Devil Takes A Bride (9 page)

Only Alec Knight could get away with such a thing and come out gleaming.

A born showman full of dash and style and outrageous charm down to the tips of his elegant fingers, he had made it seem a coup, a blow struck in behalf of all males, the usual financial supporters of women. Congratulated left and right by his hordes of scoundrelly friends for turning the tables on the female race, Alec Knight had made his choice, as far as Lizzie was concerned. He had thrown her love away on a roll of the dice.

She had thought she would never be able to glue all the pieces of her broken heart back together again, but finally, in the peace and quiet of Bath, she had begun to mend. So, what, in God's name did she think she was doing making cow eyes at Devil Strathmore? He and Alec Knight were not the same man, but they were the same breed, a fact underscored by their friendship—and by their gambling debts. The parallel was obvious, though they were night and day—a dark devil and a golden god—both of them too beautiful and too highborn for the likes of her; both dissolute scoundrels obsessed with adventure, addicted to living on the edge. Devlin might be king of the dark forest, but Alec ruled every glittering ballroom he stepped into, which was why she was never going back into Society again.

Devlin set down his fork and furrowed his brow, studying her intently. “Are you all right, my dear?”

Still mute with emotion, she looked straight into his eyes and thought,
Don't flirt with me. I can't have you. I don't want you. I don't need any man
. She was an independent woman.

A spinster.

A bluestocking and deuced proud of it. She cared only for books. Never again would she place herself at the mercy of his kind. Never again hand her heart over to be broken.

As the excruciating silence stretched thin, Pasha suddenly came to her rescue, jumping up on the table to make a dash for the pigeon pie.

Chaos exploded across the table, much to Lizzie's relief.

“Pasha, no!”

“Get down!”

“Reeer!”
The cat leaped over the epergne, a tawny streak of fur and insolence.

Wine splashed. Flatware clattered. Devlin yanked his coffee out of the way just in time to avoid wearing it, while Lady Strathmore laughed in delight. Silver lids went spinning. The candelabra tipped over, catching one of the linen napkins on fire.

The shocked footmen stumbled into motion, one quickly dousing the little flame with a heave of melting ice from the wine cooler, while the second leaped to roll the dowager's chair out of the way.

Her nephew was on his feet. “Get that damned cat out of here!”

Without forethought, Lizzie seized the distraction to effect her escape, purposely knocking over her wineglass in the confusion so that her Madeira spilled all over her best gown. She didn't even care. She just wanted out of there, now. Away from Devlin's all-too-perceptive gaze.

“Oh, no!” she cried, looking down at herself as the footmen chased the cat down the far end of the twenty-foot table. When the Strathmores looked over at her, she glanced up with an innocent expression, hoping she gave no sign of her Jacinda-like ruse.

The eagle-eyed dowager regarded her skeptically, but Devlin let out a mild curse to see what the cat had done to her gown.

“Blazes, Aunt, can't you keep that rat on a leash?”

“But, Devlin, Pasha loves pigeon pie,” Lady Strathmore protested mildly, chuckling as her spoiled pet huffed over to the warm bricks in front of the fireplace and pretended to ignore the scolding, sulking and licking his paw.

Having barely escaped a dousing from his own tumbled glass, Devlin cast about with a look of distress in her behalf, as if he knew she could never afford to replace the gown, a gift from the fantastically wealthy Jacinda. “That will come out if you hurry,” he offered. “I'm sure my valet could give it one of his treatments. Ben's a genius, truly. No stain can stand against him.” He got out of the way while the footman quickly mopped up the spreading puddle of coffee.

“You're very kind,” she murmured barely audibly. “I'm sure I'll manage. If you'll excuse me.”

“Off you go,” the dowager said blithely. “Do not fret, my dear. Owing it all to Pasha's mischief, I promise your gown shall be replaced with a new one if the valet cannot fix it.”

“Thank you, ma'am, but I'm sure it won't be necessary.” What need did she have for such finery? An estate keeper's daughter had never really had any business going into Society in the first place. Without further ado, she sketched a curtsy and then hurried out of the dining room in a rustle of ruined wet satin.

 

Dev frowned and sat down slowly again after she had gone. “Now, that's a shame,” he said, still puzzled by Miss Carlisle's strange reaction of a few moments ago and the stricken look he had glimpsed in her eyes. “You will replace her gown for her?”

“I said I would.” His aunt observed him with a narrow smile. “You like her, do you?”

He glanced over, startled by her frank inquiry.
Careful, old boy.
His aunt had a habit of trying to marry him off to every eligible female in England. “She seems pleasant enough,” he said guardedly.

“To be sure, she is not the sort of idiotic miss you are used to. I confess, I am worried about the gel. Do you know how she spends her nights?”

“I cannot imagine.”

“Translating foreign texts for extra money.”

“Don't you pay her enough, Aunt?” he asked indignantly.

“Of course, I do. She is saving up, you see, to open a bookshop.”

“A
what
?”

“You heard me.” They exchanged a puzzled look. Aunt Augusta shrugged and shook her head at the notion. “She is quite the bluestocking, our Miss Carlisle. French, Italian, German.”

“Even German?” he echoed, impressed. “I wonder where she learned that.”

“Why don't you ask her? Or is the great adventurer, like every other man, frightened of a woman with brains?”

“I am not frightened of Elizabeth Carlisle, Aunt. Hang it, old girl, I haven't seen you take to someone this way in years.”

“Well, she is quite worth one's time. Reminds me of myself as a gel, in fact.”

He laughed idly, reaching over to pour himself a glass of port from the crystal decanter, now that his coffee had been spilled. “You were an heiress with a dowry of thirty thousand pounds and to the best of my knowledge, you've barely a smattering of French.”

“Yes, but I never took any nonsense from blue bloods like you, and neither does Miss Carlisle,” she said with a pointed glance. “In any case, I'm sure she will soon be whisked away in matrimonial bliss by my very capable young doctor, Andrew Bell.”

“What, Dr. Bell of the Bilious Pills?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, he's quite mad for her. A good match, I should think. Solid, dependable, polite young man. Not bad looking, either.”

“Solid, dependable—?” Dev scoffed, shifting in his chair. “How relentlessly dull! That's not what a woman like her needs.”

Aunt Augusta raised an eyebrow. “Well, I do worry about her, now that you mention it. I fear some foolish fellow has made mischief of the poor gel's affections.”

He stopped and stared at her, his goblet halfway to his lips. “Is that so?”

“She does not speak of it, but I know a broken heart when I see one.”

He set his glass down, narrowing his eyes. “How very intriguing.”

“Careful, Devlin,” his aunt chided. “You've left enough of those in your wake.”

And so, Dev thought, had his old friend Alec Knight.

Suddenly, her strange reaction at dinner began to make sense. His chum had always been a notorious Don Juan. Indeed, Dev recalled how, even as a youth, Alexander the Great could usually be found half-buried under a mound of clamoring girls eagerly covering him in kisses. And then there had been the older women. Married women. Sophisticated seductresses old enough to be the then-teenaged lover's mother. Everywhere Alec went, ladies fell at his feet; it was as though he had some unnatural power over them.

Taking a brooding sip of his port, Dev wondered if the innocent Lizzie Carlisle had succumbed to the rogue's famous charm while growing up with him all those years under her guardian's roof.

His protective instincts disliked the thought of it immensely.

Meanwhile, his aunt shook her head. “But enough about Lizzie for the moment, darling. Even more than her, I am worried about you,” she declared, taking him off guard.

Here we go again,
Dev thought, suppressing a sigh, while her pointed gaze seemed determined to reroute the conversation in a direction where he had no desire to travel.

“I do not like at all what I am hearing about your wild ways in Town. Your drinking, your gambling, your women. These companions you keep of late—I hear they are a very bad sort. I hope you are not returning to your old ways, Devlin. We have been through this before.”

“That was a long time ago, ma'am.”

“Barely long enough to live down your former reputation.”

“My reputation?” he echoed, resting his cheek on his fist with a cynical half-smile. “When have you ever cared about the world's opinion?”

“I always care where you are concerned. Wild and wicked, a sensualist and slave to pleasure—that is how Society remembers you from your troubled times, and lately, I cannot see that you've done much to show them you've matured.”

He stared at her for a long moment. What she said, of course, was true, but the ton's misjudgment of him aided his pursuit of his enemies. The lads of the Horse and Chariot Club were fast-living hellions who spared no expense on their pleasures, and Dev's past as a lost boy of the ton gave them reason to accept him as one of their own.

Devastated by grief, he had flunked out of Oxford at eighteen, a year after his family's destruction, and had moved to London, where he had quickly sunk into dissipation in an effort to escape his pain. He had earned the nickname
Devil
for his efforts, but by the time he hit rock bottom, Aunt Augusta put an end to all that with her ingenious plan of sending him off to see the world. He had no doubt she had saved his life.

“Oh, what am I to do with you?” she murmured, gazing tenderly at him. “Running full-tilt down the road to perdition, as always. I do not hold at all with such self-destructiveness. Why can you not form healthier habits?” She eyed his glass of strong port in disapproval. “Do you know what my father always used to say? ‘Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.' ”

He smiled with a teasing glint in his eyes. “Your father, dear lady, was middle class,” he drawled. “We ‘blue bloods,' as you put it, have a fine old tradition of destroying ourselves in the grand style. You wouldn't understand.”

“Scoundrel,” she muttered, smacking his arm lightly. “Papa was worth ten of you useless aristocrats. Why, if not for our factories, you fine Strathmores would not have had a roof over your heads—except for the half-finished dome of your Uncle Joshua's masterpiece.”

Dev smiled wanly at her. His father's elder brother, Uncle Joshua, the eighth Viscount Strathmore, had driven the family to the verge of bankruptcy sixty years ago with his architectural obsession, building Oakley Park, the magnificent white mansion in Kent. Uncle Joshua had been forced to rectify the situation by marrying the heiress of an industrial magnate—Aunt Augusta. The best Society had viewed the match with pity—so noble a name forced to resort to the great merchant classes for its rescue—but the ton had soon learned that the ironmonger's daughter was not to be trifled with. No, indeed, Dev thought fondly. Even now, at the grand age of eighty-two, old Lady Ironsides could still make the ton tremble in fear and awe of her wrath. Perhaps it was the origins of her fortune—iron ore—that were to blame for her formidable streak, but even he found the nickname amusing. As for Oakley Park, though it now belonged to Dev, he never went there. With his loved ones buried in the little Greek temple–style mausoleum overlooking the ornamental pond, visiting the estate was simply too painful.

Meanwhile, Aunt Augusta was still on about her idolized papa. “Made himself from nothing, he did, to die a very wealthy man.”

“And left it all to you, lucky lass.”

“And I am to leave it to you, in turn, knowing you are going to squander everything that great man worked for.”

“Nonsense. I shall marry an heiress and squander
her
dowry. Your father's fortune I shall not touch.”

“Oh? And when will you do this thing?”

“Eventually,” he mumbled with a noncommittal shrug.

“You are a pretty liar, aren't you?” Aunt Augusta regarded him shrewdly. “Why don't you stay for a while? You need rest, darling. I can see it in your eyes.”

“That is what I love about you, old girl. You go straight at a thing, no beating about the bush for you,” he muttered, and took another drink.

“Devlin, I am losing patience. Practice your flatteries and evasions on your London coquettes. They shall never work on your old dragon aunt.”

“Who has been calling you a dragon? I shall issue a challenge at once to anyone who dares suggest such a thing.” He played with the candle in front of him, catching a bead of wax on the flat of his butter knife.

“Oh, I fear this is all my fault,” she said in a tone of quiet distress.

He glanced over, frowning. “What is?”

“You. I know why you're like this. It is all my doing.” She laid her hand atop his, her lined face softening. “Darling, you cannot escape your pain over the past in mindless pleasure. I should have done better with you. My methods were all wrong. I had no children of my own. I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do or say to you after the accident.”

His eyes flared with malice at that word—
accident
—but he said nothing. That was, after all, what the official report had stated.