Secrets of the Viscount's Bride, page 1
She took a deep breath and reminded herself to be meek and obedient Caro and not Martha.
How she was going to explain her dyed locks when she got home was a puzzle she distracted herself with as she got her nerves and temper back under control. She frowned at the dark-haired stranger in the mirror and decided the only way would be to invent a fever and have it shaved off since Noakes had had to use such powerful dye to cover her stubbornly bright hair that it wouldn’t wash out. Being bald until her red curls grew back wasn’t a pleasant prospect, but now it was time to go downstairs and pretend Caro would be delighted to marry Lord Elderwood in seven days’ time. She tweaked the low neckline of her sister’s gown to see if there was a sliver more modesty in it but there wasn’t.
“Are you ready?” Noakes asked her doubtfully.
“No, but I’m still going to do it,” Martha said with a last glance at the stranger in the mirror. Now Martha just had to get her downstairs and publically betrothed to Viscount Elderwood before she panicked and ran away.
Author Note
When I first had the idea for Secrets of the Viscount’s Bride, I came up with a recipe.
Take one prewedding house party, a very reluctant bride-to-be and her mysterious half sister, and one trapped and very unhappy groom.
Stir it all up and add a pinch of mystery and old sins, and a large handful of deception.
The result was Martha and Zach at cross purposes and striking sparks off one another, and I hope you like the end result!
ELIZABETH
BEACON
Secrets of the
Viscount’s Bride
Elizabeth Beacon has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Harlequin Historical.
Books by Elizabeth Beacon
Harlequin Historical
Falling for the Scandalous Lady
Lady Helena’s Secret Husband
Secrets of the Viscount’s Bride
The Yelverton Marriages
Marrying for Love or Money?
Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount
The Governess’s Secret Longing
The Alstone Family
A Less Than Perfect Lady
Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess
One Final Season
A Most Unladylike Adventure
A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
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
Excerpt from A Manhattan Heiress in Paris by Amanda McCabe
Prologue
‘You will do this for us, won’t you, Martha? Please say you will!’ Lady Fetherall begged with tears in her eyes.
‘I’m a hill farmer, Caro, not an actress. We live such different lives. How could I fool anyone into thinking I am you for a whole week? I doubt I could manage it for half an hour,’ Martha protested.
‘You were such a clever mimic when we were little. I don’t remember much about the time before Papa died, but I know you used to imitate people to make me laugh and you were always getting in trouble for it.’
‘That was a childish game, and anyway, isn’t it a crime to impersonate someone with the intent to deceive?’
‘I don’t know, but since you wouldn’t be deceiving me, then probably not.’
‘I’d be deceiving your viscount, though, wouldn’t I?’
‘Stop saying that,’ her half-sister said with a shudder that gave away her feelings towards the man she was supposed to marry in two weeks’ time. ‘He’s not my viscount. Even if I had never met Richard and fallen in love with him, Lord Elderwood would only be a stiff and chilly aristocrat to me.’
‘He’d be your stiff and chilly aristocrat if Mr Harmsley hadn’t persuaded you to marry him instead, though, wouldn’t he?’
‘True,’ Caro said with a grimace and a look of such blank horror that Martha began to wonder if this viscount her sister was engaged to was just a more important version of Caro’s repellent first husband. She shuddered at the thought of a repeat of that awful and sometimes violent marriage for her sister, so she hated to think how Caro felt. ‘There’s something else I must tell you, Martha,’ Caro confessed but avoided Martha’s questioning gaze.
She felt a rush of affection for the half-sister she saw so seldomly, thanks to their heartless and manipulative grandfather, Alderman Tolbourne. She recalled Caro looking the other way and wringing her hands just like this when they were small children, before their grandfather had parted them. He had done it on the pretext that Martha was a disgrace to the family name because she was born with red hair and there was none of it in his family or her lying dam’s either—or so he said. Therefore she could not be his son’s child but must be another man’s bastard imposed on Sam Tolbourne by the designing harpy who lured him into running away with her when he was barely out of the schoolroom.
Martha knew her father and mother must have truly loved one another to do such a thing, and that they had had to elope once her mama realised she was with child. Tolbourne had had such grand plans for his only child, and he had forbidden her mother and father from having anything more to do with one another. She had been old enough to hear that story from her father before he died, but Caro hardly remembered him now. How utterly lonely her half-sister must have been when their grandfather filled her young ears with a distorted version of their impulsive but loving papa and took from her even the memories of his warmth and affection for both his daughters.
‘Best get it over with, then, Caro,’ she said gently.
‘I am with child, Marty,’ Caro said in a rush, as if that was the only way she could say it without bursting into overwrought tears.
‘Goodness...’ she said lamely. It felt so odd to think of her vulnerable half-sister being a mother in a few months. Caro had been married to the dreadful Sir Ambrose Fetherall for years until he fell downstairs while drunk and broke his neck. It must have been such a relief that union had proved to be fruitless, but what a shock to find she was increasing and wasn’t married to the child’s father.
‘Did you know about the baby when you became engaged to Viscount Elderwood?’ she said.
‘Yes, but Grandfather gave me no choice but to agree to his proposal and I dare not tell Lord Elderwood I don’t want to marry him. Even without the baby I wouldn’t marry him, Caro. Titles mean nothing to me, and I just want to be loved and Richard really does love me.’
Well, obviously he says he does since he’s got you with child, Martha’s inner cynic whispered, but she told it to be quiet. What a mess, even if it was Charlton Tolbourne’s fault for forcing Caro into this marriage of inconvenience. It felt like Martha’s duty to at least try to stop Caro being forced to marry one man with another one’s child in her belly. She would have to do this, then. It was the only way Caro and her lover could marry without their grandfather finding out and forcing Caro into another marriage against her will. It looked like a pitifully poor chance, since it depended on Martha acting the fine lady for days at a time, but it was one they would have to take.
‘I suppose it is Mr Harmsley’s baby and not your viscount’s?’
‘Of course it is,’ Caro said indignantly. ‘I love Richard. I couldn’t let another man touch me like that now. And will you please stop calling him my viscount.’
‘You are engaged to him and I had to ask.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘How do you feel about the baby?’ Martha asked warily.
‘Scared,’ Caro said and she looked it. She seemed to search for words to explain, ‘yet so very happy it will be Richard’s child so I can love it and him.’
Martha understood. Even gentle Caro would have found it very hard to love Fetherall’s child. Martha felt the old weight of trying to make her little half-sister’s life as their late father would have wanted it; she certainly hadn’t been very successful since his death. Caro deserved to be happy after a lonely childhood and unhappy first marriage, but Martha couldn’t help but feel a painful pang of jealousy because her half-sister was about to experience the joy she had longed for so desperately herself when her dear Tom Lington was alive. She still had an aching void in her heart and Tom had gone to his watery grave five years ago at the Battle of Trafalgar. If he were alive, he would tell her to open her heart to her half-sister and the family Harmsley and Caro would have together. So, it looked as if this mad scheme to take her half-sister’s place while
‘I am terrified Grandfather will force me to wed this man, even if he finds out I am with child, Martha.’
‘But you are not a seventeen-year-old girl to be forced up the aisle against your will this time, Caro. You are a widow of three and twenty and legally entitled to marry whomever you choose.’
‘Try telling Grandfather that. He has had me watched ever since he found out that I was meeting Richard in secret. That’s why I had to ask you to come here to meet me instead of at Noakes’s sister’s house in Islington as usual. Even Grandfather’s thugs can hardly push their way into an exclusive London modiste’s premises when I am supposed to be choosing my trousseau. You know better than anyone how ruthless Grandfather can be, given what he did to you. We wouldn’t be so alike if there was an ounce of truth in that wicked story he set about when we were little.’
Martha shuddered. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘Nothing matters to him except getting his own way and he wants his great-grandson to be a lord one day. He claims Papa let him down by marrying first one doxy then another—and they were our mothers for heaven’s sake, Martha, even if we don’t remember them.’
‘We know they were good women and Papa loved them because he was a good man and not a bit like his father. But you’re quite right about Tolbourne. I was only six when he threw me out and he must have known it was a lie even as he accused me of being a bastard and not Papa’s child at all.’
‘If only I hadn’t hidden behind you and been so shy I wouldn’t even speak to anyone else, he might have let us grow up together,’ Caro said with a helpless shrug.
‘Don’t you dare blame yourself, Caro. He did it because I defied him. Papa said I must protect my little sister if ever he wasn’t able to, and Tolbourne was so cold and stern that you were terrified of him. You were so little; it was all his fault and never yours. He must have decided to turn you into a lovely husband hunter from the day he first saw us and realised I would fight his plans every step of the way if he kept me. I admit I was surprised when he made you marry a mere baronet the first time.’
‘Grandfather couldn’t buy his way into the ton proper for a titled husband back then so he made do with Brose. Brose’s title got me into the fringes of it, despite his shocking reputation. But Grandfather is richer now thanks to his shady dealings during this horrid war, so he can afford the lord he always wanted me to marry this time.’
‘Why not tell Lord Elderwood you are with child, Caro? Lords are always desperate for an heir, and the prospect of a cuckoo in his nest is sure to horrify him.’
‘Grandfather must have some sort of stranglehold on him to force him to offer for me. What if I tell him and he decides to marry me anyway and tell the world my baby was stillborn so it could be put in an orphan asylum?’
Martha felt a cold hand close on her heart at the thought of Caro’s child left to fend for itself as she so nearly was herself as a child. But this was no time to recall old terrors when she had Caro and her baby to worry about. ‘Why would he, Caro? That story sounds very far-fetched, even to me,’ she said and hoped she was right.
‘But what if I’m right?’
‘Even if you are, Tolbourne can’t force you up the aisle to wed this Lord Elderwood.’
‘You think not? You don’t know him as well as I do, then,’ Caro said starkly.
‘Thank goodness,’ Martha said. ‘But are you sure you can’t confide in Lord Elderwood and save all this trouble?’
‘No. He’s set on marrying me, and I know I am only a means to an end. He thinks I don’t matter enough to know what that end is, of course,’ Caro said bitterly.
As Martha’s younger sister wasn’t usually bitter, despite so many reasons why she could be, the man must have treated her very coldly indeed. Martha decided she might as well hate him in addition to Tolbourne, and she had only been grasping at straws before, looking for an easier way out of this mess than the charade Caro was asking her to perform while she made a dash for Scotland with her lover.
‘Oh, very well. If there’s no other way to get you and Mr Harmsley safely wed without Tolbourne and his tame viscount finding out, then I suppose I will have to do it,’ she finally conceded.
‘Oh, thank you, Martha. You have always been a better sister to me than I deserve,’ Caro said, seeming on the verge of overwrought tears before she blinked them back. ‘But we don’t have much time and you need to learn much about me and about Grandfather if you are going to convince people that you are me for long. It’s as well, Grandfather thinks we haven’t seen each other since the day he sent you away so it won’t even occur to him we could have swapped places. I am so grateful to you; all three of us are.’ Caro put a protective hand on her still flat stomach and met Martha’s gaze with so much emotion in her dark eyes, which were so much like Martha’s own.
However alike they looked—if you ignored the difference in hair colour—Martha had never had an unborn child to fight for. ‘It’s what sisters do,’ she said. ‘But how can you spend so much time with me if Tolbourne is having you watched so closely?’
‘Celine is Noakes’s niece and she’s really called Sally, by the way. She says you can stay here in her private apartment while I pretend I am being fitted for my trousseau, but really Noakes and I will be doing our best to turn you into a fine lady.’
‘Good luck with that unlikely transformation, but for now I had better write to Grandmama Winton and tell her I have decided to visit a couple of my fellow naval widows while I am in the south and not to expect me home until Candlemas. I do hope it doesn’t snow too hard before the beginning of February, Caro.’
Martha tried to think of all the gaps in the story so nobody would come looking for her and destroy their web of lies because she did have a real life to go back to. She could hardly expect Caro to know how vital it was to get food and water to even the hardy sheep that Martha and her maternal grandparents kept on their Cumberland hill farms when the snow came.
‘I can pay for extra help if you like, just in case it does.’
‘No, if Tolbourne found out and put two and two together it would sink us.’
‘What a horrid thought,’ Caro said with a shudder. ‘But you won’t leave Kent before the day of my supposed wedding to Lord Elderwood, even if you hear of blizzards in the north, will you, Martha? Richard and I need a week’s head start to be sure of getting to Scotland fast enough to outwit them all at this time of year.’
‘I promise to do everything I can to fool your viscount that I am embarrassingly eager to marry him. From the time he arrives at Tolbourne’s country house until the day before the wedding—I do draw the line at leaving him waiting at the altar while I make a hasty getaway on the day itself.’
‘Of course. Now, let’s get on with your lessons in being me before you change your mind.’
Chapter One
Seven days later, Martha felt so stifled by her grandfather’s overheated country house that she longed for the fresh air of her Cumberland home. Not that she could take much in, with Caro’s corset pinching and confining her into a shape she hadn’t known her body could endure until now. Outwardly she was the silk-clad mantrap their grandfather had made Caro become, but inside she was still Martha and longed to go home and resume the quiet, isolated country life she had enjoyed before this charade had begun.
She reminded herself how ruthlessly her grandfather had made Caro flaunt her fine figure and lovely face to catch a nobleman and she laughed to think she might actually owe him something for rejecting her so harshly and publicly as a child. At least hating him would lend her the courage to go downstairs and begin this pretence in earnest. She sighed at the memory of Caro arriving at Celine’s exclusive West End establishment this morning, as arranged, supposedly to pick up her wedding gown. Instead of Caro returning home afterwards with the gown, Martha had come here in Caro’s place. Meanwhile Caro had slipped out of the back door dressed as one of the seamstresses to meet her lover, who had been waiting impatiently for her a few streets away, to begin their escape.
