A License to Wed: Rebellious Brides Read online

  “I wouldn’t know. And I can assure you most of the Town would not agree.” He took a generous gulp of champagne. “My mother was not considered respectable.”

  “Being respectable sounds awfully boring to me.” She leaned forward, and the scent of damp, warm woman drifted over to him. “Have you ever watched her perform?”

  “No.” He shifted to maintain the physical separation between them. He tried to drink more champagne but was surprised to find the bottle empty. He tossed it to the grass where it landed with a hollow thud. “I never knew her. She deposited me with the earl and moved on with her acting troupe as soon as she was well enough to travel after my birth.”

  “We are the same in that way.” He heard the melancholy in her voice. “We never knew our mothers.”

  “We are not at all the same in that way,” he said gently, his head swimming a little from the champagne. “My mother chose to abandon me. Yours was taken early by God with no choice in the matter whatsoever. She would never have left you otherwise.”

  “Do you really believe that is so?”

  “Of course.” Feeling warm and loose, he scooted closer to put an arm around her shoulder and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “No one of sound mind would ever abandon you.”

  “Including you?”

  “I shall always be your friend.”

  She shook her head. “You are dissembling. You do your best to avoid me now. It’s been more than a year since I last saw you.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, all traces of her previous jollity gone. “Please don’t desert me, Will. I couldn’t bear it.”

  His chest contracted at the anguish in her gaze. He’d rather stick a dagger in his heart than hurt her. “Oh, Elle. Please don’t make this more difficult—”

  She cut him off by leaning forward and fusing her lips to his. This kiss was full of feeling, almost mournful. His heart swelling painfully, he kissed her gently, as if she were a fragile bird.

  Her fingers slid across his bare back, scalding his skin. All reason drained away like water through a sieve. Her subtle scent filled his nostrils, and her skin was soft and warm beneath his fingers. Consumed with need and desire, he touched the straining tip of her nipple beneath her wet gown. She pulled back and, keeping her gaze level with his, tugged on her bodice, baring herself.

  His blood blazed at the sight of her slim torso, pale and perfect, offering herself to him like the most divine of sacrifices. Her small breasts, pointed and upturned, were perfection. He cupped them with both hands, and his world narrowed down to the silken feel of her womanly flesh and his unquenchable need to make her his. He lowered his head to taste her, flicking the hard tip of her breast with his tongue.

  She sighed with pleasure and whispered in his ear. “Oh, Will.” Her breath blew warm against his cheek. “I love you so.”

  And he loved her, too, more than words could express, even though he had no right to. So he said nothing and eased her gently back onto the damp grass to show her instead. Everything narrowed down to Elle, the only woman he had ever truly seen.

  This time, she didn’t have to ask him to undo her buttons. He practically tore them open, his eyes feasting on the breathtaking expanse of her flawless pale skin that was suddenly his for the taking. He pressed his lips to the delicate curve of her graceful neck, lost in the urgency of his need for her, immersing his senses in the warmth of her fragrant skin.

  The soft cadence of her sweet sighs inflamed him, calling to him like a siren’s song that he couldn’t help but answer. When he positioned himself at her entrance and pushed his way home, elation coursed through his veins.

  He went gently with her, murmuring all of the endearments he’d never allowed himself to say aloud before. To utter them now, as he made love to her, felt as if an enormous burden had been lifted. She gave herself fully to him, her hips rising up to meet his strokes, urging him on. He pressed into her, kissing her deeply, his heart full to bursting, overwhelmed to finally know her in the most intimate sense.

  He had no way of knowing that this first loving of her would also be the last before word of her death came several months later, plunging him deep into a despair from which he thought he would never recover.

  Chapter 2

  PARIS―SIX YEARS LATER

  She was supposed to be dead. Being a practical man, Will did not believe in ghosts so he couldn’t account for the apparition standing in front of him.

  Elinor Dunsmore. Elle. The chatter of the surrounding guests winnowed down to a light buzz in his ears. It had been almost six years since the last time he’d set eyes on her, since the disastrous evening of her eighteenth birthday. She’d been dead for five years, although reports of her passing had clearly been false.

  He adjusted his spectacles, his heart pounding hard against his ribs. His mind struggled to reconcile what his eyes were telling him. Elinor alive? How could it be? It was impossible. Unfathomable. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect the lenses were failing him, but there was no mistaking that smoky gray gaze tinged with mischievous merriment. Had she been in Paris all this time?

  “Drink?” Lucian Verney’s voice echoed from some faraway place. “I say, would you like a drink?” he repeated.

  Dragging his gaze from Elinor’s ghost, Will focused on Lucian standing before him thrusting a wineglass in his direction. He took it and swallowed a fortifying gulp of the earthy burgundy. “The woman with Whitworth’s wife…who is she?”

  “Devil if I know.”

  “You’ve never seen her before?”

  “Not in the two months I’ve been here.” Although Lucian was a few years younger, he and Will had moved in some of the same circles in London. Lucian had joined the diplomatic corps straight out of Oxford and was now stationed in the French capital.

  Will stared at Elle, the old pain flaring in his chest again. How was it possible for her to be standing in a Paris drawing room making polite conversation with French officials and British diplomats? Tristan Fitzroy had sworn she was dead and buried in a Paris grave far from home.

  Was it all an elaborate ruse? Outrage curled in his gut as he pondered the grim possibilities. Elle’s father had once loved Fitzroy—a friend and neighbor—like a son, but Fitzroy had recently proven himself to be an unscrupulous bastard capable of the greatest of betrayals. Could bearing false witness to Elle’s supposed death be another of them?

  He kept his gaze trained on her, part of him fearful she’d vanish again if he looked away or even blinked. She had adopted the new French style of dressing, draping herself in fabric so sheer that no reasonable Englishwoman would ever dare appear thus in public.

  His lungs ached as he drank in the sight of her. The diaphanous Grecian-like confection showcased her long legs, the flesh-colored drawers beneath adding to the illusion of indecency. The draping material seemed to caress the small bosom and slim hips he’d once known intimately—had practically worshipped, really—before she’d abruptly vanished from his life. Her sole concession to modesty was the gold embroidered shawl draped over one shoulder and tucked around her slender waist, but it did little to hide the full power of her feminine allure.

  The Elle he remembered would not view her attire as scandalous; she would be attracted by its freshness and artistry. Even as a young girl, she’d always embraced the new and the different, had always sought the next exciting exploit.

  Her exit from his life had forever altered him and the course of his future. He’d mourned her not once, but twice—first when she’d slipped away to marry her Frenchman without a word to him, and then again, about a year later, when he’d learned she’d died in the childbed. Yet here she was, looking decidedly robust for someone who’d supposedly been tucked up with a spade for several years. Whatever had delayed her journey to kingdom come, a deeply buried part of him was grateful; she was a welcome sight for his desolate eyes, for a heart still ravaged by her abrupt departure from his life.

  How many times had he imagined this moment—the chance
to see her again? How many conversations had he carried on with her in his mind, ranting at her for deserting him, then holding her close, offering reassurance that all was forgiven? He’d told himself that, given the opportunity to do it all over again, he wouldn’t leave her, not even for a day, and he would speak the truth of what was in his heart—that she was everything to him. That there had never been anyone else. Now, suddenly, by some unfathomable twist of fate, here she was, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to her, except to ask how her presence here this evening was even remotely possible.

  She conversed animatedly with two Englishwomen, including the formidable wife of Lord Whitworth, the Crown’s current ambassador to Paris. A barrel-chested man with an erect posture approached the ladies and placed a proprietary hand at the small of Elle’s sylphic back. She greeted the man with a cool smile that revealed the animal-like points of her incisors, a charmingly imperfect smile that tinged her aristocratic bearing with a certain recklessness that never failed to stir him.

  Jealousy stabbed his gut, the heat of it spreading through his belly like a contagion. There was no mistaking the newcomer’s falconlike features and permanent scowl. Gerard Duret. He wondered what the devil Elle was doing cavorting with members of Napoléon’s inner circle while her family in England mourned her death.

  “But I do know the cull with her,” Lucian was saying. “That’s Général Duret. He’s the one you have to watch out for. He’ll be the first to drive a sword through our collective heart once the peace fails.”

  Will was well acquainted with the man’s reputation. Général Gerard Duret of the Corsican’s police ministry was highly placed in Napoléon’s intelligence network.

  “Ah, here’s your French ami.” Lucian turned to greet Henri D’Aubigne and gestured in Elle’s direction. “Naismith is inquiring after Duret’s companion.”

  “You speak of Madame Laurent?” The freethinking writer seemed to know everyone in Paris and his fervent dislike of Napoléon made him a valuable informant. “She is most charming. Duret is so entranced that he guards the lady like the most precious of diamonds. It is understood that his wife is most displeased.”

  “Is he docking her?” Lucian asked.

  “So it is rumored.” Henri selected a quenelle from the silver tray proffered by a roaming footman. English funds kept the portly sybarite well supplied with rich food and quality spirits, indulgences evidenced by his perpetually flushed cheeks and the strain of his silk waistcoat across a generous abdomen. “But one never knows for certain.”

  Duret’s mistress. “Does she live here in Paris?” Will asked.

  “She used to reside in the city with her husband, the Vicomte Rodolphe Laurent, but she disappeared for many years after the vicomte’s tragic end.”

  His chest burned at the mention of Elle’s dead husband. It was pathetic to be jealous of a corpse, but he couldn’t help harboring bitterness for the nobleman Elle had chosen over him.

  “What happened to the husband?” Lucian asked.

  “He departed for his club one evening and never returned.” Henri’s shiny, bald pate glistened as he bit into the meatball. “Laurent’s body turned up a few days later. His sad demise was either the handiwork of footpads or the unfortunate result of lingering revolutionary fervor.”

  Will watched Elle lean closer to Duret to whisper into his ear. “But that was years ago. Where has she been since then?”

  “Je ne sais pas. She reappeared a few months ago and has taken to hosting salons, which are de rigueur in society this Season.”

  “Have you attended her gatherings?” Will asked.

  “I have had the pleasure.” Henri spoke around the meatball stuffed in his mouth. “As I said, the lady is charming. She invites artists, academics, and diplomats, and keeps an excellent table.”

  “I have not been invited,” Lucian said, looking offended at the oversight.

  “And does Duret attend?” Will asked.

  “But of course.” Henri swallowed the last of the quenelle. “If he hasn’t already taken her to bed, it is clear he desires to. He rarely leaves Madame Laurent’s side.”

  “What does he see in her?” Lucian craned his neck for a better view of the woman in question. “She’s comely enough, but not exactly a diamond of the first.”

  Will studied the achingly familiar lines of Elle’s face; the high-sloped cheeks and large, wide-set eyes balanced by a straight nose and full lips. It was true. She was not a great beauty. She was much more than that. Elle was the most vitally alive person he’d ever met. Refreshingly honest and candid, she’d always lived in the moment, ready with a lusty laugh, humor glinting in her eyes when she’d teased him away from his studies.

  Few could help being drawn by that exuberance; he certainly hadn’t been able to resist her considerable charms. But even as he’d fallen foolishly and irrevocably in love, he’d known she was above his touch. He turned to Henri. “What do you know of her?”

  “Not much. She is English—highborn, it is said—but her French is impeccable.”

  Lucian eyed her gossamer gown. “She certainly seems to have adopted the Paris style of dressing. No respectable Englishwoman would don the indecent gowns these French chits parade around in.”

  Henri took a healthy draw of his wine. “It is the result of our revolutionary affection for the values of republican Rome.”

  Lucian frowned. “How so?”

  “Even our fashion must reflect these new philosophical and social ideals. The dressmakers are expected to produce a maximum of elegance with a minimum of fabric.”

  Lucian shook his head. “It’s a wonder they don’t catch their death.”

  “Alas, some do,” Henri returned cheerfully. “Our Merveilleuse sometimes suffer from Muslin Disease.”

  Lucian blinked. “What the devil? You are making that up.”

  “Not at all.” Henri chuckled. “It is an unfortunate respiratory condition, but one suffers as one must to be in the first stare of fashion.”

  “It’s practically obscene,” Lucian said heatedly as he turned to Will. “Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “I notice the dandies are not expected to endure the same discomfort as the ladies,” Will replied, running a distracted gaze over the young bucks known as the Incroyables. They wore their hair long over their ears and favored coats nipped at the waist and flared in the skirt, invariably worn with canary yellow or bottle-green breeches. At least they were clothed, unlike their female counterparts, the so-called Marvelous Ones, who’d adopted the same classical Greek style of dressing as Elle.

  Henri waggled his eyebrows. “Despite its lack of practicality, I find the current style for ladies most pleasing.”

  “No doubt,” Will said dryly.

  That Elle would embrace a daring new fashion didn’t surprise him, but why desert her old life? Had she abandoned her only child in favor of becoming one of Paris society’s Marvelous Ones? Or some frog’s whore? He closed his eyes and forced a deep, calming breath. Imagining Elle in Duret’s bed sickened him, but the idea that she’d willingly placed herself there threatened to drive him to bedlam. He opened his eyes to find Henri’s craggy face studying him.

  “Do you know the lady?”

  He swallowed against the lingering soreness in his chest. “We were acquainted once, but it was a long time ago.”

  They were interrupted by their hostess, Lady Whitworth, who had taken a position at the front of the room. “May I have your attention,” she called out. “The auction is to begin shortly.” Elle said something to the general, who smiled and watched after her as she and a number of other ladies in attendance began moving toward the front of the room.

  “Auction?” Will murmured to his companions.

  “For an opportunity to waltz with the lady of your choice,” Henri said. “The monies collected will be donated to the Women’s and Children’s Home in Paris.”

  Lucian inhaled a shocked breath. “Auctioning off ladies of good family to the highest
bidder? You’d think we were at King’s Place off Pall Mall,” he said, referring to a bawd house frequented by gentlemen of the upper orders in London.

  Henri chuckled. “Must you English be so provincial? You are not purchasing the lady’s virtue, just the opportunity to take her for a turn on the dance floor.”

  “Still, it is hardly proper,” Lucian said stubbornly. “This sort of thing would cause a scandal at home.”

  “But you are in Paris,” the Frenchman said jovially. “Why not enjoy all the delights our fair city has to offer?”

  Will swallowed the last of his wine and placed the empty glass on a passing footman’s tray with a decided thud. “Why not indeed?”

  —

  Elle watched the bidding with detached interest, certain that Gerard Duret would outbid everyone, mostly through sheer intimidation, for the opportunity to take a turn with her. Few risked crossing a man reputed to be more ruthless than Robespierre.

  The lady ahead of her moved forward as the bidding began. Elle shifted into the place the woman had deserted, ready to take her turn next. Her gaze ran over the vibrant blue and red uniforms worn by Napoléon’s officers, interspersed with the gauzy Greek-inspired styles worn by the women. It was strange to be back in society after so many years. Yet she was as much a prisoner now as she’d ever been.

  Frustration churned inside her chest as she scanned the crowd in desperation. Still no sign of Moineau, the man who’d promised to help her. It had been more than a month since she’d last heard from him. Where could he be?

  Polite applause signaled the end of the latest round of bidding. The flushed-cheeked lady moved into the crowd to join the gentleman who had won a dance with her.

  “And now, I give you the exquisite Madame Laurent, a vision whose presence illuminates any room,” said the auctioneer, a trim, lugubrious-faced man of medium height.

  Elle stepped forward with a good-natured smile and executed an elegant curtsy. The crowd applauded and the bidding began.