The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (30 page)

She extracted the wool coat of dove grey, epaulette closures of black braid. “
Madame la Vicomtesse
will look divine in this.”

“I agree.” He took the coat in his hands, the merino soft as eiderdown. “A good choice for the wool.”

“We will have all the rest tomorrow,
Monsieur
. The negligees, Madame’s green robe for her boudoir, the evening gown, and two day dresses.”

“Excellent, Madame Duhamel. I will include a bonus for your promptness.”

“I am most grateful,
Monsieur.
My bill for services will not appear until you have all the garments you ordered for Madame and I know that you are happy.”

“I am most grateful.”

She lingered before him. Normally so self-assured, she pursed her lips and appeared perplexed.

“Is there a problem, Madame?”

“Not at all. I simply wondered if you had seen this?” She took from her dress pocket a paper. A broadsheet, to be precise.

“No. I never read that one.” He recognized the heavy print as that of a paper from York which only reprinted items from a notorious publication out of London. “It is a rag, Madame.”

“But it speaks of you,
Monsieur
, and your little wife.” She strode forward and placed it in his hands. “You should see it, my lord.”

An hour later, Jack made his way back to his wife. Tiptoeing inside their bedroom, he paused at the foot of the bed and considered this lovely creature who had darted into his life so haphazardly. His darling Emma. She sprawled across the linens, her arms up in the pose of a carefree spirit, her head turned to one side, her lips parted in exhaustion, her elegant legs open as if she welcomed him back inside her, even in her sleep. He smiled and laid the coat aside on the nearby chair. Loathe to wake her, he strolled into his bath chamber. The remains of their baths last night were strewn about still. He had not allowed the maids or footman in here. Not yet.

But life intrudes, does it not?

Mourning the need to leave this nest, he sat on the edge of one of the copper tubs and ran a hand across his mouth. Once more, he affirmed the resolutions he had made downstairs in his library after reading the scurrilous story in the broadsheet. He would destroy Pinrose and Trayne. Quickly. Financially. To make her life happy now.

According to the broadsheet, the word was out that Emma had gone missing from her home. Her stepfather had questioned his staff and learned where she’d gone. To whom and how. Pinrose had sacked his coachman and a maid for their collusion. He’d vowed to have satisfaction from Jack.

But Jack knew Pinrose well. Satisfaction, in his case, did not mean a duel. Pinrose could not wield a sword. The man never had any grace or style to impart to fencing, let alone work any talent with a pistol. The only way Pinrose had ever made a mark on anyone was by bullying them.
And you shall never get Emma in your clutches to threaten her. Just wait and see, Danny. You shall not best me.

“Jack?” His wife’s sultry voice, thick with slumber, permeated his reverie.

“Yes, darling, coming!” He strode into the bedroom.

Naked, lithe and exquisite as a nymph, she stood, the sight of her halting him in his tracks and nearly sending him to his knees with lust. She bent over the coat, her tapered fingers caressing the cloth the way she caressed his skin.

“It’s absolutely beautiful, Jack.” Her gaze met his. “Will you help me put it on?”

He crossed his arms, assessing the living breathing temptation before him and fighting the urge to skip the banter and have her where she stood. “Why? Are we going out?”

Her expression blossomed into a glorious smile. “Visiting neighbors? Introducing me to the village? The local doyennes? Why, darling,” she said with dulcet tones to the endearment that set his heart to flutter, “I do hope not!”

In two strides, he had her in his arms. One hand to her nape, one to her derriere, he crushed her to him for a kiss. “You shock me, Madam.”

With a saucy toss of her head, she drifted backward to their bed. He followed, the contrast of the dove grey wool against her milky flesh a sight his body responded to with quick heat. But when she opened the buttons of his breeches and reached inside to extract his shaft, he could readily say he was even more stunned and infinitely satisfied as she pushed him to the bed. Then rose above him to ask, “Might I surprise you if I say, I do not care if we ever leave this room?”

Would that we could remain, my sweet.
He touched her lower lip with a fingertip. “We’ll stay as long as possible, Emma. How could I leave such an enticing invitation?”

She beamed at him. Temptress that she was, she stroked his cock.

He caught his breath and shut his eyes.

She bent and sucked him fully into her mouth.

And his heart stopped.

“You will not hate me for this?”

He barked in laughter. “Never.”

“And you like this?”

Like?
He opened his eyes, his mind afire by her possession as he trained his gaze on her. “I have no words to tell you of my praise.”

She rolled a shoulder. “I was inspired.”

“I am in awe.”

Her lush lips parted in glee. Her eyes twinkled as she looked from him to his erect cock and back again. “Will you teach me more?”

He snorted. “I daresay, sweetheart, on your own, you are creative.”

She grinned, then trailed her tongue over his slit. She kissed his tip and pulled away to examine the expression on his face.

He was certain he looked like a spellbound idiot.

She ran her thumb along his seam. “I never want to bore you.”

He hooted in laughter and sank his fingers into her curls. “No chance of that, my pet.”
I’d lock you up and throw away the key if I were a cave man. But then I’d be like Pinrose. I want you free. And wild. And mine. Because the only way to prove to you I am the best man for you, is to prove I would never keep you against your will.

****

The next afternoon Madame Duhamel arrived on time. From the sumptuous disarray of their bed, Emma protested that she had to dress and reached to grab his wrist and bring him back to her side.

“You are pouting, darling,” Jack chuckled, leaned over her nude body, his own as naked. Winking at her, he swatted her derriere.

Admiring his impressive proportions of chest and thighs and other charming attributes, she looped an arm around his neck. “I am a bride. A cosseted bride and I can be petulant if I care to.”

“Madame Duhamel has your clothes, Viscountess! Will you make her wait?”

“You get them. They’ll fit. She took my measurements. Besides, I don’t need them.” She rubbed her thighs together, her body aflame anew to have him deep inside her. It had been hours since she’d felt him sink inside her to the hilt. Much too long. “Do I?”

He watched her writhe in sinuous entreaty and his silver eyes darkened. She vibrated in triumph to lead him toward ribald ideas. “Eventually.”

“Jack,” she crooned, outrageously eager and bold, “I am very tender.”

His black brows shot high. His mouth curved and his tongue came out to lick his lips. “You are throbbing?”

“I am,” she mouthed.

“And wet?”

“That, too.” She bowed up the better to let him see how her nipples beaded in invitation.

“The way a woman is supposed to feel after she’s been loved so often, madam.”

“I need you again. Now,” she told him on a wisp of sound, her fingers skimming her stomach in invitation. “I need you to touch me, pet me.”

He swallowed, his gaze on her fingertips as he put one knee to the bed and flung another across her.

“Am I to be overruled in my own house?” he challenged, partly in mirth, one hand lightly caressing her breast, making her body quiver and gush with need.

“You like me in this bed,” she told him with a certainty she knew in her bones to be true.

“I do.” He bent to suck her nipple into his hot moist mouth. “You intrigue me. Soft. Strong. Determined, but not prickly.”

“Do you say you make love to me to discover more of my sterling character?”

“Hmm. One way to view my needs.” He leered at her with winsome charm as he shifted to push her knees up to her chest and tease her with his shaft probing her core. “For now.”

She shivered at the possibility he might want her for longer than today. He had done more than have her, more than initiate her and more than she’d asked. Now she was addicted to sex with him. Like good brandy, he intoxicated her. But precisely when he would leave her to her own devices to wait out the three-month interval she needed to satisfy the lawyers, she had no idea. And she needed one.

He paused, looming above her, dark and rich and beautiful. “Dear girl, you worry—and you mustn’t.” He slid inside her, sending her arching into his arms, his cock deep and lush and so very full. “Tell me why.”

“I have not had enough of you,” she confessed. “Not yet.”

His eyes narrowed on her, his jaw flexed. Whatever his thoughts, she could not fathom. “I’m here,” he rasped and sank inside her to the hilt to prove it. “Let me make you happy—”

“You make me shameless,” she added, breathless as he.

He growled and rammed into her, then held. “Abandoned, I’d say, madam, is the newest element I admire in your charming character.”

“Make me moreso,” she pleaded, her mouth finding his, her hips grinding against his to get closer still.

“My fondest endeavor, darling Emma.”

And accomplish that task he did so well, in fact, that before he left her arms to dress and descend the stairs to greet Duhamel, Emma had screamed out in another glorious orgasm.

****

Jack returned to their bedroom, his arms laden with the goods the
modiste
had crafted so quickly. He heard Emma splashing in the tub as he kicked closed the door to their suite and hung the items in the armoire.

“Do not dally, Mrs. Stanhope. Presents await you,” he called to her and took a chair in his sitting room. The oblong box filled up his inside frock coat pocket. He shifted, a smile on his lips, awaiting the sight of his wife.

She appeared at the door, her body wrapped in one towel, her head in another. Fresh and rosy, she smiled sweetly at him, looking exactly what she was—a woman well loved.

His cock rose at the mere idea of having her again.
Christ, you are a satyr, Stanhope.

But she is your wife. And oh, so willing, man.

“Come closer, darling.” He beckoned her, grinning and tipping his head toward the armoire.

She seemed to glide across the carpet, the towel over her body dropping as she moved, a silhouette of grace.

His cock lengthened in his ridiculously tight breeches. Perhaps Emma had the right idea not to dress. For days. Or months.

“What do you think, pet?”

He watched her hands touch the fabrics, smoothing the nap, defining the trim. Envy reared.
I want your hands on me.

He blinked at the words which were such a revelation that he could want a woman so badly.

Stanhope, you are far gone.

He smacked his lips and focused on what he was about here.

“Lovely,” she enthused over the two negligees, one pink, one white. The forest green chamber robe of plush velvet had her making odd little sounds of delight. While the day dresses, a plum satin and a sea green corded muslin had her gasping. But the sapphire evening gown with a décolleté Jack knew would dip quite daringly low, had her spinning toward him.

“You are pleased?” he asked when it became clear Emma was speechless with delight.

“Exceedingly so, darling.” She skimmed her fingers over the fabrics once more. She reached for the heavy brocade robe.

“No,” he admonished her with finality. “The sapphire.”

“But I need to don a chemise and—”

“No. I will have you in the gown, madam.”

She stared at him a moment, her magnetic grey eyes narrowing.
Did she catch a hint that he had other intent?

“Will you help me?”

“To remove it, yes.” He nodded at the satin. “Let me see it.”

Flinging the towel from her hair, she carefully took the fine blue gown into her hands and let the damn thing slide down over her naked body.

She turned and strolled toward him in her bare feet. As he suspected, without hair styling or rouge or powder, without flowers or even undergarments to complement her lush beauty, she was a gorgeous creature.

“The sapphire is the color on the family crest. You wear it well, darling. I knew you would.”

“You chose this. It’s divine, Jack.” Her fingers stroked the fabric the way she petted his chest and his back and his cock. “I wish I could wear it somewhere for you to be proud of me.”

“I am proud of you, Emma. And you will wear it, and everywhere you go, I will be thrilled to see you in it.”