Seduction in Mind (36 page)

Once Sam made his marriage plans plain to his parents, they did what was required of them and acquiesced—with politesse if not grace.

Clarissa, Hedy, and Harry each took their conge with varying degrees of civility, or in Hedy's case with no civility at all. "Don't you care about Clara Bowdoin and her coming child?" she inquired spitefully. "Poor Clara will be heartbroken if you marry."

"Miss Alworth is leaving, Owens," Sam said grimly. "See her out."

Everyone pretended not to hear Hedy's continuing vituperation as she was pushed out of the room by Sam's butler. Clarissa and Harry abruptly took their leave, the two handsome blond youngsters deep in conversation as they left.

"Now then," Sam said into the awkward silence.

"Sam, perhaps we should wait," Alex suggested. "How can it matter if—"

"No."

She shot him a fractious glance. "Pardon me?"

"I meant, please… I'd rather not wait if you don't mind, darling." Ignoring their audience, he smiled for her alone. He pulled her aside, and said in the merest breath of sound, "I'm thirty-three, I love you, and I don't want to wait."

"What will people say?"

"Since when did you begin to care what people said?"

"Since I found myself in the middle of this scandalous occasion."

"What's scandalous? Your parents are here; my parents are"—he grinned—"unfortunately, also here. It's broad daylight in my drawing room and I'm offering you my heart, my name, my title, my life."

"I don't know," she equivocated. "Everything's so sudden. We met only a short while ago."

"You mean, we
finally
met. And need I remind you, I've never offered a woman what I just offered you, so consider not only the signal honor I've afforded you, but my consequence," he said with a grin. "Furthermore, if you're concerned about scandal, think how it will look if I pick you up, carry you down the hall to the archbishop, and
force
you to marry me."

"I'm well aware of your consequence, my lord, in any number of areas," she added with a half smile. "And you wouldn't dare force me."

"Knowing you"—his lashes drifted downward in suggestion—"I'm not so sure I'd have to, but if I did, I rather think your mother might help me."

Alex took momentary pause. "That in itself is terrifying, over and above any concern with scandal."

"This won't be scandalous in the least, darling. Our sudden marriage will be considered the most captivating of love matches." He winked. "I've been very hard to land, you know."

She made a moue. "How can I even be thinking of this when I said I'd never marry again?"

"Because you love me and can't live without me."

The simplicity of his reply couldn't be faulted, no more than its veracity. "I do love you," she replied softly, "and last night was the longest night of
my
life too."

Sam smiled faintly. "Then let's make your mother happy."

"And give yours an apoplexy."

He shrugged. "You can't please everyone."

A mischievous light brightened her eyes. "I suppose as long as I am…"

"And I…"

He bowed gracefully, offered her his arm, and turned to the remaining guests. "If you'd care to join us in our wedding…"

But Sam was no more tolerant of delay in his wedding ceremony than he was in any other particular of his life. As the archbishop droned on, Sam said, "Just move along to the end, if you please."

The clergyman's astonishment lasted only a second—the viscount's expression was clearly one of impatience. He quickly pronounced the couple before him man and wife.

Ignoring the archbishop's stern look, Sam thanked him warmly, lifted Alex into his arms, and turned to their parents. "If you'll excuse us now, we'll have you all to dinner once we return from our honeymoon."

"Honeymoon?" Alex blurted out. "I have appointments all week that—"

"Can be canceled." He was walking toward the door.

"Not all of them."

"Then, I'll let you out of bed occasionally to attend them," he said, exiting into the quiet of the hall.

"Don't think you can just—"

"Make love to you day and night?"

"No… I mean"—she took a small breath—"did you say day and night?"

He smiled. "And anytime in between…"

Her answering smile was instant. "With such cogent argument, how can I refuse?"

"How indeed, considering I'm so much larger than you—which you like, as I recall. Also, I'm intent on having my way with you—which you also like,
and
aside from all this talk of sex, I'm thinking at my age we really should seriously contemplate having a child right away. So you see, making love becomes not only a pleasure but a duty. Are you interested in being a dutiful wife?" he inquired, a wicked gleam in his dark gaze, his deep voice lush with suggestion.

"If you agree to be a dutiful husband."

"You have my word on it, Lady Ranelagh." He smiled. "I'll be diligent in my duty, zealous even."

"How nice."

"Almost as nice as my finding you," he replied, gracefully descending the main staircase as though she were weightless in his arms. "I bought Leighton's painting, by the way."

"Knowing him, it cost you dearly once he knew you wanted it."

"It was worth every shilling. I prefer my wife not be naked on the walls of Grosvenor House. And Cassels turned out to be cooperative too."

Her gaze took on a new directness. "I hope you're not implying censure of any kind."

"Not in the least, darling. Pose nude all you wish." He nodded at the footman opening the front door. "I'm not averse to having a very large personal collection of your modeling."

"Would you buy them all?"

"I already have." His shoes crunched on the gravel of the drive as he moved toward his waiting carriage.

Her eyes widened. "You're going to be very hard to handle."

Leaning through the open carriage door, he deposited her on the seat. "So will you."

She grinned. "It should be interesting."

"It'll be more than that, darling." His smile was tantalizingly close as he sat down beside her, his voice heated, low. "It will be pure, undiluted pleasure…"

The viscount's family enlarged apace, with a baby born in each of the first three years of their marriage. The two boys and a girl brought enormous joy to Sam, who had given up the hope of ever having children. While Alex found that happiness wasn't so much in independence as in the heart of the whirlwind that made up her life as wife and mother. Her golf improved as Sam designed more courses; their children turned into youthful prodigies on the Lennox fairways. And the parents who had questioned the suitability of the match came to be the most partial advocates of the union—not to mention the most adoring of grandparents.

As a great admirer of his wife's artistic talents, Sam encouraged Alex to open a gallery of her own, and in the bargain he had his own private gallery of all her portraits he'd purchased. And now when Alex chose to sit as subject, in deference to the man she loved she posed in a modicum of clothing.

They would remark from time to time, with loving glances, how lucky they were to have run into each other that day at Leighton's. In the interests of harmony, Sam always refrained from mentioning he would have found her wherever she was. In those days, he'd been single-minded in pursuit.

With marriage, his former amusements were no longer of interest. He'd found love and contentment in full measure, and even the most skeptical in society were silenced. The Viscount and Viscountess of Ranelagh, despite the brevity of their courtship, were truly a love match.

It just went to show, the gossips would say—not without a certain incredulity—even the most unbridled libertine could be tamed.

1
. My heroine, Alex, is a combination of various women from history, but one of them was Angela Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906), the granddaughter of Thomas Courts (1735-1822), who brought the banking house of Courts and Co. to prominence and fortune in London. Thomas Courts was married for almost forty years to Elizabeth Starkey, who bore him three daughters. But when Mrs. Courts died in 1815, Thomas married the popular actress Harriet Mellon and left her the whole of his immense fortune and the directorship of his bank when he died in 1822. Harriet Mellon married in turn the Ninth Duke of St. Albans in 1827 and died ten years later. Harriet left the duke a modest fortune, but the bulk of her vast wealth and property went to Thomas Courts's granddaughter, Angela Burdett, who then assumed the additional name and arms of Courts.

Angela gave away immense sums of money to charities ranging from the endowment of colonial bishoprics to prizes for costermongers' donkeys; from the construction of model dwellings in the East End of London to the provision of drinking fountains for dogs. She was particularly concerned with the welfare of women and girls and established and maintained schools for them, as well as providing improved facilities for the training of girls in the national schools. For her wide-ranging philanthropies, she was created a baroness in her own right.