My Lady's Pleasure

by Julia Justiss

  But then indefatigable determination of the sort that must have led his mama to escape her relations and set off into the unknown with her Irish lover built back up in him, sparking a new idea rife with possibility.

  The solution to this dilemma might be the one he’d rejected ten years ago. Young and hotheaded, at his grandfather’s final insult he’d stormed out, vowing never to ask a Montford for anything again. But as ten years without one had demonstrated with painful clarity, all the things he valued most—honor, dignity, the hand of the woman he loved—depended on his occupying a respectable position in society. A position that, by English social code, could be conveyed on him only if he were once again received by his mother’s family.

  The idea of crawling on his belly to beg his cousin for reconciliation made him gag. But to salvage a life with Valeria, he would crawl and he would beg.

  He might not have to abase himself totally, he thought with a grim smile. Should Jeremy prove resistant, a word in Riverton’s ear might make the earl more receptive to receiving his disreputable cousin with better grace.

  He’d reinstate himself with the family and press them to find him some respectable position—assistant to a government official or secretary to a nobleman. To limit the inevitable gossip among the ton, it would be in the family’s interests to find him such a position quickly.

  He was quick-witted, hardworking, and as Valeria had said, good at ingratiating himself with people at all levels of society. Once in a position, he would excel.

  Having reconciled with the Montfords and taken that post, he could then return, confess his love and beg Valeria to marry him as soon as he’d worked himself to a level in which the world would not consider their union quite so dreadful a misalliance.

  Valeria would marry him…wouldn’t she?

  Mercy, who knew her better than anyone, had said he held her heart. Her fierce, continual concern for him surely demonstrated a deep emotion. And her passionate response to him, as powerful as the response she evoked in him—surely that was love translated into touch.

  He smiled a little, thinking of the delicious things she’d done to him and for him in the magical stretches of the night. A fierce satisfaction filled him at knowing he was the only man who had ever touched her thus.

  The smile faded. She damned well better marry him. He’d gut any other man who dared touch her as he had.

  But a plan to salvage their future did not change the bitter fact that he must still leave her now. And soon.

  Though he need no longer worry about the possibility of a child. Should she conceive, he would simply marry her sooner. If not for the distress it might cause her to have to marry in that way, he’d welcome any reason that shortened the time before he could return to claim her.

  Would she understand why he must go? She was too intelligent not to comprehend the danger they courted. But if he confessed his love and his hopes for their future, surely any hurt his leaving might cause would be offset by knowing that as soon as he could, he would come back.

  Sure, and what did he have to offer her now but fine talk? he thought, frowning. The most derelict drunk in the parish could boast of the grand feats he would perform—tomorrow or next week or next year.

  If she did love him, being Valeria, she might well press him to disregard the opinion of Society and marry her immediately. She might not understand his need to prove himself—in his own eyes and the world’s—a man worthy of her love. She might even think his plan an excuse to evade marrying her, and doubt the strength of his affection.

  Which would surely wound her more than leaving now with his vows of love unspoken.

  “Words be easy. ’Tis deeds win the battle,” Valeria’s nurse had said, and she was right. Teagan would not speak to Valeria until he’d translated plans into action and action into accomplishment.

  Which meant when he departed, he might express only his fervent vow to return.

  The thought of leaving still too painful to contemplate, he turned his mind to planning, and another prospect flashed in his mind. Perhaps he need not approach the earl, after all. His mother’s maternal family included a duke and claimed influence even superior to the Montfords’.

  One of the few pleasant interludes he could remember from childhood was visiting Lady Charlotte Darnell, his mama’s first cousin. That lady—she’d urged him to call her “Aunt Charlotte”—was now a widow residing in London.

  Lady Charlotte it would be, then. But before he figured out how to approach her, he must solve a much more difficult dilemma—finding a way to say goodbye to Valeria.

  Perhaps he should simply pen her a note and leave now, before she returned and the magnet of her presence could draw him away from his resolve to depart. But that was the coward’s way, and after all she’d given him, she deserved better than a letter left with the butler.

  Besides, remaining until tomorrow would mean they’d have tonight. One last night.

  Only the last for now. For when he’d built a new life worthy of her, he would come back to reclaim her—and all the other nights of their lives.

  Though exceedingly weary, Valeria was not able to return to Winterpark Manor until late afternoon, when the fire at the grain mill had at last been put out, those wounded in the dust explosion that caused it cared for and returned to their families.

  A smile curved her lips as she walked up the entry stairs. Ah, what a joyous reason for fatigue! Perhaps she could rest before dinner. Teagan would be departing all too soon, and she had no intention of wasting the few nights she had left with him in slumber.

  He must have been watching for her, for he appeared in the hallway immediately after Giddings took her wrap.

  “Valeria, welcome back. I trust the situation at the mill is now resolved?”

  “Yes. The building shall require repairs, but no one was grievously injured, thank goodness.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. If you are not too exhausted, would you join me in the library for a moment?”

  Ah, the library. Sparkles danced across nerves she’d thought too tired to respond when she recalled what had begun the last time she’d been in that room with him.

  “Yes…my very close friend,” she murmured, smiling.

  A smile he didn’t return. Alarm banished fatigue in an instant.

  He neither looked at her nor touched her after she followed him in. Her stomach commenced a downward spiral.

  He was going to tell her he was leaving. He would smile, and kiss her hand, and express his appreciation for her kind hospitality…then announce his imminent departure.

  Out of the whole of a long, bland, passionless lifetime, could she not have just a few more days of bliss?

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. If this were the end, let her manage it with dignity. No tears, no argument, no begging him to remain just one more day.

  Head held high, she walked to the sofa and seated herself. “What is it, Teagan?”

  He paced to the window, then turned to her. His face looked as strained as she knew hers must be.

  “There is no easy way to put this, so I’ll just say it outright. I must leave Winterpark, Valeria.”

  Even with her expecting them, the words still struck like a blow. She gripped the sofa arm to steady herself. “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  So she had one more night. Or did she? Had the time they’d shared, so unparalleled in splendor for her, been merely one more of any number of similar interludes for him? One which had now lost its luster? No, she could not believe that.

  “I see,” she managed to reply at last.

  “You cannot think I want to go!” He strode over to seize her hands and kiss them. “There is nothing I would love more than to remain here with you, as lost in our own private world as we have been these two days past. But as Mercy pointed out to me this morning, we both know that cannot be. The unusual circumstances of my arrival have allowed us a few days’ grace, but if I linger much longer, malicious gossip about the r
eal nature of our relationship is sure to erupt. I will not stay and cause your new staff and neighbors to turn against you.”

  He paused as if he would say more, then closed his lips. Unable to trust her voice, she merely nodded.

  “I will come back, Valeria. ’Tis time for me to get my affairs in order, as I should have done long since. But once I do, nothing under heaven will keep me from you.”

  “Get…your affairs in order?”

  “I mean to approach my mother’s family and see if they will permit a reconciliation. Gambling was never to be more than a temporary support, and it’s past time for me to find a more respectable occupation.”

  A wistful smile touched his lips. “I’d like to become a man you can be proud to acknowledge as your friend. A man people will not feel obliged to warn you against.”

  “I am proud already to call you my friend.”

  He swallowed. “Ah, lass, ’tis the beauty of ye,” he said, his voice rough. “Ye see good where there is none.”

  “Nay, Teagan. I see what everyone else has overlooked.”

  His jaw tightened, and as if unable to restrain himself longer, he pulled her up from the sofa and into his arms, crushing her against his chest.

  “Ah, mo muirnin, I shall miss you every day and every hour. And thank the lord at the end of every night, for it means one less day remains until I see you again.”

  He would come back.

  He sought her lips, and Valeria gave them eagerly. His kiss, deep, urgent, almost frantic, seemed to say he, too, needed to affirm that this bond they shared would endure the trials of separation to come.

  Then he released her, pushed her gently back to a seat. “If I am not to ruin all yet, I shall have to be more discreet than that for the rest of today.”

  “Surely…we will still have tonight?”

  “You’ll allow it?”

  “Yes! Oh, yes.”

  “Saints be praised,” he said fervently, making the sign of the cross. “I don’t think I could face the purgatory of leaving tomorrow if I did not know we still have the heaven of tonight.”

  With a quick sideways glance, as if afraid someone might oversee them, he kissed Valeria on the forehead. “Go rest, then, mo muirnin. We’ve but one more night, and I promise to make it one you will never forget.”

  A gentle rain was falling at dawn the next morning as Valeria walked Teagan down the path to the stables. He’d slipped to the kitchen to pack himself some meat and cheese for the journey so he might be off at first light, the better to reach London as soon as possible.

  “I’ll leave the horse at the posting inn. One of their ostlers will return him.”

  She nodded, biting her lip to avoid asking if he had sufficient funds for the journey, knowing that, even if he did not, his pride would not allow him to accept any from her.

  She waited while he entered the stable, saddled a mount, sent the sleepy groom he’d awakened back to bed.

  The drizzle had stopped and the new sun had just begun to peep over the eastern hills as they walked toward the carriageway out of Winterpark, both silenced by the heavy weight of imminent separation.

  Out of sight of both house and stable, he wrapped his mount’s reins around a tree and took her in his arms. For a long, precious moment he simply held her, while Valeria memorized the sound of his heartbeat and breathed in the scent of his skin.

  The passion they’d shared last night had been rough and frantic, slow and gentle by turns. The kiss he bent to give her now was the latter, long, lingering, tender. Despite her best intentions to be strong, she felt the hot sting of tears behind her closed eyelids.

  He broke the kiss and she lowered her head to his shoulder, not wishing to look up so he could say goodbye, hoping with all her strength that he would say instead the words he’d hinted at but never spoken, the three words she so badly wanted to hear. Freeing her to say them, too.

  But he said nothing. At last he lifted her head, framing her face in his hands, the golden cat eyes that had enthralled her from the first commanding her gaze.

  “On my mother’s grave and by all the saints, I swear I will come back, Valeria. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” she replied, disappointment battling with the hope that urged her to trust his words. “I believe you.”

  “Goodbye, then, mo muirnin,” he said roughly, brushing his lips against her forehead. “Dream of me.”

  He pushed her gently away. Without looking back he strode to his horse, untied the reins and leaped into the saddle, kicking the stallion into a trot.

  Numbness, like the shock after a mortal injury during which one does not yet feel pain, held her motionless as he rode away. Valeria wasn’t sure how long she stood there, the sun of a new day dappling her hair, a soft breeze wafting bird calls to her from the trees beyond the flower border. All the signs of a normal morning, as if half her soul and all her joy had not just been wrenched from her to disappear down the road to London.

  She turned toward the house—and found Mercy approaching her. “Child, child,” the nurse sighed, her eyes scrutinizing Valeria’s face, “what have you done?”

  “What I wanted, Mercy,” she replied fiercely. “And I will not regret it.”

  “Ah, Miss Val,” the nurse murmured, holding out her arms and gathering Valeria close. “I surely hope not.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  A week later, Teagan presented himself at the Mount Street town house of Lady Charlotte Darnell. Once he’d set out from Winterpark, his entire mind and will focused on what he must accomplish, as often happened with fickle Lady Luck, the cards that had fallen so badly the previous month suddenly realigned themselves in his favor. A few nights’ concentrated effort at inns along the road back to London had amassed him sufficient funds to be able to return to his rooms and stave off the threat of the magistrate.

  Dressed now in the best Weston and Hoby could offer, trying to keep his nervous fingers from rearranging his cravat, he stood in Lady Charlotte’s anteroom while the butler went to determine if his mother’s cousin would receive him. If ever Teagan needed the Jester’s glib tongue and charming manners, ’twas now.

  Please, Mama, he prayed, let Lady Charlotte remember me with kindness.

  A few moments later the butler returned. “My mistress is in the morning room. If you will follow me?”

  He never heard the butler announce his name. A shock pulsed through him the moment he beheld the tall, golden-haired lady who sat on the brocade settee, her clear blue eyes examining him avidly.

  In the small study of the rambling manor at the stud farm Teagan had managed for several summers, he’d come upon a miniature that the friendly cook informed him was of Lady Gwyneth—apparently the sole remaining portrait of the earl’s disgraced daughter. A portrait that bore so uncanny a resemblance to Lady Charlotte that for an instant he’d wondered if it were his mother come back to life.

  “You are the image of Mama!” he blurted. Then, remembering the imperative to make a good impression, he swept her a deep bow. “Excuse me! ’Tis good of you to receive me, Lady Charlotte.”

  His mother’s cousin continued to study him, her serene face impassive. Desperation making sweat pop out on his brow, he held her glance and tried to smile.

  She shook her head slightly. “Teagan, Teagan,” she said, advancing toward him with both hands outstretched, “why have you stayed away so long? And it’s ‘Aunt Charlotte,’ you will remember.”

  So dizzy with relief he thought he might faint, Teagan sent a silent prayer of thanks to his mama and all the other saints in heaven before bending to kiss her fingers.

  “What a handsome devil you’ve grown to be! And you are correct—your mama and I looked so alike many thought us sisters rather than cousins. But come, sit with me.” She waved him toward the settee. “I’ll have Martin bring us tea—or shall we make that champagne? A reunion after so many years demands a celebration!”

  While the butler brought wine and refreshments, Lady Char
lotte chatted about his mama and their growing up together. Once they’d disposed of the refreshments and sipped the promised champagne, she said, “But enough of ancient days. Tell me how you are and what you’ve been doing! I can’t believe you’ve committed half the sins gossip lays at your door—no more than I believed the tales the Montfords told about you when you were growing up.”

  Teagan smiled ruefully. “I expect in both cases much of the talk is deserved. Since I learned early on that Mama’s family would attribute blame to me regardless of how I behaved, it seemed only prudent to earn the thrashings I was going to receive anyway.”

  “And in more recent years?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been an honest man, if a gambler can be described as such.” He paused, his face heating. “The affair with Lady Uxtabridge I regretted almost from the moment it began, but at the time I was still too angry and bitter to heed the harm I caused. After that…despite what rumor claims, my dealings with the ladies have been no more reprehensible than any other bachelor’s.”

  She chuckled. “If Society were to ban every gentleman who committed youthful follies, the ton would be thin of company indeed! I don’t know what happened at Oxford—and no, you needn’t tell me! But I thought it dreadfully wrong of the family to break with you over it. Of course, Uncle Montford was ever a hot-tempered, harsh disciplinarian. Indeed, I never forgave him for what he did to Gwen, forcing her to choose between her home and the man she loved. And I still blame Uncle Montford for her death.”

  A fierce expression briefly creased her forehead before she continued. “At the time of the Oxford…incident, my husband agreed with the earl, and absolutely forbade me to interfere. Sometimes when one is handling a forceful gentleman, as with a feisty stallion, ’tis best to let him have his head until he settles down. I hoped you would contact me, send me some word. But you seemed to go off in a different direction altogether, which only confirmed Darnell’s view that your grandfather was right, and made it impossible for me to approach you. By the time my husband died last year, I was not sure you would care to be approached, after so long a silence. I am so very glad you decided to seek me out at last.”