Scandalous Brides

by Annette Blair

  Yes, he had gotten Alexandra safe away, but Chesterfield’s parting volley, echoing in Hawk’s brain like a death knell, made him question every decision he had made since his father’s death.

  Until today, he thought he could not fail Alex any worse than he already had, but suppose he was wrong? Suppose he had just broken her heart by stopping her from marrying the man she loved?

  Could she love Chesterfield? It hardly seemed possible, given their dissimilarities. Then again, she might have changed, as he certainly did.

  He had all but died and risen from the dead. Dying changed a man. War changed him the more. There were his scars, to begin with; how would Alexandra feel, once she saw the likes of them in the light of day?

  She might take one look and run screaming into Chesterfield’s arms.

  He and Alex had certainly switched places, and in more than looks, Hawk feared, for with his return, he might now become the thorn in her side.

  And what would he do with her, now that he had her? Not that he did not know precisely what he wished to do. He was not so broken that he did not want to be her husband in every way, though desire and action were two entirely different matters. As were desire and duty.

  Or trust and honor.

  Hawk slipped a wisp of his wife’s rich nutmeg hair behind her ear and examined her in the fading rays of afternoon light filtering through the uncurtained carriage window.

  During her growing up years, none of Alexandra Huntington’s features had seemed to match. Her eyes were too big and too bright for her small pale face. Her eyebrows, like unmatched wings, appeared drawn by an angry hand, brows one wanted to trace with a fingertip. Hawk did so now, amazed to see how much better they fit, nearly two years and one war, later.

  Her mouth was still too wide, her lips too full, her nose elegant but tip-tilted. Yet the amalgamate had become all of a piece, falling into symmetrical and harmonious placement, all of a sudden, making of his ill-favored hoyden, a beauty, striking, and too remarkable not to be kissed.

  Like the beast his scars proclaimed him, Hawk wanted to awaken the slumbering princess in just that way, or lay siege to her tower fortress. Or was beauty storming his beastly rogue’s lair, even in sleep?

  Difficult to tell which tale fit. Hawk knew only that in this marriage he had created from whole cloth, he must take care not to play the jackal and claim her for himself.

  Rogue wolf, after all, was the role for which he had been born and bred. But Alexandra’s role, and which of them would maintain the sturdier fortress, remained to be seen.

  He already knew that there would be no happily ever after for them.

  Still, to Hawk’s surprise, something akin to anticipation began to take root deep within him. He looked forward to every minute he would spend in Alexandra’s life, for however short the duration.

  His decision to give her an annulment and set her free had been difficult. But not consummating their marriage might be easier than he expected, given his physical condition, and her penchant for staid, lumbering bridegrooms.

  On the other hand, the course upon which he was determined might also be fraught with peril, for he could never tell Alex he was giving her up for her own good. If he did, she would fight him, rather than leave him, for she was in the habit of placing the welfare of others before her own. And he could not be so cruel as to pretend dislike, or worse, disinterest.

  He could not dispirit so bright a flame.

  A low, simmering flame, capable of flaring into blaze at any time, he remembered as he watched her sleep.

  Unable to keep from stoking her fire and awakening her, Hawk touched his lips to hers in that age old, mythical rite. But Beauty turned the tale and awoke her astonished beast by deepening the kiss and bringing him to alert and rigid attention. A startling and extraordinary turn of events, in every respect, for Alex was exceeding eager, and he was sexually aroused for the first time since the battle of Waterloo.

  Impatient to prove his prowess and taste her once more, Hawk parted her soft, sweet lips with his own, taking the kiss to a deeper, more intimate level, both testing himself and gauging his wife’s reaction.

  Alex moaned. She sighed. She moved restlessly against him, enhancing his physical reaction. But rather than rejoice over his unexpected progress, Hawk worried about the lessons her blackguard of a bridegroom might have taught her.

  He did not remember the imp kissing with such fervor before. Not that he had kissed her above twice, and then, in a brotherly fashion, except on the day of their wedding, when he had kissed her with promise, before saying goodbye.

  How blind he had been, how foolish, kissing scores of others, when the flower of his youth could kiss like a dream.

  Still, Hawk would give his fortune—if he were still in possession of it—to know the name of the man who had taught his wife this exquisite lesson.

  To his delight, Alex sighed, then her lids fluttered, and her eyes, bright and soft as turquoise velvet, opened at last. For a moment, she appeared, for all the world, as if she were that princess of legend, waking from a years-long sleep… her eyes growing wider and wider as she regarded him.

  As if seeking a touchstone to reality, she scanned the interior of the carriage with her gaze, the passing scenery, then his face, again, taking in and examining his every flaw.

  Hawk watched a range of telling expressions flit across her amazingly unguarded features, though, not a one of them revealed her revulsion or disgust.

  He supposed she must need to verify what might seem like a dream, but in the verification, her eyes awash with unshed tears, she appeared less certain as the silent seconds passed, but more curious.

  Not fearful, nor pitying, but not best pleased either.

  Then her frown deepened and her eyes turned to blue flames, and she lashed out and struck him square in the jaw. “Dead,” she shouted, her trembling voice a rusty rasp. “We thought you were dead. How dare you let us believe it.”

  “Alexandra, Alex. Shh, calm down.”

  “A year.” She smacked his shoulders. “A blasted year. No. Longer than that. How could you?” She slapped his arms as he tried to brace her. “Where the blazes have you been?”

  When Alex kicked her dead husband’s shin, he winced. But when she smacked his thigh with a fist, all color left his face. Pain etched the harsh angularity of his firm jaw and ashen features, further whitening the new lines carved there. He had suffered—she recognized that now—and her wrath pricked her.

  “You lived while we wept because you died.” Broken and elated by the shock of his return, Alex begged to understand. “Why did you not tell us?”

  “I was not capable, not for some long time.”

  “Because you were wounded?”

  He nodded.

  “Unable to speak?”

  “For the most part, no.”

  “You could speak?”

  “When I was conscious.”

  “You were unconscious for a year?” Her voice rose.

  He winced.

  “You lost your memory, then?”

  Denial, again.

  Alex wanted to strike him every time he refused an offered excuse. “Someone should have written to us.” She shoved his shoulder. “I am so…” Her sob took her by surprise, fast and wild and from the depths of her soul. She grasped his lapels to anchor herself in a careening world. And when that was not enough, she clutched him about the neck, afraid she would shatter, if he did not hold her together.

  He held tight.

  The storm did not last long. Alex was glad, for rage was exhausting. “I am furious with you,” she said after a calm moment.

  “I know you are. It is no more than I expect.”

  “And deserve.” She accepted his handkerchief.

  Hawk nodded. “I do deserve it. Beat me, if you will, but mind my left leg… and my face.” There, he had said it, Hawk thought with relief. He brought his ugliness into the open.

  At once solemn and assessing, Alex reached toward
his battered and badly mended face, stopped, and pulled her hand back, as if he might burst into flame … as if touching him repulsed her.

  Hawk rejected anguish, and an overwhelming need to crush her in his embrace once more, and donned his old devil-may-care mask. “What, Alexandra? Am I not still a handsome rogue? Does my countenance not please you?”

  She frowned and reached again, hesitated again. And after too long a time to be borne, she extended her hand the entire distance between them, to finger a coil of the overlong hair lapping at his shoulders, unadulterated amazement overtaking her.

  Hawk braced himself against the grateful quiver that her touch, even on his hair, engendered. “It’s beastly,” he said. “I know. Uncivilized, like me. If you find it in your heart to forgive me, can you tame me, do you think?” Would she even care to?

  “I may never forgive you.”

  “I guessed as much, but I am the eternal optimist.”

  “You are the eternal charmer, but you will not charm your way back into my good graces.”

  “I applaud your perception and your determination.”

  Alex shrugged and fingered his overlong hair. “You remind me of a cat,” she said. “A night-stalking lion, jungle-bred and ravenous, but I am your huntress.”

  “Odd, you remind me less of a cat’s doom than its plaything.”

  “A mouse?” she said with more than a trace of indignance, her defense at the ready, if he did not miss his guess.

  “Catnip,” he corrected.

  “Oh.” Her turquoise eyes widened, making her appear even more beautiful, coy, flirtatious, yet naïve, unmistakably in need of a good loving, God help him.

  The notion brought his body to hard attention once more. Rejoicing inwardly over the reaction, Hawk settled his delectable wife more intimately against him to enhance and savor the torture, her breasts no more than a stroke and a kiss away.

  She moved a lock of his hair from his eyes, her warm breath bathing the scars on his face like a blessing, and Hawk caught her familiar, violet scent with a new rush of expectation.

  As he sat stunned and entranced, she smoothed his beard, which shrouded the worst of his scars, and all but cupped his face.

  In that instant, Hawk ached to turn his head and set his lips to her palm, knowing full well that if he did so, a slap might be his for the taking. Her very touch unmanned him, made him want to rush dangerously forward.

  Such a mad turnabout—the wicked-as-sin Duke of Hawksworth, moonstruck, over the girl he once treated like a pesky pup.

  But the paradox was not new. Alexandra, herself, the memory of her, laughing, teasing, driving him daft, had kept him going, kept him fighting for his life during those endless, pain-wracked months after Waterloo.

  And all that time, a world and a war away, a lifetime away, when he still expected to die of his wounds, he was becoming enthralled with his own wife.

  “I like it,” she said—of his beard, he presumed, for she was stroking it—but he was too taken with her touch to focus on anything else. “It makes you look a danger,” she said, catching his attention, as she fingered his scar.

  “I am a danger; make no mistake—jungle-bred and rapacious, as you say. And well you should remember and keep a safe distance.”

  But before he could garner her promise, Hawk was forced to close his eyes, as he entered hell, or heaven, for she had begun to trace the red, uneven welt with a gentle touch, from beside his eye, along its raised and puckered surface, down his cheek and into the depths of his beard, where it disappeared near his chin.

  At the wonder of her touch, remorse rose in him, chiding him and ordering him to make amends. He could not keep her—he must not—for she merited better than a battered hulk for a husband, a man who would walk away with no glance back. An undeserving fool who knew not what he had, but sought instead what he could never have—his father’s approval.

  Why did he not appreciate the people who cared about him, until he all but lost them? His nieces, Beatrix and Claudia, his Uncle Giff, Alex’s Aunt Hildy, and Alexandra, herself.

  They were his family, though all of them, especially Alex, might have done better to remember him as he was, rather than see what he had become. A beast. Ugly. Disfigured.

  “For your sake,” Alex said. “I am sorry your scars forced you to join the flawed human race, but you are still handsome in my eyes, and still the Bryceson I hero-worshipped.” With a fingertip, she soothed the hideous knot of discolored flesh nearest his brow. “Does it pain you—other than when you are rightfully beaten for your thoughtlessness?”

  Hawk opened his eyes and feasted upon her, struck anew by her beauty, but more by her words. He had not felt like Bryceson for a long, long time… neither had he felt anything near human.

  Would she understand if he said his inhumanity was the reason he had not contacted her?

  He covered her hand against his face with his own. “At this moment,” he said, “even the memory of pain escapes me.”

  “Your leg?”

  Hawk shook his head, denying weakness until the end. But she gave him a disbelieving look, and he knew that with Alex, prevarication was useless. He shrugged. “On occasion.”

  She tried to move from his lap then, but he held her in place, his hands at her hips. “No, stay. I am becoming fond of the ache; it is far better than feeling nothing, and I like you here.”

  Her incredible blue-green eyes widened, swam, and Hawk scolded himself for the admission even as he agonized over what she must be thinking.

  THREE

  ALEXANDRA WAS IN A fair way to screaming as emotions bombarded her from every quarter.

  Joy—for here, miraculously, sat her husband, back from the dead, the man she had been unable to forget, even during her wedding to another.

  Sadness—for the time they had lost and the pain she had glimpsed, deep and abiding, behind his winking jest. Yes, his legendary perfection had been startlingly altered, but he had survived, for which she would remain forever grateful.

  But fury hardened her heart as well. She had taken a great deal of satisfaction in pummeling the arrogant, marble-hearted rogue to pudding, though she had not expected to hurt him, which in turn hurt her.

  So many people had mourned him, the very family he had all but deserted. Alex sighed. Yes, he had married her for mercenary reasons and left her at the church, yet her anguish was nothing to theirs.

  But he was alive, after all, and perhaps the future could be set to rights, though a loveless marriage had never been her intent, not with Bryce at any rate. She had once naively thought that her love for him would be enough to carry them through life, but now, more than ever, she was uncertain. Despite the fact that he had kept his survival from her for far too long, she could think only that he was alive, against all hope.

  To prove she was not dreaming, Alex placed her hand on the coarse fabric of his frockcoat to feel his warm, thickly muscled arm beneath, and her heart leapt as her spirit rejoiced. Alive. Her husband was alive and holding her in a way she had always imagined, in her deepest, most secret dreams, except…

  Chesterfield would not take kindly to being set aside, especially after the bargain they had struck. This time, she had been willing to marry without love, in order to support the family she and Bryce had all but failed.

  But Judson Broderick, Viscount Chesterfield, was a powerful and persuasive man. For agreeing to wed him, she had accepted a favor in advance, thereby granting him a hold over her, the stronger for her having cast him aside.

  Bryce would not appreciate the irony. But there was nothing she could do, if he did not. She had thought he was dead, after all. Besides, he might never find out, if luck remained with her.

  “Other than your justified anger at my, ah, tardiness, you have not said how you feel about this unexpected turn,” Bryce said, asking for what she dare not give—a glimpse into her heart. If he knew how she really felt, how much she loved him, had always loved him, he would flee in panic, bad leg or not. She
knew him that well. “Despite my anger, I am glad you survived. Of course, I am.”

  “Of course.” His scowl still had the power to set tinder to flame. “I suppose I do not blame you,” he said, “for preferring to be a new and beloved bride, rather than a reclaimed and convenient wife.”

  Convenient. Ouch. So, it was laid bare. In the open. Irrefutable. Theirs had been a marriage of convenience. It hurt more to hear it from him than to suspect it, or hear secondhand.

  Alexandra sat straighter, hurt overriding embarrassment, but before long, ire replaced pain, and she was grateful. “Do you think to take me for granted as you have done for the past year and a half, ever since we wed and you fled?” His turn to wince. Good. “As you tolerated me when we were growing up, while I trod in your wake, a devoted pup after its master? If such is the case, then you are right; I had rather be Chesterfield’s cherished bride.”

  With as much dignity as she could muster, given the tardiness of her move, Alex shifted from her husband’s lap to the seat opposite, folding her arms before her and allowing several silent moments to pass, until she remembered that she should not show her hand.

  She sighed and forced herself to relax. “We are married for good or ill,” she said, setting herself and her clothes to rights. “And neither of us has a choice in the matter. If we held sway over life, we would be God.” What a foolish statement, she thought. With Hawk’s return, God had granted her everything.

  Nevertheless, she pinned her wayward husband with steely regard. “I will not be overlooked or under-appreciated. Not by you or anyone. Do so at your peril.”

  “If I do, will you beat me?”

  Behind the jest, Alex saw an easing of his anguish, though she dare not let down her guard. “If you force my hand, Bryceson Wakefield, I will… go and live in sin with Chesterfield.”

  “The devil, you say!” The very demon flared of a sudden in the fire of Hawk’s eyes. Jealousy, she would name it, green and sizzling to a turn. “I see you have not changed your rule-breaking ways,” he said, as close to a sulk as one could imagine on a heartless rogue.