A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘True,’ he said modestly and reached for the finest wine and hothouse strawberries Magnus had somehow managed to present them with as a wedding-night luxury they hadn’t had time to appreciate until now.

  ‘What are we going to do about the girls?’ Isabella whispered.

  ‘Let them work out what they want, Belle. They have had too many years of being controlled and told what to do for us to start interfering now.’

  ‘Then do you think Magnus would like to be my estate manager, since we’re not going to be spending much time on them?’

  ‘My wife the heiress,’ he said with a wry smile of resignation.

  ‘Just your wife, Wulf, that’s all. We can put my fortune into trust for our children if you like because I’m a writer’s wife now and we don’t need it.’

  ‘That depends how many you’re planning to have, but I’d best get on and earn enough to keep you and them in style anyway, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You already do and we have a house I love in a place where we both want to live. I don’t need any more.’

  ‘Maybe an extra room or two for the babies when and if they happen to come along,’ he suggested easily enough and she let out a quiet sigh of relief.

  ‘Promise you’ll never let my fortune come between us?’ she said and twisted round to look at him with a plea to take her seriously.

  ‘It’s only money, love. I can manage on nothing much at all and Matty Caudle can turn a penny so many times I’m expecting the King to scream for mercy one day.’

  ‘I really do wish I could have been with you when you first met her and her son, my darling,’ she said truthfully and wriggled closer to show she meant it.

  ‘I know you do and thank you, my love, but I never want you to find out at first-hand how hard life is for a girl on the streets.’

  ‘Don’t wrap me in cotton wool. You already know Ben’s stepmama is Eiliane, Marchioness of Pemberley, and I’m sure you’re aware she’s set up an asylum for such children. I help out there when I can, so I’m quite aware of the things you’re trying not to tell me. Those poor girls don’t stand much chance of living long enough to become women at all, let alone happy ones, without the help of people like her.’

  Wulf seemed to mull over the idea she knew a lot more than he thought she ought to about the darker side of London life. ‘You Alstones and your web of powerful connections never fail to surprise me.’

  ‘I’m a Haile now.’

  ‘I’m not quite sure I am yet.’

  ‘A Develin-Haile, then; it’s a compromise I’m happy with.’

  ‘If you are, then I shall have to learn to be, but I don’t think I can ever be truly grateful the Earl of Carrowe was my father after all.’

  ‘And why would you be when he treated you so harshly?’

  ‘So our children don’t have fingers pointed at them and other brats sniggering at them in corners. So you don’t have to be married to a nameless man; so my mother isn’t expected to be ashamed of me at every turn any more.’

  ‘I don’t think she ever was.’

  ‘Then why did she let him get away with it, love? I know you would fight tooth and nail for our children if you had to, so why didn’t she?’

  ‘I can’t answer that question, my darling, perhaps you should ask her.’

  ‘I did and she palmed me off with some nonsense about him making such a mess of being a father to Gresley and Magnus she didn’t want me to suffer it as well. Still, she’s been hurt enough, and if believing that makes her feel better, so be it. At least she’s not big or strong enough to kill a large and still-powerful man. So nobody can accuse her of making away with the Earl because it must have taken a man’s strength to bludgeon and stab the old crow. It’s only thanks to you that I’m not in Newgate awaiting trial for it right now myself.’

  ‘I really am a paragon among wives, am I not?’

  ‘Not if you don’t stop doing that, no,’ he told her shortly and removed her exploring hand from his intriguingly muscular belly.

  ‘I’ve waited so long for you, Wulf. Even after I found you, you left me for what looked like for ever from this side of the Atlantic. So now I’ve finally got my hands on you I don’t want to let you go.’

  ‘It’s your hands that are doing the damage right now, but I promise you I’m never going far without you again, love, if that will make you feel better and get them off me until you’re more used to being my wife. I felt as if a vital part of me was being wrenched away when I sailed off to my new life swearing to forget you, but how could I stay here and long for you when you were going to marry my brother?’

  ‘I lost faith in us before I even met you. I should have called off my betrothal to your brother the moment I set eyes on you, or at least I tried to set them on you, in the shadows—which was quite a challenge when all I wanted to do was feel what we could do to one another and never mind the rest of our senses.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t trust me that much then, love. I wasn’t worth it.’

  ‘You were always worth it,’ Isabella said and told herself sternly not to turn into a watering pot because her failures had kept them so far apart for so long and he really thought he hadn’t been worthy of her back then. ‘And don’t forget I learnt very young that Alstone women shouldn’t trust devilishly handsome men and you’re a devilishly handsome man, my darling. I suppose I had to find out for myself a deliciously desirable man like you doesn’t have to have a devil living under his skin.’

  ‘If your eldest brother-in-law hadn’t dealt with him so effectively already, I’d castrate that piece of scum who pretended to marry your eldest sister all those years ago. His vicious misuse of an unfledged girl has made you distrust our whole sex ever since and I find that impossible to forgive.’

  ‘Having to live openly with my cousin Celia is punishment enough for him.’

  ‘Not for me it’s not.’

  ‘Miranda is worth a hundred of either of them and they did make her miserably unhappy, so I’m glad you hate them, too. But why are we talking about them when we could stare into each other’s eyes and marvel at how we both finally managed to see sense at the same time, Wulf?’

  ‘Distraction,’ he said concisely.

  ‘Oh, my love, I’m sorry. Let’s go to sleep, then, so we can get to tomorrow and make love to one another again all the sooner,’ she said and lay down on her side of the bed. She was going to have a lot to live up to, she decided as he reached for her hand and held it while they told each other silly stories to chase sleep so they could dream about the rest of their lives together.

  * * * * *

  If you enjoyed this story, you won’t want to miss these other great reads by Elizabeth Beacon

  THE WINTERLEY SCANDAL

  THE GOVERNESS HEIRESS

  And, if you enjoy these books,

  check out Elizabeth’s

  A YEAR OF SCANDAL quartet, too,

  starting with

  THE VISCOUNT’S FROZEN HEART

  Keep reading for an excerpt from IN THRALL TO THE ENEMY COMMANDER by Greta Gilbert.

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  In Thrall to the Enemy Commander

  by Greta Gilbert

  Chapter One

  Alexandria, Egypt—48 BCE

  She should have known better than to trust a Roman. She should have never listened to his honeyed speech, or considered his strange ideas, or dared to search his onyx eyes. Seth’s teeth—she was a fool. ‘Beware the heirs of Romulus and Remus,’ the High Priestess had always cautioned her, but the words had been but a riddle in her young ears. By the time she finally understood their meaning, it was too late. She was already in love and doomed to die.

  She remembered the day she started down that terrible path. She was working at her master’s brew house in Alexandria, Egypt’s capital city. She had lived through one and twenty inundations by then and had been bound in slavery since the age of twelve. She had never tasted meat, or seen her face in a mirror, or touched the waters of the Big Green Sea, though the harbour was only streets away.

  What she had done was toil. She awoke each day at dawn and worked without rest—stirring mash, cleaning pots, pouring beer—until the last of the brew house’s clients stumbled out on to the moon-drenched streets. Then she would curl up on a floor mat outside the door of her master’s quarters and welcome the oblivion of sleep.

  That was Wen’s life—day after day, month after month, from akhet to peret to shemu. It was a small, thankless existence, redeemed only by a secret.

  The secret was this: she knew Latin. She knew other things, too, but Latin was all that mattered. Few people in Alexandria spoke Latin. The official language of Alexandria was Greek, the language of Egypt’s Greek Pharaohs, though Egyptian and Hebrew were also widely spoken. But even Queen Cleopatra herself had sworn never to learn Latin, for it was the language of Rome—Egypt’s enemy. The tongue of thieves, she had famously called it.

  As it happened, the brew house in which Wen laboured was frequented by Roman soldiers who spoke only Latin. They were known as the Gabiniani—tolerated in Alexandria because they had once helped restore the late Pharaoh to his throne.

  But the Gabiniani were villains—rough, odious men who belched loudly, drank thirstily and sought their advantage in all things.

  She knew their depravity intimately, though she tried not to think of it. It was enough to admit that they were loathsome men and she was happy to keep her watchful eye upon them.

  Thus she earned her bread as a kind of spy—an Egyptian slave serving Roman soldiers in the language of Plato. She pretended not to understand their Latin chatter and placidly filled their cups. But whenever one bragged about thieving beer or passing a false drachma for a real one, she would happily inform her master.

  She had saved her master thousands of drachmae over the years in this manner and he was able to provide his family with a good life. It was for this reason, she believed, that he never used her body for pleasure, and always gave her milk with her grain. It was also why she knew he would never set her free. She began to see her life as a river, flowing slowly and inevitably towards the sea.

  But the goddess who weaves the threads of fate had a different plan for Wen. One morning, a man entered the brew house wearing an unusual grin. He was as dark as a silty floodplain and handsome in an ageless way, as if he had been alive for a thousand years. She believed him to be Nubian, though his head was shaved like an Egyptian’s and he wore a long Greek chiton that whispered across the tiles as he walked. A bracelet of thick gold encircled his arm and a heavy coin purse hung from his waist belt.

  A tax collector, she thought. She was certain the man had come to collect taxes on behalf of the young Pharaoh Ptolemy, who was seeking funds for his war against his sister-wife, Queen Cleopatra.

  ‘Please, sit,’ she invited the man. ‘Goblet or cup?’

  He did not answer, but regarded her closely, first in the eyes, then quickly down the length of her body, lingering for a time on the scar that peeked out from beneath her tunic.

  ‘How long have you been enslaved?’ he asked.

  ‘Nine inundations, Master. Since the age of twelve.’

  ‘Then you are the same age as the exiled Queen.’ Wen glanced nervously around the empty brew house. It was dangerous to speak of Queen Cleopatra in Alexandria. Her husband-brother Ptolemy was currently preparing to attack her somewhere in the desert. ‘You have a regal air about you,’ the man continued jestingly. ‘Are you sure you are not a queen yourself?’

  ‘I am as far from a queen as a woman can get, Master.’

  ‘That is not true. The roles and riches of this life are but—oh, how does that old saying go?’

  ‘The roles and riches of this life are but illusions,’ Wen said. ‘They matter not.’ It was a saying the High Priestess of Hathor had often repeated to her, though Wen had not heard it since she was a child.

  The man’s face split with a grin. ‘Will you take me to your master?’

  ‘My master is away,’ Wen lied, as he had instructed her to do on such occasions. He despised tax collectors and would surely beat Wen if she let this man through to him.

  But in that instant, her master emerged from his quarters and heralded the stranger, and soon the two men had disappeared into his office. When they re-emerged, she noticed that the coin purse no longer dangled at the man’s waist.

  ‘Serve this honourable traveller what he requests,’ her master told her, a rare smile beguiling his face, ‘and do whatever he asks. He has paid in full.’

  Do whatever he asks? She felt her ka—her sacred soul—begin to wither. Her master was not a kind man, but she had always believed him to be decent. It appeared that decency had been only in her mind, for he had apparently sold Wen’s body for his own profit.

  I could just run, she thought. I could dash out the doorway and on to the streets.

  But the streets were more dangerous than ever. A Roman general had lately landed in Alexandria—a man they called Caesar—and was conducting diplomatic meetings with Pharaoh Ptolemy in the Royal Quarter. The General travelled with a legion of soldiers fresh from battle. They wandered Alexandria’s streets in search of diversions. If Wen were not captured by slave catchers, then surely she would be captured by one of Caesar’s soldiers seeking female company.

  ‘What do you ask of me, then?’ Wen whispered, speaking her words to the floor. She studied its cracked tiles, as if she might somehow mend the rifts in them.

  But the man said nothing, nor did he attempt to lead her away. Instead, his stretched out his arms and held his hands open. ‘You need not fear me,’ he said in Egyptian, her native tongue. ‘I am not here to take, but to give.’

  Then, as if by magic, a large coin appeared between his fingers. He toyed with it for several moments, then tossed it in her direction. Her heart beat with excitement when she perceived its formidable weight. But when she squinted to determine its worth, she saw that it was stamped with an image of the exiled Queen.

  ‘I am afraid that I cannot accept this generous gift,’ she said carefully in Greek. ‘Coins like this one have been forbidden by Pharaoh Ptolemy since Queen Cleopatra was exiled.’

  ‘Then you view Cleopatra as the rightful ruler of Egypt?’

  Wen felt her jaw tense. It was a question too dangerous to answer. Cleopatra had been the first in her family of Gre
ek Pharaohs to ever learn the Egyptian language and the first of her line to have worshipped the sacred bulls. When the River had failed to rise, Cleopatra had devalued the currency to purchase grain for the starving peasants and had saved thousands of lives. In only two years since she had assumed the throne, the young Queen had shown a reverence and love for Egypt unheard of in her line of Pharaohs.

  Of course Wen viewed Cleopatra as the rightful ruler of Egypt. But she would certainly never admit it to a stranger, especially in the heart of pro-Ptolemy Alexandria. ‘No, ah, not at all,’ she continued in Greek.

  ‘You are a terrible liar, my dear,’ the man said in Egyptian, ‘though I sense much boldness in you.’ He flashed another toothy grin. ‘A cat with the heart of a lioness.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am Sol,’ he said, sketching a bow.

  ‘I am—’

  ‘Wen-Nefer,’ he interrupted. ‘I already know your name, Mistress Wen, and much else about you, though I admit that you are more beautiful than I had anticipated.’

  Wen-Nefer. That was her name, though her master never used it. Nor did the clients of the brew house. They preferred you there, or girl. It had been so long since she had heard her own name aloud that she had nearly forgotten it.

  ‘I suppose you cannot read,’ said Sol, producing a scroll from beneath his belt, ‘so I will tell you that this scroll attests to your conscription by Cleopatra Thea Philopator the Seventh, Lady of the Two Lands, Rightful Queen of Egypt.’

  His words became muffled—replaced by the loud beat of her heart inside her ears. He traced his finger down rows of angular Greek script and pointed to a waxen stamp. It depicted the same queenly cartouche that Wen had observed on the coin.

  ‘Your master has been paid,’ Sol continued, ‘and has released you to me. I have been instructed to escort you directly to Queen Cleopatra’s camp near Pelousion. Our driver awaits us outside.’

  He was halfway through the open doorway when he turned to regard her motionless figure. ‘I see,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I must have been mistaken about you. It appears that you support Ptolemy’s claim to the Horus Throne.’