sunshine streaming into the bedchamber she shared with her sister.
Lavinia?
Louisa swiveled in the direction of her sister’s bed and found it empty. To her everlasting relief.
However was she to face Lavinia this morning?
Well, funny thing, Vivi, Lord Wakefield ruined me last night, but be assured he means to marry me.
Stopping herself right there, she had to ask, he did, didn’t he?
She turned over her pillow and there was the rose that had been his parting gift.
His promise.
Yet the sight of Wakefield’s—no, Pierson’s—rose didn’t cheer her as it ought. Instead she saw only Lavinia’s dashed hopes for marriage.
While, she—Louisa—the one who hadn’t wanted to get married was . . .
Oh, bother, she certainly couldn’t say anything until she was certain of the viscount’s intentions.
It was all rather like his linen closet, still undone.
So she got herself dressed and did her morning ablutions even though she suspected it was closer to afternoon.
Taking a deep breath, she went downstairs and found Bitty dashing around a corner from the back stairs.
“Miss! Oh, miss!” she called out. “Mr. Tiploft sent me. You must come at once. Quickly.” Bitty caught hold of her hand and tugged at her.
“What is it, Bitty?” Louisa asked. “Is something wrong with the viscount?”
“It will be if you don’t come right away.”
Louisa, ever so worried, hurried along, though she still found herself being towed—Bitty pulling at her like a draft horse with its barn in sight.
“Hurry, miss,” the girl urged as they dashed up the steps.
When they got into the foyer, Clarks, the new footman was waiting. He nodded toward the parlor opposite the viscount’s study. “In there.”
The door was partially open, so Louisa took a deep breath and walked in.
And to her horror, the sole occupant of the room wasn’t Lord Wakefield.
But Lady Blaxhall. Melliscent.
“Well, well,” the lady said, her delicate brows arching with a high-winged tip. She was gowned in a bright lavender silk that shimmered in the light, a shade that could barely be called half mourning, but which suited the lady.
And Louisa assumed Lady Blaxhall never wore a color that didn’t suit her perfectly, no matter the circumstances.
“What do we have here?” Melliscent came strolling forward, examining Louisa as one might survey Hannibal’s latest offering. “Miss Tempest, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Your Ladyship,” Louisa replied, making a belated but polite curtsy.
“Aren’t you quaint,” the lady said as she circled around Louisa.
Louisa moved as well, a niggle of fear running down her spine that the very notion of turning her back on this woman would be dangerous.
“I suppose that brat came and fetched you,” she was saying.
“Bitty isn’t—”
“Don’t correct me,” Lady Blaxhall told her, dismissing any other objection with a fluttering wave of her gloved hand as she moved back to the center of the room. “Though I can’t imagine why that urchin would think you could be of help, that is unless—” The lady paused her catlike movements and stilled. “She thinks Piers—” But like her dismissal of Bitty, she laughed at whatever notion she’d considered. “How ridiculous.”
And this time when the lady turned toward her, her gown trailing behind her like a swirling cloud of subtle fury, she pinned a narrow glance on Louisa.
So this is how Hannibal’s prey feels, Louisa mused, trying to summon every bit of courage she possessed. But in the face of this woman’s poise, her unquestionable beauty and her lofty place in society, Louisa’s valor wavered.
Melliscent’s scathing glance seemed to ask one mocking question.
Whyever would he prefer you?
She must have answered her own silent question because her lips turned slightly in a smile and she drew closer, head tipped as she looked Louisa over. “You’ve let him, haven’t you?”
It was the last question Louisa would have ever expected. However could the lady have known? “I—I—I hardly think—”
Melliscent shrugged off her feeble protest. “So like your mother. Or so I am told. Unfortunate.” She strolled over toward the window where the sunlight silhouetted her figure.
Good heavens, this woman could show to every advantage no matter the situation, Louisa thought.
Melliscent sniffed at the air, as if she suddenly found it most unpleasant. “Weren’t there any dancing masters available, my dear?”
It was as if the lady had slapped her across the face. It would have been kinder.
But it had the unexpected effect of snapping Louisa out of her quiescence. “How dare you!”
“I dare because I am a lady,” Melliscent shot back. “And how unfortunate for Piers that he had to be entangled by your poor breeding.”
Poor breeding, indeed. The lady should see herself in the mirror right now—for her icy beauty was not well served by this ugly assault.
“He doesn’t love you,” Louisa told her. “He never has.”
The lady laughed, and again made another dismissive wave. “Do you think I care for such things? What a little fool you are.”
“He won’t have you—”
“Because he’s had you? Is that how you think it works?”
“But he—” Louisa began, her bravado crumbling. She’d been about to tell the lady in no uncertain terms that the viscount loved her, but she couldn’t.
For Wakefield had never said as much.
Something Melliscent must have sensed, for the lady smiled. “Has he told you he loves you?”
“Not in so many words—” she said, but even to her own ears the statement was hardly a foundation.
“Yes, not in words,” Melliscent replied. “I imagine he didn’t use words to convince you to give yourself to him either.” She laughed again, and this time it was tinged in a cruelty that cut through the rest of Louisa’s confidence.
He did love her. He must. He’d asked her to marry him.
Hadn’t he? Louisa took a step back and bumped into the doorjamb.
Her face must have revealed much of her confusion, for Melliscent was back on the attack.
If the lady had been missing an eye and most of one ear, one might have thought her Hannibal’s closest relation.
“And if there is a child, Miss Tempest, please don’t come back here. Men deplore such desperate tactics. You’ll have to go find someone as easily duped as your supposed father.”
Supposed father? Whatever was she saying?
Then it hit Louisa exactly what the lady was suggesting—that she and Lavinia were by-blows just like any child she might be carrying.
A child? Her hand went to her belly, and she looked up, only to find Melliscent’s hard, mocking smile was too much to bear.
“Didn’t that occur to you? How unfortunate,” Melliscent said, sounding anything but sympathetic. “He’ll marry me, my dear. For the simple reason that I am good ton, and you are not.”
“No,” she whispered.
“I do thank you though,” Melliscent continued, “for prodding him back into Society. He was utterly useless to me before. But now your work and your place here is finished. I won’t have the stain of your bloodlines tainting what is mine.”
Tears welled in Louisa’s eyes, and botheration, there was no way she was going to turn into a watering pot in front of this evil woman.
So she turned and fled, past Bitty and Clarks, and even Mr. Tiploft.
“Miss Tempest?” the butler asked, apparently quite surprised to see her.
So he hadn’t sent for her. Louisa paused and looked at a guilt-faced Bitty, who stood there, eyes wide with horror and her little hand stuffed in her mouth.
“Oh, miss . . . I only thought that—” Bitty began, but Louisa resumed her flight—out the door and down the stairs, blindly dashing with only one thought—to reach the sanctuary of her room.
And then back to Kempton as quickly as she could find a coach.
Pierson awoke to the sound of the bell downstairs, and the yowl of Hannibal outside his room.
Where once neither would have been a welcome beginning to his day, now he found himself smiling.
Even when he spied the half-eaten rodent Miss Tempest’s—no, make that Louisa’s—cat had brought with him.
“Thank you, Hannibal,” he told the cat as he let the beast in. “But I am famished for something else.”
My bride.
Even though he’d barely had any sleep, it was as if he’d finally gotten the respite he’d been seeking for years.
Oh, his leg still ached and he still had to reach for his cane, but what he noticed far more was how bright and persistent a sliver of sunshine could be when it sought a way into the darkness.
Like a certain lady he knew.
He grinned as he shrugged on his breeches and a shirt, along with his jacket, and went downstairs, for he’d heard the front door open a second time and couldn’t help wondering what had brought such a parade to his doorstep.
Besides, he had a visit to make to the archbishop’s office, and then pay a call to his uncle and his solicitor. And a jeweler as well.
He grinned again. Perhaps he’d change that order around and call on Charleton first, where perhaps he could steal a kiss from a certain lady.
When he got to the landing on the stairs, he could have sworn he saw the last bit of a skirt dashing down his steps, but it was the shocked and sad expressions on the faces of his staff that alarmed him more.
“What the devil is going on?” he asked.
“My lord—” Tiploft began.
But before his butler could continue, another voice chimed in.
“Piers, darling, there you are. Oh, dear, I see I have called too early. You look a wreck.”
Melliscent.
He turned around slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“Why calling on you, of course,” she said, coming forward and linking her arm into his. She went to pull him toward the parlor, seeking privacy, but he refused to budge.
“What do you want, Lady Blaxhall? I have some rather pressing business today that needs my immediate attention.”
“Lady Blaxhall? How foolishly formal you are being. Dearest, you can call me Melliscent again. I’m free. Free to be yours all over again. As for your business matters, I doubt there is anything more worthy of your attention than me,” she purred.
How he had once loved the sound of her voice, how it stroked a man’s sense of self-importance, how it had once made his best intentions, his good sense, take flight.
She was still pulling on his arm, still tugging at him to come with her, this time a little more insistently, and now, with his eyes wide open, he found her attempts cloying and distasteful.
Very distasteful.
Pierson shook her hand off his arm. “Lady Blaxhall, you seem to be under the impression that I want your attentions. I do not.”
“That isn’t what Lord Ilford—”
“Ilford? What has he to do with this?”
“He told me last night that if I was to call on you, you’d be more than happy to see me—that your disastrous attentions on that unworthy girl—”
“You mean Miss Tempest—”
“Is that her name? Such an insignificant creature. Hardly fit for—”
“I mean to marry her,” Pierson told her.
“Oh, Piers, how you jest,” Melliscent laughed, until the lady realized no one else was sharing in her mirth. “You cannot—that is, how could you?”
“Because I love her.”
“Love her? She’s naught but the—”
This time Pierson caught hold of her arm. “Say another word against the lady, and I shall throw you out the door myself.”
“But . . . But . . .”
He glanced up at the footman. “Clarks, the door please.”
The man grinned as he opened it. Wide.
Melliscent’s beautiful face contorted into a horrible rage. “How dare you!” she burst out, shaking off his grasp. “You will discover the truth about that dreadful little schemer. Believe me.” She sniffed and straightened up, chin high in the air. “And when you do, and you come crawling and begging back to me, do not think I will give you an easy reception.”
With that, the lady proceeded to sweep from the foyer, nearly plowing over Bitty.
Tiploft caught the child and set her to rights. “My lord, I fear Her Ladyship—”
“I don’t blame you, Tiploft, for letting her in. She’s an overbearing . . .” He was about to say “bitch,” but thought better of it in front of Bitty, so he finished by saying, “ . . . marchioness. Though from now on, she isn’t welcome.”
“Yes, my lord. However, I think you should know—”
“Whatever it is, my good man, it can wait,” Pierson told him. “I need to bathe and have my best coat brushed and ready. I need to call on my uncle.”
“I think you might want to make that call sooner—” Tiploft began.
“Sooner? Oh, no. That would hardly be prudent.” Pierson spared a glance in the mirror on the wall and flinched a little at the sight before him. “Lady Blaxhall was right about one thing, I’m hardly presentable this morning and I can’t go over to Charleton’s and ask for Miss Tempest’s hand in marriage looking like a beggar.”
“But the little miss, my lord—” Bitty piped up.
“What about her?” Pierson asked.
Tiploft answered. “As I have been trying to tell you, Miss Tempest was here. And she had what I believe was a rather unpleasant encounter with Lady Blaxhall.”
“Louisa was here?” Pierson glanced toward the door. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ve been trying, my lord,” Tiploft said.
“Dear God, I can’t even imagine what that bitch said to her,” he sputtered, forgetting Bitty’s innocent ears.
“I can,” Clarks said, with a low whistle.
Everyone ignored him.
Pierson hurried toward the front door, but when he got to it, he could see a carriage still out front.
Melliscent.
Most likely waiting for him to come running after her.
So he spun around and headed for the dining room and the French doors that led into the gardens, his fury at Melliscent only outpaced by his concern for Louisa.
Yet to his relief, he spied her as he came through the doorway in the garden wall.
She was sitting on the bench with her back to him. Relief washed through him at the sight of her.
“Louisa?”
She seemed to flinch, then as she began to turn toward him his heart clenched slightly in expectation of that moment when she would look at him.
Their gazes would meet, and she’d smile, a quiet greeting full of love meant only for him.
It was such a staggering thing.
Louisa loved him. And he her.
Yet when the lady in the garden turned around, the face that greeted him was so very familiar, from the pert red lips to the bright blue eyes, to the rich mahogany hair, piled artfully atop her head, but the light in her eyes was all wrong.
And there was no smile.
“My lord?”
“You aren’t her.” He took two steps closer—and realized everything was wrong.
Oh, this lady was identical to his love, but she wasn’t Louisa.
“Lord Wakefield,” the girl said, nodding slightly and making a quick curtsy. “I must commend you, not many can make the distinction between me and my sister so handily.” Her lips curved into a smile that was so very different from Louisa’s. “I can only surmise that you love my sister very much to be able to tell us apart at first glance.”
“Where is she?” he asked, looking around Charleton’s neatly kept garden. “Where is your sister?”
“Over at your house, I imagine,” she said quickly, then her brow furrowed. “Isn’t she?”
He shook his head.
“Lavinia! There you are,” came a greeting from the mews. “Prompt and eager to begin our . . .” His words trailed off as the man came the rest of the way through the gate and spied Pierson standing there.
“Tuck,” the viscount said in greeting.
When he looked over at Miss Tempest, he found the girl had blushed a deep shade of red.
Whatever were these two doing in cahoots?
“You were saying you wanted to see my sister?” Lavinia asked, shaking out her skirt and not looking at Tuck. “I can go get her,” she added, nodding toward Charleton’s house.
“Yes, if you would, please.” Pierson decided whatever Lavinia Tempest and Tuck were doing, he’d get to bottom of it once he’d found Louisa. Still, when Lavinia Tempest hurried inside the house, Pierson turned immediately to his friend. “Rather odd, you being here, Tuck.”
“A happy coincidence,” Charleton’s heir offered, rocking on his boot heels, and watching the door as if he, rather than Pierson, were waiting for Louisa
“Care to enlighten me as to how this ‘happy coincidence’ came to be?”
“Another story for another time,” his friend told him as the garden door opened and out came the sisters, Lavinia towing her twin. Even from here, Pierson could see that Louisa had been crying.
Damn Melliscent for her interference, he thought as he rushed to capture Louisa in his arms.
“Yes, well, our work is done here, puss,” Tuck was saying, as he caught hold of Lavinia’s hand and led her out toward the mews.
Pierson took one glance at the pair and thought he ought to protest, but one snuffled mew from Louisa, and Tuck and his folly were forgotten.
“Whatever Lady Blaxhall said, it was a lie,” he told her, holding Louisa out so he could push the wayward strands of hair from her face.
Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her nose a bit runny.
He thought her the most beautiful creature ever. But he also dug into his pocket and found her a handkerchief.
She blew into it noisily. “Oh, if only what she said was a lie. I am not good enough for you.”
“Good enough? What utter rubbish! You are my heart. My perfect match.”
“You’re just being kind,” she sniffled.
Pierson laughed, loud and hard. “Louisa Tempest, have you ever known me to be kind?”
Her eyes flickered for a moment, for she was about to argue the matter, but then she too saw the humor in all of it and laughed as well.
“Foolish girl,” he told her, retrieving his handkerchief from her grasp and making quick work of removing the smattering of tears on her cheeks.
“But she said—”
His brows arched up. “Not another word on the subject—”
“But—” she persisted.
He leaned over and kissed her. Soundly and thoroughly. Until she couldn’t make a sensible retort. “There. That’s much better,” he teased. “Now I need your advice on a matter of propriety—”
“Me?”
“Of course. What is the proper amount of time for a gentleman to call upon a lady after he’s ravished her? Two or three days?”
“That depends on the gentleman,” she replied. “In any case, you are decidedly overdue.”
“I said days, not hours,” he teased.
“Yes, I suppose you did,” she replied, her nose tipping tartly. “But I will still assert you are overdue.”
He laughed at her teasing indignation.
“Well, I can’t see how we could be married any more quickly. Why, I doubt even the archbishop will see me before three—”
She took a step back from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Married?”
“Well, yes. Of course,” he told her. “We’re to be married.”
“I don’t recall agreeing to be married.”
This took him aback. Whatever was she saying? Of course they were going to be married.
“Further, I don’t believe I’ve been asked,” she continued.
“Of course I did,” he shot back, and then he recounted the previous night and realized that perhaps he had just presumed . . . Oh, bother, he had proposed, hadn’t he?
“I don’t recall any sort of proper proposal,” she was saying.
There it was. The crux of all this. Proper. From a lady who could be anything but.
“Oh, demmit, Miss Tempest, you are determined to drive me mad,” he said, dropping down to one knee and catching hold of her hand. It hurt like the very devil to get down like this, but he wasn’t about to let her slip from his life on some infuriating technicality. “Will you marry me?”
“I don’t know,” she told him pertly.
“You don’t know?” he sputtered, staggering back up and facing her.
“No, I do not. I will not marry a man who doesn’t love me. And like your previous ‘proposal,’ I have yet to hear a declaration of love from you, my lord.” Now her pert nose was most decidedly tucked in the air, all smug defiance, but he could see the sparkle of mischief in her eyes.
He nearly laughed. Like a properly ordered linen closet, Louisa Tempest would have nothing less in a marriage proposal.
Tidy. Neatly organized and everything in its proper place.
And in this case, a well-stated request and a heartfelt declaration of love.
Not necessarily in that order, he imagined. Well, if that was what the lady wanted. He would do so every day for the rest of his life if necessary.
Pierson took a deep breath and did his damnedest. “Love?” he declared. “Miss Louisa Tempest, you have taught me the very meaning of the word. You have brought me back from a darkness that no man should find himself lost within, should ever endure. You are my heart, my soul, my passion. I love you as I have never loved, and will never love again.” He paused, and took her hand, bringing her fingers to his lips.
She shivered slightly as he kissed the tips, tenderly, slowly, letting his lips and tongue tease her a bit.
Then he drew back slightly and finished with one question. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
And then she did the unthinkable. She stood there for far longer than necessary considering the matter.
“Well? Did I leave something undone?” he demanded, feeling a growing impatience to have this decided.
“Yes,” she told him in her usual forthright manner. “There is something missing.”
“What could I have forgotten?” he blurted out with all his old bluster and rough manners.
She laughed at him and rose up on her tiptoes so she could whisper into his ear, “I believe you’ve forgotten to kiss me senseless, so that the only word I am able to utter is yes.”
And so, Pierson Stratton, the fifth Viscount Wakefield, kissed Miss Louisa Tempest until she was weak in the knees and wavering in his arms. Until the stubborn little miss was whispering a breathy, gasping (and most emphatic) “Yes.”
And then he kissed her again.
Just to be certain.