Her Convenient Husband's Return
A scoundrel of the ton...
Her knight in shining armor?
Katherine Wilder will do anything to escape her forced marriage, even ask Brandt Radcliffe to kidnap her! Only she doesn’t expect a man so disreputable to say no! With her father now desperate to marry her off to line his own pockets, widower Brandt has become her reluctant protector—and it seems the only way he can do that is to marry her himself...!
“A perfect pleasant Regency.”
—RT Book Reviews on Married for His Convenience
“Witty, well-researched and emotionally gripping.”
—Goodreads on No Conventional Miss
ELEANOR WEBSTER loves high heels and sun—which is ironic, as she lives in northern Canada, the land of snow hills and unflattering footwear. Various crafting experiences—including a nasty glue gun episode—have proved that her creative soul is best expressed through the written word. Eleanor has a Masters Degree in Education and is a school psychologist. She also holds an undergraduate degree in history, and loves to use her writing to explore her fascination with the past.
Also by Eleanor Webster
No Conventional Miss
Married for His Convenience
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Her Convenient Husband’s Return
Eleanor Webster
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-07396-7
HER CONVENIENT HUSBAND’S RETURN
© 2018 Eleanor Webster
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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Version: 2020-03-02
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To all those who choose to follow their hearts and
refuse to be limited by society’s norms, their own fears
or physical and emotional challenges.
To my husband, who encouraged me
when the struggle to get published overwhelmed.
To my father-in-law, for his ongoing interest
and his insistence that the villain receives
suitable retribution for heinous crimes committed.
To my father, who inspires with his love of life
and his continued joy and interest in the world—
not to mention a daily diary spanning 78 years!
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Extract
About the Publisher
Prologue
Her fingers touched the pins which impaled each fragile butterfly. She felt the cold hardness, contrasting with the spread-eagled insect wings, delicate as gossamer.
The air smelled of dust, laden with a cloying sweetness. Despite her lack of sight, Beth could feel the Duke’s gaze on her. Goose pimples prickled on her neck and she shivered even though the chamber was warm from the crackling fire.
‘Ren?’ she called.
‘Your friend is in the other room, looking at the tiger I shot. An artistic boy, it would seem?’
He stepped closer. ‘So, do you like the butterflies?’
She could smell his breath, a mix of alcohol, tobacco and that odd sweetness.
‘I find them sad.’
‘That is because you cannot see,’ the Duke said. ‘If you could see, you would admire their beauty. I pin them when they are still alive. The colour of their wings stays so much brighter, I find.’
She swallowed. Her throat felt dry. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as if swollen, making words difficult to form.
‘You are yourself very beautiful,’ he said. ‘An unusual beauty, a perfection that is so seldom seen in nature. Your face, your features have a perfect symmetry. That is why I like the butterflies.’
She withdrew her hands from the display case, shifting abruptly and instinctively away. Stumbling, she felt a sharp corner strike her thigh.
‘Do be careful.’ The Duke’s hand touched her arm.
She felt the pressure of his fingers and the smell of his breath. She pulled her arms back, hugging them tight to her body.
‘Ren!’ she called again.
‘The walls are very thick here. It is nice to know that one’s residence is well built, don’t you think?’
She felt her breath quicken as sweat dampened her palms.
‘Beth?’
Relief bubbled up in a weird mix of euphoria and panic as she heard Ren’s familiar step.
‘That stuffed tiger is fantastic,’ he said. ‘I’d love to see one alive. Did you want to feel it?’ He paused. She heard him step to her. ‘Beth, are you sick?’
She nodded and he grasped her hand, his touch warm and familiar.
‘I—would—like—to—go—home.’ She forced the words out in a staccato rhythm, each syllable punctuated with a harsh gasp.
‘Do return, any time you would like,’ the Duke said.
She held tight to Ren’s hand as they exited the room and stepped down the stairs. They said nothing as they traversed the drive and then took the shortcut through the woods and back to the familiarity of Graham Hill.
It was only as they sat in their favourite spot, leaning against the oak’s stout trunk with her hands touching the damp velvet moss, that her breathing slowed.
‘Don’t let’s go there again,’ she said. ‘Ever.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’ This was true and yet she had felt more fearful than she ever had before. More fearful than the time she had fallen off the fence into the bull’s paddock. Or when she had got lost in the woods. Or when her horse had got spooked.
‘He looks at you strangely.’
‘Yes, I feel it.’
‘We won’t go back,’ Ren agreed. ‘I thought he would have more animals. One tiger isn’t much.’
‘And butterflies.’
Ren stood. He could never stay still for long, unless he was painting. ‘Let’s forget about that creepy old place. We’ll not return, not for a hundred tigers. What should we do now—fishing, or should we see if Mrs Bridges has baked?’
Beth sniffed. ‘I think I can smell fresh scones.’
‘Your brother would say that is a scientific impossibility,’ Ren laughed.
‘And yours would say we should check it out anyway.’
He took her hand and she stood. Together they scrambled across the field towards Ren’s home. In the warm sunshine and with the promise of Mrs Bridges’s fresh baking, Beth forgot about the Duke and his butterflies.
Chapter One
Ten years later
‘You should marry me.’
‘What? Why?’ Beth gripped the couch’s worn velvet arms as though to ground herself in a world gone mad. Or perhaps she had misheard Ren’s stark statement.
‘It is the best solution.’
‘To what exactly? That you’ve been suffering from unrequited love during the ten years of your absence?’
‘Of course not,’ Ren said, with typical bluntness.
Beth felt almost reassured. At least he had not entirely taken leave of his senses.
‘If it is because of Father’s death, you need not do so. Jamie and I will fare well enough.’
‘Not if you marry the Duke, you won’t,’ Ren said.
‘You heard?’ Beth felt her energy sap, her spine bending. Her breath was released in a muted exhalation.
‘Bad news travels fast.’
‘I have not... He asked me to marry him, but it would be the very last resort. If I could think of no other option.’
‘It would be a catastrophe.’
Did he think she did not know this? Even now, her stomach was a tight, hard knot of dread and too often she lay awake at night, clammy with sweat and fear.
‘It would be better than debtors’ prison,’ she said tartly. ‘Anyhow, I hope to merely sell him the land.’
‘I’d take prison. Besides, he’ll never buy the land. He wants the land and you.’
‘I cannot see why Ayrebourne would want to marry a woman like me.’
She heard Ren’s sharp intake of breath.
‘As always you underestimate yourself,’ he muttered. ‘The Duke is a collector. He likes beautiful things. You are exquisitely beautiful.’
‘I—’ She touched her hands to her face. People had always told her that she had an ephemeral, other-worldly beauty. Indeed, she had traced and retraced her features, pressing her fingers along her jawbone and the outline of her cheeks to find some difference between her own and the faces of others.
She dropped her hands. ‘How did you learn about this anyway?’
‘Jamie.’
‘Jamie? You have seen Jamie already?’
‘Not here. In London. Gambling.’ Ren spoke in a flat, even tone.
‘Jamie gambling?’ Her hand tightened, reflexively balling the cloth of her dress in her fist. ‘I mean—he can’t—he hardly even socialises.’
‘I found him at a gambling house. I removed him, of course, before much harm was done.’
‘He hates London. When was he even in London?’
‘Last weekend.’
‘He said he was going to sell two horses at Horbury Mews.’
‘Apparently, he took a less-than-direct route,’ Ren said.
Beth’s thoughts whirled, bouncing around her mind, quick and panicked. It did not make sense. Jamie was so...so entirely different than Father. Where Father had been glib, Jamie spoke either in monosyllables or else was mired in pedantic detail and scientific hypothesis.
‘But why? Why would he do that? He knows only too well the harm gambling can do.’
‘I presume he hopes his facility with numbers will enable him to be more successful than your father.’
‘Except his inability with people will make him more disastrous.’
For a moment she was silent. Then she stood, rousing herself with a conscious effort, keeping her hand on the back of her chair to orientate herself. This was not Ren’s problem. She had not seen him for years and he had no need to make some heroic sacrifice for her or her family.
‘Thank you for telling me about Jamie. I will speak to him,’ she said stiffly.
‘Logic seldom wins against desperation.’
‘He has no reason to be desperate.’
‘He loves you and he loves this land. He’d hate to see you married to the Duke and he’d hate to sell as much as a blade of grass. He was cataloguing seeds when he was three.’
‘Seven,’ she corrected. ‘He was cataloguing seeds when he was seven. But I will determine another solution.’
‘I have presented you with another solution.’
‘Marriage? To you?’
‘I am not the devil incarnate, only a close relative.’
She released the chair, taking the four steps to the window, as though physical distance might serve to clear her thoughts. She could feel his presence. Even without sight, she was aware of his height, the deep timbre of his voice, the smell of hay and soap, now tinged with tobacco. There was a disorienting mix of familiarity and new strangeness. He was both the boy she had once known and this stranger who had just now bounded back into her life.
Beth wished she could touch his face. She wanted to read his features, as she would have done once without thought, an action as natural as breathing.
‘You do not come here for ten years and now turn up with a—a marriage proposal. How would marriage even help? It would not enable us to pay off Father’s debt. I already suggested to your brother that he buy the land, but he is as poor as we are.’
Ren laughed in a manner devoid of humour. ‘In contrast to my brother, I am a veritable Croesus. And you need not fear, I know you require independence and dislike the concept of marriage. This will be a marriage in name only.’
‘But why?’ she asked, then flushed, turning. ‘I did not mean—I mean, why marry me? Could you not just buy the land or loan us the money if you are so rich and eager to save us?’
She heard the rustle of cloth as though Ren had shrugged and could almost feel his lips curl in a derisive smile. ‘It would provide you with a guardian.’
‘I do not need a guardian.’
‘You are not yet twenty-one.’
‘I have Jamie.’
‘He is not yet twenty. Besides, he is no match for Ayrebourne. Marriage to me would make any marriage to the Duke impossible.’ He paused. ‘You were my best friend, you know.’
Beth rubbed her fingers against the smooth finish of the painted sill, while leaning her forehead against the pane. Her eyes stung with the flood of memories: long afternoons beside the brook, winter walks with the snow crisply crunching under their feet and long tramps through whistling windy days in fall.
‘Childhood friendship does not require this level of sacrifice. You and I haven’t spoken in years.’
For a moment he did not respond, but when he did, something in his voice sent a nervous tingling through her body making her breath uneven.
‘You know with us that doesn’t matter.’
She felt it, that intangible connection, that closeness that was rooted in childhood, but it had also changed. She heard him shift. She heard his breath quicken.
She bit her lip. ‘Why didn’t you write or come back or visit?’
There was a pause. She heard his discomfort, the intake of his breath and the movement of his clothes.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘It doesn’t take much. You inhale and speak. You pick up a pen or...or hire a horse.’
‘You’ll just have to believe me.’
‘And now you expect me to marry you after all these years?’
‘I expect nothing. I am merely offering a preferable alternative to the Duke,’ he said, his voice now hard and clipped.
She shivered. Few things frightened her, but the Duke was one of them. Marriage to him would destroy her. Even if she avoided that and he agreed to buy the land, it was an unpleasant concept and would give him even more reason to linger in the village or woods. She rubbed her arms. Goose pimples prickled the skin. She hated the thought of him owning the land on her own doorstep. Already, she felt watched. And sometimes, as she walked through the woods, she’d smell that odd sweet fragrance that seemed to emanate from him.
The Duke would use everything against her: her sex, her youth, her poverty, her sightless eyes, her wonderfully odd brother.
Ren stepped closer to her. She felt his breath on her neck, his tall presence behind her and his hand on her own. Warmth filled her, which was both comfortable and uncomfortable. The urge for distance and separation lessened so that, for an impulsive, crazy moment, she wanted only to lean against him and to feel his strength.
Ren was her friend. He had guided her over rivers and up steep hillsides.
His hand stilled the nervous movement of her fingers against the sill. ‘You can trust me.’
She nodded.
‘Let me honour our childhood friendship.’
‘We were good friends.’
His grip tightened and she felt the warmth grow, a tingling energy snaking through her.
‘The best. Don’t put yourself in that man’s power. Let me help,’ he said in a voice now oddly soft. ‘Don’t marry him.’
‘I don’t have the option to be selective,’ she muttered.
‘You do now.’
Chapter Two
Eighteen months later
Beth strode towards the stable. As always, she counted her steps, tapping the path with her cane. She lifted her face to the sky, enjoying the warmth of the sun’s rays and the soft whisper of breeze. She enjoyed spring. She liked the smell of grass and earth. She liked the rustle of fresh leaves, so different from the dry, crisp wintery crack of bare branches. She liked that giddy, happy sense of renewal.
Even better, she welcomed the ease of movement which came with drier weather. Country life at Allington was dreadfully dull.
Worse than dull, it was lonely. Her beloved sister-in-law was dead. Jamie seldom conversed. Edmund had left. Ren never came. Her maid chattered of ribbons.
For a fleeting second, she remembered childhood winters: walks with Ren, afternoons by the fire’s crackling heat in a room rich with the aroma of cinnamon toast. Sometimes Edmund would read while Ren painted and Jamie pored over a botanical thesis.
Beth pushed the past away, recognising her brother’s footsteps on the rutted path. She lifted her hand in greeting.
‘Field’s ready for planting,’ Jamie said without preamble, satisfaction lacing his tones.
‘You are trying new crops this year?’
‘New variety of beans. They will be hardier.’
‘In Edmund’s fields as well as our own?’
Jamie grunted assent. ‘As I doubt your husband plans to do so.’
‘He’s in London,’ she said flatly. ‘Besides, Edmund left a manager in charge.’
Edmund, or rather Lord Graham, was Ren’s brother. Her husband’s brother...husband. Even after eighteen months her mind stumbled over the word—it wasn’t surprising since she had likely conversed more with the village blacksmith, a man of guttural grunts and limited vocabulary, than her spouse.
‘I am also trying a new variety of peas,’ Jamie said.
She nodded. ‘By the way, do we have any surplus supplies? I went to the Duke’s estate yesterday. The people are starving so I asked Arnold to take grain.’
She heard Jamie’s quick intake of breath. ‘You should not go there.’
‘Arnold was with me. Besides, the Duke is away. He hasn’t visited me since I turned down his proposal.’
‘One good thing about your marriage. But he has been at his estate on occasion. I also saw him on our own grounds once. Said his hound had strayed.’
Beth felt a shiver of apprehension. Dampness prickled her palms and her lungs felt tight as if unable to properly inhale the air. She pushed the feeling away. ‘The important thing is to get his people food.’
‘It is that bad?’
‘Yes.’ Beth’s fingers tightened on her cane. Her jaw clenched at the thought of yesterday’s visit. She remembered a mother’s desperate effort to soothe her hungry child. She’d held his hands and felt the thin boniness of his tiny fingers pressed into her palm like twigs devoid of flesh. ‘The Duke’s treatment of his tenants has worsened. I worry that it is a form of punishment.’
‘Punishment?’
‘Yes, for avoiding marriage to him.’
‘The tenants were hardly responsible and I see no evidence for such an assumption.’
Beth nodded. Jamie’s world was so wonderfully black and white. ‘Sometimes human nature defies science.’
She felt his confusion and could imagine his skin creasing into a pucker between his eyes.
‘I’ll send some root vegetables as well,’ he said. ‘Are you going there now?’
‘No, but Arnold will later.’
‘We will send what we can,’ Jaime said, in his steady way.
That was Jamie all over. Steady, scientific, kind but without sentiment.
In contrast, Ren had married her in a wild, crazy, heroic gesture, disappearing after their wedding into the capital’s giddy whirl of brandy and women.
She tried to ignore that quick, predictable flicker of pain and anger. Obviously, she had not expected anything close to a regular marriage, but to be so abandoned and ignored was painful to her. For some ludicrous reason, as she had stood beside him in the still air of the tiny church, she’d imagined that they might become friends again.
Instead, they had ridden back to Graham Hall in an uncomfortable silence broken only by the rattle of carriage wheels and a discussion about the weather. Within half a day, Ren’s carriage had been loaded and he had disappeared as though he could no longer bear his childhood home or those associated with it.
Still, she had no reason to complain. He had paid off her father’s debts, Allington was profitable and the Duke remained largely in London. Thank goodness. She still shivered when she remembered their last interview.
‘I must go,’ she said to Jamie, diverting her thoughts. ‘I promised Edmund I would look in on a few of his tenants during his absence.’
She sighed. Mere weeks ago, Edmund had gone to war. She wished desperately he had not done so and knew he had been driven more by grief than patriotism. His father, his wife and their unborn child... Too many losses crammed into too few years.
‘A sight more than his brother will do,’ Jamie said.
‘His life is in London,’ she said. ‘We always knew that.’
* * *
The road to Graham Hill was a winding, meandering path through shaded woods and across open pasture. She had brought Arnold today, but even without her groom Beth knew her way. She could easily differentiate between sounds—the muted clip-clop of hooves on an earthy path was so different from the sharper noise of a horse’s shoe against a cobbled drive.