CHAPTER ONE

 

Mid-January, 1824

 

Lady Caroline Wilson hoped she was successful this month. If she was, the news would make her husband and her parents beyond ecstatic. Her father was on the mend, getting better every day. She didn’t think it would be fair to give them all false hope, if she wasn’t actually carrying her first child. The curse of being irregular with her menses is that the last two times she thought she carried, she’d only been late with her monthly course.

She pulled the hood of her heavy pelisse further down her brow to cover her head more as she blushed in the solitude of her carriage. She and Trey wanted children desperately, and did their part to see their desire come to fruition—making love as frequently as possible. Caroline enjoyed making love with her husband, and wanted him again even after making love with him that very morning. She didn't think Trey would argue with her idea for how to spend the evening.

No one occupied the space with her, as her coachman drove her the short distance home to Oakwood through the snow in the Lincolnshire countryside, after spending the morning with her parents at her childhood home, Randolph Park.

Caroline remembered her husband’s parting words when she left, and it caused her entire body to burn with excitement and desire.

“If you get back soon enough, we can have dessert before dinner.” His hot breath on the sensitive flesh of her neck just below her ear caused her knees to buckle and made her instantly wet with desire for him. If it weren’t for the fact that she had a standing appointment with her father to read him the paper each morning, she would have invited her husband back to bed.

She and her husband of sixteen months, Captain Reginald ’Trey’ Wilson, had been trying quite diligently for a child since their wedding night. Rarely had a night gone by that they didn’t share a bed. As uninformed and naive as she was when she got married, her husband had proven patient with her ineptitude and inexperience. He’d been a very considerate teacher these many months—showing her how to pleasure him and encouraging her to tell him how to satisfy her.

The past year of her life had been amazing, transforming Caroline from the virtuous, shy girl who knew nothing of what occurred in a marriage bed, into a woman who was unafraid to ask for what she wanted from her husband. In bed and out. If anyone had ever whispered, or even hinted before she married, that she would one day be this wanton, libidinous woman, she would have told them they were repulsive and uncouth, then suggest their family should see them committed to an asylum.

But she was wanton. Wanton for her husband’s touch searing her flesh, his mouth on her body causing her to shiver with desire, his body inside hers bringing them both to the dizzying heights of erotic satisfaction.

Even now, as the carriage turned onto the drive leading to the house she and Trey leased next to Randolph Park, Caroline couldn’t wait to get her husband alone. Her body craved his. Now.

She hoped that taking his mind off work might help put him in a better mood. The last few days he’d been a bit reserved and distant. When she’d asked him, he smiled at her and said he felt like he was perhaps coming down with something.

While she wasn’t a physician, she knew he wasn’t sick, because they shared a bed each night and they made love with the same fervor they had the month before when he wasn’t feeling “under the weather.” No, there was something more going on with her lord husband, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

So Caroline had gone to the two men who’d been with him since his return from battle nearly a decade earlier. The closest they could come to an answer for her was that perhaps Captain Wilson was thinking of the upcoming anniversary—of sorts.

It had been nearly ten years since the injury at the battle of Orthez that had nearly taken his life. He’d been stabbed by a French foot soldier’s bayonet in his upper left thigh, very near his manhood. Trey killed the man immediately but the wound went clear through the muscle of his thigh, just missing the artery. After several more minutes of battle, he’d fallen from his horse and been rescued from the ongoing melee by two of his soldiers. They had taken him to a hospital tent, where the surgeon there saved his life. The man saw fit to spare his leg as the wound went through muscle only, and the bone was not involved.

The scar had shocked her when she first saw it in daylight, about two weeks after they were married. She remembered crying for the pain her new husband had suffered and thanking God that he’d spared Trey’s life so they could meet. She couldn’t imagine life without her husband in it.

Trey said the area still made riding a horse for long distances painful, and likely always would. He preferred sitting on cushioned chairs, rather than wooden ones. And when the weather was cold and damp, the old wound bothered him more and made his limp more pronounced than at other times.

When Caroline had asked him if anything would help him feel better, he’d said walking helped him. So together they would walk through the gardens behind their home each evening, and when it rained or snowed they would walk through the portrait gallery several times. The walking kept the muscle from seizing and causing him pain.

She knew he often felt guilty for surviving when so many of his men had died in the war. If his memories were bothering him again as the anniversary of the battle neared, she would do whatever necessary to make those memories disappear for another day. And she would do it again each day for as long as required to make her husband feel better, all the while praying that those horrible memories leave him forever.

Her coachman called for the horses to halt, and the carriage rocked smoothly to a stop. She waited for the groom to open her door and accepted his hand as she stepped down onto the snow-covered gravel. Her boots crunched the frozen layer of ice atop the snow as she navigated her way up the wide sweeping steps with the help of the groom.

“Good day, my lady.” Mansell, the butler greeted her as he held the front door open. “I hope today finds your father much improved.”

Caroline smiled at the man who’d served under her husband and after the war came to work for his household. “It does, Mansell. Both my mother and I are feeling optimistic for a full recovery from this attack.” She handed him her cloak. “Is my husband in his office?”

“He is, my lady, but he has a visitor from London and has asked not to be disturbed.”

“When he is free from his meeting, please tell him I would like to speak with him. I will be in my sitting room.”

Caroline tempered her steps, not wanting to rush to her rooms, but wanting to be ready for her husband when he arrived. Chances were that he wouldn’t have much time for her, so she thought if she were already undressed, then she could rid him of his breeches and drawers quickly and have him inside of her in a matter of seconds.

Her body thrummed with anticipation. She felt herself getting wet and tingly imagining his touch, his mouth on hers as she worked the buttons on his trousers. She hated the fact that her skin was so fair that each time she blushed her entire body got splotchy pink and hot, though Trey told her repeatedly how he loved that about her.

“Your body cannot lie to me, my sweet,” he would tell her, then he would kiss every red patch, making her body cry out for more of his loving.

She closed the door behind her and leaned on it to catch her breath. Caroline began working the buttons on her pelisse as she rushed to her dressing room.

“Nelly?” She looked through to her bedroom and saw no one. But as if she conjured her maid from thin air, Nelly appeared. “Help rid me of these clothes, then stoke the fire in my room.”

“Would you like a nap before dinner, m’lady?”

Caroline gave her maid, who was just a few years older than she was, a wicked grin. “No. I want my husband before dinner.”

Nelly gave a shocked squeal and went about her task as quickly as possible. Once Caroline was free from her clothes, she wrapped herself in her husband’s warm robe and her own warm slippers, then climbed onto the settee in her sitting room, before the fire with a glass of wine and a book. She’d recently had a desire to read all of Miss Austen’s books again and was on her sixth re-read of Emma. Knightley was certainly one to swoon over. If she was the swooning type. Which she wasn’t.

Soon her husband entered her rooms through the connecting door, a broad smile on his handsome face. His meeting must have gone well. The corners of his beautiful hazel-brown eyes crinkled, his mood obviously much improved. Whenever Trey tried to force a good mood for her, she could tell because that beautiful smile of his never made it to his eyes. This afternoon, it did.

“I was told my lady wife wishes to see me,” he said, his gaze taking in her attire, raking over her form. She knew he wondered if she had anything on under the robe, and that aroused her further.

“I do.” She placed her ribbon between the pages of the book and set it on the table next to her settee. The shoulder of his over-sized robe slipped off her shoulder. It was unplanned, but when she heard his intake of breath she let the shoulder remain bare. Her belly quivered with excitement as Caroline went to stand in front of him and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck. Her fingers threaded into the soft brown curls at the nape, and slipped through like fine silk. Rising onto her toes, she placed a hesitant kiss on his lips. Did he even want the kiss? She was unsure because he hadn’t returned her shy gesture. Because of his mood lately, she didn’t know if he would be receptive of her mid-day effort at seduction. To her great surprise and profound relief, she realized his hands grasped her bottom, pulling her up and into his hardness.

Her husband kissed her with a ferocity she’d not seen from him in weeks. His mouth forced hers apart with the sweep of his tongue and soon they dueled, taking and giving a passion that was theirs alone. She’d never given this to another and Caroline knew Trey had given his passion only to her from the moment they had met.

She broke away from his kiss to catch her breath as he nibbled along the slope of her neck. Her hands moved to the front of Trey’s coat and she began to work the buttons free, then she started on his waistcoat. She shoved the jacket down his arms and tugged it off for him, tossing it onto the settee.

Caroline huffed in frustration when she was unable to get her husband's cravat undone, and in her impatience to feel his hot flesh against hers, began to work on the buttons on his trousers instead. Trey let go of her and began to tug at the knot around his neck.

“Damn Travers and his damn knots,” he hissed.

Caroline laughed and left him to his clothing. Stepping away, she released the belt keeping her husband’s heavy robe on her body. She turned her back on him and walked toward the bed, her slippered feet padding soft across the Turkish carpet. As she walked, she let the robe slide down her body, hoping he’d hurry to her side, as naked as she. She crawled onto the top of the bed and kicked off her slippers as she turned her best seductive smile at Trey.

“Broad daylight and naked already?” His shirt flew across the room. Caroline knelt on the bed, and pulled her hair forward to cover her breasts, his words reminding her that she was behaving like a harlot. Her knees parted and her hand trailed down to cover her mons.

“No. Don’t hide yourself.” He struggled with the boots and fell back onto the settee, but soon they went flying toward the open door to his rooms.

She gave him a coy grin, knowing he wanted her as much as she wanted him at that moment. She saw the evidence of it in his rigid arousal. “If you disapprove of my requesting you service me now…”

Finally as naked as she, he slid onto the bed. “If there is disapproval in my touch,” he whispered, “I give you leave to tell me to stop. Because you know how much it would pain me at this point.”

Her husband. The man she loved more than her own self. His hard-muscled and lean frame came from his determination to recover from his injury. When she’d first met Trey several years ago, he’d walked with a cane because of the wound he received in battle. Now the only reminder were the scars, and the occasional pains that he attributed to inactivity.

Even with that one imperfection caused by an enemy, Trey’s body appeared sculpted by the masters. Her husband was Michelangelo’s David come to life—except more handsome. He had a smile that brightened her life, and his hazel eyes had a glow in them that she knew was for her alone. His strong jaw and roman nose were perfectly proportioned, and rested beneath a wide, intelligent brow, that rarely frowned. His lips were wide, full, and soft. Perfect for kissing.

His touch went to her hair and he pushed it aside, revealing her sensitive nipples to his gaze. He lay her back on her mound of pillows, buried his face in the nape of her neck, and began to nuzzle her. She arched into him, and he took the tip of her breast into his mouth and began to tickle the tip with his tongue, sending an immediate jolt to her womb, and lower. She felt herself get even more wet for him, if that were possible.

Caroline moaned, and he chuckled, and took her other nipple and did the same. Her body was burning for him, and he was teasing her.

“I need you now!”

“Shhh… In time, my love.” His voice sounded rough and gravelly, as though he, too, was in pain from wanting her as much as she wanted him. She let him have his way with her, because he always saw to her pleasure before he took his. He kissed lower on her abdomen stopping just below her navel, to kiss the spot reverently. She wanted to cry out and share with him that she might be carrying their child, but she couldn’t. Not this time. Not yet. Each time she had before, she wasn’t the only one to suffer the loss of hope at the onset of her menses. He’d cried along with her, as he cradled her to him, promising they would keep trying.

His fingers brought her back to the present, and her husband’s lovemaking. He slid lower, his fingers parting her flesh. She opened her legs for him, making it easy for him to touch her there. His intimate caress caused her entire body to burn for him. There wasn’t a part of her body or soul that didn’t desire this man.

“Mmm… Yes.” She grabbed at the bedding beneath her and arched up to his touch, as he slid his fingers over her sensitive nub. He then brought his mouth over her sex and began loving her with it, causing her body to become a simmering mass of flesh on the verge of boiling over. When he pushed his fingers deep inside her, she cried out and felt herself clamp down on him. “Oh, God! Trey!”

He slid his fingers out and gave her nub several strokes, sending her tumbling into that first blinding orgasm. Her slick passage spasmed as he pulled away from her. Her core ached, needing to be filled.

“Mine,” he whispered as he slid up and over her. “The most beautiful woman in the world is mine.”

“I love you, Trey.” Her voice cracked with the emotion the brought out in her. He made her feel desired and cherished. He aroused and stimulated her in bed and out. And he was going to be a wonderful father.

His lips traveled upward, along her body, until he held her face in his hands, his lips hovering above hers. “I adore you, Caroline.” He kissed her softly. “I have from the day you and that ancient groom came to my home asking to see me about making trades for you on the royal exchange. I knew then I had to marry you.”

Caroline tingled all over and her hands trembled as she stroked his back and buttocks. The hard planes of his lean body were smooth and perfectly formed. And except for the scars on his thigh, back and front, where he’d been stabbed by that damned bayonet, her husband was perfectly formed and perfectly beautiful. The His fingers brought her back to the present, and her husband’s lovemaking. He slid lower, his fingers parting her flesh. She opened her legs for him, making it easy for him to touch her there. His intimate caress caused her entire body to burn for him. There wasn’t a part of her body or soul that didn’t desire this man.

“Mmm… Yes.” She grabbed at the bedding beneath her and arched up to his touch, as he slid his fingers over her sensitive nub. He then brought his mouth over her sex and began loving her with it, causing her body to become a simmering mass of flesh on the verge of boiling over. When he pushed his fingers deep inside her, she cried out and felt herself clamp down on him. “Oh, God! Trey!”

He slid his fingers out and gave her nub several strokes, sending her tumbling into that first blinding orgasm. Her slick passage spasmed as he pulled away from her. Her core ached, needing to be filled.

“Mine,” he whispered as he slid up and over her. “The most beautiful woman in the world is mine.”

“I love you, Trey.” Her voice cracked with the emotion the brought out in her. He made her feel desired and cherished. He aroused and stimulated her in bed and out. And he was going to be a wonderful father.

His lips traveled upward, along her body, until he held her face in his hands, his lips hovering above hers. “I adore you, Caroline.” He kissed her softly. “I have from the day you and that ancient groom came to my home asking to see me about making trades for you on the royal exchange. I knew then I had to marry you.”

Caroline tingled all over and her hands trembled as she stroked his back and buttocks. The hard planes of his lean body were smooth and perfectly formed. And except for the scars on his thigh, back and front, where he’d been stabbed by that damned bayonet, her husband was perfectly formed and perfectly beautiful. The he have him a coy look and grinned. “But you were.”

Caroline straddled him and he grabbed her buttocks and positioned her over his very erect penis, then slammed upward, into her. She gasped as he stretched her, and filled her fully. He ground into her, which caused her inner muscles to clench around him.

Then he started to move. And her ache was fulfilled with his thrusts. She met his movements with her own, causing the sensations to build inside her, pushing her toward another orgasm. His hands held her in place as he drove upward into her depths racing toward his own release. He smelled of his soap and their sweat, and the scent of their love-making emanated from every inch of them.

She rode him fast, matching his pace as he, too, sought his climax. Within minutes he began to growl, the sound telling her he was close. Her body read his cues, and it climbed even higher toward that sensation her body craved. She was ready to fly, but she didn’t want to go alone. Trey squeezed her bottom, holding her still while deeply imbedded. It was nearly her undoing. Her walls immediately began to clench on his shaft and her entire being tensed in preparation for the release she sought. He thrust upward, one, two, three more times and she shattered.

When she cried out his name, he exploded within her and together they rode the climax to its end. Caroline collapsed onto Trey’s chest and he cradled her to him.

She felt cherished and loved. She felt adored and worshipped. And she hoped she conveyed the same to her husband. Because she loved him infinitely.

 

Reginald ‘Trey’ Wilson, Dragoon Guard captain and veteran of the Napoleonic wars, most notably, the battles of Salamanca, the Pyrenees, and Orthez, loved his wife so much, that he would give everything he owned to be able to give her a child. And today, there was a reason to hope. His good friend and new father, Christopher ‘Kip’ Fenwicke, Viscount Huddleston, had come to tell him of a doctor he’d heard of in Edinburgh. A doctor who might help Trey determine if he was, indeed, sterile.

If he could meet with the man and have him perform whatever tests he needed, then at least he would know with certainty. And if those tests proved that he was incapable of siring children, then he would talk to Caroline about adopting children. He would agree to any number she wanted, if she could just forgive him for not telling her about this concern before they wed.

He tucked the counterpane under her chin as Caroline lay cuddled against his side in their bed, sated from their lovemaking. The injury that had ended his career in the military very nearly took the ability to satisfy a woman, and likely did take his ability to sire children.

Orthez had been a nightmare. He ran his hand down to his upper thigh and rubbed the scar where the enemy foot soldier stabbed him completely through his thigh, with the bayonet that had been in the man’s hand. The man had come at Trey’s horse from his off side. As soon as Trey saw the man coming toward him, he’d wheeled his horse so that its rump struck the man, knocking him to the ground. But before the man went down to his gruesome death beneath the hooves of his horse, he’d stabbed Trey high in the inside of his right thigh, the blade sticking in the seat of his saddle. The bastard Frenchman had aimed the long blade at Trey’s gut, but instead pierced completely through Trey’s upper thigh. He’d missed his balls by inches, and the artery carrying his life by even less.

After his attacker was down, Trey noticed the blade pinning him to his saddle, and ripped it from his leg. The blood made the seat of his saddle slick. Thinking he was not long for the world, and with a roar that came from some inner demon inside him, he attacked the two enemy soldiers coming for him, slaying them both with a precision slice from his saber.

The battle had been so fierce for so long, that Trey had lost track of time. Eventually he fell off his horse, unconscious from the loss of blood. One of his men saw him go down and rescued him from the same death as the man who’d stabbed him, under the hooves of the cavalry horses.

It had taken over two years for him to fully recover. And for most of that time, he’d contemplated swallowing a ball from his pistol because he thought his ability to make love to a woman had been taken from him forever. He’d been twenty-four years old when he was injured and at the time, thought he would have to live the life of a celibate. Not a whole man. He’d frequently cursed the French bastard that stabbed him for not hitting the artery. Death from bleeding out would have been preferable. Or so he thought at the time.

He’d been extremely angry, even asking for the name of the man who’d rescued him so he could kill the man for depriving him of a normal life, and sentencing him to live as half a man. Fool that he was then, he was now much wiser, and glad he hadn’t ended his life.

His ability to make love to a woman returned, eventually, with the help of a skilled mistress who’d seen the same injury in other men. It was a common thing to be stabbed in the thigh during battle, she told him, though uncommon to survive.

Mariah was able to help him get an erection and keep it long enough to satisfy a woman. And except for the ache in his hip, likely from the fall itself, and his muscle seizing on occasion, he’d thought he had his normal life back.

But, while his ability to make love to a woman had returned, he remembered the words of the field surgeon who’d stitched him up and sent him on to a chateau near the village of Baigts which had been turned into a British field hospital. The man didn’t think Trey could hear him when he’d told the two men carrying him to the wagon, that if Trey didn’t get gangrene and he survived the coming fever, his injury had likely rendered him unable to function as a man at worst, and at best he’d be sterile.

Because of those words, Trey never thought he’d get married. But he’d recovered the ability to get erect, and sometimes he even climaxed, so he began to entertain the possibility.

Then he met Caroline and knew he had to have her as his wife. She was beyond merely beautiful, she had a keen head for numbers and finance. She had come to him when her father had lost a large sum on a ship he’d invested in. Caroline had a plan to restore his finances, but she needed the help of a licensed broker.

Trey was that licensed broker. Caroline had found him by researching his public record of trades. She hired him to make her trades on the exchange for her father when he’d had his first attack of the heart, shortly after learning the magnitude of loss he’d suffered. Trey had invested for Caroline, and she’d done what she intended—restored her father’s fortune. Even now, she continued to direct trades for her father, making Lord Randolph a very wealthy man.

But as an only child, Caroline wanted children. Each month that her menses returned was a stab at her heart, and at his conscience as well for never telling her that he might have been left sterile by his blasted injury.

In the year he and Caroline had been married, they’d not yet conceived. She wanted as many children as possible she said, because childhood had been lonely time for her. Whereas for him, third of four sons, with four sisters as well, there had never been a dull or lonely moment in their home. When Caroline was among his multitude of nieces and nephews, she was in her element. She loved children and would make a wonderful mother.

Conniving bastard that he was, he had married her knowing he might not ever be able to give them to her. There was always the possibility, but he just didn’t know.

His wife stirred next to him. He looked down into her slumberous blue eyes and grinned. Her soft, contented smile stirred immense pride that he was able to satisfy her. Especially when he recalled those early days after the fever broke and he was returned to his family to recover. Those dark, dark days, when he had wanted to die because he couldn’t force his cock to rise.

Caroline pushed the hair from her face and raised up on her elbow, holding his gaze. “We should get dressed for dinner, don’t you think?”

“I’m content staying here the rest of the day with you.” He was, too. Trey wished he could stay here with her for the rest of their lives. He wished he’d never been injured at Orthez. Then he wouldn’t have to lie to his wife about his upcoming trip to Edinburgh.

“I don’t necessarily have to eat in the dining room. I’ll have Nelly tell Mrs. Greaves to bring us tray.”

“Do that.” He stroked her rosy cheek with the back of his hand. “There’s nothing I want more than to remain abed with my wife. Especially when I need to leave for Edinburgh soon.”

Taking the sheet with her to cover her nakedness, Caroline sat up in the bed. “When did this come about?”

“Just this morning,” he replied. “There’s a business that I would like to look into before I try to persuade my clients to invest in it.”

“Oh.” A deaf man could hear the pout in her voice. “It couldn’t wait until spring?”

“I’d rather not,” he replied. “Others might take the opportunity from me. I can be back in a few weeks, I will go straight there and return—” He traced a finger over the curve of her breast through the sheet. The touch caused a shiver to run through them both. “—to your side as fast as is humanly possible in the middle of winter.” He meant it, too. He didn’t like leaving her any more than she disliked his being away.

Caroline plopped back onto her pillows with a sigh. “I wish papa was not ill, then I would insist you take me with you.”

“How is he today?” He changed the subject, thankful for the distraction from his lies.

“Getting better, but he’s still unable to walk unassisted. He gets very dizzy just sitting upright for very long. But he is taking his tonic and eating more. Today is the first day I feel optimistic that he might recover again.”

“That is good news. I imagine your mother is much relieved.” Trey was happy for Caroline, because he didn’t want to imagine her heartbreak when Lord Randolph died. She was incredibly attached to her parents.

He had been as well, and never had an opportunity to mourn his father. He’d received a letter from his eldest brother, Albert, that their father had died, right before his regiment had left for Salamanca. He was a young officer, with little experience, and in command of men who looked to him for instruction. There wasn’t time to be a son mourning for his beloved parent. It was something he’d had to do after he returned to England.

“She is, as am I.”

“After I return from Edinburgh and we feel certain your father is well, I should like for us to make a trip west to Lancashire and see my mother.”

Caroline giggled. “We should, sweetheart. As soon as we’re certain not to be snowed in.”

“That was no accident, my dear,” he replied. Their four days all alone in the woods with nothing but each other and his instincts for survival were among the best memories he would ever have. “I’ll have you know, I planned getting snowed in at my brother-in-law’s game cottage last year.”

“I’m sure you did.” His wife rose, wrapped his robe around her, and tugged on the bell pull. “I don’t know about you, but I’m famished. I wonder if cook has any of that apple pie left. I’m craving a sweet.”

As she went into her dressing room, Trey said yet another prayer that this doctor in Scotland could help him. Because he didn’t want to think about what he’d do if the man couldn’t.