The Infamous Rakes

by Amanda Scott

  “The marquess, you mean.”

  He nodded. “He recommended a fellow, Joe Penning, whom I hired as my new steward. I thought I could just leave matters in his hands until I had more time to deal with them, but Penning kept sending messages, asking me questions, until I realized I was really needed at home. To be truthful, I think Thorne put him up to it, but it doesn’t matter, because I have learned that it does not do to leave my responsibilities in other men’s hands. I went to Longworth to learn what I might from Penning and to let it be known that I mean to take the reins at last. I had come to hope, you see, that I might ask you to marry me.”

  She was conscious of a sinking feeling, and considering that she knew she loved him with all her heart, could not imagine why the notion that he wanted to marry her should suddenly be such a depressing one. Calmly, she said, “I am certain I could help you bring things into trim at Longworth, sir, but I am not certain that we would be a good match for one another.”

  “Good God,” he snapped, “I don’t want your help!”

  Flushing with embarrassment, she turned her face away, fighting back tears. “I beg your pardon. I must have misunderstood you. I thought you were asking me to marry you, but I quite understand that you meant only that the thought had crossed your mind again. No doubt my behavior today, coupled with what you thought before—erroneously, I promise you, but I cannot tell you more than that ... that is—” She broke off, tangled in her thoughts and at a loss for what else to say.

  There was a long silence, and when she dared to look at him again, she saw that he was regarding her with astonishment. At last, he said, “What did I think before now? I swear, woman, you are borrowing trouble again. Sometimes you would try the patience of a saint, the way you assume the worst!”

  In the face of his displeasure, she wanted to drop the whole subject, to smooth the angry look away and make him smile again. But she could see that nothing but truth would avail her now, and so she said, striving to sound matter-of-fact, “But I do know you thought I was responsible for those forged invitations, and—”

  “Why would I think any such thing?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Never! Good Lord, Felicia, I have shown you over and over that your thoughts are utterly transparent to me. Don’t you think I would have known if you had been deceiving me in such a great way as that?”

  “But when you saw the samples Mr. Townshend had left me—”

  “Is that where you got them? I did wonder, but one look at you convinced me that wherever they had come from their presence in your drawing room was entirely innocent. When I learned of Mrs. Falworthy’s sudden indisposition and subsequent absence from town, I assumed I was correct in believing she had devised the scheme to puff off her consequence as a sponsor.”

  He paused, and when she could find nothing to say, he smiled at her. “I’ll tell you what it is, my love. You are too accustomed for your own good to trying to anticipate the needs of all your family, and trying to please everyone. Since you are not nearly as good at reading their minds, or mine, as I am at reading yours, let me draw from Lady Augusta’s vast supply of maxims to tell you that you cannot please everyone, and if you continue to yield to the caprices of all, you will soon have nothing to yield. There is a time and a place for everything, and if you try to please all, you end by pleasing none. You must therefore learn to let well enough—”

  “Oh, stop!” Felicia cried, shaking her head and laughing. “You are much worse than Aunt Augusta, and I can just imagine you at her age, spouting the same sort of fustian. It is, I might add, a truly appalling thought, sir.”

  “My given name is Edward,” he told her, reaching down and pulling her to her feet. “Members of my family call me Ned.”

  Feeling suddenly extremely relieved and, oddly, a bit shy, Felicia looked at his chest and said, “Do they?”

  “They do. Look up at me, Felicity, my love.”

  She did. “I wish you will decide what to call me, sir—that is, N-Ned.” Feeling more heat in her cheeks, she swallowed, then added, “You just called me Felicity, you know, and only Aunt Augusta does that. Everyone else calls me Felicia.”

  “I like Felicity,” he said, gently drawing her closer. “When I read your first letter, I imagined a soft and gentle girl, all womanly curves and laughter, a girl with far too much responsibility for her young shoulders to bear. Then, when I learned that you were generally called Felicia, I saw an entirely different person in my mind’s eye, somehow older, more mature, more capable and less yielding.”

  “That is the true Felicia, sir,” she said, looking straight at him now.

  “Is it?” he asked, bending to kiss her.

  His lips, warm against hers, recalled her instantly to the last time he had kissed her, and it seemed that her body recalled it as well, for it molded itself against his as though it belonged there, as though they were one person. Felicia felt as if she were melting. She felt warm and protected, and safe, and for a few blissful moments, she thought about what it would be like to cast all her burdens aside and run away with this man. Then she remembered that he did not really want to marry her, and her bliss turned to ashes. She stiffened in his arms.

  “What?” he murmured, kissing her cheek, then her hair, and stroking her back, his arm hard against the side of her breast.

  “I suppose you have proved what you wanted to prove,” she muttered to his chest, fighting the tears again and wondering why it was that this man could so easily make her want to cry.

  “That you are soft and desirable? Does that displease you so much? I promise you, it does not displease me.”

  “You are very charming, sir, so charming, in fact, that you made me forget for a time that you are a fortune hunter. You slipped up only once just now, but that was enough. You don’t want me or my help, only my money.”

  He held her away and looked down at her, his consternation giving way almost instantly to amusement. “You really are not very good at reading the truth in people, are you, my love?”

  “I am not your love. You said so.”

  “I said no such thing. I said, if you will but bend your stubborn little mind to recalling our exact exchange of words, that I did not want you only for the help you could give me in bringing Longworth into trim again. I mean that. I did not intend to imply that I will not value your assistance, merely that that was not at all the primary reason I wish to marry you.”

  She savored the words. “You do wish it, then, truly?”

  “I intend to ask your father for your hand just as soon as I can persuade him to listen to me. He seems disinclined to discuss anything sensibly at this exact moment, but I daresay I will be able to bring him around before the day is done.”

  “Not easily, sir, if he realizes you mean to take me away from here. And what will they do without me?”

  “I don’t much care what they do,” he retorted, bending to kiss her again.

  “Well, I do,” she said, eluding him. “You may be quite right in saying that I have allowed myself to become too much enmeshed in trying to please everyone, but I have done it for years, and they will not accept a change easily. Perhaps if we could have them all to stay at Longworth—” She broke off, biting her lip at the look on his face. When he did not explode but only shook his head, she said, “Very well then, but the children will want to stay with us, and I do not think I could bear to make them live with Papa and Mama.”

  “Nor would I allow it, even if your brother would,” Crawley said. “I am not such an ogre as that, love. Sara Ann will make her home with us for as long as need be, and the boys will both come to us for their holidays. As for your parents, you will certainly invite them to visit two or three times a year. For that matter, Longworth is not so far from Bradstoke that you cannot visit them as frequently as you choose. Now, do you think you can manage to accept me as a husband?”

  “With all my h—”

  “I cannot stand it a minute longer,” Lady Augusta announced, b
ursting into the room, then coming to an abrupt halt, her eyebrows soaring upward. “What on earth are you about, Felicity, to be allowing Crawley to paw you about like that? A proper lady does not behave so, and I have always had good cause, until today at all events, to be proud of your behavior. But a lady is known by the company she keeps and by the way she comports herself, and this will not do. Bad enough that Theodosia seems bent upon encouraging the attentions of that dreadful artist after he made such a mockery of her lovely portrait, but I cannot and will not stand for one of my nieces allowing a gentleman to make free with her person. Unhand her, sir, at once.”

  Instead of obeying, Crawley put his arm around Felicia’s shoulders and drew her closer. “I must disappoint you, Lady Augusta,” he said. “Your niece has agreed to marry me, and I mean to see that she does so just as soon as I can procure a special license.”

  Lady Augusta said haughtily, “One must suppose you covet her fortune, sir. She is far too good for you.”

  “I cannot deny that I shall welcome her fortune, ma’am,” he said, looking down at Felicia with a smile, “but any of it that I use for Longworth will be replaced as soon as the estate is in trim again. I mean that money to go to our daughters, and since we may have a good many, every penny will be needed. As to the other, you are entirely right. She is far too good. I mean to teach her to be less well behaved in future.”

  Lady Augusta said, “You are most peculiar, Crawley, but I confess, such words make me think the better of you, rather than the worse. You will not believe me, I daresay, but—”

  “Here you are, Felicia!” Theo pushed open the door that Lady Augusta had left ajar and burst into the room, her face wreathed in smiles. “Only wait till you hear what I have to tell you. Richard has just—”

  “Aunt Felicia, Aunt Felicia,” Sara Ann called, pushing past Sir Richard, who had entered on Theo’s heels, “I have been looking and looking for you. Tom says both he and Freddy must go away, and I cannot bear them to. Oh, please, Aunt Felicia—”

  Tom, coming in behind the little girl, caught her up in his arms, saying, “I have been telling her she need not worry, Aunt Felicia, but she insists she must discuss the matter with you, and I’ve just heard what Freddy did with Sir Richard’s rig. I hope you mean to give that young rascal—”

  Freddy, running in behind him, shouted, “Don’t you say it, Thomas! I have already told Crawley he may do what he thinks right, and I don’t need you to—”

  “Out!” Crawley roared. “Every last one of you!”

  There was instant silence.

  “Dear me,” Lady Crawley said, hovering on the threshold, her hands clasped at her bosom, her lower lip trembling ominously.

  Felicia, conscious of a strong wish that she had never recovered from her faint, looked up at her beloved, to see how he would handle this.

  Crawley drew a long breath, looked around the room, and said quietly, “Felicia cannot attend to your wants just now. She has agreed to become my wife, and we are going to go for a walk in the park, alone. Is that not true, my love?”

  “Oh, yes,” Felicia agreed fervently, ignoring the stupefied silence that seemed to fill the room around them.

  Crawley put out his arm, and obediently she placed her hand upon it and walked with him from the room. The last thing she heard as they hurried down the stairs was Lady Augusta declaring from the gallery above, “To do the right thing at the right season is a great art, my dears. My blessings on you both!”

  Crawley shut the door behind them and took her into his arms.

  “Not on a public street,” she protested.

  “Hush, sweetheart, we have Lady Augusta’s blessing.”

  Looking up at him to see his eyes lit with warmth and laughter, she tossed caution to the winds. “Very well, my love, since you insist, I shall begin as I hope to go on.” And welcoming his kisses, exhilarating in the way her body responded instantly to his, Felicia relaxed in his arms and counted the rest of the world well lost.

  About the Author

  A fourth-generation Californian of Scottish descent, Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which appeared on the USA Today bestseller list. Her Scottish heritage and love of history (she received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Mills College and California State University, San Jose, respectively) inspired her to write historical fiction. Credited by Library Journal with starting the Scottish romance subgenre, Scott has also won acclaim for her sparkling Regency romances. She is the recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award (for Lord Abberley’s Nemesis, 1986) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award. She lives in central California with her husband.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Forthright Lady Gillian

  Copyright © 1992 by Lynne Scott-Drennan

  The Fickle Fortune Hunter

  Copyright © 1993 by Lynne Scott-Drennan

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  978-1-4804-1520-1

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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