The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances

by Cerise DeLand

  But Lady Lacy Featherstone would never want a weak and broken man. His gut wrenched at the memory of her in all her angelic glory. She was a beauty, an accomplished horsewoman, an heiress freshly debuted last Season with family connections and willful as sin. If he had ever considered himself a proper match for that lady, now he was less than suitable. He was a cripple. Deformed. An oddity for any drawing room, let alone a bedroom.

  Lacy. He shut his eye now, recalling how she had looked the night he’d met her for the very first time at his brother Adam’s house party in April. In jade green bombazine, she had followed him into the library after the supper.

  “You are ignoring me, Wes,” she had accused him as she’d shut the door behind her. She winked at him, so coy, so forward as to address him by his first name when they’d just been introduced.

  He’d chuckled ruefully. His need to stop eating her up with his eyes was a monstrous thing so gigantic, he’d had to retreat to the seclusion of the dusty old room. Alone. If only just to get his cock down. “Ignore you? Evidently not entirely.”

  She drifted forward, her startling robin’s egg blue eyes searching his. “I want a kiss.”

  He raised a brow and chuckled. “We have met only two hours ago.”

  She came to stand within inches of him, her pale moonbeam hair a stunning accent to her ivory skin and the pink roses of her cheeks. “Minutes, hours. What do they matter when you know in your soul what is to be?”

  He silently adored her audacity to counter him but for the sake of propriety he had had to show some resilience. “Ha! And what is that, Lady Featherstone?”

  She tossed him a smile. “We are to be one. Forever.”

  “You are so certain.”

  “Doubt me? Kiss me and see.”

  He could not take his eyes off her as she pressed her breasts against his chest. His fingers itched to draw her closer, feel her delicate curves flush to his quickening body. “You are all of what? Eighteen?”

  “Nineteen,” she whispered, rising on her toes to put her lush lips to the corner of his mouth. “I have debuted. I am of age. Open to a proposal.”

  He hooted. But he had to hold the boldness and the beauty that breathed before him. No other gentlewoman had ever been so brazen. He had to touch her, make certain she was real. His hands went round her small waist. “We are not suited.”

  She slid her lips to rest fully atop his. “You are a cavalryman. I am a horsewoman. We are strong, independent and know what we want.”

  He wrapped his arm around her back, and against his chest, he absorbed the warmth of her breasts. “You need a man of wealth and position. I have neither.”

  “I have a large dowry and you have position. You are a colonel in the King’s Hussars.”

  “We are at war, my sweet.”

  “Ah. I see.” She kissed him once, quickly, the fragrance of her perfume fogging his brain. “You fear you will return an invalid.”

  “Or not at all,” he corrected her, giving her a small shake.

  She nestled closer to him. Her breasts, large and supple, bored into his chest. Her thighs, strong and insistent, pressed against his. Her voice, soft as a cat’s purr, enveloped him. She ran her fingers through the curls at his nape. “Darling, I care not how I have you. I simply want you.”

  He snatched her hand away. “That is wrong.”

  She placed his palm over one breast. “Kiss me and tell me then.”

  How could he refuse?

  She was courageous and wise and had foresight. Yet he had left his own wits somewhere in the drawing room. From the moment he had watched her greeting his sister-in-law, he had admired her beauty, her manners, her laugh. And he wished she were his.

  So there in the library, she stood on tiptoes and brushed her lips over his.

  “Darling Wes.” She took his hand from her breast and pushed it down to press against her mound. Beneath her gown, she was hot. “I need you. As you do me.” She demonstrated by pushing his fingers hard against her skirts. He could detect the plush lips of her intimate folds. “Feel how I need you.” She had gathered up her gown and she was so sweet, so torrid, so determined to enchant him that he could not resist helping her.

  “Oh, god,” he’d groaned, his fingers wet and deep within her, sluicing her sweet flesh. “You are a jewel.” He’d stroked, listening to her succulent desire, feeling her heat and his own outrageous lust to get inside her. “But we will not do this.”

  He’d pushed down her skirts, removed his hand. He had stopped his outlandish affront to her maidenly charms. He was, after all, an officer. A gentleman. From a well-known family whose only scourge was their curse.

  Yet in the next two months, every time he’d seen her at house parties or balls, he had kissed her, caressed her and had been sorely tempted to take her wherever they stood. But reason had prevailed. He’d never been so bold. So foolish. Instead, he’d done the most ridiculous thing. The most outrageous act a Stanhope man ever did do. He’d gone to her father to ask for her hand. The man had readily accepted.

  “Against common sense,” Wes mourned now, ran a hand through his hair and directed his gaze out the casement window at the never-ending rain. September in Lancashire. Supposed to be warm. Sunny. Now cold and dark as my despair.

  He struggled up from his chair, grabbed his cane and plodded in his slippers to the window. Would he ever be warm again? Anywhere?

  The sound of carriage wheels made him cock his ear in the direction of the drive.

  No one visited. He had made it plain to Charles that the man was to spread that word in the village. Wes desired no visitors. No well-wishers. No expressions of gratitude for the so-called hero of Talavera.

  Still, Wes heard the carriage wheels grind to a stop.

  Shouting above the downpour of the rain assaulted his peace.

  Footsteps. Then a knocking on the front door.

  Charles emerged from the dining room where he’d been laying out luncheon.

  “Who might this be?” Wes asked of the man who should not have invited anyone.

  “I have no idea, sir,” Charles replied as he stepped toward the foyer and the carved wooden door. “I will inquire.”

  Wes nodded, putting pressure on his cane as he hobbled back toward his chair.

  “Good afternoon,” Charles greeted the visitor. “Do come in. May I say who is calling?” he asked in a tone of voice so caring that Wes, out of his own immense curiosity, became focused on the portal and the figure standing there.

  Wes stiffened. His jaw dropped. His one good eye squinted in disbelief.

  “Yes, you may say. Charles, isn’t it?” asked the vision in the bright navy blue pelisse and pink straw bonnet. The vision stepped inside, handed Charles her umbrella and pulled at her gloves, finger by finger, as she gazed about, her large robin’s egg blue eyes landing on Wes. Her face severe, unsmiling, she told Charles, “You may say Lady Lacy Featherstone calls upon Colonel Stanhope.”

  “I’m afraid, my lady, that Colonel Stanhope is indisposed.”

  Her incomparable blue gaze danced down Wes’s form. “He looks quite fit to me, Charles.”

  What? How can I? Looking like a gargoyle. Feeling weak as a puppy. Wes stepped back into the shadows of the great room. He could still see her. And certainly she saw him. Damn and double damn it to hell.

  Lacy took a step forward.

  Charles blocked her.

  She glared at the servant. “Charles, let us understand each other from the start. I am here. I have arrived at your door after an extremely discomfiting journey by coach from Kent. Do you know how far that is, Charles?”

  “Yes, Lady Featherstone, I certainly do. The Colonel and I traveled here from London, and we did so with the Colonel in dire pain. I tell you that you may not see him.”

  You may not, cannot. You will be repulsed to be near me. Wes forced himself to stand his ground.

  She smiled with a hauteur that had his man stiffen. “But, Charles, I do see him. I see him now. I s
ee him plainly. And I will speak with him.”

  “My lady, you may not enter.”

  “Wes!” she called to him, bracing herself on two dainty feet. “I will not leave.”

  Oh, hell. Why did I involve myself with a blue-stocking with her own mind? Was I mad even before Spain? Bloody balls. “Lacy, I do not wish to see you.”

  She snorted. “I do not care what you wish.”

  “It is not proper that you are here. And unescorted, as far as I can tell.”

  She folded her hands before her, prim as he had never known her to be. “I do not care for escorts or proprieties.”

  “You must!” Was she out of her wits?

  “You heard me,” she said as she surveyed the wooden beams of the ceiling and the black and white of the foyer floor tiles.

  God, she was lovely. Like spun sugar, blonde as starlight, fragile and scrumptious. Meant for him. Once. Long ago.

  “I came alone,” she informed him and took a step forward. “My father thinks I am with my aunt Mary in Dorset.”

  If Wes were in his right mind or of sound body, he might have laughed. As it was, he scowled at her. “Go home, Lacy.”

  “I refuse.”

  What a piece she was. Once his match. “You will ruin your reputation.”

  She grinned and shook her head. Her expression said he was talking silliness. “Of what value, Colonel Stanhope, is reputation?”

  “Everything!”

  Lacy continued to glide toward him. Her gorgeous blue eyes riveted on his one good one, hers fixed with determination. “I suppose yours has saved your happiness for you?”

  Wes choked on fury. How did one so young, so fair, know such a truth?

  She strolled further into the room. “I came to help you and nurse you, Wes.”

  He huffed, the sight of her heaving breasts in the fitted jacket making him remember the night he’d viewed them in a garden at someone’s ball. He’d put his rough hand inside her gown, the sight of her nipples inciting him to taste the gossamer, pink areolas. He ground his teeth. “I have a nurse. I have Charles.”

  “He does not love you.”

  Charles startled. “Sir? I…I do not—”

  Wes raised a hand to his man and both brows at Lacy. “I venture to say he does. In his way.”

  “He does not love you as I do.” She stepped forward, her gown swishing against the carpet. “Or love you as I can.”

  “He is enough for me.”

  “Is he?” She looked Charles up and down.

  “Go home, Lacy,” Wes instructed with more sadness than he’d planned. “You and I have no future.”

  “Not true, Wesley Stanhope!” She stood toe-to-toe with him now. Her incomparable robin’s egg blue eyes bored into his one. “Give over, Colonel. You have lost this battle. I am here to marry you.”

  Chapter Two

  “Charles?” Lacy faced Wes’s butler with a determination she’d nurtured all along this hideous journey north. “Do leave us.”

  Wes nodded at his man. When he had departed the room, Wes focused his one good eye on her. “Your obstinacy won’t help you, Lacy. I will not relent.”

  “Plan to live up to your moniker, do you?” she asked blithely as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  “The cripple of Talavera?” he bit off, turned and walked toward his chair.

  When he was seated, she looked at him with ferocious resolve. All the better to hide the tears she wished to shed over his deplorable physical state. Darling, how hurt you are. “I meant the term the ton dubs you. ‘Difficult’.”

  He brandished a hand as he fell backward into his huge over-stuffed chair. “Yes. See him now. The Difficult Colonel. The Scourge of Talavera. So difficult he cannot even rid himself of a pesky chit with silly ideas in her head.”

  I will not be insulted. Or deterred. Sniffing, Lacy removed her bonnet. With it came a few of her hairpins and the fall of her platinum hair about her shoulders. Wonderful. She had planned its cascade, just like that. Wes loved her hair. Among other attributes. She planned to use every one of them in her assault on the famous colonel whom she had loved at first sight.

  “Lacy,” he sounded so weary. “You must not stay.”

  Smiling to herself, she strode to the large table on which a few books lay spread open and put down her hat. Then she began to unbutton her coat. “You cannot make me go, Wes.”

  He ran a hand through his auburn hair. “Do not remove any more clothing, Lacy!”

  She let her coat drift from her shoulders and slung it over a nearby chair. Today, she’d donned the blue serge gown that matched her eyes. These were one of her assets, and she was no fool when it came to men’s attentiveness to her. Especially Wesley Stanhope’s. From the moment she’d seen him at his brother Adam’s house last April, Lacy had known the dashing colonel instantly, completely. Understood him, too. She had proven it that first night they met when she found him in his brother’s library and kissed him. Now, it remained for her to prove it to him once again. And sadly, military man that he was, he was too bull-headed to see that she knew what was best for him. Me, of course.

  She walked toward him.

  Finally, she stood four-square before him. He was so huge and she so much shorter that facing him while he sat, she was only a head taller. The height was one she would employ. She gazed down at him, her resolve to be resolute with him dwindling as she took in how sallow his skin, how bleary his eye and how lax his bad arm. “I will not leave you, darling.”

  “Lacy.” He winced. Whether from physical pain or mental torture, she could not decide. “No good can come of this. I cannot marry you. Will not.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Why not?” Say it! Once! Then we will be done with this fantasy of denial!

  “Look at me!” He swept out a hand.

  “I am, my love.”

  His eye squeezed shut. “I am ugly.”

  “Handsome.”

  “Blinded!”

  “In one eye.”

  “My left arm is broken.”

  “Was broken.”

  He snorted. “My left leg is twisted and painful to walk on.”

  “We can correct that with—”

  He shot up from his chair to tower over her. “No. We. Cannot!” He teetered on his feet.

  She caught him with two hands to his upper arms. “I must.”

  “You are mad, woman, to think you can—”

  So she leaned up on tiptoes and kissed him. His mouth, so firm and strong, held for a split second, then melted to hers. She wrapped her arms around his and held him, steady and fierce, as she deepened the kiss with all her wild desire for him.

  “Lacy,” he murmured as he broke away and stared down into her eyes. “Lacy, you must not do this.”

  She brushed her lips on his. “What will you do, Colonel Stanhope?” She leaned up and spread tiny kisses across his jaw where his dimple marked his left cheek—near the endearing scar. “Have Charles throw me out?”

  “I will have him take you to town. Get you a room in the inn. Arrange to put you on tomorrow’s coach back to London.”

  “The roads are closed,” she told him with immense satisfaction. Even the rain conspired with her, so right was her mission. “The rain is horrible. I had to pay the coachman double just to bring me here from town.” She nuzzled her nose along the corded column of his throat and placed her mouth to the hollow there where his pulse beat frantically. “And I daresay, you have no coach here. I cannot ride a horse to town in this rain. So you see I am here on your doorstep, darling. Give over.” And then she kissed him sweetly.

  He steadied himself, braced his legs wide and wrapped her close. This near, her stomach fit into the hollow of his loins—and he grew hard, wanting her as he always had.

  Confirmation of the necessity of her goal. Gleeful, she let her eyes drift shut.

  He lifted her chin with two fingers. “Christ, you are so lovely. So determined. Some smart rogue must have danced attendance on you
while I was in Spain.” He combed her hair back from her cheeks and let his fingers descend through the length of her curls, down to her waist. “I am no man for you.”

  She nestled closer and felt the ever-rising evidence that his statement was definitely false. “I’ve come to prove you are just that.”

  With one arm, he clutched her so fiercely that he nearly lifted her off her feet. His mouth on hers, he groaned. “What once was a good match is now an impossibility.”

  “You are still my Wes. Still wise and witty, young and—”

  He shook her. “Ancient with the stench of death about me! The men I killed. The men who fought with me and died. My horse! Gutted by cannon fire. Me! A wreck of a man.”

  “But alive,” she said, proud she argued so rationally that she might have been in Inns of Court.

  “Ba!” He set her to her feet and pivoted from her to lumber toward the casement window and open it. Chill autumn air rushed in with the rich smell of wood fires and ripe foliage. “You will listen to me and do as I say.”

  “I am not one of your men, Wes.” She had come armed with her logic. “I am the woman you love. The one you proposed to before you left for Spain. I am your match. Your equal. Now and in all things. I mean for you to be my husband.”

  “You are meant for a man who can do his husbandly duty.”

  “To bed me? Darling, I just felt rock hard evidence that you are quite capable of that.”

  He turned, a snarl curling his upper lip. “Fuck you? Aye, I could. Now. Here. But not well.”

  His coarse word thrilled her, but she knew he used it to repel her. She smiled because he couldn’t. “How do you know until you try?”

  He shook his head, his jaw set. “I could have you where we stand, I daresay. For some mad reason, I seem to want that with you. You see how pitiful I have become? Good God.” He raked his hair, his hand unsteady even though his voice was raw with determination. “But I mean more than possessing you, Lacy. I mean providing for you. Crippled as I now am, I earn less income. I have no means to support you, dear girl. I am pensioned. A pitiful sum it is, too. Furthermore, I am never to return to service.”