How I Married a Marquess

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L
ord Chesney?” Jensen's voice cut through the midmorning stillness of the stables. “Are you here, sir?”

Inside the end stall box, Thomas Matteson stilled, hoping the butler would simply leave and not interrupt his morning. The same morning he'd so carefully arranged by giving the grooms time off to attend Tattersall's. He let the silence of the stables answer for him, broken only by the restless shifting of horses in their stalls and a pawing of hooves.

But Jensen persisted in his hunt. “Sir?”

Stifling a curse, knowing he had no choice but to face whatever calamity had sent the man after him, Thomas stepped into the aisle and firmly closed the stall door behind him. He brushed pieces of straw from the sleeves of his maroon redingote. “What is it, Jensen?”

“A visitor, sir.” The portly butler hurried forward, silver salver in hand.

Thomas fought to keep from rolling his eyes at the man's formality. An employee of the Matteson household for nearly twenty years, Jensen took his position seriously, even during times like these when the duke and duchess were at their country estate and Thomas was the only family member in residence.

And he was in residence precisely
because
his mother and father were not, needing the distractions of London and the freedom of turning Chatham House into bachelor's quarters until his parents returned in January. Yet Jensen and the rest of the staff continued to serve with the precision of a military regiment, taking pride in their positions within a duke's household even while the duke was away.

And while the old lord was away, the young lord would play…or at least that had been his plan. To fill his daylight hours with as many frivolous activities as possible and his nights however—and with whomever—he could. But it was deuced hard when the staff followed his every move. For heaven's sake, yesterday morning he'd caught Cook spying on him to make certain he ate breakfast!

Most likely their close attention came at his mother's orders. He would have found her concern endearing if it didn't aggravate the hell out of him. And it was damned grating that nearly everyone he interacted with these days—including the household staff—still thought of him as fragile. Still not fully recovered.
Broken
.

“My lord.” Jensen presented the card with as much flourish as if he stood in the gilded front hall rather than in the stable with his shoes dangerously close to a pile of manure.

Irritated at being interrupted, Thomas snatched up the card and read the embossed name. The Earl Royston?
Odd
.
Why the devil was he here? Royston was an old family friend and always welcome at Chatham House. But surely Royston knew that his father was in the country, and Thomas couldn't imagine what the earl would want with him.

“I've put his lordship in the drawing room, sir.” Then Jensen hesitated and cleared his throat as if he dreaded telling him, “And Lady Emily is taking tea in the morning room.”

“My sister is, is she?” His lips curled grimly. Yet another person set on ruining his morning, apparently. “Tell Royston I'll join him in a moment.” He arched a brow. “And tell my sister that she has her own town house and should bloody well stop haunting mine.”

“Yes, sir.” Despite his curt nod, Thomas knew the portly butler had no intention of passing along
that
message.

Straw rustled inside the stall behind him. Jensen furrowed his bushy brows. “Should I call for a footman to help you with your horse, sir?”

“No need.” At the sound of more rustling, he added, “Just a filly I've been attempting to break.”

With a shallow bow, and careful to miss the manure, Jensen turned smartly on his heels and retreated toward the house. Thomas waited until the butler was out of sight before opening the stall door. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned lazily against the post and looked at the woman standing inside.

“Just a filly you've been attempting to break, am I?” Helene Humphrey, the young widow of the late Charles Humphrey, pouted with mock peevishness as she brushed at the straw clinging to her riding habit. The same habit that moments ago had been pulled down to her waist and bunched up around her hips as she'd straddled him in the hay. “How positively uncomplimentary of you, Chesney.”

He shrugged away her scolding, not caring if she was offended. After all, he allowed her into his stables in the mornings only because he wanted to chase away any lingering anxieties from the nights before. And he wasn't naïve enough to believe she visited him for any reason other than
sex.

Having settled into wealthy widowhood with all the restraint of an opera diva, Helene thrilled at indulging in a string of dalliances, including those she'd risked before Humphrey died. Which was one of the main reasons Thomas had selected her to be one of his lovers. With Helene a man got exactly what he saw. No secrets, no surprises…just a beautiful and eager woman with a hot mouth and a cold heart.

“You're the one visiting
my
stables, Helene,” he reminded her.

“And where else am I supposed to take such a fine morning ride?” She turned her back to him so he could fasten up her dress.

He obliged—of course he did. He was a gentleman, after all, and a gentleman always helped his lover freshen her appearance after a tryst, even if she made assignations with half of London society and had just ridden him off six feet from a pile of horse shit.

“One of these mornings, we really should put you onto a horse.” As he fastened the last button, he lowered his head to brush his mouth against the side of her neck for one last taste of her. “I've got a new gelding you might like.”

With a wicked smile, she turned in his arms and cupped his cock in her palm. “Why would I want a gelding,” she purred, fondling him through his breeches more in possessiveness than in desire, “when I've got a stallion?”

Dragging in a breath through clenched teeth, he reached down to grasp her wrist and pull her hand away as fresh irritation surged inside him. The last way he wanted to think of himself was as providing stud service. Even if the implication was true.

“At least your guests have good timing.” She stepped back and tugged at her gloves. As with her hat and its beaded half veil, she'd kept her gloves and boots on the entire time he'd been inside her. Mercifully, though, she'd discarded the riding crop. “Ten minutes earlier and I would have been extremely put out.”

Ten minutes earlier
.
He would have been annoyed, but would he have truly cared?

His chest tightened with the bitter ache of self-recrimination. Good Lord, had his life really come to this? Pre-appointed tumbles in a horse stall with a woman he didn't even like, partaking of her pleasures more to release the acute uneasiness that pounded relentlessly at him than for physical satisfaction?

Only one year ago, his life had still possessed meaning. He'd felt alive and happy, and he never would have sought out the company of such a shallow woman as Helene. In public he'd moved in the inner circle of English society, taking advantage of all the benefits life within the
ton
afforded, for all outward appearances seemingly concerned with nothing more than fast horses, faster women, and the odds in the book at White's. But in private he'd served as a War Office operative, his skills highly valued and his work important. His life had been filled with purpose.

Until everything had gone so horribly wrong one Sunday evening, right in Mayfair. That was the evening when he'd learned the difference between being alive and truly living. The evening when his life had become a living hell.

Unconsciously he reached for his side, for that spot just above his hip where the bullet hole still hideously pocked his skin. His fingers trembled.
Goddammit
!
Even now, even in the safety of his own home in broad daylight, he couldn't keep himself from shaking.

“Next Thursday morning, then, for our usual ride?” Oblivious to the darkness once more closing in around him, she trailed the end of her riding crop suggestively along his shoulder as she stepped past him into the aisle. “Although I have
so
been wanting to try a private ride in the park.”

At the thought of her leaving, a sudden desperation swept through him. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back against him, eliciting a soft gasp of surprise from her.

He'd found release with her just minutes ago, but a dark restlessness still pulsed inside him, one that now shifted toward panic. His heart began to pound hard as the familiar metallic taste of anxiety formed on his tongue, and he recklessly sought one last moment of distraction with her.

“When it comes to riding, Helene,” he murmured as he nipped at her earlobe, hoping to arouse her enough to convince her to stay, at least for a few more minutes, “I suspect there's nothing you haven't already tried.”

He coaxed a soft moan from her as his still-shaking hand fondled her breast through her riding habit, and his cock flexed at the feminine sound. Did he have time to take her again? Nothing more than a desperate diversion, certainly, yet one that would keep at bay the rising anxiety for a little while longer and perhaps let him get through the rest of the morning without falling into the darkness that preyed on him.

Giving a throaty laugh, she slipped out of his arms.

He clenched his empty hands into fists. Physical pain speared his chest as he knew he had to let her go, because if he made another grab for her, then he'd look like a damned fool.

“Insatiable,” she scolded with a teasing smile, and
smacked him playfully on the shoulder with the riding crop. “But I'm due for breakfast, and you have guests waiting.”

She sauntered from the stable with a wide sashay of her hips toward her waiting carriage in the alley, completely unaware that the darkness was circling him again, ready to tear at him with its claws. After all, he'd become so very clever during the past year at hiding his distress. Even from the people who loved him.

As he stared after her, he forced himself to breathe deeply and steadily, to push down the panic nipping at his heels and pounding the blood through his body so hard that the rush of it in his ears was deafening. A tight knot like hot lead burned low in his gut now, and he wiped the back of his hand across his lips as if he could easily brush clean the taste of fear from his mouth. As if he could wipe away the living nightmare his life had become.

He looked down at his hands, now shaking uncontrollably, then squeezed his eyes shut and fought against the demons rising inside him. Not this morning— Dear God,
not
with Royston and his sister waiting inside.

He knew what came next once the shaking started, and he willed
it back with every ounce of his being. All the memories would come rushing back until he relived the shooting and its aftermath…the pain radiating from his side so searing that he couldn't breathe, the fear that he would die and slip forever into the blackness. And worst of all, the sheer terror of waking in the dark, screaming in confusion and panic, unable to move.

Squeezing his eyes shut and concentrating instead on the stable around him, on the sounds of the horses, the smells of the hay and manure, and the chilly morning air against his hot cheeks, he forced himself to slowly count to ten. Then twenty. Then one hundred…By the time he reached three hundred, he'd managed to subdue the shaking enough that it was no longer visible
and to stop the itching at his wrists, even if his heart continued to pound like a hammer in his chest. He took a moment longer to gather himself enough that no one would notice the agitated state that Helene's departure had thrown him into, then left the stable.