Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase (22)

If the bride was drunk—which she wasn’t—it was on account of celebrating.

In a very little while, Lady Olympia Hightower was going to make all of her family’s dreams come true. And hers, too, most of them.

She would become the Duchess of Ashmont.

Teetering on the brink of six and twenty, she ought to thank her lucky stars she’d won the heart . . . admiration . . . something . . .

. . . of one of England’s three most notorious libertines, a trio of dukes known as Their Dis-Graces.

She narrowed her eyes at the looking glass.

Behind gold-rimmed spectacles, eyes of a can’t-make-up-their-mind grey-blue-green took a moment to focus on the grandeur that was her. She. Whatever.

Elaborate side curls of a commonplace brown framed her heart-shaped face. An intricate arrangement of plaits, topped by a great blossom of pleated lace adorned with orange blossoms, crowned her head. A blond lace veil cascaded over her bare shoulders, down over the full, lace-covered sleeves and on past her waist.

She looked down at herself.

Four knots marched down to the V of the waistline. Below that swelled full skirts of brocaded silk.

She wondered what Papa might have bought with what he’d paid for this creation. Though nobody had mentioned her the precise amount, she reckoned it would have purchased Clarence, her youngest brother, a year or more at Eton. A cornetcy for Andrew wasn’t out of the question. Apart from his heir—Stephen, Lord Ludford—the Earl of Gonerby had five boys to support—a subject to which he’d given no thought whatsoever. His mind, unlike his daughter’s, was not practical.

Thus her present predicament. Which wasn’t a predicament at all. So everybody said. There was nothing predicamental about being a duchess.

In any event, practicality had nothing to do with this bridal extravaganza. The money must be thrown away on a single dress because, according to Aunt Lavinia, it was an investment in the future.

A duchess-to-be couldn’t wear any old thing to her wedding. The bridal ensemble had to be expensive and fashionable, though not flamboyantly so, because a duchess-to-be ought to look expensively fashionable, though not flamboyantly so.

After the wedding was another matter entirely. A duchess could pour the entire contents of her jewel boxes over herself and never be overdressed.

With a few adjustments, a different arrangement on her head, and more diamonds or pearls or both, Olympia would wear the dress to the next Drawing Room, when her mother or perhaps Aunt Lavinia, the Marchioness of Newland, would present the new Duchess of Ashmont to the Queen.

That wasn’t all that would happen after the wedding.

The bride picked up the cup of brandy-laced tea Lady Newland had brought to steady prenuptial nerves. The cup was empty.

“Do not even think of bolting,” her aunt had said when she delivered the doctored tea.

Certainly not. Far too late for that, even if Olympia had been the sort of girl who backed down or ran away from anything, let alone the chance of a lifetime. She had six brothers. Being the second eldest child counted for nothing with boys. It was dominate or be dominated.

Some said she was rather too dominating, for a girl. But that wouldn’t matter when she became a duchess.

She bent and retrieved from under the dressing table the flask of brandy she’d stolen from Stephen. She unstopped it, brought it to her mouth, and tipped in what she gauged as a thimbleful. She stopped it again, set it on the dressing table, and told herself she would be good.

Even if one could afford to have second thoughts, which she couldn’t, it was far too late to have them.

Humiliate the bridegroom, who’d done nothing—to Olympia, in any event—to deserve it? Disgrace her family? Face utter ruin?

On account of what? The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, which surely was nothing more than bridal nerves.

Only a lunatic would run away from becoming the bride of one of the handsomest, richest, most powerful men, she told herself. That was to say, Ashmont could be powerful, if he’d bother, but he . . .

She lost her train of thought because somebody tapped at the door.

“Please,” she said. “I’m praying.”

She’d insisted on time alone. She needed to collect herself and prepare for this immense change in her life, she’d told her mother and aunt. They’d looked at each other, then left. Soon thereafter, Aunt Lavinia had returned with the doctored tea.

“Ten minutes, dear,” came her mother’s voice from the corridor.

Ten minutes already?

Olympia unstopped the flask again and took another sip.

Nearly six and twenty, she reminded herself. She’d never get an offer like this one, ever again. It was a miracle she’d got this one. And she’d known what she was doing when she said yes.

True, Lucius Wilmot Beckingham, the sixth Duke of Ashmont, was a bit of an ass, and so immature he made nine-year-old Clarence look like King Solomon. And yes, it went without saying that His Grace would be unfaithful.

But he was handsome and could be charming when he chose and he liked her and she’d known him for years. She doubted any great shocks were in store for her.

Most important, he’d asked.

It was the last thing she or anybody else could have expected.

Of all the girls he could have chosen, why the Most Boring Girl of the Season—the title she’d won seven years in a row?

Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

“A duchess,” she told the looking glass. “You can practically change the world, or at least part of it. It’s as close as a woman can come to being a man, unless she becomes the Queen—and no mere consort either, but Queen in her own right. Even then . . . oh, never mind. It’s not going to happen to you, my girl.”

Somewhere in Olympia’s head or maybe her heart or her stomach, a snide little voice, exactly like her Cousin Edwina’s, said, “The Love of a Lifetime is never going to happen to you, either. No Prince Charming on his white charger will come for you. Not even a passionate lord. Or a shop clerk, for that matter.”

She suffocated the voice, as she had wished, many times, to suffocate Cousin Edwina.

The Olympia who’d entertained fantasies of princes and passionate gentlemen had been a naïve creature, head teeming with novel-fed romantic fantasies as she embarked on her first London Season.

Seven years later, she’d received not a single offer. That was to say, she’d received no offer any young lady in her right mind, no matter how desperate, would accept or, as had happened in one case, would be allowed to accept.

And so, when Ashmont asked, what could she say?

You could have asked him why. Why me? you could have said.

As though the why mattered. Her choice was Ashmont or a future as an elderly spinster dependent not merely on brothers who couldn’t afford to keep her, but on the goodwill of their wives as well.

She took another sip of brandy. And another.

There came louder and more impatient tapping at the door.

“I’m going to be good,” she whispered. “I’m going to do the right thing because somebody has to.”

She took another swig.

*  *  *

“What the devil’s keeping her?” Ashmont said.

The guests whispered busily. At every sound from outside the drawing room, heads had turned to the door through which the bride was to come.

No bride had made her entrance. It must be half an hour past the appointed time.

Ripley had gone out to enquire of the bride’s mother whether Lady Olympia was ill. Lady Gonerby had looked bewildered and only shook her head. Her sister Lady Wayland had explained.

“Something to do with the dress,” Ripley said. “The aunt’s gone up with a maid and a sewing case.”

“A sewing case!”

“Something’s come undone, I take it.”

“What the devil do I care?” said Ashmont. “I’m going to undo it later, in any event.”

“You know how women are,” Ripley said.

“It isn’t like Olympia to fuss over trifles.”

“A wedding dress is not a trifle,” Ripley said. “I ought to know. M’sister’s cost more than that filly I had of Pershore.” Alice had married the Duke of Blackwood, the other of his two closest friends, shortly before Ripley left England.

Alice wasn’t here. According to Blackwood, she’d gone to Camberley Place, one of Ripley’s properties, to look after their favorite aunt.

“This is boring,” Ashmont said. “I hate these bloody rituals.”

Lord Gonerby left the drawing room. He returned a moment later and said, jovially, “Apologies for the delay. Something to do with a hem or some such. I’ve sent for champagne. No sense getting thirsty while the sewing needles are at work.”

A moment later the butler entered with a brace of footmen, all bearing trays of glasses.

Ashmont drank one, then another and another, in rapid succession.

Ripley drank, too, but not much. This was partly because he hadn’t yet recovered from last night’s activities. He must be getting old, because he could have used another hour or more of sleep, after the extended bout of gambling and drinking followed by a street brawl followed by the too-familiar labor of getting Ashmont out of a melee and home and to bed.

The other reason he abstained was the job he’d undertaken.

Last night, at Crockford’s Ashmont had asked—or insisted, rather—that one of his two friends supervise today’s proceedings.

“One of you has to make sure I get there on time, with the ring,” he’d said. “And the license and such.”

Blackwood had suggested Ashmont toss a coin to decide which of the two friends of his bosom got the job.

When Ripley won the honors, Blackwood had smiled and waved them on their way, suggesting they both go home and get some sleep.

He hadn’t seemed to have any clearer idea of this particular marriage business than Ripley had.

Like everybody else, he’d been knocked on his beam ends when he learned that Ashmont had acquired his betrothed fair and square, in the usual manner of wooing and asking. In other words, the bride wasn’t pregnant.

Ripley had assumed it would be years and years before Ashmont married, unless he was so careless as to have that sort of accident. Furthermore, Ripley, like everybody else, would have reckoned steep odds against Ashmont’s finding a remotely suitable girl so desperate as to take him, dukedom or not. Or whose family would let her, if his looks or title or charm got the better of her wits.

As Ashmont had boasted in his infrequent letters, Almack’s hostesses had barred him from their assemblies, the King had let His Grace know he wasn’t welcome at the Royal Levees, and the majority of hostesses in London had cut him from their invitation lists. For a good-looking, solvent duke, these sorts of accomplishments took some doing.

Still, Ripley hadn’t expected Blackwood’s wedding, either.

It only went to show . . .

What, exactly?

He glanced that way. Blackwood—dark, like Ripley but sleeker and better looking by far—raised one black eyebrow in enquiry. Ripley lifted his shoulders.

Blackwood made his unhurried way to them.

“Don’t see what the fuss is about a hem,” Ashmont said. “At the bottom, isn’t it? Well, then.”

“If she trips on it and falls on her face—”

“I’ll catch ’er,” Ashmont said.

Ripley looked at Blackwood.

They both looked at Ashmont. He was in his altitudes, beyond a doubt. He had all he could do to stand upright.

If the bride didn’t appear soon, one of two things would happen: At best, the bridegroom would sink into a stupor and subside ungracefully to the floor. At worst, he’d pick a fight with somebody.

“’Nuff o’ this,” Ashmont said. “I’m goin’ t’ get her.”

He started for the door, and stumbled. Blackwood caught him by the shoulder. “Good idea,” he said. “No point hanging about in here.”

He caught Ripley’s eye. Ripley took the other side, and they guided their friend out of the drawing room.

With the guests milling about the trays of champagne, they encountered only servants outside the drawing room.

“Where?” Blackwood said.

“Downstairs,” Ripley said.

“Not down,” Ashmont said. “She’s up. There.” He pointed, his finger making unsteady curlicues in the air.

“Bad luck,” Ripley said. “Bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

“Was ‘spectin’ to see her at the weddin,’” Ashmont said.

They led him toward the stairs, and then, not easily, down them.

“This way,” Ripley said.

He’d been in Newland House before, but that was ages ago. He wasn’t sure of the ground floor layout. In an old house of this kind he’d expect a dining room and, very likely, a library. Not that the type of room mattered.

They needed to get Ashmont away from drink as well as anybody he might decide to quarrel with. That included everybody.

He and Blackwood guided their friend toward a door standing at a safe distance from the main staircase. Ripley opened the door.

The first thing he saw was white, miles of it, as though a cloud had slid into what he was distantly aware was a library. But clouds didn’t wear white satin slippers and clocked stockings, and did not stand upon a set of library steps.

“Oops,” Blackwood said.

“Dammit, Olympia!” Ashmont said. “What the devil are you about?” He tried to break away from his friends.

Ripley said, “Get him out of here.”

“No, you don’t, blast you,” Ashmont said. “I’ve got somethin’ to say.”

“Bad luck,” Blackwood said. “Bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.”

As he hauled the protesting Ashmont back into the corridor, he said over his shoulder to Ripley, “He put you in charge of wedding details. Do something.”

“The ring,” Ripley said. “The license. The vails and such. Not the bride.”

“Do something,” Blackwood said.

*  *  *

Once more Ripley opened the door.

The library steps nearby held nobody. A sound drew his gaze to the windows. He saw a flurry of white. She was struggling with the window latch.

He crossed the room in a few long strides.

“Funny thing,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a wedding?”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “You might give the blushing bride some help. The latch is stuck.”

He caught a whiff of brandy mingled with a flowery fragrance.

Though his brain wasn’t at its sharpest at the moment, he could sum up the situation easily enough.

Drunken bride at window with the aim of getting out.

There was a problem here.

“Why?” he said.

“How should I know why it’s stuck?” she said. “Do I look like a plumber to you? Or what-you-call-it. Glazier.” She nodded. “Window person.”

“Not being a window person, I may not be qualified to help with this sort of thing,” he said.

“Rise above yourself,” she said. “I’m the damsel in distress. And you—” She turned her head to look at him. She stared at the knot of his neckcloth, approximately at her eye level. Then her eyes narrowed and her gaze moved upward.

Behind the spectacles, her grey eyes were red-rimmed.

She’d been crying.

Obviously Ashmont had said or done something to upset her. Nothing new in that.

“Plague take it,” she said. “You’re one of them. Go away. I only want a breath of air. In . . . erm . . . Kensington Gardens.”

“In your wedding dress,” he said.

“I cannot take it off and put it back on again as though it were a cloak.” She spoke with the extreme patience more usually applied to infants of slow understanding. “It’s complicated.”

“It’s raining,” he said with matching patience.

She turned her head and peered at the window. Rain droplets made wriggly rivulets down the glass.

She gave him a grandiose wave of dismissal. “Never mind—if you’re going to fuss about every little thing.” She turned back to the latch and recommenced trying to strangle it. This time it surrendered.

She pushed open the window. “Adieu,” she said.

And climbed through, in a flutter of satin and lace.

*  *  *

Ripley stood for a moment, debating.

She wanted to go, and he deemed it unsporting to hold women against their will.

He could go back and tell Ashmont his bride was bolting.

He could go back and tell one of the men in her family.

She wasn’t Ripley’s problem.

She was Ashmont’s problem.

True Ashmont had put Ripley in charge of the wedding, and Ripley had promised to care of things: hold onto the ring, supply coins as needed, make sure Ashmont did what he was supposed to do.

Retrieving the bride wasn’t in the agreement.

She oughtn’t to need retrieving.

Just because she’d been drunk and crying . . .

“Damn,” he said.

He climbed through the window.