The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (31 page)

Her face fell. She turned away. “Do not promise me things you cannot give.”

He caught her arm and brought her back to stand before him. The scent of her soap and dewiness of her body aroused his sense of smell. They had fucked so often, he had indeed marked her with his scent. He could still smell how fecund she was. How musky her sex. How often she creamed for him and let him lick her and suck her. How she loved him. He tugged her hand. “Look at me. I promise you that you will wear this soon and with me by your side, fending off the men who will approach you.”

She chuckled, though he saw tears dot her lashes. “You would kill any man who did.”

“You are right, of course. But allow me to at least sound chivalrous, darling.”

She sniffed. “You are sweet, Jack.” Her fingers brushed the satin. “Still.”

He pulled her down to sit on his lap, then thumbed away two tears from the exquisite arch of her cheeks. “I have a gift for you.” He reached inside his coat and flipped open the jewellery box.

“Oh, my.” She extended her index finger to one of the dozens of sapphires. “The family jewels?”

He nodded. “Among others. They are now yours. To go here.” He tipped his head to kiss the center of her throat. “Allow me?”

“Yes, yes!” She swivelled to permit him to clasp it round her neck and then she stroked the jewels as tenderly as she caressed his body. “How do I look?”

His mouth watered. “Delicious.”

She brushed her lips over his in a way that had him panting. “You do mean to show me off. You are not being kind to say that we will appear in public? And me in this?”

“No, my precious.” He sank his fingers into the wet curls at her nape and nuzzled her beneath her ear. If she was becoming shameless, he was becoming enslaved. “I want you with me.”
Anywhere. Everywhere I can get you.

“Where?” she asked, her voice a thread of sound as he sank a finger inside her bodice and stroked her blossoming nipple.

“London.” Best to tell her the truth as he made her mindless in his arms. He had not planned it this way, but—

She jumped up. “You cannot be serious.”

“But I am. We must go to London. You and I.”

“That was not our plan.” She kneaded her hands. “I can’t go back. Not until I am free. That’s three months, Jack, from the time we are married. Three months to tell the lawyers—”

“Stop this,” he said as he rose and tried to gather her in his arms.

She escaped him, backing her way toward the armoire.

He followed. “Emma. Listen to me. In two weeks time, we return to London.”

“No.” She dropped his hands. “I will not go.”

He advanced on her. “You must.”

“Why?” She put a hand to her stomach, looking ill, betrayed. She spun away from him. “I should have known this interlude must end,” she chastised herself more than him.

He whirled her around, hands gripping her shoulders. “No, listen to me! You must return to challenge Pinrose and Trayne.”

“I will not go, Jack! Daniel will take me, put me away.” She waved him back with a wild gesture of despair. “I will not be locked up again. Ever.”

“Darling, they will not take you away. I will not let them.”

“They are mad. You, too, if you think them easily dissuaded!” She began to pace to and fro. “They do not know where I am and—”

“But they do know, Emma,” he told her with sweet compassion.

“How?” she cried out in alarm.

“The whole of London knows. York and Durham, too. Madame Duhamel brought me a scandal sheet yesterday. I could not bear to tell you. I wanted you to be happy. Longer.”

“They know? So soon?”

“The gossips are merciless.”

“Let me see the paper.”

“It’s downstairs in my library.”

She drew herself up, deathly quiet in her determination. “Show me.”

Minutes later, he handed her the paper, then watched her read the sheet and blanch.

He took it from her hands. “Emma, believe me. Nothing has changed. I have a plan in motion. You must let me pursue it.”

“Describe it to me.”

“It has to do with finances. Pinrose’s.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “And Trayne?”

“I will dispose of him as well.” Jack continued to tell her how he had bought up all of her stepfather’s and Trayne’s debts from other creditors making the men indebted to him alone. “I have accomplished it, save for three investments. The largest one may escape my grasp, and the other will take some doing.”

“What are they?”

“The one I may not be capable of buying is a partnership that speculates on the discovery of gold ore out of Africa. The other, more within my reach, is to fund a new shipping company out of Plymouth. But I will move heaven and earth to buy those loans from the lenders. Trust me.”

Her gaze, now not quite so desolate, met his. “I do. But I do not wish you to do this at the cost of bankrupting yourself.”

“I won’t
.” But I may come damn close if both projects fail.
Jack enfolded her in his arms. Stroking her hair, he felt her curl into him. Never had he given succour to a woman. Never had he wanted to.

A rapping on the door came at a poor time. “Yes?”

“Milord,” Simmons called to him. “A…ah…visitor, sir.”

Emma raised her face. Jack kissed her briefly, sweetly. Then brushed her curls from her cheeks. “Go back upstairs. I’ll be up in a few minutes to tell you more about my plan—and to help you off with this gown.”

She brightened over that. “Minutes? I hold you to it, milord.”

“Come.” He looped her arm through his, led her through the door and out into the foyer. But there, before them in the far end near the front door stood a man Jack had not seen here in Durham Manor for more than a decade.

“Wait here, darling.”

“Who is this?”

“My father.”

Drawn by surprise and curiosity, she followed Jack toward the front door.

“Sir,” she heard him greet his father with a chill that matched the horrid weather. “To what do we owe your unannounced visit?”

The Earl of Stanhope stood, cutting as giant a figure as his son against the ivory walls and black marble tile of the foyer. He whirled toward Jack, then inclined his head toward her as he slapped his gloves against his thigh. “You should know quite well, my boy.”

“I have never read your mind, Father.”

The men stood face to face.

Jack stiffened. “Enlighten me.”

Emma approached so near now, she saw the older gentleman clearly.

“Pinrose and Trayne are my calling card, Jack.”

Emma froze, staring at the huge stranger in the heavy black travelling cape who glowered at her husband. My god. She would know this man anywhere. The shape of the face, the iron jaw, the brilliant silver eyes, the large muscular frame. The midnight hair etched with white strands. A handsome man. The sire of her husband. The portrait in the drawing room did him no justice at all. John Stanhope, eighth earl, roué of the first water, examined her as if she were on a block for sale. She stood her ground, her chin up, her back straight.

“I say, Jack,” the older man declared with admiration as he appraised her, “if it is true that you have married this woman, I’d tell you that you have made the finest decision of your life.” He shot his head around to glare at his offspring. “But you have gotten us all in a kettle of hot water, my boy. What the hell were you thinking?” His gaze drifted back to Emma.

She felt the man’s appraisal as if his eyes delved into her soul.

“Has he seduced you, my dear, or did you work your wiles on him?”

Emma glared at him. “Neither.”

“Really? I see you wear the wedding ring I gave his mother, so I am clearly late for the ceremony. Sad, that. I would have liked… Well, no matter. Will you not introduce me, Jack? You might give me that due.”

Jack wrapped one arm around her waist as if to defend her against the storm of his father’s assault. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Father. Emma Stanhope. The earl.”

John extended his hand to pick up hers and press a polite kiss to the back. “Honored to meet you, Mrs. Stanhope. Jack, congratulations, I commend you that you wed her. She is a beauty. Fiery, too, I’ve heard from those I know in London. Bad, that. Brings down the curse, you know. Has he told you about that blight, dear Emma?”

“He has,” she affirmed at once.

“Did not deter you, did it?”

“No.”

“But then you needed only temporary succour, didn’t you, to rid yourself of Daniel Pinrose and his protégé, Trayne?”

“I wished it, yes,” she admitted curtly, not knowing how much to reveal to the man whom Jack clearly did not revere.

Jack growled. “What business is this of yours, Father?”

“You are my business, dear boy.” John glanced around the foyer. “Where the hell is Simmons? I need a brandy.”

“And you need to tell me what the deuce you’re doing here,” Jack demanded, anger rife in his features. “You are never invited.”

“Never welcome at all, so true. Did you know this, my dear new daughter-in-law?”

“I insist, Father,” Jack intervened, adamant. “Tell me why you have come.”

“Simple, really.” John worked at the buttons on his great coat. “I’m here to help you, Jack.”

Jack’s brows rose a fraction. “Odd. You never have before!”

Emma saw Jack tense as if he were an animal ready for a match.

“Tut, tut. Jack. No way to treat your father. Don’t you think, Emma?”

Jack stepped forward. “I do not want you here.”

Emma considered the taut lines of Jack’s face. What was there between father and son that should cause such enmity? She understood cruelty from Pinrose. She knew indifference from her mother. But this between father and son spoke of other causes.

The earl grimaced. “You never have abided my company. I understand that. But if you do not give me the opportunity to tell you why, you and your lovely Emma will be the losers.”

Jack scowled. “Ten minutes.” He stood aside and extended a hand toward the drawing room. “Then Simmons will call for the coachman to take you back to Stanhope Castle.”

John strolled around his son and Emma into the drawing room, headed straight for the fireplace. There, he removed his coat, flung it on a chair and pressed his hands behind him. Facing them both, he levelled his fathomless pewter gaze on Jack.

“I have heard of this elopement from the broadsheets in London. Damned terrible way to learn your eldest, your heir has run off, but we reap the indifference we sow, eh, my boy? Yes, well. In the sheets, ‘tis said, madam, that your coachman was sacked by your stepfather. A maid, too, it seems. Both repaired to the editor of a broadsheet who happily printed the story in a gossip sheet. Bad business to be so maligned.”

Jack scoffed. “Spare us any rhapsodies, Father. You have often been the subject of such broadsheets.”

“As you have yourself, dear man.”

“I learned from a master.” Jack inclined his head in sarcasm. “Continue.”

“I went round to your youngest brother in
Berkeley
Square to ask what he knew of this episode. Adam knew little but that you, Jack, had gone north. Meanwhile, I was in a tizzy.”

Jack barked in laughter. “Hard to imagine.”

“I know, I know,” the earl said with a theatrical sigh and wiggled a few fingers in the air as if throwing dice. “Figure of speech. Oblige me, will you. In any case, at that point, I began to hope, Jack, that you would make for here to hide lovely Emma away from those two scoundrels. Thus, I had my man pack a bag and here I am.”

“To help me,” Jack challenged him.

“Odd as it may seem, Jack, yes.” He dug inside his frock coat pocket and extracted a long folded set of papers. “You need to ruin Pinrose. Here is your means.”

Jack eyed the documents from afar as if they were snakes. “I have started my own means to ruin him. Trayne, as well.”

Emma had watched this verbal match with growing distaste, but now she stepped forward and curled her arm into her husband’s, proud of his action against both of her oppressors.

“Trayne, too. Well, well. So far so good.” The earl put a finger in the air. “But is it enough?”

“How could you care?” Jack grew florid with anger.

“I do if you mean to ruin yourself and take the family fortune with you!”

Emma shot a glance at Jack. He’d told her he would remain solvent. Had he distorted the possibility?

“Money,” Jack spit out.

“Money has made us all what we are.”

“Not quite all, Father.”

“For Christ sake, Jack, I know you resent the hell out of me for my absences.”

“Your disinterest, you mean?”

“Yes. My priorities were unfortunate.”

“So were your choices in nurses and tutors. Your women were more important to you than any of your offspring. It’s a damn wonder any of us survived the cruelties of many of them,” Jack said, his bitterness a shroud.