The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances (9 page)

Felice grew solemn. Howell’s views were a mystery. “You would think that a man with a merchant fleet and a spice company here in London would be supporting a ready and adequate supply of foodstuffs for our army in Spain.”

“True. But I would swear Howell has some ulterior motive.”

Fear stabbed at her heart. “Do you think he built this scandal sheet to promote his own views?”

“The
TellTale
? Perhaps. Sometimes, I think he uses it to just to make others suffer.”

“So do you think he is truly evil? Those who work against others for no reason but to take their pleasure are very few and far between, Adam.”

Adam examined her. “You confuse me. You are usually so supportive of anything I say, particularly about Howell. Yet you defend him?”

“No, surely not! I wish I knew what drives him.”

“That makes two of us.” He took her arm and walked her toward her own dressing room. “Show me this new gown. I need to acquaint myself with it now so that I will have eyes for my dinner guests instead of you alone.”

She leaned against him as they entered the room next to his bedroom. “You are too complimentary.” She went toward the dress form and her new dinner gown delivered only this afternoon by Madame Fouchay. Grass-green silk over a slip of buttercup yellow, the design with the high Empire waist was the one Adam declared he most enjoyed seeing on her.

“Lovely,” he declared.

Her golden gaze fell over him in admiration.

His expression grew lazy with desire. But he turned, frowning.

She had seen that look on his face before. Whenever he thought of the family curse, he tried to hide his despair. She knew he drew closer to her. In bed, in the wee dark hours he took her not once but twice before dawn and then again. He was patient, generous with his body and his words of affection. He gave her much. His name, his house, his prestige, his son. She wanted his very heart. And to gain it, she would have to overcome not only her own challenge, Howell. But she would also have to fight that hideous family blight. The Stanhope curse.

The only way to go forward was to tell him, show him how deeply she cared for him. “You are more than generous with me, Adam. A wardrobe, my own spending money. The run of the house. And care of Georgie. I am honored.”

“And I am more than pleased. More than I ever thought to be.” He chucked her chin. Affable, but cool. The curse could do that to him, turn him from her. But he smiled, valiant, and charmingly cavalier. “Come, don this gown. I shall like it on you immensely. Best of all, I will enjoy removing it after all our guests have gone.”

****

The party of sixteen consisted of Adam’s closest personal friends in Parliament. Felice looked down the table and took pride in how her guests relished the selections for the evening. Adam’s cook has risen to the occasion with grand flair, bringing in an entrée of roast of beef succulent and done to point. Cook’s dessert of flan and strawberries finished off the five-course meal as Adam suggested the men retire to his library for brandy and conversation. Fee took the ladies to her parlor for tea and a draught of sherry.

Lady Ulmsly was most appreciative of Felice’s menu.

“I assure you, my lady,” Felice demurred, “Cook’s talent predated my arrival here. I merely ordered the menu for this evening.”

“Nonetheless,” offered Lady Wingate, “a sound beginning as a new bride.”

“Thank you, Lady Wingate. My husband and I are extremely happy.”
I could not have dreamed of more nor imagined more for one of my heroines.

“You don’t say?” asked Mrs. Nance, a brash older woman, who was married to the MP for York. “Wonderful. The curse is not working?”

Lady Wingate raised both brows. “Mrs. Nance, this is hardly a question for our Felice.”

“Of course, it is! No wonder there was a curse, at least in Adam’s case. Poor man was so distressed married to that little Sarah. She was a peacock. Not a thought in her head for Adam. Would never have hosted such a dinner party. Wouldn’t know how. Wouldn’t care to help him.”

“I’ll say,” Mrs. Smithfield, the wife of the member from Dover, chimed in. “You have done your duty this evening, Felice, bringing us together. Lord Howell, as I understand from my Henry, learned of this dinner and fumed with envy.”

Howell envious? Wonderful.
“His paper is so critical of my husband, I am beside myself with worry.”

“Shall we put it about then that the famous family curse,” continued Mrs. Nance with a busy flutter of her fan, “is not working?”

“I have not seen sign of it since I moved in,” Felice told her with a grin. And why not? This was her only way, perhaps her only opportunity, to reveal some part of the truth and counter the effects of Howell’s and Miss Proper’s lies. “Initially, Adam and I were concerned about the Stanhopes’ challenge. But we agreed to work on our marriage to make it a solid union.”

“And love?” asked Mrs. Nance.

“Oh, well,” Felice demurred. Were the nights in his arms, the joys in their bed proof they could get on well together? Were not the hours enjoying each others’ company out of bed in the parlor and the dining room, good evidence, too? So what if those moments of laughter soon had them making love on the settee or the library table or…

Felice cleared her throat, noting her cheeks burned with her ribald musings. “All good marriages are made on earth, don’t you agree?”

“I do, indeed.” Lady Wingate gazed around the room. “We work on ours, don’t we, ladies? Even though our men are too much driven by the winds of politics.”

“And the winds of war,” Lady Ulmsly added with a grumble. “Do forgive me but I wish that man Howell would decide if he is on our side or not.”

Felice startled at the public accusation.

Mrs. Smithfield dropped open her mouth. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Well!” Lady Ulmsly drew herself up into her full importance. “The man accuses us of not being efficient in our pursuit of Bonaparte. Imagine! Yet, he is the one who delays signing contracts with the Army. We know he can make more money from his import and exports if he holds out his supplies to the last.”

Felice clasped her hands together. “He will grow rich off the war?”

Mrs. Smithfield gazed at Felice wide-eyed. “Do you think he would be so bold?”

“My husband tells me this is so,” stated Lady Ulmsly.

“Is that not a conflict of interest?” asked Lady Wingate.

“Terrible,” grumbled Lady Ulmsly.

“Shameful,” asserted Mrs. Smithfield.

Treasonous
, concluded Felice.

“Aye. If you ask me,” grumbled Lady Wingate, “he should be shot.”

He should, at the very least, be exposed
. If there was proof. Was there?

Adam might know.

But when the men came in, the topics never turned to politics, the war or Howell. It was as if the men had sworn off the subject entirely. Try though Felice might to steer them that way, she failed. The guests left less than an hour later. Adam looked ashen and suggested they go straight up to bed.

Felice agreed and preceded him up the stairs. She itched to be alone with him and pursue the subject of Howell’s actions.

“Lady Wingate cast a few aspersions on the intentions of Drayton Howell tonight,” she told Adam as she stepped out of her slippers.

He pulled at his cravat, his mouth thin with anger. “Howell! The bane of my existence.”

She stepped before him. “Let me untie that or you’ll have yourself in knots. What do you think of his criticisms of your army supply policies?”

“Here in our bedroom, I’ll say he’s an ass. Out in public, I try to stay to the facts of the matter. We have a fair idea of road conditions in Portugal into Spain and they are terrible. Fit for mules. Yet transport is vital to keeping an army moving. Especially food. While most armies live off the land they invade, confiscation never makes for good relations with the people. Howell puts on a show for the public, showing how financially prudent he is. But in reality, he may have another reason.”

“There,” she soothed him as she removed his cravat. “Do you have any suspicions that he may delay the government’s decision based on his own interests?”

Adam frowned at her. “My god, you ladies did peck at Howell’s bones.”

“We did. Is it justified?”

“Smithfield has suspicions but will not declare.” Adam turned her about and, in a moment, had her bodice undone, the gown drifting to the carpet. Then he spun her into his arms. His eyes clouded with worries. “Come to bed and forget about Drayton Howell.”

“He should never be in our bedroom,” she asserted but fought the man’s image as her husband pulled her chemise over her head and admired her naked save for her stockings.

“I want you naked. Now. In our bed.” He picked her up and strode with her to the mattress where he laid her down and hovered over her, his arms on either side of her. “I want you to promise me to tell me everything anyone says about politics.”

She nodded slowly. Was there some other message hidden in his fine words? “I will.”

“But never—” he said as he touched a fingertip to her nose, “—never in this room. Do you hear me?” His ferocity disturbed her.

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

He narrowed his gaze on her, grasped her wrists and pinned her to the bed. His kisses at first soft and rapturous soon turned fierce and compelling. Her body gushed in delight, welcoming him, wanting him in a rush of fervent need that washed all rational thought from her mind. She knew only that he was desperate for her body. But for what else she could not say.

“You have nothing to hide from me, Felice,” he told her after he had possessed her and made her quake with satisfaction. “And nothing to fear.”

Suffused as she was with the physical exhaustion that his love-making always produced, she noted the words, but did not question their meaning or their cause.

****

The next morning, his words plagued her such that she chose to remain in bed instead of going down to breakfast. Neither of them had slept well—he up and pacing the floor most of the night; she tossing and turning, asking what ate at him and receiving blithe answers.

Meanwhile, the need to rid herself of Howell raged like a disease in her mind. But what to do? Publish an exposé in the rival broadsheet? Then was she not as wicked as Howell?

She ate no breakfast but paced in her sitting room, watching the grey rain outside match her mood. She went upstairs to play with Georgie and came down just as the post arrived at eleven. As she opened her only letter and gazed at its contents, she jumped to her feet. This was her royalty statement from the publisher of her epic poetry and romances. Money! She earned more money on her work in the past few months than she ever had. She paced back and forth, the paper crackling in her clenched hand. A wild possibility brewing in her brain.

Could there be one way to save her reputation? One way to save her marriage? She had the idea, but did she have the savvy to pull it off?

What would she lose to try?

Not her honor. That was already gone. And she would lose her marriage the instant Adam learned she was Miss Proper.

But if she did not try to ameliorate the damage done to Adam and the Spanish war effort, she would forever be ashamed of her cowardice. She would fully deserve to be rejected by Adam and shunned by society. No one would ever receive her again. And she would not blame them. She would be more alone than she’d ever been. This time without love as well.

There remained only one thing to do. Be bold. Be brave. Be true to herself.

Within the hour, she presented herself at the East End office of the publisher who printed her epic poetry and romances.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Tolbert,” she greeted the jolly old clerk who had worked here since he was a boy of twelve. Tolbert was the assistant to Edward Collins, owner of Collins Publishing. She knew Tolbert better than Collins and had few compunctions about asking him a favor.

“How are you, dear Mrs. Wentworth? Oh, no, no!” The bent, greying man ambled around his huge desk overflowing with papers of all sizes, weights and colors. He shook her hand. “It is Mrs. Stanhope now, I forget. Forgive me. Wonderful to see you!”

“Thank you.” For a few minutes more, they reacquainted themselves having not seen each other since just before Felice had married Adam in January. Tolbert resumed his chair, and she took one opposite. She glanced about the cluttered office then toward the back room, where through the glass, she could see the two typesetters and the two huge presses. “I received my recent statement in this morning’s mail.”

“Wonderful. Shall I get your earnings for you?”

“Yes, please. I am thrilled sales are up. Mr. Collins must be delighted, too.”

“He is! We both are delighted with your new success. Now that you are in Society, you create a stir and people demand to read your work.”

“Curiosity motivates readers.”
Would that they were inspired to read my work only for my talent. But if the royalties allow me to extricate myself, I cannot complain.

“True.” He folded his fingers over his corpulent stomach, his bushy brows knit together. “How are you? You look well enough, but the rumors of you and your husband are not favorable.” A considerate man, Tolbert had the ability to get to the heart of a matter. “We heard he turned you out. And now there is this
TellTale
series.”

She flinched and considered her gloves. “The
TellTale
stories are pure fiction. I came to speak of another matter.”

The man lifted his brows.

“You have talked for the past year about the enormous volume of work you have. Your sales grow. The number of volumes produced increased by—” She waved a hand.

“Ten percent last year. Three, the year before.”

“Yes. And I hear Mr. Collins takes on more authors,” she added. “My friend Ann Carruthers in Kent wrote to tell me last week that he has offered to publish her novel.”

“Well done it is, too, I will say. Yes, we do take on more novels. Business is good.”

“Wouldn’t you say then that you and Mr. Collins need an additional typesetter?”