Chapter Four
“Bloody hell, Harry,you’re going to have to marry the girl,” clipped his brother, every bit the icy Duke of Bainbridge.
Seated opposite Spencer in his study, Harry tossed back a hearty gulp of whisky. Yes, he was going to have to marry Lady Alexandra Danvers. For some reason, the realization did not disturb him nearly as much as it ought. As a fledgling MP, the scandal he’d just created should be enough to chill him to his core. Add to that the fact that the lady in question was not only eccentric but was the sister to the notorious Earl of Ravenscroft and any man worth his salt would be quaking in his boots.
Perhaps it was the liquor or perhaps it was a stupor of a different variety entirely, but Harry could not shake the incipient burst of anticipation within him. More of Lady Alexandra’s lush mouth, her delectable body his to discover and pleasure, did not fill him with trepidation. Instead, it imbued him with an odd surge of expectation.
“I will do my duty, Spencer,” he assured his brother. “Of that you need have no doubt.”
Spencer skewered him with an assessing look. “If you don’t mind my asking, what in the hell were you thinking? Mother nearly had an apoplectic fit.”
He slanted a narrow-eyed glare back. “Mother should be accustomed to scandal, having one son whose life has been the embodiment of it, no?”
His brother stiffened, his jaw hardening. “Harry, if this is about Boadicea, you could have damn well left an innocent out of it.”
“It is not,” he was swift to insist, for Lady Alexandra had nothing to do with his former infatuation with his sister-in-law.
With time, distance, and love for his brother, Harry had realized that Boadicea was a far better match for Spencer than she would have been for himself. She had brought his brother out of his self-imposed exile and had introduced much-needed joy back into his life. For those reasons, Harry was grateful. To suggest that his attraction—and resulting indiscretion—with Lady Alexandra had been caused by his unrequited attachment to Boadicea was inherently wrong.
Spencer was quiet, studying him in a way that made Harry shift in his chair and take another swig of his whisky. Apparently, he approved of what he saw, for he gave a nod at last. “Very well. I think Lady Alexandra will be good for you. Did I not warn you that one day you would find the woman who would drive you to distraction? It would seem we have arrived at that day far sooner than either you or I could have imagined.”
“You also told me never to settle for anything less,” he pointed out with a sardonic air he could not quite suppress. “A forced marriage to save two reputations seems to be rather a sort of settling, does it not?”
“Not necessarily,” his brother said, taking a sip of his own whisky at last. “If you will recall, my nuptials with Boadicea occurred in much the same manner. Think of it this way, if you will. There are any number of ladies with whom you could have caused a scandal over the years and any number of indiscretions in which you could have indulged. This one was different, and there is a reason for that.”
Yes, this one was different.Shewas decidedly different. Lady Alexandra Danvers, who gadded about in men’s garb, who was compiling a weather prognosticator, who carried about a tool to measure rain and snowbands in her pocket. Who had flaming red hair, bewitching freckles, a lush mouth he could not help but kiss, and the most deliciously curved breasts, waist, and hips he had ever set his hands upon…that Lady Alexandra Danvers was unlike any other female he had ever known.
And in a decidedly good way.
She was refreshing, vexing, confusing, and alluring all at once. He could not get enough of her. She frightened the hell out of him. But all the same, he could not stop wanting her. Perhaps Spencer was not that far from the mark, and she was the woman who would indeed drive him to distraction.
What then? Would it be so indecent to want her? Would it be so injudicious to make her his?
“You are not wrong,” he conceded. “Lady Alexandra is the only lady with whom I desire to begin a scandal. As foolish and impossible as it seems, it is nevertheless truth.”
The stark, unmistakable sound of a fist pummeling the door of the study interrupted the peaceful exchange just then. There was precious little finesse on the part of whomever happened to be on the opposite side of the portal. If Harry had to hazard a guess as to the perpetrator, he would place his coin upon the Earl of Ravenscroft.
“Bainbridge, Marlow, I know you are within,” came a muffled but outraged voice through the portal. “Do I need to break down the bloody door, or will you invite me in?”
Spencer eyed him, ill-concealed amusement curving his lips into a half smile. This sudden propensity for levity—previously absent from his brother’s mien—Harry blamed upon his sister-in-law Boadicea as well.
“All set to rampage, is he not?” Spencer asked with a guffaw that suggested he wasenjoyingthis, the knave. “Perhaps you ought to grant him entrance.”
“Enter,” he called to the brother of the woman he had just disgraced.
A hopelessly awful situation in which he now found himself. He, Lord Harry Marlow, who had always been above reproach, who had never taken advantage of anyone let alone a defenseless female, who had taken care in his every action, curating his reputation as a gentleman…he was now being forced to marry a woman he hardly knew. All because he had unbuttoned her shirt, teased her nipples, and kissed her as if she were a seasoned courtesan.
He stood and faced Ravenscroft, feeling as if it were pistols at dawn. The earl’s expression was hard as granite, his customary unflappable charm nowhere in evidence. He stalked across the study, stopping only when he was close enough to strike. Harry stood tall and braced himself for the blow he knew was coming. Would it be his nose or his chin? Perhaps a blackened eye.
“Bainbridge,” the earl greeted Harry’s brother first in deference to his rank before turning his glacial gaze upon Harry. His lip curled. “Lord Harry. I do believe felicitations are in order.”
“Ravenscroft,” acknowledged Spencer in an equally clipped fashion. Their wives were dear friends, and the awkwardness in their manner had to be down to Harry’s ignominious presence and actions both.
Felicitations.
Here was the blow, then. Not a fist but the sentence of a lifetime. The earl wanted him to marry Lady Alexandra. Harry waited again for the shock to pierce him like a needle. For his mind to violently balk at the notion of marrying the eccentric younger sister of the notorious Earl of Ravenscroft. For his common sense to recall that the woman who would be his wife wore her oddness like a Worth gown, dressing as a man, creating a weather prognostics map, observing a bloody blizzard as though it were the most natural occupation in the world for a gently bred lady.
Mocking him for berating the sky.
