The Wayward Bride

by Anna Bradley

  She gasped softly, and when he turned to face her, her blue eyes were huge in her face.

  “You may not be mine, Isla, but I care very much what happens to you. Don’t ever run from me again.” He crossed to the sofa and held out the glass of port to her. “How far did you think you’d get in only a day gown and a pair of thin shoes?”

  She accepted the glass without meeting his eyes. “I didn’t think at all.”

  “No, evidently not,” he muttered, but he could already feel the anger draining out of him. He was upset with her, yes, but he was just as upset with himself. This whole thing had become such a tangle, he no longer knew who was to blame for any of it.

  Hugh dropped down onto the opposite end of the sofa with a sigh. “Upstairs, that scene in the schoolroom—I beg your pardon for it. I should never have spoken to you that way.”

  “No, but then I shouldn’t have run away from you. I beg your pardon for that.”

  Her gaze darted to his face, and even in the dim light he could see the secrets hiding behind the shadows in her eyes. “I don’t want your apologies, Isla. I want the truth.”

  She stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean—”

  “Stop it.” Hugh’s voice was quiet, but final. “You do know what I mean. Neither of us is leaving this room until there are no more secrets between us.”

  Isla sat with her head bowed as the seconds ticked by in silence. When at last she stirred and set her glass aside, Hugh could see her hands were shaking.

  “I only want the truth, Isla. Is it really as difficult as that for you to tell it to me?”

  She turned pleading eyes on him. “Yes, because you don’t want this truth. It’s…it will only make this harder.”

  A bitter laugh swelled in Hugh’s throat. “Harder than spending the rest of my life believing the only woman I’ve ever loved used me to squeeze a proposal from another man? No, sweetheart. It doesn’t get any harder than that.”

  She gasped. “You’ve…you’ve never told me you loved me.”

  “I didn’t say the words, no.” But he had told her, in a thousand different ways, on a thousand different occasions. Every time he looked at her, and every time he touched her, he’d told her. “But I did love you, Isla, and up until the night of Lady Entwhistle’s ball, I would have sworn you loved—” He blew out a quick breath, shaking his head. “If you ever cared for me, even a little, then tell me the truth now, and end this.”

  “I did care for you, Hugh.” She rubbed a hand against the center of her chest, as if something inside pained her. “So much. I was in love with you.”

  Hugh stared at her, half-afraid he’d find the shadow of a lie in her face, but her blue eyes were as clear as a summer sky. “You loved me?”

  “I did. I…I still do.” She drew in a shaky breath, but her gaze didn’t waver. “I never stopped.”

  It took all of Hugh’s control not to snatch her into his arms then. Everything inside him strained toward her, but he held back, because this story wasn’t over yet. If it was as simple as the two of them falling in love with each other, they’d be together now.

  “Then why?” His voice was choked. “If you love me, why did you choose Sydney over me? You broke my heart, Isla.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. “I didn’t choose him. I never would have. I wasn’t betrothed to Sydney the night of Lady Entwhistle’s ball, Hugh. I swear it.”

  Hugh closed his eyes and went still. These were the words he’d waited for, the only words he’d wanted to hear her say since this nightmare began, and yet he couldn’t allow himself to hope while there was still so much confusion between them.

  He opened his eyes and locked his gaze on her face. “Lord Sydney said you were, Isla. He said he’d offered for you weeks before and you’d accepted him. He wasn’t at all unsure about it. He never blinked, or even hesitated.”

  No, he’d been as definite as a man could be. Hugh was certain of it, because as long as he lived, he’d never forget the shock and despair he’d felt in that moment.

  “It’s true he’d made me an offer several weeks earlier, but I hadn’t yet given him an answer. I wasn’t betrothed to Sydney the night of Lady Entwhistle’s ball, Hugh. I care for Sydney very much, but I never intended to accept his suit.”

  Oh God, he wanted to believe her, but he knew he hadn’t misunderstood Lord Sydney that night. “Why would he lie about it?”

  “Because he felt as if he hadn’t any other choice. By the time our carriage was called, the rumors had already started, and they were ugly, hurtful ones. Sydney would have seen at once only a marriage between us would save my reputation.”

  “So he lied.” Hugh was half-ashamed of the bitter anger in his voice. The better man in him could understand exactly why Lord Sydney had done it, but Sydney was also the man who’d taken Isla away from him, and Hugh couldn’t think of that without wanting to hurl his glass into the fireplace.

  “Yes, he lied, but in Sydney’s defense, he’d already made me an offer. He no doubt assumed I’d accept him after the fiasco at Lady Entwhistle’s ball. After all, what other choice did I have?”

  What other choice? How could she ask him that, when she had to have known he’d do anything for her? “You did have a choice, damn you. You could have chosen me.”

  A tear trickled down Isla’s cheek, and she lifted a hand to wipe it away. “Oh, Hugh. I did choose you. But you didn’t choose me. Don’t you remember? I wrote to you, begging you for a chance to explain, but you sent back a note asking me never to contact you again.”

  The note. Hugh dragged both hands down his face as a dark wave of despair closed over him. How could he have forgotten the note? She’d tried to tell him the truth then, to explain what had happened, but he’d refused to listen to her. He’d been so caught up in his own anger and heartbreak, he’d abandoned her when she needed him most. “When you received my note, you believed I’d cast you aside because of the scandal.”

  Isla spread her hands out before her in a helpless gesture. “Yes. I couldn’t imagine any other explanation for it. Sydney never told me he spoke to you that night. After I received your note, I made the only choice still left to me. I could marry Sydney or refuse his offer and disgrace my family’s name. I refused to shame Lord Huntington with my scandal. He’d only just welcomed me and my brothers into his family, and I do care deeply for Sydney, Hugh. He’s a good man.”

  “Do you…are you in love with him?” Hugh looked away before she could answer, because if she was in love with Sydney, he couldn’t bear to see it in her eyes.

  “I do love Sydney. I love him dearly.” She drew closer, laid a hand against his cheek, and turned his face toward hers. “I love him, but not in the way a wife is meant to love her husband. Not in the same way I love you. He’s my dear friend, and I love him just as I love my brothers. That’s all.”

  Relief flooded through Hugh, so intense he felt dizzy with it. He reached for her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her close. He ached to kiss her, but there was one more thing he had to know first. “Why didn’t you accept Lord Sydney when he first offered for your hand, Isla?” He let his forehead touch hers and closed his eyes.

  She stroked her palm over his cheek. “Because I love you. I wanted you.”

  Hugh didn’t hesitate then. He lowered his head and took her mouth with his own. A soft sigh left her throat, and she raised her other hand to his face to draw him closer.

  Nothing had been decided between them. Worse, a small, despairing voice inside Hugh’s head warned him nothing had changed, despite their love for each other. Isla was still betrothed to Lord Sydney, and he was—

  “I missed you so much.” Isla slid her hands down his neck to his chest, a tiny moan of need on her lips. His cravat, coat, and waistcoat were still lying in a heap next to his desk, and her warm palms met only bare skin.

  Hugh opened his
mouth to nip at her lower lip. “So sweet. I’ll never have enough of you.”

  I’ll never have enough of her because she’ll never be mine…

  But he didn’t want to think of that now. All he wanted to think about was her mouth under his, her plump lips opening, her little gasp as his tongue teased inside, chasing hers until she met it with her own and drove him mad with a single, shy stroke.

  That little stroke—the hesitancy of it—made him pause.

  He wanted her desperately, and yet less than an hour ago she’d been struggling through the snow, trying to get away from him. Her skirts were still damp, for God’s sake, and they were in his study, on a sofa.

  She deserved better than this.

  She deserved everything.

  He couldn’t give her that. He could only give her tonight.

  The last time a man had touched her, he’d taken everything from her. He’d hurt her.

  Hugh wanted to be the first man to show her what true tenderness was, but he didn’t have that right. If he couldn’t give her everything, then he had no right to touch her at all.

  “Wait, Isla.” It took every bit of his self-control, but he dragged her hands away from his chest. “There’s something you should know. I’m not—”

  “No. We’ve waited long enough.” She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him like a burr. “All I need to know is I want you, Hugh. It feels like I’ve wanted you forever, and we won’t get another chance.”

  Her voice broke, and it nearly tore his heart in two, but he reached behind him, grasped her hands again, and tried to unwind them from around his neck. “You’ve been hurt once before, by a man who had no right to touch you.” He didn’t speak James Baird’s name aloud, because he refused to let the man have a place in this moment. “I won’t hurt you again, or take something from you that isn’t mine. I’d be no better than him if I did.”

  There was a hint of sadness in her eyes, but she met his gaze without blinking. “No, Hugh. It’s not the same at all. You’d never hurt me, and you aren’t taking anything from me. I’m giving something to you that’s mine to give.”

  Hugh’s heart melted at the tenderness on her face, but he shook his head and began to pull away. “You feel that way now, sweetheart, but there are things you still don’t know, and I’m afraid you’ll regret it later. I couldn’t live with that.”

  He shifted away from her, but before he could rise, she grabbed his hand and brought it to her mouth. She pressed her warm lips against his palm. “I could never regret giving myself to the man I love, Hugh. I’ll only regret it if I don’t.”

  She kissed his hand once again, and then again, the tip of her tongue teasing over his flesh.

  He groaned, and in the next moment he was kissing her sweet mouth until she was breathless, and her lips were so red and swollen just looking at them made his cock swell with desperate insistence against his falls.

  She isn’t yours…

  Except now, in this suspended moment, she was. For this one rare moment only, they belonged to each other. It was the only moment he’d ever have with her, and God help him, he couldn’t let it go.

  Isla sank her hands into his hair with a breathless sigh. “Oh, it’s so soft.”

  She sifted the dark waves through her fingers, and even that innocent touch was enough to make him ache with desire. “I want your hands on me everywhere.” He grasped her wrists and slid them down his chest to the hem of his shirt. “Take this off me, Isla. I want to feel your hands on my bare skin.”

  If a part of him had hoped she’d refuse and force them to end this madness, that part was disappointed, because she never hesitated. She grasped his shirt in her fists and tugged it over his head. Before he had a chance to take a breath, her warm lips were pressed to the hollow at the base of his neck, and she was making delighted little sounds in her throat as she tasted him there.

  “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, her blue eyes heavy and her lips parted as she gazed at him. “I didn’t think a man’s skin could be so smooth.” She stroked her fingertips down his chest, then let her hands come to rest on his abdomen.

  The muscles there jerked and leapt under her touch, and his cock, already far too eager, strained toward her hand.

  He dragged a fingertip down her throat, then leaned over her and let his mouth follow the path his finger had just taken. She moaned and sank her hands into his hair again, tugging with abandon as he licked and sucked at her neck.

  “Your skin has driven me mad since the first night I met you,” he murmured, nipping his way down the long column of her neck until he reached the warm cleft between her breasts. He kissed her there, and his lips curved into a smile against her skin. “I used to try to find ways to touch you when we danced together. Your shoulder, or the back of your neck—anyplace where there was bare skin.”

  She drew back and pulled gently at his hair to tilt his face to hers. “You did? Why, how shocking. I thought you were a proper gentleman, Lord Pierce.”

  He chuckled and teased his lips across her skin. “I thought so too, but propriety always seems to abandon me when it comes to you. Imagine what I might have done if I’d known you taste even better than you look.”

  She laughed softly, then slid her hands around his neck to steady herself as he let his tongue follow the path his lips had taken over the tops of her breasts. “Isla, God…” He moaned as her mouth teased over his neck then dropped lower to brush a string of kisses across his chest. “Come here, sweetheart. I need to…”

  But he was too breathless to tell her what he needed, so he showed her instead.

  “Oh!” A surprised little squeak left her lips as he grasped her waist and dragged her over his lap. She didn’t protest—not even when he slid his hands under her skirts, shoved them back, and arranged her thighs on either side of his.

  “Yes,” he hissed, when he felt her warm core settle over his erection. The realization that only a thin layer of buckskin separated them made him wild, and his hips moved in a restrained thrust against her.

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t draw away. She shifted experimentally over his lap, squirming tighter against the hard length of him nestled between her thighs. “Yes,” she sighed. “There.”

  That little sigh made him frantic with need. “Do you ache there, sweetheart? Tell me.”

  “Yes.” She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. “I need you, Hugh.”

  He caught her roaming lips in a long, sweet kiss. “I need you, too. So much, Isla.”

  “Then have me,” she whispered, stroking her fingernails across the back of his neck.

  Hugh shivered at the seductive touch, and his hungry cock jerked against his falls. Isla made a soft, eager sound in her throat and writhed over his lap.

  He sucked in a sharp breath, let his head fall back against the sofa, and tried to gain some control over his raging desire before he tumbled her onto her back and took her right here on the sofa in his study.

  But every last shred of his control fled when Isla took his earlobe between her teeth. His hips jerked at her gentle bite, more insistently this time, and then Hugh’s hands were under her skirts, his fingers stroking the satiny skin of her thighs.

  He was just about to pluck the ribbons on her garters loose when a short rap on the door made his hands freeze. Isla stilled on his lap, her panting breaths hot against his neck. He turned toward the door, his brain so foggy with desire he couldn’t quite recall what it was he was meant to do in this situation.

  Ignore it. Yes, that seemed a good idea. He turned back to Isla and pressed his open mouth to the top of one creamy breast, then the other. His hands were inching up her rib cage, getting closer and closer to the hard nipples he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from. Were they the same dusky pink as her lips? His mouth watered to taste them.

  “You’re so beautiful,
sweetheart—so perfect.” He slid a finger under the neckline of her gown to drag it off her shoulder. “Are you as beautiful here as you are everywhere else? Show me.” He tugged the fabric down another inch, but before he could bare her sweet nipples to his gaze, another knock sounded on the door.

  “Lord Pierce?”

  Hugh lifted his head from Isla’s breasts at the sound of his housekeeper’s voice. He was dazed with passion, his breath tearing through his lungs, but he managed to gather his wits enough to growl, “Not now, Mrs. Babcock. I’m busy with…some very important work.”

  Isla buried her face in his neck to smother a soft laugh, but then her breath caught as his fingers slid higher to tease and stroke between her thighs. “Hugh.”

  Hugh moaned. God, she was so warm and wet for him…

  He squeezed his eyes closed and prayed for control, but they popped open again at the sound of another knock, this one louder, followed by Mrs. Babcock’s muffled voice from the other side of the door.

  “I do beg your pardon for the interruption, my lord, but you see—”

  “Damn it.” Hugh nearly howled with frustrated lust when Isla scrambled off his lap and fumbled with her skirts, yanking them back into place.

  A small, feminine smile curved her lips, and she nodded toward the door. “Hugh? Perhaps you should find out what she wants.”

  Right. Yes. That was what one did when someone knocked on their door. He cleared his throat, but before he could speak, there was another rap, sharper this time, and Mrs. Babcock’s voice floated once again through the closed door. “Lord Pierce?”

  It took a great effort, but Hugh managed to gather his wits. He began to straighten his clothing, but there was little he could do about his cock. It was still insistently erect and showed no signs of subsiding. He and his housekeeper would have to have this conversation through a closed door.