A Warriner to Seduce Her

by Virginia Heath

  And they had waltzed.

  Even now her body warmed at the thought of it.

  His arms been firmly wrapped around her body. They had needed to be to hold her up and to prevent her from seriously damaging his poor toes, yet he’d not mentioned her embarrassing clumsiness once, despite the fact she had stepped on his foot repeatedly. Although not all those footwork mistakes had been caused by her ineptitude with the waltz. At least two mishaps had occurred from being so close to him while staring into his beautiful bright blue eyes. Or perhaps it had been the solid feel of his shoulder under her palm which had made her pulse quicken and her feet fail? Thanks to Jake’s raw masculinity Fliss had experienced a bit of a moment worryingly akin to swooning.

  He smelled sinfully delicious, too, which was indeed a bonus when she considered what she could have been forced to sniff on that dance floor at that particular time. Whatever cologne he had applied before dressing must have contained some sort of magical ingredient, because it was more intoxicating the closer her nose got to it. At one point, during a dizzying set of fast spins, the urge to press her nostrils against his Adam’s apple had been fairly difficult to ignore, but she’d struggled on. Valiantly. Making do with seductive wafts which emanated from his exceedingly fine person and chastising herself for being weak. Waltzing with the rakish Mr Warriner had not been a chore at all. It had been, she was prepared to admit only to herself, the highlight of her week.

  He’d hardly even flirted and yet still she had been charmed. Charmed and intrigued in equal measure because the more she got to know him, the more she began to suspect he wasn’t quite as superficial as he seemed.

  Jake did have a way of looking at a woman as if she was the only woman in the room, which had made her feel very special. She had also spied a few jealous glances from the other young ladies as he had twirled her around the floor; young ladies who would have given their eye teeth to have been in his strong and capable arms in her stead. Fliss was just vain enough to be flattered by this and rather liked being the frivolous centre of attention for once, rather than the responsible Miss Blunt who always set an example to her students. The former wayward girl made good. An inspiration to aspire to. Sometimes all that made her feel old and dull.

  With Jake, for a few short minutes, she had been vivacious and gloriously young. That waltz had been an adventure in itself. Shameless flirting aside, he was also good company. Interesting.

  Interested.

  He listened to everything she said, whether it be her bemoaning of her uncle’s persistent and irritating attempts at matchmaking or recounting boring details about canal tunnels. He had called himself a nosy fellow and that he was, but Jake also paid attention and knew how to make a lady feel special. And his name suited him. Piratical and dashing.

  Of course, he was still a shocking rake and liking him didn’t mean Fliss was less mindful of his wiles. One of the benefits of living among a succession of wayward girls was one became an expert on the sort of men who waylaid them. Fliss had trained herself to be adept at ignoring her body’s natural reaction to men like him. She wasn’t a man-hater after all. A great many males were exceedingly tolerable, Fliss just knew their limitations. Some men were dictatorial. Some men were unreliable. Most men, however, were fundamentally untrustworthy. It was embedded in their nature, like the female urge to mother, and they really couldn’t help it. One could still thoroughly enjoy the company of a rake without succumbing to his charms. Like all successful rakes, Jake had all the attributes to make a female body yearn. Such things were down to biology, not logic, and she would never allow herself to be a slave to something as base and savage. Logic made him wholly unsuitable. Not that she was in the market for a man at the moment. If she were he would be the very last sort to settle down with. Still, she was grateful he had stepped up to help her in her moment of need. That had been noble of him. It was too bad he was untrustworthy, else she might have been tempted.

  To keep her mind from being further seduced by his presence, Fliss had asked him questions about his past. Although his answers had been glib, she could tell they were purposefully so. Another benefit of living among wayward girls was one became an expert in the art of lying. Her students knew she was a master at uncovering deceptions. At Sister Ursuline’s, her ability to spot a lie at ten yards was legendary, although how she could spot one was a trick she kept entirely to herself in case the girls got wise to it and tried to camouflage the clues.

  However, the simple truth was it wasn’t really a trick, it was mere observation. There were little, almost minute physical tells which always gave the lies away. Each unique to the person, yet obvious to a master at reading them. To most people, Jake’s casual and seemingly open answers would have sufficed, but Fliss wasn’t most people and Jake’s tell happened to be in those spectacular eyes which had a habit of taking her breath away. And by golly it was tiny. Had she not been staring wistfully up into them she would have missed it. But she had been, so she’d spotted it.

  His pupils constricted.

  In fact, they had constricted three times.

  Once when he had blithely denounced his father as a violent drunk, suggesting he was making light of something which had not been in any way light at all. The second had been stronger, his black pupils constricting to a pinpoint for less than a second, and it had been in a throwaway sentence about his mother. The woman who had died when he was so young he barely remembered her. Fliss would wager all her savings on the fact he didn’t barely remember her. That was a tactic to avoid talking about her and one Fliss sometimes used when new acquaintances inadvertently probed a sore spot. Like her, he remembered his mother keenly. Too keenly and it hurt.

  So much so, she had taken pity on him and allowed him to direct the conversation to his brothers where he felt comfortable. Something she empathised with. Despite outwardly projecting otherwise, the rejection of her father when she had needed him the most still cut deep if she allowed herself to dwell upon it. All those years of loneliness and of feeling abandoned. Rejected. Not quite good enough to warrant even the tiniest place in his life. That pivotal moment in her past had shaped her and left her wary of all men, just in case another broke her heart quite so thoroughly and this time the wound would never heal.

  What Sister Ursuline called cynicism was the necessary fortress that protected that tender organ from further damage. It was easier to not challenge the comfort of her carefully constructed status quo than subject herself to the risk of further pain. Once upon a time it had been enough, the walls of the fortress impenetrable, yet as the years had marched on Fliss was honest enough with herself to acknowledge those same walls which protected her also imprisoned her as well. This unexpected trip away from the sanctuary of normality had weakened those defences. Heightened the disquiet which had taken root without her noticing and had made her increasingly dissatisfied with her life. Made her yearn to climb a ladder to peek over the battlements at the possibilities beyond. The possibilities Jake presented.

  Of all the men to be attracted to, her foolish heart had selected a rake.

  Perhaps Jake had constructed a new persona to protect him from history repeating itself, just as she had? And perhaps Fliss was frantically hoping that there were deeper layers to him simply as a means to justify her continued fascination with a man her instincts screamed was wholly unreliable.

  Or was he? It was obvious he adored all three of his brothers as his face lit with pride as he described them. Responsible, brave and clever. And then those brilliant, vibrant irises had constricted again when he had called himself the disappointment. In that instant she learned it was a label he wore openly, almost like a shield like her cynicism, but hated it nevertheless. It was on the tip of her tongue to question him about it, but her uncle had come and claimed her, and by the time they parted ways, the flirtatious look was back in his eyes and the peculiarly telling moment and the opportunity to explore it was gone.

/>   Much as the foolhardy rower and his lady friend were now. Gone to freeze in another part of the Serpentine on their quest to be seen. With nothing better to do, Fliss went back to watching the swans and wishing she was somewhere, anywhere, else. Trying to ignore the image of twinkling blue eyes which constantly invaded her daydreams.

  Chapter Seven

  Laboriously plodding along Rotten Row

  Jake had always enjoyed riding. Dashing across an open meadow, racing between steeples or simply meandering aimlessly along the open road at a leisurely trot never failed to lighten his mood. However, there was no joy to be had jostling his poor horse through the well-heeled crowds at Rotten Row at a speed little faster than the average arthritic octogenarian could achieve going uphill. He’d never understood the point of this aristocratic ritual, where the horses served as pedestals for the ton to display themselves. But Crispin Rowley was guaranteed to be here preening, because he always came here preening, which meant his fetching niece might be here, too. Or so he hoped.

  He turned his horse towards where the congested gravel path arced around the Serpentine and plodded on, forcing himself to return the smiles of the many young ladies who made no secret of the fact they had their eye on him. However, for the first time in as long as he could remember, not one of them caught his eye.

  That was odd.

  Usually, at least one tempting damsel would lure him into furthering the acquaintance. The ladies loved a naughty boy, but while Jake had worked hard to become one of society’s naughtiest boys for King and country, earning that reputation had hardly been a chore. He liked women. Really liked women, usually much preferring their company to men. Women, in all their shapes and sizes, intrigued him and distracted him in equal measure. The way they saw life quite differently from men, the calming influence they had, their resilience and intelligence, the way they smelled, moved, laughed. He was a healthy, virile, gloriously unattached man in the prime of his life. Why shouldn’t he enjoy them if the opportunity presented itself?

  Most knew he was not marriage material, accepted it and enjoyed him all the more as a result. The neglected wives, young widows and the occasional scandalous debutante who had been happily waylaid many times before he had arrived in their lives were immediately drawn to him for their fun and he was fine with that, too. Both parties got exactly what they wanted and had a great deal of fun in the getting. No matter whether he was bedding them for business or for pleasure, Jake treated all types of paramour the same and hopped cheerfully from one lover to the next like a bumble bee in a summer garden full of flowers.

  At the first sniff of awkward feelings, Jake usually made his excuses and ran, because he was an honest rake beneath it all and didn’t want anyone wasting their love on him when he wasn’t prepared to take the risk of offering it in return. They might come to rely on him and nothing good could ever come of that, although fortunately he was so successful at being a rake that few of his conquests were silly enough to truly try. They knew he was superficial and transient, which was half of the fun of the dalliance in the first place. For them he was forbidden fruit. For him, each new lover was a tempting diversion from the gnawing empty, growing void in his life and the guilt which quickly turned him maudlin if he allowed himself to remember the cause of it. Therefore, it stood to reason that as long as Jake kept lining up potential diversions, then everything in his disappointing garden was as rosy as it could possibly be and he could flit through life without accruing fresh guilt to add to his burden. Therefore, he always had his wandering eye open for the next welcome diversion and Rotten Row had always been a particularly fertile hunting ground.

  Except there was only one diversion currently lined up in his sights right now. Fliss. The only woman he truly wanted to dally with was the one he had fortuitously been tasked with seducing. A unique situation he had not found himself in before.

  That vexing woman was taking up too much space in his head and, if he wasn’t careful, when this mission was completed he would have nobody ready to fill her clumsy dancing shoes and would be left all on his lonesome to contemplate his failings. Something which wouldn’t do at all.

  It was worrying, but clearly not enough for his fixated mind to wander from its chosen route. Since the opera, he had done nothing but think about her and her alone—or rather his overwhelming reaction to her. Not a single other lady had occupied his thoughts or tempted his body in all that time, something unheard of and extremely unsettling. The damn woman had bewitched him almost as thoroughly as she appeared to see straight through him and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with that either. Yes, she was still a diversion and, yes, he desperately wanted to seduce her, but there was an irritating and nagging part of him which wanted more from the canny Miss Blunt-by-Name-and-Nature than good sense dictated.

  Bizarrely, for a man who purported not to care one jot what others thought of him, Jake wanted her respect as much as he wanted to make her smile. He wanted to kiss her senseless and talk to her for hours on end. He wanted to spend time with her. Lots of time. Considerably more than the few accumulated hours he usually allowed himself and to hell with messy, complicated feelings. Truth be told, he suspected he wanted her to have messy and complicated feelings for him. He wanted to matter to her as much as he now suddenly wanted to be a better man than the one he was whenever he was around her. A man with the admirable characteristics of his three brothers. The sort of dependable man she had set her heart on. More than anything, he wanted Fliss not to be a mission to be accomplished for King and country. A ridiculous notion he couldn’t seem to dismiss. What was that all about?

  There had been a moment before they had parted ways at the dance, when she had turned around and simply stared at him as if she was assessing him and all he had just said, and for the briefest moment Jake swore he saw her recognise the real him. The man riddled with guilt and plagued with self-doubt. As ludicrous as that terrifying thought was, he had struggled to shake it off for the rest of the evening because he couldn’t help wondering what she had made of the real him. He doubted there was a hope in hell she’d want to take a chance on the reliably unreliable Warriner any more than he wanted to risk opening himself up to the unpalatable complications which came with romantic love. Except for the first time, he was sorely tempted by those complications and that bothered him.

  To add insult to injury, he had even dreamed about her again last night and what a dream it had been. Jake had awoken hot and hard and so blasted frustrated he’d washed in ice water straight from the pump just to cool his ardour. Ardour which flagrantly refused to be cooled and still plagued him now. Ardour which could have been readily spent elsewhere. Why was he torturing himself with abstinence when she was his mission and he’d never been loyal to a single woman—business or pleasure—in his entire life? Misplaced fidelity wasn’t rakish behaviour.

  But then, he was tired. That probably had something to do with his uncharacteristic confused state. And he was supposed to be enjoying his well-earned leave. Casanova himself must have been exhausted from time to time and thus less inclined to woo willy-nilly. The simple truth was Jake needed to be home. In Nottinghamshire, sleeping. Not here traipsing up and down Rotten Row, so it was hardly a surprise his libido had gone into hibernation or that every female face and form seemed to merge into one and none of them piqued his interest. It wasn’t the vexing Miss Blunt who had rendered him ruined for all these other women. It was tiredness. Pure and simple.

  Nothing to worry about.

  ‘Why, hello, Mr Warriner.’ The sultry redhead and he had been exchanging smouldering looks for months. ‘Fancy bumping into you here?’

  Come on, Jakey-boy. Make some effort. ‘Why, hel-lo to you, too.’ He reached for her proffered gloved hand, easy to do when she had brought her pony directly level with his, and placed a lingering kiss on the back of it. A kiss that did nothing to fire the loins which had been ablaze a few scant days ago. ‘How are you on
this fine morning?’

  ‘Very bored, Mr Warriner. I am in dire need of some excitement.’ A blatant invitation to sin if ever he’d heard one, yet still nothing stirred in his breeches.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. A beautiful young lady should never be bored.’ The back of his neck prickled.

  Awareness.

  Jake turned his head slightly and saw her. Her dress was as plain as the grey February sky. Her hair was simply styled. Her bonnet austere by Rotten Row standards and she was wearing those spectacles which had haunted his dreams last night. Spectacles, which by rights should lessen her attractiveness—yet his gaze had never beheld anything so lovely and every drop of blood he possessed suddenly rushed to his groin, the overly friendly redhead already forgotten.

  ‘What do you suggest I do, Mr Warriner?’ Reluctantly he tore his gaze away from his canny northern lass and gazed back at the sultry vixen next to him. A woman who plainly wanted him naked and soon.

  Nothing.

  The fiery lust he had for Fliss fizzled out the instant he had turned back to look at the other woman. Clearly Jake really was doomed. He could already feel the powerful pull of whatever it was only she possessed.

  ‘I really couldn’t say...if you will excuse me.’ He tugged the reins and angled his horse to trail after Crispin Rowley’s phaeton and the golden-haired passenger his heart was suddenly beating loudly for, keeping enough of a distance that he remained unnoticed in the crowds, but close enough that he could watch her.

  She didn’t appear to be very comfortable sat next to her uncle. There was a stiffness about her posture which suggested she wasn’t very happy with him, her eyes and body angled away. When Rowley slowed the carriage to greet a group of people, Jake lingered behind a tree. Her eyes drifted away from the people her uncle was chatting to and towards the banks of the Serpentine. After another few minutes, those people drifted away and an unfamiliar man walked towards the carriage. Rowley and his perplexing niece exchanged what appeared to be terse words, then she climbed out of the carriage to stand with ill-disguised impatience on the path.