How to Wed a Baron

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

A QUARTER MILE FROM THE manor house located five miles outside the ancient city of Prague, and hidden amid mighty oak trees that swallowed up much of the September sunshine, a lone figure sat on the grassy bank of a meandering stream. Her knees were tucked up beneath her chin as she intently watched the progress of an early fallen leaf until it became caught up in a tangle of water lilies and disappeared below the surface.

The young woman’s sigh was audible as she turned her head and seemed to pick out another leaf floating downstream, ready to follow its progress toward capture and oblivion, powerless to change its fate.

So, the man watching her thought. She’s been told.

Luka Prochazka remained concealed behind a tree trunk as he cursed the Fates that had denied him any skill with the paintbrush, for surely this was a moment worthy of being captured on canvas for the ages. Her slim woman’s body clad in a worn gown, her marvelous tumble of thick dark curls that seemed almost too heavy to be supported by the fragile column of her throat, the downcast eyes, the complexion of purest ivory…

She sighed once more, her shoulders rising and falling in dramatic fashion. Dearest Lady Alina. At not quite her nineteenth birthday, she was so very accomplished at drama.

Yes, this would be how he would have titled his portrait: Lady Magdaléna Evinka Nadeja Valentin, In Despair. Lesser hearts than his would break to see her this way. Her aunt, Lady Mimi Valentin, would give ten years of her life, perhaps twenty, to be half so beautiful, which was probably why she’d been so eager to do as the king had requested. Indeed, knowing the woman, she had most certainly delighted in the prospect of attending court with Lady Alina no longer in her train, capturing the eye of any man between the ages of twelve and three-days-dead.

Poor, beautiful Lady Alina. How very hard she had tried to be who and what she was not. Wild, free, unfettered. But an English mother and a half-Romany father, both long dead, did not a Romany make. In the end, it was the English blood that counted to those in power. Those in control. And to those in control, a young woman of marriageable age was nothing more than a pawn.

She would make a beautiful bride once Luka delivered her to her fate. Her groom, this unknown Englishman she was being sent to in six weeks’ time, would be a lucky man, indeed.

He turned away to silently retrace his steps, give Alina some privacy until the worst of her sulk was over. As he did, he thought to himself, In the end, she’ll make the best of it. She’ll find a way, her own way. She is her father’s daughter, and there is no defeat in her….

CHAPTER ONE

JUSTIN WILDE MOUNTED the curving right-hand staircase of Carleton House with all the joy of a condemned man being marched to the scaffold, one of his royal majesty’s flunkies on either side of him. At least the execution would be formal, not slapdash in appearance.

As his well-polished Hessians confidently struck each marble stair, his alert green eyes saw everything, his exemplary brain cataloguing and recording each detail of his surroundings. One might say the baron lived his life in a state of the highest readiness, prepared to fight or flee, should either necessity present itself.

Not that the pair of ridiculous liveried footmen, matching in their height and build and coloring as well, just as if they had been specifically chosen as a matched set—which they no doubt had been—would have entertained the slightest notion that, with little effort on his part, the baron could have dispatched them both to their final reward before they could blink.

And not that the servants could be faulted for their lack of perception. They saw, the world saw, what Baron Wilde wished them to see, and nothing more: a handsome, well-set-up gentleman who appeared to be as harmless as a morning in May.

Only those who knew Justin Wilde well—and these numbered less than a half dozen—saw more than the exquisite lace at his neck and cuffs, the fashionably fine cut of his coat, the perfection that was his longish, carefully casual black hair that matched in color a pair of wonderfully winged eyebrows.

Most impressive of all was his ready smile, which could be mocking, ironic, amused, open, disarmingly friendly and, as those privileged half dozen knew, very rarely genuine.

There was no smile on his lean face at the moment, real or subtly perfected. To receive the Prince Regent’s summons at some point in time had not been unexpected. The man had warned of the eventuality at their last meeting. But now, scant months after their agreement, the sure knowledge that he was to consider himself at the man’s beck and call for the remainder of one of their lives had been brought home in all of its unpleasantness.

“That chandelier is new since my last visit, isn’t it?” he inquired of the footmen, pointing to a crystal-and-gilt monstrosity that hung at the top of the stairs. “I probably paid for it, you know. My God, is that a crystal dove at the center of it?”

The younger of the two servants looked up at the chandelier, nearly losing his step on the marble stairs, so that Justin quickly reached out to steady him.

“Coo, that was a close-run thing, weren’t it? Thank you, milord.”

“Nonsense. I apologize for distracting you, knowing the danger. My late wife perished on these same stairs some years ago.”

“Is that a fact, milord? Took herself a fall, did she?”

“She didn’t drown,” Justin agreed pleasantly.

“Silas, stifle yourself,” the older footman warned, clearly aghast at both the question and his lordship’s answer. “This way, my lord, if you please,” he then added quickly, gesturing to the left—away from the ornate public rooms and toward the private area of the residence.

Wonderful. The only thing more off-putting than Prinny at noon would be Prinny at noon and still in his nightcap. Less than five minutes later, Justin’s worst fears were confirmed.

Once he was announced, the footmen retreated amid a flurry of deep bows. Justin advanced across an expanse of priceless carpets and parquet flooring, stopping at the foot of a bed so high, so wide, so lavishly hung with velvet draperies that even the Prince of Whales appeared small as he sat propped against pillows in the middle of it, munching on coddled eggs.

Justin smartly clapped his booted feet together and inclined his head and shoulders only enough to be civil. “Your obedient servant appearing at your command, Your Royal Highness.”

“Wilde,” the Prince of Wales said, sighing as he put down his fork. “You’re the only man I know who can turn an expression of respect into an insult. Did you see it?”

Justin racked his brain for a moment, and then nodded. “The dove may have been taking ostentation too far, even for you. What next, sir, pink waistcoats?”

“Ha! Nobody has dared to speak so freely around me since George. How I miss that rascal.”

“As do his many creditors, or so I’ve heard,” Justin said, remembering the evening not so long ago he’d spent doing his part in spiriting George “Beau” Brummell out of the city and on his way to safety in Calais. “Is that why I’m here, sir? To somehow assist in raising fond memories of the fellow who was once bosom chum? I’m flattered, yet devastated to admit that my man Wigglesworth doesn’t quite possess the man’s clever way with boot black.”

The prince swept out his arm, sending the silver tray loaded down with chocolate pots and plates and pastries crashing to the floor. “Damn you! Who are you to speak to me that— What do you want? Get out!”

This last was directed at the guardsmen who had entered at the sound of crashing silver and crockery, their swords drawn.

Justin stood his ground. And waited.

“For all of George’s faults, it’s true, I do miss him,” the prince said at last, almost wistfully, his well-known mercurial mood having shifted yet again. “He was well when you last saw him?”

“Alas, I cannot answer that question, sir, as I fear I’ve never actually met the man,” Justin lied smoothly.

“Yes, of course,” Prinny said, apparently remembering that he should show no interest in the Beau, or the fact that he’d cared enough to have ferreted out Justin’s participation in the scheme to extract the fellow from the clutches of the duns and even incarceration in debtor’s prison. “Let us move on to other things.”

“As you wish, sir. I am yours to command.”

“Good, you remember who I am. There are times I find that difficult to believe. Then you recall our private agreement as well, Wilde?”

Justin inclined his head yet again. “I believe I’ve committed it to memory, yes. If I might paraphrase for you?”

“Yes, yes, go on. I want to be assured you remember it.”

Justin’s smile was brilliant. “As I would a badly throbbing tooth, sir. In exchange for a sum of money numbering somewhere in the vicinity of what could in some twisted way be termed a king’s ransom, all of it deposited directly into Your Royal Highness’s private purse—”

“That is never to be mentioned.”

“I stand corrected. Although it was fifty thousand pounds, to be precise,” Justin said, actually beginning to enjoy himself. “Your Royal Highness, known to his intimates as George the Kind, I might venture, acting purely out of a generosity of spirit acknowledged throughout the realm and without thought to personal enrichment, pardoned my sorry self for the crime of firing in self-defense when the fool I’d been forced to challenge to a duel turned and discharged his pistol on two. A mistake that proved fatal to him and disastrous to me, as I then had to flee England or else be arrested and summarily hanged.”

“Better, although you fail to mention that dueling itself has long been outlawed, no matter the result of the meeting,” the prince pointed out smugly.

“How remiss of me. Shall we dig up Robbie Farber and charge him for his crime, do you think?”

“You’re impertinent. Go on, finish it.”

Justin really would rather not, so that the insult wrapped in his answer came to him easily. “In return for this grand and noble gesture, I, Baron Wilde, grateful to be once more standing on the ground first trod by my illustrious ancestors long before yours, sir, had ever heard of England and were still happily speaking German and feeding on cabbages, after eight long and painful years of exile, and once again in possession of both my estates and my fortune—most of the latter, at any rate—am the eager and obedient servant of Your Royal Highness, ready at all times to assist him whenever the need arises. That is our agreement, until such time as Your Royal Highness believes sufficient penance has been served.”