Regency Rogues: Disgraceful Secrets

Now, even standing by the open windows, the air seemed fresh and cool. Lily and her horrid family deserved some credit for chasing out the dampness, fixing the roof and giving it all a wash and a coat of paint.

Then he reminded himself that if the other Norths were involved, the spaces outside his bedroom had not been done for his benefit. There was a plot in progress and he was tired of feeling as if he’d wandered in on the last act of the play. It was time for Lillian to prove her loyalty and tell him what had been going on here.

To find his answers, he left his room and took the stairs down to the wing that was the ladies’ side of the house. There was no such thing, really. But his family had traditionally split itself along the line created by the centre hall. The billiard room, the library and the trophy room were to the left. The breakfast room, the morning room and the conservatory were to the right. Generations of Wiscombes had found that, if one wished to, one could avoid one’s wife most of the day, except for dinner and the bedroom. A man’s life could be largely unchanged by marriage if he had the sense to stay on his own side of the hall.

In his youth, Gerry’s father had limited himself to half the house, even after his wife had passed. While Gerry kept the memory of his mother alive by haunting the spaces that had been hers, Father had treated the right side of the house and the son in it as if they no longer existed.

If the current lady of the house truly wished to avoid her houseguests, she must have fallen in with Wiscombe tradition and retreated to the wing not littered with empty wine bottles and dead deer. As Gerry turned down the right hallway a young face peeked out from behind the curtains in the hall, then disappeared again.

It was the boy. It explained the feeling he’d had all morning that he was being watched. The sounds of scrabbling and rustling that he’d heard while touring the ground floor earlier had not been mice in the wainscoting. It had been but a single pest, following behind, waiting for an invitation to come closer and discuss the gift.

When he was young, Gerry had tried such tricks on his own father and had been consistently rebuffed. The elder Wiscombe had had little use for anyone not old enough to take up a weapon and follow him into the field for a hunt. But at least Gerry had been the actual heir. It was annoying that this little whelp who had no claim of blood thought he was entitled to attention.

He did his best to ignore it. But now that he had recognised it, the sound of shifting feet on the hall rug behind him was maddening. At last, to no one in particular, he said, ‘Go away.’

There was a sniffle in response.

Children’s tears were even more annoying than women’s. Especially when they were someone else’s children and none of his concern. But it was not the child’s fault that he was a bastard. It would be unfair to treat him too harshly. ‘And well done on the mathematics,’ he added, without turning around.

The sniffling stopped. There was a sigh, then the shuffling receded down the hallway.

Very good. He had no time to deal with a single mouse when the whole house was full of rats. He continued down the hall. Gerry checked the morning room, and music room, and salon, but found them vacant. This left him with the biggest folly of his foolish house: the conservatory.

Father had claimed that no true Wiscombe cared a fig about plants, on a plate or in a pot. So it had been the first space to fail after his mother had died. With its cracked panes and overgrown tangles of ivy and ferns it had sat for years like a cancer in healthy flesh, letting the noxious wildness into the rest of the house, as if the woods themselves had come to take revenge for the continual disturbance of the wildlife.

But when he entered today, he was struck by the fresh smell of lemons on the two dwarf trees that flanked the entrance and the sweet spice of geraniums and gillyflowers in pots by the windows. Sunlight streamed through the glass roof and walls, which were both clean and unbroken. The beams shining though the green glass panes that decorated the walls cast a mottled pattern on the veined marble floor that resembled a carpet of fallen leaves.

In the midst of it was the fairest flower in the house: his Lily. She had not yet noticed him enter, so he used the opportunity to observe her. Did she know that the midday sun behind her shone through the muslin gown to reveal far more of her figure than he had seen last night while they were in bed? A thin layer of gauze and a few embroidered flowers were all that stood between him and the paradise of her high, full breasts, round hips and shapely legs.

Seven years’ bitter experience separated him and the naive child he’d been when he’d married her. Yet, when he looked at her he felt the same tightening in throat and groin that he’d experienced on the day he’d met her. He’d known that they were not making a love match, despite what her father claimed. What would a beauty like her want with a nothing like him? But perhaps, if he returned to her with a chest full of medals and a full purse, she would look at him with something other than frustration and disappointment. What a fool he had been.

As if she had heard his thoughts, she looked up at him now and gave a little gasp of shock. She dropped the bamboo-handled paintbrush she had been holding and it rolled across the floor to stop at his boot toe.

He stared down at it in surprise. Just now, he’d been too preoccupied by her figure to notice the easel she worked at and the watercolours on the glass-topped table beside her. It should not have surprised him. All ladies had hobbies and this one was not uncommon. But it had never occurred to him that his wife would have interests, other than spending his money and making him miserable with her infidelity.

Without a word, he picked up the brush and went forward into the room to give it back to her.

‘Thank you, Captain Wiscombe.’ She gave a nervous curtsy and cast her eyes downward, as though not quite sure how to respond to his sudden appearance.

His mind was equally unsettled by her demure response. ‘You paint?’ It was good that he had not been trying to impress her. He’d never have done it with such a fatuous remark.

She shrugged, embarrassed. ‘Watercolours, mostly.’ When pressed to make conversation, she seemed just as awkward as he felt.

He glanced down at a tall stack of books and newspapers beside the paints. A closer look revealed them to be a mix of atlases, gazetteers and histories of Spain, France and Portugal, along with several old copies of The Times. ‘And these?’

‘Inspiration,’ she said and almost knocked over her water glass as she tried to hide the clipping on the top of the stack.

He was faster, holding her wrist with one hand and snatching up the paper with the other. He scanned the text, reading a few lines aloud. ‘“And notable for their valour in the charge was the troop led by Captain Gerald Wiscombe…”’ He put the paper back on the table and smiled at her. ‘You find me inspiring?’

She shrugged again, blushing. ‘I followed the news of the war. It would have been foolish not to. And while flowers are lovely, one can only draw so many of them before it becomes tiring.’

A feeble excuse from someone who was obviously enamoured of the dashing hero the newspapers had made him out to be. He’d met such women before. He could set them to giggling and blushing with a single smile. An invitation to hear a few of his tamer war stories would end with them sitting indecently close, his arm draped about soft shoulders in reassurance as sweet lips offered rewards for his bravery.

He looked at the woman before him, his woman, and stifled recollections of his romantic past with an embarrassed cough. He released her hand. ‘And what is your current project?’ He glanced at the work in progress. ‘Mont-Saint-Jean?’ He could not keep the surprise from his voice.

‘It is only a copy.’ She pointed to the open book beside her paints.

Perhaps it was. But the style of rendering was familiar. ‘You did the paintings in my room?’

‘It seemed like a sensible place to put them,’ she said. ‘At least until something better could be found to decorate the walls. I hesitated to choose permanent ornaments without your input. I will remove them, if you like.’

‘No,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Your work is surprisingly accurate for someone who has never visited those places.’ He glanced back at the picture in the book. ‘See here?’ He pointed. ‘You’ve changed the angle of the light and captured the colour of it in a way this pencil sketch did not. And in the pictures in my room you’ve found the wild beauty of the countryside and omitted the chaos and blood that we left. It is how I want to remember the places I’ve been. The pictures are perfect just where they are.’

‘Perfect,’ she repeated, surprised.

‘I like them well, as I do the rest of the decoration. Is that also your doing?’

She gave another shrug. ‘I merely chose the things I imagined a man such as Captain Wiscombe might appreciate, after reading accounts of your bravery.’ Her gaze dropped even farther, as if she were fascinated with the toes of her own slippers. ‘You were quite famous, you know.’

‘I did nothing that other soldiers wouldn’t have done in my place.’ If she would giggle or flirt, he might be able to respond in kind. But the earnestness of her praise embarrassed him. While in the thick of the action, he’d never intended to be a hero.

‘On the contrary, the papers said Captain Wiscombe showed singular bravery, charging ahead when others retreated.’ Now that she’d admitted to her preoccupation with his career, she gathered the nerve to look up at him with wide-eyed awe.

‘You talk of this Wiscombe fellow as if he is some sort of paragon that a lady might swoon over and not standing here in front of you.’ He looked at her, waiting for her to laugh at the hyperbole.

Instead, the blush in her cheeks turned scarlet. She could not seem to utter a syllable in response. This was no common infatuation that might be appeased with a single kiss on the cheek. She might have stood yesterday’s criticism with cool grace. But today, she was suffering an agony of mortification over gentle mockery.

Had she really created an ideal of him in her mind and doted on it, just as he’d hoped she would? If so, it was too late. Her loyalty was worth nothing if she’d only found it after she’d betrayed him. But staring at the half-finished picture on the easel, he felt the anger beginning to drain out of him, just as it did when he entered his room the previous evening. He looked away.

‘Whatever the reason for your painting,’ he said gruffly, ‘you’ve done well by it. And the bedroom you’ve prepared for me is quite the nicest I have been in. It suits me. Do not change a thing about it and hang as many pictures there as you care to paint.’

‘Very well, Captain.’ With her assent, she seemed to stifle her more tender feelings with the unquestioning obedience he’d requested yesterday.

She must not give up so easily. ‘We will admire them together tonight,’ he reminded her, flashing his most devilish grin. It was unfair to toy with her, but he could not resist.

‘Yes, Captain.’ This time, the breathlessness in her voice stole his own, as did the thought of this beautiful creature in his bed. It would be just as he dreamed of, after all. Once he’d chased the last of the guests from the house, they would be able to explore their passions in private.

And then he reminded himself that she and her family had been instrumental in gathering the people he must now evict. While they might have stopped the leaks in the roof, they’d let Greywall into the house, allowing the one thing he’d hoped to avoid by accepting wife and commission.

While his wife’s devotion to him was flattering, it was a new thing compared to the loyalty she’d shown to her conniving father and brother. Though Lily was beautiful, sometimes poison could be hidden in a pretty bottle. He should have better sense than to drink it.

‘I did not come here to speak of my war record, or your feelings about it,’ he said, crushing the fragile rapport between them. ‘I want you to tell me what is really going on in this house.’

‘What, exactly, do you wish to know about?’ He watched the blush fade from her cheeks, revealing the cool, distant woman who presided over his dinner table. Her question was not an evasion so much as a request for clarification.

He gave it to her. ‘What are your father and brother doing in my house, and who are these guests they have invited here? And what does it have to do with their initial eagerness that I marry you?’

To his surprise, she looked almost relieved that he had asked. ‘My father makes regular trips to London, where he has ingratiated himself into the sorts of circles where there is too much ready money and very little standing in society. When he has found three or four fellows who seem interested in changing one for the other, he invites them to a house party.’

‘You cannot buy rank,’ Gerry said with a shake of his head.

‘You did,’ she pointed out. ‘Father often opines that it would be better if society worked as the military did. There would be room enough at the pinnacle if it were easier for men of vision to pay their way up to being gentlemen.’

‘Perhaps so,’ he acknowledged. ‘But that is not the way of things.’

‘But suppose there was an opportunity to dine in intimacy with a member of the peerage. A friendship there might result in other invitations and a chance to move in more august circles once one returned to London.’

‘Greywall,’ Gerry said with a frown.

‘An earl could be kept like the bear in the Tower of London,’ she agreed.

‘As if my neighbour was ever of real benefit to anyone,’ Gerry said sceptically. ‘And what does your father gain by this far-fetched altruism?’ It was a question he should have asked himself when offered a beautiful wife and a commission. ‘Does he charge admission?’

‘That would be too obvious.’ She waved the hand that held the brush as if painting the truth in the air. ‘The gentlemen who visit are better at making money than friends.’

‘They are drunken louts,’ Gerry agreed.

‘It makes them susceptible to offers that appear friendly, especially when they include a chance to make even more money. After a few days spent bagging partridges and chasing foxes, and a few nights drinking good wine, they are offered an opportunity that cannot fail to profit. My father thinks of them as investors.’

‘Investors,’ Gerry repeated. ‘In what?’

‘I believe the current offering is the breeding of Russian sables,’ Lily responded with a sigh.

‘That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.’

‘So you would think. But it has worked several times before. The first time, he bought an actual pair of the animals to bolster the plan.’

‘The first time?’ he said, amazed.

‘It seems the sable farm is doomed to failure. The first pair escaped into the woods and have been—’ she gave an embarrassed cough ‘—fornicating with martins and not each other.’

‘If he has no sables, how can he convince anyone of the viability of this plan?’

She gave a small shrug. ‘Does a Londoner know what a sable looks like before it has been made into a coat collar? A stoat dyed black will do just as well.’ Now she was smiling. ‘Ronald got a rather nasty bite during that process. Apparently, stoats do not enjoy being dipped.’

‘Is that your brother’s sole part in the scheme, the painting of weasels?’

She shook her head. ‘My father is a man of big ideas. My brother less so. He enjoys cards and billiards. Any game of chance, really. He invariably wins. That is why Greywall is here. At this point, I believe we own more of his estate than he does himself.’

We. Had she even noticed she’d said it? Possibly not. But it annoyed him that as she’d explained her family’s plans, she’d grown more animated and the colour had returned to her cheeks. ‘That explains your father and brother,’ he said. ‘The guests and the earl, as well. But what is your part in all this?’

Her smile disappeared. ‘Recently? I am hostess. Nothing more than that. I make sure the house is maintained. I avoid the guests as much as I am able. I do not approve of what is happening here. Really, I do not.’ The protest was adamant, but it came far too late in the conversation.

‘But that is, as you say, recently. What was your part before?’

‘To be pretty and biddable,’ she said, her eyes falling. ‘To marry where I was told and not ask questions.’

‘You were bait for me,’ he clarified.

‘To make the plan work, they needed the earl. He is your neighbour.’

‘And he has coveted this house since my father was alive,’ Gerry added.

‘He wants the stag that has been roaming your land for ages.’

Gerry nodded. ‘My father called him Rex. King of the forest. I saw him in the woods as I arrived.’

‘Wanting a thing is different from getting it,’ she replied.

‘I am aware of that.’ He looked at her and thought of his own marriage and what that first decision had gained and lost him over the years.

‘They wanted you so they might get the house. They needed the house to trap the earl. The earl attends these parties to reclaim his markers from my brother.’

‘And his presence attracts your father’s investors from London,’ he finished.

‘As will yours, if they are allowed to continue,’ she whispered, glancing at the door as if she feared to be overheard. ‘My brother thinks he will convince you that you owe them for the improvements made on the house. If that does not work, he will find some other way to trick you out of your money. Father assumes I will help them because I am a North. And the Norths always look after their own.’

She looked so dejected at the thought that his common sense fled, just as it had on the day he’d met her. ‘Then it is a good thing you are not a North,’ he reminded her, taking the paintbrush from her hand. ‘You are a Wiscombe now.’ Then he tipped her chin up so that he might kiss her.

In Portugal, he’d often regretted that he had not come to her on their very first night as man and wife. He should have claimed her as his own immediately. But kissing her today, the remorse faded. Without having known others, how would he have recognised the sweetness of her kisses? Her mouth opened to him with the slightest coaxing. As he drank deeply from it, her body settled against his, ready to submit.

His hands were resting on the bare flesh at the base of her neck and he felt the pulse beating against the tips of his thumbs grow faster. He squeezed her shoulders in encouragement before smoothing his palms over and down her back, pressing her breasts and belly hard against his chest. At last, he reached the flare of her hips and her rounded bottom. He first cupped and then kneaded the flesh until she was squirming against his budding erection, gasping in eagerness.

He would have her here, naked as Eve in the Garden of Eden. He could imagine trapping her against the windows, his palms pressed flat to the cool glass. The scent of lemons would mingle with her musk as he thrust. And her cries…

Her cries would alert the household. He did not give a damn for any of the people here. But it would be more enjoyable to act out this particular fantasy once he had divested the Chase of the excess inhabitants.

He tightened his hands to fists, digging his nails into his palms to distract him from the temptation of her body. Then he moved his hands back to her shoulders and gently pushed her away. It pleased him to see that she looked as disappointed as he felt by the end of their play. But it was not nearly as nice as it would be when they had time to continue.

He cleared his throat and smiled. ‘As I said before, tonight we will have time to discuss the pictures that are hanging in my room.’

‘Yes, Captain Wiscombe,’ she said with a dazed smile.

‘And we will discuss your concerns about the future, as well. But do not worry, Mrs Wiscombe.’ He added a slight emphasis to the surname, so she might remember it. ‘Since there are but two of us Wiscombes, we must stick together.’

‘Three.’ The child’s voice came from the doorway, breaking his mood like a stone through window glass. ‘There are three Wiscombes, Papa. Do not forget me.’

He had, damn it all. Just for a moment, he had forgotten the boy. But his memory had returned and ruined everything. He shot a wordless glare at the woman before him. Then he turned, pushed past the child and was gone.

Chapter Nine

No matter what he intended, Gerry was far too quick to play the fool for this family. A few daubs of paint, a doe-eyed glance and a pair of soft lips and he had been ready to forget the obvious, until it had intruded on him and demanded his attention.

He must not be swayed by appearances. The woman he’d married was as crafty as Eve, just like the rest of her family. But if she was to be any use to him outside the bedroom, it would be easy enough to prove. He crossed the length of the house to his study, pulled the chequebook from the desk drawer and wrote a hurried draft. Then he went in search of his brother-in-law.

‘Ronald North.’ He found him in the billiard room and greeted him with the same joviality he had on the previous night.

‘Wiscombe.’ The memory of the previous night’s game must have been fresh in his mind, for he did not bother to be pleasant.

‘Practising for a rematch?’ Gerry said, picking up a ball from the table to spoil the shot. ‘I would think, after years of chasing Rex about the wood, you would know that it is very hard to beat a native habitué of the Chase at any game played here.’

‘It was never my intention to best you,’ Ronald said, with a smile. ‘There is no reason we need to be at odds. We are family now, after all.’

‘By marriage,’ Gerry reminded him. ‘And while I am grateful for the help you provided with the house and lands, I suspect you must be growing tired of the place and eager to get back to wherever it was you came from.’ He pulled the cheque from his pocket and held it out to his wife’s brother. ‘This should cover the cost of repairs made to the house and the commission your father bought. I have added an expression of my gratitude for your help, as well.’

The look of shock on Ronald’s face was most satisfying. It was clear that he would not have thought to ask for this much, had he carried through with his original plan. Now, he was torn between pocketing the money and looking for the catch hidden within the offer.

‘There should be enough here to find a place of your own, if you do not already have one,’ Gerry added. ‘Dear Lily and I are eager to begin a private honeymoon, now that I am returned.’

Ronald withdrew his hand. ‘You and Lily and Stewart, you mean.’

And there was the boy again, in the way even when he was not here. ‘We are speaking of you at the moment,’ Gerry reminded him, dragging the conversation back to where it belonged. ‘I suspect it will be very dull for you, once your friends are gone. Unless you wish to spend your future evenings playing Spillikins with us.’

Ronald laughed. ‘No guests and nursery games? Are you going to tell me you had no time for cards in the army?’

‘I am as skilled at them as I am at billiards,’ he admitted. ‘But I do not like them overmuch, since the time I was forced to challenge an acquaintance for cheating at the table.’

‘A rather extreme reaction for what was probably a mistake on your part,’ Ronald said, watching him closely.

‘On the contrary, it was the other fellow’s mistake.’ He smiled, baring his teeth. ‘He didn’t have an opportunity to make another.’

‘And what does this story have to do with anything?’ Ronald asked, impatient.

‘It is merely to inform you of the future of Wiscombe Chase,’ Gerry said. ‘No guests. No cards. No hunting either, for that matter. Nothing but peace and quiet from here onwards.’ He held out the cheque again.