Devil's Bargain Read online

  A CAD'S CONTRACT

  The prospect of romance held little allure for Portia Easton. Besides which, in remote Warwickshire, the best she could possibly hope for would be a match with some obscure country gentleman. Or course, that was before Marc Hamilton, the dashing Duke of Castleton, swept into her life and, to Tia's great amazement, proposed marriage—though solely for the purpose of producing a heir. True, Tia scoffed at love... but she did not even like this arrogant, ill- mannered, though frightfully handsome, blackguard. It was an impossible situation made even more so by the Duke's penchant for making dangerous enemies—and by curious warmth in his icy demeanour that awakened sensuous stirrings in Tia's ever-so-sensible heart.

  DEVIL’S BARGAIN

  By

  Marlene Suson

  Chapter 1

  Portia Easton added up the bills piled before her on the scarred oak table in the breakfast parlour and contemplated their total in despair.

  “Tia,” came her father’s fretful voice from the hall,

  Although other members of her family always used this nickname, Papa did so only when he required her assistance, as he did a dozen times a day, to find a book or other object that he had misplaced. Knowing that she was again being summoned for such a task, Tia laid down her pen.

  Papa shuffled into the room. Time had not been kind to a man who had been so excessively handsome in his youth that he had been called Apollo Easton. Now both his body and his face had grown pale and flabby. His once noble chin had doubled. Heavy pouches hung beneath eyes that had the abstracted look of a man who dwelt mostly in a private world far removed from the real one about him,

  “I cannot find my reading glass,” he complained in a petulant tone, very like that of a spoiled child. “You must look for it.”

  “If I find it for you, Papa, will you promise to discuss your bills with me? We have not the money to pay them.”

  “Do not plague me with trivialities,” he said irritably. “You will remember that I am an Easton of Laytham Hall. It is beneath me to take notice of such details.”

  Tia stifled a sigh of frustration. This was always Papa’s response when she attempted to make him face up to their increasingly precarious finances or to his parental obligations. Although Tia would not be twenty for another three months, responsibility for the household, her younger brothers, and for fending off creditors had fallen on her thin shoulders since the death of their mama five years earlier.

  Papa refused to take seriously their pecuniary difficulties. He thought he conferred a great honour upon servants and tradespeople by permitting them to wait upon an Easton, once of Laytham Hall, and he was shocked when these ingrates expected to be paid in return,

  She followed her father into a library lined with bookshelves full of leather-bound volumes. A large, ornately carved mahogany desk in the centre of the room was littered with papers and books. Papa had moved to this tiny property in Warwickshire nearly a decade ago to devote himself to a monumental critique of literature. It would be twenty volumes, the definitive work on the subject; Although he spent almost every day closeted in his library working on it, he was only on chapter eight of volume one. There was, it seemed, always one more book that he must read before he could continue writing.

  “If you had not a woman’s limited mind, Portia, you would understand the importance of my masterpiece,” he complained. “Instead you selfishly distract me from it with your silly anxieties.”

  She patiently refrained from retorting that her limited woman’s mind recognized his “masterpiece” for what it was, an excuse to retreat into his books and avoid all responsibility.

  Tia located the missing magnifying glass on the cluttered table, partially hidden under an open volume of Shakespeare’s tragedies. As she restored it to her father, a child’s excited shriek drew her attention outside. Tia peered through the gray waves of fog floating past the window to where Freddie, the six-year-old baby of the family, romped on the dead brown grass with Puck, her King Charles spaniel.

  Papa had given this shabby property the laughably grandiose name of Birnam Wood, but the only wood upon it was two scraggly white poplars. In the fog, their twisted, lopsided branches, stripped bare by winter, looked like ghostly talons.

  Tia automatically checked to reassure herself that her little brother, with his worrisomely delicate constitution, was properly bundled up against the January cold.

  Her father growled, “Can you not keep that brat from disturbing me? How am I to think with his noise?”

  Poor little Freddie could do no right in his father’s eyes. Mama had not recovered her health after his birth and had died within a year of it. Papa had never stopped blaming the innocent child for her death. His unjustified hostility toward Freddie so angered and upset Tia that she did not trust herself to respond civilly to his unwarranted complaint. She went into the hall without a word, shutting the door behind her.

  Suddenly the front door flew open. Freddie and Puck dashed in with all the noise to be expected of a lively six-year-old and an excited dog.

  The boy ran to his sister, hugging her and crying exuberantly, “Tia, Tia, I saw the prettiest bullfinch in a hawthorn bush.” Birds fascinated Freddie, and he could already recognize and name most of the common varieties in the neighbourhood. His exceptional understanding, curiosity, and enthusiasm delighted his sister as much as his thin, undersized body worried her, “And Tia, I saw a tree creeper climbing one of the poplars.”

  The door to the library burst open, and their father stormed out. “How many times have I told you, Frederick, that I am not to be disturbed like this!” He cast a murderous eye at the boy.

  The happiness and animation vanished from Freddie’s face, and he seemed to shrink into himself, looking so small and frightened and miserable that Tia wanted to cry. Hastily he backed away down the hall until he was out of Papa’s sight.

  Glaring after him, Mr. Easton grumbled to himself, “How am I to bear that brat for six more years until I can foist him off on the Navy?”

  “What!” Tia cried in alarm.

  “I have decided on a career in the Navy for Frederick, but they will not take him until he is twelve.”

  She stared aghast at her father, remembering the time they had gone sailing with Aunt Augusta in Brighton. Even though it had been a calm day, Freddie had become so violently seasick that they had had to return to shore. “But Papa, Freddie hates the sea! He can scarcely look at it without getting sick.”

  “He will get his sea legs.”

  “He will not live long enough!” Tia knew that her delicate little brother could not survive the hard, cruel life for which the Navy was notorious.

  “Nonsense. It will make a man of him,” Papa said, unmoved.

  “What say is Freddie to have in this? It is his life!”

  “I am his father. He will do as I say.”

  Tia was trembling with anger at her father and fear for her little brother. “I will not let you send him to his death!”

  Mr. Easton’s face took on that mulishly stubborn set that Tia had learned to dread. “I will do as I wish.” He went back into his library, slamming the door behind him.

  Tia’s eyes filled with tears. Poor Freddie would be dead before he reached manhood. Then her spine stiffened, and her teeth clenched in determination. She would find a way to save her little brother if it was the last thing she ever did!

  Much agitated, Tia snatched up her heavy black cloak, intent on a solitary walk. Until now her worries for the future had centred on her other brother, Antony, who was eighteen months her junior and army-mad. There was no money to buy Antony the commission he so coveted, and he was growing increasingly surly and rebellious, often coming home foxed.

  Tia sympathized with her
brother’s unhappiness for she, too, wished to escape Birnam Wood.

  Her one opportunity to do so two years earlier had been squelched by her father. Her aunt, the Marchioness of Mobry, had offered Tia a London come-out, generously agreeing to pay all her niece’s expenses for it. But Mr. Easton would not hear of it. He depended heavily upon his daughter to run his household, and he was never a father to place his children’s welfare ahead of his own comfort.

  His refusal so angered the marchioness, who held him in high contempt, that she gave him a rare trimming, informing him in lengthy and withering terms of his many failings as a father, a husband, and a human being. No one had ever assessed him to his face in such unvarnished terms, and the fact that there was much truth in what his late wife’s sister said only served to increase his fury—and his stubborn determination to keep his daughter at home.

  Tia, bundled in her wool cloak, threw open the front door. A blast of cold gray air greeted her, and she set off briskly through the rolling fog toward Ashmore, the neighbouring estate that belonged to the Duke of Castleton.

  Whenever Tia was agitated or unhappy, she would seek the serenity of Ashmore’s woods where she would walk until she had recaptured her spirits among its oak and sycamore, ash and English elm. She loved this retreat as much as she hated its rude, top-lofty owner.

  Since that unfortunate incident five years ago, she profoundly hoped that she would never again set eyes on the duke—not that he would remember it or her. Fortunately, he rarely visited Ashmore, preferring London or Rosedale, his principal country seat in Derbyshire. She wondered idly where he was now

  The answer was London. At that moment, Marcus Augustine Richard Hamilton, the Duke of Castleton, was bounding up the steps to the home of Tia’s aunt in Grosvenor Square

  .

  Although he was years younger than the Marchioness of Mobry, they had been close friends since he had first been a young man on the town. She was prey to none of the lamentable female failings—coyness, vapours, dramatic displays of injured sensibility or shocked propriety—that so bored him. Her judgment of character was unerring, and she could be depended upon to tell him exactly what she thought with a tongue as blunt as his own.

  But most important, a man’s secrets were safe with her. Except for Jennie Martin, Lady Mobry was the only woman that Castleton trusted.

  As he banged the brass door knocker, he thought bitterly that he had good reason to distrust the fair sex. He was not a man who gave his affection easily. In his entire life, he had truly loved only two persons: his father and his brother. Both had died before their time, thanks to their faithless wives. No wonder he himself preferred never to marry, and he cursed the circumstances that now required him to take a bride.

  But, even though he must wed, he would never succumb to the fatal folly of falling in love with his wife.

  The door was opened by a porter with a condescending manner that was transformed into obeisance at the sight of the visitor who was daunting in both size and demeanour. With his exceptional height and wide, powerful shoulders, Castleton seemed to fill the marchioness’s doorway. He had about him an indefinable assurance and authority that left no doubt he was an aristocrat of the highest consequence.

  Most unnerving, however, was the harsh, uncompromising set of his face that gave the impression of a man full of smouldering contempt for the world around him. His eyes were a disconcertingly icy blue, deeply set beneath thick brows. Yet it was a handsome face: the nose straight and elegant, the mouth strong, the jaw hard and clean. He had not the slightest hint of the dandy about him. No attempt had been made to coax his thick, straight blond hair into the curls currently in fashion among pinks of the ton.

  Castleton was ushered immediately into the drawing room where the marchioness sat in one of two wing chairs arranged before a crackling fire in the white marble fireplace.

  She rose to greet him, a slender, gray-haired woman with regal bearing. Lady Mobry had never been a beauty, but she was handsome, with silver hair, penetrating gray eyes, and a face that was surprisingly unlined for a woman of her years.

  “What a pleasant surprise, Marc,” she said. “I did not expect a caller on such a bitter day. ‘Tis the coldest January I can remember.”

  He took her thin fingers in his, and she shivered. “How icy your hands are. I shall pour you a little brandy.” She gestured toward the other wing chair before the fireplace. “Sit there and warm yourself.”

  The duke complied, holding his chilled fingers out to the bright flame. He wore breeches instead of the skin-tight pantaloons favoured by the Brummell set, but both the fabric and style of his blue superfine coat with its high-standing, double-notched lapels were in the first stare of fashion. The coat, however, was cut more generously than was currently the practice so that he would not be dependent upon his valet to get him in and out of it. The casual arrangement of his neckcloth proclaimed he had no patience with the art of tying that article in the latest intricate style.

  The marchioness went to a small fruitwood table where an ornate silver tray held a decanter of brandy and two glasses of Baccarat crystal. As she picked up the decanter, she asked, “What brings you here in such weather, Marc?”

  “A wedding.”

  “Whose?”

  “Mine,”

  Her ladyship abruptly set the decanter down hard upon the silver tray and turned to face him. She was every bit as astonished as Castleton had expected her to be. He was five-and-thirty and had avoided the parson’s mousetrap for so many years that even the most optimistic and tenacious of mamas had reluctantly concluded he was a marital quarry beyond capture.

  “But Marc, you vowed never to take a leg shackle.”

  “That was when I had an heir. But now Paul is dead.” Castleton could not keep a tremor from his voice when he mentioned his younger brother, even though four months had passed since the duel in which Paul had died at the hands of his wife’s lover, Major Garrick Hetton.

  The duke closed his eyes as he thought of that terrible day. He had heard a rumour that Hetton had called Paul out, and had rushed to stop the duel. But he had arrived three minutes too late, and his brother lay dead upon the turf. Crazed with grief, Castleton had challenged the victor to another duel à l’outrance—to the death.

  The duke was a noted marksman, and the major accepted with great reluctance. Then Hetton sought to improve his odds by whirling as the seconds were still counting off the paces and firing at the duke’s back. His shot missed, but Castleton’s did not. He put a ball through the heart of his brother’s killer, and Lady Amelia lost both her husband and her lover that day.

  Castleton, banishing the memory from his mind, confided to Lady Mobry, “I must marry and set up my nursery.” He spoke with all the enthusiasm of a man contemplating a noose being draped about his neck.

  She poured a generous amount of brandy into one of the glasses and brought it to him. “Who is your intended? I have not the smallest notion who she might be.”

  “Neither do I,” he confessed, taking a sip of Lord Mobry’s very fine brandy. There was not a single woman among the duke’s wide acquaintance to whom he wished to shackle himself. He smiled ruefully at the marchioness over the rim of his glass. “That is why I am here. You are acquainted with every eligible female of the ton, and I trust your judgment more than anyone else’s. Who will suit me best?”

  Her ladyship burst out laughing. “My dear Marc, you are roasting me.”

  “Not at all. Let me tell you what I am looking for. Excellent breeding is a must, but she need not have a dowry nor be a beauty”

  Lady Mobry regarded him with surprise. “Surely, a man who chooses only the fairest of the fair for his chère amies wants to marry a diamond of the first water?”

  “I do not want to marry anyone, but I must produce an heir,” he retorted. “I do not require beauty, but I do insist my bride not be a silly ninnyhammer with a head full of foolish dreams.”

  He was not a romantic man, and he had
no intention of playing the gallant game with a wife he neither loved nor wanted. She would have to be a sensible, practical creature who accepted their marriage for what it was, a business contract in which she would be elevated to exalted position and enjoy great comfort and wealth in exchange for devoting herself to the children she bore him and to running his various households to his exacting standards.

  After explaining this to the marchioness, he asked, “Who do you suggest?”

  She did not answer immediately but stared at the dancing flames in the fireplace as though she was silently debating with herself.

  At last, she said slowly, “I have a niece who is exceedingly mature and sensible. Although Portia is not yet twenty: she has been running her father’s house very competently for years. She will have no dowry: Neither is she a beauty: but her breeding cannot be faulted: she is the daughter of my dead sister, and her father is the nephew of Viscount Easton of Laytham Hall.”

  “Is Papa the Easton who fancies himself a great literary critic, the one who is my neighbour at Ashmore?” Marc asked sharply.

  The marchioness nodded.

  He grimaced in distaste. “I have never heard a man talk such fustian. He is a fool!”

  “Yes, he is,” she agreed cordially. “I see you frowning, but I assure you that Tia is not at all like her father. In fact, she reminds me very much of myself when I was a girl.”

  That piqued Marc’s interest. Had her ladyship been five-and-twenty years younger and unmarried, he would have chosen her for his wife. He admired both Lady Mobry’s intelligence and her conduct. Over the years, she had had many admirers and would-be lovers, but she was faithful to her lord. Her constancy, so rare among women of his experience, was another reason that Castleton liked her.

  “Her father will not welcome an offer, even from you,” she warned. “He is as selfish as he is stupid. He hopes to keep Tia unwed so that he will have her to wait upon him for the rest of his life, However, I think Tia might be persuaded to accept your proposal.”