To Tame a Dangerous Lord (Courtship Wars 5)

Madeline quelled a frown, not liking the threat—although her consternation was for Rayne’s sake, not her own. She didn’t want him to be deprived of his inheritance because he had stooped to wed her.

Lady Haviland, however, forestalled any reply with an abrupt question. “Has a notice of your nuptials appeared in the papers??

??

“Not to my knowledge.”

The dowager looked relieved. “Then it is not too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For an annulment, naturally.”

A strange prick of fear struck Madeline. Would Rayne’s grandmother succeed where she herself had failed? She had tried repeatedly to convince him of the unsuitability of their marriage, but he might actually listen to his beloved relative when he hadn’t listened to her. If Rayne were to seek an annulment now—

She refused to let her thoughts dwell on such an alarming possibility. Instead, Madeline lifted her chin defiantly, her own tone frosty as she responded. “If you are so opposed to our union, Lady Haviland, I suggest you take up the matter with your grandson.”

“I intend to, I promise you!”

Clenching her jaw, Madeline crossed to the bellpull. “Now that you have insulted me in every possible way, I will ask Bramsley to show you to your carriage.”

Quivering with rage at her dismissal, Lady Haviland straightened to her full imperious height, staring at Madeline as if she were a particularly repulsive form of insect. Without another word, the dowager stalked from the room, leaving Madeline vibrating with anger herself at the exceedingly unpleasant interview.

Rayne would not be happy with her for quarreling so openly with his grandmother. Yet she had been given little choice.

Madeline pressed her lips together, trying to calm her anger. Still, she couldn’t help recalling one of Lady Haviland’s parting shots, accusing her of luring Rayne with her seductive arts. The very thought was laughable. She had no arts!

Nor did she have a wardrobe befitting a countess, Madeline remembered.

With a grimace, she glanced down at the gown her noble visitor had found so objectionable. Admittedly her pride had been a little stung by the accusation that she wore rags. And if she was to take her proper place as Rayne’s wife, it would behoove her to dress the part. Rayne tended to flout society and all its rules, but she already had numerous strikes against her, many of which his grandmother had so unkindly pointed out just now.

Chewing her lower lip thoughtfully, Madeline crossed to the writing desk at one side of the drawing room, intending to pen a note to Arabella. She hesitated to ask her neighbor for advice the very day after her nuptials, not wanting to confess that her husband had pointedly abandoned her during their wedding night.

Yet Rayne had said he wanted Arabella to help her choose some suitable bride clothes, no doubt because he feared she didn’t have good enough taste—and also, perhaps, because she would deem his expenditures “charity” and refuse to accept.

But Madeline was prideful enough to want to dress properly so that she could hold her head up the next time she faced his scornful grandmother or any of her other detractors. Therefore she would commission Arabella’s dressmaker to fashion her a new gown or two.

She might have married for convenience, Madeline thought defiantly as she searched the desk for writing implements, but so had countless other women. She would simply have to make the best of her situation. Although her dreams of a loving marriage might never be fulfilled, she had made her current bed and had to lie in it now, even if her new husband would not be there to share it with her.

* * *

“’Tis no surprise you took on this mission,” Will Stokes said to Rayne with a grin. “I told you a life of leisure would never suit you. And you never could sit idly by when a life is at stake, even if that life happens to belong to our sorry excuse for a Regent.”

“I’ll give you no argument on either account,” Rayne replied. This past year he’d been bored beyond tears by the indolent life of a nobleman. And Prinny had indeed made a poor Regent, earning the wrath of his subjects for squandering outrageous sums on his own pleasure—although his dissipation didn’t make him deserving of assassination.

Rayne had spent much of the day setting his investigative plans in motion. Currently he sat in the small parlor of Will’s home, wrapping up the final details of the operation and sharing an excellent port, which he’d recently given Will as a gift to celebrate his promotion to senior Bow Street Runner.

Their deliberations today had gone much as those in the past, except that this was a case of domestic espionage rather than one on foreign soil. They’d worked together for so many years, they could practically read each other’s thoughts. Will was particularly good at disguises, while Rayne’s sheer size and height rendered him too noticeable to fade easily into the background. Therefore he usually supplied the brains and strategy.

Espionage was a game of intrigue and lies, and Rayne had proved particularly adept at it. He’d speedily moved up the ranks of the diplomatic service until he was assigned the most important missions. Then five years ago, at the instigation of Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh, Rayne had formed an elite cadre of agents under his direct command.

He ran the operations himself, directing a score of men and three women at ferreting out French secrets, cultivating informants, supplying bribes to buy intelligence, breaking codes, translating missives from various languages, intercepting couriers, seizing diplomatic dispatches, and tracking enemy spies across the continent, among other objectives.

Now, however, his task was to foil a potential plot against the Prince Regent. The first attempt on Prinny’s life had occurred nearly nine months ago, when two bullets were fired through his carriage window on his way home from opening Parliament. But the shooter had never been apprehended. According to Arden’s information, a secret political association had been formed in the South Midlands with the goal of disrupting the British monarchy. Two men—brothers, actually—were rumored to be the ringleaders of the revolutionaries and were now fomenting discord here in London.

Rayne had once had a vast network of agents to call upon, but those numbers were greatly diminished now, since like Will, many of his former cohorts had found other employment. To carry out this operation, he’d employed Will—temporarily on loan from Bow Street—along with several other men he trusted. For the next fortnight at least, they would keep the suspects under surveillance and look for opportunities to infiltrate their ranks.

“So how are you liking your marriage shackles?” Will asked in an abrupt change of subject. “I confess you gave me a facer when you decided to wed so suddenly.”