by Alysha Ellis
“My lord,” Gaylord announced them, standing before him with a damn bright twinkle in his eye. “Lady Rawleigh and Lord Turnbull.”
“Thank you, Tindale,” Taryn called Gaylord by his assumed last name, then ran his eyes over the skinny woman—she reminded him of victims of the plague, she was that thin. As for Turnbull, that man must have eaten all of Rawleigh’s share. Both of these villains had tried to gobble whole the estates of the Marchioness of Thorne, too. “Do be seated, my lady. My lord. Sherry, perhaps?”
The woman who might have reminded him of Bess had she any flesh on her bones or compassion in her heart, folded her hands and pursed her lips. “Lord Wentworth, I have no stomach for sherry.”
“Whisky, then?” You’ll need it. He threw her the look many had dubbed Wentworth’s Wrath.
She wiggled in her chair, arching an eyebrow to feign a blasé attitude. “Certainly not.”
“See here, Wentworth.”
Taryn glowered at Turnbull. “Lord Wentworth, to you, Bully.”
“Well now, you must not use—”
“Not use the name they call you in the gaming houses?” Taryn shot back. “Such an apt moniker. For your efforts these past few years have been nothing other than a bully’s.”
The man puffed out his cheeks. “I will not sit here and take this!”
“You will if you wish to learn what I know,” Taryn said smoothly as he poured a sherry for himself and took a satisfying sip. His two guests could fluster and bluster, but this was his evening to enjoy.
“If you know where Elizabeth is, you must tell us,” the gaunt little crow demanded.
“She is to marry within the week,” Turnbull told him, though Wentworth hardly needed the reaffirmation of news he had heard here in the city upon his return from the Americas a few weeks ago. “And we dare not reveal to the world that she is gone.”
“Afraid her fiancé will not fork over the bride price you demanded?” Taryn taunted him. “What did you plan to do, drug her and carry her off?”
“Outrageous!” Turnbull grumbled.
“That is what you did six years ago when you took her from me. Why not again, eh?”
Both of his guests stiffened their spines.
Wentworth was warmed at once by his sherry and his guests’ discomfort. “Not bothering to deny it. Good. I like honesty in my adversaries.”
“Do you know where she is?” Rawleigh insisted. “Or are you toying with us?”
“Because you have no proof of the incident six years ago,” declared Turnbull.
“Mason!” Taryn called and at once, the far wall, lined with book shelves, swivelled on its axis.
“What the hell?” Turnbull exclaimed as a man appeared in the portal.
“Oh, my God,” the woman rasped with one look at the gentleman who walked in.
Wentworth took a seat in his leather chair, crossed one leg over the other and gleefully eyed the famous solicitor of the house of Deveraux as he entered the library and sat opposite Taryn.
“What the hell are you doing here, Mason?” the woman barked.
The rotund little man beamed at the woman and her brother as he arranged himself.
“Sherry, Mr Mason?” Wentworth offered as if he had nothing else in the world to do and this were a strictly social occasion.
“Thank you, my lord, but later is best.” The little man directed his striking silver eyes on Turnbull and Rawleigh.
“Do tell my guests what it is you are here to do, Mr Mason.”
“I have brought with me to Lord Wentworth the last will and testament of the eighth Marquess of Thorne.”
“Rubbish,” Lady Rawleigh exclaimed, her nose in the air. “My brother-in-law was a n’er-do-well who died of his excesses. His mind was gone when he wrote it and then took his last breath.”
“No matter,” rejoined Mason. “He left his estates intact to his daughter, Elizabeth.”
“She was only sixteen years of age when her father shed his mortal coil,” Rawleigh huffed.
“But the Marquess did not think you two, her only surviving relatives, would squander the wealth of her lands and spend her yearly income on jewels and furs and gambling.”
Taryn downed the last of his sherry, his distaste for this unveiling growing shorter with each disgusting revelation. “Nor did the old man think you would stoop to drugging her with laudanum to ruin her health and rob her of her rightful due.”
Rawleigh hitched up a shoulder. “You cannot prove it.”
Taryn arched an eyebrow. “For years, I heard stories in the islands and in the cities of America of a young English heiress who had been drugged by her guardians. Never did I think those tales might be true, let alone that they would be about one I knew, one I loved. But I came home to claim my own due as earl and put the facts together about Elizabeth’s disappearance six years ago.”
Turnbull sat so far back in his chair, Taryn thought he might disappear inside it.
“Ba!” the woman scoffed. “Fantasy. If you think we came here to be insulted you are wrong. Come, Reginald, we leave these two to their fairy tales.”
“Sit. Down.”
She sniffed at Wentworth’s command.
Her brother stood.
Taryn rose to his feet and towered above them. “I said sit down. Mr Mason, do tell them what else you have brought us.”
“The estate record books for the past eight years.”
The women set her ugly jaw. “The devil you say.”
Mason narrowed his eyes at her. “When Elizabeth came to me with her tale of abuse and abduction at your hands, I was so stricken by her story, I knew I must remove them from Worthe House. I conserved them to reveal all of your crimes.”
“When did she come to you?” Turnbull demanded. “When?”
“Before she came to see you a month ago. I should have known not to let her go to you alone, but she insisted. Said she wanted to see the looks on your faces when she appeared from the blue.” Mason chuckled. “I understand she did a fine job.”
Taryn leant forward. “But not fine enough. You got up to your old tricks at once and attacked her. Keep the opium close by, do you? For yourself, Turnbull? I know it is easy to form an addiction if one keeps to the dens in Seven Dials. Thought you would drug her, but she was faster, smarter. And all the time you planned to hurry her off to the altar to wed that idiot MacDowell.”
Turnbull took his sister’s arm. “This is absurd! I will not listen. Elizabeth agreed to the engagement with Francis MacDowell. I did not have to persuade her.”
Taryn laughed. “That bounder. He has done anything short of murder for money. Not a decent bone in his body. What do you have to tell us about MacDowell, Mr Mason?”
The solicitor patted his coat pocket. “I have here a signed affidavit by the less-than-honourable Francis MacDowell describing the payment you would make to him to marry the Marchioness and carry her away on a long voyage. He is careful to note how you required him to feed the lady laudanum on a regular basis.”
“He cannot prove it,” Turnbull spat.
“Lies,” Rawleigh accused them. “His word against ours.”
“It must have been terrible for you both not to be able to find Elizabeth, all these years since you abducted her from me in the coaching inn and locked her up in her own home.”
“That you cannot prove, either,” Turnbull stated.
“But I can,” Taryn countered.
Turnbull waved a hand as he made for the doors to the hall. But when he opened them, there stood Gaylord and James filling the expanse.
Turnbull bleated like a trapped animal. “This is madness. You cannot waylay us. Our servants know we are here. Our coachman.”
“We should never have come,” Rawleigh murmured.
The two of them tried to walk around the two men, but at once they stopped.
Taryn could not see their expressions, but he saw what they did and his heart blossomed with the satisfaction borne of reprieve from years of heartbrea
k.
There in the hall stood a glorious lady, adorned in a froth of golden silk tissue, diamonds at her elegant throat, chestnut hair swept up in the latest fashion.
She walked forward so that Gaylord and James parted to let her pass. There, she confronted her relatives, her captors, her tormenters. In all her glory, the Marchioness of Worthe stared them down with a hauteur that made Taryn beam with pride at her beauty and her power.
Lady Rawleigh stood, transfixed.
Turnbull turned to Taryn. “What game is this?”
Flicking her fan, the Marchioness of Worthe swept between them to stride into the library and take the red brocade Chippendale. Taryn hid a snicker at the unending astonishment of the two guests. Her ladyship sat, glaring at them, as if she were the queen and they her fools. The two were drawn in to the room like magnets.
“I trust,” Elizabeth told her aunt and uncle in the fine clipped tones of a lady of her elegant station, “that Mr Mason has reacquainted you both with the particulars of my father’s will. MacDowell’s statements save him from a nasty civil suit. As for you two, I will have you both leave my home in Park Street this evening by midnight. You may take nothing with you but a few garments in a valise.”
“This is absurd,” Lady Rawleigh challenged her.
“This is my right,” Elizabeth declared. “These two good men will accompany you to Worthe House, along with Mr Mason, and you will surrender the keys.”
Taryn crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the drama of Elizabeth reclaiming her birthright.
Gaylord took the woman’s arm while James took hold of the man’s. To no avail, the intruders tried to shrug off Taryn’s two brothers.
“You’ll do all this to marry him?” shouted Elizabeth’s aunt. “Who is he but a bastard, a blaggard? He seduced you and carried you off to Gretna Green. Why? For your money.”
Taryn moved to stand by Elizabeth, one hand to her warm shoulder. He watched the Rawleigh woman be marched along by Gaylord down the hall, his hatred for her glowing with the fires of hell. What audacity to bring up his own past, when she herself had drugged her own niece, abducted her and imprisoned her.
Elizabeth sat, unaffected, silent but serene, her gaze upon the two nemeses who had cast her into a limbo for years of her young life. When at last the door was shut upon the foursome, Taryn bent to take her hand and blessed it with a kiss.
“Come, my lady, time to dine.”
She rose to her feet, her molten gaze adoring his own, as she went into his open arms. “The Marchioness of Worthe and her beau, The Earl of Wentworth. They sound like a lovely couple. I wonder who has precedence.”
He hugged her close and cupped her jaw to kiss her like a madman. “Why does it matter?”
“Well,” she cooed and tossed her head, relief rolling off her with little shivers and generous smiles. “Don’t you wish to know who should give the orders?”
“I am astonished, madam.” He played at affront, one hand to his heart. “Are you telling me you do not wish to serve me and my household to the end of my days?”
“Oh, but I do. In any way you want me.” She curled her arms around his neck and reached up on tiptoes to rub her lips on his. “Even with Gaylord and James, if you wish, good sir.”
His blood roared with hot desire to have her before him, servicing him and his brothers all at once. Dipping his head, he licked her shoulder and nipped her flesh. “I want you now. Alone. Before they return. To seal the promise I made to you six years ago.”
She pulled back to scan his features. Tears stood in her eyes. “To love only me until you die.”
“You know it’s true.”
She nodded, a tender sweetness curving her lush lips. “I knew it then. I never stopped believing, even when they drugged me half out of my mind. The promise of your love gave me the courage to run away from them and find a new existence. Then when I worked for Lord Mowbray, he told me one day of a young shipping magnate making a fortune in the Indies. When he told me that man’s name, I knew I had reason to live. I promised myself I would see you once more and learn if you might still want me.”
“Never another did I want for my bride. Never in all these years.”
“The hope kept me alive,” she whispered.
He threaded his fingers through her dark, silky hair, his heart hammering with the joy of having her to himself after so long. He fought back tears himself. “And you decided to come here and surprise me. How wonderful of you.”
“I had to see you. See if you might still care for me. Still, I miscalculated to go home and taunt my aunt and uncle. I should have waited to do that until Mason got the affidavit from that fiend MacDowell. But I escaped them, thank God, and came here to apply to you. What better way than to surprise you as your cook?”
Taryn slipped his hand inside her bodice and pushed down the fabric to reveal a large, pointed breast. He had to have her. Bending to lave her lush nipples, he sucked her silken flesh up into his mouth. She arched, sighing, clutching his shoulders. “My pretty cook. My Bess.”
“Have me. I have waited and wanted for so very long.”
He bunched up her skirts, destroying the line of the gown but caring nothing for the frippery. “Ah. No pantalets. Bess, my darling, what a wise little chit you are.”
As he found her drenched cunt with probing fingers, she cupped his cock through the heavy wool of his trousers. “You are so wanton, too.”
He led her to the small chair without arms and sat. In a move reminiscent of yesterday when he had tossed her skirts, he lifted her gown now. Her long, flawless legs and her bare musky pussy had him panting for her. “What a beauty you are, my pet.”
She worked at his flies and in a trice, sank down over his pulsing erection with an expertise that had him dreaming of the rest of his life with her sucking his cum from his cock. He ran his fingers through the disarray of her coiffure. And he let her have her fill of him, but only up to the final surge.
“No, my love. You must let me give you pleasure, too.”
She left him with a teasing lick to his slit, then shifted up and sank over his straining member. Her head thrown back, she opened her mouth in abandon. Then she rode him.
He fucked her hard and fast, their mutual release at once a storm and a deliverance.
She draped her torso over him, boneless and sighing. “Will Gaylord and James wish a go at me when they return?”
Taryn brushed her hair from her cheeks and knew where she went with this line of discussion. “It would be fair.”
She sought more answers in his gaze.
He gave them. “You knew six years ago, I had proclivities for this kind of sexual arrangement.”
“I did not object. I was yours to command, as I am now.”
“I see you with them and I enjoy sharing you. I wish it for all four of us.”
“I think then we should adjourn to the earl’s suite where a large and comfortable bed awaits us.”
She wiggled her eyebrows and her arse, while her pussy muscles stroked his drained cock. “My lord, what an outrage! Your cook in your bed!”
He pushed up inside her so that she gasped at his girth. “My lady, that woman may be my cook but she is soon to be my wife. And where I go, there she is forevermore.”
About the Author
What’s a gal to do to if she lives deep in the heart of Texas, travels often everywhere, and adores Paris, Florence, London, Tokyo and all points east and west?
Ah.
She becomes an author who can write about those romantic places. With a passion for cowboys, spies, rakes, knights in shining armour and their gutsy women, Cerise DeLand is an author who adores an alpha male with a tender heart and a need for a smouldering erotic love affair with the right woman!
Cerise is a Top 20 Best Selling author on Amazon with more than three dozen works published in erotic romance, and she is also an award-winning author of mystery, mainstream and romance with St Martin’s Press, Pocket Books and Kensington.
Her books are on numerous book clubs, including Featured Selections of The Mystery Guild, Doubleday and Rhapsody. And when she isn’t dreaming up fiction or travelling? Cerise is a fabulous cook and an avid history buff.
Busy lady. Happy writer.
Email: [email protected]
Cerise loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.
Also by Cerise DeLand
Hard Drivin’ Man
Swords of Passion: At Her Service
Swords of Passion: For Her Honour
Tough Texas Hombres: One Tough Hombre
Tough Texas Hombres: Two Tough Hombres
Sharing the Billionaire: Cuffed to Him
A LADY FOR TWO
Nan Comargue
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmark mentioned in this work of fiction:
Crown Derby: Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company
Chapter One
At first, Lise thought it must be her husband, inexplicably home early from his intended fortnight in town. She blew a blonde curl off her forehead, straining her eyes to see through the gloom outside. The tall figure coming up the drive looked just like his, although all features and costume were lost in the growing dimness of approaching twilight. But then she saw the faint stutter in the figure’s stride and knew that it couldn’t be Charles.
Damn it, she thought, another visitor. And a rude one at that. The hour for paying social calls was long past.
