Suffused as she was with the physical exhaustion that his love making always produced, she noted the words, but did not question their meaning or their cause until hours later.
* * * *
The next morning, his words plagued her such that she chose to remain in bed instead of going down to breakfast with Adam. Neither of them had slept well—he up and pacing the floor most of the night; she tossing and turning, asking what ate at him and receiving no answer.
Meanwhile, the need to rid herself of Howell raged like a disease in her mind. But what to do? Publish an exposé in the rival broadsheet? Then was she not as wicked as Howell?
She ate no breakfast but paced in her sitting room, watching the rain outside match her mood. She went upstairs to play with Georgie and came down just as the post arrived at eleven.
As she opened her only letter and gazed at its contents, she jumped to her feet. This was her royalty statement from the publisher of her epic poetry and romances. Money! She earned more money on her work in the past few months than she ever had. She paced back and forth, the paper crackling in her clenched hand. A wild possibility brewing in her brain.
Could there be one way to save her reputation? One way to save her marriage? She had the idea, but did she have the savvy to pull it off?
What would she lose to try?
Not her honor. That was already gone. And she would lose her marriage in any case, wouldn’t she? That would die the instant Adam learned she was Miss Proper.
But if she did not try to ameliorate the damage done to Adam and the Spanish war effort, she would forever be ashamed of her cowardice. She would fully deserve to be rejected by Adam and shunned by society. No one would ever receive her again. And she would not blame them.
There remained only one thing to do.
Within the hour, she presented herself at the East End office of the publisher who printed her epic poetry and romances.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Tolbert,” she greeted the jolly old clerk who had worked here since he was a boy of twelve. Tolbert was the assistant to Edward Collins, owner of Collins Publishing.
She knew Tolbert better than Collins and had fewer compunctions about asking a favor.
“How are you, dear Mrs. Wentworth?! Oh, no, no!” The bent, graying man ambled around his huge desk overflowing with papers of all sizes, weights and colors. He shook her hand. “It is Mrs. Stanhope now, I forget. Forgive me. Wonderful to see you!”
“Thank you.” For a few minutes more, they reacquainted themselves having not seen each other since just before Felice had married Adam in January. Tolbert resumed his chair, and she took one opposite. She glanced about the busy office then toward the back room, where through the glass, she could see the two typesetters and the busy presses. “I received my recent statement in this morning’s mail.”
“Wonderful. Shall I get your earnings for you?”
“Yes, please. I am thrilled sales are up! Mr. Collins must be delighted, too.”
“He is! We both are delighted with your new success. Now that you are in Society, you create a stir and people demand to read your work.”
“Curiosity motivates readers.” Would that they were inspired to read my work only for my talent.
“True.” He folded his fingers over his corpulent stomach, his bushy brows knit together.
“How are you? You look well enough, but the rumors of you and your husband are not favorable.” A considerate man, Tolbert had the ability to get to the heart of a matter. “We heard he turned you out. And now there is this Tell-Tale series.”
She flinched and considered her gloves. “Those are pure fiction. I came to speak of another matter.”
The man waited.
“You have talked for the past year about the enormous volume of work you have. Your sales grow. The number of volumes produced increased by—” She waved a hand.
“Ten percent last year! Three, the year before.”
“Yes. And I hear Mr. Collins takes on more authors,” she added. “My friend Ann Carruthers in Kent wrote to tell me last week that he has offered to publish her novel.”
“Well done it is, too, I will say. Yes, we do take on more novels. Business is good.”
“Wouldn’t you say then that you and Mr. Collins need an additional typesetter?”
Chapter Nine
Adam narrowed his eyes, disbelieving what he saw. Yet, it was Felice. Her clothes. Her hair. Her hat. He leaned toward the windows of his carriage, the rain coming down in sheets and fogging up the view from his carriage. But there was no mistaking the woman, her figure, her quick stride, her furtiveness. No mistaking the building she entered, the office door that opened to her. The man who admitted her to his presence.
She might well have worn a sign: Mrs. Adam Stanhope. Here to see Drayton Howell.
Member of Parliament. Opponent of Mr. Adam Stanhope’s policies. Publisher of the Tell-Tale.
My god. He had not believed her capable of such betrayal.
Across from him at his dinner table last night, she had been the perfect hostess. An intriguing conversationalist. An informed observer of the political scene. A wit commenting on the popularity of certain novels, art and ladies’ fashion.
In his home, she had ordered his life with grace. Smoothly assuming control of his staff and their duties, she had added a measure of efficiency to the daily routines. She had reorganized the maids’ duties, settled a longstanding dispute between the butler and his coachman and even charmed Georgie’s nursemaid into relinquishing some power to her. This, she asserted, was best for the boy in the name of love.
Love. Adam scoffed at the word. The concept. The element that made a Stanhope marriage a shambles.
Had he loved Felice?
He might have. Certainly, he had been headed toward that, fearful as he was of that state of bliss. Love, that one emotion which could truly ruin what they had built together these past weeks.
Love. He cast the concept aside. Better to speak of lust.
Lust had been the emotion that built their marriage.
Aye. In his bed these past months, she had been the perfect mate. Eager for his kisses.
More than ready to return them. Willing to explore new heights of sexuality.
And he had succumbed to the euphoria she created. Allowed himself to enjoy her succulent body. Her lovely mouth. Her lush breasts. Her creamy pussy.
He drove a hand through his hair.
What kind of fool falls for that?
Certainly, from the age of seventeen, he had enjoyed women’s bodies! He knew how to prepare a woman with compliments and kisses. Knew how to tempt a woman with the touch of his fingers, the caress of his tongue. Knew how to urge a woman to open her thighs and let him pleasure her clitoris and inner walls. Understood that a woman wanted—needed—more than one orgasm.
Like Felice did.
So what was wrong with him that for a second time, he had married a woman who would destroy him?
Was he too kind? Too naïve? Too eager to have a companion in this world?
Or was he just too damn stupid to realize that no matter whom he married, he would fail?
He was, after all was said and done, a Stanhope.
And the curse was unavoidable. Indomitable.
And what was he to do now?
He stared at her as she sat talking with Howell, her lovely face drawn tight in severe lines, her right hand pointing to a sheaf of papers on Howell’s desk.
Divorce her.
Banish her.
Send her back to her cottage in Kent.
Friendless.
He winced at this vision of her. He recoiled at the vision of himself without her. He would be so alone. And his son, who adored his new mama, would miss her sorely, too.
Dear god, Fee. What have you done to us all?
And why?
* * * *
At the end of Adam’s revelations, Jack insisted the two of them call on their Aunt.
“She’s the only o
ne who has any perspective on the curse,” Jack declared as the two of them climbed into Adam’s coach for the ride to the elderly lady’s house in Park Lane. “Even Father claims she is the only one who has any objectivity on the matter.”
“What can our maiden aunt know of the curse?”
“She told me once she did not marry the one man she adored for fear of it.”
“Well, then another relative affected by this damn thing. Besides, if Father sought his sister out on this, it didn’t cure his problems.”
“True. But it is worth a shot. Particularly because you look like hell, old man.”
“You would, too, if this were you.”
“Yes, well. Rest easy, it never will be.” Jack crossed his arms and scowled out at the downpour.
“If you do not marry and have no heirs, all goes to Wes. He says he will renounce it.”
“Well, there you go! And if you won’t take it, Georgie, poor tyke, shall inherit!”
“I do not wish this hell on him.”
“If you will not take it for yourself or him then all Stanhope fortune goes to the Crown.”
Adam cursed roundly. “It was the Crown that ruined our family in the first place! Charles was a heartless letch to seduce the Stanhope wife. I will not see the Crown benefit once more from Stanhopes’ distress.”
“What do you plan to do to stop it?” Jack replied as if Adam had holes in his head.
“Divorcing your wife will not end it but only make it worse! Especially, my dear brother, because you love her.”
Adam opened his mouth to object, but the look on his oldest brother’s face stopped him.
There were no lies between them. Ever.
Had never been as children. Never as adults.
The brothers had agreed to this as young boys. Adam would not break the promise now.
Nor would he lie to himself.
He did love Felice.
And if there was a way to live happily with her, he needed to find it. Save his marriage.
His family. His heart. His hope. And yes, if possible, his political future.
* * * *
“Adam, dearest,” crooned his Aunt Amaryllis as she poured tea for Jack and him in her drawing room, “you have taken up this gauntlet rather late.”
Jack cocked a brow at Adam as he strode to take the cup and saucer from his Aunt.
“How so?” Adam asked and refused the tea in favor of standing before her fireplace.
“You have not noticed her circumstances before now,” his aunt shot back.
“What do you mean, Aunt?”
“You married her quickly.” She settled back on her settee and met his gaze fore square.
“Did you inquire of her circumstances when you proposed?”
“No. If you mean her finances, that would have been forward.”
“But kind, don’t you think?”
“She is a published author, Aunt. I assumed she made a comfortable living.”
“You also assumed you could sweep her up, marry her and create a life for her in one snap of your fingers.”
“I did.” He paced. “I did. What’s wrong with that?”
“Ba! The folly of men in love.”
Adam halted at that last word. “Aunt, please let us dispense with the critique of how I proposed. I did it quickly, I admit. I did it without much thought except to acquire a wife whom I enjoyed and had since childhood. Someone who would be a complement to me.”
“To your political ambitions.”
“Yes! Some marry for less.”
“Most should marry for more.”
Adam sighed. “Agreed. But that is not the world we live in.”
“She cares for you.”
Adam locked his gaze on his aunt’s. “I knew it from the start. I thought it useful to a marriage.”
“But you did not consider what she needed to be happy, other than your name or your income.”
Adam waited. His aunt had more to tell, and he knew not how to induce her to reveal it.
“She was in debt.”
Adam frowned. “She told you this?”
“I persuaded her to it. Bullied her actually when one of my friends discovered her renting a room after you rejected her in Dover. I asked why she was lodging in such a place. She told me she had little.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“Because she had made…shall we call them, arrangements? Arrangements to pay the debt before you went down a second time to propose.”
“What kind of arrangements?”
“I did not ask. She did not say. I suspect they are not ones she wishes to discuss.”
“But why make them at all?” asked Adam bewildered. “She is not profligate with money.
And if she had asked me, I might have been able to pay them for her.”
“They were her husband’s gambling debts. She would not have you responsible for them.”
“But what of her own income from her novels and poems?”
“Ah, those payments from fiction? Come only twice a year. They were not sizable enough to pay the bills. She told me she would have to find work.”
“Work?” Adam was appalled as much at the very idea of his wife employed, as the idea that he never knew, never suspected, she needed to. “Doing what?”
“Typesetting.”
Jack spit his tea across the room.
Adam scrubbed a hand over his face. “How in hell…?”
Amaryllis sipped her tea nonchalantly. “Remember that her father owned the publishing company that Howell bought. Felice knew how to set hot type from the age of four.”
“Has she been setting type for Howell?” Adam demanded. “Is this what you are trying to tell me? That she is or was employed by him, and she set the words that have ruined my career?”
“I am telling you that she took money from Howell, yes. And though she did not set the type, she did write those stories for the Tell-Tale.”
Adam reeled with rage and despair. “My god. Can she hate me that much?”
“On the contrary, she loves you to distraction.”
Jack, who was still using his handkerchief to brush off his waistcoat, snorted. “Superb! No wonder the curse is operating at full throttle.”
“Absurd!” Amaryllis shot back. “The curse operates only if you let it. Only if you fail to see that marriage is not set in stone from inception but a movable feast for rational men and women who know how to compromise…and forgive.”
“What am I forgiving here, Aunt?” Adam probed. “Other than myself for short-sightedness?”
“I think you must first ask that question of Drayton Howell. And then you must ask it of your wife.”
“If I see Howell, I will not talk. I will strangle him.”
“Well, then, dearest,” his aunt smiled serenely as she handed him a piece of parchment with a name scrolled upon it, “I think you need to call upon this gentleman before Howell or Felice.”
Adam took one look at the name on his aunt’s stationery and balked. “Crammer? The leader of the opposition?”
Promising to see the man who would prefer to chop off his own arm rather than see Adam, who had criticized Crammer’s party so unmercifully for two years, Adam bid his aunt good day and climbed into his coach with his brother.
“Best you see this now,” Jack said as he shoved a broadsheet into Adam’s hand. “I just bought this and the Tell-Tale from the boy on the corner there.”
Adam opened the paper Jack handed him, his own party’s crier.
Then he read the headline, fell back into the squabs and cursed. “I cannot believe it.”
“But will you do it?” Jack asked.
“Resign?”
Jack stared at him, forlorn.
Adam was wide-eyed and ferocious with shock. “Ulmsly wants me to resign? Never!”
Chapter Ten
The hall clock chimed half past eight before Felice returned home. Adam had told his butler to notify him the moment she ar
rived, and she took her time climbing the stairs to their bedroom. Indeed, she took so long, Adam almost thought her to have fled the house instead of face him. He was wrong.
She opened the door and stood on the threshold for countless moments, her gaze locked on his as he sat ensconced in his wingchair waiting for her.
Her hair, always curly, was a riot what with the constant rain she’d braved all day. Her slippers were wet. The hem of her dress drenched, droplets fell to the carpet. Her face arrested him, however. Her complexion, usually so pink and lively, was lax and gray with regret.
Without saying a word, she closed the door. Then she turned, straightened her spine and looking quite resolute, walked straight for him. Her gaze absorbed him. His attire, his robe and trousers. His pose, relaxed but wary. And then she spied the copy of the Tell-Tale on his table, under his hand.
Her golden eyes lit with despair and remorse. “Oh, Adam, what are you doing reading that? You shouldn’t. It will only make you feel worse.”
“I thought it intriguing.”
Tears formed on her lashes. She reached up to rip out the pins in her hat then circled the little, felt coronet round and round in her hands. “What does it matter what Howell prints on a day when Ulmsly asks you to resign?” she mourned, barely above a whisper. “I am so sorry, Adam.”
He’d leave the regrets for later. For now, he cared more about her. “Where have you been?”
“Walking.”
“In this weather? Where?”
She shook her head. “Along the Thames. Near Somerset House and Whitehall.”
“All day?”
“Most of it. Yes, I—”
“I would have much preferred you be here with me on such a day as this.”
She tipped her head. “Would you?” she asked, a bit in wonder. “You shouldn’t.” She stiffened her backbone once more and sniffed away her tears. Putting her hat on a nearby table, she came to stand before him and clasp her hands together as she declared, “I am responsible for your downfall. I am the one to blame for it all.”
He owed it to her to hear her out, that he knew. So he nodded and let her have her say.
“Tell me then.”
“I have lied to you.”
For a man who had told her he wanted honesty, this opening salvo took his breath away.
Lord Stanhope's Improper Proposal Page 7