Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip

by Maggie Fenton

  She pretended to think about it. “It’s my day off, but I suppose I can make an exception if ices are involved.” She’d resigned her days off to the dustbin ever since the Fountain Incident, but the prospect of spending the day with the twins and their father was not at all unappealing. In fact, she could think of few things she would like better.

  She was definitely doomed.

  The viscount clapped his hands together. “There. It is settled. Now, to bed with both of you before I change my mind.”

  The twins obeyed with more alacrity than Minerva ever managed to elicit from them and tucked themselves in while Minerva turned down the lamps and picked up their game.

  “Will you read to us, Papa?” Bea asked wistfully, the picture of childish innocence, all swaddled in her bedclothes.

  He cast Minerva a questioning glance, and she nodded, handing over the copy of Gulliver’s Travels. He saw the title and smiled. “I love this one.” Of course he did.

  Minerva had never heard the viscount read to the twins before, but he was surprisingly good at it. She thought about retreating to her room, but she was not ready to leave his company quite yet, not after the revelations of the evening. She sat back and let the quiet words wash over her without really paying attention to their meaning.

  Marlowe was even more extraordinary than she’d thought. His attentiveness toward the twins was indeed unusual for a father of any class, and especially one of the aristocracy, who normally left the rearing of children—particularly girl children—to a legion of nursemaids and governesses. After what she’d learned tonight, Marlowe’s obvious affection for the twins was even more of a rarity. Few men of any class would have loved so unconditionally children who were not their own. Yet nothing in his manner toward them would have ever betrayed the truth of their birth.

  If she hadn’t already been infatuated, this revelation would have surely done it.

  Soon his rumbling baritone had put the twins under, and he motioned toward the door. She followed him out into the moonlit hallway, away from the nursery door, and paused under a window. It was as if he were as reluctant to leave her company as she was his. He looked as if he might speak, stepping toward her into a shaft of moonlight, and Minerva, who was already wound tight after the tumult of the night, felt her heartbeat pick up at his approach. It quickly plummeted when he seemed to change his mind and stepped back into the shadows with a troubled frown.

  “Well,” he said, sounding reluctant, “I suppose I shall say goodnight. I must be up with the sun so I might chase my family back to the seventh circle of hell.”

  And a good riddance that would be. She’d hardly be surprised if that was precisely where they resided when not bedeviling Marlowe and his sisters. Though she thought she might, just a very little bit, miss Uncle Ashley. Once one looked past the gluttony . . . and the raging misogyny . . . he was wonderfully droll.

  She opened her mouth to take her leave as well when she spied the gash set just above his left eyebrow, a remnant of the duke’s assault that had escaped her notice before. Dark red blood welled up and caught in the moonlight as he shifted.

  “You’re injured,” she said, reaching toward the wound. Halfway there, she realized what she was doing, lost a bit of her courage, and ended up awkwardly grazing one of his sharp cheekbones.

  She didn’t think she imagined the gasp and widened eyes her touch elicited, but the moment was gone in a blink, too fast for her to be sure. Nevertheless, her heart began to race beyond her control.

  His fingertips gingerly prodded the wound, and he grimaced. “Thought I’d tidied it earlier,” he said gruffly.

  “It’s a nasty cut,” she murmured, barely restraining herself from reaching out to him again. She was not searching for reasons to touch him. Not at all.

  “’T’was a lucky punch,” he groused, looking distinctly put out by the memory.

  “You let both of them punch you,” she reminded him.

  “Like I said, lucky,” he insisted.

  “And then you let your father bait you.”

  “Contrary to what you may have heard, I do not make a habit of brawling,” he said a bit defensively. “I leave that to the rest of my beloved family.”

  She couldn’t help but snort. “The Marquess of Manwaring would certainly disagree.”

  He rolled his eyes, and she rolled hers right back. But at least his posture finally relaxed, the awkward mood having finally been broken by their banter. “I have already apologized for that,” he declared. “And that weren’t even a real fight. I pulled all of my punches.”

  He wasn’t lying, considering the state of the earl after just one punch from his fist. It would have been a shame to inflict the same sort of damage upon the marquess’s legendary countenance.

  “You didn’t pull your punch tonight.”

  “I lost my temper, but the bastard deserved it.” He paused, cleared his throat, and gave her a guilty look that wasn’t in the least bit sincere. “Pardon my French and all, Miss Jones.”

  “Well, he did deserve it after the terrible things he said,” she continued, gauging his reaction.

  A light went out of his eyes, his bantering mood vanishing as quickly as it had sprung up and his mouth growing taut at the edges. She immediately regretted reminding him.

  “I’m sorry; I should not have brought it up,” she said quietly, turning away once more.

  He touched her arm to stop her from leaving, and a heated spark passed over her skin at the contact.

  “No, no,” he said quietly. “You should know the truth, I think, before . . .” He trailed off awkwardly, so different from his usual brashness. She could tell he was struggling with some great emotion, and she took a chance and patted his arm gently, offering as much consolation as she could without crossing that precarious line they seemed to be toeing around each other. She already suspected the truth anyway.

  “I think I have some idea,” she said. “His insinuations were rather to the point.”

  Marlowe released a long, pent-up breath, his shoulders slumped slightly and his expression bleak. She’d never seen him look so . . . small. Defeated. Human. She did not like it one bit.

  “I had always planned to marry Caroline,” he began haltingly, abandoning any attempt at his usual playful cant. “Her family lived on the neighboring estate, so the three of us grew up together—Caro, Evander, and I. When we were old enough, she made it clear that she would accept my suit, so when I was still at Cambridge, I proposed, and she accepted. I didn’t want to wait, of course, but we agreed on a long engagement while I finished my studies. But then I was sent down with Sebastian—the marquess now—after a bit of trouble, and we were packed off to the Peninsula for our sins.”

  “Yes, I think I heard something about that,” she said, leaning against the wall and girding herself for the rest of the tale. She wasn’t about to stop him, now that he’d begun.

  He smiled, but without any humor behind it. “I’m sure you and half of England have. Some version of the story anyway,” he said with a wry smile. “So I went to war, and though I loved her, I told her not to wait for me. I couldn’t expect that of her. But she did.”

  He looked so baffled, as if he could still not believe Caroline had waited—that anyone would have waited—for him.

  She would have. She squeezed his arm on impulse.

  He sighed, shook his head as if to clear the memories, and stared down at her hand. “When I finally returned home, she welcomed me back with open arms, eager for our wedding. So I married her. Had I been in a better frame of mind, perhaps I could have seen the situation more clearly, but the war . . .”

  He glanced up from his contemplation of her hand on his arm—she’d forgotten to move it, didn’t want to—and she could see the anguish that was so often in her own eyes when she thought of all the losses she’d suffered—her father, Arthur. She could only imagine what he’d seen and done during the war. Perhaps he hadn’t the poetic genius to put his experience into words,
like Christopher Essex, but his eyes said it all.

  “The war left me raw, Miss Jones,” he said quietly. “You must understand, with all you’ve lost . . .”

  “Yes, I do,” she answered gravely.

  His free hand suddenly decided to brush against her own, and she barely repressed a shiver. “Anyway, I married her, then shortly after discovered she was with child, and quite far along. Definitely not mine. Her modiste had done quite a good job of disguising it up until the vows were said,” he muttered bitterly. “I could have forgiven her. I would have, had she wanted me to. I did love her.”

  He finally pulled his arm away from her grasp and turned his body so that he was facing the window instead of her, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her while he continued his tale.

  “But she didn’t love me. She never had. She was in love with Evander. Always had been, she said, even before I went off to war. The child . . . well, the children were his. She married me for the title . . . had hoped to marry Evander had I died in the war like I was supposed to. It was the reason she was so content with waiting.” His lips quirked up cruelly at the edges, and a hard glint flashed in his eyes. “The title was at least one thing she loved more than my brother. And money. She loved my money.”

  It was one of the most horrible stories she’d ever heard. “Oh, I am sorry,” she breathed.

  He gave a shrug that was trying too hard to be nonchalant. “I think the war numbed me. I couldn’t even muster up much anger at Evander. We’d fallen out long before that—like oil and water, we were, despite being identical—but I still loved him. And Caroline didn’t manage to break my heart completely until after the twins were born. I could get over the affair. What marriage these days is ever about love anyway?”

  She would have vehemently denied his reasoning if she’d thought he would listen to her, but she didn’t think he’d care to right now. Not when he was pouring out his heart to her.

  “But the twins . . . well, she wanted nothing to do with them, and that broke my heart. She stayed only long enough to recover from the birth before flitting off to the Continent with my brother.” He huffed out a breath and turned back to face her with a shrug. “They were drowned crossing the Channel. And that was the end of that.”

  “Hardly the end.”

  He turned to her, eyes fierce. “The end, Miss Jones. Before tonight no one knew the truth but my father, and only because Evander was indiscreet enough to tell him. I’ve never even told Sebastian or Montford. The twins are mine. They are my daughters, and I love them as much as any father has ever loved his children.”

  Well. He had nothing to prove to her on that score. His heart was as broad as those shoulders of his, of that she had no doubt. He just had so little faith in himself sometimes, and it made her want to scream at him. Instead, she laid her hand on his cheek, because she couldn’t keep herself from touching him anymore. Damn the line between them. This night had only confirmed what she’d been trying to deny for weeks now.

  He was the most complicated, ridiculous, compelling man she’d ever met, and she wanted him, damn the consequences.

  “I know you do,” she said just as fiercely. “And I’d never tell anyone.”

  “I know you wouldn’t, Miss Jones,” he murmured, all deep and rumbling like thunder on the horizon, and she shivered.

  She was not mistaken in thinking that they had come to be standing rather close—close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheekbone as he looked down at her with those rich brown eyes. Close enough for her to feel that resonant voice in the marrow of her bones.

  In fact, it was fair to say that he was looming a bit, so near to her that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. They’d been doing quite a lot of this close conversation for some time now, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, but she was surprised how little she minded. He’d ceased to intimidate her long ago.

  And besides, it was a fairly chilly spring evening, and they’d been conversing in the hallway for quite a while now, and he was so warm and . . . broad . . . and he smelled so very nice, of leather and bay rum, sandalwood and India ink . . .

  The thwack of her head against the wall behind her tore her out of her stupor, and her hand finally dropped from his cheek—she’d forgotten she’d even had it there. He’d loomed, and she’d tilted . . . and tilted some more, until her head had encountered the obstruction. It wasn’t enough to hurt, but it did sober her up a bit.

  What was she doing, skulking about in the shadowy hallway exchanging intimate secrets with the viscount?

  She’d nearly found the wherewithal to put some distance between them when one of those large, warm, ink-stained hands of his—why were they always ink-stained?—grasped her forearm, as if to steady her, though she was in no danger of falling.

  His touch, and his murmured, “Are you injured, Miss Jones?” in that deep, growling baritone of his, made all of the good sense flee her mind once more.

  Oh, she knew precisely what she was doing skulking about with the viscount. It was what she’d wanted to do since the night of their Almack’s misadventure, though she still wasn’t certain the viscount was aware of her licentious designs upon his person.

  “You’re the injured one,” she finally managed to breathe, and reached out once again toward his face. He caught her hand before it could touch the wound and brought it back to her side . . .

  But he didn’t let it go. Her heart sped up at this small intimacy, but she tried to contain herself. The viscount was often thoughtlessly tactile with people. It didn’t have to mean anything if he kept holding her hand. But . . .

  She would never know what devil possessed her in that moment to push her luck, but in retrospect she’d blame the hand-holding. “I might have something in my room to clean it,” she blurted.

  His eyes widened a bit more, and his chest rose and fell a little faster than before. That banked fire she sometimes thought she saw deep in his eyes flared to life. He wasn’t so oblivious after all, then. He leaned in close, and for a moment she thought . . .

  “No,” he said a bit harshly, jerking his head away, though he didn’t release her hand.

  Her stomach did not feel as if it had been punched at all. Nor did her cheeks heat with shame. Of course he said no. What had she been thinking?

  “Of course,” she murmured, looking anywhere but at him. “Oh God, what am I even . . .” She groaned softly and attempted to pull away, hoping to preserve at least a modicum of dignity.

  But he wouldn’t let her. He just gripped her hand even harder. She glanced up at him in surprise. Something tentative in his heavy-lidded eyes made her think he was as out of his depth as she was in that moment.

  “I mean,” he said slowly, haltingly, clearing his throat, “that . . . my rooms would be a bit better for . . . wound cleaning and . . . um, whatnot.”

  Oh. Oh.

  Her already-pounding heart kicked forward into a gallop.

  “You could . . .” he began, gesturing vaguely down the corridor with his free hand.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” she murmured back, hoping all of the gesturing meant what she thought it meant.

  He looked rather stunned, as if he couldn’t believe she’d agreed.

  She couldn’t believe it either.

  “Well, then,” he said, and cleared his throat yet again.

  “Yes, well,” she answered just as eloquently.

  He gave a short, firm nod and started walking down the corridor, still holding her hand firmly, as if he didn’t want to take a chance of misplacing her along the way. It was an unnecessary concern. She had made her decision, even though she’d never thought anything would ever actually happen with the viscount.

  She was glad to be mistaken.

  Unless he was just taking her to his rooms to tend to his wound. It was a very real possibility with the viscount. Despite their loaded exchange and hand-holding, it was all still worrisomely ambiguous. Marlowe was, if anything, a wild card, and she could
have very easily imagined the heat in his eyes and the innuendo in his invitation. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet, so by the time they actually did reach his rooms on the opposite side of the house, she’d prepared herself for the possibility that she was just as likely to be employed as his nursemaid as taken to his bed.

  His bedroom was decorated in deep, masculine greens and blues and dark woods. It was neat and clean, almost stark in its simplicity, and not at all as she had imagined. She’d expected a space as careless, cluttered, and chaotic as the viscount, but she was beginning to suspect that the viscount only pretended to be those things when it suited him.

  The massive four-poster’s bedding had been turned down for the night by the maid, with a gas lamp lit on the nightstand and a fire roaring in the grate. Plush orientals defined a small seating area near the fire, and he led her there and rather awkwardly placed her on the settee before disappearing into one of the adjoining chambers.

  She was beginning to wonder what she had gotten herself into when he returned to the settee armed with toweling and a small medical kit. He sat beside her and cleared his throat.

  There seemed to be a lot of throat clearing going on tonight.

  So she was here to merely patch him up after all. She tried not to show her disappointment as she took the supplies from him and set to work. She dabbed at his wound with the clean toweling and a bit of ointment, and if she leaned a little too near him, then that was her prerogative.

  “This probably needs stitches,” she said.

  “I’ve had worse,” he murmured, his breath glancing off her forehead.

  She paused in her half-hearted dabbing, and her heart started racing again. At some point he’d inched his body forward until his thigh and breast pressed against her, hot and hard and insistent. She’d not even noticed until the deed was done, and she began to wonder if she had underestimated Lord Marlowe once again. She seemed to do that quite a lot.

  She lowered her trembling hand, tossing the toweling aside, and Marlowe quickly seized it in his own.

  “My lord . . .”

  “Marlowe,” he interrupted gruffly.