Chapter Three
As Stephen watched all of the color slowly drain from Abigail’s face, he felt a distinct measure of satisfaction.
After the hell she’d put him through these past six months, a bit of alarm was the smallest price she deserved to pay.
Even if she’d never received the multitude of letters that he’d sent to the address he’d pried from her nanny, the only person the Duchess of Hanover had trusted with her whereabouts after she’d fled England and taken her daughter with her, Abigail had to know what her eighteenth birthday signified.
It was too important a date for the duchess not to have told her before she’d passed from consumption, a sobering fact he’d learned just three days ago when he had finally managed to track his fiancée to the small town of Lisbon.
Only to learn she’d departed the morning prior on a stagecoach bound for Manhattan.
Undeterred, he’d jumped on the next coach out of the station, and had arrived an hour ago.
Just enough time to find the hotel she’d stayed at and then track her here, to Columbia College.
He’d been ready to search every damned classroom .
. . until, by a rare stroke of sheer luck (his first since starting this wild-goose chase), there she was.
A petite, somewhat mousy-looking woman with light-brown hair sloppily pinned beneath a blue bonnet and a boxy dress walking down the steps.
Walking straight into him before he caught her by the shoulders, his hands tightening reflexively around the object of his search that had eluded him for so long.
When she’d tilted her head back, he was relieved to see that her eyes were green.
Not pale blue, or light hazel, but a true spring-meadow green framed with thick, sooty lashes.
The same color her mother’s had been, and the rumored reason why she’d caught the attention of the Duke of Hanover in the first place.
It was easy to see why. Eyes like those could start a war, or end one.
Even glaring at him, they were prettier than any viridescent jewel he’d ever held in his hand.
Stunning, really.
And as annoyed as he was by all he’d gone through to get here, Stephen had felt a glimmer of hope that the arduous journey had led him to more than he had ever dared to let himself anticipate.
Not that he was necessarily a pessimistic fellow, but he was a realistic one, and having gotten a front row seat to an arranged marriage in his own home, he knew what they could be. What they often were.
Fucking terrible.
Suffice to say, he hadn’t exactly been looking forward to his own.
But then he’d gazed into those green eyes, and her adorable, upturned nose, and the dash of freckles upon her cheeks, and he’d thought .
. . he’d thought maybe there was something to be found here.
Something that could actually grow when it was planted instead of succumbing to rot and disease as soon as it emerged from the soil.
Until she punched his arm, stomped on his foot, and threatened to do serious harm to his manhood.
“Would you care to discuss the planning of our nuptials in a more private setting?” he asked, his stare hardening as it swept across her countenance.
She wasn’t going to run away from him this time to go hide in some tiny New England town.
She’d already had the luxury of living eighteen years without the constant pressure he had been made to endure, and he would be damned before she got another day.
If he had to suffer, then so did she. Fair was fair.
Promises were promises. Contracts were contracts.
Even when they were signed on your behalf.
Then she trembled . . . and Stephen cursed under his breath as guilt sliced through his satisfaction.
He didn’t want to terrify the girl. Nor did he truly wish to upset her, no matter the upheaval and unrest her disappearance had caused his family over the years.
This was to be his future wife, after all.
The mother of his children. Although at the moment, she looked as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to bolt or heave up her breakfast. Not exactly the flattering first impression he had wanted to make when he set out across the Atlantic to collect her.
“Come on,” he said gruffly, shrugging out of his greatcoat. “It’s cold and you don’t even have a cloak on. Let’s find somewhere warm while we sort through this mess that we’re in.”
“Thank you,” she said, her small fingers curling around the lapels of his coat as he draped it over her shoulders. Comically large, it dragged on the pavement behind her as they made their way down the street to a busy coffeehouse with a single empty table toward the rear.
Over the hum of voices and the cheerful tune of a violin, he ordered tea and scones, stirred a hefty spoonful of sugar into his cup while Abigail squeezed a dash of lemon into hers, and he took a musing sip before settling back in his chair for what was surely to be an . . . interesting . . . conversation.
How did he begin a discussion with the woman who had been bound to him since she was born? A woman he’d never seen before today. A woman who clearly wanted nothing to do with him.
He’d made a mess of it thus far. Which was unusual for him, as he typically had a gift for talking people into doing whatever he wanted with a grin and a wink.
Except when he’d tried his grin on Abigail—his very best grin at that—she’d looked at him as if he had two heads, and wasn’t that a damned piece of irony?
His short list of gorgeous and coveted mistresses was proof that his renowned charm worked on all members of the opposite sex from actresses to opera singers.
He’d even coaxed a smile from the Dowager Countess of Grantham, a formidable termagant that had made grown men cry.
All females adored him, from the very young to the very old.
Except, it appeared, for one.
The woman he was to marry.
“What were you doing at the college?” By way of opening lines, it seemed harmless enough. “Applying for a secretarial position?”
Abigail’s mouth pinched, giving her a striking resemblance to the dowager countess. “No, I was not applying for a secretarial position. I was applying to be a medical student.”
“I take it you weren’t accepted?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?” he asked, lifting his cup.
“Because I was born with breasts.”
Stephen choked on his tea. Slamming the cup on the table, he doubled forward and began a series of loud, barking coughs that had every damned head in the establishment turning in their direction.
“You’ve drawn liquid into your airway instead of your esophagus,” Abigail said calmly, raising her voice above his retching. “Swallow, take a deep breath, swallow again, and sit up.”
His face red, his eyes watering, his dignity gone, Stephen eventually sat upright and swiped a hand across his mouth, then waved it in the air as a sign for everyone to return to whatever they’d been doing before he’d nearly gagged to death on poorly made tea.
If the bloody colonists hadn’t pitched good British tea into their harbor thirty some years ago, maybe he wouldn’t have choked on whatever this herbal-tasting swill was today.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, scowling at his cup.
“Liquid and food are meant to travel down the esophagus. When they enter the trachea instead, the body’s natural reaction is to expel the foreign object by any means necessary.” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the table. “I’d like to leave. As I said before, I am going to miss my coach.”
“I am sorry your . . . bosom . . . prevented you from being accepted into school, but neither of us is going anywhere until we figure this out.”
“What is there to figure out?” she retorted sharply. “We were betrothed to be married when you were a young child and I was a baby. We are now adults, and I no longer wish to be betrothed. That’s the end of it.”
“Then you do know who I am and why I am here.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“And my letters? They did reach you, I presume.”
She glanced down at her lap. “It’s been a very cold winter.”
“You burned them?”
“I can appreciate that it must have been a large inconvenience to come here, Lord . . .”
“Call me Stephen.”
“Lord Stephen.”
“No, just Stephen.”
“Then you’re not a lord?” she said, her forehead creasing.
“Viscount Brunswick, heir to the earldom of Lancaster.”
“My mother told me that your family’s surname was Highborn. Has it changed to Brunswick?”
“No, that is my father’s secondary title.”
“He has two?”
“Three, strictly speaking.”
“How many titles can one person have?”
He thought about it for a moment. “I believe the Duke of Gloucester has eleven.”
“Eleven? What does he do with them all?”
“I’m not certain. I think we’ve fallen a bit off—”
“Should I call you Lord Brunswick, Lord Lancaster, Lord Highborn, or Lord Sandwich?”
Stephen stared at her. This exasperating, oddly enchanting fiancée that he’d sailed across an ocean to find. This fiancée who knew the difference between a trachea and an esophagus, but not a viscount and an earl.
“Why the devil would you call me Lord Sandwich?”
“I read it in a book once and found it humorous.”
When the corners of her lips twitched ever so slightly, Stephen came to understand that she was having a bit of enjoyment at his expense. Something that might have rankled, were he not relieved to see that she was capable of indulging in idle pursuits of amusement.
As the son of a very strict, very serious mother, he wouldn’t wish such a somber upbringing on another child. Certainly not one of his own. He also liked the way Abigail’s freckles appeared to dance across her nose when she was struggling not to laugh.