Harlequin Historical February 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Never Trust a RakeDicing With the Dangerous LordA Daring Liaison

by Annie Burrows

  ‘Oh, my goodness. What did he do?’

  ‘He looked at me over the top of his spectacles and said it was all very well, but he would never give his consent to let you marry an idiot. Told me you were a highly intelligent girl, used to using her mind, and that a stupid man would never make you happy. Then he wrote something on a sheet of paper and told me he would consider my suit if I returned with the correct answer.’

  ‘Oh, how wonderful.’

  ‘It bloody well wasn’t. It was in Greek!’

  She had meant, how wonderful that her father had not just granted the first man to ask for her hand permission to marry her, but had set him a test. She’d begun to think he did not love her overmuch. But he did, in his way. He wanted her to marry a man who would make her happy.

  How fortunate she was in him. Many parents, from what she’d gathered during her time in town, had ambitions for their daughters which did not take their happiness into account at all.

  Lord Deben began to pace up and down. ‘I did not attend university. I was educated at home. I have a passing acquaintance with Latin, but my father saw no need for me to learn Greek. He wanted me to learn how to manage my estates and behave like a gentleman, that was all. I was in flat despair. I considered going to Farleigh Hall and employing my secretary to translate it for me. But then I thought your father would consider that cheating. So I asked if I might borrow a lexicon and set about attempting to decipher the symbols, at least.’

  ‘Gosh. That is very impressive.’

  ‘There you go again. Imputing me with virtues I do not have. I could make neither head nor tail of it!’

  ‘I didn’t mean...’ that she assumed he’d managed to translate it. She was just impressed that he’d spent the better part of two weeks wrestling with some Greek epigram in order to win her father’s permission to court her.

  ‘And then,’ he said as he got to the end of the room and was turning to pace back, ‘at the end of the first week, he informed me that he’d been lenient setting me a riddle to solve written in Greek, since he might well have done so in Aramaic. Eventually, well, you know me better than anyone has ever done. You must already have guessed that I gave up. And gave up in the most dramatic style,’ he said in self-disgust. ‘I tore the cursed thing to pieces and stormed out into the orchard.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘He followed me outside, sat me down and told me that although I would not be his choice of husband for you, that at least I appeared to be very much in earnest about you. And that if you wanted to marry me, he would not forbid the match, because there was no accounting for women’s tastes, after all.’

  She could just imagine the dry way he’d said it. He always did think women a very great puzzle.

  ‘That was when I confided that I wasn’t at all sure you did want to marry me, which was why I’d gone down to see him. I had hoped if I could win him over, that would count in my favour, seeing how very highly you regard his opinion.’

  ‘Oh. Did...did that win him round?’

  ‘Not really. He just said he was glad to hear you had not entirely lost your head, just because you’d gone to London. Nor did he wish me luck with you when I left. He just said I must not be as big an idiot as I looked, since I had fallen for a girl with as much sense as you, and that at least if you married me I was bound to improve.’

  ‘Oh...dear.’ Henrietta put her hand over her mouth. What a very unpleasant time Lord Deben had been having.

  ‘But I won’t,’ he said grimly. ‘Tonight’s performance has proved beyond all shadow of doubt that I am beyond redemption. I came to town determined to court you in form, and what did I do instead? The very first chance I got, I made it impossible for you to do anything but marry me.’

  She shucked his jacket aside, uncurled her legs and crossed the room.

  When she reached him, he caught her hands. ‘I have done only one thing tonight of which I’m not ashamed. And that was to show that oaf that you have brought a peer of the realm to his knees. At least if you had chosen him, that might have made him treat you with just a little more respect. He was the one, wasn’t he? The one over whom you were weeping, the night we met?’

  ‘Yes. But I got over him remarkably swiftly. Because,’ she admitted shyly, ‘I met someone who cast him completely in the shade.’

  She squeezed his hands, encouraging him to understand she meant him. He gripped them hard.

  ‘I taught you to want me, physically,’ he said. ‘I know that, but...’

  ‘It has always been more than that. But I dared not let anyone know how I felt about you. There was already so much gossip flying about. I did not want to appear in it all as a lovesick fool.’

  He searched her face. ‘I always thought I could tell exactly what you were thinking.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You were so often cross with me,’ he persisted.

  ‘I have never been so angry with anyone in my life as I have been with you. You made me want things I thought were impossible. I...’ She flung up her head and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I didn’t want to love you, because I thought you could never love me back. But I couldn’t stop loving you, no matter how hard I tried. Can’t you see what a deleterious effect that might have had on my temper?’

  The breath left his lungs in a great whoosh.

  ‘You never needed to attempt to seduce me,’ she said, ‘or back me into a corner where marrying you seemed like the only way out. All you ever had to do was ask.’

  ‘I didn’t dare,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you would believe I was in earnest.’

  ‘I might not have done,’ she conceded. ‘Not at first. You might have had to ask me several times before I believed you meant it, because you always seemed to find me amusing. I might have thought you were teasing me. Besides, how could I really believe that a man as experienced as you, a veritable connoisseur of female beauty,’ she said, making him wince, ‘would really want to marry a woman whose only claim to attractiveness was curly hair?’

  ‘Oh, the things I said...’

  She smiled at him fondly. ‘You called me Hen.’

  ‘So did that oaf.’

  ‘He’d called me that since I was a little girl, because he maintained a hen was just what I looked like, with my beak of a nose.’

  ‘I adore your nose,’ he said. ‘It is a nose of distinction. I hope all our children will have it. I will be delighted if it gets passed down through our line for generations to come.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ he said, dropping a kiss on it.

  She shivered with delight. ‘And I adore everything about you. Before you start saying I cannot possibly,’ she said when he frowned and drew breath to do just that, ‘because you are such a rogue, then let me tell you, my lord, that I do love you. With all my heart.’ She placed her palm on his cheek in a gentle caress.

  ‘You have been very lonely, I think, for a very long time. From what I have learned, nobody has ever really loved you as they should have done and it has made you feel unworthy of love. But I do love you,’ she said firmly. ‘And we are going to love each other in a healthy fashion. We will communicate outside the bedroom as well as in it. And I don’t care if you do despise all other women, so long as you never despise me.’

  ‘You mean it,’ he said, studying her face intently.

  She nodded.

  ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ He snatched the hand she’d lain against his cheek and pressed a fervent kiss into the palm of it.

  ‘You have loved me,’ she said, running the fingers of her other hand through his already disordered curls, ‘in a way no other man ever has. You are what I need.’

  ‘And God, how I need you,’ he growled, pulling her into his arms and kissing her. It was a passionate kiss, which spoke both of hi
s need, and his relief. It was so powerful that it drove them both to the sofa, on to which they tumbled, eager hands tearing at buttons and pulling aside fabric.

  ‘I warned you that I’m utterly selfish,’ he growled in self-condemnatory tones, as he freed her breasts from her bodice. ‘But no power on earth could make me deny myself the pleasure of your body,’ he said, fondling them, ‘while we wait for your aunt, or my godmother, to organise the society wedding you deserve.’

  She subsided back into the cushions, watching, with intense feminine satisfaction, the rapt expression on his face as he cupped and stroked her breasts.

  ‘I have been on fire for you for what feels like for ever,’ he groaned. ‘It will do you no good to say going without will be good for my immortal soul, or some such nonsense,’ he warned her.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of talking such fustian,’ she replied. ‘Because then,’ she added with a wicked smile, ‘I would have to go without as well.’

  He made a low growl of approval and lowered his head to her breasts. She flung back her head and luxuriated in the sensations he aroused, crooning over and over again, ‘I love you, I love you.’

  It was so liberating to be able to say it, at last. Especially while he was showing her how very much he loved her, too, with each kiss and urgent caress.

  ‘I can’t resist you any longer,’ he gasped, pulling himself up to look at her.

  ‘I don’t want you to try,’ she said. ‘In fact...’ She struggled to sit up and pushed him away.

  ‘What are you doing? I thought you said...’

  His look of dismay faded as she began to peel off her gloves.

  ‘I don’t think,’ he said in a thickened voice, ‘I have ever seen a more erotic sight.’ For he understood the implication of her needing to bare her hands. There were to be no barriers between them.

  He raised his own hands to untie his neckcloth.

  ‘No!’

  ‘No?’ He paused, uncertain now that he’d made the correct assumption about the gloves.

  She shook her head. ‘I want to do it,’ she said, pushing him back down amongst the cushions at the other end of the sofa.

  She was more efficient at dealing with his clothing than he’d expected her to be. In no time at all she’d stripped off his waistcoat and shirt. But then her touch could not be described as efficient at all. It was reverent, almost, the way she stroked and explored his torso.

  And when she hitched up her skirts so that she could straddle him and kissed her way down his neck, then flicked her tongue over his nipples, it was more arousing than the most expert ministrations of those women who’d never put their heart into it. That was the difference, he decided as he ran his hands up the outside of her thighs. Her shy yet eager touches were prompted by love, not lust. His hands reached their destination and squeezed her soft flesh, whilst delving both his thumbs inward. She squirmed on his lap.

  And, hell, but the sofa was not the place where he ought to take her, not the first time.

  He sat up, and took hold of both her hands.

  ‘No. Stop. We should...a bed, at least,’ he panted raggedly.

  ‘You really expect me to walk through your house, to find a bedroom, with all your servants to see, in this state?’ Her hair had half come down. Her bodice was gaping and her dress was rucked up round her waist.

  ‘Though I suppose they might not be all that shocked,’ she finished doubtfully.

  ‘I have never brought a woman here,’ he assured her, having caught her meaning at once. ‘I have always conducted my affaires elsewhere. I have never wanted to encourage a woman to think she might have some hold on me, by inviting her into my home,’ he declared with vehemence.

  ‘And yet you brought me straight here,’ she marvelled.

  ‘Yes. Because I want you in my house, in my life, in my arms, for ever.’

  She leaned forwards and kissed him again, flinging her arms round his neck.

  ‘You have started to make love to me twice already on a sofa. I think it is exactly the place you ought to take it to its natural conclusion.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘More sure,’ she gasped, flinging back her head as he ran his hands under her skirt for the second time, ‘than I have ever been about anything.’

  ‘In that case,’ he growled, flipping her on to her back and coming down hard on top of her, ‘who am I to argue?’

  ‘Ooh...’ She sighed as he sucked one breast into his mouth, whilst employing his fingers to devastating purpose. ‘Oh, that is positively scandalous.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘But we have all night to create a real scandal.’

  ‘All night?’ Her eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Easily,’ he vowed, with a wicked grin. ‘In fact, I doubt very much if I will be able to let you out of my sight for some considerable time to come.’

  She said nothing, but from the curve of her lips and the way she ran her fingers through his hair, Lord Deben knew she had no complaints.

  And nor had he. For once, he had found perfection.

  And her name was Henrietta.

  * * * * *

  Margaret McPhee

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London

  November 1810

  The applause within the Theatre Royal at Covent Garden was deafening, even after the heavy red curtain had descended on Shakespeare’s As You Like It, to shield London’s most acclaimed darling of the theatre from the audience.

  Miss Venetia Fox smiled and hugged her friend and fellow actress as they made their way from the stage. ‘They are still on their feet, Alice.’

  ‘I can’t believe it! It’s amazing! I’ve never seen a response like it.’ Alice Sweetly’s eyes were big as saucers. In her excitement her soft Irish lilt grew stronger.

  Venetia laughed. ‘You will get used to it.’

  ‘You think this’ll happen again?’

  Venetia smiled at her protégée and nodded.

  ‘You were right. Life doesn’t get much better than this.’ Alice’s face was lit with the same euphoria that was flowing through Venetia’s veins. Away from the glitz and glamour of the front of the house, the theatre’s corridors were mean and narrow and the décor shabby, but it could not suppress the women’s spirits.

  Alice hesitated outside the door to the small dressing room that they shared and turned to look up into Venetia’s face. ‘Thank you, Venetia. For helping me. For persuading Mr Kemble to put me on stage with you tonight. For everything.’

  ‘I knew you would be a star.’ Venetia gave Alice another hug. ‘After the green room we will celebrate.’

  ‘Only after the green room,’ Alice agreed. ‘See, I’m learning to be professional, just like you taught me.’

  Venetia laughed, and a joy welled up in her to see just how far Alice had come in the past year. Alice’s face showed confidence, self-respect and excitement. Venetia felt like she was walking on air as she opened the dressing-room door.

  She was still smiling as she stepped across the threshold and saw the bunch of
roses that lay upon the dressing table. The smile dropped from her face and the lightness of her mood evaporated in an instant.

  Alice chattered on oblivious, her face lighting even brighter when she saw the roses. ‘Someone’s ahead of the game tonight. Got in early before the others.’ She touched a finger to the centre of the bouquet. ‘Nice little quirk from the usual arrangement, too. Which one of us is the lucky girl, do you think?’

  Venetia knew the answer to that question without reading the small white card that had been tucked within the brown paper wrapping the stems. There were twelve roses, soft and velvety and of the deepest darkest red, and nestling in the centre of their arrangement, in such contrast, was a single creamy white rose, just as Robert had said. It was the message for which she had waited these weeks past. It had been so long in the coming that she had almost forgotten what she had agreed to. Almost.

  Venetia picked up the card with its scrawl of black ink.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got yourself a new admirer. And one that hasn’t signed so much as his initial.’ Alice raised her eyebrows suggestively. ‘Very mysterious.’

  Not mysterious at all. Venetia forced a smile, but it felt wooden upon her lips. Her eyes moved over the card and she read aloud the single word written upon it in handwriting that she could not fail to recognise—Tonight.

  ‘Sounds intriguing,’ said Alice. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I have not the faintest idea,’ Venetia lied and threw the card down on the dressing table carelessly, as if it meant nothing.

  ‘That’ll put the cat amongst the pigeons with Hawick and Devlin,’ said Alice. ‘Hawick thinks he’s about to close the deal.’

  ‘Then Hawick is wrong.’ Venetia did not rise to the bait.

  ‘You’re leaning towards Devlin, then?’ There was a mischievous sparkle in her friend’s eye.