Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1) Read online

“Addy, who are you talking to in there?”

  “I am talking to no one, Your Grace, and I intend to continue talking to no one until I remove my naïve person back to Sussex where I belong. Good day, Your Grace.”

  Adelaide clapped her hands over her mouth to capture the giggle that punctuated her declaration. Her heart might be broken, but her wit and mouth worked fine.

  “Addy, please, I must speak to you.”

  The cajoling tone was a balm to her injured romantic sensibilities. Her pride, however, grew angrier with every “Addy” he spoke.

  “My name is Miss Formsby-Smythe, Your Grace. Do try to remember that. As I intend never to see or speak to you again, you should not have further use of it after today.” Oh, that was good too. Much more of this and she might begin to feel sorry for him. Might.

  “Oh, for the love of—” Marcus pushed open the door and came to a dead stop in the middle of the room. He appeared incapable of pulling his eyes away from the mound of lacy undergarments strewn across the bed.

  If she wasn’t so shocked and yes, angry with him, it would be amusing. The man who faced cavalry charges and French cannons without a second thought was brought to a standstill by bits of lace and ribbon.

  “What are you doing in here?” she demanded, praying he did not hear or see her knees knocking. “I believe I was speaking the King’s English when I told you I did not wish to speak with you.”

  “What?”

  Good Lord, the man had not a clue what she’d said. Adelaide snapped her fingers in front of his face. That did it. He scowled at her like an old man caught napping.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, still scowling.

  The giggle she stopped, but not the sigh of exasperation. “I am packing, Your Grace. What does it look as if I am doing? Thank God there is no intelligence requirement for dukes or you would be in dire straits indeed. Now will you kindly leave so I can finish my packing?”

  “Intelligence require—” He caught himself before he continued. “No, Addy… Miss Formsby-Smythe, I will not leave. I need to talk to you. I’ve come to offer you a proper proposal.”

  Adelaide rolled her eyes. “I am certain you have nothing to say I care to hear at this point, especially a proper proposal.” She scarcely believed her ears. She should not be saying such things to a duke, especially one as… large as Marcus Winfield. Perhaps it was the room. He appeared taller somehow. And wider. And quite a bit more intimidating. She needed to do something to eliminate the feeling of being a small mouse trapped in a room with a rather large cat.

  With an air of indifference she did not feel in the least, Adelaide turned back to the half-empty dresser and grabbed another handful of chemises and nightrails. Wordlessly, she walked to the bed and began stuffing them into an already overstuffed portmanteau.

  “We have to marry, Addy,” he said, running a long-fingered hand through his already tousled hair. “Surely you know that.”

  She continued her route from wardrobe to bed with only one brief glance in his direction. Every surface in the room was covered with the clothes she had so angrily pulled from their places. He had an inordinate amount of trouble finding a place to sit. Adelaide nearly laughed out loud when he finally settled gingerly onto the bed. He glanced at the garments strewn around him as if they were an army of fey creatures ready to suddenly rise up and attack him.

  “As lovely as that proposal was, Your Grace, I am afraid I must decline,” she said with a smile even she found insincere. “Do close the door on your way out.” Without missing a step or an inch of her faux smile, she tossed the next armload of clothes over him as if he were part of the furniture. He flailed about in confusion for a moment before he clawed his way through the curtain of silk and lace and glared at her menacingly.

  She feared he was ready to strangle her. Then he did something far more frightening. He grinned. One by one he picked up her undergarments and admired them with an odd sort of gleam in his eye.

  “These are quite lovely, Addy. A bit provocative for a girl only a few years out of the schoolroom, aren’t they?”

  Adelaide snatched them out of his hand with an indignant sniff. “I sincerely hope you enjoyed fondling my unmentionables, Your Grace,” she told him as she stuffed them into every available space in her luggage. “I assure you it is as close as you will ever get to my drawers as long as you live.”

  The fierce heat of a completely embarrassing blush crept over her. Good Lord, she’d done it again. Even now, he raised his annoying eyebrow as if he wanted to burst out laughing.

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Marcus Winfield.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Addy.”

  “I told you my name is—” She did not get the chance to finish.

  Before she knew it, they stood toe to toe. Who knew such a large man could move so quickly and quietly. She tilted her head back to look up at him.

  “I won’t laugh at you, Addy,” he said softly as she stared into those fathomless green eyes. “And I won’t call you Miss Formsby-Smythe. Or even Adelaide. I’ll call you Addy. Because it suits me to do so. And you will marry me.”

  “Why, Marcus?” she whispered. She was a dried leaf adrift on a powerful north wind.

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why?” That wind died immediately at his hesitation.

  He stared at her blankly. She watched him blink a few times and then, there it was. A little flicker of panic skittered across his face. The flicker all men show when they have no idea what the right answer might be. It was the signal to any woman asking a question whatever answer a man gave her was a stab in the dark, at best. A corker of a lie, at worst.

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Your Grace,” she said with a sigh. “There can be only one reason you are proposing when you declared it completely unnecessary and romantic nonsense only an hour past.”

  “I didn’t say completely unnecessary…” He was wise enough not to continue.

  “I will tell your mother you proposed very prettily and I politely turned you down.”

  “I don’t find telling me I will never get any closer to your drawers terribly polite,” he said with a smile. “And I did not propose to please my mother.”

  “Oh really?” Adelaide folded her arms and stared at him pointedly.

  “I have it on the best authority I am a duke, and I, therefore, have the right to tell my mother no.”

  “Julius never did. I daresay you both grew up rather terrified of her.”

  A strange look came over his face as he retook his seat on the bed.

  “I wasn’t aware you knew Julius so well, until I saw you at… the funeral.”

  “I daresay you didn’t know I was alive before that day.” She waved away whatever his response might have been.

  Adelaide, compelled for reasons she did not understand, sat next to him. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I had a rather miserable season after you proposed to Clemmie. With her off the market, every rake and fortune hunter in the ton suddenly found me very attractive.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? You are very attractive.” He sounded so sincere she almost believed him.

  “You don’t have to say that, Marcus.”

  “I know.”

  She looked for a lack of sincerity in his simple response. It was not there. He really should stop looking at her like that.

  “My father may be a mere mister, but he is worth a fortune. The only person in our family worth more was my Great Aunt Adelaide. She left me her entire estate. All one hundred thousand pounds of it.”

  Marcus’s low whistle of appreciation made her chuckle. “What did that have to do with my brother?”

  “Julius kept them away,” she said, unable to keep the gentle smile of remembrance from her face.

  “Them?”

  “The fortune hunters and other riff raff. He, Dylan, and I became quite the team.”

  “Dylan? Dylan Crosby, Wessex’s brother? Addy, he is the riff raff. He is one of the most notorious
rakes in England.”

  “Who better to keep the other rakes away?” Adelaide rather liked the expression of outrage on his face. She had no idea what it meant, but she liked it. “Dylan and I grew up together. He is a dear friend. As was Julius.”

  “Oh.”

  She did not know how, but she felt his distress. His face did not show it. She simply knew. Adelaide covered his hand with hers.

  “He worried about you, you know. He was terribly proud of you, of course, but he did worry.”

  Marcus gave her a weak smile and shook his head. “He tried to talk me out of joining, but when he knew I was set on it, he paid for my commission. Said to try not to get killed as Mother would never forgive him.”

  “He told us the same thing,” she said. “We were with him, you know, when he got the word you were wounded. He was so frantic to reach Belgium and bring you home Dylan went with him. I don’t suppose you remember that, do you?”

  “I confess I don’t remember much of the month of June at all, nor a great deal of July. I remember Julius and Jeffries, his valet, being on the ship with me. Was Crosby there too?”

  He looked genuinely puzzled, which tugged ever so slightly on her heart. For a man like Marcus, not being in total control of his faculties must have been horrible.

  “He was,” she assured him. “Julius was shouting and bullying everyone so, poor Jeffries was afraid you would all be thrown overboard. From what I was told it was Dylan’s job to smooth over the feathers your brother ruffled from Waterloo all the way to London. He’s very good at that, you know. Smoothing things over.”

  “I imagine he is.” Marcus’s expression was not a pleasant one. “I cannot imagine Julius bullying anyone though. He is… was always so amiable.”

  She had to change the subject immediately. One more wince or sad smile from him and Adelaide would throw her arms around him and declare her undying love. It would undoubtedly be her most humiliating moment since her brothers soaked her petticoats in nettle juice the night of her first visit to Almacks.

  “As are you, Your Grace,” she said as she rose and returned to her packing. “With that said, you can go and tell your mother you have done your duty. Tell her another fickle Formsby-Smythe chit has turned you down. As there are only the two, you are safe to venture back into society.”

  She refused to look at him. Her sensible, practical head did. Her traitorous eyes, however, had other ideas. He appeared to be deep in thought. She knew from experience male creatures were at their most dangerous then. Men deep in thought or in whispered conversation could only result in mayhem. It had to be written down somewhere, and if it was not, it should be.

  “Addy,” he said sweetly. “Since you and Julius were… so close, I am certain he would have approved of us marrying. It would be a dishonor to his memory if I don’t do the right thing. Don’t you think so?”

  Sometimes men in deep thought resulted in mayhem. Other times the result was simple idiocy.

  “I think,” she said, holding a shoe in each hand. “I shall throw at least one of these shoes at you for using your dear, dead brother to get ‘round me. Really, Your Grace. Not even my brothers would do something so low.”

  “It was worth a try,” he muttered, even as a wash of pink crept over his face. “Addy, be sensible. We have no choice. We fell down a great blo… blasted hole and spent the night together. The tale is all over Yorkshire by now and halfway to London. By the time the tabbies in Town get through with it, I will have thrown you into that cave, ravished you, and you will be big as a house with twins.” He finished with a motion of his hands to indicate what she could only guess was an approximation of the aforementioned “big as a house” shape.

  She gaped at him in horror. It was all she could do not to lift her hand to push her mouth shut. He was hysterical. Worse, he was worried about the appearance of things, nothing more. She may have thought herself desperately in love with him at some point, very well at all points since she’d laid eyes on him. She was not, however, so desperate as to marry a man who obviously felt it necessary to do so for appearance’s sake. She could not do it. It was a good and honest decision, and it made her want to cry.

  “Addy, now see here—”

  Good Lord, he was still talking. All the way back from the cave and downstairs in the parlor he’d barely said two civil words to her. Now he could not shut up. Once they actually started talking men were incapable of stopping until they said something truly, truly witless.

  “It won’t be such a bad marriage,” he continued. “I suspect we will limp along well enough together. I can run a military campaign. A marriage can’t be much worse than that.” He had the utter temerity to smile in triumph.

  And there it was. The only virtue his words could claim was they were the most ridiculous sentiments it had ever been her misfortune to witness. With four of the most witless brothers in Christendom, that was saying something. Adelaide took a deep breath. Was it just her imagination, or was the Duke of Selridge looking about for an escape route? He was not a complete fool. He recognized the face of danger when he saw it.

  “Limp along, Your Grace?” She kept her words short and precise. Her hands gripped her skirts as if her life depended on it. Actually, his life did. As long as she maintained her death-like grip on the lovely green muslin her hands were not closed around his neck. “Is that all you think I deserve in a marriage? To limp along? Poor, plain Adelaide. She’s no beauty like her sister so she really has no right to expect much in the way of marriage.”

  “I did not—”

  “I am trying to decide which is worse—a marriage that limps or one run like a military campaign.”

  “You said you didn’t mind my limp. If—”

  “I don’t mind if you limp, Your Grace. You can limp from here to London and back if you like. I won’t mind at all. I do mind if my marriage limps, thank you very much. I don’t want a marriage that is not so bad. I don’t want well enough. I don’t want to be managed. I want more. Do you understand that, Marcus Winfield? I want more.”

  She was shouting and she did not care. The poets all said love hurts your heart. They had it wrong. Adelaide hurt all over. So much so when he leapt from the bed and began charging around the room like a mad bull, she fell into a chair by the hearth and wrapped her arms around her middle. She was miserable and wished most devoutly he would take this exhibition of male temper into the corridor before he broke something—like her heart… again.

  Marcus knew one thing for certain. If Clementine was capable of driving a man mad faster than Adelaide, Viscount Edgehill was owed the sympathy of the entire male population of England. Not that the man would be capable of receiving said sympathy, as he must be a gibbering idiot at this point. Marcus felt precariously close to that himself.

  He paced the shrinking room making every effort not to mutter to himself. He could not risk saying a single word because every other one was sure to be a swear word learned from the men in his command. Whilst those words would make him feel immensely better, they were sure to further inflame the female conflagration sitting before the hearth in silence.

  Silence.

  Addy was never silent. His halting gait nearly stumbled when he realized she was staring into the flames in abject misery. He would never have to ask her what she was feeling. It was always there; on her face, in her eyes, for all the world to see. It humbled him.

  It also rendered him utterly helpless. A railing Addy he could rail back at and he rather enjoyed it. Addy in pain and miserable was beyond his meager skills to woo. Consulting Jeffries was looking better and better. Barring that, he had only one option.

  He stopped before the hearth and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Stand up,” he commanded.

  She looked up at him and scowled. “Go to the devil, Your Grace.”

  He grabbed her beneath her elbows and pulled her to her feet. “I said stand up, Addy.” Her eyes blazed, bringing a smile to his mind, if not his face.
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  “Of all the arrogant, pompous—”

  He knew the rest of it by heart. She had no chance to finish. He snatched her into his arms and covered her mouth with a demanding kiss. Her tiny fists pounded on his chest.

  “What are you—” She squeaked out a few words when he came up for air. This time he gentled the kiss to coax and tease—his lips soft and pleading, his tongue atoning with little flicks and swirls. He was under no illusion he was in control. With her first delicate sigh, and the feathery touch of her hands to his hair, he was lost. It seemed to be his permanent state where Addy was concerned. In a few moments, he would be concerned about that. In a few moments.

  When he finally ended the kiss, and looked down into her face, she smiled. If that was all it took to make her smile, he had this marriage thing well in hand.

  “So, you will marry me, Addy?” he asked with a grin.

  “No, Marcus. I won’t.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. Surely, he’d heard her wrong. She was still smiling. “What did you just say?”

  “I said no, Marcus. I won’t marry you.”

  He opened his mouth. Shut it. Shook his head as if to clear it. Opened his mouth. Shut it again. She’d done it. She’d actually done it. He was mad as a hatter. A twenty-year-old girl had driven Major Marcus Winfield stark raving mad.

  “Are you and your sister endeavoring to see which of you can drive the men of England mad the quickest?” he asked, raising his hands over his head in surrender.

  “Yes, actually,” she said, cocking her head coyly to one side. “Am I winning?”

  Looking into those sparkling eyes and that magical face it came over him like an afternoon storm. Marcus started to laugh. He laughed until his sides hurt. He laughed so hard he had to move across the room and sit down on the bed. When she started to laugh with him, he collapsed across the ribbon and lace covered comforter and let her laughter wash over him like a cleansing rain.

  As their laughter died he sat up, bits of her unmentionables clinging to him like vines. Covering her mouth too late, Addy giggled at the sight.

  “Marry me, Addy,” he pleaded. “You make me smile. Nobody’s made me smile in such a long time.” Tears misted those brilliant eyes in an instant. He almost took it back.