Miss Adelia Worthington knew how dangerous her plan was, but she couldn’t turn back now, for when one was desperate, desperate measures had a need of being taken.
The door knocker was in her hand and she banged it thrice against a polished silvered strike plate. The servant who answered the summons looked about the street as if to understand the truth of a woman being so very alone here at this time of the night.
‘I have come to see Mr Simeon Morgan.’
‘Is he expecting you, miss?’
‘He is not, but I know he is in residence and would appreciate a word.’
The clock in the hallway chimed out the hour of ten thirty, underlining the question in the servant’s face, and for a moment Adelia thought he might simply shut the door.
‘I am Lady Worthington.’ Perhaps if she used the status of her mother’s title he might allow her access.
The name meant something, she could see that it did, for he faltered and stepped back, a blast of wind from the street helping to make up his mind.
‘Very well, my lady. If you would follow me in, I will find you a seat and tell the master you require an audience.’
At that she almost smiled because he could not know that she required so very much more.
One moment later and perched on a chair of dark velvet studded in shiny brass buttons, Adelia looked around the room she was now in. The elaborate town house was exactly as she had expected it to be, full of pomp and richness, the furniture and curtains assaulting her senses. New money always screamed with a desperate need to be noticed and it was no different here, the colours of every expensive fabric, paper and wood surface clashing with the ones next to them.
If this was a tune, it would have been discordant and shrill. If this were a painting, there would have been no quiet subject peering out from within the frame. No, this excess was drawn in bold harsh strokes, the jarring and inharmonious risk of placing everything one owned on display for all to admire and marvel at. An unmeasured pretension that spoke of boasting and swagger and a certain self-importance.
She had expected it to be so, for Mr Simeon Morgan was one of the newcomers, his fortune made in clever investments in the freshly established railway lines destined to run the length and breadth of Britain. While many of his competitors were collapsing all around him with their over-optimistic speculations, he seemed to have forged ahead unscathed. By luck or acumen, she had no way of telling.
She longed for Athelridge Hall and its old-fashioned quiet colours even as her next thought overlaid that one. The Worthington estate could be gone from them completely and swiftly if this meeting did not go well.
A noise to one side had her looking up and a small girl stood there, her long dark hair plaited and one eye blackened.
Shock held Adelia immobile.
‘You are very pretty.’ The child’s voice carried an accent from the north and the cut of her nightwear was not in the style of any servant’s offspring. Mr Morgan’s daughter, perhaps? My goodness, had he been married? Was he still? She had not heard a word about any union and horror consumed her at the very thought.
A flurry behind had another woman appearing, one who clearly had no compunction about grabbing the girl roughly and pulling her away. Should she say something? Should she demand from the older woman some assurance as to the child’s welfare? Adelia stood to follow them just as the first servant returned with a calling card in his hands.
‘Mr Morgan said that I was to give you this, Lady Worthington, after which I had to make sure you were safely escorted out to your carriage and seen off the property.’
All thoughts of the recent contretemps fled.
‘He won’t see me?’
‘No.’
‘If I sat here and waited...’
‘He was most insistent, Lady Worthington.’
‘Were I to return in the morning, would he be available then?’
‘The master said that he would prefer any contact with your family to be conducted through his lawyers. Their direction is stated upon the card you hold.’
She heard frustration in his answer at her continued presence here, and with more force than she meant, she tore up the card and let it flutter in small ragged pieces to the expensive Aubusson carpet below.
‘Could you go back and tell your master that I have tried that avenue already and it has not been conducive to any meaningful dialogue. That is the very reason I am here. I should like to speak with him face to face so there can be no doubt as to what it is I wish to relate. It is a sensitive matter and not one for lawyers or third parties.’
‘I am sorry, but I cannot allow you to go up, Lady Worthington.’
As the words echoed around the room, Adelia simply took a chance.
‘Could you help me, please, for I am in great and desperate need? If you turned away for just one moment, our problem will be solved. That is all I ask. You do not need to do anything else but look away. I shall manage the rest.’
As he faltered, hope rose.
‘I urgently need an audience. I promise I shall tell Mr Morgan that I simply ran past you and up the stairs and that you had no way of stopping me, none whatsoever, even though you tried your very hardest. I will be off the premises in five minutes and after that I shall never bother anyone here again.’
‘I could lose my job...’
‘I would find you another.’ She smiled in that particular way that seemed to send every man in society to pieces and saw him glance at her dimples.
‘It is desperate, you say?’
‘Completely and utterly.’
‘Five minutes is all you require?’
‘Not a second more. Please?’
The silence lengthened until he spoke again, this time in the slightest of whispers.
‘Mr Morgan’s chamber is the second door on the left at the top of the stairs, Lady Worthington. But he will not be pleased to see you, I can promise you that.’
Adelia simply took her chance and ran.
Simeon sat in the wing chair to one side of the low-burning fire and stared into the flames.
He was sick to death of the cold that had consumed him for over a week now, sending him every few moments into hacking bouts of coughing. He was sure a rib on his right-hand side was broken with the force of the paroxysms, and the fever which had been intermittent was back again, evident in the shaking of his chattering teeth. Even the thick woollen blanket pulled from his bed seemed to make no difference. He was utterly freezing.
‘Damn,’ he swore softly and laid a hand across his aching eyes.
He’d been asleep most of the day, which meant that he would be up all night. If he listened, he knew he’d shortly be able to hear the bells of St James’s, Piccadilly, pealing out the third quarter. He wished it were dawn already even as he wondered why on earth Lionel Worthington’s wife would come to visit him at this time of night. Lady Worthington? Was she mad? Did she expect clemency, or worse, forgiveness, for her husband’s many sins? Harris, his butler, had said this visitor looked desperate and well she should. A man with the base morals her spouse had would distress any woman.
Leaning forward, he breathed out hard, trying to loosen the tightness in his chest. Well, his lawyers would soon see to her and send her on her way, that was what he paid them well to do. He tried to remember what Worthington’s wife looked like, but could not recall her face at all. A blonde, he thought, and thin, but failed to find a true image.
Harris had conveyed his misgivings about this late and unexpected visitor succinctly.
‘Lady Worthington looks a bit lost, sir. Like a stray cat.’
Well, the last thing he needed was yet another stray in his house, his thoughts going to Flora Rountree. The child had landed upon him out of the blue a week ago and he often heard her wails in his house at all hours of the night despite employing a well-turned-out and competent governess who came with glowing references.
‘Damn it all.’
First the death of her mother, Catherine Rountree, and now this. The whole year so far had been a disaster and it was only early July.
The click of the door opening had him glancing up and, instead of his expected servant, the most beautiful young woman he had ever laid his eyes upon appeared. With teeth worrying her bottom lip, she let herself in and locked the door behind her, standing straight and determined after turning the key.
‘Who the hell are you?’
His words made her frown, though the lines on her forehead took nothing away from her loveliness. Rather eyes the shade of emerald green only brightened and a mouth with full and sensual lips puckered with worry. He felt a tight clench of thrill in his stomach and shifted his position to dampen down the unwanted sentiment.
‘Mr Morgan, I know I should not have come, but I have something to say to you that I cannot in all honesty enunciate to your lawyers or indeed to anyone else.’
Simeon drew up his blanket, wishing like hell he was better clothed.
‘I am ill.’
He could not quite understand why he had said this, explaining away his lack of decent attire. After all, it was she who had crashed into his room uninvited and any account of his own actions was hardly an obligation.
She looked away, the candlelight catching her hair, strands of gold and wheat and pure-spun whiteness escaping from a hat of feathers angled across her head.
Had the fever made him delusional? Was she an angel descended from above and one who had landed fair and square in his bedchamber? Teasing him? Her next words dissipated that notion completely.
‘My name is Miss Adelia Worthington. Lord Worthington is my father.’
‘An unfavourable parentage then, though you look nothing at all like him.’ He could not keep surprise from his words.
She ignored his comment and carried on. ‘I have come to offer you a trade.’ There was a quiver in the last word.
‘A trade?’ The room swam as he shook his head and listened.
‘But first I need to know if you have a wife?’
‘I have not.’ The words slipped from him in disbelief. Where could this conversation be going?
‘Good. The thing is that Athelridge Hall, the estate you gained from my father near Barnet, is my family home and all the property we have left in the world. I do not wish to lose it and so, as a way of mitigating the effects of my father’s foolish investments, I have come to you with an offer of marriage.’ She slowed down a bit now and swallowed. ‘To myself, I mean. I am an innocent and I have had many proposals this Season for my hand. My success in the marketplace of high society has been well documented should you doubt what I am saying—an unequalled triumph, a victory of some worth according to all the sources that I hear it from.’
The words were running together now in a faster and faster way, no breath between the outpouring. He frowned.
‘You are telling me that you are a prize, then? The incomparable Miss Worthington?’
‘Indeed, many would say that I am.’
No false modesty deterred her from carrying on, although there was a new shake in her voice.
‘In exchange for what I offer you, I want you to gift me Athelridge Hall. As my husband it would still be yours to all effects and purposes and I understand that. But my home would be safe and I would still have the rights to it. So it is something barely noticeable for you, not even an inconvenience. I know how rich you are and that the estate represents an insignificant investment for you, but I should not expect a share in anything more than Athelridge Hall. Ever.’
‘My God, you cannot be serious, Miss Worthington?’
He saw her fingers close around a small gold cross that she wore on a chain around her neck as if to counteract his blasphemy as she continued.
‘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 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.
Copyright © 2020 by Sophia James