A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘I suspect you’re the least of their worries right now, FitzDevelin. Time to stop harping on the past and get on with the present now your stepfather is dead and his killer is at large,’ Hugh warned.

  Isabella shivered, listening even harder for anything she could catch through feet of dusty air and a crumbling ceiling.

  ‘And your mother and sisters need you,’ Hugh continued.

  ‘I promised to do everything I could to get you back to London by tomorrow morning, Wulf,’ Magnus said restlessly, as it was his fault they weren’t on the road already.

  ‘I can ride all night if I have to,’ Wulf said dismissively. Isabella could imagine him doing it as well, despite the punishing ride he must have had to get here already, driven to confront her with her sins and bully her to take Magnus back and marry him. At least no self-respecting highwayman would hold up such an angry man for fear of being mown down as if as unimportant as a fly on a horse’s ear, primed pistols or no.

  ‘Start now,’ his brother urged breathlessly, ‘I’ll follow when I can, but you’ll be far more use than I am right now, Wulf.’

  Silence descended while the men tried not to agree out loud and Isabella plotted her own hasty departure from Cravenhill Park and the rural peace and quiet she’d come here to find. If she stayed, news of Magnus’s presence would leak out and the local gossips would seize on it as a sign of reconciliation in the teeth of the biggest scandal to hit the Hailes for centuries. She needed to get to London before the polite world had a chance to write off the Haile ladies for good this time.

  ‘Give me half an hour and we’ll set out together, FitzDevelin,’ Hugh said so firmly she knew Wulf might as well accept his company as eat his dust all the way back to town, since Hugh could afford the best horses and he couldn’t.

  ‘My thanks, then, Sir Hugh. I hope you’ll return here once I’ve got my mother and sisters out of that dusty old mausoleum and away from the gossips.’

  ‘No, don’t make them hide away as if they’re guilty of something, you great manly idiot,’ Isabella actually muttered under her voice before shaking her head at her own stupidity. It was high time she crept away and got on with frustrating all their well-meant masculine plans. She wriggled precariously around on her beam to face the door again, then shuffled along until she got to dusty floorboards and could take to hands and knees while the men were busy arguing about who was going where and what they were doing when they got there. They didn’t seem suspicious of the sounds of an old building restless on ancient foundations and she knew enough to insist on returning to London now, whatever arguments Edmund thought up to stop her.

  Isabella glanced down at her dusty person and undid her knotted skirts. At least they would cover grimy petticoats and her once-white pantalettes, but neither would ever be the same again. Even if her underpinnings were boiled for hours to get them white again, the lace was damaged. The last few minutes would have been much trickier if she had to twist about on a beam with nothing to keep her knees from the splinters. Dirty feet and torn stockings were bad enough, she decided as she shuffled her shoes back on at the far end of the interconnected rooms. Now all she wanted was to get back to her room unseen and wash off the dust of ages before making her rapid departure.

  Had Hugh and Wulf gone yet or were they still waiting for the doctor? She stole along makeshift corridors added long after this part of the house was built, musing how folk managed to live hugger-mugger in such times. The very idea of one room opening off another struck her as absurdly intimate, but maybe everyday life was more intimate in a rich man’s house back then. Wulf FitzDevelin’s latest intrusion into her life seemed to have made her think about things she usually accepted as everyday parts of life she didn’t even need to wonder about. Perhaps she needed his abrasive scorn of fine ladies to make her question how her life ran along so smoothly she rarely questioned the rights and wrongs of it.

  Somehow she found her way through the warren of rooms back to the main house without having to go back the way she’d come and risk them knowing she had heard most of what they had said. Now all she need do was explain her hasty departure to Kate and Louise, persuade her maid to pack everything she’d only just finished unpacking and retrace the journey they’d only just completed.

  * * *

  During the three frustrating days it had taken Isabella to journey from Herefordshire to London at a respectable pace, so nobody could accuse her of unladylike haste, she had far too much time to think. So much for her resolution to change the way she lived when they had to crawl along because she didn’t want to draw attention to her return to the capital by doing it at the same breakneck speed Hugh and Wulf would be galloping at. At last, though, she was staring out of mud-spattered carriage windows at the busy streets and closely packed houses and sighing with relief that they were back in London when she had been so pleased to quit it less than a week ago.

  Magnus would have to stay at Cravenhill until he was well enough for the long journey home, so it should be obvious why she left her brother-in-law’s house for the time being. Louise and Kate would have sent out the right letters to the right people by now, explaining how poor Mr Haile was laid up at Cravenhill after foolishly riding all the way there at breakneck speed to beg for Sir Hugh’s help in his family’s hour of need. The poor man had some sort of brain fever earlier this year so how could they turn him away at the risk of his health being permanently broken? Although his timing was unfortunate to say the least and poor Isabella had been forced to leave Cravenhill for London in order to stay with dear Charlotte Shaw, her former governess, until Mr Haile was well enough to leave. Nobody could blame the Countess of Carrowe for being too bowed down with her own troubles and sorrows to drive all the way to Herefordshire to attend to Mr Haile herself, but really it was most inconvenient.

  There would still be murmurs about why Magnus Haile was in Herefordshire when he should have been at Carrowe House. He would probably be portrayed as the devoted, broken-hearted suitor seeking comfort at the darkest time in his life; she would be the hard-hearted female who hotfooted it to London rather than give in and marry him after all. Enduring a few whispers and the odd sneer was nothing next to the horrors haunting Magnus’s mother and sisters at this very moment, though. They had to live with the sort of wild speculation and storytelling that could cost an innocent life if the wrong person was found guilty of the Earl’s murder. Her own lot in life suddenly seemed very easy in comparison.

  ‘Drive straight round to Hanover Square, Samson,’ Isabella ordered briskly. ‘Carnwood House will be closed up, so there’s no point in stopping there.’

  ‘Very well, Miss Alstone,’ Kate’s well-trained coachman replied impassively.

  Glad her personal maid, Heloise, was new and not given to arguing about anything that didn’t concern fashion or her mistress being perfectly turned out whenever she left her bedchamber, Isabella sat back on the comfortable cushions and hoped Charlotte was home.

  ‘Izzie, what on earth...?’ Charlotte shifted the baby in her arms to kiss her former pupil, then raised her eyebrows at the small mountain of luggage piling up in her spacious hallway under Heloise’s stern supervision. ‘You’d best come into my sitting room and tell me all about it,’ she said softly. ‘Have everything conveyed to the Blue Bedchamber if you please, Harris,’ she said to the butler before leading Isabella into the cosy parlour she favoured, because it was next to her husband’s office and he frequently dashed in to join her for half an hour or so.

  ‘What are you doing back in London less than a week after you left?’

  ‘Magnus came to Cravenhill in great haste, then had to stay to be nursed through a recurrence of that illness he had earlier in the year.’

  ‘Is it catching?’

  ‘No, not after all these weeks. Edmund is a kind Christian gentleman, but he would have sent Magnus somewhere else to be cared for if there was the slightest risk of infe
ction for Kate and the children. Oh, don’t look at me like that; the babe hasn’t been born yet. Or at least it hadn’t been when I left. By now it may have come into the world, since Kate was the size of a small cottage.’

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows again and looked unconvinced by Isabella’s misplaced humour, as well as her telling of half the story. The horrid tale of the Earl of Carrowe’s murder must be flying about London faster than a family of hungry kites by now, so it was little wonder Charlotte refused to be diverted.

  ‘Oh, very well, Magnus suffered what the doctor called a “nervous collapse”. It’s not my fault he’s been under so much strain of late, so don’t you start blaming me as well. And don’t expect me to tell you what did cause it either.’

  ‘As well as whom?’ Charlotte demanded. Trust her to latch on to the one part of her sentence Isabella wished she hadn’t let slip.

  ‘The rest of the world,’ she explained so airily it ought to divert attention from her flushed cheeks. ‘Who should mind their own business for once.’

  ‘I doubt even the gossips care about your part in the Haile family’s woes now.’

  ‘They would have done if I hadn’t left Cravenhill the day Magnus arrived unfit to ride another yard, let alone go a mile to the village inn. I didn’t dare wait for Kate’s baby to be born before I left, but why must the gossips tattle and fabricate stories and put me and the Haile family to so much trouble, Charlotte?’

  ‘Mainly because you were born with such spectacularly good looks it’s impossible to avoid it, but that’s the burden you bear, poor love.’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Charlotte. It feels heavier than usual right now.’

  ‘Because gentlemen can’t see the real Isabella for your looks and fortune?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Isabella said cautiously.

  If Charlotte ever guessed there was one man in particular who thought the social gulf between them so wide it was unbridgeable, she’d dig until she found out who he was. Charlotte was the only grandchild of a duke and she had wed a nobleman’s by-blow. No argument about Wulf’s unsuitability or the scandal he was born into would cut ice with Mrs Ben Shaw.

  ‘Love can creep into even the most carefully guarded heart when you least expect it,’ Charlotte warned with all that personal experience waiting to back her argument up.

  ‘Not into mine it won’t and Miss Margaret seems to have exhausted herself with her protests about her teeth coming through,’ she said as the baby in Charlotte’s arms let out a wail.

  ‘I’ll try putting her in her cradle so we can have a cup of tea and eat one of Cook’s best sugar buns in peace.’

  Charlotte rose very carefully and eased the child gently into her cradle. A little stir of protest and she sang softly until the little girl settled back to sleep with an angelic sigh of content.

  ‘At last,’ Charlotte breathed as she lowered herself to a chair. She looked so weary Isabella murmured she was going to order that tea herself instead of ringing for it and left them to sleep off their disturbed night side by side.

  * * *

  Isabella sat in her own private sitting room attached to the large guest bedchamber in the corner of the Shaws’ house that was furthest away from the nursery wing and wondered how Wulf FitzDevelin was faring under very different circumstances. The murder of a peer of the realm couldn’t quietly fade from public memory after a day or two of shocked gossip and a few soothing murmurs from the authorities. She hoped Hugh had managed to set the right hounds on the right trails to find the killer, because until he was tracked down and punished, the Hailes would be eyed with suspicion wherever they went. Isabella puzzled over the challenge of visiting the ladies of the family. It would have to be done in secret, however much she wanted to march in through the front door and make it clear she didn’t care about the newssheets or the gossips. If she was an independent lady without close family and many friends and well-wishers, she could do just that, but given that she had two sisters and a clutch of very good friends whose reputations and wellbeing were bound up with her own she had to be discreet and careful about her own reputation.

  If Magnus’s supposed love, the woman who was too timid to admit to him even when his father hadn’t been murdered, really loved him, she would come to town and stay at his mother and sisters’ side even if she couldn’t bring herself to support him as openly as Isabella thought she should. Lady Delphine’s family estate marched with that of Haile Carr and the lady knew the family very well. Isabella frowned and couldn’t recall much about her own past meetings with Lady Delphine Drace. She knew Lady Drace was widowed last year and her pompous husband had been the sort of political baronet she always avoided as carefully as she could herself. The man would prose on for ever about his own views and beliefs, then condescend to all women as if they were incapable of rational thought and put on this earth to listen to the wisdom of pompous idiots like him. The Lady Delphine she remembered had anxious blue eyes set in a thin face and hands that seemed restless and almost outside of the lady’s control. Who would think a woman like that could inspire such passion in Magnus he hadn’t cared very much if he lived or died once she’d turned her back on him after he’d fathered her supposedly posthumous child?

  Isabella was tempted to write and order the woman to live up to her obligations for once in her life. The Hailes needed a friend and Lady Drace was the logical person to be there for them, but she clearly wasn’t coming. News of the murder must have reached Norfolk and the Drace Dower House by now and she hadn’t driven up to town to show her support or even written a sturdy message of support for her old friends. Lady Delphine was clearly a broken reed, so Miss Alstone would step into the shoes of supporter and friend. Yes, now she was here and it wasn’t quite time for the Season yet, she would be able to find lots of good excuses to slip away on errands for her sisters or fittings for a new gown or an endless search for exactly the right bonnet to match her new pelisse. If she also happened to visit the creaking old Carrowe mansion while she was out, that would be by the by, as long as she didn’t allow herself to be seen by the hordes of spectators still haunting the scene of the crime like expectant carrion crows.

  Chapter Seven

  After another pointless and frustrating morning with the lawyers and magistrates, Wulf strode back to Carrowe House to fend off the curious. This morning he’d needed all Sir Hugh Kenton’s clear-sighted logic to help him cut through the jargon and ritual as they went over the whys and how and perhaps of his stepfather’s murder yet again. Until now he’d thought he understood his native language well enough, but he hadn’t encountered a room full of legal minds hell-bent on contradicting one another as incomprehensibly as possible. Sir Hugh could cut through their nonsense and get to the nub of the matter as Wulf couldn’t quite bring himself to, with the lives and reputations of his closest family weighing so heavily on his mind. He frowned at the thought of all the contrary forces tugging him in different directions right now and was doubly glad he’d listened to Lord Shuttleworth and accepted help when it was offered by a man who understood his situation all too well.

  Wulf wanted to know who broke into ruinous old Carrowe House that night to murder the Earl and he didn’t want suspicion falling on his family. Trying to weigh their lives and wellbeing against the mystery of who hated the old man enough to kill him was enough to give King Solomon in all his wisdom a headache and Wulf didn’t feel very wise at all right now. Cutting down the list of suspects would mean his family could become more and more prominent on it. His mother and sisters had been there that night, as had Magnus, even if he had been out for a goodly part of it. If they knew where he’d been, he might be left off the inventory of suspects. Wulf was only missing from it himself because he was more than halfway to Cravenhill Park when the Earl was killed. There were too many reliable witnesses to his journey and nobody had been able to show how Wulf FitzDevelin could kill his stepfather and be in Herefordshire so q
uickly unless he’d mastered the dark art of being in two places at once. If not for his guilt-driven obsession with begging Isabella to take his brother back and marry him, he would have been in London that night and would likely be in Newgate awaiting trial for his life at this very moment.

  Whoever killed the old man when Wulf wasn’t there to take the blame couldn’t have been thinking very hard. Or perhaps they loved him enough to make sure no sane magistrate could accuse him of the murder. That simply wasn’t possible and implied careful planning, which didn’t seem very likely given the impulsive, excessive violence of the crime. The coroner stated that the Earl had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death. It was apparently impossible to work out which wound had actually killed him, but both needed enough force to almost excuse Lady Carrowe and her equally slight, petite daughters from the list of suspects. But extreme passion could lend superhuman strength, one of the magistrates had pointed out unhelpfully.

  Wulf tried to block that caveat from his mind as he went in through the strong, ancient oak back door of shabby and tumbledown Carrowe House. He walked past the kitchens without even noticing the soot and decay or the empty and echoing sound of his own footsteps as he strode past deserted rooms that had once bustled with life and hectic activity. It seemed better to consider the everyday annoyance of his eldest half-brother, Gresley—now Fifth Earl of Carrowe—than let his thoughts linger on the uncomfortable notion someone he loved could be a murderer. Early this morning he’d received Gresley’s reply to his express telling him the Earl had been murdered and it was time for his successor to take up his responsibility as head of the family. Apparently the new Earl of Carrowe was too busy to come to town and the new Lady Carrowe too overcome by nerves and grief for him to leave her even if he wasn’t. Wulf must sort it all out and keep the curious at bay, meet the old Earl’s creditors and do whatever necessary to keep their mother happy until Magnus was well enough to take over. Since Gresley hardly trusted Wulf to put on his own shoes without detailed instructions, that was almost as bad as declaring he didn’t give a damn what had happened to his father or the family he was born into. The old Earl had always favoured his eldest son and now Gresley wasn’t even willing to come and fetch his body home. That was what undertakers were for apparently; something else to add to Wulf’s list of things to do. At least Gresley would have to foot their bill, Wulf thought, the new Earl’s callousness proving him a lot more like his father than he’d want to admit.