The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (18 page)

He had no thoughts now of sending her home. Not without him. The thought of her leaving his seclusion without his name sickened him.

But urgency was paramount. They had coupled frequently, wildly. He had taken her often, and she had rejoiced in it. She must sometime very soon tell her father of her marriage. Wes would have it no other way. He liked Lord Featherstone immensely. A sharp-witted man, but kind and loving to his only surviving child, Lord Girard Featherstone occasionally sported an unnatural anger. And a steady hand with a pistol.

Wes knew he could explain himself to Lord Feather, as many called the man, by telling him he loved his daughter. Wes had many times since that first night at Adam’s when she had pursued him and had shown her true colors. Her determination. Her resolve. His kind of woman. Out of bed. And in it? Well. Had he not found her irresistible for the past two days he’d loved her here in his bed? He had not let her leave and could not bear to part with her.

He’d ordered Charles to bring up a hip bath twice a day then watched her bathe, taking the sponge and soap himself when the need to put his hands on her was more than reason allowed. He’d picked her up from the copper tub by the armpits, surprised at his own strength, and put her down on his bed, sopping wet, then spread her pretty swollen lips and laved her until she’d groaned for him to put his cock inside her.

Of course, he now must marry her. Not really a hardship on him, their union was certainly a foregone conclusion. A man could not take a titled lady to bed—a virgin and the daughter of a man he respected—and not offer her his name and house and board. Even if the man did not love the young thing, he had to do his duty.

But Wes did love this headstrong creature. And he did want her. Though, Christ knew, he might live to regret it, and he knew she would.

When he would not go out in public, when he would remain here for all his days on this earth, when he chose to read and write and raise his horses, how would she take all that? A woman like Lady Lacy Featherstone would perhaps take umbrage. At first. Then she’d take herself to town. Take a lover. Take more.

Wes swallowed hard on that prospect. She was his jewel, his darling. Could he stand to see her walk away from him now that he had tasted her sweet little body. Now that he’d ripped open her hymen? Worse rakes existed in the
ton
. Wes knew. He had caroused with the best and worst of them. So had his older brother Jack. Only Adam, their youngest brother, had taken a wife at a young age and kept his respectability intact until his first wife cuckolded him and forced him to a mistress’s arms. But Adam, relieved of his first wife by a deathly illness, was now wed once more and needed no comforts from a kept woman. He had a darling of a wife.

As I will.

Wes rose from his bed the third morning of Lacy’s intrusion to his life and peered down at her beauty. Even asleep she was a siren. All sinuous grace, relaxed and totally disarming in her dishabille. Her pale hair tangled on his pillows. Her long arms flung this way and that. Her lips, dear heaven, her wide plush lips open in an invitation to kiss them, unawake and unaware of how he could not control his urge to taste her, take her.

He brushed his mouth on hers. “Wake up, I want you again.” He kissed his way down her naked torso, nipped at her soft, pink nipples. “Your breasts are eager for my lips,” he murmured and wended his way to her navel then found the part of her he had to possess, it seemed, hourly. “And your pretty
chat
craves the touch of my fingers.”

She made mewling sounds that told him she sparked to his advances. “What will you do for me if I allow you the joy?”

“Pet you.”

“Ah.” She cuffed him on the shoulder as she rolled over. “Have me this way you insatiable man.” She raised her derriere in the air.

He bent and smacked her taut little cheek.

“Ouch.” She burrowed into the sheets. “You are a terrible man. So demanding.” She wiggled her buttocks at him. “So tormenting.”

He rose to his knees and reached around to slide his hand over her stomach and sink it in her nether hair. She was wet from wanting him and his fingers sank inside her easily. He found her clitoris to pinch her and encircle the tiny nub. His penis slid along her seam from the back, and he knew the way they fit together was perfect. He found her hot throbbing core and sank inside in one swift drive.

She hissed.

He pulled out and rammed inside more deeply.

She gasped in delight. “What a way to say good morning.”

He chuckled and bit her shoulder. “You drive me to it.” He caught her hair back to nip her neck.

“Do I? How do I do that, pray tell?”

“Merely breathe, my beauty. And you have me in your hand.”

“I daresay at the moment, I do not.” She moaned as he sank inside her to the hilt and ground himself against her. “Though I look forward to having you there.”

“Chit. You are not supposed to know what to do with a man’s cock in your fist.”

“Mmm. Then you must teach me.” She braced herself in the wealth of the bedclothes and pushed her ass back toward him. “Fuck me, now, damn it, Wes. And later, I’ll take you in my hand.”

He hastened to do her bidding.

“Or can I have you in my mouth?”

****

The morning of the fifth day, Lacy stretched out her arms as she awakened to find Wes had left her alone. Not his normal practice to leave her early, he usually regaled her at least once before rising from their bed.

She smiled and ran her palms over her breasts. Her nipples beaded, used to his touch, his lips and his tongue on her there.
And here, too
, she thought as she stroked her stomach down to her mound. Aching to have him inside, she inserted her fingers into her wet core and arched, sighing. She found her little bud that he loved to pinch and nip, circling it herself and feeling her temperature rise with interest in the artfulness of Wes’s love play.

She had chosen well, this man who was thirteen years older than she. A man with a renowned career in the cavalry. A man with a reputation among women. Women not of his station. Not of hers. He’d told her the other day the reasons for that.

“The family curse is one we Stanhopes learn about at an early age. We are told to beware of love. But lust? Ah. Well. Lust and mistresses are permitted. Witness my father. He’s had as many women as he can line up to share his bed. Most of those whom he claims to have loved, he did marry. Jack’s mother, mine, Adam’s. Clarice’s mother, too, he loved, but could not wed. She was already married to an elderly man, and Father did the man the service of providing him with his own heir, which he gladly accepted though a female.”

“And so you have had affairs. I did hear hints of that.”

“With the wars, I thought I might not survive. Or become…” He’d winced. “Maimed. A monster.”

“You are no monster but a strong and daring man, my love.” She had risen from the bed then to wrap her arms around his waist and lay her head against his chest. “And you certainly are no cripple. I will show you.”

“I can barely make love to you without shaking.”

“A sign of you having lolled about here! No indication of your true potential.” She’d kissed his throat. “Once the sun comes out, we will build your strength. Go for long walks. Put you on that marvelous beast of a horse in the stable. And you will ride.”

“No, I will not.”

“Of course, you will.” She had rubbed her breasts against him. “You would not let me ride alone, now would you?”

“I vow I will not allow you out of my sight for at least twenty years. Perhaps not even out of this bed for another five!”

She grinned at the memory of his joke. It represented the return of his natural humor, a quality lacking from his demeanor the first few days she’d been here. The next quality she wished to help him reclaim was his confidence in himself, and she pondered how to ensure its return.

His revelation that he had never gone into the village since his arrival here weeks ago and that he had sent Charles on every errand worried her. Her charming, clever colonel would not, could not hide away from the world. She would not allow that. He had too much to offer to his country, his men and to her to wither away in this old pile of stones.

She rose from the bed and pulled on her silk wrapper then paced the floor.

If Wesley would not go to the world, she would have to bring it to him. Wouldn’t she?

How best to accomplish that?

****

“I suspect the sun got jealous of the clouds and ordered them to exile,” Lacy gaily told Wes five days hence when they had enjoyed brilliant weather for four days running.

Wes had sent a message to the vicar as soon as the clouds parted, and he awaited the cleric’s presence here tomorrow as Wes had instructed. “About time, too. Now all we need is the roads to emerge from the muck.”
And I will make Lacy a married woman.

Serving luncheon, Charles placed before Lacy a bowl of the stew Lacy had prepared herself early that morning. “The road from here to town is dry. The riverbanks have receded, too. The coach to London is running again.”

Wes raised his gaze to Lacy but asked of his man, “When did it resume?”

“John Topper said day before yesterday.”

Lacy bit her lower lip and considered her dinner. “When you went to buy the ale today, did he give you any news of the post?”

“Mail went out three days ago. John expects our delivery here restored tomorrow.” Charles glanced sideways at Lacy.

Wes smarted at the look.
What was that?
His man was not still making advances on Lacy, was he? Would Charles dare to touch Lacy now? Now that he knew she slept in Wes’s bed? Now that he knew what Wes planned for tomorrow? Still, the incident shook him.
Good thing you have made arrangements with the vicar or you would be fit for bedlam with your worry over her reputation.

“Thank you, Charles,” he instructed in his commander’s voice. “We are well served. You may leave us.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

After a minute of silence, Lacy put down her fork and inhaled deeply. “You must know he is not being bold with me.”

Wes met her glance. “I have only one eye, but I know what I see. He gave you a look.”

“It was…” She waved a hand.

Wes threw down his napkin. “Do not demean yourself by telling me—”

“If you will let me finish, Wes, I will tell you that he is concerned for me. That is what it was. Concern.”

“He is not making himself a nuisance?” His blood pounded with the very idea.

“No.” She put a hand over his. “Darling, stop. He is your loyal man. Always has been. He was helping me make you jealous, and now that you and I are one, he is done with paying me attention. Besides Charles has confided in me that he cares deeply for a maid in the service of your Aunt Amaryllis Stanhope.”

Wes felt mollycoddled and grumbled. “It’s true. Patsy O’Shea is a parlor maid in my aunt’s house in Park Lane. She served briefly in my father’s house, but Aunt Amaryllis took her a few years ago when she needed new staff.”

“So there you have it!” Lacy lifted both shoulders, a smile wreathing her face. “You should let them marry, you know. Suggest it, in fact.”

Wes frowned at her once more. “I doubt my Aunt Amaryllis needs a sergeant who—”

He shut his mouth with a snap. And smiled. “I see your line of thought.”

“Wonderful.” She beamed at him.

“You think we need a maid?” He took Lacy’s hand in his own.

“I believe we will,” she said with an air of expectation to her tone. “You are not sending me away—”

“No. Never.” He picked up her hand and put his lips to her palm.

“And though the sun is shining, darling, I certainly am not inclined to pack my bag and go.”

“As if you ever intended to leave,” he said with rueful joy.

“There you have it! So you see, if I am staying and we are, shall we say, living together, then don’t you think we should—”

“Get married. I do. I definitely do, Lady Featherstone.”

She got the most sublime expression on her face. “Please say that again.”

He pulled her from her seat and put his chair around to take her upon his lap. There, with her warm, giving body in his possession, he brushed a tendril of her silken hair from her cheek and smiled at her. “I have not much to give you, darling. In fact, I fear for what I, and therefore we, might become. I am a proud man and broken.”

She put a finger across his lips and shook her head.

He took her hand away. “Listen to me, sweetheart. I love you. And I find that shocking at my age, for I have never loved any one before. To care for one so young and innocent astounds me. I thought I was such a man of the world.” He smiled sadly. “But I have my limits, like other men. This war and these injuries shake my confidence in myself.”

She would have objected again, but he stopped her.

“Let me speak, Lacy. I can take you to bed, and I can love you until we are both mad with it. God knows, you have a taste for me that I am gratified to see.”

“And feel.”

He nodded. “And feel. But there were sights on the fields that stay with me. Sights I had seen before but never affected me so sorely. The military is how I have made my way, but I do not relish it or war. In fact, I wish to end it. End it all as quickly as possible. And yet to accomplish that objective, I must face the world again, and I hope you will bear with me to do it. I promise little but my love and devotion to you and any children we may be fortunate to have. But I cannot promise to be the man you met at my brother’s house, nor danced with at the assemblies. That man is not here. Still, he asks if you will marry him. I love you, Lacy. Will you,” he asked with measured tone, “marry me?”

“I will. As you were, I loved you, Wes. As you are, I love you. And as you will become, I will love you, too, my darling.” She kissed him quickly, deeply and wound her arms around his neck.

Outside, a clattering of horses’ hooves sounded on the drive.

Wes cocked his head, wondering who this could be. The vicar had no carriage and was not to come until tomorrow. But Wes sighed and focused once more on the woman in his arms. He cupped her chin and admired her face. “I hope you are never sorry, Lacy, that you agreed to this.”