CHAPTER ONE London, September, 1816 Would that he had died as everyone supposed. Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, stood at the mouth of hell--not on the field of battle, but in the vestibule of a church, gothic and empty of guests. There, he saw from afar, his wife, a bride with her bridegroom standing before a priest … and there, Hawk knew, that living again just might kill him. Thrice on his way to this improbable place, he had ordered the carriage turned around, and thrice he had turned it back. Even now, he wanted to leave, rather than face Alexandra with the dreadful sight of him, but her very presence drew him up that aisle like a beacon in a night-dark storm. ‘Smile,’ Alexandra Wakefield told herself, as she turned to face her bridegroom. But her attention was captured by a bearded derelict making his lone way up the aisle, the tap of his cane, a desolate echo in the vaulted church. His bearing, tall, sturdy and wide-shouldered, as he took the front pew, and the sharp, intense gaze he directed her way, sent a shiver of startled awareness through Alexandra. He made her think, absurdly, of her late husband--not the first time Bryce came to mind that day--but the brooding stranger watching her, as if he might devour her, looked nothing like. Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, a rogue by nature, swarthy, charming and handsome as sin, had enraptured every female who beheld him. Alexandra had been no exception. ‘Beauty and his beast,’ some slyly called them, for Hawk was the beauty. The day he asked for her hand in marriage had been the happiest of Alexandra’s life. Then she learned the real reason he married her, and it hurt. It hurt enough for her to say yes to Chesterfield’s proposal of marriage, one year to the day, after Hawksworth died at Waterloo. At the memory, a sob rose in Alex, until the Vicar cleared his throat, snapping her back to reality with a hot rush of embarrassment. “Do you, Alexandra Huntington Wakefield,” he was forced to repeat, “take Judson Edward Broderick, Viscount Chesterfield, as your lawfully wedded husband?” Panic gripped Alex, grief, soul-deep, but she had no time to regard it, as the brooding stranger stood, his jaw rigidly set, and tapped his cane on the floor. “You will pardon the intrusion,” he said, his husky and familiar voice swamping her in a miasma of yesterdays. “But my wife must decline.” “Bryce?” Alex cried, but no sound emerged from her throat, none save the sob that had been trapped there. Then the chapel’s ceiling tilted, and dipped, and kissed its floor. Hawk hastened awkwardly to his wife’s side and ignored the agony of kneeling, aware that he would have the devil of a time rising again. But at this moment, he cared for nothing, no one, save Alexandra. “Give us a minute,” he enjoined the beleaguered Vicar, because warning her hovering bridegroom away, with even a veneer of civility, would be impossible. “I object,” Chesterfield said, revoking the need for civility. “What?” Hawksworth snapped. “You think I will abduct her from the altar? You would have no say, even if I did.” His old adversary hissed and bared his teeth, like a hound after a bone. “She is my wife,” Hawk said, as much to affirm his responsibility as to stake his claim. “Mine.” “Gentlemen, remember where you are,” the Vicar admonished, as he took Chesterfield’s arm and urged him up and toward the sanctuary, nodding for the unknown groomsman to follow. Hawk lifted and supported his wife’s head and shoulders, drinking in the sight of her like a man parched, shocked that the vision before him was not the hoyden he remembered. “Ah, my funny-faced minx,” he said, a rasp in his voice. “What were you thinking, while my back was turned, to go and blossom into a beauty and to accept Chesterfield, of all people?” Hawk had known for some time that Alexandra deserved better than a broken man like him, that for her own sake, he must set her free. But as he had made his way up the aisle, he recognized her bridegroom and faltered in his resolve. Yes, he must seek an annulment as planned, but not just yet, for she also deserved better than the scoundrel standing beside her at the altar. Hawk smoothed a curl from her brow. “You were such a discerning sprite, you cannot possibly love the knave.” Then again, she had married once without love, why not twice? “Ragamuffin?” Hawk called, less in banter than in challenge, the old nickname certain to ruffle her feathers and bring her around. “I know I am scarred and changed,” he said. “but am I so horrid that you cannot bear to look upon the sight of me?” Even then, Alex did not stir. With a rush of panic, Hawk called for water, and almost as fast as he did, the Vicar was there offering a cup. Chesterfield, two steps behind, knelt and reached for Alex’s hand. “Do not,” Hawksworth snapped with the command of a man who led regiments, halting his wife’s accursed bridegroom like a hail of grapeshot. If only he had a weapon to hand now, Hawk thought as he placed the cup to his wife’s lips and tipped it upward. Alex swallowed involuntarily, coughed, opened her eyes and swooned again. Would that she were overcome with joy, he mused facetiously as he stroked her cheek with the back of a hand, rather than frightened to death by the loathsome sight of him. Hawk wanted to take Alex into his arms, stand and carry her as far from the cruelties of life as he could get her, except that he was the ultimate cruelty. Besides, rising at all, without revealing his blatant and embarrassing weakness was a feat that he had not yet mastered. Without choice, but mortified all the same, Hawk gently returned his wife to the mercy of the cool marble floor. Then he stood in one resolute, pain-racked motion, no one, save him, aware of the cost in sheer willpower or the shout of anguish trapped behind his firmly-set lips. Chesterfield impaled him with a look, fists clenched at his side, malice in both stance and expression. “Sorry,” Hawk said. “I lived.” |
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