A Wedding For The Scandalous Heiress
A Wedding For The Scandalous Heiress
Elizabeth Beacon
A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger……at her own betrothal ball!When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless, and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!
A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger…
at her own betrothal ball!
When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!
“Beacon has herself another winner.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Governess Heiress
“Historical romance fans will be delighted by this tale... Curl up and spend an enjoyable afternoon with this sweet story.”
—RT Book Reviews on One Final Season
ELIZABETH BEACON has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon.
Also by Elizabeth Beacon
The Duchess HuntCandlelit Christmas KissesThe Scarred EarlThe Black Sheep’s Return
A Year of Scandal miniseries
The Viscount’s Frozen HeartThe Marquis’s AwakeningLord Laughraine’s Summer PromiseRedemption of the RakeThe Winterley ScandalThe Governess Heiress
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress
Elizabeth Beacon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07360-8
A WEDDING FOR THE SCANDALOUS HEIRESS
© 2018 Elizabeth Beacon
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#ubba35b25-93c2-5b78-b3a6-f8a98dedafc3)
Back Cover Text (#u4210ffec-3550-5165-9e8b-5f3a2bfac46b)
About the Author (#u162b1f52-cdab-529f-9b91-c8fde9ebf94b)
Booklist (#uddfd849f-3f65-57c6-b3a0-2e96e32e9ae2)
Title Page (#ub1a62126-36d2-55d0-9139-f0c333c9173e)
Copyright (#u8693c46a-1ec2-5fb2-b6f3-5dce52d7ba99)
Chapter One (#uccc54d0e-66ed-5554-b9a0-c55b08fc1e82)
Chapter Two (#u471e3a9a-2f9a-5bf2-ac7e-25b63c0ee263)
Chapter Three (#ueb2aeea4-2965-5f4a-a2e7-3023291198a4)
Chapter Four (#u508a99e2-6239-5442-a04e-55a19c0aa461)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
You’re three and twenty, Isabella Alstone, and far too old to hide in the dark. You should stay in the ballroom and pretend to be happy, not creep out here as if you’re planning to steal the silver.
Isabella was tired of being the perfect lady, though, so she stripped off her gloves and waved them in front of her overheated face, ignoring the voice of her conscience. It was hot even outside on this sultry late summer night and she wasn’t going back until she was cooler, calmer and more resigned... No, not more resigned, more collected. Yet promises so logical and right when voiced to a friend seemed strange and wrong now and how could she be calm about that?
‘Now, why is a lady of quality lurking in the shadows with the likes of me? Better go back to being belle of the ball instead of getting caught out here in bad company.’
The voice from the shadows startled Isabella from her reverie. The sound of his velvet-and-darkness voice told her he was right, but she was in the mood to be reckless.
‘Why?’ she demanded, peering into the gloom to try to see through the shadows.
His gruffly masculine voice had a pleasing hint of danger along the edge of it she shouldn’t want to know more about, but she had left safe, respectable Isabella inside and it was wonderful to be a different person altogether for a few stolen moments. She could be the sort of female who’d dive into wild encounters in the dark, as if she was put on this earth to be foolish and bold with the first rake she stumbled on in the shadows. Her fantasy of being a brash and sophisticated lady who took what she wanted from life and laughed at the future, as if it wasn’t heading towards her at the speed of a runaway horse, was too alluring to turn her back on just yet.
‘Because I’m here,’ the mysterious voice explained, as if that was all she needed to know to send her running. She stayed exactly where she was, refusing to scuttle inside like a scared rabbit, and heard him sigh, as if he couldn’t believe how stupid she was not to listen and do as she was bid.
‘You’re no debutante, so the Bond Street Beaux must have told you how beautiful you are by now and that will make everything worse if we’re caught in the moonlight together.’
He stepped forward so the light from the few hundred wax candles could illuminate his face and form and show her how right he was. With a face too much his to match any ideal of classical perfection, he wasn’t the most handsome man Isabella had seen. He wasn’t the tallest or broadest or most obviously powerful male she had ever met either. Of course, he was leanly fit and quietly muscular as well as deeply, darkly intense. And uniquely formed to make her shiver in her dancing slippers with an unexpected and delicious anticipation of something she’d hardly dared think about until now and usually shuddered away from when she saw that feral light in other men’s eyes. Only seconds ago she’d been hot and weary and now she felt so alive there could be air and stardust under her feet instead of solid York stone. If this was how being irresponsible felt, it certainly topped being her usual sensible and reasoned self.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea who you are, so if you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working. Although you’re right about one thing,’ she said as lightly as she could when the world seemed to have stopped and they were the only two people left moving. ‘I have been out for a long time now and know false flattery when I hear it.’
‘I don’t flatter, Mrs...’ he shot a steely gaze at her ring finger ‘...apologies, Miss, and there’s no need to pretend to be middle-aged,’ he said with a wry smile that did hot and disturbing things to her insides. ‘We’ll both be old soon enough.’
‘We will?’ she echoed in a breathy whisper that must have given him doubts about that maturity, but she did feel like a giddy girl when he took her gently by the arm and urged her further into darkness and away from the pool of golden candlelight spilling out of a ballroom that now seemed almost as remote from her as the Arctic.
‘Will someone come dashing out to find you any moment now, ready to usher you away?’ he asked with a smile, but she felt a tension in his sleekly powerful body that made her frown briefly.
‘No,’ she told him like a silly debutante desperate to be ruined by a rogue. ‘My family trusts me to behave,’ she added with a late tilt at sophistication and a flutter in her heartbeat that suggested they shouldn’t tonight.
‘They don’t consider the basic needs of the human heart often enough, then, or, in my case, even baser masculine ones you’re better not to know about until you really are a Mrs Belle,’ he replied with a cynical thread in his voice that made her frown for another sensible, bone-jarring moment before the darkness and scent from some exotic hothouse flower nearby wafted it clean away.
‘So you’re not to be trusted?’ she heard herself ask like the fledgling idiot she’d never allowed herself to be in polite society.
Nobody was ever going to lure her in with showy good looks, false promises of love and passion, and heady nights like this one. She remembered her eldest sister, Miranda, falling for evil, charming Nevin Braxton at seventeen and all the horror her elopement and ruin had brought down on her family’s lives too well for that. Isabella had shuddered away from rakes as if their kisses would poison her ever since. This man hadn’t flattered and flirted and fawned on her, though. He seemed to see beyond her golden looks, exquisitely fashioned gown and neat figure and was speaking to the real Isabella.
And out here she could forget what was waiting for her inside the hot room only feet away. On this terrace with the scent of exotic flowers heavy in the air, only now mattered. Just enough light shone from the ballroom for her to see his eyes were ice blue and hot at the same time. Her breath stuttered when he pulled her further from the lights of the party and the glow of a waxing moon gave them a world of their own.
‘You should not trust me, Belle. I’m dangerous,’ he said almost seriously. ‘I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing,’ he added as if he believed it.
‘It’s not full,’ she told him and sensed his bewilderment. ‘The moon,’ she explained with a nod towards it where it seemed almost touchable, on the horizon, ‘so you can’t claim the moon made you do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself say rashly. A sane part of her was so shocked it was as if it flopped down on to the stone bench nearby and sat there with its mouth open.
‘Oh? And why would you let me do that, Belle? Perhaps you’re as wild as I am,’ he murmured, suddenly closer than she remembered.
She should run, dash back into the familiar noise and heat and glitter of a tonnish ballroom, and find the nearest respectable female to chaperon her. Instead she stayed as if her feet were rooted into the still-warm stones under their feet. She could touch and taste him if she stayed, hear the urgent saw of breath he’d been holding too long. Moonlight fell on high cheekbones and dark, dark hair springing almost to disarray despite all his efforts to tame it. The hint of a frown at his dark eyebrows told her a goodly part of him thought he ought to fight this basic, gut-deep attraction as well. But there was enough light for the sensual curve of his mouth to betray the fact urgency and passion were getting the upper hand even without her exploring touch and silent encouragement to get on and kiss her and to hell with the real world.
‘I think you’re right,’ she whispered as she padded her fingertips against his tense jaw, feeling how it clenched and suspecting it was taking everything in him not to fall on her like the wolf he claimed to be.
But reason gave way to madness and suddenly she was in his arms. This was the kiss that would bring Isabella Penelope Alstone fully to life. The one she’d been so secretly waiting for since the day she began to be a woman. She hadn’t even let herself know she wanted it until now. His mouth fitted lushly against her eager lips and he felt so familiar against her. He murmured something as if he agreed with her unspoken thoughts and she opened her mouth to say Yes, please, but he dipped his tongue inside first, as if he had to know more, had to know everything now she was here at last. She was melting from the outside in, or should that be the inside out? Heat beat through her in time with his hurried breaths and the dart of his gently exploring tongue, as if he knew she’d never felt passion like this before and it was a shock that echoed through them both.
Yes, there was the shake of novelty and wonder in his fingers as he danced them across her cheekbone and down to outline her chin as if he was learning her with every sense he had. Never before had she been tempted to burrow into a man’s arms, to try to become a part of him by melding her heat with his, her mouth with his. For a minute reality threatened to pull her back and her mind told her body to flinch away, but the alluring stranger snatched all her attention back by sliding his wickedly exploring tongue over her lower lip, deepening the kiss.
She shifted even closer and copied his exploration. His cheek and jaw felt so firm under her touch and her fingers were intrigued by the contrast between her own softer features and his hawkish ones. She could feel the suggestion of his beard despite a careful shave and she spared a moment to scent the clean, sharp smell of soap and something tangy used to take the sting of the blade away when a gentleman was making himself civilised and smooth for the company of ladies.
Real life threatened to jump in again, but she told it to go away and muttered something encouraging instead. Nothing in reality could beat a meeting outside time and all the rules of polite society. Her heart beat so fast and her breath demanded air while pleasure and hope and a big, wide yes to life and this stranger and all he could be opened up inside her. She was shivering like a thoroughbred and rode a tide of heat more intense and deep and demanding than anything she’d ever felt before. There were no words to describe how right it felt when he pulled her closer to show her what she was doing to him. She felt the tension of deep desire in his rigidly muscular form. This was the carnal, primal need that carried men and women to places they’d never intended to go to when they started an evening not even knowing one another.
Instead of flinching back and telling him, no, they couldn’t go any further down that road when they didn’t even know one another’s real names, she pushed her curious hands under his unbuttoned evening coat and gave a pleased little grunt at the feel of a hot, needy and intriguingly muscular male under her exploring touch. Her fingers soothed the tight muscles at the base of his spine, whispered inquisitively downwards, desperate to know the difference between his spare male flanks and her own sleekly feminine curves. He gasped as if she’d stung him, then sucked in breath as if he might need more if she was going to carry on, so she did. She could feel his muscles shift and soothe, then tense again as she explored the sparseness of his buttocks and the honed, pared-down line where they met long, strong legs. Her own legs wobbled and almost let her down as their stance thrust his unmistakably eager manhood emphatically against her.
This was what uncontrollable desire felt like. This was how a woman felt when she was desperate for the man she loved to take her somewhere magical. That old taboo, that stark little four-lettered word sounded like a death knell in a corner of her mind, but she was moon-mad and curious enough to ignore it for a little longer. It put a hiccup in her sigh, though, a caveat in her exploration even as she buried a gasp of awe and need against his shoulder, then stood on tiptoe so that every bit of her felt it knew every bit of him.
But they didn’t, they couldn’t; not with so many sharp eyes and curious minds dangerously close by. She felt him stand a little straighter, pulling back his leanly powerful shoulders so he stood more sceptically apart from her as she burrowed against the warmth and strength and certainty of him and tried to hold on to this moment for a little while longer. If she let go, she’d have to see what she’d done and what she ought to have been doing instead. Ever since she’d given in to impulse for once and stepped outside the stuffy ballroom behind them, the way her life was planned out from now on was weightless in the balance against this rebellious encounter under the stars. Let him go and that weight would tumble back and she would end up more wrong than she had ever been in her life.
As she stood in the stronghold of his arms, trying to hold the real world at bay for as long as she could, voices started to disturb the fog of her mind.
‘Isabella can’t be out here,’ she heard Magnus Haile’s voice say in the vast, close distance between his world and the one she and the stranger and the moon inhabited.
Now just a few yards away his voice sounded pacifying with forced casualness. She stiffened and felt her fellow moon-led simpleton do the same. Magnus must be with his father for him to sound like that. The Earl of Carrowe was a despot with his family, but so sleekly charming in the polite world the stark difference between public and private man still took Isabella’s breath away.
‘Where is she, then? Get your engagement puffed off so I don’t end up in the sponging house or have duns to breakfast. You have shilly-shallied for far too long, so you find her before her upstart brother-in-law withdraws his consent or I’ll spill your secrets.’
‘She’s of age and so am I. We need no consent,’ the Honourable Magnus Haile asserted uncomfortably, as if he was trying to remind himself that he and Isabella were two free and unencumbered adults.
Even as she stood in another man’s arms and felt him go rigid before he let her go as if she’d suddenly grown horns and a tail, Isabella frowned at the flatness in Magnus’s usually pleasant tenor voice. He had spent last Season courting her so half-heartedly it took her until the end of it to notice. Then he had asked his fateful question and it shocked her even now to recall she had agreed. They were friends, she reassured herself. They would run in harness well together and she had never met anyone who made her heart race or her inner wanton melt with greed and heady desire. Until tonight. When it was too late.
Isabella stepped cautiously away from her stranger; stiff as he was now reason had rushed back in. A sluggish breeze stirred the sticky heat and fluttered her pale gown as space opened up between them.
The Earl of Carrowe pushed his protesting second son aside and stepped away from the pool of candlelight. Still as a statue now, Isabella froze and held her breath. This familiar stranger standing so stiffly next to her felt remote and withdrawn as an iron statue. She desperately hoped the night was deep enough for the Earl not to see them standing here like guilty lovers. Who would have thought a man she never laid eyes on until tonight could show her Isabella the Undone? All in the space between the ballroom and here and now.
‘You don’t need consent, you need a pitchfork up your...’ the Earl said in the coarse manner he saved for his family. Or at least those who depended on him for a leaky roof over their heads. Here at Haile Carr he had to hide his true self or risk the fury of his wealthy daughter-in-law and her even wealthier father.
‘You’ll keep a still tongue in your head about my future wife if you want me to go through with this marriage.’ Magnus sounded as austere as a monk and halted his father’s trail of obscenities in their tracks.
Isabella stifled a hum of sympathy as she felt the weight of real life settling back on her shoulders. It felt even more of a burden now than when she had first decided to share Magnus’s responsibilities. They weren’t in love, but she never wanted to be in love anyway. Love was a trap and an illusion, nothing like the fairy-tale emotion three-decker romances portrayed. Isabella had agreed to Magnus’s proposal for one reason—to get him and his sisters out from under the Earl’s thumb—to give her best male friend outside her family a chance to be free of the monster she had heard bully and even beat his children. She had had no idea until a visit to the Haile ladies showed her the insults and foul language of the real man under the Earl of Carrowe’s urbane outer shell. The Countess had hidden Isabella’s presence and even took her out down the backstairs so the Earl wouldn’t know she had been there. From that moment on she was filled with a passionate desire to help the Earl’s daughters and Magnus had given her a chance to do it, so she took it and him and told herself all would be well because she didn’t want to be in love with her husband anyway.
Except it felt as if they had missed something vital out. Isabella had been restless and hot and uncomfortable in her own skin in the ballroom and bolted outside to get away from what she’d done with her eyes wide open. And look where that had got her; she’d taken light in the arms of a stranger and now had to live with the memory of it on her conscience while she pretended to be Magnus’s glowingly happy bride-to-be.
‘Renege on our deal and I’ll tell the world what you did last year and who you did it with,’ the Earl threatened Magnus as if he couldn’t bear to be bested by another son after his heir married a rich woman and got control of his own purse strings. The atmosphere in the ballroom had felt oppressive with Viscount Haile and his wife holding court while family tensions simmered just below the surface. Or maybe she was making excuses for her own bad behaviour.
But what did Magnus do last summer? A couple of times since she arrived here Isabella had sensed something was deeply wrong with Magnus. It felt as if she knew only half of what was going on. Their engagement was supposed to be a surprise that would make this annual party even happier, but it didn’t feel very joyous to Isabella. Her money and family power were pitted against the Earl’s extravagant self-indulgence and his cruel grip on his family. He’d traded control of his unwed daughters for part of her fortune; Magnus would save his sisters and Isabella could start the family she longed for. But then she arrived here and the reality of marrying the man who’d been her friend since she made her debut finally hit home. To make those babies they would be intimate together and it felt like a giant factor she left out of her calculations about marrying for sense and companionship. Much as she liked Magnus she wasn’t sure she wanted to couple with him. She was a country girl at heart and three and twenty; she knew enough about the mechanics of marriage to shiver at the very idea of the one she’d committed herself to while she stood so close to a man who had nearly taught her a lot more than she needed to know about how a man and a woman were together when they wanted each other so urgently they couldn’t even wait for a bed.
‘You need money too much to risk Isabella jilting me,’ Magnus was arguing now and she felt the man at her side wince.
Not for her sake, she sensed, or for the Earl’s. So he must be on Magnus’s side. She could feel fury arcing across the few bare inches of late summer air between them. The shame of her own betrayal was bad enough—the wrong she’d done Magnus with this stranger. So what about him? He was furious with her, but fairness whispered he hadn’t deserved to kiss another man’s affianced bride as if she was free as air, then find out how wrong he was before their lips were cool from kissing. Even more guilt twisted in her belly and finally saw off the wanton Isabella who still longed for more from a lover and never mind who he was and who he wasn’t.
‘No, damn you, I need all that gelt to keep the duns at bay,’ the Earl was saying now. ‘You find the wench so we can announce the engagement before all the local clodhoppers go home.’
‘I’ll see if Isabella is mending a flounce or visiting the ladies’ withdrawing room, because she’s clearly not out here. You shouldn’t judge her by your low standards. Not everyone has your genius for sin.’
‘Speaking of sinners, where’s your mother?’
‘Maybe she’s with her prospective daughter-in-law, avoiding you.’
The string of obscenities that greeted that provocation faded as father and son turned to go back inside. Isabella wasted a few moments wondering how quickly the Earl could put on the mask of genial host after his unpleasant tirade. No doubt it would be plausible as ever by the time he was back in the crowded ballroom that she now dreaded so deeply she would almost prefer to stay out here with a furious male of a very different kind than re-enter it and face the future.
‘I presume you know your fiancé’s mother, Miss Alstone?’ he asked coldly.
She shivered despite the sticky heat that hit her again now the magic of the moonlit night had flown. ‘How do you know my...?’ she began, then her voice trailed off when he turned to face her.
‘Who else but you would skulk on the terrace at Haile Carr, trying to avoid her fiancé in the arms of a stranger? Who else did I come here to see and maybe even steel myself to meet?’
‘I don’t know, but why are you here?’
He grasped her arms as if she was the last person he really wanted to touch and walked her towards the pool of golden light on the still-warm stones. Her gaze ran over his hawkish features and heat and excitement flashed through her once again, but there was such fury in his uncannily light blue eyes it suffocated.
‘Can you see it now?’ he demanded roughly, shaking her a little when she stayed silent. ‘The mark of Cain you have put on me tonight,’ he bit out and the rage and guilt beneath his bitter words felt formidable.
For another cowardly moment she let her gaze linger on features that seemed uniquely his. Eyes clear and pale and steely blue, yet so alive and passionate even the fury in them seemed better than the cold aloofness he was striving for. Eyebrows and wild curls so dark above his icy gaze that looked so hard now. His features were so strongly marked and masculine she couldn’t sort them from a softer, more blurred version that nagged at her memory.
‘The Countess, you’re Lady Carrowe’s...’ Yet again she let her voice tail off as if she was an incoherent and bedazzled debutante. Even the thought of being so silly and unguarded made her stiffen her spine and meet his eyes as if it didn’t cost such an effort. She felt sweat bead her brow. ‘Youngest son,’ she ended, because she knew who he was and still refused to name-call over one thing that certainly wasn’t his fault.
‘Say it, Miss Alstone,’ he ordered with weary impatience. ‘I’m my mother’s publicly denounced shame since the day I had the bad taste to be born alive. I’m the cuckoo in the Earl of Carrowe’s nest; Lady Carrowe’s disgrace; destroyer of innocent ladies’ reputations and all the names they call me if I’m stupid enough to enter a room full of your kind. And what about you, Miss Alstone? You’re Magnus Haile’s affianced wife and far more of a disgrace than my mother ever was in private. She married a monster and you’re about to wed his very opposite; you have no excuse for luring in a lover before you even marry my big brother.’
‘That’s between us and none of your business,’ she said coolly.
‘Tell him about this and I’ll tell the whole world what you did tonight. Dare whisper a word to hurt him and I’ll make sure the world finds out what we’ve done.’
‘You can’t ruin me,’ she defied him and knew it was cheap to invite him to throw mud at the Earl of Carnwood’s youngest sister-in-law if he dared.
‘Wulf FitzDevelin may not get past generations of rank and privilege and be-damned-to-the-rest-of-you, but Dev can do it with a few flicks of his pen and a lampoon from a scurrilous friend who owes him a favour.’
‘You’re him; a famous writer? That Dev?’ she said, incredulous he was the scourge of liars and hypocrites and fools she’d found so irresistibly funny when he wasn’t directing his fury at her.
His more usual style of showing the folly and misfortune of his fellow man took his writing beyond satire. She admired his compassion and delight in ordinary and extraordinary people of great cities and small places alike. In his mind she probably qualified as liar, hypocrite and fool. That idea added a layer of sadness to her guilt she didn’t want to think about right now.
‘Luckily for me there’s no law to stop a bastard being a writer or vice versa. And I thought I was so cynical nothing could shock me, but you proved me wrong tonight, Miss Alstone; I hope you’re proud.’
‘Not really,’ she made herself say as if she was thinking about something more important than a trifling sin she could take to church with her on Sunday and come away with a feeling of absolution.
‘Mention this aberration to my brother and I’ll not only deny every word and ruin you, I’ll take your family and friends down with you.’
‘Don’t threaten me,’ she flared back at him, even as fear for those she loved and wanted to protect flared fiercely in her heart and hurt more bitterly because he was the one trying to put it there. ‘Nobody will rule me or mine with fear or beatings or nasty little lies ever again,’ an Isabella even she hadn’t known was so furious about her childhood spat like a cornered tigress. ‘Stay away from me and mine and your brother as well,’ she went on in a forceful whisper for fear of being overheard. ‘I’ll do what I can for your half-sisters, Mr Wulf, as long as you’re not glowering at me from the sidelines as if I’m the She-Wolf of France and Lucrezia Borgia rolled up together.’
‘Your namesake the Queen Isabella, so-called She-Wolf of France?’ he taunted her.
‘A poor choice of words doesn’t change facts.’
‘I doubt you worry very much about them at the best of times, miss. Luckily for you I haven’t the stomach to stay here and watch you promise to wed my brother as if you’re worthy of even a single hair on his head.’
‘You love him, don’t you? All those stories about you being heartless and impervious to love and affection are more of Lord Carrowe’s lies,’ she said, so shaken by the fact the notorious Wulf FitzDevelin had turned out to be nothing like the man he’d been painted she forgot she was the one doing battle with him right now.
‘I feel very cold and resistant to you, and if you don’t hurry back inside, your undeserved reputation as a cool and lovely lady of fortune will be blasted for good. I’d be the first to dance on her grave, but Magnus wouldn’t like it.’
‘I certainly won’t risk notoriety for the sake of someone who thinks he can threaten all I hold dear because I was stupid.’
‘Stupid? A little more than that, Miss Alstone,’ he said with such revulsion in his voice she decided to let him have the last word, since he liked them so much.
She gave him one last challenging look to dare him to do his worst, then turned her back. He was a mirage—a wonder that turned out nothing of the kind. Magnus and his sisters and her own loving family were real; they mattered. She used her memory of the ballroom’s layout and decorations to sneak back inside unnoticed. She would get her breath back and confess to nodding off in a quiet corner from exhaustion and nerves. Yes, she could put Isabella Alstone back together and even look glowingly happy when her engagement to a good man was announced. Just a few more moments away from the stares and speculation of the cream of local society and she’d be able to playact with the best of them.
Chapter Two (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Six months later Isabella wished she couldn’t remember that night of rebellion as if it was only moments ago. She watched her very pregnant middle sister walk towards her like a ship in full sail and did her best to swap prickly memories for here and now.
‘Are you hiding up here because you think it’s the last place anyone will look, Izzie?’
‘If I was, it clearly hasn’t worked and, no, I’m not hiding,’ she lied concisely when Kate reached her. The need to find peace felt urgent after all these weeks and months of turmoil, so here she was on the top floor of the newest part of Viscount Shuttleworth’s grand and sprawling mansion, watching the spring landscape below and trying not to think.
‘That’s your story,’ Kate said sceptically. ‘I never believed them when you were the baby of the family and a sweet smile and tall tale got what you wanted nine times out of ten, and I don’t believe you now.’
‘Well, I’m not a baby anymore, so stop thwarting me for the good of my soul and trust me to know my own mind.’
‘You’re my little sister, Izzie, and trying to pretend all’s well with your world when it obviously isn’t won’t work. I can tell how sad and confused you are about whatever has happened between you and Magnus these last few months while I’ve been stuck in the country like a cow out at pasture. Don’t shut me out, love; I’m on your side whether you want me there or not.’
‘You wouldn’t leave me alone even if I wanted you to, so it’s as well I don’t,’ Isabella joked, then sobered when she saw genuine hurt in her sister’s eyes. ‘I know how lucky I am to have a lionhearted older sister like you, Kate. When we were little and Miranda eloped, then Jack died, you protected me like a lioness. You must have been so sad and lost yourself, but you somehow forced our aunt and cousin to stop beating and bullying me until I was as silent and cowed as Magnus’s poor little sister Theodora. I’m sorry it cost you so much to keep me safe, but you have a family of your own to spoil and protect now, my Lady Shuttleworth, and I can take care of myself. I’m sad about the end of my betrothal to Magnus, but I expect I’ll get over it soon enough.’
‘I don’t think you will,’ Kate argued as if wistfulness and guilt were written all over Isabella’s face and she really hoped they weren’t. ‘And you were quite right to put an end to it if you didn’t love him.’
‘Although you’re the worst-tempered and most infuriating sister I have, Katie darling, you’re loyal to a fault,’ Isabella tried to joke; because she had a sore heart and conscience she didn’t want Kate to know about. And she did love Magnus, just not in the way a wife should love her husband.
‘You only have two sisters.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Hmmm, I know when I’m being led away from a subject, so trying to make me angry won’t work. I’m not as gentle as Miranda is most of the time, but I can control my temper when you’re not around to goad it. And you should humour me, since I’m in a very interesting condition,’ Kate said with a rueful rub of her swollen belly.
‘You’d hate it if I did.’
‘True, but I might secretly be flattered you wanted to cosset me so badly you held that clever tongue of yours for once in your life.’
‘You don’t need flattering. You and Edmund have a lovely little daughter and a new baby on the way. No doubt all three of you will spoil him or her to the edge of reason the moment they are born and what does anyone else’s opinion matter when you’re the centre of their world?’
‘I love them so much I pinch myself to make sure this is really happening at times, but you’re my little sister, Izzie. I couldn’t not care about you while there’s breath in my body, and, come to think of it, even if I was dead, I doubt I’d be able to stop loving you.’
‘Oh, Kate, I love you so much,’ Isabella said, feeling shaky at the very thought of losing her beloved sister. They were all trying not to dwell on the ordeal of childbirth as Kate got closer and closer to her time, but the thought of ever having to live without her beloved sister cut through Isabella’s fragile attempts to be cheerful like a grim bolt of lightning on a sunny day.
‘Then tell me the truth,’ Kate demanded relentlessly as if she knew she had an unfair advantage and was determined to use it.
Isabella avoided her eyes and tried not to think about the ridiculous mess her life was in. The truth? She didn’t even know what it was herself, so how could she tell anyone else? ‘Magnus and I found we did not suit,’ she said carefully. ‘So I had to break the engagement, since he couldn’t.’
‘And we both know a lady can change her mind if she really must, but a gentleman’s word has to be his bond. It’s quite absurd when you think about it, but you’re too passionate to be Mr Haile’s convenient wife for the next forty years because neither of you had the courage to say no before it was too late.’
‘As I’m now considered a jilt, I doubt I’ll have a chance to marry another man I respect, so we’ll probably never know. I haven’t met anyone else I would want to marry in five years on the marriage mart,’ Isabella said with her fingers crossed under her skirts.
She’d met a man she simply wanted that night at Haile Carr, but Wulf FitzDevelin wouldn’t marry her if she was the last single woman left on earth, so he didn’t count. ‘Half the eligible bachelors avoid me now and the rest find my fortune irresistible,’ she told her sister breezily. ‘I expect they think I’m desperate after whistling Magnus down the wind as if handsome and intelligent gentlemen are ten a penny.’
‘You’re ridiculously lovely and an heiress in your own right, Izzie. If you were desperate, you’d have clung to him like a limpet.’
‘I didn’t say it was logical, but at least as an old maid I’ll be spared such nonsense in future.’
‘You’re three and twenty, love, and won’t be on the shelf long,’ Kate argued with a wry smile. ‘There are a few other gentlemen with good eyesight and a modicum of sense in their handsome heads, so you don’t need to wear the willow.’
Isabella felt tears threaten at her sister’s steadfast love and loyalty, just as they had when she’d seen Kate and her husband, Edmund, stood waiting for her on the gravel carriage sweep this morning, too impatient to wait to greet their guest at the top of the wide stone steps as befitted their station as Lord and Lady Shuttleworth. Kate, Edmund and their daughter had hugged and inspected Isabella for damage, as if they were afraid she’d been broken since they saw her last. Louise Kenton, née Alstone, was the youngest sister of Miranda’s husband, Kit, Seventh Earl of Carnwood. Kit and Louise and their sister Maria were distant cousins of her and Miranda and Kate and he was probably the most reluctant lord in the House when he succeeded to the family titles, but marrying Miranda seemed to have reconciled him to it and Louise simply added Kate and Isabella to her family when her brother married their big sister and she felt like another sibling now. Isabella wasn’t quite sure she wanted Louise’s sharp eyes on her, though she was glad Louise was here for Kate during this time. At least she knew a good deal about childbirth after bearing six children since marrying Hugh.
Isabella didn’t know how Edmund convinced his wife she was too near her time to go to Derbyshire and join Kit and Miranda for the Easter festivities, but she was very glad he had. This way Kate must play hostess to as many of the family as he could assemble and what a good thing her sisters had married men who respected as well as loved them. Kit and Edmund found ingenious ways around their wives’ sore spots and stubborn streaks when an invigorating argument wasn’t advisable and that was the sort of marriage Isabella had tried to convince herself she could build with Magnus.
She felt like a fool about that delusion when she watched Edmund and Kate, and Hugh and Louise, together and realised she’d left something vital out. Magnus was a handsome and civilised gentleman with a clever mind, a dry sense of humour and a good heart, but he wasn’t the love of her life. Although she didn’t want one of those, it was probably better not to marry at all than accept less. She had spent six months at odds with herself and at the end of it found out Magnus was in love with another woman. He had offered for Isabella to silence his obnoxious father about the child he and his beloved Lady Delphine had made together and he loved her so much he’d been ready to sacrifice himself and Isabella for the sake of her precious reputation. So if she wasn’t going to risk marrying for reason again and loving a man with all of her heart was a terrifying step she refused to take into the unknown, she would do better not to marry.
‘I’m not pining for Magnus, Kate. He was the first grown-up gentleman I danced with at my come-out ball and I suppose I fooled myself into thinking we could make a good marriage out of our long friendship and mutual interests, but I was wrong. I miss him as a friend, but I won’t collapse in a tearful heap whenever you say his name.’
‘If you like him that much, maybe you should marry him anyway, since you always said you’d never wed for love,’ Kate suggested half-seriously, as if it had been wedding nerves that made Isabella call off the wedding and the whole thing might still be salvaged. Since Kate took three years to discover she loved Edmund far too much to let him marry anyone else, Isabella forgave her sister for doubting her.
‘No,’ she said firmly enough to nip any well-meant schemes to throw her and Magnus back together in the bud. ‘It would be a disaster.’
Never quite measuring up to a lover your spouse couldn’t have would make a marriage hideous. Lucky for her it was only passion on her side and not love. Still, it was probably unfair to compare every other man she met to broodingly handsome Wulf FitzDevelin and his devilishly seductive kisses one impossible night when she took a few minutes off from being cool and careful Miss Alstone.
‘You don’t think you could come to love him in time, then?’ Kate said with memories of her own slow-burning feelings dreamy in her dark blue eyes.
‘No.’
‘Then I’m glad you found out before it was too late. Edmund is my best friend, but he’s also my abiding passion and it baffles me how you thought you could settle for less. A civilised and passionless marriage could never work for you, love.’
‘You were hell-bent on making one yourself once upon a time,’ Isabella pointed out to divert her sister from this uncomfortable topic of conversation.
‘I’m not sure that’s a proper way for an unmarried lady to express herself, sister dear. And, as Edmund was the man I was determined to make it with, I had perfect taste, even if my judgement was a little clouded,’ Kate replied smugly. Isabella was certain Kate and Edmund still enjoyed the odd passionate, invigorating argument about it even now.
‘Take a lesson from me, Izzie,’ Kate persisted because she knew Izzie far better than she wanted her to, ‘marriage lasts too long for any Alstone to risk it without being in love with our spouse.’
‘Don’t upset yourself because it didn’t happen. I miss Magnus and his mother and sisters, but I’m glad we agreed to part before it was too late.’
Are you going to tell your sister what blinded you to the truth for so long, Isabella? the sneaky inner voice she wanted to ignore whispered.
I was confused, she told it firmly and it was a wonder she didn’t have a permanent headache with all these contrary feelings clashing about inside.
‘Gentlemen can be the most dreadful cowards about losing their freedom,’ Kate said sagely as if she was an expert on the breed now she had a subtle and determined lord to try to order about for his own good.
‘I don’t think Magnus was waiting to say “I do” through gritted teeth because of prenuptial nerves, love,’ Isabella tried to joke, then went back to staring out of the wide sash windows because it wasn’t funny. ‘Oh, look who’s outside again, Kate. Louise did say Sophia was to stay in the schoolroom today, didn’t she? The wretched girl obviously wasn’t listening since she looks as if she’s off to explore the lavender maze you designed by the wilderness and never mind her governess.’
‘It’s a lovely day and I don’t blame Sophia for wanting to be outside instead of stuck in the schoolroom staring out of the windows at a blue sky and dreaming. I’m not going to lumber up to the schoolroom to betray her. You could find Louise and tell her what her youngest daughter is up to if you really want to, but she’s probably doing her best not to know.’
‘We were never allowed to use the weather as an excuse to avoid our books,’ Isabella said half-heartedly.
‘Charlotte never took her eyes off us long enough for us to escape, but I’m not sure even she could keep Sophia in on a day like this if she was still a governess instead of Ben Shaw’s wife and mother of their vast tribe of children,’ Kate said, peering over Isabella’s shoulder at the half-grown girl.
‘The Kentons would be a challenge even for her,’ Isabella said absently. Sophia had reached the broad walk now and her scarlet cloak flew out behind her as she ran. She made a splash of vital colour against the sunlit grass and a richly periwinkle-blue sky and was nearly at her destination now. Isabella wished she was out there with her, running away from adult cares and all the gossip her cancelled wedding had brought down on her and her family. ‘With parents like Louise and Hugh none of them are ever going to be pattern cards of proper behaviour.’
‘They’d have to be changelings,’ her sister agreed.
‘Sophia and her littlest brother certainly aren’t and, speaking of young Kit, I wonder where he is. Perhaps Sophia locked him in a cupboard, because I can’t see him minding his primers if he can get into mischief with his big sister instead.’
‘Louise could be keeping a closer eye on him as she knows what a restless little devil he is, or he could still be on his way and that’s why Sophia’s running to get away before he spoils her adventure.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Isabella said and wondered if it was too late to chase after Sophia or let little Kit lure her into mischief. ‘It’s a good thing their brothers are at school or I might have to go and restore order and it looks cold out there.’
‘Much you’d care. Miranda is always scolding you for ruining your complexion in the sun or the wind and you don’t take much notice when you’re not in town and the tabbies can’t make snide remarks about her negligence.’
‘Miranda will listen to their spiteful gossip and feel guilty.’
‘She’s never quite learnt to ignore the nay-sayers, has she? As well Kit doesn’t care or we might still be wearing hair shirts because she ran off with Nevin when he was secretly wed to our vile cousin Celia. Oh, look, Izzie. Who on earth is hurrying after Sophia? I’d certainly remember if I’d met him, happily married or not,’ Kate exclaimed and pointed at the lithe and vigorous figure striding after Sophia Kenton with a wildly gesticulating master Christopher Kenton on his shoulders.
No, it can’t be him, Isabella. Wulf FitzDevelin is on the other side of the Atlantic and he wouldn’t follow you to Herefordshire on a private family visit if he wasn’t. He wouldn’t cross the street to pick you up if you’d been knocked down by a dust cart, she told herself firmly, because her heartbeat was loud in her ears as she watched the powerful male figure hurry after Sophia and wondered if she’d really fainted and this was a nightmare.
His drab greatcoat swirled out behind him in his hurry and even from up here his crow-black locks looked wild, but there was such leashed power and energy in his loping walk, encumbered or not, that she couldn’t escape the reality of him. He was here, now. She remembered the defiant set to his head and shoulders too well and couldn’t fool herself her eyes were deceiving her.
How dare he? He wasn’t on visiting terms with Kate and Edmund and it couldn’t be because he couldn’t stay away from her. He had put vast and empty miles of ocean between them after that night at Haile Carr and now he was back. A silly, moon-led part of her was dancing as if he’d come to claim her now his half-brother wasn’t engaged to marry her any longer. She shook her head to deny the idiot any say and decided she must find out what he wanted before he made his contempt for her clear and Kate put two and two together.
Feeling the force of his impatient personality even from up here, she noted he was even more leanly fit and unforgettable by daylight. Large chunks of his overlong sable hair were being held captive by Master Kenton and she almost winced in sympathy, but he deserved it, didn’t he? She shivered as if she was out there, in spring sunlight, close enough to see him frown as she fought to read the thoughts in that austere, almost handsome dark head of his.
‘He’s the Haile family ghost; Wulf FitzDevelin,’ she muttered, but Kate heard and raised her eyebrows. ‘I can’t imagine what he’s doing here, so don’t ask me,’ she added as coolly as she could with Kate gazing at her as if she thought differently.
‘That’s Lady Carrowe’s Folly? Well, I never, ever did,’ Kate said slowly. ‘If his father was anything like him, I almost understand her fall from grace. If I wasn’t married to the love of my life and Edmund wasn’t such a potent lover, I might be tempted to lure a man like him into my bed and the devil take the consequences.’
‘You only say that because you know it’s never going to happen. Any woman who sends out lures in his direction will reap trouble and heartache. If he has a heart, he’s hidden it so well nobody knows where it is.’
‘Your Magnus is said to be as close to him as if he was a full brother and you think him a good man.’
‘Magnus is a good man and can’t see his half-brother’s dark side because he loves him.’
‘Whatever side you catch him on I’d wager my best bonnet debutantes’ hearts beat nineteen to the dozen when they set eyes on the two of them. Their elder sisters will do more than sigh over a rogue like that and I expect he has to fight them off, if he’s careless enough to venture into Carrowe House at the right time for the Countess to be at home to callers.’
‘If you weren’t such a country wife nowadays, you’d recall not even the most dashing of the young matrons are brave enough to visit her ladyship openly and they’d be idiots to accept a dare like him even if they did,’ Isabella said with a fierce frown at the man’s back as he strode away.
‘Or so besotted they couldn’t help themselves,’ Kate suggested with another overt glance at that powerfully lean masculine figure as his long legs ate up landscaped gardens and a much sneakier sidelong look at Isabella.
The inner voice she was trying to ignore whispered Kate was right: he did improve the scenery even on such a shining spring day. Familiar little demons were whispering in her ear and how dare he wake them up when she’d tried so hard to silence them? The long, sinful nights in his bed her inner fool yearned for wouldn’t be as wonderful as his leanly honed body and moody looks promised. No, of course they wouldn’t; not now he despised her. No point risking her all for an itch she wanted to scratch so badly it still kept her awake at nights.
She tried to divert herself by wondering if his mother had loved his father or simply wanted him. Lady Carrowe never refuted her husband’s assertion Wulf was her by-blow, but had she thought what illicit passion could cost when she lay with her lover long enough to get with child? If he was anything like Wulf, she probably couldn’t see past the blind haze of wanting and so it was a good thing Wulf FitzDevelin disliked and distrusted Isabella Alstone so much, wasn’t it?
‘He’s probably here to lecture me about his brother,’ she told her sister crossly and at least he was oblivious to her fast-beating heart and weak knees as she followed his every move with hungry eyes.
‘Hmmm, well, he looks to have made a firm friend of young Kit. Sophia won’t be so pleased her little brother caught up with his help, or should I call it endurance?’
‘Young Kit is a force of nature,’ Isabella agreed absently.
‘You could call it that,’ Kate replied as they watched man and boy close in on Sophia, ‘but your FitzDevelin is one as well and grown-up with it.’
‘He’s not my FitzDevelin. I wouldn’t give him a ha’penny worth of goodwill if he stooped to beg it from me and he never will.’
‘Why ever not?’ Kate asked so innocently Isabella bit back a groan.
‘We hardly know each other and don’t like what we do know,’ she said flatly.
‘Because he’s the Countess of Carrowe’s by-blow and they whisper dark scandals about him and all the lovers he’s had who ought to know better?’
‘He had no say in the sins his mother and father committed before he was born,’ Isabella said absently as she tried not to think about all those bored society matrons rumour credited him with seducing. Kate was probably right and they lined up to be seduced and that was one more reason not to join in.
‘They say the Earl made sure his wife’s by-blow got an education and would have set him up in a profession if your Wulf hadn’t run away. Kind of him to raise his wife’s bastard, but he didn’t get much thanks, did he?’
‘Kind? Do you really think so?’ Isabella asked absently.
She was busy watching Wulf move so fluidly he might actually be a wolf padding after his prey if he had another pair of lithe legs and a fine pelt to go with those ice-blue eyes. For a hungry moment she wished she was at his side, close enough to admire the ease of sleek muscle over elegant bones and wonder at his total focus as he ruthlessly tracked his quarry. Except he wasn’t a predator and she wasn’t fascinated, so it was as well she wasn’t close enough to fall under his spell.
‘You don’t?’ Kate said, sounding intrigued.
‘The Earl isn’t a kind man, Kate. He would have sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation and divorced her if he was.’
‘She does seem very inoffensive and quiet now,’ Kate said and Isabella could see her acute mind working on Lady Carrowe’s unfortunate situation.
If the lady had even one more supporter among the haut ton, she might be less oppressed and her daughters more welcome in polite society. Isabella stared down at the empty garden where Wulf and the youngest Kentons had disappeared from view. She half-expected to see a mark in the air, a magic rune perhaps to tell unwary females danger lay ahead.
‘You have given a good deal of thought to Mr FitzDevelin’s shocking birth and stormy upbringing during your engagement to his brother, Izzie,’ Kate said airily.
‘No more than I would about anyone in such a situation,’ she replied and fought not to cross her fingers against another huge lie, because not a single night had gone by since she met him when he didn’t haunt her sleeping and waking.
‘Of course not, but whatever you think of him he’s here and can’t have come all this way to see anyone but you. In your shoes I’d hear him out before Edmund and Hugh chase him away.’
‘I doubt he’ll go or stay unless he wants to,’ Isabella muttered, but Kate was right. She didn’t want her overprotective male relatives running him off before she found out what he wanted. ‘Can you keep them busy long enough for me to be rid of him before they find out?’
‘I’m in no fit state to stop anyone doing whatever they want, but if Hugh and Edmund think we’re having a feminine coze about babies and lying-in, they won’t interrupt unless the house is on fire or someone falls off the roof. We can go to my boudoir and tell my maid to be sure we’re not disturbed, then you can use the garden stairs to go and find Mr FitzDevelin and I can escape the fuss Edmund will surround me with until I’m safely delivered.’
‘He loves you, Kate.’
‘I know and I love him, but I can’t take a step without having to account for it to someone who has better things to do if they’d only get on with them.’
‘Not as far as he’s concerned they haven’t and you’d be mortally offended if he went off to discuss crops with his tenants or horses with his cronies and left you to birth his child alone.’
‘I would and quite right, too.’
‘Stop being contrary and go and have a rest, then. Edmund will need to be revived with smelling salts if you don’t stop behaving as if you’re about to throw a trifling entertainment instead of giving birth to his second child.’
‘If you promise to stop being wise about the rest of us and look at your own motives and feelings, I might.’
‘There truly is a first time for everything, then,’ Isabella said crossly.
‘Anyone would think I was the contrary one of the three of us,’ her sister said as if she really thought she wasn’t. ‘And stop looking like that, because Miranda and I know you’re wilful as a donkey even if you fool so many with that angelic face.’
‘I almost wish I’d stayed in London to be gossiped about by strangers now.’
‘Really? When there must be so many more sharp eyes to watch your assignations with Mr FitzDevelin when you’re in town?’
‘Nonsense, I’ve never met him in town and this isn’t an assignation.’
‘You would have to know he was coming for it to be one of those, wouldn’t you?’ Kate said as if she was quite convinced Isabella had been waiting for him to catch up with her ever since she broke her engagement to his brother and how much more wrong-headed could one woman get?
Chapter Three (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Wulf cursed himself for not being able to resist the shine of tears in a little boy’s eyes when he begged for help to catch up with his big sister. He’d been excluded from so much as a boy that the little rascal couldn’t have chosen a better bid for sympathy. Yet what would such a young girl think when confronted by a strange man with her brother aloft, especially one this unkempt and in need of a shave? His windswept, travel-stained appearance would probably terrify her and exhaustion was making it easier for him to frown than smile.
‘How did the infernal brat persuade you to hunt me down?’ this girl demanded when she saw her brother riding triumphantly on a stranger’s shoulders. ‘I do wish people would ignore him when he pretends to be an ill-treated waif. Every time someone believes him it only encourages him to keep doing it,’ she went on and he should have known this sturdy little rogue couldn’t have a shrinking violet as a sister.
‘Thank you for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind if I’m not invited again,’ he managed to reply with a straight face. He had ridden here too hard to get this over with. Lack of sleep and a decent meal must be making him light-headed, because there wasn’t anything here to laugh about.
‘We don’t live here, so that won’t do any good,’ she told him with a resigned sigh that almost set him off again.
‘I promise to learn from my mistakes, then,’ Wulf said, swinging his giggling passenger down so the boy could run into a clever lavender labyrinth and gallop its paths as if he’d had enough energy to run from Herefordshire to the distant Welsh Mountains all along.
‘He’s a horrid brat and should be beaten at least once a day for the good of all our souls, but who the devil are you?’ the girl demanded as if she’d only just taken in his windswept, bearlike appearance and realised he wasn’t the sort of visitor a grand house like Cravenhill Park usually attracted by daylight.
‘I’m Wulf FitzDevelin; who the devil are you?’ he replied, wondering if the young men of the ton had any idea what a whirlwind was going to hit them when she was old enough to be presented at Court.
‘I’m Miss Sophia Kenton, because my older sister Julia got to be Miss Kenton when our aunt married Mr Sandbatch, and Wulf’s not a proper name for a gentleman.’
‘I’m not a proper gentleman, but it’s short for Wulfric if that helps.’
‘He’s my horse,’ young Master Kenton shouted breathlessly from the labyrinth and this time Wulf did laugh out loud. The sound sent a pair of crows cawing into the treetops and broke the almost uncanny peace of this place.
‘I’d have thrown him off a lot sooner if I were you,’ Sophia said with a frown at her little brother.
‘I really don’t think you would,’ Wulf said, seeing reluctant affection in the girl’s eyes and contrasting it with the open dislike in the eyes of his two eldest half-siblings when he’d been a scrubby brat himself.
‘Probably not, but I’d be tempted,’ the girl said with a wry smile.
‘It is you, Mr FitzDevelin; I thought my eyes were deceiving me. What a very unexpected surprise,’ Isabella Alstone’s cool voice said from behind them.
Wulf felt his heart thunder; instinct should have warned him she was there. The sound made him feel as if parts of him he didn’t want to think about right now could burst into flames. ‘Good day, Miss Alstone,’ he said flatly.
Somehow he managed to meet her dark blue eyes calmly and she obviously couldn’t imagine why he was polluting the clean air of her brother-in-law’s fine estate and ought to go back where he belonged. In the gutter presumably, he concluded and hoped a cynical half-smile would divert her from the ravenous hunger roaring through him like the hottest and most ill-timed lightning.
‘Is my brother-in-law expecting you?’ she asked as if she had no idea how she made red-blooded males feel by being so perfectly, femininely arrogant. All he wanted right now was to kiss her and it took too much effort to recall why he’d come. She’d jilted Magnus—Gus, as he’d always been to Wulf—and he’d done so much damage between them already even the idea was madness and he should be ashamed of himself.
‘I doubt Lord Shuttleworth has the least idea I’m here, but you should have known I’d come, Miss Alstone,’ he said stiffly.
‘Why would I? There’s no reason for you to intrude on a private family gathering and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you walking up the Broad Walk with young Kit on your shoulders,’ Isabella said stiffly.
Now she was faced with the real man her silly heart was racing as if she’d run all the way from the house to simper at him. She half-wished he was still on the other side of the Atlantic, building the new life he’d claimed to want when he left England. If he’d stayed away, she wouldn’t have to face the fact he still stirred her as no other man ever had. She wouldn’t have to feel the Isabella he woke up that night straining against the leash.
‘You didn’t send your brother-in-law to throw me out, though, did you?’ he challenged in the husky undertone she found so ridiculously enchanting that moon-mad night.
‘I don’t want to embarrass my family, Mr FitzDevelin,’ she said primly.
‘I presume you are part of Miss Alstone’s family, Miss Sophia? Am I making you uncomfortable?’
‘Yes, I am and, no, you’re not. I’m far too interested in how Aunt Izzie knows you and what you’ve done to make her glare daggers at you. I don’t think Kit has ever been embarrassed about anything in his life, so I shouldn’t bother to ask him.’
‘Oh, please run along, Sophia, and take young Kit with you,’ Isabella interrupted before this meeting turned into an even bigger farce.
‘I can’t; it would be improper to leave you alone with a strange gentleman, Aunt Izzie. It’s our duty to chaperon you,’ Sophia said so virtuously Isabella frowned to say she was overdoing it and should do as she was bid for once.
‘Maybe so, but show your little brother the way to the middle of the lavender labyrinth and at least try to mind your own business while you’re doing it,’ she said, in lieu of Sophia turning into a proper young lady by a minor miracle.
Sophia crossed her arms and stared back as if Isabella was the one being difficult. ‘For that I should stay here and insist on listening to every word.’
‘Go away, Sophia. Please?’ Isabella gave up trying to reason her out of eavesdropping. ‘Please?’ she cajoled as she was desperate to get this over and Wulf back on the road before Edmund or Hugh knew he was here.
‘Oh, very well, but you owe me half-a-dozen favours.’
‘And she’ll make me pay,’ Isabella muttered gloomily once Sophia demanded little Kit’s attention until he found something more interesting to do.
‘You don’t treat her as an irritating little girl, though, do you?’ he asked as if he was surprised.
‘If she had any idea how difficult being grown-up is, Sophia wouldn’t be in such a hurry to be one.’
‘You find being a society beauty burdensome, then, Miss Alstone?’
‘I do when people throw it at me like an accusation, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘I apologise,’ he said impatiently.
‘I doubt it, but you must have come here to speak to me, since you don’t know my family and I doubt if you’re a business connection of my brother-in-law. A strange man on the strange horse I assume is resting in my brother-in-law’s stables as we speak won’t go unnoticed long, however much you tipped the groom to look the other way. My brother-in-law will want a good reason why you came here uninvited now his family are arriving for Eastertide and my sister is in an interesting condition.’
‘Before I’m grabbed by the scruff of my neck and thrown out I admit I came to plead with you.’
‘You? Plead with me?’ Isabella exclaimed, although he’d come a long way to play a trick if he was lying. ‘I doubt you even know how.’
‘Then I must learn, mustn’t I?’ he said impatiently. ‘Magnus is a broken man,’ he accused with such fury in his ice-blue eyes he must think it was her fault. ‘He’s shockingly thin and can’t shake off the influenza I’m told he contracted at Christmas. He needs you. I can’t imagine why when you kiss strange men at the drop of a hat and threw him over when you got tired of being engaged to marry him.’
‘Please don’t bother stretching your poor, underused imagination any further, then, because I’m not the woman your half-brother needs.’
‘You really are stony-hearted, aren’t you?’
‘Apparently,’ she said calmly.
Letting him know his accusation hurt as if a knife had been plunged into her chest would be even more stupid than finding the air at Cravenhill Park fresher and the sunlight brighter because he was here, even while he was flinging insults at her. If she had any sense, she’d turn her back on him and walk away; prove how indifferent she was to him and his misconceptions. A foolish part of her was far too pleased he was here to do that, despite the fury in his gaze as he let it slide over her.
‘What will get me past the ice between you and nobodies like me so I can reason with you?’ he asked and began to pace, as if that was the only way he could stop himself shaking her.
‘Nothing you can say,’ she told him steadily and refused to let him know he’d hurt her. His picture of events was so wide of the mark she’d laugh if she wasn’t feeling so sick.
‘And I dare say you’d turn his life upside down and treat him like a fool if you did agree to wed him after all, but even that would be better than watching him waste away for the lack of you in his life.’
‘I shall not and certainly not to please you. Please me by going away and avoiding me like the plague from now on, Mr FitzDevelin. Your brother and I had our own very good reasons not to go ahead with our wedding, but not one of them is any of your business.’
‘Yes, it is. I got back to England a week ago to find Magnus half the man he was when I left and he’s worth a hundred of either of us. I won’t let you set him at naught because his devotion has become tiresome.’
‘Find a fresh horse and go home, because you’ve had a wasted journey. Your insults won’t change a thing and next time you set out on a wild goose chase you should talk to your brother about it before you begin.’
‘He won’t talk to me,’ the wrong-headed idiot mumbled as if he didn’t want to admit he’d failed.
‘Neither will I,’ she said quietly.
Was it right to enjoy the blaze of anger and frustration lighting his eyes to purest ice blue before he turned to pace up and down the path again to stop himself taking her back to London by force for his brother like a juicy bone someone stole?
‘He obviously loves you to distraction,’ Wulf FitzDevelin threw out as he paced close enough to vent his fury without Sophia hearing. ‘Heaven knows why when you treat him like a whining dog you can kick aside when you’re weary of it.’
‘I don’t kick dogs. Your arguments are so persuasive I’m surprised you’re not employed as a diplomat, Mr Wulf,’ she retaliated sweetly. She was stoking an already scorching fire and it felt wickedly enjoyable as well as oddly powerful to bait him when he couldn’t lay a finger on her without having to explain it to a pair of children and her furious male relatives, but she really should stop it. ‘You’ll scare the children and as they’re Kentons it takes a lot of doing.’
He frowned even more fiercely and looked over at Sophia, who was staring at him while little Kit ran round the maze making war whoops as if he witnessed fiery adult battles of will every day of the week. He might well, given who his parents were and the fact they were notorious for enjoying a good argument. This wasn’t a good argument, though, was it? Still, Wulf looked a little sheepish when he turned back to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, as if every word cost a fortune.
‘Are you? Now I’ve seen your true colours I’m not surprised Magnus doesn’t confide in you.’
‘We were close as real brothers until he got engaged to you. He’s been closed as an oyster ever since and now just drinks and looks miserable as sin whenever someone mentions your name. You broke off the engagement days before you were due to marry; you’ve broken his heart.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic; it was two months until our wedding and the invitations hadn’t even been sent out.’
‘Be grateful we’re being watched by innocents, Miss Alstone. I’m so tempted to find out if there’s red blood in your veins I doubt much else would hold me back.’
A hard and feverish sort of wanting blazed in his ice-blue eyes as if his steely will was all that stopped him kissing her witless, so she’d have to be grateful Sophia and little Kit were nearby, wouldn’t she? ‘I’d bite you if you tried it, Mr FitzDevelin, then we’d see what yours is like and never mind mine.’
‘How very uncivil of you,’ he snapped back sarcastically as if he hoped his words would freeze in mid-air and physically hurt her.
Isabella was hard-pressed not to wince. ‘Lucky we are being watched, then, since I don’t care to lower myself to your level,’ she replied and she needed to feed that fury; keep him standing across the green dell glaring at her like an enemy. She was almost terrified by the wild emotions burning the frosty air yet fascinated by the idea of exploring them and never mind conventions, relatives by marriage or her thorny Alstone pride.
‘You’re afraid you might kiss the bastard back, again.’
‘No, I could never want a man who despises me,’ she lied.
‘Why not, you did last time, Isabella,’ he reminded her with such deadly softness she felt his words scorch as if he’d written them in Greek fire on her flinching skin.
He was quite right; that night she kissed him as if her last breath depended on it and why was she such a confounded idiot as to want him and not his half-brother? She felt the merciless heat of longing for a dark and dangerous man she’d never been able to feel for gentlemanly, handsome and much kinder Magnus Haile. Raw wanting ran through her like wildfire, but this time she’d keep it to herself.
‘Go away,’ she demanded in a voice rasped and on the edge of admitting something dreadful.
‘And tell Magnus he’s right, you’re cold as an iceberg under all that golden beauty?’
A shard of pain her good friend could say such a thing about her threatened her serenity. She managed a haughty stare and told herself he’d made it up.
‘I can’t persuade you to drag my half-brother out of the pit of despair he’s tumbled into since you jilted him? He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a piece of rubbish by a woman he loves for some reason that’s beyond me.’
‘No, you can’t and find out what he really wants next time you set out to get it for him by fair means or foul,’ she replied so sweetly she heard him grind his teeth and was savagely glad.
Chapter Four (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Wulf struggled with a powerful urge to shake Isabella until she was as disarrayed as he was after galloping all the way here as if the devil was on his heels. But he couldn’t do that with the young Kentons looking on. Even if their softly hostile words didn’t carry on the clear air, such acute children must already know something was amiss and that would send them running for their father. Tension was stiffening every muscle and sinew he had and he wanted Isabella with a burning hunger he’d never felt the like of before. It roared to life the instant he set eyes on her hesitating on the edge of the terrace at Haile Carr while he was trying to convince himself to go inside the hot and brightly lit ballroom because Magnus needed his support and never mind the Earl and his eldest half-brother’s order to stay away. If only he’d fought his doubts a little harder, he might have been introduced to this golden-haired and lovely heiress as Magnus’s intended bride instead of kissing her as if his heart and soul depended on it.
An image of his brother six months on, pale, bony and unshaven as he brooded over a brandy glass at the breakfast table, reminded him why he was here. But as Isabella Alstone was as cool as the frosty air around them as she stared back at him, there seemed no point repeating the speech he’d put together word by painful word as he rode here. His inner devil took over his tongue at first sight of her and hurt was still screaming for air inside him. For months this sense of betrayal had wanted to tumble out in a toxic stream of bitter words, but they weren’t for Magnus, were they?
‘Quiet men have unquiet souls and dark needs and it could be too late to draw back and say a polite “no, thank you” to the next one you hook as firmly as you caught my brother,’ he warned. The thought of her playing with another idiot in the dark made him feel as if madness was lying in wait.
‘You have no idea what your brother and I mean to each other. You should be wary of thinking you know him better than he does himself, Mr FitzDevelin. I would like you to leave before you cause the sort of scene I would rather not put my family through at Eastertide with my sister so near her time.’
‘No doubt your brothers-in-law will enjoy crushing my pretensions if they find me, but I rode here for my brother’s sake and would rather be a thousand miles away for mine. Will you mend this public rift and take up your betrothal to Magnus again?’
‘No,’ she said stiffly.
Was it the hint of hurt too deep for an ice princess that made his breath catch and a whisper of forbidden longing catch at his heart? No, she was his brother’s dream and Wulf FitzDevelin’s worst nightmare. ‘You don’t care a fig for my brother,’ he said flatly and turned away in disgust. Yes, that was it; her regal indifference to Magnus’s sufferings disgusted him. He should disregard the little part of him that was dancing a jig because she was free to enjoy all kinds of forbidden mischief with Magnus’s bastard brother at last.
‘Maybe I care too much,’ he thought he heard her whisper and his inner devil tripped up in mid-skip and fell flat on its ugly face.
Wulf spun on his heel to glare a challenge at her and she met it, nodded at their youthful audience to remind him to be quiet. ‘Why break your engagement, then?’ he rumbled gruffly.
‘Because it was the right thing to do,’ she murmured, watching the Kenton children explore the labyrinth as if they’d been the centre of her interest all this time and the hard tension in the air between them didn’t fascinate her as well.
‘And you always do the right thing, do you?’
‘No, but I own my mistakes when I realise I’ve made them, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘Was it because I kissed you at the Summer Ball?’ he finally gritted out the question that had alternatively appalled and elated him since he read a notice the marriage between the Honourable Magnus Haile and Miss Isabella Alstone would not take place. The newssheet had appeared just as he returned from running away from his stark betrayal of his brother’s trust.
‘You do have a high opinion of yourself, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘Was it?’ he persisted.
‘No, I might have managed to forget that outrage...’
‘You didn’t respond with outrage at the time; I wish you had.’
‘So do I and stop interrupting—it’s rude as well as a waste of time. Where was I? Oh, yes, I might have forgotten that outrage, but I chose to keep it in my memory as a reminder never to wander out of a hot ballroom and expect to find a gentleman in the dark. Your conduct that night had no influence on my decision not to marry your half-brother. Be glad of it, Mr FitzDevelin, and stop glaring at me as if I made you do it when we both know you fell on me like the lust-driven yahoo you are.’
He ought to be as furious as she was trying to make him, but when she put on that high-nosed lady manner, it lit a fire inside him she ought to be a lot more wary of. It had burnt out of control that night at Haile Carr; heat had scorched the sense out of both of them, as if being close as they could get was all that mattered in this life. Gus would have every right to despise him if he found out what they nearly did the first night they laid eyes on one another, but this wasn’t about them and stealing illicit kisses in the moonlight. He had come here to plead with her to take his half-brother back and marry him, not to remind them both how disgracefully they behaved when they forgot who they were. So how is that going, Wulfric? Badly. The uncomfortable truth was he didn’t want her to wed anyone else. Fury at the very idea of her in another man’s arms thundered up against his love for his brother and trumped it. He made himself recall the sickening fall back to earth that night after he’d kissed this beautiful, vital woman as if his life depended on it, then found out who she was. A Miss Alstone of Wychwood would never truly want a misfit like him. Even if he had half a kingdom to offer her, she’d turn up her nose and say a chilly ‘No, thank you’.
‘Did Gus ever kiss you like that?’ he heard himself ask and only just smothered a groan of disbelief.
‘He never asked for more than a lady cares to give before marriage.’
‘Less than nothing, then,’ he stated flatly and she blushed and lowered her eyes. He tried to stamp on a low sense of satisfaction he’d ruffled her ice-maiden calm when Gus could not.
‘I gave your brother his freedom, and if you want to know more, you must ask him,’ she ended with so much ice in her voice he shivered.
‘Do you think I haven’t?’
‘Ah, but you don’t ask, do you? You demand.’
Wulf blushed and was surprised he still could. ‘I’m sorry I was rude,’ he said a little more loudly so the children might hear him, if they hadn’t run off to find enough strong men to throw him out. He flicked a glance in their direction and saw they were still there, keeping half an eye on him as if he might do something very interesting if they turned their backs and they didn’t want to miss it.
‘You only ever wanted me because of how I look,’ she accused so softly he could barely hear her. ‘And don’t twit me on being vain, because it’s more of a trial than a blessing. Men have wanted me since before I left the schoolroom because of my fortune and a set of even features, but I was always more than that to Magnus—would I could say the same for you.’
‘Marry him, then,’ he said harshly, secretly hurt she thought him wanting and why wouldn’t she when Magnus was worth a dozen of him?
She sighed and shook her head. ‘Do try listening for once,’ she said as if she was running out of patience. ‘Magnus confided in me, and if you can’t trust my word we should not wed, ask him to do the same for you.’
‘You could marry me,’ he heard himself say as if his voice was coming from a great distance.
‘Because you kissed me once and feel guilty? No, thank you. I wouldn’t marry now unless I was so deep in love I couldn’t help myself, which means I shall never marry because I don’t want to be in love.’
‘Perhaps you won’t have a choice, but you wouldn’t wed a bastard even if you loved me from head to foot, would you? Miss Alstone of Wychwood and the by-blow of an erring countess? Unthinkable.’
‘I would dislike you if you had a ducal coronet, vast numbers of houses and thousands of acres to your name. Being housed and fed by a vindictive man during your early years has bent you out of shape, Mr FitzDevelin. Maybe Lord Carrowe isn’t the tolerant, sophisticated gentleman the polite world think him, but you’re not either.’
‘I hope you don’t mean he raised me in his own image.’
‘No, but I think you became hard and angry in order to survive his harsh regime and you shouldn’t let him shape your view of the world.’
‘You have no idea how it feels to be blamed for anything amiss in your family’s life.’
‘My sister Kate and I were left in our great-aunt and cousin’s hands as small children. I doubt there’s much your stepfather could teach them about humiliating those too small or poor to thumb their noses and walk away. You ran as soon as you were old enough, didn’t you? I can’t tell you how we would have envied you the strength and cunning to survive in the wider world when we were to blame for anything that went wrong at Wychwood before our brother-in-law inherited it.’
Wulf felt his heart lurch at the thought of tiny, defiant Isabella surviving such a harsh regime. She ought to have been doted on and valued from the moment she was born, as the outgoing and confident children on the other side of this coolly peaceful garden obviously were. He itched to drag the hags who inflicted such cruelty on two little girls to the nearest Bridewell and show them how it felt to be whipped and humiliated until tears and pleas sank into despair and your only refuge was unconsciousness. He’d sworn as a boy never to lay violent hands on a woman or child, so he’d have to trust the Earl of Carnwood to make sure those harpies never had control of a child’s life again and reminded himself the Alstone sisters were nothing to do with him, then or now.
‘You do understand, then,’ he admitted gruffly.
‘I do, but we were rescued by my eldest sister’s godmama after she spent a year or two nagging my grandfather to send us to school so persistently he gave in to get some peace. Then Miranda married Kit and we had a fine governess and all the love we were starved of when Miranda left and my brother died. So Kate and I only had a few years of being wronged before our older sister and brother-in-law showered us with enough love and attention to make up for that time.’
‘Those women left their mark on you,’ he argued quietly and at least now he knew why she held herself a little aloof in case she met gleeful spite in a stranger’s eye or saw a bully under their skin.
‘Not as big as the one your stepfather left on you,’ she countered.
‘He doesn’t rule my life; I won’t let him.’
‘Then if you get over this conviction you know what’s best for your brother and anyone else you care about, we might get on better.’
‘We might, except Magnus is still miserable and you’re still here. Relations between us won’t improve until you change that situation.’
‘Here we go again, so it’s probably as well my brother-in-law is about to interrupt us.’
‘Damn it, I’m not done.’
‘Well, I am and here he comes anyway. Go back to London and talk to your half-brother before you blunder into any more private homes without an invitation. If you tell Magnus half the wrong-headed nonsense you spouted at me, I’m sure he’ll confide before you dash about the countryside doing more damage.’
Two purposeful males were striding ever closer and she was pushing him aside as if he was a problem she’d confronted and solved. Except Wulf felt more like an arsenal of gunpowder ready to blow with the smallest spark. He wouldn’t be going away satisfied he could now forget Miss Alstone’s vital beauty, acute mind and waspish tongue as if he’d never met her one hot and spellbound August night.
* * *
‘Papa, Papa, we’re over here,’ little Kit shouted as if he and his sister must be more important than any mysterious stranger.
‘Mr Fitz-something helped him catch up with me,’ Sophia informed her father with an exasperated look at her brother, as if she already knew he wouldn’t get the rebuke she half-wanted him to have for spoiling her adventure.
‘And your mother has a great deal to say about you setting him a bad example twice in one day, so I’d keep quiet about his sins if I were you,’ her father told her gently as he sat young Kit on his shoulders. ‘Did you invite FitzDevelin here, Shuttleworth?’ Sir Hugh Kenton asked very coolly indeed and Wulf no longer wondered how the man kept six children almost in order. He had an urge to go and stand in a corner until he’d learnt how to behave himself and he was supposed to be grown-up.
‘No,’ Lord Shuttleworth said baldly.
Wulf felt as if his fur was being rubbed the wrong way, but he couldn’t accuse either of them of the sort of lazy prejudice his stepfather lived by. They clearly disliked him for his own sake and never mind the bed he shouldn’t have been born in.
‘Mr FitzDevelin is on his way into Wales and has called in to pass on a message from his mother, Edmund,’ Miss Alstone said as she rashly stepped in to protect him from making a very sudden exit with the force of a gentleman’s boot to speed him on his way.
‘How unexpected of her ladyship to send you as her envoy, FitzDevelin,’ the Viscount Shuttleworth said blandly.
‘And how invisible her letter is, too,’ Wulf thought he heard Sir Hugh mutter as if he’d been looking forward to throwing the unwanted guest out for his whatever he and Lord Shuttleworth were to one another. Brother-in-law; cousin-by-marriage? Whatever complex relation his lordship was to Sir Hugh Kenton, the Alstone clan moved as one formidable whole when threatened. How Wulf wished his own family were so uncomplicated.
‘I suppose your horse has had a short rest, Mr FitzDevelin, so you can be on your way to Brecon again,’ Isabella said as if a mythical journey would save him from her relatives’ protective wrath.
Tempted to argue he had nowhere else to go just for the hell of it, Wulf obliged with a silent bow because he didn’t feel like lying outright to these two aristocrats.
‘A shame we can’t put you up for the night, FitzDevelin, but I must be inhospitable,’ Lord Shuttleworth said as if he was only mildly amused by playing host to such an unwelcome visitor for however short a time it took to get rid of him.
Wulf read the warning underneath his bland comment and decided to go quietly. No point arguing when he’d wasted a long ride hoping he could put the world right for his half-brother. For once in his life he’d tried to be unselfish, noble even, and Miss Alstone was so obstinate he wondered why he’d bothered. He’d fought all the way here to blot out the snide, self-mocking voice that whispered he was a fool in time to the pounding of hooves as he ate at the miles between him and Isabella Alstone. It argued he was desperate to see her again and never mind his brother. And now he was here why had he ever thought anything he had to say could make a difference when Magnus couldn’t change her mind?
‘You’d best hurry. I’m told it could rain so hard tonight the roads will be impassable,’ Sir Hugh warned and even his son stopped telling his father about his day so far as if he’d caught something implacable in his quiet voice.
‘Then I’d best get on my way before I’m marooned,’ Wulf agreed blandly, although they all knew he’d be heading back to London and it didn’t look like rain.
‘Thank you for delivering the Countess’s message and do give her my best wishes when you see her next, Mr FitzDevelin,’ Miss Alstone chimed in to speed him on his way.
What else could he do but bow as gracefully as he could, then smile a quick farewell at Miss Sophia Kenton and the little rogue sitting on his father’s shoulders? Miss Alstone was already discussing the weather with Kenton while Lord Shuttleworth waited impatiently to see Wulf off the property.
‘My wife is very near her time, FitzDevelin,’ his lordship told him as they strolled away. ‘Come here again and I’ll have you roped on your horse and left to wander wherever he takes you. And stay away from my sister-in-law.’
‘I came on my brother’s behalf, my lord,’ Wulf made himself argue. He wanted to thump someone to make himself feel better as well, but it would do neither of them any good to alarm the very pregnant Viscountess.
‘I trust my sister-in-law to know her own mind and so should you. She and Mr Haile will only have parted after a lot of heartache and I hate to see her troubled.’
‘You are in her confidence, then?’ Wulf heard himself say urgently, as if he was her rebuffed suitor and not Magnus.
‘No, but she hates to break a promise and you can tell your brother so when you get back to London. He obviously doesn’t know her as well as he thinks if he thought sending you to plead his case would get her to change her mind.’
‘He doesn’t know I’ve come.’
‘Then you’ll be the butt of his displeasure as well, won’t you?’
‘Probably,’ Wulf said with the sort of defensive young man’s shrug he thought he’d grown out of.
‘I suppose you cared enough to come here on a pointless quest bullheaded,’ his lordship said as if he was trying to find excuses for the sort of boyish mischief Wulf never had the chance to commit.
‘My brother is eating his heart out. He’s taken to the bottle and refuses to shave for days on end and not even our younger sisters can get a smile out of him. If you had a half-brother you loved, wouldn’t you do anything to see him happy when he’s hurting so badly?’
‘Yes, which is why you’re walking to my stables to collect your horse and not being carried there by my grooms to be put on it and driven off fast as the nag will go.’
‘I’d best be grateful for small mercies, then,’ Wulf said with a rueful grin and decided he’d like this man under other circumstances.
‘Don’t try too hard until you’re away without arousing my wife’s suspicion you’re here on a mission of your own,’ Lord Shuttleworth said as if he knew Wulf’s reasons for coming here were only half-unselfish and that was impossible, wasn’t it?
‘Consider me warned off, my lord.’
‘A shame, but I won’t have my wife or her sister upset if there’s anything I can do to prevent it and that’s a fault I’ve long shared with Sir Hugh and the current Earl of Carnwood.’
‘I’m not your equal, my lord, but there’s no need to point it out with every second word. Trust my stepfather to be sure my irregular birth is engraved on my heart, much as Mary Tudor claimed Calais was on hers.’
‘It’s not a matter of quality or inequality, but common sense. Tangling with you or your brother now will drag my sister-in-law’s good name through more mud and I can’t have that.’
‘Nobody will know I was here if you don’t tell them and I didn’t give your stableman a name.’
‘Which was why he sought me out and, as a reward, I’ll be granting him a cottage of his own this Eastertide so he can wed his sweetheart. So some good came of your impromptu visit.’
‘I shall preen myself even as I ride away with my tail metaphorically between my legs, my lord,’ Wulf said and was surprised by a bark of genuine laughter from his reluctant host.
‘Smug or not, that will be a challenge.’
‘I’m used to it,’ Wulf said ruefully and wasn’t that the truth?
‘I suppose you must be and as a rule I care more about a man’s head and heart than the way he came into the world, but I know my sister-in-law has been hurt and I care more about her than your sensitivities, so I’m prepared to be inhospitable in your case.’
‘I came here on my half-brother’s business,’ Wulf said as his temper began to tug at its tethers. Magnus was ill and Isabella Alstone was clearly in perfect health and coolly composed, so why was she the one who needed protecting?
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Elizabeth Beacon
A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger……at her own betrothal ball!When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless, and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!
A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger…
at her own betrothal ball!
When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!
“Beacon has herself another winner.”
—RT Book Reviews on The Governess Heiress
“Historical romance fans will be delighted by this tale... Curl up and spend an enjoyable afternoon with this sweet story.”
—RT Book Reviews on One Final Season
ELIZABETH BEACON has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon.
Also by Elizabeth Beacon
The Duchess HuntCandlelit Christmas KissesThe Scarred EarlThe Black Sheep’s Return
A Year of Scandal miniseries
The Viscount’s Frozen HeartThe Marquis’s AwakeningLord Laughraine’s Summer PromiseRedemption of the RakeThe Winterley ScandalThe Governess Heiress
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress
Elizabeth Beacon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07360-8
A WEDDING FOR THE SCANDALOUS HEIRESS
© 2018 Elizabeth Beacon
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover (#ubba35b25-93c2-5b78-b3a6-f8a98dedafc3)
Back Cover Text (#u4210ffec-3550-5165-9e8b-5f3a2bfac46b)
About the Author (#u162b1f52-cdab-529f-9b91-c8fde9ebf94b)
Booklist (#uddfd849f-3f65-57c6-b3a0-2e96e32e9ae2)
Title Page (#ub1a62126-36d2-55d0-9139-f0c333c9173e)
Copyright (#u8693c46a-1ec2-5fb2-b6f3-5dce52d7ba99)
Chapter One (#uccc54d0e-66ed-5554-b9a0-c55b08fc1e82)
Chapter Two (#u471e3a9a-2f9a-5bf2-ac7e-25b63c0ee263)
Chapter Three (#ueb2aeea4-2965-5f4a-a2e7-3023291198a4)
Chapter Four (#u508a99e2-6239-5442-a04e-55a19c0aa461)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
You’re three and twenty, Isabella Alstone, and far too old to hide in the dark. You should stay in the ballroom and pretend to be happy, not creep out here as if you’re planning to steal the silver.
Isabella was tired of being the perfect lady, though, so she stripped off her gloves and waved them in front of her overheated face, ignoring the voice of her conscience. It was hot even outside on this sultry late summer night and she wasn’t going back until she was cooler, calmer and more resigned... No, not more resigned, more collected. Yet promises so logical and right when voiced to a friend seemed strange and wrong now and how could she be calm about that?
‘Now, why is a lady of quality lurking in the shadows with the likes of me? Better go back to being belle of the ball instead of getting caught out here in bad company.’
The voice from the shadows startled Isabella from her reverie. The sound of his velvet-and-darkness voice told her he was right, but she was in the mood to be reckless.
‘Why?’ she demanded, peering into the gloom to try to see through the shadows.
His gruffly masculine voice had a pleasing hint of danger along the edge of it she shouldn’t want to know more about, but she had left safe, respectable Isabella inside and it was wonderful to be a different person altogether for a few stolen moments. She could be the sort of female who’d dive into wild encounters in the dark, as if she was put on this earth to be foolish and bold with the first rake she stumbled on in the shadows. Her fantasy of being a brash and sophisticated lady who took what she wanted from life and laughed at the future, as if it wasn’t heading towards her at the speed of a runaway horse, was too alluring to turn her back on just yet.
‘Because I’m here,’ the mysterious voice explained, as if that was all she needed to know to send her running. She stayed exactly where she was, refusing to scuttle inside like a scared rabbit, and heard him sigh, as if he couldn’t believe how stupid she was not to listen and do as she was bid.
‘You’re no debutante, so the Bond Street Beaux must have told you how beautiful you are by now and that will make everything worse if we’re caught in the moonlight together.’
He stepped forward so the light from the few hundred wax candles could illuminate his face and form and show her how right he was. With a face too much his to match any ideal of classical perfection, he wasn’t the most handsome man Isabella had seen. He wasn’t the tallest or broadest or most obviously powerful male she had ever met either. Of course, he was leanly fit and quietly muscular as well as deeply, darkly intense. And uniquely formed to make her shiver in her dancing slippers with an unexpected and delicious anticipation of something she’d hardly dared think about until now and usually shuddered away from when she saw that feral light in other men’s eyes. Only seconds ago she’d been hot and weary and now she felt so alive there could be air and stardust under her feet instead of solid York stone. If this was how being irresponsible felt, it certainly topped being her usual sensible and reasoned self.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea who you are, so if you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working. Although you’re right about one thing,’ she said as lightly as she could when the world seemed to have stopped and they were the only two people left moving. ‘I have been out for a long time now and know false flattery when I hear it.’
‘I don’t flatter, Mrs...’ he shot a steely gaze at her ring finger ‘...apologies, Miss, and there’s no need to pretend to be middle-aged,’ he said with a wry smile that did hot and disturbing things to her insides. ‘We’ll both be old soon enough.’
‘We will?’ she echoed in a breathy whisper that must have given him doubts about that maturity, but she did feel like a giddy girl when he took her gently by the arm and urged her further into darkness and away from the pool of golden candlelight spilling out of a ballroom that now seemed almost as remote from her as the Arctic.
‘Will someone come dashing out to find you any moment now, ready to usher you away?’ he asked with a smile, but she felt a tension in his sleekly powerful body that made her frown briefly.
‘No,’ she told him like a silly debutante desperate to be ruined by a rogue. ‘My family trusts me to behave,’ she added with a late tilt at sophistication and a flutter in her heartbeat that suggested they shouldn’t tonight.
‘They don’t consider the basic needs of the human heart often enough, then, or, in my case, even baser masculine ones you’re better not to know about until you really are a Mrs Belle,’ he replied with a cynical thread in his voice that made her frown for another sensible, bone-jarring moment before the darkness and scent from some exotic hothouse flower nearby wafted it clean away.
‘So you’re not to be trusted?’ she heard herself ask like the fledgling idiot she’d never allowed herself to be in polite society.
Nobody was ever going to lure her in with showy good looks, false promises of love and passion, and heady nights like this one. She remembered her eldest sister, Miranda, falling for evil, charming Nevin Braxton at seventeen and all the horror her elopement and ruin had brought down on her family’s lives too well for that. Isabella had shuddered away from rakes as if their kisses would poison her ever since. This man hadn’t flattered and flirted and fawned on her, though. He seemed to see beyond her golden looks, exquisitely fashioned gown and neat figure and was speaking to the real Isabella.
And out here she could forget what was waiting for her inside the hot room only feet away. On this terrace with the scent of exotic flowers heavy in the air, only now mattered. Just enough light shone from the ballroom for her to see his eyes were ice blue and hot at the same time. Her breath stuttered when he pulled her further from the lights of the party and the glow of a waxing moon gave them a world of their own.
‘You should not trust me, Belle. I’m dangerous,’ he said almost seriously. ‘I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing,’ he added as if he believed it.
‘It’s not full,’ she told him and sensed his bewilderment. ‘The moon,’ she explained with a nod towards it where it seemed almost touchable, on the horizon, ‘so you can’t claim the moon made you do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself say rashly. A sane part of her was so shocked it was as if it flopped down on to the stone bench nearby and sat there with its mouth open.
‘Oh? And why would you let me do that, Belle? Perhaps you’re as wild as I am,’ he murmured, suddenly closer than she remembered.
She should run, dash back into the familiar noise and heat and glitter of a tonnish ballroom, and find the nearest respectable female to chaperon her. Instead she stayed as if her feet were rooted into the still-warm stones under their feet. She could touch and taste him if she stayed, hear the urgent saw of breath he’d been holding too long. Moonlight fell on high cheekbones and dark, dark hair springing almost to disarray despite all his efforts to tame it. The hint of a frown at his dark eyebrows told her a goodly part of him thought he ought to fight this basic, gut-deep attraction as well. But there was enough light for the sensual curve of his mouth to betray the fact urgency and passion were getting the upper hand even without her exploring touch and silent encouragement to get on and kiss her and to hell with the real world.
‘I think you’re right,’ she whispered as she padded her fingertips against his tense jaw, feeling how it clenched and suspecting it was taking everything in him not to fall on her like the wolf he claimed to be.
But reason gave way to madness and suddenly she was in his arms. This was the kiss that would bring Isabella Penelope Alstone fully to life. The one she’d been so secretly waiting for since the day she began to be a woman. She hadn’t even let herself know she wanted it until now. His mouth fitted lushly against her eager lips and he felt so familiar against her. He murmured something as if he agreed with her unspoken thoughts and she opened her mouth to say Yes, please, but he dipped his tongue inside first, as if he had to know more, had to know everything now she was here at last. She was melting from the outside in, or should that be the inside out? Heat beat through her in time with his hurried breaths and the dart of his gently exploring tongue, as if he knew she’d never felt passion like this before and it was a shock that echoed through them both.
Yes, there was the shake of novelty and wonder in his fingers as he danced them across her cheekbone and down to outline her chin as if he was learning her with every sense he had. Never before had she been tempted to burrow into a man’s arms, to try to become a part of him by melding her heat with his, her mouth with his. For a minute reality threatened to pull her back and her mind told her body to flinch away, but the alluring stranger snatched all her attention back by sliding his wickedly exploring tongue over her lower lip, deepening the kiss.
She shifted even closer and copied his exploration. His cheek and jaw felt so firm under her touch and her fingers were intrigued by the contrast between her own softer features and his hawkish ones. She could feel the suggestion of his beard despite a careful shave and she spared a moment to scent the clean, sharp smell of soap and something tangy used to take the sting of the blade away when a gentleman was making himself civilised and smooth for the company of ladies.
Real life threatened to jump in again, but she told it to go away and muttered something encouraging instead. Nothing in reality could beat a meeting outside time and all the rules of polite society. Her heart beat so fast and her breath demanded air while pleasure and hope and a big, wide yes to life and this stranger and all he could be opened up inside her. She was shivering like a thoroughbred and rode a tide of heat more intense and deep and demanding than anything she’d ever felt before. There were no words to describe how right it felt when he pulled her closer to show her what she was doing to him. She felt the tension of deep desire in his rigidly muscular form. This was the carnal, primal need that carried men and women to places they’d never intended to go to when they started an evening not even knowing one another.
Instead of flinching back and telling him, no, they couldn’t go any further down that road when they didn’t even know one another’s real names, she pushed her curious hands under his unbuttoned evening coat and gave a pleased little grunt at the feel of a hot, needy and intriguingly muscular male under her exploring touch. Her fingers soothed the tight muscles at the base of his spine, whispered inquisitively downwards, desperate to know the difference between his spare male flanks and her own sleekly feminine curves. He gasped as if she’d stung him, then sucked in breath as if he might need more if she was going to carry on, so she did. She could feel his muscles shift and soothe, then tense again as she explored the sparseness of his buttocks and the honed, pared-down line where they met long, strong legs. Her own legs wobbled and almost let her down as their stance thrust his unmistakably eager manhood emphatically against her.
This was what uncontrollable desire felt like. This was how a woman felt when she was desperate for the man she loved to take her somewhere magical. That old taboo, that stark little four-lettered word sounded like a death knell in a corner of her mind, but she was moon-mad and curious enough to ignore it for a little longer. It put a hiccup in her sigh, though, a caveat in her exploration even as she buried a gasp of awe and need against his shoulder, then stood on tiptoe so that every bit of her felt it knew every bit of him.
But they didn’t, they couldn’t; not with so many sharp eyes and curious minds dangerously close by. She felt him stand a little straighter, pulling back his leanly powerful shoulders so he stood more sceptically apart from her as she burrowed against the warmth and strength and certainty of him and tried to hold on to this moment for a little while longer. If she let go, she’d have to see what she’d done and what she ought to have been doing instead. Ever since she’d given in to impulse for once and stepped outside the stuffy ballroom behind them, the way her life was planned out from now on was weightless in the balance against this rebellious encounter under the stars. Let him go and that weight would tumble back and she would end up more wrong than she had ever been in her life.
As she stood in the stronghold of his arms, trying to hold the real world at bay for as long as she could, voices started to disturb the fog of her mind.
‘Isabella can’t be out here,’ she heard Magnus Haile’s voice say in the vast, close distance between his world and the one she and the stranger and the moon inhabited.
Now just a few yards away his voice sounded pacifying with forced casualness. She stiffened and felt her fellow moon-led simpleton do the same. Magnus must be with his father for him to sound like that. The Earl of Carrowe was a despot with his family, but so sleekly charming in the polite world the stark difference between public and private man still took Isabella’s breath away.
‘Where is she, then? Get your engagement puffed off so I don’t end up in the sponging house or have duns to breakfast. You have shilly-shallied for far too long, so you find her before her upstart brother-in-law withdraws his consent or I’ll spill your secrets.’
‘She’s of age and so am I. We need no consent,’ the Honourable Magnus Haile asserted uncomfortably, as if he was trying to remind himself that he and Isabella were two free and unencumbered adults.
Even as she stood in another man’s arms and felt him go rigid before he let her go as if she’d suddenly grown horns and a tail, Isabella frowned at the flatness in Magnus’s usually pleasant tenor voice. He had spent last Season courting her so half-heartedly it took her until the end of it to notice. Then he had asked his fateful question and it shocked her even now to recall she had agreed. They were friends, she reassured herself. They would run in harness well together and she had never met anyone who made her heart race or her inner wanton melt with greed and heady desire. Until tonight. When it was too late.
Isabella stepped cautiously away from her stranger; stiff as he was now reason had rushed back in. A sluggish breeze stirred the sticky heat and fluttered her pale gown as space opened up between them.
The Earl of Carrowe pushed his protesting second son aside and stepped away from the pool of candlelight. Still as a statue now, Isabella froze and held her breath. This familiar stranger standing so stiffly next to her felt remote and withdrawn as an iron statue. She desperately hoped the night was deep enough for the Earl not to see them standing here like guilty lovers. Who would have thought a man she never laid eyes on until tonight could show her Isabella the Undone? All in the space between the ballroom and here and now.
‘You don’t need consent, you need a pitchfork up your...’ the Earl said in the coarse manner he saved for his family. Or at least those who depended on him for a leaky roof over their heads. Here at Haile Carr he had to hide his true self or risk the fury of his wealthy daughter-in-law and her even wealthier father.
‘You’ll keep a still tongue in your head about my future wife if you want me to go through with this marriage.’ Magnus sounded as austere as a monk and halted his father’s trail of obscenities in their tracks.
Isabella stifled a hum of sympathy as she felt the weight of real life settling back on her shoulders. It felt even more of a burden now than when she had first decided to share Magnus’s responsibilities. They weren’t in love, but she never wanted to be in love anyway. Love was a trap and an illusion, nothing like the fairy-tale emotion three-decker romances portrayed. Isabella had agreed to Magnus’s proposal for one reason—to get him and his sisters out from under the Earl’s thumb—to give her best male friend outside her family a chance to be free of the monster she had heard bully and even beat his children. She had had no idea until a visit to the Haile ladies showed her the insults and foul language of the real man under the Earl of Carrowe’s urbane outer shell. The Countess had hidden Isabella’s presence and even took her out down the backstairs so the Earl wouldn’t know she had been there. From that moment on she was filled with a passionate desire to help the Earl’s daughters and Magnus had given her a chance to do it, so she took it and him and told herself all would be well because she didn’t want to be in love with her husband anyway.
Except it felt as if they had missed something vital out. Isabella had been restless and hot and uncomfortable in her own skin in the ballroom and bolted outside to get away from what she’d done with her eyes wide open. And look where that had got her; she’d taken light in the arms of a stranger and now had to live with the memory of it on her conscience while she pretended to be Magnus’s glowingly happy bride-to-be.
‘Renege on our deal and I’ll tell the world what you did last year and who you did it with,’ the Earl threatened Magnus as if he couldn’t bear to be bested by another son after his heir married a rich woman and got control of his own purse strings. The atmosphere in the ballroom had felt oppressive with Viscount Haile and his wife holding court while family tensions simmered just below the surface. Or maybe she was making excuses for her own bad behaviour.
But what did Magnus do last summer? A couple of times since she arrived here Isabella had sensed something was deeply wrong with Magnus. It felt as if she knew only half of what was going on. Their engagement was supposed to be a surprise that would make this annual party even happier, but it didn’t feel very joyous to Isabella. Her money and family power were pitted against the Earl’s extravagant self-indulgence and his cruel grip on his family. He’d traded control of his unwed daughters for part of her fortune; Magnus would save his sisters and Isabella could start the family she longed for. But then she arrived here and the reality of marrying the man who’d been her friend since she made her debut finally hit home. To make those babies they would be intimate together and it felt like a giant factor she left out of her calculations about marrying for sense and companionship. Much as she liked Magnus she wasn’t sure she wanted to couple with him. She was a country girl at heart and three and twenty; she knew enough about the mechanics of marriage to shiver at the very idea of the one she’d committed herself to while she stood so close to a man who had nearly taught her a lot more than she needed to know about how a man and a woman were together when they wanted each other so urgently they couldn’t even wait for a bed.
‘You need money too much to risk Isabella jilting me,’ Magnus was arguing now and she felt the man at her side wince.
Not for her sake, she sensed, or for the Earl’s. So he must be on Magnus’s side. She could feel fury arcing across the few bare inches of late summer air between them. The shame of her own betrayal was bad enough—the wrong she’d done Magnus with this stranger. So what about him? He was furious with her, but fairness whispered he hadn’t deserved to kiss another man’s affianced bride as if she was free as air, then find out how wrong he was before their lips were cool from kissing. Even more guilt twisted in her belly and finally saw off the wanton Isabella who still longed for more from a lover and never mind who he was and who he wasn’t.
‘No, damn you, I need all that gelt to keep the duns at bay,’ the Earl was saying now. ‘You find the wench so we can announce the engagement before all the local clodhoppers go home.’
‘I’ll see if Isabella is mending a flounce or visiting the ladies’ withdrawing room, because she’s clearly not out here. You shouldn’t judge her by your low standards. Not everyone has your genius for sin.’
‘Speaking of sinners, where’s your mother?’
‘Maybe she’s with her prospective daughter-in-law, avoiding you.’
The string of obscenities that greeted that provocation faded as father and son turned to go back inside. Isabella wasted a few moments wondering how quickly the Earl could put on the mask of genial host after his unpleasant tirade. No doubt it would be plausible as ever by the time he was back in the crowded ballroom that she now dreaded so deeply she would almost prefer to stay out here with a furious male of a very different kind than re-enter it and face the future.
‘I presume you know your fiancé’s mother, Miss Alstone?’ he asked coldly.
She shivered despite the sticky heat that hit her again now the magic of the moonlit night had flown. ‘How do you know my...?’ she began, then her voice trailed off when he turned to face her.
‘Who else but you would skulk on the terrace at Haile Carr, trying to avoid her fiancé in the arms of a stranger? Who else did I come here to see and maybe even steel myself to meet?’
‘I don’t know, but why are you here?’
He grasped her arms as if she was the last person he really wanted to touch and walked her towards the pool of golden light on the still-warm stones. Her gaze ran over his hawkish features and heat and excitement flashed through her once again, but there was such fury in his uncannily light blue eyes it suffocated.
‘Can you see it now?’ he demanded roughly, shaking her a little when she stayed silent. ‘The mark of Cain you have put on me tonight,’ he bit out and the rage and guilt beneath his bitter words felt formidable.
For another cowardly moment she let her gaze linger on features that seemed uniquely his. Eyes clear and pale and steely blue, yet so alive and passionate even the fury in them seemed better than the cold aloofness he was striving for. Eyebrows and wild curls so dark above his icy gaze that looked so hard now. His features were so strongly marked and masculine she couldn’t sort them from a softer, more blurred version that nagged at her memory.
‘The Countess, you’re Lady Carrowe’s...’ Yet again she let her voice tail off as if she was an incoherent and bedazzled debutante. Even the thought of being so silly and unguarded made her stiffen her spine and meet his eyes as if it didn’t cost such an effort. She felt sweat bead her brow. ‘Youngest son,’ she ended, because she knew who he was and still refused to name-call over one thing that certainly wasn’t his fault.
‘Say it, Miss Alstone,’ he ordered with weary impatience. ‘I’m my mother’s publicly denounced shame since the day I had the bad taste to be born alive. I’m the cuckoo in the Earl of Carrowe’s nest; Lady Carrowe’s disgrace; destroyer of innocent ladies’ reputations and all the names they call me if I’m stupid enough to enter a room full of your kind. And what about you, Miss Alstone? You’re Magnus Haile’s affianced wife and far more of a disgrace than my mother ever was in private. She married a monster and you’re about to wed his very opposite; you have no excuse for luring in a lover before you even marry my big brother.’
‘That’s between us and none of your business,’ she said coolly.
‘Tell him about this and I’ll tell the whole world what you did tonight. Dare whisper a word to hurt him and I’ll make sure the world finds out what we’ve done.’
‘You can’t ruin me,’ she defied him and knew it was cheap to invite him to throw mud at the Earl of Carnwood’s youngest sister-in-law if he dared.
‘Wulf FitzDevelin may not get past generations of rank and privilege and be-damned-to-the-rest-of-you, but Dev can do it with a few flicks of his pen and a lampoon from a scurrilous friend who owes him a favour.’
‘You’re him; a famous writer? That Dev?’ she said, incredulous he was the scourge of liars and hypocrites and fools she’d found so irresistibly funny when he wasn’t directing his fury at her.
His more usual style of showing the folly and misfortune of his fellow man took his writing beyond satire. She admired his compassion and delight in ordinary and extraordinary people of great cities and small places alike. In his mind she probably qualified as liar, hypocrite and fool. That idea added a layer of sadness to her guilt she didn’t want to think about right now.
‘Luckily for me there’s no law to stop a bastard being a writer or vice versa. And I thought I was so cynical nothing could shock me, but you proved me wrong tonight, Miss Alstone; I hope you’re proud.’
‘Not really,’ she made herself say as if she was thinking about something more important than a trifling sin she could take to church with her on Sunday and come away with a feeling of absolution.
‘Mention this aberration to my brother and I’ll not only deny every word and ruin you, I’ll take your family and friends down with you.’
‘Don’t threaten me,’ she flared back at him, even as fear for those she loved and wanted to protect flared fiercely in her heart and hurt more bitterly because he was the one trying to put it there. ‘Nobody will rule me or mine with fear or beatings or nasty little lies ever again,’ an Isabella even she hadn’t known was so furious about her childhood spat like a cornered tigress. ‘Stay away from me and mine and your brother as well,’ she went on in a forceful whisper for fear of being overheard. ‘I’ll do what I can for your half-sisters, Mr Wulf, as long as you’re not glowering at me from the sidelines as if I’m the She-Wolf of France and Lucrezia Borgia rolled up together.’
‘Your namesake the Queen Isabella, so-called She-Wolf of France?’ he taunted her.
‘A poor choice of words doesn’t change facts.’
‘I doubt you worry very much about them at the best of times, miss. Luckily for you I haven’t the stomach to stay here and watch you promise to wed my brother as if you’re worthy of even a single hair on his head.’
‘You love him, don’t you? All those stories about you being heartless and impervious to love and affection are more of Lord Carrowe’s lies,’ she said, so shaken by the fact the notorious Wulf FitzDevelin had turned out to be nothing like the man he’d been painted she forgot she was the one doing battle with him right now.
‘I feel very cold and resistant to you, and if you don’t hurry back inside, your undeserved reputation as a cool and lovely lady of fortune will be blasted for good. I’d be the first to dance on her grave, but Magnus wouldn’t like it.’
‘I certainly won’t risk notoriety for the sake of someone who thinks he can threaten all I hold dear because I was stupid.’
‘Stupid? A little more than that, Miss Alstone,’ he said with such revulsion in his voice she decided to let him have the last word, since he liked them so much.
She gave him one last challenging look to dare him to do his worst, then turned her back. He was a mirage—a wonder that turned out nothing of the kind. Magnus and his sisters and her own loving family were real; they mattered. She used her memory of the ballroom’s layout and decorations to sneak back inside unnoticed. She would get her breath back and confess to nodding off in a quiet corner from exhaustion and nerves. Yes, she could put Isabella Alstone back together and even look glowingly happy when her engagement to a good man was announced. Just a few more moments away from the stares and speculation of the cream of local society and she’d be able to playact with the best of them.
Chapter Two (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Six months later Isabella wished she couldn’t remember that night of rebellion as if it was only moments ago. She watched her very pregnant middle sister walk towards her like a ship in full sail and did her best to swap prickly memories for here and now.
‘Are you hiding up here because you think it’s the last place anyone will look, Izzie?’
‘If I was, it clearly hasn’t worked and, no, I’m not hiding,’ she lied concisely when Kate reached her. The need to find peace felt urgent after all these weeks and months of turmoil, so here she was on the top floor of the newest part of Viscount Shuttleworth’s grand and sprawling mansion, watching the spring landscape below and trying not to think.
‘That’s your story,’ Kate said sceptically. ‘I never believed them when you were the baby of the family and a sweet smile and tall tale got what you wanted nine times out of ten, and I don’t believe you now.’
‘Well, I’m not a baby anymore, so stop thwarting me for the good of my soul and trust me to know my own mind.’
‘You’re my little sister, Izzie, and trying to pretend all’s well with your world when it obviously isn’t won’t work. I can tell how sad and confused you are about whatever has happened between you and Magnus these last few months while I’ve been stuck in the country like a cow out at pasture. Don’t shut me out, love; I’m on your side whether you want me there or not.’
‘You wouldn’t leave me alone even if I wanted you to, so it’s as well I don’t,’ Isabella joked, then sobered when she saw genuine hurt in her sister’s eyes. ‘I know how lucky I am to have a lionhearted older sister like you, Kate. When we were little and Miranda eloped, then Jack died, you protected me like a lioness. You must have been so sad and lost yourself, but you somehow forced our aunt and cousin to stop beating and bullying me until I was as silent and cowed as Magnus’s poor little sister Theodora. I’m sorry it cost you so much to keep me safe, but you have a family of your own to spoil and protect now, my Lady Shuttleworth, and I can take care of myself. I’m sad about the end of my betrothal to Magnus, but I expect I’ll get over it soon enough.’
‘I don’t think you will,’ Kate argued as if wistfulness and guilt were written all over Isabella’s face and she really hoped they weren’t. ‘And you were quite right to put an end to it if you didn’t love him.’
‘Although you’re the worst-tempered and most infuriating sister I have, Katie darling, you’re loyal to a fault,’ Isabella tried to joke; because she had a sore heart and conscience she didn’t want Kate to know about. And she did love Magnus, just not in the way a wife should love her husband.
‘You only have two sisters.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Hmmm, I know when I’m being led away from a subject, so trying to make me angry won’t work. I’m not as gentle as Miranda is most of the time, but I can control my temper when you’re not around to goad it. And you should humour me, since I’m in a very interesting condition,’ Kate said with a rueful rub of her swollen belly.
‘You’d hate it if I did.’
‘True, but I might secretly be flattered you wanted to cosset me so badly you held that clever tongue of yours for once in your life.’
‘You don’t need flattering. You and Edmund have a lovely little daughter and a new baby on the way. No doubt all three of you will spoil him or her to the edge of reason the moment they are born and what does anyone else’s opinion matter when you’re the centre of their world?’
‘I love them so much I pinch myself to make sure this is really happening at times, but you’re my little sister, Izzie. I couldn’t not care about you while there’s breath in my body, and, come to think of it, even if I was dead, I doubt I’d be able to stop loving you.’
‘Oh, Kate, I love you so much,’ Isabella said, feeling shaky at the very thought of losing her beloved sister. They were all trying not to dwell on the ordeal of childbirth as Kate got closer and closer to her time, but the thought of ever having to live without her beloved sister cut through Isabella’s fragile attempts to be cheerful like a grim bolt of lightning on a sunny day.
‘Then tell me the truth,’ Kate demanded relentlessly as if she knew she had an unfair advantage and was determined to use it.
Isabella avoided her eyes and tried not to think about the ridiculous mess her life was in. The truth? She didn’t even know what it was herself, so how could she tell anyone else? ‘Magnus and I found we did not suit,’ she said carefully. ‘So I had to break the engagement, since he couldn’t.’
‘And we both know a lady can change her mind if she really must, but a gentleman’s word has to be his bond. It’s quite absurd when you think about it, but you’re too passionate to be Mr Haile’s convenient wife for the next forty years because neither of you had the courage to say no before it was too late.’
‘As I’m now considered a jilt, I doubt I’ll have a chance to marry another man I respect, so we’ll probably never know. I haven’t met anyone else I would want to marry in five years on the marriage mart,’ Isabella said with her fingers crossed under her skirts.
She’d met a man she simply wanted that night at Haile Carr, but Wulf FitzDevelin wouldn’t marry her if she was the last single woman left on earth, so he didn’t count. ‘Half the eligible bachelors avoid me now and the rest find my fortune irresistible,’ she told her sister breezily. ‘I expect they think I’m desperate after whistling Magnus down the wind as if handsome and intelligent gentlemen are ten a penny.’
‘You’re ridiculously lovely and an heiress in your own right, Izzie. If you were desperate, you’d have clung to him like a limpet.’
‘I didn’t say it was logical, but at least as an old maid I’ll be spared such nonsense in future.’
‘You’re three and twenty, love, and won’t be on the shelf long,’ Kate argued with a wry smile. ‘There are a few other gentlemen with good eyesight and a modicum of sense in their handsome heads, so you don’t need to wear the willow.’
Isabella felt tears threaten at her sister’s steadfast love and loyalty, just as they had when she’d seen Kate and her husband, Edmund, stood waiting for her on the gravel carriage sweep this morning, too impatient to wait to greet their guest at the top of the wide stone steps as befitted their station as Lord and Lady Shuttleworth. Kate, Edmund and their daughter had hugged and inspected Isabella for damage, as if they were afraid she’d been broken since they saw her last. Louise Kenton, née Alstone, was the youngest sister of Miranda’s husband, Kit, Seventh Earl of Carnwood. Kit and Louise and their sister Maria were distant cousins of her and Miranda and Kate and he was probably the most reluctant lord in the House when he succeeded to the family titles, but marrying Miranda seemed to have reconciled him to it and Louise simply added Kate and Isabella to her family when her brother married their big sister and she felt like another sibling now. Isabella wasn’t quite sure she wanted Louise’s sharp eyes on her, though she was glad Louise was here for Kate during this time. At least she knew a good deal about childbirth after bearing six children since marrying Hugh.
Isabella didn’t know how Edmund convinced his wife she was too near her time to go to Derbyshire and join Kit and Miranda for the Easter festivities, but she was very glad he had. This way Kate must play hostess to as many of the family as he could assemble and what a good thing her sisters had married men who respected as well as loved them. Kit and Edmund found ingenious ways around their wives’ sore spots and stubborn streaks when an invigorating argument wasn’t advisable and that was the sort of marriage Isabella had tried to convince herself she could build with Magnus.
She felt like a fool about that delusion when she watched Edmund and Kate, and Hugh and Louise, together and realised she’d left something vital out. Magnus was a handsome and civilised gentleman with a clever mind, a dry sense of humour and a good heart, but he wasn’t the love of her life. Although she didn’t want one of those, it was probably better not to marry at all than accept less. She had spent six months at odds with herself and at the end of it found out Magnus was in love with another woman. He had offered for Isabella to silence his obnoxious father about the child he and his beloved Lady Delphine had made together and he loved her so much he’d been ready to sacrifice himself and Isabella for the sake of her precious reputation. So if she wasn’t going to risk marrying for reason again and loving a man with all of her heart was a terrifying step she refused to take into the unknown, she would do better not to marry.
‘I’m not pining for Magnus, Kate. He was the first grown-up gentleman I danced with at my come-out ball and I suppose I fooled myself into thinking we could make a good marriage out of our long friendship and mutual interests, but I was wrong. I miss him as a friend, but I won’t collapse in a tearful heap whenever you say his name.’
‘If you like him that much, maybe you should marry him anyway, since you always said you’d never wed for love,’ Kate suggested half-seriously, as if it had been wedding nerves that made Isabella call off the wedding and the whole thing might still be salvaged. Since Kate took three years to discover she loved Edmund far too much to let him marry anyone else, Isabella forgave her sister for doubting her.
‘No,’ she said firmly enough to nip any well-meant schemes to throw her and Magnus back together in the bud. ‘It would be a disaster.’
Never quite measuring up to a lover your spouse couldn’t have would make a marriage hideous. Lucky for her it was only passion on her side and not love. Still, it was probably unfair to compare every other man she met to broodingly handsome Wulf FitzDevelin and his devilishly seductive kisses one impossible night when she took a few minutes off from being cool and careful Miss Alstone.
‘You don’t think you could come to love him in time, then?’ Kate said with memories of her own slow-burning feelings dreamy in her dark blue eyes.
‘No.’
‘Then I’m glad you found out before it was too late. Edmund is my best friend, but he’s also my abiding passion and it baffles me how you thought you could settle for less. A civilised and passionless marriage could never work for you, love.’
‘You were hell-bent on making one yourself once upon a time,’ Isabella pointed out to divert her sister from this uncomfortable topic of conversation.
‘I’m not sure that’s a proper way for an unmarried lady to express herself, sister dear. And, as Edmund was the man I was determined to make it with, I had perfect taste, even if my judgement was a little clouded,’ Kate replied smugly. Isabella was certain Kate and Edmund still enjoyed the odd passionate, invigorating argument about it even now.
‘Take a lesson from me, Izzie,’ Kate persisted because she knew Izzie far better than she wanted her to, ‘marriage lasts too long for any Alstone to risk it without being in love with our spouse.’
‘Don’t upset yourself because it didn’t happen. I miss Magnus and his mother and sisters, but I’m glad we agreed to part before it was too late.’
Are you going to tell your sister what blinded you to the truth for so long, Isabella? the sneaky inner voice she wanted to ignore whispered.
I was confused, she told it firmly and it was a wonder she didn’t have a permanent headache with all these contrary feelings clashing about inside.
‘Gentlemen can be the most dreadful cowards about losing their freedom,’ Kate said sagely as if she was an expert on the breed now she had a subtle and determined lord to try to order about for his own good.
‘I don’t think Magnus was waiting to say “I do” through gritted teeth because of prenuptial nerves, love,’ Isabella tried to joke, then went back to staring out of the wide sash windows because it wasn’t funny. ‘Oh, look who’s outside again, Kate. Louise did say Sophia was to stay in the schoolroom today, didn’t she? The wretched girl obviously wasn’t listening since she looks as if she’s off to explore the lavender maze you designed by the wilderness and never mind her governess.’
‘It’s a lovely day and I don’t blame Sophia for wanting to be outside instead of stuck in the schoolroom staring out of the windows at a blue sky and dreaming. I’m not going to lumber up to the schoolroom to betray her. You could find Louise and tell her what her youngest daughter is up to if you really want to, but she’s probably doing her best not to know.’
‘We were never allowed to use the weather as an excuse to avoid our books,’ Isabella said half-heartedly.
‘Charlotte never took her eyes off us long enough for us to escape, but I’m not sure even she could keep Sophia in on a day like this if she was still a governess instead of Ben Shaw’s wife and mother of their vast tribe of children,’ Kate said, peering over Isabella’s shoulder at the half-grown girl.
‘The Kentons would be a challenge even for her,’ Isabella said absently. Sophia had reached the broad walk now and her scarlet cloak flew out behind her as she ran. She made a splash of vital colour against the sunlit grass and a richly periwinkle-blue sky and was nearly at her destination now. Isabella wished she was out there with her, running away from adult cares and all the gossip her cancelled wedding had brought down on her and her family. ‘With parents like Louise and Hugh none of them are ever going to be pattern cards of proper behaviour.’
‘They’d have to be changelings,’ her sister agreed.
‘Sophia and her littlest brother certainly aren’t and, speaking of young Kit, I wonder where he is. Perhaps Sophia locked him in a cupboard, because I can’t see him minding his primers if he can get into mischief with his big sister instead.’
‘Louise could be keeping a closer eye on him as she knows what a restless little devil he is, or he could still be on his way and that’s why Sophia’s running to get away before he spoils her adventure.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Isabella said and wondered if it was too late to chase after Sophia or let little Kit lure her into mischief. ‘It’s a good thing their brothers are at school or I might have to go and restore order and it looks cold out there.’
‘Much you’d care. Miranda is always scolding you for ruining your complexion in the sun or the wind and you don’t take much notice when you’re not in town and the tabbies can’t make snide remarks about her negligence.’
‘Miranda will listen to their spiteful gossip and feel guilty.’
‘She’s never quite learnt to ignore the nay-sayers, has she? As well Kit doesn’t care or we might still be wearing hair shirts because she ran off with Nevin when he was secretly wed to our vile cousin Celia. Oh, look, Izzie. Who on earth is hurrying after Sophia? I’d certainly remember if I’d met him, happily married or not,’ Kate exclaimed and pointed at the lithe and vigorous figure striding after Sophia Kenton with a wildly gesticulating master Christopher Kenton on his shoulders.
No, it can’t be him, Isabella. Wulf FitzDevelin is on the other side of the Atlantic and he wouldn’t follow you to Herefordshire on a private family visit if he wasn’t. He wouldn’t cross the street to pick you up if you’d been knocked down by a dust cart, she told herself firmly, because her heartbeat was loud in her ears as she watched the powerful male figure hurry after Sophia and wondered if she’d really fainted and this was a nightmare.
His drab greatcoat swirled out behind him in his hurry and even from up here his crow-black locks looked wild, but there was such leashed power and energy in his loping walk, encumbered or not, that she couldn’t escape the reality of him. He was here, now. She remembered the defiant set to his head and shoulders too well and couldn’t fool herself her eyes were deceiving her.
How dare he? He wasn’t on visiting terms with Kate and Edmund and it couldn’t be because he couldn’t stay away from her. He had put vast and empty miles of ocean between them after that night at Haile Carr and now he was back. A silly, moon-led part of her was dancing as if he’d come to claim her now his half-brother wasn’t engaged to marry her any longer. She shook her head to deny the idiot any say and decided she must find out what he wanted before he made his contempt for her clear and Kate put two and two together.
Feeling the force of his impatient personality even from up here, she noted he was even more leanly fit and unforgettable by daylight. Large chunks of his overlong sable hair were being held captive by Master Kenton and she almost winced in sympathy, but he deserved it, didn’t he? She shivered as if she was out there, in spring sunlight, close enough to see him frown as she fought to read the thoughts in that austere, almost handsome dark head of his.
‘He’s the Haile family ghost; Wulf FitzDevelin,’ she muttered, but Kate heard and raised her eyebrows. ‘I can’t imagine what he’s doing here, so don’t ask me,’ she added as coolly as she could with Kate gazing at her as if she thought differently.
‘That’s Lady Carrowe’s Folly? Well, I never, ever did,’ Kate said slowly. ‘If his father was anything like him, I almost understand her fall from grace. If I wasn’t married to the love of my life and Edmund wasn’t such a potent lover, I might be tempted to lure a man like him into my bed and the devil take the consequences.’
‘You only say that because you know it’s never going to happen. Any woman who sends out lures in his direction will reap trouble and heartache. If he has a heart, he’s hidden it so well nobody knows where it is.’
‘Your Magnus is said to be as close to him as if he was a full brother and you think him a good man.’
‘Magnus is a good man and can’t see his half-brother’s dark side because he loves him.’
‘Whatever side you catch him on I’d wager my best bonnet debutantes’ hearts beat nineteen to the dozen when they set eyes on the two of them. Their elder sisters will do more than sigh over a rogue like that and I expect he has to fight them off, if he’s careless enough to venture into Carrowe House at the right time for the Countess to be at home to callers.’
‘If you weren’t such a country wife nowadays, you’d recall not even the most dashing of the young matrons are brave enough to visit her ladyship openly and they’d be idiots to accept a dare like him even if they did,’ Isabella said with a fierce frown at the man’s back as he strode away.
‘Or so besotted they couldn’t help themselves,’ Kate suggested with another overt glance at that powerfully lean masculine figure as his long legs ate up landscaped gardens and a much sneakier sidelong look at Isabella.
The inner voice she was trying to ignore whispered Kate was right: he did improve the scenery even on such a shining spring day. Familiar little demons were whispering in her ear and how dare he wake them up when she’d tried so hard to silence them? The long, sinful nights in his bed her inner fool yearned for wouldn’t be as wonderful as his leanly honed body and moody looks promised. No, of course they wouldn’t; not now he despised her. No point risking her all for an itch she wanted to scratch so badly it still kept her awake at nights.
She tried to divert herself by wondering if his mother had loved his father or simply wanted him. Lady Carrowe never refuted her husband’s assertion Wulf was her by-blow, but had she thought what illicit passion could cost when she lay with her lover long enough to get with child? If he was anything like Wulf, she probably couldn’t see past the blind haze of wanting and so it was a good thing Wulf FitzDevelin disliked and distrusted Isabella Alstone so much, wasn’t it?
‘He’s probably here to lecture me about his brother,’ she told her sister crossly and at least he was oblivious to her fast-beating heart and weak knees as she followed his every move with hungry eyes.
‘Hmmm, well, he looks to have made a firm friend of young Kit. Sophia won’t be so pleased her little brother caught up with his help, or should I call it endurance?’
‘Young Kit is a force of nature,’ Isabella agreed absently.
‘You could call it that,’ Kate replied as they watched man and boy close in on Sophia, ‘but your FitzDevelin is one as well and grown-up with it.’
‘He’s not my FitzDevelin. I wouldn’t give him a ha’penny worth of goodwill if he stooped to beg it from me and he never will.’
‘Why ever not?’ Kate asked so innocently Isabella bit back a groan.
‘We hardly know each other and don’t like what we do know,’ she said flatly.
‘Because he’s the Countess of Carrowe’s by-blow and they whisper dark scandals about him and all the lovers he’s had who ought to know better?’
‘He had no say in the sins his mother and father committed before he was born,’ Isabella said absently as she tried not to think about all those bored society matrons rumour credited him with seducing. Kate was probably right and they lined up to be seduced and that was one more reason not to join in.
‘They say the Earl made sure his wife’s by-blow got an education and would have set him up in a profession if your Wulf hadn’t run away. Kind of him to raise his wife’s bastard, but he didn’t get much thanks, did he?’
‘Kind? Do you really think so?’ Isabella asked absently.
She was busy watching Wulf move so fluidly he might actually be a wolf padding after his prey if he had another pair of lithe legs and a fine pelt to go with those ice-blue eyes. For a hungry moment she wished she was at his side, close enough to admire the ease of sleek muscle over elegant bones and wonder at his total focus as he ruthlessly tracked his quarry. Except he wasn’t a predator and she wasn’t fascinated, so it was as well she wasn’t close enough to fall under his spell.
‘You don’t?’ Kate said, sounding intrigued.
‘The Earl isn’t a kind man, Kate. He would have sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation and divorced her if he was.’
‘She does seem very inoffensive and quiet now,’ Kate said and Isabella could see her acute mind working on Lady Carrowe’s unfortunate situation.
If the lady had even one more supporter among the haut ton, she might be less oppressed and her daughters more welcome in polite society. Isabella stared down at the empty garden where Wulf and the youngest Kentons had disappeared from view. She half-expected to see a mark in the air, a magic rune perhaps to tell unwary females danger lay ahead.
‘You have given a good deal of thought to Mr FitzDevelin’s shocking birth and stormy upbringing during your engagement to his brother, Izzie,’ Kate said airily.
‘No more than I would about anyone in such a situation,’ she replied and fought not to cross her fingers against another huge lie, because not a single night had gone by since she met him when he didn’t haunt her sleeping and waking.
‘Of course not, but whatever you think of him he’s here and can’t have come all this way to see anyone but you. In your shoes I’d hear him out before Edmund and Hugh chase him away.’
‘I doubt he’ll go or stay unless he wants to,’ Isabella muttered, but Kate was right. She didn’t want her overprotective male relatives running him off before she found out what he wanted. ‘Can you keep them busy long enough for me to be rid of him before they find out?’
‘I’m in no fit state to stop anyone doing whatever they want, but if Hugh and Edmund think we’re having a feminine coze about babies and lying-in, they won’t interrupt unless the house is on fire or someone falls off the roof. We can go to my boudoir and tell my maid to be sure we’re not disturbed, then you can use the garden stairs to go and find Mr FitzDevelin and I can escape the fuss Edmund will surround me with until I’m safely delivered.’
‘He loves you, Kate.’
‘I know and I love him, but I can’t take a step without having to account for it to someone who has better things to do if they’d only get on with them.’
‘Not as far as he’s concerned they haven’t and you’d be mortally offended if he went off to discuss crops with his tenants or horses with his cronies and left you to birth his child alone.’
‘I would and quite right, too.’
‘Stop being contrary and go and have a rest, then. Edmund will need to be revived with smelling salts if you don’t stop behaving as if you’re about to throw a trifling entertainment instead of giving birth to his second child.’
‘If you promise to stop being wise about the rest of us and look at your own motives and feelings, I might.’
‘There truly is a first time for everything, then,’ Isabella said crossly.
‘Anyone would think I was the contrary one of the three of us,’ her sister said as if she really thought she wasn’t. ‘And stop looking like that, because Miranda and I know you’re wilful as a donkey even if you fool so many with that angelic face.’
‘I almost wish I’d stayed in London to be gossiped about by strangers now.’
‘Really? When there must be so many more sharp eyes to watch your assignations with Mr FitzDevelin when you’re in town?’
‘Nonsense, I’ve never met him in town and this isn’t an assignation.’
‘You would have to know he was coming for it to be one of those, wouldn’t you?’ Kate said as if she was quite convinced Isabella had been waiting for him to catch up with her ever since she broke her engagement to his brother and how much more wrong-headed could one woman get?
Chapter Three (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Wulf cursed himself for not being able to resist the shine of tears in a little boy’s eyes when he begged for help to catch up with his big sister. He’d been excluded from so much as a boy that the little rascal couldn’t have chosen a better bid for sympathy. Yet what would such a young girl think when confronted by a strange man with her brother aloft, especially one this unkempt and in need of a shave? His windswept, travel-stained appearance would probably terrify her and exhaustion was making it easier for him to frown than smile.
‘How did the infernal brat persuade you to hunt me down?’ this girl demanded when she saw her brother riding triumphantly on a stranger’s shoulders. ‘I do wish people would ignore him when he pretends to be an ill-treated waif. Every time someone believes him it only encourages him to keep doing it,’ she went on and he should have known this sturdy little rogue couldn’t have a shrinking violet as a sister.
‘Thank you for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind if I’m not invited again,’ he managed to reply with a straight face. He had ridden here too hard to get this over with. Lack of sleep and a decent meal must be making him light-headed, because there wasn’t anything here to laugh about.
‘We don’t live here, so that won’t do any good,’ she told him with a resigned sigh that almost set him off again.
‘I promise to learn from my mistakes, then,’ Wulf said, swinging his giggling passenger down so the boy could run into a clever lavender labyrinth and gallop its paths as if he’d had enough energy to run from Herefordshire to the distant Welsh Mountains all along.
‘He’s a horrid brat and should be beaten at least once a day for the good of all our souls, but who the devil are you?’ the girl demanded as if she’d only just taken in his windswept, bearlike appearance and realised he wasn’t the sort of visitor a grand house like Cravenhill Park usually attracted by daylight.
‘I’m Wulf FitzDevelin; who the devil are you?’ he replied, wondering if the young men of the ton had any idea what a whirlwind was going to hit them when she was old enough to be presented at Court.
‘I’m Miss Sophia Kenton, because my older sister Julia got to be Miss Kenton when our aunt married Mr Sandbatch, and Wulf’s not a proper name for a gentleman.’
‘I’m not a proper gentleman, but it’s short for Wulfric if that helps.’
‘He’s my horse,’ young Master Kenton shouted breathlessly from the labyrinth and this time Wulf did laugh out loud. The sound sent a pair of crows cawing into the treetops and broke the almost uncanny peace of this place.
‘I’d have thrown him off a lot sooner if I were you,’ Sophia said with a frown at her little brother.
‘I really don’t think you would,’ Wulf said, seeing reluctant affection in the girl’s eyes and contrasting it with the open dislike in the eyes of his two eldest half-siblings when he’d been a scrubby brat himself.
‘Probably not, but I’d be tempted,’ the girl said with a wry smile.
‘It is you, Mr FitzDevelin; I thought my eyes were deceiving me. What a very unexpected surprise,’ Isabella Alstone’s cool voice said from behind them.
Wulf felt his heart thunder; instinct should have warned him she was there. The sound made him feel as if parts of him he didn’t want to think about right now could burst into flames. ‘Good day, Miss Alstone,’ he said flatly.
Somehow he managed to meet her dark blue eyes calmly and she obviously couldn’t imagine why he was polluting the clean air of her brother-in-law’s fine estate and ought to go back where he belonged. In the gutter presumably, he concluded and hoped a cynical half-smile would divert her from the ravenous hunger roaring through him like the hottest and most ill-timed lightning.
‘Is my brother-in-law expecting you?’ she asked as if she had no idea how she made red-blooded males feel by being so perfectly, femininely arrogant. All he wanted right now was to kiss her and it took too much effort to recall why he’d come. She’d jilted Magnus—Gus, as he’d always been to Wulf—and he’d done so much damage between them already even the idea was madness and he should be ashamed of himself.
‘I doubt Lord Shuttleworth has the least idea I’m here, but you should have known I’d come, Miss Alstone,’ he said stiffly.
‘Why would I? There’s no reason for you to intrude on a private family gathering and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you walking up the Broad Walk with young Kit on your shoulders,’ Isabella said stiffly.
Now she was faced with the real man her silly heart was racing as if she’d run all the way from the house to simper at him. She half-wished he was still on the other side of the Atlantic, building the new life he’d claimed to want when he left England. If he’d stayed away, she wouldn’t have to face the fact he still stirred her as no other man ever had. She wouldn’t have to feel the Isabella he woke up that night straining against the leash.
‘You didn’t send your brother-in-law to throw me out, though, did you?’ he challenged in the husky undertone she found so ridiculously enchanting that moon-mad night.
‘I don’t want to embarrass my family, Mr FitzDevelin,’ she said primly.
‘I presume you are part of Miss Alstone’s family, Miss Sophia? Am I making you uncomfortable?’
‘Yes, I am and, no, you’re not. I’m far too interested in how Aunt Izzie knows you and what you’ve done to make her glare daggers at you. I don’t think Kit has ever been embarrassed about anything in his life, so I shouldn’t bother to ask him.’
‘Oh, please run along, Sophia, and take young Kit with you,’ Isabella interrupted before this meeting turned into an even bigger farce.
‘I can’t; it would be improper to leave you alone with a strange gentleman, Aunt Izzie. It’s our duty to chaperon you,’ Sophia said so virtuously Isabella frowned to say she was overdoing it and should do as she was bid for once.
‘Maybe so, but show your little brother the way to the middle of the lavender labyrinth and at least try to mind your own business while you’re doing it,’ she said, in lieu of Sophia turning into a proper young lady by a minor miracle.
Sophia crossed her arms and stared back as if Isabella was the one being difficult. ‘For that I should stay here and insist on listening to every word.’
‘Go away, Sophia. Please?’ Isabella gave up trying to reason her out of eavesdropping. ‘Please?’ she cajoled as she was desperate to get this over and Wulf back on the road before Edmund or Hugh knew he was here.
‘Oh, very well, but you owe me half-a-dozen favours.’
‘And she’ll make me pay,’ Isabella muttered gloomily once Sophia demanded little Kit’s attention until he found something more interesting to do.
‘You don’t treat her as an irritating little girl, though, do you?’ he asked as if he was surprised.
‘If she had any idea how difficult being grown-up is, Sophia wouldn’t be in such a hurry to be one.’
‘You find being a society beauty burdensome, then, Miss Alstone?’
‘I do when people throw it at me like an accusation, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘I apologise,’ he said impatiently.
‘I doubt it, but you must have come here to speak to me, since you don’t know my family and I doubt if you’re a business connection of my brother-in-law. A strange man on the strange horse I assume is resting in my brother-in-law’s stables as we speak won’t go unnoticed long, however much you tipped the groom to look the other way. My brother-in-law will want a good reason why you came here uninvited now his family are arriving for Eastertide and my sister is in an interesting condition.’
‘Before I’m grabbed by the scruff of my neck and thrown out I admit I came to plead with you.’
‘You? Plead with me?’ Isabella exclaimed, although he’d come a long way to play a trick if he was lying. ‘I doubt you even know how.’
‘Then I must learn, mustn’t I?’ he said impatiently. ‘Magnus is a broken man,’ he accused with such fury in his ice-blue eyes he must think it was her fault. ‘He’s shockingly thin and can’t shake off the influenza I’m told he contracted at Christmas. He needs you. I can’t imagine why when you kiss strange men at the drop of a hat and threw him over when you got tired of being engaged to marry him.’
‘Please don’t bother stretching your poor, underused imagination any further, then, because I’m not the woman your half-brother needs.’
‘You really are stony-hearted, aren’t you?’
‘Apparently,’ she said calmly.
Letting him know his accusation hurt as if a knife had been plunged into her chest would be even more stupid than finding the air at Cravenhill Park fresher and the sunlight brighter because he was here, even while he was flinging insults at her. If she had any sense, she’d turn her back on him and walk away; prove how indifferent she was to him and his misconceptions. A foolish part of her was far too pleased he was here to do that, despite the fury in his gaze as he let it slide over her.
‘What will get me past the ice between you and nobodies like me so I can reason with you?’ he asked and began to pace, as if that was the only way he could stop himself shaking her.
‘Nothing you can say,’ she told him steadily and refused to let him know he’d hurt her. His picture of events was so wide of the mark she’d laugh if she wasn’t feeling so sick.
‘And I dare say you’d turn his life upside down and treat him like a fool if you did agree to wed him after all, but even that would be better than watching him waste away for the lack of you in his life.’
‘I shall not and certainly not to please you. Please me by going away and avoiding me like the plague from now on, Mr FitzDevelin. Your brother and I had our own very good reasons not to go ahead with our wedding, but not one of them is any of your business.’
‘Yes, it is. I got back to England a week ago to find Magnus half the man he was when I left and he’s worth a hundred of either of us. I won’t let you set him at naught because his devotion has become tiresome.’
‘Find a fresh horse and go home, because you’ve had a wasted journey. Your insults won’t change a thing and next time you set out on a wild goose chase you should talk to your brother about it before you begin.’
‘He won’t talk to me,’ the wrong-headed idiot mumbled as if he didn’t want to admit he’d failed.
‘Neither will I,’ she said quietly.
Was it right to enjoy the blaze of anger and frustration lighting his eyes to purest ice blue before he turned to pace up and down the path again to stop himself taking her back to London by force for his brother like a juicy bone someone stole?
‘He obviously loves you to distraction,’ Wulf FitzDevelin threw out as he paced close enough to vent his fury without Sophia hearing. ‘Heaven knows why when you treat him like a whining dog you can kick aside when you’re weary of it.’
‘I don’t kick dogs. Your arguments are so persuasive I’m surprised you’re not employed as a diplomat, Mr Wulf,’ she retaliated sweetly. She was stoking an already scorching fire and it felt wickedly enjoyable as well as oddly powerful to bait him when he couldn’t lay a finger on her without having to explain it to a pair of children and her furious male relatives, but she really should stop it. ‘You’ll scare the children and as they’re Kentons it takes a lot of doing.’
He frowned even more fiercely and looked over at Sophia, who was staring at him while little Kit ran round the maze making war whoops as if he witnessed fiery adult battles of will every day of the week. He might well, given who his parents were and the fact they were notorious for enjoying a good argument. This wasn’t a good argument, though, was it? Still, Wulf looked a little sheepish when he turned back to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, as if every word cost a fortune.
‘Are you? Now I’ve seen your true colours I’m not surprised Magnus doesn’t confide in you.’
‘We were close as real brothers until he got engaged to you. He’s been closed as an oyster ever since and now just drinks and looks miserable as sin whenever someone mentions your name. You broke off the engagement days before you were due to marry; you’ve broken his heart.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic; it was two months until our wedding and the invitations hadn’t even been sent out.’
‘Be grateful we’re being watched by innocents, Miss Alstone. I’m so tempted to find out if there’s red blood in your veins I doubt much else would hold me back.’
A hard and feverish sort of wanting blazed in his ice-blue eyes as if his steely will was all that stopped him kissing her witless, so she’d have to be grateful Sophia and little Kit were nearby, wouldn’t she? ‘I’d bite you if you tried it, Mr FitzDevelin, then we’d see what yours is like and never mind mine.’
‘How very uncivil of you,’ he snapped back sarcastically as if he hoped his words would freeze in mid-air and physically hurt her.
Isabella was hard-pressed not to wince. ‘Lucky we are being watched, then, since I don’t care to lower myself to your level,’ she replied and she needed to feed that fury; keep him standing across the green dell glaring at her like an enemy. She was almost terrified by the wild emotions burning the frosty air yet fascinated by the idea of exploring them and never mind conventions, relatives by marriage or her thorny Alstone pride.
‘You’re afraid you might kiss the bastard back, again.’
‘No, I could never want a man who despises me,’ she lied.
‘Why not, you did last time, Isabella,’ he reminded her with such deadly softness she felt his words scorch as if he’d written them in Greek fire on her flinching skin.
He was quite right; that night she kissed him as if her last breath depended on it and why was she such a confounded idiot as to want him and not his half-brother? She felt the merciless heat of longing for a dark and dangerous man she’d never been able to feel for gentlemanly, handsome and much kinder Magnus Haile. Raw wanting ran through her like wildfire, but this time she’d keep it to herself.
‘Go away,’ she demanded in a voice rasped and on the edge of admitting something dreadful.
‘And tell Magnus he’s right, you’re cold as an iceberg under all that golden beauty?’
A shard of pain her good friend could say such a thing about her threatened her serenity. She managed a haughty stare and told herself he’d made it up.
‘I can’t persuade you to drag my half-brother out of the pit of despair he’s tumbled into since you jilted him? He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a piece of rubbish by a woman he loves for some reason that’s beyond me.’
‘No, you can’t and find out what he really wants next time you set out to get it for him by fair means or foul,’ she replied so sweetly she heard him grind his teeth and was savagely glad.
Chapter Four (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
Wulf struggled with a powerful urge to shake Isabella until she was as disarrayed as he was after galloping all the way here as if the devil was on his heels. But he couldn’t do that with the young Kentons looking on. Even if their softly hostile words didn’t carry on the clear air, such acute children must already know something was amiss and that would send them running for their father. Tension was stiffening every muscle and sinew he had and he wanted Isabella with a burning hunger he’d never felt the like of before. It roared to life the instant he set eyes on her hesitating on the edge of the terrace at Haile Carr while he was trying to convince himself to go inside the hot and brightly lit ballroom because Magnus needed his support and never mind the Earl and his eldest half-brother’s order to stay away. If only he’d fought his doubts a little harder, he might have been introduced to this golden-haired and lovely heiress as Magnus’s intended bride instead of kissing her as if his heart and soul depended on it.
An image of his brother six months on, pale, bony and unshaven as he brooded over a brandy glass at the breakfast table, reminded him why he was here. But as Isabella Alstone was as cool as the frosty air around them as she stared back at him, there seemed no point repeating the speech he’d put together word by painful word as he rode here. His inner devil took over his tongue at first sight of her and hurt was still screaming for air inside him. For months this sense of betrayal had wanted to tumble out in a toxic stream of bitter words, but they weren’t for Magnus, were they?
‘Quiet men have unquiet souls and dark needs and it could be too late to draw back and say a polite “no, thank you” to the next one you hook as firmly as you caught my brother,’ he warned. The thought of her playing with another idiot in the dark made him feel as if madness was lying in wait.
‘You have no idea what your brother and I mean to each other. You should be wary of thinking you know him better than he does himself, Mr FitzDevelin. I would like you to leave before you cause the sort of scene I would rather not put my family through at Eastertide with my sister so near her time.’
‘No doubt your brothers-in-law will enjoy crushing my pretensions if they find me, but I rode here for my brother’s sake and would rather be a thousand miles away for mine. Will you mend this public rift and take up your betrothal to Magnus again?’
‘No,’ she said stiffly.
Was it the hint of hurt too deep for an ice princess that made his breath catch and a whisper of forbidden longing catch at his heart? No, she was his brother’s dream and Wulf FitzDevelin’s worst nightmare. ‘You don’t care a fig for my brother,’ he said flatly and turned away in disgust. Yes, that was it; her regal indifference to Magnus’s sufferings disgusted him. He should disregard the little part of him that was dancing a jig because she was free to enjoy all kinds of forbidden mischief with Magnus’s bastard brother at last.
‘Maybe I care too much,’ he thought he heard her whisper and his inner devil tripped up in mid-skip and fell flat on its ugly face.
Wulf spun on his heel to glare a challenge at her and she met it, nodded at their youthful audience to remind him to be quiet. ‘Why break your engagement, then?’ he rumbled gruffly.
‘Because it was the right thing to do,’ she murmured, watching the Kenton children explore the labyrinth as if they’d been the centre of her interest all this time and the hard tension in the air between them didn’t fascinate her as well.
‘And you always do the right thing, do you?’
‘No, but I own my mistakes when I realise I’ve made them, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘Was it because I kissed you at the Summer Ball?’ he finally gritted out the question that had alternatively appalled and elated him since he read a notice the marriage between the Honourable Magnus Haile and Miss Isabella Alstone would not take place. The newssheet had appeared just as he returned from running away from his stark betrayal of his brother’s trust.
‘You do have a high opinion of yourself, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘Was it?’ he persisted.
‘No, I might have managed to forget that outrage...’
‘You didn’t respond with outrage at the time; I wish you had.’
‘So do I and stop interrupting—it’s rude as well as a waste of time. Where was I? Oh, yes, I might have forgotten that outrage, but I chose to keep it in my memory as a reminder never to wander out of a hot ballroom and expect to find a gentleman in the dark. Your conduct that night had no influence on my decision not to marry your half-brother. Be glad of it, Mr FitzDevelin, and stop glaring at me as if I made you do it when we both know you fell on me like the lust-driven yahoo you are.’
He ought to be as furious as she was trying to make him, but when she put on that high-nosed lady manner, it lit a fire inside him she ought to be a lot more wary of. It had burnt out of control that night at Haile Carr; heat had scorched the sense out of both of them, as if being close as they could get was all that mattered in this life. Gus would have every right to despise him if he found out what they nearly did the first night they laid eyes on one another, but this wasn’t about them and stealing illicit kisses in the moonlight. He had come here to plead with her to take his half-brother back and marry him, not to remind them both how disgracefully they behaved when they forgot who they were. So how is that going, Wulfric? Badly. The uncomfortable truth was he didn’t want her to wed anyone else. Fury at the very idea of her in another man’s arms thundered up against his love for his brother and trumped it. He made himself recall the sickening fall back to earth that night after he’d kissed this beautiful, vital woman as if his life depended on it, then found out who she was. A Miss Alstone of Wychwood would never truly want a misfit like him. Even if he had half a kingdom to offer her, she’d turn up her nose and say a chilly ‘No, thank you’.
‘Did Gus ever kiss you like that?’ he heard himself ask and only just smothered a groan of disbelief.
‘He never asked for more than a lady cares to give before marriage.’
‘Less than nothing, then,’ he stated flatly and she blushed and lowered her eyes. He tried to stamp on a low sense of satisfaction he’d ruffled her ice-maiden calm when Gus could not.
‘I gave your brother his freedom, and if you want to know more, you must ask him,’ she ended with so much ice in her voice he shivered.
‘Do you think I haven’t?’
‘Ah, but you don’t ask, do you? You demand.’
Wulf blushed and was surprised he still could. ‘I’m sorry I was rude,’ he said a little more loudly so the children might hear him, if they hadn’t run off to find enough strong men to throw him out. He flicked a glance in their direction and saw they were still there, keeping half an eye on him as if he might do something very interesting if they turned their backs and they didn’t want to miss it.
‘You only ever wanted me because of how I look,’ she accused so softly he could barely hear her. ‘And don’t twit me on being vain, because it’s more of a trial than a blessing. Men have wanted me since before I left the schoolroom because of my fortune and a set of even features, but I was always more than that to Magnus—would I could say the same for you.’
‘Marry him, then,’ he said harshly, secretly hurt she thought him wanting and why wouldn’t she when Magnus was worth a dozen of him?
She sighed and shook her head. ‘Do try listening for once,’ she said as if she was running out of patience. ‘Magnus confided in me, and if you can’t trust my word we should not wed, ask him to do the same for you.’
‘You could marry me,’ he heard himself say as if his voice was coming from a great distance.
‘Because you kissed me once and feel guilty? No, thank you. I wouldn’t marry now unless I was so deep in love I couldn’t help myself, which means I shall never marry because I don’t want to be in love.’
‘Perhaps you won’t have a choice, but you wouldn’t wed a bastard even if you loved me from head to foot, would you? Miss Alstone of Wychwood and the by-blow of an erring countess? Unthinkable.’
‘I would dislike you if you had a ducal coronet, vast numbers of houses and thousands of acres to your name. Being housed and fed by a vindictive man during your early years has bent you out of shape, Mr FitzDevelin. Maybe Lord Carrowe isn’t the tolerant, sophisticated gentleman the polite world think him, but you’re not either.’
‘I hope you don’t mean he raised me in his own image.’
‘No, but I think you became hard and angry in order to survive his harsh regime and you shouldn’t let him shape your view of the world.’
‘You have no idea how it feels to be blamed for anything amiss in your family’s life.’
‘My sister Kate and I were left in our great-aunt and cousin’s hands as small children. I doubt there’s much your stepfather could teach them about humiliating those too small or poor to thumb their noses and walk away. You ran as soon as you were old enough, didn’t you? I can’t tell you how we would have envied you the strength and cunning to survive in the wider world when we were to blame for anything that went wrong at Wychwood before our brother-in-law inherited it.’
Wulf felt his heart lurch at the thought of tiny, defiant Isabella surviving such a harsh regime. She ought to have been doted on and valued from the moment she was born, as the outgoing and confident children on the other side of this coolly peaceful garden obviously were. He itched to drag the hags who inflicted such cruelty on two little girls to the nearest Bridewell and show them how it felt to be whipped and humiliated until tears and pleas sank into despair and your only refuge was unconsciousness. He’d sworn as a boy never to lay violent hands on a woman or child, so he’d have to trust the Earl of Carnwood to make sure those harpies never had control of a child’s life again and reminded himself the Alstone sisters were nothing to do with him, then or now.
‘You do understand, then,’ he admitted gruffly.
‘I do, but we were rescued by my eldest sister’s godmama after she spent a year or two nagging my grandfather to send us to school so persistently he gave in to get some peace. Then Miranda married Kit and we had a fine governess and all the love we were starved of when Miranda left and my brother died. So Kate and I only had a few years of being wronged before our older sister and brother-in-law showered us with enough love and attention to make up for that time.’
‘Those women left their mark on you,’ he argued quietly and at least now he knew why she held herself a little aloof in case she met gleeful spite in a stranger’s eye or saw a bully under their skin.
‘Not as big as the one your stepfather left on you,’ she countered.
‘He doesn’t rule my life; I won’t let him.’
‘Then if you get over this conviction you know what’s best for your brother and anyone else you care about, we might get on better.’
‘We might, except Magnus is still miserable and you’re still here. Relations between us won’t improve until you change that situation.’
‘Here we go again, so it’s probably as well my brother-in-law is about to interrupt us.’
‘Damn it, I’m not done.’
‘Well, I am and here he comes anyway. Go back to London and talk to your half-brother before you blunder into any more private homes without an invitation. If you tell Magnus half the wrong-headed nonsense you spouted at me, I’m sure he’ll confide before you dash about the countryside doing more damage.’
Two purposeful males were striding ever closer and she was pushing him aside as if he was a problem she’d confronted and solved. Except Wulf felt more like an arsenal of gunpowder ready to blow with the smallest spark. He wouldn’t be going away satisfied he could now forget Miss Alstone’s vital beauty, acute mind and waspish tongue as if he’d never met her one hot and spellbound August night.
* * *
‘Papa, Papa, we’re over here,’ little Kit shouted as if he and his sister must be more important than any mysterious stranger.
‘Mr Fitz-something helped him catch up with me,’ Sophia informed her father with an exasperated look at her brother, as if she already knew he wouldn’t get the rebuke she half-wanted him to have for spoiling her adventure.
‘And your mother has a great deal to say about you setting him a bad example twice in one day, so I’d keep quiet about his sins if I were you,’ her father told her gently as he sat young Kit on his shoulders. ‘Did you invite FitzDevelin here, Shuttleworth?’ Sir Hugh Kenton asked very coolly indeed and Wulf no longer wondered how the man kept six children almost in order. He had an urge to go and stand in a corner until he’d learnt how to behave himself and he was supposed to be grown-up.
‘No,’ Lord Shuttleworth said baldly.
Wulf felt as if his fur was being rubbed the wrong way, but he couldn’t accuse either of them of the sort of lazy prejudice his stepfather lived by. They clearly disliked him for his own sake and never mind the bed he shouldn’t have been born in.
‘Mr FitzDevelin is on his way into Wales and has called in to pass on a message from his mother, Edmund,’ Miss Alstone said as she rashly stepped in to protect him from making a very sudden exit with the force of a gentleman’s boot to speed him on his way.
‘How unexpected of her ladyship to send you as her envoy, FitzDevelin,’ the Viscount Shuttleworth said blandly.
‘And how invisible her letter is, too,’ Wulf thought he heard Sir Hugh mutter as if he’d been looking forward to throwing the unwanted guest out for his whatever he and Lord Shuttleworth were to one another. Brother-in-law; cousin-by-marriage? Whatever complex relation his lordship was to Sir Hugh Kenton, the Alstone clan moved as one formidable whole when threatened. How Wulf wished his own family were so uncomplicated.
‘I suppose your horse has had a short rest, Mr FitzDevelin, so you can be on your way to Brecon again,’ Isabella said as if a mythical journey would save him from her relatives’ protective wrath.
Tempted to argue he had nowhere else to go just for the hell of it, Wulf obliged with a silent bow because he didn’t feel like lying outright to these two aristocrats.
‘A shame we can’t put you up for the night, FitzDevelin, but I must be inhospitable,’ Lord Shuttleworth said as if he was only mildly amused by playing host to such an unwelcome visitor for however short a time it took to get rid of him.
Wulf read the warning underneath his bland comment and decided to go quietly. No point arguing when he’d wasted a long ride hoping he could put the world right for his half-brother. For once in his life he’d tried to be unselfish, noble even, and Miss Alstone was so obstinate he wondered why he’d bothered. He’d fought all the way here to blot out the snide, self-mocking voice that whispered he was a fool in time to the pounding of hooves as he ate at the miles between him and Isabella Alstone. It argued he was desperate to see her again and never mind his brother. And now he was here why had he ever thought anything he had to say could make a difference when Magnus couldn’t change her mind?
‘You’d best hurry. I’m told it could rain so hard tonight the roads will be impassable,’ Sir Hugh warned and even his son stopped telling his father about his day so far as if he’d caught something implacable in his quiet voice.
‘Then I’d best get on my way before I’m marooned,’ Wulf agreed blandly, although they all knew he’d be heading back to London and it didn’t look like rain.
‘Thank you for delivering the Countess’s message and do give her my best wishes when you see her next, Mr FitzDevelin,’ Miss Alstone chimed in to speed him on his way.
What else could he do but bow as gracefully as he could, then smile a quick farewell at Miss Sophia Kenton and the little rogue sitting on his father’s shoulders? Miss Alstone was already discussing the weather with Kenton while Lord Shuttleworth waited impatiently to see Wulf off the property.
‘My wife is very near her time, FitzDevelin,’ his lordship told him as they strolled away. ‘Come here again and I’ll have you roped on your horse and left to wander wherever he takes you. And stay away from my sister-in-law.’
‘I came on my brother’s behalf, my lord,’ Wulf made himself argue. He wanted to thump someone to make himself feel better as well, but it would do neither of them any good to alarm the very pregnant Viscountess.
‘I trust my sister-in-law to know her own mind and so should you. She and Mr Haile will only have parted after a lot of heartache and I hate to see her troubled.’
‘You are in her confidence, then?’ Wulf heard himself say urgently, as if he was her rebuffed suitor and not Magnus.
‘No, but she hates to break a promise and you can tell your brother so when you get back to London. He obviously doesn’t know her as well as he thinks if he thought sending you to plead his case would get her to change her mind.’
‘He doesn’t know I’ve come.’
‘Then you’ll be the butt of his displeasure as well, won’t you?’
‘Probably,’ Wulf said with the sort of defensive young man’s shrug he thought he’d grown out of.
‘I suppose you cared enough to come here on a pointless quest bullheaded,’ his lordship said as if he was trying to find excuses for the sort of boyish mischief Wulf never had the chance to commit.
‘My brother is eating his heart out. He’s taken to the bottle and refuses to shave for days on end and not even our younger sisters can get a smile out of him. If you had a half-brother you loved, wouldn’t you do anything to see him happy when he’s hurting so badly?’
‘Yes, which is why you’re walking to my stables to collect your horse and not being carried there by my grooms to be put on it and driven off fast as the nag will go.’
‘I’d best be grateful for small mercies, then,’ Wulf said with a rueful grin and decided he’d like this man under other circumstances.
‘Don’t try too hard until you’re away without arousing my wife’s suspicion you’re here on a mission of your own,’ Lord Shuttleworth said as if he knew Wulf’s reasons for coming here were only half-unselfish and that was impossible, wasn’t it?
‘Consider me warned off, my lord.’
‘A shame, but I won’t have my wife or her sister upset if there’s anything I can do to prevent it and that’s a fault I’ve long shared with Sir Hugh and the current Earl of Carnwood.’
‘I’m not your equal, my lord, but there’s no need to point it out with every second word. Trust my stepfather to be sure my irregular birth is engraved on my heart, much as Mary Tudor claimed Calais was on hers.’
‘It’s not a matter of quality or inequality, but common sense. Tangling with you or your brother now will drag my sister-in-law’s good name through more mud and I can’t have that.’
‘Nobody will know I was here if you don’t tell them and I didn’t give your stableman a name.’
‘Which was why he sought me out and, as a reward, I’ll be granting him a cottage of his own this Eastertide so he can wed his sweetheart. So some good came of your impromptu visit.’
‘I shall preen myself even as I ride away with my tail metaphorically between my legs, my lord,’ Wulf said and was surprised by a bark of genuine laughter from his reluctant host.
‘Smug or not, that will be a challenge.’
‘I’m used to it,’ Wulf said ruefully and wasn’t that the truth?
‘I suppose you must be and as a rule I care more about a man’s head and heart than the way he came into the world, but I know my sister-in-law has been hurt and I care more about her than your sensitivities, so I’m prepared to be inhospitable in your case.’
‘I came here on my half-brother’s business,’ Wulf said as his temper began to tug at its tethers. Magnus was ill and Isabella Alstone was clearly in perfect health and coolly composed, so why was she the one who needed protecting?
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Elizabeth Beacon
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger……at her own betrothal ball!When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless, and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!