Married By Mischance (Lord Dere’s Dependents #5)

Chapter One

Bolt in Tun, Fleet Street. The Portsmouth and other stages set out from this inn, where travellers are well accommodated.

An ear-splitting shriek roused Maria Barstow from the deepest slumber.

She was always slow to come to full consciousness, however, and had gone late to bed the night before, which made her reluctant to stir now.

Instead, murmuring a protest, she returned to her dream, burrowing her face more comfortably into the warm bolster and slinging an arm about it to tug it closer.

Unfortunately the rising clamor insisted on penetrating her dream.

There were more screams, pounding footsteps, doors slamming open and shut.

Questions and accusations and confusion.

“What’s amiss?” “Good gracious!” “I demand an explanation!” “Did somebody murder Maria?” “This is a respectable inn!” “Maria! Maria! Wake up!” “Grab her! Get her away from—him—it!” “Scandalous creature!”

Though well used to the boisterous confines of Iffley Cottage, where she lived with her large family and two pets, this dream struck Maria as unusually turbulent, and she sensed further sleep receding from her grasp.

An instant later, rough hands banished it altogether, seizing her by the shoulders and ripping her from the bed.

“What on earth?” she protested, staggering against her assailant.

Shoving her nightcap up from cross, bleary eyes, she found herself encircled in Mrs. Markham Dere’s arms, smashed to that lady’s magnificent bosom.

Mrs. Dere, niece by marriage to the Barstows’ beloved benefactor Baron Dere and ruler of the family in all but name.

Suffice to say, the embrace was unprecedented, and not only because Mrs. Dere was not given to displays of affection, but also because she had never been particularly fond of Maria.

And when Maria squinted over Mrs. Dere’s shoulder, she saw all the world gathered, just as in her dream, stuffing both her chamber and the doorway, with additional heads from the passage peering over shoulders: her mother, her sister-in-law Sarah, her younger brother Gordon, her nephew Bash, her mother’s cousin Lord Dere, Mrs. Dere’s son Peter, as well as a handful of those unknown to her, but whom she suspected were employed by the Bolt in Tun.

“Shameless girl!” hissed Mrs. Dere, shoving Maria’s head back down.

“Let me take her,” Maria’s mother said, only to be driven back by a second hiss, as if Mrs. Dere had metamorphosed into an angry goose.

“What on earth?” repeated Maria, muffled by Mrs. Dere’s tucker. “What is the matter? Did we miss the coach?” She would have been mortified to appear before such a crowd in her nightdress, but she was so completely enveloped by Mrs. Dere that modesty did not enter in.

“I knew we should not have stayed at so disreputable a place!” cried Mrs. Dere, instantly drawing the ire of the proprietor, a bearded dumpling of a man who shoved his way forward to retort, “This is no disreputable place, madam, even if guests prove not so respectable as they seemed!”

“Hold your tongue, if you please!” she ordered. “Have you forgotten you are in the presence of Lord Ranulph Dere?” If he had, it was hardly the innkeeper’s fault, for Mrs. Dere’s powerful presence quite overshadowed the quiet, silver-haired baron.

“Address him, sir!” she thundered to their titular head. “Tell him we demand an explanation!”

“An explanation for what?” Maria tried again, only to be squeezed the harder against Mrs. Dere.

The mild-mannered baron placed an apologetic hand on the innkeeper’s arm. “My good fellow, we must ask how the doors of individual rooms may be forced, threatening the safety and reputations of virtuous—”

“Not the innkeeper, Uncle!” cut in Mrs. Dere, infuriated. “We will deal with him later! I mean that one.” Releasing half of her stranglehold on Maria, she stabbed a dramatic finger toward the bed.

“‘That one’?” squeaked Maria, taking wriggling advantage of the loosened hold to try to see behind her. “What one? Do you refer to the bolster?”

“That—is—no—bolster,” returned Mrs. Dere ominously.

At last, with a mighty effort, Maria managed to twist enough to see what the fuss was about, and the sight struck her dumb.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said. Or, she would have said, had any sound emerged.

For Mrs. Dere was right.

That was no bolster in her bed.

Unless the Bolt in Tun topped its bolsters with waving black hair and dressed them in frilled linen shirts. That is, unless the Bolt in Tun got up its bolsters as attractive young men.

And Maria Barstow must have been as shameless as Mrs. Dere and the innkeeper feared because her next thoughts were, “Goodness—he sleeps even more soundly than I do,” and “No wonder I was so cozy!” and “Wait—does he…look familiar?”

While such unblushing things raced through her head, the baron was not idle. He approached the bed and, visibly steeling himself, gave the young man’s arm a joggle.

Everyone held his breath.

The young man gave a faint snuffle, smacking his rosy lips.

“Do it again, Uncle,” urged Mrs. Dere. She thrust Maria aside, and Maria’s mother Mrs. Barstow hurried forward to shield her nightgowned daughter.

“There has been some terrible mistake, Mrs. Dere,” said Mrs. Barstow, her tongue loosening.

“Some confusion. Either this is Maria’s room and not the young man’s, or vice versa.

And seeing her portmanteau there, it is clearly Maria’s.

Whatever has—happened—Maria is not to blame.

She does not know this—invader—from Adam. ”

But being both an honest girl and one still not entirely in command of her faculties, Maria blurted, “Oh, but I do know him, Mama. It’s the plaster gentleman.”

“The what?” demanded nearly the entire gathering.

Mrs. Barstow swayed on her feet at this unforeseen admission, and then it was Maria holding her upright.

“Oh—er—I mean—I can’t think what he’s doing here,” she floundered, waving vaguely bed-ward.

“I simply meant that I have seen him before—even spoken with him—but it was in Oxford. When I was at Keele’s, staying with Della and Gerard.

At least, I’m fairly certain that’s him.

It would be easier to tell if he were awake because he was then.

Awake, I mean. Obviously. And dressed. As I was. ”

“Mercy,” whispered her mother.

“What did I say about ‘disreputable’?” the innkeeper grumbled.

Mrs. Dere ignored him, returning her attention to the bed. “That man cannot possibly still be asleep,” she said through tightened lips. “He is pretending.”

“He does feel rather warm, Alice—” began the baron.

“Oh, yes,” Maria agreed. “He is quite warm.”

This dragged a groan from her younger brother Gordon.

“For pity’s sake, you feather-brain, shut your mouth.

You’re making things worse. This is why we never talk to you before you’re fully awake.

Don’t you see I will have to challenge this overwarm, plaster person to a duel, and I will probably die because I’m so vexed with you. ”

“You’ll probably die because you don’t know a thing about dueling,” observed his friend Peter Dere. “But I’ll be your second.”

Mrs. Dere raised her be-ringed hand, and silence fell again. Striding forward she grasped the sleeping man’s shoulder and delivered a shake violent enough to wake the recently dead. Which meant the young man, being not dead at all but only recovering from a fever, opened his eyes.

“A-Angel,” he croaked, blinking up at the halo of Mrs. Dere’s bright hair.

“Don’t you ‘Angel’ me, sirrah,” she snapped, coloring nonetheless. “Who are you? Explain your presence in this room.”

Frowning, he rubbed his own hands over his face, and those near enough could see they were the hands of a gentleman—smooth and well-manicured.

“Might ask you to do the same, madam,” he muttered, struggling to raise himself, but falling back against the pillows. “Have I overslept the time?”

“Hadn’t we better call a doctor?” suggested Lord Dere.

“And introduce another witness to this?” Mrs. Dere swelled with indignation. “Never! In fact, get out, all of you. All of you who are not family! Out, out, out. I insist.”

“Now, look here,” spoke up the proprietor, planting fists on his hips. “These are my premises, and I’ve a right to stay on my premises and know when there’s indecency and scandal afoot.”

“Out!” shrieked Mrs. Dere, such fire in her blue eyes that even her son Peter jostled for escape among the chambermaids, errand boys, general drudges, and fellow inn guests plugging the doorway in their eagerness to comply.

“Now you’ve done it,” the innkeeper scolded when the scuffle succeeded in bursting into the passage (though truth be told, most of them remained in earshot, waiting to creep forward again when Mrs. Dere forgot them). “Word of this debauch will be all over town by nightfall.”

“What debauch?” echoed the young man, striving again to sit up, his dark eyes now taking in the remaining throng. “I must be dreaming. Who are all of you? Where am I?”

“Don’t play the innocent with us, sirrah,” said Mrs. Dere icily. “You are nowhere but where you have forced your entrance.”

“Alice,” said the baron gently, “I believe he is unwell.” He lay the back of his hand against the young man’s forehead, nodding after a moment and clicking his tongue. “Yes, indeed. Quite warm. We had better send for a doctor.”

“No doctor!” cried the young man, finally struggling up on his elbows.

The opening of his shirt gaped, revealing the cords of his neck and fine blades of his collarbones.

Maria’s eyes went round as guineas, and she must not have been the only one, for he clutched the panels of his shirt together, repeating, “No doctor, please. No need. I am already a thousand times improved over yesterday—unless I am…hallucinating…at this very moment, which seems entirely possible.” A sheen of sweat glossing his brow, he fell back once more, lifting supplicatory fingers toward the baron.

“Again I ask, what is happening? Take pity, sir, and tell me.”