A Wicked Lord at the Wedding (2 page)

The band launched into another set.

She danced around him, agile, evasive. “Behave yourself, baron.”

“It
was
an invitation.” His blue eyes burned with confidence. “And, by the way, I accept.”

He realized that she doubted him when he swore he’d make up for not being a decent husband. But had she fallen completely out of love with him?

S
PAIN
S
UMMER
1809

If anyone had asked Miss Eleanor Prescott to describe her life on the day she met a lean, black-haired infantry captain named Sebastien Boscastle, she would have answered that she had stepped into the pages of a fairy tale.

It hadn’t mattered that until then she had been passed off on dour relatives or sent to gloomy boarding schools, her destiny taken out of her hands by the well-meaning. It hadn’t even mattered that she had no inkling what her destiny might be.

She recognized her fate the instant she looked up into the sultry blue eyes of the infantry officer who entered her father’s hospital station on that sweltering afternoon in Spain. He was the reason she’d braided jasmine in her hair early that morning, even though she’d never bothered before.

“Have you been injured?” she’d asked, aware by his unabashed grin that there wasn’t a thing wrong with him.

He took off his black bicorne hat. He had thick
ebony hair and strong, sun-burnished features. The epaulettes of his scarlet infantry coat rested upon broad shoulders. He was tall, even taller than she was, and his spare frame filled the makeshift wooden station with understated power. A saber hung at his side.

“Do I have to be injured to talk to you?”

His deep, teasing voice gave her chills of delight.

All the officers flirted. It was one of the reasons her father, Dr. Jason Prescott, a senior regimental surgeon in General Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army, had argued that she shouldn’t leave school to join him. Assisting at surgery was hard, heartbreaking work.

But even her father hadn’t been able to refuse when she had been dismissed from Mrs. DeLacey’s Academy in Knightsbridge with a letter of regret claiming that she had no academic potential at all. She lacked the social grace to become a debutante. She couldn’t stay put in a chair long enough to even call herself a wallflower.

The day she met Sebastien, her dismissal became a blessing instead of a disgrace. What did it matter if there were donkeys and dirty wagons in the background rather than a coach and four?

No godmother at a fancy ball could have created a stronger magic. The dire predictions of her undesirability vanished. She knew about Sebastien from campaign gossip. The officers’ wives whispered that he was brave, and good-natured, which made him the worst kind of temptation. It was common knowledge in London that a Boscastle recognized
no competition, and once one of his infamous family set his mind on a love conquest, the rest was history. Passion, these experienced ladies warned Eleanor in knowing whispers, appeared to have been passed through his breed’s ancient bloodlines.

“Seduction is a strategy to men like him,” the lieutenant general’s niece informed her, not bothering to hide her envy. No matter what anyone said, Eleanor was impressed that he didn’t seem to be intimidated by her father’s reputation. It took nerve to enter a medical shelter for no other reason than to flirt with her.

But then, he could probably sense from the way she agreed to talk to him that he had caught her interest.

“Is there anything wrong with you?” she asked again, realizing that one of them should break the spell of staring at each other.

“There might be,” he said wryly.

She tried not to encourage him by laughing. She might have been able to resist his blue eyes. His easy charm targeted the chink in her armor. “Where?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s my—my breathing. It’s stopped.”

“This sounds very serious,” she said, biting her bottom lip. “It might even be contagious. I think we ought to find my father.”

He stepped in front of her, looking abashed, but oh-so attractive. “I’m a fraud,” he confessed without warning.

“I thought so,” she said quietly.

He reached down toward the cot for his hat. “I suppose you want me to leave?” he asked awkwardly.

She sighed. She wished he’d waited a little longer to admit the truth, which left her with no choice but to pretend she was offended. “It’s a good idea. I’m meant to be packing my father’s instrument case. And if you aren’t in any pain—”

He straightened. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek. She wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been studying him so intently.

“But I am in pain,” he insisted, his blue eyes sincere. “I have been since I noticed you at the general’s dinner party the other night.”

She swallowed a laugh. “That was
you
behind the screen?”

“I thought I was rather subtle. But, well—I probably wasn’t thinking at all.”

“Didn’t you knock over the tea urn the same evening?”

His grin deepened. “You noticed that, too—you noticed
me
?”

“I’d venture everyone in the hall did,” she said with a giggle. “Although all I saw of you was the back of your head.”

“I would like you to see more of me—no, I meant—” His eyes glinted with rueful humor as she started to laugh in earnest. “I don’t usually knock things over.”

“I imagine that’s a good trait in an officer.”

“My name is Sebastien Boscastle, Baron of … of something or other.”

“Are you a good baron or a bad one?”

“Why don’t you judge for yourself?”

“How?” she asked, laughing again at the glint in his eye, and the silly question. He had to be a good officer because she’d heard his promotion universally praised. His company stood in awe when he strode past. She was overwhelmed by him herself, and not because she hoped to move up in the ranks.

But a bad baron was another thing. She envisioned dark-hearted warlords battling one another in medieval civil wars and bearing fainting brides up to impenetrable castle towers. There was no question that this man could hold his own as a warrior. But as to whether he was wicked enough to abduct a lady, well, it was unlikely she would ever know.

“How am I supposed to judge you?” she asked, folding her arms. “There isn’t a castle close by for you to besiege. Not an English one, anyway.”

He leaned his head toward hers. She knew right then that he wasn’t going to ask her to come outside and watch him shoot an olive from a fellow officer’s hat to impress her.

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

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

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

Hard. Cold steel.

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

He stopped.

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

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

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

“When will you let me know?”

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

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

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

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

“Yes or no?”

“No, but—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

She’s mine
.

And he was hers, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was right.

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

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

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

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

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