by Cheryl Holt
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she was amazed she didn't burst into flames. "You make the most outrageous allegations, and I haven't the foggiest—"
He kissed her. The deed was sudden, unanticipated, and she tensed, geared to push him away, to grapple and skirmish until he desisted, but before she could react, it dawned on her that the endeavor was so sweet, and so dear, that she couldn't fathom bringing it to a swift end.
His lips were soft, warm, and gently pressed to hers, and her eyes drifted shut. Having never been kissed before, she was overwhelmed by how precious it was. How could she be twenty-five and not have experienced this bliss?
Surprising her completely, he slipped his tongue inside her mouth, and he stroked it against her own, the gesture causing butterflies to cascade through her stomach. He tasted like the brandy he'd been drinking, and the tang was so splendid, and so naughty, that she moaned with delight.
Mesmerized, enthralled, at that moment, she would have done whatever he demanded, and it occurred to her that this was why females were chaperoned and counseled as to the wages of sin. Others comprehended the dangers of such reckless passion, and as she was a novice and entirely bowled over, the warnings by which she'd abided all her life held no significance whatsoever.
She craved more of this ... this unbridled spiral, this rampant pandemonium, and whatever wild feat she need commit to have him continue she would gladly attempt.
She was so inundated that she wasn't aware of all that was transpiring, and it gradually registered that her
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bodice had been slackened, that he was tugging it down. In a few seconds, her bosom would be exposed, and she couldn't predict what might happen after that.
Alarm bells clanged inside her head.
Somehow, she'd jumped into a raging inferno that was beyond her control. She hadn't meant to land herself in such a jam! Was this her mother's tendencies leaping to the fore?
She'd striven so valiantly to be virtuous, to be upstanding and good, yet a handsome man had barely glanced in her direction and she was prepared to cast off her integrity and principles. Had she no pride? No dignity?
She wrenched away.
"Marcus, please."
He halted and frowned at her, so swept up, himself, that he didn't appear to recognize her, and her heart sank. He probably seduced every chambermaid who walked by his door. What woman was safe in such a den of iniquity? No doubt, she was but one in a long line who'd been kissed to high heaven on the comfortable sofa.
"What is it?" he inquired.
"I can't proceed." She felt humiliated, ashamed for not being the strumpet of base character he'd hoped she was.
"Why are you upset? We're only kissing. There's no harm in it."
"Yes, but you're expecting much more than a kiss, and I couldn't possibly." He slid to the side, granting her the chance to escape, and she squirmed away and sat with her back to him. "You believe I'm someone I'm not."
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"You're hot-blooded, Kate, and you can't deny this aspect of yourself. Not to me."
"You have this crazed notion that I'm decadent, that I'm the sort who can blindly carry on as is your wont here in the city, but I'm a country girl. I have no capacity for debauchery, and I apologize if I've led you to presume otherwise."
Behind her, he rose and nestled himself to her, nuzzling at her nape. She hadn't known the spot was so sensitive, and she shivered, goose bumps billowing down her arms.
"Don't be sad," he whispered.
"I'm not; I just wish..."
"Wish what?" he prodded when she couldn't finish.
"I wish I was loose. I wish I could be the person you assume me to be. How pathetic is that?"
He chuckled. "You are so lusty, Kate. So ready for me and what I can give you."
"No, you're wrong."
She shifted, eager to persuade him that he'd misjudged her, but he was so close, his beautiful blue eyes inches away. He could tempt the Blessed Virgin, so how was Kate to resist him when she was a mere mortal?
Where he was concerned, she was so weak, so lacking in fortitude, and he could tear down any walls she might erect to keep him at bay. The realization terrified her.
"We'll be lovers, Kate, for the duration of your visit. It will be wonderful between us. I promise."
"We're not going to be any such a thing. I'm leaving and I shan't return. Don't ask me to; don't pressure me; don't order me. I won't relent."
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As if she hadn't spoken, he announced, "We'll dally every evening. At midnight."
How typical that he'd disregard her! He was like a spoiled child.
"No, Marcus."
She stood and retrieved her cloak, draped it over her shoulders, and adjusted the hood. He observed, not moving to assist or intervene.
It was time to depart, but she couldn't force herself out. She stared at him, a thousand comments on the tip of her tongue.
What if she was never alone with him again? What would she yearn to have told him?
Nothing seemed appropriate, so she whirled around and rushed away, but before she could exit, he called to her.
"Tomorrow night, Kate. I'll be waiting."
"You will wait in vain," she insisted.
"I don't think so. You'll be here."
His confidence, his assurance that she'd yield, infuriated her. With a groan of frustration, she yanked open the door and sneaked into the hall.
4
"What is your opinion, Mother?"
"About what?"
Christopher Lewis sat in his mother's suite, watching her eat and eat and eat from an assortment of candies. He couldn't ever remember seeing her without food at the ready, and heaven help the servant who let Regina's plate fall empty. She obsessed over victuals as a banker might over his gold.
She was always wolfing down one tidbit or another. Because of this, she was extremely obese, and considering the tiny chair on which she was perched, he was surprised it could hold her.
Her hair was a dull gray, her features bloated and puffy. Supposedly, she'd once been pretty, but with how she currently appeared, it was difficult to discern if the stories were true.
"About the new seeds I wish to purchase for our tenants."
"A colossal waste of funds."
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"But it's the latest scientific advance."
"Nonsense and folderol."
He sighed. She was so set in her ways, and she viewed any suggestion as suspect. He had so many plans for the estate, modifications he yearned to implement, if only he could wrest control from her. Her fingers were so tightly clamped around the purse strings that he probably wouldn't have the power to wrench them free after she was in the grave.
He was dying to assert himself as the earl, and he couldn't fathom from where he'd acquired his drive to improve Doncaster, but he guessed it was inherited from his father, who'd died when Christopher was a toddler. Without a doubt, he hadn't obtained it from Regina! A more cold-blooded, vindictive person he never hoped to meet
At the next question, she'd scoff, as she did at everything, but he raised the topic anyway. "How about the chalkboards for the vicar's wife?"
Regina nearly choked on a bonbon. "Absolutely not."
"But it's such a grand idea. We could start a school so easily."
"What on God's green earth would possess you to presume that we must educate every waif who traipses past our door?"
"Our workers should know how to read and write. And to factor." He grinned, recognizing that she was more annoyed by the second. She loathed his novel concepts. "They'll be able to accurately count our money when they're making it for us."
"Never." Flushing beet red, she went back to gorging and scrutinizing her business papers.
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Then and there, he decided he'd buy the blasted chalkboards himself. Though she was a horrific miser, Regina gave him an allowance, of which he'd never spent a farthing. He had a bundle stashed away, and he was determined to establish a schoo
l, so he would forge ahead. It would be simple to hide the project from Regina. She never bothered with the routine lives of the people, so she wouldn't be cognizant of what was happening.
Melanie was over by the mirror, primping her curls, and she chirped up. "It's hilarious that you would waste your time and energy on such twaddle."
"You're correct, Melanie," he facetiously agreed. "I could exhaust myself at vital pursuits, like trying on clothes."
"Precisely," she concurred, too thick to realize that he'd been poking fun at her.
He sighed, again.
How had he wound up with Regina as his mother and Melanie as his sister? What twist of destiny had tethered them as a family? The country folks spread tales of changelings, and he often wondered if an elf hadn't snatched him at birth and deposited him in the wrong house.
If it hadn't been for Kate's calming presence over the years, he couldn't predict what might have become of him. She—and the male employees who'd befriended him—had guided him to discover the man he was meant to be.
Now that he was eighteen, that fellow was emerging more and more. He was anxious to extract his rightful place from his mother, but he wasn't sure how to accomplish it.
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He stood, needing fresh air, needing to be away from their stifling, insufferable company.
"Where are you going?" his mother asked.
"I'm riding with Stamford."
"You'll return for supper?"
"Yes, Mother."
"No carousing with him. There's no telling what sorts of trouble he might propose."
Christopher rolled his eyes. She still viewed him as such a child. If she ever learned of his sneaking out at night, of his reveling with the village boys, or his flirting with the tavern girls, she'd have an apoplexy.
"I'll fight his attempts to corrupt me."
She glanced up and scowled. "Don't be smart. I'm not in the mood for any sass."
"Yes, ma'am," he cajoled, not in the least repentant.
"Use the occasion wisely. Put in a few advantageous comments about your sister."
Melanie added, "You should inform him of how frequently it's mentioned that I'm beautiful."
Beautiful like a marble statue, he mused. On the outside, she was fetching, but on the inside, she was vain, petty, and malicious.
"I'll wax on till he's smitten," Chris lied.
Despite what the two females assumed, he had no intention of furthering their cause of bringing Stamford and Melanie together. Chris wouldn't deliver such a fate to his worst enemy. Native savages could tie him to a pole and threaten to cut out his tongue and he wouldn't utter a flattering word about Melanie. She had no redeeming characteristics, and he wouldn't join her and his mother in fooling Stamford.
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He exited before they could issue any other frivolous orders he'd decline to follow.
******************
Shifting her corpulent frame, Regina watched Christopher depart; then she perused the post that had been forwarded from home. Melanie was prowling about, and Regina considered hiding the top page, as she would once Kate arrived, but Melanie didn't read well enough to understand what was written, so there was no need for furtiveness.
Regina couldn't remember when she'd first decided to steal from Selena Bella's trust fund, but it was so easy to do. Others were too gullible, especially a person like Kate, who saw the good in everyone and never noticed the bad. It would never occur to her to double-
check the bills the Bella girl sent.
Kate had never met her half sister, a circumstance Regina had striven strenuously to ensure, so she wasn't aware of how modestly Regina's thievery had forced Bella to live. Plus, Kate had never managed her own household, so she had no notion of what items cost, or how much was required for expenses. Regina altered Bella's invoices before passing them to Kate, so she was duped with the fakes, just as she'd been tricked into believing she'd had no legacy from her parents. It was simple to deceive Kate.
Of course, when her father had committed suicide, Kate had been very young, so she didn't know that she'd been manipulated. Regina had pilfered Kate's dowry, and by now, it had been missing for an eternity, so there was no trail that might lead to her as the culprit. She patted the satchel where she kept her
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records, smiling with how successful she'd been at duplicity.
Her nest egg was growing by leaps and bounds, and she almost wished she could brag about how shrewd she'd been, though she never would.
She couldn't rationalize her behavior to others. Usually, it was difficult to defend it to herself, but better than anybody, she grasped how rapidly fortunes could change. One minute, she'd been stewing in her home in Cornwall, her husband dying, their savings squandered on worthless medicines, and two mewling babies pulling at her skirts. The next, her husband was an earl. He'd perished straightaway, her son had inherited the title, and they'd moved into a mansion with two hundred rooms.
Christopher and Melanie didn't recall that embarrassing period when their father had been next in line to a great earldom, but they'd been snubbed by the local gentry because he worked to earn their living. They thought life was a celebration, filled with fashionable, wealthy people who frittered away at nothing, but Regina would never forget how it had been, and she would never return to that horrid condition of groveling before her neighbors.
She couldn't depend on Fate. If they could ascend so high, they could descend just as fast, and she declined to plummet to obscurity.
If disaster reigned, she would have Kate's and Selena Bella's assets to tide her over, and she felt no guilt about the situation. The two women didn't deserve the windfalls. They were both daughters of a whore. Let them suffer for the sins of the mother.
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Regina gobbled the last petit four off the plate, irked she'd have to ring for another, that the staff hadn't supplied more without her requesting it. She liked to have food close by, liked to nibble whenever the urge caught her fancy. There had been a time when she hadn’t had a French chef, when she'd often had to prepare her own desserts, and she'd never recovered from that dreadful experience.
"Where is Kate?" Melanie whined, tapping her foot in a show of petulance that annoyed Regina.
She'd struggled to provide a stable upbringing for her children, but with how they were surrounded by opulence, it had been challenging. Melanie presumed the world revolved around her, despite how Regina counseled to the contrary. The girl was shrill, spoiled, conceited, and Regina despaired for her. When reality slapped Melanie in the face, when tragedy crashed down, she would be incapable of coping, would crumble at the first signs of adversity.
Thank God, she'd birthed Christopher. He possessed Regina's intellect, her savvy and cleverness, and although on occasion he was overly compassionate, under Regina's tutelage he would go far.
"She'll be along directly."
"You said the same fifteen minutes ago."
"Then, quit harping. I'm always right."
She glared at Melanie, wondering when she'd evince an interest in something beyond her own self-centered objectives. Wasn't Regina's stake in any marriage as vital as Melanie's? For years, Regina had endured the rebuffs of the ton, and she'd seethed, while ignoring the whispers as to how there were questions regarding Christopher being the lawful heir,
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as to how they were interlopers into the circles of the Quality.
When Melanie wed Stamford, how Regina would revel in triumph!
"What are your plans for Lord Stamford?" she queried. "It's obvious you had no effect on him yesterday."
"Was that my fault?"
"As he mistook a servant to be you, whose fault would you imagine it to be?"
"Kate's. She was absolutely flaunting herself at him. You were there; you saw her. If she'd been more reticent, none of this would have happened. You'll speak to her, won't you?"
Regina definitely intended to talk to Kate about her forwardness. It was a topi
c about which she frequently chided. Kate was afflicted with many of her mother's worst traits—willfulness, pride, intractability—and was more striking than a woman ought to be.
Although Kate didn't perceive it, men were drawn to her, which was the main reason Regina had her conceal her hair. An unsuspecting gentleman could be lured to ruin, and Regina wasn't about to allow Kate to wreak the havoc her mother had instigated. Not when she was residing under Regina's roof and her conduct could reflect badly on Melanie or Christopher.
"Yes, I will admonish her, but in the interim, you must put your own house in order. Stamford is to visit this evening, so I ask you again: How will you impress him?"
"I won't." She stuck her snooty nose up in the air. "I hate him. He's a brute, and I shan't have him for a husband."
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"You have no say in the matter. You'll wed whomever I select, and you'll wed him gladly."
"I will not. I'm marrying someone who loves me, and it won't be that cruel, vicious creature. He has a heart of stone."
"Be silent. I can't abide your romantic drivel."
Melanie appeared mutinously ready to expound, and luckily, they were saved from an argument by Kate's knock.
"You'll discipline her, won't you, Mother? For wrecking my debut?"
"You're worried about Kate when your own actions have been abominable. Go to your room, and don't emerge until you are prepared to specify the ways in which you will charm Lord Stamford."
"I won't do it, I tell you. I won't!"
Regina's temper sparked. She rose and walked over until they were toe-to-toe, and Regina towered over her.
"Not another word, you ungrateful wretch."
"Or what? Will you beat me? Send me to bed without supper?"
"Don't think you're too grown-up to be punished."
"You always suppose that you can force me into anything. But not this time. I don't care if we traveled so far. I don't care if I shame you. I won't accept a proposal from him."
Regina slapped her, and she stumbled and lurched to the side, catching herself before she fell to the floor.
