Lord Stanhope's Improper Proposal

by Cerise DeLand

“Don’t be shy.”

  She flicked a button on his waist coast. “I’m not. It is just the light of day, you realize. And we are in the breakfast room.”

  His fingers etched swirls on her thighs. “Anywhere you are is where I wish to have you.”

  She met the challenge in his gaze. “Here?”

  With one arm, he swept the breakfast dishes toward the center of the long table. “Here.”

  He told her to rise and sit on the table.

  She hooted. “You cannot mean to do it now?”

  He raised her chin. “Anytime. Do you doubt we can do it at this angle?”

  She threw back her head to laugh. “I do not doubt you can do it backwards!”

  “Mmm.” He nodded. “That I will show you this evening.” He helped her slide back on the polished wood.

  “You are a satyr.”

  At that, he paused for a moment, definitely unhappy with the pronouncement. But then he leaned forward to thumb her nipples and reach inside her bodice to bring forth one breast then the other.

  She looked down at herself. A total wanton. Scandalous Miss Proper.

  She scarcely had time to berate herself than his seeking hands were gathering up her hem and lifting it above her thighs.

  “I want to see you prepare yourself for me. As I taught you last night.”

  Her hands played and pinched her nipples. They sank over the wrinkled froth of her gown and down to the pouf of her pussy. Her pussy. Adam’s term for her nether hair and now her own. She combed her fingers through it. Stroked it. Tugged it. The friction made her moan in need and cry out for him.

  “More,” he told her in a guttural sound. He opened the placket of his breeches, grasping his rigid cock and caressing it, thumbing moisture from his hard red tip. “Show me that you are eager for me, pet.”

  “I am,” she cried, as she parted her pussy lips. “See how hot and wet I am.” She sent a fingertip down one slick lip.

  “A flowing fountain.” He smiled wickedly. “See how well we fit together here.” He inserted his shaft inside her, halted then pulled out.

  She objected.

  “I know, my sweet. But anticipation is so good for you.”

  “You will drive me to Bedlam.”

  He kissed her like a madman. “I intend to go with you.” He entered her again and held.

  Then set up a rhythm that had him enter, hold and retreat. Enter, hold. Retreat. Enter, hold.

  Retreat. “This is Two Seagulls Soaring.”

  Two lovers fucking. “I see that,” she said with difficulty as he continued, seemingly disciplined as a monk, save for the perspiration on his brow.

  “Then we will go to my aunt’s,” he said on a hold, “and return to move your belongings into the bedroom suite adjacent to mine.”

  “No,” she objected on retreat.

  “Fear not,” he told her on enter. “You sleep with me.”

  “Not separately,” she demanded on hold.

  “Never,” he said on retreat. “I have more to teach you.”

  Her incredulous gaze danced over his features. “You know more positions?”

  “A multitude,” he exaggerated with wide-eyed lechery.

  She giggled. “I am yours. But you must go faster.”

  “I cannot,” he confessed on a stunning enter.

  “You’d better,” she threatened. “Or I’m…um…what do you call it…rejoicing without you!”

  “Well, then, if you must do it now?” He rocked her in a faster tempo that shifted the table and made them both laugh.

  “I believe I really, really…must!”

  Afterward, they pondered what the servants must think of the master of the house who had just brought his new wife home more than five months past their wedding and had claimed her in the dining room for more than an hour. What’s more, they had set the china clattering and the table legs groaning to their uproarious shouts and ribald laughter at eleven in the morning.

  Chapter Eight

  Each day, Felice discovered new satisfactions to being Adam’s wife.

  His servants accepted her as their mistress without incident or comment.

  His Aunt Amaryllis was the first to call on Felice a week after she’d moved into his townhouse. Days later, the grand old lady brought two of her best friends, dowagers of the first water whose acceptance was needed for any woman in society to make a place for herself.

  Other scions of the town soon followed. Lady Ulmsly, featherbrained but forthright, presented her card. Clarice, Adam’s half-sister, came praising two new male staff secured for her by her late husband. Two of Clarice’s friends, fashionable women who admired Felice’s short hair and au courant style, arrived to coo over Felice’s newly married state.

  Adam brought his son, Georgie, down from the family estate in Gloucester. The little boy was a tow-haired giggling child of two who, nonetheless, did not run to Felice’s arms immediately. She did not balk at that. She read fairytales to him at night, played blocks with him in the nursery and, thus, gave him time to discover that she was as devoted to him as she was to his enthralling father.

  Her days with Adam were a blur of political discussions, luncheons for him and his colleagues and social obligations that often took him out without her. Increasingly disturbed by the Tell-Tale assertions of his infidelity to her and to his party, Adam complained how his colleagues now questioned his motives and his objectives. His speeches to the floor were met with catcalls and demands he sit and be quiet. Not all came from the opposition.

  “Shall we host a dinner party?’ she asked him one morning at breakfast. “We will invite your colleagues.”

  Adam remained reluctant. “The conversation might turn to taking me to Tyburn Hill to hang me.”

  “What better way to cool their heads than to show that you are not averse to private discussions,” she persuaded him.

  Seeking a remedy for his ills, Felice castigated herself for Adam’s troubles. Miss Proper continued to tear his reputation to shreds. This was not because Felice wrote such hideous thing, but because whatever she presented to Howell, he edited to make more damning. He would even do it in front of her. Torturing her, he would greet her in the office that had once been her father’s. Howell would read her words—and change the type as it was set, transforming Adam into a lecherous, debased gambler and womanizer. Then he would criticize his politics in scurrilous asides.

  Felice objected to Howell actions vociferously but had no power to make the kindly old typesetter remove the defamatory words. Though the man who had once been her father’s right arm gazed at her sympathetically, Bill Bundy would not argue with his current employer. “A man has to eat, don’t he, sweet Fee?”

  Determined to save what she could of Adam’s reputation, she had gone to the Fleet Street offices yesterday in high dudgeon. Bundy looked on as she faced Howell. “Only two more. Then we are done.”

  She had vowed she would forever after cut him cold. Ruin him somehow as he was ruining Adam. Never would she forgive him for how he had abused her and her husband. Taking the premise of a private loan and making a wife betray her husband. For what? To ruin a man’s political ambitions? To win a political point or two?

  But at the root of this problem was her own disloyalty to Adam. And she had not the courage to reveal it. From their wedding day, he had emphasized truth in their relationship—and she had violated it. Though she had discounted the Stanhope family curse as a hoax, she had only contributed to the possibility that her own happy marriage was headed for disaster.

  * * * *

  “Shall I help you with that?” she asked Adam the night of their party. “You are all thumbs with this cravat.”

  “Style!” he complained and let her fiddle with the damned thing. “Do you have a new gown for this evening?”

  “I do,” she said. “I wanted to feel very special for my first dinner party as the wife of the MP from Bayton.”

  As she was still in her chemise and stockings, he felt no
compunctions about drawing her close. “You are special to me. More so each day.”

  She threw him a grin. “The feeling is mutual.”

  “Georgie comes ‘round, too.”

  She nodded, gratified the boy had begun to accept her. “He is a sweet child, easy to love.

  We will do well together, darling. You wait and see.”

  “Wes liked you. Said so before he returned to Spain. And Jack tells me he admires you immensely. Always did.”

  “Ha! Really? Lift your chin. There. So, ‘Difficult’ can accept me as a Stanhope wife,” she joked about his oldest brother. “Extraordinary!”

  “He especially likes your figure!” Adam ogled her décolleté. “If only he could see you now!”

  “You both are scandalous men to discuss my form.”

  “I like your voluptuous curves!” Adam swept her close and took a fast hard kiss. “Hurry with this tie, madam, or I fear our guests will find us unforgivably late!”

  “A tempting idea.” She winked at him. “For later! Let’s get your coat.”

  As she presented it for him, he turned his back and brooded about the dinner conversation. “No discussion tonight of salt and flour supplies for the troops in the Peninsula.

  Help me steer them from that, will you?”

  “Of course. What seems to be the issue?”

  “On the floor yesterday, Howell accused me of miscalculating what we need.”

  “Too little?”

  “Too soon,” he told her.

  “Do any of our guests tonight feel the same?”

  “I am not certain yet. I want to listen and learn.” Adam pulled at his coat cuffs and brushed away a speck of lint, frowning over the increasing virulence of his opponents.

  Felice grew solemn. “You would think that a man with a merchant fleet and a spice company here in London would be supporting a ready and adequate supply of foodstuffs for our army in Spain.”

  “True. But I would swear Howell has some ulterior motive.”

  “Do you think he built this scandal sheet to promote his own views?” she posited.

  “The Tell-Tale? Perhaps. Sometimes, I think he uses it to just to make others suffer.”

  “So do you think he is truly evil? Those who work against others for no reason but to take their pleasure are very few and far between, Adam.”

  Adam examined her, confused by her words since she was usually so supportive of anything he said, particularly about Howell. “You defend him?”

  “No, surely not! I wish I knew what drives him.”

  “That makes two of us.” He took her arm and walked her toward her own dressing room.

  “Show me this new gown so I will have eyes for my dinner guests instead of you alone.”

  She leaned against him as they entered the room next to his bedroom. “You are too complimentary.” She went toward the dress form and her new dinner gown delivered only this afternoon by Madame Fouchay. Grass-green silk over a slip of buttercup yellow, the design with the high Empire waist was the one Adam most enjoyed seeing on her.

  “Lovely,” he declared.

  Her golden gaze fell over him in admiration. He bristled with delight for what she gave him in bed and elsewhere in his life. With his son, his house, his very heart. Was he coming to love her? So dangerous a proposition. Family curse or not.

  “You are more than generous with me, Adam. A wardrobe, my own spending money. The run of the house. And care of Georgie. I am honored.”

  “And I am more than pleased. More than I ever thought to be.” He chucked her chin.

  “Come, don this gown. I shall like it on you. Best of all, I will enjoy removing it after all our guests have gone.”

  * * * *

  The party of sixteen consisted of Adam’s closest personal friends in Parliament. Felice looked down the table and took pride in how her guests relished the selections for the evening.

  Adam’s cook has risen to the occasion with grand flair, bringing in for the entrée a roast of beef succulent and done to point. Cook’s dessert of flan and strawberries finished off the five course meal as Adam suggested the men retire to his library for brandy and conversation. Fee took the ladies to her parlor for tea and a draught of sherry.

  Lady Ulmsly was most appreciative of Felice’s menu.

  “I assure you, my lady,” Felice demurred, “Cook’s talent predated my arrival here. I merely ordered the menu for this evening.”

  “Nonetheless,” offered Lady Wingate, “a sound beginning as a new bride.”

  “Thank you, Lady Wingate. My husband and I are extremely happy.” I could not have dreamed of more nor imagined more for one of my heroines.

  “You don’t say?” asked Mrs. Nance, a brash older woman, who was married to the MP for York. “Wonderful. The curse is not working?”

  Lady Wingate raised both brows. “Mrs. Nance, this is hardly a question for our Felice.”

  “Of course, it is! No wonder there was a curse, at least in Adam’s case. Poor man was so distressed married to that little Sarah. She was a peacock. Not a thought in her head for Adam.

  Would never have hosted such a dinner party. Wouldn’t know how. Wouldn’t care to help him.”

  “I’ll say,” Mrs. Smithfield, the wife of the member from Dover, chimed in. “You have done your duty this evening, Felice, bringing us together. Lord Howell, as I understand from my Henry, learned of this dinner and fumed with envy.”

  Howell envious? Delicious. “His paper is so critical of my husband, I am beside myself with worry,” Felice declared.

  “Shall we put it about then that the famous family curse,” continued prying Mrs. Nance, with a busy flutter of her fan, “is not working?”

  “I have not seen sign of it since I moved in,” Felice told her with a grin. And why not?

  This was her only way, perhaps her only opportunity, to reveal some part of the truth and counter the effects of Howell’s and Miss Proper’ lies. “Initially, Adam and I were concerned about the curse. But we agreed to work on our marriage to make it a solid union.”

  “And love?” asked Mrs. Nance.

  “Oh, well,” Felice demurred. Were the nights in his arms, the joys in their bed proof they could get on well together? Were not the hours enjoying each others’ company out of bed in the parlor and the dining room, good evidence, too? So what if those moments of laughter soon had them making love on the settee or the library table or…

  Felice cleared her throat, noting her cheeks burned with her ribald musings. “All good marriages are made on earth, don’t you agree?”

  “I do, indeed.” Lady Wingate gazed around the room. “We work on ours, don’t we, ladies?

  Even though our men are too much driven by the winds of politics.”

  “And the winds of war,” Lady Ulmsly added with a grumble. “Do forgive me,” she nodded to the ladies, “but I wish that man Howell would decide if he is on our side or not.”

  Felice startled at the public accusation.

  So did Mrs. Smithfield. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Well!” Lady Ulmsly drew herself up into her full importance. “The man accuses us of not being efficient in our pursuit of Bonaparte. Imagine! Yet, he is the one who delays signing contracts with the Army. We know he can make more money from his import and exports if he holds out his supplies to the last.”

  “He will grow rich off the war?” asked Felice.

  Mrs. Smithfield was stuck speechless.

  “My husband tells me this is so,” stated Lady Ulmsly.

  “Is that not a conflict of interest?” asked Lady Wingate.

  “Terrible,” grumbled Lady Ulmsly.

  “Shameful,” asserted Mrs. Smithfield.

  Treasonous, concluded Felice.

  “Aye. If you ask me,” grumbled Lady Wingate, “he should be shot.”

  He should, at the very least, be exposed. If there was proof. Was there?

  Adam might know.

  But when the men came in, the topics
never turned to politics, the war or Howell. It was as if the men had sworn off the subject entirely. Try though Felice might to steer them that way, she failed. The guests left less than an hour later, leaving Felice to broach the matter with Adam as they undressed.

  “Lady Wingate cast a few aspersions on the intentions of Drayton Howell tonight,” she told Adam as she stepped out of her slippers.

  He tried to undo his cravat. “Howell! The bane of my existence.”

  She went toward him. “Let me untie that or you’ll have yourself in knots. What do you think of his criticisms of your army supply policies?”

  “Here in our bedroom, I’ll say he’s an ass. Out in public, I try to stay to the facts of the matter. We have a fair idea of road conditions in Portugal into Spain and they are terrible. Fit for mules. Yet transport is vital to keeping an army moving. Especially food. While most armies live off the land they invade, confiscation never makes for good relations with the people. Howell puts on a show for the public, showing how financially prudent he is. But in reality, he may have another reason.”

  “There,” she said as she removed his cravat. “Do you have any suspicions that he may delay the government’s decision based on his own interests?”

  Adam frowned at her. “My god, you ladies did peck at Howell’s bones.”

  “We did. Is it justified?”

  “Smithfield has suspicions but will not declare.” Adam turned her about and, in moment, had her bodice undone, the gown drifting to the carpet. Then he spun her into his arms. His eyes clouded with worries. “Come to bed, and forget about Drayton Howell.”

  “He should never be in our bedroom,” she asserted but fought the man’s image as she went into her husband’s arms.

  Adam wrapped her close, stripping away the last of her undergarments. “I want you naked. Do you hear me? Never wear these again.”

  His ferocity disturbed her. So did his actions as he grasped her wrists, pinned her to the bed and consumed her with kisses everywhere. Her body gushed in delight, welcoming him, wanting him in a rush of fervent need. He was desperate, and he made her so as well.

  “You have nothing to hide from me, Felice,” he told her after he had possessed her and made her quake with satisfaction. “And nothing to fear.”