The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (13 page)

“Against common sense,” Wes mourned now, ran a hand through his hair and directed his gaze out the casement window at the never-ending rain. September in Lancashire. Supposed to be warm. Sunny.
Now cold and dark as my despair.

He struggled up from his chair, grabbed his cane and plodded in his slippers to the window. Would he ever be warm again? Anywhere?

The sound of carriage wheels made him cock his ear in the direction of the drive.

No one visited. He had made it plain to Charles that the man was to spread that word in the village. Wes desired no visitors. No well-wishers. No expressions of gratitude for the so-called hero of Talavera.

Still, Wes heard the carriage wheels grind to a stop.

Shouting above the downpour of the rain assaulted his peace.

Footsteps. Then a knocking on the front door.

Charles emerged from the dining room where he’d been laying out luncheon.

“Who might this be?” Wes asked of the man who should not have invited anyone.

“I have no idea, sir,” Charles replied as he stepped toward the foyer and the carved wooden door. “I will inquire.”

Wes nodded, putting pressure on his cane as he hobbled back toward his chair.

“Good afternoon,” Charles greeted the visitor. “Do come in. May I say who is calling?” he asked in a tone of voice so caring that Wes, out of his own immense curiosity, became focused on the portal and the figure standing there.

Wes stiffened. His jaw dropped. His one good eye squinted in disbelief.

“Yes, you may say. Charles, isn’t it?” asked the vision in the bright navy blue pelisse and pink straw bonnet. The vision stepped inside, handed Charles her umbrella and pulled at her gloves, finger by finger, as she gazed about, her large robin’s egg blue eyes landing on Wes. Her face severe, unsmiling, she told Charles, “You may say Lady Lacy Featherstone calls upon Colonel Stanhope.”

“I’m afraid, my lady, that Colonel Stanhope is indisposed.”

Her incomparable blue gaze danced down Wes’s form. “He looks quite fit to me, Charles.”

What? How can I? Looking like a gargoyle. Feeling weak as a puppy.
Wes stepped back into the shadows of the great room. He could still see her. And certainly she saw him.
Damn and double damn it to hell.

Lacy took a step forward.

Charles blocked her.

She glared at the servant. “Charles, let us understand each other from the start. I am here. I have arrived at your door after an extremely discomfiting journey by coach from Kent. Do you know how far that is, Charles?”

“Yes, Lady Featherstone, I certainly do. The Colonel and I traveled here from London, and we did so with the Colonel in dire pain. I tell you that you may not see him.”

You may not, cannot. You will be repulsed to be near me.
Wes forced himself to stand his ground.

She smiled with a hauteur that had his man stiffen. “But, Charles, I do see him. I see him now. I see him plainly. And I will speak with him.”

“My lady, you may not enter.”

“Wes!” she called to him, bracing herself on two dainty feet. “I will not leave.”

Oh, hell. Why did I involve myself with a blue-stocking with her own mind? Was I mad even before Spain? Bloody balls.
“Lacy, I do not wish to see you.”

She snorted. “I do not care what you wish.”

“It is not proper that you are here. And unescorted, as far as I can tell.”

She folded her hands before her, prim as he had never known her to be. “I do not care for escorts or proprieties.”

“You must!”
Was she out of her wits?

“You heard me,” she said as she surveyed the wooden beams of the ceiling and the black and white of the foyer floor tiles.

God, she was lovely. Like spun sugar, blonde as starlight, fragile and scrumptious. Meant for him. Once. Long ago.

“I came alone,” she informed him and took a step forward. “My father thinks I am with my aunt Mary in Dorset.”

If Wes were in his right mind or of sound body, he might have laughed. As it was, he scowled at her. “Go home, Lacy.”

“I refuse.”

What a piece she was. Once his match. “You will ruin your reputation.”

She grinned and shook her head. Her expression said he was talking silliness. “Of what value, Colonel Stanhope, is reputation?”

“Everything!”

Lacy continued to glide toward him. Her gorgeous blue eyes riveted on his one good one, hers fixed with determination. “I suppose yours has saved your happiness for you?”

Wes choked on fury.
How did one so young, so fair, know such a truth?

She strolled further into the room. “I came to help you and nurse you, Wes.”

He huffed, the sight of her heaving breasts in the fitted jacket making him remember the night he’d viewed them in a garden at someone’s ball. He’d put his rough hand inside her gown, the sight of her nipples inciting him to taste the gossamer, pink areolas. He ground his teeth. “I have a nurse. I have Charles.”

“He does not love you.”

Charles startled. “Sir? I…I do not—”

Wes raised a hand to his man and both brows at Lacy. “I venture to say he does. In his way.”

“He does not love you as I do.” She stepped forward, her gown swishing against the carpet. “Or love you as I can.”

“He is enough for me.”

“
Is
he?” She looked Charles up and down.

“Go home, Lacy,” Wes instructed with more sadness than he’d planned. “You and I have no future.”

“Not true, Wesley Stanhope!” She stood toe-to-toe with him now. Her incomparable robin’s egg blue eyes bored into his one. “Give over, Colonel. You have lost this battle. I am here to marry you.”

“Charles?” Lacy faced Wes’s butler with a determination she’d nurtured all along this hideous journey north. “Do leave us.”

Wes nodded at his man. When he had departed the room, Wes focused his one good eye on her. “Your obstinacy won’t help you, Lacy. I will not relent.”

“Plan to live up to your moniker, do you?” she asked blithely as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

“The cripple of Talavera?” he bit off, turned and walked toward his chair.

When he was seated, she looked at him with ferocious resolve. All the better to hide the tears she wished to shed over his deplorable physical state.
Darling, how hurt you are.
“I meant the term the
ton
dubs you. ‘Difficult’.”

He brandished a hand as he fell backward into his huge over-stuffed chair. “Yes. See him now. The Difficult Colonel. The Scourge of Talavera. So difficult he cannot even rid himself of a pesky chit with silly ideas in her head.”

I will not be insulted. Or deterred.
Sniffing, Lacy removed her bonnet. With it came a few of her hairpins and the fall of her platinum hair about her shoulders.
Wonderful.
She had planned its cascade, just like that. Wes loved her hair. Among other attributes. She planned to use every one of them in her assault on the famous colonel whom she had loved at first sight.

“Lacy,” he sounded so weary. “You must not stay.”

Smiling to herself, she strode to the large table on which a few books lay spread open and put down her hat. Then she began to unbutton her coat. “You cannot make me go, Wes.”

He ran a hand through his auburn hair. “Do not remove any more clothing, Lacy!”

She let her coat drift from her shoulders and slung it over a nearby chair. Today, she’d donned the blue serge gown that matched her eyes. These were one of her assets, and she was no fool when it came to men’s attentiveness to her. Especially Wesley Stanhope’s. From the moment she’d seen him at his brother Adam’s house last April, Lacy had known the dashing colonel instantly, completely. Understood him, too. She had proven it that first night they met when she found him in his brother’s library and kissed him. Now, it remained for her to prove it to him once again. And sadly, military man that he was, he was too bull-headed to see that she knew what was best for him.
Me, of course.

She walked toward him.

Finally, she stood four-square before him. He was so huge and she so much shorter that facing him while he sat, she was only a head taller. The height was one she would employ. She gazed down at him, her resolve to be resolute with him dwindling as she took in how sallow his skin, how bleary his eye and how lax his bad arm. “I will not leave you, darling.”

“Lacy.” He winced. Whether from physical pain or mental torture, she could not decide. “No good can come of this. I cannot marry you. Will not.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Why not?”
Say it! Once! Then we will be done with this fantasy of denial!

“Look at me!” He swept out a hand.

“I am, my love.”

His eye squeezed shut. “I am ugly.”

“Handsome.”

“Blinded!”

“In one eye.”

“My left arm is broken.”

“
Was
broken.”

He snorted. “My left leg is twisted and painful to walk on.”

“We can correct that with—”

He shot up from his chair to tower over her. “No. We.
Cannot
!” He teetered on his feet.

She caught him with two hands to his upper arms. “I must.”

“You are mad, woman, to think you can—”

So she leaned up on tiptoes and kissed him. His mouth, so firm and strong, held for a split second, then melted to hers. She wrapped her arms around his and held him, steady and fierce, as she deepened the kiss with all her wild desire for him.

“Lacy,” he murmured as he broke away and stared down into her eyes. “Lacy, you must not do this.”

She brushed her lips on his. “What will you do, Colonel Stanhope?” She leaned up and spread tiny kisses across his jaw where his dimple marked his left cheek—near the endearing scar. “Have Charles throw me out?”

“I will have him take you to town. Get you a room in the inn. Arrange to put you on tomorrow’s coach back to London.”

“The roads are closed,” she told him with immense satisfaction. Even the rain conspired with her, so right was her mission. “The rain is horrible. I had to pay the coachman double just to bring me here from town.” She nuzzled her nose along the corded column of his throat and placed her mouth to the hollow there where his pulse beat frantically. “And I daresay, you have no coach here. I cannot ride a horse to town in this rain. So you see I am here on your doorstep, darling. Give over.” And then she kissed him sweetly.

He steadied himself, braced his legs wide and wrapped her close. This near, her stomach fit into the hollow of his loins—and he grew hard, wanting her as he always had.

Confirmation of the necessity of her goal. Gleeful, she let her eyes drift shut.

He lifted her chin with two fingers. “Christ, you are so lovely. So determined. Some smart rogue must have danced attendance on you while I was in Spain.” He combed her hair back from her cheeks and let his fingers descend through the length of her curls, down to her waist. “I am no man for you.”

She nestled closer and felt the ever-rising evidence that his statement was definitely false. “I’ve come to prove you are just that.”

With one arm, he clutched her so fiercely that he nearly lifted her off her feet. His mouth on hers, he groaned. “What once was a good match is now an impossibility.”

“You are still my Wes. Still wise and witty, young and—”

He shook her. “Ancient with the stench of death about me! The men I killed. The men who fought with me and died. My horse! Gutted by cannon fire. Me! A wreck of a man.”

“But alive,” she said, proud she argued so rationally that she might have been in Inns of Court.

“Ba!” He set her to her feet and pivoted from her to lumber toward the casement window and open it. Chill autumn air rushed in with the rich smell of wood fires and ripe foliage. “You will listen to me and do as I say.”

“I am not one of your men, Wes.” She had come armed with her logic. “I am the woman you love. The one you proposed to before you left for Spain. I am your match. Your equal. Now and in all things. I mean for you to be my husband.”

“You are meant for a man who can do his husbandly duty.”

“To bed me? Darling, I just felt rock hard evidence that you are quite capable of that.”

He turned, a snarl curling his upper lip. “Fuck you? Aye, I could. Now. Here. But not well.”

His coarse word thrilled her, but she knew he used it to repel her. She smiled because he couldn’t. “How do you know until you try?”

He shook his head, his jaw set. “I could have you where we stand, I daresay. For some mad reason, I seem to want that with you. You see how pitiful I have become? Good God.” He raked his hair, his hand unsteady even though his voice was raw with determination. “But I mean more than possessing you, Lacy. I mean providing for you. Crippled as I now am, I earn less income. I have no means to support you, dear girl. I am pensioned. A pitiful sum it is, too. Furthermore, I am never to return to service.”

“You do not know that. You—”

“Look. At. Me.” He glared at her with his one good eye. “How can I lead my men now? I could not see half of them!” He touched his patch. “I will never again wield a sword!” He raised his left arm only as high as his shoulder. “Be reasonable!”

“So you won’t return to the King’s Hussars. So you have only a pension. I have money. A dowry. You would have accepted it before. You can take it now.”

“No!” He banged his cane down into the carpet. “How can I hold my head up if you provide our income?”

“Oh,
damn
, Wesley. How many men live off the incomes of their wealthier wives? Hundreds! Money knows no gender.”

“My manhood does.”

She couldn’t help but grin at him. “Yes, your manhood knew my gender a few minutes ago, and the recognition had nothing to do with my money!”

“You are stubborn as hell!”

She preened. “Precisely. A perfect match for you, Difficult.”

“Lacy. I will not marry you. Ever. Accept it.”

She lifted her chin at him. “And I will not leave you. Ever. Accept it.”

“If you stay, dear girl, the rumors will kill you. No man will ever have you.”