The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (24 page)

“And Trayne? Has he said that he will accept only a virgin?”

She rolled a shoulder and felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “He asked me in front of Daniel if I was still untouched.”

“Bastard.”

“I told him the truth. I see now I should not have.”

Jack brushed her strawberry ringlets back from her cheek and pressed her closer. “No matter now.”

“So you will have me?” Her pulse leapt at the joy and she glanced up at him. “Teach me?”

Jack considered her lips, a lingering touch that made her breasts grow heavy with want. “Have you, yes. Teach you, why? You have no plans to take another, do you?”

“No. Not at all. But I have heard our maids tittering in the downstairs parlor about their…”

“Affairs? Encounters?”

“Yes, quite right. And they seem to think it all great fun.” She knew she was outrageous to ask but she had to know more about coupling. “Is it? Great fun?”

“It can be. It should be.”

“Will ours be?”

He examined her soft grey eyes for a small eternity. “I will ensure it will be.”

“Oh, thank you. I am delighted. If I cannot marry, I want to experience this for once in my life.”
With you and no other. For one night, if no more.
“I can be content and have all I require.”

“Really?” He picked up an errant wisp of her hair and twirled it about his finger. His gaze met hers and locked. “Do you not require love in your life?”

“I will have it from children who give love freely. Unendingly.”

For some reason, he blinked and turned his face toward the window.

He was…undone?

“What did I say to upset you?”

He snorted. “You are damnably persistent.”

“Yes. A trait Daniel wishes to disabuse me of. I will not change. I would not have survived if I succumbed to all who–”

“Dear Emma,” he said as he tried but failed to smile at her, “keep your determination, but do not use it against me.”

“Tell me how I unnerved you,” she insisted.

He pressed his lips together. “A small thing. Your reference to how children love. Well and without censure. So should we all, eh?”

“Yes, Jack. So should we all.”
And I am now bound to see why you believe it possible for children and acceptable for your brothers and sister, but not for yourself.

Jack sat in the gentlemen’s waiting room of the newest Durham dress shop, tapping his hat against his knee. The place was a tiny establishment run by a woman who claimed to be a French
comtesse
before fear of Madame Guillotine had sent her scampering to English shores and the town of Durham.

He’d been waiting more than two hours. Why the hell did women’s clothes require forever to tailor?

He sighed and stood. They had to travel to the vicar, who was a peevish man, punctual to the second.
Curse him. Why couldn’t I have a cleric in my patronage who is late as hell, like the one near Wes’s and Lacy’s hunting lodge?

Clothes for Emma had been a necessity. No one should look at her and wonder if he valued her. Last night, when they’d pulled up to the drive to his country home, only his butler had opened the door. But the look on the man’s face as he gazed at Emma had told Jack volumes about his assessment of the lady on Jack’s arm. True, his butler was discreet, but shock at seeing a lady poorly attired was written in bold letters in his countenance. But when Jack told the servant that this lady was soon to be his mistress and that she must be shown to a guest bedroom immediately, the man had become solicitous. Thank god. Minutes later, his housekeeper too appeared and remembered her manners. Both servants accepted Jack’s orders and had seen to Emma’s comfort. Grinning, he filled with the joy of changing her life.

Where the hell had that come from?
He’d never been so motivated to alter any other woman’s existence. Certainly not to marry any of them. Why now? Why this young woman?

He shook his head, mystified. And laughed.

Jack took to pacing the store, the bolts of fabric appealing to his urge to stroke the silks and velvets. He rubbed a bit of jonquil silk between his thumb and index finger, laughing to himself. What was wrong with him? This morning, he’d noticed how he craved more cream than usual in his coffee, enjoying how the smooth milk coated his tongue. Was he going soft? Wanting texture and flavor and color in his life since the other night when a sprite fell in front of his carriage?

“Monsieur le Vicomte!” Madame Duhamel swept from her dressing room in a cloud of grey silk and too much rose perfume. “Your lady will emerge in a moment. She is very lovely. Cuts a good figure, as you say here.”

Jack chuckled.
A good figure for your services, too, I imagine.
“I am eager to see her. What keeps her?”
She had no case of nerves when we arrived, but was bubbling at the very idea of her marriage.

“She is eager to please you, Monsieur.”

She has. She does.
“She will do it better if she appears promptly,” he said, directing his words toward the dressing room.

“I’m coming, Jack!” Emma called to him from the curtained rooms in the back.

He was eager to have done with this wedding ceremony. There was so much to do in London for Emma, yet caring for her clothes and comfort was necessary. Caring for her reputation had become even more important to him. To that end, before he’d hired a travelling coach four days ago in London, he’d penned a note to his younger brother Adam that he was leaving for Durham estate for a week or more. He did not reveal the reason, lest Adam storm over to Grosvenor Square in shock at the news of his pending marriage. Then, too, he’d rejected Emma’s suggestion of Gretna Green in favor of the more legitimate ceremony by his vicar’s hand. Jack needed to marry Emma as quickly as possible, as lawfully as possible, then return to London to right other wrongs against this charming woman. That he also contemplated the consummation of his marriage to her with a yearning he’d not known for any woman made him testy.

How to please a virgin, old man?

Absurd quandary for a man who has bedded— let’s be honest—too many women. Absurd quandary for a man who has never wished to marry any woman, but now cannot wait to claim this one.

He spun and touched another roll of cloth. “Tell me about this velvet, Madame.” He sank his fingernails into the deep pile of forest green velvet and imagined it against the swell of Emma’s breasts. If they were as pert and full as they seemed beneath that awful muslin she had worn to waylay him, then she was a rare find, indeed.

“Silk from Lucca, Monsieur. You like it?”

“I do. I will have this in a chamber robe for the Viscountess.”

“But of course! I have a wonderful length of mink that would look superb at the bodice.” She ran her fingertips along her own to illustrate.

“No,” he shot back, thinking of the purity of his future wife’s complexion. “I want the contrast of the green against her skin.”

“I see,” the woman demurred as he moved toward a table of sheer chiffons. “And shall Madame have a gown for her boudoir?”

“Of course.” She could not sleep for months in the nude. Could she? “This one.” He pointed to the pale pink. “And this.” The ivory.

“The style, Monsieur?”

He caught her eye and her meaning. Lascivious in her query, she covered her innuendo with a deft smile as he replied, “She is my bride. Yes. You may say so in the village. So do give her the newest style, Madame Duhamel. And send along with the other items, a long night rail of brushed cotton, too.”

She woman bowed her head. “Of course. May I suggest three more items?”

He nodded, his eyes on her gaunt eagle’s face.

“Slippers to match the robe? Kid walking shoes to match her new coat. And an evening gown,” she suggested as she lifted a long bolt of embossed sapphire satin, “the color on your family crest. For dinner parties. A low décolleté, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” Jack could imagine Emma in the regal blue. How her eyes would glow, her hair gleam like flames. She would walk and dance like a nymph in the sinuous fabric. He pursed his lips, his body hardening at the thought of her so gloriously arrayed. He could do even better by the fabric and take from the family jewel box a sumptuous sapphire necklace and two earbobs. They would do grand justice to her ivory complexion and her firm, young breasts. “I do indeed
.
”

“Jack?”

He heard her footsteps approach.

“You are buying me more?”

He turned.
My god.
His gaze ran down her form. In plum georgette, Emma Darling appealed to every sense he had. For the eye, the classic Greek elegance of a strawberry blonde with flawless skin, her face framed by the
en Coeur
neckline. For the nose, the fragrance of jasmine. For the hands, the tautness of her shoulders, the point of her breasts, the curve of her hips, all to be adored with reverent touch.

“You are lovely, darling Emma.” He made a motion for her to whirl about. “Let me see how I shall be beggared. Delightful. And the new cloak for the lady, Madame Duhamel?”

“Finished tomorrow, my lord. We will sew all night, I promise you. I will deliver it myself to Durham Manor. For today, I give her my own cloak to borrow. The chill demands she have good wool.”

“Indeed. I am grateful for your foresight,” he praised the woman but could not take his gaze from his bride-to-be.

Emma ran her palms over the fabric of her dress, smiling like a child at her birthday party and beaming with more good health than when he’d first seen her.

The fact that she had stopping sneezing and wheezing, despite a red nose, pleased him. But the fact that he was eager as hell to have this ceremony dismayed him. A confirmed bachelor, he marvelled that he harboured a growing desire for her. Usually lust hit him quickly and hard. Here, though he knew her for only four days, he felt inspired moment to moment by her lack of artifice. But he admitted to himself that he was lured by her resilience. Her effervescence. He’d never known women without wiles. He marvelled at her forthrightness. And her courage.

For the first time in his life, he felt compelled to match her in those qualities. Noble, even, to try. He patted the wedding ring in his frockcoat pocket.
He wanted her, today, tonight. If the rake in him whispered that having her once would signal his boredom with her, the rationalist laughed that freedom could come so easily. He enjoyed her company too damn much to desert her or hurt her. And so beyond the ceremony, he promised he would not think. Not now when his only goal was to make her happy.

“Come, Emma. We must be off.”

Emma glided forward and took his hand. “The rest of my wardrobe?” She asked of Madame.

“In three days’ time. We will work night and day.”

Emma grinned at the dressmaker. “Wonderful. Thank you very much.”

When they were in his carriage with his Durham Manor coachman at the reins, Jack pulled her close as he was wont to do now as they travelled. The devil take anyone who did not approve of his show of affection for her. If curiosity seekers caught a glimpse of them through the windows, they could jolly well look the other way. He hugged her nearer, smiling at the feel of her warm plush torso close to him. She nestled against him like a pleased and affectionate little animal and stretched up to kiss his cheek. “You are generous, Jack. I did not expect it.”

“Necessity, Emma. We cannot have you naked for three months.”
Though that’s not a bad idea.

She went still and silent, but turned toward the window. “Does it hurt?”

“What?”

She tipped her head this way and that, but he saw how she blushed to the roots of her hair. “To be bedded?”

Her thoughts travelled to the bedroom just as did his? How intriguing. Gratifying, too. He caught her chin. “Look at me. Some might not enjoy the act, I have heard. However, you will feel nothing but pleasure, I do hope.”

“How is that accomplished?”

He chuckled, a pang of desire growing in his cock. “Inquisitive chit. Never fear. I will show you.”

She grinned. “I am eager for it.”

Bless me, if that’s true.
But he would not rush her or scandalize her. He thought it only polite to demur. “Outlandish woman. You try me.”

“How so?”

“You are forward.”

“And in the bedroom? Does a lady not ask her husband for affection?”

“Never having been married, I cannot say.”

“But you have had mistresses. Has no one ever asked you to kiss her…or…do other things?”

He pulled back, feigning shock.

She giggled.

“What do you know, Emma Darling, of
other
things?”

“Nothing! And you avoid my question, good sir. Do no women ask for affections?”

Some have been very forward. Asked for attentions I had no desire to bestow.
He glanced away, wondering why he had never been permanently attracted to any of his paramours. All had been lovely. Most educated. A few witty. None had been as interesting or as honorable as this woman next to him. Was that because none had ever survived a test of will like this one? “Of course.”

“Why should a wife be different?”

“Wives are generally not lovers,” he told her.

She scoffed. “Do you really think that?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

She frowned. “That is very sad. Is there some rule prohibiting a wife’s…assertiveness?”

I fervently hope not!
He shook his head, bewildered at her own assertive line of questioning. “None I know of. Merely convention and the need to marry for any reason, of which love is last.”