“I trust you will invite Captain Ransome to stay at Longueville when he arrives, Nicholas. It has been too long since I enjoyed a challenging game of whist.”
“As you say, Dorothea, the captain is a charming rascal,” Mrs. Hargate remarked. “His presence would be a welcome addition to our party.”
“Then I shall most certainly invite him,” Nicholas said, rising to accompany the ladies into the drawing room.
Later that evening, long after Digby had eased the blue superfine coat from his master’s broad shoulders and loosened the starched cravat, Nicholas flung himself into his favorite chair beside the empty hearth, full glass in hand, a brandy decanter within easy reach, and let his mind slide back to that glorious summer ten years ago when he had considered himself the most fortunate of men in England.
Chapter Four
Angelica
Longueville Castle, Cornwall Summer 1804
Nicholas listened to the soft breathing of the girl in bed beside him. In the flickering glow of the gutted candles, he could see her breasts rising and falling in the gentle rhythm of sleep. His fingers ached to reach out to caress her, but he restrained his intemperate urges, forcing himself to ignore the now familiar tightening of his groin every time he contemplated his wife for any length of time.
His wife!
The Countess of Longueville. Nicholas marveled at the sound of it ringing in his head, and grinned foolishly down at the sleeping girl. He still thought of Angelica as a girl, although he had discovered on their wedding night that she was as eager and uninhibited as any woman he had ever bedded.
Or so it had seemed to a bridegroom rather more in his cups than was proper.
It had been the wedding of the Season. That Nicholas did remember clearly.
St. George’s in Hanover Square had been unable to accommodate the crush of London’s elite who came in record numbers to witness the leg-shackling of one of England’s most eligible bachelors. His euphoria had been so intense that even the most ribald of jests from his circle of friends had failed to shake the quiet certainty Nicholas had felt that he had stepped into a fairy wonderland of delight and undeserved joy.
Even the wild coach ride along the London-Bath Road to Farnaby Hall, his uncle’s estate on the outskirts of Bath, could not dim his joy. Accompanied by a boisterous cavalcade of those same ribald friends, who had set themselves up as his unofficial escort, Nicholas had accepted his Aunt Lydia’s invitation to break his journey back to Cornwall at Farnaby Hall. His cousin Matthew, ever ready for a lark, had helped persuade the new bride to forgo a quiet wedding night at Morley Court in London for an adventure by moonlight on the King’s highway.
Angelica had been more than willing to be persuaded by his handsome cousin, and the noisy procession of coaches and riders had set out at midnight, after the sumptuous bridal feast, laid out with meticulous care by the Dowager Countess, had been demolished and the musicians sent home to their well-earned beds.
This was yet another side to his new bride that charmed the earl. She was ever ready to override what she called stuffy conventions if they stood in the way of her pleasure. In this the new countess was like his cousin, although in Matthew the pursuit of pleasure had already acquired a reckless edge that his mother, Lady Lydia Farnaby, privately deplored.
Nicholas was not surprised when his mother bitterly protested what she termed a vulgar display of ramshackled manners better suited to London street sweepers than a peer of the realm. In any other circumstance, Nicholas might have agreed with the dowager, but Angelica declared the scheme a famous lark, and one glance at her sweetly pouting lips was all it took to convince the earl that no possible harm could come of the adventure.
He had not counted on the frequent stops at posting houses along the Bath Road, nor the increasing quantity of local ale consumed by his boisterous escort. By the time the party pulled into the Black Swan in Melksham, ten miles short of their destination, Nicholas was feeling the effects of the innumerable toasts he had been obliged to drink to his bride.
He glanced down again at the girl who had brought him so much happiness.
Angelica.
She was well named, he thought. Seeing her lying there so vulnerable and trusting, her spun-gold hair spread on the silk pillow in a halo around her delicate face, Nicholas knew that angelic was the only word that truly caught the essence of his wife.
He really should go back to his own bed. It was unseemly for a husband, however infatuated, to take advantage of his wife’s sense of duty to satisfy his own unquenchable desires. Once should be enough. Or perhaps twice, he thought wryly, since once would never be enough with Angelica.
And what was this farradiddle about sense of duty? One of the things he most admired about his wife was that she lacked the dowager’s rigid adherence to protocol and tradition. Her nonchalant attitude towards his title and fortune had both shocked and amused him. And what might be termed duty in other wives was nothing so conventional in Angelica. Had he not intended, night after night, to leave her at a decent hour, only to be sweetly detained by two white arms flung impetuously about his neck? And two soft lips begging to be kissed? And a warm, seductive voice whispering deliciously erotic nothings in his ear?
How was a man expected to resist such temptation?
His wife sighed, and her eyelids fluttered. The little minx was awake, he thought. When her lips twitched into a smile, Nicholas knew he had guessed correcdy. Throwing caution to the winds, he leaned down and brushed one last kiss on that tantalizing mouth.
He should leave now, he told himself, but knew he would not when her arms slipped round his neck and drew him down on top of her.
“Do not leave me yet, love,” she murmured against his ear. “Surely it is no more than midnight.”
“The clock downstairs has struck three, sweetheart,” Nicholas said, breathing in the exotic perfume that his mother had declared more appropriate for a second-rate opera singer than a countess.
Nicholas liked it. There was something vaguely wanton about it that never failed to arouse him.
He was aroused now. The warmth of her arms about his neck and the hot pressure of her lips against his ear chased any thought of retiring to his own bed out of his mind. And then his wife whispered something so outrageous that he raised his head and stared at her in disbelief.
“What did you say, love?”
A gurgle of mocking laughter told him he had not misunderstood her. “I forbid you to be stuffy, Nicholas,” she murmured, gazing up at him through half-closed eyes.
There was a moment’s silence while Nicholas digested his wife’s new fantasy.
“Did you actually ask me to ... 7'
Angelica pouted prettily. “Of course I did,” she said, a touch impatiently. “I asked you to rip my night rail off and ravish me. What is so unusual about that?”
If truth be told, Nicholas considered his wife’s request highly unusual, particularly in the marriage bed, but he knew better than to say so. Only last week she had begged him to put her across his knee, pull up her night rail, and smack her like a naughty child. When he flatly denied her, she had banished him from her bed and refused to speak to him for an entire day.
That had been almost too much to bear. Nicholas did not wish to repeat the anguish of falling out of his wife’s good graces. Neither did he wish to behave like a brute with the woman he loved beyond reason.
“Are you sure you wish to destroy that bewitching night rail, my sweet?” he ventured, hoping he could deflect this aberrant request with more practical considerations.
“Of course not, silly,” she retorted pettishly. “I want you to destroy it, Nicky. So do not disappoint me, darling. You know what happens when you do that.”
The words were spoken seductively, and his wife’s hands caressed his hair and trailed suggestively down the length of his naked back, but Nicholas could not fail to hear the threat echoing in the background. He would be banished again, he thought, and that was unthinkable.
Angelica grasped his hand and brought it up to the lacy neckline of the night rail. Instinctively, Nicholas grasped the fragile silk, his senses already aroused by the implications of what she demanded of him.
“Go on, Nicholas,” she urged, her back already arched in anticipation. “Do not be a slow-top, dearest. Surely you have played these love games with your amourettes. Do not pretend you are an innocent. I am the innocent here, sweet, and I expect you to teach me all you know about pleasure.”
She smiled up at him, her eyes glimmering hotly through half- closed lids; her lips moist and parted, her breath already shallow with desire.
Nicholas felt his resistance dissolving.
In vain he reminded himself that he had—or so he thought— taught Angelica all about pleasure. At least as much as was proper for a wife to know. The notion of extending that education into the realms frequented by the more experienced courtesans of his acquaintance disturbed him. Perhaps he was a slow-top, he thought wryly. Perhaps his notions of what was proper behavior in a wife was, as Angelica claimed, stuffy and old-fashioned.
“Well?” his wife demanded, impatience making her voice sharp. “What are you waiting for, love?”
“You wish me to tear your clothes off? Seriously?”
“Of course,” she purred. “And do not tease me, Nicholas. You know I hate to be teased.”
He grasped the silk more firmly and sensed that it would be child’s play to rip the garment in two. All it required was determination.
“Do it, dearest,” his wife murmured in a passion-heavy voice. “Pretend I am an unprotected female you simply must have and ravish me. Do it, Nicholas. Please do it.”
Much later, back in his own bed at last, Nicholas could find no way to justify the violence he had perpetrated on the body of the woman he loved. Violence had never been his way. His weakness in acquiescing to Angelica’s demands for rough games disgusted him.
The sound of ripping silk followed him into what remained of the night, and for many nights to come.
Chapter Five
Unanswered Questions
“Are you actually suggesting there is any truth to those old rumors about the earl’s role in his wife’s death, Mrs. Rawson?” Lady Sylvia replaced the delicate porcelain cup in its saucer and shot a skeptical glance at Lady Marguerite.
She had joined her aunt and Giovanni for tea in the Italian Saloon, where they were entertaining the vicar’s garrulous wife, Mrs. Violet Rawson, and her widowed sister, Mrs. Rose Downy. Predictably, the conversation of the two elder ladies had veered towards the recent return of the master of Longueville Castle, which they had pronounced unwise in the extreme.
Mrs. Rawson—who prided herself on being able to recite the entire family history of every last one of her husband’s parishioners—fixed her sharp agate eyes on Sylvia and smiled condescendingly.
“Where there is smoke, there is usually fire,” she murmured, falling back on popular wisdom, which she invariably did at the slightest hint of opposition. “And let me assure you, my dear Lady Sylvia, that there was plenty of smoke on the moors and cliffs in these parts when her ladyship came to her untimely end.”
“I have always maintained that the mystery of the countess’s accident was vastly exaggerated by the locals,” Lady Marguerite remarked, motioning to Hobson to add hot water to the silver tea-pot. “Do try these watercress sandwiches, Mrs. Downy; the cress is particularly tasty this year.”
Sylvia watched her aunt offer the plate to her guest, and realized that Lady Marguerite was heartily tired of the topic introduced by
every visitor who had set foot in Whitecliffs since the return of the Morleys to Longueville Castle. She was becoming more than a little tired of it herself, although certain aspects of the young bride’s sudden death seemed to defy explanation.
“But you will admit there was a mystery surrounding the event, my lady,” Mrs. Downy insisted, helping herself to one of the delicate cress sandwiches, “and that it was never explained why her ladyship ventured down to the cliffs by moonlight. All alone, too, if what the magistrate said was true.”
Her sister gave a snort of derision. “That one was not alone, you can take my word for it,” the vicar’s wife cut in with what Sylvia considered a deplorable lack of Christian charity. “Birds of a feather, you know,” she added darkly. “And as for that mealy- mouthed magistrate, we all know Sir Gerald was hand in glove with the earl to put a good light on the affair.”
“I daresay there was enough evidence to support the verdict of accidental death,” Lady Marguerite remarked evenly, ignoring the unflattering allegation of Sir Gerald Littlefield’s handling of the affair. “The young countess was rash to a fault, perhaps, but everyone knows those cliffs can be treacherous.”
“If it was an accident, as you claim, my lady,” the vicar’s wife insisted pugnaciously, “why did her ladyship leave a suicide note? And what exactly did that note say?”
“We do not know it was a suicide note,” Lady Marguerite cut in sharply. “It may have had no bearing on the tragedy at all.” “Besides,” Sylvia added, anxious, for some inexplicable reason, to divert the accusations from the earl, “I understand that Lord Longueville denied the note was written in his wife’s hand.”
Mrs. Rawson looked at her pityingly. “Of course he would deny it, my dear. He did not wish the poor child to be banned from hallowed ground. But Mr. Rawson confided to me that the note was definitely written by her ladyship.”
Her sister shook her head vigorously. “So you have told us many a time, Violet,” she said. “But how do you explain the rumor, still current in the village, that the note was from a gentleman?”
Lady Marguerite put her cup down with more force than necessary, and Sylvia saw that her aunt had finally lost patience with this pointless gossip about the unfortunate countess.
“I do believe this is a moot point, ladies,” she said coldly. “How the countess died and why is no longer our concern. It was settled ten years ago by Sir Gerald, and I suggest we allow the poor child to rest in peace.”
She looked pointedly at the handsome gilt clock on the mantelpiece, indicating that the visit was over.
Mrs. Rawson opened her mouth to protest, but she evidently thought better of it, for she smiled ingratiatingly at her hostess and turned to her sister. “I believe we have taken up enough of her ladyship’s hospitality, Rose. And remember we have promised to stop in at old Mrs. Jones’s to ask after her daughter.”
She leveled her agate stare on Lady Sylvia, who wondered what new piece of vicious gossip the old Tabby was about to regurgitate.
“Have you heard that Lila Jones is finally riveted to that rogue who led her into a fool’s paradise last spring, my lady?” The smile that accompanied this arch pronouncement was deceptively mild. “Thanks to my dear Mr. Rawson’s intervention, of course, that Daly lad finally made an honest woman of the lass. Mrs. Jones is in alt over the happy ending to what might have been an ugly scandal. What with the baby expected around Christmastime and all.”
The smile, which had definitely become a smirk, did not reach the woman’s eyes, and Sylvia suddenly realized that the tid-bit of gossip had been expressly intended to remind her of her own fall from grace. With a Herculean effort, she kept her face expressionless. Not for the world would she give this old harridan the satisfaction of knowing she had hit her mark.
“What delightful news,” Sylvia heard herself gush insincerely. “I do hope Lila is happy with the match. I have heard Tom Daly is a bit of a scoundrel.”
“Never you doubt it, my lady,” Mrs. Downy remarked, and at least her smile appeared genuine, Sylvia noted. “Young Tom may be a bit of a devil with the lasses, but now that poor Lila has a ring on her finger, she is respectable again.”
“Poor Lila!” Sylvia exploded, after the two gossips had departed. “What a hypocrite that woman is. Poor Lila will live to regret throwing in her lot with that jackstraw, unless I am very much mistaken. And as for a marria
ge ring making her respectable again ... Bah! What humbug!”
Giovanni spoke for the first time since the subject of the countess’s mysterious death had been introduced by Mrs. Rawson. “There is at least some truth to it, my dear Sylvia,” he said gently.
“To the ignorant mind, marriage is the cure for all kinds of sins. Another much abused concept, of course,” he added hastily as Lady Marguerite threw him a dark look.
“Are you actually endorsing that dreadful woman’s misguided illusion that Sylvia and I are sinners, my dear Giovanni?” she inquired with deceptive sweetness.
Sylvia glanced at her aunt’s Italian paramour and saw him smile—a tender, sensuous smile he reserved solely for Lady Marguerite—a smile so full of love and devotion that it had shocked Sylvia when first she witnessed it. She had been brought up to believe that gentlemen never, not even in their most intimate moments, entertained what her father had always referred to as uncouth emotions, much less displayed them as frankly as Giovanni did. She had since learned that Lord Weston had misled her into believing that all gentlemen were equally reticent about the expression of their feelings.
Watching the Italian’s smile deepen, and his eyes turn a warmer shade of velvety brown, Sylvia reflected, as she had many times before, that her aunt was the luckiest woman she knew. To command the love and loyalty of such a man had become, over the years she had spent in Cornwall, one of Sylvia’s secret fantasies. But eligible gentlemen were as scarce as hen’s teeth in this remote part of England, and had there been any, not one of them—if her father’s dire prediction was true—would have looked at her with anything but contempt.
Eligible, indeed! Sylvia had soon discovered that in one respect, at least, Lord Weston had predicted correctly. She was herself ineligible. As if it was not revealing enough for a young, unmarried female to take up residence in a household as notoriously debauched as Lady Marguerite’s was reputed to be, local gossip endlessly speculated on the truth of Sylvia’s disgrace.
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