Kate Moore

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

AN
IMPROPER
WIDOW

An Avon Regency Romance

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Avon edition / February 1995

InterMix eBook edition / July 2012

Copyright
© 1995 by Kate Moore.

Excerpt from
Blackstone’s Bride
copyright © 2012 by Kate Moore.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN
: 978-1-101-57118-7

INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For Mom and Dad

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my mother’s cousin, Ms. Betty Kirby, of Highcliffe, Dorset, for providing me with replicas of the 1810 Ordnance Survey for southern England and for researching Susannah’s dream cottage in Wincanton. It is really there. And I would like to thank Joan and Tracy Grant, aka Anthea Malcolm/Anna Grant, for their help with innumerable research questions including the vexing issue of “marquis” vs. “marquess.” And, of course, Homer, for his inexhaustible inspiration.

The son is rare who measures with his father.

—Homer,
The Odyssey

Francis William Arden, fourth Marquess of Warne, entered the breakfast room of his house on Upper Brook Street on a wet March morning, knowing he would find Cornelius Bellaby ahead of him and wondering how he was to tell his friend that he had decided to marry.

Bellaby looked up from the
Chronicle
at Warne’s entrance. “Raining is it?” he asked.

Warne nodded. “Buckets.”

“Thought it would” was Bellaby’s reply. He bent his ginger-colored head to the paper again without further comment, as if the sight of a peer of the realm, unshaven, sweating, and dressed in a sleeveless shirt and white stockinet breeches, was no more remarkable than a flying pig.

Warne smiled. There was hope for Bellaby after all. At first his friend had objected strenuously to Warne’s habit of taking a morning run. “You’ll pollute your lungs and shrink your privates,” Bellaby predicted. In time, however, as neither Warne’s health nor his manhood had suffered, Bellaby had been compelled to accept the eccentricity. Now Warne hoped his friend would accept his decision to marry.

He picked up the fresh towel draped across the back of his usual chair and applied it to his wet hair. He rubbed briskly for a moment, then discarded the towel and wrapped a forest-green robe around his white running clothes. He chose an orange from a plate on the sideboard and crossed to the window.

Beyond the rain-dappled glass an old soldier shuffled by to take up his post at the crossing. Warne had first noticed the man several days before and had given him a shilling for performing his self-appointed sweeping task. It was these old soldiers returning to take up lives interrupted by the long war with Boney that had started him thinking about marriage. His war, too, was over. This season he could take a wife.

“Warne, here it is, just the opportunity we’ve been looking for.” Neil Bellaby stabbed the small advertisement in the
Chronicle
with his forefinger and lifted his gaze from the paper, but his friend appeared not to have heard him.

Warne was staring out the window apparently deep in contemplation of some object visible only to himself. Bellaby noted his friend’s inattention. It reminded him that it was an accident that he and Warne were friends—the corn merchant’s son and the peer. He clenched his jaw firmly shut. He wanted to plead with Warne—
don’t change
—but of course, he would do no such thing.

For nearly ten years they had begun the day perusing the papers, making sense of the details of shipping, trade, and foreign affairs that revealed economic principles at work and showed them their next venture. Warne’s breakfast room—the idea room, Bellaby liked to call it—had become their meeting place after a successful venture had allowed Warne to purchase a town house. It was Warne’s quick intuitive flash that spotted the opportunities that had made them both rich. Bellaby was the detail man. Now, however, something was distracting Warne from the pursuit of wealth. Bellaby felt a moment of cold fear that his friend would never play the game again with the brilliance that had been so exciting to watch over their years as partners.

Outwardly, Warne looked the same. His auburn hair hung loosely about his face, carelessly toweled and still damp. He ran regardless of weather. The tall, powerful body retained that look of leashed energy that made women of a certain stamp eager to bed the marquess. But Warne’s face had changed. The blue eyes were more often amused than angry. He laughed more readily. He pushed his enemies less hard. He looked younger than he had a year ago. Warne was no longer at war.

It had been Warne’s hatred of his father that had fueled his drive for wealth, that much Bellaby understood. When they first met, Warne had been penniless, living by his wits and his athletic prowess. Bellaby had had a fortune in furs from Canada and boundless admiration for the disinherited young peer with his quick fists. They had become partners. Then on the very day Wellington had beaten Napoleon, the old marquess had died.

Since then Warne had assumed his father’s title. He had taken his seat in the Lords and made his maiden speech, a speech in which he had painted a vision of England’s manufacturing might. He had told the peers of his father’s era that with their investment England could produce steel as she now produced muslin and then all the veterans of the war could be employed. For his pains he was dubbed “The Iron Lord,” and a caricature appeared in print shop windows showing Warne’s dying father borne into the streets on an iron bed.

Warne turned and caught his friend staring. “Sorry,” he said. “You found a mill for conversion?”

Bellaby blinked and allowed a slow grin to stretch his mouth wide. Warne had been listening after all. “Paper mill, seven acres, not far from Kennet’s canal. Price is right. Shall we go take a look?” He thrust the
Chronicle
into his friend’s hand, and stood. On the wall behind him several sheets of the
Ordnance Survey
had been pieced together. The huge map was dotted with pins indicating the location of various Warne properties and businesses belonging jointly to Arden and Bellaby. Whenever he could, Warne had purchased property adjacent to one of his father’s estates and bettered it. Bellaby searched for something near the mill in question and found a small property near Wincanton that could serve as a headquarters. He put his finger on the spot.

Warne studied the few lines describing the advertised mill. They had been looking for an enterprise that could be run entirely by steam. This could be it, but the conversion would mean spending months in Somerset, overseeing the work of engineers and craftsmen. After a pause, he suggested, “You go, Neil.”

Bellaby’s wiry frame tensed. “I will, of course, but I thought you were particularly interested in this project.”

“I am, but I have another . . . project here in town.”

His friend’s face fell, and Warne realized he had blundered badly. “Not a business project,” he hastened to explain. “I would never act without you in business, Neil.”

“Well, what then?”

Warne met his friend’s piercing blue gaze. “I am going to . . . marry.” He almost said
re
marry, but he had never told Bellaby the story of his first marriage and the tale was best forgotten now.

“Marry!” Bellaby’s mouth fell open, and his right hand, raised to point out some spot on the map, fell. He took a few purposeless steps as if to distance himself from the idea, whirled, and strode back. “Who?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Warne. “I’ve got to pick somebody. That’s the project.” He reached for the bellpull and rang for his butler.

“Why?”

Warne had to laugh at the utter incomprehension expressed in the one syllable. “Why marry? So that when I pass to my immortal reward or punishment as the case may be, four hundred years of Warne lands go to a Warne instead of Prinny or his heirs.”

“You have a point there,” Bellaby conceded. “Prinny never could handle money. In his hands even your fortune would dry up.” Bellaby was pacing in earnest now.

When the butler appeared, Warne asked, “Do I have any cards of invitation lying about, Pedrick?”

“Of course, sir. Would your lordship care to see them?”

“Straight away, thank you.”

“Sir,” said Pedrick, “may I mention that there is a gentleman waiting to see you, a Mr. Inkson from Lett’s.”

“Lett’s? The stationers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send him in.”

“Marriage . . .” Bellaby said with a shudder. “This is what comes of your damned monkish habits. Running, celibacy.”

“Celibacy?” By the standards of the day Warne knew himself to be restrained, but his lapses had earned him a reputation that years of abstinence would hardly erase.

Bellaby snorted. “Well, how you manage without a mistress, I don’t know. I’d say you’re as randy as the next fellow.”

“As the proverbial goat at any rate,” Warne acknowledged. He tossed the paper on the table and helped himself to coffee.

“That’s my point, Warne,” Bellaby insisted. “Make an arrangement with some accommodating piece and leave it at that.”

“As you have with the patient Alice?”

“Exactly. Alice could find you a prime article.”

Warne shook his head. His distaste for such arrangements went beyond his rebellion against his lecherous father.

“A widow then, an improper widow, one who knows what’s what under the sheets.”

“No, it’s a wife I want.”

“You aren’t thinking of some chit right out of the schoolroom! You’ll be obliged to come to her in the dark, keep your nightshirt on, and apologize for offending her sensibilities when you enter her.”

“Bellaby, trust me to pick a bride who will welcome my attentions.”

“You’ll never find one at that temple of dullness—Almack’s.” There was a moment of silence. Both men knew that the Iron Lord would not be particularly welcome at Almack’s.

“You’d do better at the Mansion House. Let a few plump aldermen parade their daughters before you. Look at their teeth as well as their bosoms and demand thirty thousand in the bargain.”

“With all due respect, Bellaby, I want a wife with better manners than you have.”

“You want a paragon, then?”

Warne sipped his coffee. He had considered this. He could not go looking for a girl like Ellen Kirby, the girl he had married when he was seventeen. “Wit and goodness, passion, a little beauty will do for me.”

“Lord.” Bellaby ran a hand through his hair. “You want to fall in love.”

Warne tried to recall Ellen Kirby’s eyes. For years he had remembered his love with painful clarity, and then inexplicably, when he was winning, when he was finally repaying his father for her death, the memories had faded. “I doubt I can,” he told Bellaby.

A knock on the breakfast-room door cut off Bellaby’s further objections to Warne’s marriage plans.

Pedrick ushered in a thin gentleman with a wide brow sparsely covered with fine yellow hair. The gentleman rolled his head from side to side as if his thoughts were too weighty to be supported by his slender neck. “Mr. Inkson, my lord,” Pedrick announced, stepping aside and discreetly setting a silver salver of cards at Warne’s elbow.

Mr. Inkson looked from Warne to Bellaby, and Warne followed the visitor’s gaze. Bellaby, magnificent in a blue coat, yellow waistcoat, and white inexpressibles, looked every inch the Bond Street Exquisite, while Warne sprawled in a chair in his green robe. His visitor’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

“He’s the peer,” said Bellaby with a laugh and a nod toward Warne.

“Seat, Mr. Inkson?” invited Warne.

“Yes, thank you, my lord,” Mr. Inkson replied. He sank into a chair as if his legs had just that moment given out.

“Coffee?” Warne asked.

Mr. Inkson shook his head. He had retained his hat and turned it around and around in his hands by the brim. Warne waited.

Mr. Inkson cleared his throat and rolled his head to the right. “My lord, I came to report a most curious circumstance. Most curious, indeed.”

“Yes, Mr. Inkson?” Warne prompted.

“It came to my attention this morning that our shop had been robbed during the night. A person or persons unknown removed a pane of glass from one of the windows at the rear of the shop, turned the latch, and contrived to enter.” Mr. Inkson’s heavy head listed to the left.

“An unfortunate occurrence. Have you suffered a severe loss?”

Mr. Inkson’s head came upright, and he opened and closed his mouth like a fish. “In fact, your lordship, no monies were taken and only one item is missing from our stock, and that is why I have taken it upon myself to wait on you.”

“Yes?”

Mr. Inkson’s heavy thoughts caused his head to lean to the right again. “My lord, your cards have been stolen. I assure you we can print a new order immediately and have them to you within three days, but I wanted to advise you of the theft lest someone perpetrate a fraud in your name. One of the cards was left behind.” Here Mr. Inkson paused, laid his hat upon his knees, and reached into an inner pocket of his coat. He drew out a small creamy card bearing the marquess’s name and title and handed it across the table to Warne.

Below his name was written in the neat hand of a very careful student—
With my father’s compliments.

Bellaby saw Warne’s eyes assume the iron look that had not been there since the old marquess died. He came around the table and peered over Warne’s shoulder. “Someone’s playing a joke,” he said.

“A nasty joke,” said Warne. He rose, and Mr. Inkson popped up like a cork on a fishing line.

After some pointed questions about Lett’s handling of the matter, Warne requested Mr. Inkson’s discretion and offered him the customary parting civilities.

Mr. Inkson bowed and backed from the room. In the hall Pedrick could be heard directing the visitor to the door.

“Queerest theft I’ve ever heard of,” said Bellaby.

Warne studied the message on the card left behind by the thief. He could swear he had seen the handwriting before.

“You don’t think it’s a joke, do you,” Bellaby said.

“Revenge, more likely.
No score left unpaid
was my father’s motto.”

Bellaby frowned and slowly circled back to his side of the table. “Could be one of your father’s men. They went down with him, you know.”

Warne was thinking the same thing. His father’s man of business, his solicitor, his bailiff were all men who had remained loyal to the old marquess. They had suffered with him as Warne succeeded. Probably, Jopp, his father’s banker, felt sufficient enmity on his own to act against Warne. He would investigate Jopp first.

“Bellaby, this episode is another reason for me to stay here. The thief can hardly use my cards while I’m in town.”

“Very well,” Bellaby replied. “I’ll look into the paper mill, but I ask one thing of you.”

Warne raised an eyebrow.

“Before you get yourself leg-shackled, I want to meet any lady you are considering.”

“You’ve never presented me to the fair Alice.” Warne named the young woman Neil had in keeping in a house in Kensington.

“Of course not,” said Bellaby from the door. “While my lady swears she’s partial to freckled fellows with ginger hair and wiry builds, I’d rather not put her to the test, Warne.”

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