“Not true.” They paused behind the second hedge. Where to next? Ah, the gazebo next to the lake offered an excellent partially obscured respite before he jumped into the lake and swam to freedom. He set them in that direction. “We would only have destroyed one another, not the world. It was merely chaos on a very small personal level.”
Technically, the last time they’d talked, there’d not been much talking… but John didn’t know about that and never would.
“Still too much chaos for my liking,” John said. “And there’s to be no destruction at all during my wedding.”
“Then you should not have invited Miss Beatrice Bell. No. You should have eloped.”
“And miss the opportunity to show the entire world that Evelina has agreed to be my wife after all this time? I think not. Everyone must share in my joy for at least a fortnight. Besides, Evelina is old friends with the Misses Bell. All of us were at one point. Or have you forgotten those wild, foolhardy days? You and me and Daniel, Evelina, Edmund and Martin, and the Bells, all dragged to Mother’s yearly house party and bored out of our minds. Oh, the mischief we managed.”
“Perhaps it’s best the old group fell apart,” Richard grumbled.
“I suppose there were several reasons for its dissolution.”
Foremost among them being that Richard’s other half brother, Daniel, was a complete, irredeemable scoundrel who’d been exiled from England. Another reason being that their friend Edmund had wooed and married Evelina before John, who’d always loved her, could take action to woo her for himself. And lastly, Richard and Beatrice Bell had fallen out of friendship with one another in a rather spectacular way.
“Frankly,” Richard said, stepping up into the gazebo, “I’m surprised she came. She… did come, didn’t she?” After all, he’d only seen the cousin.
“Yes, she’s here.” John joined him, and they leaned back against the railing. “I’m sure she is quite over what happened between you. She would not have come if she wasn’t.”
Richard snorted. John hadn’t heard the last thing Beatrice had said to him.
You have no idea how many hearts you break, Mr. Clark.
An eternity would be too soon, according to Beatrice Bell’s timeline.
“You cannot hide for the entire length of the party, Richard.”
“I’m an excellent hider, John.”
“Be a man and face her.”
“I won’t be a man if I face her. She’ll have my balls. Almost did last time.”
“Last time was at Edmund Denby’s funeral. She did nothing but glower at you.”
She’d done a tiny bit more than that. Richard sighed. “I suppose I shall have to swallow my pride and my fears and face the she-devil.”
“She-devil?” John chuckled. “Come, Miss Bell is not that bad. In fact, I thought at one point that you and her…” He grinned, wiggling his eyebrows.
Each rise and fall of those damn dark caterpillars was like a cudgel over Richard’s head. He should have added grave-sized holes to the landscape gardener’s design. Then he could jump straight into one. Although the lake was a nice option. Sink to the very bottom and drown himself.
“Me?” Richard found himself saying. “And Beatrice Bell? Absurd.” She was too good for him. A wealthy merchant’s daughter and a marquess’s bastard? Not exactly a desirable match. Pride was a monster, wasn’t it, tearing at flesh till a man howled. And he’dmauledher. Kissed her, pawed at her like a man possessed. At his friend’s funeral. While his other friend, the lonely widow, grieved graveside. What had Beatrice called him?Que bruto. She’d told him what it meant, too, had wanted him to know. She thought him a brute, a beast. She thought right. And he hated it, every reminder of his deficits boiling his anger higher, spilling over onto the woman who made him want and ache and hate all at the same time. “You cannot make a bride of a demon. The fact that she is a spinster attests to that.”
John’s face went waxen.
Richard was being too harsh, but the words wouldn’t stop, the boiling reached higher temperatures. “I’d rather marry?—”
John’s eyes went large, and he began to shake his head.
“—the cow than marry?—”
“Miss Bell!” John said much too loudly for the small gazebo space. “And Evelina, my dear! So lovely to see you both!”
Miss Bell. Damn. Damn.Damn. But perhaps it was the cousin and not Beatrice.
“Oh,” a woman’s voice said behind him, “you used to call me Beatrice. Let us not be so formal.” That voice—rich and sharp and filled with as much intelligence as humor. She Whom He’d Royally Pissed Off. More than once. The woman who would like to kick him off a cliff. The only woman who boiled his blood. All it took was one memory of her to make his cock twitch.
Beatrice bloody Bell.
