Haunted by the Earl's Touch

by Ann Lethbridge

  ‘We will take that passage to London, first thing in the morning, and I will obtain a special licence.’

  ‘The banns will be read and we will be married in the parish church for all your people to see, as already arranged, according to my father’s wishes.’

  ‘You don’t know your father’s wishes.’

  She looked down at the note in her hand. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I do.’

  Tears burned behind his eyes at the tenderness in her voice. ‘I don’t want to wait weeks to have you in my arms, in my bed,’ he groaned. ‘but if that is your wish...’

  Her arms came up around his neck. She kissed his lips, a small press of her lips against his, before she drew back with a smile. ‘There is absolutely no reason for us to wait until we are married, is there?’

  ‘You are a wicked woman.’

  ‘I’m a blue-stocking, remember.’

  Right then, with his blood pounding in his veins, he couldn’t remember a thing except his need to be inside her. He picked her up in his arms and strode for his chamber, knowing only one thing. She was his and he was the luckiest man alive.

  Epilogue

  ‘So Beresford, I finally get to meet your lovely wife,’ Templeton drawled.

  Bane narrowed his eyes as his friend, the blond darling of the ton and heir to the Marquisate of Mooreshead, bowed over Mary’s hand. He’d given this ball at his newly renovated London town house, invited the ton, in order to introduce her to society. He could hardly complain that so many of them, including his oldest and most trusted friend, had come. Most of them were curious to see who the bastard earl had married, no doubt. Still, he did not have to like that his best friend and well-known rake, Lord Templeton, was eyeing his wife like a wolf who had just spotted dinner.

  As usual he’d come late to the party. There were only a few more dances now supper was over and the last of the guests would depart.

  Gabe caught his glare and laughed. Damn, the man was far too handsome a fellow with a smile on his lips, even if he was one of His Majesty’s most dangerous spies.

  ‘I wish you both much happiness,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Mary dipped a curtsy. She looked beautiful tonight in a gown of pale-rose silk, her hair arranged artfully by Betsy, her height lending her the elegance of a queen. Pride filled him, every time he looked at her, along with the desire to glare at any male who approached.

  ‘Do you plan to return to that pile of rocks in Cornwall?’ Gabe asked.

  ‘In time,’ Bane said. ‘It needs some major renovations before we will feel comfortable there.’ Like the closing up of passages behind the walls.

  Mary nodded her agreement.

  ‘Before you do anything to the house, would you be willing to lease it to me? For a year or so? Its inconveniences might prove very useful to my enterprise.’

  Mary didn’t so much as blink. They’d agreed they would keep no secrets from each other and, after receiving Gabe’s permission, he’d told her all about his friend’s work for the Foreign Office.

  He sent her an enquiring look and she nodded. ‘I owe you for finding my friend Mrs Ladbrook.’

  Bane had wanted the woman to pay back the money she had salted away, but Mary wouldn’t allow it. A woman alone had to do what she needed to survive. Besides, they were friends.

  She turned to Bane. ‘Since you will be busy making your mark in Parliament, and working for better conditions in the mines, and I have an idea for a school for miners’ children I would like to raise with the denizens of the ton, I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘We will need its return when we begin our family.’

  A family was her dearest hope, he knew. But he hoped it would not happen too soon. He liked having her to himself.

  ‘Then it is agreed,’ Bane said to Gabe.

  ‘May I request this next dance, Lady Beresford?’ Gabe asked, with a sly look at Bane and a charming smile for his wife.

  ‘Mary is promised to me,’ Bane said quickly, unable to keep the possessive note from his voice.

  She shook her head at him.

  ‘You are,’ he said and swept her into the waltz with a warning glower at his friend. As they moved around the floor, he was overcome by a wave of contentment.

  ‘Are you happy?’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Incredibly. Unbelievably. There is only one thing missing.’

  ‘Children.’

  ‘Your children,’ she whispered close to his ear.

  His groin tightened. ‘I am sure no one would miss us if it is your pleasure to try again.’

  A shiver passed through her frame. ‘It is always my pleasure.’

  He manoeuvred her closer to the door and then whirled her out into the hallway. Giggling like children, they ran up the servants’ staircase to their chamber.

  ‘You, sir, are wicked,’ she said, leaning her back against the closed door.

  She looked wanton and quite delighted.

  His heart swelled as he pulled her close. ‘I am glad you are pleased, my dearest heart,’ he breathed softly against her neck, feeling her soft swells against his length with a powerful shudder of anticipation of the love and bliss he would find in her arms.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of Some Like it Wicked by Carole Mortimer!

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  Chapter One

  May 1817—Highbury House, London

  ‘Do smile, Pandora; I am sure that neither Devil nor Lucifer intends to gobble you up! At least...it is to be hoped, not in any way you might find unpleasant.’

  Pandora, widowed Duchess of Wyndwood, did not join in her friend’s huskily suggestive laughter as they approached the two gentlemen Genevieve referred to so playfully. Instead she felt her heart begin to pound even more rapidly in her chest, her breasts quickly rising and falling as she took rapid, shallow breaths in an effort to calm her feelings of alarm, and the palms of her hands dampened inside the lace of her gloves.

  She did not know either gentleman personally, of course. Both men were in their early thirties whereas she was but four and twenty, and she had never been a part of the risqué crowd which surrounded them whenever they deigned to show themselves in society. Nevertheless, she had recognised them on sight as being Lord Rupert Stirling, previously Marquis of Devlin and now Duke of Stratton, and his good friend, Lord Benedict Lucas, two gentlemen who had, this past dozen years or so, become known more familiarly amongst the ton as Devil and Lucifer. So named for their outrageous exploits, both in and out of ladies’ bedchambers.

  The same two gentlemen Genevieve had moments ago suggested might be considered as likely candidates as lovers now that their year of mourning for their husbands was over...

  ‘Pandora?’

  She gave a shake of her head. ‘I do not believe I can be a party to this, Genevieve.’

  Her friend gave her arm a gently reassuring squeeze. ‘We are only going to speak to them, darling. Play hostess for Sophia whilst she deals with the unexpected arrival of the Earl of Sherbourne.’ Genevieve glanced across the ballroom to where the lady appeared to be in low but heated conversation with the rakish Dante Carfax, a close friend of Devil and Lucifer.

  Just as the three widows were now close friends...

  It was sheer coincidence that Sophia Rowlands, Duchess of Clayborne, Genevieve Forster, Duchess of Woollerton, and Pandora Maybury, Du
chess of Wyndwood, had all been widowed within weeks of each other the previous spring. The three women, previously strangers, had swiftly formed an alliance of sorts when they had emerged from their year of mourning a month ago, drawn to each other by their young and widowed state.

  But Genevieve’s suggestion a few minutes ago, that the three of them each ‘take one lover, if not several before the Season was ended’, had thrown Pandora more into a state of turmoil than anticipation.

  ‘Nevertheless—’

  ‘Our dance, I believe, your Grace?’

  Pandora had not thought she would ever be pleased to see Lord Richard Sugdon, finding that young gentleman to be unpleasant in both his studied good looks and over-familiar manner whenever they chanced to meet. But, having found it impossible to think of a suitable reason to refuse earlier when he had pressed her to accept him for the first waltz of the evening, Pandora believed she now found even his foppish company preferable to that of the more overpowering and dangerous Rupert Stirling or Benedict Lucas.

  ‘I had not forgotten, my lord.’ She gave Genevieve a brief, apologetic smile as she placed her hand lightly upon Lord Sugdon’s arm before allowing herself to be swept out on to the ballroom floor.

  * * *

  ‘Good Lord, Dante, what has put you in such a state of disarray?’ Rupert Stirling, the Duke of Stratton, enquired upon entering the library at Clayborne House later that same evening, and instantly noticing the dishevelled state of one of his two closest friends as he stood across the room. ‘Or perhaps I should not ask...’ he drawled speculatively as he detected a lady’s perfume in the air.

  ‘Perhaps you should not,’ Dante Carfax, Earl of Sherbourne, bit out. ‘Nor do I need bother in asking what—or should I say, whom—is succeeding in keeping Benedict amused?’

  ‘Probably best if you did not,’ Rupert chuckled softly.

  ‘Would you care to join me in a brandy?’ The other man held up the decanter from which he was refilling his own glass.

  ‘Why not?’ Rupert accepted as he closed the library door behind him. ‘I have long suspected that my stepmother would eventually succeed in driving me either to drink or to committing murder!’

  * * *

  Pandora—having found herself trapped in a corner of the ballroom with Lord Sugdon once their dance came to an end, and only managing to escape his company a few minutes ago when another acquaintance had engaged him in conversation—could not help now but overhear the two gentlemen’s conversation as she stood on the terrace directly outside the library.

  ‘Then let it be drink this evening,’ Dante Carfax answered his friend. ‘Especially as the Duchess has been thoughtful enough to conveniently leave a decanter of particularly fine brandy and some excellent cigars here in the library for her male guests to enjoy.’ There was the sound of glass chinking and liquid being poured.

  ‘Ah, much better.’ Devil Stirling sighed in satisfaction seconds later after he had obviously taken a much-needed swallow of the fiery alcohol.

  ‘What are the three of us even doing here this evening, Stratton?’ his companion drawled lazily as he threw wide the French doors out on to the terrace with the obvious intention of allowing the escape of the smoke from their cigars.

  ‘In view of your dishevelled state, your own reasons are obvious, I should have thought,’ the other gentleman remarked. ‘And Benedict kindly agreed to accompany me, once I told him of my need to spend an evening away from the cloying company of my dear stepmama.’

  Dante Carfax gave a hard laugh. ‘I’ll wager the fair Patricia does not enjoy being referred to as such by you.’

  ‘Hates it,’ the other man confirmed with grim satisfaction. ‘Which is the very reason I choose to do it. Constantly!’

  Devil by name and devil by nature...

  The thought came unbidden to Pandora as she remained unmoving in the shadows of the terrace, having no wish to draw the attention of the gentlemen to her presence outside by making even the slightest of noises.

  The aroma of their cigars now wafting out of the open French doors was a nostalgic reminder to Pandora of happier times in her own life. A time when she had been younger and so very innocent, with seemingly not a care in the world as she attended such balls as this one with her parents.

  Occasions when she would not have felt the need, as she had this evening, to flee out on to the terrace in order to prevent any of Sophia’s tonnish guests from seeing that Pandora had finally been reduced to humiliated tears by Lord Sugdon’s blatant and crude suggestions...

  Not that most of the ton would care if she did find herself insulted, many of society not even acknowledging her existence, or troubling themselves to speak to her, let alone caring if she constantly found herself being propositioned by those gentlemen brave enough to risk her scandalous company.

  Indeed, if it were not for the insistence of Sophia and Genevieve in having her also received at whatever social functions they chose to attend, then Pandora believed she would have found herself completely ostracised since she had ventured to return to society a month ago.

  ‘A futile exercise, as it happens,’ Rupert Stirling continued wearily, ‘now that my father’s widow is also recently arrived at the Duchess’s ball.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure that Sophia did not—’

  ‘Don’t get in a froth, Dante, I am not blaming your Sophia—’

  ‘She is not my Sophia.’

  ‘No? Then I was mistaken just now in the perfume I recognised as I entered the room?’

  There was the briefest of pauses before the other gentleman replied reluctantly, ‘No, you were not mistaken. But Sophia continues to assure me I am wasting my time pursuing her.’

  Pandora’s mind was agog with the implication of this last conversation. Sophia? And Dante Carfax? Surely not, when Sophia lost no occasion in which to criticise the rakishly handsome Earl of Sherbourne...

  ‘Would not the taking of a wife solve at least part of your own problem, Rupert, in that the Dowager Duchess would then have no choice but to leave off living openly with you in your homes, at least?’ Dante now asked.

  ‘Do not think I have not considered doing just that,’ the other man rasped.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it would no doubt solve one problem, but surely bring about another.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘In that I would then be saddled for the rest of my life with a wife I neither want nor care for!’

  ‘Then find one you do want, physically, at least. There are dozens of new beauties coming out each Season.’

  ‘At two and thirty, my taste in women does not include chits barely out of the schoolroom.’ The to-ing and fro-ing of Rupert Stirling’s voice indicated that he was pacing the library in his agitation. ‘I cannot see myself tied for life to a young woman who not only giggles and prattles, but knows nothing of what takes place in the bedchamber,’ he added disdainfully.

  ‘Perhaps you should not dismiss the existence of that innocence so lightly, Rupert.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, no one could ever accuse you of a lack of finesse in the bedchamber, which would surely allow you to tutor your young and innocent wife as to your personal preferences. And secondly, innocence does have the added benefit of ensuring—hopefully—that the future heir to the Dukedom would at least be of your own loins!’

  ‘Which may not have been the case if Patricia had succeeded in giving my father his “spare”—an occurrence which would have succeeded in rendering me fearful for my very life whilst I slept,’ the Duke of Stratton stated venomously.

  Pandora was aware she no longer remained silent outside on the shadowed terrace merely to avoid detection, but was in fact now listening unashamedly to the two gentlemen’s conversation. Two gentlemen, having seen them from a distance but a short time ago, it was all too easy for Pandora to now envisage.

  Dante Carfax was tall and dark with wicked green eyes, his impeccable evening attire fitting to perfection his
wide and muscled shoulders, flat abdomen and long powerful legs.

  Rupert Stirling was equally as tall, if not slightly taller than his friend, his golden locks fashionably styled to curl about his ears and fall rakishly across his intelligent brow, his black evening clothes and snowy white linen tailored to emphasise the powerful width of his shoulders, narrow waist and long and muscled legs. His eyes would no doubt be that cool and enigmatic grey set in his haughtily handsome fallen-angel face, with a narrow aristocratic nose, high cheekbones and a wickedly sensual mouth that could smile with sardonic humour or thin with the coldness of his displeasure.

  A displeasure that at present appeared to be directed at the woman his late father had married four years ago.

  Pandora had been only twenty at the time, and not long married herself, but she remembered that the whole of society had then been agog with the fact that the long-widowed seventh Duke of Stratton, a man already in his sixtieth year, had decided to take as his second wife the young woman it was strongly rumoured had been romantically involved with that gentleman’s son before he returned to his regiment to fight in Wellington’s army against Napoleon...

  Pandora, along with all of society, was also aware that the new Duke and his stepmother had occupied the same house ever since the death of his father the previous year—or rather houses, because whether in town or the country, Rupert Stirling and his father’s widow invariably now occupied the same residence.

  ‘As I recall, you always did have reason to fear for your life when in the bedchamber with that particular lady,’ Dante drawled drily in reply to the other man’s previous comment.

  Pandora felt the colour warm her cheeks at overhearing such intimate details of Rupert Stirling’s relationship with the woman who was now his widowed stepmother. Perhaps, after all, she had listened long enough to the gentlemen’s conversation, and should now return to the ballroom and make her excuses to Sophia before leaving? Yes, that would probably be for the best—