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C. HAMPTON JONES

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A MERCENARY MAJOR

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Part 2:

THE BLESSING OF MARRIAGE

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STORYBOOK EDITION

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Volume 5 of the REGENCY ROMANTIC WARRIORS SERIES

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MMXI

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Editor: Alex Blackburn

Copyright/all author’s rights/publishing-rights/

2011 C. Hampton Jones

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C. Hampton Jones” right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

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In this work of fiction, the characters, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or they are used entirely fictiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

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This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission of HamptonJones books or the author. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement

and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

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License Statement:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the publisher and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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CHAPTER 1: A CONSUMMATION

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London, October 1814

He turned slowly towards her and touched the side of her face.

She jerked away from his touch and he smiled a bit crookedly. He wondered fleetingly if he was wandering into the territory of Jeffrey, bloody, Burroughs, but suppressed the thought at once. She was his now; to have and to hold.

He stroked her shoulder as if asking her permission. She reminded him of a shy and jumpy filly.

Anthea took a deep breath. It should have been Jeffrey - not this stranger - in bed with her on her quite delayed wedding night.

Her nightshift fell open and she pushed out of it; wriggling her backside, tugging it away from under her buttocks. She dropped it in the bed, never minding where it fell, not noticing that she was still lying partly on top of it.

He bent his head and kissed her throat, circling down to her lush breasts. He noticed that she shivered and wondered if it was out of fear.

He lost himself in the scent of her silky skin and a rose fragrant perfume.

Wild roses, he mused. How surprising, my new wife is a wild rose!

In the back of his mind a thought trailed, that he should be glad that he liked her scent. He had lost his over-fastidiousness during his time in the army, but for some reason it had rapidly returned. Thank God, his senses had accepted her!

He closed his eyes in ecstasy, running his lips over the soft mounds of her incredible round breasts, nudging a small puckered nipple, licking and sucking, almost gobbling her.

He hardly noticed her sighs and moans, as he was deeply absorbed in his ministrations while he was only savoring the taste and the feel of her.

His hands trailed over her belly down to her mound that was surprisingly fleshy. He felt under the silky hairs to probe the swelling folds.

He heard her moan softly and he wondered again if she was frightened, it could not be... lust, could it?

She held her eyes stiffly closed and he registered that she was biting her lower lip. He wondered again if it was out of shyness.

Intently staring into her face, he probed until he found the exquisitely sensitive nub he had been searching for.

It startled him that she started to move against his searching hand. He had expected her to lie stock-still until he would be done with her. Julia had been like a broomstick on their first night; actually, she had always been stiff and unresponsive.

He gave in to the surge of his arousal and moved between her legs, his manhood swollen and throbbing. He touched her sensitive nub with the head of his velvety shaft, pushing and pulsing softly.

Suddenly her moves under him became spasmodic and her breath came out ragged. Her hands clawed at his hips.

“Please, please!” she mewed.

He was concentrating too much on his own lust to show any surprise at this odd, not very virginal behavior as he forced himself slowly against her folds, so it hardly registered to him when she cried out.

“Oh god,” she whispered, moving her hips in a sensual way.

He had been hovering over her, using the strength of his arms and his toes not to force himself inside her.

Now he just let go. He thrust deep into her, sheathing into her slick flesh with one swift stroke.

He heard her gasp.

Was it with pain?

For a moment, her body seemed to stiffen.

“Jesus, wife!” he panted, not really knowing what to say more.

He crunched his teeth together. If he did not watch out, he was going to spill like a young pup.

Her eyes shot wide open and she uttered a moan.

He felt his face contort with restraint.

“I will wait a moment, so that you will be less uh… raw,” he managed to say. He felt almost dizzy, as if someone had thrown a cloud of mist over his brain. He knew he moved his lips, but he hardly registered his own words.

“Will waiting reduce the largeness of you, my lord?” she asked innocently.

“I… am… afraid… not!”

He wondered fleetingly if he was losing his speech, as the words appeared with intervals.

He groaned through clenched teeth.

God, this was heaven and hell at the same time! He knew now that he was going crazy! This woman, her bed, her body, it was not at all the way he was used to feel and to react when he was with a woman. It was different, but Jesus why was it different? Because she was warm, and clean? Oh, God and why did she move that way?

“D… Don’t…” he croaked

Unable to resist her seductive moist and warm sheath any further he drove himself into her again and again.

“So good!” he mumbled, realizing he said the words aloud. Kit Brondemeire was never a talker in bed, so why was he babbling now?

She cried out again. He heard it through the haze of his own frenzy.

Suddenly he felt her muscles clench around him and she let out a long moan.

“Ah, God!” he groaned, adding a string of tender words he did not even know were in his vocabulary.

He realized then that he could not hold on anymore.

“I… am… going… to …c…!”

His long body arched and then went rigid when his cock surged and spurted. He almost went mad with the fierceness of it.

He closed his eyes. His teeth had been clamped close with the tension of his movements. He relaxed his jaws slowly.

“Christ in heaven!” he muttered.

Had it ever been as good as this?

He felt her nipples brushing his chest and became aware that he was weighing her down into the soft mattress.

With a muttered exclamation he untangled his body from hers, lifting the nails of her hands carefully, as they had dug themselves deep into the flesh of his buttocks.

He knew he had to let go of her and rolled away from her with a feeling of regret.

His orgasm had been fierce, but the massive ejaculation he just had could not prevent his cock from hardening again the moment he withdrew from her.

This was madness, he thought; bloody pure madness!

They both lay back in their pillows, breathing raggedly.

She was the first to turn her face towards him; it was puffy and her eyes heavy-lidded.

He suddenly remembered something through the haze of this delightful coupling: it was supposed to be her first time!

He rolled on his side and peered at her. Through the shadows the single candle threw over her face he searched for tearstains, but found none. He wondered if she looked actually dazed... Was it satisfaction he saw?

Impossible, of course; she had been a bloody virgin! She must have been, or?

She turned away from his stare with a soft smile.

Impossible, he thought, at once remembering Julia Fortescue’s wails when he took her virginity on that long ago night. Julia had cried for days afterwards, driving him almost to insanity about his so-called cruelty.

He clenched his jaw again, at once rigid with anger.

No virgin!

Bloody hell, he had been cuckolded, indeed! His new wife had been no virgin!

He got up from the bed, checking his penis in the poor light of the candle. It glistened with wetness, but he did not think there was blood. Not like with Julia; she had bled like a slaughtered pig.

“Damnation!”

“My lord?”

She had turned back to him, her round breasts quivering, her body in a relaxed pose, a smile still hovering on her lips.

Not like a virgin at all!

Damn Jeffrey, bloody, Burroughs to hell! Damn her!

“You bitch!” he growled, “How dare you!”

She sat up in one movement; her eyes widening to enormous proportions.

“My lord?” she asked again.

His breath caught in his throat. He searched frantically for his robe on the floor.

“You...”

His voice gave and he needed to swallow.

“You, madam, were not a virgin!”

Her brows rose almost to the level of her hairline.

“My lord, I assure you...”

He made a noise full of contempt. It sounded like a bark.

He tugged his wrapper tight and headed for the connecting door to his own bedroom. He did not look back when he slammed it shut.

Anthea stared at the door.

Not a virgin? But Jeffrey had never...

She lay slowly back on the bed, reaching for a damp and crinkled sheet to cover her nakedness.

He knew, she suddenly realized. He knew that she and Jeffrey had indulged in their love-games. Why else would he react so crossly?

She sent an angry stare at the closed connecting door.

How dare he think that she had dallied in such a fashion with another man? True, what she had done with Jeffrey was not innocent, but they had never gone all the way, never! She had saved herself for him, this… this lout!

Lucy frowned when the upstairs maids came to make the bed. There were normally only two maids required for the task, but now four of them filed into Anthea’s bedroom. They peered demurely at the bed but Lucy knew they were bursting with curiosity.

She looked up when Higgins entered the bedroom with an expression of importance on his face.

Lady Anthea had breakfasted in her room that morning, alone. At seven o’clock she had taken her bath, put on her riding clothes and had disappeared towards the stables. There had been no Viscount Brondemeire in the vicinity.

Lucy wondered if he was still abed. Jenkins had not yet gone down for the Viscount’s warm shaving water, let alone to order water for his bath.

It was very quiet downstairs. The girls acted as if they were going through their chores and the footmen busied themselves with unimportant tasks as if they were waiting for something.

Lucy raised her chin and went to the bed. She fished out her ladyship’s silk nightshift which was most certainly flattened by somebody partly lying on it. The silk had absorbed a few bloody stains and some white stains that certainly did not belong to the Viscountess herself.

Higgins and the four upstairs maids broke out in a smile.

The deed had been done! The Viscount had consummated the marriage, unlike that despicable Baron Caversham, of yore!

There were some light spatters on the silk sheets and one of the upstairs maids raised her eyes questioningly at Higgins.

“Those sheets need to be saved,” Lucy said hastily, “I don’t think they should be laundered. Just fold them and give them to me.”

She watched when the maids did as she requested. Even Higgins knew that Lucy was on first name terms with her ladyship and thus she ranked almost higher than he did in the household. It was just that Lucy did not seem to care about rankings, only obviously on occasions like those.

Higgins had learned to appreciate the red-haired woman from the North.

God knew there was almost as much talk about her as there had been about Lady Brondemeire. Lucy was nearing her forties but she did not show her age. The downstairs maids used to mutter that she was a spoiled woman in this household. She did not have to do the normal chores, which were attributed to a lady’s maid; there was a laundry barn behind the North side of the house, where two women washed and cleaned on an everyday basis, a seamstress in the house was constantly busy sewing and repairing if the need arose. The laundry women did the ironing as well.

All Lucy had to do was point and command.

As her ladyship did not change her dresses as much as one would expect from a fashionable member of the London Quality, most of the laundering and the cleaning were on behalf of the staff anyway.

It was Lucy’s business to do her ladyship’s hair, but Anthea was used to going to bed early, instead of showing herself at the nightly occasions such as balls, musicales and the theatre. Because she mostly wore a bonnet in the daytime it could be expected that her ladyship’s coiffure was not a task of immense proportions, either.

Lucy walked into Anthea’s dressing room, pressing the soiled night shift and the sheets against her chest. She put them into a drawer that could be closed with a key.

After what she had overheard last night, when eavesdropping in her ladyship’s dressing room, while Anthea was being ravished by that man and then to have received such a thundering speech by way of his thanks, she was certain that one day, she would need to produce the items important to this wedding night as they were.

“Men!” she muttered contemptuously.

Lucy had her share of admirers in her life and she had been married for a short time to a handsome sailor who worked on board of one of Cyril Fairfax’ ships. He was on the one ship that had gone under, close to the Canary Islands.

The worst day of Lucy’s life was not the day when she was notified of her widowhood, but the day when she was informed that her beloved Cerdic had another wife and two children in Portsmouth.

Because Lucy was a very attractive woman with her long reddish-blond tresses and her plump figure she’d had many an admirer, either ‘downstairs’ or even ‘upstairs’ at Rotherham.

What Lucy and a select few people hid, was that she had once given her favors to the exceedingly handsome Earl of Rotherham after his wife died. Those few people who knew about this had been the ones who had encouraged her to console the lonely Earl in his bed.

Lucy bit her lip.

Cyril Fairfax had been the love of her life, but she was well aware that she had shared that feeling with more women than she cared to count.

Anthea was always blissfully unaware of that situation, too absorbed in her own approaching adulthood and her lovesickness for the handsome boy next door.

Lucy was certainly not going to make her any wiser about her bedtime bliss with Anthea’s father, as Anthea had adored the ground her father walked on until his betrayal, when he married her off to their despised neighbor Guy Burroughs, Baron Caversham. She had been hurt and confused, not understanding why her father did such a terrible thing to her. Lucy knew now that even that horrible event in Anthea’s life had never lessened her adoration for the man who sired her. Of course the whole situation with Baron Caversham had been a short-lived affair. Anthea only had suffered the events on her wedding night and they had not included anything remotely compared to a coupling with the dirty, terrible man who had not been able to become her husband in reality. In the end Anthea had undergone it as a short, bad dream. Cyril never deemed it necessary to share his reasons for that unequal match with anybody and apart from the fact that Anthea had to ask the House of Lords to annul the marriage, in order to get her huge fortune back that came as her wedding portion, it had not seemed to influence Anthea’s life too much.

Lucy had been quite grateful to move back to Petit Versailles after Anthea’s marriage so suddenly ended: she had a cynical Earl to service, whenever he felt like it, and the mood came often. The Earl had stopped his privateering after the countess died. Lucy guessed that the Earl suddenly acknowledged how short life was after Annette’s demise. He stayed home far more often, very much to Lucy’s gratification.

When he died of a wasting disease, three years later, it was Lucy who almost could not go on, due to a sadness that was to cling to her for months.

Going to London with Anthea had been a great help out of her lingering depression. There had been quite some servants at the Claridge hotel, who had eyed her with longing and invitation and, slightly to Lucy’s shame, she had given in to two of them, just because she wanted to experience a man’s hands on her body again. Of course those experiences had not been comparable with her bed sport with Cyril, but it had helped her to move on, away from the memories.

Right now Lucy labored under the appreciative looks of the newly arrived John Jenkins, Lord Brondemeire’s valet. At the servant’s hall he did not seem able to keep his eyes off her. Or better yet, her quite visible bosom in her not so serviceable ladies’ maid dress.

According to gossip he had already inquired where she normally slept.

Although Lucy did think John Jenkins was a handsome devil, she was certain she would turn the key in the lock of her small but very nice bedroom on the fifth floor. That room normally belonged to a governess, but Anthea had allowed her maid that boon, because she did not have a governess in her household anyway, and she wanted Lucy to sleep in the comfort of her very own room, without having to share one with the first upstairs maid, as would in reality befit her rank in the household. Anthea never had to share a bed in her life and it appalled her that servants had to sleep together in a narrow bed, as was ‘the done’ thing in London.

Lucy decided she was going to play very hard to get for that John Jenkins. She liked him well, oh yes, but she would be damned if she would be another man’s toy for a few nights only. Cyril had never even acknowledged his ‘knowledge’ of her in the daytime at Petit Versailles, which might have been sensible - none of his daughters was to know of his shenanigans with the staff- but it had hurt the faithful maid! It had been only a small consolation for Lucy that Cyril, in his better years, had always looked outside the house for his amorous conquests. The reason for that attitude had been the Countess herself. Cyril had known that Annette du Plessis was always suspicious of her wandering husband and that it was best to avoid scenes in the house that had to do with his roving eye. Still, Lucy suspected that she had not been the only one to console the Earl at the time, and she had a hard time accepting that. It was not easy to acknowledge that she had been a mere plaything for the dashing Earl, because he had such easy access to her in Petit Versailles.

Lucy was now at a stage where she wanted more out of life than a few hasty beddings.

On the other hand, most women of forty looked like their own grandmother in her days. She was lucky to be a beloved lady’s maid, first to the Countess of Rotherham and now to Anthea. She never lacked food, and a clean place to sleep, which were exactly the things that kept a woman from growing old too soon.

She was not sure of John Jenkins’ age, but she guessed he was at least two years her junior.

She sighed inwardly. There was a rumor that one of the young laundresses was after him. Maybe she should not keep him dangling too long. She knew better than anyone that a man’s moods might be fickle if it came to a woman he wanted.

She promised herself that she would think about all that later as right now she had a marriage to save before it had even properly started.

Lucy cast one more look at Anthea’s bed, now all made up with fresh sheets.

That man presumed to barge into Anthea’s house, taking all her worldly goods and then insult her on their wedding night? Not if she could help it!

Kit awoke with a blinding headache that morning when Jenkins opened the curtains and the sun flared into the room.

Kit made a slow movement with his hand, but Jenkins seemed oblivious to his master’s distress. He had recoiled when the musty smell of alcohol and sleep wafted towards him when he entered the bedroom, but he could now not do more than pretend indifference.

John crawled in front of the bed, where an empty brandy bottle had fallen from the bedside table. He sniffed at the bottle. At least it was not that bad stuff, which could poison a man. There was still hope for the Colonel.

“Hair of the dog, milord?” he asked formally, while Kit was struggling to sit up.

Kit brought his hands to his head and nodded.

Jenkins disappeared quietly into the hallway to prepare his ultimate remedy against a bad hangover.

It was good his headache prevented him from thinking as Kit was still feeling a rush of anger when he woke up.

He preferred not to inquire after his wife, but in the empty breakfast room where he had a slow meal of kippers and coddled eggs as late as eleven o’clock Higgins’ mulish expression spoke volumes.

Unrequited Higgins told the Viscount that his wife had gone out riding early in the morning that she had been working in the library with the steward and had gone out shopping afterwards. She begged his lordship’s apologies, but she would be neither at home for lunch nor for dinner. If his lordship would not take dinner at his club, Higgins was to inform Cook about this so that he could have a meal served wherever and whenever he pleased.

Kit scowled but said nothing.

His club! Tony was a member of White’s and would no doubt re-introduce him there, as soon as he would be back in town. Unfortunately, he left only yesterday for Andover on a three-day ride at a minimum, and if he went back almost on the same day, he would not be back in London for almost a week.

Kit wondered if the Faradiddle still existed; the club he used to visit when he was a young buck. The problem was that he was a bloody Colonel now, while the Faradiddle was in earlier times a place for ensigns and young lieutenants. It would not do to stand out there like a sore thumb due to his high rank.

He shook his head and lived to regret it, because Jenkins’s miracle cure had recovered his appetite, but did not free him from his headache.

So his dear wife had decided to sulk and hide, hadn’t she?

He felt anger growing in his chest again.

Well, he would do what every buck in town did; look for a nice piece of horseflesh at Tattersall’s and visit a Bond street tailor. He might even run into one of his old army comrades and then he would decide where he would dine that night.

He felt a slight regret that he had sold his own place at Lancaster Square. He did not need to live with her, did he? The bloody cheat!

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Chapter 2: CONSEQUENCES OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS

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It had been a week since that disastrous wedding night and Anthea had managed to avoid her new husband most of the time. It needed some help from Higgins and Lucy, as well as the servant’s stairs, but at least she did not have to go through the humiliation of facing him and his slanderous remarks.

She even had gotten Higgins to arrange a lock on the connecting door to the Viscount’s bedroom. Then she started sleeping on the third floor in the old nursery, so that she did not have to face him when he stepped out of his own bedroom or had to hear him when they both happened to be at home at night.

The disappearance and avoidance tricks had not been easy. Invitations seemed to pile high on the silver salver in the hallway, as members of the Ton had heard of the aristocratic Colonel’s homecoming and Anthea had to use all her inventiveness to decline the most important invitations without overtly insulting their senders.

Another problem arose as today her sisters were due to arrive home from a hunting party in Hereford. Anthea racked her brains to find a solution to have her sisters make their acquaintance with Brondemeire, while she could stay unobtrusively on the sidelines – like hiding behind a curtain or some such, but she soon admitted that she would not be able to get around it. They would have to be formally introduced to Brondemeire before dinner and it would be regretfully up to her to do the introductions.

At least some of her anger about the wedding night fiasco had worn off. She was more in a state of indifference now, and undoubtedly not meeting or seeing him had helped her into that blessed state, although her heart still hammered whenever she happened to hear his voice in the house.

What a stupid idiot she was! Had she fallen in love with him after one hour of bliss and a week of humiliation?

She knew the feeling too well to deny it. For some reason he was able to steal her heart when he bedded her just that one single time. Or to be honest; she knew she had fallen for him like a brick, the moment she had set eyes upon his handsome face and long strong body a week ago in her library.

It was confusing at the same time. What about her love for Jeffrey? It was as if she was looking at a blank wall when she thought of him, as if the man had been wiped entirely from her memory.

At least, according to Lucy, her disappearing tricks had been a blessing for her wardrobe; she’d had a deuced time figuring out what to do in the afternoons. One could only shop for so many things for the household, so she had found herself a dressmaker, a mantua-maker, who was quite tall herself and knew how to hide that disposition in her clothing. She went to Madame Mirabeau’s shop for at least five consecutive days and every day parcels with the most enticing eveningwear, morning dresses, unmentionables, and even three new riding costumes were carried in by her footmen.

She noticed that she was not alone in these undertakings. There was a stream of parcels going into the direction of the Viscount’s suite as well; all with the mark of the most expensive London tailors and boot makers on Bond Street. That secretly pleased her. She liked his parade uniform but understood he did not fancy walking around London looking like a circus act. Even when it was unduly fashionable to be with the conquering army, still now, half a year after Napoleon’s defeat, he obviously did not like to be part of the “rage.”

She also knew from Lucy’s remarks, who was obviously in league with Brondemeire’s valet, that he had gone to Tattersall’s and had bought himself a big black stallion by the imaginative name of “Spawn”, short for “Devil’s Spawn”. She knew what humongous amount of money Spawn had been bought for, because the bill had been taken off her household charges. It made her smile because it meant that he was not indifferent to what she thought about the way he spent her money.

That morning she had gone into the stables for a very early ride in the park.

Higgins, now obviously part of Lucy’s and Jenkins’ plot to help her in her avoidance acts had warned Lucy that the Viscount was due to ride with some friends as early as seven o’clock, so that Anthea had gone to the stables at half past six when it was still dark and rather cold outside.

Spawn was standing in the biggest box available.

She clicked her tongue to him and he turned to her with big beautiful dark brown eyes.

“God, you are the most beautiful horse I have ever seen,” she whispered to him.

A flustered and pleased groomsman came and agreed with her. He told her in a proud voice that more of his like were to come because his lordship had bought a town carriage and a matched pair of four.

At that moment Anthea considered that she would have her lawyers cut her husband from his yearly expenditure, but when she realized that she would just be hanging out some very dirty laundry for all and sundry to gape at, she just turned and stroked the beautiful horse and decided to have him saddled. Let the Viscount ride the aging Ratatouille!

The groom was a new man. He knew that her ladyship had gone out riding every morning on the sedate Ratatouille and did not expect much from her horsemanship. He did not know that the aging Ratatouille had been the bane of Cyril Fairfax’ stables for years and was still able to show a storming gallop and a fierce temper if he was so inclined.

He feared that his worst nightmare would be realized when the Viscountess helped herself to the sidesaddle without using the mounting block, and then told him not to bother with a martingale, which he had quite panicky suggested because Spawn liked to throw up his head whenever he felt like it.

The Viscountess reined him in a bit shorter and forced him into a nice trot as she expected Spawn to show a tendency to storm out of the garden gates if he did not feel a firm hand. Anthea’s expert handling of the horse left the new groom with his mouth hanging open.

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It was already seven thirty when Kit, Devon, and David entered the park at the entrance on Rotten Row.

It was entirely due to David that Devon had arrived late at Berkeley Street number fifteen. David had met some of his cronies after his dinner at The Steak and Pie, a notorious place that boasted food and an inn frequented by all sorts of ladies of the night, where one could rent a room by the hour. A tired friend had eventually dragged him home; David had been too busy to spend his earlier winnings in a gaming hell on two sisters of the profession, treating them to an abundance of gin in a big bedroom that easily accommodated the three of them. Thus his friend took care that David was able to keep his riding appointment with Kit, albeit a bit later than the appointed hour.

The Viscount was in a worse mood than he already had displayed to his friends all week as soon as he noticed that his new horse was gone from the stables.

According to the groom his wife had taken the beast to the park less than half an hour before he entered the stables, and the only remaining horse fit for riding was old Ratatouille.

Devon had been quiet as well. Sunrise was never his best time for any sort of entertainment and he had been in a bad mood for some days as well, due to a recurring depression and rebounding fits of the swamp fever, which some doctors called malaria.

When they entered the park on that crispy October morning they encountered a vision that was a sight for sore eyes; a lady dressed in an emerald green fur-lined riding outfit rode by them on a horse in a full gallop.

She performed a perfect turn into Rotten Row on the same horse that had been cause for many quarrels and vehement discussions at Tattersall’s as about everyone seeing it had wanted to own it.

She wore a small matching hat with her hair in a net adorned with emeralds. She rode on a lady’s sidesaddle that accentuated the perky firm form of her bottom when she turned her back on the gaping group of men.

“Who on earth is that?” David asked, suddenly waking up out of an almost slumber.

Devon’s eyes started to glimmer for the first time since days; nothing better than a lady with a perfect seat, to entice a military man!

Kit cursed inwardly. If he had not recognized the woman, he would certainly have recognized the horse; his newly bought horse Spawn.

“Look how she moves those great tits,” David exclaimed, oblivious of Kit’s scowling, “and that butt! Greatest seat I have seen in months!”

Devon watched Kit’s face change from all too indifferent to fury.

“I thank you not to insult my wife!” he growled at his friend.

David turned towards Kit who was scowling after the horsewoman with the perfect seat.

Bloody fine, Kit thought; “moving tits and a great butt!”

That was his wife.

She was drawing the attention of every buck who had ventured out on Rotten Row in the morning; the wife he had shunned because she had actually reacted to his lovemaking in a way that should normally only please a man.

He watched her slide her derriere with the movement of the horse and felt his groin tighten. Damn, but she was attractive, dressed in that riding suit, her one leg thrown over the pommel of her sidesaddle and her other leg fixed tightly in the stirrup! He had been between those endless legs and he had rejected her!

He was an idiot and he knew it.

David gaped at him.

“Will you introduce us to her at last?” he asked, staring after her.

Kit followed his young friend’s look and clenched his jaw shut.

There was no telling how she would react if he went after her now or awaited her here with his friends. The last time he had exchanged a word with her was before he had slammed the connecting door of their bedroom.

That word had been ‘bitch’.

“My horse does not agree with the stallion,” he growled, “but we are having a formal dinner tonight, so if you behave I’ll tell the butler to expect you as well.”

He turned Ratatouille away from Rotten Row.

He had already lost his pleasure in the morning’s ride when he found his new horse gone from the stable. To go home now would solicit unwanted questions from his friends, so he turned into a lonely lane where he could exercise a brisker trot without having to see his own horse thundering by with a woman with bouncing tits and a marvelous seat.

Life had been hell anyway those last days.

He had started to dream about her, almost every night. Long erotic dreams that made him wake up with a hard throbbing cock. He had to resort to pleasuring himself if he did not want to go crazy, but that actually made the whole situation a lot worse. He had to think of her if he wanted to achieve some peace and quiet and his scant satisfaction.

There was no way to hide the stained towels and handkerchiefs and Jenkins had looked rather oddly at him since of late.

A week after his wedding night his anger seemed to have gone into hibernation, leaving him bad tempered and moody. Thank you Lord for the blessing of marriage! He would rather go back into battle any day!

At least with his friends coming to dinner and now that her sisters were returning from a party in the county, he and his new lady-wife might be able to show a semblance of what... courtesy for each other?

He groaned.

He knew it was all his formidable stupidity which had landed him into this; nobody’s, but his own bloody stubbornness!

She was in an excellent mood after her exhilarating ride; that horse was worth every sin in the Book!

She wondered if she would write the Viscount a note, requesting him to take care of the acquisition of more horses for her stable. Aline and Attelante were slightly more sedate riders than she was, but they needed good horses anyway.

Ratatouille was even for Attelante too calm nowadays.

Aline was the sister who was most interested in horses; she had always been the one following her father into the stables at Petit Versailles to help to take care of them and to even discuss breeding programs with him.

Her sisters had ‘participated’ in a hunting party, but if Anthea knew their chaperone Lady Ross well, they probably would have been allowed to do some arching, which was considered a ladylike pastime, and wait in colorful troupes in the drawing room of Herrington House for the men to come back from an exhilarating day in the fields.

That thought solicited a smile from Anthea.

Aline would have hated not to be able to join the men on the hunt. She had taken her aging bay horse Gideon with her and probably had ridden him in the early mornings, attended by a wide-eyed and fascinated groom, when Lady Ross was still abed.

Aline loved horses; she lived and breathed them.

Attelante did not dislike horses but she did not share Aline’s and Anthea’s passion for them. She just rode them well, but never felt the challenge to dominate a strong, beautiful beast. She cared more about how she looked upon a horse. Anthea surmised she was a bit more like their mother in that respect. Annette du Plessis had been French to the bone and much more interested in her dresses than in horseflesh.

After Anthea had taken her bath, Higgins begged entrance into her bedroom, handing her a note from her husband.

She stared down at his bold handwriting.

That was what their marriage had come to; the exchange of notes because they refused to talk to each other, or to be honest; she ducked him whenever she could and had not spoken a word to him since that disastrous night when he slammed the door shut on her.

She sighed and read the note.

“Did the Viscount express that he has invited two guests for dinner tonight?”

Higgins nodded.

“He did indeed, my lady.”

She looked down at the note again.

“Lord Devon Broadhurst and Lord David Montague.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She looked at Higgins in her mirror.

“Do we have a Debrett’s or Burke’s in the house, Higgins? I’m afraid I’m very rusty on titles.”

Higgins nodded.

“We have a Debrett’s, indeed, my lady, but might I beg you to be of service? I happen to know both gentlemen. They served in the Peninsula with the Viscount. Lord Broadhurst came back as a major. He is the third son of the Earl of Allington. He was widowed quite some time ago, more than ten years would be my guess and there was no issue. You are related to his sister Pamela by marriage as she is the wife of the Marques of Andover, your only brother-in-law.”

“Widowed?” Anthea turned around to look at Higgins.

Widowed? Was her husband not widowed as well? Such a strange thought! But then, she had also been a widow until the annulment of that marriage.

She almost giggled.

“Quite so, my lady, we might expect Lord Broadhurst to enter the marriage market in the coming Small Season.”

“Ah,” Anthea nodded, “but a third son...”

“The Allington family is known to be living in the country as they don’t own a townhouse in London, anymore.” Higgins said with emphasis. “Lord Broadhurst still maintains his own residence, which was bought after his marriage to the American lady. It is not situated in Mayfair, as far as I know.”

Right, that meant he was close to being destitute and supposedly his family as well. Every aristocratic highflyer worth his salt possessed a house in Mayfair nowadays. She supposed Devon Broadhurst had needed to buy his colors to add to a non-existent jointure. Well, one impoverished husband in the family was quite enough! He was not eligible for her sisters.

“What about the other gentleman, Higgins?”

“Ah,” Higgins said coughing behind his hand.

“Lord David Montague is the half-brother to Lord Basil Montague, Marques of Ware. He came back as a captain but then he is only twenty-five years old. Although the Marques of Ware is his half-brother he is almost thirty years his senior. Lord David Montague has in a way removed himself from his brother’s title when he, ah, lost his part of the Ware inheritance.”

“How so, removed?” Anthea inquired.

“Um, the Marques of Ware will not relinquish the heir’s title to Lord David Montague, madam. There is a rumor that he threatened to allow the title to go to his nephew twice removed.”

Anthea nodded. Somebody had told her about Lord David Montague before. Jeffrey? Had he been a friend?

She ground her teeth.

The situation between her and the Viscount could hardly get any worse. Why would she not entertain Jeffrey’s friend at her table tonight? It promised to become some party with one untenable husband, one destitute third son, and one as good as disinherited rake.

She made a moue of her mouth in the mirror when Higgins quietly walked out of the room.

-

She had to sleep in her own room that night as the girls were following her upstairs and she was not able to give them the slip to disappear to the nursery.

Attelante sat down on Anthea’s big soft bed.

Even at midnight, she looked as if she just had left the hands of her uppity French maid Michelle.

Aline just dropped herself face forward on the counterpane.

Anthea took the low chair before her table ‘de toilette’, carefully unscrewing a ruby earring.

“Well Sis,” Attelante said conversationally, “out with it!”

Anthea feigned ignorance.

“Out with what?”

“You and that absolutely gorgeous husband did not exchange five words at dinner.”

Anthea froze in front of the mirror.

“The Viscount is my proxy husband,” she answered, her voice turning to ice, “I’m afraid that’s the reason we have nothing to say to one another.”

“So I noticed,” Attelante confirmed stoically, “and everybody else, I might presume. I saw Lady Ross and Lady Grange exchange looks all the time.”

Anthea reached for the lock of her ruby necklace.

It was a very lascivious thing that might have been the possession of a sultan’s wife one day. Its color matched her dress that was of a rather flimsy material and the bodice over the high waist was almost non-existent. The bodice was the reason why she had decided to wear the rubies; it had turned out to be so low that she had the impression her breasts were almost rolling out of it. At least the opulent necklace had made her feel a bit less exposed.

“Does he not sleep with you?” Attelante asked.

Anthea blushed, putting the rubies gingerly into her jewelry case.

“That’s quite a fast question for an unmarried girl,” she muttered without conviction.

At twenty-four Attelante did as she pleased.

Attelante smiled naughtily.

“He’s been home for a week and you are not even talking to another.”

“Oh, stuff it, Attie!” exclaimed a sleepy Aline, “How would you like to be married to a stranger?”

“We all marry strangers, Aline,” Attelante retorted, straightening the skirt of a lovely flowered pink and soft-yellow silk dress, “but not all of us marry such a fine specimen as our new brother-in- law…”

“I agree he is good-looking for his age,” Aline mused, “but he’s only a Viscount and I understand he did not have that much money, did he, Thea?”

Anthea just stared at her image in the mirror.

Good looking indeed. He had been wearing his full colonel’s regalia at dinner and had looked quite impressive. She was certain his white officers breeches, clinging to a pair of very muscled thighs had been brand new, as was the red braided coat with all the gold trimmings. His blond hair had been clipped short in a fashionable Brutus.

Even Lady Ross had been wide-eyed when he entered the room where they had pre-dinner drinks.

She was taken aback to see him thus. He had been wearing his riding clothes, when she presented her sisters to him that afternoon. She appeared to have spoken to the air and looked at his right ear whenever she addressed him. Introductions were mercifully short and she hastened away under the pretense of overlooking the unpacking of her sister’s and Lady Ross’ luggage.

She did not notice the awe her sisters bestowed on her errant husband, nor had she seen the heated looks the same had sent in her direction during dinner.

At dinner, she had placed herself at least six yards away from him, at the other end of the dinner table. That was far away enough not to have to talk to him. Six yards was about shouting distance.

Devon Broadhurst was placed in the middle, flanked by Lady Ross and Attelante, while David had the company of a rather closemouthed Aline and a chattering Lady Grange, the Viscount’s only aunt alive from his mother’s side.

Devon was charming and nice, but David Montague blundered through dinner after mentioning his old chap, Jeffrey Burroughs, who was now supposed to be rusticating in the Yorkshire country-side.

This name-dropping earned him a rather stiff upper lip look from the Viscount.

David then resorted to treating the company to some daring occurrences in the army, which were hardly meant for the sensitive ears of unmarried ladies. It made the elderly ones at the table wonder if he had ever had an education.

Anthea noticed Lord Montague’s fast intake of alcoholic beverages and felt obliged to signal the footman behind David’s chair to slow down the provision of the heavy claret.

“He’s still the Marques Andover’s heir,” Anthea remarked, surprised that she was defending her husband, “and he is nearly the personal friend of the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of Lindley.”

She had heard that from Higgins when he was in a chatty mood.

Aline slid off the bed.

“Let’s go, Attie,” she murmured, “we need to leave Thea now.”

“Why?” Attelante frowned, “He’s certainly not coming to sleep with Anthea tonight. I heard David, I mean Lord Montague, say they were all having a night out.”

She suddenly looked at Anthea who had blanched in front of the mirror.

“I’m sorry, Thea,” she gasped, “that was very insensitive of me.”

True, Anthea thought darkly when her sister hastened to the door; very true and very astute. Obviously, her husband was in the phase of openly paying her back for her assumed indifference and her hiding techniques.

*

*

*

Chapter 3: OPINIONS GALORE

*

*

“This is no use!”

Kit straightened up from the rose-colored couch.

The girl sitting in front of him in her daring see-through silk dress scrambled backwards.

“But, my lord...” the girl protested.

Madame was not going to like any report of a man whom she had not been able to bring to a happy completion.

Kit was already fastening the plaque of his officer’s breeches.

“It’s not your fault, Mimi.”

He reached for his officer’s coat which had been the subject of female admiration all night. The entire London was in love with uniforms since Napoleon’s defeat. If you had one you needed to wear one.

He reddened when he pulled on his shoes.

Christ, this had never happened to him before in his life. Not even when he had been pissed with drink.

The entire evening, throughout dinner, he had sported a hard-on, as big as a dinosaur’s bone and as soon as they joined Madame Barquette’s Chocolate House, a nice name for one of the most expensive brothels in London, he had been as limp as a lily. Even the delectable Mimi, one of the highest paid whores was not able to make his thing jump back into its rather common state since of late.

-