by Shayla Black
Jack shrugged. “That’s a lot of ifs. And all your work on this railroad will be for naught unless Maddie Sedgewick marries you.”
“She will agree to do so by next week.” Brock tossed his father a confident nod. “I’ll make certain of it.”
Continue Reading for Chapter One of “ONE WICKED NIGHT”
WAS IT ONE NIGHT OF PASSION...
When Lady Serena Boyce’s husband, the elderly Duke of Warrington, could not give her an heir, he begged her to take a lover in order to conceive a child. She never dreamed it would mean falling in love. One look at the handsome stranger who rescued her from a thief, and virginal Serena was overcome with desire. Dark and compelling, Lucien Clayborne, Marquess of Daneridge, was everything her honor warned her against. Yet the anguish in his soul drew her nearer...and before the night was through, she had gifted him with her innocence.
...OR A LOVE THEY WERE DESTINED TO SHARE?
Then the duke was murdered, and Lucien discovered that Serena was pregnant. Still reeling from the death of his cherished daughter and enraged by his first wife’s callous betrayals, Lucien’s honor demanded that he make Serena his bride. But the rapture of their one night together had unlocked feelings he thought his heart had forgotten. And now, a chilling evil threatened their chance to claim a love that promised to last a lifetime.
CHAPTER ONE
June, 1816
An air of defeat hung about Serena’s husband like a cloak as he rose from her bed. She felt her dream of motherhood die with his sigh of finality.
“Cyrus?” she called, pushing a stray lock of blond hair behind her shoulder with trembling fingers.
He didn’t face her, didn’t reply, but answered with a tight shake of his head, not breaking the heavy silence between them.
Serena righted her dressing gown about her legs to ward off a sudden chill. What had gone wrong tonight, when he had seemed assured for the first time in months?
Despair clutched at Serena like a tight fist, strangling all hope from her heart as Cyrus retrieved his robe and covered his sagging shoulders.
“Is it my fault? Have I done something to displease you?”
With a diplomat’s precision, Cyrus knotted the blue velvet tie around his soft middle and cleared his throat. “The fault lies with me, my dear. I should not have embarrassed either of us again.”
Without a backward glance, Cyrus crossed the Aubusson carpet for the door.
Serena leapt from the bed and closed the distance between them. Tentatively, she reached for his hand. “Please, Cyrus. Do not leave. Truly,” she placated him, “you did not embarrass me. Come. Let us...try again.”
“No.” He withdrew from her touch. “It’s ludicrous to continue hoping our union will bear fruit. We have been married these three years past, and I have been without the ability since we wed.” He looked away in disgust. “Bloody fever.”
“It will happen...someday,” she insisted, hearing his self-directed rage and mortification. “We must simply be patient.”
“My patience is thin. Alastair is behaving as though I’ve got one foot in the grave, supporting deplorable habits with money he has not yet inherited. I can feel him waiting for rich Uncle Cyrus to die,” he sneered.
Serena’s troubled gaze touched the furrow on her husband’s lined brow, ran over the down-turned mouth which served him so well in his brilliant career in the House of Lords. He was a true statesman, able to smooth out peace between law-making men and ease warring countries toward a truce. She admired him greatly. Why couldn’t their comfortable marriage have been blessed with children, as well?
“Alastair is young yet,” she offered. “Perhaps he will mature.”
“Perhaps, thought I suspect George the Third will regain his sanity first,” Cyrus spat. “Alastair is thirty-five. What has he ever accomplished above producing illegitimate children? He has no wife, nor would any suitable woman have him. Responsibility is not a word that haunts his foul vocabulary. How will he manage an estate this size and assume the duties of a dukedom?”
Serena floundered for an answer, her heart aching for him. Alastair was interested only in what would please or benefit himself. He would take everything Cyrus had nurtured during the fifty-four years of his life and destroy it with his reckless disregard.
Her husband sighed tiredly. “If only I had someone, even a distant cousin, I could adopt as my heir. But short of selecting someone off the street, I know of no one.”
“Cyrus, you mustn’t worry so. Your...ability may return. Please, until then, do not dwell on it.”
Incredulity sharpened his gaze. “Serena, I have never been incapable of anything in my life. Now that I have a beautiful young wife and have need of an heir . . . How can I think of anything else?”
Serena felt the need for a child as keenly as Cyrus. As much as she ached to hold a sweet child in her arms, she knew Cyrus needed such a child to protect his heritage. The ton’s latest scandals often included Alastair. He was an embarrassment to the family. She had no doubt Cyrus’s inability to perform his husbandly duty was killing him.
Serena tugged on his hand, urging him to sit beside her on the pale, multi-hued coverlet. Her heart twisted at his defeated expression. “Everything will right itself. You’ll see.”
Shaking his head, Cyrus raised a spotted hand to stroke her cheek. “You always try to lift my spirits, my dear. It’s one of the qualities I adore about you. You deserve so much more from a husband.”
“Cyrus, you mustn’t say such a thing! You have been a devoted husband, and I care for you very much.”
“As you would a favored uncle,” he pointed out.
Serena wanted to deny his words, but could not. “Stop this talk. We have tomorrow and every day after.”
“This was the last time. You and I both know this consummation will never come to pass. The fever and my gout have seen to that.”
Serena bit her lip and looked away, hoping to hide her disappointment. But Cyrus knew her dreams. In the early weeks of their marriage, they had often discussed her impatience for motherhood. Now Serena wished he knew nothing of her longings. He would only use them to torture himself.
He sighed heavily. “You’re thinking of children again, are you not?”
Her eyes welled up with moisture as a thick lump of despair stuck in her throat. One traitorous tear, followed by another, slid down her cool cheek. She tried to swipe the drops away before Cyrus saw. Instead, he took her hand in his, then dabbed her tears with the linen sheet.
“I am sorry, more sorry than I can say.” His voice cracked with regret. “I know the pressure your grandmother has put on you. I realize how difficult it was to attend your sister’s lying-in.”
“Grandy only wishes for my happiness, and Catherine’s confinement was a joy.”
Cyrus frowned. “So you tell me. Caffey informs me you cried all afternoon when you arrived home.”
Serena rose, presenting her back to Cyrus. She clenched her teeth, making a mental note to chastise her maid later. “Caffey talks too much.”
“But she speaks the truth, my dear, and we both know it.” He rose and moved to her side. “Serena, I have debated this issue thoroughly. You know I am a man of logic. And I have come to the conclusion we have only one suitable option.”
With an uncertain nibble on her lip, Serena turned to her husband. “What is that?”
The dark eyes usually filled with affection now flashed with conviction as he sent her a grave stare. Prickles of alarm dashed up her spine.
“You must take a lover,” he instructed. “Stay with him until you conceive a child.”
Incredulity erupted within her, followed closely by a sense of betrayal. Dear God, did Cyrus understand the significance of his request?
Mouth gaping open, she demanded, “How can you suggest such a thing? I—it’s adultery!”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Serena, listen to me. It isn’t, not exactly,” he argued. “I am giving you leave to fulfill your dr
eam of motherhood. Understand that, please.”
She wrenched from his embrace, staring at his familiar face in shock. “I stood before an altar in the house of God and vowed to be faithful as long as we both should live, not as long as you wished me to be.”
“I would not ask you to take a lover if I doubted this decision was the right one. I need an heir to protect a title and fortune over four hundred years old. And you, my dear, desire a child. At twenty-two, most married ladies have at least one. I alone must bear the blame for that lack.”
“Cyrus, you could not have known—”
“I did know,” he interrupted. Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and finger, Cyrus winced. “Serena, I married you almost certain that I could not...perform. But for some bloody reason, I had convinced myself that a young wife would bring my ability back. It’s because of that selfishness you’re not a mother. Had you married any other man, you would be bouncing a babe on your knee now, perhaps two.”
He had known of this deficiency, yet married her anyway? Serena raised a shaking hand to her gaping mouth, anger beginning to wash over her shock in an icy cascade.
Cyrus eased her hand from her face and into his, then knelt before her. His dark eyes scanned her face with concern. “You must see, I’ve wasted three years of your life that I cannot give back. All I can do is give you leave to conceive where you may.”
The bleak gray of Cyrus’s eyes matched the resignation in his stance. Serena’s ire dissolved as compassion overtook her heart. After all, Cyrus had more at stake than a dream. Centuries of family pride rested in his hands.
“Our marriage has not been fruitless,” she argued. “You’ve taught me so much about life, people, politics—”
“Yes, yes. But all that aside, you desire a child; I cannot give you one.”
His hard-edged tone rattled the tight control governing her emotions. Tears prickled the back of her eyes again. “Think of what you ask me.”
“I have, Serena.” He nodded, his face austere. “I understand very well what this means.”
“Then you know I cannot. You’re asking me to compromise myself.” She lifted a trembling hand to her throat. “To behave like…” She sighed, then whispered, “My mother.”
“Never that,” he insisted. “I am asking you to find a man, just one, who can fulfill your dream—and give me an heir.”
Shaking her head, she looked at her husband through a blur of tears. “We must trust God. He has a reason for our chastity, and when He deems it appropriate, all will be right between us.”
“God has done nothing for us,” Cyrus ground out. “By the time He deems our consummation appropriate, I will surely be on the far side of the grave.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook gently. “We must take matters into our own hands.”
“Cyrus, no. I cannot…”
“Take a lover. You can,” he vowed. “You must.”
“I-I wouldn’t know how.”
A smile broke the severity of his scowl. “My dear, you won’t have to do anything but acquiesce. If you but give men the slightest encouragement, instead of rebuffing them, they will do everything possible to charm you. You will scarcely need to bat an eyelash to get their attention.” He smiled. “Believe me.”
Unbelievable. Heady. Scary. “Please don’t ask this of me. You know such fast behavior goes against everything I believe. I could not bear to be labeled my mother’s daughter in every sense.”
“Serena, I understand your fear, but sometimes we must do things we would rather not to further an important cause. You know how I deplore battle, yet I advocated the Peninsular War because I believed in my country and our cause.”
“But you weren’t asked to shoot the French, just to negotiate peace,” she argued.
“I also had to vote for a declaration of war, knowing I would send England into submission or thousands of young men to die. The decision was practical, not emotional.”
Serena hung her head, feeling inexplicably betrayed by his request, as if Cyrus were telling her he had a lover instead of asking her to take one herself.
“People would know the child was another man’s,” she argued.
He stared at her, his eyes reflecting patience. “Not if you were discreet. Women in the ton engage in other liaisons frequently, many you’ve met.”
“Who?” she asked, scarcely able to imagine any of her acquaintances indulging in illicit liaisons. She had purposely avoided women like her mother.
“Who is of no consequence. The point is, the practice is not an uncommon one.”
“Mimicking others with low morality hardly makes the thing right. To lie in another man’s bed and....” She hung her head, disturbed by visions of acts she did not understand. “I doubt I could.”
Cyrus took her hand in his. “Darling, you have yet to try. Sometimes a spark will occur between a man and a woman that compels them together. Once you feel that, your fears and resistance will melt away, I vow.”
Unlikely. The thought of consummating the unknown acts of the marriage bed even with Cyrus felt tantamount to jumping off a cliff. But to share something so intimate with a stranger and not be anxious or worry people would brand her wanton . . . Highly unlikely, indeed.
“What of the child’s natural father? Certainly he would know who sired your heir.”
“You’re so wonderfully naive.” Cyrus smiled. “It is common for men of the ton to have children scattered about. One more should hardly lift a gentleman’s brow.”
Serena absorbed that unfeeling view with a gasp. One more reason she had held society and its doings at arm’s length these years.
Still, the need to have her own child churned within her. More than anything, she wanted to hold her babe, touch its downy head, sing it lullabies each night, feed it milk from her breast...give it her love. And Cyrus needed an heir. The plain truth was, she could not conceive without a healthy man.
She swallowed, wondering if, as with most things, Cyrus was right. “I will consider it.”
“My dear, you will not be sorry,” he vowed, rising from the floor with a smile. “Get a good night’s rest. We leave for town in two days.”
“We? You’re taking me with you to London?”
“For the rest of the season,” he confirmed. “This small corner of Sussex is hardly big enough for you to carry on a discreet affair.”
* * * *
Lucien Clayborne, the fifth Marquess of Daneridge, stood at the edge of the cold grave. He closed his eyes and bunched his fist around a bouquet of spring flowers. The smell of the blossoms and freshly cut grass blended with his grief to swirl a guilty nausea through him. He relished the pain, along with the discomfort of the morning drizzle.
Chelsea had been dead three months, and he had no one to blame but himself. He cursed into the biting wind. Why couldn’t he have breathed twenty years of his own worthless life into her precious little body?
Flooded with grief, he sank to his knees, not giving a damn that mud fouled his gray wool trousers. Carefully, he placed the flowers over her grave, next to the others he had brought the day before. Chelsea would have accepted them with one of her bright, guileless smiles.
Lucien cursed heavenward, glad he was insulting the God who had taken Chelsea from him. He wanted that God to feel his anguish. He wanted that God to understand he no longer believed in Him.
Hot tears scalded the back of his eyes. He swallowed back the unmanly show of emotion.
For the thousandth time, he asked himself: Why Chelsea? As usual, no answer came.
His body ached from lack of sleep as he rose. How long before he could pass a whole hour without thinking about her and the knowledge that he had failed her? How much longer would regrets and recriminations taunt him, keeping him awake through the night?
Those torments were no more than he deserved—for the rest of his life. After all, he had been immersed in his much too public divorce and escaping its unpleasantness to notice Chelsea. Consumed with rage and bruised
pride, he had spent all his energy shedding Ravenna legally and emotionally, while trying to ignore her indiscreet tryst with Lord Wayland and their flight to Italy.
He had failed to notice his own daughter’s confusion or need for affection until it was too late.
Lucien turned away from the grave. As his lonely black carriage traveled up South Audley Street, he watched St. George’s burial ground slowly slip from his sight. He made himself a vow: If he ever had another child, he would be a much different father.
* * * *
“My dear, Serena! It is you,” her grandmother said with surprise, rising from the damask-covered Grecian couch. She grasped Serena’s hands with her own frail ones. “You look lovely. Why didn’t you write to tell me you were planning a trip to London?”
“Grandy, I had no time, and I did not want to come. Cyrus insisted,” she explained. “I realize it’s early. Have I come at a bad time?”
“Oh, no. Now, you must sit and tell me everything.” Her grandmother’s face lit up in a beaming smile. “Have you come to town early to prepare for your confinement?”
Serena sighed, bracing herself for her grandmother’s disappointment. “No, Grandy.”
“Are you doing something to prevent conception?”
Serena stared at her grandmother in astonishment. “Grandy! Of course not. I would hardly know how.”
Speculative blue eyes assessed Serena. “Then why aren’t you in the family way yet? Your health is not failing, I hope.”
Embarrassed by the turn of the conversation, Serena cast her gaze down. “No, things simply have not worked out as Cyrus and I had hoped.”
“But you are still trying?”
“Grandy, could we please discuss something else?”
The older woman sighed. “Talk to me, lamb. Your husband is a duke. He needs an heir other than that worthless nephew of his. And I want a great-grandchild from you.”
