A Wedding For The Scandalous Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon
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does seem very inoffensive and quiet now,’ Kate said and Isabella could see her acute mind working on Lady Carrowe’s unfortunate situation.
If the lady had even one more supporter among the haut ton, she might be less oppressed and her daughters more welcome in polite society. Isabella stared down at the empty garden where Wulf and the youngest Kentons had disappeared from view. She half-expected to see a mark in the air, a magic rune perhaps to tell unwary females danger lay ahead.
‘You have given a good deal of thought to Mr FitzDevelin’s shocking birth and stormy upbringing during your engagement to his brother, Izzie,’ Kate said airily.
‘No more than I would about anyone in such a situation,’ she replied and fought not to cross her fingers against another huge lie, because not a single night had gone by since she met him when he didn’t haunt her sleeping and waking.
‘Of course not, but whatever you think of him he’s here and can’t have come all this way to see anyone but you. In your shoes I’d hear him out before Edmund and Hugh chase him away.’
‘I doubt he’ll go or stay unless he wants to,’ Isabella muttered, but Kate was right. She didn’t want her overprotective male relatives running him off before she found out what he wanted. ‘Can you keep them busy long enough for me to be rid of him before they find out?’
‘I’m in no fit state to stop anyone doing whatever they want, but if Hugh and Edmund think we’re having a feminine coze about babies and lying-in, they won’t interrupt unless the house is on fire or someone falls off the roof. We can go to my boudoir and tell my maid to be sure we’re not disturbed, then you can use the garden stairs to go and find Mr FitzDevelin and I can escape the fuss Edmund will surround me with until I’m safely delivered.’
‘He loves you, Kate.’
‘I know and I love him, but I can’t take a step without having to account for it to someone who has better things to do if they’d only get on with them.’
‘Not as far as he’s concerned they haven’t and you’d be mortally offended if he went off to discuss crops with his tenants or horses with his cronies and left you to birth his child alone.’
‘I would and quite right, too.’
‘Stop being contrary and go and have a rest, then. Edmund will need to be revived with smelling salts if you don’t stop behaving as if you’re about to throw a trifling entertainment instead of giving birth to his second child.’
‘If you promise to stop being wise about the rest of us and look at your own motives and feelings, I might.’
‘There truly is a first time for everything, then,’ Isabella said crossly.
‘Anyone would think I was the contrary one of the three of us,’ her sister said as if she really thought she wasn’t. ‘And stop looking like that, because Miranda and I know you’re wilful as a donkey even if you fool so many with that angelic face.’
‘I almost wish I’d stayed in London to be gossiped about by strangers now.’
‘Really? When there must be so many more sharp eyes to watch your assignations with Mr FitzDevelin when you’re in town?’
‘Nonsense, I’ve never met him in town and this isn’t an assignation.’
‘You would have to know he was coming for it to be one of those, wouldn’t you?’ Kate said as if she was quite convinced Isabella had been waiting for him to catch up with her ever since she broke her engagement to his brother and how much more wrong-headed could one woman get?
Wulf cursed himself for not being able to resist the shine of tears in a little boy’s eyes when he begged for help to catch up with his big sister. He’d been excluded from so much as a boy that the little rascal couldn’t have chosen a better bid for sympathy. Yet what would such a young girl think when confronted by a strange man with her brother aloft, especially one this unkempt and in need of a shave? His windswept, travel-stained appearance would probably terrify her and exhaustion was making it easier for him to frown than smile.
‘How did the infernal brat persuade you to hunt me down?’ this girl demanded when she saw her brother riding triumphantly on a stranger’s shoulders. ‘I do wish people would ignore him when he pretends to be an ill-treated waif. Every time someone believes him it only encourages him to keep doing it,’ she went on and he should have known this sturdy little rogue couldn’t have a shrinking violet as a sister.
‘Thank you for the advice. I’ll bear it in mind if I’m not invited again,’ he managed to reply with a straight face. He had ridden here too hard to get this over with. Lack of sleep and a decent meal must be making him light-headed, because there wasn’t anything here to laugh about.
‘We don’t live here, so that won’t do any good,’ she told him with a resigned sigh that almost set him off again.
‘I promise to learn from my mistakes, then,’ Wulf said, swinging his giggling passenger down so the boy could run into a clever lavender labyrinth and gallop its paths as if he’d had enough energy to run from Herefordshire to the distant Welsh Mountains all along.
‘He’s a horrid brat and should be beaten at least once a day for the good of all our souls, but who the devil are you?’ the girl demanded as if she’d only just taken in his windswept, bearlike appearance and realised he wasn’t the sort of visitor a grand house like Cravenhill Park usually attracted by daylight.
‘I’m Wulf FitzDevelin; who the devil are you?’ he replied, wondering if the young men of the ton had any idea what a whirlwind was going to hit them when she was old enough to be presented at Court.
‘I’m Miss Sophia Kenton, because my older sister Julia got to be Miss Kenton when our aunt married Mr Sandbatch, and Wulf’s not a proper name for a gentleman.’
‘I’m not a proper gentleman, but it’s short for Wulfric if that helps.’
‘He’s my horse,’ young Master Kenton shouted breathlessly from the labyrinth and this time Wulf did laugh out loud. The sound sent a pair of crows cawing into the treetops and broke the almost uncanny peace of this place.
‘I’d have thrown him off a lot sooner if I were you,’ Sophia said with a frown at her little brother.
‘I really don’t think you would,’ Wulf said, seeing reluctant affection in the girl’s eyes and contrasting it with the open dislike in the eyes of his two eldest half-siblings when he’d been a scrubby brat himself.
‘Probably not, but I’d be tempted,’ the girl said with a wry smile.
‘It is you, Mr FitzDevelin; I thought my eyes were deceiving me. What a very unexpected surprise,’ Isabella Alstone’s cool voice said from behind them.
Wulf felt his heart thunder; instinct should have warned him she was there. The sound made him feel as if parts of him he didn’t want to think about right now could burst into flames. ‘Good day, Miss Alstone,’ he said flatly.
Somehow he managed to meet her dark blue eyes calmly and she obviously couldn’t imagine why he was polluting the clean air of her brother-in-law’s fine estate and ought to go back where he belonged. In the gutter presumably, he concluded and hoped a cynical half-smile would divert her from the ravenous hunger roaring through him like the hottest and most ill-timed lightning.
‘Is my brother-in-law expecting you?’ she asked as if she had no idea how she made red-blooded males feel by being so perfectly, femininely arrogant. All he wanted right now was to kiss her and it took too much effort to recall why he’d come. She’d jilted Magnus—Gus, as he’d always been to Wulf—and he’d done so much damage between them already even the idea was madness and he should be ashamed of himself.
‘I doubt