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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 because 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.
He liked the feel of her, he liked her smell. But most of all, he liked the way she demanded nothing of him.
Small and even white teeth nipped at his shoulder.
‘Your mind is far, far away, Simeon. Am I not enough of a distraction for you today? Would you like other…ministrations?’
She licked his ear as she said this, her fingers closing around his manhood. ‘I have two hours before I am needed anywhere else and I still harbour a lot of inclination for more of your body.’
Such thoughts began to work upon his libido and he felt a rising. Damn Worthington and his ill-timed demise, damn his comely daughter for her unsettling visit and damn his own mind for spending so much time ruminating upon them both.
Turning Teddy over, he brought his mouth down across one large breast. At thirty-five Theodora was a woman who knew her own body and she was rabid in her demand for satisfaction. An experienced female, proficient in the art of lovemaking, the two husbands she had lost young added to her allure. She would never marry again. She had told him this daily when he had first met her a year ago, though lately she had said it less and less. A small throb of warning halted him, but she was not having that, her fingers now in other places, clever and slick.
‘Take me, Simeon, and ride me high and long. Make me scream in bliss.’
The dirty talk was working and she was already wet with their endeavours from half an hour earlier. Without a word, he entered her and thrust on home, her face dissolving into relief and her nails clawing into his skin, drawing blood.
Pain and passion. An avid mix. He lifted her up and rode her as she had requested, her shouts of delight muted by his fingers hard banded across her lips.
Three hours later he was sitting at the back of a pub in Regent Street, the place filled to the brim with rowdy locals, the smell of smoke and strong drink in the air.
Tom Brady, one of his oldest friends, was waiting for him, two cold beers on the table. He was an inspector for the Metropolitan Police and a damn useful contact to have.
‘I got your note, Sim, and I looked into the fiasco of Worthington’s last few weeks on this earth.’
‘And?’
‘The Viscount actually died a few days before the family released the news, apparently. On the eighth of July.’
Simeon counted back the days. If this was true, then the Viscount was dead already when his daughter had come to see him and yet she had hardly looked grief stricken. Why not?
Tom Brady continued. ‘Lionel Worthington was rumoured to be all but bankrupt and his sole estate is not even in the family’s hands after he made a number of poor investments. There is also talk of his late mistress, Mrs Catherine Rountree, for some say the Viscount had a hand in her death a month ago. He drank a lot by all accounts and a few of the first people on the scene of the carriage accident in the north intimated that he looked demented. An angry drunk, they told the constables who finally arrived, though by that time Worthington was long gone. Skulked off into the shadows in his drunken fury, hiding until he could formulate more lies to make some sense of his disappearance and be exonerated.’
Fury railed in waves across Simeon’s body.
‘A letter, written by you, was found among the Rountree woman’s effects at her house in Camberwell, by the way, Simeon.’ Brady dug around in his pocket. ‘I thought you might like it back before anyone else could use it to point the finger at you, so to speak.’
Taking it, Simeon held the missive tight while he struggled to work out what to say.
In the end he stuck with the truth.
‘Did you read it?’
‘I did.’
‘Did anyone else?’
‘No. The property of the deceased Mrs Catherine Rountree was still to be sorted. A letter like this, where you threaten the Viscount, might be inflammatory for there were things about the Viscount’s death that did not make sense.’
‘Things?’
‘One of the Worthington servants, when questioned, said he heard raised voices and a fierce argument well into the evening. He thought perhaps there had been a visitor in the house, for around midnight he found the front door ajar, banging in the wind, and he was certain that it had been secured earlier on, as it always was.’
‘Who do you think it was?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Worthington had his enemies. It could have been any number of people, but our services are stretched and there are other more important cases that will take precedence. You didn’t see him into the next world, did you, Sim? Your missive held threats, after all.’
Lifting the beer to his lips Simeon drank deeply before replying. ‘Viscount Worthington wouldn’t be worth spending a long time in gaol for.’
‘From memory, you knew his mistress, Mrs Catherine Rountree, well, though, did you not? I recall you mentioning her over the years.’
‘She grew up in Angel Meadow, too, which is why I have taken full responsibility for her little child.’
‘Some say that Lionel Worthington was not kind to the girl, thinking her only a nuisance who took up far too much of Mrs Rountree’s time.’ When Brady spoke again there was hesitation in his words. ‘Did you see the Viscount in the days before his untimely demise, Sim?’
‘I did. I felt so strongly on the subject that I followed up my letter with an ultimatum in person the morning before he died. I reiterated that if he ever went near Flora Rountree again I would kill him. I was pleased to hear he went home and saved me the bother of seeing through such a threat.’
‘His older daughter found him.’
‘I had not heard that.’
‘It isn’t common knowledge. He is buried at Athelridge Hall apparently, in the small graveyard to one side of the chapel.’
‘Who is the heir to the title?’
‘A Mr Cartwright from York. Word has it he has a much bigger estate up north and Athelridge Hall was never part of the entailed property.’
‘So the Worthington family have returned home?’ Simeon thought of the deeds of ownership to Athelridge Hall sitting in his wall safe and the reality of an eternal resting place for a man he’d hated being right under his nose.
‘They left London in a rented hackney and the bills from their lengthy stay here have been left unpaid. Everyone is speaking of it so I doubt Miss Adelia Worthington will have any more suitors arriving on her doorstep now.’
‘You know of her?’
‘Miss Worthington?’ Tom hesitated, looking at him in a strange way. ‘What man with eyes and ears in London would not? Her beauty is heralded as unsurpassed and if her character has defects, then who would notice them?’
‘Defects?’
‘Apparently, she is haughty and strong minded and has turned down each and every desperate suitor with barely a reason. As a consequence, we at the Metropolitan Police have been foiling planned duels in her name ever since the end of January, when she arrived in the city.’
‘Like a modern-day Helen of Troy; a face that has launched a thousand proposals?’
Tom laughed, but all Simeon could think of was one proposal. Hers to him. ‘I will allow you anything.’ The very words made his loins ache, a further irritation in a difficult month. His fever had abated, but the heat of their remembered encounter had left him unfathomably and uncomfortably warm.
‘Could I ask you to settle the debt the Worthingtons have left behind them in London, Tom? Anonymously.’ He brought out a wad of notes and peeled them off. ‘This should cover it. Speculation and gossip about that family will only harm the small daughter of Mrs Rountree if anyone were to dig deeper. Any investigation into Worthington’s liaisons means the child may be questioned and I’d rather she wasn’t.’
Taking the money, Tom shoved it into his waistcoat pocket. ‘I’ll do that, though there is something else, too, that I need to speak to you about. Something much more…personal.’
His tone had Simeon looking up.
‘Is Lionel Worthington’s older daughter a particular friend of yours?’
‘No. I only met her once a week or so back under difficult circumstances, but I barely know her.’
‘Then you might be interested in the fact that Miss Adelia Worthington has told everyone you asked for her hand in marriage and that her father had given his blessing. His last rite as a parent, I think she said, and the first time in a long while that she had seen him happy. A final gift. Something to be treasured.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘She has the proof, too, for her matrimonial dowry was Athelridge Hall and she has made it known that you accepted the titles for it from the Viscount as surety of your intentions.’
‘I recovered the place after Worthington’s bad investments began to impinge on my own portfolio.’
Tom frowned. ‘Was it a public notice?’
Simeon did not answer.
‘Witnesses would have been useful, but still…’ Tom threw that thought away and began on another. ‘Her beauty must count somewhat in her favour.’
‘Favour?’
The way Tom had said that sentence was somewhat worrying.
‘She is a tease, so I’m told, and a woman who provokes gossip. If Miss Worthington’s first months in society were filled with offers from the smitten sons of society, her last one was not. She hit the Honourable Rodney Anstruther over the head with an umbrella in Hyde Park for no good reason whatsoever and he has made certain everyone knows of it.’
‘What does he say of her, then?’
‘That Miss Worthington has an icy heart and a cold manner and that she is not to be trusted.’
The day drew in on him.
‘And the others?’
‘Have withdrawn their own suits on the death of her father. It seems that the Worthington financial stability is not at all as the Viscount had intimated and society favours the wealthy. Perhaps Adelia Worthington has her own reasons for her interest in your substantial fortune, Sim. A solution, so to speak, to all her woes.’
Just like all of the others. Just like the newly brought-out debutantes and their desperate mothers. He’d been in society just twice over the past year and had hated it both times. It was why he had stuck with Theodora Wainwright and her ilk. While such women might wish for permanence in his life, they would never expect it.
There was no way in hell that Lionel Worthington and his daughter would have the last laugh. No. He would visit his lawyers tomorrow and find out just what could be done to escape these lies.
With a flourish, he finished his beer and called for another just as Tom began to speak again.
‘You’re twenty-seven now, Sim. Some wily female would have caught you sooner or later and you need heirs for that fortune you have accumulated.’
Simeon shook his head. ‘You are wrong about that. A fortune means nothing to me and one marriage in this lifetime was more than enough.’
Tom nodded. ‘Hell, I had almost forgotten about Susan Downing. What were you? Nineteen?’
‘Led by my lust and eminently stupid is what I was. I regretted marrying her the morning after we had walked up the aisle. With Miss Worthington there wouldn’t even be that twenty-four hours of hopefulness.’
‘You could leave England. Disappear for a while?’
‘I have a business to run. I’d be as bankrupt as Lionel Worthington if I did that.’
‘Then if there is no way to escape marriage, take her to Athelridge Hall and leave her there. There are many other men in London who never see their wives and life goes on as normal.’
‘Normal?’ Simeon could hardly get his head around the very idea. ‘A misguided deceitful harlot claiming my name and bearing any rightful heir. How could that ever be normal?’
The cold he was recovering from suddenly seemed to freshen and he spent the next few moments coughing, sick in mind and body and reeling from the betrayal of a girl who wasn’t even out of her teens. If he handled this crisis badly, he would be the laughingstock of London and his burgeoning investment business would bear the brunt of his ill-thought-out decisions.
Already his youth in the founding of a railway empire had counted against him and he did not need this sort of a mess in his personal life to add to any conjecture. This industry depended on steadfastness. It needed a cool head and a sound grasp of financial practice. A humiliating and contentious marriage would be the antithesis to all he had worked so hard for and there was no way he would let such a thing happen.
No. Miss Worthington might not yet realise that she had a tiger by the tail with his claws unsheathed, but she soon would.
A private battle it might have to become, but he could well deal with that. He swore that she would rue the day she had tricked him into this and the most beautiful visage in all the world would be no protection whatsoever against his unbridled fury.