Seduction Regency Style

by Louisa Cornell

  “Yes, my lord,” they chorused. With a nod to Missus Birkchester, the man took a guard-like stance outside Everly’s door. Grace’s mother gave Cecilia a speculative look she couldn’t interpret, then hurried away.

  Robert gestured Cecilia into the dimly lit hall. She complied, happy when he closed the door behind them. The wood muted Missus Everly’s wails. Cecilia glanced at the stoic guard, then at the door. An odd mixture of anger and sorrow for Missus Everly swirled inside her. Cecilia couldn’t imagine the pain of burying a son, but Missus Everly had brought his death on him, and nearly Robert’s, as well. Cecilia supposed the woman had every right to her sorrow, but not much right to anyone’s sympathy.

  “Which room is yours?” Robert asked.

  Cecilia turned back to him. “I don’t know.” She hadn’t left Everly’s side, and while she imagined Missus Birkchester had given her a room, no one had thought to tell her where.

  He frowned and looked up and down the hall. He seemed so annoyed by her reply, she considered pointing out that every room there was his, so if he wished, he could assign her one. He gave an abrupt, jerky shrug and turned on his heels to start down the hall. After a moment, she decided he must mean for her to follow.

  Robert’s long stride quickly outdistanced her, but he only went to the end of the hall. There, he stopped before a set of double doors. They were more elaborately carved than the single doors that lined the hall. He stared at them for a long moment. She couldn’t tell if he waited for her to reach him or stilled for a different reason. She reached the end of the hall and came to a halt behind him.

  “My rooms,” he said, voice tight. The muscles across his back and shoulders were tense under his shirt and vest.

  His rooms. That he’d shared with his wife. Cecilia swallowed. What could she say? Was there aught to say?

  Robert tucked the satchel more securely under his arm. He pushed one side of the leaf-and-rose carved doors open but didn’t advance. With his tall form blocking the way, Cecilia could see little other than a fire that glowed within. His staff, at least, expected the lord of the manor to use his suite.

  Robert drew in a deep breath and entered. He stopped in the center of what was a sitting room, a sofa to either side of the elaborately rose-adorned rug. Cecilia trailed silently after. His head jerked to one side, where carved chairs stood about a small table, then to the other, where a harp rested.

  Had she played that elegant instrument? Cecilia wondered. Had Robert lounged on one of these sofas, feet toward the massive fireplace with its sculpted vases of white marble roses, and listened to her play? Had he been attentive, or had he read? When he came across something interesting in his texts, had he shared it? Did that annoy her, or did she watch her tall, handsome husband with amusement while he spoke over her playing?

  Cecilia’s eyes burned with tears. She blinked them away. Tears wouldn’t bring back Robert’s first wife. Nor, if she were honest, did she want them to. He was hers now.

  Except that he wasn’t. In the forest, when he asked Everly if he’d reformed, Robert had seemed about to let the man remain his heir. If Everly had made a different reply and lived, would Robert still need her?

  Robert cleared his throat. “It was good of Missus Birkchester to clear away Everly’s things.”

  “He was using your room?” Cecilia blurted.

  “Certainly.” Robert’s tone was dry. “He’d proclaimed himself duke. Rather, his mother had.”

  His voice sounded almost normal, but he spoke without turning to face her. He paced away, toward the table, and set the satchel there. His movements quick and too forceful, he yanked it open and pulled free a pile of papers.

  “I want to burn these so there can be no question,” Robert said. “Everly’s fathered more than his share of bastards. Once that woman gets over her grief, like as not she’d find one of his sons and forge marriage papers. If her son was a good puppet, a grandchild would be equally so. Of course, she’d have to orchestrate it all from Canada, because that’s where I’m sending her.”

  Cecilia hadn’t considered any of that. Not potential sons of Mister Everly, or what Robert would have done with Missus Everly. She turned and pulled the door closed, then crossed to the table where Robert shuffled through the papers.

  “I want to make sure they’re all here,” he said, still without looking at her.

  A page caught her eye and she lifted it from the pile. Their annulment, carefully written out in Missus Everly’s clipped script. Robert’s signature at the bottom, witnessed by Missus and Edmond Everly. All it wanted was the mark of a priest.

  A tremble went through Cecilia’s hand. She set the page on the table. “Are you certain?”

  Robert stilled. He looked up to frown at the silk-clad wall across from him, where a painting of flowers hung. “Of?”

  “That you wish to burn these pages.” Cecilia worked to keep her voice steady. “If Missus Everly can pick one of her son’s bastards and make him heir, so can you. You could ask William and Lanora to raise him. He would be a good man. For that matter, you could look into who will inherit now that Everly is dead. He could be a good man, too. You…” She swallowed. “You wouldn’t need a new heir.”

  Robert’s frown deepened. “Is that what you want?”

  Her heart spasmed, seeming to cut off air to her throat. “You married me to solve a problem. You made that very clear. Now, that problem is gone.”

  “What of you, though?” He was so tense, even his lips seemed hardly to move. “You must have had reasons for accepting my offer. Surely, they are still valid. I would be a cad to go back on my word simply because my situation is resolved.”

  Situation? Resolved? Tears stung her eyes again. Was she really still a simple business arrangement? Would his heart forever and always belong to his first wife? “I did have reasons,” she whispered. “They seemed important, but now they do not.” Not important enough to make him suffer being married to her. Around the hard ball of pain in her throat she managed to say, “I would free you if that is your desire.”

  “Desire.” He said the word slowly. A line appeared on his brow.

  With quick, crisp movements, he gathered the pages. Pile clutched in one hand, his other grabbed her wrist. He marched them over to the fireplace.

  “What I desire is to see these pages burn.” His words were clipped. His arm shot out. The pile dropped onto the flames, the annulment on top.

  For a moment, the room dimmed, the bright flames muted. Then the pages blackened about the edges. Flames licked upward. The room filled with light as the contracts were devoured.

  His grip on her wrist gentle, Robert turned Cecilia to face him. “What I desire is for you to want to be married to me.” He brushed strong fingers down her cheek, tracing lines of tears. “What do you desire, Cecilia Hadler?”

  Don’t tell him, she ordered herself. Don’t bring her into this moment. The words burst forth, “For you to love me even a fraction as much as you loved your first wife.”

  The hand that still clasped her wrist spasmed. The thumb smoothing tears from her cheek stilled. Cecilia bit her lip. Why had she said it?

  “A fraction?” he repeated softly. “You would claim a fraction of my heart from a woman who’s been dead a dozen years? From a ghost I’ve permitted to keep me from everything I love?”

  Cecilia stared up into his green eyes, pupils alive with flickering firelight. Were his words a concession? She glanced toward the fireplace. The pages were no more than barely discernable ash.

  He raised her hand to his lips. “This hand may have a fraction of my love,” he murmured. Gentle fingers turned her hand over. He kissed the inside of her wrist. “And this wrist another.” He captured her other wrist and kissed it. “This one as well.” His hands slid up her arms to rest lightly on her shoulders. He drew her closer. His lips brushed across her cheek. His breath warmed her ear. “And this cheek.” He trailed kisses from the base of her ear, along her neck. “This neck.”

&nbs
p; Cecilia brought a hand to her chest, her rapid breath combining with his kisses dizzyingly.

  He nuzzled her fingers aside and trailed kisses across her décolletage and up the other side of her neck. “I believe there are more than enough parts of you to kiss that I must turn over the entirety of my heart,” he murmured against her ear.

  Cecilia felt faint. Laughter bubbled from her, born of relief, and joy. She twined her arms about his neck. “Yes, well, I hope one of them is my lips,” she said, and kissed him.

  Epilogue

  In the middle of their bright pavilion, clad only in a simple, sleeveless white shift, Cecilia spun, laughing, their infant son held overhead. Giggles spilled from him, along with no small amount of drool. She lowered him until they were face to face.

  “Look at you. You drool more than one of your papa’s hounds.”

  In answer, he reached for a handful of her loose white-blonde curls.

  “Oh no you don’t.” She held him out again and turned in a slow circle. His giggles formed bubbles of spit, and that was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen. “You’re getting so big so fast,” she observed. “Mommy can’t spin you all day. Let’s practice crawling.”

  They practiced crawling, and rolling an amazingly light, large wooden ball, until little Edmond grew tired. She then settled him for his nap. Once he was asleep, she let his nanny know she was going and set out in search of her husband.

  As it turned out, Robert often did work shirtless in Egypt. He never asked his men to work harder or more hours than he did, and they all baked under the harsh Egyptian sun. His efforts weren’t just to lead by example. They also insured he was there when discoveries were made, or to take the lead when an artifact needed to be cleared.

  For her part, Cecilia crossed the space between their pavilion and Robert’s current excavation under the shade of a parasol. Unlike him, she didn’t turn a golden bronze when exposed to the Egyptian sun, but more a bright and painful berry red. Robert said in time she would develop a greater tolerance to the harsher sun. She wasn’t certain she believed him.

  Today there was no digging. Robert had left earlier that morning dressed in tall black boots, buff trousers and a white shirt, open at the throat. By now, she was sure, his sleeves would be rolled up, exposing strong tanned forearms. Her face heated slightly as she walked across the hot dun-colored sand. In Egypt a woman certainly saw a great deal more of her husband than in the stuffy parlors of England, in more ways than one.

  She headed to the edge of the pit he and his men had dug, then started down the steep ramp. Many of the men greeted her as she passed. They called her Missus Daring, for they called Robert Mister Daring. The nickname had inspired his alias, Darington. It seemed they thought him quite bold for a learned Englishman.

  At the bottom of the ramp, she crossed to the gaping, sphinx-flanked tunnel entrance Robert and his men had uncovered. Though half the face had crumbled from one and they had only one paw out of four, the tunnel guards were still impressive. They towered over her, a clear warning not to enter their domain with ill intent. Every time she walked between them, she had to work not to watch their eyes, to see if they looked back.

  Just inside the entrance, Cecilia switched her parasol for a lantern. Holding that source of illumination high, even though the tunnel was lined with torches, she passed beyond the reach of the sunlight. She knew the way well but placed her feet with care in the wide tunnel, noting the stones Robert had marked in white paint to denote waiting traps. He hadn’t triggered or disarmed them. He worried the one might damage the tunnel, and the other encourage thieves.

  The tunnel walls were thick with the odd, geometric drawings favored by the ancient Egyptians. Cecilia knew each panel as well as the face of their son. As Robert carefully cleared the debris of centuries from each, she followed behind to document the scenes. Years of studying medicine had given her a keen eye and steady hand. She was quite skilled at transferring reality to the page.

  She found Robert and his two most learned assistants in the first chamber, painstakingly clearing dirt from the brightly painted scenes that adorned the walls. Not wishing to disturb them, she brought her lantern to her small desk. Her tools waited where she’d left them the day before, a half-captured panel on the open page. One thing she could say for the dry, dust-choked tunnels, there was no fear of weather damaging their work. Not sun, nor wind, nor rain.

  Though she’d endeavored to be silent, Robert reached her side in a moment. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “How is Edmond?”

  “Sleeping, or he was when I left him. I do believe he’ll be crawling any day.”

  “And Lanora?” he asked, one hand resting on her shoulder as he scrutinized the page before her. “Did you have time to finish reading her letter?”

  Cecilia nodded. “The twins are doing well, and she’s certain the new baby is only the one, and will be a boy this time.”

  Robert nodded. His gaze went from the page to the wall and back again.

  Cecilia resisted the urge to roll her eyes. He’d never yet found an error in her work. It was his nature to double check. “When your grandson comes, it would be nice if we met him, and let Lanora meet her brother.”

  Robert nodded again. “Once we’ve documented this find, we’ll spend some time in England.” His sweeping gesture encompassed the wall before them. “These pictures, the hieroglyphics, they all mean something. With the Rosetta Stone, we’ll soon know what.” He cast a fond, slightly melancholy look about the ancient chamber. “There comes a time when exploration must give way to study.” A long finger tapped her page. “This, we take back to England. We have years of work ahead of us there, when the time comes to leave Egypt behind.”

  Cecilia studied his strong, tanned face. Her palms tingled with the desire to run across his short-cropped black hair, ever so slightly touched with gray now. His green eyes were dark as he thought of leaving his explorations behind. She slid an arm about him. Immediately, his strong arm wrapped about her.

  “Not that Lanora needs to meet Edmond right away,” she said. “He’s very young to travel, and soon it will be winter in England. He’d be dreadfully cold there. I can always sketch him for her and William.”

  “And this new babe, who she is so sure will be a boy. Don’t we need to meet him?”

  Cecilia made an airy gesture. “He’ll be too little to meet for some time to come, and she can hire someone to sketch him for us. Lanora sketches nearly as horribly as she sews or plays the pianoforte.”

  “She’s brilliant with languages, though,” Robert said.

  “She is at that.” Cecilia gestured to the page open on the desk. “Maybe someday she can help us with all this.”

  In answer, Robert hugged her close. “I best get back to work.” He dropped another kiss on her forehead before striding away across the chamber.

  Cecilia pulled her stool from under the desk and sat. She carefully checked her tools and squinted at the image- and hieroglyph-adorned wall. Somehow, she thought it would be a rather long time before she, Robert and Edmond returned from Egypt.

  ###

  Thief of Broken Hearts

  The Sons of Eliza Bryant

  Book One

  Louisa Cornell

  Chapter One

  London

  August, 1814

  “Your Grace, I…”

  Endymion de Waryn, Duke of Pendeen, lifted his quill mid-word. He raised his head and stared at his personal secretary…astonished. Yes. Astonished. Not surprised, as Babcock had stood there long enough to repeat those same three words twice now, punctuated by a few moments of painful silence and violent throat clearing after each utterance.

  At two and thirty, Endymion had been neither astonished, nor surprised, nor shocked in nearly two decades. His carefully scheduled life precluded it, just as he preferred.

  Astonished. Precisely, and the Duke of Pendeen was nothing if not precise. A quality he also expected of every man, woman, and child in his servi
ce.

  “Your Grace, I…” The secretary, standing just inside the door, extended his hand. The stack of the day’s post, trapped in his long, knobby fingers, fluttered like so many ivory butterflies caught in flight.

  Endymion settled his writing instrument into the silver quill rest mounted on his black marble inkstand. “Babcock, I am in the room. You are in the room. I know why I am here.” He cocked his head inquiringly.

  “I suppose I count for nothing,” a bored voice intoned from the long, silk-brocade sofa before the empty hearth across the room.

  “Less than nothing. If not for the stench of your cologne, I’d have forgotten your presence entirely.” Endymion shot a disparaging glance at the impeccably dressed lord draped with indolent elegance across the most comfortable piece of furniture in the room.

  “I’ll have you know my cologne is the finest Floris has produced in twenty years. It was mixed to my specific order.” Anthony Farris, Marquess of Voil, adjusted his neckcloth and flicked a piece of lint from the top of his champagne-polished Hessians.

  “You smell like a brothel on Sunday.” The duke waved his secretary forward.

  After a moment’s hesitation, punctuated by a deep bob of his Adam’s apple, Babcock minced across the Persian carpet to stand before Endymion’s broad, mahogany desk. He dropped the clutch of letters onto the polished wood surface and took a step back, hands folded at the waist, one letter still in his grasp.

  “How would you know? When have you ever darkened the door of a bawdyhouse?”

  “I am married, Voil.” A familiar twitch settled between Endymion’s shoulders.

  The marquess levered himself into a half-reclined position. “Not so much as anyone might notice. Least of all, your wife.” He filched a lemon tart from the generous plate on the tea table next to the sofa. “I’m all for a convenient marriage, man, but, good God. Seventeen years?”