Lord Stanhope’s
Improper Proposal
A Stanhope Challenge Story
By Cerise DeLand
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
http://www.resplendencepublishing.com
Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 N Atlantic Avenue #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118
Lord Stanhope’s Improper Proposal
Copyright © 2010, Cerise DeLand
Edited by Michele Hickerty
Cover art by Les Byerley, www.les3photo8.com
Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-164-1
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Electronic release: June 2010
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.
Great thanks to a wonderful editor, Michele Paulin.
Catching all those pesky problems is a challenge you more than meet!
Chapter One
London, January 1809
It is a truth, universally accepted, that a politician in want of the premiership must also be in want of a wife.
Felice knew that was her new husband’s justification for marrying her so quickly.
“A reason as good as my own,” she told herself as she combed her hair back from her face and fluffed the ruffled bodice of her wedding dress. She pursed her lips, wondering how Adam really kissed a woman. How he kissed his mistresses. He had merely brushed her own mouth with his after the ceremony minutes ago. She’d always thought her lips worth more than a peck—and she was determined that this second husband of hers would do more than ignore her.
“I’ll insure that he does,” she resolved, with a check of her figure in the cheval mirror in the retiring room of her new brother-in-law’s mansion on Grosvenor Square. “After all, the fictitious Miss Proper has charms that Adam does not know about.” Nor should he!
That secret could ruin her marriage. “And I intend to keep both!”
So go to your wedding breakfast and be done with this mooning! You accepted his proposal! Now reap the rewards! London Society is open to you—the excitement of their lives, their intrigues ready fodder for your pen. For your romances and your poems.
She frowned at herself.
Be honest, Fee. You want more than inspiration for your stories. More than a means to repay that nefarious man your first husband’s debt. You want Adam Stanhope gracing your own bed, not just his look alike walking on the pages of your newest romance. You want him inside your body. Making you wet and warm. And kissing your—
A quick knock at the door had her whirling.
“Dear Felice,” cooed her husband’s Great Aunt Amaryllis from behind the portal. “Do come out now. We are quite eager to applaud you and Adam. The guests, too, are clamoring for the receiving line!”
Most likely, the men want more wine while they make wagers on how soon Adam will bed me. And the women? They want to assess how a country mouse like me managed to snare the renowned, rich and eloquent Adam Stanhope. Third son of the earl. Widower. Father. Some day soon, the head of his party, if the papers and broadsheets are to be believed. And thereafter certainly, Prime Minister.
“Adam Stanhope,” she murmured to herself. “A great catch, Fee. If you can intrigue him.”
And there was the rub.
Adam, now thirty, was notorious for outlandish behavior. When he’d turned seventeen, he’d run away from home and sailed to Hong Kong to work with his cousin in his Far Eastern trading company. Four years later, he’d come home to finish his education at Cambridge, marry the beauty of the Season and run for Parliament. He’d won twice now. But since his wife had died in childbirth, Adam had made a name for himself as a rake. He was just like his brothers in that regard. Still, he was the only one who had married and challenged the Stanhope family curse. For it was a legend that no matter whom a Stanhope married, no matter that person’s quality of character or breeding or good intentions, once wedded, a Stanhope lived in hell.
“I will be happy.” Felice repeated the phrase that had become her motto ever since Adam had appeared in Kent last month and proposed. “I’ll dispense with this hideous man plaguing me at once. Then I will devote myself to ensuring Adam is happy. I will be a social asset to him. And a good mother to his son.”
What more could a man ask for?
* * * *
“A politician has to have a wife! Who the devil put that ridiculous rule about, Reggie?”
Adam Stanhope asked his friend as he paced in his brother Jack’s drawing room at eleven in the morning. He threw back another shot of Jack’s fine brandy and coughed. “Oh, lord, that burns all the way down. Whose idea was it to stay out all night, eh?” He scrubbed his hand over his face, acknowledging his predicament had less to do with excess alcohol than with Fee Wentworth.
Correction, Stanhope. “Dammit, you’d think a respectable widower with an heir earned the right to be free!”
“No help for it, old man,” Reggie responded and drained his glass of spirits. “Damn good stuff, if I say so myself! But see here, Adam, you admitted you need her. We’ve been through this entire argument before. You’ve got a bit of a reputation, courtesy of that Miss Proper ramblings and—”
The far door burst open. Adam’s oldest brother, Jack, appeared in all his dark imperious hauteur. He took one look at both men and slipped inside to shut the world out. “Now, Adam.
Reggie. What the hell are you doing in here drinking?”
Adam cocked a long black brow at the man who expected to be obeyed in all things.
“Drowning my sorrows.”
“Too late for that!” Jack’s mouth twitched in a grin. “Get the hell out here and let’s toast the good health of the bride and groom.”
“Come, come, Jack, you know what this means for me.”
Jack’s black brows arched high. “Oh, I do. One look at your bride and I have a very good idea that—”
Adam scowled at his brother. “She’s lovely.” Damned gorgeous, in fact. And mine, god help me now. “But I have ruined her.”
Jack startled. “You’ve had her? Already?”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean.”
Jack strode over to remove the snifter glass from Adam’s fingertips. “I know what you mean. And this does not help.”
“I’ve known her since she was ten, Jack!” Adam thrust out a hand, roiled by what he had just done to this sweet, shy woman.
“And? She was a charming child then. Now you have—“
“Wrecked her life! That’s what I’ve done!”
Jack narrowed his eyes on his brother. “How late did you stay at White’s last night?”
When Adam said “Ba!” and shook his head, Jack peered at Reggie. “How late?”
The man winced and brushed imaginary crumbs from his cravat. “Five. Six. Not certain.
We were winning at dice, you see, and couldn’t leave.”
Jack stared at the ceiling. “I hope to god it was profitable.”
Adam grinned. “Five thousand in my pockets I hadn’t had before!”
The far door opened again. An auburn-haired man stuck his head in and grimaced. “What the hell is the delay here?”
Jack beckoned him. “Wes, Adam is having a rather belated moment of introspection. Do come in and help me talk sense into our youngest brother.”
Wes took a step inside and shut the door behind him. In his cavalryman’s dress blues, he leaned back against the door. “What’s the matter, Adam? Nerves?”
Adam rolled his shoulders. “Every man’s entitled. You told me so yourself.”
“That,” Wes chuckled as he limped over to the chair beside Adam and fell into it, “is before a man goes into battle!”
“Well, I am!”
Wes gave him the quelling glance his men termed The Demand. “You are married.”
“I know I thought it a good idea. Despite the nightmare I lived through with Sarah.” The mere mention of his first wife sent a wave of revulsion through him. “Everyone thought it a good idea. My colleagues. The Prime Minister. But you both, most of all, know this won’t work.”
Wes pursed his lips. “I’ve seen your new lady wife, and I say give it a go. If you admit defeat before you start, you’re doomed.”
“This is not a cavalry charge,” Adam murmured.
Wes shrugged. “Perhaps it should be.”
“Wes, have a little pity,” Adam pleaded, his head splitting from too much whiskey and too little sleep.
“No pity for you,” Wes shot back. “Felice lives up to her name in temperament as far as I can tell. And her figure, Adam, has certainly become more alluring than when I last saw her in Great Aunt Amaryllis’ garden.”
“She was ten!”
“Was she, now? Hmm. No wonder she was flat-chested.”
“Now see here,” Adam admonished his older brother. “Her figure is—”
“Superb and yours to explore.” Wes wiggled his brows suggestively, then looked at Jack.
“We met her when we first summered at Aunt’s house. What year was it Father foisted us off on the poor old gel?”
Adam groaned. “It doesn’t matter!”
I liked her then. Enjoyed her wit and intelligence every time we met. Now I’ve gone and hurt her irrevocably.
Jack shook his head. “Don’t argue with him, Wes. He’s got a snoot full from an all-night gambling rout at White’s. It only encourages him to debate you. And neither of us can ever outtalk him.” He gave his brother, the Colonel and Man of Action, a wide-eyed look of despair.
“The curse is upon him.”
“Oh, hell,” Wes mourned. “Not that again.”
Adam frowned at both of his brothers. “That again? I don’t seem to recall that either of you is yet married. Why not?”
“Not our time,” Jack told him.
“No woman I like enough,” Wes added. “You, Jack?”
“None I cannot live without,” Jack said with pointed disdain for the subject. “Come on, Adam, let’s do our drinking out there with all the others.”
“They all wonder, you know,” Adam offered, his gaze on the door.
“What?” Reggie asked when the two Stanhope brothers didn’t respond to him.
All three Stanhopes considered Reggie Mortenson with bleak expressions.
Adam answered for them all. “They wonder when Felice will leave me. As we speak, they are out there taking wagers on the number of months she remains.”
“The Stanhope women don’t all leave,” Jack reminded Adam.
The three brothers winced and looked at anything but each other. Adam knew each man thought of his own mother and how each had died in succession. And even though Jack’s mother passed away after a riding accident, Wes’s died of consumption and Adam’s of childbed fever, the ton declared each woman had suffered first and foremost from a broken heart.
“He says he loved each one,” Jack reminded them of the phrase their father repeated to them often.
Adam shut his eyes. “He declares he loved Clarice’s mother, too!” Their charming half-sister Clarice had been Stanhope’s by-blow, conveniently born between Jack and Wes.
“Aye,” Wes acknowledged with a smirk. “In his prime, the man was a walking satyr.”
Jack inclined his head toward Wes. “Astonishing, isn’t it, that he managed his estates as well as he did, hopping from bed to bed like a right royal degenerate.” He flourished a hand. “Yet, he cared for each woman he bedded.”
Adam growled. “How can you believe him?” He had never known their father to be honest with anyone, least of all his three legitimate sons. “You were four,” Adam reminded Jack, then faced Wes. “And you were two when I was born and my mother took a childbed fever.
How can you know that he tells the truth?”
Jack rolled a shoulder. “Perhaps on this one issue…”
Adam shook his head, hands fisted on his hips. “I long to see the day each of you faces a woman whom you do not wish to kill with the family curse.” He straightened his cravat and ran two hands through his hair. “Open the damn door, Wesley, I’m ready to claim my bride and ruin both our lives.”
Chapter Two
Felice had tried conversation with him.
Adam sat silent in the coach to Dover, gazing out at the graying landscape and brooding.
But now, here at the inn, she was determined to brave his mood and make the consummation of this marriage a joyous night. A good beginning to a stunning match and domestic bliss. A counterpoint to the scandalous series in the Tell-Tale by Miss Proper.
She pushed that errant thought aside quickly, skimmed her hands down her negligee and ran the brush through her long waves once more. Beneath the Italian chiffon, she felt her nipples bead. Her heart raced and her cunny swelled.
This night will be better than those with Wallace.
Her first husband had known nothing of subtleties. Not in art or music, books or cards.
And certainly not in the finer points of making love.
But Adam Stanhope does.
Rumor said he did. Living in the Orient, he was reputed to have learned the exotic sexual practices of the Chinese. His mistresses put it about that he was agile and demanding. Her friends in the Risque Society applauded her daring marital catch and told her Adam’s exotic physical practices could make a woman howl in fulfillment. Certainly, too, he must have benefited from his two brothers’ tales of their legendary prowess with women. Jack’s preference was for titled ladies whose husbands did not serve them well. Wesley’s reputed taste was for a certain tea merchant’s daughter. Felice thirsted to taste such delights herself.
“Felice?” Adam called through the door. “May I come in?”
“Of course.” Hurry.
She turned. The sight of him made her mouth water.
For a man who spent most of his days indoors, he retained the muscular physique of a man who indulged in horses and fencing. His midnight hair was thick and curly, perhaps more so than her own. His thick eyelashes fringed lightning-bright blue eyes that sparked and sent shocks of delight down to her core. She smiled, suppressing a grin that their children, if they were fortunate enough to have any at her late age, would definitely be black-haired devils. His sultry gaze fell down her body and gave her pause.
“You look lovely.”
She smiled more broadly.
“The ivory and lace do you justice,” he told her, securing the sash of his dressing gown and turning toward the window. Hands behind his back, he looked out over the Channel waters and flexed his shoulders.
She went to stand behind him. His cologne wafted over her senses. The sage and anise aroused her need to have him take her in his arms.
“Thank you for the lovely nosegay. And my wedding ring,” she said and paused to feel the circle of tiny diamonds around her finger, “is more stunning than I thought.” She was tempted to say, I don’t need diamonds, but stopped herself. His Great Aunt Amaryllis had cautioned her not to be self-deprecating to him. “Adam hates that in anyone, especially a woman,” the lady had warned.
“Adam, I know we have not had much time to become reacquainted, what with Parliament in session, but I am eager to begin. Our friendship was a solid one when we were young and—”
“Listen to me, Felice.” He whirled on her, his large, electric-blue eyes cares
sing her lips, her throat and falling to her cleavage and her pointed nipples. He inhaled and focused on her mouth. “I want you to know how grateful I am that you agreed to marry me.”
“Gratitude is wonderful, but there must be more.” More that you feel for me or you would not have asked. She reached out to touch her hand to his.
“How true.” He rubbed her fingers for a moment then jerked away. “But with us, this arrangement we have is different.”
“Yes, we were friends long before this. Trusted each other with our secrets. Read each others’ little stories. Knew what the other wanted from life.”
He stared at her. “We were children, Fee. We acted like ragamuffins and tore up the countryside with our antics.”
She chuckled. “Some marriages are based on less. Ours will be founded in more.” She extended her hand to cup his cheek.
He clasped her fingers. “Don’t, Fee. Please. This is hard enough.”
Her spine stiffened. He didn’t want her? She was comely. She knew it. Squire Forester had asked for her hand last year. Months before, Sir Harold Spencer had offered. She might be thirty and a widow, but she was not ugly. Her body was svelte, her breasts perhaps too large. And aye, her hair was black as hell and not the pale froth so popular. Her skin was flawless. Most of all, she had a mind she used to write epic poems, though indeed she earned a pittance for her labors. Her invention of Miss Proper was a new ploy and her forthcoming series loosely alluding to him, a ruse—a terrible necessity to satisfy her debts. Still, she had married him, welcomed this offer because she wanted him. Not his money. Not his name. Not his position. No, she had always adored him. And never had thought to have the chance to live with him. So when the offer came, she’d grabbed it. “Whatever are you talking about, Adam?”
“You know I respect you, Fee.”
“Do I?”
“Of course, you do. I like your spirit, your conversation. I even like your poetry.”
I doubt you’ll like my prose. She arched a brow. “Romantic nonsense, you called it when I first began.”
“You are much better at it now than at twelve, and it has made you a penny or two.”
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