A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress Read online

  A stolen kiss from a dashing stranger…

  at her own betrothal ball!

  When Isabella Alstone receives a shockingly passionate kiss from a handsome stranger at her betrothal ball, she scandalously ends her engagement. She is even more surprised when she discovers exactly who the stranger is! Ruggedly striking Wulf FitzDevelin is illegitimate, penniless and her ex-fiancé’s half-brother—their match is wholly unsuitable. Yet Isabella cannot escape the burning longing to feel his touch again!

  “Beacon has herself another winner.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Governess Heiress

  “Historical romance fans will be delighted by this tale... Curl up and spend an enjoyable afternoon with this sweet story.”

  —RT Book Reviews on One Final Season

  “Can you even imagine how many of your relatives and friends will line up to challenge me if they find out what we were doing just now?

  “Oh, no, that’s right,” he continued as he stood farther away to look back at her. “I forgot—I’m not worthy of a sword or a pistol, am I? So will it be an ambush in the dark and a good whipping or two in order to teach me not to tilt at windmills?”

  “Not on my account. I’m quite capable of standing up for what I want and I’m not sure I like being called a windmill.”

  “Don’t make a joke of it, Isabella,” he said rather painfully. “I know you’re an independent woman of means who thinks she knows her own mind, but I won’t let you be ostracized and mocked for the sake of a by-blow other ladies used to toy with in secret. You might think you could dare to be a pariah and a laughingstock with such a lover, but I won’t let you risk it,” he said grimly, and she could see from the stubborn set of his mouth he believed it.

  “Do you really think I care what the scandalmongers think of me?”

  “You might not, but I do.”

  Author Note

  The Alstone family have a lot to answer for. I never intended to write a series when Miranda Alstone’s story, A Less Than Perfect Lady, began. I made the mistake of wondering what became of the hero’s best friend, Ben Shaw, so Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess happened next. Then there was One Final Season, because Kate Alstone’s story kept nagging at me in its turn. When their cousin Louise Alstone climbed out of a window dressed in black breeches and shirt, A Most Unladylike Adventure galloped into town but that was it. No more, and there were other families to explore...

  Four happy endings seemed quite enough, until dark, damaged and thoroughly unsuitable Wulf FitzDevelin needed a bold, beautiful and daring heroine to appreciate him. So that was when Isabella stepped smartly forward with a wicked gleam in her dark blue Alstone eyes and said “Mine” and off we went.

  So welcome to my fifth Alstone story and I hope you enjoy meeting Wulf nearly as much as Isabella did. One or two characters from the past might be familiar to some of you, but Wulf and Isabella are quite capable of standing alone—in fact, I think they would insist on it.

  ELIZABETH BEACON

  A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

  Elizabeth Beacon has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Harlequin Historical.

  Books by Elizabeth Beacon

  Harlequin Historical

  The Alstone Family

  A Less Than Perfect Lady

  Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess

  One Final Season

  A Most Unladylike Adventure

  A Wedding for the Scandalous Heiress

  A Year of Scandal

  The Viscount’s Frozen Heart

  The Marquis’s Awakening

  Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise

  Redemption of the Rake

  The Winterley Scandal

  The Governess Heiress

  Linked by Character

  The Duchess Hunt

  The Scarred Earl

  The Black Sheep’s Return

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Excerpt from In Thrall to the Enemy Commander by Greta Gilbert

  Excerpt from His Wicked Charm by Candace Camp

  Chapter One

  You’re three and twenty, Isabella Alstone, and far too old to hide in the dark. You should stay in the ballroom and pretend to be happy, not creep out here as if you’re planning to steal the silver.

  Isabella was tired of being the perfect lady, though, so she stripped off her gloves and waved them in front of her overheated face, ignoring the voice of her conscience. It was hot even outside on this sultry late summer night and she wasn’t going back until she was cooler, calmer and more resigned... No, not more resigned, more collected. Yet promises so logical and right when voiced to a friend seemed strange and wrong now and how could she be calm about that?

  ‘Now, why is a lady of quality lurking in the shadows with the likes of me? Better go back to being belle of the ball instead of getting caught out here in bad company.’

  The voice from the shadows startled Isabella from her reverie. The sound of his velvet-and-darkness voice told her he was right, but she was in the mood to be reckless.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded, peering into the gloom to try to see through the shadows.

  His gruffly masculine voice had a pleasing hint of danger along the edge of it she shouldn’t want to know more about, but she had left safe, respectable Isabella inside and it was wonderful to be a different person altogether for a few stolen moments. She could be the sort of female who’d dive into wild encounters in the dark, as if she was put on this earth to be foolish and bold with the first rake she stumbled on in the shadows. Her fantasy of being a brash and sophisticated lady who took what she wanted from life and laughed at the future, as if it wasn’t heading towards her at the speed of a runaway horse, was too alluring to turn her back on just yet.

  ‘Because I’m here,’ the mysterious voice explained, as if that was all she needed to know to send her running. She stayed exactly where she was, refusing to scuttle inside like a scared rabbit, and heard him sigh, as if he couldn’t believe how stupid she was not to listen and do as she was bid.

  ‘You’re no debutante, so the Bond Street Beaux must have told you how beautiful you are by now and that will make everything worse if we’re caught in the moonlight together.’

  He stepped forward so the light from the few hundred wax candles could illuminate his face and form and show her how right he was. Wit
h a face too much his to match any ideal of classical perfection, he wasn’t the most handsome man Isabella had seen. He wasn’t the tallest or broadest or most obviously powerful male she had ever met either. Of course, he was leanly fit and quietly muscular as well as deeply, darkly intense. And uniquely formed to make her shiver in her dancing slippers with an unexpected and delicious anticipation of something she’d hardly dared think about until now and usually shuddered away from when she saw that feral light in other men’s eyes. Only seconds ago she’d been hot and weary and now she felt so alive there could be air and stardust under her feet instead of solid York stone. If this was how being irresponsible felt, it certainly topped being her usual sensible and reasoned self.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea who you are, so if you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working. Although you’re right about one thing,’ she said as lightly as she could when the world seemed to have stopped and they were the only two people left moving. ‘I have been out for a long time now and know false flattery when I hear it.’

  ‘I don’t flatter, Mrs...’ he shot a steely gaze at her ring finger ‘...apologies, Miss, and there’s no need to pretend to be middle-aged,’ he said with a wry smile that did hot and disturbing things to her insides. ‘We’ll both be old soon enough.’

  ‘We will?’ she echoed in a breathy whisper that must have given him doubts about that maturity, but she did feel like a giddy girl when he took her gently by the arm and urged her further into darkness and away from the pool of golden candlelight spilling out of a ballroom that now seemed almost as remote from her as the Arctic.

  ‘Will someone come dashing out to find you any moment now, ready to usher you away?’ he asked with a smile, but she felt a tension in his sleekly powerful body that made her frown briefly.

  ‘No,’ she told him like a silly debutante desperate to be ruined by a rogue. ‘My family trusts me to behave,’ she added with a late tilt at sophistication and a flutter in her heartbeat that suggested they shouldn’t tonight.

  ‘They don’t consider the basic needs of the human heart often enough, then, or, in my case, even baser masculine ones you’re better not to know about until you really are a Mrs Belle,’ he replied with a cynical thread in his voice that made her frown for another sensible, bone-jarring moment before the darkness and scent from some exotic hothouse flower nearby wafted it clean away.

  ‘So you’re not to be trusted?’ she heard herself ask like the fledgling idiot she’d never allowed herself to be in polite society.

  Nobody was ever going to lure her in with showy good looks, false promises of love and passion, and heady nights like this one. She remembered her eldest sister, Miranda, falling for evil, charming Nevin Braxton at seventeen and all the horror her elopement and ruin had brought down on her family’s lives too well for that. Isabella had shuddered away from rakes as if their kisses would poison her ever since. This man hadn’t flattered and flirted and fawned on her, though. He seemed to see beyond her golden looks, exquisitely fashioned gown and neat figure and was speaking to the real Isabella.

  And out here she could forget what was waiting for her inside the hot room only feet away. On this terrace with the scent of exotic flowers heavy in the air, only now mattered. Just enough light shone from the ballroom for her to see his eyes were ice blue and hot at the same time. Her breath stuttered when he pulled her further from the lights of the party and the glow of a waxing moon gave them a world of their own.

  ‘You should not trust me, Belle. I’m dangerous,’ he said almost seriously. ‘I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing,’ he added as if he believed it.

  ‘It’s not full,’ she told him and sensed his bewilderment. ‘The moon,’ she explained with a nod towards it where it seemed almost touchable, on the horizon, ‘so you can’t claim the moon made you do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Kiss me,’ she heard herself say rashly. A sane part of her was so shocked it was as if it flopped down on to the stone bench nearby and sat there with its mouth open.

  ‘Oh? And why would you let me do that, Belle? Perhaps you’re as wild as I am,’ he murmured, suddenly closer than she remembered.

  She should run, dash back into the familiar noise and heat and glitter of a tonnish ballroom, and find the nearest respectable female to chaperon her. Instead she stayed as if her feet were rooted into the still-warm stones under their feet. She could touch and taste him if she stayed, hear the urgent saw of breath he’d been holding too long. Moonlight fell on high cheekbones and dark, dark hair springing almost to disarray despite all his efforts to tame it. The hint of a frown at his dark eyebrows told her a goodly part of him thought he ought to fight this basic, gut-deep attraction as well. But there was enough light for the sensual curve of his mouth to betray the fact urgency and passion were getting the upper hand even without her exploring touch and silent encouragement to get on and kiss her and to hell with the real world.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ she whispered as she padded her fingertips against his tense jaw, feeling how it clenched and suspecting it was taking everything in him not to fall on her like the wolf he claimed to be.

  But reason gave way to madness and suddenly she was in his arms. This was the kiss that would bring Isabella Penelope Alstone fully to life. The one she’d been so secretly waiting for since the day she began to be a woman. She hadn’t even let herself know she wanted it until now. His mouth fitted lushly against her eager lips and he felt so familiar against her. He murmured something as if he agreed with her unspoken thoughts and she opened her mouth to say Yes, please, but he dipped his tongue inside first, as if he had to know more, had to know everything now she was here at last. She was melting from the outside in, or should that be the inside out? Heat beat through her in time with his hurried breaths and the dart of his gently exploring tongue, as if he knew she’d never felt passion like this before and it was a shock that echoed through them both.

  Yes, there was the shake of novelty and wonder in his fingers as he danced them across her cheekbone and down to outline her chin as if he was learning her with every sense he had. Never before had she been tempted to burrow into a man’s arms, to try to become a part of him by melding her heat with his, her mouth with his. For a minute reality threatened to pull her back and her mind told her body to flinch away, but the alluring stranger snatched all her attention back by sliding his wickedly exploring tongue over her lower lip, deepening the kiss.

  She shifted even closer and copied his exploration. His cheek and jaw felt so firm under her touch and her fingers were intrigued by the contrast between her own softer features and his hawkish ones. She could feel the suggestion of his beard despite a careful shave and she spared a moment to scent the clean, sharp smell of soap and something tangy used to take the sting of the blade away when a gentleman was making himself civilised and smooth for the company of ladies.

  Real life threatened to jump in again, but she told it to go away and muttered something encouraging instead. Nothing in reality could beat a meeting outside time and all the rules of polite society. Her heart beat so fast and her breath demanded air while pleasure and hope and a big, wide yes to life and this stranger and all he could be opened up inside her. She was shivering like a thoroughbred and rode a tide of heat more intense and deep and demanding than anything she’d ever felt before. There were no words to describe how right it felt when he pulled her closer to show her what she was doing to him. She felt the tension of deep desire in his rigidly muscular form. This was the carnal, primal need that carried men and women to places they’d never intended to go to when they started an evening not even knowing one another.

  Instead of flinching back and telling him, no, they couldn’t go any further down that road when they didn’t even know one another’s real names, she pushed her curious hands under his unbuttoned evening coat and gave a pleased little grunt at the feel of a hot, needy and intriguingly muscul
ar male under her exploring touch. Her fingers soothed the tight muscles at the base of his spine, whispered inquisitively downwards, desperate to know the difference between his spare male flanks and her own sleekly feminine curves. He gasped as if she’d stung him, then sucked in breath as if he might need more if she was going to carry on, so she did. She could feel his muscles shift and soothe, then tense again as she explored the sparseness of his buttocks and the honed, pared-down line where they met long, strong legs. Her own legs wobbled and almost let her down as their stance thrust his unmistakably eager manhood emphatically against her.

  This was what uncontrollable desire felt like. This was how a woman felt when she was desperate for the man she loved to take her somewhere magical. That old taboo, that stark little four-lettered word sounded like a death knell in a corner of her mind, but she was moon-mad and curious enough to ignore it for a little longer. It put a hiccup in her sigh, though, a caveat in her exploration even as she buried a gasp of awe and need against his shoulder, then stood on tiptoe so that every bit of her felt it knew every bit of him.

  But they didn’t, they couldn’t; not with so many sharp eyes and curious minds dangerously close by. She felt him stand a little straighter, pulling back his leanly powerful shoulders so he stood more sceptically apart from her as she burrowed against the warmth and strength and certainty of him and tried to hold on to this moment for a little while longer. If she let go, she’d have to see what she’d done and what she ought to have been doing instead. Ever since she’d given in to impulse for once and stepped outside the stuffy ballroom behind them, the way her life was planned out from now on was weightless in the balance against this rebellious encounter under the stars. Let him go and that weight would tumble back and she would end up more wrong than she had ever been in her life.

  As she stood in the stronghold of his arms, trying to hold the real world at bay for as long as she could, voices started to disturb the fog of her mind.