Marry Christmas (Zebra Historical Romance) Page 8

  “Elizabeth,” her father said in a warning tone. “I’m afraid you don’t know what you are talking about. The duke has made every attempt to make certain you are not completely unhappy. Indeed, he has been remark ably patient with you.” He ignored her rather unladylike snort of disbelief. “I understand your friendship with Mr. Ellsworth. But he and I have come to an under standing. He is leaving for New York today.”

  “You’re lying,” Elizabeth said fiercely. “That does not sound like Henry at all. He’s never been concerned about money.” Then the soft echo of their conversation made her heart wrench. “How could we possibly live and where? No, it’s impossible. We should elope and then go to your father.” Henry had quickly said he would seek forgiveness, but now Elizabeth was filled with doubt, and her father must have seen that doubt in her face.

  “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. Men are practical beings. I suppose it is a good lesson to learn early on. This Mr. Ellsworth may very well love you as he says he does, but clearly that is not enough.”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  Jason swatted at a fly. “You’ll have no illusions about your marriage to the duke. It is better, I think, to know going in rather than to discover later that what you mistook for love of you was really love of your money. Perhaps you will find some affection for the duke in time.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Elizabeth asked, dully.

  “I’m truly not the person to talk about such romantic things.” Jason cleared his throat. “Speaking of the duke, he has asked for a private meeting with you this afternoon.”

  Elizabeth truly felt her stomach roil. “I hate him,” she said, staring at the dark Oriental rug beneath her feet.

  “Now, Elizabeth, it is a sin to hate,” her father admonished.

  She lifted her head. “It is also a sin to promise in a church before God to love, cherish, and obey a man you wish to the very devil.”

  Jason stood abruptly, but Elizabeth didn’t feel a bit of fear, so she stood as well. “The duke has done nothing but promise to make you his wife.”

  “He betrayed me,” Elizabeth nearly shouted, something she had not done in years.

  “What the devil are you talking about? He has been nothing but kindness. Why this morning when he approached me one his greatest concerns was that you would be happy.”

  Elizabeth shook her head in disgust, knowing the duke had said the words he must know a father would want to hear. “It is of no matter, as you would say. I suppose we are to have a congratulatory supper tonight. And Mother, I am certain, already has the engagement ball completely planned, right down to which shoes I should wear on my feet.”

  “That is enough,” her father shouted.

  “It is enough.” Elizabeth turned away, her skirts twisted around wildly, and walked as angrily as she could to the door. When she reached it, she was about to grasp the door handle, when the door was opened by the conscientious footman. “I can open my own door,” she shouted to no one in particular. She made it all the way to her room before she allowed herself to cry once more.

  She had been in her room perhaps thirty seconds before a soft knock sounded and her mother entered. Without a word, Alva went to her daughter and held her and let her cry without uttering a single word. She held her until Elizabeth’s tears stopped, until her breathing returned to normal.

  “There now,” Alva said, smiling gently at her daughter’s tear-ravaged face. She lifted her hand to Elizabeth’s cheek and patted it twice, softly, before standing and walking from the room, leaving her daughter staring after her.

  Rand had very nearly thrown more than one million pounds out the window, but it was something his damned conscience and cursed kind heart had forced from him. He didn’t know he had it in him until he stood before Elizabeth’s father and offered to beg off. Even as he did it, he wasn’t entirely certain what he wanted to hear from the older man. As much as he needed the money, and God above knew he did, the idea of forcing a girl to marry him had become completely unpalatable.

  “Are you aware that your daughter is in love with another man?” he’d asked Mr. Cummings. “If this match would at all be favorable to you, I think I will gracefully bow out and bid you good-bye.”

  “I have been made aware of the situation,” Jason said carefully. “And no, the match would not be at all favorable.” Jason Cummings let out a long breath. “You must think me a terrible father for forcing this on my daughter. You will see someday how very powerfully persuasive wives can be.” He let out a chuckle.

  Rand, if anything, felt worse. He had not pictured all this emotion and pure angst when he accepted the idea of marrying the American heiress. Indeed, he’d thought he’d be met with a shy, willing girl with a lofty dream of becoming a duchess. He’d met enough of them since inheriting the title. It was just his luck to be tied to the only girl who did not. So he found himself in the un tenable position of insisting on a marriage he didn’t truly want—though he certainly needed—to a girl who wished him to perdition.

  “I believe it is time you proposed to my daughter, if, indeed, that is your ultimate plan. I cannot take the chance she will take flight.”

  Rand raised his eyebrows. “Do you think she might?”

  “I find I am constantly surprised by my daughter,” Jason said dryly.

  “Mr. Cummings, I am extremely uncomfortable with—”

  The older man held up a hand to stop him. “Despite her recent rebellion, she will come ’round. I know my daughter. She is only nineteen and is enjoying being the center of a tragic love affair, when in reality, she has danced with the gentleman a few times and exchanged a few ridiculous letters.”

  Rand was in complete agreement, and told her father so. “If that is the case, I will propose to your daughter. I do think we suit, even if she does not.”

  Jason smiled. “I’m glad to hear it.” He stood and came around his desk to shake the duke’s hand. “You’ll need patience, Your Grace.”

  “I do realize that, Mr. Cummings.”

  Jason dropped Rand’s hand and returned to his desk. “Now on to the business side of things. I’ve had my attorney draw up some papers detailing the wedding settlement and a yearly stipend of fifty thousand pounds to continue hereafter.”

  My God, Rand thought. These people are insane to pay that amount simply to give their daughter a title. The amount of the settlement was ludicrous, another fifty thousand pounds per annum was obscene. “Sir,” Rand interrupted. “I have no need of a yearly stipend. I intend to take the money from the marriage settlement, save my inheritance, and invest the rest. I would appreciate, however, any advice you can give on that matter.”

  Jason gave Rand a measuring look, then carefully crossed out a portion of the settlement with his fountain pen. “Done,” he said, signing the document with a flourish.

  When the older man turned the document to him, sliding it over the gleaming mahogany service of his desk, Rand felt as if his entire future lay before him. Inalterable and daunting. He took Jason’s gold-trimmed mother-of-pearl fountain pen, conscious of the richness of the writing instrument, and signed his name without looking over the paper that legally bound him to marry Elizabeth Cummings.

  Chapter 9

  Elizabeth entered the Gothic Parlor wondering if the duke was aware how appropriate such a gloomy room was for what was about to transpire. It struck her that she was about to accept the proposal of a man she hardly knew and disliked immensely. She knew only that he dressed well, was tall and a duke. He could be overbearing and direct, but she’d rarely seen him smile, and the only time she’d heard him laugh was when she was being completely rude to him. She didn’t know his favorite food or color or whether he enjoyed sweets as she did. She didn’t know anything of this man who she would spend the rest of her life with. And she was the only person in the world who seemed to think that mattered.

  She found him staring out onto their garden, watching a gray squirrel chase another around a large oak tre
e. For some reason, the fact that he smiled gently as he watched them play put her slightly at ease. A cruel man would not smile at squirrels playing.

  “Your Grace,” she said, dipping a curtsy.

  He turned, smiling still, and for just an instant she saw what other women saw: a spectacularly handsome man. She pushed that thought firmly from her mind.

  “Miss Cummings,” he said, giving her the smallest bow. “Thank you for joining me.” His hands were by his sides, then he thrust them into his pants pockets, with drawing them instantly only to shove them behind his back. He’s nervous, she realized, and that made her feel slightly better as well. Elizabeth managed a small smile, and it was shaky at best. Her nerves were a jangled mess, and were not helped in the least by her father’s interview that morning and her bout of tears after. She realized, of course, that she did not hate the duke nor truly dislike him personally, if she were completely honest.

  She loathed that she was being forced to marry him, but probably not the man himself. See? She was being enormously munificent. She could admit she didn’t know him well enough to have even formed any opinion of him. She only knew she hated what he represented: an end to her dreams, her childhood, her life in America.

  An end to everything she’d known or ever hoped for, and he stood before her smiling as if he were bestowing upon her the greatest gift.

  “Please, sit,” he said, indicating a heavily carved chair with gold embroidered cushions and lion claw feet.

  The phrase “throw her to the lions” spun through her head and she had to stifle a bit of hysterical laughter.

  Still fighting a grin, Elizabeth dutifully sat, all her training being brought to the fore for this momentous occasion. She would not embarrass herself or her mother by showing one iota of emotion. She would act with the deportment of a future duchess—or at least a well-brought-up American girl.

  With a sense of inevitability, she watched as the duke got down on one knee and brought out a ring, and felt her stomach clench almost painfully.

  “I will try to be a good husband to you,” he said, his eyes on the ring. “We shall make the best of this.”

  Ah, the romance.

  He let out a small laugh. “I rehearsed what I was going to say. Something to put you at ease, perhaps make you smile. But I see I had better just get this over with.” He took her hand and opened her fingers gently, placing the ring in her hand. Elizabeth stared down at the ring, a pretty thing with a pink stone surrounded by diamonds. It wasn’t grand or gaudy or even very impressive. It was simply a very pretty ring. She slipped it on finding it only a tiny bit too large.

  “Will you do me the great honor of being my wife, my duchess,” he asked formally.

  Elizabeth swallowed past a growing lump in her throat. “Yes,” she said. She lifted her hand and couldn’t quite believe she had just agreed to become the Duchess of Bellingham. “What is this stone?”

  She looked down at him and found him studying her intensely, almost as if he were waiting for her to change her mind. “It’s a tourmaline.”

  “It’s very pretty,” she said, feeling she ought to say something nice to him. She wasn’t a completely horrid person, after all.

  He stood and dragged a matching chair next to hers and sat in it. He was so close the skirt of her pale blue day dress covered his shoes and she had to stay the urge to pull away.

  “I am not such an awful man, am I?” he asked, tilting his head and smiling.

  At that moment, she felt she was the awful one. For what, really, had the duke done to her except show up and offer to make her a duchess. She knew other girls would have been thrilled, other girls who had never fallen in love or made silly dreams in their heads of marrying their true love. “I have acted horribly, not you,” she said, looking down at her hands.

  “I daresay you had your reasons.”

  She looked up to him, surprised that he was attempting to understand her reluctance to marry him. His eyes were gray, a dark, smoky gray that could have been mistaken for almost any color from a distance. He had obviously shaved before their meeting, for his jaw was smooth with only the hint of a beard and she wondered, just for a moment, whether it felt smooth as Henry’s face always had.

  “In two weeks I shall be departing Newport. Lord Hollings and I plan to see a bit of America before the wedding. Your father has told me your mother is planning a Christmas affair, so that gives us a good amount of time to see the sights.”

  “Yes, it should,” she said, trying to hide her relief that he’d be leaving shortly. She had no illusions that Henry would reappear in her life, but she was so sick of pretending to be happy in public when she was not.

  “I think we should take those two weeks and try to get to know one another. I understand there are many more balls. And your father would love to get me out on that yacht of his.”

  Elizabeth felt beyond guilty that he should be trying so hard to act as if they were any other couple. She simply could not bring herself to do the same, not when that very morning when she awoke she’d believed with all her heart she’d be marrying another man. But she had to say something to him.

  “I will try,” she said softly, and saw something flicker in his eyes, as if he were disappointed with her answer. Or angry.

  “Well, then,” he said, standing. “Why don’t you go tell your mother you are about to become the newest duchess in England.”

  He seemed so pleased with that statement when all it did was make her feel slightly ill. “I will.” Elizabeth rushed from the room feeling his eyes burning into her back.

  “She acts as if I am sentencing her to death. Or at least torture. I do not know how long I can remain patient with her,” Rand said, pushing back his second brandy. He was not a drinking man, so already he was beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol, a warm soothing relaxing sensation. Perhaps he would become a drinking man, at least until this wretched wedding was over.

  “Apparently you’ll have to be patient with her until at least Christmas,” Edward said, eyeing his friend carefully.

  Rand scowled, staring at his brandy as if it were offensive. “Have you noticed that all these American cities are named for cities in England? New London, Bristol, Boston, York. Oh, they’ll put a ‘new’ in front of it as if it’s delightfully original, but it’s all the same. I’ll bet not one of these people has even been to York. And I’ll further bet their new York is nothing like the original.” He paced back and forth in their small library, a place where, to Rand’s great irritation, Edward enjoyed holing up.

  “Providence.”

  “What the deuce does providence have to do with anything?”

  “The city of Providence. We don’t have a Providence back home,” Edward said in that distracted way he had when he didn’t really care what Rand was spouting off about.

  “There’s one, then.”

  “Newport.”

  “We have a Newport,” Rand pointed out triumphantly. “On the Isle of Wight. I’ve been there, actually, for a wedding. Blasted dreary affair it was, too. A sixteen-year-old girl marrying a fifty-five-year-old earl. Now that’s something to be upset about. That’s something to cry about.”

  Edward lifted his head from his book. “Miss Cummings was crying?”

  “No. But it was quite apparent she had been. I’m surprised she didn’t cry when I gave her that ridiculous ring. I couldn’t bring myself to explain it, but I could see she was confused by its inferior quality. Everything’s been sold. Everything. Hell, it was the best I could do given the circumstances. I haven’t gotten a check yet from her father,” he said bitterly. Apparently, the brandy was making him feel sorry for himself, something he completely abhorred even though he found himself of late falling into that trap. He put the glass down in disgust.

  “What does it really matter how she feels?” Edward asked, marking his page, then closing the book and setting it aside. “You didn’t agree to this marriage for any reason other than you needed money. I’m begin
ning to think you have illusions of turning this into some sort of love match.”

  Rand shook his head. “It’s not that. Believe me. It’s that she seems to be so opposed to the marriage.”

  “And you wanted her to fall at your feet in gratitude for bestowing upon her such a lofty title.”

  “Yes,” Rand said, brightening a bit. “I think that’s it exactly. It’s as if she doesn’t have the least notion how rare it is for someone who is not wellborn to marry a title. One of her ancestors was an indentured servant. It’s as if she is doing me the grand favor and it is I who should be grateful.”

  Edward chuckled.

  “If not for the fact that I needed the funds, I would never consider such a low marriage. And neither would you,” Rand accused, immediately wiping the smile off Edward’s face.

  “True enough.”

  “For generations we have carefully guarded our titles, our inheritances, being careful who we marry, who bears our children. And now, based only on dire financial need, I am being forced to lower my standards. And I am the one who should be grateful and apologetic. Bah.”

  Edward raised one brow. “Were you?”

  “Was I what?”

  “Apologetic. Good God, I hope not.”

  Rand felt his cheeks tinge slightly and hoped his friend thought the alcohol to blame. “Not in so many words, but I expressed my sympathy that she cannot marry the man she wants. I should have told her to beg for my hand in marriage.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he realized how absurd a statement it was and burst out laughing. “I really can be such an arrogant ass.”

  “I will not argue that point,” Edward said.

  “I rather wish you would,” Rand said glumly.

  “It is one of your finer attributes.”

  Rand smiled grimly. “I cannot wait until the next two weeks are over and we are on our own. Can you think of anything more tiresome than attending these American entertainments?”

  “Now there’s a positive attitude.”