Celeste Bradley - [Royal Four 02] Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

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  Epilogue

  Every ruler needs a few men he can count on to tell him the truth—whether he wants to hear it or not.

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Celeste Bradley

  Praise

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  ENGLAND, 1813

  Lady Olivia Cheltenham fell into the Thames and was rescued by a Viking god. Rather, she was pushed in—by none other than her very own mother—and the Viking god saved her. In any case, he tried to. Sorry to say, she ended up saving him.

  When Olivia felt her mother shove her over the railing of the Westminster Bridge, she had what seemed like a very long time on the way down to think upon the reason. Despite the fact that Olivia did not have her diary in hand—being in midair, after all—she was sure Mother had never shown signs of being homicidal before. Doubtful indeed that it was a sudden onset of madness.

  Nor had Olivia done anything more offensive than ask repeatedly why she was being required to stand on a bridge and look at the Thames for hours on a chill, windy day. Therefore, the only explanation could be that there had been an eligible bachelor within sight.

  As the icy water closed over Olivia’s head, wrenching her bonnet from her head and taking her breath away, Olivia was forced to admit that perhaps she should be more charitable. Mother had been under such a strain lately.

  Yet surely she wasn’t mad enough to kill Olivia in the hunt for a husband?

  The river was not deep here and Olivia felt her toes touch the soft, mucky bottom briefly before her natural buoyancy began to pull her upward again. Her head broke the surface and she took a much-needed breath. This not being the first time she had ever fallen into water in her life, she had begun to strip off her spencer immediately and now she was able to pull her arms free and toss the short jacket aside to float slowly away.

  Fortunately, her gown would not weigh her down, for she was wearing a very light muslin without much in the way of petticoats. Mother had insisted she wear it this morning despite the weather—a fact made suddenly sinister in the light of recent events. Olivia put her mother’s plotting out of her mind in favor of a more important matter—survival. She was an excellent swimmer, but the water was icy with autumn runoff. It was imperative that she get out immediately. She kicked her slippers away and examined her situation.

  Above her, she heard her mother’s horrified screams and the shouts of what seemed like a large crowd gathering, but Olivia did not waste time peering up at them. The water was so cold that it was already sending spikes of pain into her hands and feet. She ought to get out before she went numb. Turning easily with a sweep of her arms, she spotted a set of the slimy stone stairs that led from the bank down to the water every so often along the river’s edge.

  She was about to strike out for the spot when something large hit the water next to her, sending choking brown filth up her nose and into her open mouth. She sputtered in disgust and swiped at her face, clearing her vision in time to see a pair of great arms reaching for her.

  With a kick, she avoided them easily and swam a short distance away. The arms belonged to a large, filthy stranger.

  Of course, in his defense, he probably hadn’t been filthy before he entered the water.

  In fact, he’d probably looked very nice indeed a few moments ago. Olivia tread water easily as she considered him. If the chiseled cheekbones and firm chin visible beneath his streaming, dirty gold hair were any indication, he normally looked very fine indeed. His head remained very stably above water. Apparently he was large enough that he was able to stand firmly on the bottom. He looked like a very wet, very dirty Viking.

  No, not descriptive enough. He looked like a large, wet, dirty Viking god.

  There was only one man in London who matched that description—Dane Calwell, Viscount Greenleigh, official Catch of the Season. Olivia had never met him formally, but she had seen him at many of the events her mother had dragged her to in the search for a husband. Olivia hadn’t bothered to dream of “the Dane’s” attention—well, at least not that she would admit to, and midnight fancies of Viking … er, conquest notwithstanding, she was most definitely not the Catch of the Season.

  As Mother never failed to remind her, she was a bit too tall for fashion and had never quite mastered the trick of wearing ball gowns with grace and her hair never seemed to stay in place and she never seemed to know quite what to do with her hands—or her unbecomingly large feet—in public and the gentlemen all seemed to be prettier than her, or at least seemed to pay more attention to their appearance.

  Yet Mother had not given up. Cheltenham depended on Olivia. Hence the reason handsome, wealthy Lord Greenleigh had decided to go for a swim.

  Enter the eligible bachelor.

  He swiped long, previously golden hair from his face and blinked sky blue eyes at her in confusion. “Are—are you all right?”

  Mother’s game was working. He was dutifully going to rescue Olivia. How embarrassing. She grimly decided not to play. “Oh yes,” she assured him. “No need to bother about me.”

  Obviously not understanding, he reached for her. Olivia evaded his grasp, swimming effortlessly aside. Unfortunately, this put him between her and the stairs and she was already starting to shiver.

  He reached again. She evaded again. He stared at her in frustration. “Will you come here so I can help you?”

  “No thank you,” she replied primly. “If you’ll simply move aside, I shall make my own way out.”

  He blinked, frowning. The river lapped at his chest much the way it did to the great immovable pillars of the bridge. “What?”

  Olivia gave up. She had no time to make idle chatter with him. He was big enough to simply walk out, but she was growing colder by the moment. Striking out, she took a side tack that swept her a bit downstream of him. Of course, the great fellow reached for her again, but he seemed unwilling to take a single step, so she rounded him quickly and made for the stairs.

  Halfway there, she glanced back. He still stood there, as immovable as a stone. “Aren’t you coming?” she called. “The water is very cold.”

  He turned his head and upper body to look at her. “I—I can’t.”

  Olivia was beginning to lose patience. Her teeth were chattering mightily now and she couldn’t feel most of her body. “I’ll make sure she apologizes,” she snapped. “I know it was a terrible thing to do, but I do think you’re being a bit mulish now.”

  He blinked at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, miss, but the reason I can’t move is that my boots have sunk into the mud.”

  “Oh.” Olivia looked longingly at the stone stairs once more, then turned back.

  “No,” he protested when he saw her returning. “Go on! You must get out of this chill water!”

  Olivia ignored him, stroking swiftly to his side. “Can you not pull your feet from them?”

  He glanced away s
heepishly. “They’re very new and they fit quite tightly. It usually requires my valet’s help to pull them off.”

  Olivia didn’t bother to hide her opinion of that sort of vanity. He glanced at her expression and shrugged. “Everyone is wearing them that way these days.”

  Some Viking god he was. It was just her luck that the only man in London who attracted her was a vain and impractical dandy. As if he needed any help looking stunning!

  Locking her jaw against the chattering that now verged on violent, Olivia reached for him. “You need to take the weight off the mud,” she told him. “Let yourself lean back and try to float your weight on the water.”

  He frowned at her. “I think I’d prefer to stay firmly on my feet.”

  “I’m sure you would,” she said patiently, though it cost her dearly. Still, she could hardly rail at the fellow when it was Mother who had caused the entire mess. “Trust that I know what I’m talking about,” she urged him. “Livestock gets stuck in the mud at home in Durham all the time.”

  “Livestock?” He looked a bit miffed at that but began to lean back obediently. She caught his wide shoulders with her numb hands, kicking fiercely as his weight began to come on her. For a moment she thought he was going to sink like a stone, but then he began to float on the sluggish current.

  “Now wiggle your feet from side to side,” she instructed him. “You must break the suction of the mud.”

  He scowled at nothing in particular.

  “Are you wiggling?” she persisted.

  “I’m wiggling,” he assured her gruffly.

  Olivia was beginning to have trouble moving her limbs. She felt so heavy … .

  “I’ve one free,” he said exultantly, stretching out his arms for balance.

  Olivia kicked too slowly and sank beneath his movement. It took all her strength to push back to the surface. She wasn’t chattering anymore. Her brain felt sluggish, but somewhere she managed to dredge up the knowledge that that was a bad sign.

  He lurched in her grip. “I’m free!” He pulled her close with one great arm, carefully treading water so his feet would not touch down again. “Miss?”

  Olivia closed her eyes. Her lids were far too heavy to hold open any longer. She hung there in his grasp, too cold and numb to save herself now that she’d saved him.

  “Miss!”

  Being one of the most eligible bachelors in London Society, Dane Calwell, Viscount Greenleigh, was actually rather accustomed to saving damsels. In fact, they seemed to drop from the sky to land at his feet in various states of distress.

  There was the time he’d rescued Miss Waverly from a near collision with a bog cart (although it was odd how she happened to be standing in the street just as he left his abode). He’d rescued Miss Morton when her hair ribbons had suddenly become mysteriously wound about a branch at the Teagardens’ house party (they had been such unusually long ribbons). He’d swept Miss Hackerman from the saddle of a suddenly fractious horse when taking his daily ride through Hyde Park last week, although the horse had been perfectly docile until Dane had drawn near (but evidently he had a strange effect on young ladies’ mounts, for that sort of rescue was becoming a regular event).

  The Season was nearly over and Society’s mamas were becoming desperate indeed. They might have been reassured had they known that Dane had every intention of marrying this year. After all, he was in his thirties and his wild days were long done. A man with his responsibilities required an appropriately demure, composed, well-bred hostess and mother for his heir. Therefore, Dane looked on all of this attempted entrapment with amused tolerance.

  After all, it was not inconceivable that he might actually meet a suitable girl by plucking her from the path of a bog wagon. Unfortunately, the Misses Waverly, Morton, and Hackerman had all failed to impress him with their steadiness when they had indulged in outrageous fits of hysterics after being rescued. Still, Dane had hope that he’d find a young woman with a bit more substance before the Season ended.

  So when a young lady fell into the Thames right before his eyes, Dane hadn’t hesitated before leaping from his horse to dive into the water next to the struggling miss.

  Except that this particular miss hadn’t needed rescuing, at least not until she’d nearly frozen while rescuing him.

  She lay in his arms now as he carried her up the grassy bank of the Thames. He didn’t think it was precisely proper for him to be holding her so close, but the limp girl’s mother—who only now had thought to run back down the bridge to the bank—was currently indulging in a rather overblown fit of panic and there didn’t seem to be any servants with them.

  Dane wrapped his sodden coat more closely about the pale, chilled form of his rescuer. He always did his best to see that his—er, damsels ended up properly taken care of after their ordeals, but there didn’t seem to be anyone to take care of this one.

  She wasn’t quite unconscious, but her frozen state concerned him greatly. He was feeling deadly cold himself, and he was far larger than the young woman he held.

  He glanced up at the gathering crowd—where had all these people been while the two of them had been floundering in the Thames?—and picked out a mild-looking young man at random.

  “You there,” Dane called. “Fetch a hackney coach here at once.” The fellow nodded quickly and ran for the street. Dane glanced at the woman he was beginning to think of as “the mother from hell” and tried to smile at her reassuringly. This only sent her into a fresh bout of sobbing and carrying on as she clung to his side. She seemed to feel that she was to blame for some reason. Dane listened for a moment to see if the woman might let drop any hints as to her and her daughter’s identity or what had happened or anything useful at all.

  There was no sense coming from that quarter, so Dane tuned the woman out.

  A shabby hack pulled up on the grass. It was a pretty poor specimen and small to boot, but Dane was in no mood to care. He ordered the mild young man to load the mother into the vehicle and carried the girl on himself. Seating himself in the cramped interior, he settled her into his lap, keeping a protective hold on her.

  Perhaps he ought to be ashamed of noticing that she was a healthy armful and that she fitted rather nicely against him. Most young ladies seemed to aim for a sort of wispy daintiness. It was refreshing to be this close to such a sturdy female. She felt rather … unbreakable. He always felt somewhat uneasy when he came too close to some of the more petite women in Society. His common sense told him that he was not going to crush them during a dance, but his imagination supplied many an awful vision anyway.

  She was attractive, as well, in a healthy country-bred sort of way. Not beautiful, but appealing enough … and vaguely familiar as well. He knew he’d seen her about, but he could not recall much more than the impression of quiet and stillness. Not a flash sort, then. Interesting … .

  So when his coat briefly fell away from the young woman’s bodice during the jostling carriage ride, Dane fell prey to his manly instincts rather than his gentlemanly ones and didn’t precisely avert his eyes from what the thin, sodden muslin wasn’t covering very well.

  Well, well. Very nice. Very nice indeed. He could safely change his description from “sturdy” to “buxom.”

  Olivia wasn’t unconscious, unless one counted being too cold and humiliated to be able to fend for oneself. Besides, her Viking lord was large and warm and strong and she found herself rather loathe to “wake,” for then he’d surely set her aside.

  However, when she felt the cold air wafting over her bared bodice, she could not resist taking a peek to see if he was taking a peek.

  He was.

  Then he promptly tucked his coat back around her. It had only been a tiny lapse, one she could hardly hold against him when she thought about how much she would like to see him nearly naked and soaking wet … .

  Dane saw her open eyes and smiled at her, glad to see that she was alert once more. Her wry, assessing gaze told him she’d seen him peeking, but he certainly
wasn’t going to affirm her suspicions by appearing guilty. Besides, the brief glance at her full bosom capped with rosy points that pressed tightly to the translucent muslin had been the highlight of his rather trying day.

  Her gaze left his, however, and slid to where her mother sat opposite them, now sobbing somewhat less vociferously.

  “Mother,” the girl said firmly through blue, chilled lips. “T-tell this nice gentleman that you’re s-sorry.”

  The weeping woman uttered something unintelligible, which seemed to satisfy the girl in Dane’s lap, for she then turned to look back up at him with a air of expectation. Dane hesitated, having the feeling that he was the only one who didn’t know what they were talking about. “Ah … apology accepted?” he said finally.

  The girl seemed to relax. “You’re t—taking all of this very well, I must say,” she told him as her shivers continued. “That bodes well f—for your character. You must be a man of g—great parts.”

  Perhaps it was the fact that he’d recently been peeking at her own rather “great parts” or perhaps it was the fact that his own “parts” were becoming more and more stimulated by the motion of a curvaceous bottom being jostled against them, but the commonplace saying struck Dane in quite a different way than it was intended to. He laughed involuntarily, then covered it with a cough. Smiling with bemusement at the very unusual creature nestled on his lap, he nodded. “Thank you. I might say the same about you.” It was a pure delight to come across such a combination of robust voluptuousness and resilient poise.

  The girl eyed him speculatively for a moment, then turned to her mother again. “Mama, you should allow this gentleman to introduce himself to you.”

  “Mama” nodded vigorously, then visibly repressed her sobs and dabbed at her eyes with a tiny scrap of lace that truly didn’t look up to the task of drying all those tears.

  “That’s not necessary, my dear,” the woman said, with a final sniffle. “The Viscount Greenleigh and I have already been introduced.”

  Dane sat there for a long moment with a smile frozen on his face while he racked his memory to place the red-eyed woman across from him. Finally, light dawned. Cheltenham. She was the wife of a destitute earl, but the family was of excellent lineage and spotless reputation. “Of course we have, Lady Cheltenham,” he said smoothly, as if he’d recognized her all along.