Her Wicked Proposal

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“I think it only fitting that he’s been deprived of sight, devil that he is. May he never fix his lecherous gaze on another virtuous woman ever again,” Lord Upton announced to the men in the main card room of Berkley’s, an elite gentlemen’s club. There were several murmurs of agreement on this, but an equal number of disgruntled mutters.

Cedric entered the card room, fighting off the natural panic of being in a room where he felt intensely vulnerable. “Stow it, Upton. I’m blind, not deaf. Do not make me call you out.”

His cane swung back and forth across the carpet as he navigated his way through the tables. He could not see Lord Upton’s face, but the disquiet in the area of where he heard Upton’s voice was telling. Cedric smiled and waited for his friend Ashton Lennox to join him.

“Cedric?”

He flinched at the sudden sound of his friend’s voice. Ashton had a way of walking softly as a cat.

Although Cedric could no longer see, he remembered well enough how Ashton looked. Tall, pale blond hair and sharp blue eyes. Ashton was one of his closest friends and the one Cedric trusted most to help him survive without his sight. Ash had always been more patient than the other League members, and he needed that dependable patience to help him muddle through now. He could imagine the intense gaze his friend fixed on him at that moment. Even in a world of darkness, he still sensed when he was being watched.

“It’s fine. Upton is a damned fool, that is all.” He discreetly gripped Ashton’s right arm and let Ashton lead him toward the private parlor that was reserved for him and his friends. Although his pride demanded he make his way on his own, reason reminded him that if he were to be so foolish as to walk without someone to guide him, he’d likely trip and give that bastard Lord Upton just what he wanted from Cedric, to be the laughingstock of the room.

Sleep with a man’s daughter one time and don’t marry her…he acts like I burned down his house.

Cedric’s ears picked up on the sneer in Upton’s voice, which seemed far too close for comfort. “Dueling with a blind man? His honor is not worth that foolish endeavor.”

Cedric stiffened and cursed his remaining senses, which had heighted in awareness since his loss of sight, especially his hearing.

“Pay him no heed,” Ashton said coolly.

“Unfortunately, he’s right. I’d have to have my second point my pistol in the right direction, and even then the shot would be unlikely.” He let this slip in his usually sardonic tone, but the truth of it ate away at his insides.

That was perhaps one of the worst things about losing his sight and having his balance diminished. He could no longer ride, shoot, or hunt. He couldn’t do anything he used to do. Even going to his gentlemen’s club had become a nuisance. He felt exposed without one of his friends accompanying him. Over the past several months he’d learned to recognize men based on their voices and the way they walked, but it wasn’t enough to feel secure when he was out and about in London. Every sense was heightened, yet his concern that he could be attacked remained just as high. Having his sight last December hadn’t saved him from danger, and now he was even more vulnerable.

An assassin almost certainly hired by Sir Hugo Waverly had tried to kill him last Christmas. The assassin had almost succeeded, and it was because of this Cedric had lost his sight. Trapped in a burning cottage with his sister Horatia, he truly thought they were going to die. At the last moment, Lucien Russell, the Marquess of Rochester, had found them and dragged them both bodily from the burning building as flames leapt around them. The last thing Cedric remembered was the sound of a wood beam groaning as it broke from the ceiling and collapsed on his head, forcing him into this world of darkness.

The doctor who had seen to him had been unable to determine whether his condition would be permanent. But Cedric had accepted it as such after the first two months passed. Cedric had opened his eyes each morning to a slate of gray; every night he’d forgotten in his sleep that his eyes were sightless, and every morning he awoke anew to the agony of his loss.

At first he’d suffered from a stifling panic, but he’d forced himself to calm down with slow, deep breaths. What followed then was an aching sadness, a helplessness that made him furious and terrified. He was resigned to darkness and to living life at a slow pace, doing little with himself until yesterday when he’d received Anne in the garden.

It was Anne’s visit that had him calling a meeting of his closest friends, known to most of London through the society papers as the League of Rogues. The League consisted of Godric, the Duke of Essex; his half brother, Jonathan St. Laurent; Lucien, the Marquess of Rochester; Charles, the Earl of Lonsdale; Ashton, Baron Lennox; and himself.

Cedric felt Ashton’s muscles in his arm shift as Ashton opened the door to the private parlor. The rumble of familiar voices surrounded him as he and Ashton entered the room.

“Good to see you, Cedric,” Godric said somewhere to Cedric’s left. Godric had somehow managed to leave the arms of his sweet wife, Emily, to join them at the club.

He remembered how Godric had convinced the League to abduct the poor woman last year when her uncle had embezzled money from Godric. She was meant to be a pawn in a larger game, only it turned out Emily was far better at moving the pieces. That abduction had landed Godric with a wife who had been up to the challenge of taming him. Cedric grinned. Nothing had been the same for the League since Emily had become a part of their lives.

“Is everyone here?” Cedric listened to the shuffle of boots and the rustle of clothing as the men took their seats nearby.

“All here,” Lucien announced. That red-headed devil had recently married Cedric’s sister, Horatia, even facing a duel with Cedric to do so. More than once it had occurred to him that his blindness might somehow be God’s punishment for his stubbornness on the matter.

Cedric trusted these five men with his life. With the exception of Jonathan, they had survived countless close calls with death and been a party to many scandals in the ton. But above all they were friends, and it was as friends that he needed them the most now.

“What’s this you said in your note about news?” Jonathan asked.

“Can someone pour me a scotch and push me toward a chair?” he asked with a half-joking smile. His friends chuckled.

Ashton urged him a few steps forward, and Cedric’s knees brushed the firm cushion of a chair. He took a seat and set his cane down on the floor.

“First, before we hear what Cedric has to say, I have some news of my own,” Lucien said, his voice a little breathless with excitement. “Is it all right if I speak, Cedric?” His voice carried some secret weight, at least to Cedric’s heightened hearing. What could make Lucien, one of the boldest men he’d ever known, become timid?

Cedric nodded.

“Horatia and I…well…we are expecting. The doctor confirmed it this morning.”

“A baby?” Cedric sat up, elated at the thought. He then thought of Anne and himself. Would they someday be announcing such news? Was he ready to be a father? Instinct said no, but his heart still stirred at the thought.

“Yes. The doctor said she has been with child for two months now. We can expect the child in November.” The pride and warmth in Lucien’s tone was obvious.

Four months ago Cedric had been appalled and infuriated when his friend, a rakehell who could make Lucifer himself blush, and Cedric’s sister had become lovers. It had felt like he’d lost his sister, a companion he’d relied on so much, and one of the two people in his life it was his duty to protect from rogues with wicked reputations. Now it was one of the most wonderful things in the world to know that his friend and sister were so in love and so happy with each other. Secretly, he’d feared that a marriage between them would put some distance between him and Lucien, but it hadn’t.

Cedric and Lucien’s friendship had been through a rough patch last December, but Cedric couldn’t deny the truth. Lucien loved his sister with a depth Cedric hadn’t thought possible. And soon Lucien would love the child who was on the way. Envy slithered inside Cedric, curling and twisting. He wanted a marriage like that, with love and children.

He sighed wearily. Lord, I’m getting sentimental. Time and circumstance had changed them all, it seemed.

The cheers and teasing commenced all around Cedric as the warmth of his friends cloaked him.

“Congratulations!” Charles and Ashton said from either side of Cedric.

“A baby Russell,” Jonathan marveled with a devious chuckle. “Your mother must be pleased as punch, Lucien.”

Cedric was unable to stop his grin. “I’m to be an uncle then?”

Lucien laughed. “Many times over, I hope.”

Cedric glowered. “Have a care, man, that’s my sister you married, not a broodmare.”

“Very well, I’ll let Horatia decide the number of children. But you will have to deal with my mother when she doesn’t get her ten desired grandchildren.”

“Now,” Jonathan prompted. “Let us hear your news, Cedric.”

“Oh…right. Well, Ashton and I have just come from the Doctors’ Commons where I procured a special marriage license. I’m to be married within the week.”

There was a spewing sound and brandy sprayed over Cedric’s face.

“Bloody hell! Who did that?”

“Apologies,” said Charles. “You just caught me off guard. Did I hear you correctly?”

Cedric removed his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face, trying not to scowl in Charles’s direction.

“Married to whom?” Lucien asked, his tone echoing Charles’s disbelief.

“Anne Chessley.” He waited for any sort of reaction, but he hadn’t expected the silence he met instead. What were they doing? Staring at him with gaping mouths or glancing at each other in concern? Damn my eyes. A chair creaked nearby as someone shifted in their seat.

“What? No congratulations?” Cedric tried to joke, but his grin faltered as the silenced continued.

Finally Ashton broke the quiet. “I think they are merely surprised as you gave up on courting Anne last year.”

Lucien cut in. “And she is supposed to be in mourning for her father.”

“Marriage next week seems extremely scandalous, even for gentlemen like us,” Ashton added.

Godric spoke up, his tone gentle. “Ashton makes a fair point. Not that I care one whit about what society considers scandalous. Not when there are true injustices in the world. I am deuced glad to hear you are marrying Anne. I know Emily will be ecstatic to hear you and Anne finally settled down together. She was always convinced that you cared more about Anne than you let on.”

“The only reason I’m not congratulating you, old boy, is because you’ve now evened the odds of sane men versus married men in this room.” Charles’s droll tone set Cedric’s teeth on edge. “Ash, Jonathan and I will have to hold out against being leg-shackled.”

Cedric snorted at this. Charles and marriage went as well together as…well…Charles and a convent full of nuns—which, in other words, was not well at all.

“Anyone else care to question my judgment in marrying Anne?” Cedric asked defensively.

“I am not questioning your judgment,” Ashton replied, “but I am most curious as to how it came about. I agreed to take you to obtain a special license, but until now you’ve been close-lipped on the matter of why.”

Cedric sighed. It was a question that had been plaguing him since Anne came to see him the day before. With any others he would not breathe a word of his true feelings, nor explain what had transpired with Anne the day before. But the League had different rules. They shared the darkest of secrets without a second thought, such was the depth of their trust in one another.

“As you know, Anne is now the heiress to her father’s estate since he passed away. Apparently the young bucks and fortune hunters are already in relentless pursuit of her fortune. She sought me out and proposed a scheme of sorts.”

“A scheme?” Godric sounded intrigued by Cedric’s choice of words. The last time the League had involved themselves in a scheme, they’d taken part in a messy abduction, and Godric ended up married.

“Yes, she asked me to ask her to marry her.”

“Hold on, you’re telling me that Anne, the ice maiden, asked you to propose to her?” Charles didn’t sound convinced.

“She’s not an ice maiden,” Cedric growled.

“Weren’t you the one who named her that?” Charles reminded him.

Cedric clenched his fists. “I was mistaken. I expect all of you to respect my wish that she never be addressed that way in or out of her hearing again.”

“Of course, old boy, whatever you say,” Charles agreed.

“So finish the story,” Jonathan prodded.

Cedric gave a little shrug. “It is that and nothing more. She suggested the scheme, and I agreed and got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife.”

There was another interminable period of silence that seemed almost to deafen his sensitive eardrums as he waited for his friends to speak. Even the other conversations in the room had died down, as if the men in the room were straining to overhear what was going on in their little corner.

“But why did you agree to ask her?” Godric inquired, the only one brave enough to shatter the quiet.

He steeled himself and spoke, soft but firm. “Not one of you in this room can comprehend what it has been like for me. I cannot live as I used to, cannot pursue the life I once had. But when Anne came to me, I realized that she may be my one and only chance left to live.”

The silence in the room now filled with tension. With that awful silence suffocating him, he started to speak. His friends had to understand why he’d agreed to Anne’s offer.

“She has agreed to marry me despite all the things I cannot give her. I cannot praise her for her loveliness. I cannot take her to balls and dance with her. I cannot even go riding with her. That she has come to me over these other men seeking her hand, it lessens the sting of my current condition. I believe, given time, that we may be able to make ourselves decently happy together.”

“Decently happy? Cedric, you deserve love, great love, not decent,” Godric replied with surprisingly deep emotion. Lucien murmured his agreement with this.

Cedric shook his head. It was so easy for them to believe that. They had both been lucky to find women who loved them. He was not so fortunate. His past was shadowed with far too many regrets and poor decisions. Fate held no such love for him, and decent was in itself a gift.

“It is kind that you think so, Godric, but I do not agree. I’ve hurt both my family and my friends too often of late and have been a selfish bastard most of my life.” He held up a hand to silence the murmurs of disagreement. “I plan to marry Anne in a week, and I wish you all to attend.” He let the invitation slip out a little more quietly, suddenly afraid that his friends would desert him.

“I shall be there,” Ashton said, putting a hand on Cedric’s shoulder.

“Horatia would have my guts for garters if we missed it.” Lucien’s reply made Cedric snort. His little sister would no doubt have Lucien trussed up in the finest clothes of her choosing and sitting on the first row of the church pew. If only I could have my sight back for one moment to see that.

Godric and Jonathan assured him they too would come.

Charles was the last to speak. With an exaggerated sigh he said, “I suppose I ought to go, if only to make sure you don’t trip and knock out the archbishop. That sort of thing is likely to bring lightning down on us all, and Christ knows I’ve got enough bolts of wrath thrown at me every day.”

A rough pat on the shoulder shook Cedric as Godric spoke. “In honor of your announcement, would I be able to tempt you to dine with us tonight? Emily will send Anne an invitation as well. It would be good to have everyone together again.”

“If you wish. Just send word to me when dinner is and I shall be there.” Cedric fumbled for his cane where he’d set it down. Another hand touched his as it found the cane and pressed it into his palm.

“Thank you,” Cedric said.

“You’re welcome.” Jonathan cleared his throat. “And how does Miss Audrey fare, if I might ask? I was told she and Lady Russell are currently in France?”

“Yes. They are somewhere near Nice the last I heard,” Cedric said.

He had sent his youngest sister, Audrey, on a European tour with Lucien’s mother just a few weeks after Lucien and Horatia married in early January. Audrey was eighteen and a pretty, vivacious girl. She’d managed to do well growing up without their parents, having only Cedric as her guardian. This year should have been her second season, but Cedric’s blindness had left him unable to escort her to balls and parties, her lifeblood for entertainment. Audrey had been moping about for nearly two months, and he’d felt like he’d lamed a favorite horse. She needed to be out in the world, experiencing life, so he’d asked Lucien’s mother to take Audrey abroad to Europe for half a year.

Next year would be soon enough to unleash Audrey onto the world. She was innocent and naïve, but also determined to get a husband, a deadly combination for her virtue and Cedric’s nerves. Therefore, he had proposed her trip with the promise that as soon as she returned he would have a potential husband waiting for her. He would collect a smattering of men he approved of and would present them to her and let her choose.

It turned out Audrey’s absence had been a blow to Cedric’s social tendencies. He missed her morning chatter about the latest Parisian fashions over breakfast, missed her insistence that they go driving in Hyde Park in his phaeton so she might see the handsome bucks of London. He missed her hugs and the patter of her slippers on the stairs. He’d sworn long ago that his sisters were a damned nuisance, but he’d since eaten those words and enjoyed the pair of sisters he’d been gifted with and had stopped cursing his luck for having no brothers. Horatia and Audrey were everything to him, the only family he had left. Horatia’s marriage and Audrey’s trip had left him very alone in his townhouse.

“Well, I had best be off. Er…Ash, would you assist me to the carriage?” Asking for help wounded his already battered pride, but the embarrassment of asking his friends was lessening slowly. They did not offer pity, and once he realized this, he was thankful. They merely helped him, and that meant a thousand words he’d never say to them.

“Of course.” Cedric felt Ashton’s hand take his arm and guide him toward the door.

“I’ll send word on dinner to everyone,” Godric called out cheerfully before the parlor door swung open.

“Now, where shall we go?” Ashton asked Cedric politely. He never seemed to mind accompanying Cedric on his errands about London.

Cedric grinned. “To see my future bride.”