The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection Volume 2

by MacMurrough, Sorcha

  "I say, there had better be some champagne left after last night," Georgina said.

  "We have to send around to Stone Court, Eltham Castle, Ashton Manor and the Vicarage too," said Ellen, running to the morning room for paper and pen to dash off four notes to spread the news.

  Soon the house was full once more, with an impromptu engagement party under way with their closest friends.

  Blake had never been more relieved in his life. He beamed and smiled, and was pleased to see that not a single person even so much as looked askance at them. Even the solemn Martin Jerome wished them much happiness.

  Arabella could not have been more delighted. It was a dream come true at last. She had been terrified something would try to tear them asunder. Thus far everyone was happy for them and she could not see a single dark cloud on her horizon.

  As the wedding preparations got under way, however, word spread throughout the neighbourhood. And not everyone was so delighted about the news.

  In Bath, Rosalie lay on her back, riding crop in hand as her latest lover laboured between her thighs.

  Laboured was most certainly the operative word, she thought with a barely suppressed yawn. She smacked his buttocks hard to try to liven him up a bit, but all he did was groan and collapse. "I'm still done in from the Jerome ball the other night," he whined.

  "Don't mention that ball to me," she hissed furiously, cross at not having been invited. "That bastard Blake is richer than ever, and has the nerve to-well, never mind."

  "He obviously has other things on his mind if he hasn't responded to your communications," he said, trying to mollify her. "He's getting married on Friday after all."

  "Married!" She cracked the whip down on his buttocks so hard she drew blood. "To whom?"

  "To Arabella Neville, of course. Who else does he have eyes for these days? Guardian and ward my foot. Anyone can see they're hot for each other. He's made a fool of us all, skewering her whenever he got the chance, I'll be bound. Obviously got caught out, and has to marry the simpering little twit. He'll be back, I'm sure!" he shrieked as she began to thrash him until he almost fainted from the pain.

  "Out!" she screeched, calling him every single foul name she could think of. "Get off me and get out! And don't you dare ever speak to me again."

  Adam was even more livid. He was so furious he punched his brother right in the mouth.

  "What are you hitting me for?" Oliver snarled, clutching his jaw. "I'm not the one who nabbed her right out from under you!"

  "You should have bloody well tried harder, then! At least one of us would have ended up with her fortune!"

  "I never had a chance with her. You gave it a run for your money, and you lost. Blame yourself." He spat blood as he looked at him furiously. "You're really getting beyond the Pale, you know."

  Adam scowled blackly, but decided he could use all the allies he could get. "I'm sorry. I just can't believe-" He nearly choked on his own fury. "Who the hell stole our prize? That bastard Philip Marshall?"

  "No. The one who had it to give in the first place."

  Adam shot him a look of incomprehension. "What are you talking about?"

  "Blake himself, of course. Who else?"

  "No! No! No!" He brought his fist down on the table so hard it smashed right through the timber. "No! I'll bloody kill him! I'll kill them both! They've played me for a fool! All of us for fools! Guardian indeed! He's been swiving the little tart all this time right under our very noses! Well, they're both going to pay! I don't care how or when! As soon as I see a chance, they're going to wish they'd never been born."

  Oliver looked at his brother's puce face in alarm. He was out of control, had become more and more foul-tempered ever since the accident that had damaged his spine.

  Oliver knew Adam was in a lot of pain, though he tried to hide it. The support strapping for his back helped keep him upright, but the grinding of the damaged vertebrae had to hurt like the very devil. He wondered how much opium and laudanum he was using these days.

  But for Oliver his brother's violence was even more worrying. "Listen, I know this is a blow to our hopes. But there are plenty of other heiresses. The Jerome girls, for one.

  "Ellen and Georgina are lovely little things, and we've been accepted like family in that house. We keep in with them, we can move in like a pair of wolves amongst the lambs.

  "Don't do anything foolish. Our situation is still recoverable. They are not as pretty, it's true, nor as rich. But they all look the same in the dark, and their dowries will be good enough to pull us out of Queer Street. A bit of luck with the gambling, and we shall be home free.

  "Malcolm Branson plucked his family out of the gutter not so long ago with his luck at the card table. He got high up enough to have been engaged to Emma Jerome before she died. We can do the same. Just tell our creditors we need a bit more time, and put a brave face on it. Get invited to the wedding, escort the girls, and we shall take it from there. You can be very charming when you want to be," Oliver said.

  "Compromise one of them and all our problems will be over," Adam decided with a leer. "I'll even make a bet as to which one we futter first. I reckon little Georgina will be hot enough for it."

  Oliver held out his hand and dared to touch his brother's still-bunched fist. "Please listen, Adam. You need to pull yourself together. Shrug this off as if you couldn't care less. Otherwise people will suspect something. Know we're desperate. Pray, calm yourself. I know it's a blow, but we'll get over it. Smashing up me or the furniture is not going to help."

  Adam's eyes narrowed. "No, but I know someone who might. A couple of people, actually."

  "Where are you going?"

  He snorted with laughter. "To see a lady about a stallion."

  Adam Neville wasted no time in seeking out Rosalie Stanton. She had just risen from bed after kicking out the hapless chap who had given her the bad news about Blake's engagement.

  "Well, well," she said, eyeing up the handsome young man whom she had heard all sorts of interesting things about. He seemed a lad after her own heart, if all that was rumoured were true. This could be interesting… Especially since she was still desperate for a good swive after this morning's debacle. "What brings you here, sir?"

  "I take it you've heard about Blake and Arabella?" he asked.

  "Indeed. Most remarkable, and disgusting, if you ask me."

  "Not good for either of us, as I'm sure you'll agree."

  She was startled by his directness. "But not much we can do to prevent it in only a couple of days."

  "True. But perhaps we don't want to. I understand that you cleverly engineered your own marital separation by ensuring your husband and his, er, friend were caught in flagrante delicto. Surely a woman with your powers of persuasion could manage the same thing with Blake?

  "Only this time, I would ensure that his wife was there to see the whole thing. I would then not only get her fortune, but a sizable chunk of his too. He would have to make a generous settlement upon her, and would never be able to hold up his head again in decent society."

  Her green eyes glittered. "A nice plan. But just why would you want to help me, or me help you?"

  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

  "A good reason, but I can think of a few better ones."

  He took her meaning at once. "Yes, I can see how there might be er, compensations. I'm told that older women have all sorts of experience and tastes which a young men would do well to learn about. So long as you understand that I have a few tastes and needs of my own." He pulled open the small valise he had brought with him.

  Her eyes widened, and she practically purred. "I can't tell you how glad I am you've stopped by."

  He grabbed her wrist before she could touch him. "So long as you understand I have to pay another visit after this. And I'm in charge. We do it where and when I say."

  "Where and when I say," she said with a throaty laugh, baring her breasts, tossing her blonde hair back over one shoulder seductively.
<
br />   She was confident of her own sex appeal and the power it gave her over men. Well, most men, she amended, thinking of how Blake had slipped through her net.

  But Adam was a mere callow youth. She would have him eating out of her hand. And anything else she told him to, she thought with a smile of triumph.

  It soon turned to a grimace of agony as he yanked her gown off completely and flattened her face down on the sitting room table with one violent shove, and spread her legs.

  Leonore's mild-mannered sister had told her the news of the upcoming nuptials. Leonore had barely choked back the foul words which had formed her reply to the innocent question of wasn't it the most marvelous news.

  She was in the parlor, wringing her hands together in indecision over what she could do to stop the match. Wringing her hands as though she would squeeze the very life out of that vile little trull who had dared come between her and Blake.

  She hadn't spent the past six years being generous with him for nothing. True, there had been plenty of other men. Some of them had even proposed to her.

  But it was Blake she had set her sights on, Blake she was determined to have no matter what the cost.

  The arrival of Adam Neville filled her with astonishment. Why on earth would he-

  "What brings you here, sir?"

  His business was all too plain. "I take it you have heard the news about Blake and Arabella?" he asked without preamble.

  "Indeed. Most remarkable, and disgraceful, if you ask me. His own ward. Really."

  "Not good for either of us, as I'm sure you'll agree."

  She looked at him coolly. "What would make you think-"

  "I know what you and Blake have been to each other in the past. What I want to know is how recently."

  She did not even bother to try to deny it. "Not recently at all. I've tried. We've been seen talking. I followed him down here to Bath when he declared his intention of settling Arabella in the country now that he had been made heir to the Jerome fortune. But it's been months."

  "On the other hand, it's common knowledge that you've been his regular mistress for several years."

  "But not by any means has he been my only man. Or set me up in my establishment."

  "Still, the fact is that you have a prior claim."

  She shook her head. "Even if I wanted to file a breach of promise suit, there would be little we could do to prevent the match in only a couple of days."

  "You misunderstand me. I don't wish to prevent it. I wish to deal the marriage a series of blows which will split them apart and leave Arabella even more wealthy than she was before. Once he has to settle a goodly sum of money upon her as a divorce settlement, I shall have even more than if I had managed to marry her now."

  "What do you want me to do? Get caught in the act with him or something? I've already tried. He's too clever-"

  "Then we must be more so, mustn't we?"

  "Why, what did you have in mind?" she asked with interest.

  At the end of his outline, she shook her head. "It will never work. There is no chance I could ever convince him-"

  "You don't need to convince him, just her. With various other things I have behind the scenes, she'll never trust one word that comes out of his mouth. The catching him in the act I have planned will be the final straw."

  "I thought you said you didn't need me to-"

  "Well, only as a last resort, my dear," he said, bestowing upon her his most pleasant smile. "After all, an attractive woman like you. Why should you be named in something so sordid as a divorce case? We can pay someone to take on that distasteful role. No sense in subjecting yourself to the indignities of several witnesses seeing your lush bare charms, now is there? Then he cannot possibly be angry with you for engineering his downfall."

  His voice had taken on a seductive, throaty quality as he had moved closer and closer to her on the sofa, and he now raised his hand to brush one of her breasts. "The amplitudes of a goddess should not be exposed to the eyes of mere mortals."

  Her cheeks flamed, but she leaned into the caress. A goddess… He was such a handsome young man. And it had been so long….

  She batted her eyelashes coyly. "My sister will be going out shopping shortly. Would you care to keep me company for tea and crumpets?"

  "Most certainly," Adam said with a suave smile. "I adore crumpets. I hope you have plenty of butter and jam."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Blake and Arabella endured the frenetic activity of the wedding preparations as good-naturedly as they could considering everyone was so determined to help that they could have screamed.

  They scarcely had a moment alone together except at night. Even then it was well past midnight by the time they got everyone out of Arabella's room, and seven in the morning when they came back in again to start going through lists as though they were generals launching an invasion of the Continent.

  There were the trips to Bath for a trousseau, jewels, trips to hothouses for the flowers, and dozens of invitations to send out, the order of service to be decided upon, rehearsals, visits from all their well-wishers, and so on.

  "We should have eloped to Gretna Green," Blake muttered when they finally fell into bed exhausted on Wednesday night, Arabella having pushed Ellen Jerome out into the hall one last time. "By the way, I'm sure she knew I was behind the door."

  "I don't care if she did," she said, snuggling into his arms. "I adore you, and I don't care who knows it."

  "Delighted to hear it, Mrs. Sanderson."

  "Good, because you'll be hearing it every day of your life, Dr. Sanderson."

  "Don't chat, love. Just kiss me."

  Her bones began to melt as he teased her tender flesh with his fingers. She flipped him over on his back and slid onto him with a sigh. "You have no idea how much I needed that."

  "I think you can see I do," he said through clenched teeth.

  He let her give her passion free rein, and soon they were soaring to the heavens and floating back down to earth as gently as a feather.

  "I love you," she whispered, sinking onto his chest with a fully sated sigh.

  "And I you." He rolled her onto her side and got up out of the bed.

  She frowned at him as he picked up his jacket. "Surely you're not leaving, my love?" she exclaimed.

  "Not at all. I just want to do this properly now." He knelt by her near the bed, and took her hand.

  "My dearest, darling Arabella. I have never loved, nor ever will love, any woman as much as I love you. I would like to make so bold as to request your hand in marriage. Please make me the happiest of men by accepting my poor humble self."

  He opened the ring box and she gasped at the spectacular engagement ring between two wedding bands. It was a perfect marquise cut diamond, and easily had to be two full carats. The pair of wedding bands flanking the engagement ring were finely engraved, and set with diamonds and rubies.

  "Oh, Blake. You really didn't need to-"

  "I wanted to. Rubies for love, diamonds for eternity. Do you like them?"

  Happy tears glittered in her deep blue eyes. "They're perfect. Thank you."

  "Does that mean yes?"

  She beamed. "A hundred times, yes. You know it's always been yes."

  He kissed her and sat on the edge of the bed. He slipped the ring on her left finger, and stroked away the tears which had begun to fall unheeded on her cheeks. He was surprised to find his own eyes damp and cuffed away the moisture awkwardly with the back of his wrist.

  "It's nothing to be ashamed of. Being happy is a good thing." She stood up and strode over to her dresser. "As long as we're exchanging presents-"

  "Oh, no, really-"

  It looked like a watch case, but inside was miniature of her and a lock of her hair "It's a bit rough and ready, but we didn't have much time. Geoffrey Parks did it for me yesterday when we were all sitting in the drawing room. He did one of you as well for me. I hope you don't mind my asking him. I was afraid you might be leaving. But I knew I loved yo
u, wanted you to have a picture of me. There is also space to put in other pictures and locks of hair, when we are so blessed."

  "Believe it or not there's a place here in my fob pocket for it." He grinned. "Thank you. It's lovely."

  He left the ring on her finger and returned the ring box containing the wedding bands to his jacket pocket. He placed the locket in his waistcoat pocket, and came back to the bed.

  "Now I feel sure I must have another present around here somewhere for you. Where do you suppose it could be?"

  She smiled up at him, her eyes glowing. "It's all of you. Every glorious inch of your flesh. Every thought, word, gesture, tender act that shows me how much you love me."