Tempted By His Secret Cinderella (Allied At The Altar Book 3) Read online

  ‘Bad news?’ Rosie asked at last. ‘Did the performance not go well?’

  ‘On the contrary. Chiara has won his favour,’ her father said solemnly. ‘She was spectacular tonight.’

  Rosie looked between them in confusion. ‘Then this is cause for celebration? We’re going to be rich!’

  ‘We’re going to be liars for ever,’ Elidh said softly. ‘This will never be over. If we’re found out, it will ruin not only us, but Sutton, too. He will lose the fortune if he doesn’t wed a woman of noble birth, or he’ll have to support the lie.’ How had this happened? She wasn’t even playing the game and yet she’d emerged tonight as the perceived front runner for Sutton’s attentions.

  ‘Then we make sure he never finds out. After a while, it will cease to matter. He’ll be so in love with his new bride. It’s not as if he suspects anything as it is,’ Rosie reasoned.

  ‘It’s not him I’m most worried about,’ her father put in. ‘The others will try to bring us down now that his preference is public. I am sure many a parent will be burning the midnight oil with hasty letters back to London, making enquiries now that the Principessa is a threat to their daughters. Rosie, we need all the servants’ gossip you can hear. I will personally assign myself to Catherine Keynes to head off any trouble on that end.’ He fixed them with a general’s stare, the one he’d used in Julius Caesar. ‘The real fight begins now. We must be more vigilant than ever to ensure no one gets inside our defences.’

  ‘I can intercept the letters,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s easy enough. They’re all collected on a plate, waiting for the footman to take them, once they’ve been franked.’

  ‘Or we can leave now,’ Elidh interjected firmly. Rosie and her father were building schemes upon schemes now, talking of intercepting and stealing letters. Even if only one letter slipped through, the risk of discovery would be great. ‘What will people find in London, Father, if enquiries are made?’

  ‘Nothing but one late-arrived letter,’ her father replied thoughtfully. ‘The one letter I told Catherine Keynes I’d sent asking for permission to join the party. The one that arrived purposely late, which confirms our story. We have nothing to fear from London, because there’s nothing there. Why ever would we leave now when we are so close to winning?’

  Because they couldn’t win, Elidh thought desperately. Even if they won, they lost. This ruse could not and should not be sustained. Elidh sighed. It was up to her, then, to put a stop to the madness and there were only two ways to do it. Either leave or tell Sutton the truth.

  * * *

  He was getting close to the truth and now the damn trail was cold, just when Bax had wagered a significant sum on his cousin proposing to a woman who didn’t exist. The best runners in London couldn’t find her and no peer of note had ever heard of the Principessa Chiara Balare di Fossano.

  Bax ordered another brandy. Something was afoot, something that would hopefully justify this journey back into town. Before his cousin’s house party, it seemed, no one in London, high society or low, had ever known of or encountered the Principessa except a young ticket seller who’d sold Prince Lorenzo Balare di Fossano first-class accommodations the day of the party.

  Hell and damnation. Bax opened the slim file again, hoping to see something new in the information, something he hadn’t seen before. But the file was scant. There was one sheet inside. It contained two lines. His eyes fixed on the line that mattered.

  It is the conclusion of this investigation that beyond the sale of the tickets there is no record of the person you have enquired after.

  No record. Nothing.

  The runner had tried to explain to him that ‘no record’ simply meant there was no criminal record. Police weren’t interested in ordinary citizens who committed no crimes, and certainly not foreigners visiting for a short time. He’d dismissed the runner and gone to the club to think—not White’s. God, no. White’s was too pristine, too clean for him, populated by men who gave themselves pristine airs as well.

  Bax preferred a different sort of club—the Tartarus, located in Covent Garden where the population of gentlemen who frequented clubs was a wilder set. One could see all nature of interesting human behaviours outside these windows and there were rooms in the back where there were no windows. Peepholes. Maybe. Well, most likely. The Tartarus didn’t skimp when it came to depravity and predilections. It was not the sort of place Sutton would ever frequent. Oh, no, his perfect cousin was going to marry a princess. Sutton had the world’s best luck, it seemed. Forced to marry a noblewoman within four weeks and a beautiful Italian princess drops into his lap.

  But not if Bax could help it. He was a big believer in the idea that when something looked too good to be true, it definitely was. Usually, people vanished into thin air. But the Princess had appeared out of thin air and conveniently just in time to win a fortune. How interesting. One wouldn’t think a princess would be intrigued by a fortune. Normally, they came with fortunes of their own. Of course, Fenworth had told him she was only at the party as an observer, so perhaps that explained it. Perhaps. Bax wasn’t buying it. He took a swallow of his drink, letting the brandy burn down his throat. It was a cut cheaper than what White’s would serve, but he liked the edge. It kept him sharp. He had business to conduct in a while. But first he wanted to poke a few holes in this mystery.

  The dregs of London had no record of her. What of society? Surely the upper class had records? The police kept note of criminals but society kept note of princesses. Surely she would have caught the haut ton’s attention? Surely she would have been mentioned in society pages, raving beauty that she was? It was this piece that mystified him more than the lack of a criminal record. Successful frauds didn’t have records anyway and one would have to be extremely successful to escape his aunt’s detection. But how to prove it? Maybe he didn’t have to prove it. Perhaps a brazen stab in the dark with a little blackmail would be enough to send her running off into the night. It might be time to put in an appearance at the party and conduct a little fishing expedition. He could leave London on the morning train.

  A man approached the table, well dressed but with an air of roughness about him. Breeding would always tell, Bax thought, no matter how expensive the suit. He’d made this man rich, but he couldn’t make him a gentleman. ‘The cargo’s ready. Did you want to inspect it one last time?’

  Bax tossed down the rest of his drink and stood. ‘They’re clean? We have a doctor certifying they don’t have the pox?’ That was a mistake he couldn’t afford to make—giving an eastern pasha the pox. It would be tantamount to a declaration of war. England wouldn’t thank him for it if the Ottoman Empire accused him of infecting their royalty. It would expose the whole arrangement and him.

  ‘Yes, sir, and everyone made their marks on the papers saying they chose to do this freely.’ That was critical. It was the one thing he could use as proof that this wasn’t slavery, that these women, most of them prostitutes, had chosen to take his offer to send them to Turkey. It was an enticing offer the way he presented it: to live in the luxury of a harem, to have clothes, food, shelter all their days. All they had to do was what they were already doing, only they didn’t have to settle for the next sailor off the boat. They could have a king. That wasn’t entirely true but the distinctions of Ottoman royalty would be lost on them. Bax didn’t even try.

  ‘Hopefully it wasn’t too much trouble?’ Bax asked, following the man to one of the back rooms.

  ‘No more than usual. There’s always a couple who resist, but we took care of that,’ his man assured him. It was to be expected. It was a lot like net-fishing—a few unexpected fish were pulled in with the usual catch, but the ends justified the means and if Bax sent a few girls east that might otherwise not have gone, he didn’t worry over it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  His mother looked worried. Sutton glanced up from his correspondence. He’d stolen a few moments after brea
kfast to sift through the mounting pile of letters that had accumulated during the house party. ‘What is it, Mother? Have the guards thrown another girl out of my chambers?’ He smiled, but his mother didn’t laugh.

  ‘I want to talk about Princess Chiara. You were indiscreet last night at the musicale. I have been entertaining arguments all morning from concerned and angry parents. Lord Wharton has been most vociferous.’ His mother took the chair across the desk. Her gaze was steady, but she looked drawn, giving truth that her words were not exaggerated. ‘She offers you nothing, Sutton, but a distraction from the real task at hand. It insults the other guests.’

  Sutton sat back in his chair, ready to defend his position. ‘If I was staking a claim to her, she is noble—that’s all she needs to offer. It seems people are too quick to admit defeat if they’re already assuming I’ll marry the Italian Principessa.’ The Marquis and Lord Wharton would only be too thrilled to know Chiara had resisted his efforts to court her affections. They’d rest far easier if they’d heard the conversation on the balcony last night instead of seen it. ‘For the record, however, you’re wrong on the other account, too. She does offer me more than just a title that satisfies my uncle’s will.’ How did he describe what she offered? There was peace in her presence, a chance to be himself, to express himself in ways he did not share with others. He tried to explain. ‘We have things in common. Surprising things. She makes me laugh, she speaks her mind. She’s the one girl here who appears to like me, not my money.’

  A tempting realisation flickered to life, taking shape from the amorphous, nameless something that had flared between them from the start. I could be happy with her. We could build a life.

  His mother read the trajectory of his thoughts. ‘Can you truly see a princess rusticating with your camels at your dairy?’

  Sutton did not hesitate. ‘Yes. Not any princess, but I can see her. She rescued a gosling on our boating expedition. His foot was hurt and she scooped him in up in her palm and brought him home.’ The more he argued, the more the idea grew and took form.

  His mother arched a brow coolly. ‘A gosling is not a stable full of camels. It’s not like you to be irrational. Think, Sutton, how unnecessarily complicated it would be. How would you live together and satisfy your uncle’s conditions? Your uncle’s will doesn’t allow for more than three months apart. Will she give up living in Italy? Will she expect you to spend part of the year at one of their many villas? You can’t even spend two weeks away from your stable. You’re chafing to be down there even now. How would you manage months at a time?’ She gave him a pitying stare. It wasn’t that the stable needed him. A manager could handle it. It was that he needed the stables. He couldn’t be away from it. He was always drawn back to it. These last days, being so near and yet unable to be at the stables as he usually was, had been difficult.

  Sutton said nothing. His mother was sowing the beginnings of doubt, as he was sure she’d intended to do. Chiara’s question last night ran through his mind. Why? What could come of it? Perhaps, like his mother, she also saw the impossibilities of anything beyond the moment, no matter how great the attraction. What was happening to him that he had not? He, with his great mind for logic and his past, should have been the first to see them.

  ‘Perhaps you should consider these things if you insist on singling her out and kissing her in front of everyone,’ his mother warned.

  ‘I did not single her out,’ Sutton growled. ‘Any more than I kissed her in front of everyone. People need to mind their own business. It was a private conversation. Voyeurs were not invited.’

  ‘Yet it does not change the fact that, under other circumstances, the situation was nothing short of compromising. If it had happened at a London ball, you’d have been forced to the altar.’ His mother did not back down. ‘The only thing protecting you now is that no one in that room last night wants you to marry her. They want you to marry their daughters and you can’t if you’re caught compromising the Principessa.’ His mother’s eyes blazed. ‘Sutton, you know nothing about her, about where she comes from, who her people are. She makes you laugh? That is not enough.’

  ‘It was enough for you and Father,’ Sutton argued. ‘Why shouldn’t my marriage be held to the same standard of happiness and mutual respect? Love, even, if we can find it.’ There it was again, the contradiction he’d tried to explain to Chiara last night. The logic of choosing a mate had failed him. Like was supposed to attract like, that’s how it worked in the animal kingdom. There were indicators that guided one’s choosing and those indicators were ironclad. But not for him. The straightforward methods of the animal kingdom had failed him, superseded by an illogical emotion, something he’d thought he’d given up long ago after the debacle with Anabeth Morely. More to the point, something he should not revisit, if he had any sense. Emotion had served him poorly once. There was no reason to believe it would serve him any better a second time around. With so much at stake, he could not afford to lose his head over Chiara Balare. He knew that much at least, even if it seemed he was having difficulty from stopping himself from the action of doing it, proof that simply knowing wasn’t preventative enough.

  ‘You have different standards, now. Your uncle has seen to it.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘Since Leland’s death, I have wondered if this is his way of getting revenge against me at last for not choosing him...’ she looked up at him ‘...the sins of the father being visited on the son and all that.’ Sutton knew this story, the love triangle between the brothers and the lovely Catherine Allwise in the Season of 1829. She’d chosen the second son, to the first’s everlasting dismay, a dismay that coloured his marriage a year later to the wealthy East India Company heiress, Rose Hampton. His mother’s idea wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. His uncle was keen on revenge in general—the will was proof of it, subtly pitting cousin against cousin in a race for the fortune.

  ‘No, Mother, I don’t think this is about revenge against you,’ Sutton offered. His mother wasn’t looking for approbation, she was looking for absolution and he would give it to her. He’d been looking for something of the same last night on the balcony. Was this whole debacle truly his fault? ‘Love doesn’t work that way. If Uncle Leland had loved you, he would only have wanted your happiness even if it wasn’t with him.’

  She smiled. ‘I appreciate your thoughts. I do want the same for you, I am just not sure the Princess is the one you can find it with.’ She was holding back, debating whether or not to speak. For a woman who didn’t usually hesitate to be direct, this offered a level of intrigue and concern.

  ‘What is it, Mother? You have reservations. I hear it in what you’re not saying. Do you know something?’ His stomach clenched, a horrible hypothesis forming. What if he couldn’t choose Chiara? What if there was some impediment that prevented her from satisfying his uncle’s conditions? He ran through the conditions in his mind. There’d been no stipulation that the bride had to be English. Any nobility would suffice. But he was going to need more than the usual persuasion. Her eligibility might not matter if he could not overcome her resistance.

  ‘I fear she’s not who she says she is.’

  ‘Has there been word from your enquiries?’ He would pursue this logically. He would not let emotion ride him, but the knot in his stomach drew tighter, making him regret the extra sausage he’d had at breakfast.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing yet. But I am not the only one making enquiries. Wharton has written to friends and I suspect, after last night, others will write as well.’

  ‘So, there’s no proof.’ The knot began to relax. It was all jealous supposition.

  ‘Not yet. I just need you to be prepared, to have a second choice in mind. Don’t alienate the other girls. Remember that no one likes to be second place. You will lose Imogen Bettancourt. The Marquis will not settle for his daughter to be a runner-up and to marry a man with no title. His pride will not allow it. Others will f
eel the same way. If you make them mad enough, they might join forces and leave you holding an empty bag, force you to surrender the fortune because you snubbed their girls when you had the chance.’

  Ah, so his mother had come with worries and warnings this morning. What if Chiara refused him at the last? What if someone designed an obstacle that forbade him from choosing her? Choosing Chiara had suddenly become dangerous, not only for her, but for him.

  ‘So the lords have gone from bribing us for our approval to threatening us for it,’ Sutton mused over the birth of this new strategy. It was in direct response to his actions last night. Sweet heavens, they might as well put up a board like the one at the Newmarket race track displaying all the odds. He could imagine where the most pressure for this threat was coming from: Wharton, the Marquis, and Isabelle Bradley’s father. ‘Then it’s time for us to divide and conquer.’

  Sutton ran through in his mind the allies he needed most and who could be sidelined. In other words, which girls did he have to keep hopeful? Louie Fenworth didn’t have the balls for confrontation and what balls he had were likely engaged on behalf of the Bissell twins as opposed to his poor sister, Eliza. But he would keep the Fenworths hopeful just because it was no trouble. Alexandra Darnley and Virginia Peckworth would easily find matches when they returned to London, matches their families might benefit from more in other, non-financial ways. They wouldn’t protest much and neither would their parents. Moving them to the back of the pack would satisfy Wharton’s little coterie by suggesting their own daughters were rising. ‘Let Wharton and the Marquis know their daughters are still in contention. I’ll spend time with them both today on the shopping trip to the village. We’ll take the barouche, just the three of us.’