Page 36 of Bad Luck Bride (Scandal at the Savoy #3)

Devlin seemed to know it, too. His next words proved the fact. “Tell that one to the marines.”

She gave up on pretense. With Devlin, it seemed to be useless. “I am a bit… muddled up, I confess.” She made a rueful face. “For that, I blame you.”

He smiled a little. “I’d say I’m sorry about that, but then I’d be the one lying.”

“The truth is…” She paused and faced him. “Wilson has been showing this obsessive jealousy for weeks, and it’s starting to set my teeth on edge. That’s why, I suppose,” she added, thinking it out as she spoke, “I didn’t agree when he ordered me to stay away from you. I was angry.”

“Kay, you aren’t blaming yourself because he behaved like a lout, are you?”

“He didn’t—” She broke off as Devlin raised an eyebrow, daring her to deny Wilson’s conduct.

“I’m not blaming myself. But it’s undeniable that I could have avoided this argument with him tonight, and I didn’t.

In a strange way, I wanted it. I don’t really know why.

To test him, perhaps? To take a stand and see what he’d do in response? I don’t know. But it was foolish.”

“Perhaps it’s much simpler than that. Perhaps you did it because you don’t really want to marry him, and you’re looking for a way out.”

“We’ve already discussed this,” she reminded, in no mood to rehash it again. “There is no way out.”

To her relief, Devlin didn’t try to debate the point.

“And anyway,” she went on, “he’s only being this way because of you.

” Even as she said it, she thought of Wilson following her across Yorkshire last autumn, and her words seemed more like wishful thinking than truth.

Devlin’s return may have made things worse, but there had been signs of Wilson’s possessive, acquisitive nature from the very beginning.

It might very well continue, even after their marriage was a fait accompli.

Either way, however, it would serve no purpose to discuss any of it, especially with Devlin.

“It’s true that jealousy can bring out the worst in a man,” he said as she fell silent. “I know that well enough. But if I’m what brought this on, then why did he invest in the Mayfair? He knew—he must have known—I was an investor, too.”

She decided not to get into the weeds by bringing up Wilson’s desire for connections to the Duke of Westbourne and Lord Calderon.

Instead, she shrugged. “It’s clear he thinks it will be a lucrative investment, and things like that are important to Wilson.

He never turns down a chance to make money.

That’s how he got so rich. And I don’t think he thought you’d ever be directly involved. After all, you live in Africa.”

“That’s probably it. No doubt he’ll be happy to see the back of me when I go, and with any luck, that’ll be the end of it. I hope so, at any rate,” he added, giving her a meaningful glance. “For your sake, Kay, I hope so.”

At this confirmation of her own apprehensions, Kay shivered, misgivings dancing over her skin.

“But,” he added when she didn’t reply, “will it be the end of it?”

Slowly, gently, he picked up her hand, his thumb caressing her wrist through her glove in the very place Wilson had gripped her so tightly.

Kay shivered again, a feeling that had nothing at all to do with her fiancé or her fears of the future.

“If my departure isn’t the end of it, Kay, what then?”

She stirred. “I should go.”

At once, Devlin opened his hand.

Pull away , she ordered herself, staring at her wrist resting on his open palm. Go inside .

She didn’t move.

“When I came out here,” he murmured, “and I saw him grab you and refuse to let go, do you know what I thought?”

“No,” she whispered, lifting her face, meeting his eyes in the moonlight. “What did you think?”

“I thought I’d have to break his arm to free you. I was almost looking forward to the prospect.”

Warmth flooded through her, an odd feeling given the violence of his rhetoric. She parted her lips to reply, but no words came out. She didn’t know what to say.

His lashes, long, opulent, and midnight black, lowered as he looked down, his gaze homing in on her lips.

Kay’s heart slammed hard into her ribs, robbing her of breath, and she tensed. He seemed to feel it, for he stirred, letting her hand fall, then slowly, ever so slowly, he moved closer.

“I should go in,” she said again, her voice strangled and desperate to her own ears.

“Yes,” he agreed, but he didn’t move.

Sadly, she couldn’t seem to find the will to follow her own advice. “We should both go in,” she said instead, a rather craven attempt to put all the responsibility on him, to get him to do what she could not find the strength to do herself. “We really should.”

For some unfathomable reason, that made him laugh softly under his breath, his teeth dazzling white in the moonlight.

“Why are you laughing?”

“Hell, Kay,” he said as he leaned closer to her, “when have you and I ever done what we should?”

“Never,” she admitted with a sigh. “What did you—”

She broke off in the midst of her question, the same question that had been nagging at her for the past twenty-four hours.

But though she was sure she was probably going to regret asking, she could not resist. “What did you mean the other night when you said you were marrying Lady Pamela for escape?” she whispered. “What are you escaping from?”

Still smiling a little, he put his hand on the side of her waist, then slowly, ever so slowly, giving her plenty of time to draw back, he slid his arm around her. “My fate.”

She frowned, too aware of his touch to make sense of his reply. “What do you mean? What fate?”

“You, Kay,” he muttered, his free hand sliding up her back to the nape of her neck, his thumb pressing beneath her chin to lift her face. “I mean you.”

With that, he bent his head and kissed her.

The touch of his lips sent Kay hurtling backward in time and space, out of a garden folly in Berkshire to a ball in Chiswick, where Devlin had taken her hand, led her into a boxwood maze, and given her the first kiss of her life.

Devlin, she thought with a jolt of the same frantic yearning she’d felt for him in her youth. This was Devlin—his mouth, his embrace, his hard, strong body, blotting fourteen years of loneliness, shame, and disgrace from her mind as if they had never happened.

Suddenly, she was eighteen again, running out to meet him in the dark, with her heart beating like a mad thing, coming into his arms with exaltation and joy surging through her veins, returning his kiss willingly as burning, uncontrollable desire coursed through her body.

In his arms, she wasn’t a chubby, freckle-faced social failure or a ruined, dried-up spinster. She was beautiful, desirable, wanted.

It was glorious.

His mouth opened, urging hers to do the same, and when she parted her lips, the arm he had around her waist tightened, urging her even closer. Willingly, eagerly, she came, her hands slid up his chest and into his hair as she rose on her toes, pressing her body to his.

Against her mouth, he groaned, and she reveled in the sound, raking her fingers through the thick, unruly strands, tasting his kiss with all the abandon of the girl she’d been.

But then, his hips stirred against hers, and she felt the hardness of him. She jerked as if he burned, striving for sanity.

In less than a month, she was getting married, and not to the man holding her in his arms, but to a man whose one and only kiss had felt nothing like this, a man who did not evoke desire in her body and wreak havoc in her soul. A man who would never be able to break her heart.

She tore her mouth from his. “We can’t do this, Devlin,” she gasped. “It’s madness.”

“Absolute madness,” he agreed, his arm tightening around her waist, his free hand caressing the nape of her neck.

Suddenly, his fingers cupped the back of her head, and before she could reply, he recaptured her mouth, sending desire coursing throughout her body.

She rose on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, relishing this kiss, glorying in it, and sanity floated away on the spring breeze like so much flotsam.

She’d forgotten, she realized as she raked her hands through his hair, what desire felt like. But Devlin was making her remember, in the taste of his mouth and the hard feel of his body pressed to hers.

How, she wondered wildly. How on earth could she ever have forgotten this?

“What is going on here?”

The sound of that demanding feminine voice was like a bucket of ice water being dumped on her head, shocking her out of her euphoric haze. Devlin must have felt the same, for he broke the kiss, lifted his head, and swore.

Kay opened her eyes and felt another jolt of shock at the sight of Devlin’s grim countenance. He was looking past her at the doorway, and when she turned her head in that direction, she found herself staring into the beautiful, horrified face of Lady Pamela Stirling.

Making things worse, the girl was not alone. Wilson stood behind her, staring past her shoulder. As his eyes met Kay’s, she saw his lips press together in a tight line and his expression turn cold, so cold that a shiver ran down Kay’s back.

Oh, no , she thought, sick with dismay as she realized what they must have just witnessed. Oh, no, no, no.

Confirming that realization, Lady Pamela’s face crumpled, she let out a sob, pressed her hand over her mouth, and turned away.

Wilson moved sideways to let her pass, then he looked at Kay, and with that look, she knew there would be no discussions, no reconciliations, and probably no wedding.

He said nothing, however. Instead, he turned without a word and followed the girl back into the house.

Kay stared at the empty doorway, watching the carefully constructed new life she’d tried to build crumbling into ruins all around her as the ramifications of tonight’s events sank more deeply into her consciousness.

Her sister’s season and prospects—and possibly even her entire future—in jeopardy.

Her mother living in poverty and debt. And herself, unmarried and childless, going through a lifetime of regret over the fact that for the second time in her life she’d allowed Devlin Sharpe to wreck her life.

She was an idiot. And he was a dog.

“Kay?”

At the sound of Devlin’s voice, she turned toward him with a groan. “Why?” she cried in despair. She stepped back, tearing herself free, staring up at him through a blur of frustrated tears. “Why do you have to keep ruining my life? And why do I keep letting you?”

“Kay,” he said again and took a step toward her, lifting his hands as if to touch her.

The move sent her momentary self-pity to the wall and galvanized her into furious action. “Don’t,” she ordered, flattening a palm against his chest to stop him. “Don’t come any closer.”

To her relief, he complied, coming to a halt, letting his hands fall to his side without a word.

“Stay away from me, Devlin,” she ordered fiercely, even as her voice broke. “Just stay the hell away from me. Or I swear, I’ll shoot you dead like the cur you are.”

With that, she stepped around him and strode toward the door into the house without a backward glance.