by Robin Gideon
Second Chance at Love 2
Celeste’s Story
Lady Celeste Fallon’s cruel husband of eighteen years is turning her life into a living hell. At thirty-six, Celeste discovers passion in the arms of her coachman, the handsome and muscular Heath McCord. When he introduces her to his assistant, the young and gorgeous Laine Chandler, ménage à trois passion explodes!
Now that she has at last found love and sizzling passion in her life, Celeste must find a way to free herself from her loathsome husband. To make matters worse, her cruel and grasping in-laws are plotting to take control of her fortune in the courts through legal trickery. In 1890s England, a woman has little legal control over her own life. Can Lady Celeste keep her fortune, and the two lovers in her life, or will she lose it all to cruel forces beyond her control?
Note: This book was previously published with another publisher and has been extensively revised and expanded.
Genre: Historical, May-December, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 32,852 words
CELESTE’S STORY
Second Chance at Love 2
Robin Gideon
MENAGE AND MORE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage and More
CELESTE’S STORY
Copyright © 2013 by Robin Gideon
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-209-8
First E-book Publication: January 2013
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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DEDICATION
For Keith.
CELESTE’S STORY
Second Chance at Love 2
ROBIN GIDEON
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
London, England – June 1894
“I’m so goddamned bored with all of those smug bastards I could spit. I’m bored with them, and I’m bored with you.”
Celeste stared at her inebriated husband, Ralph Fallon. His words were badly slurred, and when he looked at her through red-rimmed eyes, he closed one eye, apparently to get a better view of her, even though she was sitting only a few feet away on the opposite seat of the carriage.
“How long have we been married now?”
Celeste moved a curling lock of auburn hair away from her temple, smoothing the strands behind her ear. In a voice carrying equal measures of sadness and contempt, she answered, “Eighteen years.”
“Are you sure? Seems goddamned longer.”
“I’m thirty-six, Ralph. I was eighteen when we got married. I’m quite sure.”
Celeste turned her head to look out the carriage window. She despised her husband every bit as much as he loathed her, though she had learned she mustn’t put her contempt into words. The last time she had shown the temerity to criticize him, he slapped her across the face with an open hand. When she showed more anger than fear at being struck, he then backhanded her so forcefully she staggered several steps and then fell to her knees, bleeding from the mouth. As he towered over her, he explained that he had just given her a lesson he would repeat until she remembered it. From that moment forward, she remembered.
He pulled a silver gin flask from the inside pocket of his jacket, removed the cork stopper, then tilted it to his lips. Then, obscenely, he held the upside-down flask over his mouth and lolled his pink tongue out to catch the last few drops of liquor.
The words haven’t you had enough were nearly out of Celeste’s mouth before she stopped them. In the foul mood Ralph was in tonight, he would surely resort, once again, to violence, should she openly disrespect him.
The manual dexterity necessary to put the stopper back into the flask exceeded Ralph’s abilities. The cork fell from his fingers. Ralph started to pick it up off the floor of the carriage, but when he leaned forward, he very nearly tumbled out of his seat. With a shrug of resignation, he put the flask back into his coat pocket, rested his head against the supple leather of the seat cushion, closed his eyes, and began to snore.
How did he ever end up like that? Celeste narrowed her eyes at her husband and his drunken snoring. How did I ever end up like this? I’ve been publicly embarrassed more times than I can remember. My friends and sisters pity me. I don’t even have any children to love. I’m a thirty-six-year-old woman married to a vicious boor who spends my money and hates the sight of me.
She was grateful for the faint breeze wafting into the carriage compartment through the open windows. The ball at the Kahlos family’s lavish Kensington estate had been unpleasantly warm, and though there were plenty of cool drinks to quench the thirst, she had been careful not to sip too much champagne. With Ralph gulping down gin as if it were water, she knew she would have difficulty with him before the night was through. It wasn’t like this was the first night she’d watched him drink himself blind drunk.
She stared out the window, her eyes open but unseeing as the well-appointed carriage rattled along through the streets of tony London. Thoroughly exhausted, more emotionally than physically, she wanted nothing more than to crawl between the sheets of her bed and sleep until the next midday.
“Heath, how much further until we’re home?” Celeste called out the window to her hired man, who drove the two
-horse team with a firm, confident hand.
“About another thirty minutes, m’lady,” Heath replied from the coachman’s seat. “Would you like me to hurry the horses a bit? It won’t be any bother.”
“It’ll be a bother to the horses,” she said, smiling to herself. Just because Ralph made life unnecessarily difficult for her didn’t mean she should make the horses work harder than necessary. “Let the horses be. We’ll get home soon enough, I suppose.”
But a moment later, she heard the reins slap lightly against the team of tall, thick-chested roan geldings and felt the carriage lurch a bit as they picked up speed. She smiled. Heath McCord had been working for the Fallons for three years—ever since Ralph had taken a riding crop to the previous coachman for no good reason.
As she often did whenever Ralph’s behavior troubled her, Celeste closed her eyes and thought about the orphanage she sponsored. What were the next big challenges to overcome? There was the carpenter who needed help—the one who had hurt himself while building the addition. He and his family would have to be taken care of until he could work again. And there was the legal issue of how long the lease was enforceable at the orphanage. Celeste would have to see her barrister again about that thorny issue.
She sighed wearily. There were so many orphans in London and so few people who wanted to adopt them. Yes, there were plenty of husbands and wives who wanted to adopt, but the children they would adopt had to come from families of a certain privileged background. Celeste had explained to people a hundred times that it was the children from poor families who needed adoption, not children from the ton. Her words, almost invariably, fell upon deaf ears. But someday, just maybe, she’d be able to find homes and families for all the children who so desperately needed them. Someday, if she worked very diligently and with great purpose, she would be able to…
The carriage turned. Blinking her eyes, she came out of her reverie, recognizing the stone archway leading into her estate. Home, at last. Quite suddenly, she didn’t feel at all tired. Perhaps another letter to the vicar in Southwick who had shown so much concern for the orphans would be just what he needed to go from merely being concerned to taking positive action.
Ralph’s uneven snoring drew her attention as the carriage rattled along the cobblestone driveway leading to the estate. What to do about him? It wouldn’t bother her at all if her husband spent the entire night in the carriage. But if she left him in the carriage, there would be a vicious row come morning when he would be red-eyed with anger while a pounding hangover beat in his brain. No, she would simply have to wake him and help him to bed, as she had so many times during the last years of their marriage.
The carriage came to a stop at the front doors, and her cheeks heated with embarrassment. A moment later, the carriage door opened and Heath reached in to pull down the twin steps. He looked at Ralph first, pursed his lips into a thin line of disdain, then turned toward her.
“M’lady, why don’t you just get the doors for me, and I’ll carry Master Fallon in myself?”
Celeste looked at Heath and gave him a sad smile. “No,” she said in a whisper. “You have many duties with us, but being a nursemaid to my husband isn’t one of them.”
Heath shook his head and took off his hat. He combed fingers through his thick, blond hair, smoothing the strands back from his forehead. “Please, let me be of service, m’lady.” The right side of his mouth pulled up in a half smile, and a dimple formed in his cheek. “I’m big and strong, m’lady. My father always said that if the dray horse ever went lame, he could put the harness on me and never lose so much as a half day of plowing in the fields.”
Despite herself and the circumstances, Celeste laughed softly. “Did your father really say such a thing?”
“No, but I thought you might like to hear it.”
The honesty of Heath’s reply caught her by surprise. She looked into his eyes, and an oppressive silence came over the carriage for several seconds. Finally, when the silence became difficult to bear, she whispered, “I’ve heard about your reputation with the ladies, Heath. I see now the stories are probably true. And I’ll bet it is your gift of making women smile which makes you so…” She searched for a word that wouldn’t be too graphic before settling on “popular.”
“Might be the case, Lady Fallon, but there’s no crime in making the ladies smile.”
Heath looked straight into her eyes, unsettling her. It was as though he could see into her soul—and that wasn’t something she wanted. With some difficulty, she looked away, the hint of a nervous smile touching her lips and warming her cheeks and ears with embarrassment. Her breathing turned into shallow, uneven gulps.
“No, indeed, Heath,” Celeste said at last. “And if your offer of assistance is still good, helping me with”—unwilling to speak his name, she nodded in her husband’s direction—“him, I would be very appreciative.”
One couldn’t see Heath in his finest livery without being aware of his size, particularly across the chest and shoulders, but even so, when she watched her hired man easily lift Ralph out of the carriage, carrying him beneath his arms and knees, a faint shudder went through her. The man didn’t even appear to strain as he carried the unconscious Ralph up the front marble steps to the estate.
“I’ll get the door for you,” she said. As she hurried up the steps, her full, heavy breasts bounced in the décolletage of her fashionable Worth evening gown. Suddenly aware of their movement and of the slick friction of a silk chemise against her nipples, a flush of sensual heat went through her—a sensation she had experienced only a few times in her life, and never in the past dozen years.
She opened the door wide. As Heath entered, he had to turn sideways but didn’t turn quite enough to prevent Ralph’s head from hitting the doorframe. The unconscious man grunted as his skull bounced off the solid oak, and though he twitched, he did not open his eyes.
“Sorry, m’lady. Didn’t mean it.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” she replied, seeing the strength in Heath’s biceps as they strained against the fine, blue linen of his livery frock coat. “He deserves it, and worse.”
She was grateful she had instructed her servants to not wait up for their return from the Kahlos’ dance. Even though they were her servants and were supposed to keep all happenings within the household in the strictest of confidences, she knew they gossiped. The fewer people who knew just how dissolute Ralph’s behavior had become, the better.
At the top of the stairs, Celeste turned to watch Heath ascend. “His bedroom is the third door on the left.” And then, for reasons she didn’t want to think too much about, she added, “Mine is the third door on the right.”
For only a moment, Heath’s gaze met with hers. She cursed herself for telling the servant where her bedroom was, and though she tried to dismiss the statement as simply her own nerves causing her to talk too much, she realized it wasn’t entirely true. Yes, she was embarrassed, but Ralph’s behavior often embarrassed her. Never before had she felt the need to inform the hired help of the sleeping arrangement she had with her husband.
She hurried to Ralph’s bedchambers. Opening the door, she found the servants had left a single candle alight on the bedside table. Judging from the size of the candle, she suspected it had been placed in the room less than an hour earlier.
Heath carried the unconscious man to the bed and put him down. Even though he had carried her husband up a flight of stairs and down a rather long hallway, Heath didn’t even breathe hard. It was clear he had labored, but it seemed to have required minimal effort for him to carry from the carriage the five-foot-five-inch-tall man.
“Thank you, Heath,” Celeste said, keeping her voice low. The draperies were open, allowing in the moonlight, though it was still quite dark in the bedroom. “I appreciate your service so very much.”
After giving the bottom hem of his waistcoat a tug to straighten it, Heath nodded and smiled. “My pleasure, Lady Fallon. And should—”
�
��Please, after what you’ve seen tonight, I don’t think you have to be quite so formal with me when we’re alone.” A shiver went up her spine. Words seemed to tumble out of her mouth without any conscious thought of her own tonight. “You may refer to me as Lady Celeste.” She looked away and briefly caught her lower lip between her teeth. Almost in a whisper, she added, “If you like.”
“I like very much, Lady Celeste.”
Ralph coughed then snored once again. Celeste was thankful for the diversion, because she simply couldn’t understand her body’s sudden reaction to Heath’s blatantly masculine allure.
She looked down at Ralph, hating him for his weakness, hating him for his cruelty and pettiness. She had not wanted to marry him, but her father had insisted, and with the family fortune being a considerable one, having the right man to manage those finances was critical.
Oh, Papa, if you only knew how foolishly this man spends the money you worked so hard to earn.
“Thank you, Heath. I can take care of matters from here.” She began loosening Ralph’s necktie.
Without being asked, Heath removed Ralph’s laced shoes and placed them silently on the floor. “You’re sure you don’t need anything else, m’lady?”
“I’m sure. And once again…thank you.”
* * * *
Heath knew it was time for him to leave Lady Celeste, but a soft and insistent voice refused to be silent, whispering he must stay.
She was standing less than ten feet away, and since she was looking down at her besotted husband, he allowed himself a leisurely view of her. From the first moment he had seen his new employer three years earlier, he had been aware of her beauty, but never more than now. After having spent four hours at the Kahlos’ dance, her upswept coiffure had come partially unpinned, and auburn tendrils trailed down the sides of her face. Irrationally, Heath wondered what her reaction would be if he closed the ten feet separating them and removed her hairpins to let those luxurious tresses tumble down over her bare shoulders.