The Gentleman's Scandalous Bride Read online

  Noticing her father, she approached at once, glad of a comforting face—until she realized who he was talking to. “…one of those newfangled greenhouses,” Father was saying. “On the east side of the house, I’m thinking, to catch the morning sun. Since autumn is nearly upon us, I’d be much obliged if you could start it immediately.”

  Rose made an indignant noise. This was the second time Father had pressed Mr. Martyn, architect to the king himself, to build a silly greenhouse!

  She wished she could ball up the lacy handkerchief tucked in her sleeve and stuff it into her father’s mouth. “Mr. Martyn works for royalty, Father! He builds palaces, for heaven’s sake. He’s far too—”

  “Well, not quite palaces,” the gentleman corrected her. “Renovations to palaces, additions to palaces, but I’ve yet to build an entire—”

  “See?” Rose met her father’s green eyes, speaking loudly and slowly to make sure he could hear her over the hubbub of the celebration. “Palaces. He hasn’t the time to build you a greenhouse.”

  Mr. Martyn sipped from his own goblet of champagne, then grinned at Rose’s father. “Oh, I think I might find the time,” he argued, his words infused with a hint of laughter. “In exchange for a dance with your lovely daughter.”

  A pointed look at Rose made it clear which daughter he meant.

  Lord Trentingham frowned. “My chubby doctor?”

  Mr. Martyn looked confused, and Rose knew she should remind him that her father was hard of hearing at the best of times—and in a crowded room, he was all but deaf.

  But she couldn’t seem to speak. The impertinence—that he meant to barter for her company! Surely her father would never—

  “I’ll be most pleased to build your greenhouse,” Mr. Martyn reiterated a bit louder, “if your lovely daughter will grant me a dance.”

  “Plant what in grass?”

  Understanding dawned in the young man’s eyes. “A dance!” he shouted. “May I have the honor of a dance with Lady Rose?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course,” Father said. “Now, about that greenhouse—”

  “I’ll do a preliminary design before I leave,” Mr. Martyn all but bellowed.

  “Excellent.” Lord Trentingham turned a vague smile in Rose’s direction. “Run along, my dear. Enjoy yourself.”

  Her mouth dropped open, then snapped shut when she found herself propelled from the drawing room by a warm hand at her back. Then she was stepping out onto the covered portico, which had been pressed into service as a dance floor.

  Three musicians in one corner were playing a minuet, a graceful dance that facilitated conversation. The wedding guests chatted and flirted, their shoes brushing the brick paving in unison. Though the dance was already in progress, Mr. Martyn handed both their champagne goblets to a passing maid, took Rose’s fingers, and swept her into the throng.

  Touching his hand, skin to skin, reminded her of her first glimpse of him in Oxford. Her nerves were suddenly jangling, though she was not a nervous sort of girl, and she remembered she’d felt much the same when they’d first met.

  But only until she’d discovered he was a plain mister. Since then, seeing him had had no effect on her at all.

  So it was disconcerting to find that touching him now seemed to make the champagne bubbles dance in her stomach.

  “Lovely Corinthian capitals on the columns and pilasters,” Mr. Martyn noted, ever the architect. “Do you know who carved them?”

  She pliéd and stepped forward with her right foot before finally finding her tongue. “Edward Marshall, who also carved the Ashcroft family arms in the pediment. And in future, please keep in mind that there’s no cause to seek my father’s permission for a dance,” she added archly. “Ashcroft women make their own decisions.”

  “So Rand has told me,” her partner said, breezing over the implication that she might have refused him.

  They rose on their toes, and when he pulled her closer, she caught a trace of his scent. A woodsy fragrance with a base of frankincense and myrrh. It smelled nice, she thought, wondering if she could duplicate it in her mother’s perfumery.

  “Your family is an odd one,” he said conversationally. “I don’t allow my sister to make her own decisions. Not the important ones, in any case.”

  She felt sorry for his sister. “Our family motto is Interroga Conformationem.”

  He hesitated.

  “Question Convention,” she translated, narrowing her eyes. Couldn’t every educated gentleman speak Latin? Certainly any she’d consider husband material.

  It was a good thing he wasn’t in the running.

  They dropped hands to turn in place, then he grasped her fingers again. “Is it true, as Rand says, that your father allows his daughters to choose their own husbands as well?”

  She noticed Lily and Rand dancing together—much closer than the dance required. Surprisingly, envy didn’t clutch at her heart this time. She smiled. “Yes.”

  “In future, I’ll keep that in mind,” Mr. Martyn responded with an irresistible grin.

  Ignoring his impertinence, Rose glanced across the wide daisy-strewn lawn toward the Thames, noticing her brother Rowan racing onto the portico. He looked like a miniature version of their father in a burgundy suit, his long hair streaming behind him.

  A quite ordinary-looking man followed more sedately, but as he wore red and white—the king’s livery—he attracted more attention.

  The musicians stopped playing, and the dancers ground to a halt.

  “There he is,” Rowan said, pointing toward Rose in the sudden silence. “Mr. Christopher Martyn, the man you seek.”

  TWO

  “IF I MAY speak with you in private, sir,” the messenger said. “I bring word from His Majesty.”

  Kit nodded and stepped off the portico, feeling the eyes of all the wedding guests upon him. Ignoring their speculative murmurs, he calmly led the way toward a summerhouse he’d spotted earlier. The sudden appearance of the king’s man didn’t alarm him as it did the others. He was, after all, completing several royal projects. King Charles likely just wanted a change.

  He hoped.

  As Kit crossed Trentingham’s celebrated gardens, he resisted the urge to cast Rose a last look over his shoulder, just to gauge her reaction. Not that it mattered what she thought of him—she was an earl’s daughter, after all. Unattainable. He was wasting his time with her, and he was not normally the sort to waste time.

  But he’d watched Rose sipping champagne, and her mouth had looked like a perfect red rosebud. Or the comparison seemed to fit, anyhow. Kit didn’t know much about flowers.

  And she was fun to tease. She wore her hauteur like armor, and he couldn’t resist testing it, poking at its weak spots. Trying to draw out what lay underneath. There was more to Rose, much more, than met the eye.

  But perhaps he should leave well enough alone. It wasn’t his role to draw her out. He knew his place in the world. Commoner, through and through.

  A girl like Rose would never look twice at a fellow like him.

  Which was another reason he didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to see that theory confirmed.

  Though his best friend was a baron who’d grown up in a mansion, Kit had been raised in a single-room cottage. No Martyn had ever held a title, or even flirted with the possibility—much less with a beautiful, high-born lady.

  The circular redbrick summerhouse was a small building with classic Palladian lines. Kit ushered the king’s man inside. Owing to the commendable design—large arched windows over each of the four doors—it was bright beneath the cool, shaded dome.

  Bright enough to make out the gravity in the messenger’s eyes.

  Apprehension soured the champagne in Kit’s stomach. “Yes?” he prompted.

  “It concerns one of your projects, sir. I’ve been sent to advise you that the ceiling at Windsor Castle is falling—”

  “Falling?” The word hit Kit like a punch in the gut. “Falling how?”

  The messenger
shrugged apologetically. “I’m no builder. It looked to me as if only some plaster had fallen—not the ceiling itself. But there are many cracks.”

  Many cracks. That was bad, very bad. And inexplicable. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No, sir.” The pressure in Kit’s stomach let up just slightly. “But His Majesty wanted to make you aware—”

  “I understand.” Kit understood Charles’s underlying message all too well. If he failed to complete this project on time and satisfactorily, his hope of being appointed Deputy Surveyor—a step toward someday becoming Surveyor General of the King’s Works, the official royal architect—would be as good as dead.

  And the rest of his dreams would die along with it.

  He yanked the door back open. “I shall depart for Windsor posthaste.”

  “Sir.” The man bowed and preceded him outside.

  Back at the house, Kit looked about for Rand, but his friend was nowhere to be found. He went instead to make his apologies to his hostess. “Forgive me, Lady Trentingham, but I must take my leave. There’s a problem at Windsor Castle. I cannot seem to locate Rand—”

  “He and Lily have a habit of disappearing,” she told him with a rueful smile. But then her brown eyes turned sympathetic. “I’ll explain,” she added. “He’ll understand.”

  In no time at all, Kit was settled in his carriage, rubbing the back of his neck as the vehicle lumbered its way toward Windsor.

  Could he possibly have made an error in designing Windsor’s new dining room? Had a flaw in the plans gone unnoticed? He unrolled the extra set he always carried, spreading the crisp linen over his lap. But he couldn’t seem to concentrate.

  Especially when his carriage jostled past the village of Hawkridge, where he’d grown up.

  He gazed out the window at the familiar landscape, remembering nights whiled away in his family’s snug cottage, he and Ellen playing on the floor while their mother read by the fire. Days spent with his father, learning carpentry and building. Afternoons fishing with the local nobleman’s son, Lord Randal, both of them starved for companionship their age.

  That felt like a lifetime ago. Now Rand was a married man, a man who looked as though he’d seen all his hopes and dreams realized—on the very day that Kit’s seemed to be slipping away.

  His hand went into his surcoat pocket, grasping at the small, worn bit of brick he always carried there. A chip off his very first project.

  For twelve years—through school and university, through punishing hours and sleepless nights—he had dedicated himself to one goal. The Deputy Surveyor post was almost within his grasp.

  He couldn’t fail now.

  THREE

  “YOU LOOK melancholy,” Rose’s mother said later that evening. Standing with Rose in her perfumery, Mum picked over the many flower arrangements on her large wooden worktable, plucking out the marigolds. “Why the long face, dear? Are you sad to see your creations destroyed?”

  “Of course not.” Rose added a purple aster to a pile of flowers and some ivy to a bunch of greens. She cleared her throat, then forced what she hoped sounded like a romantic sigh. “The wedding was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

  “Made more so by your lovely flowers.” Rose had filled the house with towering creations made of posies cut from her father’s gardens. “Which is why,” her mother added, “I thought—”

  “I don’t care what becomes of my flower arrangements. Honestly, Mum, it makes no sense to let the blooms wither and die when we can turn them into essential oils for your perfumes. I don’t mind in the least.” With a bit more force than necessary, Rose tugged two lilies from the vases and tossed them onto the table. “Whatever happened to Christopher Martyn, do you know?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject.

  “That messenger brought news of a problem with one of his projects. He had to leave.”

  “Which project?” Rose asked.

  “He didn’t say. Or perhaps I don’t remember.” Mum fixed her with a piercing gaze. A motherly gaze. “Does it signify?”

  “Of course not. I was just curious, that’s all.” A touch of the headache began to pulse in Rose’s temples. “Why should I care what happens to his projects?”

  “You danced with him—”

  “Father traded that dance for a greenhouse. I had no say in the matter.”

  Her mother nodded thoughtfully, beginning to pluck petals from a bunch of striped snapdragons. “You just look melancholy.”

  Rose pursed her lips, quashing her exasperation. She lifted the lid off the gleaming glass and metal distillery that Ford had made for her mother while he was courting Violet. “It’s nothing, Mum.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that your younger sister is wed?”

  “Why should it?” She was chagrined to hear her voice crack. “I wish her happy, Mum. I do. I vow and swear it.”

  “It’s no failing of yours, dear, that Lily met with love first.”

  “Stuck as we are in the countryside, it’s a wonder she met anyone at all.” It was an ancient complaint, but in her present mood Rose had no compunctions against dragging it out again. “We’ve hardly ever been to London, or anywhere else we might meet eligible—”

  “You have a point,” Mum interrupted.

  “Pardon?” Rose blinked.

  “You heard me. You haven’t much opportunity here to meet gentlemen.” Mum tossed the pink petals into the distillery’s large glass bulb. “I’m thinking that we—you and I—should attend court.”

  “Court?” Rose decided she couldn’t be hearing right. One of them had clearly drunk too much champagne. “As in King Charles’s court?”

  “I believe they’re at Windsor now—they do move around, as you may know.”

  “What I know is that you and Father have always claimed court is no place for proper young ladies.”

  “Well, you’re not so young anymore,” Mum said, then came to wrap an arm around Rose when she winced. “I didn’t mean it that way, dear. But you’re nineteen now, a woman grown. And I will be there to chaperone. It’s perfectly acceptable.”

  It was more than acceptable, Rose knew—girls as young as fifteen went to court, many of them unchaperoned. And she also knew the licentious men there treated them like full-grown women. Violet had been to court with Ford, and she’d come back with stories that had made Rose’s hair curl.

  A little part of her wondered if this was really such a grand idea.

  But she wasn’t going to argue when faced with such extraordinary good fortune. “Gemini, I’d best go talk to Harriet! She’ll need to alter some of my gowns, and it will take hours to decide what to bring before she can even begin.”

  “There’s no time for alterations, dear.” In contrast to Rose, whose stomach was churning with excitement, Mum calmly plucked petals. “I mean to leave tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” Rose dropped the stem in her hand. “Tomorrow?”

  “There’s no time like the present,” her mother said with an enigmatic smile.

  Normally, Rose might have been mortified by the implication that her spinsterhood was fast approaching. But this was no time to be touchy.

  No, it was time to prepare.

  She was going to court! Leaving her flowers on the table, she hastened to her chamber to pack.

  FOUR

  “WHAT A DAY.” Chrystabel slipped beneath the counterpane to join her husband in bed, sinking into the mattress as she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like weeks. “Thank heaven they’re married at last.”

  “I suspect you’re really thanking heaven Lily’s virtue is no longer at risk,” Joseph teased, leaning up to kiss her lightly on the lips. He lowered himself onto an elbow, smiling into her eyes, his own a deep, sparkling green.

  She pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead. “Well, there is that,” she admitted. Her eldest daughter’s courtship had taught her the vulnerability of a girl’s virtue—and her own motherly duty to protect it with every stratagem she possessed.

 
Chrystabel was a woman who could learn from her mistakes.

  “But mostly,” she added, “I’m just gladdened to see them happy at last. Everything worked out.”

  “It usually does,” said her ever-practical husband.

  She released a contented sigh. “Another wedding.”

  “Another wedding night,” he responded with another kiss.

  A tradition, their wedding nights. That was one of the reasons she so loved arranging other people’s marriages.

  Chrystabel kissed him back, her hands on his warm, stubbly cheeks. “I’ll miss you,” she murmured against his lips.

  “Where are you going?” He pulled back slightly in alarm.

  “I’m thinking to take Rose to court at Windsor. With your permission, of course,” she rushed to add, knowing he would never deny her.

  “Court? Do you expect that’s wise? The men there—”

  “I’ll watch her like a hawk. And rest assured, there’s not a man at court I want for Rose. She belongs with Kit Martyn. He’s at Windsor as we speak, checking on a project—”

  “Kit Martyn? You’ve mentioned him before. Chrysanthemum my love, I know you fancy yourself a matchmaker, but Rose has shown no interest—”

  “Which is exactly why he’s perfect for her.”

  Joseph lifted his head and searched her eyes in the dim, flickering light from the fire. “Come again?”

  “You know how she is. As soon as she sets her sights on a gentleman, the act begins. The shameless flirting and flattery. Don’t you see? She’s doomed to chase away anyone worthy of her—unless he’s someone she thinks she doesn’t want. With Kit she’ll be herself. Charming, intelligent, sharp-witted….why, he cannot fail to fall in love with her.”

  “I suspect he’s taken with her already,” Joseph said dryly. “But what good will that do if she doesn’t fall for him? We’ve promised her she can choose her own husband.”