Page 2 of The Duke and the Accidental Bride

“Isabella, welcome!” Lord Langham held his arms wide as he swept across the room to greet Isabella. “I know I say this every time that I see you, but you grow more beautiful with each passing day.”

Somehow, and considering the circumstances, Isabella very much doubted it.

The manservant who had ushered Isabella and Martha inside moments ago, directing them straight to the drawing room, had not bothered to offer them a towel to dry themselves with, leaving the two women looking like drowned rats seeking shelter from a sinking ship.

“U -- uncle,” Isabella shuddered from the cold as he took her by the arms, holding her back to get a better look at her. “It is wo – wo -- wonderful to see you, as always.”

“My God!” her uncle cried suddenly, as if only just now noticing how disheveled she was. “What on earth -- is it raining outside? I had no idea.”

“Just a little.”

“Renfield!” He looked past Isbella to his manservant. “Fetch some blankets and towels, won’t you? And be quick about it! Oh, come here, you poor thing. By the fire...” Still holding her by the arms, Isabella’s uncle led her across the room and sat her down on a couch by the fireplace. “There,” he purred as he helped her settle. “I am so sorry, if I had known what the weather was doing, I would have had Renfield wait for you outside.”

“It is quite alright,” Isabella said, shuffling forward on the couch so that she was closer to the fire; the heat began to warm her, doing little for how she must look, but at least it made her feel a bit better. “I am here now.”

“Yes,” her uncle said as he stepped back. “And I am so glad that you came – and I must apologize also, for all this secrecy. Andthe demand!” he chuckled. “I cannot imagine what you must be thinking.”

“The same as I often think about you,” Isabella said before she could help herself.

Her uncle’s face dropped, quickly followed by a curving of his upper lip in a way that she recognized only too well. He did not like being talked back to, and he loved reminding those he thought beneath him that he was not a man to be spoken to in such a manner.

Careful now, Isabella. Uncle Leopold might be an insufferable old wart but he also holds the keys to Mother’s fate. And my own, for that matter.

She was about to apologize. Not something that she enjoyed doing, but she knew to be necessary. Best to at least try and be civil.

Only then, and most shockingly, her uncle laughed. “Ha! That tongue of yours...” He shook his head in jest. “You always were a sharp one, weren’t you. You’re like your mother in that way.”

Isabella balked at the response.

Leaning back, she glanced at Martha – standing on the other side of the couch in a bid to warm herself by the fire – who appeared just as shocked as Isabella was by this most strangereaction. It might have been the first time that she had ever heard her uncle laugh.

“Ah... yes, I am... glad to have come,” she said lamely, mostly for lack of an idea what she should say.

“And I am glad to see you here.” Her uncle was then quick across the room. “Shall I fix you a drink – where is Renfield with those towels and blankets?” He looked about the drawing room. “Honestly, good help can be so hard to find.”

“I am quite alright, concerning the drink,” Isabella said, now eyeing her uncle with extreme confusion. “I would rather speak of the reason that you have asked to see me.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Her uncle was by the liquor cabinet, where he poured himself what looked to be a glass of whiskey. He took a sip and smacked his lips before making his way back to her. “Again, I am so sorry for all the secrecy but in this instance, it was required. And I must ask that whatever is to happen here tonight, that your mother be kept in the dark. That woman...” He rolled his eyes. “I swear that she invented meddling.”

“If that is your wish,” Isabella said slowly, still eyeing her uncle as she waited for what was sure to be the punchline.

“Oh, not just my wish, but His Grace’s also.”

Isabella blinked. “His Grace?”

“Well, yes.” Her uncle looked down at her as if she was daft. “His Grace, the Duke of Fangsdale. The reason that you are here.”

Isabella blinked again. “I... what does His Grace have to do with this?”

“Why, he is the reason that I have asked you to come. Did you not wonder what he was doing here?”

“Here? What are you...” Isabella turned around on the couch and swept her gaze across the drawing room, certain that her uncle had lost his mind.

The room was cloaked in shadow, the sole light source coming from the hearth which was blocked mostly by her body sitting before it. It left the corners of the room darkened, which was why Isabella had barely paid them any attention – far too concentrated on getting warm, and her uncle’s odd behavior.

Only now, looking closer, Isabella spied for the first time a man standing in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall, watching the scene unfold with a sense of what she might have mistaken for boredom and extreme disinterest was his stern gaze not focused so squarely upon her that it was as if she were a lamb, he a wolf, and he was eyeing her off as he waited for the perfect moment to pounce on and then eat her.

A sudden cold swept through her body; overpowering the heat from the fire. He was taller than her uncle, broader in the shoulders, wider in the back, thicker in the legs; a hulkingspecimen of a man that looked as out of place as if a tree had sprung up in the back corner of the room.

---