The Wicked Sister Read online

  While the others stayed in the carriages, Michael and Maria alighted and walked up the path to the front door. However, they hadn’t gone very far before the front door flew open and a gaggle of children and dogs erupted, hurling themselves at Michael. Behind them came a plump lady looking as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and a tall, middle-aged man in spectacles, blinking owlishly in the daylight. He reached over the children’s heads to grasp Michael by the shoulder. Then, while Maria stood back, smiling, Michael embraced the plump lady who could only be his mother.

  Michael protested as the children tried to push him toward the house. And his mother turned to Maria, friendly, but clearly bewildered.

  “Forgive the chaos, it is always like this when Michael comes home! Please, come into the house! You’re very welcome, Miss…?”

  “Maria Conway,” she said hastily, holding out her hand.

  Mrs. Hanson took her hand mechanically, but otherwise seemed to have frozen. Everyone else broke off to stare at her, too, even the youth who’d just loped out of the house to join the party.

  “Some relation of the earl?” Mr. Hanson blurted.

  “His sister,” Michael replied, having fought his way back to her side. “Let me introduce you properly! My mother, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, and my father, my brother Charles, who’s about to go up to Cambridge, my other siblings Louisa, Jane, Martin, and Esther. This is Lady Maria Conway, the earl’s sister…and my betrothed.”

  Maria could have wished this announcement provoked more happiness than astonishment, but she understood the shock. It was a rather more subdued family that accompanied them indoors.

  “We’re on our way to Blackhaven,” Michael told them. “To be married.”

  Maria then presented the formal invitations to the wedding and to stay at the castle. Mrs. Hanson looked terrified and ran away to see to tea.

  “Is that all your baggage in the other coaches?” asked the youngest sister, Jane with some awe as she gazed out of the parlor window.

  “Well, one of them is weighed down with baggage, mostly my mother’s,” Maria replied. “We left London in a bit of a hurry, otherwise she would have most of her furniture trailing after us, too.”

  The children laughed at this image. “Does it walk by itself?” Louisa asked. “Or is it on little wheels to run after the coaches?”

  “What a wonderful idea!” Maria exclaimed, and with the ice broken, Mrs. Hanson walked back into a parlor filled with laughter.

  “We can’t really come to Blackhaven,” Mr. Hanson said a little later. “I have too many commitments here—and there are far too many of us, besides! But we’ll be thinking of you, and hope you’ll visit as soon as you return to London.”

  “Of course we will,” Maria said warmly.

  “But Charlie has to come to the wedding,” Michael said. “For I need him as my best man.”

  Charlie leapt to his feet, awe and pleasure mingling in his grin. “Truly? Stay in a castle?”

  “I wish you could all come,” Maria said with genuine regret. “For my sisters would love you.”

  Mrs. Hanson frowned suddenly. “But you are not traveling all that way alone? I cannot think your mama would approve of that, even if you are engaged!”

  Maria laughed. “Oh, dear, no. She is waiting in her carriage outside. So is my brother and my sister-in-law. And the baby.”

  Mrs. Hanson paled. “Oh, my goodness! We have left her ladyship—”

  “Two ladyships and a lordship,” Martin interjected with some glee.

  “…outside in their carriages while we take tea?” Mrs. Hanson finished with horror.

  “No, no, you didn’t leave them,” Maria assured her hastily. “It was their choice, for we are quite unannounced, and they felt it wrong to overwhelm you. But if you care to come outside to see us off, I’ll happily present you. They will be charmed.”

  Maria then helped Mrs. Hanson and Louisa carry the tea things to the kitchen where a flustered maid took awed possession.

  “Do you know,” Mrs. Hanson said suddenly, “in spite of your birth, you are much more suited to him than Judith was.”

  Maria flushed, unsure she wanted to be compared to Judith, even favorably. However, since she gathered Mrs. Hanson tended to blurt her thoughts and feelings, she replied only, “I think so, too.”

  “It’s strange, but she was much haughtier than you and with considerably less cause. But…you are good for him. He seems somehow…brighter with you.”

  She could have said nothing more guaranteed to please Maria, who happily led the troop of Hansons out to the coaches. Gervaise stepped down to meet them, while Mama and Eleanor graciously shook hands with all through the carriage doors. Eleanor and Gervaise made sure Charlie knew he would be welcome and comfortable at the castle, and then farewells were said. On impulse, Maria embraced her future mother-in-law, who again looked as if she might cry.

  They climbed back into the coach with Mama and waved until they could no longer see his family.

  “You have a good family,” Mama pronounced. “And your brother is a presentable young man.”

  Maria met Michael’s gaze with humor. It might have been faint praise to most, but in the dowager countess, it displayed rare open-mindedness.

  *

  Long and tedious as it was, the rest of the journey north, for Maria, was beguiled by Michael’s company—and the amusement caused by his gradual wearing down of her mother’s lingering disapproval of the match. By the end of the second day, Mama’s lips definitely twitched at one of his wry comments. By the fourth, she was calling him Michael and treating him much as she did her other sons-in-law.

  And, of course, there were the secret, exciting interludes when they could steal a few moments alone together before retiring for the night. In Michael’s arms, she grew more familiar with sweet, heavy desire and looked forward with breathless impatience to the day she would be his wife.

  Alice and Helen, who had been left at the castle with Miss Harker, greeted their return with joy, hurling themselves at everyone in turn, including Michael.

  “I knew you would marry him in the end!” Alice crowed.

  “We know the signs now,” Helen agreed, clinging to Maria’s arm as they all spilled into the drawing room. “Are you going to live in the castle, like Serena and Tamar did at first?”

  “From time to time,” Maria said. “Since Bonaparte is finally defeated, we are taking our wedding trip in Europe. And then we’ll have to live mostly in London because of Michael’s position. But we’ll be at the castle frequently, too, since this is Michael’s constituency.”

  The next two weeks were bliss for Maria. She spent nearly all of it in Michael’s company, though not always alone with him. The girls often accompanied them on their outings, and there were visits to local families, great and small. Together, they looked into problems people wished to bring to Michael’s attention as their member of parliament.

  After one such meeting, she felt Michael’s gaze on her as they walked away. “What?” she asked him.

  “I think we make an excellent partnership,” he said softly, and she smiled, tightening her hold on his arm. For in spite of everything, she had still been jealous of his “partnership” with Judith, however illusory it had turned out to be.

  A few days before the wedding, Charles Hanson arrived. Initially somewhat overawed, he quickly became firm friends with Alice and Helen, and Maria knew she was acquiring a most lovable new brother. She looked forward to getting to know the other siblings. But in truth, she looked forward to everything in her new life.

  The only disagreement was, inevitably, with her mother, who was quite scandalized by the idea of Maria sharing Michael’s rooms in London after they returned from their wedding trip.

  “You must stay at Braithwaite House,” she insisted. “If you are determined not to trust Gervaise to choose a suitable house for you.”

  But Maria would not budge. Her independence from her family would begin on
her wedding day, and she rather looked forward to the experience of living with Michael in two bachelor rooms for a week or so, while they found and readied a little house of their own choosing.

  *

  The sun shone on their wedding day, spilling through the church windows on to the altar, as Mr. Grant performed the ceremony that made them man and wife. Maria couldn’t stop smiling. When she looked at Michael to make her vows, he gazed back with something approaching awe. He seemed…dazzled. Maria rather liked that, too. For his part, he appeared very handsome in his new black coat and pantaloons, his shirt and cravat gleaming snowy white in the sunshine. Charles stood beside him and a little behind, like a paler image of his distinguished brother.

  As well as Gervaise, Eleanor, Mama, and her younger sisters, Mrs. Grant was in church to see her married, as was Bernard Muir and his step-mother, the Winslows—including Catherine and Lord Sylvester Gaunt, Tamar’s brother—plus Lady Arabella Lamont and several country and townspeople she’d known since childhood. She was touched that they’d come to see her married. Many even paraded behind them up the hill and to the castle.

  The wedding breakfast was naturally sumptuous and passed in a blur of happy chatter and laughter. Then, there was only time to hug her mother, her brother, and sisters and let Michael hand her into the coach that would take them to Whalen and the yacht belonging to Lady Arabella’s husband, the famous Captain Alban Lamont.

  “We won’t be using it until the end of summer,” Lady Bella had told her and Michael. “So, it is at your disposal for the next month at least.”

  Since the weather remained fine, after dinner served by Alban’s well-trained steward, Maria and Michael went on deck once more. At night, the sea seemed more mysterious. Black and silvery in the light of the moon, its gentle rolling was entrancing.

  Maria, with Michael’s arm around her waist, her head resting against his shoulder, smiled in the darkness. “I remember thinking once, that I preferred to travel than to arrive.”

  “And now?”

  She rubbed her cheek against his arm. “As long as I’m with you, I am content wherever I am.”

  He bent and kissed her, and she sighed. “I don’t think anyone has ever been as happy as I.”

  He smiled. “Never?”

  “No, because no one else was ever married to you.”

  He laughed. “You would go to my head, if it wasn’t already full of you.” His smile died slowly. Behind his spectacles, his eyes glinted in a way that caught at her breath and caused a nervous little thrill at the base of her stomach. “Shall we go below? I would like to make you happier yet.”

  Her heart hammered as they walked across the deck, said a civil goodnight to the passing officer, and climbed down the ladder to their spacious cabin.

  “I want you to be happy, too,” she whispered as he unfastened her cloak.

  His fingers stilled. He gazed down at her. “Oh, my dear, sweet—” He broke off to kiss her with a tenderness that turned to fire, spreading rapidly through her veins. “You are the best, the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. Until I met you, I had almost forgotten the simple joy of life. With you, everything is new and bright…”

  Without their cloaks and his coat, she was closer to his body as they kissed. But it was not close enough. Clearly, he felt so, too, for he partially released her to take her hand and lead her through the main cabin to the bedchamber beyond.

  He undressed her with slow, gentle care, caressing and kissing the skin he revealed. Trembling with hunger and nerves, she felt helpless, at his mercy. Until she realized, he, too, was shaking.

  “What is it?” she whispered anxiously.

  Slowly, he bent and touched his forehead to hers. “You are so young, so delicate. And I want you so badly, I’m afraid of spoiling things between us, of hurting you.”

  In fresh wonder, she took his hand. “You cannot hurt me,” she said simply. “I want you in the same way.”

  He seemed stunned by her admission. Half-naked, she turned, tugging him toward the bed. With a sudden groan, he swept her up in his arms, and then it seemed nothing could hold him back. His sweet, gentle touch grew wild and heated, and she gave herself up to it with delight. Utterly responsive to his every kiss and caress, exploring his body with hunger, she only gasped as he entered her, wanting more of this strange, new closeness.

  Everything moved faster, then, quick and desperate. And yet even then, she knew his care and control remained.

  “I feel I have waited so long for this,” he whispered, “for you…”

  There was nothing she could do but reach for his mouth and kiss him as he moved above her and the strange, untamed pleasure grew sharp and intense, flooding her as it swept him along, too, and he collapsed on her with groans of sheer ecstasy.

  Slowly, he moved his weight off her, but held her close against him. She still felt one with him.

  She cupped his face with one lethargic hand. “Michael?”

  “Yes, my love.”

  “Will you love me again?”

  He smiled into her hand as he kissed it. “Forever,” he said.

  And he did.

  Mary Lancaster’s Newsletter

  If you enjoyed The Wicked Sister, and would like to keep up with Mary’s new releases and other book news, please sign up to Mary’s mailing list to receive her occasional Newsletter.

  Other Books by Mary Lancaster

  VIENNA WALTZ (The Imperial Season, Book 1)

  VIENNA WOODS (The Imperial Season, Book 2)

  VIENNA DAWN (The Imperial Season, Book 3)

  THE WICKED BARON (Blackhaven Brides, Book 1)

  THE WICKED LADY (Blackhaven Brides, Book 2)

  THE WICKED REBEL (Blackhaven Brides, Book 3)

  THE WICKED HUSBAND (Blackhaven Brides, Book 4)

  THE WICKED MARQUIS (Blackhaven Brides, Book 5)

  THE WICKED GOVERNESS (Blackhaven Brides, Book 6)

  THE WICKED SPY (Blackhaven Brides, Book 7)

  THE WICKED GYPSY (Blackhaven Brides, Book 8)

  THE WICKED WIFE (Blackhaven Brides, Book 9)

  WICKED CHRISTMAS (Blackhaven Brides, A Novella)

  THE WICKED WAIF (Blackhaven Brides, Book 11)

  THE WICKED HEIR (Blackhaven Brides, Book 12)

  THE WICKED CAPTAIN (Blackhaven Brides, Book 13)

  REBEL OF ROSS

  A PRINCE TO BE FEARED: the love story of Vlad Dracula

  AN ENDLESS EXILE

  A WORLD TO WIN

  About Mary Lancaster

  Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.

  Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; The Unmarriageable Series and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.

  Connect with Mary on-line – she loves to hear from readers:

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