His Convenient Marchioness

by Elizabeth Rolls

  It was a punch in the gut to hear a ten-year-old boy blaming himself for something he could not possibly have prevented. Hunt took a careful breath. ‘Harry, you could not have stopped the carriage from being held up.’

  ‘No, but I didn’t protect her.’ Harry’s cheeks were wet. ‘I’m nearly eleven and you trusted me.’

  He bit back a curse at himself. He’d wanted the boy to feel important, on his way to manhood. What he’d done was lay a man’s responsibility on a child’s shoulders.

  ‘Harry, when I said that, I meant for you to do things like help your mother in and out of the carriage. I didn’t expect the damn carriage to be held up!’ He’d never considered the consequences if the boy was actually called on to live up to impossible expectations.

  Georgie sat up. ‘You said damn. That’s a bad word. Mama doesn’t let us say it.’

  Oh, hell! ‘And nor should I,’ he said. ‘Not in front of ladies. I apologise, Georgie.’ He looked at his stepson. ‘Harry, a hold-up is a matter for grown-ups. You were not in any way responsible.’

  ‘Then I shouldn’t have tried to take the reticule to him?’

  Children were a quagmire. He wanted to tell Harry that he should have stayed in the coach with Georgie, no matter what the threat. But it sounded as though the fellow might well have shot Masters, or even Emma, to enforce obedience. Then Harry would be blaming himself for that. Sometimes there was no right answer. Only the right thing. And despite his responsibility to Peter Lacy, he thought the boy’s father would be proud of his son.

  ‘No. You did the right thing, the honourable thing, Harry. You acted exactly as your father would have done. The problem is—’ How on earth did you explain this to a child? He tried. ‘Doing the right and honourable thing doesn’t always have a happy ending.’

  Harry blinked. ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘No. But that doesn’t let us off doing it. I might wish you’d stayed in the carriage and your mother certainly would have preferred that, but we understand why you didn’t.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts, Harry. And the highwayman is securely tied up under armed guard and he’ll be taken away in the morning.’ After he’d answered a few very pointed questions.

  ‘And...and you think Papa would have been proud of me?’

  Hunt’s answer came straight from the heart. ‘No. I think he is proud. Just as I am. Even if we both wish it hadn’t been necessary.’

  Georgie wriggled. ‘He must be a very stupid highwayman. I mean, once he’d shot Harry he wouldn’t have got anything, would he?’

  ‘No. He wouldn’t,’ Hunt agreed. He rose, lifting Georgie. ‘Time for both of you to be tucked up.’

  ‘It’s funny, though,’ Harry said.

  Hunt glanced at him as he lowered Georgie into her bed. ‘Funny?’

  ‘Odd, funny. Not funny, funny,’ Harry said. ‘He must have known all about us.’

  Hunt frowned. ‘Known what about you?’

  ‘That Mama had two children. He told her to get us out. Both of us.’ He scowled. ‘I mean, how did he know I was there? He’d know about Georgie—’ He looked apologetic. ‘Sorry, sis, but you were making an awful noise.’

  ‘I was scared!’ Georgie’s voice, muffled in her pillow, remained defiant.

  ‘Me, too,’ Harry admitted. ‘Anyway, it’s funny.’

  Hunt met Emma’s shocked gaze, saw horrified speculation. He shook his head very slightly. Better not to discuss the implications here. He straightened, went to her and brushed a kiss across her mouth, knew the fierce urge to deepen the kiss, sweep her from the room and assure himself in the most primitive way that she was safe. His. He stepped back. That was not possible. Tonight, of all nights, Harry and Georgie needed her. ‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hunt left Emma tucking the children in and went to his own rooms. He didn’t bother ringing for a servant, but shrugged out of his damp coat and let it fall, followed by his waistcoat. Someone had come up and lit the fire and left a brandy decanter on the wine table by the fire. He’d need help with his boots eventually, but that could wait.

  He sat down by the fire and poured a generous measure of brandy. If what he suspected was true, then Harry had had a very narrow escape. Twice. Because the more he thought about it, the less the house fire seemed like an accident. If Emma and the children had been there... He shuddered, took a swallow of brandy. Somehow he had to protect Harry. Because if he was right, the danger was not over. He was not even perfectly sure where the danger lay precisely...and it was possible this had not started with Harry. There was also poor Thirlbeck’s death...

  * * *

  He was still sitting there half an hour later when the clock chimed midnight. He should go to bed, but he was far from sleep. More brandy would do the trick, but that wasn’t what he wanted. What he wanted, being a thoroughly selfish and inconsiderate type, was his wife. In his bed and...

  ‘Hunt?’

  His heart quaked. Emma stood in the open doorway that led to her own rooms, her face pale against the darkness of the room behind her, her slender form swathed in a dark blue silk robe.

  ‘I thought you might be asleep. May I come in for a moment?’

  Only for a moment? When she was in this room? Where she belonged. Where he wanted and needed her. He found his tongue and some of his wits. ‘You’re not with the children?’

  Obviously not, as she was crossing to the fireplace.

  She smiled as she sat down in the other chair. ‘No. They both said I should go to bed. That they were quite safe with you here.’

  He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Safe because I’m here? Emma, my stupidity—’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My stupidity,’ he repeated. ‘I should never have let you leave so late. Or if I did I should have sent outriders, or gone myself!’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve been kicking myself for leaving so late, too. It wasn’t just your decision. And I suppose we could dismiss Masters for being wrong. Is there another glass?’

  ‘What?’ He was still getting past the idea of sacking Masters. ‘Oh. I’ve had enough. Take this one.’ He poured brandy into his glass and handed it to her.

  She accepted the glass, sipped. ‘If you’re blaming yourself, Hunt, then you’ve had more than enough. You came.’

  ‘Nearly too late.’

  ‘You came,’ she repeated. ‘And we’re safe.’ She let out a breath. ‘Hunt, the fire? Could that—?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘I think very likely. He knew you were there that night.’

  Emma let out a breath. ‘Martin. Who else could want Harry—?’ She shut her eyes. ‘I don’t think I mentioned it to you—there was no reason—but he knew we were coming here, too. He was there this afternoon.’

  Hunt felt a small click as the piece dropped into place. ‘Was he now?’

  Emma looked sickened. ‘Yes. Escorting his mother and Miss Carshalton.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Hunt, they are betrothed. You know her, don’t you?’

  Hunt let out a breath. He’d suspected as much at the Westerfolds’ ball the other night. Why else would the Duchess of Keswick sponsor the chit? ‘I knew her as a child. She is the great-niece of a man I admire and respect very much, and the only child of a very wealthy ship owner, the perfect bride for a penniless younger son who wanted more and didn’t see why a nephew should stand in his way.’ His mouth hardened. ‘Or a brother. Thirlbeck was killed in a hold up. At the time it caused a deal of talk—outbreak of lawlessness and fears about revolution, because it seemed he had been deliberately targeted according to witnesses.’ He let out a breath. ‘Perhaps there was a simpler motive. And now we have a second hold up. A pattern.’

  ‘But can we prove any of this?’ Emma whispered. ‘If we can’t, Harry may never be safe.’ The glass rattled as she set it do
wn.

  ‘There may be a way.’

  ‘What way?’

  ‘If the magistrate agrees to offer clemency to our prisoner in return for information.’

  ‘Clemency?’

  ‘Transportation.’ He didn’t much like it. He wasn’t usually bloodthirsty, but in this instance, he’d like to pull the lever himself. ‘He’s committed a capital offence and there are enough witnesses to ensure that he’ll hang. But if he turns King’s Evidence, then his testimony would at the very least cast a heavy shadow on whoever was behind him.’

  Emma nodded slowly. ‘You don’t think it might be Keswick? All that fuss about custody might have been to make it easier to get rid of Harry.’

  He’d considered that. Looked at it from every angle. ‘It’s possible. I wouldn’t rule it out just yet, but it’s unlikely. He might have preferred Martin to inherit, but I doubt he’d want to kill an heir.’

  ‘An heir,’ Emma whispered. ‘Not a grandson.’ She glanced at the clock and rose. ‘I’m sorry. It’s late. We can deal with this in the morning.’

  ‘Yes.’ He stood up and held out his hand. ‘Come to bed?’

  She stared at him, clearly surprised, and he could have groaned out loud and kicked himself. Of all the clumsy, inarticulate oafs. ‘I meant, you must be exhausted. Stay with me tonight. To sleep.’ It shook him to his very foundations, but he wanted that, that simple intimacy, more than he wanted her. And he wanted her more than his next breath. However, on this occasion he was going to be a gentleman, and—

  ‘Are you inviting me to your bed?’

  He took a careful breath. ‘Do you need an invitation?’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  She did while he didn’t. That was the way aristocratic marriages worked. A gentleman visited his wife’s bed when it pleased him, and left when it pleased him. He had been very careful to establish that pattern. Always going to her bed. And the other night, after he’d woken from the nightmare, he’d pushed her away, left her bed. ‘Emma, when we discussed marriage initially, what we both wanted—’

  ‘I don’t want that anymore.’

  Emma gathered every scrap of her failing courage and took a deep breath. ‘Hunt, I can’t hold to the terms of our marriage.’ She met his shocked gaze. ‘I’ve fallen in love with you.’

  ‘Love, Emma?’

  Oh, God! What had possessed her to tell him? Love. The one thing neither of them had wanted either to give or to receive. Why had she never understood that love could perhaps be ignored, but never commanded or forbidden?

  His eyes were unreadable. Did he view it as a burden? Something to feel guilty about if he could never return it? Would he opt for a kindly lie?

  She groped for words, for a coherent thought, to fling into the bubble of silence that engulfed them. Somewhere beyond the silence the fire danced and crackled. ‘It is a gift, Hunt.’ She went to him, laid her fingers in his outstretched hand, raised her other hand to his face and cradled the shadowed jaw. Her palm tingled at the rasp of his stubble. ‘A gift, free and clear. It requires no recompense, no guilt. It just is. And it isn’t inconvenient.’

  He said nothing at first, but his gaze pinned her, searching.

  ‘You believe that?’ he asked at last. ‘Even though we agreed love was against the rules?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can’t help how I feel and it’s your fault anyway.’

  His brows shot up. ‘My fault?’

  ‘How was I supposed to resist you?’ she demanded. ‘You’re kind, honourable, you make me laugh and you’re excellent in bed.’ He actually blushed and she charged on, desperate to lighten the moment. ‘Besides, don’t you know that telling a woman something is forbidden is guaranteed to make her do it?’

  His slow smile, the one that left her breathless and turned her insides to jelly, curved his mouth. ‘Of course. Bluebeard. That’s me. So—’ Heat crept into his eyes. ‘If I absolutely forbade you to strip off your robe and—’ Her robe hit the floor between one breath and the next.

  His eyes darkened, narrowed. ‘I see. And your nightgown—if I forbade you to unbutton it, very slowly—’

  She released him, stepped back and her fingers shook at the heat in his gaze, her nipples peaking in an aching rush as she reached for the first dainty pearl button. Carefully she slipped it free, heard something very like a strangled groan. Heat pooled liquid in her belly and lower, between her thighs, at the knowledge that he wanted her. She kept her eyes on his. They burned in the glimmering firelight, dark and hungry. This, then, was power, feminine and glorious. Another button and he clenched his fists. As if it were all he could do not to reach out and rip the gown away. Wicked delight spread through her at the thought and she licked her lips as she freed the third button, heard his soft curse.

  Hunt’s mouth dried. Three buttons and he was harder than granite. ‘You’re playing with fire, wife,’ he whispered. It wasn’t just the buttons. It was that half-smile that told him she knew just how hot the fires were burning. That she intended to stoke the blaze.

  More buttons slipped free until the demure linen hung open to her waist and firelight danced with gilded shadows in the sweet valley between her half-revealed breasts. Heat rose, her fragrance wove through him, temptation incarnate. Desire scorched in every vein, his cock ached, his whole body burning with the need to tumble her to the bed, hike up her nightgown and ravish her. He held back. How bold would she be? And would he survive it?

  He took a careful breath and a step back. ‘Shrug it—’ God! His voice was little more than a growl! ‘I mean, you are absolutely forbidden to shrug it off one shoulder.’

  Laughter, old as Eve, glimmered in her eyes as she twitched one shoulder and the nightgown slid away. At the same time she reached up, tugging the ribbon from her braid, sliding her fingers through it so the silk of her hair cascaded in a dark river over her naked, rose-crested breast.

  He clenched his fists. ‘That’s enough.’ He barely knew his own voice, harsh, strangled. Any more and he was likely to lose all control.

  Her smile, utterly female, all challenge and invitation, said she knew it as well as he and with a twitch of her other shoulder the nightgown fell away. She stood naked, the once-demure creamy linen in a froth about her feet. Not Venus arising from the sea-foam, this sultry seductress, but Diana the huntress, in a pool of moonlight. And he was her prey.

  His breath came in hard. ‘The bed. Now.’

  She didn’t move. But the deepening curve of her smile would have lured an angel to damnation.

  On a sound that was half-curse, half-laughter, he took one swift stride and swept her up into his arms. An instant later he tumbled her on to the bed, following her down and rolling until they ended in the middle of the vast expanse of blue counterpane.

  Emma found herself gazing up into Hunt’s storm-dark eyes. Somehow her wrists were caught above her head. ‘Weren’t you going to forbid me your bed?’ she murmured.

  His mouth crushed hers briefly. ‘Are you trying to drive me insane, woman?’

  She wriggled, savoured the hard, delicious weight of him pinning her to the bed, his hips cradled between her thighs. Somehow the fact that he was still in his shirt, breeches and boots was even more erotic. ‘Is it working?’

  She cried out as his hand slipped between them, found the aching wetness where she wanted him.

  ‘God, yes.’ His voice was ragged and his fingers were gone and she could feel his fierce haste, unbuttoning his breeches, shoving them down. And then he was there, pushing inside, stretching her. She gasped at his invasion and he stilled. ‘Emma?’

  ‘Yes.’ She tilted her hips, accepting, demanding.

  She saw his eyes darken as the last of his control snapped and he surged in. Deep, so deep that she cried out in an agony of pleasure. Her body leapt to flame and she wrapped her legs around him, matching him stroke for stroke, taking
him as he took her.

  His hand slid beneath her, tilting her into his thrusts, and she came on a scream of unrestrained pleasure. He rode her hard and deep, so that she came again, and he surged, pumping hard and fast, until he broke on a groan and collapsed over her, heavy and sated, his heart pounding in time with hers.

  Eventually Hunt came back to himself. Beneath him, Emma was warm, soft. Her fingers idly caressed his nape and to his disbelief he felt a renewed stirring of interest. A little more of his brain re-engaged. He’d taken her in his breeches and boots, for God’s sake!

  ‘Emma—’

  ‘How closely are you related to the Churchills, Hunt?’

  He found the strength to lift his head and look down at her. Her eyes were still closed a contented smile curving her lips. ‘Ah, third cousin, once removed, to Marlborough on my mother’s side. Why?’ Hell’s teeth, but he had to lose the boots—

  The smile tilted up at one corner. ‘Explains the boots.’

  Laughter shook him. The first Duke of Marlborough had famously returned from a military campaign and pleasured his Duchess without removing his boots. ‘I was going to apologise for that.’

  One eye opened. ‘Not necessary.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  Reassuring, but even so, he was getting his boots off before he had her again. Preferably his breeches, too. He rolled to the side, taking her with him so she nestled snugly in his arms, exactly where he wanted her. Not just in his arms, but in his bed, his heart. Where, apparently, she wanted to be. ‘Nevertheless, will you excuse me for a moment while I get rid of them?’

  ‘Mmm. If I must.’

  * * *

  Emma sank to her knees in mud and rain-washed darkness, lifted the small, limp body. Rain mingled with the salt of tears.

  ‘Give him back! Kill me! Kill me instead!’

  Her screams were silent agony.

  In the yellow flicker of the lanterns she looked up from Harry’s body, saw the gleam of the pistol barrel levelled at her. She didn’t care if she died. Her life for Harry’s...