Three Proposals and a Scandal: A Sons of Sin Novella (16 page)

“That makes all the difference,” he said solemnly.

“I should have married Desborough,” Marianne said breathlessly, reaching his side and leaning in for a kiss. “He’d have given me perfect children instead of these hellions.”

The boys stopped their game and watched their parents curiously. “Perfect children are boring,” Peter announced.

“I was a perfect child and I certainly wasn’t boring,” his mother told him, reaching out to ruffle his hair.

“None of the Thornes were perfect,” Elias said.

“And we’re all Thornes,” Michael said calmly.

“You are indeed,” Marianne said. “I blame your regrettable behavior entirely on your father.”

“What’s gettable?” Selina asked.

“It’s a barrel of fun,” Elias said.

His wife regarded him with an unimpressed expression. “See if you believe that after they’ve had you at their mercy all morning.”

Elias tightened one arm around his daughter’s slight weight and reached to touch his wife’s lovely face. “I could handle this lot with my eyes closed.”

“I’m sure you could,” she said drily. “And you’d only look around when the house collapsed on top of your head.”

He glanced down at his children and felt a familiar sensation, as if his heart was so overloaded with love it was likely to burst. “There are kittens in the stables.”

Michael, who loved animals above all things, dropped his wooden sword and started to wriggle with excitement. “Bella had her litter?”

“She did.”

Marianne looked with fond exasperation at her offspring. “Be gentle with Bella. Take it from me—she’s had a very long morning.”

“Can we go and see?” Peter asked.

“Yes. I want to talk to your mother.”

Michael grimaced with disgust. “That means you’re going to kiss her.”

Elias laughed. “It does indeed. So run away before you have to witness the horror.”

“Come on, Michael,” Peter said, taking to his heels and darting through the archway. Michael followed at a gallop.

“Papa, let me down,” Selina complained, squirming against him.

“Can I have a kiss first?” Elias asked. “You don’t want your mother to have all the fun, do you?”

Selina conquered her impatience long enough to suffer a kiss on the cheek. Usually her father was the most important object in her life, but the lure of Bella’s kittens outweighed even Elias’s charm. The moment her feet touched the ground, she zipped after her brothers.

“They are hellions, aren’t they?” Elias said.

“Don’t sound so proud of yourself.”

He glanced at Marianne with a smile. With her grass-stained skirts and mane of rich brown hair, she looked something of a hellion herself. “You’re not really sorry you accepted me and not Desborough, are you?”

“Life would be quieter with him,” she said with a straight face, but humor lit her blue eyes to sapphire.

“Peter would say a quiet life, like a perfect child, is boring.”

She laughed and came readily to his hand as he swept his arm around her waist and swung her closer. “You look like you’ve got wicked plans afoot.”

“I can’t lie to my children.”

“Is that so?” She linked her hands behind his neck.

“Indeed. I promised to kiss you, so for honor’s sake, I must.”

“How noble,” she said faintly then melted against him as he pressed his lips to hers. It was a long time before either spoke.

He raised his head and regarded her with the adoration that had only increased over seven years of marriage. “My God, I do love you.”

She looked as smug as Selina. The years had made many changes, including lending her a self-confidence that he found sinfully arousing. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“Just glad?”

She trailed one hand down the side of his face. “All right.
Very
glad.”

“Wench,” he said fondly, tightening his grip on her hips.

She glanced around. “The children are occupied elsewhere and we are quite alone, my lord.”

Heat surged through him at the prospect of enjoying his wife in this hidden corner of the garden, but as he shifted to bring her closer, the letter in his pocket crackled. “First, I really do want to talk to you.” He caught her hand and drew her to a stone bench with moss-covered lion’s feet. “Your father’s solicitor has written.”

Marianne frowned and the laughter faded from her face. “Is my father well?”

Elias settled her beside him on the seat and passed her the letter. “See for yourself.”

Marianne’s hands were unsteady as she unfolded the thick sheet of cream paper. Again, Elias cursed that old trout Baildon for his intransigence.

She’d held her head up through the scandal surrounding their marriage, although when the truth of Tranter’s sins emerged, the gossip lost much of its sting. Hardly anyone now remembered the brouhaha at Ferney seven years ago. Hardly anyone, except his wife’s bull-headed father.

Although over the last two years, there had been signs of rapprochement.

Lord Baildon had eventually insisted upon seeing his grandchildren, even if in London, never at Elias and Marianne’s home. And six months ago, Elias’s burgeoning prosperity had sparked a grudging request for financial assistance with a failing shipping line.

Elias would happily let the dolt stew in his sour pride, but he knew Marianne regretted the estrangement. And when all was said and done, Lord Baildon was his children’s sole living grandparent, however cantankerous.

Dazed, Marianne looked up at Elias, the letter resting on her knee. “I’m back in his will. He’s restoring my dowry.”

“Yes.”

“It means he’s forgiven me.” Emotion made her voice crack.

“I think he’s been edging toward that for a while now. Especially since he met Selina.” Even Elias had found Lord Baildon’s complete surrender to his rambunctious granddaughter touching. He was utterly besotted with the tiny terror. Baildon loved the boys, but he’d cut off his right arm if Selina asked.

“And when you stepped in and saved that trading venture, he stopped saying you wed me to get your hands on my fortune.”

Elias was now richer than his father-in-law, thanks to investments in innovative transport and manufacturing. He occasionally teased Marianne that she’d married him for his prospects. She always laughed and enlisted his support for another of her schools. His wife had become quite the advocate for female education.

Elias took her hand. It was trembling. He knew what this message from her father meant to her. “I don’t want his money, but the decision is yours.”

“It’s so like him to tell us like this. He’ll never admit he was wrong about you.” She gave him a watery smile. “We could set up a trust for Michael and Selina. Or I could use the money for my charity work. Would you mind?”

“My darling, it’s yours. I’m happy whatever you decide.” His grip tightened. “After all, I’ve already covered you in diamonds as I vowed on our wedding night.”

His wife could still blush. Like him, she must remember when he’d draped her naked body with the magnificent parure he’d given her for their third wedding anniversary. He was sure Selina was the result of that night. The fiery passion he and Marianne had shared at her conception perhaps explained her untamed spirit.

“Will you go to Dorset for Christmas?” she asked.

The lawyer’s letter ended with an invitation for the whole family to travel to the Seaton estates for the festive season. Elias had to give the marquess credit for conceding in style—even if the old man would die before he said the words “I’m sorry.”

“I think it would be good for the children.”

“I love you, you know.” Marianne’s lips twitched, although her wet eyes betrayed how her father’s capitulation moved her. “You really are proving the nobility of your character.”

“You’ll make it up to me,” he said lightly.

She glanced around the deserted garden. “I could start now.”

Elias bent to kiss her, reveling in her quick response. “There’s no time like the present, beloved.”

Anything can happen in the moonlight
…

Justice. That’s all Nell Trim wants – for her sister and for the countless other young women the Marquess of Leath has ruined with his wildly seductive ways. Now she has a bold plan to take him down… as long as she can resist the scoundrel’s temptations herself.

From the moment Nell meets James Fairbrother, the air positively sizzles. Yet for all his size and power, there’s something amazingly tender in his touch. Could he really be such a depraved rogue? The only way to find out is to beat the devil at his own game… one tempting kiss at a time.

Mearsall, Kent, May 1828

“Avenge me.”

The raspy whisper stirred Nell Trim from her grief-stricken haze. She straightened in the hard wooden chair beside the narrow bed. Around her, tallow candles guttered. Outside the cottage’s mullioned windows, the night was dark and quiet.

She rose to smooth her half-sister’s covers. “Shall I fetch Father?”

“No.” Dorothy grabbed Nell’s hand. The late spring air was warm and Dorothy’s fever had raged for two days, but the fingers that closed around Nell’s were icy with encroaching death. “Listen…to me.”

Nell stared helplessly into the girl’s ashen face. Once Dorothy had been the village belle. Now her skin was gray and dry, and her large blue eyes sank deep into their sockets. She was eighteen years old and looked three times that. “Dr. Parsons said to rest.”

Dorothy’s cracked lips turned down. “There’s no time.”

Nell’s heart cramped with futile denial. “Darling…”

Her half-sister’s hold tightened, stifling the comforting lie. “We both know it’s true.”

Yes, they did. Dr. Parsons had relinquished all hope after Dorothy had lost her baby. Nell still shuddered to remember the sea of blood gushing from her half-sister’s slight body.

Since then, Dorothy had lingered through agony. Looking into her drawn face, Nell knew that lovely, vivacious, heedless Dorothy Simpson wouldn’t last the night. “I’ll get you some water.”

Irritation shadowed her half-sister’s face. “I don’t want water. I want your promise to take up my cause.”

Nell frowned. “But you don’t know who assaulted you.”

For months, Dorothy had hidden her pregnancy, until even her unworldly schoolmaster father had noticed. In tearful shame, she’d confessed that a stranger had attacked her.

Dorothy’s bitter smile was out of keeping with the frivolous girl Nell knew. But of course, frivolity had brought disaster, hadn’t it?

“It wasn’t exactly…assault.”

Horrified Nell snatched her hand free. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

Ever since hearing that Dorothy’s pregnancy resulted from violence, Nell had been angry. This hint that the story wasn’t exactly as presented—hardly surprising, Dorothy was often unreliable with the truth—left her bewildered. “You went…willingly?”

Dorothy’s expression conveyed a strange mixture of shame and pride. “I loved him.”

“Was it one of the village boys?” Nell felt queasy. Had someone they knew taken advantage of Dorothy? It seemed the most obvious answer, yet Dorothy had always scorned Mearsall’s lads as yokels.

A grunt that might have been a dismissive laugh. “Don’t be silly.”

“Then who?”

Dorothy’s gaze fixed on some distant horizon. Unbelievably Nell heard a trace of her sister’s old conceit. “A great gentleman. A man who could give me everything I wanted.”

“Everything except a wedding ring,” Nell said sharply, unable to reconcile Dorothy’s boasting with this pain and disgrace.

Tears filled Dorothy’s eyes. “I knew you and Papa would scold. That’s why I said I’d been forced.”

Despairingly, Nell stared at this wayward girl she loved so much. Dorothy was seven years younger, more child than sister. When Nell was five, her soldier father had died fighting the French. Widowed Frances Trim had then married the much older William Simpson, as much to provide security for her daughter Nell as for companionship. Since Frances’s death ten years ago, Nell had cared for her half-sister like a mother.

“Oh, Dorothy,” Nell said, a world of regret in the words. She could hardly bear her guilt at failing to keep a closer eye on her sister.

Convulsively Dorothy clutched Nell’s hand. “Don’t be cross.”

“I’m cross with the man who did this to you.” That was an understatement. She’d like to see the wretch hanged.

Before this unknown blackguard got his filthy paws on her, Dorothy had been an innocent, although easily flattered. A man wouldn't need much town polish to convince Dorothy, who’d never been past Canterbury, of his credentials as a lord.

“Good,” Dorothy said with venom, her face as white as the pillowcases.