The Lure of a Rake Read online

  “I obtain unentailed lands left me with my mother’s passing. The estates are lucrative and come to me when I marry.” Ah, so the need for a wife. “Your dowry is yours,” he cut in, his earlier grin now gone, replaced by a solemnity she’d seen but on a handful of instances from him. “I’ve no need of your funds and will cede all of it over to you.”

  Her mouth fell open. “What?” Gentlemen did not give control of any property or possessions to their wives. At least, that had been the worthless example set by her own father.

  “Nor will you have to worry after children,” he pledged. “Or hosting balls or throwing soirees or dinner parties. Your life will be yours.” How very tempting the gift he dangled—freedom, control in a world where women were wholly lacking of such things.

  Yet, she’d learned long ago to be wary of any gentleman’s intentions. “And what benefit would you gain in marrying me?” she asked, putting a question to him. A gentleman, who would one day possess the most distinguished, respected titles in the realm could have his choice of bride. Why should he choose a lady riddled with scandal, whispered about by all?

  “I—”

  “Like me?” she interjected, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Yes, well there is that,” he said with a wink.

  Was this veneer of charm a means for him to keeping anyone from delving deep under the surface to see who he truly was? She’d wager for his reputation as rake, with his disdain for Society’s whispers and lies, that there was more good than he’d ever have the world know of, inside him.

  He palmed her cheek and she leaned into his strong, powerful hand. Warmth radiated from the point of his touch and sent heat spiraling through her. “You require a husband,” he said softly and she stiffened, as the blunt fact of those words doused her with the reality of what his offer truly was. “But that is not why I’d have you marry me.”

  Her heart thumped hard. He desires more than the marriage of convenience he presented…

  “I would have you marry me because you should not be subjected to censure or stares.” A rush of disappointment killed that fleeting, foolish, romantic thought. “As my wife, you’ll wear whatever color gowns you wish and I’d wager it isn’t gray.” Seafoam green. “I’d wager you’d don satins in a seafoam.” She gasped. How did he know that? He continued over her shocked exclamation. “As my marchioness, you’ll be permitted to take your slippers off in the midst of Almack’s if you so wish it.” She wanted no part of that distinguished hall where ladies were subjected to the nasty sneers and whispers. “You should paint and garden and do whatever it is that brings you happiness.”

  You bring me happiness. Since her miserable return to London, the only joy she’d found had been in his presence. The truth of that held her frozen, unmoving, with his words enticing her with the dream he presented. He would offer her all that. “Ours will be a marriage of convenience?” Disappointment tugged at her and she held her breath praying he did not hear the regret steeped in her words.

  “Exactly,” he said with a nod, dislodging that errant, loose curl that she ached to brush back.

  What did she expect of an offer that came after just a week knowing a gentleman? “There will be no… no…” A blush burned its way from her toes up to her hair.

  He folded his arms. “No…?”

  “We will not be intimate, then?” And if it was possible to blush to death, by the heat burning her skin, she was moments away from going up in a fiery conflagration.

  Understanding glinted in his eyes. In one smooth movement, he lowered his hands to the table at her back, framing her in his arms. “You misunderstand,” he whispered, brushing his lips to her temple and then her closed eyes and finally her lips, in a too-fleeting kiss that had her swallowing back a cry, demanding more. “I will make you my wife in name and in body,” he pledged. “It will be a true marriage.”

  She wanted to grasp on to what he held out and not solely because, in wedding him, she’d be free of her father’s hold and spared a match with Lord Tremaine, or any other desperate lord who wanted a broodmare and not a wife. Cedric spoke as one who knew her interests and celebrated them. An unrepentant rogue, he’d never stifle her spirit or crush that which brought her joy. Genevieve nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said softly.

  His broad shoulders went taut and the muscles rippled the black fabric of his immaculately cut jacket. “Yes?” Surprise stamped his features.

  How endearing to find one so unwavering in his confidence should know indecision because of her. “Should I say no?” she teased.

  “Oh, undoubtedly.” A smile formed on his lips. This smile was not the mocking, rogue’s grin, but rather an endearingly warm one that glinted in his eyes. “I am, however, happy you have not.” He released her with an alacrity that left a void at the loss of his touch. “I will speak to your father.” Of course, as a future duke he’d command a meeting with nothing more than a single word uttered.

  She called out, halting his retreat. “Lord Tremaine is to arrive today.” All the panic that had weighted her chest, the cloying desperation at having no choice lifted. For Cedric had presented her one. It was full of so much more promise and joy than anything her father would have insisted she agree to.

  He wheeled around and stalked back toward her like a sleek panther, setting off the butterflies that only he’d ever stirred within her. “Then I shall speak to your father right now,” he pledged and lowered his brow to hers.

  Tremaine and Father had been friends since Eton and an unofficial arrangement had been reached…even as neither gentleman had inquired about what Genevieve wanted. “My father might deny your request,” she warned.

  “He will not deny me.” Cedric spoke with a confidence borne of a man who’d not been denied anything in the course of his life. What must it be like to have complete command of your life? Envy pulled at her. Then, with his pledge, he’d offered her that.

  So why did she selfishly want so much more? “And if he does?”

  Their breath danced and melded. “Then I’ll marry you anyway,” he pledged. The resolve in his tone spoke of a man who wouldn’t be denied. Surely that came of more than a marriage of convenience.

  “But what if—”

  Cedric took her lips under his. Heat spiraled, as it invariably did, from his embrace. She wound her arms about his neck, anchoring him close as she met his kiss, accepting his tongue as he plunged it in her mouth and stroked hers in a primitive dance that she returned.

  A shocked gasp at the front of the room brought them apart.

  Her maid stood, blushing like a beet caught in the summer sun. Mortification curled Genevieve’s toes and she studiously avoided the girl’s eyes. With the maid’s devotion, Genevieve had no doubt she could rely on the girl’s silence. And there was still the truth that Cedric would speak to her father.

  With the ease that could only come from a gentleman who’d been discovered so scandalously too many times before, an unrepentant Cedric sketched a bow. “My lady. I bid you farewell.” Without another word he stalked over to the door and paused at the entrance to toss an all-knowing look over his shoulder. “For now,” he promised and winked.

  Genevieve touched a hand to her racing heart and stared after him. He would marry her. He would offer her everything. Everything, that was, except love.

  And though there was no love, there would be friendship and passion. Which was a good deal more than existed within most marriages. So how, staring at the empty doorway, could she account for this knot of disappointment that pebbled in her belly?

  Chapter 15

  “By God, never tell me the rumors are true and congratulations are in order?”

  The next morning, seated at his table at the back of White’s, Cedric glanced up from his half-empty glass of brandy.

  Montfort grinned and without awaiting permission, hooked his ankle around the chair opposite Cedric and pulled it out. He motioned over a servant and relieved the liveried footman of a glass. The earl cast a look about
the famed, but respectable, club and grimaced. “Imagine my surprise when I received your note last evening to meet here, of all places.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Given the news on the front of The Times regarding your foray into respectability, however, it does make sense.”

  Cedric made a crude gesture that raised a laugh from the other man. “Go to hell, Montfort.” His being at White’s had nothing to do with his amusements once married. To visit one of his scandalous gaming hells or brothels when he’d only just become betrothed would earn unwanted and unneeded gossip. And though he didn’t give a jot about what Society said of him, it clearly mattered to the lady who’d agreed to marry him. The least he could give Genevieve was freedom from gossip—for now, at least.

  “I never thought I’d see the day you’d abandon your gaming hells for this bloody oppressive place,” Montfort muttered as he poured himself a glass from Cedric’s bottle. He glanced up from his task. “What is next? Attending Sunday sermons with the soon to be Marchioness of St. Albans?”

  Cedric offered a wry smile. “Hardly.” He swirled the contents of his glass. “The lady was quite practical in seeing our arrangement as nothing more than a matter of convenience for the both of us. As such, I’ve little intention of changing how I live.” After more than seventeen years of debauched existence, he didn’t know any other way and given his own father was really rather incapable of anything but sinning.

  His friend choked on his swallow. “If you believe that then you know a good deal less about ladies than has been credited. No lady happily tolerates her husband’s carousing.”

  “The lady has little interest in my faithfulness or how I spend my days,” he argued with a frown. Didn’t she? “…In marrying, I will be turning my funds, my children, my very happiness over to a man. How could I trust…?” A frisson of unease ran through him. He’d been quite clear that they’d carry on their own existences. He shrugged, thrusting aside the doubt his friend had raised. “I was quite clear in my requirements and she was equally clear.”

  Montfort kicked his chair back on the hind two legs. “Oh?” he drawled. “And just what requirements would a lady have to agree to marry one such as you?”

  The insult easily rolled off Cedric. With their lifelong friendship, no one knew better than Montfort the dissolute bastard that Cedric was. “It matters not why she agreed.” Just that she had. She’d be taken care of and through that, they’d both be spared the wills their own sires would have imposed on them.

  At the memory of meeting with her coldhearted bastard of a father, he gripped the crystal snifter. Cold. Condescending where his daughter was concerned, her father had proven himself remarkably like Cedric’s own ruthless parent.

  “Yes, I suppose it doesn’t,” Montfort agreed, righting his chair. He took a swallow of his drink. “Then I suppose you’d meet little resistance from the desperate Farendale doxy.” With that dismissive statement, Montfort looked about the club. “Few options for that one.”

  An unholy fury rolled through Cedric and the crystal snifter cracked under the pressure of his grip. “She is to be my wife,” he bit out.

  His friend returned his attention to Cedric. “Beg pardon?” he blinked several times.

  With a growl of annoyance Cedric swiped his free hand through his hair. “Nothing,” he snapped. He was not one of those respectable gents who was offended or bothered on anyone’s behalf—not even his own. So what accounted for this urge to drag his friend across the table and bury his fist in said friend’s nose?

  Montfort swirled his drink. “Why the reason for meeting at this ungodly hour?” he asked, thankfully diverting Cedric’s attention from his confounding thoughts.

  “Is it early?” His gaze found the long-case clock at the opposite wall. Ten o’clock. Yes, certainly not an hour he’d generally be awake, after late night carousing. Except he’d not partaken in those scandalous revelries into the early morn hours…for nearly a week. Peculiar stuff.

  “Oh, undoubtedly.” Montfort followed that with a loud yawn.

  “I had business to attend to.” An early morn visit to secure a special license from the archbishop. Said paper now burned inside the front of his jacket for what it portended. He waved over a servant and put in a request for an unbroken glass, which Cedric promptly filled.

  A sharp bark of laughter split Montfort’s lips. “You had business to attend to that wasn’t wagering or whoring?”

  “I’m to marry this morning. Eleven o’clock,” he added. In short time, he would break every silent vow he’d taken to thwart his father’s wishes and forever bind himself in marriage to one woman. Anxiety roiled in his gut. That ultimate sense of failure he’d bring to a woman, just as his father had brought countless women. Genevieve is different. She requires a husband. I require a wife. This is practical… Thrusting aside the whispering of misgivings churning in his mind, he spoke quietly. “I would ask you to stand up with me this morning.” Ultimately, he’d deny the bastard that which he desired above all else—that beloved heir and spare to carry out his polluted line. For what his father had never expected was for Cedric to find a bride content to settle for a practical arrangement where both benefited.

  “Of course, I will be there,” Montfort spoke with a seriousness that Cedric had thought him incapable of. The earl’s amusement faded and his eyes reflected back the same horror and regret Cedric had felt one week earlier over the expectations his father would have thrust on him. He propped his elbows on the table. “I am sorry,” he spoke the way one would at the passing of a loved one. “I know you’d rather dance in the fires of hell than shackle yourself to one woman.”

  Cedric remained silent. Yes, his friend was, indeed, correct. Yet, there were certainly worse things than wedding a lady unafraid to challenge him, one who kissed with a wild abandon that promised a spirited wife who delighted in the marital bed. Lest his friend note that grin and make more of it than was there, he took a long swallow to conceal it.

  “No need to be so glum, old friend,” Montfort said misinterpreting the reason for his silence. “There is some good to come in marrying the lady,” he continued, following Cedric’s own thoughts. “The duke is no doubt enraged by your selection in a bride?”

  “Undoubtedly,” he confirmed, lifting his nearly empty glass in salute. As elated as Genevieve’s own miserable father had been after they’d worked through the formal arrangements, was as livid as Cedric’s own father had been when he’d visited him yesterday afternoon. His mind still resonated with the furious bellowing his pronouncement had met. A surge of triumph gripped him.

  “Which, in itself, makes her the perfect bride,” Montfort added.

  Yes, at one point that would certainly have been true. And even as his friend’s words were steeped in logic…there was…more that made Genevieve perfect.

  “…Do you believe because I am a woman, I should favor pastel, peaceful landscapes…?”

  Unsettled by the irrational sentiment, he cleared his throat. “My family is assembling at eleven o’clock in Kensington Gardens.” That particular detail had not come only because of his father’s insistence that the hasty affair be conducted in his ducal office, but for the significance of that location for the meeting place it represented.

  Montfort erupted into another bevy of laughter. “Kensington Gardens.” He leaned forward and slapped Cedric on the arm. “If you believe a romantic lady who insists on getting married outside in a garden is the logical sort who’ll allow you to carry on as you’ve done these years, then you’d be wise to turn tail and run as quick as Aumere did, years earlier.”

  His jaw tightened reflexively with such intensity his teeth ground together at the mention of Aumere. The bloody fool. Regardless, Genevieve was better off without that one. And do I believe she is better off with me? “The place where the wedding takes place is neither here nor there,” he grumbled under his breath. He’d certainly not point out that he’d decided on said location.

  His friend inclined his head. �
��Given the hour, we should be along, then? Wouldn’t do to be late to your own wedding.”

  Cedric swung his attention to that clock once more, and squinted at the numbers. Fifty minutes past ten. He’d but ten minutes to find his way to Hyde Park.

  Bloody hell. With a curse he shoved back his chair and sprinted through his club.

  *

  Never more had Genevieve been so grateful for the shelter afforded by the high hedge maze of Kensington Gardens.

  Looking past the vicar, she trained her gaze on the green boxwood. Anything but the cold, unspeaking Duke of Ravenscourt, or on the concern radiating from her sister’s eyes, or her flushed and furious father. Or Cedric’s sister and brother-in-law, the Marquess and Marchioness of Grafton.

  Especially that united pair.

  Except… From the corner of her eye, she took in the flawlessly perfect golden-haired lady, and the chestnut haired stranger at her side, their hands twined together. She swallowed hard and redirected her attention forward. I did not even know he had a sister. He was a stranger in every sense of the word, this man she’d so quickly agreed to wed. I know nothing more than his love of art and the liquefying power of his kiss. Genevieve pressed her eyes closed a moment. And she knew his own self-profession of being a rake.

  “He is not coming,” her father spat a third time.

  Mother patted his hand and murmured placating words. “I am certain the marquess is just detained.” She looked to the duke as though hoping, expecting, he’d concur.

  Genevieve’s stomach dipped. This moment was so eerily similar to another that a dull buzzing filled her ears, muffling her parents’ exchange. Not again. Surely, Cedric would not so humiliate her in this way. Surely, he’d not leave her standing at this altar of flowers and greenery. But what do I really know of the gentleman? He was a rake and risky and all things to be avoided and, yet, she’d been swayed by the promise he’d dangled before her. Freedom. Control. What happened to a lady twice jilted? A nervous laugh escaped her, capturing the attention of Cedric’s sister.