Virtuous Scoundrel (The Regency Romp Trilogy Book 2)

by Maggie Fenton

  There was nothing chaste or little about his gesture. Not that she was complaining.

  “We shall keep the love nest in Soho,” he said in between kisses, “since I know how much it means to you.”

  Coda

  In Which Sebastian Did Not Marry His Pianoforte After All

  Bruton Street, London

  Two and a half years later . . .

  SEBASTIAN STALKED TOWARD the bedroom for the twentieth time in the last two minutes and stopped just short of banging on the closed door. He growled at the wood and retraced his steps down the hallway, where Crick and Polly stood in silent vigil along with Penny, Seamus, Ludwig, and Waldstein—the latter two the results of Seamus’s scandalously public tryst with Belle du Jour. All of them, even Penny, were eyeing him with a bit of concern, which did nothing to soothe his nerves.

  Since he’d been intercepted at his tailor’s by an agitated Crick, who had told him the unwelcome tale of his wife’s collapse at the Aldwych women’s hospital, he’d been alternately frantic with worry and petrified by fear. Crick did not bother to get truly distressed over anything less than war or extreme illness. Since the Peninsula, the only time Sebastian had seen his manservant wear such an expression was when Polly had nearly died from childbirth fever after delivering their first child last autumn. So if Crick thought Lady Manwaring’s condition was worthy of concern, then it damn well was.

  Sebastian knew Katherine hadn’t been feeling well even before they’d journeyed down from Briar Hill to London the week before, and he wished he’d insisted that she stay in the country. But she’d been as amenable to that suggestion as she was to playing her loathed Czerny études, determined to see to her charitable work in the city. Why his wife couldn’t be a bit less generous and a bit more selfish with her time was quite beyond him.

  Sebastian ran a trembling hand through his tangled curls and growled in frustration. “What the devil is taking so long, Crick?” he demanded.

  “It’s been ten minutes, milord,” Crick retorted. “Give the doc time to do ’is job afore you decide to explode.”

  Sebastian huffed out an impatient breath and banged his head lightly against the nearest wall. Dr. Lucas’s presence did nothing to reassure him, though he knew he was being ridiculous. Even after all this time, Sebastian was still horribly suspicious (i.e., jealous) of those distinguished salt-and-pepper whiskers and that smooth, capable bedside manner. It certainly did nothing to relieve his anxiety, knowing the doctor who had once held a passing tendre for his wife was now attending her sickbed. Without him. It seemed a horrible conflict of interest, but unfortunately Dr. Lucas was the best sawbones in the city. Sebastian could hardly entrust Katherine’s health to anything less than the best.

  It didn’t mean that he had to like it.

  “Bloody whiskers,” he muttered into the plaster.

  As if on cue, the bedroom door opened and Dr. Lucas and his moustache emerged with medical bag in hand, his face impassive even as the collection of dogs anxiously nipped at his heels as he made his way down the corridor.

  The doctor took one look at Sebastian’s face, sighed, and shook his head.

  Sebastian could feel his heart sinking to the floor.

  “Go see your wife,” the doctor said gravely, clapping him firmly on the shoulder as if for fortification.

  Oh God.

  Sebastian swallowed around the lump in his throat and took a minute to compose himself before he entered the bedchamber. The dogs had no such compunctions. They bounded into the room before he could stop them. Penny went straight for her spot beneath the bed, and Seamus, after licking Katherine’s fingers in greeting, made his way to the bay window and his favorite sunspot. The two overgrown puppies, however, bounded up onto the mattress and attacked Katherine’s face with their tongues, whimpering in their distress, their tails wagging so furiously the whole bedframe shook.

  They had inherited their size from their sire.

  Horrified, he shooed them off the bed and out the door, slamming it closed against them. They cried out in indignation and scratched at the door, but for once he would not be moved by their mummery. He had greater concerns at the moment than seeing to their comfort. He returned to the bed and sat beside his wife. He took her cool hand in his own, the lump in his throat growing. She was propped against the pillows in a dressing gown, looking wan and entirely too delicate for his liking.

  “My dear . . .” he began, swallowing around his dread.

  She squeezed his hands and rolled her eyes at the worry on his face. “Stop fretting so, Sebastian,” she said with gentle exasperation. “I am hardly dying.”

  He let out a relieved breath, the weight of the universe lifting from his shoulders. He damned Dr. Lucas’s poker face to hell and back. The wretch. “How was I to know that?” he retorted with a bit of a pout. She loved his pouts, so he threw one in for her whenever the occasion arose. “Your sawbones looked as if he was at a wake when he left the room. Nearly gave me an apoplexy.”

  She smiled faintly. “He was just winding you up.”

  Not very doctorly of the man. “He hates me for stealing you away from him,” he declared.

  “Fustian,” she murmured, snuggling down into her pillows. “That was ages ago. Besides, he is engaged to be married.”

  “Well, it’s about bloody time he moved on,” he muttered.

  “To Lady Blundersmith’s former companion, the one that Marlowe hired for a governess last spring.” At his blank look, she sighed in exasperation. “You must remember her, that little wallflower her ladyship kept fainting on when you ruined Montford’s ball two winters ago by breaking your best friend’s nose.”

  He drew himself up indignantly. She was never going to let that go. “I ruined nothing. Astrid was beside herself with glee for weeks, since we made her otherwise deadly dull ball the talk of the town.”

  “Until we came back from France,” Katherine reminded him.

  “Ah, yes. Wasn’t that great fun,” he said dryly. “Thank God for Aunt Anabel and Monsoor le Duck for making a spectacle of themselves. Else I wonder if the gossip sheets would have ever turned their attention away from us, short of a biblical plague.”

  “All’s well that ends well,” Katherine said in response, patting his hand and looking quite ready to take an afternoon nap without explaining herself any further.

  Well, her little platitude was not wrong, at least before today’s drama. As she had once predicted, their marriage had been a mere fortnight’s wonder, not that they’d put much stock in what other people thought of them. After a French wedding and Christmas honeymoon on the Mediterranean, they had promptly decamped to Briar Hill with their dogs, servants, and pianofortes, and settled in the country, away from the wagging tongues of London.

  Not that their married life had been entirely free from scandal since then. Four months after the ruination of the Aubusson rug on Bruton Street and just after their move to Briar Hill, Agador had appeared on their doorstep unannounced with three squirming bundles of fur and teeth.

  Apparently, the duc had little use for Seamus’s by-blows and had cast them off into their father’s care as soon as they were weaned.

  Alas, Seamus had proved to be extremely disinterested in fatherhood. But, in a move that shocked everyone, Penny had welcomed the puppies into the household, some dormant maternal instinct having been piqued by the three squirming brown bundles. It was inexplicable, but then again, everything about Penny was inexplicable.

  A week later, Agador had appeared at their doorstep again and begged for one of the puppies back. Apparently Belle du Jour had gone on a hunger strike, inconsolable at having her babies taken from her, and rightly so. The duc had finally seen the error of his ways and had given in to his precious pug’s demands.

  She was of royal lineage, after all.

  After a bit of a tussle with Penny, they had returned the lo
ne female of the litter to Agador’s resigned arms. They could hardly begrudge a mother her progeny, much as they’d adored the puppy.

  The duc had, some months later, written the new puppy into his will, much to Agador’s annoyance.

  The scandal didn’t end there. Before Agador had left that second time, he’d given them the invitation to the duc’s upcoming nuptials at St. George’s Hanover Square. The wedding, held later that spring, was the most elaborate, absurd spectacle they had ever witnessed, with both the bride and bridegroom sporting wigs half as tall as they were and twice as heavy, their necks swaying alarming under the weight. As the pièce de résistance of the day, Montford, who’d valiantly half carried, half dragged the doddering bride down the aisle, had received from her a pinch to his backside for his trouble, in front of the packed church.

  Sebastian had laughed for days afterward at the memory of the look on his friend’s face.

  It had been fairly smooth sailing since then. As long as he was able to escape to London once in a while to visit his tailor and his wife’s modiste (as she had gladly turned over her wardrobe decisions into her husband’s capable hands), Sebastian was more than happy to ride about the estate visiting his tenants and making improvements until the end of his days. He had become a damn good marquess in the past two years, shocking everyone, even himself.

  And even though everyone, including his wife, had told him he was mad to do so, he’d invested the profits he’d made from the estate that first year on Sir Wesley Benwick’s new line of transatlantic steamers. He’d made a bloody mint, enough to keep them in Hessians and bombazine for a lifetime. No one had ever told him he was mad again.

  Aside from his wife. She called him mad on a regular basis, and he was quite happy to let her.

  His success as a marquess and an investor left most of his time his own, which was all he cared about in the end. He spent the bulk of these hours in the company of his new wife, primarily in their private chambers. He liked to think they were both making up for the decades of celibacy between them. It was, at times, exhausting work, so occasionally they took breaks to play their pianofortes or walk the grounds with their growing collection of dogs.

  And Petunia the pig, of course, who had, thankfully, begun to mellow in his dotage. He’d only chased Sebastian up a tree once since they’d been reunited at Briar Hill.

  They had indeed settled into a comfortable, almost ordinary sort of life.

  Until now.

  “All’s well that ends well, except you are not well, my dear,” he said, stroking her hair, refusing to be put off. “The fact you are not on your deathbed—yet—is not as reassuring to me as you think it should be.”

  “Do I look so dreadful?” she murmured, leaning into his caresses.

  “You look quite poetically wan, my dear,” he assured her. “And you are by all accounts fainting in public places. But last I checked I was not married to a swooning maiden out of a Christopher Essex poem.”

  She rolled her eyes exaggeratedly at that.

  “You are ill, and I demand you tell me what is wrong before I go hunt down Dr. Whiskers and wring his neck for an answer,” he said firmly.

  “Dr. Whiskers!” she cried, her eyes popping wide in astonishment.

  He waved in the vague direction of his own hair. “Dr. Lucas,” he insisted, “and all his bedamned distinguished facial hair.”

  Her eyes narrowed scoldingly, though her lips trembled with barely concealed mirth. “Final proof that I have indeed married the most ridiculous man in the kingdom. You are jealous of a man’s whiskers.”

  He didn’t even bother to deny that last bit. “Ridiculous? Ha! I’ll have you know I am the most beautiful man in the kingdom. It was in the Times.”

  “Oh, so then it must be true,” she murmured, flicking his ear with her fingertip playfully. “And your title extends to London, not the entire kingdom.”

  He waved away her entirely semantic argument. “You don’t deny it, then.”

  “Not yet. I shall reserve judgment until I see how your son compares. You are such a vain creature, Sebastian, I don’t know how I put up with you.”

  He sniffed and nuzzled her neck. “I’m not vain,” he protested. “I just know how fond you are of my fine eyes and Grecian profile. I only wish to preserve my best assets for your pleasure, my dear. They are nothing to me.”

  She ran her fingers over the edges of his eyes and gave a noncommittal little huff. “Your fine eyes are getting crow’s feet.”

  His own fingers immediately shot to his face for proof of her accusation. He could feel nothing untoward, but he would have to look in a mirror later just to make sure.

  Not that he cared a jot that his face was showing a bit of wear and tear. He was not precisely a young man anymore.

  “And I think I see some gray coming in,” she said, running her fingers through his curls.

  He practically melted against her. He always did when she touched his hair, even when she was teasing him. “Well then, my dear, perhaps I shall finally give the good doctor a run for his money with my own distinguished whiskers.”

  “No moustaches, Sebastian. I quite draw the line at that.”

  He felt certain he could wear her down eventually on that subject, so he let it rest for the moment. Now that he knew his wife wasn’t in imminent danger of expiring, he was feeling a bit frolicsome, seeing as how they were both in bed. Perhaps she wasn’t up for much more than a bit of a snuggle at the moment, but he’d gladly take what he could. He climbed up onto the mattress despite his boots and relaxed into her arms, enjoying her lazy caresses.

  A few minutes later, he sat up with a jolt, his heartbeat suspended in his chest, his hair in wild disarray around his head, and his eyes popped wide and unblinking as he gawked at his wife.

  She was smirking at him. The minx. Astrid was rubbing off on her far too much for his peace of mind. He was certain Katherine hadn’t learned how to tease him so mercilessly on her own.

  “You said . . .” He cleared his suddenly dry as dust throat. “You said you would reserve judgment. Until you saw how my son compares.”

  She cocked a brow. “Well, it might be a daughter, in which case your title shall remain unchallenged.”

  “You . . . you . . .” For one of the few times in his life, he was nearly speechless. “You fainted because you’re . . .”

  Her smirk grew into a full grin, and she took his hand and placed it on her belly. “Do keep up, Sebastian. We shall have to visit the modiste while we are in town. My wardrobe is getting dreadfully tight. I thought it was because I was eating too much cake.”

  “I thought it wasn’t possible . . .” he murmured.

  Something painful washed over her face, and he wanted to kiss those lingering bad memories away forever. “So did I. But apparently my father’s physician was quite mistaken all those years ago. Dr. Lucas says I am four months along already.” Her smile returned full force. “And that I need to eat more cake.”

  Well.

  “That can definitely be arranged, my dear,” he said, delirious with joy. He would not have thought it possible for him to be any happier with his life when he’d awakened that morning tangled up with his beloved wife, but she had once again proven him wrong. “I shall call on Montford immediately and demand he order the largest cake in history at his next ball.”

  She kissed him tenderly. “No broken noses this time, Sebastian, and absolutely no blood.”

  “Of course not, my dear,” he said as he kissed her back with a grin. “It would quite ruin the taste when you lick me clean.”

  She shook her head in mock exasperation. “Ridiculous.”

  He smiled against her skin. “I think you mean romantic, my dear.”

  Fin

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In Which I Give a Little More Insight into Our Happy Couple’s Happy Endingr />
  Historical accuracy? What? I am not ashamed to admit I have other priorities when writing. Like the banter. And the romance. And the laughs. But I stepped up my game for Virtuous Scoundrel, since there was an element of the plot that was a bit of a concern. Namely, whether it would have actually been possible for my hero and heroine to get married, considering she had been married to his uncle (gasp!). That was going to be a huge hitch to my plans if it wasn’t possible. Thankfully, after a bit of research, I discovered it was. Thank you, Internet.

  Though not technically illegal according to civil law at the time, marriages that fell outside of canonical law (such as a man’s marriage to his uncle’s widow) would have been discouraged (hence an elopement to France to avoid scandal) and could have been contested, especially when it came to matters of inheritance. However, the Marriage Act of 1835 made any “irregular” marriages prior to this date uncontestable, while at the same time making any future marriages that broke such laws of affinity after this date unlawful.

  So Katherine and Sebastian and their heirs could indeed live happily ever after with the help of the gargantuan fortune he would eventually make from his and Sir Wesley Benwick’s investments in the railroads.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Helen Cattaneo for giving me the chance to work with Montlake, and also to all of the Montlake team for their guidance and support. I am so grateful for the opportunity.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MAGGIE FENTON is an avid reader, reviewer, and scribbler of romance in between her work as a professional musician. She has one master’s degree in English literature and another master’s degree in piano performance. She might try for a third if this writing thing doesn’t work out. She writes Victorian steampunk romance under the pseudonym Margaret Foxe, and she has enjoyed some success as a self-published author in that genre. She hopes to enjoy much, much more.