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

  Barnes collected the pile of documents, making signs of dismissing him. But Sutton wasn’t ready to leave yet. ‘What about those papers? We haven’t talked about everything in them yet.’

  ‘And we won’t until you have your bride,’ Barnes said sternly, not appreciating the affront to his competence, as if he’d left something undone. ‘Your uncle has left instructions to be read upon the announcement of your engagement. Then, and only then, shall we proceed. He was very thorough, Mr Keynes. As for you, there is a lot to think about, and do, if you choose, in a very limited amount of time. Please let me know if I can be of assistance.’ It was about as blatant a dismissal as they came. The implication was clear: the clock was already ticking. The old man might as well have turned over an hourglass and started counting down the minutes towards four weeks.

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate your time today, Mr Barnes.’ Sutton rose and extended his hand. ‘We will be in touch.’

  Outside, the sun was still high, it was still July in the city, and it was still hot. Sutton ran a finger around the inside of his collar. It seemed unfair the world had not changed in the hour he’d spent in the solicitor’s office. His life had changed. Shouldn’t the world have changed as well? Sutton headed towards Ludgate Circus, pausing at the public urinals to relieve himself before he caught a hansom cab to Mayfair. Too much damn tea. Too much to think about, all of it circling back to focus on one critical issue: a bride. Without a bride, it wouldn’t matter how willing he was to make the sacrifice.

  Perhaps that was what he hated most about the whole arrangement. It required him to rely on someone beyond himself. It was not something he did easily or often, even with friends. To do so now with a woman he didn’t know was preposterous. He liked to be the one who controlled the variables of any given experiment. Now, the critical variable was beyond him. Everything hinged on her, whoever she might be.

  Sutton shook his head. No. He would not be the victim here. He would not focus on what he didn’t control, but on what he did. He might not know a woman to marry, but he did know a woman who could help him: his mother. Before he could approach her, however, he needed a moment or two to think. He had the cab stop and let him out a few streets before he reached South Audley Street. By the time he reached number 71A a plan was forming. He would solve this situation as he solved every other puzzle placed before him—with logic and reason.

  Chapter Two

  ‘This is the most ridiculous, most scandalous thing your uncle has ever done. Wherever will you find a bride in four weeks and at the back end of the Season? People are thinking of leaving London, not lingering.’ Catherine Keynes gave voice to the very thoughts that had plagued him from the ice-blue sofa in the drawing room where her at-home had just concluded.

  ‘Those were my thoughts, exactly.’ Sutton gave a wry chuckle. ‘But you look well, Mother. Between the two of us, I am sure we’re up to the task. I have a plan, but I will need an able assistant.’ He studied his mother—a strong, shrewd woman who loved her family fiercely, if not maternally. He’d always thought, growing up, that she would have made a formidable queen in bygone years. He could imagine her navigating the dangerous intricacies of medieval court politics. His mother was the ablest person he knew for what he intended. Well connected, well experienced in society after thirty-two years among its ranks.

  ‘I should have known you’d have a strategy.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t suppose that strategy involves walking away from the fortune. You don’t need it and I don’t need it, in case you were thinking of taking it for my sake. I am comfortable enough with what your father left me. Who knows? I might even remarry at some point should the right man present himself, then you wouldn’t need to worry over me at all.’ It was a distinct possibility. His mother was still a handsome woman at fifty. This afternoon, she was dressed in a blue-and-silver gown of summer cotton that matched the drawing room decor, her still-dark honey hair coiffed in an intricate collection of braids. Her posture straight.

  Sutton stopped pacing and leaned against the white Carrara marble mantel, imported from Italy and expensive, a further reminder that the Keyneses didn’t need the money. They lived well enough on their own, Sutton’s own father having made a fortune in the south-east Asian trade. Sutton shook his head. ‘You know I can’t just turn that money over to Bax.’

  ‘It’s not your job to save the world from him,’ his mother argued the temptation that had crossed his mind in Barnes’s office. He could walk away and it certainly made things easier. He could forgo a hasty, dramatic bridal search and retreat to the comfort of life as he knew it. But that was neither socially responsible, nor was it the honourable thing to do.

  ‘“All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing,”’ he quoted. ‘I have to do my part.’ Sutton paced the length of his mother’s drawing room, pushing a hand through his thick hair. He blew out a breath. ‘The last girl Bax “importuned” killed herself last week. She washed up on the shores of the Thames with stones in her pockets.’

  ‘Good lord.’ His mother blanched. ‘Will no one stop him?’

  ‘He’s too powerful. He owns too many secrets. But we can mitigate him and, in time, I can work against him and others like him. He’s not alone in his corruption or his brand of it. For now, I can rob him of excess funds.’

  ‘By making a scandal of a marriage?’ his mother scolded, a furrow creasing her brow. ‘A race to the altar can be nothing less than a spectacle.’

  ‘Certainly it can’t be less than a spectacle, but it can be more.’ That was the plan anyway.

  ‘I like the sound of that.’ His mother held up the Wedgwood teapot in question. ‘Tea, darling? While you lay out your grand plan?’

  ‘No, no tea.’ Sutton quickly waved away the pot. He’d had enough tea today to last him all week. ‘Here’s what I am thinking. If my marriage must be a spectacle, I want to make it one worth watching. I control if it becomes a scandal or not. I want to make it a grand event, create the perception of a whirlwind romance, love at first sight.’ But it would be quite the exacting experiment beneath that frothy surface.

  His mother smiled. ‘You want to make it a fairy tale. I like the idea. It certainly softens the edge of scandal. You invite all the eligible girls to a house party at the Newmarket estate. Let them have a taste of the luxury that could be theirs. We’ll put out the best china and polish the good silver to impress the mothers. We’ll lay in champagne and French wine to impress the fathers. Hartswood always shows at its best in the summer. The girls can stroll and pose in their pretty dresses for you in the gardens while their fathers fish the river.’

  Sutton laughed. ‘You make it sound so easy.’ He wished he had his mother’s confidence when it came to his marriage. Some of the burden eased with the relief of having a partner in this. His mother did not challenge his decision, she simply got behind him and lent her considerable energies. ‘I’m afraid it needs to be a bit more involved than pretty poses in the garden. I don’t want to select a wife based on how she looks in a dress. I tried that once, a deviation from the norm, and a failure of an experiment, if you recall.’ The disaster of Miss Anabeth Morely had been years ago in his youth, but he had no desire to repeat it.

  Sutton moved on, refusing to dwell on the memory. ‘We’ll need a full slate of a variety of activities. I want to arrange to have time with each of the girls, to observe them in different settings, with different people, and with me. At the end of the house party, we’ll hold a ball and I will announce my choice at midnight, the perfect ending to the fairy tale we’ll create.’

  ‘So, the party is to be your microscope? You’ll be putting them under the lens of your scrutiny,’ his mother surmised aptly.

  ‘Yes. I suppose it is. But I am not the first to use a house party to such ends. There is no scandal in the setting I propose. It’s quite traditional, really.’ And it was efficient. He could gather everyone in a single space for
his consideration.

  ‘A setting and a task torn straight from the pages of a fairy tale,’ his mother agreed. ‘When is the party to be?’

  ‘In five days. I don’t think I can spare any more time than that if I’m to meet my uncle’s deadline. Can you do it?’ It wasn’t the idea of the party that he doubted, it was the implementation. They had to act quickly, but extravagant entertainments took time. ‘Can you arrange the activities, the details, the guests?’ He was counting on her for this. His days would be taken up with paperwork and other legal details. Even so, he didn’t know the first thing about planning a party of this magnitude.

  ‘In five days’ time? You want the impossible, but I think we can manage.’ Her eyes danced, energised by the challenge. ‘It’s a mother’s job to know how to arrange these things. If you are set on this, then I will help see it done.’ She smiled softly. ‘My son is getting married. Goodness knows you’ve made me wait long enough. I should start planning the wedding while I’m at it since time is of the essence.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother.’ He was an only child, out of poor luck in that department. His mother should have had legions of children to command: daughters to march out on the marriage mart, sons to organise into professions. Instead, she’d got him, a gentleman scientist who preferred his camels and horses to the social whirl. His one foray into that world had not recommended it. Some experiments didn’t bear repeating.

  There was one last piece to discuss. ‘As to the guests, I am aware the Season is slowing down and so many of the girls are spoken for.’ Sutton thought of the tea heiress, Pavia Honeysett, married now to his friend, Cam Lithgow. She would not have fit his uncle’s criteria but she, a girl of mixed birth and not title, had caught the eye of a marquis before her marriage, general proof that girls had been swept up early this year and the competition for well-born wives was fierce.

  ‘There’s always someone to marry.’ His mother was unbothered by his concern. ‘People are looking for something new now that Ascot and the Regatta are behind us. I’ll post an announcement in The Times and London will converge on Newmarket in five days.’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘Everyone will want to come.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘And we’ll let them; let them vie for your attention. London will wait upon your favour. You needn’t beg, not with your good looks and the promise of that fortune.’

  That’s what he was worried about. He didn’t want to limit his choices to the dregs, to wallflowers and fortune hunters, but he kept his thoughts to himself. There was only so much of the situation he could control, thanks to his uncle’s stratagems. It wasn’t the house party that would draw them, it was the mere presence of the fortune. Whether he was in Newmarket or in London wouldn’t matter. At least in Newmarket he could control who he spent his time with. Here in London he’d be at the mercy of other people’s guest lists. He bent to kiss his mother on the cheek and took his leave. He needed the sanctuary of his club, a drink and time to think. Who would want him, just him, now? Who would even see him, the man, standing there behind the fortune? In that regard, he’d just have to trust to luck that he’d be able to throw the net wide enough. But he was a scientist. Trusting to luck was not something he was used to doing.

  * * *

  There was a reason for that. Luck often failed and it was failing him spectacularly today. Sutton had barely set foot inside the asylum of his club before he realised his mistake. London had not waited for an announcement in The Times. From the buzz in the common room, it seemed the whole city already knew he had been named heir to Sir Leland Keynes’s fortune. By four o’clock that afternoon, London fully grasped the import of that. The Season now had an eligible parti nonpareil.

  Sutton was bombarded with men wanting to shake his hand, some of whom he hadn’t seen since school days, others whom he’d never met at all but who claimed introduction through convoluted connections. Older men wanted to offer condolences on his uncle’s passing, younger men wanted to renew acquaintances or establish them. All of them had sisters, daughters, nieces, cousins, wards or god-daughters. The preponderance of females offered up to him made his earlier observation about the dearth of candidates laughable. Apparently, marriageable females were thick on the ground when one was possessed of a fortune.

  But his instant popularity reinforced his earlier worry. He’d become nothing but a placeholder, a gateway to a fortune. Sutton made his way to an empty, isolated chair in the corner and ordered a drink. He didn’t kid himself the privacy of his seat would last long. He was a man no longer, but a thing to be used and manipulated for personal gain, the very reason he’d resisted the idea of marriage for so long. He didn’t want an alliance. He didn’t need an heiress’s money or a debutante’s father’s political connections. He wanted something more.

  Not love, necessarily. The idea of love was an illogical concept when it came to the science of successful pairings. Animals didn’t mate for love or for alliances. They mated for strength, for compatibility. That’s what he wanted. Compatibility. Someone who loved animals, who would enjoy working beside him with his camels and his horses, who might enjoy him. Those wishes were now officially relegated to the dustbin of impossibilities.

  A pair of young men approached his sanctuary and invaded with oblivious bonhomie, taking advantage of a very casual connection. They’d met once or twice at Tattersall’s. ‘Keynes, so good to see you. Dare say we’ll see more of you in London, these days.’

  Sutton smiled and shook their hands, wondering just how long it would take them to mention the unattached women in their lives.

  ‘My sister is with me this Season,’ the first one said, and Sutton restrained the urge to laugh. Of course she was. It had taken the man all of thirty seconds. A record, to be sure. If his uncle wasn’t already dead, Sutton would kill him for this. His uncle had made his life a living hell.

  Chapter Three

  Bermondsey Street, south-east London—

  Saturday, July 14th

  The fast click of boot heels on the wooden treads of the boarding-house stairs alerted Elidh to her father’s return. From the sound of those clicks, he was excited and in earnest. That worried her. It usually meant he had concocted a new scheme to lift them out of the encroaching poverty of their life. Elidh set aside her mending and steeled herself for whatever came through the door. With her father, one never knew. Sometimes he brought home people, sometimes he brought home ideas. Once he’d brought home a monkey. She wished he’d bring home money. They could use some right now. She’d economised all she could and it still wasn’t enough. Not for the first time, she wished her father could be normal, that he would get up in the mornings and go to a clerking job for the Bank of London. A man could make a hundred pounds a year clerking and there was security. A clerk worked for life, until he chose to quit.

  Right now a hundred pounds a year sounded like a fortune to her. They could move out of the dingy boarding house, even out of the dockside neighbourhoods, to a cottage, perhaps in Chelsea. They could eat their own meals instead of the general fare served downstairs in the dining room where they ate with the other boarders. But her father wasn’t a clerk. Clerking was beneath him. Just ask him. He was a playwright, the leader of an acting troupe. At least he had been three years ago, when her mother was still alive and every day had been full of adventure.

  Her mother was dead now, lost to tuberculosis, and her father might as well be, too, stumbling through life without his wife, his love, his raison d’être. He had moments. Moments when he was inspired to write his next big play. The moments lasted a few days, long enough to conjure hope that this time it might end differently, that he might complete a work, that it might actually be good enough to sell. But it always ended the same way. Crumpled papers on the floor, a mad rage in which he declared his latest work was rubbish and he vowed never to write again. But that had to change. They’d been close to broke before, but nothing like this. There’d always been something to sell,
something to be done to get them by. This time, Elidh wasn’t sure anything would save them. There wasn’t anything left to pawn, no prospects left to hope on that a play might be finished, that a patron might emerge to purchase it. She had counted their funds this morning. Counting her recent payment from a dress shop that gave her piecework during the Season, they had enough to pay the rent for another month, but that was an unreliable source, petering out when the Season ended. Such inconsistency made for long winters. When the money gave out this time, she didn’t know what would happen next.

  The door to their rooms crashed open, her father waving a newspaper excitedly in one hand. ‘I’ve found it, Elidh! This will be the making of us!’ He thrust the paper at her. ‘Read!’

  Elidh took the newspaper hesitantly. It was fresh, newly printed. She thought of the coin that had been spent on this luxury, precious shillings that could have been hoarded against the inevitable. She scanned the page her father had folded back. Her brow furrowed. It was the society page. Gossip, all of it, most of it about a Sutton Keynes and his newly acquired fortune. The reported amount staggered her. Just moments ago, she’d been thinking a hundred pounds a year would be heavenly. Lucky him. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with us.’ She passed the paper back to her father.

  ‘Don’t you see, Daughter? The bloke needs to marry, quickly, or his fortune is forfeit. He’s holding a house party to find a bride. Anyone is welcome.’

  A tremor of angst rippled through Elidh. What was he planning? Her father couldn’t possibly be thinking of going? Of passing her off as bride material? Had he looked at her recently? She was plain: blonde hair, nondescript eyes that vacillated between hazel and brown. The most interesting thing about her was her name. A man who could pick anyone would definitely not choose her. He probably wouldn’t even notice her. She took back the newspaper, scanning it once more. ‘Anyone who fits the standards, Father,’ she corrected, feeling more confident she could scrap his airy plans. ‘He needs a woman with a title.’ There was nothing her father could do about that. There wasn’t a title anywhere in their family tree. He was a playwright, her mother an actress.