The Last Hellion

by Loretta Chase

  His intended looked up at him, her big eyes glowing. “You are the dearest, kindest man in all the world, Bertie Trent,” she said. “You think of everybody.” She turned to her father. “Do you see, Papa? Do you see how lucky I am?”

  “Of course I see,” said her father, while Bertie turned vivid scarlet. “And I hope your beau will allow me the honor of writing the invitation to your friends.”

  The invitation was duly written, and a vestry man carried it to Ainswood House.

  Not a quarter hour later, the wedding guests trooped into St. James’s Church, and nobody argued with anybody, though a few people did cry, as females do, and Susan, whose tender sensibilities couldn’t bear tears, tried to comfort them with hand-licking and the occasional cheerful, “Woof!”

  The minister, accustomed to the oddities of the gentry, bore it good-humoredly, and the wedding, if it fell short of certain peers’ high standards of grandeur, unquestionably succeeded in making all parties happy, most especially the principals, which, after all, was all that mattered.

  After the ceremony, Mr. Prideaux invited the company to adjourn to the Pulteney Hotel, where he was staying, for “a bit of refreshment.”

  It soon became apparent to everyone where Tamsin had inherited her efficiency from, because a very lavish wedding breakfast contrived to be assembled and served on very short notice.

  Not long afterward, it dawned on Bertie that efficiency wasn’t all his bride had inherited.

  Mr. Prideaux made a “little gift” of a suite of rooms to the newlyweds, neatly forestalling arguments about where they’d spend their wedding night.

  Pulteney’s was an elegant, very expensive hotel. The rooms turned out to be a suite of enormous apartments customarily reserved for visiting royalty.

  Even Bertie, who could not calculate pounds, shillings, and pence without getting a violent headache, had no trouble deducing that his father-in-law must be plump in the pocket.

  After the servants finished fussing with things that needed no fussing with and departed, he turned to his bride.

  “I say, m’dear,” he said mildly, “maybe you forgot to mention your pa was as rich as Croesus.”

  She turned pink and bit her lip.

  “Oh, come,” he said. “I know you must’ve had a good reason, and you ain’t goin’ to be too shy to tell me? I know you wasn’t worried I was a fortune hunter. Even if I wanted to be, my brain box don’t work that way. I hardly know what to say to a gal when I like her, let alone say things pretending I do when I don’t and it’s only her money I like. Whatever I’m thinkin’ comes right out of my mouth, generally, and you know what I mean, whatever I say, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I know,” she said. She stepped away from him and took off her spectacles and rubbed them on her sleeve and put them back on again. “At Athcourt, when you asked me to marry you, I was going to tell you about my father. But you told me how you’d run away from heiresses your aunt kept taking you to meet. I was alarmed. I know it’s silly, but I couldn’t help it. I was afraid that when I told you, you’d see an heiress instead of me. I was worried it would make you uncomfortable and perhaps your pride couldn’t bear it. I’m sorry, Bertie.” She lifted her chin. “I’m not by nature ruthless or deceitful, but in some matters, a woman must be. I could not risk your getting away from me.”

  “Couldn’t risk it, could you?” He nodded. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Lady T. You done excellent. I didn’t get away, did I? And ain’t goin’ away, neither.” He laughed. He couldn’t help it. The idea of her being ruthless and deceitful, on his account—and worried he’d get away—tickled him immensely.

  Still chuckling, he advanced and drew her into his arms. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere,” he said. He kissed her pretty nose. “Except mebbe into our fancy bed with my wife.” He looked up, glanced about. “If, that is, we can find out where the deuce it is.”

  Chapter 20

  Longlands, Northamptonshire

  One week later

  Being in regular communication with Ainswood House, the servants at Longlands were fully apprised of their new mistress’s standards of domestic order.

  Consequently, despite only twenty-four hours’ notice of the family’s arrival, the Longlands staff turned out in full ceremonial regalia to welcome them. These domestic troops were cleaned, starched, and polished within an inch of their lives, lined up with military precision at sharp attention.

  All of which disciplined perfection dissolved into a chaos of whoops, whistles, and cheers when the Duke of Ainswood swept up his bride in his arms and carried her over the ancestral threshold.

  Tears streamed down the housekeeper’s plump face when the young ladies she’d so sorely missed rushed at her, to crush her with hugs and be crushed in return.

  Even Morton, the house steward, was observed to dash a tear from his eye while he watched the master set his bride down amid a welcoming horde of mastiffs, whose boisterous greeting set the hall bric-a-brac trembling.

  The dogs quieted abruptly when Susan made her entrance a moment later, towing Jaynes.

  “Grr-rrr-rr,” said Susan.

  Her ears had flattened, her tail was stiff—her entire stance clearly communicated hostility. The others were males, and she was not only an intruder but outnumbered, four to one. Nonetheless she made it plain she was prepared to tear the lot of them to pieces.

  This seemed to puzzle the other canines.

  “Woof,” one said uncertainly.

  “Woof!” one of his fellows seconded more boldly.

  A third barked, then dashed to the door and back. Susan remained rigid, teeth bared, snarling.

  “Come, don’t be cross,” Vere told her. “Don’t you see? They want to play. Don’t you want to play, sweetheart?”

  Susan grumbled and glared at them, but her hostile posture relaxed a degree.

  Then one of the dogs darted forward, a ball in its big jaws. He dropped it a safe distance from Susan. “Woof!” he said.

  Warily, Susan advanced and sniffed the ball. After grumbling to herself a bit more, she took it in her mouth and trotted to the door. The other dogs followed.

  Vere met his wife’s gaze. “Those fellows will do anything for you-know-what,” he said. “I’m amazed they didn’t crawl on their bellies.” He gave Lydia his arm and they started up the stairs.

  “They’re not going to get any you-know-what,” she said. “Not today, at any rate. She isn’t in season.”

  “They’re softening her heart in advance,” he said.

  “She’s an aberration, you know,” Lydia said. “Oversized, and the wrong color. That’s why I got her for practically nothing. Her antecedents are suspect. You may not want to breed her with your pedigreed lot.”

  “Mallorys aren’t as particular about bloodlines as Ballisters,” he said. “You, for instance, had rather have an illegitimate son as your father because, bastard or not, he at least has noble blood in his veins.”

  “I shouldn’t care if my father had been sired by a chimney sweep,” she said. “What mattered was that he truly loved my mother and made her happy, and did his damnedest to be first rate at what he did. It’s character and effort that count with me, not bloodlines.”

  Vere would have argued the point—for everyone knew the Ballisters were the greatest snobs in the world—but they’d reached the first floor and were turning into the family wing, and teasing banter was impossible while his heart thudded so painfully.

  The walls were covered with pictures—not the masterpieces of portraiture and landscape that adorned the public rooms, but drawings, watercolors, and oils of a much more informal and intimate nature, capturing generations of Mallory family life.

  Halfway to the master’s apartments, Vere paused before the picture he knew would be there. He had not looked at it in eighteen months. He looked at it now. His throat tightened. His chest constricted.

  “This is Robin,” he told his wife. It was hard getting the words out, but he’d expected diffi
culty and made up his mind to bear it. “I’ve told you about him,” he went on. “Lizzy and Em have told you about him. Now you see him.”

  “A beautiful child,” she said.

  “Yes. We’ve other pictures, but this is the best of the lot.” The tightness was easing. “It’s the most like him. The artist caught his smile—the one Robin seemed to keep mostly to himself, as though he knew a private joke. Charlie had the same smile. God help me, what an idiot I’ve been. I should have taken it with me. How can one look into the boy’s face and not see sunshine? Lord knows I needed it.”

  “You didn’t expect to find sunshine,” she said quietly.

  He met her gaze, discerned understanding in its blue depths. “I’m not sure I would have found it if you hadn’t taught me how. I’ve talked about him, listened to Lizzy and Em talk about him,” he continued, his voice growing surer, steadier. “It’s grown easier as the days pass. All the same, I wasn’t sure I could look him in the eye today. I hadn’t done well by his memory, poor lad. It was death and decay and a black, cold rage I’d carried about with me in my heart instead. Unfair, when the boy gave me nothing but joy for six full months.” His gaze returned to the portrait. “I’ll always miss him, and so I’m bound to grieve from time to time. But I have happy memories. So many. That’s a blessing. And I’ve a family to share them with. Another blessing.”

  He could have lingered before the portrait with her and said more. But there would be plenty of time for lingering, for talking, for sharing memories.

  At any rate, he’d already made up his mind what to do, and that must be done first.

  He opened the door to the ducal apartments and led her through the passage to the bedchamber.

  It was an enormous room, as befitted the head of the family, yet a warm one. Late October sunlight burnished the golden oak wainscoting and glimmered in the golden threads of the rich blue drapery adorning both windows and bed. The bed was immense and ornately carved. It had been built centuries earlier for a visit from James I.

  “The last time I saw this bed was when I watched Robin depart for the hereafter,” Vere told his wife. “My last memory is of a little boy dying in it. I can carry that memory in my heart now, along with others. I wasn’t too late. I was there for him when he needed me. It’s a bittersweet memory, but not impossible to bear.”

  “I have some of those,” she said.

  She, too, had watched at deathbeds, clung to hands of loved ones, felt the pulse weaken and fade as life departed.

  “Your mother, your sister,” he said.

  She nodded.

  He closed the small distance between them.

  “This will be our first memory in this room,” he said. “I want it to be perfect. It must set the tone for the rest of our life here together. Because this is home.”

  She looked at the bed, then up at him. Her mouth turned up ever so slightly.

  She understood.

  His gaze drifted downward.

  She wore one of her new frocks: a pale lavender pelisse-robe that buttoned all the way down to the hem. “So many buttons,” he murmured as he brought his hands to the topmost one. He brought his mouth to hers as well, and kissed her. It was long, slow, and deep, and all the while he was unbuttoning, slowly, to just beneath her waist.

  Then he eased away from her mouth and sank down onto his knees, and continued his work, but more quickly.

  When he was done, he looked up at her. She shrugged out of the garment, let it drop to the floor.

  She moved toward the bed, darting one quick but devastating glance over her shoulder. She leaned against the bedpost for balance and reached up under her petticoats.

  He watched, still on his knees, mesmerized, while her silken drawers slipped to the floor. She loosened the ribbons of the petticoat bodice, and the neckline drooped over her corset, baring her breasts to a tantalizing hairsbreadth of the nipples.

  She turned, slowly, and clasped the bedpost with both hands.

  He rose, not at all slowly, and stripped to the skin. Over her shoulder, she watched him, her ripe mouth still curled in the tiny devil’s smile.

  He went to her. “Wanton, Your Grace. You’ve become wanton and depraved.”

  “I’ve had an excellent teacher,” she said softly.

  He cupped her breasts, trailed kisses over her shoulders and back. He felt her shiver with pleasure, and he shivered and burned inwardly with impatience.

  “I love you,” she said. “Take me like this.”

  She pressed her beautiful rump to his loins.

  Muslin tickled his swollen rod, a maddening torment that made him laugh hoarsely. In public, she could freeze a man with one blast from those ice-blue eyes. In private, with him, she was all fire, the most wanton of harlots.

  He dragged up her skirts. “Like this, Duchess? Is this how you want me?”

  “Yes, like this. Now.”

  He cupped her, tangled his fingers in the silken curls, and found liquid heat. Now, she’d said, no more patient than he was.

  He entered her, and took her as she wanted, because it was what he wanted, too. She understood.

  He’d wanted this room to echo with cries of passion, and laughter, and love words. They were not tame and decorous beings, either of them, by nature. They were defiant and fearless and hot-blooded. They were not quite civilized and never would be.

  And so they made love like the passionate creatures they were, and when they tumbled onto the bed, they made love again. And again. Fiercely, joyously, noisily, shamelessly.

  And when, finally, they lay limp with exhaustion, their damp, naked bodies twined together, the scent of their passion hung in the air, in the mixed gold and crimson light of the setting sun, and the sounds of their lovemaking seemed to echo in the room.

  “Now, there’s a memory to warm an old man in his old age,” Vere said. “And to give a fellow reason to live to a very old age.”

  “You’d better,” she said. “Otherwise, I shall find someone else.”

  “If you try to find a replacement, you’ll be sadly disappointed,” he said. “I can’t be replaced. I’m the only man in all the world who possesses the right combination of qualities for you.” Lazily he stroked her breast. “You can turn your Ballister stare upon me all you like, but you can’t petrify me. You can knock me about to your heart’s content without worrying about doing any damage. You can perpetrate any sort of outrage your wicked mind conceives and be sure I’ll join in, with a will. You’re a troublemaker, Lydia. A Ballister devil. Nothing less than a Mallory hellion would ever suit you.”

  “Then you’d better stick with me for a very long time,” she said. “Else I’ll follow you into the hereafter.”

  “You would, too.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t quail, even at the mouth of hell, with flames spewing at you and demons howling. But I’ll do my best to put that off as long as possible.”

  “I can ask no more,” she said, “than that you do your best.”

  “You may be sure I’ll make a first-rate effort to be one of the long-lived Mallorys.” He trailed his hand down to her belly. “For one, I’m vastly curious to see what sort of monsters we’ll produce.”

  She laid her hand over his. “I am, too. It would be a grand thing, wouldn’t it,” she added softly, “if we started a baby on this day, our first day together in this house, in this bed. A child conceived in love, in the light of the sun…” Her mouth quirked up. “And altogether uninhibitedly.”

  “A child would make a fine keepsake of the occasion,” he said huskily.

  “The finest.” She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his face close to hers. In her cool blue eyes, twin devils danced, the ones only he could see. “Maybe,” she whispered, “just one more time. I know there’s no way to make sure—”

  He kissed her. “You may be sure, madam, that I’ll do my damnedest.”

  He did.

  Epilogue

  In the 1829 edition of the Annual Register, under “Births,
July,” the following notice appeared: 20. At Longlands, Northants, the duchess of Ainswood, a son and heir.

  The future duke, christened Edward Robert, was the first of seven children, of assorted genders. Some were fair-haired and blue-eyed, some dark-haired and green-eyed.

  But they were all hellions, each and every one.

  About the Author

  LORETTA CHASE holds a B.A. from Clark University, where she majored in English and minored unofficially in visual art. Her past lives include clerical, administrative, and part-time teaching at Clark and a Dickensian six-month experience as a meter maid.

  In the course of moonlighting as a corporate video scriptwriter, she fell under the spell of a producer who lured her into writing novels…and marrying him.

  The union has resulted in more than a dozen books and a number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award. You can talk to Loretta via her e-mail address, Author@LorettaChase.com, visit her website at www.LorettaChase.com, and blog with her and six other authors at www.WordWenches.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Glowing acclaim for

  New York Times bestseller

  LORETTA CHASE

  and

  The Last Hellion

  “Filled with terrific scenes. Sparks fly…Thumbs up on this one.”

  Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “A rare talent for creating crackling sensual tension and characters so fresh and compelling that readers won’t be able to forget them…A classic of the genre.”