A Regency Invitation to the House Party of the Season

by Nicola Cornick, Joanna Maitland

  ‘I did not plan it,’ he said slowly. ‘I promise you that.’ It was difficult for a man of his experience to admit that he had lost his head, but it was essential to make her understand the truth. ‘I have told you that I find you all too attractive, Miss Ward,’ he said ruefully, ‘and what happened yesterday was the proof. I lost control.’

  Cassie was looking at him shyly from under her lashes. ‘I see,’ she said, and, searching her face, he saw that there was pride and amusement under that diffident surface. Damn it, the minx was pleased that she could have such an effect on him, and here was he helplessly dangling like a fish on her line…

  He reached out to pull her into his arms, but she read his intention and drew away, fending him off.

  ‘Oh, no, you do not, Lord Quinlan! You have asked for the opportunity to court me and you have it. But—’ she flicked him a challenging glance ‘—that courtship does not involve kissing.’

  The air between them was suddenly alive with sensual tension. Peter caught her arm and drew her closer to him. ‘I have conditions too,’ he said softly, his mouth an inch from hers. ‘I am happy to abide by your terms for a little while, Miss Ward, but I will take something on account.’

  And he kissed her, swift and hard, letting her go before the urge to pull her closer still and ravish her became too strong. When he released her she was breathing quickly and there was a heat and turbulence in her eyes that almost overset all his good resolutions.

  ‘You are certain that you will persuade me to marry you, then,’ Cassie whispered. She pressed her fingers to her lips in an unconscious gesture.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How very arrogant you are.’ She raised a haughty brow.

  Peter smiled, that wicked, glinting smile that brought the colour into her cheeks. ‘I would wager on it,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you are not indifferent to me,’ Peter said. ‘If you were, I would have left Lyndhurst Chase by now. I will not force my suit on a reluctant lady. But you, Miss Ward…’ his smile deepened ‘…you will be my willing bride soon. Of that I am convinced.’

  Cassie turned her shoulder to him and swept out of the room then, but Peter followed with a whimsical smile. He knew that she was intrigued against her will and that her curiosity would eventually lead her straight back into his arms—if only he had the patience to wait that long.

  Chapter Four

  Peter gave Cassie ten days of the most perfect, irreproachably respectable courtship. Anthony Lyndhurst had arranged a number of entertainments to keep his guests amused. There was hunting, shooting and fishing for the gentlemen; games of croquet and cricket on the lawns, an outing to the Assembly at Newbury and invitations to dine with various country neighbours and acquaintances. Throughout it all, Peter wooed Cassie with absolute decorum, dancing with her in the evening, escorting her into dinner, riding about the estate with her and rarely touching her other than to hand her into a carriage. They were in each other’s company almost all the time. Cassie kept expecting him to press his suit or to kiss her. He did neither.

  When he failed to meet this expectation, Cassie told herself that he needed her money and no doubt he would be prepared to be patient to get it, but such thoughts seemed to demean Peter’s evident regard for her. She could not deny that he was sincere in his respect and his attention to her, and under that scrupulous courtesy the feelings ran hot between them. She could feel it in his touch and see it in his eyes, and it was all the more exciting for the fact that it was banked down and held under such strong control.

  She found herself starting to reflect on what it would be like to marry him. It would be an escape from Lady Margaret’s domestic tyranny and her cousins’ benevolent rule. She would have her own establishment in which to exercise all those managing tendencies, which had so far been thwarted. And she would have Peter and those kisses and caresses that had been denied her these ten days past and for which she secretly ached. No doubt it was wanton of her to feel that way, but Cassie had never been one to pretend about her feelings.

  It troubled Cassie more than she liked to admit to think of Peter sleeping but one floor below her. Sometimes she would lie awake in her bed, all her senses seeming alive and alert, waiting for something, anticipating something…There would be a pitter-pat of excitement in her stomach and a feverish buzz in her blood, and she would toss and turn restlessly for what seemed like hours. Peter was disturbing her sleep and in Cassie’s book that was a problem that required a solution.

  ‘Better the devil you know,’ Eliza said one night, when Cassie was preparing for bed and had confided in her maid that she had thought of accepting Peter’s proposal as a means of achieving some independence.

  ‘That would be the worst reason to marry Lord Quinlan,’ the maid continued. ‘A chaperon’s tyranny is nothing to that of a husband. Marriage is a very serious matter, not to be entered into lightly.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Cassie said. Eliza’s words only seemed to echo her own uncertainty.

  ‘It is not a privilege given to all of us,’ the maid continued with a slight edge to her voice. ‘Use your chances wisely, Miss Cassandra.’

  Cassie looked at her, remembering Eliza’s words a few days before about her feelings for Timms. She had always thought of the maid as such a practical homebody that it was a shock to realise that Eliza must have had her hopes and dreams of a family and home of her own. Hopes that she now thought were lost.

  ‘Now if you want Lord Quinlan because he’s a handsome gentleman, then that’s a different matter, of course,’ Eliza was saying. She cast Cassie a shrewd look. ‘Couldn’t blame you, neither.’

  ‘Eliza!’

  ‘Well, now,’ the maid said imperturbably, ‘no need to pretend that you do not think him a good-looking man.’

  ‘I admit that he is,’ Cassie said, ‘and I doubt that I am the first lady to think so.’

  Eliza sat down on the end of the bed, her hands full of the silk stockings that she was sorting. ‘That is another matter entirely, my pet. Are you afraid that you could not hold him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie said, baldly. She fidgeted with the brightly coloured bedspread, then looked up to meet Eliza’s thoughtful gaze. ‘I am not indifferent to Lord Quinlan, but I am uncertain that I could bear to risk all for him only to find I had lost him after marriage.’ She stopped, staring into the shadows. ‘I have a pile of money and very little else,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I do not wish to give the money away and find I am left with nothing.’

  ‘A very practical attitude, my pet,’ Eliza said, patting her hand.

  ‘Is it so wrong of me to want a man who wants me alone?’ Cassie asked. Her shoulders drooped. ‘Sometimes I do not feel wanted, Eliza. My mother—’ She broke off, feeling it disloyal to criticise Mrs Ward, who had been an invalid for many years.

  ‘Your mother wanted you right enough,’ Eliza said comfortably. ‘Your cousins love you too, Miss Cassie. That is why they want you to be happy. Go about it the wrong way sometimes—’ she sniffed ‘—but their hearts are in the right place. Except for that William, of course. He’s not worth the cost of his jacket and nor is that fancy valet of his neither.’

  Cassie smiled and squeezed Eliza’s hand. ‘Thank you, Eliza.’

  Her maid smiled fondly. ‘Seems to me that you have two matters to resolve, pet—how Lord Quinlan feels about you, and how you truly feel about him. Then all will be right and tight.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Cassie said, laughing.

  ‘That’s right.’ Eliza got to her feet. ‘Think you can manage that, Miss Cassandra?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Cassie said. ‘And if I can persuade him to kiss me into the bargain, then so much the better.’ She reached for her peignoir. ‘I think that I shall go up on to the roof and sit quietly in the cupola for a little. It always helps me to think when I am up there.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Eliza said, stopping her hand before she could scoop up the negligee. ‘If Lord
Quinlan sees you in that get-up, it’ll be more than kisses you’ll be getting, Miss Cassie, and no mistaking! If you really must think, then sit by the window. It’s the same view as you get on the roof and a fair sight more comfortable.’

  After Eliza had gone, Cassie slipped behind the curtains and curled up on the window seat. She opened the sash so that she could feel the cool night air. The shadows of the trees tossed in the ragged moonlight tonight. Yet, despite the wildness of the evening, it seemed that Cassie was not the only one suffering from insomnia that night. The inhabitants of Lyndhurst Chase seemed to be out and about. Cassie saw one of the maids—she thought it was Sarah’s maid, Dent—come out of shadows and creep across the courtyard in a very furtive manner. She heard the cheerful tones of Eliza upraised on the night air, answered by the gruff voice of Timms, Anthony’s valet. And as she was about to retreat to the warmth of her bed, she saw a gentleman’s figure detach itself from the darkness at the corner of the house and slide like a ghost behind the yew hedge. Cassie sat up straighter. Something about the set of his shoulders and the way he moved made her think it might be Peter, and she found she was smiling to think that she might be the cause of his insomnia. Perhaps he ached for her too and had gone out to take the air before trying to sleep.

  Then the shadow of a lady slipped by from a different direction and hurried behind the yews after the man. There was a faint scuffle of gravel; a laugh, cut off quickly, and Cassie found herself subject to a wave of searing jealousy that started at her toes and swept up to her throat, bringing the heat into her cheeks and a sick anger with it. How dare Peter Quinlan come to Lyndhurst Chase to court her, then take his pleasure with one of the maids? How dare he! It might be the way that rakish London gentlemen felt they could behave, but it was certainly not acceptable to Cassie.

  Without further ado, she stormed out of her bedchamber and down the broad oak stairs, her slippers pattering on its wooden treads. She raced down the corridor and knocked on the door of Peter’s room. She was fully expecting there to be no reply; when a low masculine voice bade her enter, she was stunned.

  The voice spoke again, a hint of impatience in the tone this time. ‘Come in!’

  Then the door was flung open from within and Cassie found herself face to face with Peter. He was dressed—or rather undressed—in nothing but his pantaloons and shirt, which was open at his throat, the neckcloth discarded. That in itself was enough to hold her silent. There was a mixture of amusement and unqualified surprise on his face as he saw her. Behind him, Cassie could see a candle lit on the table beside the bed, the bedcovers rumpled as though Peter had been lying on top of them and a book lying face down on the bedspread.

  Peter was alone. He had been reading. He was not out in the garden dallying with the maids. The discoveries jostled for space in Cassie’s head whilst Peter waited and she groped for words to explain herself.

  ‘It’s you!’ Cassie took a step back. As an opening gambit she was aware that it was not very satisfactory.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter said cordially, his interested gaze missing no detail of Cassie’s unorthodox attire. ‘Was there something that I can do for you, Miss Ward?’

  ‘Yes! That is, no!’

  Cassie was so confused to find him there when she was expecting him to be absent in flagrante that she knew she was making no sense. Then, while she gaped, a door opened stealthily down the corridor and Peter caught her arm and pulled her into his room in one quick movement, closing the door behind them.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Cassie demanded, recovering her senses.

  ‘I am avoiding scandal. What are you doing,’ Peter countered, ‘knocking on the doors of gentlemen’s bedchambers in the middle of the night?’

  ‘It is not the middle of the night,’ Cassie argued, ‘and it was only the one bedchamber. Yours!’

  ‘The question still remains,’ Peter said. He folded his arms. He looked unyielding and Cassie had the sudden conviction that she had got herself rather deep into difficulties entirely through her own impulsiveness.

  ‘You never think about the consequences,’ Eliza had said to her, and once again her maid had been proved right.

  Cassie gulped. ‘I was not expecting to find you here,’ she said.

  Peter raised one black brow. ‘Then why come looking for me in the first place?’

  It seemed a logical question. Cassie fidgeted with the ribbons on her peignoir as she tried out and rejected various replies.

  ‘Because I wanted to know—’ She stopped and started again. ‘Oh dear…I thought I saw you out in the gardens, you see.’

  ‘I am sorry, but I do not see.’

  Cassie was torn between embarrassment at her predicament and irritation at his obtuseness. The one thing that did not occur to her was to prevaricate. Though it was humiliating to admit it, she had to tell him the truth. ‘I thought you were with someone,’ she said crossly. ‘Out in the gardens.’

  Comprehension and amusement leapt into Peter’s face. ‘I see now.’

  ‘This,’ Cassie said, ‘is quite mortifying.’ She surreptitiously backed towards the door. ‘I think I should leave.’

  Peter came towards her with a very deliberate tread. He stopped when he was a mere couple of feet away and allowed his gaze to travel over her. Cassie suddenly became acutely aware of her tumbled hair, the transparent filminess of her nightdress and peignoir and the very particular way in which Peter was regarding her.

  ‘Mortifying is not the word to describe my feelings at this moment,’ he murmured.

  Cassie gave a little wail as she remembered Eliza’s comment about the peignoir. She retreated further. Peter followed.

  ‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you thought that I was involved in dalliance in the garden with another lady?’

  ‘No!’ Cassie said, blushing to the roots of her hair.

  ‘Yes, you did. So you came rushing in here to see if your supposition was correct, not expecting to find me.’

  ‘But you are here,’ Cassie said, her back coming up against the door panels, ‘so evidently I made a mistake.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’ Peter was still talking in the same soft tones, but Cassie found them far from soothing. There was something rather dangerous about such quiet absorption, and when Peter leaned one hand against the door, trapping her between the panels and his body, she tried unsuccessfully to flatten herself. Her breath came in quick gasps. She was aware that the tips of her breasts were just brushing Peter’s shirt and the friction—and the knowledge of her body’s reaction to it—was far too stimulating to be comfortable.

  ‘What I would like to know,’ Peter said, ‘is why it mattered to you whether or not I was with another lady?’

  Cassie forgot her embarrassment briefly in sheer indignation. ‘What a ridiculous question!’ she said. ‘You are here to woo me, Lord Quinlan, not to dally with someone else. Such behaviour is quite unacceptable.’

  ‘So you feel possessive towards me,’ Peter pursued.

  Cassie frowned. ‘Not in the least. It is merely good manners to restrict yourself to one lady when you have not yet secured her hand in marriage.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Peter moved in closer still. ‘You would not say, then, that you were prey to a certain jealousy?’

  Cassie jumped. ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Miss Ward, you are a liar.’ Peter turned her face up towards his. ‘I can read it in your eyes,’ he said.

  ‘You are certainly close enough to read anything you choose there,’ Cassie snapped. She tried to wriggle away from him. The silky material of the peignoir slid across his chest to devastatingly arousing effect.

  ‘So I am,’ Peter said. ‘What else can my proximity to you tell me?’

  His hand slid down her silken sleeve and came to rest on the curve of her waist. Cassie could feel the warmth of his touch. It was a shocking reminder of how sheer were her nightdress and peignoir and that she was naked beneath the flimsy layers.

  Peter’s hand spanned her waist
, his fingers spread against her ribcage. He leaned forward until his breath stirred Cassie’s curls.

  ‘I can feel the beat of your heart,’ he murmured. ‘You seem a little agitated, Miss Ward.’

  Cassie pushed half-heartedly and pointlessly against his chest. ‘Of course I am agitated,’ she said. ‘You are standing a deal too close to me for comfort, Lord Quinlan.’

  ‘Is it comfort that you want from me?’ Peter asked. His breath feathered across her cheek. ‘Admit the truth, Cassie. Admit that you were jealous. Admit that you want me. Not for comfort, but for something quite different…’

  His lips were tracing the curve of her throat now, pausing above the line of her collarbone, brushing aside the soft material of her peignoir so that he could touch his tongue to the slope of her shoulder. Cassie’s insides dissolved. Her legs trembled. She felt her nipples harden still further against the gossamer lightness of the nightdress. Then Peter’s hand came up to cup her breast and she slumped against the door in utter weakness.

  ‘I admit it,’ she whispered. ‘I admit anything that you like…’

  She felt Peter smile against her skin as he bent his head to kiss her bare shoulder. ‘You are, as always, very honest, Miss Ward,’ he said. He moved away from her a little, keeping one arm about her to support her. ‘A pity you could not have waited a while longer before you capitulated,’ he said, a smile in his voice, ‘but there will be time enough for that.’

  He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on the palm. ‘Goodnight, Miss Ward.’

  Cassie shot out of the bedroom door with a mixture of relief and deep disappointment, and dashed up the stairs to regain the peace of her own bedchamber. Her body was humming. She rained down curses on her own head for the impetuosity that had delivered her to Peter Quinlan’s door and on Peter’s head for being able to arouse her with the slightest touch. Once again, sleep eluded her. As the clock struck one, and two and three, Cassie thumped her pillows and vowed that tomorrow she would sort the matter out for good. In that moment she promised herself that she would make Peter Quinlan ache for her as she ached for him. She would bring him to his knees.