One Wicked Night (2 page)

Still, the need to have her own child churned within her. More than anything, she wanted to hold her babe, touch its downy head, sing it lullabies each night, feed it milk from her breast...give it her love. And Cyrus needed an heir. The plain truth was, she could not conceive without a healthy man.

She swallowed, wondering if, as with most things, Cyrus was right. “I will consider it.”

“My dear, you will not be sorry,” he vowed, rising from the floor with a smile. “Get a good night’s rest. We leave for town in two days.”

“We? You’re taking me with you to London?”

“For the rest of the season,” he confirmed. “This small corner of Sussex is hardly big enough for you to carry on a discreet affair.”

*****

Lucien Clayborne, the fifth Marquess of Daneridge, stood at the edge of the cold grave. He closed his eyes and bunched his fist around a bouquet of spring flowers. The smell of the blossoms and freshly cut grass blended with his grief to swirl a guilty nausea through him. He relished the pain, along with the discomfort of the morning drizzle.

Chelsea had been dead three months, and he had no one to blame but himself. He cursed into the biting wind. Why couldn’t he have breathed twenty years of his own worthless life into her precious little body?

Flooded with grief, he sank to his knees, not giving a damn that mud fouled his gray wool trousers. Carefully, he placed the flowers over her grave, next to the others he had brought the day before. Chelsea would have accepted them with one of her bright, guileless smiles.

Lucien cursed heavenward, glad he was insulting the God who had taken Chelsea from him. He wanted that God to feel his anguish. He wanted that God to understand he no longer believed in Him.

Hot tears scalded the back of his eyes. He swallowed back the unmanly show of emotion.

For the thousandth time, he asked himself: Why Chelsea? As usual, no answer came.

His body ached from lack of sleep as he rose. How long before he could pass a whole hour without thinking about her and the knowledge that he had failed her? How much longer would regrets and recriminations taunt him, keeping him awake through the night?

Those torments were no more than he deserved—for the rest of his life. After all, he had been immersed in his much too public divorce and escaping its unpleasantness to notice Chelsea. Consumed with rage and bruised pride, he had spent all his energy shedding Ravenna legally and emotionally, while trying to ignore her indiscreet tryst with Lord Wayland and their flight to Italy.

He had failed to notice his own daughter’s confusion or need for affection until it was too late.

Lucien turned away from the grave. As his lonely black carriage traveled up South Audley Street, he watched St. George’s burial ground slowly slip from his sight. He made himself a vow: If he ever had another child, he would be a
much
different father.

****

“My dear, Serena! It
is
you,” her grandmother said with surprise, rising from the damask-covered Grecian couch. She grasped Serena’s hands with her own frail ones. “You look lovely. Why didn’t you write to tell me you were planning a trip to London?”

“Grandy, I had no time, and I did not want to come. Cyrus insisted,” she explained. “I realize it’s early. Have I come at a bad time?”

“Oh, no. Now, you must sit and tell me everything.” Her grandmother’s face lit up in a beaming smile. “Have you come to town early to prepare for your confinement?”

Embarrassed by the turn of the conversation, Serena cast her gaze down. “No, things simply have not worked out as Cyrus and I had hoped.”

“But you are still trying?”

“Grandy, could we please discuss something else?”

The older woman sighed. “Talk to me, lamb. Your husband is a duke. He needs an heir other than that worthless nephew of his. And I want a great-grandchild from you.”

“I am ever aware of that, Grandy,” Serena answered patiently.

“When I was your age, I had two children and one on the way. I only stopped conceiving when I started refusing Aldus.” Her grandmother’s blue eyes narrowed. “Is that your game?”

Her grandmother frowned, her eyes full of displeasure. “The gossip before you two wed was that he had cast aside his mistress of many years because he was no longer...capable.”

Cyrus had kept a mistress? Serena shouldn’t be surprised, as nearly all men of wealth did. “Capable?”

Her grandmother nodded. “That he is impotent. And I would say Madame Maria ought to know. She bore your husband three daughters.”

Serena’s mouth fell open in shock as a hot bolt of envy pierced her. Another woman had borne Cyrus’s girls, and she, his wife, would never conceive. How unfair!

“Serena, is this true?”

Numbly, she nodded. Here was a whole part of Cyrus’s life she knew nothing of. She had never heard of Madame Maria or her children. A thousand questions, along with a well of pain, rose up within her, leaving her raw and aching.

“I knew I should have protested the marriage, but he claimed he was marrying to beget an heir. So, I assumed the rumors were false.”

Serena barely heard.

Grandy shook her shoulder, regaining her attention. “Does this have anything to do with your sudden trip to London?”

“Yes.” Serena felt a new onslaught of tears and fumbled to produce a handkerchief from her sleeve. She twisted it in her hands. “Cyrus has asked me to take a lover.”

Her grandmother quirked one silver brow in disdain. “This is how he intends to get an heir?”

“Yes, and I cannot do it.” She paused, fists bunching. “He’s asking me to commit adultery.”

“Oh, phoo! I could kick your Aunt Constance, rest her soul, for feeding you too much moral rubbish. All those prayer meetings affected your thinking.”

“It
is
adultery, even if Cyrus condones it.”

“Really, lamb. Don’t be so provincial. Such affairs are quite common among the
ton
. Look at my good friend Lady Bessborough. It’s quite known she had children by men other than her husband. She has not been ruined at all.”

“But I cannot picture myself engaging in—in the same illicit acts that brought Mama such shame.”

“Your situations are hardly alike. Having one discreet affair for the sake of conception hardly compares to taking as many lovers as suits your whim and flaunting them.”

“But one lover or a hundred, the number should not signify,” Serena argued. “It is immoral.”

“I agree with your husband; it’s also necessary. You can and you must take a lover. It will be good for you to find someone devilishly handsome and let him seduce you.”

“But Grandy, to behave as if I’ve no morals--”

“Let your overstarched morals retire in peace, along with your Aunt Constance. You’re too young to bury yourself with her and that old stuffed shirt you call husband. Here in Town, very few people note the doings of a married lady, as long as you’re discreet. Besides, I think it’s time you followed your heart.”

CHAPTER TWO

Gold, red and white oil lanterns burned brightly around Vauxhall Gardens, stinging Serena’s eyes beneath her silk mask. A passing couple elbowed her as they jostled past. Another man’s braying laugh prompted a staccato pounding in her head.

She didn’t want to be at these public gardens. Large gatherings, like the ones she had attended nearly every evening for a week, all seemed so lavish and pointless. Vicious gossip proved their attendees awaited the next scandal with the same anticipation a mongrel stalks its prey. That, coupled with her mother’s scandalous reputation, had motivated Serena to accept Cyrus’s suit three years ago, just days after her come-out. Marrying quietly had appealed much more than this social ordeal.

But tonight, she had promised Cyrus she would “socialize” with the widowed daughter of a friend. So she turned her concentration to the impending fireworks and ignored her uneasiness, as well as the threat of rain.

A throng of people swirled through the gardens. From the lowliest tradesman to the most respected member of the
ton
, she noted all were dressed for the gala masquerade.

“What do you think of him?” her companion Melanie asked above the strains of a violin, gesturing across the Grove.

Serena looked at the very dull Lord Highbridge, their escort, to see if he had heard Melanie’s question. He appeared intent on the orchestra, so she shifted her gaze to the young blond man in question. He looked fashionably bored, as did all the others. She turned to her friend with an indifferent shrug.

With a cryptic lift of her shoulder, Melanie turned away, leaving Serena to wonder if everyone she knew had lost their sensibilities. Or was she, as Grandy had suggested, living to avoid Mama’s mistakes by clinging to Aunt Constance’s values?

The orchestra stopped playing. With the announcement that Madame Saqui, the French rope dancer, was about to begin her performance, the mass of people around Serena rushed for the fireworks platform. They bumped and shoved, until she found herself crushed against the wall of the Roman amphitheater.

People in the boxes nearby called out bawdy encouragements as a stocky woman dressed in spangles and feathers materialized on the rope. Around her, blue flames burned, giving her a ghostly appearance.

Serena watched, spellbound, as the woman twirled on the suspended rope. Holding her breath, Serena prayed silently for the fearless, leaping woman. The dancer hopped and turned, never losing her balance, never looking down.

Transfixed, Serena never sensed danger until a steel-gripped hand clamped around her wrist and pulled viciously. Pain twisted through her fingertips as she felt a vice-like hand wrap about her elbow and drag her into the bushes.

She screamed. The crowd’s gasps of astonishment at the rope dancer’s performance overshadowed her cry. Though she bucked and writhed in an attempt to escape, her unseen attacker pushed her to the ground. Her backside met the hard dirt and spindly branches. The abused flesh throbbed in protest. Fear poured over her in an icy stream.

She looked up at her attacker, staring at the dark, masked figure. Light behind him cast the shadow of his menacing stance over her.

She screamed again.

“Shut up,” his harsh voice ordered.

To lend backing to his command, he produced a knife from a well-worn black boot. Serena followed the blade’s progress from his feet upward, as it sliced toward her. Her assailant thrust the weapon above her left breast, resting its tip against her bare skin. Shock and confusion cut through Serena, terrifying her with a cold stab of dread.

“Please,” she begged. “Do not hurt me.”

With a grunt, her attacker shoved her to her back and straddled her. Cast in near darkness by the shrubbery, Serena discerned little except that he was large, masked, and dangerous. Her virginal, childless life flashed through her mind’s eye.

She pummeled her fists against his chest, twisting for escape. As he increased the pressure of the blade against her skin, her heart beat against her ribs in a frantic rhythm.

The man inched the tip of the knife lower, until it sunk beneath the fabric of her bodice. He cut a small hole in her dress in silent threat. Serena prayed as she never had, even as fear covered her with a sheen of cold sweat.

Outside the bushes, away from her plant-walled horror, the audience gasped then clapped wildly, signaling the end of the rope dancer’s performance. Serena screamed again for help.

With his free hand, her assailant clapped his clammy hand over her mouth. “Shut up, or I will kill you.”

He pricked her again with his blade in warning, closer to her throat. A drop of hot blood rolled across her skin. Her heart chugged madly. When he lifted his tense hand from her mouth, Serena wanted to scream again, but terror closed her throat.

With a grunt, the man opened her reticule and pocketed her money. He ripped the pearls from her ears and throat before he fit his blade beneath her left glove and sliced upward, leaving a thin, red cut marring the center of her palm.

Again, Serena struggled, kicking, pushing against the man. He shoved her back to the ground.