Читать книгу The Regency Season Collection: Part Two - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 46
ОглавлениеTom watched and assisted his wife and brother-in-law whenever they needed it for the rest of the hour they had agreed to spend at the Trethayne ball before going on to another society ball to show the world they had come to town to do more than just challenge the old vulture at the head of his wife’s family tree on his home ground.
‘My thanks, Lady Chloe, Winterley,’ he said as soon as he’d handed his lady up into the vast old town chariot Virginia had insisted was far more comfortable than more modern and less accommodating vehicles.
‘Not at all. It was far better entertainment than I expected of my first appearance in London society,’ Chloe Winterley said, ‘and now I’m no longer the prime target of all the gossips. I swear I would like you for that, Polly, even if I didn’t love you already for marrying Tom and preventing my lord here from worrying himself to flinders about his well-being and peace of mind when I would far rather he was intent on mine instead.’
‘Then I’m pleased to have been of service,’ his Polly said lightly enough, but Tom knew she was a lot less relaxed than she was so gallantly pretending to be all the same.
‘I wonder who the next one is,’ he remarked to divert their attention from the strains of taking on the Earl of Trethayne and the most conservative part of polite society all in one evening.
‘What next one?’ Toby piped up, and Tom felt Polly’s interest stir despite her weariness with this whole wretched business of claiming back Toby’s fortune from the money-grabbing old villain who’d appropriated it as his own and blessed the topic of conversation he’d found so appallingly unamusing at the outset of his season at Virginia’s beck and call.
Satisfied? he asked silently, as if his godmother could somehow hear him.
You’ll do now seemed to come back to him as if she’d whispered it in his ear, but the laughter and satisfaction in it felt so much like her that his breath caught with love and loss. It was almost easy when you got the hang of it, this love business, and he realised he’d had a flying start at it by being taken in and loved despite himself by Virgil and Virginia all those years ago.
‘My godmother’s next victim,’ he explained with an apologetic nod at the corner of the carriage he knew very well only held Toby and a silk cushion, even if it had been her favourite seat when she was alive.
‘Victim?’ Toby asked sleepily, and Tom wondered if they really needed to drag him across London for another interminable party, but Luke and Peters had insisted and he suspected they knew more about staying on the right side of the dowagers than he did.
‘My great-aunt, being a great deal more fun and loving us as dearly as your own great-uncle clearly only loves himself, decreed four of her closest relatives and friends spend a quarter each of the year after her death carrying out errands on her behalf. This quarter was Tom’s and the next... Well, only my darling wife and Peters’ senior partner know who the next one on her list is and they are not telling us.’
‘First I had to inform the person who will be expected to carry out her wishes, Luke,’ Chloe told him, and Tom thought he knew what his friend had meant at the beginning of all this about enjoying watching the next on the list dance about at Virginia’s bidding because he knew his task was safely over.
He felt Polly next to him and the enormity of the changes in his own life caught him up in wonder, that he should be so other than how he had thought he was back then and that Polly should love him anyway.
‘So who is he?’
‘That is not for me to reveal.’
‘Me,’ Peters’s voice rasped from his own dark corner of the vast old vehicle as it rumbled to a stop, and the flares and noise of another great rout spilled out on to the streets around it. ‘Confound it, but she picked me for some reason best known to herself.’
‘I’m quite sure she had a good one,’ Chloe said soothingly, and Tom felt his Polly lean forward to ask more and ran a distracting hand over her pert derrière now shadows and the flurry of disembarking covered up his need to touch her as often as he could get away with it.
‘Enough, love, it’s his job to work through the next few months as best he can. We have our own lives to work on for our next fifty or sixty years together.’
‘True, but I can never thank your godmama enough for sending you back to Dayspring Castle this spring, Tom,’ Polly said with such certainty in her voice he had to swallow back an unmanly lump in his throat.
She had done so much damage to the Marquis of Mantaigne’s light-hearted indifference to the rest of the world he hardly recognised himself in Polly Trethayne’s besotted husband, but the very thought of having missed out on this new life of theirs made him realise how deeply indebted he was to Virginia for making him return to the castle he’d sworn never to set foot in again as long as he lived.
‘True, and if I hadn’t loved her before I would have to now, love, for she’s turned all I ever swore not to do on its head. If only I’d come back when I came of age instead of ordering the place to fall down without me, we could have been happy for years by now.’
‘If you hadn’t left Dayspring empty, we would never have gone to live there in your absence, you idiot,’ his loving wife chided as Tom sprang out of the carriage to hand down his lady before any other rogue could do it for him.
‘There you are, you see, Peters? I have a lifetime of scolds and humility to look forward to,’ he said smugly as he stood back for Luke to echo his own determination not to let any other man lay a hand on his wife tonight and hand Chloe down from the grand old coach.
‘I look forward to observing it from afar, my lord,’ the supposedly quiet young lawyer told him solemnly.
‘If you think you can get away from Farenze that easily you’re about to discover your error. Fellow’s like a limpet. Polly and I will call our first son after you, then you won’t be able to deny our acquaintance either.’
‘Frederick, wasn’t it?’ Polly asked, looking as if she was trying hard to like the idea, and Tom considered the notion with apparent seriousness.
‘Peter?’ he suggested, thinking that sounded a fair enough name for a future marquis and the son he’d once sworn never to have. He caressed Polly’s long fingers as they walked up the steps to the next grand town house on their list unashamedly hand-locked. ‘It would keep the boy’s feet on the ground to have a good solid name to remind him he’s not one of the lords of Creation.’
‘He will have me for that,’ Polly reminded him with a radiant smile as they joined the tail of guests waiting to be introduced to their host and hostess for the next hour or so and yet another blushing daughter recently launched on the marriage mart.
‘How true,’ Tom replied with a mock grimace at the idea of being humbled for his own good for the next fifty years or so. ‘Perhaps we’d best call him after a great warrior after all then. It sounds as if the poor lad could need encouragement.’
‘Even if I thought you were serious, my lord, there’s no need to do either on my account,’ Peters told him with an uncomfortable glance around another glittering ballroom that told Tom he would rather be almost anywhere else, but he’d been drawn into that Farenze Connection old Trethayne had referred to so scornfully against his will and felt some sort of obligation to support the rest of them tonight. ‘Those are not my real names,’ he added as drily as if discussing some obscure point of law with his fellow lawyers.
‘An alias?’ Tom asked with raised eyebrows and tried to ignore his wife’s frown and shushing gesture as he challenged his latest brother-in-arms.
‘We all sail under false colours in some ways, don’t you agree, my lord?’ the man challenged him back, and Tom looked at himself at the beginning of his quest and decided the man was right.
‘Perhaps, but some of us not quite as deliberately as others. Are you the black sheep of the family then, cast adrift for some youthful sin I’m quite certain you won’t tell us about?’
‘I could be,’ not-Peters said tightly as they approached the head of the receiving line, and delighted whispers began to break out in another overcrowded ballroom like ripe corn chattering together on a stir of summer hot air. ‘I could be their worst nightmare,’ he added so low nobody else but Tom and Polly could hear.
‘Or their favourite dream,’ Polly argued. ‘You never know what the next three months might bring you, but I’m very glad Tom’s brought him to me. Perhaps you should go back to them and find out if they really think themselves better off without you rather than deciding for them?’
‘And perhaps I should do the decent thing and stay away,’ he replied with a bleak certainty even Tom found rather chilling for a man he’d come to respect and like, if he could get through the rigid self-control Peters used to fend off the world.
‘Whatever you should or shouldn’t do, you’re at Virginia’s mercy for the next season and I wish you joy of it,’ Luke put in with a grin after they had got through the surprised greetings and hasty congratulations of their hosts and moved out into the ballroom beyond. ‘I certainly intend to enjoy the fruits of my labours to the full,’ he added with a wicked smile at Chloe.
‘Cocksure braggart,’ she chided softly enough so only they could hear her, despite the stars in her eyes.
‘Guilty,’ he admitted brazenly and whisked her into the next dance to show the polite world he only had eyes for his wife and intended to ignore all those dreadful rumours that the Farenze curse had struck again.
Dark and dangerous Lord Farenze himself had been captured and spellbound beyond diversion and now, horror of horrors, there was a rumour going about the ballroom that the Marquis of Mantaigne had wed the magnificent creature he refused to let go long enough to even be introduced. Society, or at least the young and hopeful female part of it, let out a long sigh of disappointment and readjusted its expectations of making a brilliant marriage or taking a dazzlingly handsome lover with that particular gentleman.
‘So you see, Peters, for I don’t imagine you’re about to gift us with the use of your real name, you are in danger of being made happy despite your best intentions to be miserable,’ Tom told him and dragged his own lady onto the dance-floor in his friend’s wake before Polly could protest at leaving her brother to be guided through the avidly curious throng by Virginia’s next hero.
‘He’ll guard your eldest lamb as if he’s the only heir to a kingdom, never fear, love,’ Tom whispered as Polly watched her eldest brother grin at the neatly dressed lawyer and follow him to the groaning refreshment table.
‘I don’t. Mr Peters has a very safe pair of hands and Toby is far more grown up than any of the pampered sons and heirs these people are accustomed to. If they try to pump him for details, he’ll very likely to tell them some wild and improbable story just for the fun of it.’
‘Aye, and I can’t help liking him for it.’
‘Neither can I,’ Polly admitted with a chuckle that did something very drastic indeed to Tom’s heart and sent him into a state of complete desire between one second and the next.
‘I much prefer his big sister though,’ he admitted huskily as they came back together for the next part of the dance and even a brisk measure with a very disapproving matron hadn’t been enough to restore him to a fit state to inhabit a lady’s ballroom. ‘You couldn’t manage a bit of a stumble, or perhaps even a faint, could you, love? I want to bed you even more urgently than I did this afternoon and I don’t think there’s any way I can conceal the fact from the rest of the world for much longer.’
‘It would take half a dozen footmen to carry me out,’ she said with a wry smile and a huff of laughter as she looked down at the evidence of his rampant need for her. ‘Hmm, I do see what you mean, though,’ she added with a delighted smile that only made it worse.
‘I won’t have you traduce yourself, or me for that matter, my love. You are just as tall as you need to be and I wouldn’t have you even half an inch less and at least if I’m carrying you I can hide behind your skirts, for once.’
‘You couldn’t,’ she gasped a little less certainly as the music finally wound down, and she looked as if she felt ready to melt from the inside out as well.
‘I’m impressive, Polly, my darling, but not even I am too huge not to be able to hide what you do to me behind that delightful but highly unnecessary wisp of silk and nonsense,’ he said with a dismissive glance at the finest gown in a whole wardrobe of them that the Bond Street modiste had rushed through her workroom in time for Lady Mantaigne to make her début in polite society at the advanced age of four and twenty.
‘It is very necessary,’ she argued absent-mindedly as she flitted through scenarios for getting out of this ballroom in double-quick time and without her lord making a scandal of them both mere days into their marriage.
‘Not as far as I’m concerned it’s not,’ he argued as his intensely blue eyes met hers with a wealth of hot promises that made her shiver with anticipation. ‘I want you in it, out of it and any other way I can have you, my lovely witchy Polly. From the first moment I laid eyes on you I’ve been racked with need and I don’t intend either of us to be denied satiating that need again for much longer.’
‘We sated it all afternoon, Tom,’ she protested half-heartedly, but there was as much heat in her grey-green-blue eyes as in his, and her breath was coming so short his fascinated gaze was fixed on her décolletage as her breasts rose magnificently, begging for his attentions as soon as possible under the promise of all he’d taught her to expect these past few days since they married in haste. ‘I suppose I am very hot,’ she managed to say rather breathily.
‘You most certainly are,’ he drawled, with the Tomcat smile that had once made her hackles rise and hot shivers of desire plague her dreams and now made her long to share them with him even more than she had a second ago.
‘I love you, Tom,’ she breathed, and to the devil with anyone who might be listening.
‘And I love you, my darling, but any minute now I might have to beg you to get us out of here, because I can’t seem to string two thoughts together than aren’t of making love to you as soon and as long as I can find an excuse to.’
‘Oh, very well then,’ she said with a tight little sigh that told him more than a hundred words of how much she loved and wanted him back, because she obligingly drooped as if quite overcome by the heat and excitement of her first night amongst the ton and trusted him absolutely to catch her and get them out of here as fast as he could order his host to lend them the nearest carriage and throw guineas at the coachman to get them back to Mantaigne House faster than he could say knife.
* * *
Polly stayed totally limp against him for a long moment, savouring the mighty strength of her lover and revelling in being needed and wanted by the man she wanted and needed so desperately back.
‘I never dreamed I would marry at all, you know?’ she whispered as he held her even closer to shield her from the rocking carriage as it swept across Mayfair.
‘I know it,’ he said rather grimly, considering he had interrupted kissing his way up her throat to do so. ‘I deplore it and yet... Oh, love, I’m so glad you were safe at Dayspring and away from the wolves all the time I was strutting about the ton pretending I didn’t care a damn for anyone. I have no right to be so proud to be your first lover, but I am and fully intend to be your last as well, if God will grant us the time to glory in each other like this for life.’
‘Idiot,’ she muttered on a blissful haze of joy that almost went beyond words. ‘Of course I’m glad it was only ever you and always will be. There’s nothing wrong with being all in all to each other, nothing wrong with being glad we love and live and want each other so immoderately. Do you truly think Toby will be all right with Mr Peters, though?’ she added as remembrance of the rest of her family impinged on the desire he was feeding so shamelessly she wondered if they would make it home and into his splendid marquis’s bed before they fell on each other like ravenous tigers.
‘Why else to you think the man agreed to come with us tonight?’ Tom said and gasped in a huge breath as the brush of her thigh against his mightily aroused manhood made him grip his fists tight in his determination not to make love to his marchioness in a stranger’s carriage. ‘He’s no fool and knew neither we nor Luke and Chloe would be able to keep cool in the company of our lovers. I dare say he would rather have teeth pulled than enter a Mayfair ballroom of his own accord.’
‘Then he’s a good man,’ she said with a nod that said it confirmed her conclusions about her new husband’s lawyer and perhaps friend. ‘I hope your godmother hasn’t bitten off more than she could chew this time, though, for I would dearly like to see your Mr Peters happy.’
‘He’s neither mine nor Mr Peters, love, but I have learnt to have even more faith in Virginia over the past three months than I had before, so I expect he’ll end up wherever it is he thinks he has no right to be. However, my interest in the man is lukewarm at best when I have my Lady Mantaigne available to distract me with her many and varied charms,’ he said as the carriage finally lurched to its destination.
‘No,’ she ordered him brusquely as he jumped out of the carriage and turned to lift her in his arms again. ‘You will just have to carry this,’ she declared, handing him her cloak as a mask for the state they had done nothing to diminish during the drive. ‘I refuse to have you winded and exhausted when we finally manage to get ourselves upstairs,’ she added with a haughty sniff as he eyed her with lordly determination and made a grab for her.
‘She-wolf,’ he accused as she dodged him and reminded him he’d agreed to pay the coachman another two guineas if he got them here before the clock finished chiming midnight.
‘Tomcat,’ she shot back over her shoulder as she gathered up her silken skirts and frothy petticoats in one hand and ran up the steps as if the devil was on her heels.
‘Hand over the keys to the wine-cellar, marry him to your eldest daughter or just pay the man for me, would you?’ Tom asked his butler distractedly before he set off up the steps to his once-stately and echoing mansion without a second thought for his lost reputation as an elegantly bored and sophisticated man about town.
‘Yes, my lord,’ the butler said with a glare for the grinning coachman. ‘Breathe a word of this and I’ll make sure you ain’t up to marrying any man’s daughter, let alone mine,’ he threatened the man as he handed over the extortionate fee his master had promised him.
‘Even the nobs will know by now he can’t keep his hands off her, cocky, so that’s a horse as has already bolted,’ the man said cheerfully and went off to tell his tale to whoever was the most eager to listen to it.
‘And ain’t that just how it ought to be between a man and his wife?’ the butler asked the sparkling June night, lit by stars so bright they even managed to outshine the man-made glitter of Mayfair in full fig.
‘Hurry,’ Tom gritted between clenched teeth as Polly streaked up the stairs ahead of him and he could see enough of her slender legs and the long, sleek lines of her hips and bottom outlined by that wicked provocation of a gown to drive him nigh demented. ‘I hope your maid isn’t waiting up,’ he managed as she got to the door only one step ahead of him and fumbled it open before turning to snap a hasty denial.
‘Of course not. Jane has far more sense,’ she told him as if he was an idiot to even mention it.
‘Silly me,’ he said with a predator’s grin and shut the door behind them with a contented sigh. ‘Alone at last, my love,’ he whispered and set about the laces of her gown with hands clumsy with too much haste even as he devoured her temptation of a mouth with a driven groan.
‘Ah, love, quiet,’ she soothed even as her still slightly calloused fingers raced to undo as much of Lord Mantaigne as she could while he was doing the same for Lady Mantaigne in his ham-fisted fashion. ‘We have all night,’ she promised even as she hastily shrugged out of her loosened gown and gave a crow of triumph as she pushed his roughly unbuttoned waistcoat and tightly fitting evening coat off his shoulders.
He dipped his head to feast on her roused nipples even as she moaned with pent-up need and haste and caressed his wildly disordered locks with such tenderness he raised his head and snatched another of those hasty, open-mouthed kisses before pulling far enough away to fumble off his cravat and tug his shirt over his head. Any last trace of ladylike restraint vanished as she eyed his hard-muscled torso and lean waist with a heavy-eyed smile.
‘Evening breeches are a cursed nuisance,’ she informed him as he bent to unbutton them at the knee and heel off his elegant shoes before impatiently stripping away his stockings.
‘Oh, I don’t know, they have their uses,’ he said huskily as she attacked the buttons at his waist with more haste than skill.
‘Not for hiding this,’ she told him with would-be severity, but her eyes glittered hotly in the light of the candle Jane had left on the nightstand, so they might at least try not to ruin another set of expensive raiment and cause her and his lordship’s valet even more trouble.
‘Did you want to?’ he asked with a wicked grin.
‘Not from us, from all those other women,’ she admitted rather painfully.
‘None of them matter. I didn’t love anyone until I met you, remember?’
‘Oh, you man, you. You have always had it there deep within you, Tom, but you wouldn’t let yourself know it. How else could you have made a family of the heart when your real one faded? How did you win a legion of friends and lovers who put you at the centre of their circle and had the sense to know you made them more than they were without you? You are so much more than you ever let yourself know, but what if you learn that for yourself one day and don’t need me any more?’
‘Now who’s the idiot?’ he asked with a catch in his deep voice. ‘I will never not need you, Polly. I found pleasure with other women before I met you and if that makes you sad and uncertain of me, I’m sorry for it and wish it otherwise, but it was nothing like this. I’ve never needed to make love to another woman so desperately it feels as if I might expire of sheer need without you. Does it look as if I could ever stop wanting you, my love? Because if it does, I think we’d better get you fitted for some eyeglasses as soon as the spectacle makers are open in the morning.’
‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my eyesight,’ she said with a hiccup of laughter as she let her gaze linger on the very evident need he had of her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she told him, quite forgetting to be insecure at the sight of him so openly and proudly wanting her to the finest fibre of his being.
‘Ah, love, come here and let me show you how breathtakingly lovely you are,’ he said in reply and he actually blushed at her wide-eyed appreciation of his muscular body and rampantly aroused manhood. ‘I love you, Polly Trethayne,’ he told her as he held her eyes and parted her legs so he could thrust into the hot wet heat of her and unite them once more.
‘Polly Banburgh,’ she corrected breathlessly and opened wholeheartedly to him, sparing a moment to marvel anew that Polly Trethayne had found herself a husband, and such a fine and rampant husband as the Marquis of Mantaigne as well. ‘I love you, Tom. With every last inconvenient inch of me, I love you.’
‘Every last magnificent and delightful inch of you I hope you mean. Every bit of you is precious to me,’ he said as he met her dazed eyes with his blazing hot, blue gaze so full of conviction she had to believe him. ‘I wouldn’t have you an inch less, my Polly, and don’t let anyone make you feel awkward or overgrown ever again.’
‘Very well, I won’t,’ she said meekly and let her inner muscles ripple around his hard member in delighted encouragement. ‘There are so many parts of me in need of reassurance that you love right now, husband,’ she murmured with wanton encouragement as she sneaked a suggestive hand over her own hard-peaked nipples and down the smooth line of her narrow waist and the curve of her hips before she reached their joined bodies and found his more fascinating than her own.
‘Oh, I love you all right, so get ready to be reassured to your heart’s content, Lady Mantaigne,’ he said huskily as he silenced her with a long, hard kiss as if they’d been parted for weeks instead of hours and proceeded to show his wife he loved and appreciated and wanted every last fine inch of silky skin and every hair on her head.
* * * * *
