The Bargain Bride
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Teaser chapter
“A doyen of humorous Regency-era romance writing.”*
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“Funny and touching—what a joy!”—Edith Layton
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“Remarkable. . . . An original, laugh-out-loud, and charmingly romantic read.”—Historical Romance Writers
“A true tour de force. . . . Only an author with Metzger’s deft skill could successfully mix a Regency tale of death, ruined reputations, and scandal with humor for a fine and ultimately satisfying broth.”—The Best Reviews
Also by Barbara Metzger
The Wicked Ways of a True Hero
The Scandalous Life of a True Lady
Truly Yours
The Hourglass
Queen of Diamonds
Jack of Clubs
Ace of Hearts
The Duel
A Perfect Gentleman
Wedded Bliss
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In memory of Edith Layton—
a great writer, a better friend
Chapter One
Lord and Lady X were wed in a match arranged by their parents. They have been blissfully ecstatic ever since the wedding . . . an entire month ago.
—By Arrangement, a chronicle of arranged marriages, by G. E. Felber
Three years was a long engagement. Thirteen years was ludicrous. It was an insult, an error of judgment, an affront to good manners and good sense, but, damn, it was thirteen years of freedom.
And it was over now, blast it to hell.
West regretted the loss of his liberty almost as much as he regretted the supposed slight to Miss Goldwaite, but he would not take the blame for the entire decade’s debacle.
He had not chosen the bride.
He had not chosen all the delays. The bride was too young; then she was in mourning. Soon after, West joined the army, where he wished he was now. He resigned his commission when his father and brother died, after which he spent years trying to restore the family’s fortunes. He’d thought that if he could repay the settlements, he could rescind the agreement between his father and Mr. Gaspar Goldwaite.
Hah! The banker was as tenacious as a bulldog, and twice as ugly. West shuddered to think what the daughter looked like now. At thirteen, she had been sunburned, scrawny, and had scraped knees. She had been pale, still scrawny, with swollen eyes at sixteen, at her mother’s funeral. He had not seen her since.
He had not chosen to see her today.
Likely she was a skinny, sour-faced spinster at twenty-six, he thought, with her father’s spectacles, if not his sparse hair. She’d be purse-lipped and prunish, saints preserve him, countrified and coarse. Just look where she and her grandfather lived, he considered as he read yet another signpost to Little Falls. Lud, he lived in London. What could he have in common with a common-born rustic female? Not that he was a snob, but he was a tit
led gentleman of university education, worldly-wise, politically minded, and socially accepted. Zeus, what had his late father been thinking?
The previous viscount, God rest his gambling soul, had been thinking that he had nothing but leaking roofs, debts, and spare sons. Gaspar Goldwaite, on the other hand, had everything except entrée to the polite world for his only daughter, Persephone. It was a match made in heaven . . . thirteen years ago.
West, Kendall Westmoreland, was well aware that he had to marry. With his father’s passing, and then his elder brother’s, he was Viscount Westfield. He had never expected or coveted the succession, but he had stepped into his father’s shoes vowing to be a better holder of the venerable title. He was thirty-two years of age, and the sense of duty weighed heavily on his shoulders. He liked his bachelor existence, but he knew he owed his patrimony more than leaving the estates and obligations to his younger brother, Nicholas, a scapegrace pleasure-seeker with pockets perennially as empty as his head. West sighed as he passed through Little Falls—which was little more than a church, an everything store, and a smithy—on his way to Littleton Cottage. He’d rather be facing French cannon fire.
He had to marry, and it seemed he might have to marry Miss Persephone Goldwaite. The banker had made it abundantly clear that his choice was a proposal or pistols at dawn.
Shoot at a balding banker with bad eyesight? Impossible. Almost as impossible as wedding the man’s daughter. Damn. West knew he should have settled the whole matter earlier, repaid his debts and convinced the female to cry off years ago. He’d always thought—when he thought about the engagement at all—that Miss Persephone Goldwaite would have found another poor chap to marry. Hell, she was an heiress. There were scores of men with titles and debts eager to make such a match, even if they had to compromise the girl or kidnap her. Instead his betrothed was rich and unwed at the age of six and twenty. The woman must be as ugly as her father.
West almost turned his horse back the way he had come, but he was no coward. He might refuse a ridiculous challenge, but he could not ignore his own conscience. Honor, not a dawn meeting, had him up early this morning, and desperation drove him forward, seeking out his fiancée before her financier father was out of bed at the inn six miles south. He could have driven with Goldwaite to this village in the middle of nowhere later this afternoon and listened to his prospective father-in-law plan the wedding and his forthcoming children’s lives. West chose to ride ahead, alone, early, on a hired horse from the inn’s stable.
At least he got to make one decision for himself.
Penny scrubbed as hard as she could as she tried to get rid of the stains and smells of paint on her skin. Or else she was trying to rub away the stench of her father’s message. They were arriving this afternoon. He was coming, the cad who had ruined her life. Penny reached over the side of the copper bathtub for another can of hot water. No amount of soap and suds was going to wash away that stain, but heaven take it if she wouldn’t try.
While she rubbed her skin raw, Penny tried to regain her equilibrium. She was not going to let that man affect her one bit, never again. And, she told herself, dunking her head under the water, sending soap bubbles flying across the room, he had not actually ruined her life. She would not give the toad that much credit. She liked the life she had, running her grandfather’s country house, supervising the staff, managing the nearby orphanage and school, helping the vicar care for the aged and infirm in the parish. She led a worthy, rewarding life. Not like some London rake who cared for nothing but his own pleasure.
No, her life was fulfilling. It simply was not the life she had imagined before he entered it, then left without a second glance. Granted, he was not responsible for his father’s debts, the war, her mother’s death, or her father’s remarriage, but nearly everything else in her life could be laid at his door. Why should her new stepmother keep Penny on in London’s marriage mart when she was already promised? Why pay for new gowns and more Seasons when the new Mrs. Goldwaite had two young daughters of her own—less well favored, considerably less well dowered—to raise? Why have another mistress at Goldwaite House—one used to running the household and adored by the servants—when Penny’s maternal grandfather in the country had no one to look after him? So Penny had been sent to Yorkshire to wait for her fiancé to come.
He had not.
He had not rescued her from the wicked stepmother. He had not saved her from banishment to a hidden castle. He had not slaughtered any dragons for her. Kendall Westmoreland, now Lord Westfield, was no fairy-tale hero. He was no hero at all. What he’d killed was her childish dreams; that was all. The first time she had seen him, when their fathers met to sign contracts, he’d been kind. The second, at her mother’s death, he’d been comforting. He was the handsomest, noblest young man in the entire kingdom, a prince from her storybooks, a god from the myths she read, a creature of magic and wisdom and beauty and sweetness and strength.
She was a child, and a fool. He was a weakling. And cruel.
He should have escorted her the year of her come-out, before her father remarried, when Mr. Goldwaite hired a widowed baroness to chaperone Penny, but he was with the army on the Peninsula. He should have visited her before he went off to war. She would have followed the drum gladly if he asked her. He should have come to see her when he reached his majority, rescinding those contracts and ending the betrothal while Penny could have found another man to marry. She had been certain he would come four years ago when he succeeded to his father’s title and sold out of the army. No one would have expected a viscount to wed a banker’s daughter. She was suitable enough for a second son, but not the heir. He had not come to York even then, nor sent for her to come to London. He stayed in Town enjoying himself, likely using the engagement to keep himself safe from matchmaking mamas, if he mentioned it at all.
Penny would have stopped scanning the London newspapers when she started seeing her fiancé’s name in the society columns instead of the war dispatches, except she had to read the papers to her grandfather. According to the on-dits columns, his lordship’s current inamorata was a Lady MG, dubbed the Colorful Widow, whatever that meant. Penny assumed she was buxom, beautiful, and wealthy, to boot. Not that she cared, of course. Westfield obviously did not care about her or her feelings. He never once came, or wrote, or sent a message. Never.
Now he was arriving this afternoon. Likely because her father had been made a knight, probably for paying Prinny’s debts, the same way he had paid the previous viscount’s. Perhaps her father’s new title made Penny a more acceptable bride for his lordship’s puffed-up pride.
She tossed the washcloth across the room with enough force to knock over a bottle of perfume. No, by heaven, he’d come to ask her to cry off, finally, because he had to start his nursery. Women who wanted to be mother to his sons must be lined up in London, waiting six deep.
Good. Let one of those silly twits have him and his care-for-naught manners. Let her worry when he rode off to war, and let her weep when she read about actresses and opera dancers. Let her spend thirteen years waiting for love.
No, Viscount Westfield had not ruined Penny’s life. He’d broken her heart. Now she would not marry him if he were the last man on earth. He was here only because everyone knew a gentleman did not break an engagement. He simply made his betrothed so miserable that she was eager to end the arrangement. Cry off? She would shout it from the rooftop this very afternoon, if she had any skin left.
A boy ran around the side of the building to lead West’s horse away, but no one answered when he let the brass door knocker tap on the door twice. No one answered, which would never have happened in a properly run gentleman’s residence in London. Even more telling of the difference between city life and country dwelling, the unlocked door creaked open when he rapped again.
“Halloo?” When no one answered his call, West stepped through the entry and found himself in even more unfamiliar territory. Bright splashes of color assaulted his sensibilities
from every inch of the narrow hallway, from paintings—no, he amended, smears—of every size and shape, that were hung ceiling to floor. The Academy of Art was known to fill their walls, but with art, not these . . . these . . . Words failed West. The closest description he could give was the works on display might have been painted by a cow with a brush tied to its tail. Great daubs of color flew across the canvases with no rhyme nor reason that West could see.
He shook his head. Here he’d been worried that his promised bride was no beauty. He should have been concerned that she was cockle-headed, and color-blind to boot. How could anyone live in a place like this? He thought of the quiet refinement at Westfield Manor, the few cherished heirloom masterpieces he’d been able to reclaim. Then he thought of Miss Goldwaite being chat elaine there. “Great gods.”
“Magnifique, non?”
West turned, and shook his head again. Maybe he was the one with attics to let. A large man stood there, carrying a ribbon-wrapped spear. The man’s size did not intimidate West, although his own six feet were overshadowed by the other’s height, nor did the spear seem threatening. What had him nonplussed was the fellow’s attire, or lack of it. He was wearing a feathered head-dress, a beaded leather breechclout, and war paint, lots of war paint. Now he pointed the spear at one of the paintings and answered for West. “A masterpiece, oui.”
“Oui . . . ,” West sputtered, eyeing the spear’s sharp point.