Regency Scandals: Touch Me, Tempt Me & Take Me Box Set

by Lucy Monroe

  The clock chimed the hour and she stirred against him. “Your aunt will be expecting us in the drawing room for tea soon.”

  He carefully disentangled their bodies, gently setting her off of his lap. “You are right. If we are to discuss our investigation, we must hurry.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  He shrugged. No need for her to know how desperate he had been to touch her.

  She smiled. “You got sidetracked.”

  “Yes. But now we must focus on the task at hand.”

  She stood up and brushed her skirts into smooth folds again. “So you are saying that you had no intention of seducing me when you came into the room?”

  He couldn’t see her face as she bent to straighten her clothes, so he could not tell if she were teasing him or not.

  He sidestepped her question. “We need to discuss the thief at your shipping company.”

  “Oh, that must be why you locked the door. You didn’t want to be disturbed or overheard discussing the sensitive subject.”

  His hands stilled in the process of tucking his shirt back into his pants. “Are you mocking me, Thea?”

  Her head came up and the sparkle of amusement in her eyes brought an answering smile to his lips.

  He stalked toward her and breathed in satisfaction at her retreat. “You tease me at your own peril, little baggage.”

  She tried to dart around him, but he caught her. “If we were not expected downstairs for tea, I would exact retribution.”

  The smile left her face.

  Her blue eyes grew luminescent. “I must be shameless because even knowing she expects us, I want you to.”

  He caressed her cheek. “Admit you belong to me.”

  He hated the look of wariness that settled over her features. He bit the urge to let out a stream of curses only with great effort. He kissed where his fingers had just touched.

  She sighed and turned until her lips touched his.

  She kissed him softly then stepped away. “I’m afraid.”

  Her admission touched him. It could not be easy for a woman with her pride to admit the weakness of fear.

  “What is it you fear, Thea? Do you fear me?”

  He didn’t even like asking the latter. The possibility that she might say yes tore at his insides. She had said once she believed him to be like her father. Did she believe that still?

  She turned and moved toward the desk. Stopping, she absentmindedly turned the pages of the ledger sitting on top. He wanted to repeat his question, but forced himself to wait patiently for her answer.

  “I fear marriage. I fear living in England amidst people so preoccupied with one’s appearance that they cannot possibly know a person’s heart. I fear for my uncle’s safety, that I will not discover the thief in time. I fear my aunt will die and leave me when I have just found her.” Her voice broke. “How could I have waited so long to come? She invited me often, but I waited. Because I was afraid.”

  The last of her words came out in a broken whisper. He strode across the room and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  She turned her face until their eyes locked.

  She gave a small, sad smile and shrugged. “I believe I fear myself most of all.”

  Her honesty humbled him.

  He pulled her against him and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly. He didn’t ask her what she meant. He understood what it was to fear oneself. Growing up, he had refused to look in a mirror for fear of seeing the resemblance to his father that others had remarked upon. He didn’t want to become the kind of man that would seduce and then abandon a lady to pursue greater wealth in another.

  He had often wondered why his father had ever courted his mother. His father had known from the outset that his mother’s marriage portion would be tied up in legal settlements. The thought that his own father was so dishonorable that he had pursued an innocent woman for the sake of conquest alone chilled Drake to his very bones.

  He had feared that same failing might reside in his own heart. Until he met Thea. Every protective instinct he possessed had come roaring to the surface when he met her. Although he had craved her touch almost from the first moment, he had never once considered making her his mistress or taking her maidenhead and then moving on. He wanted her forever.

  He would do anything to protect her, including pressuring her into a marriage she thought she didn’t want.

  But, not right now.

  Making love had softened her, broken down some of her defenses. If he pushed her, she would draw those defenses around herself in an impenetrable wall. He rubbed her back until he felt her relax against him.

  He rocked her from side to side for several minutes of silence before releasing her and stepping away. “Let’s talk about Merewether Shipping.”

  Her eyes widened as if she had expected him to pursue the earlier conversation, but he was too intelligent to lose ground in an effort to gain it.

  Their investigation was a much safer topic of conversation. “Did you find anything else in the ledgers?”

  Thea frowned at his question. “I have found nothing so far, except evidence that the thieving has not stopped.” She slammed the ledger on the desk shut. “There must be a clue in here somewhere as to who is responsible, but I cannot find it.”

  “It’s fairly obvious whose doing it, Thea.”

  She cocked her brows at him. “Who?”

  “Emerson Merewether.”

  She traced the letters on the bound leather cover of the ledger. “No. I don’t believe it. He’s so much like Uncle Ashby. There must be another explanation.”

  He shook his head. “It has to be someone who has access to both the ledgers and the warehouse. Thea, who else could it be?”

  “What about his assistant? That Barton fellow. He looked shifty to me.”

  He smiled at her description. “Shifty?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Didn’t you see the way he dressed? Too stylishly for a shipping clerk. And he insisted on staying to hear our discussion.”

  Drake moved around to sit at the desk. He opened the ledger that Thea had shut and looked at the neat entries. “He’s more than a shipping clerk. He’s Emerson’s assistant. His preference for dandyish clothing does not make him shifty and he did not insist on staying. He offered and left immediately after Emerson declined that offer.”

  “Don’t you see? He’s just clever. He knew better than to insist, so he casually offered and I don’t think we can dismiss the possibility that there could be other suspects. If Emerson runs his office at all like Uncle Ashby, there are many times during any given week the records are accessible to whoever might come by his office.”

  “I very much doubt that Emerson is that lax. Life in London is not like it is on the island.”

  She frowned. “I’ve discovered that, but I still think you should consider the possibility.”

  “And I think you are allowing your affection for Ashby Merewether to bias your feelings toward his nephew.”

  “Emerson as the culprit doesn’t make any sense, Pierson.”

  He paused. “You called me Pierson.”

  “It is your name, after all.”

  “But you have only ever used it on my insistence or when we have made love.”

  She shrugged. “We are on somewhat intimate terms. Calling you Drake seems a bit formal.”

  He had thought so after their first kiss.

  “Uncle Ashby has no children,” she said, going back to the original topic, the telltale pink of her cheeks witness to how discussing their intimacy affected her.

  “So?”

  “Emerson knows that Uncle’s half of Merewether Shipping will eventually go to him. He has no reason to steal from a company that will eventually belong to him.”

  “Unless he needs funds now.”

  She bit at her lower lip. “I suppose.”

  “I’ll have my man of affairs conduct some inquiries into Emerson’s financial circumstances.”

  He
r brows drew together. “What about Barton?”

  “I’ll have him investigated as well.”

  She nodded. “Good. You need to watch out for those self-effacing types.”

  Drake bit back a laugh.

  She was really reaching, but once they had completed the investigation would be soon enough to shatter her illusions about Emerson. Merewether’s nephew or not, he was the most likely candidate for the thefts. Not to mention the attempts on Thea’s life. If Drake discovered that Emerson was indeed responsible, the jovial man would lose his affability...permanently.

  ******

  Thea leaned toward her aunt and whispered, “Does she not realize she is singing a tragedy?”

  The young debutante entertaining her parents’ guests at the pre-season musicale smiled charmingly as she sang of her lover dying beneath the waves of the open sea.

  Lady Upworth whispered back, “She’s showing off her best asset. Hopes it will make the gentlemen forget she can’t sing worth a pence.”

  Wincing as the smiling girl hit another discordant note, Thea had to agree.

  Lady Boyle, who sat on her other side, had nodded off. Thea was amazed that Drake’s aunt could sleep without allowing her head to list to one side. If any one were to look, they would assume she had closed her eyes to focus on the music. Thea knew better and she envied the older woman’s oblivion to the indifferent entertainment.

  The ability to escape the unpleasant must run in the family because Drake had also managed to avoid the untalented singer, having disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. It annoyed Thea. He was the one who insisted on announcing their pretend engagement to all and sundry. The least he could do was to stay by her side and deal with the curious stares and pointed questions the perfectly correct, but not always polite, members of the ton posed to her.

  Lady Noreen had had the good sense to skip the entertainment altogether.

  The awful song finally ended. She made to stand, but her aunt’s hand arrested her. With dawning horror, she realized that yet another young lady had come forward to entertain them.

  The blushing girl sat down next to a large harp and began to slide her fingers across the strings. Hope surged through Thea at the lovely sound until she realized that sliding her hands up and down the strings seemed to be all the young woman knew how to do. By the time the song ended, she was sure she never wanted to hear the harp again.

  The harpist was followed by a pianist who played passably, a flautist who did not and another singer who shook with nerves through her entire song. When her aunt’s measured breathing indicated she too had fallen asleep, Thea began to feel acutely persecuted. The evening had been her aunt’s idea after all. Why bother to come if she intended to sleep through the program?

  A young lady with a pixy face, golden brown eyes and blonde hair, who sat on the other side of Lady Upworth caught Thea’s eye and gave her a commiserating smile. Thea returned her smile, feeling warmed by at least one friendly face among the ton.

  They both turned to face the front again at the same time and it was only as her gaze settled on another debutante that the message her brain was trying to give her pierced her consciousness. An image rose in her mind of a sketch she had studied many times. The girl in the sketch was smiling and had two charming dimples, just like the young lady sitting on the other side of Thea’s aunt.

  Thea took another surreptitious look at the young lady who had smiled at her in such understanding. It was. She was certain of it. Why had her aunt not warned her?

  Perhaps, because she believed you would then cry off the entertainment tonight, a small voice in her head accused.

  Her heart began a swift palpitation; her palms became sweaty inside her gloves and her eyes smarted with unaccustomed tears.

  The young woman seated so demurely beside her aunt was Lady Irisa Selwyn, Thea’s half-sister.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lady Upworth has written that Estcot has returned to town. I never told her that he was the one who had caused the rift between Langley and myself. Apparently he left Town around the same time I did. He has returned and under a cloud. He has gotten some country squire’s poor daughter pregnant. She refused to marry him and even attempted to take her own life to avoid it. Once the story got out, he was completely ruined in the eyes of the ton. He has finally gotten his just desserts.

  February 24, 1804 Journal of Anna Selwyn, Countess of Langley

  Thea spent the rest of the musicale with her mind racing in receipt of the fact her own flesh and blood sister sat not five feet away.

  When the hostess finally stood and thanked everyone for coming and inviting them to refreshments in the other room, Thea heard the words through a fog.

  Miraculously, both her aunt and Lady Boyle woke immediately and put on the perfect performance of someone who had listened the entire time and enjoyed it. She would have been highly amused at their antics if she weren’t in such a state of shock. She was certain that had they wanted it, both dowagers could have had careers treading the boards at Drury Lane.

  “Are you ready to go, dear?”

  Thea stared at her aunt. They had come just to sit through two hours of untrained musicians?

  Not to mention the fact that Irisa sat on the other side of the old woman and she knew it very well.

  “There is a buffet in the other room,” Thea said, not yet ready to deal with the other.

  Lady Boyle tut-tutted. “No good. She’s a skinflint, that one. Much better food at home.”

  If she could sit through interminable hours of entertainment that was anything but, they could suffer an indifferent buffet to assuage her hunger. “Listening to the music has increased my appetite.”

  “Don’t know how it could have. Fairly ruined mine,” said Lady Boyle.

  “I believe I could use a glass of punch,” Lady Upworth remarked, her gaze assessing as she looked from Thea to the young woman beside her.

  Irisa was speaking to someone to her right, so not part of the discussion, but Thea felt sure her sister would be staying as well. The question was, how did she feel about meeting the other woman for the first time. Certainly, she would not make herself known to Irisa, but to simply speak with her when her whole life they had never even been able share a correspondence.

  At that moment, Lady Boyle capitulated. “Come along, then.” She led the way toward the other room. “It’ll please our hostess that we’ve decided to stay for the buffet. Most of her guests leave after the music.”

  Thea felt a spark of trepidation. If the buffet were worse than the entertainment, it must be awful. Still, she was hungry and if she ate nothing, what would her excuse for staying be?

  She saw that Lady Boyle had been right about most of the guests leaving because there was a very short line at the buffet table and only a few of the eating tables were occupied. She found punch for her aunt and saw both Lady Upworth and Lady Boyle seated before making her way to the food table.

  As she surveyed the fare offered, she didn’t see the reason for such a lack of enthusiasm. True, the food had none of the flare or color that she would have found at a buffet back home, but then most of England’s food was bland compared to the fare she had been raised on.

  As she took a lobster patty and placed it on the small china plate, she heard a soft voice to her left.

  “Do you think we acquire the ability to sleep sitting up as we get older, or is it something one is born with?”

  Feeling uncertainty and excitement in a volatile mixture inside her, Thea turned to Irisa. “I don’t know, but I’ll admit I have wished more than once for the knack.”

  Putting out her hand, her sister said, “I am Lady Irisa Selwyn.” Turning to a lovely, willowy creature with brown ringlets cascading down her back, Irisa said, “This is my bosom beau, Cecily.”

  The blonde creature smiled charmingly. “You will have to forgive Irisa’s impetuousness. She forgets herself.”

  Irisa laughed, the sound touching Thea’s heart. Her
sister’s laughter. She had not been sure she would ever hear it.

  “Don’t mind Cecily,” Irisa said. “She would wait to have our chaperones introduce us, but that seems silly to me. You are here with my aunt, after all.”

  Thea agreed, but forbore saying so. “It’s nice to meet you both. My name is Thea Sel—“ She could not give Irisa her real name. Not right now. She pretended to cough and then said. “Selby.”

  “Miss Selby, you’re here with Lady Boyle and Lady Upworth aren’t you?” Cecily asked, apparently questioning Irisa’s claim Thea had arrived with her aunt.

  Thea nodded.

  “They’re both quite well placed in the ton,” the other girl remarked.

  Thea wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond to the comment. “They are both very kind ladies.”

  “And talented,” replied Irisa with a small laugh.

  Thea smiled, blinking back moisture she dared not let the others see. She and her sister shared a sense of humor. Lady Upworth had said so, but to see it in action was an amazing thing.

  They chatted some more as they finished filling their plates, Thea’s heart beating so rapidly, she was sure the other two had to notice, but they did not. Thea learned that Irisa was in Town with Cecily’s family as her own parents were not yet arrived for the Season. Thea could not lament that fact.

  She was relieved there would be no opportunity just yet to run into her father.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you again,” said Irisa as she turned to go with Cecily.

  “I look forward to it,” replied Thea, more fervently than society would dictate.

  She watched Irisa walk away with an odd sense of incompletion. This girl was not only her sister, but her birth had been the final act in a play that had kept Thea’s mother out of England until her death. Thea had never blamed Irisa, but she had desperately wanted to see a sister she had known about since birth and never met.

  Now she had and was impressed with not only her sister’s charming manner, but the innate family similarities.