Night of Pleasure by Delilah Marvelle Page B

more than I should. But I’m done with that. I’m asking that you hold onto all my money for a full year. Invest it for me. That way, when Elsa and I are ready to start a family next year, I will have a sizable investment to work with.”
    Derek quickly made his way toward him. “How the hell are you going to live if I invest all of your money? You’ll need something for monthly expenses.”
    “My novels will pay for that.”
    Derek’s eyes widened. “ How ?! You haven’t sold any in months. It would be like me wanting to make money off the paintings I used to do when I was twelve.”
    Andrew set his shoulders. “I appreciate the moral support. I wish you the best at your wedding, and I’m sorry I won’t be there.” He swung away and disappeared out into the corridor, his steps angrily hammering farther and farther away.
    Derek seethed out a breath and jogged out into the corridor, skidding to a halt. “Now you’re just being bloody spiteful. I’m trying to give you sound advice. I’m trying to—”
    “Like always, Derek, you are only trying to run roughshod over my life and everyone else’s. Why are you trying to control us when you know that isn’t who we are?” Andrew kept walking. “Go back to your superior way of thinking and your superior way of life that includes your superior American princess. I’ll simply head back over to the large steaming pile of shite I made for myself and roll around in it.”
    “Why are you always so goddamn— Where are you going ? We need to sit down and talk about how marrying this woman is going to—”
    “ Going to what ?!” his brother yelled, swinging toward him, his eyes ablaze. “Plunge me into hell because I’m looking to make a respectable woman out of someone you and the rest of society thinks is a whore? Well, what if I were to tell you that I was the real whore here? Not Elsa, but I? And what if I were to tell you this particular whore wants a better life outside of all the beds he’s been rolling around in since he was eighteen? What then?”
    Derek swallowed. “I never called her a whore. Not once. And you damn well know it.”
    “Invest the money for me,” Andrew bit out. “In the meantime, don’t bloody call on me with your lectures. You’re not my father.” His brother swung away and disappeared.
    Derek fell against the nearest wall and stared up at the gold-painted ceiling far above his head. They were alike in so many ways. The only difference was that he’d been fortunate enough to have been born heir and handed everything he could ever want. An impending great fortune of three million, a title, good health, the respect of everyone in his circle, a brother he could always confide in, a mother who thought the world of him, cousins who thought the world of him. And Clementine. A beautiful woman who was about to change his life by gifting him with the one thing he’d always wanted: a family of his own.
    Not the one his father had envisioned for him. No. But the one he envisioned. Where his son could cry in his arms whenever he needed to without being scolded. Where his daughter could come to him and admit to wanting to be a scientist without being scolded. And where his wife embraced him, not because of an arranged marriage that required her to, but because she wanted and needed to be in the only place she had ever truly belonged: in his arms.

London, England – in a carriage on its way to the Banfield House at Grosvenor Square
    April 26, 1830, late afternoon
    The precise moment as to when Clementine Henrietta Grey’s life had become a jaded fairy tale would have been at birth. She was, after all, the eldest and only child out of eleven to have been born breathing. As such, her father ensured every breath she took was of immense value. He certainly had the means to afford it.
    Her father, Mr. Rupert William Grey, was renowned throughout all of New York, Madrid, Moscow, Paris and Hamburg as ‘The Commander of all Political Assets,’