Tangled Reins and Other Stories

  “That isn’t the way that I do business.”

  “It is now. I want your love. Your hand in marriage.”

  “My love?” Her voice sounded squeaky as a rusty gate. “Marriage? Rowarth, I told you this morning—”

  “You told me that your words of love meant nothing. I think that you lied. I think you sent me away because you are afraid to take the risk.”

  Eve stared at him, unwilling, unable to lie again. That morning it had been painful enough. “I cannot be held to anything I said in the throes of passion. It was so blissful I probably would have said anything …”

  Rowarth smiled again, devastating, wicked. She felt light-headed, dizzy with love for him. “Eve …” He shook his head. “Take the risk. I love you—you make me happy, a better man. I hope I make you happy, too. So we will wed.”

  The blunt male logic of it made it sound so simple.

  Eve’s throat closed with tears. How to dissuade him now? He had come several steps closer. There was a smile in his eyes and a confidence about him that said he knew now how this would end. She could not hurt him again, could not lie.

  “We cannot marry,” she said defiantly. “I was your mistress. I am unsuitable. Everyone will talk scandal.”

  He looked unmoved. “I have had a great deal more women than you have had men, my dear.” He shrugged. “Does the past matter, if we love each other?”

  Actually she found it did. She was consumed with jealousy for all those women. She wanted to rip them to shreds.

  “If you believe that my past does not matter, you are mistaken,” she said. “No one will receive me.”

  He looked regretful. “Some will because of the title. But I know that it is a great deal to ask of you. Do you love me enough to do it?” Then, as she hesitated, knowing she was only making excuses anyway, he added, “Eve, you know that I am no callow youth with unrealistic ideals. I’m old and cynical yet despite that I know that once I have found love—the real thing—I cannot afford to let it go if I am ever to be happy again.”

  Eve picked up a cuckoo clock, concentrating fiercely on it. “I cannot. I am illegitimate, and ill-educated—”

  He took the clock from her, placed it carefully on the desk and then took her hands, his gaze suddenly intent. “You may recall that we have had this conversation before. I do not care about your parentage or your education. You are loving and generous and warm and the most special woman in the world and I knew it from the moment we first met.”

  She could not look at him. She tried to free herself and was held fast.

  “Rowarth,” she said again, and she could hear the unsteady note in her voice and cursed herself for it. “How many dukes do you know who married their mistresses?”

  He was actually counting. She could see it. “Three,” he said, at last. “Dunston, Glenroth and Shefford. The Duchess of Shefford called herself an actress but we all knew—”

  “Rowarth!”

  “I beg your pardon.” He sounded genuinely apologetic. “But you are scared, Eve. You are making excuses.”

  She was. It was true. She so desperately wanted to accept him and to lay to rest the very last secret between them, yet she knew that if she did she ran the biggest risk of all, that of losing him for good.

  “Eve, look at me,” Rowarth said. “Tell me what truly troubles you.”

  It was pointless to resist. He was determined and his gentleness undermined every last defense she had.

  She let go of her last secret. “I told you that I lost our baby five years ago.” She looked up into his eyes. “What I did not tell you, Rowarth, was that Dr. Culpepper explained that I would never bear more children.” She took a deep, painful breath. “I had not even known I wanted a child but then to be told I could never again bear one … it almost destroyed me.” She covered her face briefly then let her hands fall. She needed to end this. When he had gone she could break down. “But the point is that we cannot wed, Rowarth. We could not then and we cannot now, for I would never be able to give you an heir. That was why I ran away.”

  There, it was out. The painful truth that she had nursed to herself all these years was finally exposed in the light. She had never talked of it with anyone. It was too difficult. The wound had never healed, for the hurt had run too deep. It had scarred over, her defenses imperfect, aching when something reminded her, or when, like now, the barrenness of her future was spread before her in all its sterile detail.

  Rowarth’s expression had changed. She had known it would. She could not hit him with such a shocking truth and expect everything to be the same. He would withdraw from her now, free himself and beat a hasty retreat. He would do it charmingly, of course, with expressions of deep regret and commiseration even as he headed for the door, but he would leave her nevertheless.

  “Eve, I am so very sorry.”

  He sounded sincere. Eve was sure he was. She stifled a strong desire to throw herself into his arms and beg him to make everything right, because of course he could not. No one could. She drew herself up.

  “Thank you.” Inexplicably he was still holding her hands and she realized that he had made no move to go. He was watching her, the deepest compassion in his face. She swallowed the enormous lump in her throat.

  Why did he not go? She did not want his sympathy. It would be unendurable.

  “Thank you,” she said again, very quickly. “But you must see …” She wished she did not have to spell it out. “It would be quite impossible for us—for you. You need an heir for Welburn. I know you love the place very deeply and would want to pass it on to your son. So …”

  So why do you not simply go, put an end to this, walk away?

  He dropped her hands at last and straightened up. Her body sagged with relief as well as misery.

  “I am afraid that I do not.” He sounded terribly polite. Eve felt confused.

  “Do not what?”

  Unbelievably, there was still a spark of humor in his eyes. Her battered heart lifted to see it before plunging back down again. How could she feel even remotely happy when she was banishing forever the love of her life?

  “I am afraid that I do not see why this makes it impossible for us to be together.”

  She stared at him, utterly unable to comprehend what she was hearing.

  “But, Rowarth—”

  “My darling Eve.” Now, his arms went about her. Now the comfort and the peace she craved was so close but she did not quite dare to reach out to grasp it. He pressed his lips to her hair and spoke softly. “I am sorry for all you have suffered, Eve. I am even more sorry that I was not beside you when you needed me. I cannot imagine what you have been through or what it feels like for you, though I would do anything in my power to take away those memories. Alas, I cannot. But I can promise to devote myself to your future and your happiness always, if only you will let me.”

  “But, Rowarth—” Her throat was clogged with tears. She never normally cried and now she was turning into a watering pot. It was infuriating. “The dukedom! Pray, do not be so foolish—”

  “My darling Eve,” he said again, his lips moving to brush her ear, making her shiver, “my current heir is my nephew, and he loves Welburn almost as much as I did at his age. I am sure he has been secretly praying that I will never wed so that he can inherit. And I should be glad if he did.”

  “Oh!” Eve felt taken aback, almost shocked. “But surely a man wants a son?”

  Rowarth was strong enough not to deny it.

  “It would have been very special,” he acknowledged, “to have had a son—or a daughter—with you.” For a moment they stood locked together in contemplation of a different future, one that could not be. Then Rowarth’s arms tightened about her.

  “But I want you, Eve, more than anything else in the entire world. You are the one who completes me. You are all I need.”

  Eve felt his compassion and his tenderness and his love touch her soul, taking away the darkness, and she turned her face up to his.

&nbs
p; “I have never loved anyone but you,” she whispered. “I cannot believe this is true. It makes me feel quite giddy.”

  She saw a smile curve his sensuous mouth. “My sweet, I have always said that you are a very inexperienced courtesan. To love only one man in your entire life …”

  She touched his cheek lightly, lovingly. “And you love me, too.”

  “So much that it consumes me,” Rowarth said. “I love you even more than I did five years ago. I had no idea it could be like this.”

  “So we may learn about love together.” Her heart unfurled, light banishing the darkness, healing her. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and Rowarth caught it with one finger and traced the line of her cheek.

  “You have worked very hard for all that you have achieved here,” he said, as the cuckoo clock chimed loudly from the desk.

  “That’s true. I have.” Eve looked around at the shabby shop and felt a rush of affection for it.

  “You once said that you preferred being a pawnbroker to being a duchess.”

  “Perhaps I shall have to reconsider.”

  “I thought,” Rowarth said, “that you might wish to keep the shop anyway. Perhaps Joan could run it for you?”

  “I think that she would like that very much.” Eve pressed her fingers to his lips. “How generous you are to risk offering me a means of escape should I find I really do prefer being a pawnbroker to being a duchess.”

  “You will not want to escape.” His arms about her told her that he would never let her go now he had found her again. The happiness swelled within Eve and this time she dared to trust it. “You are arrogant,” she whispered.

  He laughed. “So you keep telling me.” His voice changed. “Accept me, Eve. Come away with me.”

  Her heart was so light and full of joy she thought she might burst. “I thought that you had a job to do,” she teased. “You have not yet caught Warren Sampson.”

  “The other Guardians can do that,” Rowarth said. “Hawkesbury will not rest until he has Sampson behind bars.”

  “And what will you be doing meanwhile?” Eve asked, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.

  “I shall be on my wedding trip with you,” Rowarth said. He bent his head and his lips met hers. “We can go wherever you wish, my love. Wherever you are is my heart’s home and it always will be.”

  HOW TO WOO

  A SPINSTER

  Kasey Michaels

  CHAPTER ONE

  LADY EMMALINE DAUGHTRY sat in the gardens of Ashurst Hall on one of the first bright days of spring, completely and entirely alone.

  It was her twenty-eighth birthday.

  On her lap was the letter that had arrived in the morning post from her nieces, Lydia and Nicole. In order to keep to one sheet, thus saving on the postage, Lydia had written her rather formal, excruciatingly correct wishes in her finest copperplate. Nicole, being Nicole, had scribbled her good wishes upside-down between Lydia’s lines, her usual exuberance evident in both her atrocious spelling and her latest affectation of marking all her i’s with small hearts.

  The twins were back with their mother, the thrice-widowed Helen Daughtry, at their small estate of Willowbrook, as Helen was once again between husbands and had remembered that she had daughters to fuss over in her own fashion.

  That would change in a few weeks, when Helen went tripping off to London for the Season, and Lydia and Nicole were once again shuttled back to Ashurst Hall “to bear their dearest spinster aunt their Comfort and Presence, as you must be So Devastatingly Lonely isolated in the back of beyond.” Or so Helen’s last letter, all but pinned to the twins’ luggage, had stated so cruelly. But all under the guise of being caring and compassionate.

  Lady Emmaline knew her late brother’s widow could be a kind person, in her own way. She simply wasn’t a kind person frequently.

  In that way, Helen had fit very well with the Daughtry family, who seemed to belong to another age, the more rough and tumble—and most definitely profane—age of two decades past. Marital fidelity was a joke to them, kindness considered a weakness and selfishness a near art form. Or else today’s Society had simply learned to hide their failings and vices better …

  Her morals had, however, been the only way her sister-in-law resembled the Daughtrys. Helen always said she’d married the wrong brother when she’d wed the second son, but even that marriage had been quite above her social station. Yet, ever resourceful, she’d made do with a husband who had tired of her within a few months, and built her own life, her own circle of London friends.

  When Emmaline’s brother Geoffrey had died, Helen had tricked herself out in crushingly expensive widow’s weeds, impatiently waited out a full month of mourning and then deposited her son, Rafael, and the twins on the doorstep of Ashurst Hall and returned to London and those friends. Over the years, the children had spent more time at Ashurst Hall than on their own estate, until Rafe had left to serve with Wellington.

  Emmaline had been as thrilled by these additions to the family as her only surviving brother had been appalled—which may have been one of the reasons Emmaline had been so delighted. After all, it wasn’t as if there was any love lost between Charlton and herself.

  Charlton and Geoffrey were so very much older than Emmaline, and males to her female, so it was not surprising that the three had never been especially close. And Emmaline could have accepted that. But Emmaline’s mother had departed this earth the same day her only daughter was born, and for that, Charlton and Geoffrey would never forgive her. Even their father, the Duke of Ashurst, had been no more than occasionally aware of his daughter’s existence. Not that he’d much cared for his sons, either. Emmaline always thought his children would have garnered more affection from their sire if they could run on four legs, go up on point when they spotted the fox and then lay at his feet at the banquet whilst he celebrated his latest glorious kill.

  And then Geoffrey had died, and their father had looked around and noticed that, by Jupiter, he was in danger of being outnumbered by petticoats. Charlton’s wife was enough to have twittering about Ashurst Hall, complaining that he came to dinner in his hunting clothes, or tossing fierce looks at him when he belched or scratched satisfyingly whenever the spirit moved him. It was time to marry off the one he could get rid of, by Jupiter!

  So Emmaline had been hauled off to London upon the occasion of her eighteenth birthday, where she was put under the supposedly watchful eye of Helen Daughtry. Which is the same as to say Emmaline was left to her own devices while Helen flirted outrageously with any man who happened to look at Emmaline in a matrimonial way.

  Not that Emmaline hadn’t had her chances during the Seasons she’d suffered through under Helen’s haphazard chaperonage. There had been at least a few gentlemen who hadn’t taken one look at Helen’s décolletage and deserted Emmaline as if she’d just told them she had contracted the plague. There had been Sir William Masterson, a widower with six children under the age of ten. He’d made no bones that he was looking for a woman to ride herd on his … well, on his herd. Lord Phillipson had loved her; Emmaline had been very aware of that fact from the way he had all but drooled on her shoe tops, but as his breath would fell an ox at ten paces, she’d felt she had to decline his proposal.

  There had been no third Season, as her father had died, and Emmaline had insisted on a full year of mourning (Helen had actually laughed when she’d heard that, which was, in fact, as she headed out the door on her way to London less than two hours after the duke had been put to bed for his eternal rest in the family mausoleum).

  Charlton, now the thirteenth duke, had given Emmaline one more chance the following Season, sending her off with a warning that an only passably pretty woman of three and twenty shouldn’t be so damned choosy and she’d better find some fool who’d come up to scratch because he was done paying through the nose for gowns and gloves and other fripperies.

  The Season hadn’t gone well. Emmaline sometimes wondered if she had deliberately sabotaged herself
and her matrimonial hopes simply to spite the new duke.

  On the event of her twenty-fourth birthday, Charlton’s gift to her had been a half dozen white, embroidered spinster caps and the information that, while he and his sons George and Harold (their mama having succumbed to a putrid cold three years previously) would be going to London for the Season, she was to remain at home.

  Emmaline hadn’t protested. Indeed, at the time, she had been rather relieved. After all, in her many Seasons in London she had met, danced and spoken with nearly every eligible bachelor not risking his life on the Peninsula, and none of them had excited her in the least. She could find little attraction in men who cared more for the cut of their evening jacket than they did the notion that Bonaparte might somehow best Wellington and they’d all be speaking French. How on earth was she supposed to take any of these men seriously when none of them had been any better than her brother and nephews, some of them actually worse?

  But now the war was at last over and Bonaparte was on his way to a deserved exile, and the world could welcome home all its fine, brave soldiers … who to a man would surely be on the lookout for ladies much younger than Lady Emmaline.

  No, she was destined to remain forever on this estate, sitting in this same garden, season after season, year after year, birthday after birthday, waiting for her perfect lover who would never arrive. How she had tired of watching Charlton eat with his fingers at the dinner table, hearing George and Harold brag about their latest bouts of drinking and gambling, wretches that they were, not to mention listening in some fear to her brother threaten to send her off to their great-aunt in Scotland because he was weary of looking at her.

  Yes, having Rafael and Lydia and Nicole so often in residence these past years had been Emmaline’s main comfort, and she missed them sorely.

  She did not miss Charlton or his sons, who had left her alone without a kind word about her birthday, most probably because they’d forgotten the date. No, they’d gone off five days ago to play with George’s newest toy, a yacht he had won at the gaming tables. As if any of them knew the first thing about steering a boat, or whatever it was one did with a boat.