A Wicked Lord at the Wedding Read online

  Now it was autumn.

  The branches of the horse chestnut tree on which she had hoped to hang a swing for their children had gone bare. In fact, everything in the garden looked half-dead, forsaken. Hell, was he still paying the gardeners for this unmaintained mess?

  “So,” he said quietly. “Has the early rat caught the cat on her way out, or on her way in?”

  She stared meaningfully at the black mask that dangled from his fingers. Her eyes locked with his. She gave a small smile of acknowledgment. She knew exactly where he had been. It was her whereabouts during his absence, the details of her life without him, that presented the mystery.

  “I should ask you the same question,” she said, lifting her cloak in one hand. “However, you needn’t bother with an answer. It’s my own fault for not realizing what you were up to.”

  “I mentioned it to you as I recall, darling. There’s no need to trouble yourself with this assignment again.”

  “Yes, but I was distracted, darling. I won’t be again. And—I’ve developed a liking for this assignment.”

  He gave a low whistle. “Things are going to be different now that I’m back. You’ll have many distractions.”

  She shook her head. “I shall have to be on constant guard against you.”

  He thought of the man who’d called at the house last night and his sickening love note. Sebastien would be on guard now, too.

  She could have clobbered her devious husband. She had planned to present the treasures of her hunt to the Duchess of Wellington while Sebastien held out empty hands. The duchess was no more pleased with her husband’s interference than was Eleanor with hers.

  Upon finding the book in her bed, she had dressed and stolen downstairs into the kitchen for a tart green pippin and a wedge of cheese to sustain her. She’d intended to find Isabella Sampson’s letter and go straight to the duchess’s house on Harley Street.

  “Is that apple for me?” Sebastien asked, holding out his hand. “What a thoughtful wife. I’ve worked up quite an appetite.”

  She dropped the apple into his gloved palm. “I assume you have the letter?”

  He inclined his head, his blue-gray eyes gleaming. She had made a mistake. This was no rat. It was a wolf she had in her garden, hungry and cunning. She swallowed as his even white teeth crunched into the apple. She’d not let him outwit her again.

  “We really should go inside.” She motioned to the house. “We can discuss this over a proper breakfast. You are rather lean.”

  “Breakfast? How civilized of us. By the way, you had a caller late last night.”

  “Yes.” She half-turned to find him staring at her with an intensity that she felt to the bone. “I gather it was Sir Nathan Bellisant.”

  “Isn’t that a charming name?”

  “Were you rude to him?”

  “Not at all.” His vulpine smile stirred a shiver across her skin. “Although I didn’t invite him in for tea, if that’s what you meant.”

  “Sebastien—”

  “And I didn’t pummel him into a hundred pretty little pieces and throw his remains under a passing carriage.”

  She paled. “That sounds utterly barbaric,” she said in a horrified voice.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “And you sound rather pleased that it does. He’s under the duchess’s protection, I’ll have you know.”

  “It’s a damn good thing. I thought I was quite polite, under the circumstances.”

  He offered her his arm. Numbly she took it and allowed him to lead her toward the house. “We’ll sit down at the table and converse like a proper married couple,” he said firmly.

  “There’s nothing proper about either of us anymore,” she said under her breath.

  His eyes twinkled down at her. “But we’re still married. A couple.”

  “In a contest against each other,” she added as he slipped his mask inside his coat.

  He turned, capturing her hand in his. “We can call the contest off. I’ll be happy to fulfill your obligation to her grace.” He laced her fingers in his. “And you will be free to return to your wifely duties.”

  “I gave my word.”

  “To me first,” he replied, his voice devilish.

  Her lips curved in a cynical smile. “I thought you were hungry.”

  He drew her back into the heat of his body. His stubbled jaw brushed her cheek. “Lean and hungry,” he said in a low voice. “But not for breakfast.”

  They met at the table two hours later, refreshed, Eleanor in a sky-blue merino dress, Sebastien in a white muslin shirt and tailored black broadcloth trousers, as if they were any other lord and lady in London who did not conduct secret lives.

  Or who kept secrets from each other.

  If Sebastien had wondered in bad conscience how many mornings Eleanor had eaten alone, missing his presence, he now had cause to question whether he had been missed at all.

  Or whether his wife had been alone.

  “Mary instructed Cook to make a chestnut pudding for you,” she said without the slightest hint of wedded discord between them.

  “Chestnut pudding?” He leaned back with a puzzled look.

  “Coffee?” she asked, her hand resting on the elegant silver pot. “Or have you taken to something stronger?”

  “Coffee is fine,” he said wryly. “And I don’t care for chestnut pudding.”

  Or had he in the past? So many trivial associations still eluded him. It went beyond frustration to reach into one’s mind for a memory and encounter a void.

  “I thought pudding might appease that great appetite of yours.” She poured steaming coffee into his cup. “Don’t forget that we are going to the opera this evening.”

  He gave her a narrow look. How was he expected to remember an event as inconsequential as the opera when he was wondering whether anyone had shared his wife’s bed?

  “I don’t care for the opera. I prefer to stay home.”

  There. He had taken another stand. They weren’t attending the opera. Obviously if he’d been home to direct these little matters, she would not have wandered astray.

  She regarded him with a provocative smile that made him think he had knotted his neckcloth too tightly, until he realized he had forgotten to put one on.

  “I understand,” she said, her voice pleasingly low. “But didn’t we agree that we should appear together in public whenever possible to throw off anyone who might have caught the Masquer’s scent?”

  He shook his head. He refrained from expressing the unseemly thought that someone had already caught her scent, and that her posing as the Masquer had nothing to do with it at all. Or perhaps it did. Perhaps he wasn’t in competition with anyone except this Mayfair scoundrel who, being his wife, presented an interesting opposition.

  “Let us discuss the caller you had last night,” he said bluntly. “I assume you found the book?”

  She made a face, crumbling her biscuit onto her plate. “I did,” she said with a sigh. “How considerate of you to place it where it couldn’t be missed.”

  “I thought it might have some personal significance.”

  She looked up at him candidly. “It could have waited until later in the day.”

  “I thought the same thing about your”—he gestured with his fork—“whatever he is.”

  “A painter.” She stared disapprovingly at the fork. He put it down. She was avoiding his gaze. This wasn’t a good sign.

  “Of portraits,” she continued, suddenly glancing up at the wall. “The duchess has commissioned him to paint her sons as a Christmas surprise for the duke. And you can’t let him know.…” She faltered. “It’s meant to be a surprise.”

  “So you said.” But it didn’t explain why the brazen bugger had been knocking at her door. “Does he only paint these secret masterpieces in the middle of the night?”

  Her mouth formed a faint moue. “I don’t think so. Have you taken up an interest in art? Would you like to go to the museum next—” “He writes you
love notes,” he said baldly.

  She sighed again.

  “Well?” he said. “I might not even have known if the corkbrain hadn’t used me as a go-between.”

  She smiled vaguely. “Spenser wrote that passage, although Nathan has had a book of verse or two published.”

  “Did it have a special significance?”

  “Not to me.”

  He frowned at her. “Is he in the habit of coming to the house so late at night?”

  She shook her head, studying the arrangement of crumbs on her plate. “No. Well, he’s dropped by on the odd occasion.”

  Now he was staring at the crumbs, too. “Does anyone else avail themselves of this open invitation?”

  “I didn’t invite him here last night,” she answered calmly, glancing up without warning. “Nathan is one of those unfettered spirits who flies about as inspiration stirs him.”

  He made a face. “Nathan is invited to find his inspiration elsewhere. Or to fly off a steep cliff.”

  “I hope you don’t tell him that if he calls again.”

  “I’ve a feeling he won’t return.”

  “Well, we’ll all be in trouble if he’s too upset to finish painting the duke’s sons.”

  “I assure you, the sentiments of some shabby young artist are the least of my concerns.” He raised his voice. He watched her eyes widen as he emphasized his point. “And I believe I speak for the duke when I say that.”

  She was staring at his hand now. At the fork that he’d picked up again and stabbed emphatically into the air. Irritated, he laid it down.

  A footman entered the room to clear the plates from the table, hazarding a cautious look at his master.

  “My lord?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m finished.”

  Yet he was still hungry.

  And a hundred civilized breakfasts would not satisfy him until he regained the position of authority that he had unwillingly relinquished.

  Chapter Twelve

  She sat by herself at the fire for another hour, nursing a drop of sherry. She knew what he had wished to know. The same uncertainty haunted her thoughts.

  Had she been faithful to him while he was gone? Was she to believe that during their separation he had not slept with another woman? A man of his deeply passionate nature? Was she to believe that no barmaid or ambassador’s daughter had even once shared his bed?

  And now he demanded to know if she had slept with another man. She had not. She had only become one. Had she ever been tempted, come close enough so that Sebastien would have cause to accuse her?

  No. Although to this day Nathan Bellisant believed she would change her mind, and yes, she had enjoyed his attention at times.

  An artist who followed his own code of morals, Nathan did not particularly care if Eleanor was married. He was a libertine without anchor, and while he was an amusing friend, she regretted agreeing to sit for the portrait of her he had painted.

  When she’d refused to be his belle amie, he’d vowed he would wait for her to relent. She’d laughed and warned him he would wait forever.

  The fact was that she had never been on fire for anyone but her husband, which might not be the same as loving him with the naïve hopes that he had extinguished on their wedding day.

  But it was an element of her nature that had remained constant.

  She was a woman who took a promise seriously, and if Sebastien did not realize that, then he, and not Eleanor, had married a complete stranger.

  Sebastien had worked himself into a mood over a situation that appeared to unsettle him more than it did his wife. Her very calmness served the opposite effect upon his state of mind.

  In truth, unmasking political malcontents had seemed easier than deciphering the person Eleanor had become under the duchess’s sly guidance. The issue of her “friend” had not been resolved to his satisfaction.

  He refused to drop the subject even as they dressed for the opera in their separate closets.

  “The opera,” he grumbled. “I never liked the opera. Didn’t I say that I wouldn’t go?”

  “Are you talking to yourself?” she asked absently, sifting through her jewels.

  He looked at his reflection in the cheval glass. “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “Probably. Damnit, I only said that I dislike the opera.”

  She gave a deep sigh. “Then are we going or not?”

  Suddenly he wondered what it was about the opera that she found so compelling. “We’re going.”

  In fact, he thought it a good idea that henceforth he escort Eleanor on all her activities. He looked up from the glass at the bare oaken walls.

  “Where is the portrait of you?” He stared in bemusement around their bedchamber.

  “What did you say?” she asked from behind the door.

  Every so often she would disappear into her closet in an interesting stage of dishabille, only to reemerge to pick up the dangling thread of their discussion. He suspected she was avoiding an honest confrontation. Well, he had no intention of being put off.

  “The portrait that Bellflower did?”

  She clasped an emerald pendant around her neck. For a moment he stared, his breathing suspended, certain he had not bought her that elegant necklace.

  “That necklace—”

  “What about it?” She touched the stone. “Is it too much? The green usually goes well with my hair, but this dress is so pale that—”

  Before he could make a fool of himself with another accusation, he remembered that the pendant had belonged to her aunt.

  He frowned to cover his embarrassment, as well as his relief. “It’s fine. Pretty. I like it.”

  “Do you?” she asked with a skeptical lift of her brow. “Then why did you look so stricken when you saw it?”

  “I—”

  She lowered her hand in concern. “Dear Sebastien, are you all right?”

  “I’m—” He took a breath, then another, wondering how she could be more beautiful than when he’d married her.

  “We don’t have to go,” she said, looking uncertain, even a little afraid of him. “If you’re not up to it, we will stay here.”

  He shook his head decisively. “We’re going. I want to go. No, I don’t.”

  She laughed, looking charmingly confused. “I’d like us to be together.”

  “So would I.”

  He felt a flare of heat assail him. She stood, temptation personified, in a lilac evening gown. Satin or silk. The hell if he cared. He was fascinated by the contrast of one sleeve fastened at her shoulder, the other listing to her elbow. Wife or wicked gentlewoman. He would take her either way.

  “You’re not even ready,” he said, unable to keep the desire from his voice.

  Her voice dropped even lower. His hopes rose. “Please, Sebastien. We’ll arrive at the theater very late.”

  His eyes swept over her. “We’ll arrive there very happy.”

  She shook her head in warning. But her eyes glittered invitingly, and she stood unmoving when she could have retreated back into the closet.

  “Are we meeting anyone there?” he asked, the air between them suddenly thick.

  “No.” Her voice was soft. Her gaze held his. Which of them wielded the strongest weapon?

  He managed to shrug. “Well, if we’re not meeting anyone, a few minutes won’t matter.”

  “We can’t arrive in the middle—”

  “Why not? Lie with me again.”

  “I’m half-dressed,” she protested.

  “Half-undressed.” He stared at her, smiling in anticipation. “It’s a question of how one looks at it.”

  “One is looking at a rogue.”

  “A rogue who cannot resist his wife. Is that so wrong?”

  “It takes getting used to. You’ve resisted me for a long time.”

  “What an idiot,” he muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said I’ve been an idiot.”

&nbs
p; He took a decisive step, then another, bringing their conversation to a halt. She bowed her head, submissive or amused, perhaps both. But he recognized desire when he saw it. Steadily he slid his hands up her sides to her shoulders, untying the delicate net sleeve she had secured. Her eyes searched his, acknowledging his need. The unclasped pendant slithered down her throat into the creamy mounds of her cleavage.

  She gasped.

  “Let me get that,” he said quickly.

  “I can do it!”

  “Allow me. I’ve missed these small moments.”

  “You’ve missed the large ones, too,” she murmured.

  “I realize that.” His hooded gaze caressed her. “I won’t again.”

  She parted her lips, but said nothing, an omission which Sebastien chose to believe signaled her consent. Staring at her in absorption, he stroked his fingers down her elegant throat and dipped into the cleft between her breasts. She exhaled quietly. She might well have moaned. He wasn’t sure. He could not think properly for the quickening of blood, of his heartbeat, that pounded through his body.

  “There it is,” he murmured, wrapping the gold links around his finger. “I believe if this chain lingered here much longer, your warmth would melt even the metal.”

  “You are not fair,” she said softly.

  He bent his head, rubbing his face in the crook of her neck. “How so?” he whispered, smiling to himself.

  “You’re taking advantage.”

  He kissed the pulse that throbbed faintly in her throat. “Of—”

  “—my neglected sinful nature.”

  He drew back, the blood in his veins surging. “Sinful is the state into which we are allegedly born. But neglected—we can’t allow that.”

  Did that mean she had slept alone all this time? He clasped the pendant in his palm and took her by the wrist.

  “We’ll have to remedy this problem immediately.”

  “How accommodating of you,” she murmured, a shiver going through her.

  “I have a lot to make up for you.”

  “I won’t disagree.”

  His black gaze devoured her. “You were very agreeable last night.”

  She raised her other hand to her hair, fretting a little. “It took forever to arrange this just so.”