Have You Any Rogues? (12 page)

“And why would you want to go to such a dull affair?” he asked, straightening. “As for no one wanting you, that’s balderdash. I’ve always wanted you. Still do. Would marry you right this moment if you’d only say yes. Then we’d shake off these London cats and leave them to their gossip. You can live the life of a queen well away from their tattling. I’ll see to it. I promise.”

Brokenhearted and lost, Henrietta looked up at the man who had been as much a part of her life as Henry and Christopher had. A good friend. A kindly soul. A more respectable gentleman couldn’t be found.

And when Gusty promised a thing, Hen knew he’d keep his word. Unlike other purported gentlemen.

Then she saw all too clearly her way out of all this.

Marry Gusty. Be Lady Juniper. Live in the soft green hills of Kent at Juniper House well away from any Dales.

After all, what had she always wanted? A good life in the country. Images of Owle Park flitted through her thoughts—a graceful house surrounded by green lush meadows and the lulling song of birds. Juniper House, if she remembered correctly, wasn’t much different.

Better still, a life with Gusty would be well away from the folly that was passion . . . and love.

Lord Juniper must have seen the fleeting bit of hope in her eyes, for he caught hold of her hand and turned her so she faced him.

“Marry me, Hen,” he implored, gathering her up in his arms, sheltering her from the rain and from her worst fears—that she no longer had a place in Society. Or more to the point, in Crispin’s heart. “Marry me now,” he rushed. “If anything so we can get out of this dreadful drizzle.” He laughed a little. “I’ve always been prone to the sniffles, so if you don’t say yes quickly, I’ll hold you responsible for the dreadful case that is sure to come from a damp cloak and wet boots.”

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Love is a many splendored thing.

MR
.
MUGGINS
,
IF
HE
COULD
TALK

Owle Park, 1810

“Y
ou can’t be serious,” Henrietta said, taking a sip from the bottle of wine Crispin had plucked from the shelf and opened. “Your Aunt Damaris locked you in her wine cellar for three days?”

Crispin shuddered. “Yes, until Cousin Matheus came to call. Poor fellow, when Croston left him unattended in the foyer, he thought he was going mad when he heard my pounding from the cellar. Managed to get me out—though in return Aunt Damaris scratched his name from the family Bible.”

Henrietta laughed and held out the wine for him.

He took a long drink. “It wasn’t funny. By the time I got out, you were good and married, and well away from London.”

“How was I to know that note wasn’t in your handwriting?” Henrietta asked.

“Or that my aunt had sent Juniper in my stead, knowing full well his feelings for you.”

She glanced over at him. “Why didn’t you marry Lady Portia?”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “She wouldn’t have me. Or so Aunt Damaris swears. I never did see her again.” He sighed. “And with you married to Lord Juniper, I hoped, well, I supposed you might finally be happy.”

Hen shook her head. “How could I be so, when I wasn’t with you?”

They sat there for a time, each silently regarding the other, until Crispin spoke again. “What did happen to Juniper?”

She closed her eyes. “Contrary to what his mother likes to claim, I neither bewitched him nor poisoned him.”

“And don’t forget my personal favorite, drove him mad,” Crispin added, tipping the bottle in a mock salute.

“It isn’t funny,” she told him starchily, snatching the bottle from his grasp and taking another sip. “When Gusty said he was susceptible to taking the sniffles, it was no jest.” She set the bottle down and rose from where she stood, pacing about a bit, the memories nipping at her heels. “By the time we’d married and were in the carriage to Juniper House, he was already claiming the damp would be his undoing.” She paused. “And it was. A fortnight later, he was gone.”

“From the sniffles?”

“No. Pneumonia,” she shot back. For it was hardly a matter to be teased about. “He went so quickly. And then there was his mother making all these horrible accusations. I might have believed them if it hadn’t been for his brother, Eustace.”

“The one who inherited?”

“Yes. Dear boy that he is, he confided that Gusty had nearly died twice before of the very same thing and he’d been complaining for nearly a month before we married that he wasn’t feeling well.”

“So when he died, how come you didn’t return to London?”

“How could I? I feared seeing you with her. And then there was Aunt Zillah. She bundled me up after the funeral and hauled me north to her house outside of Buxton, and before I knew it, nearly a year had passed. She told me I couldn’t go back to Harley Street until I could prove to her that I would be a proper widow.”

Crispin laughed. “Have you ever been?” He took a drink and waggled his brows at her.

“No,” she said, retrieving the wine and taking another drink. It was truly an excellent vintage.

“Yet you returned to London,” he said, coming to sit beside her.

She nodded. “I had to. Preston was making a shambles of everything. Henry arrived last fall and insisted I come home. Dragged me, really. Claimed I was the only one who could nag some sense into Christopher.”

“Seems to have worked.”

Henrietta laughed. “Miss Timmons was none of my doing. Preston managed her all on his own. And rather well done, if I must say. She is the perfect duchess for him. For all of us.”

Crispin glanced over at the puppy still asleep in the box. “Save her choice of hounds.”

Henrietta laughed, and eventually so did Crispin.

“And so the wrongdoing between our families returns in some grand circle, doesn’t it?” she pointed out, nodding toward the little mongrel.

“I suppose so,” Crispin said, his words wistful. “But I propose that this time, it ends differently.”

She glanced up at him. “How so?” she asked, feeling a bit shy suddenly, and a bit dizzy from the wine.

It was the wine, wasn’t it?

“Instead of launching our two families into a new feud for the next three hundred or so years, what if Mr. Muggins’s roguish behavior is the beginning of a new accord?”

“What sort of accord do you propose?” she asked, slowly and carefully.

“Marriage.” That single word came out in a defiant thrust.

Immediately, Henrietta was shaking her head. “I cannot. I’m horrible at marriage.”

Wasn’t three husbands good evidence of that?

“I disagree,” he replied.

He would.

“Those marriages were made for all the wrong reasons,” he pointed out. “And you were only truly married to one of them.”

She couldn’t argue that—Juniper had fallen ill before they’d reached the inn for their wedding night.

Still . . . “Crispin, I don’t see how we dare.”

“We must,” he insisted, getting to his feet, catching her hand and pulling her against him. “I don’t think I can live with being responsible for another of your madcap marriages.”

She shook her head at his teasing. “But . . . but . . .”

“No, no buts,” he told her. “For once, let your heart be your guide.” And then he kissed her.

When his lips touched hers, she realized she’d been waiting all this time for him to do just this. Kiss her.

It had been so long.

His lips claimed hers, and there was nothing she could do but open up to him. His tongue teased over hers and she sighed, her arms winding around his neck, pulling him closer.

She couldn’t . . . she shouldn’t.

And yet how could she resist, especially when he deepened his kiss, his fingers pulling her hairpins loose and letting the long strands fall down over her shoulders. As the strands fell free, all her fears tumbled away as well.

And when he loosened her gown and slid it down her shoulders, kissing and nuzzling his way down her neck until suddenly his mouth closed over one of her nipples, the ripples of desire racing through her limbs chased at the remainder of her doubts.

“We don’t dare,” she tried to insist, struggling to find some solid ground beneath her wavering legs.

Crispin’s response was a loud snort of derision and then a kiss, this time lower, over her belly and then lower still.

“Oh, don’t you dare,” she said as he grinned up at her from where he now knelt, her gown puddled around her feet. “Crispin, this is ever so wrong.”

But this was Crispin Dale, rogue that he was.

And so he did.

Dare, that is.

“Well, yes,” Henrietta managed as his breath blew hot over her already wet sex. “Yes, well, that is anything but wrong.”

T
he doorbell to Owle Park rang loud and clear through the house.

It took Mrs. Briar a few minutes to toddle up to it and answer it, and when she did she was more than a bit shocked to find a lofty-looking gentleman standing there, hat in his hand.

“I am Halwell. Lord Halwell. Here to collect Lady Juniper.”

Mrs. Briar gaped at the man. “But you’ve already been here.” Then she looked out in the drive, where yet another carriage sat—this one an impressive traveling barouche that was rich and well appointed.

While the other one . . . well, it had only been a curricle. Hardly the sort of carriage for a trip to London.

Suddenly doubts began to assail the poor lady.

“Been here? Hardly,” Lord Halwell blustered. “I’ve been delayed. A vexing bit of trouble with one of the braces. Now if you will summon Lady Juniper for me—” He nodded toward the stairs.

Mrs. Briar glanced at the stairs as well and then shook her head slightly. “But I thought—”

“Is Lady Juniper here?” he pressed as if he was starting to doubt he’d come to the correct address.

“Well,” Mrs. Briar told him in her usual forthright way, “I don’t rightly know where she is.”

“D
id you hear that?” Crispin said, glancing up from his delightful task of leaving Henrietta Seldon shivering with pleasure.

“It sounded like the bell,” she said with a flutter of her hand and a distracted glance at the stone steps up toward the door.

He nuzzled the spot between her legs again, where she was still quivering from the first time he’d “wronged” her. “I do believe your rescue has arrived.”

She glanced down at him. “I don’t want to be rescued. Not now.”

He pulled her into his arms and laid her down upon the floor. The stones were dry and cool against her heated body.

“What do you want?” he asked her.

Her hands slid up and ran through his hair, cupped his hard, square jaw. “You, my love. Only you.” And to show him how much she wanted him, nay,
needed him,
she nestled beneath him, one of her legs winding around his hip, her hands opening his breeches, stroking him once she’d freed him, guiding him to her.

Crispin smiled and entered her slowly, tantalizingly, leaving her restless beneath him. Even as he filled her, he moved again, pulling himself nearly out of her, his long, hard length sliding against her. It was pleasure and desire and agony all at once.

She’d come so quickly, so hard and fast when he’d teased her with his lips, his tongue, his mouth, but now that he was inside her, it was as if he wanted to discover every bit of her. Tease her. Explore her.

His hand curved around her bottom and drew her closer, thrusting deeply and completely into her, leaving her gasping, “Yes, Crispin. Oh, yes.” Her eyes fluttered open and her gaze met his, and in that instant she realized everything that had been missing all these years. Everything she’d ever longed to know.

It was all there, shining in his eyes. His love for her. His desire to see her sigh and cry out beneath him. His need for her—a mirror of her own for him—a sense of completeness that had been missing from her life.

In that quiet, gentle moment she understood what she had longed for.

What she’d been running away from for far too long.

And Henrietta Seldon, siren of his heart, let go of all her fears and finally discovered the beauty that was making love.

An opening and sharing of one’s heart and soul.

And when she found her release, it was with Crispin’s gasp and deep thrust inside her carrying her upward and over, tumbling together into a bliss of their own making.

S
ome time later, Crispin leaned over and kissed Henrietta on the nose. “Calypso, I have loved you since the first moment I saw you.”

Henrietta sighed, then suddenly her brow furrowed. “The first moment you saw me?”

“Yes,” he replied, putting another kiss on her forehead.

She sat up, a mulish expression coming over her once dreamy features. “The first moment you spied me, I was down over a log with my backside up in the air and you were ogling me.”

“Yes, be that as it may, I must confess I found you quite bewitching at that moment. Such a lovely bum. How could a man not fall in love with such beauty before him?”

She swatted at him. “You are horrible, Crispin Dale—”

He hardly seemed to notice her ire. “Yes, well, come kiss me again. I’m in the mood to be most horrible yet again.” His brows waggled at her.

“Oh! You Dales!” Playfully, she pushed him away.

“Seldons!” he shot back as he caught her and once again covered her body with his.

“Crispin?” she asked as he started to nibble at the most distracting spot behind her earlobe.

“Hmmm?”

“When we get married—we are getting married, aren’t we?”

“Yes, with banns and the vicar and all proper.”

Henrietta smiled at this. It sounded rather lovely. But still she had to ask. “When we get married—”

Crispin stopped his nuzzling and met her gaze. “Yes?”

“Might we hyphenate our names? You know, Lord and Lady Seldon-Dale?”

His horrified expression answered her question.