A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘Fool,’ she muttered and paced restlessly along narrow paths and back on herself because it was a largish garden for London, but not by Wychwood’s vast proportions or Edmund’s rolling acres. Either would do now, except she had a whole London Season to get through before she could get to real, wide countryside and truly fresh air. She heard a faint click and a hint of movement off to her right and stopped in her tracks to consider if she ought to run or shout for help first. Neither, instinct told her as a tall and very masculine shadow loomed out of the back of the garden, but what the devil was he doing here?

  ‘How dare you?’ she whispered not quite loudly enough to be heard by anyone close enough to find them, as if they’d had an assignation planned all along.

  ‘I’m hardly going to lose a fine reputation or a good name if I’m caught, so why not?’ he murmured.

  ‘No, and wouldn’t it be a shame if you had to cultivate one of those?’ she sniped back, but he was too busy frowning down at her as if he had every right to be here quizzing her to rise to her goad.

  ‘I hurt you,’ he told her huskily, and did he think she didn’t know?

  ‘I doubt it,’ she snapped and wished she could think of the perfect response to his abrupt words now instead of having it occur to her long after he’d gone.

  ‘Charlotte Shaw was watching us so closely I thought a light flirtation with another woman would stop her speculating about me and you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Ben Shaw would kill me if he thought I had designs on you, if he didn’t send for your brothers-in-law to do it for him.’

  ‘What a faint-heart you are, Mr Wulf.’

  ‘No, I’m a realist,’ he said grimly and looked so certain and stern about it in the faint moonlight it might take gunpowder to shake his stubborn belief he had no right to be involved with a lady of birth and fortune.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ she told him severely. ‘And if that’s all you came to tell me, you can go away again.’

  ‘I haven’t finished.’

  ‘Well, I have and I have a headache.’

  ‘So I understand, but you looked so lonely out here, Isabella,’ he said as if that explained why he came back to keep her company.

  ‘You must have eyes like a wolf as well as their bad reputation, then. How did you get in here so easily?’

  ‘I was taught to pick locks by a very fine craftsman,’ he said modestly.

  ‘And you think that’s a good thing for a gentleman to know?’

  ‘I think it’s the sort of thing wolves like me are expected to know and there’s no harm in being predictable when it gets me where I want to go.’

  ‘There’s no story in here, Wulf; nor a Mrs Fonthill to make it worthwhile for the Wulf FitzDevelin to creep about in the shadows. If you think Ben’s safe is easy to crack, you should have brought your friend and half the contents of the Woolwich Arsenal with you because you’re wrong.’

  ‘I’m not a thief,’ he told her as if she’d tweaked his pride.

  ‘You obviously consort with one.’

  ‘He’s reformed, I hope,’ he said impatiently and there was just enough moonlight to see him frown as if he wasn’t quite sure about that and it worried him.

  She didn’t want to find that admirable, so she turned away from the sight of him, the shadowed, lurking-in-darkness and barely visible man he seemed to think was all she deserved. ‘You should go now before someone sees you.’

  ‘Who could?’

  ‘Whom,’ she corrected him snippily and was almost ashamed of herself until she recalled Mrs Fonthill’s low-cut gown and hungry eyes.

  ‘You should open a school,’ he teased softly and how she wanted to be gently teased into a better humour and perhaps more, but she was so tired of peering through the night or the dust heavy shade of Carrowe House at him like this that she wasn’t going to be as easily distracted this time.

  ‘I should go inside and refuse to speak to you until you’re prepared to own up to me in public,’ she told him bleakly and felt him wince.

  ‘Put the shoe on the other foot, Miss Alstone. You can’t want a bastard like me attracting attention to you in public when you were betrothed to my half-brother until very recently. If I was considered pitch before that and the murder, I’m a whole lake of it now.’

  ‘I make it a rule only to kiss men who admit to knowing me whenever and wherever we meet.’

  Maybe she had been cursed to fall in love with the wrong brother and none of the neat endings she had mapped out at the start led to the right place. There—that was the snap of reality she needed to meet his accusing look with cool reserve even if he probably couldn’t see it. She couldn’t love him. And what right did he have to question her when he’d spent the entire evening wooing a potential mistress?

  Isabella swept down the nearest path to the house in a swirl of expensive silk and finest lawn petticoats, Wulf trailing slowly behind her. Yes, this was the gown she chose with both her sisters last autumn, wasn’t it? When she was trying so hard to believe this man was nothing to her and it didn’t matter if he had left England never to return. Sensing she wasn’t quite her usual self after a scandalous meeting under the stars she couldn’t tell them about, Kate and Miranda had carried her off to their favourite silk merchant to pick something fine and frivolous and hoped it would help whatever was troubling her when she was engaged to marry a fine and handsome gentleman and ought to be dancing on air. So it wasn’t so much a quietly fashionable gown as a hug from her beloved sisters, a reminder she was loved. A contrast to Mrs Fonthill’s blatantly low-cut gown and brutally corseted waist and there was that nasty little clutch of jealousy in her belly again. It made her feel sick and uneasy and he shouldn’t have come after her, she decided crossly and glared back at him again.

  ‘They would be gentlemen, then, wouldn’t they?’ he said cynically and she wanted to slap him, except there was a hint of jealousy in his voice that made her silly heart race although she’d forbidden it to.

  ‘Not if they tried to kiss me in the dark to find out if I would kiss them back. And who are you, Wulf, if you’re not a gentleman?’ she said relentlessly.

  ‘A man who doesn’t know who his father is,’ he said as if that was all he’d ever be and this time hot tears prickled at her eyes. She told herself it was her fury at his intransigence that put them there.

  ‘A man who doesn’t know who he is for the lack of one?’ she said and turned to face him. He was so heartbreakingly handsome and so determined to be the big, bad wolf, yet he’d got in here past Ben’s careful defences, and all the reckless risks he’d have run if he was caught, because he thought he’d hurt her. ‘That’s not enough to sum you up now, Wulfric FitzDevelin—you’ve made yourself and never mind who your father was.’

  ‘Aye, I’ve made myself into a fool,’ he said as if he was joking.

  He’d stepped closer still as if he had to convince her by proximity alone he was unsuitable to even be seen with Miss Alstone by the clear light of day. Instead he was pure, or perhaps impure, temptation and more so than ever when he was being so ridiculously modest.

  Her fingers shook with the effort of not reaching for him as she tried to smooth an imaginary crease from the skirt of her gown. ‘You’ve made me into one as well and more than once,’ she admitted huskily and what sort of an idiot was she to remind them of that when she ought to be raging at him for his sins, but the root of his dalliance with Mrs Fonthill was in his stupid blindness about himself as a man she wanted and had let herself fall in love with somewhere along the line. How could she go on being furious with him when his stubborn conviction he was too much of a rogue to deserve her was part of the reason she loved him in the first place?

  ‘Oh, the deuce; why did you have to bring that up now?’ he muttered crossly.

  ‘You have so many questions and not enough answers,’ she replie
d lightly and would have walked away if he hadn’t hooked his arm round her waist as if it belonged there.

  She tried to imagine she hadn’t longed to be in his arms, but couldn’t dig up the right sort of petty little insults it would take to make him let her go. She’d wanted him mercilessly since he walked into Charlotte’s drawing room looking so darkly dangerous and determined to ignore her. She did her best to stiffen in his arms and think of winter to cool her ardour. ‘Take your hands off me, you lecher,’ she whispered not quite fiercely enough, ‘and that’s a polite term for Mrs Fonthill’s lover, by the way. I’m sure you know more impolite ones than I do. Choose one and wear it, Mr FitzDevelin, because you earned it tonight.’

  ‘I’m such a dirty dog and you want me, so I might as well add to my sins.’

  Isabella hardly heard her own gasp when he pulled her even closer and kissed her fiercely before she could think of a protest. Well, no, that was a lie. She thought of several, but he wasn’t going to leave her any breath to speak anyway, so she drew his head down so she could kiss him back. It was such lusty pleasure to be in his arms and she shouldn’t even know such delights existed until she was a respectably married woman. Except she did. It was like being adrift in the most exotic and lovely country she could ever imagine visiting and coming home all at the same time. Her heart was beating so fast and light now she wondered if it was thundering in his ears as loudly as it was in hers. His mouth was ravenous on hers as if he’d been starving for her and at least there was no hint of Fonthill’s perfume or another woman’s easy hunger on his lips. Wulf FitzDevelin wanted Isabella Alstone. She wriggled triumphantly and heard him groan at the feel of her restless body moving against his before he slid an even more passionate kiss across her willing mouth and stilled her with pure heat.

  ‘Isabella,’ he half-protested and half-praised her when he finally managed to lift his head and murmur her name.

  ‘Wulf,’ she muttered back and he kissed her again as if he had to imprint the taste and scent and touch of her on his memory. Sadness pinched at her even as the urgent heat of him spoke of long hot nights and lazy summer days of loving without boundaries and she knew it was a lie. Only he could take her there and he was far too much of a gentleman to risk it, the great fool. It was a joyous sort of pain, this outrageous need of him that gnawed at her in a way she couldn’t find words to tell herself about, let alone him. She felt the jet buttons of his waistcoat bite into the soft skin of her torso through gossamer layers of silk, boned satin and lace, and stretched sensually against him to let him know she wanted it all gone. She wanted him naked; just him and her. With nothing between them but salty skin and lovers’ whispers of praise and encouragement.

  ‘I want you so much; I want it all,’ she murmured with lips that felt numb. Their mouths were made for loving and not talking right now.

  ‘No, Belle, we can’t,’ he muttered low and gruff as the injured wolf he looked like when he raised his head as if every fraction of an inch he made himself put between them hurt in some vital way.

  ‘Not here and not now, I know that; but tell me where and when and I’ll come to you.’ She offered all of herself, rashly, completely and with such exhilarating feelings inside that all the lies they’d told each other since they met that first night melted away. ‘I will,’ she argued with a frantic nod as his eyes told her he’d already made up his mind not to let her.

  He shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe his ears weren’t making up lies about her. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said firmly, getting his inner warrior on to the parade ground with unseemly haste. ‘Stop it, Isabella. You can’t ruin yourself with a bastard like me, however willing you are.’

  ‘Willing?’ she said as if it was poison on her tongue, which it felt like as she watched him be all the things she loved him for but almost hated right now. He could say what he liked about being a bastard; it was his damned honour and his pride standing between them—like twin statues of virtue and nobility she wanted to smash to tiny pieces and dance on. ‘You think I’m only willing?’ she demanded. She was desperate for them to love one another right now, not passively willing to let him have his wicked way with her as if she was some milksop out of a bad play.

  ‘Yes, in every way there is,’ he said as grittily as if he’d been turned to stone despite the warm wonder of his body so firm and masculine against hers.

  He couldn’t quite draw completely away from her to leave her achingly lonely in the shadows again, though, could he? He wasn’t going to let them be lovers and what else could they be out here in the little hours and the darkness if he meant to be noble? So he was distancing himself from her as if he was about to board another ship bound for New York, but this was different. Now she knew Wulf longed for her as acutely as she did for him. Although she would be being loved to the last degree of heat-soaked pleasure right now if they were equals in that, wouldn’t she?

  ‘Is that all you think I am?’ she asked in a voice that sounded as if all the blood and life in her was soaking into the cold stone pavers under her feet while he stepped round her with a polite excuse me.

  ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly, as if he really wanted to be a thousand miles away now, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Liar,’ she hissed at him. He flinched; his eyes closed to deny it and he shook his head as if he desperately wanted to mean it. ‘You want me every bit as much as I want you,’ she went on fiercely. ‘You want me, Wulf; denying it won’t make it go away. You’ve done that for more than half a year now and it hasn’t worked, has it?’

  ‘Do you want me to admit I need you as urgently as my father did my mother?’ he said harshly, as if who he was explained everything. Why were they back with that tired excuse?

  ‘Or as much as she wanted him,’ she challenged. ‘Knowing her, as I have come to since I engaged myself to marry the wrong brother, I can see your mother must have loved your father more than life itself to take such a risk with you,’ she ended more gently. He didn’t think anyone could love him so much; she could swear it until she was blue in the face and he’d never believe her. ‘She loves you so very dearly, Wulf,’ she said softly, feeling her whole future swung on making him see he was lovable and worth the risk she would take if she let herself love him for life. Something told her she had already made that giant step without leaving herself a way back. ‘Since she loved your father passionately enough to break her marriage vows, she must have loved him nearly as dearly as she does their son.’

  ‘Then why didn’t she fight for us? Why not leave the Earl and proclaim me and my father boldly from the rooftops? She’s a Develin, for heaven’s sake, she could have thumbed her nose at the world and her father would have sighed and tut-tutted for a while, then shrugged and taken us in and made the best of a bad lot.’

  ‘What would have happened to your elder brothers and sister? However much she loved you and your father, she couldn’t walk away knowing what Lord Carrowe would do to them when she wasn’t there to protect them from his fury.’

  ‘So she chose to live not even half a life for their sake, with no power or influence to alter what I was made to do? Don’t you think they would have been better off without her, given the Earl’s never-ending need to punish her for daring to take a lover, and I can’t believe she ever loved him.’

  ‘Neither can I, but she’s not the sort of woman to marry solely for advantage, so she must have felt something for him,’ Isabella argued and wondered why she was defending Lady Carrowe when she’d never found the courage to do it herself.

  ‘If she ever did, it was long gone by the time I arrived. She must have hated him for keeping me under her nose to beat every time he thought she was tempted to stray again. I wish she’d told him so every time he did it rather than close down and grit her teeth as if she deserved whatever filth he threw at her.’

  He said it as if only by hating her husband could his mother be halfway right not to have rescu
ed him. Isabella frowned and thought harder about the lady’s reactions to a man she had come to hate too much herself to see things clearly until now. ‘I think she pitied him,’ she said slowly as the truth dawned.

  ‘How could she pity such a hyena, Isabella?’

  ‘For being one, I suppose.’

  ‘She’s a saint, then, but I’m not and never will be.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed and couldn’t stop herself from giving his tense face a loving pat to console him for everything he’d endured, ‘but somehow I still like you quite immoderately.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he argued gruffly, putting his hands about her waist as if he was about to push her away before she got past more of his defences. ‘Don’t forgive me for anything I’ve done, Isabella. It’s hard enough to walk away from you as it is.’

  ‘Then don’t do it, Wulf. Accept me as I am, as we are, equals before God.’

  ‘You’re Miss Alstone and I’m Lady Carrowe’s bastard and once upon a time I would have gone home with that lonely rich woman while her husband was busy with his steam-powered engines. I would have scooped up her frustration and loneliness and enjoyed her body until I went on my way, whistling with the dawn.’