set eyes on the two of them. Their elder sisters will do more than sigh over a rogue like that and I expect he has to fight them off, if he’s careless enough to venture into Carrowe House at the right time for the Countess to be at home to callers.’
‘If you weren’t such a country wife nowadays, you’d recall not even the most dashing of the young matrons are brave enough to visit her ladyship openly and they’d be idiots to accept a dare like him even if they did,’ Isabella said with a fierce frown at the man’s back as he strode away.
‘Or so besotted they couldn’t help themselves,’ Kate suggested with another overt glance at that powerfully lean masculine figure as his long legs ate up landscaped gardens and a much sneakier sidelong look at Isabella.
The inner voice she was trying to ignore whispered Kate was right: he did improve the scenery even on such a shining spring day. Familiar little demons were whispering in her ear and how dare he wake them up when she’d tried so hard to silence them? The long, sinful nights in his bed her inner fool yearned for wouldn’t be as wonderful as his leanly honed body and moody looks promised. No, of course they wouldn’t; not now he despised her. No point risking her all for an itch she wanted to scratch so badly it still kept her awake at nights.
She tried to divert herself by wondering if his mother had loved his father or simply wanted him. Lady Carrowe never refuted her husband’s assertion Wulf was her by-blow, but had she thought what illicit passion could cost when she lay with her lover long enough to get with child? If he was anything like Wulf, she probably couldn’t see past the blind haze of wanting and so it was a good thing Wulf FitzDevelin disliked and distrusted Isabella Alstone so much, wasn’t it?
‘He’s probably here to lecture me about his brother,’ she told her sister crossly and at least he was oblivious to her fast-beating heart and weak knees as she followed his every move with hungry eyes.
‘Hmmm, well, he looks to have made a firm friend of young Kit. Sophia won’t be so pleased her little brother caught up with his help, or should I call it endurance?’
‘Young Kit is a force of nature,’ Isabella agreed absently.
‘You could call it that,’ Kate replied as they watched man and boy close in on Sophia, ‘but your FitzDevelin is one as well and grown-up with it.’
‘He’s not my FitzDevelin. I wouldn’t give him a ha’penny worth of goodwill if he stooped to beg it from me and he never will.’
‘Why ever not?’ Kate asked so innocently Isabella bit back a groan.
‘We hardly know each other and don’t like what we do know,’ she said flatly.
‘Because he’s the Countess of Carrowe’s by-blow and they whisper dark scandals about him and all the lovers he’s had who ought to know better?’
‘He had no say in the sins his mother and father committed before he was born,’ Isabella said absently as she tried not to think about all those bored society matrons rumour credited him with seducing. Kate was probably right and they lined up to be seduced and that was one more reason not to join in.
‘They say the Earl made sure his wife’s by-blow got an education and would have set him up in a profession if your Wulf hadn’t run away. Kind of him to raise his wife’s bastard, but he didn’t get much thanks, did he?’
‘Kind? Do you really think so?’ Isabella asked absently.
She was busy watching Wulf move so fluidly he might actually be a wolf padding after his prey if he had another pair of lithe legs and a fine pelt to go with those ice-blue eyes. For a hungry moment she wished she was at his side, close enough to admire the ease of sleek muscle over elegant bones and wonder at his total focus as he ruthlessly tracked his quarry. Except he wasn’t a predator and she wasn’t fascinated, so it was as well she wasn’t close enough to fall under his spell.
‘You don’t?’ Kate said, sounding intrigued.
‘The Earl isn’t a kind man, Kate. He would have sued his wife’s lover for criminal conversation and divorced her if he was.’
‘She does seem very inoffensive and quiet now,’ Kate said and Isabella could see her acute mind working on Lady Carrowe’s unfortunate situation.
If the lady had even one more supporter among the haut ton, she might be less oppressed and her daughters more welcome in polite society. Isabella stared down at the empty garden where Wulf and the youngest Kentons had disappeared from view. She half-expected to see a mark in the air, a magic rune perhaps to tell unwary females danger lay ahead.
‘You have given a good deal of thought to Mr FitzDevelin’s shocking birth and stormy upbringing during your engagement to his brother, Izzie,’ Kate said airily.
‘No more than I would about anyone in such a situation,’ she replied and fought not to cross her fingers against another huge lie, because not a single night had gone by since she met him when he didn’t haunt her sleeping and waking.
‘Of course not, but whatever you think of him he’s here and can’t have come all this way to see anyone but you. In your shoes I’d hear him out before Edmund and Hugh chase him away.’
‘I doubt he’ll go or stay unless he wants to,’ Isabella muttered, but Kate was right. She didn’t want her overprotective male relatives running him off before she found out what he wanted. ‘Can you keep them busy long enough for me to be rid of him before they find out?’
‘I’m in no fit state to stop anyone doing whatever they want, but if Hugh and Edmund think we’re having a feminine coze about babies and lying-in, they won’t interrupt unless the house is on fire or someone falls off the roof. We can go to my boudoir and tell my maid to be sure we’re not disturbed, then you can use the garden stairs to go and find Mr FitzDevelin and I can escape the fuss Edmund will surround me with until I’m safely delivered.’
‘He loves you, Kate.’
‘I know and I love him, but I can’t take a step without having to account for it to someone who has better things to do if they’d only get on with them.’
‘Not as far as he’s concerned they haven’t and you’d be mortally offended if he went off to discuss crops with his tenants or horses with his cronies and left you to birth his child alone.’
‘I would and quite right, too.’
‘Stop being contrary and go and have a rest, then. Edmund will need to be revived with smelling salts if you don’t stop behaving as if you’re about to throw a trifling entertainment instead of giving birth to his second child.’
‘If you promise to stop being wise about the rest of us and look at your own motives and feelings, I might.’
‘There truly is a first time for everything, then,’ Isabella said crossly.
‘Anyone would think I was the contrary one of the three of us,’ her sister said as if she really thought she wasn’t. ‘And stop looking like that, because Miranda and I know you’re wilful as a donkey even if you fool so many with that angelic face.’
‘I almost wish I’d stayed in London to be gossiped about by strangers now.’
‘Really? When there must be so many more sharp eyes to watch your assignations with
