Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedications
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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About The Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Regency Sinner 7
Wicked Sinner
By
Carole Mortimer
USA Today Bestselling Author
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2018 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper Designs
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatter: Matthew Mortimer
ISBN: 978-1-910597-64-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
DEDICATIONS
My husband, Peter
Chapter 1
November, 1815
Stonewell Park,
Kent, England
“Inform Her Grace I wish for her to join me in my study immediately.” Dominik Sinclair, the Duke of Stonewell, was in no mood to care that his butler looked surprised by his terseness but instead continued to take the long strides to his study to await the arrival of his wife.
His treacherous and scheming Angel.
Nik had ridden to Kent overnight, stopping only the once, and then it was only to refresh his horse, Obsidian, rather than himself. The matter he wished to discuss with his duchess was too urgent to be put off any longer.
He had already delayed dealing with this situation for far too long, Nik acknowledged grimly, to the detriment of his close friends’ happiness. Worst of all was the fact that perhaps, if Nik had not given his wife the benefit of the doubt in this matter, refusing to believe Angelique could possibly be involved in treason to her country and the Crown, then Worthington and Lady Priscilla Germaine might still be alive.
As it was, Nik now had irrefutable proof that his wife of three years was the traitor he and the other seven gentlemen, known in Society as the Sinners, had been seeking these past six months.
Nik’s present mood was furious at best and murderous at worst. Angelique would do well to confess to her crime without delay and put them both out of their misery.
“You wished to see me?” Angelique entered her husband’s study with a confidence she did not inwardly feel, even though the mere sight of Nik after some time spent apart, looking so tall, dark, and austerely handsome, was enough to cause her heart to pound and between her thighs to clench.
The two of them had once been the most envied married couple in Society, the beautiful Angelique and her handsome and arrogant duke. But these past months, their marriage had been…difficult, with Nik seeming to withdraw more and more behind a mask of increasing coldness each time the two of them were together. They had not shared a bed, nor anything else but polite conversation, for the same amount of time.
Nik had not even given her the politeness of sending word ahead for her to expect his arrival today. Nor was his summons upon his arrival, no matter how Foster might have tried to soften her husband’s demand for her immediate presence in his study, been in the least encouraging that this estrangement was about to come to an end any time soon. At least, not in any way that would bring about a return of Angelique’s happiness.
If she knew the reason for Nik’s distant behavior, then perhaps she would have been able to set things right, but on the few occasions she had broached the subject with Nik, he had dismissed her concerns as being fanciful.
She was not imagining the nonexistence of the intimate side of their marriage. Nor Nik’s increasing coldness toward her. Or the dictatorial manner in which he had sent her and her mother to Kent the previous month with very little warning. Nor the way in which he no longer referred to her intimately as Angel, even when they were alone together, as they were now.
Angelique had long suspected that Nik was now satisfying his dark and fierce physical needs with a mistress, so perhaps a confession of such was the reason he had arrived in Kent so unexpectedly?
Although the glower on his handsome features, as he stared at her with cold and unrelenting ice-blue eyes, his muscular body stiff and unyielding, did not indicate he felt any remorse, if that was his intention.
It was more likely he was here to discuss a formal separation that would involve the two of them remaining married to each other, but allowed both to lead separate lives.
Angelique’s heart ached at the very thought of it.
She had been twenty and very much in love when she married Dominik Sinclair, the Duke of Stonewell, three years ago. Not only was Nik a duke, but he was also twelve years her senior, and an arrogant and wealthy gentleman well respected in Society.
Their first weeks of marriage had been something of a shock to Angelique. Behind that reserve and arrogance, her husband was an extremely sensual man, and his requirements in the bedchamber were very specific. Angelique had very quickly learned to like, even to crave, those dark requirements.
Truth be told, no matter how Nik now felt toward her, she was still very much in love with her harsh and forbidding husband. Even now, she could feel how her traitorous body continued to respond to his presence. Her breasts tingled, the nipples hard, and her cunny was wet, the lips there swollen with a longing to be filled by her husband’s hard and demanding cock.
All while Nik looked at her as if she was no more than a stranger to him rather than the woman who had so eagerly satisfied, indeed encouraged, all his carnal needs during the first heady years of their marriage.
How could she now be expected to bear being treated as a stranger by the man who knew her body so intimately?
Her chin rose proudly as she unflinchingly met her husband’s icy gaze. “Is there something specific you wish to discuss with me?” she prompted again.
Something Nik wished to discuss with her?
The time for discussion had long since passed. Indeed, it had become irrelevant the first time Angelique betrayed the country to which she, and he, owed their complete allegiance.
During the long hours of riding here, Nik had been plagued with thoughts of how this conversation might proceed once he was face-to-face with his treacherous wife.
To his annoyance, he had continued to try to make excuses for her, wondering if Angelique might at first have seen her behavior as nothing more than a game, an excitement in her life, rather than the treason it actually was.
But that thought was quickly followed by the knowledge, whether Angelique had thought it a game or not, that the traitor was responsible for assisting in Napoleon’s escape from Elba earlier this year, resulting in a resurrection of the war between England and France, and the death of many innocents, before the Corsican was forced into surrender a second time.
Of the eight ladies initially suspected of treason, only Angelique remained. One of those other ladies was dead, the other six having been cleared of all blame. To add to her guilt, the Duchess of Stonewell had now been named as the traitor to England by the French spy currently being held in custody and questioned for his part in aiding and abetting her in
her treasonous acts.
Nik now had no option but to accept Angelique’s guilt.
No matter what the reasons might have been for her behavior, the deaths of those soldiers, along with the deaths of Worthington and Lady Priscilla Germaine, were unforgiveable.
Nik hardened his heart to how ravishingly lovely Angelique looked in a thick brocade ruby-red gown that should have clashed with the red of her hair but instead only made her pale skin appear more translucently tempting.
Nik clamped down on the stirring of his cock as the image entered his mind of ripping that gown from Angelique, along with her undergarments, and seeing her naked body bent over the bottom of their bed, her cunny and bottom fully on display as he stood behind her, stroking his cock as he contemplated where and how he wished to claim her.
“Why did you do it?” he demanded harshly instead.
Her brows rose. “Why did I do what?”
His mouth tightened. He was not fooled for a moment by Angelique’s supposed innocent bewilderment at his question. She had been playing a role for some time now in order to hide her subterfuge and scheming. No doubt it was now all too easy for her to continue to play that part. “Answer me truthfully, Angelique, and we can be done with this matter. I shall remain your husband in the eyes of God and man, no matter what you are guilty of,” he added bitterly.
The frown deepened on her ivory brow, green eyes glittering with temper, an angry blush rising in her cheeks. “Are you accusing me of infidelity, Stonewell?” Her tiny hands were clenched at her sides. “How dare you, when it is you who have obviously been sticking your cock into another woman, or possibly women?”
Nik drew in a harsh breath at her crudeness. Was this a deliberate attempt to divert his attention from the real purpose of this conversation? “My cock, as you so indelicately refer to it”—his top lips curled back—“has been nowhere near any woman these past six months.” It was a dearth Nik had suffered without complaint, but as he had previously preferred to fuck his wife every night and most mornings too, not one he had particularly enjoyed.
But he had not been able to lay so much as a finger on Angelique since he first learned she was one of eight ladies under suspicion of treason against the Crown, and the mere thought of making love to any other woman but his wife was completely anathema to him. The two of them suited each other perfectly. His wife’s physical needs, once he had introduced her to all the possibilities, had proved to be as deep and dark as his own. His body now wanted only Angelique’s and to hear only her cries of both ecstasy and pain.
“I know your tastes and appetites only too well,” she continued in that scornfully accusing tone. “I do not believe you have remained celibate for the six months since the two of us last shared a bed.”
A nerve pulsed in his clenched jaw. “Unless a confession is forthcoming, you will learn exactly how I intend to dispense with that celibacy in the next few minutes.”
Her face paled at his obvious threat. “I cannot confess to something I have not done.”
“That is your last word on the subject?”
She met his narrowed gaze unflinchingly. “It is.”
Nik gave a terse inclination of his head. “Then I suggest you take yourself upstairs to my bedchamber, remove your gown, and present yourself in the required position before I arrive.”
Angelique’s heart quickened at the thought of going to Nik’s bedchamber, the knowledge of what would happen once they were alone in there together. Her own bedchamber had always been the preference for their less…intense lovemaking.
Another part of her quaked at the coldness she still sensed in Nik, and what it might lead to.
Their previous intimacies had been pleasurable for both of them, and never more than she could stand, and always, always followed by the most exquisitely satisfying lovemaking imaginable.
The hard and accusing expression now on Nik’s face was a promise of pain rather than pleasure.
She tilted her chin. “And where will you be while I am presenting myself in the required position?”
His mouth thinned. “I shall be issuing the necessary instructions to ensure your mother and her lover, Lord Holmes, take themselves back to London within the hour.”
Angelique’s eyes widened “Why?”
She knew it irritated Nik that her mother had lived with them since the onset of their marriage, even more so since the widowed Lady Jacqueline had taken Lord Cedric Holmes as her lover these past months. But what choice did Angelique have but to offer her mother a home when that lady had no financial means of her own?
In the past, Nik’s innate politeness had always prevented him from actually dismissing his mother-in-law from any of the homes in which he and his wife were also in residence. It seemed he no longer felt restrained by a need to continue with that politeness.
“Why?” Nik snorted. “So that I might fuck my wife into submission, of course, without your interfering mother around to hear your screams!” His pale eyes glittered with dark intent.
Angelique drew her breath in sharply. “Nik?”
His nostrils flared, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Go to my bedchamber, Angelique. Now. Before I decide to commence your punishment here and now.”
Angelique had no idea what she had done to rouse such a violence of emotions in her normally controlled husband. “I do not understand—”
“Do not attempt to test my patience with pleas of ignorance,” he warned harshly. “Or I assure you, I shall feel no qualms whatsoever in stripping you naked this minute before bending you over my desk and punishing your backside until it is red and burning and you are begging me to fill it!”
The threat sent a tide of heat and lust surging through Angelique’s body rather than fear.
Quickly followed by a hollowness at the way Nik continued to call her Angelique in that cold and distant voice, rather than the more intimate Angel.
“Will you not allow me to defend myself, at least?” she pleaded.
If anything, his expression grew even harsher and colder. “There is no defense for what you have done. None,” he added flatly. “All I require from you now is your confession.”
“Before or after you fuck me?” she challenged crudely in the face of his implacable demeanor.
“Either. Both. Or possibly even during,” he bit out scathingly. “In any case, there will be little pleasure in it for you.”
Angelique gave a shake of her head. “You are making a terrible mistake.”
His top lip turned back in a sneer. “I did that three years ago, when I married you.”
The pain of Nik’s dismissal of their previous happiness together was too much for Angelique to bear. But rather than give in to that inner anguish and pain, she instead raised hands that had curled into lethal claws. “You bastard!” she choked as she rushed across the room toward him.
Nik’s fingers easily captured her wrists before her nails could make contact with his cheek, his grasp painful enough to leave bruises. He stared down at her icily for several long seconds before his head lowered abruptly and his mouth took possession of hers.
There was nothing gentle about his kiss. Nik simply took what he wanted from her, and in return, he demanded Angelique’s complete surrender.
To her utter and complete shame, she gave it.
Unreservedly.
Her lips parted beneath the onslaught, hands clinging to his shoulders as Nik’s tongue instantly claimed the heat of her mouth, penetrating deeply, in the same fierce way his body had always enjoyed thrusting into and claiming hers.
Angelique gave a sob at the loss as Nik suddenly wrenched his mouth away from hers before grasping the tops of her arms to hold her away from him.
Nik could feel a nerve pulsing in his cheek as he stared down at the quick rise and fall of the plump swell of Angelique’s breasts above her gown. A pulse visibly throbbed in her neck, her cheeks were flushed, her lips bruised and slightly parted, her eyes a glittering green. All, Nik kne
w, evidence of her arousal.
As the fierce throb of Nik’s hard and straining cock inside his pantaloons was testament to the need he felt to thrust his cock inside her cunny and take her until she screamed. A need which had been denied him for far too long.
But he had Angelique as his captive now, and once he had dispensed with the presence of his mother-in-law and her lover, he intended to fully slake his lust for Angelique. All six months of it.
He had no doubt it would take some time to succeed in doing that. After which, he would have no choice but to relinquish Angelique to her fate.
The thought of her pretty neck being stretched by a hangman’s noose caused a churn of nausea in his stomach.
Quickly followed by heavy resolve.
He had no choice.
Whether Angelique could be made to confess or not, her own actions and the Frenchman’s information had already condemned her.
He released her abruptly. “You have your instructions. I suggest you follow them.”
Angelique looked up at him searchingly for several seconds before she turned with a swish of her skirts and left the study.
Nik leaned heavily against the side of his desk and allowed the devastation of emotions he had been holding in check to wash over and consume him.
Angelique was going to die for her crimes of treason and murder, and there was not a damn thing Nik could do to prevent it.
Chapter 2
Angelique was aware, as she knelt beside Nik’s bed, of the raised voice of her mother and the cold murmur of Nik’s voice in reply, followed by the slamming of a door. No doubt Lady Jacqueline had just been given her orders to leave Stonewell Park and take her lover with her.
It was also an indication that Nik must now be striding down the hallway to his bedchamber.
Angelique had removed her gown and slippers but remained dressed in her corset and drawers as she knelt submissively, as Nik’s instruction to present herself had demanded she should. Beneath her drawers, her mound and nether lips were bared of all hair, as her husband insisted they should be. The two of them might not have been intimate for months, but Angelique had continued with the ritual. Just in case Nik decided to return to her bed.
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