A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  Isabella chuckled at her friend’s imitation of one of the grandes dames expressing their views as if they were all that mattered, but she knew a red herring when she smelt it. ‘So, no criminals—who don’t you want me to meet at your dinner table tonight, Charlotte dear?’

  ‘It might be better for both of you if you don’t meet right now.’

  ‘I’m even more intrigued about whom you think I’m going to be rude to.’

  ‘Not rude precisely,’ Charlotte said carefully.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Intrigued and pretending not to be.’ Charlotte’s words came out in a rush, as if she’d been trying to hold them back, but truthfulness wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘You will have to be plainer to convince me it’s a good idea to stay away when you have rashly invited me to live here until Miranda and Kit are back.’

  ‘If you must have it, Wulf FitzDevelin accepted our invitation to dine before his recent family drama unfolded. We can’t tell him not to come because you’re staying with us, Isabella. He’s too sensitive about his illegitimate birth as it is and we’ve been trying to set this meeting of minds up since he got back from America.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ Isabella said carefully and wished she wasn’t blushing. ‘You think I can’t be civil after what happened, or didn’t happen, between me and his brother?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be crushingly polite as only you know how.’

  Isabella felt herself flush again under her former governess’s steady gaze and almost admitted she sometimes used an excess of good manners to defend herself against the more curious and malicious among the haut ton.

  ‘I have met Mr FitzDevelin more than once at Carrowe House since I came back to London in such a hurry, Charlotte, and I won’t hide the fact I visit the Hailes behind society’s back from you. You know I can’t turn mine on people I grew very fond of when we all thought they would be my family by marriage. Mr FitzDevelin and I even manage to be polite to one another most of the time, despite my lack of common civility.’

  ‘Now I’ve offended you.’

  ‘No, but I admit to being a little hurt you think I’d snub him in public.’

  ‘Under all that polish you’re still the same ruthlessly outspoken little madam I first met, aren’t you?’ Charlotte said with a grimace. For a moment she seemed ready to abandon the subject and leave things be, but that was too much to hope for. ‘No, it won’t do, Isabella. I can’t let you pretend I’m mistaken and ought to keep my worries to myself. You’re attracted to the wrong brother, aren’t you?’

  ‘What on earth have I done to deserve that outrageous slur, Charlotte?’ Isabella tried not to let her voice squeak as she fought to control her shock that her best friend had worked out her darkest secret. ‘I jilted his eligible, handsome and amusing elder brother whom he loves. Mr FitzDevelin wouldn’t want me if I was sent to him wrapped in silver gilt and tied up with pure gold ribbons.’

  ‘Attraction and mutual need don’t follow rules, Isabella. If they did, I’d be a governess or schoolmarm and Ben would be who knows what by now.’

  ‘This isn’t love and yours was.’

  ‘Ben was born a bastard and felt it in every inch of his giant, gallant, daft frame, but I’ll never regret marrying him. I love him as I could never love another man if I had to live without him for a millennium.’

  ‘I know that, but why are you telling me?’

  ‘Because it’s wonderful to love such a prickly bear of a man and find out he loves you back.’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t tell me you’re matchmaking now. A minute or so ago you were trying to keep us from meeting at your dinner table tonight and what I feel for Mr FitzDevelin isn’t love, or anything close to it. Don’t get carried away and start building castles in Spain.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘How do I know what?’

  ‘That he doesn’t love you?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen far too much of love matches, thanks to you and my sisters, to mistake this for love,’ Isabella said and crossed her fingers under her skirts. It might not be love, and even if it was, it wouldn’t lead to a happy ending.

  ‘I suppose you’re old enough to know your own mind.’

  ‘I do; I’m not in love with Mr FitzDevelin.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d dare admit it if he was the man from all those wild dreams you never admitted having, but you can’t reason away love and I suspect at least half of you doesn’t want to.’

  That was too close to the bone. Isabella wondered what she needed to say or do to persuade her friend to let the notion she and Wulf were more than nodding acquaintances go. ‘Mr FitzDevelin doesn’t even like me.’

  ‘Then since you’re so definite about not loving him, I’ll try to treat you as fellow guests attending the same simple meal. It could be a struggle, since you usually leave the room or close the conversation if his name is mentioned, but I’ll try.’

  ‘There’s nothing simple about your dinners,’ Isabella said lightly, ‘but if you and Ben can’t get your odd ideas about Mr FitzDevelin out of your stubborn heads, I might as well have my supper in the nursery or go to Carnwood House.’

  ‘With the knocker off the door and most of the staff in Derbyshire with Kit and Miranda? I’ll cancel the whole affair before you spend a glum evening with a maid of all work, the bootboy and a taciturn footman for company.’

  ‘I’ll stay, then, but rid yourself of the notion I like Mr FitzDevelin more than any other nodding acquaintance. Kit would laugh himself hoarse if the poor man galloped to Wychwood in order to demand my hand in marriage and so would I.’

  ‘Would you now? I wonder,’ Charlotte said as if she had her own ideas about how funny it might be.

  ‘Yes, Mr FitzDevelin would be horrified to hear you talk so.’

  ‘Would he? Poor Dev,’ her friend said softly.

  ‘If ever I’ve met a man capable of looking after himself, it’s Mr FitzDevelin.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that make him your perfect man? He might elbow past that fine control you pride yourself on before you knew he was doing it.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Charlotte. Waste your breath on one of your children or save it for Ben, but please write me off as a hopeless case and leave me be.’ Isabella stuck her nose in the air and went upstairs to pick out her most modestly stunning gown in the hope of making Wulf suffer for being the cause of the last half-hour of relentless interrogation, even if he didn’t know it was his fault.

  Chapter Twelve

  She should have been prepared for the shock of Wulf FitzDevelin looking handsome as the devil in a dark evening coat and immaculate linen after her conversation with Charlotte earlier. Isabella shot a sidelong glance at the man when she thought nobody else would notice. Tonight he seemed quite happy to ignore the clever conversation and free flow of ideas around the table for the fine eyes of the lady seated next to him. Part of her hoped he was throwing up a smokescreen to mask his interest in her instead of the eagerly wicked Mrs Fonthill. This could be his clumsy way of protecting her from the curiosity of her friends.

  Charlotte had placed them opposite one another at the dinner table and Isabella dearly wished she didn’t have to watch him flirt with someone else every time she looked up from her dinner. The bit of her that wasn’t reasonable hoped Wulf knew her every move as acutely as she knew his. That Isabella was bitingly jealous every time she caught him smiling at the overblown creature, or openly admiring her cunningly displayed bosom. If he was acting, he was so good it looked as if he wouldn’t notice if Miss Alstone took to dancing stark naked among the entrées in an attempt to wrench his attention away from the woman at his side. She glared down at her plate because her eyes were oddly misty for some reason she didn’t want to think about. Perhaps she’d caught a cold from the children. At least that would give her an excuse to retire early from this deliciou
s but somehow rather awful dinner and that seemed a very alluring idea right now.

  It was the thought of all those experienced and eager women he once confessed he’d made love to that had made her faith in him threaten to melt away. She tried to tell herself Wulf was only pretending to run true to form for her sake, but the image of one or two of the ladies she knew considered their duty to their husbands done and a young and handsome lover their just reward for bearing all those sons played over and over in her mind and made the whole evening hideous before it had hardly begun.

  Wulf was so fascinated by his dining companion he didn’t seem to notice Isabella sneaking sidelong glances at him when she wasn’t trying hard to be polite to the gentlemen on either side of her. She couldn’t enjoy the company of all these clever, enterprising and interesting people because Wulf was behaving like a moon-led idiot with an overblown female who ought to know better. She felt insulted he’d been the same with her in secret and suddenly began to doubt his sincerity during their shadowy encounters. She ought to dismiss him from her thoughts as if he was no more than a stupid fly buzzing around another woman as if he’d never heard of Miss Isabella Alstone. Yet the other men in the room faded to watercolour next to him. She had to clench her nails into her palm until it hurt in order not to leap out of her chair and rant at him for ignoring her after their latest snatched kiss in the gloom.

  For an awful moment she also wanted to stab a pin in the woman he was so engrossed with. She longed to be the cool and aloof Miss Alstone she was before she met him. No good; that version of her packed her bags and left six months ago—on the night she met Wulf FitzDevelin. The night Isabella was shocked, intrigued and sensually excited by every last handsome, bitter, faithless inch of him between one breath and the next. How could she be intrigued by a man who was blatantly flirting with another woman while she watched from the sidelines, even if it was a pretence? She shouldn’t hate the woman he was ogling, but sympathise with her. Mrs Fonthill was falling for the same sensual promises in his ice-blue eyes Isabella had.

  Blaming the object of his flattery instead of the man who fixed his eyes on her as if she was the one female in the world he wanted only yesterday was wrong. Wulf didn’t belong to her because of a few stupid kisses they should never have snatched. So of course she wasn’t jealous or vindictive; she was disgusted by the lures a married woman could cast with her husband sitting nearby. By now the rich curves of the woman’s generous breasts was holding Wulf’s attention like iron to a magnet and reasonable Isabella was giving up. He did nothing to discourage Mrs Fonthill’s possessive little touches and blatantly seductive glances under her skilfully darkened lashes. Little doubt these two would have a more satisfying end to their evening than he’d ever allowed her, but if the lady deserved censure because she was married, what about him?

  He deserved her contempt, she decided. When he woke up next to a tawdry and overripe bedmate tomorrow morning, he’d get his just deserts. Isabella imagined the lady’s sleek brows and lashes without the lampblack she used to darken them. It could end up smeared across Mrs Fonthill’s suspiciously blushing cheeks if she didn’t wash it all off before she lured him into her bed. Next Isabella considered the lady’s elaborately looped and bejewelled hair and decided her luxurious locks could be padded out with false curls as well. She let them fall down on the smeared and ruffled pillows to shock Wulf in the morning, too, and it would serve him right for not seeing past the very obvious lures of a woman who wouldn’t admit to being a day over thirty in a court of law.

  She was quite enjoying her vengeful fantasy now and was almost charming to her immediate neighbour for a few minutes as satisfying images of Wulf reaping the price of his sins ran through her head like a bad play. How dare he use another woman to deny the attraction that sang between them even as they said a stiffly polite good evening to each other?

  Stop right there, Isabella, she silently corrected herself. This is the lesson you badly needed to learn and never mind the one he’ll get in the morning. These are his true colours.

  Except she didn’t want them to be; she didn’t want him to lie in another woman’s arms tonight and soar to whatever heights lovers achieved in the witchy darkness.

  ‘No, he can’t be the lover I long for and can’t have. I won’t let him be,’ she whispered under her breath, horrified when Ben picked up her tension if not her words and followed the direction of her eyes. He had the cheek to grin as if he thought it was a fine joke she was watching Wulf with hungry eyes while he flirted with another woman.

  Feeling out of sorts with herself and almost everyone else, she remembered Charlotte’s warning: Mrs Fonthill was bored by talk of arts and natural science and the inventions her husband doted on. Apparently the lady had a generous dowry and it was her money that had set the Fonthill Works on its feet and kept his innovations going until the markets realised they had need of them. Now he was successful in his own right, the lady had lost interest. In fairness she had thrown herself at Wulf and maybe the gallant great fool was too kind under all that hawkish male beauty and aloofness to humiliate a lonely and frustrated woman in public. If it wasn’t Wulf’s sleeve the woman was clutching, Isabella might pity her for being married to a man who cared more about steam-powered engines than his rich wife.

  She shuddered at the thought of how Magnus might have come to view her after a few decades of marriage. He was far too much of a gentleman to treat a lady he wed for money so shabbily. Isabella shuddered at the thought of the life they would have had together if she hadn’t found the courage to call off their wedding. At least Wulf was born of love and not duty—he endured a rough and bitter upbringing because of it, but he never had to doubt his heart and instincts as his half-sisters and brothers did because of the man who fathered them.

  Now she was thinking about his brother to try to blot Wulf out of her mind and that wasn’t working out very well, was it? She clung to it in the hope she could do better. Magnus’s life had been pulled out of shape by being the Earl of Carrowe’s second son, a spare in case his elder brother failed the succession. Magnus was sent to Eton and Oxford and thrown on the ton with too small an income to be fully part of it, but no space for a bigger dream. It was a wonder he had grown up so good-humoured and blasé about his role, she mused while the ladies quit the dining room at Charlotte’s signal.

  With any luck, she might manage to forget this silly fascination with Wulf’s every move and glance if she thought about his half-brother long enough. Mrs Fonthill had peeled herself away from Wulf with open reluctance and at the last possible moment as the ladies followed Charlotte to the drawing room. Isabella willed her fingers not to clench into claws and made a murmured excuse about checking on the children. If she stayed, she’d lose her temper and say what she thought of Mrs Fonthill flaunting her lush bosom to attract a man’s attention. To truly deserve a Wulf FitzDevelin in her bed she’d need more than a full figure and a lusty imagination.

  The children were asleep for once and the night nursery disappointingly calm. Since Isabella couldn’t face watching Wulf flirt with another woman any longer, she decided to stay away. Charlotte could twit her in the morning if she liked after she’d sworn she could be indifferent to Wulf for a whole evening, but she couldn’t do it now. Isabella rang for Heloise and told her she had a headache and would try to sleep it away. Her maid would convey a message to Charlotte before she decided there must be a crisis in the nursery and came up to find out what it was and never mind her guests.

  Ever since she found out Wulf would be here tonight Isabella had been secretly elated. This would be their first out-in-the-open, social meeting. As a very real headache throbbed in her temples she blinked back tears for the lonely feel of an evening when the man she longed for spent all his time with someone else. Knowing she had lied to Heloise and couldn’t sleep if she tried, she waited a few moments to make sure her maid had gone away, then wrapped herself in her warmest shawl against
the spring chill and went out to pace the spacious garden alone. At least out there she could breathe fresh air and have room to be properly alone. She longed for cool clear air off the Pennines and the freedom of the hills above Wychwood that she had tramped so often as a girl. Perhaps if she could get back there, she wouldn’t hurt so much. She tried to tell herself it was only her pride that hurt, but she knew it was a lie.

  She paced past the French windows towards the airy family garden Charlotte and Ben had made. Pausing for a moment, she yielded to temptation and looked back into the drawing room. Instead of bending over Mrs Fonthill as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her, Wulf was staring out of the windows, as if he knew she was out here by instinct, but that was impossible, wasn’t it? Far easier for her to see him than for him to look out with the light from the candles that were making the darkness deeper than ever behind her. She eased back a little and held her breath until he looked away and turned to answer someone’s question, or perhaps slant his latest inamorata an easy smile. Isabella wandered deeper into the wide gardens that were the main reason Charlotte and Ben took this house, allowing their growing family as much freedom as town children ever had.

  It was far too early in the year for the roses to be in flower yet, but the pale glimmer of a late primrose or the tall and glossy pale pink tulips the gardener had carefully placed wherever the boys didn’t run were lighter marks in the darkness. The moon didn’t look anywhere near as big or bright here in sooty London. She compared it to that night last summer at Haile Carr and found it wanting in so many ways—no heat, no heady and exotic perfume and, worst of all, no Wulf. No comparison at all, then. Drat the man. Without him this was night-time in a pleasant enough garden where she could find a little peace after a noisy and disappointing evening, but essentially it was as blank and lonely as all the other nights since.

  She shivered; time to live with what was instead of yearning for everything Wulf wouldn’t allow himself to be. So she wandered a little further into the walks and even smiled briefly when she spotted a new den the children had built in the wilder bit here at the back of the gardens. She moved on despite a childish urge to crawl inside and cry for a bit, then curl up safely until morning. There was a neat bench almost tempting her to be still in the faint moonlight, but she didn’t sit. If she wanted to be still, she would be inside, tucked up in bed while the most determined guests lingered over the fading sparkle of ideas and a last glass of brandy. This far from the front of the house and the mews, she had no idea if most of the carriages had already rattled home with their sleepy occupants drunk on ideas or Ben’s fine cognac. She didn’t care anyway, she assured herself and wondered if Mrs Fonthill was brazen enough to take her newest lover up in hers and leave her husband here to be called for later.