The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

by Jillian Hunter

  She tossed down her napkin and hurried off toward the trees where she had last seen her rogue. It was rude of him, really, to be openly flirting in the midst of the wedding breakfast. With everyone watching. And him making such a beastly point of not touching her for two weeks.

  She came to the corner where he had disappeared. A stone Cupid stood in the center of the pathway, pointing an arrow at her heart.

  “Shoot if you like,” she muttered, “but you’re a little too late.”

  A deep mocking voice spoke behind her. “Too late for what?”

  She spun around, bumping against Grayson’s muscular body. A rush of blood warmed her all the way to her toes. It was the closest they had come to physical contact in over a fortnight, but even then he did not touch her. No, he just stood there in all his virile power, letting her smolder. “I was talking to Eros. Where are your giggling girls?”

  “Ah, the Misses Darlington. Well, we rescued the dove, and they took off to find their mama.”

  “What dove?”

  “One of the wedding doves got itself entangled in a tree. The gardener and I staged a heroic rescue.” He stared down into her face, his eyes searching hers. “Were you jealous, Jane?”

  She pressed her hand against his chest. “Horribly. Insanely. Grayson, you are never to go off in the trees with any other female but me. Were you trying to make me jealous?”

  He grinned. “Me? Capable of such a juvenile act? Of course I was, darling, and obviously my ploy worked.”

  He reached down and took her hand, breaking his vow. “We’re announcing our engagement at the ball tonight.”

  “Do you think—”

  “I do.”

  “So do I,” she whispered, winding her hands around his neck to kiss him. “I cannot bear to be away from you. I am ruined, Grayson, inside and out, thinking of you.”

  A discreet cough interrupted Jane’s long-awaited passionate moment.

  Grayson glanced around first, irritated that anyone would intrude on their privacy.

  “What the—”

  “Forgive me. I was looking for Chloe.” Heath held up his hands, trying not to laugh.

  Grayson caught Jane by the hand. “Since it’s only you, you’re forgiven, although I can’t imagine why you couldn’t wait a minute. We were finally celebrating our engagement.”

  Heath glanced around the avenue. “Congratulations.”

  “Is something wrong?” Jane asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Heath replied, his gaze returning to hers. “Chloe disappeared during breakfast.”

  Grayson shrugged. “I’m sure she’s somewhere on the estate.”

  “But with whom?” Heath asked in a low voice. “Baron Brentford disappeared the same time as she did.”

  “He was staring at her during the wedding ceremony,” Jane said in concern. “He’s such an intense young man.”

  Grayson frowned. “I thought he was staring at you.”

  “Only until Chloe caught his eye. She really is unhappy about losing her officer. I think she was talking with Brentford this morning.”

  A blur of movement at the end of the avenue attracted their attention. Jane gestured at the two figures on horseback riding back toward the park gates. A gentleman in black from head to toe. A young woman in royal blue, her head of dark curls thrown back in laughter. No groom. Jane sighed, wondering who she was to pass judgment. These Boscastles wielded their charms like a weapon.

  Grayson swore, a Boscastle not at his charming best. “We’re too late now. Whenever mischief passed between them is already done.”

  “Which doesn’t mean we will allow this to happen again,” Heath said with a grim look. “I wondered why Brentford took that bottle of wine off the table.”

  “Now we know,” Grayson said, his jaw taut.

  Heath pivoted on his heel. “I think it’s time I introduced myself. I assume you have a few choice words for him, too, Gray. Shall we include Drake?”

  Grayson looked at Jane before backing away to join his brother. “No. One of us will have to stay here to guard the queen. Jane, please give our excuses to our hosts.”

  “Queen, am I? Well, listen to me, both of you, I am ordering you not to embarrass your sister again—”

  “I am subtlety incarnate,” Heath said, laughing.

  “And that word is not in your brother’s vocabulary,” she said in exasperation.

  She watched them hurry off to harass their sister and thought, This will be my life, my fate. All her actions subject to Grayson’s approval, the concerns of his family her concerns. She turned to the statue of Cupid, picturing the stormy days ahead. There was no help for it once that winged-tip arrow struck home, and all she could hope was that one day Chloe would find the love she desperately sought and that he would love her in return.

  Grayson and Jane announced their engagement at the end of the bridal ball held in the oval salon that same night. Lord Belshire was so relieved that he led a toast and celebrated by drinking an entire bottle of champagne. In the peculiar standards of Society, the betrothal instantly canceled out all the scandals of the previous weeks. The roguish implications of Grayson’s conduct suddenly took on the rosy glow of a romantic courtship. It was quite the thing to pretend one approved of the couple’s antics.

  “The rogue must have planned this all along,” whispered a dowager to her niece. “Go and talk to Heath, darling. He’ll be looking for a bride next.”

  “Don’t they make a perfect match?” cooed the same people who had predicted disaster only a few days ago.

  “So it’s to be a Boscastle-Welsham connection, after all.”

  “Except that Jane’s traded in an ordinary baronet for a marquess.”

  “He hasn’t taken his eyes off her all evening,” sighed one happily married matron. “He makes no secret of his love for her.”

  Jane found herself surrounded by a crowd of female well-wishers, with Cecily at the front of the crush.

  “It seems I was wrong about him after all,” Cecily whispered sheepishly. “He isn’t the scoundrel everyone thought he was.”

  Jane hugged her friend in a celebration of their mutual happiness. Cecily’s bridal wreath was a little lopsided from dancing, and her beautiful white satin gown lacked a silk knot here and there. “Well, he certainly is no saint, although heaven knows, neither am I.”

  Cecily did not even pretend to disagree. “At least your papa looked very happy about the engagement. He was acting as if he had arranged the match himself.”

  “Speaking of arranging matches,” Jane said, lowering her tone, “I don’t suppose you know what happened between Chloe, her brothers, and Brentford earlier today?”

  Cecily frowned. “My maid said Brentford left the house shortly after their meeting, looking shaken but still alive. Chloe is playing cards with Drake.”

  “Grayson probably scared everyone to death again.” Jane glanced around the cluster of elegant figures in the candlelit room. “Where did he and my father go anyway?”

  The two men had slipped away to the billiard room, where Lord Belshire puffed away on a cigar and congratulated his future son-in-law on his engagement.

  “Well, you did it, Sedgecroft.” He practically had to restrain himself from dancing a little jig around the table.

  Grayson positioned his queue stick. “I still have to get her to the altar.”

  “She’ll be there, believe me, or I’ll marry you myself. You’ll be there, won’t you? History will not repeat itself. . . .”

  Grayson glanced up, grinning, before he took a shot. “I was there the first time, sir, remember?”

  Chapter 29

  There was such a flurry of activity in the days preceding the wedding that Grayson and Jane barely found time to exchange a few words, let alone succumb to temptation. For one thing Grayson’s widowed sister, Emma Boscastle, the Viscountess Lyons, had arrived from Scotland. An energetic sprite of a woman, Emma took charge of the arrangements with a snap of her graceful fin
gers.

  Known for her flawless deportment, her genius at hosting a party, she also served as a veritable fountain of advice for the socially unaware. Which, in her educated opinion, unfortunately included her own undisciplined family.

  As Drake said on the day of her arrival, “Well, there goes the end of uncivilized life as we know it. The Dainty Dictator has arrived. Fall in everyone. She’s liable to inspect behind our ears.”

  With the Boscastle reputation for scandal, the crème de la crème of the nobility waited in anticipation for the ceremony. Which, judging by the bride’s last attempt at matrimony, promised to provide an unforgettable entertainment if nothing else.

  And then the day arrived. Jane awoke with her heart pounding all through her body and wondered if Grayson felt the same way. Goodness, what if he decided to trick her and not show up at his own chapel for the wedding?

  Except that Emma would be there to keep Grayson in line. Beautiful blue-eyed Emma, in whom the Boscastle penchant for wildness seemed to have gotten itself reversed into a penchant for propriety.

  In his Park Lane residence, the marquess’s valet cheerfully sharpened his razor on the leather strop and lathered the handsome face of his master. “Well, today’s the day, my lord, and if I may be so bold as to say, I never thought I’d live to see it.”

  Grayson nodded, his square jaw smothered in shaving soap. “Nor did I. In fact, I can hardly believe it will happen.”

  It did happen, though, exactly three hours later. In a poignant echo of the previous ceremony, Grayson Boscastle, the fifth Marquess of Sedgecroft, turned to openly admire the bride walking the nave of his private chapel. He knew for a fact that she had a beautiful derriere. And the rest of her was something else altogether.

  Not that he made a point of lusting after young women in wedding dresses, but this particular bride happened to belong to him.

  Or shortly would. After all, both of them had managed to put in an appearance. He straightened his shoulders as her father bore her to the altar, his arm securing hers in an until-death-do-us-part grip.

  “Done,” Belshire said in a terse voice.

  Grayson stared down at her veiled face, took her hand, and said, “Thank you, from the depths of my heart. I will cherish her forever.”

  A buzz of appreciation rose from the guests seated in the pews. The bride, everyone agreed, could not have been more beautiful. She wore a cap of embroidered silk with seed pearls threaded through her honey-colored hair. A cream white satin dress, with a fitted bodice in the palest pink and a sash of pink rosettes that dropped to the flounced hem, draped her graceful curves beneath a long train of Valenciennes lace.

  Grayson felt his throat tighten. This was it. No ending here. A beginning. So he would stand beside her for the rest of their lives. At births, at baptisms, at balls, until his dying breath. He stared down at her in adoration. He did not regret his past, except the times he had neglected his family and taken their existence for granted. He wouldn’t repeat that mistake as he embraced the future. Perhaps he wasn’t as good as he should be, but he’d learned he wasn’t all bad either.

  He glanced up from his wife’s face at his brothers and sisters, those handsome, heartbreaking siblings of his. Unbelievable as it was, he loved the whole aggravating lot of them. . . .

  Dear God. Not the mistresses again. His gaze lit on a pew occupied by two of his former mistresses and the products of their previous relationships.

  Mrs. Parker blew him a friendly kiss. Her pair of gangly sons from her first affair grinned and gestured at Jane, elbowing each other in approval. Tomorrow Grayson would have to see about securing the two oafs military commissions.

  He returned his attention to his bride, his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I swear I didn’t invite them. . . .”

  “I did,” she whispered, biting her lip to hold back a mischievous laugh.

  He blinked. “Oh.”

  “Aren’t you glad?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I wanted everything to be the same as the day we met.”

  “The same?”

  “Well,” she whispered, “this time I thought I’d invite the groom.”

  He laughed low, thinking of how many times they would look back in private amusement at this moment.

  The minister cleared his throat, and silence settled over the chapel. The rich perfume of roses mingled with the fragrance of melted beeswax. Jane’s eyes misted with tears of happiness as Grayson gave her hand a possessive squeeze. Same place, same guests, but a very different groom and an entirely different feeling. This time her heart was on the altar. She stood, accepting his in return, committing herself to a lifetime of his leonine arrogance, his devotion, repeating her vows in a clear steady voice.

  The guests waited, craning their heads for a view of the groom kissing the bride. Jane whispered against his cool lips, “Everyone was waiting for a scandal.”

  His heavy eyebrows lifted as he gathered her against him for their first married kiss. “Give the people what they want.”

  “Which means—” And she broke off, gasping with laughter as her scandalous love chucked her up in his arms and over his shoulder.

  “I wanted to do this before,” he said above the whoops of the well-wishers, who rose from their seats to watch them, “on the day you were to marry Nigel.”

  She pushed her bridal cap back off her forehead and hit him on the shoulders with her bouquet. “I wanted you, too,” she said breathlessly. “But I never dreamed we—”

  “Grayson Boscastle,” said a woman’s low cultured voice behind them. “Kindly remember a sense of time and place. Unhand the marchioness this instant.”

  Even in her upside-down position Jane could feel the automatic response in her husband’s body, her slow slide to the floor as he settled her back on her feet. “Was that Esther?” she whispered, her cheeks flushed with delight. Oh, to be a woman who wielded such power over this family of naughty boys.

  “Ah, no.” He rubbed the side of his nose, his eyes crinkling in an unholy smile. “It was your sister-in-law Emma. Mrs. Killjoy.”

  Emma, a beguiling woman with apricot gold hair and soft blue eyes, gave Jane a sympathetic look. “Remind the almighty there’s the breakfast to get through before . . . other things.”

  Other things being taking his bride to bed. Grayson traced a possessive hand down the curve of his wife’s spine to the rise of her bottom. An aristocrat to the bone, he would make his social appearance at the wedding breakfast. He would graciously accept the toasts and blessings given them. And then heaven help anyone who interrupted him and Jane afterward.

  For the second time that year a wedding breakfast was held in the banqueting hall of the Park Lane house. This time the newlywed couple, both bride and groom, actually sat together with the bride’s parents at the head table.

  Cut-glass chandeliers sparkled like stars above the guests who chattered and devoured lobster salad and champagne. Emma politely reminded everyone to leave room to sample the hothouse pineapples and huge multi-tiered wedding cake from Gunter’s.

  Then, in the middle of the toast, Nigel’s mother looked at Jane and burst into tears. “For almost a decade, I have thought of her as my daughter-in-law.”

  “There, there, Mother,” Nigel said comfortingly. “You have your first grandchild coming to console you.”

  “Yes.” She sniffed, eyeing Esther’s gargantuan belly over the top of her handkerchief. “A grandchild who might be as large as a gorilla by the looks of him . . .”

  At the adjacent table Emma set down her silver fork in alarm. “Oh, no. Nigel’s mother is going off like a waterworks. I knew it was gauche to have a huge wedding after that last debacle.”

  Caroline smiled at her. “I don’t think we need to worry about appearing gauche. Grayson and Jane have risen to the top of the scandal broth like cream.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Emma said with a resigned smile. “It’s your turn next, isn’t it?”

  Mira
nda leaned toward them, whispering, “Actually, we heard a rumor about you, Emma, and a certain man—”

  “This,” Drake Boscastle announced to the guests seated around him, who, as a group, were a little less well behaved than those at the bridesmaids’ table, “is exactly why I hate weddings.”

  Mrs. Parks arranged the pearls on her bosom and gave her sons a scowl against stuffing too much cake in their mouths. “Why is that?”

  “All the emotion. I mean, look at Nigel’s mother bawling into her champagne. All the potential for disaster.”

  “Except,” Mrs. Parks said in a wistful voice, “your brother really does love his bride.”

  And Grayson did, openly, prompting a consensus of opinion among his acquaintances that the wedding was proof a Boscastle could be domesticated. A few of his more astute friends, however, interpreted the blazing possession in his eyes whenever he glanced at his wife to mean his wildness had not been quite strangled by the bonds of holy matrimony.

  Two hours later he proved the point.

  “Champagne in bed, and in the middle of the day,” Jane whispered, admiring the powerful lines of her husband’s chest as he removed his blue frock coat. “This is decadence.”

  “Isn’t decadence under the pretense of decency what you wanted?” he asked, and took the half-empty glass from her hands.

  She stretched up to kiss him, short teasing flicks of her tongue against his, heat rising between them like steam. “I think you know me a little too well.”

  “I think you’re right,” he said in a husky voice.

  He slid his large hands up her ribs to the lush contours of her breasts. She drew away, teasing him, to remove the petticoats he had untied.

  His gaze traveled over her in burning anticipation. Her languid movements as she undressed, her back to the bed, taunted him. He lounged across the pillows, watching her through narrowed eyes, and felt his body heat, felt the potent rush of blood through his veins.