A Wicked Lord at the Wedding Read online

  “May I offer evidence?” he asked, his smile darkly inviting.

  She sighed. Her heart pounded at the leashed sensuality in his eyes. He wouldn’t dare to kiss her. She would never let him. But somehow she heard herself asking, “How?”

  His lips slowly pressed to hers. So far, so good. Sweet. Quite unlike a kiss one might imagine a wicked baron inflicting. She felt awash with a ridiculous sense of relief. Then something changed. Slowly that first kiss transformed into a potent eroticism that she never wanted to end. Her illusion of safety fled. His firm mouth demanded entry into hers. She unfolded her arms. Her fingers felt the hilt of his saber.

  Hard. Cold steel.

  His tongue teased at hers. He was holding her—no, suddenly she was holding his upper arms. Mercy. No wonder those stolen brides fainted. Not all of them could have fallen unwillingly. She should never have flirted with him in the first place. His tongue delved deeper into her mouth. Her mind spun. So this was what all those warnings meant. A woman bewitched lost her power to see what was right in front of her. His hands molded her to his hard body, a novel delight she could not deny. But in the next instant those strong hands conjured urges and aches that no lady would ever admit aloud.

  He stopped.

  A benediction, she told herself, which didn’t explain why she felt bereft or why the dust motes that quivered around them glimmered like proof of magic. She backed away from him. She had never felt this disarmed before.

  “Tell me,” he said, his grin vulnerable and yet assured. “What do you think?”

  She stared up into his hard, beautiful face. “I haven’t decided.”

  “When will you let me know?”

  Her father walked into the station at that moment, his gaze shrewdly appraising. “If it’s a prognosis you want, Boscastle, then as the senior surgeon I regret to inform you that it is rather dire for young rogues.”

  Sebastien blinked. “Am I known to be a rogue, sir?”

  “Do you have an injury?” the older man asked frankly.

  A flush crept across Sebastien’s broad cheekbones. “Well, I got hit last week by—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then get out. You have a sterling reputation. Let’s not ruin it.”

  “Yes, sir. My apologies, sir. And to Miss Prescott.”

  He glanced from Eleanor to her father, pivoted, and walked straight into the other soldier who had been waiting outside for Dr. Prescott and the ever-desired glance from his dark-haired daughter. The heavyset subaltern from Surrey drew up his shoulders to stare around Sebastien’s taller figure.

  “Get out of here,” Sebastien said in an undertone. “She’s mine, and I’m pulling rank.”

  The subaltern stumbled back against the tent stake. Eleanor dropped her father’s chisel into his case.

  Mine. What nerve. What a bold-hearted man.

  She’s mine.

  And he was hers, too.

  At first, they tried to hide their attraction to each other. But if she needed help unloading her father’s supplies or help sitting in an ambulance wagon, Sebastien found a way to assist. When his company marched to another village, he lingered to make sure she hadn’t fallen too far behind. The French troops had assaulted several women on the campaign. Sebastien vowed no one would lay a hand on Eleanor.

  They met a few times at the river, too, right before dawn. She carried a passport that enabled her to leave camp. He was an officer. He helped her carry buckets of water back and forth to her father’s shelter. Often they wouldn’t see each other for days, although Sebastien managed to keep an eye on her.

  “I think you should stay in England after we get married,” he once said, when she was leaning back against an olive tree.

  He was kissing her face. His knuckles drifted from her jaw, across her collarbone, to the inside of her cloak. The next thing she knew he had thrown his coat on the ground and had drawn her down underneath him. She was exhilarated, shaking, about to fall and no force in the world could save her.

  “You have some gall,” she breathed between kisses that beguiled her like black magic. “You never even proposed to me.”

  “I know your answer.” His hands stoked the instincts she kept trying to subdue. She wasn’t in control. She wasn’t sure how far she would go. But when his fingers caressed the tender hollow between her thighs, she was his, wracked with longing, her instincts trampling everything she had been taught about virtue and men no one could resist.

  He resisted her. “Not here,” he whispered roughly. “Not like this.”

  Years later they would compete to prove which of them was the stronger one. But on that day, Sebastien won their first battle of wills by proving that her body wasn’t all he wanted. He pulled her to her feet and back into his arms. Her legs shook while he stood as solid as the tree behind her.

  “Listen to me.” His voice barely penetrated her thoughts. “I’m not going to be alone with you until after we are married because the next time I won’t be able to stop.”

  She pressed her face to his chest. If she listened hard, she could hear his heart beating against her cheek. Wild. Strong. Stronger than she wanted to be.

  He drew her cloak around her shoulders—to shield her from his desire or the morning damp, she wasn’t sure. “What if I make you pregnant and get killed before we’re married? I don’t want you to be a campaign wife, either.”

  He was right.

  She was practical. Her father had raised her in a world that was not always kind. And yet she dreamed about Sebastien every night after their encounter at the river. She lost herself in hot, misty visions of what they would have done had he not been stronger than her.

  They tried to avoid each other. It didn’t work.

  He invented excuses to talk to her. No soldier had ever suffered as many inexplicable medical ailments as Sebastien did that summer. He made medical history. The pungent scent of witch hazel might have been the most prized aphrodisiac. When Eleanor dabbed it on his face, he had to clench his fists and hope to God she couldn’t tell his whole body had turned to stone. But, hell, the woman could have slapped pond slime on him for all he cared.

  She listened for his name to be called after every battle, sometimes so immobilized by dread she could not breathe. She lived for the moments they met, at a memorial service, a dinner, or during the rare moments when General Wellesley appeared in camp to rally spirits.

  Desire grew glance by glance. So did trust. One meaningful stare, a few words, one smile at a time, Sebastien Boscastle and Eleanor Prescott fell deeper and deeper in love until neither of them bothered to deny it.

  Soon, no other officer in the company dared to flirt with her. One dark look from Captain Lord Boscastle kept his competitors at bay.

  He pursued her with the same unfaltering determination that had earned him his early success. An infantry officer, he knew the danger of early fire. There was always a perfect moment to make a definitive move on the field. And so he captured her, having been her captive from the instant he had seen her face.

  And then one day he came to her with a lost child, a distraught boy of three whose father had been killed on the field. The boy’s mother had disappeared a few hours after viewing her husband’s body. The soldiers were searching a ravine where she might have been ambushed.

  “I can’t stand this anymore,” she said as she knelt to wipe the boy’s grimy face. He was shivering, too tired to sob, his body limp in Sebastien’s arms.

  Sebastien stared down at her. “I want you to go back to England.”

  His hand closed over hers, protective and strong. That same night the boy’s aunt came to claim him, and Sebastien staked his claim on Eleanor by asking her father’s permission to marry her.

  When she stood later with her father and Sebastien in the lamplight, she had to comment upon Sebastien’s arrogance.

  “You still never asked me.”

  “Well, he asked me,” her father said in his blunt man
ner. “And I’ve accepted.”

  Sebastien. A good officer, a good man. A bad baron at times, to judge by the way he’d chased her.

  The only time he shocked the camp was right after a grueling battle, when he persuaded a barber to carve Eleanor’s initials into his buttocks. She begged him to keep it secret, but news of Boscastle’s amusing misdeed spread through the regiment until it reached her father, who only shook his head and said it was fortunate he hadn’t gotten sepsis of the arse.

  “And I thought you were the sensible one,” she said as they trudged alongside a line of artillery wagons a few days later.

  Sebastien smiled with the confidence she adored. “Did I ever tell you that I want a large family?”

  Hot, grumpy, and happier than she’d ever imagined, she shook her head. He’d given her water from his canteen, but what she craved was cold lemonade.

  “Well, I do. And if we have a son first, I want to name him Joshua, after my father.”

  “He isn’t still alive?” she asked, waiting quietly for his answer. He’d never talked to her about his family.

  “He was murdered.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t expected that. She managed to act as if she heard that sort of confession every day. In fact, she did. As a surgeon’s daughter, she listened to men confessing the saddest and most poignant stories anyone could imagine. And from her father she’d learned that being trusted was an honor, so she kept their stories to herself. Trust meant everything.

  “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “The man who killed him was never caught.” He looked at her intently before adding, “Yet. One of us will find him.”

  “Us?”

  “My three brothers. We’ll find him sooner or later.”

  She didn’t press him to elaborate. Every time they talked it felt natural to share things they had never admitted to anyone else.

  “I was an utter failure in school,” she confessed. “I couldn’t hold still long enough to read an entire book.”

  “You don’t hold still now.” He hesitated, mischief in his eyes. “Except when I’m kissing you.”

  “Which is certainly more exciting than reading about the Battle of Pharsalus.”

  “But Pharsalus was fascinating. The men in my company all know Pompey’s battle cry—‘Herculēs invictus.’”

  “You aren’t making fun of my unfinished education?”

  “Not at all.” He looked as innocent as Lucifer before his fall. “What would I want with a wife who knows more about Caesar’s cavalry than kissing me?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I do know one thing.”

  “That my kisses excite you?”

  “No. That Caesar won his battle, and Venus helped.”

  “‘Venus victrix,’” he said, breaking into laughter again. “Don’t you think it would sound a little silly for the British infantry to charge into battle invoking the goddess of love as their inspiration?”

  “Love is a war, Sebastien.”

  A goat rambled up between them, nibbling the tail of his coat. For several moments he succeeded in ignoring the animal. “In that case,” he said, finally nudging the goat away, “I’ve already lost, haven’t I?”

  So had she.

  “If we have a girl first,” she said, smiling at the thought, “we’ll call her Elizabeth. That was my mother’s name.”

  “Elizabeth it is. And we’ll name the next pair John and Olive.”

  “John and Olive,” she said, shaking her head.

  He stared straight ahead, so confident of the future that she believed it, too. “That’s a good start. Now all we need to agree on is nine or so more names.”

  “Nine?” she asked, incredulous.

  “To make it a baker’s dozen.”

  “Thirteen?” She’d been an only child. She couldn’t imagine thirteen of anything, not of cats or dogs, dolls or children, and by the time she caught the bedevilment lurking in his eyes, she realized he could probably talk her into anything if she didn’t stop him.

  “Where would we put them all?” she wondered aloud over the the wagons creaking and the dogs barking at the sheep ambling behind them.

  He glanced at her with that stern, indulgent look that said he would take care of everything. “I have a small country house in Sussex. It’s in poor shape, but with a little time we could make it a good home.”

  She stopped in her tracks to stare at him. “You’ve thought this through.”

  “And it has a library.” He grinned. “Where you’ll read to our children.”

  She laughed again, losing ground to his persuasive warmth. “You’re so arrogant. I still can’t believe you won over my father. Maybe you should have asked him how many children he’d like.”

  He smiled. “I can picture it now. I’ll sit at my desk and examine estate accounts while the children listen to Gulliver’s Travels.”

  “Do you really have an estate?” she asked skeptically.

  “We will after the war. It’s not much to speak of now, only a white Palladian house with old Venetian windows. The park is five or so acres of oak wood where smugglers used to hide their goods.”

  “It sounds quite lovely.”

  “The woods have been taken over by wild deer.”

  It sounded more than lovely. It sounded like the home she had secretly craved while her father vanished from medical assignment to assignment. She couldn’t deny she’d relished the adventure of finally joining him, but what Sebastien described suddenly made her want what she had never known.

  When she glanced up, he was standing in front of her, his eyes as dark as indigo, a hint he was about to kiss her. Her bones softened until she was surprised she had the strength to stand.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, when she wished he would, and she had backed against the wagon, not to escape, but to wait.

  He bent his head. Her lips parted involuntarily. There was no way he would kiss her with drummers, staff-soldiers, and their wives openly watching. But if he did, it wouldn’t matter. Love offered hope. And she loved this man who had grown up knowing that the person who’d murdered his father had gone free. She hurt inside as if his anger had become her own. Or maybe this was how it felt when you let another person into your heart.

  He laughed easily in those days and battled hard. He was strong-minded enough to match wits with Eleanor, his intensity a counterbalance to her unbridled energy.

  A month later when he was shot five times, once in the thigh, shoulder, neck, and twice in the back, she knew that he should not have lived. Something beyond her father’s skill had saved him. Four of Sebastien’s closest friends had died at his side. An act of grace had saved him.

  She was grateful that he had survived. She had prayed to God. And she had bargained with the devil, not knowing what she had to offer either of them.

  Yet her first thought during his recovery, when his hollow blue eyes opened and stared past her, was that her wish had only been half-granted.

  Sebastien Boscastle had died during battle, and his ghost had been returned to her.

  They were married a few months later in early May of the following year at her aunt’s home in Dover. Sebastien had been given an indefinite leave, but he didn’t talk to Eleanor about the war or their future in England.

  Her father took her aside right before the wedding ceremony. “Be strong. You’ve seen this happen to men before. Some injuries need more time than others to heal.”

  But when Sebastien and Eleanor exchanged vows in her aunt’s parlor, a premonition of dread stole over her.

  Who was he? What had happened to her cynical rogue?

  Did she know him at all?

  His firm mouth captured hers, a kiss that could have been a promise, or even a farewell.

  She felt tears stinging her eyes, but she couldn’t cry, even though the small assembly of guests would understand that a bride could weep a little in happiness on her wedding day.

  He withdrew from her during their we
dding reception, and she had no idea how to comfort him. He drank too many glasses of champagne and picked a fight with a junior officer who’d given her a harmless kiss.

  She’d never known Sebastien to lose his temper; he had always seemed aware of his physical strength and refused to abuse it.

  But that afternoon she saw her own fears reflected on the faces of his friends as they pulled him away from the other man.

  “What are you doing?” they questioned him, joking through their concern. “Your bride is going to toss you out before your honeymoon.”

  Her father quietly asked Sebastien if he were in pain, but he only shook his head, looking as distressed at his violent outburst as everyone else.

  “It’s nothing,” Eleanor’s aunt said. “Weddings have a way of undoing some men. This will blow over before you know it.”

  But when Eleanor noticed a fleck of blood from the fight he’d started, on her husband’s perfectly knotted neckcloth she knew it signaled bad days to come. His earlier wounds hadn’t even healed completely.

  “After all,” her aunt added, “the Boscastle men have a reputation for wicked turns. Passion does not necessarily express itself in lightness.”

  A dark and passionate man Sebastien proved to be.

  He spent their entire wedding night bringing her pleasure. Patient. Intuitive.

  His hands and mouth left her breathless, so replete that no woman could have asked for more. Her body burgeoned with wicked urges as he unbound her. One pearl button, one lace string, one layer of white silk and one inhibition at a time. She almost fainted when his hands swept over her bare shoulders and breasts.

  “You,” he whispered as he leaned over her, stealing kisses, her breath, every thought that rose in her mind, “are the most beautiful, the most exciting, the only woman who has ever existed.”

  “‘Venus victrix,’” she said, smiling up into his face.

  He frowned in amusement. “If you like,” he answered after a puzzled silence that indicated he had no idea what she was talking about.

  Something cold crossed her heart. “What happened to you today?”

  “Don’t ruin this.” He didn’t want to talk about it. Truthfully, neither did she. She’d never seen him drink. She told herself that the advice of her favorite aunt and not alcohol meant this marriage would last forever.