The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (20 page)

“Sir,” Hawritch said as he examined those in the room, “I was told to discuss my purpose only with you.”

“Very well,” Wes understood the need for secrecy in wartime. “And do you also have orders?”

Lacy shifted in her chair.

“I do, Colonel. But I was told to deliver my papers to your hand only. And to discuss them with no one.”

“I see,” Wes wondered what the hell to do. As soon as he took the orders in hand, he might very well be bound to carry them out. He shut his eyes and rubbed a hand across his forehead. He didn’t need one of his raging headaches now. Suddenly, he realized he had not suffered one since Lacy had thrown herself back into his life.

“Why are you here?”

Everyone in the room went dead silent and turned to the man who’d blurted this.

“
Why
?” Lord Feather demanded of Amaryllis.

“Girard,” Wes’s aunt addressed Lacy’s father by his first name in an astonishing tone of intimacy, “I am here for you.”

“What? That’s insanity!” Feather retorted.

“Of course, it is,” she replied, cool as cucumber in July. “But nonetheless, I am here.”

“Well?” Feather demanded, his cheeks red with an outrage only he understood. “Tell us why.”

Amaryllis did not deign to look at him but put her nose in the air. “I see you are about to make a great mistake. The second great mistake of your life.”

Feather shot a glance at Wes. “Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?”

Wes folded his hands. He knew when best to sit on the sidelines and watch opponents have at each other. “None whatsoever, my lord.”

Charles hoisted the whiskey flask. “Another, my lord?”

“No!” Feather retorted.

“I will, though!” Amaryllis raised her glass.

“You cannot tolerate more than one!” Feather objected.

Everyone’s eyes bulged with interest.

She preened. “In the intervening years since I so unceremoniously took more than one punch and passed out into your arms, my lord Feather, I’ll have you know I have learned how to drink.” She extended her glass so that Charles might pour. “Fill it up, man. There. Thank you.”

“You are impossible!” Feather jumped up from his chair. “Like you always were.”

She threw the whiskey back and got to her feet. The two of them stood toe-to-toe in the middle of Wes’s great hall. Whatever this was, a reunion or a rematch, it was damn good.

“I’ll have you know that I am my own woman. Independent. And I do as I wish.”

“Well, you shouldn’t!”

“Pardon me?” She put her hands on her hips. “As if you know how to live your life!”

“I do! Have done! And done quite well without you,” he roared back.

“Financially, yes,” his aunt sputtered. “But what of Louise?”

Uh oh.
Wes knew Feather’s long dead wife was not a topic anyone discussed with Feather without coming away with a bruise or two.

“What about her?” Feather baited Amaryllis.

“You married her when you knew you should not have. She was miserable.”

“That made two of us! Lord knows, I tried to make it better. So did she! We were unsuited.”

“And now, you will seek to separate these two fine young people who are so well suited to each other?” she taunted, pointing at Wes and Lacy.

Feather blinked. “What? What the hell do you mean?”

“Aren’t you here to separate them?”

“No, I—well, yes, I was, but listen to me, Amy.”

Amy?
Wes winced, pained with laughter. A pet name for his aunt, usually the imperious but rational one in the family? Lord knew his father had never fulfilled that role. He was too busy seducing anything in skirts to bother with common sense. All that was left to his father’s sister.
Amy.

His aunt dug a rumpled sheet of paper from her dress pocket. “This!”

“What in god’s name is that?” Feather reached to pluck it from Amaryllis’s fingers.

She pulled back. “A letter, Feather.”

“Hell, Amy, I see that. Where’d it come from? What’s it say?”

“It’s from Charles.”

A gasp rose up from the assembly.

“
Charles?
” Wes shouted. “What? You wrote a letter? What the devil is going on here?” he scowled at his servant who stood, flask in two hands like a penitent, grimacing at Wes.

“I was concerned you would throw Lady Featherstone out.”

Wes rose from his chair.

Lacy grinned, thoroughly enjoying this.

Her father gasped and whirled on Wes. “
You were going to throw her out?
”

“Well, of course, I was!” Wes retorted to those who focused on him now. “She showed up unannounced in the rain, with no servants and said she had lied to you to give herself cover.”

“That she did!” affirmed Feather. “When my sister happened to write and ask after Lacy, I knew she was not with her and I went straight away to come here. I could not let my precious child ruin her reputation.” He advanced on Wes. “If you were not of a mind to marry her, I had to see to it she could find another man.”

“Yes,” Wes conceded, “you did.” He spun to face his servant. “But why would you write to Lady Stanhope, Charles?”

“He didn’t,” said Amaryllis.

“He wrote to me,” Patsy claimed.

Wes hung his head, biting his lip. To laugh or scream, that was the question. But a better one was, “Why, Charles?”

“I feared if Lady Featherstone left, sir, your health would decline further. That she would…spend many days here for naught and two fine reputations would be lost.”

His man looked tortured. Wes understood at once that what Charles feared was Lacy’s ruin. Then too if this was a household of poor reputation, Charles could never ask Patsy to marry him or serve here with him. His sergeant would spend his life caring for a man who was not only maimed, but increasingly bitter. “I understand, Charles. Thank you. You did no harm. You meant to help.” Wes faced his aunt. “And when you came you had no idea that Lord Featherstone was here?”

She looked sheepish. “None at all.”

”And this outburst is really an old quarrel between you and Lord Featherstone?”

His aunt, never coy, glanced away, suddenly sad. “It is.”

“An old heartache,” Feather added with distaste and sank to his seat.

“So then this is the lady,” Lacy said to her father, “you should have married.”

He nodded.

Amaryllis sniffed again and resumed her chair. “Charles, give us another shot of that, will you?” She held up her glass.

“Jesus, Amy!” Feather was outraged. “No need to get blistered!”

“Will you stop me?”

“Yes, damn it!” Feather looked around and suddenly burst out laughing. So did the others, including Aunt Amaryllis. “I think I will! Later.”

His aunt began to chuckle. “A promise, Feather, I will hold you to. But why later?”

“We are about to have a wedding,” he told Amaryllis with mellow affection in his gaze, and she smiled back with such love it burned its way into Wes’s heart.

Exclamations of joy went round the room.

Wes rose, went to stand behind Lacy’s chair and put a hand to her slim shoulder. He grinned, wondering where the deuce the vicar was. “Our vicar is always late. One must come into the world and leave it on his schedule. But in the meantime, Captain, I am intrigued how you too are here at so propitious a time. Did Whitehall also receive a letter from Charles?” Wes meant it as a joke, but the reaction on Hawritch’s face told no tale of laughter. “
What
?” he demanded of the man who had served him so well and never flinched from bad news. “What nerve have I struck?”

Beneath Wes’s fingers, Lacy’s muscles tensed.

“General Dickson received a letter, sir.” Hawritch’s gaze went round the room and landed on Lacy. “From Lady Featherstone.”

To find himself out maneuvered by his beloved tempted Wes to anger. But he knew not the results of her intrusion, and to be fair to her, he had never known her to be without some noble purpose to her acts. Without a look at her, Wes walked around to face his subordinate. “Give me the letter, Captain. I will now see what Dickson has to say.”

Hawritch gave it up to him, and Wes tore open the wax seal and read, then re-read the orders. He was to report to Dickson in Whitehall with all due speed. There, he was to take up a position on general staff, consulting on the troop movements north through Spain toward France. If and when circumstances warranted and his health improved, he would go with Arthur Wellesley in pursuit of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Wes turned on his heel and faced Lacy. “Stand up.”

She bit her lip then rose from her chair.

“Come here.”

She lifted her chin, valiant as ever, and marched forward.

“Do you have any idea what is in this set of orders?”

She shrugged, but her eyes never left his.

“What did you suggest to my commanding officer?”

“That he put you to work. In London in Whitehall. Until you are more fit. I said two or three months would do it.”

“You did, eh? Anything else?”

She nodded. “And afterward, once you are more fully recovered and if the war still rages, that you serve on General Wellesley’s staff in Spain.”

“Because?”

She lifted her chin higher, and her robin’s egg blue eyes challenged his. “You are a magnificent officer. A wise man. A talent who must not be wasted at such perilous times as these.”

Wes examined her. She was young and blindingly lovely. Headstrong and sometimes foolish. But she was brave and kind. Selfless in her love of him and he adored her.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and held her closer to kiss her hard and fast. “You will be a famous Stanhope wife.”

“Not as famous as my husband,” she assured him. “And only if that vicar learns how to read a clock!”

Wes lifted Lacy’s hood against the March winds as he led the way into the front door of a Portsmouth inn near the docks. He’d arranged for a room for them for the next three days in this tiny, tidy place with strong fires, good cooks and soft beds.

He waved to the innkeeper near the tavern bar as they passed toward the stairs then up to the top floor where they were alone in the largest room. He could barely keep his hands to himself she looked so lovely.

Once inside the room, he kicked the door shut and caught her up in his arms to swing her around. “I have missed you.”

She wound her arms around his neck and worked at the clasp of his cloak. “Since I was with you last in February in London, I have been starved for you.” She let him kiss her cheek while she worked at the buttons on his uniform.

“You don’t feel starved,” he complained. “You’ve gained weight!”

“It’s damn cold in Lancashire in winter, sir! Besides a married woman can be fat and happy.”

“Who told you that?” he objected playfully.

She chuckled. “You can lift me, you brute. Do not complain!”

“How are your father and Aunt Amaryllis?” he asked of the lovebirds who recently became betrothed.

“I think I am jealous,” Lacy said, giggling. “They are so cute together. Like children who have a new game to play.” She pushed his cloak and coat off his shoulders.

“Mmm. Happiness is a fresh sport. I understand it now.” Wes held out his arms as she fiddled with his shirt.

“Delicious, isn’t it?” She stretched up to kiss his jaw.

He grabbed her around the waist and held her while he plundered her luscious mouth. “None to compare.” He let her work on his flies. “Tell me about Jack and Adam and Felice.” Lacy had stayed with them in London before she’d left to come to Portsmouth and bid him farewell for Spain. “Georgie, too,” he added Adam’s son by his first wife.

“All well.” Lacy flung off her own cloak. “And send you their love. Georgie sends gooey little kisses, too. Like this.” She put an imitation of a child’s kiss on his lips.

He licked his lips and rolled his eyes. “And how are my horses?”

“Well. I think Lucinda will breed this year. She may have conceived already. I cannot be sure yet. But I will write to let you know.”

“Do that.” His hands now more practiced at removing all her folderol, he managed to get her bodice open and spread the fabric wide. Then he placed his mouth atop the mound of one breast and breathed in her scent. “Christ, you are lovely. How did I think I could ever do without you?”

She wound her fingers in his hair. “That was a mystery, Colonel. I had to solve it.”

“You did, my love.” He took her lips then, long and lavishly, the sweet caverns of her mouth a new delight to him each time he tasted her. “I shall forever be grateful.”

She cupped his cock through his trousers. “Care to show your wife just how grateful you are?”

“What is your pleasure, madam?” he teased.

“That we not leave this room until you board the transport.”

“That,” he whispered with reverence as he let her clothes drift to the floor, “I can do.”

“That you not speak of Spain,” she told him, “only us, while you make love to me.”

“Done as well.”

“That you know I will think of you daily, hourly.”

“I have known it since the minute you barged your way in the front door of the lodge.” He sent his lips down her throat, his hands cupping her breasts, his thumbs brushing her peaking nipples. “Everything you did was to show me I was not dead.”

She opened the button of his trousers and reached inside to take his cock in hand. “I have the proof.”

He rammed his thigh under one of hers and pushed her against the wall, his fingers finding her deliciously eager for him. Then he lifted her leg and the tip of his shaft found her opening. In one explosive jolt, he was inside her, stunning her, thrilling himself with her surrender.

Her eyes closed, she seemed to swoon. “I think you are well recovered, my love.”

His forehead rested on her shoulder. He was shaking with laughter. “To take you against the wall?”

She moaned. “To hold me up with both arms and use your left leg, you are so healthy, darling. I am so proud of you.”

He laughed and slid rhythmically in and out of her. “Proud of me? I owe my renewed life to you.”

“And I to you,” she told him. “Oh, Wes, what would have happened if you had not wanted me again in Lancashire?” The anguish in her tone shocked him, but he knew what propelled her today was fear for his life.