Sins and Scandals Collection: Whisper of Scandal / One Wicked Sin / Mistress by Midnight / Notorious / Desired / Forbidden

She saw a flash of something in Garrick’s eyes, some emotion so profound that she felt shaken. “Yes,” he said. His tone had warmed a shade. “I believe you. You are too honest to play me false. You keep your promises.”

“You did not wish to wed again,” Merryn said, watching his face. She felt as though she was learning something new, stumbling along a strange path. She knew that insight was not her strong suit. Tom’s betrayal had pointed that up rather painfully. But now with Garrick she found she wanted to learn and understand.

Garrick shook his head. “No. I never wanted to marry again.”

Merryn understood that now. It had not occurred to her before that Kitty’s unfaithfulness must have damaged Garrick so badly that he would never remarry. She had thought he had not cared. She realized that she had been wrong.

“But surely you need an heir?” she said.

“I have brothers,” Garrick said. He smiled at last. “I may not speak to them but I can count on them to continue the Farne line.”

It seemed a cold world to Merryn, who had only that morning come to value the extent of her sisters’ love.

Garrick was watching her with those dark, dark eyes. “Do we have an agreement, then?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” Merryn whispered. The word was out, no going back.

She saw him smile with relief and triumph and possession. He kissed her again and she felt her head spin and her knees weaken as the pleasure rocked through her like a sweet, hot tide.

He released her. “Thank you,” he said. “I will call on you later.”

He bowed to her and went out and Merryn crossed to the window and sank down onto the seat, remembering the pressure of Garrick’s mouth on hers and feeling the heat still thrum through her body. Her lips felt impossibly soft and sensitive, swollen from Garrick’s kisses. Her belly was aching with a tight, hot sensation. She knew how that might be eased now. She knew what she wanted.

With a groan she covered her face with her hands.

How could she marry this man and live with him as his wife when she hated what he had done?

Garrick Farne. Her husband. She felt impossibly torn.

JOANNA HAD DECREED that the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy was the event at which Merryn and Garrick would make their debut in society as a betrothed couple. The wedding was two days away.

“You cannot hide away forever,” Joanna snapped, when Merryn objected. “Yes, there will be gossip but better to tackle it head-on. Trust me—I know a little about facing society’s censure.”

“I did not enjoy social occasions before,” Merryn argued. “Why should it be different now?”

“It won’t be,” Tess put in. “It will be worse.” She and Joanna were wrestling their sister into a brand-new yellow gown. Merryn felt like a tailor’s dummy, pummeled and pushed between them. “But you have to do it, Merryn,” Tess continued, “otherwise you will become even more of a hermit than you already are. They will call you the Reclusive Duchess, or something else snide and more alliterative than I can think.”

“The Desolate Duchess?” Joanna suggested.

“The Dismal Duchess,” Merryn said.

“Oh, yes,” Tess said, smiling, “I like that one.”

The sisters stood back, spun Merryn around and presented her to the mirror. “There. You look lovely.”

Merryn thought that she looked like a very reluctant Cinderella with two beautiful fairy godmothers smiling behind her. Her hair had been curled and teased into precisely the sort of upswept arrangement she hated and could never maintain, even though the prettiest yellow bonnet secured it. The gown was … Well, it simply was not her style. But then she did not have a style. Shabby bluestocking was scarcely the mode and certainly would not do for the Royal Academy.

She was about to dismiss her reflection, thank her sisters politely and make the best of a bad job when she looked again and felt a small frisson of excitement. She had never previously paid the slightest attention to her appearance, never had any interest in it and yet now, suddenly, she could hear Garrick’s words.

I do not even notice your sisters when you are close by …

A little shiver shook her. She looked again. Her hair, so glossy and golden, framed a face that had regained its color and gained also something of sensual knowledge and experience. Her eyes glowed deep blue. Her lips were parted on the edge of a smile. The gown skimmed her shoulders and fell like a golden waterfall from below her breast to spill about her feet. She was aware of the caress of the silk and the way it swathed her body with a soft cocoon like a lover’s embrace.

She reached out one gloved hand and touched her reflection, trying to pin down the difference in her, the difference in how she felt. She thought of Garrick and the way that he watched her. She pressed her fingers to her lips in an unconscious echo of his touch. She felt alive.

“I think Merryn has woken up,” Joanna said, a little dryly, from behind her.

Merryn spun around. Just for a moment, lost in a world of new and sensual discovery, she had forgotten her sisters. They were both laughing at her. They were also both looking frightfully proud of her and a little bit anxious. She felt a pang of love and gratitude and caught their hands.

“Thank you,” she said. “I won’t hug you because it would crush the silk.”

“Gracious,” Joanna said, squeezing her hand, her eyes like stars, “we will make a fashionable lady of you yet, Merryn!”

“Pray do not set your sights too high,” Merryn said, laughing, and then they were all hugging each other anyway and she clung to Joanna and to Tess because everything had changed, she had changed and she was a little bit afraid, and because she had only just realized how much she loved them.

“At least you will not have to run the gamut of Garrick’s family,” Tess said as she disentangled herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hear that they do not speak.”

“Poor Garrick,” Joanna said. “That must be unconscionably lonely. I wonder why they are estranged?”

“Well,” Tess said, “it could be because all his siblings are the most unconscionable snobs. Ghastly, you know. He is better off without them.”

It felt odd to hear Joanna and Tess speak sympathetically of Garrick, Merryn thought, and yet on a purely human basis she had to agree with them. Garrick had always struck her as the most solitary of men and in some bitter way this marriage, borne out of necessity not love, might make him more solitary still. She had always deplored the cold business arrangements of aristocratic marriages yet at least in an arranged marriage there was usually companionship if not love, mutual support and sometimes respect. Garrick had offered her his name to save her reputation. She offered him nothing. It felt wrong to enter marriage on such a basis. She gave a violent shiver. She felt small and lonely, smothered by convention. For one terrifying moment she could see her life spinning out before her in a series of images of great country houses with huge, empty rooms, spaces where she would always walk alone.

“Here …” Tess handed her the yellow coat that matched the silk gown. “You are cold.”

“I am frightened,” Merryn said frankly.

Joanna and Tess exchanged a look. “We will be with you,” Joanna said encouragingly, “and Alex, too, although he says he is too much of a philistine to appreciate art. But I have always thought Mr. Turner’s pictures most fine. I adored his painting of Hannibal crossing the Alps.”

Merryn bit back the retort that would previously have sprung to her lips, a blistering comment on Joanna’s appreciation of any picture that was fashionable and approved by society. Besides, that was not really fair to her sister who as well as being generous to a fault had a very fine eye for style that was all her own.

I have been very unkind in the past, Merryn thought. I must try to do better.

It was odd; she had thought she was happy before, keeping secrets, doing her work for Tom, harboring her hatred of Garrick Farne. Only now, with her past life in tatters and an uncertain future before her as Duchess of Farne, could she see that perhaps what she had thought was happiness had been something different, a partial life bringing interest and challenge through her work and her studies perhaps, but also devoid of love.

Shrugging off the disturbing thought, she grabbed the fur muff that matched the trim on the bonnet.

“Well,” she said, smiling at Joanna and Tess, “let us go and make them talk!”

Despite her bravado, the journey to the Royal Academy in the Strand was accomplished in tense silence. The fact that the exhibition rooms were crowded with people also did nothing to soothe Merryn’s nerves. Alex offered her his arm and Joanna and Tess walked ahead, arms linked, terrifyingly à la mode, challenging anyone, Merryn thought, who dared to look askance at them. Even so there was absolute silence for a moment as they swept into the main exhibition room before a positive barrage of chatter broke out around them. Merryn unconsciously raised her chin in exact parody of her sisters’ nonchalant disdain but she was horribly aware of all the flutter of speculation and gossip, the whispers, the sideways glances. She could imagine all the unpleasant things they were saying, the comments about her fall from grace, her scrambled betrothal to save face, the delicious on dit of her being found naked in a bordello, a piece of scandal that surely could never be surpassed. Her face burned and the tears pricked her eyes but she was not going to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing how she felt. She had always hated to be the center of attention; this was hideous, her worst nightmare, as the fans flicked and the eyes followed her and someone tittered, a laugh full of lewd suggestiveness.

“I wish Garrick had escorted me,” Merryn whispered impulsively to Alex. Although she appreciated her brother-in-law’s support a very great deal she felt bereft without Garrick at her side, an odd but undeniable sensation that she had not expected.

“He is here now,” Alex whispered back, smiling.

Merryn turned slowly, her heart in her mouth. Garrick had come through the main entrance doors and was walking toward them flanked on one side by a man Merryn recognized as Captain Owen Purchase. Purchase seemed to be looking at Tess with the expression of a man struck dumb with admiration.

“Another good man goes down under the onslaught of the Fenner sisters,” Alex was saying ruefully.