The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances

by Cerise DeLand

  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 folds. And my god, the rapture of her when she was in the throes of delight. She looked to be a goddess, arms above her head, her fingers clutching for the sheets, her lips open and crying his name.

  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 secret places. 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. Heart-broken, both.

  Dear god, Fee. What have you done to us all?

  And why?

  ****

  Jack glared at him as if he’d grown two heads. “Are you done now?”

  Adam swore roundly. He’d come to Jack for insight. A breather from the fury that consumed him. And the sorrow that threatened to swamp him. “What else is there to say? She’s working with Howell.”

  “I’m not ready to believe it. Why are you?”

  Adam glared at him, unwilling to give in to the urge to name one of the reasons he could so easily sink into the depths of disillusionment.

  “Oh, no. Do not tell me Sarah is the cause,” Jack said, wagging a finger at him.

  Adam shot out a hand to dismiss him. “As if you’re married and can speak.”

  “Damn the curse. Come on, off we go. Aunt Amaryllis has to hear this.”

  “Bloody balls, Jack.”

  “No more. Come with me.” Jack put his hands on his hips. “Will you not turn any stone to get to the bottom of what holds you back?”

  “Amaryllis will give us tea and sympathy.” Jack headed for the front door of his townhouse and yelled for his butler and his coat.

  “The old gel’s the only one with any perspective on the story,” 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 can wave a magic wand on the matter.”

  Adam scoffed. “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, that’s another relative affected by this damn thing. But I’ll tell you worse. If Father sought his sister out on this, whatever she said 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,” Adam reminded Jack. “And he says he will renounce it.”

  “Well, there you go!” Jack said, seemingly unaffected. “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 issued a round of profanity. “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 leaned over and glared at Adam as if he had holes in his head. “Divorcing your wife will not end it but only make it worse. You’ll lose your precious political career.”

  Adam crossed his arms. “I could give a shit.”

  Jack pointed at him. “Especially, my dear brother, because you are driven to say that you could give up the one thing you have craved…until now. You love this woman. And there is the blasted proof.”

  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. To save his marriage. His family. His heart. His hope.

  ****

  Aunt Amaryllis had a smile on her face as she poured tea for Jack and him in her drawing room.

  Adam paced the floor, unable to rest.

  “Do come sit down with Jack and me. You rile my nerves with all that silent fuming, dear boy.”

  “I can’t.” He gazed out the window.

  Jack threw Adam a look of distress and took the lead.

  Amaryllis sat quietly while Jack explained the state of Adam’s marriage, then listened to Adam’s description of how he’d seen Felice with Howell. He’d added finally and reluctantly that he suspected Felice of disloyalty, perhaps even collusion with Howell to ruin him.

  She sat for long minutes, frowning, then glared at him. “You are come here with Jack to ask me about the curse. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “My idea,” Jack told her. “The only way I could get him here.”

  “I have much to say to you, Adam,” his aunt told him. “You may not like it. Do come sit.”

  “No.”

  “Stubborn cuss.” She sniffed. “Very well. The curse. Silly fairy tale.”

  Adam bristled. “No Stanhope who has loved has enjoyed a happy union for long.”

  “And why not? Because a man too proud to bend is no man worth living with. Yet you, dear boy, wish to be a politician. Do they not bend?”

  Adam eyed her. “Occasionally.”

  She snorted. “If there is no bending, there is no movement with the wind or rain or snow. Every living thing bends or it breaks. There is no change, no growth.” She smoothed her skirts. “I know the story of King Charles’s demand that the Stanhope bride go to his bed. From what I understand of that monarch, he liked women but he also valued the earl of Stanhope as an adviser. Yet, when Charles desired her, he asked the man if he might swive his wife. Asked! And Stanhope, eager for favor, eager to please his king, gave her. Gave her! Consented! And then, months later, he had the balls to refuse to take her back when Charles had done with her. Charles cast her out. The earl refused to acknowledge her. This wo
man he had loved was now no one to him. And no one else would take her in. Not her parents. Not her brother. She went to a brothel. A brothel! Imagine the outrage of it to a genteelly-reared young woman. She died penniless, broken, of God knows what diseases. Yet her fate was all avoidable. All. Stanhope, that wretched weakling, put it out that he had once loved her and that some errant gypsy put a curse on the family. Was it the gypsy who laid on the curse?”

  The question hung in the air.

  Jack intruded on the silence. “Tell him what you conclude, Aunt.”

  “How much had he loved her that he gave her to his king?” She put up a hand. “I know. I know. You will say it was the king’s right to have her. And if so, then why not take her back? Stanhope had married her. He promised to cherish her, protect her. Was it entirely her fault that she was lovely, attractive? That Charles found her intriguing? I say no. We have no evidence she sought to turn the king’s head. It was Charles and Stanhope who played fast and loose here. Ba. Men can be too churlish in their power. Women have little. And in this case, Stanhope could not forgive or forget what she had done. Or was he himself who could not forgive himself his cowardice? And so he made a myth to cover his own culpability.”

  Adam stared into the fire. “And your point, Aunt?”

  “Are you making a marriage that works or one you can use and dismiss at your will?”

  That stung. He faced his aunt. She did have more for him. He felt it in his cold bones.

  She examined him as if he were a specimen in a glass case. “My dear boy, you have been married for lo, these many weeks, and you have taken up this gauntlet to discover her true nature rather late. Felice has had need of you to notice her long before this. Are you so absorbed by your career that you do not notice your wife’s activities?”

  “What?” He was affronted by his aunt’s accusations. “I do. She is at home or at the dressmaker’s. She plays with Georgie. She attends to the staff. I cannot imagine what you mean.”

  Jack cocked a brow at Adam as he rose to accept his aunt’s offer to refill his teacup.

  “You have not noticed her circumstances before now,” his aunt shot back.

  “Explain to me your thoughts, Aunt.”

  “You married her quickly.” She settled back on her settee and met his gaze squarely. “Did you inquire of her circumstances when you proposed?”

  “No. If you mean her finances, I had no need to know. That would have been forward.”

  “But kind, don’t you think?”

  What was she getting at? “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. “What’s wrong with that?”

  She groaned. “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.”

  Though it was true, her accusation insulted him. Since that day, he had grown to value Fee for much more than her respectability. Still he had no logic to counter her. Only a poor rejoinder. “Some marry for less.”

  She sighed. “Most should marry for more.”

  Adam shook his head. “Agreed. But that is not the world we live in.”

  His aunt fixed him with serious eyes. “She cares for you.”

  Adam halted. This was the truth. “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 say, and he knew not how to induce her to reveal it. He raised both hands. “Oh, Christ. Just tell me.”

  “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 few funds to afford anything better.”

  “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.”

  He wiped a hand over his mouth. This was the very devil of a surprise. “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? They 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 do so. “Doing what?”

  “Typesetting.”

  Jack spit his tea across the room.

  Adam scrubbed a hand over his face. “How in hell…?”

  Jack tugged a handkerchief from his weskit pocket.

  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 TellTale.”

  Adam reeled with rage and despair. “My god. Can she hate me that much?”

  “On the contrary, she loves you to distraction.”

  The words rippled through his bloodstream. “How can that be if she and Howell—?”

  “Whatever has occurred there, Adam, dear boy, is nothing to what you and she could have together.”

  Jack, who was still using his handkerchief to brush off his breeches, 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 not asking the right questions of my bride? Do I accuse myself of short-sightedness without taking my wife to task?”

  “I think you must first talk with Drayton Howell. And then with your wife.”

  Adam sneered. “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? He would rather chop off his own nuts before—”

  Jack said, “Whoa.”

  Aunt Amyrillis said, “Please.”

  Adam threw up his hands. “Very well. I will do it. I promise. Thank you for the enlightening conversation, Aunt. I am so full of tea and remonstrance, I shall leave. And quickly, too.” Adam kissed his aunt on both cheeks and bid her good day, Jack on his heels.

  But as Adam climbed into his carriage, Jack halted and told the coachman to wait a minute. He trotted off out of sight.

  In a minute, he returned, climbed in beside Adam and shoved a broadsheet into h
is hands.

  “What’s this?” he asked Jack.

  “The newest TellTale. Best you see this now. I just bought this from the boy on the corner.”

  Adam opened the paper Jack handed him. It was his own party’s crier.

  He read the headline and fell back into the squabs. “Damn it to bloody hell! I cannot believe it.”

  “But will you do it?” Jack asked.

  “Resign?”

  Jack stared at him.

  Adam was wide-eyed with shock. “Ulmsly wants me to resign? Never!”

  Chapter Ten

  The hall clock chimed half eight before Felice returned home. Adam had told his butler to notify him the moment she arrived, 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 come to 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 leghorn hat was a flat sodden mess. Her hair, always curly, was a riot from the humidity of the rainy day. Her slippers were soaked. The hem of her gown was so drenched that 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. When she turned, she 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. Her gaze shot to the copy of the TellTale 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?”