Preview of Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall
Preview of Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall
CHAPTER 1
"Malvern?"
Valentine opened one eye, found the activity painful and the view unprepossessing, and, therefore, immediately closed it again.
"I say, Malvern?"
He opened his mouth with even more difficulty than his eye. Its interior felt both dry and sticky at the same time. He passed his tongue-which seemed to have died at some point during the night-across his lips and tried to remember how words worked.
"Dammit, Malvern."
Ah yes. Something like this: "No, thank you," he said politely, and buried his face in the pillow.
"Look, I'm sorry to wake you, but-"
"Not as sorry as I am."
There was silence. It was good. Valentine liked it and wanted it to continue.
"For God's sake, man. Are you soused? Would you care for some water?"
"No, I would not." This, Valentine was certain of. "I would care for you to go to the devil."
"Well, that's . . . very rude and not going to happen. Because I have to ask you something."
Valentine attempted his other eye. It reluctantly presented him with the hazy image of a young man standing over him, holding what was clearly a candle. This was not a good sign. If it was dark enough to require a candle, it was too dark for the Duke of Malvern to be awake.
"I used to be mildly indifferent to you, Tarleton," he muttered. "Why this abominable betrayal of my trust?"
"Yes, well." The young gentleman-Arabella's twin brother, who went by the improbable name of Bonaventure and the even more improbable nickname of Bonny sounded upset. And Valentine was upset at the volume of his distress. "I lied when I said I was sorry to wake you because I'm not. You deserve to be woken viciously and regularly. On account of being such a ... such a bad person."
First the sister. Now the brother. Was there no peace for the . . . hmm. Wicked would have been putting it rather strongly. Averagely virtuous? "What are you talking about, Tarleton? And must you talk at all?" He tried to move. Except it made his head explode, so he stayed where he was, twitching and whimpering.
Sometime later, finding Tarleton had still not done the decent thing and left, Valentine gathered himself and asked, "What in God's name happened to me?"
"From the empty decanter of brandy by your bed," Tarleton told him unsympathetically, "I suspect this decanter of brandy happened to you."
Valentine groaned. Then mustered his strength and rolled onto his back with all the grace and dignity of the Prince Regent trying to mount a horse. His body seemed altogether unimpressed with his behaviour and inclined to resist at any opportunity, but he persevered and pulled himself heroically upright.
Unfortunately, this caused fragments of last night to assemble themselves jaggedly in his mind-which, in turn, made him remember why he had chosen to take up with a bottle of brandy.
His relationship with the long-standing arrangement between the Tarletons and the Laytons had been rather akin to the relationship Damocles shared with a particular pointed and precariously positioned object. But his father had been right to suggest the match: it was an eminently sensible arrangement for both families, and Valentine's memories of Miss Tarleton had always been pleasant- a charming if shy child, he had thought with idle fondness. On the rare occasions he had permitted himself to think of his marital obligations at all.
Which may, in hindsight, have been an error. For Miss Tarleton had taken advantage of his absence to grow up exceptionally beautiful and unnecessarily peculiar. And, for no reason he could fathom, appeared to hold him in deep aversion. Valentine was unaccustomed to being held in deep aversion-he was a duke, and if people held dukes in any sort of aversion, they usually only did so in private-and he found the experience unwelcome. As was her apparent conviction of his decrepitude.
Decrepit or not, a quick check of his current faculties, both physical and mental, confirmed that he was at least functional. Irked, possibly even vexed, but functional.
"Please," he drawled, "enlighten me as to the nature of the calamity so absolute and precipitous as to necessitate my being awakened at ... I say, what time is it?"
Tarleton gave him a hard stare-or as hard a stare could be expressed by a face so angelic. "It's four o'clock."
"Good God." Shuddering, Valentine fell back against his pillows. "Does the world even exist at such an hour?"
"Some of it. But please stop fussing. I need to talk to you about Belle."
Valentine arched the very tip of his brow-he rarely troubled himself to raise a full one. "Well, that makes a certain degree of sense, I suppose. Since she is assuredly both calamitous and precipitous."
This observation did not seem to please Tarleton. Both brows shot upwards as if in rebuke of Valentine's lack of brow-based theatricals. "Don't you speak of my sister that way, you shameless brute. This is your fault. She would never have done such a thing if you hadn't ... done whatever you did to her first."
"I beg your pardon. I proposed marriage to her. As I believe it has long been expected that I would."
"Well ..."Tarleton bristled like an affronted porcupine. "You must have done it wrong."
Was Valentine really being lectured on appropriate behaviour by a man who burst into other men's bedchambers at unspeakable hours? "I think," he said haughtily, "I know how to propose marriage."
"Show me."
"Tarleton, have you lost your mind?"
"I need to know what happened. I need to know exactly."
"You need to go away this instant and put your head in a bucket of water."
Tarleton did not, in fact, go away that instant and put his head in a bucket of water. Instead, he seized hold of the bedcovers under which Valentine was sheltering and yanked them onto the floor.
Thankfully, Valentine had slept where he had fallen and still in his clothes-thus sparing them both an intimacy they were not prepared for.
"Propose to me."Tarleton planked his hands on his hips. "Right now."
Valentine was unwinding the creased remains of his neck cloth. "You do know it won't be legally binding."
"I don't actually want to marry you." Tarleton-who must have been reading the same novels as his sister-actually stamped his foot. "You've clearly turned into an awful person. I just need to understand what happened to Belle."
First decrepit. Now awful? Such was Valentine's confusion that he crawled woozily off the bed. "She was behaving rather strangely all evening. I think it might have been the quail."
"It was not," returned Tarleton, his eyes flashing magnificently, "the quail."
Evidently, Valentine was going to get no peace until the young man felt himself satisfied. Though God knew what that was going to take. He had not precisely been delighted to renew acquaintance with his bride-to-be-especially when she kept referring to him as repugnant-but at least he was not expected to wed the brother. He positively pitied the poor woman who was going to have to spend her life with the lightning storm of wayward impulses given human form that was Bonaventure Tarleton. "If you say so."
"I do say so. That's why I said it. Now stop faffing around and tell me what you did. And don't leave out a single detail. Because I'll know."
"For the twenty-seventh time" -Valentine stifled a yawn, in a manner that any sensible person would have been devastated by-"I didn't do anything. We retired to the drawing room, I went down on one knee, as I believe to be traditional-"
"Go on then."
"You doubt my capacity? How infirm do you think I am?"
Tarleton's eyes widened. They were blue like his sister's. Just as bright and as disconcertingly pretty. "I never said you were infirm. You're very firm. Almost ... excessively firm, really."
"I understand you're trying to be reassuring, but stop it at once." Flustered, Valentine sank to one knee. "I believe I did something like this."
There was a long silence-during which Tarleton subjected him to intense scrutiny. "Hmm," he said finally. "I thought you might have startled her somehow or made a mull of it. But, actually, that's not a dreadful start."
'"Not dreadful,"' repeated Valentine faintly.
"I mean, spoiled a bit because you look like you slept in a hedge, and your hair is all messy, and you haven't shaved not that I object to a little stubble, but Belle's the fastidious type. It's one of the few things we disagree on."
"What is happening, please? I did not invite an assessment of my kneeling."
Tarleton smiled-and it was a strange angle for being smiled at. He was used to people looking up to him. "Perhaps you should. You look delightful down there."
"Your sister was less than delighted."
"You must have been vile later. What happened next?"
"I might have taken her hand?"
Tarleton obligingly offered his own. He wore more rings than his sister. More rings than surely any one person needed to wear-unless they were at least part magpie.
"And then, "Valentine continued, "I said, 'Miss Tarleton, I have . . . something something blessing of families . . . something something ... honour ... something something
... wife."'
'Tm assuming you didn't say 'something something' at the time?"
"Of course I did not."
"Always best to check. And then what?"
Valentine blinked. "And then what what?" "What else did you say?"
"Well, nothing. I'd finished."
"You'd finished?" Tarleton's voice rose.
"This habit you have, of repeating everything I say. Is it hereditary?"
"This habit you have of sneering at everything-is that hereditary?"
It was probably a good time to rise. Not, Valentine reflected, that it had been a good time to kneel in the first place. "I," he murmured, "am not a villain in a tawdry romance. I do not sneer."
"Then what do you call"-Tarleton pointed with far more gusto than the gesture warranted-"that?"
"My face?"
"And"-another whirling of his fingers, the jewels refracting the candlelight into rainbow splinters-"this?"
"I have no idea to what you're referring."
Tarleton made a sceptical humphing noise. "You need to stop distracting me. What happened to the rest of your proposal?"
"What do you mean"-Valentine's reserves of sanity were fraying a little, as was his tone-"The. Rest. Of. My. Proposal?"
"The rest of it!"
Valentine was troubled to hear something like a snarl emerging from the back of his throat. "Tarleton ... "
"You know, the bit where you told Belle she's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen."
"Why in God's name would I say that to her?"
"Well . . . well ... " The young man seemed genuinely confused, his slightly retrousse nose wrinkling in confusion. "Because you're marrying her. And she is beautiful."
"Undeniably, but I do not see how it's relevant." "You would prefer to marry someone ugly?"
"I would prefer not to marry anyone at all."
"And you said that?" exclaimed Tarleton. "To my sister? To whom you were proposing? While proposing?"
Valentine was getting a headache. On top of his hangover. He put his fingers to his brow and massaged it absently. "I didn't say it. I think it was mutually assumed."
Not to be outdone by physical expressions of dismay, Tarleton flung both his hands in the air, like a diminutive Prometheus defying the gods. "You did, at least, tell her how she'd filled your heart with laughter and your soul with joy, driven you to the brink of madness with desire, and made your life without her a vast and empty ache."
A pause.
"A vast and empty what?" enquired Valentine politely.
"Ache." Another arm wave. Valentine was starting to
wonder if the entire family spent their lives in front of mirrors performing dramatic poses for an as-yet unrealised audience. "A vast and empty ache."
"If the ache is present, by definition it is not empty."
Tarleton was gazing at him much as his sister had the night before: with deep betrayal and burgeoning revulsion. Having apparently taken his fill of the bitter draft that was Valentine, he cast himself upon a nearby chair and flung an arm across his face. "What is wrong with you?"
This felt unwarranted. And somewhat hypocritical, coming from a man who clearly had many, many things wrong with him. "I have no idea what you're implying, Tarleton. My proposal was very polite and well reasoned."
"'Polite and well reasoned'?" Oh God, now Tarleton had gone back to repeating everything Valentine said. "Have you not read a single novel?"
"I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"Well, if you had, you'd know that 'polite and well reasoned' are not qualities people look for in marriage proposals."
"For heaven's sake"-Valentine tried, and failed, to keep the impatience from his voice-"if we lived life as though it were a novel, we'd spend all our time becoming embroiled in improbable adventures and spouting nonsense about filling our vast and empty souls with joyful aches."
"Yes," said Tarleton, "and?"
"Tarleton, nobody in their right mind would want any of that."
There was a long silence. Then Tarleton stood up, but only in order that he might further misuse the furniture by violently reoccupying it. "Now I understand everything."
Valentine sketched the most elegant bow he could manage, given the circumstances. ''I'm gratified to have been of service. Do you think I might be permitted to return to bed?"
"Not really. I mean, I'm saying I understand. But it's still your fault."
The Tarletons were rubbing off on him. It was the only possible explanation for why Valentine-who prided himself on his exquisite manners and understated grace-crumpled to the floor and put his head in his hands. "What, for the love of God and for the last time, is my fault?"
"Why, Belle of course." Tarleton's voice had slipped into the mildly injured register of someone confronted by a sudden display of unreasonable behaviour. "She's run away."
Excerpted from Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall with permission from the publisher, Montlake. Copyright © 2022 by Alexis Hall. All rights reserved.
Preview of Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall
