The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness Read online

  Dr. Wingfield was summoned, but, though he recommended complete bed rest for a day or two, he did not seem unduly concerned about Pru’s condition.

  By the time Max finally arrived in Clarges Street the street lamps were being lit outside, and Patience’s nerves were completely frayed.

  “You certainly took your time!” she greeted him sharply as he came into the drawing room.

  “Well, I’ve had quite a day,” he replied. Ignoring her frown, he kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You’ll be glad to know it’s all been sorted.”

  “We’re married?” she said softly.

  Max hesitated.

  “We’re not married!”

  “Of course we’re married,” he said, reaching for her.

  “But?” she said, eluding his grasp by neatly stepping behind a chair.

  Again, he hesitated. “According to the lawyers, it is not unassailable. Of course, no one will ever dare dispute that we are married—not while I live. But, as my widow, you would not be secure. Our children—if we are so blessed—would not be secure.”

  “Oh, God!”

  This time she allowed him to take her in his arms. “There is a very simple solution,” he told her. “Tomorrow morning, we marry again—very quietly. No one need ever know we botched it the first time. I botched it the first time,” he corrected himself quickly as she glanced up. “My uncle has arranged for the Archbishop of Canterbury to marry us at Sunderland House.”

  “I thought we had to be married in a church,” she objected.

  He smiled. “Apparently, the archbishop is the church. Or, at least, he brings it with him everywhere he goes like a tortoise with his shell. All the lawyers agree it will answer,” he added, “and we can rely on the discretion of his excellency.”

  “Well ...” she said. “If you’re sure you want to marry me again ...”

  “Quite sure,” he said softly, making her feel warm all over.

  “Then I will come to you tomorrow at Sunderland House,” she said.

  His arms tightened around her. “You don’t understand,” he said, laughing. “I have come to take you home tonight—now! Mrs. Drabble will sit with you all night to make certain everything is done properly,” he added quickly. “You will not be molested—until tomorrow night. Then, I’m afraid, Mrs. Drabble won’t be able to help you.”

  Patience squirmed away, laughing. “But I can’t go with you tonight,” she told him. “Pru has a cold, and it’s not getting any better.”

  All traces of humor vanished from his face. “She has come home, then, has she?” he said, with noticeable disdain. “I daresay her friends could not get rid of her soon enough!”

  “That is not fair, Max!” Patience said. “You don’t know what she’s been through. She’s had a terrible time!”

  “Should I be sorry for her?” he asked dryly.

  “Yes!” she answered vehemently. “Lord Milford has been keeping her a prisoner in his house! He has forced her to agree to marry him!”

  “Indeed? How did he do that? Dangle his title in front of her nose? She will like being a countess.”

  “You don’t understand,” Patience said. “He took away her maid. He took her clothes, her shoes, everything. He starved her! Locked her in a room! She had to escape by climbing out a window. She could have broken her neck!”

  Max seemed unimpressed. “Did she tell you all that?”

  Patience scowled at him. “You think she is lying?”

  “Now, why would I think that, I wonder?”

  “I saw her climb out the window with my own eyes! Lord Milford tried to stop her.”

  “I should bloody well think so!” he retorted. “She could have broken her neck.”

  Patience sighed. “You think because she told a little fib about you—”

  “Little fib!”

  “It doesn’t mean she is lying now. I believe her.”

  “You believe all her little fibs,” he scoffed.

  “No, I don’t. But I do believe this one!”

  He sighed.

  “That is not what I meant!” she said angrily. “You’re twisting my words. Are you going to do something about Lord Milford or not?”

  “Forgive me if I don’t feel inclined to accuse a gentleman of kidnaping on the word of a proven liar,” he drawled. “I know how it feels to be falsely accused.”

  “Max!”

  “Unless you have some proof... ?”

  “My sister’s word is enough for me,” she said stubbornly.

  “We are not going to agree on this subject,” he said.

  Patience shook her head. “No,” she said sadly. “I won’t trouble you about it anymore. I will deal with it myself.”

  “Good,” he said.

  Patience frowned. “She is not lying about having a cold at any rate,” she said. “Dr. Wingfield has been to see her. I suppose you accept his word as proof? So I cannot go with you tonight. And, if she grows any worse, I may not be able to meet you tomorrow either.”

  His eyes flashed. “What? You certainly will meet me tomorrow! Tomorrow is my wedding day.”

  “If my sister is too ill for me to leave her, the wedding will have to be postponed,” said Patience. “Surely, you can see that.”

  “No, I don’t see that!” he retorted. “Why should my wedding be postponed because your sister has a cold?”

  “Well, it’s not my fault you botched the first wedding,” she shot back. “Nor is it my sister’s fault.”

  “I must be mad,” he said, gritting his teeth, “to submit to a lifetime of having that thrown in my face!”

  “You needn’t!” she told him.

  He jabbed his finger into the air imperiously. “Understand this, my girl: if you are not at Sunderland House by seven o’clock tomorrow morning, I shall come back here and rain holy hell down on you! I will drag you bodily from this house to mine.”

  “If my sister—” she began.

  “I don’t care if your sister is dead come morning!” he shouted. “You shall marry me!”

  Turning on his heel, he stormed out of the room.

  Chapter 24

  Pru did not die in the night. In the morning, she was perhaps a little better, though not, in Patience’s judgment, well enough to leave the house. Patience drove to Hyde Park at the appointed time. Leaving Hawkins with the curricle, she went on foot to the rendezvous.

  The fog was deepest down by the river. Patience foolishly craned her neck, as if that could help her eyes penetrate the heavy gray fog enveloping the bridge up ahead. Anything or anyone could be hiding within it, she suddenly realized. Reaching into her reticule, she found her pistol. Its weight reassured her.

  Up ahead on the bridge a solitary, slim-shouldered figure in a hooded cloak paced back and forth. Suddenly, it stopped and lowered its hood. Patience recognized Isabella’s auburn hair at once. Isabella beckoned to her impatiently, holding up a packet of letters in one hand.

  Patience hurried forward. As she set foot on the bridge, a heavyset figure detached itself from the shadowy bank and leaped on her, catching her from behind. A handkerchief doused in ether was pressed roughly over her nose and mouth. After a brief struggle, she slumped in her attacker’s arms. She never had the chance to use her pistol.

  Isabella signaled for her brother’s carriage as Lord Milford carried Patience across the bridge. “I suppose you know this is kidnaping!” Isabella fretted as the carriage flew out of the park.

  Lord Milford was busy binding Patience’s hands. He had already gagged her with his cravat. “Don’t be silly,” he said impatiently. “I am engaged to Miss Prudence. If you can’t kidnap your own fiancée, then what’s the point?”

  “Very well! You’ve kidnaped her,” Isabella snapped. “What do you plan to do now?”

  “I shall take her to my country estate, of course,” he replied. “The vicar of Milford owes his living to me. He will marry us or I’ll turf him out. I’ve the special license in my pocket.”

  “And
how is the bride to make her vows with her mouth full of your necktie?”

  “There are some things,” he told her, “that go without saying. Besides, I shall have witnesses who will swear they heard her speak her vows.”

  “Well, I shall not be one of them,” Isabella declared. “Sir Charles has pledged to take me to Gunter’s this afternoon. You will have to set me down at Grosvenor Square, or he may think that I have been kidnaped.”

  Her brother grumbled.

  “You needn’t be afraid of detection,” she said. “No one is following us.”

  “I am not afraid,” he said sharply.

  She smiled. “Of course not. How silly of me. Then you will set me down in Grosvenor Square?”

  She kept on smiling until, grumbling, he knocked on the little sliding door that separated him from the driver. “Home!” he said gruffly.

  “You’re wearing a hole in my rug,” the Duke of Sunderland complained.

  “I’ll buy you another one,” Max snapped, suppressing the sudden urge to knock every ornament from the mantelpiece, including and most particularly, the French clock that had the temerity to show the correct time.

  “There’s no need to bite my head off,” the duke said. “It’s not my fault you are stood up again.”

  “I am not stood up!” Max said angrily. “Her sister must have gotten worse.”

  “Then why does she not send a message?” the duke asked sensibly.

  “It is only a little after the appointed time,” said Max.

  “It is half past seven,” the duke said firmly. “Charles Manners-Sutton cannot wait any longer. He has a funeral to meet at Westminster Abbey. War hero and all that sort of thing. Big to-do. He can’t be late. Shall we send round to Clarges Street for her?”

  “No,” Max said grimly. “I shall go.”

  “Something must be wrong,” Mrs. Drabble insisted.

  “For her sake, I hope her sister is dead!” Max retorted. “I will accept no other excuse for her tardiness!”

  His curricle was brought up and he set off for Clarges Street at once, arriving there just as Hawkins was returning to the house with Freddie Broome’s curricle.

  Max called out to him, throwing the reins to his own groom and jumping out of the vehicle.

  Hawkins was relieved to see him.

  “Where is your mistress?” Max demanded. “What keeps her? I have been waiting for her at Sunderland House all morning!”

  “I cannot tell you, sir,” Hawkins replied. “We drove out to the park very early.”

  “The park!” Max interrupted. “At this hour? Why?”

  “My mistress did not say, sir.”

  “Well, where is she now?”

  Hawkins shook his head. “My mistress bade me leave her at the gates.”

  Max blanched. “You left her in Hyde Park? On foot?”

  “I did not like to, sir, but she insisted ...”

  Max bit back a curse. “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing, sir. I waited for her for an hour. I searched, but there was no sign of her.”

  “So you left?” Max said incredulously.

  “Begging your pardon, sir! I thought—I rather had the impression that her ladyship had gone to meet someone. Yourself, possibly. When I could not find her, I thought, perhaps ...”

  “No,” Max said curtly. “She did not go there to meet me.”

  Hurrying up the steps, he hammered on the door with his fist. “Did you see no one else in the park?”

  “Not a soul, sir,” Hawkins said. “I’m very sorry, sir.”

  “So you should be!” Max said sharply. “Send to Bow Street at once. I want every inch of that park searched. If my wife has met with some accident, you will answer for it, Hawkins!”

  Pushing past Briggs, who had come to answer the door, he entered the house. The butler tried to take his hat, but Max rebuffed him. “Have you seen your mistress this morning?”

  “No, sir,” Briggs replied. “That is, not since her ladyship went out.”

  “She went to the park, I believe, to meet someone?”

  Briggs looked helpless. “Did she, sir?”

  Max sighed impatiently. “Whom did she go to meet, Briggs? I will have answers!”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Perhaps Miss Prudence may be of some assistance.”

  “Have her brought to me,” Max commanded, walking briskly up the stairs. “On second thought: I shall go to her. She is still abed, I suppose?”

  “Sir!” the butler protested, but Max paid him no heed.

  Pru was indeed still in bed, but she was sitting up. She opened her mouth to scream as Max burst into her room, but her surprise was overtaken by a round of violent sneezing.

  “Where is Patience?” he demanded as she blew her nose. “Where is my wife?”

  Pru’s eyes were streaming and her nose was very tender and red. “Is she not with you?” she asked, wheezing pathetically.

  “Would I be here if she were?” he snapped. “She went out to meet someone hours ago. She has not returned. Whom was she meeting?”

  “Is it so late?” Pru mumbled, rubbing her temples.

  “It is very late!”

  “She should be back by now,” said Pru, squinting at the clock on her mantelpiece. “That is, I thought she must have gone on to Sunderland House to marry you. Hawkins did not bring her back from the rendezvous?” Pushing back the coverlet, she set her feet on the floor.

  “I have had enough of this!” Max said angrily. “Who was she meeting in the park? Tell me at once or I shall throttle you.”

  Pru climbed unsteadily to her feet and hobbled over to the wardrobe. “You needn’t threaten me,” she said irritably. “She’s my sister! I want her back as much as you do. She went to meet Isabella,” she added.

  “Isabella Norton?” he said in disbelief. “Why?”

  Pru opened the wardrobe door. Standing behind it, she began pulling on her blue walking habit over her nightgown.

  “Why, Prudence? Tell me at once or I shall wring your neck!”

  “She went to get my letters, if you must know,” Pru snapped.

  His lip curled. “Your letters! I might have known it was something to do with you! What letters?”

  “You should have been more careful with them,” she accused him. “They were private! But you let Milford, of all people, get his hands on them.”

  Max flinched. “Not ... not those absurd schoolgirl letters you wrote to me?”

  “I suppose you gave them to Milford! I suppose you both had a good laugh at my expense!” she said bitterly.

  “Certainly not,” he said coldly. “I stopped reading them after a time. I threw them away.”

  “Then he must have stolen them from the rubbish,” said Pru. “You should have burnt them!”

  “I’d like to burn you,” he growled. “And Patsy went to get them back for you? How like you to get her to do your dirty work for you!”

  “She wouldn’t let me go,” Pru protested. Dressed now, she banged the wardrobe shut. “She was going to ask you to go with her, but I gather you were not interested in helping me. I would have gone with her, but she wouldn’t let me. I am sick!”

  “She never said a word about any of this to me! Just a lot of nonsense about Milford holding you prisoner.”

  “It was not nonsense!”

  Max suddenly groaned. “You don’t suppose she read your stupid letters? She wouldn’t take them seriously! She wouldn’t—She wouldn’t blame me?”

  “No,” Pru said reluctantly. “She’d never blame you for anything. In her eyes you are perfectly wonderful. No. If she hasn’t come back here, and she hasn’t gone to Sunderland House, then something must have happened to prevent her from doing so.”

  “I have sent to Bow Street,” said Max. “The park will be searched. In the meantime, it would be worth speaking to Isabella. If she has returned home, that is,” he added. “It could be they are both missing.”

  “Or perhaps she never made it
to the rendezvous at all,” Pru suggested. “Maybe her brother caught her trying to leave the house.”

  “I will call in Grosvenor Square,” said Max.

  “I am going with you!” cried Pru, running after him as he hurried from the room.

  “Absolutely not!” he told her firmly. “If anything happened to you, Patsy would never forgive me. I know that much.”

  “She’s my sister,” Pru insisted. “I’m going with you whether you like it or not! Is this really a good time to argue about it?” she added quickly as he began to object.

  “At least put on your cloak,” he said gruffly. Taking it from the servant, he tossed it to her.

  Less than five minutes later they arrived in Grosvenor Square. Max was shocked to see a uniformed officer of the foot patrol standing guard at Lord Milford’s door.

  “What has happened?” he demanded as the patrolman barred his way to the door.

  “And what is your business here, sir?” the patrolman responded in kind.

  “Nothing to concern you,” Max retorted. “My business is with Lady Isabella Norton.”

  Pru pushed past him. “Sir, my sister has gone missing! Lady Isabella was the last to see her. Won’t you let us in?”

  “You’re the missing lady’s sister?” the patrolman cried, opening the door for her. “Why didn’t you say so? Go right in! Mr. Morton of Bow Street is here already. You’ll find him in the drawing room with his lordship.”

  Isabella gasped as Max came into the room with Prudence in tow. Lord Milford was seated at the fireside holding a raw steak to his face. A meticulously dressed gentleman got to his feet, his brows raised slightly as he regarded the new arrivals.

  Max was surprised to find the runner so gentlemanlike. “Mr. Morton of Bow Street, I presume?”

  Morton bowed. “And you are ... ?”

  “I am Purefoy,” Max said simply. “Lady Waverly is my wife.”

  “Liar!” cried Isabella, jumping to her feet. “You are not a Purefoy! Your name escapes me at the moment. Though I will allow that he is married to Lady Waverly,” she added grudgingly.