The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (41 page)

Phoebe’s heart soared. The hardness was gone from his eyes, replaced by a glimmer of the fever she’d come to know at Wentworth Hall.

“I did not,” he said, dabbing the handkerchief beneath her nose, “reach the surface until the moment I laid eyes on you here, in this very room.” He stopped dabbing her face and laid his palm against her cheek. “I love you, Phoebe—I never stopped loving you. And I will never stop loving you.”

She tried to tell him she loved him, too, but her words erupted in one loud sob.

Will chuckled. “Marry me, Phoebe. Come back to Wentworth Hall. Travel with me, paint with me, have children with me. Just never leave my sight again.”

“Yes,” she said, grabbing the lapels of his coat. “Yes, yes, yes…”

He silenced her with a hard, passionate kiss full of longing and missed opportunities. Phoebe kissed him back with as much passion, with joy and hope and the promise of what was to come.

When he bent down and swept her up in his arms and carried her to the divan, she did not protest. She fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat, eager to touch his flesh and feel his heart beat against her hand. He moved over her and looked down at her with eyes dark with passion. “I have missed you,” he said. “God, how I have missed you.”

“Show me,” she said, and sighed with happiness when he put his hand on her ankle and began to slide it up her leg.

Will felt a little guilty a half hour later, when he and Phoebe emerged from the salon where they had engaged in rude, wretched, and thoroughly pleasurable behavior. He’d never met Middleton—it was hardly polite to take his sister-in-law on his divan. But what a taking it had been.

He knew a moment of panic when, hand in hand with Phoebe, they encountered Lady Middleton in the corridor. Lady Middleton gasped when she saw them. Her eyes raked over his disheveled state, then Phoebe’s. With a cry of alarm, she slapped Phoebe on the forearm, and then just as abruptly threw her arms around Phoebe and squeezed her tight. “I am so happy for you!” she cried.

“Ava, I have something to tell you,” Phoebe tried, but another woman appeared in the corridor, holding a baby boy.

“What has happened?” she demanded.

“Greer! Are you so lacking in perception?” Ava cried.

The other woman gasped. “No!” she cried, and hurried forward to hug Phoebe while Lady Middleton threw her arms around Will, surprising him. The three of them began to talk at once. One of them handed him the baby who instantly reached for his neckcloth and pulled one end free.

He couldn’t help but laugh. He had a feeling he was about to embark on the greatest adventure of his life.

T he charitable ball for the benefit of the works of the Ladies’ Beneficent Society became the opening ball of the full Season, beginning in 1823, and for several years after, three couples hosted it—the Marquis and Marchioness of Middleton, the Earl and Countess of Radnor, and the Viscount and Viscountess Summerfield. They personally greeted the three hundred guests from the highest ranks of the Quality who attended, and graciously accepted donations throughout the night to help poor women and children.

The ball was begun as a consolation for the two lords who had fought so valiantly to see reforms benefiting poor women through Parliament. Unfortunately, their efforts had been derailed and no reforms were enacted—protections for working women would not begin to find widespread acceptance in Parliament until midcentury.

While not everyone agreed with their drive to protect poor women, donations to the Society grew nonetheless, and numerous poor women were helped into positions that paid a livable wage for them and their children.

And although Phoebe would never know it, even Frieda found a spot of happiness. After she had given birth to her first child, a young clergyman without a parish had taken pity on her, and the two of them eventually married and went to India to do missionary work.

The social furor over Summerfield’s offering for Lady Phoebe Fairchild (several members of the ton felt they had not been given an adequate opportunity to present their unmarried daughters) died down over the course of that winter, and most people seemed to have forgotten the entire affair by the start of the Season the next spring.

It was also revealed that Lady Summerfield enjoyed designing and sewing gowns. While she did not accept commissions for them any longer—she could hardly do so while carrying her first child, after all—the women in her family were always thought to be clothed in the finest gowns in all of London.

The summer of 1824 would be known as the summer of the babies, as Ava, Greer, Phoebe, and Alice all gave birth. Jane, having only recently married Lord Richfield of Essex, was still touring Europe. Unfortunately, with birth there came death, and Will lost his father in the autumn of 1824. But the earl had lived long enough to hold his first grandchild in his lap.

Joshua and Caroline Darby inherited a small manor estate in the north of Bedfordshire and, against all betting odds, lived quite happily. Roger’s natural charm quickly led to him being promoted to captain. He was rarely at Wentworth Hall, but he sent long letters home detailing his many adventures, just as Will had once done.

In the spring of 1825, Will Darby was happier than he’d ever been in his life, even during the years he’d spent exploring the far corners of the world. He and Phoebe had spent their honeymoon in Paris, but Will seemed to have lost his wanderlust. There were more important things to him now. His daughter, Cassandra, named after Phoebe’s mother. And of course his darling wife, Phoebe, who delighted him every single day.

He realized, one afternoon when he was riding back from Greenhill on Apollo’s back—the only horse he’d managed to salvage from the wild herd—that he had the life his father had always wanted for him. He was happy. He was content.

It was a beautiful day—the wildflowers were in full bloom, the air was crisp and clear, and Will wanted to share it with his family. He handed Apollo to the stable boy and strode inside Wentworth Hall. “Phoebe!” he shouted from the foyer.

Farley was there to greet him, bowing low before Will tossed his hat and gloves to him. “She is in the nursery, my lord, and begs you remember Lady Cassandra’s nap time.”

As if he could forget. Will grinned at Farley and took the stairs two at a time. When he opened the door of the nursery, he was instantly met with a strong “Ssh” issued by his wife.

“She’s sleeping,” she whispered. She kissed Will, then took him by the hand and led him to the cradle. They stood together, leaning over the rail and staring down at the angelic face of Cassandra Elaine Darby.

Phoebe pulled him away again, winking at the wet nurse who sat reading nearby, and drew Will along into the adjoining suite of rooms. When she had shut the door quietly behind him, Will grabbed her up and kissed her lustily, smothering her with kisses.

“Your daughter is beautiful,” Phoebe said between kisses.

“So is her mother.”

“She needs a brother and you need an heir.”

Will reared back and looked into Phoebe’s pale blue eyes. “Phoebe, darling, you needn’t worry about that now,” he said laughingly.

“Why not?” she asked, sliding her hand down from his waist. “Cassandra is ten months old,” she said as she cupped him, squeezing him through his trousers.

Will sucked in a breath through his teeth. “What are you about, minx?”

“I want more,” she said with a grin. “I want cherubs like Cassandra to fill our house. I want a house full of our children,” she said, and slipped her hand into the waist of his trousers.

Will grit his teeth as she began to rub him.

“Give me babies, Will,” she said with a lusty glimmer in her eye. “Give them to me right now.”

He grinned. “Phoebe, love of my life, I will give you anything. Anything your heart desires.” And true to his word, he took his wife to bed that beautiful spring afternoon and fulfilled her heart’s desire.

Julia London recently took time from her busy writing schedule to talk to us. Here is a transcript of that revealing conversation:

It has been very exciting! I’ve been very fortunate to have written a variety of novels—historical romance, contemporary romantic comedy, and a tie-in novel to a daytime television drama, Guiding Light. I think the highlight has been seeing the different novels so well received by the public. A lot of writers say there is nothing more gratifying than finishing a book. I think there is nothing more gratifying than knowing that a reader has enjoyed one of my books.

I never say never—it’s entirely possible we might see the Desperate Debutantes in the future, although currently, I have no plans for them. And while I never stray very far from the Regency era, I am setting my new historical series in the very early 1800s, before the official Regency era began. In 1806, England was rocked with the scandal of the disintegrating marriage between the Prince of Wales and Princess Caroline. A public trial was scheduled, but Princess Caroline wrote a tell-all pamphlet, called simply “The Book,” in which she hinted at several scandals that had involved members of the royal family and the British aristocracy. The public trial was called off, all copies of the pamphlet were destroyed, and the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Princess Caroline continued on as it had. Using that pamphlet as a backdrop, my new series, The Book of Scandal, will be about people who are touched by that scandal and find redemption and love in the most unlikely places.

That was so cool! I had not watched Guiding Light before this opportunity presented itself, but needless to say, I am a huge fan of it now. It was a different writing experience for me, and one I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn’t have to create my own hero for this contemporary love story—the story and the characters were conceived by the writers of the Emmy-winning soap. Jonathan Randall, a popular character, disappeared from Springfield, the town where the story is set, by faking his own death. The novel Guiding Light: Jonathan’s Story reveals what happened to this tough yet tender, very passionate “bad boy” after he left town. I don’t want to give anything away, but his activities involve a very interesting woman and his baby, Sarah.

Writing this novel has been a collaborative effort, and I learned a lot about how daytime television works. I also learned an important writing tip: Think like a soap opera. Stories can be told through a series of dramatic scenes without a lot of exposition linking them.

I am! This is another fun project I’ve been writing this year. I recently reread several texts about Merlin the Magician, prophet and sorcerer to King Arthur. But in the Idylls of the King, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, relates a tale about how Vivien, a sorceress or witch, robbed Merlin of his magical power, then imprisoned him in a tomb and left him for dead. But Merlin was a very powerful sorcerer. What if he had managed to escape that tomb?

My book envisions that he did escape and in order to get revenge against Vivien for stealing the amulet that contained his power, he assembled a group of superior warlocks and trained them as warriors. These warlocks can take any shape or form they like, can move through time and space, can perform feats of magic to suit whatever mission they undertake. While they look like big, powerful human men, their demonic side makes them crave sex. For fifteen centuries, they have sought Merlin’s amulet.

But wily Vivien formed an army, too. Her witches are crafty and cunning, and their greatest weapon is their ability to seduce a warlock. Into this battle steps an unsuspecting thirtysomething woman, Laura, who is drawn into another world where sex is her greatest weapon against an angry warlock assassin who moves her like no mortal man has ever done. It’s been great fun creating a whole new world, and I hope readers will enjoy the novels as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Thank you for that lovely compliment. I began writing after finding an Iris Johansen book that had a guy on the inside cover who was to die for. I had no clue that it was a romance, but I loved that book and went through a period of a few weeks where I read every book like it that I could find. And when I had completely saturated my mind with dozens of them, I got the bright idea to try to write one myself. I love the dynamic between men and women and exploring the differences between the sexes, no matter the time period. As for writing in past and present settings, I think the fundamentals are the same. Good characterization and dialogue, and good conflict and motivation are essential to carrying a story forward, whether it’s set in 1800 or 2007. The trick is to turn on your inner Jane Austen or your inner Sex and the City to add some authenticity to the vernacular of the time period—but the mechanics of writing a good book are the same.

I loved your holiday short story “A Merchant’s Gift” in The School for Heiresses anthology. Will you write another Christmas story soon?

I wish I could—I very much enjoy writing novellas, but my schedule is too full to write one just now.

The holiday season is a big family event for us. My husband and I both have large families who live nearby. Frankly, we eat our way through the holidays, as our Christmas celebrations tend to span a few days with so much family—and that’s a lot of pie. But spending time with our families is something we very much look forward to each year. We have a great, fun tradition we share with my side of the family, which is a White Elephant gift draw. In addition to a standard gift exchange, we find the goofiest gifts we can and spend the afternoon drinking poinsettias (champagne and cranberry juice) and laughing at the White Elephant draw. After last Christmas, we came home with a can of bug spray and a calendar with an inappropriate theme. Oh, but we laughed!