He’d kept his distance for the remainder of the evening. Seeing her again after so many years had meant nothing to him. Clearly, the Earl of Langlevit still thought of her as a child, as his mother’s ward. He would never see her as otherwise—not as a woman, and not as marriageable material. It had chafed her pride to no end when he’d left the soiree with not one, but two unattached ladies of her acquaintance. The rumors about him being a profligate had run wild, but they had done little to temper the fire of her affection for him. In fact, the knowledge had made it burn brighter.
She’d imagined and reimagined scenes of when they would next meet. She’d seduce him thoroughly and lead him on a merry chase, whereupon he’d fall madly in love with her. But their paths hadn’t crossed since. Her fevered imaginings had become nothing but a dearth of hopeless wishes.
“I wonder how much they’d wager?” Max asked.
Irina turned back to him. “For what?”
“For your hand in marriage.”
She stared at him and shook her head. “Betting on a woman’s hand? You can’t be serious.”
“Why not? You’re a princess, Irina, and you’ve a reputation as…well…”
“Don’t say it, Max.”
“An iceberg,” he finished. She pinched his arm. “What? You love me for my honest summarizations.”
She sighed and held back a laugh. He was right. His blunt honesty was a gift. Most of the time.
“I am also of the male species and rather competitive,” he went on, finishing his flute of champagne. “Being well schooled in how competitive men think, I am quite certain that if there is a wager concerning who can melt Princess Iceberg’s heart, it will be a lucrative one. The more money in the pot, the more attention you’ll receive.” He leaned in close. “Think about it. They’ll be mad for you.”
Irina did, and her pricked pride flared to life. “They are all money-greedy goats.”
And it would be a game for the goats, nothing more. But isn’t that what the whole season was?
“Vying for a lady’s hand in marriage and winning her dowry is the game every man is playing, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes, but the women make it so plain whom they intend to choose. There is no risk involved for the men,” he answered.
“What is going on inside that scheming head of yours, Max?” she asked, seeing the glint of excitement in his eyes.
“Just an idea to spice up the season next year,” he replied. “Imagine…men attending every social function with the goal of winning your attention.”
She narrowed her eyes on her friend. “Because there would be money in it for them?”
“And a challenge they would not normally have,” he answered, cocking his head. “Of course, they needn’t know what I do: that you won’t have any of them.”
Not unless the Earl of Langlevit were to enter the game. He wouldn’t, though. She had no illusions that it would capture his attention, if such a farce even came to fruition. But if Max were right, she would have London in the palm of her hand while she was there. Perhaps the recalcitrant earl would be forced to take notice of her then. And if he didn’t, at least it would be an entertaining diversion before she returned to St. Petersburg.
Irina lifted her nearly empty flute high and toasted her friend. “You may be onto something, Max.”
Chapter Two
London, England
March 1821
It was barely noon, but Henry James Radcliffe, Earl of Langlevit, was already inside his bedroom, a glass of Scotch in one hand and his eyes hitched on two women removing each other’s dresses. The curtains were drawn to block both the bright sunshine and any possible view from the street below. No passing lady or gentleman need glimpse the lewd display currently unfolding in the earl’s bedroom. The show was meant for him, and him alone. And usually it worked.
Henry shifted in his wide leather chair, the small fire in the hearth behind him warming the back of his neck and causing small beads of sweat to form on his temple. The moment Camilla and Mary had been led inside Henry’s room, they had dropped their fur-lined capes and started to laugh. Neither woman had bothered to wear a chemise or petticoat underneath her muslin gown, and by all appearances it looked as though they had each dampened the thin white muslin as well. Their breasts and legs and the rosy areolas of their nipples had stood out in stark clarity through the sheer fabric. Poor Marbury, Henry’s faithful and close-lipped valet, had definitely gotten an eyeful before he’d been able to shut the bedroom door. These women had traveled across London, all the way from The Cock and the Crown, where Henry’s missive had been delivered earlier that morning, practically naked.
It was not the first time women from the gaming hell had done so. These two, however, he’d asked for specifically. Brunettes with dark blue eyes. Tall and willowy. Willing and able to serve his needs however he wanted.
He’d felt the stirrings in his groin and the hard thump of his pulse as the two women had sauntered across the room toward him, slow enough for him to look his fill. When they’d touched him, however, their hands running over his chest and stomach, he’d felt a whisper of panic.
It wasn’t working.
He’d sent them a few paces toward his bed and told them to give him a show. He just needed a few minutes to get his mind right. To let it go blank and serene. Once it did, the rapid beating of his heart would slow and that restless, nameless feeling of something invisible nipping at his heels would go away. He would pour himself into these women, let them drain him of every thought and every sound, until he was blissfully empty. And if he was extremely lucky, he’d also manage to erase the image of the beautiful face that had haunted him for the last two years.
“Are you paying attention, my lord?” Mary asked.
Henry looked at her and realized he had not been. Instead, he’d been staring at the carpet the two women were standing upon with their bare feet.
“Of course,” he said, lying, and swallowed the remainder of his drink.
Camilla grinned at him as she ran her skilled hands over Mary’s curved hips. It had taken them less than five minutes to artfully strip one another bare, and now they stood before him expectantly.
His heart was still racing, his mind whirling, and for Christ’s sake, he wished he wasn’t in bloody London. Hartstone. That was where he longed to be right then—utterly alone, breathing clean, quiet air. But he’d left his Essex estate weeks ago to come to town and sit dutifully in the House of Lords, and there wasn’t a damn breath of fresh anything, least of all air, to be had.
He knew he should get up from his chair and cross the room, that he should touch Camilla and Mary and let them distract him as best they could, the way the women from The Cock and the Crown usually did. It wouldn’t be enough.
When had it started to not be enough?
St. Petersburg, murmured the irritating, know-it-all voice in his head. Henry didn’t understand how or why spending less than one minute in Princess Irina Volkonsky’s presence two years before had affected him so completely. She had been nearly unrecognizable at first. Gone was the coltish fourteen-year-old he recalled, replaced by a startling beauty with noticeable curves and swells and…and he had acted like an utter buffoon.
Henry clenched his teeth at the memory, as he did every time he thought of it. Of his lack of good graces and what had been an utter loss of the ability to speak. Irina had not crossed his mind for so long—years, perhaps. Ignorant of her identity, it had been her laugh—a rich, bold, and unabashed sound—that had drawn his attention from across the ballroom. It was her confidence and the beguiling glimpse of bare shoulders in a silk gown he’d wanted to remove with his teeth that had ultimately held it.
The attraction had been immediate. Raw and visceral, and it had taken him completely by surprise. He’d sought no introduction, striding toward her like a man possessed with one singular obj
ective—to stake his claim. But then she’d turned, laughter glimmering in those deep-violet eyes, and his world toppled inward as recognition landed on him like an avalanche.
Princess Irina Volkonsky.
His mother’s bloody ward. In hindsight, he’d done the only thing he could: resort to extreme courtesy while his blood simmered and his groin tightened ignominiously at the full, unobstructed view of her. Good Lord, she’d taken his breath away.
On the cusp of womanhood, she had grown into those long limbs, which now supported her with grace and poise. Her face had held a gamine quality, dominated by mesmerizing eyes that had deepened and matured. And that luscious mouth of hers…devil take him, it had caused him to swell more. What had he been thinking? She was a goddamned child. Could he have sunk any lower in depravity? Discomfited, he’d grappled for something to say like a stuttering oaf. And then, furious with himself, he’d shut up for good. He’d felt uncomfortably warm, and his clothes had suddenly felt ill-fitting, his cravat too tight.
Much like right now.
What in hell was wrong with him? Two women stood before him, ready for the taking, wanting only to give him pleasure, and Henry felt nothing but hollow panic. Perhaps he’d been too clear in what he’d demanded. Too precise. He should have asked for blondes, redheads, anything but what now seemed like pale imitations of the female he craved. And all because of one brief, silly line he’d read a week ago in the gossip column in the Times, one his tortured brain had replayed over and over about a certain visiting princess.
His breath hissed from clamped lips.
In the drop of silence, and with Camilla and Mary exchanging a worried glance, he heard the slam of the doorknocker two stories below. Stevens would answer the door, and whomever it was would leave their card. It would be among the others Stevens would present to Henry in the salver at luncheon. There was no reason for him to stand and excuse himself so that he could see who was calling.
And yet he did.
The women stared at him, their eyebrows raised in surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said. More was needed. Something coy and playful, and perhaps reassuring. He should go to them, tap them both on the backside and thank them for their brief diversion. But again, it felt as if simple speech was beyond his grasp. “If you’ll excuse me,” was all he managed to get out before going to the door and exiting into the corridor.
Once there, Henry gulped in air and felt the shake of his hands. He’d just left them standing there, naked. What kind of man was he to turn down an invitation to tup two women at once?
Deranged, the voice murmured again.
Henry pushed it away and straightened his collar. His cravat was still loose, but who the devil cared? He was in his own home. Though at the moment he felt a stranger to everything around him.
His butler’s voice drifted up the open, twisting stairwell from the foyer below. Henry glanced over the banister as he descended, saw the black-and-white tiled floor and Stevens’s shiny, bald pate as he dropped the calling card into the silver salver set upon the credenza.
“Who was it?” Henry asked as he came down the last flight of carpeted steps.
Stevens turned and took a crisp bow before answering. “A footman from her ladyship, Lady Langlevit’s residence, my lord.”
He extended the salver to Henry, who spotted his mother’s familiar cardstock easily. The pale pink color with spring green embossing never failed to amuse him. The Countess of Langlevit was just shy of her fiftieth birthday, and yet she insisted on the kind of calling card a blushing debutante would choose. She had aged well, and only ever having borne one child, had kept a girlish sort of figure he supposed, but those were not the things that made his mother appear young. It was her bright presence. Her smile. She was like an eternal springtime, and there was not a soul in London who did not adore her. Including her wretched son.
Of course, that did not mean he was eager to answer her summons. Henry knew exactly what she wanted to discuss, and it weighed on him. It was his birthday, his thirtieth, which meant one thing to the Earl of Langlevit: he needed to marry and perform his filial duty to produce the next heir. It was not a request made by a woman yearning for grandchildren, but a necessity stated within the letters patent attached to the Langlevit title, issued by none other than the tyrannical King Charles I.
Henry did not want children. Nor did he want a wife. However, thanks to an archaic stipulation written into the Langlevit title, he required both. For the past six generations, every Earl of Langlevit had been held to the unusually rigid requirement of marrying by the last day of his thirtieth year and getting to work producing an heir or suffer being stripped of the title, all holdings, and inheritance. And for the past six generations, every Earl of Langlevit had likely tried to figure a way to wriggle free from the restriction, one that was unlike anything found in the letters patent of other peerages.
Two hundred or so years ago, King Charles, who had a penchant for ruling as his own conscience saw fit, granted a peerage to a friend—a friend he wished to see married. Most specifically, to the king’s own cousin. Charles awarded the man an earldom with the precondition that he marry by age thirty, or else the title and holdings would revert to the Crown. The monarch’s exact language did not release future heirs to the earldom from that one precondition, however, and so every heir since had been forced to meet the requirement.
It was absolutely preposterous, Henry thought, but it was also irreversible.
After his father’s death seven years ago, Henry had become earl—and the countdown had begun. He’d known he could not simply sit back and allow the Crown to revoke his family’s legacy, not when his mother depended upon the income of her late husband, and not when the tenants working and living upon Langlevit lands depended upon him for their security. A title in abeyance would spell uncertainty and possible disaster for them. Henry had a duty to them all, just as the previous earls had. It was marriage. Not the guillotine.
No. Henry would heed the rules of his inheritance and marry. Though he’d waited until the last minute, it remained his responsibility. His duty. With the season getting underway, there would be a pool of prospects in town, but Henry had already come to a decision. He could not abide the endless balls and dances and crowds, and then the game of calling on the young woman he selected, plying her with flowers and making small, polite conversation in the hopes that she would accept him and not the several other young men vying for her hand. Just the thought of it exhausted him and made his pulse leaden.
Hell, he couldn’t even make it through an encounter with two nude women in his own bedchamber.
What Henry wanted was to propose to a woman who would not require the romancing a debutante would expect. What he wanted was a woman who would answer him quickly and be amenable to a simple and fast ceremony. What he needed was a widow, and he knew just the one: Lady Carmichael, the widow of one of Henry’s closest childhood friends in Essex. It had been two years since John had died, and Rose was alone in Breckenham with a young son and about to cease half-mourning. The timing was right.
If she were to accept his written proposal, which he had sent to her home near Breckenham two days prior, he would break ties with the light-skirts he often sent for while in London, like the two upstairs. Town, with its noise, crowds, social requirements, and close quarters, always caused a buildup of tension and panic deep inside of him. Henry hated it. Fought it. Tried to reason with it. But there was only one thing that helped to silence the noise: the base act of sexual release. No emotion attached, no conversation, no pleasant company. Just sex.
Thinking of Rose in such a way, as a means of release, made him feel slightly ill. But if he had to marry, he’d rather it be to someone he trusted. Someone who knew him…who didn’t have to be warned about his erratic behavior, or of the night terrors brought on by ghastly memories that he could never escape. Along with the countess and a se
lect few in the War Office, Rose and John had been the only ones who knew the truth of what he had endured while he’d been held captive in France. As far as sexual release, he would secure a discreet mistress—he simply couldn’t fathom using Rose that way.
Henry had broached the marriage requirement with her twice before. Once, long before she and John had married, and she had laughingly promised that should they both be unattached by the time they were thirty, she would consider it. Then she and John had fallen in love. After John’s death, Rose had claimed she would never marry again. She didn’t need to. John’s estate provided more than enough for her and their young son.
The second time was eight months ago, when Henry had called upon her to check in on his godson, William. Rose had been the one to bring up the subject.
“Your time is running out, you know,” she had told him, bouncing William, who was the spitting image of John, on her lap, while they sat in the garden.
“I won’t be a fit husband to anyone, Rose, you know that.”
She had clasped his hand and squeezed. “You’re robbing yourself of the chance to be happy.”
“Happiness is an illusion.”
“And you are a cynic, my lord.” She shook her head. “There has to be a young lady out there for you.”
Henry’s voice was quiet. “No blushing deb deserves a man like me.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about the type of company you prefer,” she said with a sidelong glance that had held no judgment, only a measure of concern. “Perhaps you should consider widening your prospects.”
He hadn’t shared her enthusiasm, but had struck upon an idea as he’d watched her with William. He had no interest in widening his prospects. There was no other woman he felt more at ease with than Rose. Theirs could be a marriage of friendship. Of convenience. If she would have him.
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