Regency Scandals: Touch Me, Tempt Me & Take Me Box Set

by Lucy Monroe

  Pansy was by her side in an instant. “Is it another of those nasty notes, milady?”

  Irisa shook her head in a quick gesture to let Pansy know she did not want to discuss it in front of the upstairs maid.

  Jenny said, “I don’t know how it was delivered, Lady Ashton. The footman gave it to me with the others.”

  “Please instruct the footman to come to me in the library. You can leave the message for his lordship on the small table in his chamber.”

  “Yes, milady.” Jenny bobbed a curtsy and left.

  “Come, Pansy. We must go to the library to query the footman and in answer to your question: Yes, I do fear this is another of the blackmailer’s notes.”

  “You don’t want your new staff to know about the threats, milady?”

  “I think it is best to discuss the matter with his lordship first. He may wish to keep it from the other servants.”

  Pansy didn’t reply, but followed Irisa to the library.

  Upon interrogation, the footman admitted that he didn’t know how the envelope had been delivered. It had been in the usual spot for calling cards and correspondence when he came into the front hall with the other notes delivered by the Owlpen and Langley footmen.

  Irisa thanked and dismissed him.

  Deciding the anonymous blackmailer would be easier on her nerves than Mama’s recriminations, she took a deep breath and opened the white envelope.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The missive was much shorter than the first letter had been.

  Lady Ashton,

  You will not find much joy in the title, I can assure you. You have made a grave mistake in going through with your wedding to The Saint. Such an unforgiving man will not tolerate the stain your birth is bound to bring to his name. Neither of you deserves happiness and you will not find it together. That I can promise you.

  Once again the note was unsigned.

  Irisa dropped the note on the small table by where she sat and hugged herself, having gone suddenly cold. She could not begin to comprehend the message. Who hated her so much they would be willing to hurt Lucas to prevent her happiness? She had made no enemies she knew of.

  True, there were the few gentlemen over the past four years her Papa had refused when they asked permission to pay their addresses. She could not see one of them so moved they would go to the lengths the blackmailer had in order to get revenge for the rejection.

  After all, had their passions been so strongly aroused, she might have been willing to entertain their suits. Only the duke had been furious when she refused to marry him. His pride had been pricked and he’d barely been civil to Papa and Mama, but why wait four years to wreak some kind of vengeance?

  Which is exactly what Irisa told Lucas when he came into the library ten minutes later. She had not yet read her mother’s missive, her mind still occupied with the personal and threatening direction the blackmailer had taken with his messages.

  “It makes no sense. Why would someone wish me such ill?”

  He reached out and brushed her cheek with reassuring fingers. “You forget that the author of this note has implied that I do not deserve happiness either. In fact, he or she refers to me as unforgiving. That is a rather personal indictment of my character.”

  Lucas read the note before tossing it back on the table with disgust. “We must consider the possibility that the blackmailer’s original complaint is with me. The vitriol expressed toward you could easily stem from your association with me.”

  She did not agree. “The opposite could just as easily be true. If the blackmailer is trying to harm you, why send me the notes? Why not focus his attention on you?”

  “Because the blackguard realizes I am more vulnerable to your hurt than I am to my own.” Lucas picked up the lavender envelope. “Who is this from?”

  “Mama. I’m nervous about reading it, if you want the truth.” Which sounded perfectly ridiculous when she thought about it. The other note had been from a blackmailer and she had wanted to read it first.

  He smiled and handed her the envelope. “You may as well get it over with. Putting it off will only make it worse.”

  The prospect of reading Mama’s words did not have quite the fearsome aspect they had a half hour before. She knew the difference could be attributed to Lucas’s presence. It gave her strength. She tore open the envelope and read quickly, unable to stifle a gasp of dismay at the words.

  “You will never believe it.” She met Lucas’s concerned gaze, feeling stricken. “Papa has decided to take Mama on an extended tour of the continent.”

  Lucas’s face relaxed and he shrugged. “Many members of the ton have done so since the war ended. I’m surprised your parents have waited so long to join their ranks.”

  “Yes, but they are doing it in order to avoid the gossip. Mama says she does not know when they will return to England. They are leaving for Dover the day after tomorrow. She says that if I wish to say goodbye, I must call this afternoon, as they will be too busy to receive me this evening or tomorrow. The afternoon is almost over, Lucas.”

  “Then, I suppose we must make haste and leave immediately.” Lucas’s voice lacked enthusiasm for the project, but he did not try to dissuade her.

  Slipping into his Wellington role, he issued instructions to the servants and led her outside to the waiting carriage twenty minutes later. As he handed her into the carriage, even in her agitated state, she realized she had never seen it before. In fact the pretty yellow curricle did not have Lucas’s crest on the door.

  “Did you buy a new curricle, Lucas?”

  He handed her the reins and waited for her to set the horses in motion before answering. “Yes. Do you like it?”

  “It’s lovely.” The bottle green squabs contrasted beautifully with the bright exterior.

  “It’s yours.”

  Surely she had not heard him correctly. “Mine?”

  “Yes. A wedding gift, if you like it.”

  She almost dropped the leads and had to force her attention to the road in front of her in order to avoid running into a slow moving pony cart. “But, Lucas, I thought you did not want me to drive.”

  He had been very kind about Thea teaching her, but she had assumed it would take a great deal of cajoling before her husband would even consider her owning her own carriage.

  “You have an excellent hand with the ribbons and once this mess with the blackmailer is cleared up, you will want the independence of your own conveyance.”

  She was staggered by his trust in her.

  ***

  Much to her surprise, Papa and Mama were both in the drawing room when she and Lucas were announced by the Langley butler. Papa looked over papers while Mama plied her needle, the scene so similar to the one four years ago when Irisa had come to them intent on her own form of blackmail that she stopped motionless in the doorway. Lucas’s grip on her arm tightened briefly.

  She took a deep breath. “Papa, Mama, I’ve come to wish you well on your trip.”

  Mama looked up from her needlework, accusation in her lovely brown eyes. “One can only hope it will not be a permanent exile.”

  Papa did not look up from his papers.

  Lucas led her to a small sofa and sat her on it before taking the spot beside her. For once his overt possessiveness did not embarrass her. His warmth reached out to surround her and she felt able to face this new ordeal with her parents with a certain amount of serenity. “I’m sure it will not be so bad. You are bound to enjoy the travel.”

  Mama shuddered. “It will be a perfect nightmare if we find ourselves barred from the company of our kind.”

  “Mama, you are refining too much on possibilities.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “I would expect you to have more sympathy for my plight, but you always were an unnatural daughter.”

  Irisa tightened her hands into fists. “I have been the best daughter I knew how to be.”

  “It’s difficult to believe you could have caused us more grief
if you had tried.” Papa’s accusation so shocked her that for a moment she sat in numb silence.

  Lucas was not similarly affected. “Irisa has been an exemplary daughter to you, Langley, and if you are too much the fool to appreciate her, then you can bloody well keep your opinions to yourself.”

  Papa’s face set in grim lines and he inclined his head in acknowledgement of Lucas’s words before turning his attention back to the papers in front of him.

  Irisa could not stand it. She jumped up, both hands fisted at her sides. “Was what I did so very bad? I tried so hard to please you, but I could not marry His Grace four years ago any more than I could cry off my engagement to Lucas four days ago. Is wanting to be happy such an unnatural thing for me to do?”

  Mama’s only answer was to burst into noisy tears and Papa pretended as if she had not spoken at all. She crossed the room in a few swift strides and swept the papers from the table. Papa looked at her then, his face filled with disgust and something inside of her cracked.

  “Why did you stop loving me? There was a time when you touched me with affection, when you smiled at me and noticed me. Then one day it was as if I no longer existed for you. Is it because I was the cause for Jared’s scar? Was it the fact that I reminded you of your own failings? Did you come to hate me because I was too natural a daughter?”

  Mama’s outraged gasp filled the room. Irisa stopped speaking, her throat too clogged with tears to go on.

  Papa was looking at her now, his expression unreadable. “When the wolf almost got both you and Jared I realized I was vulnerable to losing you, just as I had lost Anna. There are so many things that can happen to a child. Illness. Accidents. I could not face the prospect of losing someone else I loved.”

  “So you stopped loving me?”

  “Yes.”

  She thought he was going to leave it at that, but he didn’t. “I do not regret that decision. The grief you have brought to me as your parent would be compounded if I cared for you as I once did.”

  The absolute selfishness and cowardice of her father’s response left her breathless. “Do you truly believe I sent the blackmail notes myself and will now make your secret known to the ton?”

  “Of course your father doesn’t believe anything so ridiculous, but you chose to marry Ashton yesterday rather than protect your family from scandal.”

  She turned to face her mother. “What of you, Mama? Did you stop loving me as well?” But even as she asked the words, Irisa knew the answer. Mama had not stopped loving her. Mama had never loved anyone as much as she loved herself and her social position.

  “I wish I had, but I cannot stop loving my daughter and that has increased my pain at your betrayal tenfold.”

  Suddenly Lucas towered beside her. His body radiated outraged fury. “Just how long do you expect your daughter to pay for your sin?”

  Mama turned crimson and her mouth opened and shut in outraged shock, but nothing came out.

  “It is not our sin at issue here,” Papa said, his voice raised in angry protest.

  “On the contrary. That is exactly the issue here. Irisa is not responsible for your past actions. You have succeeded in making her feel guilt where she has none. She is the only innocent in any of this and I won’t bloody well allow you to make her the sacrificial goat for your own failings.” He turned to her. “We’re leaving.”

  She shook her head. “There is something else I wish to say.” She glared at both her parents, as she saw her past through the eyes of the truth Lucas had spoken rather than a hazy veil of guilt and shame. “My husband is right. I am not responsible for your current imbroglio. Refusing to marry him would not have been a permanent solution. One day, someone would have latched onto your secret, but what you both fail to realize is that it is your secret, not mine.”

  She met her Papa’s gaze head on. “Thea once said that your weakness tore apart our family. I didn’t believe her at the time because I mistook your harsh implacability for strength. She was right, though, wasn’t she? You were too weak to admit your wrong to Anna Selwyn and save your first marriage. It was your actions that caused Jared to live without knowing the love of his mother.” Irisa shifted her gaze to Mama. “A woman who cared more for her children, both of them, than she did for her own happiness.”

  “Anna had no right to steal my daughter and raise her in the god forsaken West Indies.” Papa sounded every bit as unbending as usual.

  Irisa turned toward him, rage filling her. “God did not forsake her. You did. Just as you forsook Jared and I when you were too afraid to risk loving us. Just as you are about to forsake your family once again because you are too weak to face the consequences of your past.”

  Silence reigned in the drawing room. Mama had even ceased sniffling. Irisa looked from Mama’s shocked face to Papa’s stoic one. “I suppose coming here today was a fool’s errand. You showed me long ago that my only value to you was what I could bring into your life. The best I can do for you now is to leave it. Bon voyage.”

  She turned to go, knowing neither Mama or Papa would call her back. She’d made her choice and they had made theirs. She would never again accept responsibility for the pain of the past and she didn’t think either of them ever would.

  ***

  When they reached the carriage, Lucas handed her inside. But this time, he took the reins. The trip home went by in a blur of thought for Irisa. Once they reached Ashton House, Lucas led her straight to his bedchamber. Unlike the day before, she did not feel embarrassed. She was relieved. Emotions cascaded through her in one disturbing wave after another and she wanted nothing more than to be alone with her husband, his arms wrapped securely around her.

  And that is exactly what she got. He shut and locked his door, then seated himself on a chair and pulled her onto his lap without a word. He held her, his hand rubbing circles on her back and that gentle touch brought the tears. She sobbed against his shirtfront for the longest time while he murmured soft words of comfort and reassurance. Her tears finally abated and she searched in her reticule, still dangling from her wrist, for her handkerchief.

  After she had repaired herself as best she could, she looked up at Lucas. His eyes were fathomless blue pools and for a moment she forgot what she was going to say.

  “Better now?” he asked.

  She nodded, wadded up her handkerchief and shoved it back into her reticule. “I’ve become a regular watering pot since our marriage.”

  His hand around her waist tightened. “You’ve had a very trying time of it lately, little one. It would be surprising if you never gave way to tears.”

  “It hasn’t exactly been a picnic for you either, but I don’t see you turning on the waterworks.”

  He chuckled. “I have other ways to vent my frustration.”

  She rubbed her backside against him and felt his manhood stir. “Yes, but our first time was last night. What did you do before that?”

  This time he laughed outright. “I build models. Ships in bottles. It takes my mind off things and helps me to focus.”

  So that’s why he did it. It put a new light on the previous night as well. If he’d felt the need to resort to his models after sending her off to bed, he must have found it as difficult as he’d implied he had. “Have you always built them?”

  “I started with simple models of ships right after my father died. I began putting them in bottles when I was fifteen or so.”

  “They’re very beautiful. I cannot wait to see the ones you keep at Ashton Manor.”

  “Who told you about those?”

  “The housekeeper.” She nuzzled against Lucas’s neck. “Lucas?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you going to be all right, my love?”

  “Yes.” She tilted her face up and kissed him, touching his lips lightly and gently with her own. “Thank you for going with me.”

  His eyes filled with familiar blue fire and he shifted under her until a hard ridge rubbed against her b
ottom. “Irisa.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not angry.”

  It took her a moment to get his meaning and when she did, she went off in peals of laughter. It didn’t take him long to change her laughter into breathless desire and her last coherent thought as he carried her to the bed was that she certainly liked it when her husband wasn’t angry.

  ***

  Lucas marveled at the sweet generosity of the woman snuggled into his side as he brushed the curve of her breast with his fingertips.

  She stretched against him with a purr of satisfaction, pressing her soft flesh more firmly into his hand and licking delicately at his male nipple. “Lucas, are you still not angry?”

  He heard the mischief in her voice and growled even as his body shuddered in response to that impish little tongue. “You are playing with fire, sweeting.”

  She nipped the hardened nub on his chest and then licked it again in a soothing gesture. “Do you promise? I like it when you burn me up, my love. I like it very much.”

  He flipped her on her back and loomed over her, catching her wrists in one smooth motion and drawing them above her head. “Say that again.”

  She smiled up at him, her eyes no longer shadowed with pain as they had been in her parents’ drawing room. “I like it very, very much.”

  He hadn’t meant that, though pleasure shot through him at her words. “Call me your love,” he commanded. She’d never done so before and he found he liked it.

  Her smile faded, but her eyes remained warm. “You are, you know. My very own love. I love you so much, Lucas.”

  What had been renewing interest turned into raging need with those few, short words. Using his knee, he pressed her thighs apart and pushed his throbbing erection into her damp and welcoming sheath. “You belong to me.”

  “Yes.” She squirmed under him, trying to draw him deeper into her body.

  He accommodated her with forceful thrusts. Keeping her wrists locked together with one of his hands, he used the other to caress her breasts so tantalizingly displayed because of the position he held her in and brought them both to shattering completion. Afterward, he barely managed to withdraw before collapsing by her side on the rumpled bedding.