Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch

Regency HIGH-SOCIETY AFFAIRS

Sparhawk’s Lady Miranda Jarrett

The Earl’s Intended Wife Louise Allen

Lord Calthorpe’s Promise’ Sylvia Andrew

The Society Catch Louise Allen

Sparhawk’s Lady

Miranda Jarrett

MIRANDA JARRETT considers herself sublimely fortunate to have a career that combines history and happy endings – even if it’s one that’s also made her family far-too-regular patrons of the local pizzeria. Miranda is the author of over thirty historical romances, and her books are enjoyed by readers the world over. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including two Golden Leaf Awards and two Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and has three times been a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for best short historical romance. Miranda is a graduate of Brown University, with a degree in art history. She loves to hear from readers at PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301-1145, USA, or at MJarrett21@aol.com.

For the unholy Trinity – Teri, Raine, and Theresa

You make me laugh, you make me cry, you give

me the joy of your friendship (and don’t forget

the kitten handouts!)

Prologue

Portsmouth, England May 1787

With growing panic, Caroline Harris stared at her reflection in the mirror as her mother’s maid tied the sash at her waist. Soon it would be time to leave the ladies’ retiring room and join the gentlemen in the salon, and then it would be too late.

Why, why was there never enough money?

“I can’t do this, Mama,” she whispered hoarsely. “I know you say we’ve no choice, but I can’t. I can’t.”

“You can, and you will,” snapped her mother with the angry irritation that Caroline had come to know too well these past two weeks. “You’re all I have left to me, girl, and I won’t die a pauper.”

Caroline nodded, not trusting her voice to speak. If she cried, she would be cuffed. She’d learned that lesson quickly enough. Tears would make her eyes red and puffy, and then no gentleman would want her.

But what gentleman would want her anyway, dressed like this? Her flowered silk gown had been remade from an old one of her mother’s, cut down so far that her nearly all of her high, small breasts showed above the neckline, the darker rose of her nipples peeking shamelessly through the gauzy neckerchief. Her stays were laced so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and her feet were squeezed painfully into pointed, high-heeled shoes meant to give her a dainty, swaying walk.

Her hair, usually as straight and fine as corn silk, had been crimped and set with sugar water into high, stiff, fashionable curls she’d been forbidden to touch. The jewels that glittered against her pale skin were paste as false as the rest of her, and when she looked at the masklike way they’d painted her face—black kohl around her eyes and rouged circles on her cheeks—she wanted to weep all over again. She looked like a cheap wax doll that no one would ever value, let alone love or cherish.

And not even her mother had remembered that today was her fourteenth birthday.…

Miriam Harris clutched possessively at her daughter’s arm as she, too, stared at the reflection, the resemblance between them obvious in the high cheekbones and the wide-set blue eyes. But that was all; the consumption that would soon claim Caroline’s mother had left her face tight and gaunt beneath the dyed black hair, her body bent and wasted, and the life she’d led, a Cypriot always dependent on the favors of gentlemen, had long ago destroyed the innocent charm that lit her daughter’s face.

“You’re too weedy by half, Caroline,” she declared with a broken gasp, and coughed into the lace-trimmed handkerchief she was never without. Swiftly she wadded it into her reticule, but not before Caroline had seen the bright red blood on the white linen. “Look at you, half a head taller than me! I shouldn’t have wasted my money for all those years to see you raised in the country if this is how you turned out.”

With a sharp pang of homesickness, Caroline thought of the thatch-roofed house in Hampshire where she’d lived until last month, of ruddy-faced Mrs. Thompson who’d treated her like one of her own children, of sunlight and fresh milk and apples and fields to run through and kittens in the barn to play with. She remembered, too, the careful dreams she’d nursed of her parents: her father a handsome officer in a fashionable regiment tragically killed defending his king and country before he could wed her mother, the kind, beautiful lady in London who sent money each month for her care and would, as soon as her circumstances permitted, come herself to fetch Caroline away.

A lovely dream it was, a fantasy Caroline had played over each night before she fell asleep, and years and miles away from the reality of the ravaged, dying woman clinging to her arm. True enough, Miriam had finally come for her daughter, but not for the genteel family life that Caroline had always imagined. No, nothing like that, not in the mean lodgings that were her mother’s home now, with nearly everything of value stripped away and sold for food and medicine, and once again Caroline felt the tears smarting behind her eyes.

“No weeping now, daughter,” warned her mother, lowering her voice so the other women around them, most dressed in the same expensive, revealing fashions, wouldn’t overhear. “Sir Harry will look to you to ease his troubles, not to be burdened with your own.”

Caroline shook her head with a final, desperate show of defiance. “We don’t have to live like this, Mama. I could sew, or seek a position with a milliner. There must be other ways than this!”

“What, and squander the one true gift that God gave us both?” Her mother’s laugh was short and bitter. “Your face is your fortune, girl, and with it you’ll earn more in a week than any squalid little seamstress in a garret could in twenty years.”

“But Mama—”

“Don’t gainsay me, you foolish girl!” hissed her mother, her thin fingers tightening on Caroline’s arm as she led her from the room. “You’re all I have, and this is all I know. I mean to see you launched while it’s still in my power. If you please Sir Harry Wrightsman tonight, he’ll treat you finer than you can ever imagine, far better than you deserve.”

At the arched doorway Caroline shrank back. To her, the room before them was unbelievably grand, with gilded walls and mirrors and hundreds of candles. The beautiful women and the men who clustered around them terrified her, their gestures too free, their conversation and laughter too loud, nearly drowning out the musicians in the alcove. No matter what her mother said, she knew she didn’t belong here.

“Oh, Mama,” she whispered, her face pale beneath the rouge. “I beg you, please, can’t we go, please, please?”

“Hush, don’t shame me!” said her mother sharply, tugging Caroline along. Already smiling for the benefit of the others, she looked past her daughter to scan the crowd of people. “It’s too late for begging. The thing is done. You must prosper on your beauty and youth alone, Caroline, and you’d best pray that’s enough for Sir Harry.”

With her own eyes downcast, Caroline sensed the stares of the others, felt their curiosity closing in on her like a heavy cloak. If her mother’s fingers had not dug so deeply into her arm she would have turned and fled. But there’d be no escape now. Though she was young, she wasn’t a fool. The moment she’d come into this room, her innocence and her good name were irrevocably gone. As her mother said, the thing was done, and Caroline’s fear settled into an icy dread. This night would be the worst of her life, and she prayed for the strength to survive it.

Beside her, Miriam called greetings to her friends in a voice far sweeter than any she’d ever used with her daughter, a voice laced with gaiety and the promise of love.

Oh, Mama, if only you’d shown that love to me…

“So this is your prize chit, eh?” said the man eagerly, and Caroline’s heart froze. “By God, Miriam, but she’s a pretty piece, even finer than you claimed! Come now, missy, don’t be shy. Let’s have a proper look at you.”

Roughly he seized her chin to turn her face up toward his and forced Caroline to meet his gaze. He was old, far older than she’d expected, his face florid and lined, his eyes nearly buried in the fleshiness of his cheeks, and when he smiled, his remaining teeth stained yellow from tobacco, the stench from his breath nearly made her faint. Powder from his old-fashioned wig sifted down onto his sloping, velvet-covered shoulders, and though his clothing was costly, no tailor in London could disguise the corpulence that swelled his waistcoat. This was the man she’d been sold to; this was the man whose bed she was to share, the man to whom she must willingly give her body.

Dear Lord help her, she couldn’t do it, not with him. She couldn’t do it. With a little sob she jerked free and backed away, her hand over her mouth.

Sir Harry was displeased, and so was her mother. “Maidenly fears, my lord, that’s all,” said Miriam quickly as she put her hands around her daughter’s shoulders, a show of maternal concern that also kept Caroline from retreating further. “I told you she’s only a fortnight from the country.”

“Only a fortnight, eh?” The greedy lust in his eyes sickened Caroline. “Then you swear she’s still a virgin?”

“Never touched by any man, my lord,” said her mother, fighting back a cough. “Not even kissed.”

“Then come with me, little maid,” he said with a satisfied leer, “and I’ll teach you all you need to know.” His arm snaked around Caroline’s waist and pulled her close. Twisting frantically against his arm, she caught one final look of her mother, standing alone with the blood-soaked handkerchief pressed over her mouth, the tall plume in her hair nodding gently over her carefully expressionless face.

Oh, Mama…

The music continued, the conversations around them never paused, as Sir Harry pulled Caroline, stumbling across the floor toward the doors that opened to the garden. Dear Lord, the garden: he meant to be alone with her already. He wouldn’t even wait until they’d returned to his house. She balked, catching the heel of her shoe in her skirts, and with a little cry pitched forward.

Swearing, he jerked her back to her feet. “Come along, you little hussy. Spirit in a woman’s one thing, but outright defiance is quite another. Unless that’s your game, eh? You play the wicked lass, and I’ll correct you?”

Shaking her head, Caroline stared at him with desperate bewilderment. “No, sir, forgive me, I never meant to play any games on you!”

His small eyes narrowed as he suddenly twisted her wrist so sharply that she yelped with pain. “On me or under me, we’ll try them all in time, won’t we, my little cat?”

“Release the lady, Wrightsman,” said a mild voice behind them, and, her heart still pounding with fear, Caroline turned to see her defender. He didn’t look like a hero—thin and ungainly as a crane in a plain brown silk coat, his gray-streaked hair cropped short in monastic severity—but in Caroline’s eyes he was already worthy of a white horse. “I don’t believe she wishes to keep your company any longer.”

“What she wishes doesn’t matter, Byfield,” growled Sir Harry. “She’s Merry Miriam’s daughter, and I’ve bought her services from Miriam herself.”

The gray-haired man frowned. “Her own mother sold her to you?”

“Aye, and drove a harder bargain than any moneylender,” said Sir Harry sourly. “I’ll have you know I’ve paid a king’s ransom for this little whore’s maidenhead.”

“If she still has a maidenhead, then she’s hardly a whore,” reasoned Byfield. “For that matter, to my eye she looks too young for any sort of venal activity. Since when have your preferences turned to children, Wrightsman?”

Sir Harry snorted. “Since Christmas week in Bath with that infernal actress. Left me with the French pox, damn her eyes! Even an old puritan like you must know the only real cure comes from lying with a virgin, and that means the girl’s bound to be young. How else can a man be certain the chit’s what she claims?”

Incredulous, Byfield stared down his nose at the other man. “You would knowingly ruin the poor girl that way? Pox her in the empty hope of curing yourself?”

“She’ll be paid well enough for her trouble, you can be sure.”

“I don’t care what you gave that sorry excuse for a mother, Wrightsman. I won’t stand by and let you do this. Come round to my banker in the morning and you shall have double what you paid.”

“Damn your interference, Byfield, it’s the girl I want, not the money!”

“Triple it, then, and find yourself a new physician instead. Who can put a price on an innocent’s soul?” His smile grave, the sixth Earl of Byfield held out his hand to Caroline. “Here, child. You’re coming home with me, and I swear no one shall ever touch you against your will again.”

And at last Caroline wept.

Chapter One

April 1803

He would not be afraid.

Jeremiah took a deep breath and rested his hand over the open top of the lantern’s globe, sealing the candle and its flame within beneath his palm. As the air was exhausted, the flame slowly began to flicker and dim, and the shadows in the bedchamber grew darker, deeper, closing in on Jeremiah as the small light faded. He could feel his heart pounding in his breast, his blood racing, every muscle tensing to run and escape the blind, irrational panic that was swallowing him as completely as the night itself. The little flame twisted one final time and guttered out, leaving only the smoking spark on the wick and the endless, silent, eternal blackness.

With a choking sound deep in his throat, Jeremiah lifted his hand, his eyes desperately intent on the tiny glowing spark. His breath tight in his chest, he willed it back to life, struggling to concentrate on this last dot of light as the only way to fight the blind terror that would smother his life if he let it.

Come back. Damnation, come back! Don’t die and leave me alone in the night!

God, why had he let it go so far?

Slowly, as if it heard him, the spark glowed brighter, stronger, until at last it became a flame again, dancing double in the curved globe. Still Jeremiah stared at it, unable to look away. For now the shadows were gone, the demons vanquished. But how long would they stay away, how long before he found any lasting peace? With a groan of despair he dropped back onto the bed, his arms thrown across the pillows beneath his head.

What the devil had happened to him? It hadn’t always been this way. He was a Yankee, a Rhode Islander by birth, nobody’s fool, a deep-water captain raised on the Narragansett. The first time he’d fought for his life he’d been only eleven, beside his privateering father in the War for Independence, and through two more wars he’d never turned his back on a fight, whether with swords or pistols or his own bare fists.

He’d battle hurricanes at sea or thieves and rogues on land. Who or what made little difference to him, as long as he won. His temper was notorious, his courage undoubted. He stood over six feet tall with shoulders to match, and years of hard living had made his body equally hard, scarred, lean and muscular.

No one who knew him would ever call him a coward. No one would dare. But he himself knew the truth.

He, Captain Jeremiah Sparhawk, was afraid of the dark.

He stared up at the pleated damask canopy overhead, still struggling with the terror. He was safe here, safe in his sister Desire’s great house on the hill outside of Portsmouth. She was a fine lady now, his sister, married to an English nobleman, Rear Admiral Lord John Herendon. If Jeremiah listened he could just make out the sound of their guests in the music room below, the laughter and merriment that he’d wanted no part of this evening, or any other since he’d been brought here four months ago. Yet Desire had welcomed him when he’d needed a haven, sat by his bedside when the pain and fever had threatened his sanity, and not once had she questioned him when he’d begged to leave the lantern lit at night.

That other night there’d been no moon, no stars, nothing to mark where the midnight sky met the sea. The hot wind that carried the Chanticleer eastward across the Mediterranean had strangely died at sunset, and with the ship becalmed, the men on watch had grown drowsy, lulled to complacency by the warm air and the gentle slapping of the water against the hull.

But he was their captain. If they erred, the fault and the blame was his alone. He should have sensed the danger before it was too late, before the devil was there on his chest with the cold, curved blade pressed tight into his throat.…

He woke with a ragged cry, soaked with his own sweat, and instinctively lunged for the pistol he kept beneath his pillow. Clutching the gun in both hands, he rolled over onto his back, ready to challenge the demon that dared follow him here into the light.

“Forgive me if I startled you, Captain Sparhawk,” said the woman standing beside the bed, “but you can lay that pistol down. At least you won’t need it on my account.”

Still not sure if he was dreaming, Jeremiah stared at her with the gun gripped tightly in his hands.

“Please,” she said gently. “I promise I’m no threat.”

She didn’t look like any nightmare he recognized. Far from it. She was so beautiful it almost hurt him to look at her, dressed all in white, from the egret’s plumes in her blond hair to the toes of her white satin slippers. If no devil, then an angel?

But heaven’s angels were neither male nor female, and the way the white silk of her gown spilled over the full curves of this one’s body left little doubt that she was decidedly female, decidedly of this earth. Her mouth was full and very red, her eyes very blue, widely set and tipped up at the corners. She watched him evenly, not at all embarrassed that he wore trousers and nothing else, waiting for him without any sign of fear.

Fear. Dear God, had she been here long enough to hear him cry out against the dark like a terrified child?

He uncocked the pistol and lowered it slowly, that gentleness in her voice making him wary. He didn’t want sympathy or pity, especially not from a woman he didn’t know. “How did you get in here?”

“The customary way.” Now that he’d put the gun down, she stepped closer to him, the diamonds on her bracelets glittering in the light of the single candle. “Through the door.”

He cursed himself mentally for forgetting to lock it. Was he getting so old that he’d already turned careless? “Then you can damned well leave the same way you came. Clear off, and leave me alone.”

She shook her head solemnly, the white feather in her hair brushing against the curtains of the bed. She was near enough now that he could smell her scent, jasmine and musk, and in spite of his wish to be left alone, he felt his gaze drawn inexorably to the soft, full curves of her breasts above the white satin. It didn’t make any sense. Why was she here, so beautifully available? He hadn’t had a woman since they’d brought him back to England, and his body was reminding him, a bit too obviously, that he’d recuperated long enough.

“Ma’am.” Consciously he forced his eyes back up to hers. Beautiful or not, he didn’t need the kind of entanglement she’d bring, not now when his life was in such a shambles. “Look here. Where I come from, ma’am, a lady doesn’t visit a man’s bedchamber unless she’s blessed sure of her invitation. If she comes prowling around on her own, then she’s generally something less than a lady. Now will you take yourself back downstairs with the others, or am I going to have to haul you down myself, for all the world to remark?”

Suddenly imperious, she lifted her chin a fraction higher, and he saw now that she was older than he’d first thought, no young girl dabbling at flirtation. “You shouldn’t address me so familiarly. I am the Countess of Byfield.”

“Well, hell.” He scowled at her, unable and unwilling to recall his sister’s careful coaching on English titles and forms of address. “I’m Captain Sparhawk of Providence, and by my lights that’s considerably more impressive. At least I earned my title.”

“So did I.” She smiled with an open charm he hadn’t expected, her lips curving upward like her tip-tilted eyes. “Forgive me. I forgot that you’re an American, and that a countess would be an anathema to you. Perhaps we’ll do better if you simply call me Caro.”

“I’m not going to call you anything.” He grunted, wishing she didn’t use hundred-guinea words like anathema. “I’m tired, and I want to go to sleep. I’ll just say goodnight and then you go on back down to my sister and the rest of your friends.”

“But they’re not my friends.” Impulsively she sat on the edge of his bed and leaned toward his hand, her blue eyes searching his face. “I don’t go out much, you see, and I’ve never met your sister. It’s you that’s drawn me here, Captain Sparhawk, you alone, and now that I’ve found you I’ve no intention of leaving quite yet.”

“I’ve drawn you here?” he repeated softly, staring at her parted lips so near to his own. Her gloved hand brushed against his hand, just enough to make the hair on his arm tingle with anticipation. “A craggy old Yankee shipmaster with white in his hair?”

She smiled again with the same openness. “You’re not so very old, Captain, and I’m not so very young. Together, I think, we could find some common ground to share.”

Her fragrance was like a drug to his senses, filling them so completely he could almost taste her already. He knew she expected him to kiss her. When he’d been younger, it had happened to him all the time. Barmaids or countesses, women generally made their wishes felt the same way. It would be so easy to draw her into his arms and beneath the sheets, to lose himself in the soft, willing pleasure she was offering.

So easy, and so wrong. Just because he’d been careless enough to let her into his room through that unlocked door didn’t mean she deserved a place in his life, however fleeting, or even one in his bed.

Purposefully he shifted away from her, focusing instead on sliding the pistol back beneath his pillow. “It’s late, ma’am. Good night.”

He heard her sigh, and felt the mattress lighten as she rose to her feet. “Jack warned me you’d be like this,” she said sadly. “But I thought at least you’d be willing—”

“Willing for what?” demanded Jeremiah. With humiliating clarity the answer came to him. His brother-in-law was so hopelessly besotted with Desire that he believed love alone could cure every other man’s ills, as well. How many times before this had Jack urged him to find a ladylove of his own? “So help me, if Herendon put you up to this—”

She turned sharply. “Whatever are you saying?”

“You know damned well what I’m saying! What did Jack tell you of poor old ailing Jeremiah? Did he tell you I was so lonely that I’d welcome the attentions of a woman, any woman, who showed a breath of interest in me?”