The Stanhope Challenge - Regency Quartet - Four Regency Romances by Cerise DeLand Page A

He’d had not the will to refuse her but had taken his shaft in hand and watched it sink inside her hot walls until he swore she was replete and he milked dry.
    How many times had he taken her last night?
    He stared at her. Her arms flung out in repose, her expressive lips parted, her large golden eyes closed, she was an erotic sight for only him. His heart bounded with pride. How often had he taken her to the ecstasy she’d asked for and deserved? He grinned and brushed his fingertips over her navel to the top of her seam. Should he make her come again? She came with such abandon every time he touched her. Never had that happened to him here in England. Not even with the woman he had once thought he adored.
    Sarah crossed his mind like a ghost. Her spectre matched the woman who, when alive, had transformed within a few months of their marriage into a lying, manipulative unfaithful creature.
    He climbed out of bed and made for the balcony. Pale dawn lined the sky. The translucent yellow reminded him of Sarah’s pale hair, and in contrast, the deep blue recalled the color of her eyes. At once, the horror of their marriage came rushing back to him like the hideous travail it had been.
    Sarah Collingswood had been the fairest debutante of her Season. Petite, quick and coy, she had interested any young buck who had a mind to marry. Why Adam had found her attractive after his many years in China, he could not say for certain. Perhaps, he was simply ready to marry. She had been lovely. Celebrated. The picture of youth and health. He had known her briefly when she was but a child and had not seen her until he returned to England from Hong Kong and his tenure with his cousin in the export company. But Adam had never delved too deeply beneath the surface of the charming doll who danced at the assemblies and commented with some intelligence over politics and books.
    Beneath that façade, Sarah had been childish and vain. Worse, she’d craved attention. Yet even he, for all his knowledge of yin–yang intimacies of sexual congress, could not bring her to orgasm. That had been a harbinger of her other petty traits. She’d been too stiff, too interested in her dignity and what she’d thought were society’s dictums that a wife remain elusive and unresponsive, even in bed. He could never have predicted that she would need other men’s attentions. Or that she would go so far as to commit adultery. And thus, she destroyed his own belief in the goodness of women and substantiated his belief that the famous Stanhope curse was real. Would that he had sought out Felice and wed her instead when he’d returned from Hong Kong. Perhaps he would never have had cause to give the curse any credence.
    Yet, for his career and for his son, he’d sought out Felice with the plan to solve his problems with a simple solution of marrying his childhood friend. But one look at her, one conversation with the charming widow, and he’d found he laughed at her wit. On instinct, he’d wanted to offer her marriage. He’d discussed it with Jack and Ulmsly. A few other party leaders as well. His years in China had brushed his reputation with hints of the exotic. Men thought him adventurous. Women thought him dashing, bold. Both sexes attributed to him an eroticism that appealed sub-rosa, but which was too bold for a politician of any national stature. He needed a wife, his friends and colleagues said. And soon.
    Two weeks later, he’d ridden down to her cottage, knocked on her door and within minutes, he’d offered marriage with no thought of the hideous family blight of the curse. But the day of his wedding, he’d gotten cold feet. As if abstinence could cure his family’s problem, he had deluded himself into believing the union could be in name only. He had forgotten that he was a man who liked women. Educated, witty, lovely women. Out of bed. And definitely in it.
    “And now what have you done?”
    Two arms wound around his waist and the warmth of