~ Yet even in the scene of mirthful festivity, Flora aware of an unaccountable feeling of Apprehension . . .
Vander had ignored the question of marriage all day, working in his stables from five in the morning to evening. A stallion that he'd bought from Africa, chosen due to his bloodlines, had been delivered that morning. The young horse, Jafeer, had turned out to be both ferocious and completely unnerved by his new residence, and Vander had spent most of the afternoon trying to settle him.
His stable master was convinced that a good night's sleep would make all the difference to Jafeer's temperament. Vander wasn't quite as certain. There was a wild tone to the Arabian's whinny that suggested true distress.
Marvelous. He'd had the stallion shipped all the way to England . . . and now it was showing every sign of being difficult, if not impossible, to train.
He walked into his study and caught sight of an untouched letter: Mia's supposed requirements for marriage. Rage ran up his spine like a flame. The woman actually thought that she could dictate the terms of their marriage?
She was blackmailing him into making her a duchess, and on top of that, insisting on her own terms as well? The hell with that. A man is the master of his wife. Once Mia and he married, he would be in control.
She might be able to buy his title, but nothing else. With a sudden jerky movement, he crumpled the sheet and hurled it into the fire. It fell against the logs and within seconds was consumed by flames.
He had never deluded himself about his intimidating size and rough demeanor. He knew he was the least sophisticated duke in the land. But Mia hadn't shown any fear in response to his explosion of anger, though grown men had trembled in his presence.
Her infatuation was that powerful.
She must have made up her mind as a girl, biding her time until precisely a year after the death of his mother. He balled his fist and tapped it against the mantelpiece, thinking. There was something deeply unsettling about the idea that she wanted him so much, even after all this time, that she was willing to blackmail him.
By all rights, he should feel revolted at the idea of bedding her. But fool that he was, despite his outrage, he still liked her voluptuous figure.
He dropped his hand and turned away, walking back to his desk. She would probably attempt to use his desire to tame him. Every fiber of his being rejected that notion.
It might be time to let the dukedom go.
But . . . he was the duke. It was everything he was, and everything he had. The bones of the house were his. The portraits of his ancestors which lined the walls, the crypt full of those ancestors' bones . . . the coffin where his mother was interred, his father's beside her, an ironic pairing, under the circumstances.
No.
He couldn't let all that history fall into a stranger's hands over something as trivial as marriage. He wanted to keep the title for his own children, even if those children came from Mia Carrington's womb.
Something barbaric stirred in him. Her curves, plump mouth, golden hair: it would all be his. He hardened even more at the thought.
Revulsion followed that wave of lust. She was incredibly short-sighted. What if he locked her in the garret? Starved her? Killed her? He had the feeling that a jury of his noble peers would refuse to convict him of murder, if it came to trial and the sordid facts of their marriage emerged.
Not that he would actually harm her; thoughts were one thing, actions entirely another. But she could damn well accept his terms for this marriage, and the hell with whatever demands she'd made on that sheet he'd consigned to the fire.
He dropped into his chair, took up a sheet of engraved stationery, scrawled a letter, and signed it with his full name.
Miss Carrington:
You will find below the parameters of this marriage. Without your express consent to my terms, I will not marry you and the dukedom can go to hell.
Evander Septimus Brody
4th Duke of Pindar
Viscount Brody
Baron Drummond
He folded it, took out the sealing wax he never used, and busied himself with lighting a candle, melting the wax, and all the rest of the rigmarole involved in stamping the letter with the ducal seal in dark crimson.
A grim smile curled the edges of his mouth as he rang the bell.
When a footman arrived, he handed over the letter. "Send that to the Carrington estate in the morning. Inform Miss Carrington that the groom will wait for her reply."
Chapter Six
From Miss Emilia Carrington to William Bucknell, Esq.
Mssrs. Brandy, Bucknell & Bendal, Publishers
September 6, 1800
Dear Mr. Bucknell,
I assure you that I am writing as quickly as I possibly can, given the fact that I am scarcely out of my blacks. And I was jilted
I have been making excellent progress on An Angel's Form and a Devil's Heart and indeed, I have nearly fifty one hundred pages written.
I have made some salutary adjustments to the plot, and I believe this will be a most original and fresh novel. My heroine, Flora, is jilted at the altar by the hero, much to her consternation. However, this indignity will not go unrevenged. unavenged.
She also nearly dies of hunger, and barely escapes the evil Lord Plum with her virtue intact, until she is finally reunited with Count Frederic, who saves her from a runaway horse.
I believe my readers will find the plot quite enjoyable.
With all respect,
Miss Carrington
P.S. Please send me all of Miss Julia Quiplet's novels by return post. I very much enjoyed reading the book you sent. For many reasons, it has been a vexing few days, but I was much comforted by the novel. In fact, I was unable to sleep last night until I turned the last page of The Lost Duke of Windhower.
Carrington House,
Estate of Master Charles Wallace Carrington
Residence of Miss Emilia Carrington
(And, for that matter, Miss Lucibella Delicosa)
Mia had been at her desk since five that morning, agonizing over her impossibly late manuscript, which translated to trying-with little to show for it-to write the first chapter. If she and Charlie had to escape to Bavaria, they would need her writing income.
She had only reached the stage of writing notes about the plot and trying out scraps of dialogue, which she was capable of doing for weeks before actually sitting down to write a novel.
Perhaps Flora could knock down the devilish scoundrel, Count Frederic, with her mother's prayer book (a nice touch), after which he would bleat pitifully, "But I love you . . ."
Flora would snap back, "I don't know why you're crying, Count. I lost closer friends than you when I was deloused!"
Mia had read that insult somewhere.
Alas, there was no point in even considering a heroine who had been inflicted with lice. A Lucibella heroine would never find herself infested by vermin. Her heroines were always being chased into ravines or threatened with ravishment. But they knew nothing of lice, menstruation, or even rotten teeth. Boils. Smallpox. Syphilis.
A Lucibella heroine would faint or possibly even die if she was diagnosed with a disfiguring infection.
What's more, every gentleman who met a Lucibella heroine instinctively genuflected. It hardly needed to be said that no man would ever whip open his breeches and display his private parts.
That just brought Mia around to thinking about Vander again, though to be honest, she hadn't stopped thinking of him.
She had a fair understanding of the mechanics of the marital act. But that-that part of a man was much larger and more vital than she had imagined.
Because she had imagined it. Roughly the size of a quill, she had thought. Or a pencil.
She had been badly mistaken, clearly.
Unless it was just Vander who was outsized.
After all, everything about him seemed bigger than other men. His chest was wider, his shoulders were wider. It stood to reason that the other parts of him were congruous.
He probably had a huge big toe. Enormous kneecaps.
Humiliation was warring with . . . with mortification. She swallowed hard. It was one thing to deduce that most men's dismissive attitudes meant that they found her unattractive. But it was another to have heard it all confirmed. Vander found her fat and short and embarrassing. And tarred her with her father's brush, obviously.
Mia had been horrified when she first realized Lord Carrington's adulterous activities . . . but at the heart she was a romantic. Her father had loved the duchess so much that he never re-married. Whenever the duke was released from the asylum and returned to Rutherford Park, her father would worry himself ill.
He would walk around and around his library, muttering to himself. In a week or two, something would happen at the duchy-Mia was never quite certain what-and a note would arrive, summoning Lord Carrington.
The duke would be locked up again; her father would resume his place at the duchess' side. Mia had learned from her father that love was more important than wedding vows. Love was everything.