‘I saved the best proposal of all for your ears only.’

A streak of cold dread snaked downwards. ‘You want a divorce, no doubt?’

At that he laughed, the sound engulfing her.

‘Not a divorce, my lady wife, but an heir, and as you are the only woman who can legitimately give me one the duty is all yours.’

She almost tripped at his words and he held her closer, waiting until balance was regained. Their eyes locked together. There was no humour at all in the green depths of Taylen Ellesmere, the sixth Duke of Alderworth.

He was deadly serious.

Shock gave her the courage of reply. ‘Then you have a large problem indeed, because I am the last woman in the world who would ever willingly grace your bed again.’

AUTHOR NOTE

So many people have written to me and asked if I was going to write the story of Lucinda, the last sibling of the Wellinghams.

Well, here it is. Lucinda has featured in Asher’s story, HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY, Taris’s story, ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT, and Cristo’s, ONE ILLICIT NIGHT.

Falder has been like a second home to me for so many years—it is quite sad to have to say goodbye. I hope you love the way Lucinda’s man is no push-over and, as the dissolute Duke who has seemingly ruined their sister, is causing mayhem for the Wellingham brothers.

About the Author

SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband who is an artist.

Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house.

Sophia enjoys getting feedback at www.sophiajames.net

Previous novels by the same author:

FALLEN ANGEL

ASHBLANE’S LADY

HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETY

MASQUERADING MISTRESS

KNIGHT OF GRACE

(published as The Border Lord in North America)

MISTLETOE MAGIC

(part of Christmas Betrothals)

ONE UNASHAMED NIGHT

ONE ILLICIT NIGHT

CHRISTMAS AT BELHAVEN CASTLE

(part of Gift-Wrapped Governesses anthology)

LADY WITH THE DEVIL’S SCAR

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The
Dissolute Duke
Sophia James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter One

England—1831

Her brothers would kill her for this.

Lady Lucinda Wellingham knew that they would. Of all the hare-brained schemes that she had ever been involved with, this was the most foolish of the lot. She would be ruined and it would be entirely her fault.

‘Just a kiss,’ the man whispered, pressing her against a wall in the corridor, the smell of strong liquor on his breath. His hands wandered across the line of her breasts, and in the ridiculously flimsy dress that she had allowed Posy Tompkins to talk her into wearing, Lucinda could feel where his next thoughts lay.

Richard Allenby, third Earl of Halsey, had been attractive at London society balls, but here at a country party in Bedfordshire he was intolerably cloying. Pushing him away, she stood up straight, pleased that her height allowed her a good few inches above his own.

‘I think, sir, that you have somehow got the wrong idea about my wish to…’

The words were cut off as his lips covered hers, a wet, limp kiss that made her turn her head away quickly before wiping her mouth. Goodness, the man was almost panting and it did not suit him at all.

‘You are here at the most infamous party of the Season and my room isn’t far.’ His fingers closed across her forearm as he hailed two others who looked to have had as much to drink as he had. Both leered at her in the very same way that Halsey was. A mistake. She should have fled moments ago when the chance had been hers and the bedrooms had not been so perilously close. In this den of iniquity it seemed anything went, the morals of the man whose house it was fallen beyond all redemption.

A spike of fear brought her elbow against the wall, loosening Halsey’s fingers and allowing a hard-won freedom which she took the chance on and ran.

Twisted and narrow corridors lay before her. There were close to twenty bedchambers on this floor alone and, moving quickly, Lucinda discovered double doors at the very end. With the corners she had taken she was certain those following would not see which door she had chanced upon and without a backward glance she turned an ornate ivory handle and slipped into the room.

It was dark inside save for a candle burning next to the bed, where a man sat reading, thick-rimmed glasses balanced on the end of his nose.

When he looked up she placed one finger to her lips, asking for his silence before turning back to the door. Outside she could hear the noise of those who followed her, the uncertainty of where she was adding to their urgency. Surely they would not dare to try their luck with any number of closed doors? A good few minutes passed, the whispers becoming less audible, and then they were gone, retracing their steps in the quest for the escaped quarry and ruing the loss of a night’s entertainment. Relief filled her.

‘Can I speak now?’ The voice was laconic and deep, an inflection of something on the edge that Lucinda could not understand.

‘If you are very quiet, I think it might be safe.’ She looked around uncertainly.

A ripe swear word was her only answer and as the sheets were pushed back Lucinda saw the naked form of a man unfold from within them and her mouth gaped open. Not just any man either, but the scandalous host of this weekend’s licentiousness: Taylen Ellesmere, the Sixth Duke of Alderworth. The Dissolute Duke, they called him, a rakehell who obeyed no laws of morality with his wanton disregard of any manners and his degenerate ways.

He was wearing absolutely nothing as he ambled across to the door behind her and locked it. The sound seared into Lucinda’s brain, but she found she could not even move a muscle.

He was beautiful. At least he was that, his dark hair falling to his shoulders and eyes the colour of wet leaves after a forest storm at Falder. She did not glance below the line of his neck, though every fibre of her being seemed to want her to. His smile said that he knew her thought, the creases around his eyes falling into humour.

‘Lady Lucinda Wellingham?’

He knew her name. She nodded, trying to find her voice. What might happen next? She felt like a chicken in a fox’s lair.

‘Do your three brothers know that you are here?’

Her shake of the head was tempered by a lack of breath that indicated panic and she could barely take in air. Every single thing had gone wrong since dawn, so when her hands tried to open the stays of her bodice a little she was glad when they gave, allowing breath to come more easily. The deep false cleavage so desired by society women disappeared as the fasteners loosened, her breasts spilling back into their natural and fairly meagre form. The lurid red dress she wore fell away from the rise of her bosom in a particularly suggestive manner and she knew he observed it.

‘Choosing my room to hide in might not have been the wisest of options.’ He glanced tellingly towards the large bed.

Lucinda ignored the remark altogether. ‘Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, and his friends gave me little other choice, your Grace. I had the need of a safe place.’

At that he laughed, the sound of mirth echoing about the chamber.

‘Drink loosens the choking ties of societal pressure. Good manners and foppish decency is something most men cannot tolerate for more than a few weeks upon end and this place allows them to blow off steam, if you will.’

‘At the expense of women who are saying no?’

‘Most ladies here encourage such behaviour and dress accordingly.’

His eyes ran across the low-cut décolletage of her attire before returning to her face.

‘This is not London, my lady, and nor does it pretend to be. If Halsey has indeed insulted you, he would have done so because he thought you were … available. Free will is a concept I set great store by here at Alderworth.’

The challenge in his eyes was unrepentant. Indeed, were she to describe his features she would say a measured indolence sat across them, like a lizard playing with a fly whose wings had already been disposed of. Her fingers went back to the door handle, but, looking for the key, she saw it had been removed. A quick sleight of hand. She had not seen him do it.

‘As free will is so important to you, I would now like to exercise my own and ask you to open the door.’

He simply leaned over to a pile of clothes roughly deposited on a chair and hauled out a fob watch.

‘Unfortunately it is that strange time of the evening: too early for guests to be properly drunk and therefore harmless and too late to expect the conduct of gentlemen to be above reproach. Any movement through the house at this point is more dangerous than remaining here with me.’

‘Remaining in here?’ Could he possibly mean what she thought he did?

His eyes lightened. ‘I have room.’

‘You have known me for two minutes and half of those have been conducted in silence.’ She tried to insert as much authority as she could into her announcement.

‘All the better to observe your … many charms.’ His green eyes were hooded with a sensual and languorous invitation.

‘You sound like the wolf from the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, your Grace, though I doubt any character from a nursery rhyme exhibits the flair for nudity that you seem to display.’

Moving back from him, she was pleased when he pulled on a long white shirt, the sleeves billowing into wide folds from the shoulder. A garment a pirate might have worn or a highwayman. It suited him entirely.

‘Is that better, my lady?’

When she nodded he smiled and lifted two glasses from a cabinet behind him. ‘Perhaps good wine might loosen your inhibitions.’

‘It certainly will not.’ Her voice sounded strict even to her own ears and her eyes went to the book deposited on the counterpane. ‘Machiavelli’s Il Principe is a surprising choice for a man who seems to have no care for the name of the generations of Ellesmeres who have come before him.’

‘You think all miscreants should be illiterate?’

Amazingly she began to laugh, so ridiculous was this conversation. ‘Well, they are not usually tucked up in bed at ten o’clock wearing nothing but a pair of strong spectacles and reading a book of political philosophy in Italian, your Grace.’

‘Believe me, degeneracy has a certain exhausting quality to it. The expectations for even greater acts of debauchery can be rather wearisome when age creeps up on one.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-five. But I have been at it for a while.’

He was only a year older than she was and her few public scrapes had always been torturous. Still he was a man, she reasoned, though the double standards of behaviour excusing his sex did not even come close to exonerating his numerous and shocking depravities.

‘Did your mother not teach you the basics of human kindness to others, your Grace?’

‘Oh, indeed she did. One husband and six lovers later I understood it exactly. I was her only child, you see, and a very fast learner.’

She had heard the sordid story of the Ellesmere family many times, but not from the angle of a disenchanted son. Patricia Ellesmere had died far from her kin. There were those who said a broken heart had caused her death, but six lovers sounded particularly messy.

‘What happened to your father?’ She knew she should not have asked, but interest overcame any sense of reticence.

‘He did what any self-respecting Duke might have done on discovering that his wife had cuckolded him six times over.’

‘He killed himself?’

He laughed. ‘No. He gambled away his fortune and then lost his woes in strong brandy. My parents died within a day of the other, at different ends of the country, and in the company of their newest lovers. Liver failure and a self-inflicted shot through the head. At least it made the funeral sum less expensive. Two for the price of one cuts the costs considerably.’ His lips curled around the words and his green eyes were sharp. ‘I was eleven at the time.’

Such candour was astonishing. No one had ever spoken to her like this before, a lack of apology in every new and dreadful thing he uttered.

Her own problems paled into insignificance at the magnitude of his and she could only be thankful for her close and supportive family ties.

‘You had other relatives … to help you?’

‘Mary Shields, my grandmother, took me in.’

‘Lady Shields?’ My God, who in society did not know of her proclivity for gossip and meanness? She had been dead for three years now, but Lucinda still remembered her beady black eyes and her vitriolic proclamations. And this was the woman whom an orphan child had been dispatched to?

‘I see by your expression that you knew her?’ He upended his tumbler and poured himself another. A generous another.

He wore rings on every finger on his left hand, she noticed, garish rings save for the band on his middle finger which was embellished with an engraving. She could not quite make out the letters.

A woman, no doubt. He was rumoured to have had many a lover, old and young, large and thin, married and unmarried. He does not make distinction when appetite pounces. She remembered hearing a rumour saying exactly that as it swirled around in society—a diverting scandal with the main player showing no sense of remorse.

The Duke of Alderworth. She knew that most of the ladies in society watched him, many a beating heart hoping that she might be the one to change him, but with his having reached twenty-five Lucinda doubted he would reform for anyone.

Foolish fancies were the prerogative of inexperienced girls. As the youngest sister of three rambunctious and larger-than-life brothers she found herself immune to the wiles of the opposite sex and seldom entertained any romantic notions about them.

Surprisingly, the lengthening silence between them was not awkward. That astonishing fact was made even more so by the thought that had he pushed himself upon her like Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, she might have been quite pleased to see the result. But he did not advance on her in any way. Outside the screams of delight permeated this end of the corridor again, women’s laughing shouts mingled with the deeper tone of their drunken pursuers. A hunting horn also blasted close, the loudness of it making her jump.

‘A successful night, by the sounds. The hunters and the hunted in the pursuit of ecstasy. Soon enough there will be the silence of the damned.’ He watched her carefully.

‘I think you are baiting me, your Grace. I do not think you can be half as bad as they say you are.’

His expression changed completely.

‘In that you would be very wrong, Lady Lucinda, for I am all that they say of me and more.’ A new danger cloaked him, a hard implacability in his eyes that made him look older. ‘The fact is that I could have you in my bed in a trice and you would be begging me not to stop doing any of the tantalising things to your body that I might want to.’

The pure punch of his words had her heart pounding fast, because in such a boast lay a good measure of truth. She was more aware of him as a man than she had ever been of any other. Horrified, Lucinda turned to the window and made much of looking out into the gardens, lit tonight by a number of burning torches positioned along various pathways. Two lovers lay entwined amidst the bushes, bare skin pale in the light. Around them other couples lingered, their intentions visible even from this distance. The intemperance of it all shocked her to the core.

‘If you touch me, my brothers would kill you, most probably.’ She attempted to keep fear from the threat and failed.

He laughed. ‘They could try, I suppose, but …’ The rest was left unsaid, but the menace in him was magnified. The indolence that she imagined before was now honed into cold hard steel, a man who existed in the underbelly of London’s society even though he was high born. The contradictions in him confused her, the quicksilver change unnerving.

‘I came to the party with Lady Posy Tompkins and she assured me that it was a respectable affair. Obviously she and I share a completely different idea of the word “respectable” and I suppose I should have made more of asking exactly where we were going before I said yes, but she was most insistent about the fun we might have and the fact that her godmother was coming made it sound more than respectable …’

He stopped her by laying his finger across the movement of her mouth. ‘Do you always talk so much, Lady Lucinda?’

Her whole body jerked in response to the touch. ‘I do, your Grace, because when I am nervous I seem to be unable to stop although I don’t quite remember another occasion when I have been as nervous as I am right at this moment, so if you were to let me walk from this room this instant I should go gladly and find—’

His mouth came to the place where his finger had lingered, and Lucinda’s world dissolved into hot colourful fragments of itself, tipping any sense of reality on its head and replacing ordinariness with a dangerous molten pleasure.

Chapter Two

Tay just wanted her to stop talking, the edge of panic in her voice bringing forth a guilt that he hadn’t felt for years. The slight curve of her breasts fitted into his chest and he liked the softness. Usually he had to bend down to women, but this one stood only a few inches below him, her thinness accentuating her willowy figure in an almost boyish way.

Her nails were short and the calluses between her second and third fingers told him she was left handed and that she participated in some sort of sport. Archery, perhaps. The thought of her standing, aiming at a target and her blonde hair lifting in the breeze was strangely arousing. He should, of course, escort her from Alderworth posthaste and make certain that she was delivered home safely into the bosom of her family.

But he knew that he would not, and when he took her mouth against his, another feeling surfaced which he refused to dwell on altogether.

He did not imagine she had been kissed much before because her full lips were held in a tight line and, as he opened her mouth with his tongue, her eyes widened.

Eyes of pale blue etched with a darker shade—eyes a man could lose himself in completely and never recover from.

Softening his assault, he threaded his hands through her hair, tilting her face. This time he did not hurry or demand more as the heat of a slow burn built. God, she smelt so good, like the flowers in an early springtime, fresh and clean. He had become so used to the heady over-ripe perfumes of his many experienced amours that he had forgotten the difference.

Innocence. It smelt strangely like hope.

Sealing his mouth across hers, he brought his fingers behind her nape. Closer. Warmer.

The power of connection winded him, the first tentative exploration of her tongue poignant in a way that made him melancholy. It had been a long time since he had kissed a woman who watched him as if he might unlock the secrets of the universe.

Lust ignited, an incendiary living torch of need burning bright, like the wick of gunpowder snaking down through his being. Unstoppable.

‘Are you a virgin?’

He knew she was by the way she was breathing, barely enough air to fill her up, lost in the moment and her lips parted.

‘Yes.’

‘Why the hell did you come to this party, then?’ The layer of civilisation that he had tried to keep in place was gone with the feel of her, but there was no withdrawal as he asked the question. Rather she pressed in closer and shut her eyes, as though trying in the darkness to find an answer. He felt the feathery waft of her breath in the sensitive folds of his neck and wondered if she was quite as innocent as he presumed. If this was a game she played, then it was one that he had long been practised in and she would need to be careful. His hands went around her back of their own accord, like a pathway memorised.

Salvation.

The word came unbidden and blossomed into something that he could not deny and his pulse began to quicken. It had been years since he had felt like this with any woman and surprise spurred him onwards.

He twisted her and his mouth fell lower, laving at the skin at her neck, his attention bringing whorls of redness to the pale. Her breath matched his own now, neither quiet nor measured, for the power of the body had taken over and his thumb caressed the budding hardness of one nipple through crimson silk.

She arched back, thighs locked tight, her breasts twin beacons of temptation.

He wanted her as he had never wanted another in all his life, the feel of her, the softness, her hair light-spun gold against his dark. With a small motion he had her bodice loosened and his palm around the bounty of one breast, cupping flesh, stroking the firmness. He needed her devoid of clothing, wanting pure knowledge without a covering. If she had not been the lady he knew she was, he would have simply ripped the garment off from neckline to hemline, and transported her naked to his bed to take his fill. His mouth ached for the intimacy of her curves.

‘The taste of a lover is part of the attraction,’ he stated simply as he raised his head, watching as understanding dawned. Uncertainty chased on the heels of wariness, but still she did not pull away as he thought she might. Only a slight frown marred her brow, measuring intent without any fear whatsoever. A guileless allowance.

Such an emotion was something he had rarely experienced. His reputation had protected him, he supposed, and kept others at a distance. But Lucinda Wellingham was different and more dangerous than all of the sirens who had stalked him across so many years. The connection between them was unexpected and startling as it drew him in, his body tightening in the echo of an old knowledge. His head dipped and he brought one soft peak into his mouth, the force of the action ripping stretched red silk and the seam shirring into uncountable and damaged threads. He liked the way she arched into him, her fingers combing through his hair, nails hard-edged with want, taking his offering and giving him back her own.

His hands now moved from the rise of her bottom around the front to feel for the hidden folds of womanhood, the silk only a thin barrier to taking. He pressed in to find her centre.

‘No.’ A single word, moaned more than stated, but enough.

‘No?’ He had to make certain that that was what she had meant, his breath coming thick with need. She shook her head this time, sky-blue eyes devoid of everything, a frown on her forehead and her chest rising and falling.

No, because she could not envisage what a yes might mean? No, because he was a man with enough of a reputation to destroy her?

Breaking away he moved back, the anger in him mounting with a pounding awareness of guilt. The road to ruin was a short one and he knew a lady of her ilk would have no possible defence against his persuasions. Suddenly his own chosen life path seemed seedy and vulgar.

‘I will take you home.’

She did not repair the damage to her dress as she watched him so that one breast stood out naked from the loosened fabric, a pink-rosebud nipple beckoning against scarlet silk. With her glassy eyes and stillness she was like a sensual and pliant Madonna fallen from heaven to land at the feet of the devil. Indecision welled, but he had no shield against such goodness, no way to safeguard his yearning against her righteousness.

Stepping forwards, he readjusted her gown, retying the laces on the flimsy bodice so that some measure of decency was reinstated. He could do nothing to repair the ruined seam and his eyes were drawn to the show of flesh that curved outwards beneath it, calling for his attentions. Swearing, he took a blanket from his bed and laid it around her, the wool almost the same shade as her hair. Then he collected his clothes, pulling on his breeches and placing a jacket over the shirt. He did not stop for a cravat. His boots were shoved on stockingless feet at the door as he retrieved the key and unlocked it.

‘Come, sweetheart,’ he murmured and found her hand, liking the way her slender fingers curled around his own.

Trust.

Another barrier breached. He yearned for others.

Outside it was quiet and, as the stables materialised before them, a lad came to his side.

‘Ye’d be wanting the carriage at this time of the night, your Grace?’ Disbelief was evident in the query. Normally conveyances were not sent for until well into the noon hours of the next day. Or the one after that.

‘Indeed. Find Stephens and have it readied. I need to go to London.’

When the boy left them Lucinda Wellingham began to speak, her voice low and uncertain. ‘My cloak is still in the house and my hat and reticule. Should I not get them?’

‘No.’ Tay wanted only to be gone. He had no idea who would talk about her appearance at one of the most infamous and least salubrious parties of the Season, but if he had her home at the Wellingham town house before the morning surely her brothers would be able to fashion a story which would dispel all rumour.

‘My friend Posy Tompkins might wonder what has happened to me. I hope that she is safe.’ She did not meet his eyes at all, a contrite Venus who had tripped into the underworld unbidden and now only wanted to be released from it.

‘Safe?’ He could not help laughing, though the sound was anything but humorous. ‘No one at my parties is safe. It is generally their singular intention not to be.’

‘Enjoying herself, then?’ she countered without missing a beat, the damn dimples in her cheeks another timely reminder of her innate goodness.

‘Oh, I can almost swear that she will be that. The thrall of a good orgasm is highly conducive to contentment.’

Silence reigned, but he had to let her know. Who he was. What he was. Her muteness heartened him.

‘I am not safe, Lady Lucinda, and neither am I repentant. When you came to Alderworth dressed in the sort of gown that raises dark fantasies in the minds of any red-blooded man, surely you understood at least that?’

Tears glittered and Tay swore, causing more again to pool beneath the light of the lamp.

‘Lord knows, you are far too sweet for a sinner like me and tomorrow you will realise exactly just how close to ruin you were and be thankful that I took you home, no matter the loss of a few possessions.’

Asher, Taris and Cristo would not have called her sweet. Not in a million years. She was a failure and a liability to the Wellingham name and she always had been. That was the trouble. She was ‘intrinsically flawed’. The gypsy who had read her palm in a stall outside the Leadenhall Market had looked directly into her eyes and told her so.

Intrinsically flawed.

And she was. Tonight was living proof of the ridiculous things she did, without thought for responsibility or consequence. With a little less luck she could have been in the Duke of Alderworth’s bed right now, knees up around his bare and muscled thighs and knowing what a great many of the less principled women of English society already did. It was only his good sense that had stopped her, for she had been far beyond putting a halt to anything. With just a little persuasion she would have followed him to his bed in the candlelight. Shame coated her, the thick ignominy making her feel ill. Such a narrow escape.

An older man came towards them, carrying a light, and behind him again a whole plethora of busy servants. Lucinda did not meet their eyes as they observed her, plastering a look on her face that might pass for indifference. Goodness, how she hoped that there was none amongst these servants of Alderworth who might have a channel of communication into the empire of the Wellinghams.

At her side Alderworth made her feel both excited and nervous, his heat calling her to him in a way that scorched sense. When his arm came against her own she did not pull away, the feel of him exciting and forbidden before he moved back. She took in one deep breath and then let it out slowly, trying to find logic and reason and failing.

His gaze swept across her with all the intensity of a ranging and predatory tiger.

Within moments the conveyance was ready to leave, the lamps lit and the driver in place. Without touching her Taylen Ellesmere indicated that she climb up and when she sat on a plush leather seat, he chose the opposite side to rest on, his green eyes brittle.

‘It will take us four hours to reach Mayfair. If you are still cold …?’

‘No, I am fine.’ She pulled the blanket further about her, liking the shelter.

‘Good.’ Short and harsh.

Glancing out of the window, she saw in the faded reflection her stricken and uncertain face.

What did the Duke of Alderworth make of her? Was he as irritated by her uncertainty as he was with her intemperance? She could sense he wanted her gone just as soon as he could get her there, a woman who had strayed unbidden into a place she had no reason to be in; a woman who did not play the games that he was so infamous for.

Why he should hoist himself into the carriage in the first place was a mystery. He looked like a man who would wish to be anywhere but opposite her in a small moving space.

It was the kiss, probably, and the fact that she did not know quite how to kiss a man back. Her denial of anything more between them would have also rankled, an innocent who had played with fire and had burnt them both because of it. Granted, two or three forward beaux had planted their lips on her mouth across the years, but the offerings had always been chaste and tepid and nothing like …

No, she would not think about that. Taylen Ellesmere was a fast-living and dissolute rake who would be far from attracted to the daughter of one of London’s most respectable families. He had all the women he wanted, after all, loose women, beautiful women, and she had heard it said time after time that he did not wish to be shackled by the permanency of marriage.

She shook her head hard and listened to what he was saying now.

‘I shall deny that you were at Alderworth tonight should I be questioned about it. Instruct your brothers to do the same.’

‘They might not need to know anything if I am lucky …’

‘It is my experience that scandal does not exist in the same breath as luck, Lucinda.’

A strange warmth infused her as he said her name. She had never really liked ‘Lucinda’ much, but when he pronounced it he made it sound … sensual. The timbre of some other promise lay on the edge of his words.

‘Believe me, with good management any damage can be minimised.’

Damage. Reality flared. She was only a situation to be managed. The night crawled in about them, small shafts of moonlight illuminating the interior of the coach. Outside the rain had begun to fall heavily, a sudden shower in a windless night.

Taylen Ellesmere was exactly like her brothers, a man who liked control and power over everything about him. No surprises or unwanted quandaries. The thought made her frown.

‘I do not envisage problems,’ he said. ‘If you play your part well, there should not be—’

A shout split the air, and then the carriage simply rolled to one side further and further, the wild scrunch of metal upon wood and a jerking lurch.

Leaping over beside her, the Duke braced her in his arms, protecting her from the splintering glass as it shattered inwards, a cushion against the rocking chaos and the rush of cold air. He held her so tightly she felt the punching hardness of metal on his body, drawing blood and making him grimace.

Then there was only darkness.

Lucinda was in her own room at Falder House in Mayfair, the curtains billowing in a quiet afternoon breeze, the sounds of the wind in the trees and further off in the park the voices of children calling.

Everything exactly normal save for her three sisters-in-law dressed in sombre shades and sitting in a row of chairs watching her.

‘You are awake?’

Beatrice-Maude came forwards and lifted Lucinda’s head carefully before offering a sip of cold lemonade that sat in a glass on the bedside table. ‘The doctor said he thought you would return to us today and he was right.’ She smiled as she carefully blotted any trace of moisture from Lucinda’s lips. ‘How do you feel?’

‘How should I feel?’

Something was not right. Some quiet and creeping thing was being hidden from her, crouched in the shadows of truth.

‘Why am I here? What happened?’

‘You don’t remember?’ Emerald now joined Beatrice-Maude and her face was solemn. ‘You don’t remember an accident, Lucy?’

‘Where?’ Panic had begun to consume her and she tried to sit up, but nothing seemed to work, her arms, her legs, her back. All numb and useless. The feel of her heart pumping in her chest was the only thing that still functioned and she felt light headed at the fear of paralysis.

‘I cannot move.’

‘Doctor Cameron said that was a normal thing. He said many people regain the use of their bodies after the swelling has subsided.’

‘Swelling?’

‘You suffered a blow to the neck and a nasty bang on the head. It was lucky that the coach to Leicester was passing by the other way, because otherwise …’

‘You could have been there all night and Doctor Cameron said you may not have lived.’ Eleanor, her youngest brother’s wife, had joined in now, but unlike the others her voice shook and her face was blotchy. She had been crying. A lot.

This realisation frightened Lucinda more than anything else had.

‘How did it happen?’

‘Your carriage overturned. There was a corner, it seems, and the vehicle was moving too fast. It plummeted down a hill a good many yards and came to rest at the bottom of the incline.’

Agitation made her shake as more and more words tumbled into the chasm of blankness her brain had become.

Beatrice took over, holding her hand tightly, and managing a forced smile. ‘It is over now, sweetheart. You are home and you are safe and that is all that is important.’

‘How did I get here?’

‘Asher brought you back three days ago.’ Lucinda swallowed. Three days. Her mind tried its hardest to find any recollection of the passage of time and failed.

And now she was cast upon this bed as a figure of stone, her head and heart the only parts of her body that she could still feel. A tear leaked its way from her left eye and fell warm down her cheek into the line of her hair. Swallowing, her throat thick and raw, she had the taste of blood on her tongue.

Screaming. A flash of sound came back through the ether. Screaming and screaming. Her voice and another calming her. Quiet and sad, warm hands holding her neck so that she did not move, the night air cold and wet and the rain joining blood.

‘Doctor Cameron said it was a miracle you did not move another inch as you would have been dead. He says it was fortunate that when they found you, your head had been stabilised between two heavy planks of wood to restrain any motion.’

‘Lucky,’ she countered, the sentiment falling into question.

They were not telling her the whole of it. She could see it in the shared looks and feel it in the hushed unspoken reticence. She wondered why her brothers were not here in the room and knew the answer to the question as soon as she thought it.

They would not be able to hide things from her as easily as her sisters-in-law, although Cristo was still most efficient at keeping his own council.

‘Was anyone else hurt?’

The hesitation told her there had been.

‘There was a man in the carriage with you, Lucy.’ Emerald now took her other hand, rubbing at it in a way that was supposed to be comforting, she supposed, though it felt vaguely annoying because her skin was so numb.

‘I was alone with him?’ Nothing made sense. What could she have been doing on the open road at night and in the company of a stranger? It was all too odd. ‘Who was he?’

‘The sixth Duke of Alderworth.’ Beatrice took up the story now.

‘Alderworth?’ Lucinda knew the name despite not remembering anything at all about the accident.

My God. The Dissolute Duke was infamous across London and it seemed he kept to the company of whores and harpies almost exclusively. Why would she have been there alone with him and so far from home?

‘Does Asher know he was there?’ She looked up at Emerald.

‘Unfortunately he does.’

‘Do other people also know?

‘Unfortunately they do.’

‘How many know?’

‘All of London would not be putting too fine a point on it, I think.’

‘I see. It is a scandal then and I am ruined?’

‘No.’ Beatrice-Maude’s voice was strong. ‘Your brothers would never allow that to happen and neither will we.’

Lucinda swallowed, the whole conundrum more than she could deal with. Eleanor and Emerald watched her with a certain worry in their eyes and even Beatrice, who was seldom flustered, seemed out of sorts.

Intrinsically flawed. The words came from nowhere as she closed her eyes and slept.

Chapter Three

Tay Ellesmere sat in the library of the Carisbrook family town house in Mayfair and looked at the three Wellingham brothers opposite him.

His head ached, his right leg was swollen above the knee and the top of his left arm was encased in a heavy white bandage, as were his ribs, strapped tightly so that breathing was not quite so agonising. Besides this he had myriad other cuts and grazes from the glass and wood splintering as the carriage had overturned.

But these injuries were the very least of his worries. A far more pressing matter lingered in the air between him and his hosts.

‘You were dressed most inappropriately and Lucinda was barely dressed at all, for God’s sake. The scandal is the talk of the town and has been for the past week.’

Asher Wellingham, Duke of Carisbrook, seldom minced words and Tay did not dissemble, either.

‘Our lack of clothing was the result of being thrown over and over down a hill in a somersaulting carriage. One does not generally emerge from such a mishap faultlessly attired,’ he drawled the reply, knowing that it would annoy them, but short of verifying their sister’s presence at his party he could do little else but blame the accident.

‘We thought Lucinda had gone with Lady Posy Tompkins to her aunt’s country home for the weekend. I cannot for the life of me imagine how instead she ended up alone in the middle of the night with the most dissolute Duke in all of London town and dressed as a harpy.’

‘Did you ask her?’

‘She can remember nothing.’ Taris Wellingham broke in now, his stillness as menacing as his older brother’s fury.

‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing before the accident, nothing during the accident and nothing just after the accident.’

Hope flared. Perhaps it might give him an escape after all. If the lady was not baying for his blood, then her brothers might also give up the chase should he play his cards well.

‘Your sister informed me that she was trying to reach the Wellingham town house after being separated somehow from her friend. She merely asked me to give her a lift home and I immediately assented.’

‘Her reticule, hat and cloak were returned to us from your country seat. A coincidence, would you not say, to be left at the very place you swear she was not.’

Cristo Wellingham’s voice sounded as flat as his brothers’.

‘Richard Allenby, the Earl of Halsey, has also told half of London that she was a guest at your weekend soirée. Others verify his story.’

‘He lies. I was the host and your sister was not there.’

‘The problem is, Duke, Lucinda is facing certain ruin and you do not seem to be taking your part in her downfall seriously.’

Taylen had had enough.

‘Ruin is a strong word, Lord Taris.’

‘As strong as retribution.’

Asher Wellingham’s hand hit the table and Tay stood. Even with his arm in a bandage he could give the three of them a good run for their money. The art of gentlemanly fighting had been a lesson missing from his life, the tough school of displacement and abuse honing the rudiments of the craft instead. Hell, he had been beaten enough himself to understand exactly the best places to hit back.

‘We will kill you for this, Alderworth, I swear that we will.’ Cristo spoke now, the sound of each word carefully enunciated.

‘And in doing so you may well crucify your sister. Better to let the matter rest, laugh it off and kick any suggestions of misbehaviour back in the face of those who swear them true.’

‘As you are apt to do?’

‘English society still holds to ridiculously strict rules of conduct, though free speech is finding its way into the minds of men who would do better to believe in it.’

‘Men like you?’ Taris stood. His reported lack of sight was not apparent as he stepped towards the window, though Tay saw the oldest brother watch him carefully.

Care.

The word reverberated inside him. This was what this was all about, after all: care of each other, care of a family name, care in protecting their only sister’s reputation from the ignominy of being linked with his.

Protection was something he himself had never had. Not from his parents. Not from his grandmother. And particularly not from his uncle. It had always been him against a world that hadn’t taken the time to make sure that a small child was cherished. The man he had become was the result of such negligence, though here in the salon of a family that watched each other’s backs the thought was disheartening.

He made his way around a generous sofa. ‘I have an errand to attend to, gentlemen, and I find I have the need of some fresh air. If you will excuse me.’

‘What do you make of him?’

Asher asked the question a few moments later as Cristo crossed to the cabinet to pull out a bottle of fine French brandy.

‘He’s hiding something.’ Taris accepted a drink from his brother. ‘For some reason he is trying to make us believe there was only necessity in our sister’s foolish midnight tryst in the carriage with him and that she was never at Alderworth.’

Cristo swore. ‘But why would he do that?’

‘Even a reprobate must have his limits of depravity, I suppose. Lucinda’s innocence may well be his.’ Taris drank deeply of the brandy before continuing. ‘He studies the philosophy of the new consciousness, which is interesting, the tenets of free speech being mooted in the Americas. Unusual reading for a man who purports to be interested in nothing more than sexual mayhem and societal anarchy.’

‘I don’t trust him.’ Asher upended his glass.

‘Well, we can’t hit a man wrapped in bandages.’ Cristo smiled.

‘Then we wait until they are removed.’ There was no humour at all in the voice of Asher Wellingham, Duke of Carisbrook.

Lucinda wheeled herself to the breakfast table, her muscles straining against the task and her heart pounding with the effort. It had been almost two weeks since the accident and the feeling that the doctor had sworn she would recover was finally coming back, though she had been left with a weakness that felt exhausting and a strange and haunting melancholy. Now she could walk for short distances without falling over, the shaking she had been plagued by diminishing as she grew steadily in strength. The wheelchair was, however, still her main mode of getting about.

Posy had spent much of the past week at the town house, her horror at all that had happened to Lucy threading every sentence.

‘I should never have taken you to Alderworth, Luce. It is all my fault this happened to you and now … now I don’t know how to make it better.’ Large tears had fallen down her cheeks before tracing wet runnels on the pink silk of her bodice.

‘You did not force me to go, Posy. I remember that much.’

‘But while I was safely locked away in our bedroom, you were …’

‘Let’s not allocate any more blame. What is done is done and at least I am regaining movement and energy.’

It had taken Lucinda a good few days to convince her friend that she held no malice or blame, Posy’s numerous tears a wearying and frustrating constant.

Asher was sitting in the dining room, reading The Times just as he usually did each morning, and he folded the paper in half and looked closer as something caught his interest.

‘It says here that the Earl of Halsey has suffered a broken nose, a black eye and twenty stitches in his cheek. The assault happened in broad daylight four days ago in an altercation outside the livery stables in Davies Mews right here in Mayfair. There were no witnesses.’

His glance strayed to Lucinda’s to see how she might react. The whole family had tiptoed around her since the unfortunate happening as though she might break into pieces at any unwanted reminder of scandal and she was tired of it. Consequently she did nothing more than smile back at her oldest brother and shrug her shoulders.

‘Footpads are becoming increasingly confident, then.’ Emerald took up the conversation as she buttered her bread. ‘Though perhaps they do us a favour, for isn’t he the man who has constantly insisted Lucinda was underdressed at the Alderworth fiasco? Without his voice, all of this could have been so much easier to deal with.’

Lucinda knew Richard Allenby, of course. He had always been well mannered and rather sweet, truth be told, so she had no idea why he should be maligning her now and in such a fashion. Yet a shadow lingered there in the very back of her mind, some nebulous and half-formed thing trying to escape from the darkness. Wiping her mouth with the napkin, she sat back, the food suddenly dry in her mouth and difficult to swallow.

‘You look like you have seen a ghost, Lucy.’

‘What exactly was it that the Earl of Halsey said of me?’

‘He has been spreading the rumour that you may have been intimate with Alderworth at his home. He says he saw you in the corridors on the first floor of the place, searching for the host’s bedchamber.’

Her brother’s tone had that streak of exasperation she so often heard when speaking of her escapades, though in this case Lucinda could well understand it.

‘Intimate?’ The shock of such a blatant falsehood was horrifying. ‘Why would he tell such a lie? Surely people could not believe him?’ Wriggling her foot against the metal bar of the wheelchair, she checked for any further movement. Over the past few days the tingling had gone from her knees to her feet as the numbness receded.

‘Unfortunately they are beginning to.’ Asher’s voice no longer held any measure of care.

‘What does Alderworth say?’

‘Nothing and that is the great problem. If he denied everything categorically and strode into society the same way he strode into Wellingham House, people might cease to believe Richard Allenby. But instead the man has disappeared to the country, leaving chaos behind him.’

‘Alderworth came here? To the town house?’ Lucinda frowned. There was something about him that was familiar, some part of him that she remembered from…before. ‘What did he want?’

‘Put bluntly, he wanted to be rid of any blame as far as your reputation was concerned. He made that point very plain.’ Asher put his paper down and watched her closely. ‘The man is a charlatan, but he is also clever. The slight whiff of an alliance with us might be profitable to him.’

‘Alliance?’ Lucinda’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

‘A ruined reputation requires measures that may be stringent and far from temporary.’

‘You mean a betrothal?’ Horror had Lucinda’s words whispered. Low. She had heard all the stories of the wicked Duke. Everybody had. He was a man who lived by his own rules and threw the caution most others followed to the wind.

As her heartbeat quickened, memory fought against haze and won. Dropping the teacup she was holding, she stood, liquid spilling across the pristine whiteness of an antique damask tablecloth, the brown stain widening through the embossed stitching even as she watched.

The naked form of Taylen Ellesmere came through the fog, unfolding from a rumpled bed, each long and graceful line etched in candlelight, the red wine in a decanter beside him almost gone. She knew the feel of his skin, undeniably, for they had been joined together pressed in lust, his velvet-green eyes close as he had leaned down and kissed her. No simple chaste kiss, either, but one with a smouldering and virtue-taking force.

Shock kept her still, as she looked directly at her oldest brother.

‘What is wrong? You look … ill.’ Real concern crossed his face.

‘I am remembering things and I th-th-think everything Richard Halsey is saying of m-me might indeed be tr-true.’

Her weakened legs folded beneath her just as Asher caught her, the hard arm of the chair slamming into her side.

‘You are saying you lay with Alderworth. Unmarried.’

‘He was naked in his bedchamber. He touched me everywhere. The door was locked and I could not leave. I tried to, but I could not. He took the key. He was not safe.’ A torrent of small truths, each one worse than the last.

‘My God.’ She had never heard the note in her brother’s voice that she did now, not once in all her many escapades and follies. His fractured tone brought tears to her eyes as she felt Emerald’s hand slip into her own and squeeze.

‘You will marry my sister as soon as I can procure a special licence and then you will disappear from England altogether, you swine.’

Asher Wellingham had already laid a good few punches across Tay’s face and Cristo Wellingham was still holding him down. Not the refined manners he had imagined them to have, after all, each blow given with a deliberate and clinical precision. His nose streamed with blood and he could barely see out of his left eye. The two front teeth at the bottom of his mouth were loosened.

‘If you kill me…a betrothal might be…difficult.’

Another blow caught him in the kidneys and, despite meaning not to, he winced.

‘You will tell Lucinda that it was completely your fault she was at Alderworth in the first place and that your heinous, iniquitous and pernicious sense of social virtue was lost years before you met her. In effect, you will say that she never had the chance of escaping such corruption.’

‘C-comprehensive.’

‘Very. But as long as you understand us we will allow you to at least take breath into another day whilst we try to mitigate all the wrong you have heaped upon our sister. She is distraught, as you can well imagine, and names you as the most loathsome of all men. A reprobate who took advantage of her when she was drunk.’

‘She told you that?’

‘And worse. But although she might hate you, she also knows that you are the only man who can restore her shattered name in society when you marry her. In that she is most adamant.’

‘A sterling quality in a bride.’ Even to his own ears his voice lacked the sting of irony he usually made an art form of.

‘Well, you can laugh, Alderworth, but if you believe we will let you anywhere near Lucinda after the ceremony is performed then you have another think coming. You have already done your damage. Now you will pay for it.’

Tay coughed once and then again, his breath difficult to catch. When the younger brother allowed him to drop heavily to the floor he felt the arm that had been hurt in the carriage accident crack against hard parquet, pain radiating up into the shoulder socket.

Ignominiously he began to shake and he swore. It had been a long time since he remembered doing that, his uncle’s face screwed up above him in the wrath of some perceived and tiny insult, the summer winds of Alderworth hot against the wounds that lashed his back. Bleeding, everywhere. No mercy in the beating.

Standing uncertainly and holding on to the edge of a chair, he raised himself before them. ‘Your sister’s memory is faulty. I did not touch her.’

‘She says exactly the opposite, and anybody who knows Lucinda knows, too, that straightforward honesty is one of her greatest strengths.’ The embossed ducal ring on Carisbrook’s finger caught the light as he moved forwards. ‘Frankly, given the number of your dubious guests who have not ceased gossiping since the accident about what went on at Alderworth, I find your whining and feeble excuses insulting. A man worth his salt would simply own up to his mistakes and take the punishment he deserves.’

From experience Tay knew when to stop baiting a man who would hit him until life was leached from truth. He nodded an end to the dispute and saw the answering relief on Asher Wellingham’s face.

‘We will pay you to leave a week after the wedding. A considerable sum that should see you well on your way to your next destination. After that, you will never again set foot anywhere near London or our family.’

‘Alderworth is almost bankrupt. Your father’s debts were numerous and you will not have enough equity to continue the repayments after the year’s end.’ Taris had taken up the reins now, from a sofa near the fireplace, his voice steady and quiet. ‘You have been trying to trade your way out of the conundrum, but your bills are becoming onerous and a lifestyle of indolence is hardly a profitable one. Accept our offer and you might keep your family inheritance for a few years yet. Decline and you will be in the debtors’ prison by Christmas.’

‘Will your sister know?’

‘Indeed. Lucinda wants it.’ Cristo stepped forwards, disdain in his eyes. ‘She wants you out of her life for ever.’

Marriage as a bribe to keep the Alderworth estate. Tay thought of its roofline under the Bedfordshire sky, the golden stone against the sun and hundreds of acres of fertile and green land at its feet. His father had forsaken the place, but he could not. Not even if the alternative meant selling his soul.

‘Very well.’ His voice was hoarse and he felt his honour breaking, but he swiped the feeling away as a quill was inked and a parchment made ready. He was the only Alderworth who could save four hundred years of history and Lucinda Wellingham hated his very guts.

Chapter Four

Lord Taylen Ellesmere, the sixth Duke of Alderworth, had the appearance of a man who had been in a particularly rough boxing match when Lucinda saw him for the first time at the top of the aisle in the small chapel in London’s Mayfair.

He did not turn to look at her, his profile granite-hard, his left wrist encased in a bandage and a large cut running along the whole side of his jaw. The muscles beneath the wound rippled with anger, a barely held wrath that was seen in the straightness of his posture and in the rigidity of his being. His hair was shorter, shaved almost to the skull, a single white, opaque scar snaking from the edge of his right ear to his crown. One eye was blackened.

Even Asher looked slightly taken aback by his appearance, but at this stage of the proceedings there was little anyone could do.

The die was cast after all. She would marry the Duke of Alderworth to redeem her place in society and he would marry her because her brothers had made him do so. She had sinned and this was the result. Love existed nowhere in the equation and the empty pews in the chapel reflected the fact. Her siblings and their wives sat on her side of the church, as well as some close friends, but on his side … there was nobody.

Lucinda speculated as to who might stand up as his witness, the question answered a moment later when Cristo moved across to him. Her youngest brother looked about as unhappy with the whole thing as Asher was, a duty performed out of necessity rather than respect.

Every other Wellingham wedding had been a joyous affair, celebrated with laughter and noise and elation. This one was sombre, quiet and dismal. She wondered how long the Duke of Alderworth would stay in London after the ceremony and just what words she might use to explain away his absence. Asher had said that he would remain in the capital for a week or more, so that appearances could be upheld. After that they would be glad to see the back of him.

Her brother had breathed this through a clenched jaw as if even a day in the company of her soon-to-be husband would be one too many.

Lucinda swallowed away dry fear. This was the worst mistake she had ever made, but the consequences of her own stupidity had brought her to such a pass, her whole family entwined in the deceit. She wanted to throw down the bouquet of white roses interlaced with fragrant gardenias and peel off the ivory gown that had been quickly fashioned by one of London’s up-and-coming modistes. The veil helped, however, a layer of lace between her and the world, sheltering confusion. A week ago she would not have been able to walk or to stand for such long periods, but today the utter alarm of everything allowed her to keep any pain at bay.

Posy Tompkins stood to one side of her, her face drawn. Her friend had been nothing short of horrified about the consequences of their ill-thought-out visit to Alderworth and had been attentive and apologetic ever since. She claimed she had managed to avoid the worst of the excesses by locking herself in her room.

‘Are you sure you want to go through with this, Luce?’ she whispered. ‘We could disappear to Europe together otherwise. I have more than enough money for us both. We could go to Rome or Paris to my relatives.’

‘And be for ever outcast?’

‘It might be better than …’ She stopped, but Lucinda knew exactly what she was about to say.

It might be better than being married to a man who looked for all the world as if he was going to his own funeral. With an effort she lifted her chin. It was not as if she was happy about anything, either, although some quiet part of her buried deep held its breath as green eyes raked across her own, the red streak in one of them bright with fury.

‘This is 1831, Luce, not the Middle Ages. If you truly do not wish to do this, you only have to say. No one can drag a reluctant bride to the altar even if the alternative is enormous scandal.’

‘I do not think your words are helping, Posy.’

‘Then let me call it off. I can say that it was completely my fault I took you to Alderworth in the first place and procured the dress and …’

But the minister had begun to speak in his low, calm voice and Lucinda knew that to simply walk out on her last chance of salvation would be to cut herself off from a family that meant the world to her.

She had brought this upon herself, after all, and she just could not think of another more viable solution. A marriage ceremony. A week of pretence. And then freedom. Lord, she would follow the straight and narrow from now on and, if God in all his wisdom allowed her the strength to get through these next hours, she would promise in return an eternal devotion to His Good Works.

When Tay took a quick look at his bride-to-be he saw that under her veil her hair was plaited in a crown encircled by pale rosebuds. Today she seemed smaller, slighter, less certain. The lies she had spun about them, he supposed, come home to roost in front of the altar, no true basis for any such betrothal. He was glad of the lace that covered her head because he did not wish to see her deceitful eyes until he had to. The gown surprised him, though. He had thought she might balk at making any effort whatsoever, but the dress fitted her perfectly, spilling in a froth of whiteness about her feet. A dainty silver bracelet adorned her left wrist, four small gold stars hanging from it.

A continual whispered dialogue with the bridesmaid began to get on his nerves and he was glad when the minister, dressed in flowing dark clothes, called the place to order.

Everybody looked tense. The bride. The brothers. Even the minister as he held his hand up to the organist and called for quiet.

‘Marriage is a state that is not to be entered into lightly, or with false promise. Are you happy to continue, Lady Lucinda?’

Tay bit down on chagrin. Of course she would be. His title was one factor and her ruin was another. He wished the man might skip through to the final troths and then all of this would be over.

But he did not. Rather he waited until the bride before him nodded her head without any enthusiasm whatsoever. ‘Then we are here today to join this man and this woman in the state of Holy Matrimony …’

For ever and for ever. It was all Tay could think as he gave his replies, though his parents had never let such pledges inhibit them in their quest for the hedonistic. For the first time in his life he partly understood them and some of his disillusionment lifted.

But it was too late for such understanding now, with his years seemingly destined to run along the same chaotic and uncontrolled pathway as those that he had sworn he would never follow. He was his father’s son, after all, and this was a universally ordained celestial punishment for what he had become. The thought calmed him; fate moving in ways which allowed no redemption and if it had not been this particular sticky end that he had met, then undoubtedly it would have been another.

‘Will you, Taylen Andrew Templeton Ellesmere, take Lucinda Alice Wellingham as your lawfully wedded wife …?’

The words shook him from his reverie. Her middle name was Alice and it suited her. Soft. Pale. Otherworldly.

‘I will.’

Resignation tempered his pledge.

When Lucinda Wellingham gave the troth her tone was shaken, a thin voice in a house of God that held no message of joy within it.

And finally it was over.

Because it was expected he turned to face her and lifted the veil slowly. The church had been a place of refuge for him as a child and he still believed in the sanctity of religion despite everything he had become. The woman who stood there, however, was different from the laughing brave one in his bedchamber in Alderworth. This girl had dark rings beneath her lashes and eczema on her cheeks. Her eyes were flat blue orbs with no sparkle at all and the bump on her head from the accident was still visible. Exhaustion wove paleness into her skin.

As hurt as he was. A shared damage.

He felt his hand move to touch the wound and stopped himself. Theirs was a marriage in name only and the Wellinghams had been insistent that he understood this was for public consumption. A week or two at the most and then they wanted him gone. Her brothers had said that was her wish, too, his bride who, after uttering only lies, would not carry out even the pretence of a union once her ruin was minimised.

A travesty. A perversion. A shameful parody of something that should have been finer. Lord, the notion that survival justified the use of immoral means to achieve the required end was rubbing off on him in a melancholic and peculiar discontent. ‘He who neglects what is done for what ought to be done effects his ruin …’ Machiavelli. The memory took him back to the night she had burst uninvited into his room, her colour high and the red dress low across her breasts.

Tay wished Lucinda Wellingham would take his hand again and hold it as she had at Alderworth, her fingers entwined into the worth of him as if she knew things that nobody else had ever discovered. He shook his head hard at such nonsense and she chose that moment to look at him directly, pale blue searingly condemnatory, the lies between them settling into an uncrossable distance.

‘It cannot be easy to be the bride of ruin.’ His words made her flinch, but he did not take them back. He wished that amongst those gathered there had been one person who might have welcomed his company. But there wasn’t. All the wives of the Wellinghams had drawn Lucinda into their bosom, their eyes slicing across his like sharp knives—a rancorous truce, the white flag of surrender raised across his spilled blood and bruising. If he had by chance dropped dead due to some unforeseen and dreadful ailment he thought a party might have ensued, this veil of pretence transformed into a celebration of death.

He had never felt so unwelcome anywhere.

The shake of Taylen Ellesmere’s head made Lucinda turn away, the tears she felt smarting at the back of her burning eyes threatening to fall. He did not look contrite or penitent or even slightly apologetic. He looked implacable and indifferent, this man who had disgraced her through fine red wine and a callous disregard for innocence, and was now making no effort whatsoever to assuage such poor behaviour.

The Bride of Ruin, indeed. Her husband now. Judas. Shylock. Marcus Brutus.

Lucinda could not even bear the thought that he might reach out and touch her.

She had been destroyed and she could remember none of it. She had been deflowered by a master with only the slightest jolt of memory remaining. Her brothers stood around her, a wall of masculine prickliness, sheltering her from the canker this betrothal had spawned, her sisters-in-law stalwart in the next ring of protection.

Alderworth had not apologised to them. Rather he had laughed in the face of their accusations and sworn free will was a liberty that all were entitled to.

Free will to take an innocent beneath him and to ravish her under the influence of strong wine; free will to take her to his bed and to say nothing to obliterate the raging gossip that swirled around the circles of society.

Lucinda Wellingham, the harlot. Lucinda Wellingham, intrinsically flawed.

Like the spoilt centre of a fruit, she thought, and was glad Posy Tompkins had also pushed in beside her because at least her friend’s perception of the nuptials was laced with some sense of excitement.

‘You will be free now, Luce. A married woman has so many more liberties.’

‘I doubt another invitation will ever land upon my mantel, Posy.’

‘Then we shall hold our own soirées, brilliant cultured gatherings that shall be the talk of the town.’

‘Like courtesans?’ Lucinda could not take the sting of it from her words for, all of a sudden, the whole world seemed meaningless and hollow. Posy had no notion of the signed agreements designating the boundaries of this marriage. She had not told her.

‘Taylen Ellesmere is titled and handsome. There will be many a woman who might envy you such a husband. Believe me, be thankful he was not old and grey with no teeth and bad breath.’

Despite everything Lucinda smiled. Trust Posy to see the bright side of it all. Taking her friend’s hand, she held her fingers in a tight grip and turned away from the worry of her family. The promises had been given and the deed was done. The only way on from here was upwards and Lucinda swore that when she was finally free of all this she would never allow her life to be mired again in such a shambolic wreck of betrayal.

‘The wedding breakfast has been set up, Lucy. Asher asked if you would come now so that we can get this … finished with.’ Beatrice spoke softly so that no one would overhear. The Wellinghams could manipulate to avoid disaster, but they wanted no others to understand that they did so. The twenty or so outside guests who had strong ties with the family beamed at her from one corner of the room of Falder House.

They had been invited to make this farce seem … legitimate. With the knowledge of what might happen next her brothers had at least given her back her shattered name. But after this she would only garner pity; the bride who was left summarily by a husband who had never loved her.

Threading through the room, Beatrice, Taris and Asher led the assembly along to the blue salon. If she had wondered before at the control her brothers liked to wield, she understood now the very essence of it. The tables were dressed lavishly, the settings of the finest bone china and sterling silver. French wine had been brought up from the cellar. No shortcuts to encourage gossip. No small errors that might make the invited guests wonder. Nay, beneath the polite banter another reality lingered, stronger and unmistakable, but only if your name was Wellingham.

Taylen Ellesmere was sat next to her, his nearness making her shake, though when his leaf-green eyes brushed her own she felt … dizzy and disorientated.

Some worry leaked through her anger, a quiet emotion in a room full of tension. Bruising lay beneath his one blackened eye and there was a cut upon his bottom lip that she had not noticed before. Despite it all his beauty shone through, no slight comeliness, either, but a full-on barrage of masculine grace.

Unnerved, she shifted the lengthy veil which had pulled in beneath her, the lace of the Carisbrook’s heirloom fragile in the play of sunshine from the window. She felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her lungs by one hefty punch of misgiving, but another truth also lingered.

Her husband was not all evil. There was a goodness in him that no one had discovered as yet.

She knew this as certainly as night followed the day, even though on his left hand beside his marriage band other rings glinted in the light—perhaps reminders of love from other women he had once admired before he had been made to marry her by her brothers? His name was always linked to paramours, after all. Was there one who he might have wished was standing here now in her stead?

Her cheeks itched with the eczema she always got when misgiving consumed her and the idea that her good name might be salvaged by such a course of action suddenly seemed foolish and ill advised. She wished she did not feel so shamefully heated by his presence at her side, the indifference she sought so far away from this undeniable awareness of him.

‘The carriage accident hurt us both? I have been told how very lucky I was in not being killed by it, for with only a small movement things could have been so very much worse and I may never have walked again or even spoken and according to Doctor Cameron there might have—’

He stopped her by raising one hand. ‘Are you nervous?’

For the first time she could ever remember in her whole entire life, Lucinda blushed. She felt the slow crawl of blood fusing her cheeks and held her hand up to the heat.

‘Why would you say that?’

‘Because you confided in me once that you talk too much when you worry.’

Her mouth dropped open.

Such a private honesty and one that she had never let another soul be privy to. She seldom shared her secrets, keeping them close to her heart instead, safe from derision or discussion. When and why had she told him such a thing? Perhaps the wine had made her speak? The exasperating fact of her lack of memory was both tiring and worrying.

‘Surely you remember. It was just before I kissed you.’

Should she tell him that only a minuscule recollection remained from the time that they had shared in his chamber? His nakedness. The wine. His mouth upon her breast. Her nipples hardening.

Now that was new. Sitting up, she tried to remember some more, but couldn’t. A new resolution firmed. He had taken her maidenhood without her consent and now would pay for it.

The laws of the land were there to protect the innocent and every Lord in his position had been brought up to acknowledge such a code. Ethics safeguarded chaos. When such tenets were broken, this was the result: a hasty marriage between strangers, flung together by the flimsy strands of expedience.

‘I was foolish to come to your house in the first place, your Grace, and more foolish to stay. This is my penance.’ She kept her tone distant, formal, just a polite conversation. When she leaned forwards she caught sight of herself in the wide shiny silver of an unused platter. Her cheeks were worse, even in the few short hours since leaving her chamber. She doubted she had ever looked quite so awful and her groom’s handsome visage just made everything a hundred times more humiliating. Shallow, she knew, but in all her girlhood fantasies she had not imagined herself appearing so very bedraggled at her own wedding feast.

Lord Fergusson came up behind them, placing one hand on each of their shoulders. ‘If you can have a marriage like I had for forty-three years, then you will be well blessed.’ His old eyes brimmed with kindness.

Tay Ellesmere simply looked across at her. Answer this as you will, he seemed to be saying, shards of irritation noticeable.

‘Indeed, Lord Fergusson,’ she replied, remembering Mary-Rose, his beautiful wife, who had passed away suddenly the previous summer.

‘But may I offer you a few words of advice? What you put into a marriage is what you get out from it and agreement is the oil that smoothes the way.’

‘Then with all the agreements between us, ours shall run most smoothly,’ Alderworth observed.

He had changed the meaning of the word ‘agreement’, but Lord Fergusson did not understand his reference. Her new husband’s hands were in his lap. Fisted. Not quite as indifferent as he made out to be. Another thought struck her. Every knuckle had been grazed as though he had only recently been in a fight. Was that why his eye was black and his jaw cut? Please, God, let it not have been her brothers who had hurt him.

‘I knew your uncle, Duke.’ This was said tentatively. ‘The Earl of Sutton.’

‘Unfortunate for you.’ Her groom’s tone was plain ice and Lord Fergusson left as quickly as he had come, a frown on his face as he scrambled away.

‘He is an old man who would do you no harm, your Grace, and he has only just lost his wife. Besides, this is a wedding and people expect—’

He broke in before she had finished. ‘What do they expect, Lucinda? All that is between us here is dishonesty and farce. The charade of a marriage and the farce of a happy ever after. And now you want me to lie about an uncle who was not fit to be around children, let alone one who—’ He stopped suddenly, his green eyes as dark as she had ever seen them, fathomless pools of torture. The real Taylen Ellesmere who lived beneath all he showed to the world was evident, the pain within him harrowing.

‘You speak about yourself as a child? This uncle, the Earl of Sutton, he was your guardian?’

Only horror showed now, though the shutters reflecting emotion closed even as she watched and the implacable ruthless Duke was back.

‘Enjoy your day, my dearest wife, because there are not many left to us.’

With that he stood and walked out of the room.

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