A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  Wulf smiled across Theo’s head to say, Well done, little sister, neither am I.

  ‘If you don’t, it’s my fault,’ his mother said sadly. Wulf wished himself a hundred miles away so he didn’t have to be here as the inescapable truth of how much the Dowager Lady Carrowe had risked for love.

  ‘Nonsense, Mama, it’s nothing to do with you. We shall set up a ladies-only republic in Hampstead and make a pledge to one another never to fall in love or marry,’ Dorrie joked with a frantic cheerfulness that ate into Wulf’s heart like acid. She came across the room to hug Aline and Theo joined in as Wulf stepped back, glad the bond between his sisters was so strong nobody could break it, not even the late Lord Carrowe. ‘You will need a passport to visit us, Wulf,’ Dorrie went on, ‘and even Magnus won’t be allowed inside our borders without a written invitation.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I should be insulted at the differences you make between us, Lady Dorothea,’ he said in a lame attempt to go along with her.

  ‘You should, I suspect,’ Isabella whispered as she stepped past him to catch up her errant bonnet as if it was alive and on the verge of scampering away.

  ‘Now, my dear, if you really are determined to leave us so soon, you cannot be left to wander around this mausoleum getting lost until Crumble chances upon you. I doubt he has time to escort you out and we really must finish sewing our mourning weeds,’ his mother intervened before Wulf could bow and go away and brood somewhere quiet and devoid of feminine company. ‘Wulf will escort you,’ she went on blithely, ‘and I do hope your maid won’t give notice after being forced to endure our ramshackle servants’ hall yet again.’

  Wulf frowned and waited for Isabella to point out his mother had contradicted herself shamelessly. Apparently Miss Alstone was a frequent visitor to Carrowe House but couldn’t be trusted to find her way downstairs and call for her maid to accompany her home on her own. Unlikely, he decided and wondered what game his mother was trying to play by throwing them together like this.

  ‘If Heloise was going to resign, I’m sure she’d have done it the day I chose to return to London the very moment she finished unpacking all my luggage so she then had to pack it all up again,’ Isabella joked as if she had done it on a whim.

  Wulf tried to feel impatient instead of at odds with himself and a little bit glum as he waited for the Haile ladies to bid an affectionate farewell to Miss Alstone and promise to spend a day in Hanover Square. He was glad his mother and sisters had such a good friend. He just wished she wasn’t Miss Isabella Alstone.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Your mother has more courage and character than people credit,’ Isabella said carefully as they made their way downstairs. Wulf was doing his stern best to escort her out in silence, as if she was his least-welcome duty in a day packed full of them, and she didn’t feel like obliging him today.

  ‘She has need of it,’ he said as if he had been given a strict ration of words for the day and didn’t intend to waste many on her.

  He had felt the shadow the late Lord Carrowe cast over his family more than anyone, so she tried to be fair. ‘I do know the late Earl wasn’t a good man,’ she persisted because even though this stiff and guarded conversation felt wrong it was better than stony silence. ‘So there’s no need to tiptoe around the truth with me.’

  He looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘Did he try to force himself on you? He wasn’t above coercing women who didn’t respond to his so-called charm and he had a vile reputation according to the kind of women the ton would never lower itself to listen to.’

  ‘No,’ she said coolly, refusing to be kept quiet because they both knew he shouldn’t mention such women to a lady. She didn’t see why she should be deaf, dumb and stupid about the harshest realities of life any longer and he wouldn’t put her off that easily. ‘I’m wary of ageing rakes and dark corners and it was my fortune he lusted after.’

  ‘You think you’re wary?’ he asked incredulously. She felt her cheeks flush as she recalled one night when she truly threw all caution to the four winds, but that was different. ‘And I know the Earl always tried to act the enlightened gentleman in polite company, so why would you even think you needed to be cautious?’

  ‘Lord Carrowe was so harsh with your mother and sisters I’m amazed he managed to deceive so many people that he was anything other than a brute,’ she said carefully.

  ‘It wasn’t like him to let the brute out when he could be overheard,’ Wulf murmured as if the old man was still alive and might dash out and yell at him if he was criticised here in his own home.

  She looked for signs of a small boy who lived here in constant fear of the Earl’s fury in the sternly self-contained man in front of her and almost laughed out loud at her own naivety. He’d tower over the man now and all the terror would be on the other side, since the late Earl of Carrowe had been a coward as well as a bully. ‘He was so hard with them I knew he was a charlatan even before...’ In the nick of time she stopped herself. She had to persuade Magnus to tell his brother the truth before it fell off her tongue by accident. His family knew how to keep secrets, for goodness’ sake, so why not confide in them before more damage was done?

  ‘Even before...you found out the old jackal had a hold over Magnus that the great bumbling idiot refuses to discuss even now?’ Wulf continued for her and Isabella decided her best defence was silence. ‘If you could persuade him to confide in me, I’d be grateful,’ he said stiffly, stopping on the stairs while they were alone in order to get as close to pleading for her help as such a proud man would ever get.

  And he knew all the best places to whisper secrets here, didn’t he? Such caution wrenched at her heart for the beaten and bewildered child he’d been in this house all those years ago. Still, Magnus’s secrets had been so important to him they got him within a hair’s breadth of marriage to the wrong woman and he had to tell his brother himself, in his own time.

  ‘You know your brother better than anyone else does, Mr FitzDevelin, and I dare say he would have told you if you were here to tell.’

  ‘I had to go away,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘I’m sure you did. Telling your family you weren’t coming back probably wasn’t wise, though, especially as you lied.’

  She didn’t want to remember the aching hollow at the pit of her stomach his absence had left her struggling with. When he wasn’t looming over her like a sternly puzzled Roman general, she might find time to recall how desolate it felt to think she would never meet Wulf’s wary winter-sky eyes again or see his firm mouth set in a sceptical line when he silently accused her of being a pampered society beauty who played with men’s hearts for sport. Shock hit like a slap, then raced in her blood at the thought of never being alone with him again like this, but they were having a workaday conversation on the stairs, in a tumbledown house, with several conniving and possibly matchmaking females nearby, and that was all it was to him. She had to remember that fact and learn to live with it.

  ‘I meant to make a new life when I left,’ he said stiffly. ‘I had offers to write for periodicals and newssheets and perhaps a book about my adventures. I was weary of being the Bastard Wolf and wanted to be free of him as well as my parents’ sins and Lord Carrowe’s malice. At least in a new world I could be my own man.’

  He was already his own man, Isabella decided and wondered why he didn’t know it. He still refused to meet her eyes and seemed to have no idea she secretly longed for him to admit he went because she was going to marry his brother and he couldn’t endure being in the same country when she became Mrs Magnus Haile. Wulf FitzDevelin was far too guarded to do anything of the kind, though, even if it was true and she had no proof of that. Maybe a new country could give a countess’s natural son a much freer and more hopeful life than hidebound and dynastic old England. She wasn’t used to feeling this uncertain since she grew up and took command of her own life. It felt acutely uncomfortable and a l
ittle bit lonely.

  ‘I soon realised I’d made a mistake; my mother and sisters need me,’ he went on with a manly, defensive shrug.

  ‘They do,’ she agreed and this wasn’t the time or place to want to kiss the gruff idiot again. ‘Can you endure the gossip now you’re back?’

  ‘I was a fool to listen to it in the first place, and now my mother’s house in Hampstead is empty, life will be much easier for her and my sisters if I can persuade them to live there with Magnus. Any help you can give me on that front would be appreciated. It may not offer the sort of gentleman-about-town appeal he’s used to and Magnus has suffered a reverse of fortune as well as love.’

  ‘It was never about money for him and we were not in love. What about you, Mr FitzDevelin?’

  ‘I’m not in love either,’ he said facetiously.

  She already knew that. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. What will you do when your family are living together in Hampstead?’

  ‘I will go my own way, Miss Alstone.’

  ‘I know you love them too much to do that; I’m not quite the spoilt fool you think me,’ she said coolly.

  ‘You have no idea what I think of you,’ he argued softly.

  ‘Then tell me,’ she demanded recklessly.

  ‘I think you’re a lovely young woman who has been indulged by a family who love you. You are stubborn and hot-headed and a little bit too convinced you know what’s best for those you love. You have far more intense passions and ambitions than most ladies of quality and will blossom into a great lady when you wed the right husband and I wish you both well.’

  ‘How kind,’ she said hollowly. ‘But I don’t expect to marry.’

  ‘Then I have to conclude you love Magnus after all and can’t endure marrying anyone else,’ he said so flatly she wondered if he found the notion painful.

  ‘No,’ she said patiently, wondering how many times she had to say so before he believed her. ‘We were good friends, and if that is all you have to say, I really must be about my business, Mr FitzDevelin. I know you’re busy and have little time in your life for standing about talking to outsiders like me at the best of times.’

  ‘My mother and sisters don’t consider you one of those, Miss Alstone,’ he said as if he had reservations, ‘but you’re right; we can’t stay here all day and someone has to tidy up the mess the Earl left behind.’

  ‘And perhaps it is stupid of me to think I can do anything to help your mama and sisters through it,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘I suppose you’d like me to stop interfering and go away?’

  She might manage to stay in Hanover Square and twiddle her thumbs until Kit and Miranda arrived in town if she tried hard enough. Except she didn’t exactly trip over dozens of well-wishers when she came here to keep the Haile ladies company by furtive routes and back alleys, and if she didn’t come, who else would? But Wulf still seemed to seriously consider saying, Yes, please stay away, before he shook his head belatedly as if his sisters’ and mother’s needs came before his own.

  ‘My mother and sisters need you and I can stay out of the way.’

  ‘And you don’t need anyone, least of all me?’ she said, ignoring the forbidden ground under her feet.

  Silence as thick and tense as the one they were suspended in while they stood in the darkness and hoped the Earl wouldn’t spot them in the shadows that night at Haile Carr fell around them like a shroud. She shivered at the tension she could sense in his rigidly still body and what a devilish time she’d chosen to be shy of his ice-blue gaze because she was too afraid to imagine he was fighting a need to reach for her when she wanted to feel his hands on her so urgently she was shaking. She grasped her own behind her back to stop herself from reaching up to smooth his frown away. If she was alone in this need, she had to accept it and walk away. It was a foolish dream. When he’d left England for a new life without even saying goodbye to her, she had all but sleepwalked into marrying Magnus because she didn’t want to wake up and face the truth about all three of them, but she was awake now. Barely possible chances made her heart race as he stared down at her as if he’d never seen the likes of her before, and if she could be unique for him, nothing else would matter.

  ‘I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, Miss Alstone,’ he said bleakly and made her ache for that innocent babe even while she wanted to stamp her foot at him for thinking she’d care.

  ‘None of us have a say in when and where that happens,’ she managed to say in a rather rusty voice he could interpret how he liked, but if she wasn’t careful, she’d cry for what might have been and that would be a disaster for both of them.

  ‘True, but you were born in your father’s bed. Best if you let me speculate who mine was alone,’ he said and refused to even meet her eyes this time. She had to hope it was because he thought they would give too much away. Hope was the last thing left in Pandora’s box when all the cares of the world escaped it after all, and since she’d spent half a year trying to crush it, she knew it was almost indestructible.

  ‘You don’t know who he was, then?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘My mother won’t say and apparently the man she loved died before I was born, so he isn’t here for me to suspect. Since she was wed to a man who only ever loved himself, I can’t blame her for finding consolation and affection elsewhere, but our marriage laws are cruel, aren’t they, Miss Alstone?’

  Isabella felt as if every muscle she had was stiff at the thought she might have been irrevocably tied to his brother in a week or two and never a shred of real love to bind them for life between them. It felt as if she’d stood on the edge of a chasm and stepped back just in time. Because? Because marrying your best friend when he loved another woman was a mistake and Wulf was right, the law was cruel.

  ‘At least when I ran away, her husband couldn’t use me to try to break her any more,’ Wulf said hoarsely, as if talking about that time made it feel too real again.

  ‘You went for her sake?’ Her heart stumbled at the thought of him doing so when he was far too young to be so brutally alone.

  He was so male and self-sufficient now it was nearly impossible to picture him as a helpless boy a grown man had ranted at and beat whenever he felt like it. Isabella wondered if Lady Carrowe had thought her lover worth the price their son paid and almost ran back to ask. No, that was the ultimate impertinent question and she wasn’t prepared to strip her own heart bare to find a good enough reason for asking it quite yet.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said with would-be cynicism, as if he’d consigned his feelings to a dark cupboard many years ago and wanted them to stop there. ‘And don’t convince yourself the gossips are wrong about me, Miss Alstone, because I truly hated the Earl and I’m a bastard in more ways than one.’

  ‘You clearly have a talent for melodrama, sir. Perhaps you’ll grow out of it now the chief cause has gone.’

  He hesitated in mid-glower and laughed instead. The surprisingly joyous sound of his deep chuckle seemed to lighten the shadows of even this poor old house and his genuine smile made her knees wobble.

  ‘I have lived on my wits since I was a boy, so maybe you should excuse me.’

  ‘And perhaps that’s why you haven’t found out what you’re truly capable of yet.’

  ‘Have you read something I wrote, then, Isabella?’ he asked softly. ‘And does that make you less indifferent to me than you pretend or just curious?

  She blushed. ‘Yes, and the latter,’ she admitted as casually as she could with his eyes watchful and almost amused on her as if he knew differently.

  ‘What did you think?’ he asked, not quite managing to be indifferent.

  ‘That you take a reader to places they might never see and show them what really happens there. You write vividly and passionately about matters that ought to worry your readers a lot more than they do, but you still hold something of your
self back. Perhaps it would cost you too much to test your talent to the limit. The Earl did so little to deserve your attention in life that you’d do better to live up to your own standards than defy his.’

  His ice-blue eyes were intent and even a little defiant now and she wanted to shiver with something beyond coldness as she met them as steadfastly as she could. He nodded as if acknowledging she was right. ‘I’m glad he wasn’t my father and even more so that he didn’t bother to pretend he might be.’

  ‘And I like your mother’s maiden name better than his. In your shoes I’d be proud to own it and never mind the rest.’

  ‘Maybe you would, but Wulf is easier on the tongue and you have a fine name when you’re not being ma’am,’ he said with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

  ‘I do believe you just called me a little madam.’

  ‘No, how could I be so crass, Belle?’ he parried and the teasing glint in his eyes when he named her that way warmed them so much she heard herself sigh like a besotted schoolroom miss.

  ‘My brother used to call me that,’ she said with a catch in her voice she thought she’d managed to train out of it.

  ‘I’ll settle for Isabella, then, if we’re ever this strictly alone again,’ he told her as if trying to tiptoe around a grief that was part of her and she was touched he cared enough to try.

  ‘No, don’t; I like it. My brother Jack would have liked you. You’re honest and trustworthy, unlike the snake his school sent to escort him home when he grew ill. Jack would have refused to share a carriage with Nevin Braxton if he’d been well enough to push him out of it.’

  ‘That’s the name of the viper who pretended to wed your eldest sister when he was already secretly married to your cousin, isn’t it?’ he asked gently.

  She was glad he didn’t pretend not to know about the scandals in her own family closet. ‘Yes, and a worm of the first order he was, too. We Alstones aren’t really calm and civilised folk at all, Wulf. That devil’s spawn did everything he could to ruin my sister’s life when she was only seventeen and I find that unforgivable.’