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  ‘But I am, Mr Morgan. I should allow you your full rights as a husband as well as your prerogative to choose a mistress. Any number of them. I should not stop you from…making your own personal choices. I would be compliant, dutiful and discreet. I would run the estate with diplomacy, refinement, grace and tact. Even if you stayed only one night a year at Athelridge Hall I should not complain and I would not expect you to bring me to London. Whatever you wanted I would attempt to give to you. Without complaint. In short, I would endeavour to be the perfect wife. Tolerant and accommodating. Barely there.’

  ‘A comprehensive promise?’ He could not believe the absolute inappropriateness of her making such a pledge to him.

  ‘And one you might favour?’

  He laughed. ‘You know nothing about me, Miss Worthington. How old are you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘A baby. Go home and thank the Lord for your lucky escape.’

  When her eyes darkened and flashed fire it heartened him. Not quite a docile martyr, then? She certainly wasn’t doing as he had bid her either. The deep dimples in both cheeks as she bit at her lip unsettled him, for they were apparent even when she did not smile.

  ‘Every other unmarried man in society and many of the married ones hold a great desire for me. Why would you not?’

  ‘Because I have no wish whatsoever for a wife, even one as compliant and long-suffering as the model of the one you are promising me. I fare far better with more disposable lovers, mistresses and courtesans. I can change them whenever I am bored, which I often am. Without drama. Without question. Here today, gone tomorrow, so to speak. An impermanent liaison which requires no true commitment and has the added benefit of hurting nobody.’

  He stood and crossed the room to pour himself a brandy, the warmth of it suppressing the shivers he could feel returning. ‘Given the indisputable fact of your glowing first Season, every other man of your acquaintance is probably better suited to your needs than I am. Go away, Miss Worthington, and pick one.’

  ‘No.’

  That word was whispered, but he had already heard enough. She was like a small exotic bird who had strayed into a lion’s den. How did she not realise the danger she was in?

  ‘That is more than enough. Scurry back to your besotted society suitors, the ones who would fit into the lifestyle you are more than used to, the ones who would welcome such a broad and extraordinary promise and honour it as I would not.’

  He could see the worry on her face, but he could also easily understand her effect on any man who came across her. She was the most exquisite female he had ever known. Unforgettable. Fragile. And beautiful beyond words. He could barely keep his gaze off her face and he hated himself for such shallowness.

  ‘That is impossible, Mr Morgan, for the home I had, Athelridge Hall, is now your own and I need it back.’

  ‘Did your father direct you to come here?’ God, Simeon could almost imagine it of the man. To sacrifice a daughter for the mistakes he had made and would keep on making. To muddy the pond with compromise and immorality and think nothing at all of it. To send another in his stead to accomplish his dirty work.

  The blood fled from her face at his query and he thought for a second that she might simply fall to the floor, but her hand found the brass bedstead and then she didn’t.

  ‘I came of my own accord, sir.’

  ‘A risky business that, given the enormity of your proposition, the smallness of your person and the lateness of the hour.’

  ‘Sometimes safe and easy pathways are unable to be…found, and one has to forge a new way.’

  ‘With all your many stated and ardent proposals my advice to you would be to use such lofty options and make a choice. Find a lord of means who might appeal to you and marry him summarily as protection.’

  Another flare of anger brightened her eyes. She had secrets, Simeon thought. He recognised them easily in others.

  ‘You are the only person who holds the titles of my family home in your pocket, sir.’

  ‘Then tell your papa to come up with the money and I will consider selling them back to him. Even a plan for repayment will do me fine.’

  The beginning of tears surprised him.

  ‘That is impossible.’

  She was so young, Simeon realised suddenly, and simply had had enough. Better to frighten her, then, and send her packing in shock. His past was hardly salubrious and the mystery surrounding him would help see her on her way.

  ‘I am not paying the high price you ask for the virginity you mention, Miss Worthington. However, if indeed you do feel the need to show me the goods I wouldn’t object in the slightest…’

  He let the sentence slide, knowing the insult within them, but he needed her gone.

  ‘The goods?’ Her cheeks flamed red.

  ‘Tempt me with your breasts, your hips, your crinkum-crankum. All the parts of a woman that attract a man and make him sell his soul. Unbutton your bodice and surprise me.’

  The grubby slang had her eyes widening just as he knew it would. ‘I do not think…’

  ‘Don’t think, Miss Worthington, just go.’

  The fury in him was building because he understood what was at stake here and how carefully her father had orchestrated such a travesty. Lionel Frankton Worthington was a bastard and if his daughter had failed to realise it then she must be of the exact same mould. It behoved him to punish them both by exposing such a crude proposal, though he knew of course that she would run now, from his presence, from his house, from his life, and she would never come back. He waited for her footsteps, exhaustion vying with rage.

  When shaking fingers came up to the buttons at her bodice, his heartbeat skipped. He saw then an undergarment of silk and lace across milk-white skin, rising flesh and pink-tinged nipples. When she moved again the curve of womanhood and a round abundance of softness was clearly visible above her fallen clothing.

  Behind her the clock struck the hour of eleven. The hush grew and grew as his eyes feasted on her bounty, there for such an easy taking, there to reach out and seize. He could have Miss Adelia Worthington in a moment. She was her father’s daughter, after all, and payment was much more than overdue.

  He scowled as his body hardened, cursing the betrayal even as he welcomed it. This was not going anything like he thought it would, yet he could not turn away. When he stood he let the blanket around him drop as he took the first step towards her. Damn the consequences, he thought savagely, he had never been a saint, after all, and if the beautiful daughter of his worst enemy had done her homework she would have at least known that.

  * * *

  He was a huge man and dark, the tight trousers he wore moulded around his body like silk, the white shirt above unbuttoned all the way down the front. In the shadows of the fire and the night he looked like Hades escaped from his Underworld, a dark soul-taker bent on her destruction. She should have run when he had allowed her the chance, but if this failed…

  He stopped a foot away and reached out, one finger trailing across the underside of her right breast before settling on the nipple. The heat of him was as shocking as that in the room and she knew if he wanted to he could ravish her here and now and she would never be able to halt it. He was crude and coarse and his accent was a strange one, clipped in a careful way as though hiding all that he had been, once.

  Yet she was caught in the glance of his golden eyes and rendered speechless by his sheer masculine presence. The digit moved, up and down, evoking a visceral response and, for the first time in her whole life, Adelia understood the meaning of lust. Her breath shallowed and her head tipped back, the place between her legs sliding into something between a throb and an ache. Formless. Unshapen. Lost.

  Amorphous. Like a tide, the high swell of it tipping her over.

  She held no touchstone, no way of stating the wrongness of all that was happening to her b
ecause in this moment it only felt right. She was held captive by forbidden delight and by a man whom she had never known the likes of.

  Then his hand trailed up across her throat and on to her cheek before it traced the line of her upper lip with a precise and careful tenderness.

  He made no move to come forward, though, even as she hoped he would, this stranger with his unshaven face, his darkness and his heat.

  He had turned down marriage and offered her this, yet even with her breasts unbound and on show he did not simply take. She needed to say something, needed to make it matter, the ache of the sensual and the certainty of his want.

  Swallowing, she tried to shape her words.

  ‘Marry me, Mr Morgan, and…you can have it all…this…everything… I promise and without argument.’

  The nipple his hand had returned to was swollen as he dipped to take the hardness of it into his mouth, hot suction drawing out a moan before he broke the pressure. Utter desire snaked through every part of her—fire, hot and undeniable.

  ‘I could have you anyway and easily, Miss Worthington, for your body is telling me so.’

  ‘No.’ But she could not find any resistance within her as his tongue flicked back against her, a different movement now, a stab of pure passion assaulting her senses, her flesh moving in the rhythm he inspired, the wet warmth inside bursting through in waves and building, higher, deeper, longer.

  The stubble on his cheek scratched her skin and the hand that held her anchored was tight on her flesh.

  She was someone else, someone brighter and bolder, someone who would take the risk and use it, feel it, know it. The mystery and the danger and pure unadulterated need drove fear away and welcomed in a languid floating relief which brought tears to her eyes.

  He caught her as she lost balance and held her close, his breath in her hair, rough and fast, as if he, too, had been surprised by this.

  This?

  What had happened?

  Already the horror was building and the disbelief.

  Her father had been a man who used women for pleasure again and again with no thought for a wife at home or a family who understood that their papa was not quite as others were. Was she of the same mould, a daughter who had come here with a ridiculous plan and expected this man to fall at her feet and agree to it?

  An immoral woman. One who might trick others with her body and imagine no redress. A stupid, vain and foolish woman who had anticipated her beauty would be enough?

  Already he had let her go and for that at least she was glad.

  * * *

  Adelia Worthington stood there, her mouth open and her emerald eyes glassy, the palpable beauty that had been so obvious before glittering now under another truth.

  Wanton. Shameless. As good as any of the whores he had bedded with her quicksilver metamorphosis, nipples hard, lips swollen, breath shaky.

  ‘Dress yourself, Miss Worthington.’

  He could not be kind. He felt used and tricked and sullied somehow. An evening meeting that had taken only moments to draw down into this. She had done it before, no doubt, the virgin ploy sending him off guard and her unmatched comeliness seeing to the rest.

  He could smell her scent from here, all woman and eagerness.

  ‘God.’

  The fever seemed to have risen and the heat in the room made him sweat. Her breasts stood firmly round and pale in the light, her fallen bodice still exposing everything. Beautiful beyond measure.

  He saw the marks of redness on her skin, marks where he had sucked too hard in unparalleled ardour. The slender column of her throat lay unprotected, blue lines just beneath the skin. Fragile. Dangerous. Spellbinding. Menacing.

  Was she here at the behest of her father to blackmail him in some way?

  He half expected the Viscount to hammer down the door and demand retribution. If he had not been so sick he would have seen the trap of it in the very first seconds, but fever had softened his sense.

  ‘I am not the husband you are after. There is nothing I can offer you save, perhaps, pity.’

  ‘Pity?’

  ‘Your father? You must realise the loathing he inspires among all who have the misfortune to cross his path? Tell him I know exactly how Catherine Rountree died. Tell him that his mistress left me a letter explaining things. Tell him that all of London shall soon know what he has done and he shall be pilloried for it. Tell him he cannot sacrifice his daughter to escape retribution, even such a daughter as you.’

  She swallowed and pulled up her clothing, the shaking worse now than it had been before, the gold cross at her neck glinting.

  He had had enough of lies. His own lies. Catherine’s lies. Lionel Worthington’s lies. Death held some reckoning and the child fostered upon him demanded recompense. From them all.

  ‘I am sorry—’ she managed to say before he interrupted her.

  ‘Don’t be.’ He turned away as the words came out brokenly. He didn’t want excuses or vindication. He wanted her gone.

  When he looked back again there was no one there, the only sign of her ever being in his room a lingering perfume of lemon and lavender.

  He’d expected more complex scents. The simplicity of what was left felt jarring somehow and he wished like hell that she had never come. Laying his arms on the marble of the mantel, he dropped his head against the cold stone, hating the shaking that was back and the fear within him.

  Chance was something that seldom happened without a strong reason and her intent had held little of the coincidental within it. No, Miss Adelia Worthington had come here with a fully formed purpose and one that he feared she would not simply abandon. He would hear more from her, he knew it, but next time he would be ready.

  Another darker thought also struck him, now that the fog of desire had lifted. There had been bruises on her arms and on the back of her neck. Substantial bruises that gave the impression of great force. Who had hurt her and why? Secrets wound into conjecture and puzzlement came in on top of that. She was a mystery, this beautiful and young Miss Adelia Worthington, and one he did want to unravel, damn it.

  * * *

  Once outside Adelia thanked the Morgan servant for accompanying her to the waiting hackney, smiling at him in a false and desperate way that set her own teeth on edge.

  ‘Thank you for the chance to see Mr Morgan. I am sorry I was longer than five minutes.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, my lady. I hope you accomplished all you wished to.’

  She did not answer, for she knew without doubt that she was now ruined.

  Mr Simeon Morgan would tell everyone about her foolish and dreadful mistake and society would turn their backs upon her and give her the cut direct. She could not even begin to contemplate the consequences of such a public exposure.

  It was over. Athelridge Hall was lost. Her family would be homeless.

  She should have taken the other pathways open to her. She should have accepted the proposal of the first even slightly wealthy suitor who had offered for her. She had not hated any of them in the way she hated Simeon Morgan, the rich and amoral spawn of the devil. He had baited her, she knew that now, and she had risen to his words like the imprudent girl she’d thought she wasn’t. He was never going to consider her ridiculous offer, not even for a moment. Her arm ached and the marks on her breast stung in shame.

  Yet below this another thought harboured and her nipples rose into nubs at the echo of it. She had wanted him to touch her. She had wanted what she had seen so briefly in his golden eyes as his mouth had come down roughly across her breast. Wanted the passion in him, the desire and the hunger.

  He was a rake and a womaniser, exactly like her father, though at least he was honest in his admitting of it. He’d told her she was a baby and that he bedded only mistresses and courtesans. He’d said she should run before she got hurt and that he could offer her nothing save
pity.

  Yet pity was not the emotion she had seen on his face just before she had left. No, there was anger there and fury mixed with aggravation and stronger things. Fiercer sensations.

  The world crashed down over complications even as the body of her father was becoming cold on the floor of slate in the front room of Athelridge Hall.

  His servants would find him tomorrow, the old Cranstons, in the first morning light and he would be lain in state, three handfuls of salt sitting on his chest on an earthenware plate and a portrait of the Virgin Mary hung above giving spiritual guidance. These would be her mother’s instructions, her Scottish heritage fully formed in the art of death.

  If it had been left to Adelia, she would have had no compunction in tossing him out to be buried in a beggar’s grave in some unknown churchyard. And she would never have visited it afterwards.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Viscount Worthington was dead.

  Simeon had heard the news today, six days after his daughter’s outrageous and unasked for late evening visit.

  Dead from suicide.

  Simeon wondered about his part in the whole conundrum given his lack of care in allowing the man’s offspring title to the small and insignificant Athelridge Hall estate. But still he could not be sorry. If the Viscount had killed himself over his foolish loss at his ill-played games of investment, then the world was better off for it. If he had killed himself in remorse for the accident with Mrs Catherine Rountree on the Northern Road, then at least he had died for something more honourable.

  Privately, Simeon felt the motive of greed was more likely to be the reason for his death than that of principle, but he didn’t care enough to give the dead man any benefit of the doubt.

  Beneath him, Theodora Wainwright was pliant and generous. Her long red hair streamed across the white of the pillow in fiery threads and her eyes, while not the startling green of Miss Adelia Worthington’s, were none the less alluring enough.