her wariness of the man she was henceforth to love and cherish and—she gritted her teeth as she had done when the minister bade her repeat the word—obey, and against her better judgment she had allowed herself to fall asleep against his shoulder, thereby missing her very first sight of London by night.
It was only when the sound of hushed but obviously angry voices intruded on her slumber that she had roused sufficiently to realize that she was no longer in the coach, but reclining, cloak and all, upon an extremely comfortable bed.
“It’s indecent, that’s what it is,” hissed the first voice, which Jennie had readily recognized as Bundy’s.
“God’s teeth, woman, I was merely loosening the ties of her cloak, not taking the first step in any serious pursuit of debauchery,” a second masculine voice had hissed back angrily.
“Kit!” Jennie remembered she had screamed—fortunately only in her sleep-befuddled mind and not aloud. Squeezing her eyes shut, she had tried to feign sleep once more, hoping they would all just go away and leave her alone, but the earl was too sharp not to notice the sudden tenseness in the lower limb he had just then been in the process of divesting of its footgear.
“Ah ha!” he had crowed, more than a hint of triumph in his voice. “Methinks yon beauty awakes! Dash it all, foiled again. Just when I was about to have my evil way with the innocent, not to mention unconscious, damsel.” This last was said with heavy sarcasm, which, as Jennie could have told him, sailed completely over the head of the hovering Ernestine Bundy.
That overwrought female, torn between her duty to her charge and a strong inclination to indulge herself in a bout of strong hysterics, had then somehow steeled herself to throw her body between Jennie’s and that of her would-be ravisher and declared in a quavering voice, “Over my lifeless, bleeding body, sirrah!”
Even now Jennie’s shoulders shook slightly as she remembered Kit’s immediate descent into the ridiculous—clasping his hands to his chest and fervently denying any intention to harm so much as a single hair of the lady’s gray head while backing toward the door mouthing absurd apologies that had Jennie stuffing her knuckles into her mouth so that she would not laugh out loud.
“I saved you for now, young lady,” Bundy had told her charge as she helped her undress before throwing a nightgown in her general direction and stomping heatedly out of the room. “But I shan’t always be here to protect you. Remember,” was her parting shot, “you have made your bed, my dear—and now you must lie upon it!”
And lie upon it Jennie had done; long into the dark of the early-morning hours, tossing and turning but never finding her rest until a thin, watery sun rose above the horizon.
By the time Goldie had roused her with her morning chocolate, Jennie felt like the proverbial last bloom of summer—faded, more than a tad wilted, and increasingly unable to put on a brave face for yet another chilly day.
But being young, and therefore fairly resilient, by noon Jennie had been sufficiently restored in spirits for her to drag the willing Goldie on the tour that had ended abruptly at the sight of the massive bed in what she knew was the chamber she would soon be expected to occupy with her husband.
I can’t do it! she shrieked silently, her small hands clenching into fists and thoroughly wrinkling the green sprigged muslin skirts now clutched between her fingers. Kit said I had to marry him. Papa said it was my duty. But I and I alone will say whether or not I have to share his bed. And I say no!
“Jane. Jane!” Miss Bundy repeated more loudly. “Woolgathering again, I suppose. Some habits never change. Why, I remember when you were seven and I found you daydreaming in that tree in the garden. I had to call you a dozen times before—”
“Before you startled me out of a very pleasant daydream, as I recall, and I toppled to the ground and broke my arm,” Jennie ended for the lady. “Papa wasn’t best pleased, you’ll remember.”
Miss Bundy merely sniffed, obviously still feeling she had been more victim than sinner in that particular incident.
“Well?” Jennie asked after some moments when Miss Bundy seemed to be lost in replaying old hurts.
“Well, what?”
“You called my name, Bundy, remember?” Jennie sighed, a small smile lighting her face as the familiarity of this little scene made her feel less an alien in an unfriendly land.
Miss Bundy puzzled a moment, tapping one long finger against her pointed chin, before declaring brightly, “I remember now. How very remiss of me. Renfrew gave me a note earlier for you—which I opened, of course—”
“Of course,” Jennie sighed fatalistically.
“Don’t interrupt, Jane. All my many hours of instruction on deportment and still you—but never mind. The note says that the earl desires the pleasure of your company in the main saloon—that’s the huge room just off the foyer, the one that houses the Jones chimneypiece, my dear—at half past three of the clock today. My goodness, it’s that now! You’d best hurry, dear, but do let Goldie straighten your hair first.”
“There’s no time for that, Bundy. I’m late as it is,” Jennie said in reply, already moving toward the door. Now that she had made up her mind about the direction she wished this marriage to take, she was all at once bursting with the necessity to share her decision with Lord Bourne—whom she graciously acknowledged to possibly have some slight interest in the business.
THE EARL OF BOURNE was pacing the main saloon, glass in hand, looking about him with what he hoped was bored disinterest. This place is a far cry from your bachelor digs in the Albany off Piccadilly, even if Byron, Macaulay, and Gladstone shared the same address, Kit, my lad, he mused, positioning himself with one arm propped negligently (he hoped) upon the mantelpiece.
If only he could get over the disquieting feeling that at any moment some long-lost Wilde with a better claim to the title would come bursting through the door and roust him outside and back into the real world.
Kit had never dreamed he would one day inherit his uncle’s title, lands, and great wealth. In fact, the most he had hoped for—when he dared to hope at all—was for the old boy to leave him a broken pocket watch or some such useless trinket.
But fate works in strange ways; in this case by eliminating all close heirs by way of accident or unfortunate illness. And while Kit had been striving to make a name for himself as a soldier, his male relatives had all been conveniently dropping like flies in order to pave his way to the earldom.
And fate hadn’t stopped at the earldom either. Dame Fate, not one to indulge any mere mortal to the point where he might tend to get cocky, had then leavened Kit’s triumph a bit by saddling him with a totally unnecessary gift—a wife.
He abandoned his studied pose—his lordship reclining at his ease—to check the watch at his waist. His late wife, he pointed out to himself, just as there came a noise at the doorway and Jennie entered with more haste than decorum, skidding to an ignominious halt about three feet inside the double doors.
“I…um…I mean, Bundy…er…that is…you wanted to see…um, talk to me?” Now that’s an auspicious beginning, Jennie berated herself mentally, her outward grimace bringing a pained smile to the earl’s face.
Yes, infant, Kit replied silently, I do want to see you—waving goodbye as you ride out of my life. But he did not say the words. Jennie was his
