by Shirl Anders
Regency Rogues: My Lady Series, Lady Gambled, Owning Arabella, Red Cloak
(Regency Romance Boxset)
By Shirl Anders
This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book maybe be reproduced, scanned, or printed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Copyright © 2015 by Shirl Anders. All rights reserved.
Spies, scarred lords, and noble rogues with high adventures of the heart and smoldering conquests. A boxset of Shirl Anders bestselling steamy regency romances.
Table Of Contents:
My Lady Compelled
My Lady Enslaved
My Lady Captive
My Lady Taken
My Lady Enthralled
My Lady Gambled Book One
My Lady Gambled Book Two
Owning Arabella
Red Cloak of Abandon
Excerpt Wicked Lord Part One
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My Lady Compelled
By Shirl Anders
Chapter One
Drummond Penhurst, Duke of Kittridge, relaxed in the lavishly furnished gaming salon of his country manor as he regarded the five gentlemen seated around the table. The game was Monte and these five men, chiefly including himself, comprised one of England’s most successful spying circuits in the last forty years. The fact that he had been the administrator of this notable spying venture brought him satisfaction. The fact that it no longer existed with Napoleon’s demise, brought him feelings of restlessness that he had seldom before encountered.
Their illustrious code name had been Hellagon. Regardless, the clandestine people in the offices at Thirteen Whipple Street had called them surreptitiously as the Queen’s Archangels. The pretentious naming had adhered and until the last throes of Napoleon’s demise, one needed only mention the Archangels on French soil to obtain a pale and fearful reaction. Yes, Drummond considered pragmatically, he had done his job with skill and even exceedingly artful at times, managing over the years to deliver them through alive. Barely.
His gaze flicked casually to Harrison, the reclusive Earl of Ravenscar and the only man present who was near to his own middle age. Together, he and Harrison had operated in the macabre world of espionage for more than eight years. His gaze followed the movement of Harrison’s leather gloved hands, dealing the next round. Harrison’s hands were perpetually gloved now, hiding the acid burns from their last spying operation gone awry, just as Harrison’s voice was now a permanent rasp from those same acid fumes.
Damnation, Drummond cursed silently. He had nearly lost Harrison in that last fateful debacle. He still questioned seriously who had betrayed their team. Who was it that had nearly cost Harrison his life and had cost Radford the Duke of Sutherlin one eye and Brynmore, Baron of Duneagan the hearing in one ear?
He felt every day since that time that he had better find the traitor before Harrison did. Harrison was set for his own style of dark vengeance and it was nearly as if Harrison knew who the betrayer was. Nevertheless, he reflected, it was unlike Harrison not to confide in him if he did indeed know. And all of this coming to pass well over a year before, so now it seemed to him like so much muddied water beneath the proverbial bridge.
What in the hell, he wondered, for the hundredth time since his return to England, did a master spy do with his life after the intrigue of espionage was no longer viable because of peace time? It appeared to him that he had arranged his life a bit too well around his spying efforts. His one and only wife had passed away several years before he had taken up the cause of spying, but not before she had given him the prerequisite heir and one daughter.
His son, Samuel, was a fine man and everything but the Duke of Kittridge in name. Samuel administered all the sundry ducal concerns with a firm hand and intelligent mind, having done so for several years now. His daughter, Tabitha, was married with a child of her own and a life completely established well without his presence. Neither of them had need of a slightly jaded, retired spy gumming up their well-ordered lives. So what did men of his age and accomplishments do, finding themselves very well unneeded at all turns and certainly not interested in the frippery of London’s ‘ton’.
Hm, he mulled as he tapped his fingers on the armrest of his chair, while he surveyed the men around him once again. It was quite clear that the gentlemen surrounding him also needed some type of settling. Not that he would consider, especially for the younger men, the possibility of foisting a wife on each of them. However, with the others injuries, there was also Saxonhurst, Marquess of Hartely’s hand lost to cannon fire and Wyndham, Earl of Hawkenge’s bad leg caught by shrapnel at Waterloo.
So he pondered soberly that all of his companions, well including himself, had definite needs of settling, perhaps there was a purpose yet. He would have to consider it. However, just then Harrison raised the ante and he turned his ear to the waggish conversation around him.
“I would favor a woman with the attributes of a courtesan for my wife, gentlemen, if you must know,” Wyndham replied, somewhat defensive, to Radford’s question.
Wyndham had gone to war, an idealistic young man and returned world-weary, but tightly honed, Drummond thought, as he watched the gilded-haired man propping his injured leg up on the brocade stool provided by his chair. Perhaps they all had, Drummond mused.
“You clearly have no one to answer to except yourself, Wyndham,” Radford said, dropping some of his sardonic veneer that went with his piratical, black satin eye patch. “What with your brother and his wife killed by way of that carriage accident, while we were all dancing the minuet of Napoleon’s demise.” Radford turned his one startling light blue eye balefully on Wyndham. “I do imagine that you are required to produce an heir for your title, and what a deliciously wicked idea . . . to take a whore for a wife.”
“I surely understand the man’s need to be carrying on his family line by marrying,” Brynmore interrupted. “In your position you canna do no less,” he finished with a firm tug of the red and black tartan, tossed over his shoulder as if to emphasize family pride. No one in the group had more familial pride than the Scottish, Laird Duneagan, especially after the loss of nearly all the Duneagan’s clan at Waterloo.
Radford sharply turned his vivid blue eye over the table at the Scottish Baron, then resumed his interrupted speech. “And, I must admit that I would rather have an intelligent tart in my bed for the next thirty years, if I were to choose wisely.”
“It should be possible to find,” Harrison rasped, sweeping the group with his brooding, black-eyed gaze. “Somewhere among all of the prissy and frigid daughters of our peers. There has to be a few worth training to a man’s needs. The crux of the matter is not to mount the mare while searching.”
“No cock in the pussy,” Drummond mused.
“Exactly,” Harrison replied in his raspy voice. “Last card,” he added to those around the table in general.
“Really,” Saxonhurst chuckled sadly. “Harrison, you are too ruthless at this game for my innocence,” he added as he tossed his cards down conceding Harrison’s win.
Drummond casually watched Saxonhurst maneuvering the silver hook that replaced his hand with dexterity as Saxonhurst took up the next shuffle. It was an amazing feat after only a year of dealing with the missing limb.
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br /> “Still, gentlemen,” Saxonhurst continued in his pensive way. “The ladies of our esteemed ‘ton’ are very unlikely to offer forth any sort of courtesan persona. If only they understood that life is too short not to indulge in full-blooded passion from the very beginning of their tender ages. Then by admitting that they do have the capacity of heated passions, they would secure their husbands to them more tightly.”
“What cause would any man have for a mistress outside of his marriage if he had a hot-blooded woman at home in his bed?” Wyndham asked, seriously intent.
“Think of the trouble to be spared the families lives, his wife, and their children, if a man was not driven to take up a wee doxie on the side. Those lasses can be a bit of trouble as many times as not,” Brynmore observed.
“What man does not dream of a passionate woman as his sole possession?” Drummond mused. “The facts are, gentlemen, that if you discover a lady with potential, it is for you to exploit it because the lady will never admit to herself the baser instincts that could control her. Unless the man teaches her inexorably otherwise.”
“Speaking from experience?” Harrison asked with a hedonistic glean in his ebony eyes.
“It is no mystery that I am the only man here who has been married,” Drummond replied easily. “I have incurred two such errors in my life along this very line. With my wife it was understandable, for it was an arranged marriage. Even still, with the wisdom that I have now gained, I do believe even that very proper lady could have been turned to more passionate natures if I had simply proscribed to put my wit and intelligence into the matter.”
“Put forth as much effort into making your wife your mistress as you put into plotting Napoleon’s fall?” Radford quipped with sarcasm.
“Exactly,” Drummond replied. “I know now that the feat could be well accomplished with, ah, shall we say, firm resolve and a masterful plan. I aver, gentlemen, that most women need us to thrust through their inbred moral objections and show them the way.” He paused and held forward his glass of amber colored whiskey as if in toast. “They would applaud us in the end.”
“Here-Here,” Brynmore announced, raising his glass. “Here is to wiping away all the lasses’ inhibitions.”
“Here-Here,” Radford followed. “And to instructing them each intimately on their passionate natures.”
“Here-Here,” Wyndham offered intently. “And, to provoking each of them into hot-blooded courtesans.”
“And to showing them that life is too short not to be enjoyed to the fullest.” Saxonhurst toasted with solemn brown eyes.
“Now,” Harrison rasped as he finished toasting the last decree. “Here is to discovering the second woman in Drummond’s tale and I could be just patriarchal enough to remember the lady’s name.”
Drummond gave Harrison a calculating glare, as he drawled, “Really, Ravenscar?” Harrison nodded in the sublimely venomous way that he had. It was a product of his deadly assassination skills, Drummond supposed.
“The Lady Gabriella St. John, if I recall correctly,” Harrison replied in a hoarse whisper, pausing to take a sip of his whiskey. “You were quite young and enthralled, I am told.”
“I certainly place you too well, Harrison, to find that lady’s name from my past a coincidence from your mouth,” Drummond observed, feeling a heightened sense of awareness strum along his nerve endings. He had not heard the lady’s name spoken in more than twenty-five years. However, he had never forgotten . . .
“Her husband, Lord Reginald, proposes to sell her,” Harrison conveyed. “A wife’s sale. You have heard of these sales in the lower classes before, I’m sure.”
“I see,” Drummond uttered through his throat gone suddenly dry. He was shocked and for a man who seldom let anything unravel him, this came perilously close to doing just that. He leaned forward, snuffing out his expensive cigar. “It appears, gentlemen that I have some unexpected business to which I must attend. Stay as long as you will and, Harrison, I do thank you for finally arriving at the point of your suggested gathering this evening.”
Then as Drummond strode from the salon, he heard Harrison’s last toast. “Here-Here, gentlemen. Here is to finding that right woman.”
Chapter Two
“I cannot believe you did this, Lord Kittridge. S-Saved me! I-I . . . thank you, Drummond.” Gabriella St. John voiced demurely, appearing very near to grateful tears.
“Do not thank me, Lady St. John,” Drummond uttered curtly.
“B-But, I . . . this is all so embarrassing. I just don’t know quite what to say, I . . .”
Drummond interrupted her misconception ruthlessly. “You, my lady, shall remove your clothes for me now. And say nothing.”
“Drummond!”
“Let us not be hypocrites, madame. You are now mine, completely and without recourse, to do with as I please.” He paused in vibrant tension. “Do you refute this, madame?”
“No, I . . . No, you know that I cannot!” Gabriella cried, obviously more shaken than she had already been.
“Then, I shall see what I have purchased, madame,” he continued, relentless. “Now!”
“You have become an arrogant beast, Lord Kittridge,” Gabriella exclaimed, appearing more furious and embarrassed now as she tossed her mink muffler onto the wing chair in his study along with her trim mink hat to follow. She eyed him uncertainly through beautiful violet colored eyes, apparently gauging his resolve in this most daring scene, and then she cried, “I certainly could not begrudge you the entire twenty-thousand pounds that it cost you to purchase me!”
Her white gloves came off next, furiously following the mink accessories. “Just what do you intend to do with me?” she exclaimed as her shaking fingers worked on the black pearl buttons of her fashionable silk walking dress. “Make me into your whore,” she panted as the dove gray dress slid to her slippered feet and she shuttered in fevered distress. “How you must hate me to do this,” she despaired in obvious anguish, jerking down her petticoats one by one, until she stood in only her cream-colored, gauzy camisole.
Drummond saw at once that she was still exquisite after all these years. Infinitely more so dressed in an utterly feminine camisole. The camisole covered only to her creamy-colored upper thighs above her silk stockings held in place by frilly garters of violet satin. The lacy top edge of the camisole dipped into the sultry curves of her magnificent bosom, showing her pink nipples clearly outlined against the fragile silk. She was sumptuous with her auburn hair and purply colored eyes, little did her contemptible husband realize, but he would have paid ten times as much to have her.
“Come here to me, madame, now!” Drummond commanded. Completely ignoring Gabriella’s questions and tirade as he reclined imperiously in his high-backed leather chair behind the desk in his study.
“Answer me!” Gabriella exclaimed indignant, even as she came forward with faltering steps. She only tiptoed to the edge of his desk, with one of her hands attempting ridiculously to cover her ample breasts, while the other scrunched between her perfect thighs. He could see the pulse beating wildly in the hollow of her slender throat.
“I do not have to answer to you for anything, madame. It is you, who are now fully and completely beneath my proprietorship.” Drummond reached forward.
“Oh, you-you,” Gabriella squealed as he clasped her wrist, hauling her unceremoniously into his lap with her back plastered to his chest.
“There is nothing for you to do, madame. No place for you to go.” Drummond moved his hand then with bold rapaciousness. He slid his fingers beneath Gabriella’s camisole to aggressively capture in his hand her hot flushed little pussy, while she tried instantly to clench her legs together, eliciting a strangled screech.
Then, he uttered harshly. “You may not abandon me this time. You must submit!”
“Oh, I will escape you-you, arrogant bastard!” Gabriella cried, trying to struggle from beneath his arm clamped around her slender waist, while his fingers dipped, relentless into the hot, moist lips
of her sex, making her gasp loudly in denial.
Suddenly Drummond’s fingers halted their exploring motion as Gabriella’s final words registered in his mind and he released her just as quickly. “Go then! Back to your husband. Now, madame,” he snapped.
Gabriella braced her hands upon his arms to peer back over her shoulder at him. “You know that I cannot . . . he has everything. I-I.”
“The streets then, madame, I care not!”
“B-But . . . there is nowhere for me to go.”
“Precisely, madame.” Drummond allowed his gaze to burn with demand into Gabriella’s. “Spread your legs for me now! Place them up and over mine.”
“I shall hate you . . . I-I,”
“We shall see,” Drummond replied intently as Gabriella turned her gaze forward, and then collapsed upon his chest, raising her legs, so slowly . . . faltering, up over his.
Drummond relaxed then. He had routed the first major skirmish and he did intend to win the entire battle. The woman in his arms was everything that he had ever dreamed her to be. Soft, feminine, and gracefully feisty, although she had no chance. Who would have ever thought in the grand continuum of life’s events that he would be given this second singular chance? He never questioned the mores of God’s greatest design. More appropriate, he molded those events to his own design. But this time . . . This time, lent him nearly to believe in divine providence.
Gabriella’s shapely curves trembled where they settled over his muscular frame. Her breathing was agitated, her soft brunette hair tickled his throat from where her head moved, restless beneath his chin. Nonetheless, she struggled no more when he placed both of his palms flatly onto the gossamer flesh of her shivering inner thighs.
“What will you do to me?” she moaned, with a helpless whisper. Still, she did not fight his hands presence, nor their right to be there.
