A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘No, of course I know there are houses more decrepit than this not even a stone’s throw away from Mayfair. It was a figure of speech and I should have thought more carefully before I trotted it out,’ she said with a wry grimace even more dangerous than her usual heart-shaking smile.

  ‘Now I’m ashamed of myself for picking you up on it, but please have a care if you ever visit the Rookeries to look more closely at the poor, Miss Alstone. The places spawn crime in every form you can and can’t imagine and you’d be a rich prize. Last time I was forced to rescue a lady from the stews, it didn’t end well for either of us.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She mistook me for a gallant knight dashing to the rescue. Her father wasn’t quite so enchanted with me, though; he caught me smuggling her back into his house in a state of grateful fluster and disarray and jumped to all the wrong conclusions.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He made his footmen hold me while he liberally applied his horsewhip to my disreputable person to teach me to keep my filthy hands off my betters. Apparently he couldn’t meet me as a gentleman, since I’m not one.’ Wulf could feel the bitterness of the day he found out he was younger and more idealistic than he’d realised even after his rough upbringing. The burn of that past indignity threatened his guard, so he forced it into outer darkness and paid attention to getting them through the present unscathed.

  ‘What happened when she told him the truth?’

  He shrugged, not sure that the heedless and spoilt young girl ever had. ‘He couldn’t apologise to a bastard even if he wanted to,’ he said as casually as he could, which probably meant not indifferently enough with her blue eyes focused on him as if she wanted to read his very soul. Heaven forbid, Wulf, his inner cynic whispered in his ear and for once he agreed with the rogue.

  ‘And that was the start of your dark and wolfish reputation?’

  ‘I doubt it and don’t pity me, because I lustily enjoyed making his kind squirm in a very different way for some time afterwards, but being a dangerous lover to bored and duty-done tonnish ladies palls after a while even for the likes of me, Miss Alstone.’

  ‘Stop it. I don’t deal in clichés, FitzDevelin, and you’re trying too hard.’

  ‘I’m trying very hard, but not about that,’ he muttered under his breath and why did she have to pick that particular word? He was rigid with wanting her and the effort not to fall on her like the hungriest wolf was costing him more than she’d ever know.

  ‘I promise not to run about the squalid areas of the largest and probably richest city in the world and need rescuing,’ she went on blithely. ‘Even if I did, I would never let someone else take the consequences of my folly after they put themselves out in all sorts of ways I know you’re refusing to talk about. The selfish and silly girl who did that is the one who needed horsewhipping if you ask me.’

  She waited expectantly for him to tell her more of the silly little story that had set him on the path to becoming the wolfish bastard the ton still liked to see him as, when it saw him at all. He was too busy struggling with overheated desire and this strange sensation in the pit of his stomach that might be even more dangerous to his composure if he let himself examine it closely. What could he say? Nothing civilised, so he kept quiet and that seemed to make her even more determined to defend him from her own kind and even against his own scathing opinion of a much younger Wulf FitzDevelin who still had a few dreams worth shattering.

  ‘And I know how squalid and desperate the poorest areas are already by the way, because Lady Pemberley is my eldest sister’s godmother,’ she innocently went on with her counterargument. Wulf had to be glad she had no idea how dark and wolfish his thoughts were right now and tried not to let it show in his gaze. ‘I expect you know as well as I do she works among the destitute and desperate whenever she can and you may be sure she takes very good care to keep me safe when we go to the slums together. So at least you will never be called upon to save me from the consequences of my own naivety. Trust Lady Pemberley for that, even if you consider me a fool simply because I was born in a rich man’s bed.’

  ‘I doubt you’re a fool of any sort,’ he said and why did she look as if that admission made her angrier than anything he’d managed to say to her so far?

  ‘Then no doubt you think me a spoilt and over-privileged fine lady who likes to boast of her compassion by visiting nice, clean little children in foundling hospitals and talks about them the whole time as if they can’t hear her. I almost wish you still saw me as a heartless jilt, Mr FitzDevelin,’ she told him with her nose so far in the air he was surprised she didn’t fall over.

  ‘So do I,’ he murmured dourly and knew she heard him, because she sniffed so loudly she sneezed from inhaling so much dust as she marched ahead of him like an offended empress.

  Chapter Eight

  Wulf ran up the last few stairs of the once-grand staircase at Carrowe House a week after his surprise encounter with Miss Alstone at the bottom of them and strode impatiently along the dusty corridor leading to the Dowager Countess’s suite. He’d just heard that Develin House would be empty much sooner than he’d dared to hope. If he could persuade his mother to change her mind and leave this decrepit old mausoleum, she wouldn’t have to endure a set of rooms so long emptied of comfort and valuables. Here worn old rugs nobody else wanted had replaced the exquisite Aubusson rugs he dimly remembered from his early childhood and the once-fine silk hangings had rotted to gossamer. He frowned at the notion they’d struggle to buy necessities for Develin House between them. He wanted his mother to have the best of everything after enduring this dusty poverty for so long, but all he could come up with was the everyday and most of that would be second-hand.

  Impatient with himself for wanting what she didn’t covet for herself, he knew deep down he’d learnt what really mattered as a runaway and they all had far more than that now. Food in your belly, enough heat to stave off the chill of night and clothes to cover your nakedness could be enough if you were free. Live through today and take tomorrow when it came. He would love to get his mother and sisters out of here if he could persuade them it wasn’t running away from the chill and dust and unease of Carrowe House if they moved to his mother’s old home to live just a few miles away in Hampstead. If only Gresley would come, Wulf could put it about that they were leaving the place free for its new owner. But Gresley was still refusing to do his duty as the new Earl of Carrowe. Once their mother and the girls were safely at Develin House, at least he could stop worrying about them living in a rambling old ruin. Wulf and his manservant, Jem Caudle, had secured an inner core of rooms here to cut the ladies off from the rest of the house at night so Wulf could sleep now and again, but even nailed-up doors and windows and the stoutest bolts wouldn’t keep out a maniac if the Earl’s attacker came back. No, best get them out of here and they’d worry about new this and that once he earned enough money to buy it, or they managed to squeeze the jointure their mother was entitled to under her marriage settlement as well as the portions Magnus and the girls were due from Gresley and his nip-farthing wife. In the end Gresley would pay to keep them out of the poorhouse and avoid being lampooned by Wulf’s friends.

  Feeling his fingers tighten into fists again at the thought of having to ask his eldest half-brother for anything, Wulf reminded himself to save his fury for those who deserved it. His mother and sisters knew too much about angry men already, so he distracted himself by wondering if there was anything about this old ruin they would miss. Wulf decided he might miss the sheer space of it and all the history that now sat so sadly on it. Except there was space enough around his house on the Heath even for him and history was everywhere he looked in London and much of it as rotten and dilapidated as this vast old house.

  He knocked on the door kept closed to keep some warmth in and called out, ‘It’s only me’, to reassure his mother before he went in. The Dowager Lady Carr
owe wasn’t yet sixty and today she looked younger, despite her pallor. Her hair was still dark enough to show what a dusky-haired beauty she had been in her youth. He took a moment to admire the purity of her bone structure and fine blue-grey eyes even as he worried about the thinness that accentuated them so starkly. They might share colouring to an almost uncanny degree, but her eyes were softer and more trusting than his had ever been, despite all she’d endured at the Earl’s hands.

  ‘Oh, here you are at last, my darling, how wonderful. We’ve been having the most delightful coze,’ she said as she hurried towards him with an instinctive grace not even the late Earl of Carrowe had managed to knock out of her.

  She kissed his cheek, something she never dared do when the Earl was here to object and perhaps it was as well Gresley wasn’t here to glare and fume at her for daring to kiss her bastard son either. Gresley grumbled like a bad-tempered bulldog if their mother showed the least sign of loving anyone more than him, but if he truly cared, he’d be here right now, wouldn’t he?

  ‘Hail, Wulf,’ Lady Aline Haile joked and she wouldn’t have done that without a defiant glare at the door when her father was alive either.

  ‘All hail, Aline Haile,’ he obliged her by fetching out their old way of defying her father behind his back and dusting it off, but his gaze had fastened on someone else. ‘Good day to you, Miss Alstone,’ he managed steadily enough even though his voice wanted to stutter at the vital beauty of her in this shabby setting.

  ‘Isabella isn’t here to pry,’ Lady Dorothea Haile told him earnestly.

  Her twin sister, Theodora, shook her head in agreement, but she still didn’t speak. Wulf cursed the old Earl under his breath for that silence. The old viper had blamed her for something he caused by shouting at her until she was too terrified to get a single word out of her mouth and Theo had not spoken since. Even her family had all but forgotten she once had a voice.

  ‘As if she would,’ Aline said scornfully. ‘Isabella is our friend, Wulf, so there’s no need to glower at her like a suspicious mastiff.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said, smoothing out his frown as best he could, though it wasn’t there because he thought she was here to dig out their secrets and spread them about.

  Today Isabella was neat and quietly elegant, but he was struggling with a picture of her breathless and a little tousled by the wind off the distant Welsh Mountains when she rushed outside to intercept him at Cravenhill Park. Raw need to feel her lips invite and yield under his was a weakness threatening to tie knots in his tongue and his innards and it was even more impossible than usual for him to be so wound up in wanting her like this.

  As he’d spent another morning with the trappings of violent death, he tried to convince himself the frustration and misery of it all must be sapping his will to resist her bright allure. He let himself imagine how it would feel to come home to her for a moment—as if every sin ever committed against him was wiped out, he concluded.

  Forget it, Wulf, you’ve no place in her world and a sick brother, three sisters and a mother to support.

  That was the slap he needed to restore him to sanity and he almost reeled under the weight of it.

  ‘Thank you for having such touching faith in my goodwill, Mr FitzDevelin,’ she said stiffly as if he wasn’t a very welcome surprise to her either.

  Thank goodness; if she’d smiled that sunlight-and-roses smile she kept for her true friends, he might have forgotten who was looking on and kissed her anyway. He felt the stir and shout of her proximity in his sex and insisted it behave like a gentleman for once before he fell at her feet and begged. ‘How d’you do after your long journey back to London, ma’am?’ he asked stiffly, because they were not supposed to have met since he galloped to Herefordshire on a fool’s errand.

  ‘Very well, I thank you, sir,’ she replied and he heard a faint trace of mockery in her voice, as if she knew he had to be stiff as a tin solider in order not to embarrass them all. If she knew, then why the devil wasn’t she more wary of rousing his inner beast?

  ‘I trust the roads were not too churned up after the rain?’ he asked clumsily and marvelled at his own lack of easy small talk when it mattered most.

  ‘I had a smooth journey, Mr FitzDevelin; it was very nearly the most tedious trip into the country and back that I’ve ever had,’ she said and now he knew she was mocking his hasty ride there, the witchy minx.

  ‘Then I have to thank you for bearing my mother and sisters company so often since your return.’

  ‘It’s always a pleasure to see them,’ she replied, as if the Earl’s murder wasn’t the sensation he knew it was. Laying sneaky emphasis on the last word was even more provocation and thank heavens his mother and sisters didn’t appear to have noticed.

  Now she was eyeing her gloves and the elegant bonnet lying on an unsteady pier table nearby and Wulf supposed his arrival must have stopped her feeling joy in his favourite females’ company and was doubly sorry he’d come back too early to miss her latest visit.

  ‘Would the rest of the world thought it one as well,’ Aline said with such bitterness in her voice Wulf wanted to comfort her for the hard lot life had handed her when she was born a girl to her father’s bitter disappointment.

  From the outset the haut ton had looked down their collective noses at her—maybe because she had no portion and had inherited her father’s Roman nose, or perhaps because so much mud had stuck to her mother some of it rubbed off on her daughters. He had no idea how their minds worked. The fact was Aline was so busy defending their mother and little sisters from sneers and snubs nobody seemed to notice there was a clever, vibrant woman behind her haughty frown.

  ‘I don’t want them coming here to gawp, then going away to gossip about us as if they know more than the angels,’ Dorrie said bitterly.

  Wulf hugged her close and kissed her in a parody of a fulsome big brother until she giggled at last and ordered him to stop. ‘Don’t let them win, love,’ he said as earnestly as he dared with Isabella listening. ‘You’ve held your dignity so far and it would be a shame to lose it now.’

  ‘I’m not sure I care what the wider world thinks of us any more, Wulf,’ Dorrie said wearily.

  ‘Then Theo and I will care for you, won’t we, adorable Theodora?’ he asked her twin with another old joke as he drew Theo close as well, made her part of the circle of love his mother and sisters always made even at the worst times. Theo didn’t speak, but at least she seemed to forget to be scared for a few precious moments.

  ‘Of course you must care, Dorothea,’ Lady Carrowe told her daughter with uncharacteristic briskness.

  Was this the real Gwenllian Develin, the woman who grew out of the lovely, light-hearted girl the old Earl had courted with single-minded determination, then treated so ill she became a meek ghost of her former self? Wulf wondered why the old windbag hadn’t troubled a lesser female with his mean desires and jealous rages.

  ‘We have to mourn your father because his life was ripped violently away and nobody deserves to be murdered,’ his mother said. ‘After a suitable time has passed, we will be able to find you good husbands to make you happy.’

  ‘I don’t want to rely on a man for that, Mama,’ Aline argued quietly. Wulf wondered if she was being brave about her limited prospects or truly meant it.

  ‘No, indeed, there is such a slim chance of finding true love among so many unlikely candidates,’ Miss Alstone said with a wry grimace that made Theo laugh shyly into his shoulder as if she had to hide her mirth so nobody could take it away.

  ‘A chance both your sisters took,’ Wulf argued while he hugged his youngest sister even closer to show her she could laugh as much as she liked now her father wasn’t here to call her a grinning idiot.

  ‘Maybe they are braver than I am, Mr FitzDevelin,’ Miss Alstone said lightly.

  Nothing would ever make his mother’s bastard an
acceptable suitor for Lady Carnwood’s little sister, but he was secretly delighted she wasn’t planning on entering another betrothal just yet. Tickets to cross the Atlantic were expensive and he wasn’t sure the Continent would ever be far enough away if she married someone else when he still longed for her as if she was uniquely branded on his senses.

  ‘True love comes with bravery added, my dear, but it’s still an act of faith,’ his mother said with a reminiscent sigh. There was silence while they considered what love had cost her and Wulf silently repeated an old promise not to risk it himself.

  ‘I’m sorry Magnus and I couldn’t make that leap, Lady Carrowe,’ Isabella said as if she couldn’t keep the words in even with Wulf listening.

  He caught another glimpse of the striving and burningly honest soul she usually kept hidden and cursed under his breath. She looked as if she’d wanted to love his brother so badly he could almost feel her yearning to be a wife and mother and jealousy stabbed him because she would never let herself love the likes of him.

  ‘It’s not something you feel to order, Isabella,’ his mother replied with a look of concern. ‘Love is a gift, not a duty to be squared up to. If you loved Magnus as more than a friend, I might be angry with you for refusing to see your betrothal through, but that depth of feeling was never there between you. To tell the truth I was relieved when you ended it, for both your sakes.’

  The sadness in her voice when she spoke of true love touched Wulf even if he was the product of a love church and state said she had no right to feel. He saw the tears swim in Isabella’s glorious blue eyes before she blinked as if she had no right to feel it either. Lust was tempered by tenderness for a dangerous moment, but his next sister down saved him with a denial of her own.

  ‘Well, I’m not going to fall in love with anyone, ever,’ Aline said firmly.