His fingers brushed hers,
and she flinched.
“I would like an annulment,” she announced.
Marcus jerked backward, the unfortunate bonnet once
again hitting the floor. He hoped the infernal thing was
damaged beyond repair.
“You want an annulment?” He’d heard of women
hatching preposterous schemes to entrap a titled
husband, but he’d never heard of a scheme that included
a request for an annulment.
She tilted that chin—definitely pointy—at him.
“On—on grounds of insanity.”
“You admit to a weakened mind?” So much the
better!
She blinked and her brown eyes widened. “Sir, you
are the insane one.”
Marcus’s mouth opened and closed, and he had the
uncomfortable sensation that he looked like one of the
carp in the Japanese pond at Chalmers, the main
Spenford estate.
He suspected such an expression did not convey
complete, calm rationality.
She knotted her fingers in her lap, which seemed to
firm her voice. “I have heard married ladies talk of an
illness that gentlemen can acquire as a result of—of
dissolute living.” Her cheeks flamed. “It drives them
mad.”
“You accuse me of dissolute living?” he said
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38
dangerously.
Her gaze dropped, then rose again. “Papa warned me
your reputation is…not quite spotless.”
Marcus felt himself reddening. Outrageous! What
kind of man was Somerton to talk to his daughters in
that way?
She didn’t realize how perilously she trod, for she
continued. “It occurs to me that perhaps you chose a
bride from Piper’s Mead because…”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. Her implication
was clear: because no lady of sense in London would
have him.
“I am pleased to inform you my health is perfect,” he
snapped.
“Which implies you are deliberately accusing me and
my father of dishonesty,” she warned.
“I apologize,” he said, teeth gritted, aware that she
hadn’t apologized for her suggestion that he lived an
improper life. But he had to admit, she seemed as
baffled by the situation as he was. Surely a parson’s
daughter could not have cooked up this wild scheme.
He breathed out through his nose, calming himself.
“May we start this conversation again, in an attempt to
untangle this confusion?”
“I suppose so,” she said dubiously.
As the coach swung into the lane that ended at the
rectory, Marcus grasped the strap overhead. “What is
your name?”
Her guarded expression suggested she still harbored
suspicions he was a half-wit. “My name is—was
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39
THE EARL’S MISTAKEN BRIDE
Constance Anne Somerton.”
Marcus tipped his head back against the seat. “I met
Constance Somerton in Piper’s Mead on Monday, and
believe me, she looked nothing like you.”
She frowned, putting a little furrow in the middle of
her forehead. “That’s not possible.”
“I suspect she was younger than you—” this woman
looked all of her twenty years “—with dark, curly hair
and eyes an unusual blue. She called herself Miss
Constance Somerton.”
His bride pressed her fingers to her mouth, and he
remembered how they had felt, fine and slender, in his
grasp.
“Amanda,” she moaned.
He pounced. “Is that your name? Amanda?”
She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but only, he sensed,
through heroic self-restraint. “I am Constance. Amanda
is my sister. She is of somewhat…mischievous
temperament.”
“You call passing herself off as you mischievous? ” he
barked. “I asked your father if I could marry her!”
She closed her eyes. “Of course,” she murmured. “It
wasn’t me you wanted at all.”
He had thought that perfectly obvious from the
moment he’d lifted her veil.
“How could I have been so stupid?” She sounded
broken.
Marcus felt a twinge of concern. But he was virtually
a stranger to her; she had no reason for heartbreak. This
was likely part of her act. “Certainly one of us has been
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stupid,” he said bitterly.
To his horror, tears sprang to her eyes. Marcus
averted his gaze as he offered her his white linen
handkerchief.
But she held up her hand, palm out in refusal. “I want
nothing from you.”
For the barest moment, her dignity impressed
him…then he remembered, she’d already duped him
once.
“Of course you don’t,” he said. “You can buy all the
handkerchiefs you want, thanks to the generous
settlement documents your father signed on your behalf
this morning.”
Those tears clung to her lashes, held there by force of
will, it seemed, not spilling onto her pale cheeks.
Marcus stared at the ceiling of the carriage as she
fumbled in her reticule, presumably for a handkerchief
of her own.
Instead of a scrap of fabric, she pulled out a folded
sheet of paper. “What’s this?”
“I hardly think I would know,” he said coldly.
She opened the note. “It’s Amanda’s hand.”
At the mention of her “mischievous” sister, Marcus
plucked the paper from her fingers. “Allow me to read
it to you.”
It wasn’t a request.
The opening words of the missive, written in a girlish
hand, jumped out at him.
Forgive me!
Foreboding filled him as he began to read aloud.
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THE EARL’S MISTAKEN BRIDE
“‘Forgive me! Constance, darling, I have done
something very Dreadful, and you will think me
Wicked. On Monday, I encountered Lord Spenford in
the Village….’”
His mouth tightened and his voice