Harlequin Historical July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Read online

  ‘Not for me it doesn’t.’ He had tried to sidestep this discussion last night after she had ambushed him in the carriage after convincing him to attend the damn ball. When that failed, she had subjected him to a lengthy lecture on the supposed benefits of their union, and had dismissed all his objections deftly out of hand until he had reluctantly agreed to sleep on it, hoping it wouldn’t just shut her up, it would make it go away. But Abigail had spent the last thirteen years as the Marchioness of Thundersley and had made up her mind it would be best for all if she continued in the role—irrespective of all his reservations. ‘I simply cannot and will not marry my brother’s wife. I’m sorry.’

  Although he wasn’t. He was horrified. So disgusted at her proposal he could barely look at her now without curling his lip in distaste.

  ‘Can we at least have a sensible discussion about it? I should like to properly understand your reservations.’ As far as he was concerned, they had already said everything which needed saying, although clearly she hadn’t listened to a damn thing he had said during that dreadful, interminable carriage ride.

  ‘Well for a start you were married to my brother.’ Which did not seem to be a hurdle as far as she was concerned, but an unsurmountable one which Luke found supremely distasteful. It was true he and Cassius had been virtual strangers for the entirety of his life. They had had nothing in common except their father’s unusual height and, on the rare occasion they were forced to meet, they had clashed over pretty much everything—usually his mother and the abysmal way she was treated. ‘Which is morally wrong and probably against the law anyway.’ If it wasn’t, it certainly should be.

  ‘It is actually not against the law of the land, I have researched it extensively, Lucius.’ Of course she had. He could imagine she had been very thorough about it all too. She was the sort. From the moment he had received her letter informing him of his brother’s sudden and unexpected demise in a carriage accident six months ago, she had treated widowhood as more of a great personal inconvenience than a tragedy. If she grieved anything, it seemed to be the loss of her status. Luke certainly hadn’t witnessed her shed a single tear. ‘Half-siblings are not explicitly mentioned in the Impediments of Affinity and so therefore there is no real legal recourse.’ As he suspected, it was dubious. Not that her argument made any difference. It would be a cold day in hell before he stood at the altar with her!

  ‘They don’t need to be explicit if they are implied.’

  She smiled, looking smug. ‘A good lawyer can always find the devil in the detail and the house of Thundersley can well afford the best. I suppose it might be different if there were inheritances at stake and children, but obviously that will not be a problem for us because Cassius and I had no children.’

  Several physicians had had to attest to the fact her womb was finally empty before they had officially granted Luke the title only a month ago because Abigail had clung to the belief she might be pregnant all that time. Whether she had believed it, or whether it had been a delaying tactic to prevent him inheriting, he had no clue but he was certain that nobody had been more devastated about the absence of an impending heir than he had been. The last thing he had wanted to do was upheave his life in Cornwall, temporarily abandon his mother and the slate business he had built from scratch, and step into his brother’s ill-fitting shoes. But upheave it all he had. Four weeks into official nobility and those damned uncomfortable shoes pinched like the devil. He loathed feeling restricted and hated feeling trapped, yet trapped he was again thanks to the fresh burden of additional responsibilities he didn’t fully understand which came alongside the blasted title he didn’t want—and apparently Abigail was one of them.

  ‘The lack of children was Cassius’s fault by the way...not mine.’ He winced at the intimacy of the confession. ‘Your brother wasn’t the most ardent and virile of husbands...’ Luke wanted to stick his fingers in his ears, scrunch his eyes closed and run screaming from the room. ‘Getting him to visit my bedchamber was like drawing blood from a stone. On the odd occasion when he did...’

  He held his hand up frowning and shook his head, his entire body now so tense with awkwardness it was making all his muscles ache—including the one between his eyebrows. ‘I really do not need to know any of that, Abigail.’ And he certainly didn’t want to have to picture it.

  ‘No... I suppose not.’ She stared down at her hands. ‘But I am still young enough to bear your heirs, if that is what is bothering you.’

  ‘It really isn’t.’ Heirs was probably number nine hundred and ninety-nine on his extensive list of objections.

  ‘Good—because my physician has assured me I am in the best of health and ripe and ready to carry your children.’ Oh, good grief! She was like a dog with a bone. ‘And while the church might frown upon our union in principle, I am sure we can find a vicar who will marry us. Perhaps one in Cornwall who knows you well and would be sympathetic to our plight?’

  ‘I don’t.’ And it was her plight, not his. He was tempted to shout that from the rooftops but the few scant manners which had been drilled into him meant he couldn’t quite bring himself to bellow his utter disgust at a woman. ‘I am not in love with you, Abigail, nor do I harbour any romantic feelings towards you whatsoever.’ He couldn’t say he particularly liked her much either. Like his brother and his sire, his sister-in-law was cold, disdainful and disapproving, more concerned with rank and status than substance.

  She laughed at that, an annoying, tinkling, false titter which let him know in no uncertain terms she did not even consider love a consideration. ‘Love rarely features in a society marriage, Lucius, at least not to begin with.’ As if he hadn’t witnessed that first-hand! Love hadn’t featured at all in his parents’ long-distance union. ‘Although I am sure a mutual regard will grow if we give it time. It’s not as if I am proposing we marry tomorrow. That would be outrageous.’ She laughed again—part scoff, part outright dismissal as if he were the one suddenly in a great hurry to be wed. ‘I still have five long months of half-mourning left before I am free.’ Which beggared belief when Cassius was barely cold in the ground. Not that his brother had been particularly warm to begin with.

  He had been as dictatorial and standoffish as their father had been, but significantly more callous about his familial responsibilities. At least his standoffish sire had initially tried to fix all the things that went wrong before he lost interest. Cassius had only wanted revenge for the fact his father had married Luke’s unsuitable mother in the first place.

  Abigail squeezed his hand, apparently oblivious that the contact made him cringe. ‘Five months gives us plenty of time to get to know and appreciate one another properly as a husband and wife should.’

  All the hairs stood up on the back of his neck at that implication. Yet that same ingrained politeness which stopped him shaking her by the shoulders and telling her she was clearly stark staring mad, also prevented him from admitting that he found absolutely nothing about her attractive either. Abigail’s petite and delicate blonde prettiness did nothing for him. Her needy, clingy and manipulative character did less. He liked his women to have some fire, honesty and curves, like the delicious redhead from last night.

  Now there was a woman who had heated his blood with no effort.

  Even three sheets to the wind, and reeling from shock, the mere sight of the Miss Hope Brookes had been like a punch in the gut and it would likely take months for him to stop thinking about the way she had tasted. That tart mouth of hers had been plump and passionate and she had filled his arms to perfection. And felt delightfully robust in them too. He could see himself happily rolling around in the grass with Hope if he ever found the time again for a quick dalliance. If he could muster up the enthusiasm to do that with Abigail, which in itself would take a blasted miracle, he’d likely break her in the process.

  Instead of saying any of that, he gently extracted his hand from her clutches and attempted to be
diplomatic again, exactly as he had been last night. ‘I am afraid I feel no desire for you either...and likely won’t as you are and always will be my sister-in-law.’ Practically incest no matter what the law had to say, when he knew he would never feel comfortable in his brother’s house let alone in his blasted wife!

  ‘I lived without desire throughout my marriage, Lucius.’ Then to his horror she reached for his hand again and stroked her fingers over it in seductive invitation. ‘But I suspect desire will not be a problem for us. I developed a few tricks which always worked on Cassius...’

  This time, Luke pulled his hand away hard in case she finished that awful sentence. ‘No, Abigail.’

  Her features hardened and her lips thinned, making her look cold and mean and he couldn’t help but uncharitably think that this was perhaps closer to her real nature than the façade she had been showing him. ‘To what specifically?’

  ‘To all of it. I am sorry, but my mind is made up. Whatever tenuous legal loophole you think you have unearthed, I will not marry my brother’s wife.’ He stood, suddenly desperate to be rid of her. ‘Under any circumstances.’

  ‘Even though I will be an asset to you?’ She was relentless and, exactly as last night, worryingly determined in her quest. ‘Do you know how to manage an estate and an extensive investment portfolio? Do you understand Parliament? The nuances of society? I could assist with all those things.’

  It galled that she thought him an idiot, not that she would have any concept of the life he had carved out for himself in the wilds of Cornwall. Cassius had never bothered enquiring how he kept food on his mother’s forgotten table or clothes on her back or paid for her medical bills or for her constant nursemaid after he had rescued her from the hellhole his brother had shoved her in. After their father had died, her meagre allowance stopped overnight. Apart from the dilapidated house and the exhausted tin mine which had been bequeathed to Luke in the will, he hadn’t received a penny since the day the old man died either. Although the self-centred old curmudgeon had been reliably stingy with those pennies when he had been alive. Luke’s paltry allowance, or guilt money as he preferred to call it, got swallowed up in all the other monthly household bills and any pleas for more fell on such deaf ears he had learned not to ask well before his years ran into double digits.

  ‘You could assist with all those things without my ring on your finger!’

  ‘But I could also make you respectable!’

  ‘I don’t give a damn about respectability!’ Or about being a damn marquess either. The last thing he wanted was the obligation of an estate he had no memory of, tenants, pensions and servants on top of everything else he had to worry about. That life was never meant to be his.

  ‘Then if you refuse to care about your reputation or how that sullies the good reputation of your brother, at least think about all the staff here in this house! All the uncertainty they will have to suffer with no mistress! Or worse, a new mistress who doesn’t understand them.’

  ‘Is this all about this house?’ He almost slapped his forehead for not realising it sooner. ‘Because if you are scared I will suddenly evict you to some desolate dower house somewhere in the wilds of nowhere, allow me to put your mind at rest. You can live here for ever, for all I care. I have no attachment to this place.’

  Luke had always loathed it, not that he had ever spent much time here. On the rare occasions when he had been summoned, it was usually either for a carpeting or a funeral. He could count his visits here in the last decade on one hand, and two of those were to watch first his father and then his brother get lowered into the ground in a sturdy mahogany box. Every bit of this fashionable mausoleum in Mayfair felt alien and cold. Everything was swimming in gilt or marble or unnecessary and opulent tassels, and Abigail’s servants seemed to watch him like a hawk in case he pocketed one of the ridiculously expensive candlesticks and pawned it.

  Not to mention he could feel his dead ancestors’ silent disapproval everywhere, largely because there were portraits of them all over the walls. He couldn’t fathom their compulsive need to glorify themselves in perpetuity. It took a certain amount of arrogance and vanity to insist on displaying a likeness of yourself in every single room, even more to pay a small fortune to do so, however, Cassius and his father clearly had. Luke might not know much about art, but even he had heard of great masters like Gainsborough, Reynolds, Lawrence and Brookes and while the brushwork was magnificent, even those talented painters hadn’t properly captured the essence of the two previous Marquesses of Thundersley properly. If you scraped back the expensive paint, all that was left were soulless blank canvases which, in his humble opinion, better exemplified them.

  ‘I shall move out, Abigail.’ The sooner now, the better. He had already taken determined steps to remove himself at the first possible convenience prior to his sister-in-law’s unexpected bombshell last night. He could hardly uproot his mother to live here, even temporarily, when here had been the place where her mind had first begun to unravel. There hadn’t been a significant incident in years because she was making progress in the right direction and he wouldn’t allow anything to jeopardise that. She had hated this place.

  So did he. But according to his new solicitor, he now apparently owned a large percentage of London because his illustrious family had always put more stock in property than people. He had houses coming out of his ears. ‘Keep the house, Abigail. I do not want it.’ And good riddance to her and it. He would happily never set foot here again.

  She glared at him as if he were an idiot. ‘You might not want it now—but you will, or your future wife will.’

  ‘She won’t.’ Because he had no plans for a future wife. His particular responsibilities didn’t lend themselves to marriage and all that that entailed, and likely never would. Wives expected attention he couldn’t spare and likely wouldn’t be particularly understanding of the fact his priorities had to lie elsewhere. And that was if they were prepared to marry a man whose blood was tainted by the curse of insanity in the first place. Not that he had ever thought for one second his mother’s condition was hereditary, but as he had learned to his cost, the rest of the world weren’t quite so forgiving of the condition, which was why he was always at great pains to keep it secret and protect it at all costs.

  ‘Of course she will.’ Abigail was quite agitated now. ‘Addresses on Berkeley Square are few and far between and rarer than hen’s teeth so if you refuse to marry me, your new Marchioness will steal it from me. Or you will realise its value and sell it for a fortune. And then what is to become of me?’

  He decided not to mention the twenty thousand pounds Cassius had left her in his will alongside a house in Bruton Place not ten minutes away. Exactly like his brother and father, his sister-in-law measured her own worthiness and standing in the world by the directions written on the front of her correspondence.

  But there was a simple solution to all of this nonsense. ‘Then I shall transfer the deeds to you, Abigail.’

  ‘You will?’ She seemed a little placated at that and he almost sighed aloud with relief as he backed towards the door.

  ‘I shall even talk to the solicitor about it first thing...for your own peace of mind.’ Just as he would feel better as soon as he escaped. Perhaps he should do that first thing too? Take a room at an inn and put as much distance between himself and his cold, calculating and possessive sister-in-law as was humanly possible. ‘It will all be sorted; I promise. And then we can forget all this awkwardness between us happened...’ Not that he would ever forget it. He had never been so shocked or disgusted by anything in all his thirty years—and he had seen some dreadful things. ‘Goodnight, Abigail.’

  Alone in his room—or rather the innocuous guest bedroom he had taken instead of the master bedroom which both his father and brother had lain in—Luke stripped off his clothes and sluiced himself in the cold water from the jug on his nightstand. It did little to wash away
the cloying layer of disgust which seemed to cling to his skin. Then he stretched out nude on top of the covers and sucked in several calming breaths in an attempt to stop his mind racing so that he could sleep.

  He had never understood his family or, for that matter, the aristocracy in general. Not the way they lived, their idleness and sense of privilege, the way they thought or the things they put such great stock in, but this was a new level of strange, even for them. It was incomprehensible to him that Abigail thought it acceptable to replace one brother with another in the same dispassionate way one would replace an old pair of boots, and he suddenly felt a wave of pity for them all.

  And as for her knowing a few tricks! He involuntarily shuddered at the thought.

  Desire couldn’t be manufactured, and even if it could he could think of nothing worse than a perfunctory coupling whose sole purpose was to beget the heirs she seemed to be obsessed with providing him. Desire should feel overwhelming and hot, as necessary as breathing, like the way Hope had left him feeling after only one stolen, drunken kiss. Even a lap full of icy pond water and frog spawn hadn’t succeeded in dampening his ardour last night.

  He smiled at that memory.

  It might well have started as a chaste kiss but it hadn’t ended that way thanks to Hope’s blatant enthusiasm for kissing. The way she had buried her fingers in his hair while her tongue had tangled with his had been...quite something. And she had instigated that part of the proceedings, which alleviated some of his guilt for clumsily and erroneously kissing her in the first place. The spontaneous heat and passion of it had knocked him sideways. So much that even the champagne hadn’t numbed his surprise and utter delight. She, on the other hand, had been both stunned and mortified by her distinct lack of piety and his shocking breach of propriety which he most definitely owed her a huge and grovelling apology for—hence he’d ended up in the fountain.