congregation as they had waited for the bride and groom to take their vows.
‘Marriage is for life, Hal. I believe it shows how sensible she is to have refrained from making the wrong choice. And even you have to concede that the dissolute Rainham was a bad choice. Nobody has seen the fellow in years—probably had to run away from all his creditors. Brava to her, I say. It hardly makes her a man-hater to have realised Rainham was a mistake at the last minute—merely choosy. When one has the largest dowry of any young lady in the ton, one has to be very careful.’
‘Ha! By all accounts the dowry is so sweet because her personality is so sour. Her poor father must be so desperate to marry her off to have offered such a ridiculous sum. How many Seasons has she been out now?’ Hal prodded Aaron in the chest. ‘I shall tell you. Too many and that in itself tells me everything I need to know. Even with the dowry she is resolutely dour. She has not, to the best of my knowledge, entertained the overtures of a suitor in years. Her mouth curls in distaste every time she converses with a single gentleman. And when was the last time she accepted an invitation to dance?’ Sullen Lizzie positively glared at any fellow brave enough to get within ten feet of her. Despite her famed beauty, Hal had never bothered being one of them. Gently bred young ladies with pristine reputations were not his type and he sincerely doubted scandalous earls were hers. Kissing the frosty Lady Elizabeth once would be a huge achievement. Managing to do it five times would be a miracle.
‘Are you conceding the challenge then, because if you are I shall send a note to my stable master immediately, instructing him to cease all shovelling for the night. I want you to have a decent pile in the morning. We did shake on the wager, after all, and I must remind you that you are both a gentleman and a peer of the realm, and as such duty bound to honour your word. It is a great shame, though. I had hoped you were made of sterner stuff. Lady Elizabeth is a very beautiful woman and, as you previously stipulated, one who is in possession of all of her own teeth.’
Male pride, Hal mused, was a dangerous thing. Everything about the wager told him he would lose so why bother. However, a bigger, primal part of him wanted to best his cocky friend and in truth Lady Elizabeth was a stunningly beautiful woman and it would be no great hardship to kiss her. Unsociable. Unapproachable. Unreachable. Very definitely a challenge for only the finest, most skilled of hunters, and only where women were concerned he was undoubtedly that. ‘I wouldn’t dream of conceding.’
He watched Aaron’s face fall before staring back at him stunned. ‘Really? Are you completely sure?’ And now his friend sounded nervous, as if he regretted his own choice, too, but was also too stubborn to back down.
‘I shall kiss Sullen Lizzie five times in five different locations before Twelfth Night. And you, Aaron, are going to move a veritable mountain once I win and I am going to crack open a bottle of my finest port and watch, gloating, while you do it!’ The more he thought about it, the more Hal was convinced Lady Elizabeth Wilding was the perfect candidate to test his superior powers of seduction on. At least she wasn’t eager and surely that had to be a point in her favour. Hal would have to be resourceful and tenacious. Like a hunter of old. Already, he could feel the previously sluggish, hot male blood coursing through his veins at the prospect. He clinked his glass against his flabbergasted friend’s.
‘Let the Mistletoe Wager commence!’
Lizzie gazed wistfully at the ormolu clock on the Renshaws’ opulent fireplace and stifled a groan when she saw the time. It would be at least another hour before her father relented and allowed her to summon the carriage. His insistence that she maintain this silly façade after five long years was beyond tiresome. Initially, he had insisted she return to society to maintain appearances. Her continued presence gave credence to the lie that she had chosen to terminate her engagement to Rainham, as was a woman’s prerogative, and therefore she had nothing to be ashamed of. It was necessary, he explained, to keep her scandalous, dirty secret a secret.
Back then, she had readily agreed to keep her baby a secret and spare her family the scandal. The wonderful Wildings had rallied around her, fiercely protective, and their loyalty was something she would always be grateful for. So many girls ‘in trouble’ were cast out and shunned by their families, even more had to suffer the horrendous grief of giving up their child and never seeing or daring to mention the poor thing again. Fortunately, she had been spared both of those ordeals. For the first year she stayed largely at the family estate in Cheshire with her brother, his wife and their young son Frederick, venturing back into town to keep up the necessary appearances when the need arose, but after her mother had died, Lizzie and George were summoned back to Mayfair to live with her father, something she had agreed to do temporarily because she could not stand the thought of him being all alone.
Aside from the bothersome London Season and the shorter Christmas one, where she was forced into a society which would instantly turn on her if they were ever appraised of the truth, she got to live her life exactly as she wanted to.
Almost.
Yet to all intents and purposes, little George did not exist outside their Mayfair house. Small children, it turned out, were very easy to conceal from the prying eyes of the world. For the longest time it had been surprisingly easy to behave in public as if nothing untoward was going on. Back when he was a baby, Lizzie had only been too pleased to comply. It would have caused the most horrendous scandal for both their family and the Government to have done otherwise. As the most senior man at the Foreign Office, the King’s chief advisor on the delicate art of global diplomacy, her father had to be seen to be above reproach and she had not wanted to bring his ambitions to a shuddering halt because of her foolish indiscretion. She had returned to society after her clandestine confinement and nobody was any the wiser. All in all, they had done such a good job that even now, remarkably, her pristine reputation was still intact and, to all intents and purposes, she was just another single young lady on the marriage mart.
Except she wasn’t.
Despite her father’s steadfast refusal to give up the hope Lizzie would find a suitable man to marry, there was nothing which would ever tempt her to take a trip down the aisle again. Once bitten, twice shy, and Lizzie had been bitten too hard. So hard she was certain she still bore the treacherous Rainham’s teeth marks. From the outset, she had rebelled against her papa’s misguided belief she would soon snare another man who could be convinced, or bribed by his powerful father-in-law, into claiming the new-born child as his own. Instead, she actively repelled any man who dared to come within six feet of her. And, for good measure, any woman, too. The last thing she needed was allowing anyone to get too close, just in case she inadvertently let slip something which might embarrass her family or, more importantly, bring unwarranted shame and censure on her son.
Heaven forbid she would consider the alternative and marry a man who was shallow enough to be bribed to take on her child. Georgie deserved better than that and Lizzie would never allow him to be an inconvenience to a husband who would prefer her delightful little boy did not exist at all. As a wife, she would be bound by her husband’s edicts. What if Georgie was banished to boarding school or some remote property to be brought up by strangers? Unloved and all alone. She would protect him from that with the last breath in her body. No, indeed. The very last thing she could ever risk, for the sake of her beautiful boy, was marriage.
However, her dear papa refused to acknowledge her fears or that the trusting, foolish girl she had been had died the day Rainham had jilted her. What had emerged from the wreckage was a stronger, harder woman who would never be seduced into the merry dance of courtship again, no matter how charming or handsome her would-be suitor was. If she could thank the scoundrel Marquess for something, other than the fruit of his lying, deceitful loins, then it would be for opening her eyes to the harsh realities of life. Lizzie had
