The Welshman's Bride

“Regrettably, your actions did not have the effect you intended.”

The baron leaned toward him. “What happened between you before last night, Dylan? It’s clear she thought if the betrothal was broken, you would wed her. Did you give her cause to think you wanted to marry her if she was free?”

Dylan smote his forehead. “God’s holy heart, that’s why she did it—to break the betrothal!”

“Obviously. Did you tell her that?”

“Anwyl, no! I said I would be sorry to see her leave or some such thing.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else!”

“What else did you do?”

“I...there may have been some kissing,” he muttered, looking at his feet.

“Kissing?”

“Passionate kissing,” he confessed.

“Just kissing?”

“A little more.”

“What ‘little more’?”

Frustrated, Dylan raised his eyes and regarded the baron resolutely. “You’re a man. You can guess. But I never made love to her, or even got close to it.”

“Dylan,” the baron began not unkindly, “do you never stop to think? Lady Genevieve has been with Lady Katherine DuMonde the past eight years. I doubt she’s even talked to many men that whole time. Now she’s traveling to be married to a man she’s never seen, and who she knows is not young. They stop here, and who does she meet but you?

“I won’t be telling you anything you don’t already know when I say you’re as handsome a young man as she’s ever likely to meet, and—” he grinned for an instant “—you’ve got a merry devilry that reminds me of myself at your age, so I know how attractive that quality can be.

“I do not doubt that you’ve grievously underestimated the effect you had on her,” he continued, serious again. “She thought you liked her more than you intended, and saw a way to get out of a marriage she didn’t want.”

“I suppose I should have listened to Griffydd,” Dylan muttered.

“What does Griffydd have to do with this?”

Dylan shrugged. “He tried to warn me, but I...”

“Yes, you should have paid attention,” the baron replied. “But that is past. The question before us now is, what can we say to assuage her uncle?”

“I won’t be forced to marry her just to save her honor, which she compromised,” Dylan warned.

“You know I am not a proponent of forced marriages, for any reason,” the baron replied. “We must think of a way to let the marriage to Lord Kirkheathe proceed as planned.”

As the baron regarded the silent young man he had known from his birth, his brow furrowed with concern. “You do want the marriage to Kirkheathe to proceed?”

Dylan shrugged again. “Naturally. But after all the racket Lord Perronet made, her reputation may already be too seriously ruined. Kirkheathe might spurn her.”

“That is true.” The baron sighed.

“Unless I can convince Lord Perronet that I did not make love to his niece and so there is no reason she cannot marry Kirkheathe.”

“You will convince him?”

Feeling a certain amount of guilt over what he had done with Genevieve, he nodded. “I will try.”

“So there is no reason at all she cannot marry Kirkheathe?”

Dylan rose and faced his foster father. “If there is, it is only in her own mind.”

“Or heart, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed after a short silence.

“Well, then,” the baron said, rising. “I suggest you waste no time. The longer Lord Perronet is on the rampage, the worse the damage to Lady Genevieve’s reputation will be.”

Dylan nodded and turned to go.

Before he could leave, the baron reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. “She seems a sweet girl, if misguided. Do not fault her too much for her foolishness.”

Dylan smiled his irrepressible smile. “Because she claims to be in love with me, I will be chivalry itself when I talk to her.”

Then a scowl replaced the smile as he strode from the room.

“As for her uncle, I can make no such promises.”

Having hastily dressed in a gown of what she considered a most appropriate black, Genevieve sat staring at her hands folded on her lap. Her uncle was going to be here at any moment, and she was doing her best to compose herself.

It was not easy. Indeed, if someone were to offer her a means of being spirited out of Craig Fawr to the farthest reaches of Europe, she would consider herself the most fortunate of beings.

Sadly, no such miraculous event was in the offing.

And yet it was not shame and sorrow that filled her heart at the moment. It was a fierce and righteous anger, because she had been tricked by a clever rogue bent only on his own amusement

She never should have trusted Dylan DeLanyea’s kisses and his smiles and his sorrowful words. She should have remembered Lady Katherine’s admonitions that most young men were scheming, lustful rascals best avoided.

To think she had believed that he loved her! That his passionate kisses meant that he cared. Instead, as she had discovered to her horror and her shame, he had only been toying with her and amusing himself at her expense.

She should have been a dutiful niece and gladly gone to her marriage instead of climbing into a bed beside a naked and softly snoring Welshman who had promised her... nothing.

And she never should have cut her own finger to make it look as if she had bled. That was something one of the other girls at Lady Katherine’s claimed would happen the first time she lay with a man. That girl had lost her virginity some time before to a soldier in her father’s employ.

How she had looked down on Cecily Debarry after she had heard that, Genevieve thought, disgusted with herself as she remembered. That was how people would think of her now, as a sinful, immoral creature—and it was Dylan DeLanyea’s fault!

“Are you dressed?” her uncle demanded from the other side of the door.