Regency Rumours/A Scandalous Mistress/Dishonour And Desire (28 page)

‘Who … Stephen?’

‘Yes. I want to take you to bed.’

‘Can you wait?’

‘No. How long?’ He lifted a strand of her hair and placed his lips where it had been.

‘Tonight? We really
do
have to talk, you know. Things cannot go on as they are. You must see that.’

‘It’s not talking I have in mind, sweetheart. But, yes, we do have to talk. My parents are back in Richmond and I shall take you to meet them as soon as we get home.’

‘No … no! That’s the problem that must be resolved. You’ve changed the original plan. It was not meant to be like that. You know it wasn’t.’

‘You’re mistaken. It was
always
meant to be like that.’

‘By you, perhaps. But my lord … listen to me … please.’
Backed against the piano, she was captured inside his braced arms with her palms pressing the lapels of his coat, trying to keep hold of what she had to say.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I will listen to you tonight, but meanwhile we shall carry on as we have been doing, to your brother-in-law’s great annoyance.’

‘He
was
good to me, my lord.’

‘And I shall be even better.’

‘He was never in my bed, if that’s what you think.’

His wide mobile mouth moved, and there was some slight crinkling at the corner of his eyes. ‘No, I’m sure he was not.’

‘Not that he didn’t want to be, I think.’

‘I doubt there’s a man anywhere in the world who would not want to be.’ His hands had strayed on to her hips, and there was another delay as her body responded, and ached, and allowed itself to be fondled, intimately.

The afternoon was still wild, but not wet enough to prevent them from visiting the King’s Baths to watch the bathers, walking through the abbey, plundering the shops and buying extra tickets for the following night’s concert at the Assembly Rooms which was to be conducted by none other than Signor Rauzzini. That evening, Amelie, Dorna and her sister-in-law joined the men at the White Hart Inn for dinner, which might have been another ordeal for Stephen Chester had not Miss Hannah Elwick sat next to him to tend his needs like a mother and her favourite child.

If it had been part of Amelie’s strategy to use the hapless Stephen as a possible second string to her bow, she now had no option but to let it go when he and Hannah stuck together like glue all evening. But it was beneficial in another way, for
as the two brothers escorted Amelie and Caterina back to Lansdown, Stephen escorted the other two ladies back to Sydney Place and so missed Lord Rayne’s solo return to the White Hart.

Amelie had been unusually quiet that evening, though Dorna’s gaiety bubbled over the meal and no one noticed except Lord Elyot, whose hand stole more than once across to Amelie’s lap, as if he knew instinctively which of her concerns was uppermost in her mind.

Later, behind the white bedcurtains that kept out the wind’s buffeting roar, she lay in his arms feeling that this might be for the last time, wondering how to reconcile what she knew with what he had discovered and whether, or indeed how, he would accept it. But the time for accusations had passed, and now their starving bodies came together and fused along every surface to assuage the long week of emptiness.

The time away from each other, marred for Amelie by doubts, gave her an edge of anger that she could not suppress, as if to make him aware of every discomfort he had imposed upon her, wittingly or not. Aroused and kindled to white heat, she still refused him access, biting, fending him off while leading him on, fighting him, telling him
no
when every fibre cried out
yes.
He played along with it until she was too tired to contest him any longer, then, holding her flailing arms into the pillow, he met her lifting thighs with a fierceness that matched her own, subduing her in an instant. There were no words, not even endearments, but the breath-shattering beat of his body against hers said all she needed to know about his desire and commitment. How could she ever have doubted him?

Although his need of her had burned in him so long without release, he was a careful and unselfish lover who knew well how
to give pleasure through all the ebbing and flowing tides, how to bring her to the height of the wave, to wait, then to crash down with rapturous cries of delight after an eternity of suspense.

Limp and satiated, she lay sprawled across him, savouring every inch of the moist warm contact and wondering if what they had just done would bring on the monthly event which, this time, had failed her when she needed it most.

Consequently, when he said, very quietly, ‘I believe you have something to tell me, sweetheart,’ she was lost for an answer. Was he able to read her mind?

She hesitated, and he prompted her. ‘Do you want to tell me how a widow manages to remain a virgin? It is rather unusual, you have to admit. Was Chester impotent? Is that the reason?’

She felt the prickling sensation at the base of her neck. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘He was not.’

‘So what happened? Can you tell me?’

She smoothed a hand over his powerful chest, calming the expected storm. ‘I’ve always maintained that I cannot marry you,’ she said, ‘for a very good reason. I have no natural parents. No ancestry. My parents, the Carrs, adopted me a few days after I was born. Sons of marquesses, my lord, don’t marry foundlings. Even though you may wish to, your father would not allow it. You know that. You may say that he need not know, but
I
know, and I couldn’t let it happen. No man should be so deceived.’

‘That’s …
very
… interesting,’ he murmured, drowsily, ‘but it hardly accounts for you holding on to your virginity after you were married, does it? Unless Sir Josiah discovered your birth and felt cheated. Was that what happened? Had you better start from the beginning, sweetheart?’

‘You were not supposed to know that I was a virgin. How did you find it out? Was it guesswork?’

He sighed and rolled on to an elbow to see the dark fearful eyes in the candlelight. ‘No, not guesswork. A man can tell, you see. Unless he’s blind drunk. And I wasn’t.’ He smiled, tracing a tender line down her nose with a finger.

‘Can he?’

‘Yes. Believe me. Now, can we get back to your marriage?’

‘When Stephen lost his wife, he wanted me to take her place, but he was the second son, you see. Josiah was the first, the wealthy baronet, and he offered for me too. My mother had huge ambitions for me and I was their only daughter, dutiful and obedient, and although I didn’t love either of the brothers, Josiah was fatherly and kind, and I thought I could make him a good wife. I didn’t particularly want to step into Stephen’s first wife’s shoes. My mother insisted I accept Josiah, and my father went along with it, intending to keep the details of the adoption secret. I believe it was not too difficult. They had spent months in Switzerland before they took me in, so she could have pretended that she was pregnant during that time. But this is what I fear Ruben Hurst may have discovered, according to his letter.’

‘I think that’s highly unlikely. But go on.’

‘As I said, my mother would have told nobody, not even Josiah, but my father took a different view and, on the night before our wedding, he was struck by conscience. He told us both how I’d been rescued from the Manchester Foundling Hospital, and said that Josiah should not be deceived into thinking that he was marrying a woman of good ancestry when he—that is, my father—had no idea who my parents were. He and my mother had felt it best not to ask for details, and I think at that time they were not keeping proper records as they do in London. In Manchester, the children were left
with some little item belonging to one of the parents, in case they wanted to reclaim it.’

‘Did you have anything?’

‘No, I think not. Nothing. I think, you see, that my father wanted to give Josiah the chance to call the marriage off before it was too late. He deeply respected Josiah. They had been friends for years.’

‘But he preferred to go ahead with it. Did he love you too much?’

‘There’s more, my lord. When my father left us, Josiah was very upset, and eventually he confessed to me that the choice would be mine. He’d had an affair with his mother’s maid when he was twenty-three and, to cut a long story short, to save the maid’s job he’d taken the newborn child, a girl, to the same Foundling Hospital in Manchester, only a few days before I was rescued from there by the Carrs. He was quite sure about the date. And because of that, and because I had the maid’s looks by then, Josiah believed there was a strong chance I could be his daughter. Perhaps that explained his love for me. I don’t know.’

‘What was the maid’s name? Did he say?’

‘No, it would have been nice if I’d known my mother’s name, but Josiah thought it best not to say. We agonised about the problem for a long time, and Josiah would have released me, but I wouldn’t let him call it off. I knew that, if we said nothing, no one except ourselves would know.’

‘But couldn’t he have verified it, somehow?’

‘The wedding was the next day. It was to be the greatest day of my mother’s life, and Josiah’s too. I couldn’t … I simply
couldn’t
pull out at that late stage. It would have been the end of my mother, I think. There was no time for him to enquire
before the wedding, and even if he’d postponed it, he may have been proved correct, after all that, raising a lot of questions he didn’t want to answer about his lover and her identity, a terrible scandal and a daughter he didn’t want. He was forty-three, highly respected with an expanding business and a solid reputation, and I couldn’t bear to think of the consequences, so I was the one to decide it was best not to know. But that also meant we could never consummate our marriage, in case it was true.’

‘Yes, I see. But that was a great sacrifice for you.’

‘It was my choice, Nick. I was a dutiful daughter, and the thought of hurting such a good man was more than I could have borne. I knew he adored me, you see, and I didn’t know anything about lovemaking, and I didn’t know what I was missing except the chance to have a family of my own.’ Her voice wavered and dropped a pitch. ‘That’s all I missed.’ She turned her head away and, when he brought it back to face him, he saw how her eyes were filling with tears, her lovely features contorted with anguish. ‘It was my duty, Nick,’ she whispered, ‘and he was offering me so much with the chance to please my ageing parents.’

She had carried that burden for four years, two as a married woman and two as a widow and now, having spoken it out loud for the first time, the significance of it swamped her with deep despair, exposing a grief for her childlessness and for what she saw as failure in every direction she took. ‘Nick … Nick,’ she sobbed, hiding her face in him, ‘you must know … before you … you go … that I … love you. You must know that.’

Pushing her damp hair away, he rocked her in his arms and mopped her tears. ‘Sweetheart, hush now. What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere. And I know you love
me. Why, I have only to look into your eyes to see that. There now … hush … I’m not leaving you. It’s
you
who cares most about your parentage, not me, sweetheart. I’ve found the woman I love, the one I’m going to marry and have children with, and I don’t care a damn who her parents are. As it happens, I believe your kindly Josiah may have withheld some of the truth, even from you, to protect your mother’s good name. Come now, lass, dry these tears. You’ll not get away from me on that kind of excuse. Tell me you love me again.’

‘I love you, Nick … dear heart,’ she gulped. ‘I love you, and I can’t bear the thought of losing you.’

‘Sweetheart, you’re not going to. I told you at the start that this relationship was not going to fail. Didn’t I?’

‘You say you’ve found the woman you love. Is it true?’

‘Quite true. Do you know that I almost threw myself at your feet in Rundell’s that day we first met? Dearest love, there hasn’t been a single moment when I’ve
not
been desperately in love with you, and I would have used every trick in the book to get you, unwilling widow. Everybody knows how in love with you I am, little goose, so it’s no good dragging up your dodgy parentage to hold me off.’

‘But everybody also knows how bloodlines matter more than anything to the aristocracy, Nick. Your father would not accept it, if he knew, and I could not so deceive a man. And your mother doesn’t tolerate scandal. You told me that yourself, didn’t you?’

When he rolled off the bed, Amelie took it as a sign that he was debating the reply, but in the next moment she was being wrapped in the counterpane and carried over to the hearth where the low fire was resurrected into a dancing blaze. Holding her within the circle of his arms, he pretended to have mislaid the question.

‘You were saying, m’lady?’ He smiled, behind her head.

‘Well,
that
was a fudge, wasn’t it,
my lord
? My informant reliably tells me that the scandalous doings of your mother would make the Chesters’ saga look almost respectable. How
could
you have used such an excuse to get me into your bed?’

‘I admit it,’ he said, nuzzling into her neck. ‘I did it to make you beholden to me. And it was not just my bed where I wanted you, either. If this is the prize, a little trickery is allowable. Forgive me, my sweet, but I had to hold you somehow, and you were so determined not to let me near you. Am I forgiven?’

Like a cat, she rubbed her head against his neck, hardly able to believe that this was happening to her. ‘Wicked man,’ she whispered. ‘Is it any wonder I tried to avoid you after what I found out of your reputation? But for Caterina, I would never have given in to your disgraceful demands, my lord. It was quite the most shocking way to behave towards a lady. But now I’m not quite what I seem, am I? Who knows what or who I am? Did you really make any discoveries in London, or was that all fudge, too?’

His fingers roamed over her face, lifting a stray tear off her eyelashes and taking it to his lips. ‘Oh, dear. Am I in danger of losing all my credibility now? I hope not, because I did find something that may fit in rather neatly with your foundling story, sweetheart. It looks as if Sir Josiah Chester may have been trying to protect the identity of his early love when he told you she was his mother’s maid. That’s not quite how it looks. It began with that portrait of you by Lawrence that hangs in your bedroom; it reminded me so strongly of someone I saw at Sheen Court. I was a child of about six or seven and she was an exquisitely beautiful creature. She made
a big impression on me, and I suppose that was the first time I ever fell in love. Even at six. When I saw your portrait, I realised that there
must
be some kind of connection, so when I saw Lord Dysart again at Lady Sergeant’s ball, I went to have a chat with him while you were dancing with Seton.’