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‘Whatever side you catch him on I’d wager my best bonnet debutantes’ hearts beat nineteen to the dozen when they set eyes on the two of them. Their elder sisters will do more than sigh over a rogue like that and I expect he has to fight them off, if he’s careless enough to venture into Carrowe House at the right time for the Countess to be at home to callers.’
‘If you weren’t such a country wife nowadays, you’d recall not even the most dashing of the young matrons are brave enough to visit her ladyship openly and they’d be idiots to accept a dare like him even if they did,’ Isabella said with a fierce frown at the man’s back as he strode away.
‘Or so besotted they couldn’t help themselves,’ Kate suggested with another overt glance at that powerfully lean masculine figure as his long legs ate up landscaped gardens and a much sneakier sidelong look at Isabella.
The inner voice she was trying to ignore whispered Kate was right: he did improve the scenery even on such a shining spring day. Familiar little demons were whispering in her ear and how dare he wake them up when she’d tried so hard to silence them? The long, sinful nights in his bed her inner fool yearned for wouldn’t be as wonderful as his leanly honed body and moody looks promised. No, of course they wouldn’t; not now he despised her. No point risking her all for an itch she wanted to scratch so badly it still kept her awake at nights.
She tried to divert herself by wondering if his mother had loved his father or simply wanted him. Lady Carrowe never refuted her husband’s assertion Wulf was her by-blow, but had she thought what illicit passion could cost when she lay with her lover long enough to get with child? If he was anything like Wulf, she probably couldn’t see past the blind haze of wanting and so it was a good thing Wulf FitzDevelin disliked and distrusted Isabella Alstone so much, wasn’t it?
‘He’s probably here to lecture me about his brother,’ she told her sister crossly and at least he was oblivious to her fast-beating heart and weak knees as she followed his every move with hungry eyes.
‘Hmmm, well, he looks to have made a firm friend of young Kit. Sophia won’t be so pleased her little brother caught up with his help, or should I call it endurance?’
‘Young Kit is a force of nature,’ Isabella agreed absently.
‘You could call it that,’ Kate replied as they watched man and boy close in on Sophia, ‘but your FitzDevelin is one as well and grown-up with it.’
‘He’s not my FitzDevelin. I wouldn’t give him a ha’penny worth of goodwill if he stooped to beg it from me and he never will.’
‘Why ever not?’ Kate asked so innocently Isabella bit back a groan.
‘We hardly know each other and don’t like what we do know,’ she said flatly.
‘Because he’s the Countess of Carrowe’s by-blow and they whisper dark scandals about him and all the lovers he’s had who ought to know better?’
‘He had no say in the sins his mother and father committed before he was born,’ Isabella said absently as she tried not to think about all those bored society matrons rumour credited him with seducing. Kate was probably right and they lined up to be seduced and that was one more reason not to join in.
‘They say the Earl made sure his wife’s by-blow got an education and would have set him up in a profession if your Wulf hadn’t run away. Kind of him to raise his wife’s bastard, but he didn’t get much thanks, did he?’
‘Kind? Do you really think so?’ Isabella asked absently.
She was busy watching Wulf move so fluidly he might actually be a wolf padding after his prey if he had another pair of lithe legs and a fine pelt to go with those ice-blue eyes. For a hungry moment she wished she was at his side, close enough to admire the ease of sleek muscle over elegant bones and wonder at his total focus as he ruthlessly tracked his quarry. Except he wasn’t a predator and she wasn’t fascinated, so it was as well she wasn’t close enough to fall under his spell.
‘You don’t?’ Kate said, sounding intrigued.
‘The Earl isn’t a kind man, Kate. He would have sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation and divorced her if he was.’
‘She 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?
Chapter Three (#ud99a4adf-cff9-5100-b1a0-9da29e7a3d09)
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 Lord Shuttleworth has the least idea I’m here, but you should have known I’d come, Miss Alstone,’ he said stiffly.
‘Why would I? There’s no reason for you to intrude on a private family gathering and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw you walking up the Broad Walk with young Kit on your shoulders,’ Isabella said stiffly.
Now she was faced with the real man her silly heart was racing as if she’d run all the way from the house to simper at him. She half-wished he was still on the other side of the Atlantic, building the new life he’d claimed to want when he left England. If he’d stayed away, she wouldn’t have to face the fact he still stirred her as no other man ever had. She wouldn’t have to feel the Isabella he woke up that night straining against the leash.
‘You didn’t send your brother-in-law to throw me out, though, did you?’ he challenged in the husky undertone she found so ridiculously enchanting that moon-mad night.
‘I don’t want to embarrass my family, Mr FitzDevelin,’ she said primly.
‘I presume you are part of Miss Alstone’s family, Miss Sophia? Am I making you uncomfortable?’
‘Yes, I am and, no, you’re not. I’m far too interested in how Aunt Izzie knows you and what you’ve done to make her glare daggers at you. I don’t think Kit has ever been embarrassed about anything in his life, so I shouldn’t bother to ask him.’
‘Oh, please run along, Sophia, and take young Kit with you,’ Isabella interrupted before this meeting turned into an even bigger farce.
‘I can’t; it would be improper to leave you alone with a strange gentleman, Aunt Izzie. It’s our duty to chaperon you,’ Sophia said so virtuously Isabella frowned to say she was overdoing it and should do as she was bid for once.
‘Maybe so, but show your little brother the way to the middle of the lavender labyrinth and at least try to mind your own business while you’re doing it,’ she said, in lieu of Sophia turning into a proper young lady by a minor miracle.
Sophia crossed her arms and stared back as if Isabella was the one being difficult. ‘For that I should stay here and insist on listening to every word.’
‘Go away, Sophia. Please?’ Isabella gave up trying to reason her out of eavesdropping. ‘Please?’ she cajoled as she was desperate to get this over and Wulf back on the road before Edmund or Hugh knew he was here.
‘Oh, very well, but you owe me half-a-dozen favours.’
‘And she’ll make me pay,’ Isabella muttered gloomily once Sophia demanded little Kit’s attention until he found something more interesting to do.
‘You don’t treat her as an irritating little girl, though, do you?’ he asked as if he was surprised.
‘If she had any idea how difficult being grown-up is, Sophia wouldn’t be in such a hurry to be one.’
‘You find being a society beauty burdensome, then, Miss Alstone?’
‘I do when people throw it at me like an accusation, Mr FitzDevelin.’
‘I apologise,’ he said impatiently.
‘I doubt it, but you must have come here to speak to me, since you don’t know my family and I doubt if you’re a business connection of my brother-in-law. A strange man on the strange horse I assume is resting in my brother-in-law’s stables as we speak won’t go unnoticed long, however much you tipped the groom to look the other way. My brother-in-law will want a good reason why you came here uninvited now his family are arriving for Eastertide and my sister is in an interesting condition.’
‘Before I’m grabbed by the scruff of my neck and thrown out I admit I came to plead with you.’
‘You? Plead with me?’ Isabella exclaimed, although he’d come a long way to play a trick if he was lying. ‘I doubt you even know how.’
‘Then I must learn, mustn’t I?’ he said impatiently. ‘Magnus is a broken man,’ he accused with such fury in his ice-blue eyes he must think it was her fault. ‘He’s shockingly thin and can’t shake off the influenza I’m told he contracted at Christmas. He needs you. I can’t imagine why when you kiss strange men at the drop of a hat and threw him over when you got tired of being engaged to marry him.’
‘Please don’t bother stretching your poor, underused imagination any further, then, because I’m not the woman your half-brother needs.’
‘You really are stony-hearted, aren’t you?’
‘Apparently,’ she said calmly.
Letting him know his accusation hurt as if a knife had been plunged into her chest would be even more stupid than finding the air at Cravenhill Park fresher and the sunlight brighter because he was here, even while he was flinging insults at her. If she had any sense, she’d turn her back on him and walk away; prove how indifferent she was to him and his misconceptions. A foolish part of her was far too pleased he was here to do that, despite the fury in his gaze as he let it slide over her.
‘What will get me past the ice between you and nobodies like me so I can reason with you?’ he asked and began to pace, as if that was the only way he could stop himself shaking her.
‘Nothing you can say,’ she told him steadily and refused to let him know he’d hurt her. His picture of events was so wide of the mark she’d laugh if she wasn’t feeling so sick.
‘And I dare say you’d turn his life upside down and treat him like a fool if you did agree to wed him after all, but even that would be better than watching him waste away for the lack of you in his life.’
‘I shall not and certainly not to please you. Please me by going away and avoiding me like the plague from now on, Mr FitzDevelin. Your brother and I had our own very good reasons not to go ahead with our wedding, but not one of them is any of your business.’
‘Yes, it is. I got back to England a week ago to find Magnus half the man he was when I left and he’s worth a hundred of either of us. I won’t let you set him at naught because his devotion has become tiresome.’
‘Find a fresh horse and go home, because you’ve had a wasted journey. Your insults won’t change a thing and next time you set out on a wild goose chase you should talk to your brother about it before you begin.’
‘He won’t talk to me,’ the wrong-headed idiot mumbled as if he didn’t want to admit he’d failed.
‘Neither will I,’ she said quietly.
Was it right to enjoy the blaze of anger and frustration lighting his eyes to purest ice blue before he turned to pace up and down the path again to stop himself taking her back to London by force for his brother like a juicy bone someone stole?
‘He obviously loves you to distraction,’ Wulf FitzDevelin threw out as he paced close enough to vent his fury without Sophia hearing. ‘Heaven knows why when you treat him like a whining dog you can kick aside when you’re weary of it.’
‘I don’t kick dogs. Your arguments are so persuasive I’m surprised you’re not employed as a diplomat, Mr Wulf,’ she retaliated sweetly. She was stoking an already scorching fire and it felt wickedly enjoyable as well as oddly powerful to bait him when he couldn’t lay a finger on her without having to explain it to a pair of children and her furious male relatives, but she really should stop it. ‘You’ll scare the children and as they’re Kentons it takes a lot of doing.’
He frowned even more fiercely and looked over at Sophia, who was staring at him while little Kit ran round the maze making war whoops as if he witnessed fiery adult battles of will every day of the week. He might well, given who his parents were and the fact they were notorious for enjoying a good argument. This wasn’t a good argument, though, was it? Still, Wulf looked a little sheepish when he turned back to her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, as if every word cost a fortune.
‘Are you? Now I’ve seen your true colours I’m not surprised Magnus doesn’t confide in you.’
‘We were close as real brothers until he got engaged to you. He’s been closed as an oyster ever since and now just drinks and looks miserable as sin whenever someone mentions your name. You broke off the engagement days before you were due to marry; you’ve broken his heart.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic; it was two months until our wedding and the invitations hadn’t even been sent out.’
‘Be grateful we’re being watched by innocents, Miss Alstone. I’m so tempted to find out if there’s red blood in your veins I doubt much else would hold me back.’
