Too Scandalous to Wed (12 page)

“Henry!”

She shuddered to hear him say her name. “Get away from me!”

Sebastian grabbed her, hugged her in his arms.

It was a miserable moment, to be in his hold. She had longed for him for so many years, yearned for his touch. Now she just wanted to get far away from him.

“What the devil are you doing here, Henry?”

“Me!” She squirmed in his embrace. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Don’t evade the question.” He gave her a shake. “Answer me.”

“I came to give you this.” She pushed the letter into his chest. He let her go and grabbed the missive. “I wanted to set things right between us, but I’m such a fool!”

“You shouldn’t have come, Henry.”

Icy breath escaped his lips, his nose.

He was angry.

She didn’t care.

“What is this place?” she hissed, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“My club.”

“Your club?” she sneered. “This is where you gather with your friends?” She pointed to the abbey. “What the hell kind of a place is this?”

“Just that, Henry, the Hellfire Club.”

A vile name indeed. “You meet in an abbey?”

“Our founder had the abbey restored more than seventy years ago.”

“This has been going on for
decades
?”

Years of debauchery. Years of fiendish pursuits. And Sebastian was a part of it all. He wallowed in the decadence, the depravity. He
liked
it!

The ache tore at her heart.

“Is this what you do for pleasure, Sebastian? Celebrate vice?”

He was silent.

“
Why?
” she cried.

He took a step toward her, shoved the letter in his pocket, then grabbed her by the arms again. “Some of us are born good, Henry, and some of us are born damned. I wasn’t born good, and I’m not going to fight fate.”

She gasped. “Rot!” She twisted her arm to break free of his hold. “You have a choice, Sebastian. You
don’t
have to come here.”

He let her loose; combed a shaky hand through his thick and wavy locks. “Henry—”

“Who are the men inside?” she demanded, tears burning her cheeks.

He was breathing hard. “Men like me, Henry.”

“The
ton
you mean?” Throat sore from crying, she croaked, “And you bed
nuns
?”

“Not nuns, Henry. Doxies dressed like nuns.”

So that was it. No
ladies
allowed, but doxies…

No wonder Peter had tried to stop her from coming. He’d wanted to spare her from the hideous sight of his ignoble brother.

“But where are the friars?” she said. “Peter told me there were friars.”

“Peter?”

Henrietta sensed she had rankled him even more with the confession about his brother, but she was too grieved to care. She just wanted answers, hurtful as they might be. Her world was shattering before her eyes, but she still wanted more from Sebastian. She wanted more truth.

Sebastian took a moment of repose before admitting, “We are the friars.”

“Oh, I see.” She sniffed. “The ‘friars’ bed the ‘nuns’ in the abbey.” It was enough to make her retch again, admitting the words aloud. “You’re a fiend.”

“I know, Henry.”

But she didn’t know. That was the wretched truth. For eight years she’d loved, even worshipped, a dream. Sebastian wasn’t a gallant knight. He was
a villain, just as her sisters had said. And
she
had adored him. Seduced him. Wanted to
marry
him!

Oh God, it hurt, the candor. It hurt so much she wanted to scream. He looked so formidable in the shadows. So wicked. So
un
like her Sebastian. The hero she had dreamed up in her head.

“I want you to stay away from me,” she sobbed. “Don’t ever come near me again!”

“I won’t,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

S
ebastian made his way back down into the banquet hall. He grabbed a bottle of spirits. He didn’t care what brand it was, so long as it was hard. Hard enough to numb the crushing pain throbbing in his chest. He popped the cork and guzzled the liquid fire.

It was over, Henrietta’s infatuation with him. After eight long years, he had ground her girlhood fancy to dust. It was ironic, really. To shatter her whimsical dream, all he’d had to do was tell her the truth. Tell her he was a loathsome villain.

Sebastian settled in a chair and took another swig of brandy, trying to blot out the memory of Henrietta’s briny tears from his mind. He had devastated the girl. A deuced shame. But what other choice had he had? He was a fiend. And Henrietta was an innocent and foolish girl.

True, she had tried to seduce him. But under the misguided belief that they were soul mates. What rot! It was better for the chit to learn the truth about
his vile nature. She was still young. Only twenty. She had plenty of time to find herself another mate. A more suitable husband.

Sebastian quaffed the rest of the drink, let it burn his throat and fill his belly. Henrietta was going to be all right. She was a charming, pretty little chit. She’d have a plethora of beaux by next Season’s end. She would forget all about him, he was sure.

Bloody spirits! Not working fast enough. A cutting pain speared his heart, pinched his lungs, making it hard to breathe.

Sebastian gripped his brow and rubbed his aching temples. There would be no more adoring looks, he mused. No more fanciful gestures or spirited laughter or passionate kisses. Soon Henrietta would belong to another man. Soon she’d shower her husband with devotion. And Sebastian would be dismissed from her thoughts like a bad dream.

Good riddance, really. At least he didn’t need to pretend anymore. Pretend that he was some gallant knight to shield the chit from the truth about his wicked ways. He was free. Free to be the man he was always destined to be: a villain.

A disgusting villain who’d just squashed Henrietta’s heart.

Blast it! What the devil had possessed the girl to come down here in the first place?

The letter.

Sebastian fumbled in his pocket, looking for the cursed piece of paper she had come to deliver. He
found it in the silk lining of his coat, all crumpled up.

He unfurled the missive:

Sebastian stared at the letter, the words sinking into his woozy brain. Memory of last night’s passionate tussle in bed with Henrietta pounded in his head.

All that was good between them? Yes, it had been good. Achingly good. But the girl didn’t want his forgiveness anymore. She didn’t want anything to do with him, in truth. She was gone from his life. Forever.

Sebastian’s vision started to fuzz. Thank God! He let the bright torchlight, the besotted friars, the moans of wenches all mix together in his head.

The movement and noise swirled before his bleary eyes, in his drowsy ears. He dropped his head back, beckoned the darkness to come, to stomp asunder the misery in his gut. But instead, the buzzing antics of a fustian pest bothered his senses.

“She was mine, Ravenswood.” The chap slurred his words as he took a seat opposite Sebastian. “You’d no right to take her from me.”

Sebastian lifted his head, trained his wavering eyes on the grating mooncalf. But all he could see was purple feathers.

“Who the devil are you?” snarled the viscount.

The mooncalf fumbled with the laces of his mask.

“Emerson,” Sebastian gritted.

A young upstart, Emerson was the son of an earl. He had joined the Hellfire Club to obtain a notorious reputation—and thus ruffle his officious father’s feathers. Perhaps he even wanted to send the earl into an early grave with the shock of his wicked ways?

Whatever the matter might be, it was all rot. Emerson infamous? He was a peevish misfit with an iniquitous cruel streak. He enjoyed the brutality of life. Seeing others suffer, that was, for Emerson was a coward himself, too timid to show his face more than half the time. Like the other friars in the club, he preferred to wear a mask to conceal his identity.

It was all bloody absurd in Sebastian’s estimation. If one did not
really
enjoy ignominy, one should not join a society like the Hellfire Club. Wearing a mask was a timorous pretense.

“What the deuces are you talking about, Emerson? What woman?”

“The spirited little wench you just chased after.”

Sebastian hardened.

“She was mine, Ravenswood.” Emerson pointed to his chest. Missed. And poked himself in the throat. “I’d picked her.”

“Picked her for what?” Sebastian growled.

Emerson garbled his words. “To be our next banquet, o’course. Mmm.” He licked his lips. “She’d have made a tasty dish, strapped to the table—”

Gripped by a pounding fury, Sebastian shot out of his chair, fists swinging. But vertigo nearly plunked him back into his seat.

Emerson, meanwhile, toppled out of his chair, and scurried on hands and knees to get away from the ominous viscount.

Sebastian gathered his composure and set off after the little rabble-rouser, knocking chairs and tables out of the way.

The friars erupted in guffaws, clamoring, “Go get ’im, Ravenswood!”

Regaled by the spectacle, the friars didn’t care about the root of the fight.

Emerson scrambled under the banquet table. It was a sturdy structure, too heavy for Sebastian to tip. Instead, the viscount stomped to the other side of and grabbed the crawling wastrel by the ankles.

Emerson let out another holler and kicked.

Sebastian, thoroughly foxed, lost his hold on the scalawag, who disappeared into one of the tunnels.

Beneath burning torchlight and a hail of guffaws,
Sebastian could feel the darkness clawing at his eyes. And why the devil was he chasing after Emerson again? He didn’t remember anymore.

Staggering into a nearby tunnel, Sebastian stumbled into an empty cell and collapsed on the bed. The blood pounded in his ears. Darkness pounded on his head. And Sebastian welcomed the blackness with a blissful sigh.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the catacombs, a distraught Emerson had curled into a quiet corner, the stinging tears of humiliation burning his cheeks. He didn’t have a contusion on his body, but the bruise to his ego was sore indeed.

The ring of laughter still echoed in his ears. The friars’ sporting taunts. He was disgraced. He could never return to the Hellfire Club. And all because of that savage brute Ravenswood. Emerson didn’t know what had set off the viscount, but he was determined to make the man suffer.

Dearly.

But how?

A scrap of paper caught the besotted Emerson’s eye. The same scrap of paper Ravenswood had been reading before he’d stomped after him like an ogre. The viscount must have lost the letter in the fury of the chase. It was now wedged under a chair leg, fluttering in the cold catacomb breeze.

Too busy drinking and heckling, the friars didn’t pay much mind to Emerson as he crawled discreetly
back into the banquet hall and snatched the letter from its precarious spot.

Quickly Emerson skulked back into the tunnel, away from the bacchanal, and read the letter.

The words danced on the page. He was foxed. He had to concentrate hard to get the inscription to stay still and make some sort of sense.

After a few deep breaths and a hard stare, he deciphered the content.

A love note!

He scrolled further down the missive.

From a
man
!

Emerson had never suspected Ravenswood to be the type to consort with a man. Henry, was it? What a fabulous piece of
on-dit
! It would surely ruin the knave once word leaked out.

Emerson cast his wavering gaze over the crowd of inebriated friars. He tried to remember their names. Was there a Henry among the rowdy lot?

But wait…Ravenswood had chased after a chit earlier in the night. The very chit Emerson had wanted to strap to the banquet table. And hadn’t Ravenswood called her…Henry?

Could Henry be a woman?

But who the devil would name a woman Henry?

Blast it! Emerson rubbed his throbbing temples. He’d had too much drink. He couldn’t think straight.

But soon the name dawned on him. Henry…as in Henrietta Ashby, the eccentric daughter of Baron
Ashby. Society talk about the flamboyant family was abundant. Could she be the woman in the letter?

Emerson was going to find out. And then he would have his revenge. The daft chit was in love with the viscount—and Ravenswood wanted nothing to do with her. What a perfect form of punishment for the viscount, that he should be made to marry the very woman he loathed. Cleary the viscount was angry with the wench. Clearly he’d hate to be leg-shackled to her for the rest of his days. But what choice would he have once the scandal broke? She was the daughter of a baron; Ravenswood would have to save her reputation. And spend the rest of his life in misery.

Perfect.

W
retched tears! Henrietta stumbled on the first step, her vision fuzzy. It was almost dawn. She had dismissed her maid to bed. Henrietta didn’t want to bother with a bedtime ritual: brushing her hair, washing her face, divesting her clothes. She just wanted to get to her own room and bury herself under the bedcovers. She wanted to forget all about Sebastian; to lose herself to dream and stifle the smarting pain in her breast.

She gathered her skirts and mounted the stairs again.

“Henry!”

Henrietta ignored her brother-in-law. She was too distraught to chitchat now—especially with him. He had tried to
help
her woo Sebastian, knowing who his brother really was: a scoundrel.

“Leave me alone, Peter.”

Peter bounded up the steps after her and grabbed her by the arm, curtailing her retreat. “Henry, I’ve
been waiting for you to come home. You went after Seb, didn’t you? Please tell me what happened. Did Seb hurt you?”

A sardonic chortle. “He only devastated my very belief in goodness.”

Peter looked devastated himself. “Henry, I’m so sorry.”

She jerked her arm away. “Why didn’t you tell me, Peter?”

“Henry, I warned you not to go after him.”

“No, I mean
why
didn’t you tell me he was a fiend?”

He raked a hand through his dark curls and sighed. “I thought you could save him, Henry.”

Tears blurred her vision. “He’s a monster, Peter. And you didn’t even warn me. You wanted me to
marry
him!”

“He’s not all bad, Henry. Really, he’s not. He just needs someone to care for; someone to care about him.”

She pointed to her chest. “Well, it’s not going to be me.”

Henrietta scurried to the top of the stairs. She bumped into her eldest sister. Having heard the commotion, Penelope must have come out to investigate.

“What’s going on?” Penelope glanced from her husband to Henrietta. “Henry, where have you been?”

Henrietta brushed past her sister and rushed into
her room. She flopped onto the bed and cuddled her pillow. But the heady musk of Ravenswood filled her nostrils, triggering a memory.

Last night she had snuggled with Sebastian in this very bed. She could still feel the warmth of his breath on her skin, feel the soft touch of his lips, see the smoldering look in his eyes. He had been so tender, yet passionate. So much like the hero she had dreamed about for
eight
long years.

Henrietta tossed the pillow across the room. For eight years she had loved an illusion. For eight years she had worshipped a devil. The ache in her belly infested her lungs, making it hard to breathe. What a miserable waste of time, of devotion. So much effort squandered on seducing a scoundrel!

She grabbed the bedcovers, buried her face in the fabric, and bumped her head against Madam Jacqueline’s naughty book of pictures. In a fit of pique, she tossed that, too—under the bed. There it wouldn’t cause anymore trouble.

Henrietta nestled against the bedspread again. But still the smell of Sebastian haunted her.

She let out a sob, tears burning her eyes. She was such a fool!

“Henry?”

Penelope stood in the doorway. In her wrapper, she looked drowsy, but there was still worry in her eyes—and sympathy.

Henrietta’s bottom lip started to tremble. “You were right, Penelope. Ravenswood is nothing but a wicked rogue.”

Penelope quickly crossed the threshold and clambered up onto the bed. “Come here, sweet.”

Henrietta surrendered to her grief and slumped against her sister. Slender arms went around her in a tight hold, and Henrietta wailed into Penelope’s breast until her throat ached. She didn’t even notice the other hands that stroked her hair and caressed her back. Or the dip in the bed as three more sisters gathered around her for support. All Henrietta could feel was the throbbing ache in her chest: an ache she feared would never go away.

Henrietta stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror. She looked different. Older? She certainly felt different. Even the world around her had changed. Less bright. Less hopeful.

“Leave my hair down today, Jenny.”

The chambermaid nodded. “Yes, Miss Ashby.”

Jenny picked up the hairbrush and started to comb it through her mistress’s hair. She tugged at the locks to unravel the knots.

Henrietta tried to unravel some knots, too. Knots in her heart. All sorts of distressing thoughts came to mind, consumed her concentration.

Thoughts of Sebastian.

He haunted her dreams, disturbed her waking
hours. She was determined to be rid of him; her heart was still clinging to him.

Foolish heart! When would it learn? The world wasn’t filled with heroes and knights. It was peppered with villains and an assortment of worthy men. Henrietta had to sift through the lot of scoundrels to find one such worthy man. But whoever he might be, he was not Ravenswood.

Henrietta remembered the viscount in the catacombs—with a nun. A doxy, really, but still, the horror of it all filled her head, the painful recollection a smarting spasm on her heart.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath to quell the tears threatening to surge again. She wasn’t going to waste a minute more pining over the villainous viscount. She had already lost her youth to the man. She would not lose a moment more of her future. She
was
going to find herself a more respectable husband, one worthy of her affection. She was not going to be lonely and cheerless for the rest of her days because of the ruthless Ravenswood. She was adamant about that!

The bedroom door opened.

Henrietta looked over her shoulder. “Good morning, Mama. I’ll be ready for breakfast in just a minute.”

Henrietta was late—as usual. But it was unlike the baroness to be so impatient about her tardiness. In fact, it was family tradition to start the meal with
out her. So why had Mama come to fetch her?

“Jenny, I would like to speak with my daughter—alone.”

Jenny bobbed a curtsy. “Yes, my lady.”

The maid set the hairbrush aside and quickly skirted from the room.

Henrietta watched the girl go, then returned her attention to her curious mother. “What’s the matter, Mama? Why did you shoo Jenny from the room?”

The baroness entered the boudoir and closed the door softly behind her. “Because there are some things a servant should not hear.”

Henrietta lifted a brow. “Such as?”

“Private things, Henry.” The older woman moved deeper into the room. “Now, what sort of fabric would you like your wedding dress to be made from?”

Henrietta paled. “Wedding dress?”

“And lilies are your favorite bloom, are they not? I shall put in an order for a hundred lilies at the hot house. No, two hundred.”

Henrietta started to feel dizzy. “Lilies?”

“Now let’s talk about the wedding menu.”

Alarmed, Henrietta grabbed her belly. “
What
wedding, Mama!”

With a very innocent air, the baroness quipped, “Why yours, Henry. Now don’t dawdle. We have a lot to do before Twelfth Night.”

“Twelfth Night!” Henrietta sailed out of her chair, her mind a whirl. “But the marriage license?”

“Being fetched as we speak.”

The room was spinning. “Who am I marrying?”

“Your betrothed, of course…Viscount Ravenswood.”

Henrietta grabbed the back of the chair for support. She had a very profound desire to sink to the floor and cry. “Mama, what’s happening?”

“It’s very simple, my dear. You’ve disgraced yourself and now you must pay the consequences.”

Those blasted tears Henrietta was fighting to keep down bubbled to the tips of her lashes.

“Now don’t blubber, Henry.” The baroness sashayed over to the vanity and picked up a lacy kerchief. She shoved it under her daughter’s nose. “We have to get back to the matter at hand. Shall we serve goose or duck at the wedding luncheon?”

“Mama, I…”

“Goose it is. Now how about the soup? Pheasant, perhaps?”

Henrietta twisted the kerchief around her finger. “I don’t want to marry Ravenswood.”

“You don’t have a choice, Henry.”

“But I—”

The baroness touched Henrietta’s lips, silencing her. “Perhaps you did not hear me, Henry. You’ve made a spectacle of yourself. The whole Town is in a tizzy about the shameful letter you wrote to Ravenswood. You are ruined. Your father is ruined. I am ruined. Your sisters and their husbands and their
children are ruined. And you are going to marry Ravenswood and make it right. Is that understood?”

A great welter of shame stormed Henrietta’s breast. The letter! “You know about the letter?”

“Everybody
knows about the letter.”

Grief and rage swirled together in Henrietta’s belly. That bastard, Ravenswood! He couldn’t just devastate her foolish girlhood fancy, he had to devastate her very respectability, too, by showing the letter all over Town?

Bile filled her throat, constricted her airway. Henrietta rushed over to the window and pushed back the curtains.

Air! She needed air!

“Get ahold of yourself, Henry,” the baroness chided. “We have to fix this blunder.”

Henrietta pushed and pushed against the frozen pane of glass. She didn’t care if she shattered the icy sheet. She needed air.

At last the casement parted. Cold winter air whooshed inside the room.

“Henry.” The baroness hugged herself to ward off the chill. “Close that window at once!”

But Henrietta did no such thing. She stuck her head out the opening and inhaled the biting wind, wishing the cold could numb her heart and the fury in her belly.

“Henry, you’ll catch your death!”

Henrietta didn’t care. In truth, marriage to Sebas
tian would be a death of a sort. To be leg-shackled to that villain for the rest of her days? She would be forever miserable.

“Enough of the dramatics, Henry.” The baroness marched over to the window, yanked her daughter back inside the room, and closed the glass. “You didn’t think Ravenswood such a terrible match when you wrote him that letter.”

“Mama, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Henry. Oh, this is all your father’s fault!” The baroness lifted her hands heavenward, as though in prayer, before she scooped up the side of her dress and flounced over to the hearth. “He reared you like a boy. But you are not a boy, Henry. You cannot act like one!”

“I know, Mama,” she said quietly.

Lady Ashby made a noise of distress, rubbing her hands together before the snapping flames in the hearth. “Then
what
possessed you to write such an outrageous letter?”

“I thought…” Henrietta slowly dragged her feet over to the bed. She wrapped her arms around the bedpost and hugged the wood with all her might. “I thought he loved me, Mama. We had a fight. I thought if I wrote him the letter…”

“All would be well again?” The baroness huffed. “Well, you got your wish, Henry. You’re going to be the next Viscountess Ravenswood.”

Henrietta shivered at the title: a title she did
not want anymore. She remembered the promise Ravenswood had made to her the other night: the promise to stay away from her—forever. Hopeful, she said, “He won’t marry me, Mama.”

“He most certainly will,” the baroness proclaimed in a very pompous voice, “or there’s going to be a duel.”

Henrietta gasped. The very thought of Ravenswood and Papa in an empty field in the wee hours of the morning had her heart fluttering in distress. “But Papa’s a terrible shot!”

Lady Ashby pointed to her chest. “
I
would shoot him, Henry.”

Henrietta supposed even a blackguard like Ravenswood would not duel with a woman, so there was no other way to settle the matter—she had to get married.

She sighed. “But Ravenswood doesn’t care for me, Mama.”

And Henrietta didn’t care for him. He was a devil, through and through. Oh God, what had she done! She should never have written that letter. She should never have visited with Madam Jacqueline. She had made such a terrible mess of her life. And now she was going to pay for her foolery.

Rightly so, she supposed. Who else should suffer but her? It was all her doing, all her wretched fault. And now her family was tainted by the scandal, too. What choice did she have but to marry Ravenswood? She had to save the family name, the honor
of her parents and sisters. And she could not marry another, more respectable gentleman. Who would want her now, after such a disgrace? She had to marry. And she had to marry Ravenswood.

“Whether Ravenswood cares for you or not is inconsequential. The deed is done, Henry. You’d best prepare yourself for the wedding.”

Henrietta rested her brow against the bedpost, the horror of her dismal fate sinking into her brain. “Yes, Mama.”

She was going to be Ravenswood’s wife. A few days ago she would have been thrilled by the news, but today she was anything but. Just the thought of being the next Viscountess Ravenswood, sharing a home with the lecherous scoundrel, made her heart hurt. The rogue was going to spend his marital days at his fiendish club. He was not going to give up his wicked ways for her, she was sure.

And she would have to endure the humiliation of it all, the disgrace. Didn’t the
ton
already whisper about his immoral pursuits? Her sisters had heard the ghastly rumors, so the gossip must be widespread. She was going to have to bear the snickers and the pity. And she was going to have to endure a daily reminder of her foolery. Each time she was with her husband, she would remember her childhood fancy: the noble hero she had invented in her head. And each time she would feel the shame of her silly girlhood dream.

The smarting pain in her chest made it hard to
breathe. She had hoped to forget all about Ravenswood, to banish the villain from her heart and soul. She had hoped to find a better, more respectable husband. But both hopes were now dashed to bits.

“I can’t believe I’m getting married,” said Henrietta.

“Yes, it was rather a shock to us all. Your poor father almost had an apoplexy when he heard the news.”

“Oh no, Papa!” Henrietta dismissed her woe at once and rushed to the door, panic knocking on her breast. “Is he all right?”