The Wedding Chase (32 page)

Wolfgang shook her gently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think you a thief.”

“You thought Robin … thief … I bought bargain thread, ribbon … raided aunt’s attic … her coming out clothes.” Her laughter rang so out of control she was coughing and hiccupping. “Nearly fifteen years old … you pompous … ass. Small wonder—” she choked, “Robin hates you.”

He glared at her, giving her another little shake. “Stop this. Compose yourself.”

Zel tried to stare him down, but dissolved into another wave of hilarity. “… see yourself … pompous ass.”

Wolfgang watched the tears streaming down her cheeks. He was behaving like a pompous, overbearing, overprotective ass. And she was developing the language of a sailor. His lips twitched as he zeroed in on her, drawing her rapidly into his embrace. But the resistance he expected did not materialize, and the force of his attack laid them out on the hard bench.

He twisted about, sprawling her on top of him, taking her mouth deeply, fiercely, without gentle preliminaries, swallowing her hiccups and giggles. She wiggled, rubbing her hips into him, slipping her arms beneath his shoulders. He slid one leg over the backs of her knees, as his hand at her derriere pressed her into his arousal.

“Wolfgang,” she whispered, burrowing into his chest.

By all the brimstone in hell, he’d like to yank up her skirts and bury himself so deep in her it would take an army of Welsh coal miners to dig him out. He choked back the growl rising in his throat, stilling his marauding mouth and hands. Why was it so damn difficult to keep to his plan? To give her just a taste and make her come for more. Around her he acted no better than a randy schoolboy out to tumble the nearest dairy maid. But he didn’t want a quick tumble in the hay with Zel. He wanted her first time, their first time, to be a prelude to their life together, filled to overflowing with tenderness and ecstasy.

“Zel?” Wolfgang eased her off him, scrambling to his feet, reaching to pull her upright. She swayed slightly, as dazed as he at the sudden onset then abrupt interruption of passion. He brushed the wrinkles out of her skirt and pushed a few pins more securely into her hair. Half the house party thought they were having an affair. They didn’t need to convince the other half. “You look a bit rumpled, but you’ll do.” He tugged at his jacket, smoothing the fabric over his chest. “Come, Gamine, squint all you wish, only please hit the target this time. We’ll replace your spectacles when we’re back in town.”

She should have brought her music. She would have remembered it if she hadn’t been so furious with Aunt Diana and Emily and Wolfgang. Zel was never without it for so long, and now to be asked to perform and to depend on the taste of strangers.… She scattered another pile of sheet music.

Haydn, Handel, Clementi, Haydn, Purcell, Haydn. Wolfgang called this a fast crowd and not a Beethoven in the house. No, here … a sonata and another. She eagerly pulled the scores from the stack.
Pathétique
and
Appassionata
. “Oh, Lady Stafford, forgive my rash tongue, you are a saint
among women,” she murmured, settling the familiar music on the pianoforte. Either could be ready in the two days before the concert. More notice would have been nice but no longer necessary.

Pathétique
she knew would play well to this audience.
Appassionata
, a more recent and challenging piece, might be doing it a bit strong. She spread out the former and eased into the first movement, soon absorbed by the relentlessly haunting melody. She stumbled over a few complicated sections, but halted to catch her breath only after the last note was played. With that breath came a well-known scent, an untamed smell of oak and birch, tall grass, horseflesh and saddle leather.

“I should have known to look for you here.” His voice sounded just above her head.

“Have you been riding?” She pivoted around, scanning up his broad chest to the tanned, slightly flushed face.

“Yes.” Wolfgang’s eyes met hers, his tone accusatory. “I couldn’t find you.”

“I was meeting with Lady Stafford, planning the musicale.” Zel matched his tone. “And if one is to do any accusing, it should be me. You regaled the lady with stories of my prodigious talent. She refused to hear my nays and placed me firmly in the program with nothing less than a sonata.”

“Good, I’m proud of your talent.” He folded his arms, looking very smug.

“You might have been embarrassed if I’d failed to find familiar music.”

“But you must know many pieces by heart.” He sat beside her on the bench.

“Shorter pieces, yes, but I rely on the score to prompt me on the longer pieces.”

“What are your choices? I heard only the end of the one you were playing. Beethoven, I presume?”

Zel held up the music. “Both Beethoven.
Pathétique
or
Appassionata
.”

“Why, there’s no choice.” Wolfgang grinned. “
Appassionata
it must be.”

“But I know
Pathétique
so well, it is nearly ready now.”

“Play
Appassionata
.” He clasped her hand. “For me.”

“You’ll have to promise to leave me alone then, for the rest of the afternoon today and several more hours in the morning and afternoon tomorrow.”

“I suppose I can handle that.” He sulked. “If I could have a few moments now, before you lose yourself in your rehearsal.”

“Shall we move to the sofa?” She stood, taking his other hand to draw him up.

His eyes intent upon hers, he raised her hand to his lips and gently kissed each fingertip. “You’re unlike any other woman I’ve known.” He sat very close to her on the settee.

“Lady Stafford said the same thing.” Zel grimaced. “But I do not believe she was being complimentary.”

Wolfgang’s eyes shuttered. “What did she say?”

She paused, then plunged in. “That I was nothing like your other women and certainly not like your wife.”

“Damnation and demon spawn.” He raked his fingers viciously through his hair, pulling free the already disordered queue. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have you embarrassed for the world. But thank God you are nothing like Rosalind.”

Zel’s voice sounded tiny, even to her ears. “What was she like?”

“Where do I begin? Are you sure you really want to know?”

She nodded.

He jumped to his feet, stalking to the pianoforte, running his fingers roughly over the keys. “She was a whore. A bitch in heat.” He smiled grimly at the shock on Zel’s face. “I suppose it didn’t start that way. At least I didn’t know it from the start. I was just home from the Peninsula, my physical wounds barely healed, when Ridgemont persuaded me to forget my worries in the social whirl.”

Wolfgang sat at the bench again, face to the pianoforte, back to Zel. “I met her at her come-out ball. She looked like a fairy princess. Tiny and delicately beautiful, face framed in a cloud of golden hair. She seemed all that was good and sweet. I was completely besotted.” He swiveled, a hard, unseeing glare aimed at Zel. “I had to have her. I had nothing to offer but promises. I told her I would make a fortune for her no matter what it took. I’d become a pillar of the community. Everyone would look up to us.

“She had dozens of suitors, but I was the most obsessed. I never left her side at parties, never looked at another. I never did more than kiss her fingertips, I was so certain of her purity. She chose me.” Wolfgang pushed off the bench, striding to the windows. “She insisted on a long engagement and the thrill of the hunt began to wane. I started to work, making good my promise of wealth, devoting myself to my properties and investments. I hadn’t inherited the earldom, had no hope of doing so with so many in line before me, but I wasn’t a pauper.” He ran restless fingers over the lines dividing the panes of glass. “She complained that my adoration for her wavered. I tried to devote myself to her and my promises, feeling stretched to the limit, consoling myself that the wedding drew near and all would be well.” He struck the window, the glass shook.

Zel dashed to him, enclosing his fist in both her hands. “If this is too difficult, you do not need to continue.”

He looked at her queerly. “I want to tell you.”

She guided him back to the settee. “Then sit with me.” She opened his fist and twined her fingers with his.

“The wedding was a disaster. The bride was drunk and crude. The groom thought his disillusionment complete. But the illusion was to be shattered further. The bride wasn’t a virgin and made no secret of the fact she had a string of lovers both before and during the engagement.” He leaned into Zel, eyes focused on their hands. “I could have forgiven lovers before the engagement. I was certainly no saint. But
I’d been stupidly faithful to my betrothed and expected the same.

“During the wedding trip to the lake country she tried to convince me she was still my fairy princess, tried to rekindle my adoration. But it was gone. I could see too clearly behind the facade.” Wolfgang squeezed Zel’s hand.

“I realized I’d never loved her, never really knew her. I tried to bargain with her. I’d provide her with the wealth she craved in exchange for fidelity until she bore me a son, then she could do as she pleased.” He stroked Zel’s thumb, scratching his own finger with her nail. “She laughed in my face, and the minute we were back in town she took up with her former lovers, one of whom was Newton.” He raised her hand to his cheek. “He’s one of the men who cuckolded me and then blamed me for not making her happy. Maybe I didn’t try enough, I don’t know. I finally exiled her to a small family holding in Scotland, promising to divorce her if I found she was pregnant. She lashed out in fury, and word came she was bedding anything on two legs.

“I went to Scotland and told her I would begin divorce proceedings immediately. We fought bitterly and I left to spend the night at a local inn. The next morning she was found dead at the bottom of the stairs.”

Zel gasped and pressed in close, kneading his hands.

“There was an inquest and I was cleared. She was seen alive by the servants after I left, and witnesses at the inn swore I was there all night.” He raised his eyes, no longer trying to mask his pain. “But there were many who believed I killed her. I put my affairs in order and took off for the Orient before the dirt had settled on her grave, and didn’t return until two years ago.”

“My God, I am so sorry, Wolfgang.” Zel released one of his hands, laying her fingers lightly over his cheek.

“Those years in the Orient probably saved my sanity.” He breathed in deeply. “My father had been a missionary in the Far East before his marriage, and he brought home his
Chinese butler. Some of my earliest memories are of Mr. Yang and his friendship. He taught me his language and culture.”

The faint stubble on his face scratched at her palm as he pushed his cheek into her hand. “With that kind of knowledge, I found I could make deals with a few renegade Chinese merchants in Singapore. Deals no other English barbarian had a chance at. I threw myself into trading. I was only trying to forget Rosalind, but made a tidy fortune in the process.”

Wolfgang pulled her fingers to his lips, his shaky laugh warming her hand. “I didn’t plan to burden you with my memories. Some wounds refuse to heal.” He leaned forward, holding her hand to his chest. “It’s been over five years, and I can’t stop thinking I should have done something differently.”

Zel put her free arm about his shoulders. “But you did not kill her, you cannot blame yourself.”

“I was a fool. I should’ve seen her for what she was and never married her at all. She’d be alive now.”

She smoothed the hair at his nape. He released her hand, arms circling around her waist. Wrapping her own arms about his neck, she pulled his head to her chest. “She made her choices. You made yours. What’s done is done. What does it serve to torture yourself over the past?”

Wolfgang gripped her tighter. “I seem good at doing just that.”

Zel gently massaged his shoulders and back. “Are you talking now about the deaths in the succession line?” She kept her tone light. “Surely you haven’t found a way to blame yourself for those too?”

“Just hold me.” His sigh shuddered through her body as he rubbed his cheek against her silk-covered breast, arms still clenched fast about her.

* * *

“I don’t trust that man.” Maggie looked into the kind, scarred face, seeking the reassuring bright blue eyes. “He and his friends watch Miss Zel all the time, follow her around. Jenkins, we need to do something about him.”

“Maggie, I asked you to call me Marmeduke.” He flashed his strangely perfect teeth, so at odds with the rest of his face. “The captain takes care of his own. There’s no love lost between him and Newton, but your mistress won’t be hurt.”

“He makes me fretful.” She leaned against the thick oak trunk, watching Newton enter the stables. “I suppose I worry too much, but I don’t like the look of him or that Horeton woman either.”

“Come walk a bit more.” Marmeduke took her elbow. “You won’t be needed for another hour or more.”

Maggie sighed and followed his lead, wondering again why she felt so safe in this man’s company. She barely knew him and she certainly could not be drawn to his looks. She peered up at him. He looked as if Miss Zel’s dog had chewed on him more than a bit. But all those scars were somehow comforting. He’d smile at her with those amazing white teeth and the chill she’d lived with for years would suddenly lift. She wanted to know everything about him. “How long have you worked for Lord Northcliffe?”

“I worked for his family near as long as I can remember.” He steered her along an overgrown path, away from the house. “His grandfather pulled me off the streets, gave me work in his stables. I was one of his Christian charities, but it saved my life even if not my soul. When the captain’s father, a third son, mind you, married, I left with him to live on his wife’s estate and run the stables there.

“Captain always adored horses. People used to say he was born astride a saddle, such a wild thing he was.” Marmeduke held a willow branch aside for Maggie to pass. “After his sister died he didn’t have anyone except the Chinese butler, myself, and his horses. He did make some friends at school,
and later when they all bought their colors he asked me to go to the Peninsula as his batman. I thought it would be my last chance for adventure before sinking into old age.” He laughed, a wonderfully warm sound. “But it sunk me good.”