Wanton Widows: Three Short Regency Romps Read online

  Wanton Widows

  three short Regency romps

  by Isabella Hargreaves

  Copyright © Isabella Hargreaves 2015

  ISBN 978-0-9943671-0-5

  Except for use in any review, no part of this book may be used,

  reproduced, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form, or by any

  means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)

  without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade

  or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the

  author’s prior consent. If you would like to share this book with another person,

  please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the

  hard work of this author.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are

  either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

  resemblance to actual events, locales, organisations, or persons living or

  dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Find out more about Isabella Hargreaves and her books online at

  www.isabellahargreaves.com

  Foreword

  These short stories are a departure from my usual historical romances in that they are erotic romances. I challenged myself to write at this heat level, but even so they are best described as “naughty but nice”. Each is very different – saucy, intriguing, humorous – but united by their theme of Regency-era widows finding new partners in unconventional ways, and by their genre.

  My thanks to my wonderful writing group friends: Noelle Clark, Anthea Jones, Tania Joyce and Kendall Talbot for their valuable comments on the drafts.

  I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

  Isabella Hargreaves

  Table of Contents

  Story 1: What a Widow Wants

  Story 2: The Widow’s Wedding Night

  Story 3: Wooing the Wealthy Widow

  About the Author

  What a Widow Wants

  By Isabella Hargreaves

  The young Dowager Lady Caroline Newberry, like all the debutants at Lord and Lady Massey’s ball, was dressed in her best finery and on the hunt for a man. Not just any man. A specific type of man. He didn’t need wealth or power or to be in need of a wife.

  He did need to be available, well-made and good in bed. He didn’t even need to be forward. She was more than willing to make all the advances to signal her desire for nothing more or less than intercourse – not after marriage or after engagement, or next year, or next month, or next week, or tomorrow - but tonight, as close to now as possible.

  She scanned the crowded ballroom, hung with chandeliers and baskets of cascading flowers, for her quarry. Her eyes flicked over the elderly, the married, the weak-chinned, the effeminate.

  It was one whole, long year since her husband had passed away and she wanted a man, needed a man, yearned for a man.

  Her husband may have been dead a year, but it had been nine whole, long years before then that she had found out, at age eighteen on her wedding night, and every night thereafter, that her husband was impotent. Completely. Nothing had stirred his lifeless limb. Ever.

  The realisation had been a surprise … a relief because he wasn’t a young, attractive man and … as the years mounted up, a frustration that never died.

  So, for ten weary years she’d been trying to deny her needs, her desires, her yearnings. In that time she had created a long list of fantasies of how and where she would like to lose her virginity.

  In the last year she had planned for, and dreamed of, this very night - her first ball of her first season since she made her come-out at age eighteen.

  Ten years ago, she had been prime meat and her family had quickly and easily married her off to Lord Newberry, a fifty-year old father of eight who had already put two wives into the family grave in distant Yorkshire.

  She had expected to be the mother of another eight of his children by now, but time had diminished his ability and it was not to be.

  She took another slow turn around the ballroom with Harriet, her staid step-daughter-in-law, nodding to acquaintances as she walked and assessing the male merchandise. By the end of the second set of dances she had narrowed the choice to Lord Quigley or Sir Robert Townley. Caroline managed to engineer a set with each of the men and flirted outrageously. Her mother, God rest her soul, would have been well and truly shocked by her behaviour. Lord Quigley’s only deficit was his incredible bad breath, while Sir Robert was young and bumptious. But beggars, it appeared, could not be choosers. There was no-one else!

  Then she saw him.

  He was the cliché of tall, dark and handsome – except his handsome was of the cynical, dangerous type.

  A whisper from her companion, dear prim Harriet, told her who he was.

  Sir Nicholas De Courcey was not someone the mothers of the debutants wanted dancing with their daughters. He was not eligible. He was utterly ineligible. He was married … and separated … and rumoured to have divorce on his mind … maybe. Until such time as he was divorced, he was in limbo and a danger to the debutants, who seemed stricken with him wherever he went.

  He avoided them of course, as she saw for herself. Who could blame him? He had married one of their kind once, and look what had happened. That was what she was told.

  But, he didn’t need to avoid her, did he?

  She asked her starchy step-son to introduce her to him and he grimaced at her request, then obliged, to stop her vexing him further.

  “Sir Nicholas, I’m delighted to make your acquaintance,” she said.

  He looked at her with polite interest and perhaps something more suggestive. “And I yours, Lady Caroline. My condolences on the passing of your husband.” His voice was deep and smooth.

  She inclined her head in acknowledgement of his words and waited, unmoving and pointedly, for him to invite her to dance in the waltz set that was assembling behind them.

  He took her hint and responded as she wished. She placed her hand on his black-clad arm. Beneath her fingers was solid muscle. Promising.

  The music commenced and she slid her hand up his arm to rest it upon his shoulder. It was wide and unpadded. Mmmm.

  He took her right hand in his, while his other hand, on her waist, heated her skin through the silk of her dress. He spun them around the ballroom, skilfully keeping her safe from the other dancers.

  She must make her move now or lose her nerve. “You dance very well, Sir Nicholas. What else do you excel at?”

  “There are many sports at which I am proficient,” he replied disinterestedly.

  “Do you have a preference? Which sports do you love?”

  “Riding, hunting, fishing…” Still a polite, indifferent response.

  “You must be most accomplished.”

  “At most things.” He gave a faint smile that died quickly.

  “There is one past-time I would like to share with you.”

  “Indeed?” He raised and lowered a brow.

  “Would you like to guess its name and play?”

  He twirled her around the dance floor again before answering.

  “What if I try and fail in my attempt?”

  “I’m sure you’ve never failed in any of your attempts at this past-time.”

  He directed a long look at her for the first time. “Now I’m curious.” He paused. “Is it chess?”

  She chuckled. “Too inte
llectual.”

  “Horse racing?” he said with scepticism, accompanied by a matching expression.

  “Too public.” She dismissed it with a wave of her left hand.

  “Gaming?”

  “Too expensive.”

  “Charades?”

  Her voice deepened to a throaty purr. “Too many participants.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Draughts?”

  Hah! “Too tame.”

  His other eyebrow joined its mate. She had surprised him. She smiled to herself.

  “Is this a game for two, performed in private?” His voice was low and velvety.

  She looked boldly into his eyes. “It is best done that way, indeed.”

  “And you would like to play this game with me, Lady Caroline?” He affected boredom.

  “I am considering issuing you with a challenge.” She smiled up at him.

  His look was long and piercing. She bravely held his gaze and risked a come-hither smile.

  Instead of responding, he danced them through the French doors, onto the balcony overlooking the garden. The brightness of the ballroom spilled onto the outside tiles. He whirled her along the balcony in tight circles, halting only when they reached a shadowed stone seat at the farthest end.

  “Now, my dazzling beauty, we’re private. Let’s try your game?”

  “There’s still not enough privacy for the game I have in mind.”

  “Really?” He stepped closer. “Does it go like this?” He bent his head and kissed her lips gently and lingeringly, giving her the opportunity to retreat from his advance. When she made no move to stop him, he deepened it. He tasted of the champagne they had sipped upon arrival, in celebration of the launch of the Masseys’ youngest daughter into the adult world as a debutant. Her heartbeat ratcheted higher.

  Then, he leant away. Caroline opened her eyes to peer up at him in the darkness. He watched her.

  “It starts like that,” she said and stepped closer. “But it doesn’t end there.”

  She wanted him to know her intent, so stood on tiptoe to kiss him open-mouthed, her hands on his waist to help her balance.

  He responded by drawing her into a tight embrace and kissing her fiercely. Her heart raced. A shaft of desire turned her nipples hard and plunged through her belly to flare between her legs. She had to have him soon. She was ready to have him now.

  He whispered fiercely. “Come with me. Let’s leave here now.” He nibbled her lips. “Meet me in the foyer in ten minutes.”

  “No.” Her voice was adamant.

  He froze, then stepped away from her. When he spoke, his voice was no longer mellow and compelling, but laced with cynicism to suit the world-weary guise that he presented to the world. “Have you changed your mind and wish to return to the humdrum of respectability?” He sketched a deep bow of mock homage. “Let me escort you to your step-son. I’m sure he’s anxious for the return of his mama.”

  She could have stamped her foot with frustration but instead Caroline slapped his face. It was a ringing crack in the night air, loud to her ears even though the ballroom’s hum of noise still billowed onto the balcony.

  He looked at her with his hooded eyes. She knew not what he thought. She didn’t care. She had his attention now. She stretched her arms out, grabbed his lapels and pulled him towards her. She kissed him ravenously. Nothing was going to stop her having him. His stiff lips gradually became pliant and responsive.

  “We can’t stay here.” He muttered against her lips. “We risk discovery.” He kissed her again. “We must leave.”

  She moaned in response. She wanted him right here and now.

  He broke their kiss, a look of frustration on his face. “Someone must be sensible … if it isn’t you, it must be me.”

  He tested the door nearby. Unlocked. He steered her through into the darkened room. In a fog of desire she followed him. He led them to the rear of the house through the door that opened to the servants’ area, but instead of heading downwards, he pulled her onwards. At the foot of the bare, rear stairs leading to the top floor, he dropped her hand and turned to her. “Now is the time to go back to your family and resume your blameless life. Do you want to do that?”

  She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

  He turned to retrace their steps.

  Caroline seized his hand. The staircase to the top floor loomed above her, narrow and steep, but she knew that at its giddy height was an empty nursery and beds aplenty. She hitched her dress in her left hand and ploughed forward, attacking the stairway with an energy driven by her lust.

  Sir Nicholas didn’t follow behind her like a schoolboy being led to his first taste of pleasure by an older woman. He surged past her on the stairs, drawing her along in his wake. When she faltered with heaving chest and gasping breath, he stopped to put his arm around her waist and assist her up the last flight of stairs.

  At the top he halted. So did she – to drag huge desperate breaths into her lungs. But not for long. Still puffing she urged him towards the first door. It gave way as she turned the handle, into a dark room lit only by the moonlight through its open curtains.

  That light revealed a narrow bed. She would have hurried towards it but he halted her momentum. “I think you’re forgetting something, Lady Caroline.”

  He pulled the door closed and turned her against it, crowding her with his body. His lips sought hers in an open mouthed kiss. Surprised, her lips pliant, his tongue took the advantage to meet hers, to parry and lick. Desire ignited in her womb.

  She pulled him closer by his coat collar. The warm, fresh scent of him, the feel of his newly-shaved face rasping her soft skin, had her shivering. The sound of their panting breaths, the suck of their lips, were loud in the still, silent air of the room. Her hands plunged beneath his coat, only to encounter his waistcoat blocking her from reaching his skin. His muscles rippled under her hands while he smoothed and kneaded her buttocks, bringing her ever closer to his hard arousal until it rested firm against her belly.

  He broke their kiss. “Now my lady.” His fingers on her thighs slid the silk of her dress upwards. The cool night air of the room whispered around her ankles, calves, thighs. Higher and higher the gossamer material rose. His hands held it bunched around her buttocks, then abandoned it for her skin, sliding over her bottom, trekking towards her fanny instead. He found it unerringly. He was a master of his art. She moaned in appreciation. He returned to kissing her while his hands achieved their magic.

  Her hands fumbled at his buttons, desperate to release them so she could shed his clothes, to touch his skin as he was touching hers. She pushed at his coat, briefly distracting him from pleasuring her, while he helped shuck it off onto the floor. She whimpered in frustration until the waistcoat buttons came undone and followed the coat to the ground.

  Caroline skimmed her hands up his muscled arms, revelling in the solid mass under her fingers. They tracked across his chest, tangling in the light hair that dusted his sternum and led downwards. Her quest blocked by his waistband, Caroline groaned. Locating the buttons, she flicked them from their holes and the fall of his breeches sagged down, helped by his unrestrained erection, which emerged from the slit of his drawers.

  She took his cock in her hand. How long she had waited to see and feel one of these? One that worked. It lay there hard and heavy in her palm. She wanted it now!

  She wanted to experience what it could do. She knew enough about the tension leading up to coupling, but she wanted to know what it actually felt like! Why was he delaying? He was still kissing her and his hand was making her slick and ready. The tension was excruciating. “Now,” she breathed against his mouth. She was starving for this.

  “Right now, my lady?” He sounded a little bemused.

  “Yes!”

  “As you request.” He lifted her slight form against him. She held onto his solid shoulders and gripped her legs around his. Her dress, ruckled around her waist, rustled. He slid her down until she felt his cock against her entrance. Taki
ng her weight in one arm, he guided his cock into her.

  There was resistance, a straining, then he was in her. But he paused. “Don’t stop!” she moaned. Her back rested against the door, her legs were locked around him. He gave a few thrusts, then groaned with frustration and took two steps to the table beside the doorway. He sat her near its edge. Her arms were clamped around his neck as he thrust deeply in her. The tension in her body travelled up her spine, pooling in the base of her brain, spiralling deeper and deeper. Through her half-closed eyes he looked as lost in the moment as she felt.

  A flash of light burst in her head as the tension shattered. She gasped and moaned.

  Sir Nicholas made one more thrust and groaned out his completion. His forehead rested against hers as he gulped deep lungsful, obviously fighting to bring his breathing back to normal. He released her.

  As her heart rate slowed back to normal, she pulled her thoughts together as she tugged her silk dress over her hips and down her legs. At last! She had achieved her long-sought after goal. Elation filled her blood with bubbles of joy.

  Then, she focused on the man. He was undoubtedly the best choice she could have made in that ballroom … but he didn’t look or sound so happy. He looked at her with hard eyes. What was he thinking?

  What was he asking her?

  “You have some explaining to do, Lady Caroline! What Banbury tale have you told me? If you think you can dupe me into a marriage because I’ve deflowered you, you’re mistaken. I’m married, your ladyship, married! With a contract in front of God that can’t be broken, except by Parliament, requiring a lot of money and even more shame.”

  “Married? Again? To you?” She laughed. “Never.”

  “So, who are you? You can’t be Lady Caroline Newberry. She married a decade ago.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Then how is it that you are a virgin, madam?” He seemed affronted by her former state of being.

  “Unlike you, my husband was not so able to do his husbandly duty.”

  A light of understanding showed in his dark eyes. “Ah.”