Then Comes Marriage by Kasey Michaels

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If you've been longing for a Regency romp with plenty of passion and intrigue, look no further than Then Comes Marriage. Where once there were three confirmed bachelors, now only Brady James, Earl of Singleton, remains. Somehow, in contrast to the wedded bliss his two best friends are enjoying, his own life as a man-about-town has lost much of its charm. To relieve his boredom, he recently attempted to discover more about Regina Bliss, the lovely young waif his good friends have taken under their protection -- only to have someone take exception to his unconventional hobby of investigation. Abducted, beaten, and left for dead, Brady takes new interest in the life he nearly lost. He fakes his own death. Then he insists Regina join him as he poses as his own heir to discover the reason behind the attack -- and the identity of their common enemy. Lovely Regina's talent for lies makes her the perfect ally in his grand deception -- and dealing with the desire that grows between them is a risk that both these bold adventurers must be prepared to take.

From the Publisher

Kipp Rutland found Regina Bliss begging and introduced her to the hero of this love story. Investigating her past finds him trussed like a turkey and floating in the Thames. This is no way to start a love affair, but this is no normal love affair.

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Then Comes Marriage

Warner Books

Chapter One

"Obviously you haven't been paying attention, Bram. I passed beyond bored more than a year ago," Brady James, Earl of Singleton, told him, gratefully accepting the glass. "What you see before you now is stultified. Damn near mummified. Tell me again why society finds this endless parade of opulence necessary."

Bram took a sip of his wine, smiled as his beautiful wife waltzed by in the arms of a half-pay officer whose expression told the world he felt as if he'd just died and gone to Heaven. "But that's precisely the point, Brady. Parading opulence. Look at me everybody, I've got more hothouse flowers at my ball than Lady Whoever had at hers. Look at me everybody, I have more diamonds in my tiara. Look at me everybody, I can afford the best tailor to swathe my corpulence in the finest satin. Look at me, look at me. Please, everybody, look at me."

"Your Sophie doesn't act like that," Brady told him, waving to the duchess of Selbourne, who was at that moment delightedly waggling her gloved fingers at him. "She enjoys herself, no matter where she is. I think she genuinely likes people, all sorts of people." He pushed himself away from the post, grinned wryly. "I mean, she seems to like you."

"Correction, my friend. Sophie adores me. She tells me so just often enough to keep me from thinking too long about the times she doesn't adore me."

"Her aim improving?" Brady asked, as the two men made their way to the anteroom where, Brady hoped, he could find himself a card game and a quiet corner.

"Thankfully, no. Although she never quite forgives me when I step out of the line of fire. She'd much rather I catch whatever she throws. Remember that god-awful vase Prinny gave us as a wedding gift? The big blue one with the naked nymphs and prancing centaurs? Missed that one entirely when it came my way the day I forgot to show my face at Sophie's little tea party for Lady Sefton. Made quite a mess, I tell you. Broke into a thousand pieces."

"It would have been a bad influence on your children in the long run," Brady said, smiling. "I looked closely at it one night, you know, while waiting for you and Sophie to appear. I truly believe a few of those prancing nymphs and centaurs were ... copulating."

Bram grinned. "Sophie said they were just being extremely friendly when I tried to point out that fact to her. But she did cross nearly the entire room to pick the thing up and wing it at me, so I think she knew. Oh, by the bye, Sophie's found another one for you."

"Another vase? What in God's name would I want with one? Please don't tell me I so forgot myself as to compliment the damn thing. Our dear Prince Regent has the pocketbook of a pauper and all the taste and refinement of a whorehouse madam."

"No, not another vase, as well you know. Another female. A Miss Sutton, I believe. Good family, sweet girl, and very biddable."

"Lord save me," Brady said, shaking his head. "That would be the fourth one this week, and the last one hadn't even cut her second teeth yet, I swear it, Bram. I never should have told Sophie I was feeling left out now that you and Sophie, and Kipp and Abby, and seemingly all my friends are so happy, so ... so married."

"Relax, the Small Season will be over soon, and you can escape to the country."

Brady looked around the card room, saw that every chair was filled. Not that he wanted to play for the tame stakes his hostess allowed anyway. "Maybe sooner than later, Bram," he said, turning on his heel. "But stay or go, I'm definitely fleeing this insipid ball before Sophie sics Miss Sutton on me. I'll stop round tomorrow, to apologize to your dear, meddling wife."

"You'd better," Bram called after him. "And, being a good friend, I won't tell her you're coming. Otherwise, I can see myself helping to amuse Miss Sutton until you appear. Do you think she'd like a rousing game of snakes and ladders?"

Chuckling under his breath, Brady made his way to his hostess, bid her a good evening, gathered his hat, gloves, cane, and cloak, and stepped out onto the wide marble porch.

He cut quite a handsome figure in the rather garish light from the flambeaux affixed to the facade on either side of the door. Tall, over six feet, and with the build of a man who enjoyed physical exercise, he tapped his tall hat down on his golden brown hair at a rakish angle that shaded his bright brown eyes. His tanned skin contrasted well with the pure white of his linen and his black-as-ebony evening clothes and cloak.

He took a deep breath of the never wonderfully perfumed London night air, pulled on his gloves, and tucked his cane under his arm. It wasn't past midnight yet, which meant that parts of fashionable Mayfair were just now coming alive, and he could feel the excitement in the air. An excitement he, unfortunately, didn't share, as he knew he had somehow lost his interest in the social whirl.

And yet, what else was there? No wars to fight at the moment. No large scandals, although one would probably be along any moment, for this was, after all, London. Even the government seemed to be running itself smoothly, an oddity in itself, but just one more reminder that, other than vis-iting his tailor or whiling away the hours in some gaming hell, there was precious little for him to do. Precious little he wanted to do.

Perhaps he would leave the city and return to his property in Sussex. He could throw himself into riding his fields, checking the estate books, and spending some long, quiet evenings by the fire with a snifter of brandy, his favorite hounds sleeping in front of the hearth.

He made a mental note to have someone hunt up some dogs for him. Preferably big, tongue-lolling, sleep-on-your- feet dogs.

Mostly, he needed to clear his head. He flipped a coin in the direction of the nearest footman, telling him to find his coachman in the crush of coaches lining Berkeley Square and inform him that his master would find his own way home this evening.

The air was warm for this late in the fall, with a hint of fog whispering at his feet, and he really didn't need his cloak. Using his cane, he deftly swept back the cloak, flipping the ends over his shoulders, revealing the fine cut of his evening clothes, and started off toward his mansion in Portman Square.

The flagways were still fairly well populated, what with members of the ton still hieing here and there, and the streets clogged with coaches either surrounded by other coach traffic or parked wherever possible, awaiting their owners. As usual, the pungent odor of horse manure overrode the essence of the high-class, perfumed, oft-times unwashed bodies heading to or from yet another party, yet another ball.

Only after he'd walked for a few blocks did Brady at last feel some small, satisfied solitude. He enjoyed the night, the sounds of it, the smell of it, the now more thick, silent fog, the hint of danger that was ever in the London air, even here, in the rarefied air of Mayfair.

He smiled in the darkness as he thought about his friends. Bram and his adorable Sophie, now the parents of two, and yet still very obviously lovers. About Kipp Rutland, the Viscount Willoughby, and his bride, Abby, already gone from London, on an extended honeymoon at the Willoughby estates. They'd sent out notes to Bram, Brady, and others, thanking them very much for not visiting.

Three confirmed bachelors, and two of them now wed, leaving Brady feeling very much alone, very much on the outside, looking in at his friends' happiness. Not that he wanted a wife, needed a wife, or could even picture himself dandling a drooling infant on his knee. Just turned thirty, he was too young, he was having too much fun, he was ... fun? He was bored. Damn it all to hell, he was bored.

He had to be bored. Otherwise, why would he have taken the time to go haring off to a benighted village like Little Woodcote with the silly notion of discovering information about the waif Kipp and Abby had recently rescued from the London streets?

"Because she lied," he said out loud as he turned yet another corner, still meandering aimlessly, chafing slightly because Regina Bliss's secrets were still safe, his trip having been a total waste. "Because she has the strangest way of looking straight through you with those wonderful grey eyes. Because she's beautiful, and you can't get the image of her face out of your head. Because you can't stand secrets. And, face it, man, because you had nothing else to do. Not one damn other thing to do but go riding off to find out why a servant girl is a near master of the English tongue and uses that tongue to tell whopping great fibs."

Brady winced, embarrassed to be talking to himself, and looked around, hoping no one had overheard him. "Well, damme," he said, marveling at the absence of people, of hacks, of coaches, taking in the fact that the fog had turned from romantic to oppressive, and figuratively kicked himself.

That's where meandering will get you. It will get you lost.

Brady stood still, hoping to get his bearings in the fog, closing his eyes as he mentally tried to retrace his steps. He'd left Berkeley Square, turned north. Walked a few blocks, then turned west, heading in the general direction of Portman Square. Except he should have turned north again a few blocks earlier.

Damn! Damn and blast! He should have just walked over to the park and kept to the main thoroughfares. That's what he should have done. But the main thoroughfares were just that, the main arteries for the ton and their coaches and their noise and congestion, and even horse manure. He'd wanted peace and quiet. He'd wanted to be alone.

And now he was alone, in spades.

Flipping back the edges of his cloak even farther, to free his arms, he took hold of his cane by the knob, secure in the knowledge that the decorative piece also held a hidden rapier beneath its ebony-wood casing.

It wasn't so much that he feared attack. It was that he didn't want to be found in a gutter the next morning, with everyone knowing he was stupid enough to have gotten himself robbed in the middle of Mayfair. Pride. Unreasonable at times, unfathomable, he was sure, to the weaker sex, but there it was. He didn't worry about stumbling across some opportunistic cutthroats; he just wouldn't want anyone to know he'd been such a clunch as to unwittingly put himself in danger's path.

His mind now concentrated on his surroundings, every slight noise, every cough that could have come from the next alleyway, Brady turned to retrace his steps to a more populated street.

"Now!"

The hoarsely whispered word that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere-blast this fog!-had Brady whirling about, his blade already exposed to the faint yellow glow of a faraway streetlamp. He positioned himself for battle, evenly distributing his weight on the balls of his feet, holding up the blade, raising his other arm for balance.

Nothing. There was nobody there. Nothing but the night and the fog and his overworked imagination.

Wasn't that above everything wonderful? First he'd been talking to himself. Now he was hearing things. Feeling silly, stupid, and wondering when he'd turned into a nervous old woman, Brady bent to retrieve the casing for his blade, and then kept going facedown on the wet flagway under the blow from a club that smashed into his shoulder.

His battered, bleeding nose already giving him hell, Brady shook off the force of the blow and quickly rolled to his left, hoping to regain his feet.

He got to his knees before another blow broke his right arm-he could feel the snap. He could hear it. The blade fell from his suddenly nerveless hand.

"Bastard!" he shouted, climbing to his knees once more, using his left arm to brace himself until he could get to his feet, determined at least to see the face of his attacker.

Attackers. There were three of them, all masked, all of them holding wicked-looking wooden clubs. And, his brain registered before the blows came raining down on him and his consciousness faded, they were the best-dressed street thieves he'd ever seen.

The next thing Brady thought, when he could think again, was that if he wasn't dead yet, he was going to be in the next few minutes. Because he could feel the rough burlap around him. He could smell the rotting vegetables the sack had held before it held him, held him stuffed up inside the sack like a baby in a very inhospitable womb.

He could feel the sway of a vehicle as it rumbled through the streets. Local cutthroats would have killed him, taken his purse, possibly even stripped him of his valuable clothing, then left him in the gutter-all in the space of a minute. This was different. He was being taken somewhere. That wasn't good. That couldn't possibly be good.

Brady bit his bottom lip nearly through when one of the sets of boots propped on him as if he were some human footstool lifted for a moment, then slammed heel first into his side; once, twice, a third time. It was almost an absent-minded violence, the sort of violence committed by a man who hurt people just because he could.

Brady lay very still, hoping the man would lose interest in a target that didn't moan, didn't cry out, didn't try to fight back. God, he hurt. He hurt everywhere. His stomach was close to turning with the sick pain of broken bones, the crush of his headache. How many times had they hit him? Had Caesar suffered a dozen stab wounds? Would those have hurt less than the blows from those three vicious clubs?

"He moved. God, he moved," a voice said from somewhere above him.

That same boot slammed into Brady's back. Once. Twice. "Don't be such a woman. It's just the coach that's moving. He's dead."

"Or he will be in a few minutes," yet a third voice said. Or was it the first one, speaking again? Brady couldn't tell. The heavy burlap kept him from distinguishing more than a few words at a time, and nobody was saying more than a few words at a time.

Well, at least they weren't having tea and crumpets as they drove him to wherever they were taking him. That would be lowering, wouldn't it?

Brady was getting giddy, and he knew it. He couldn't move. Not for the pain. Not for the confines of the sack. Not unless he wanted another kick, and he certainly didn't want another kick.

The coach turned onto a much rougher road, one that couldn't have been cobbled in a dozen years, and then slowed, stopped.

Brady could hear the cry of gulls, smell the murky water of the Thames ... and he knew. Things weren't about to get any better for him.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Then Comes Marriage by Kasey Michaels Copyright © 2002 by Kasey Michaels. Excerpted by permission.
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