by Darcy Burke
He took her tiny hand in his. “I’ve never felt this content. It must be because I’m making love with my wife. I’m truly happy. I don’t think I could get any happier.”
She rolled onto her side to him. She ran her little finger over his chest. “I will bet you a ride on Hero that I could make you happier.”
“Christ, woman. I’m not letting you ride Hero.”
“Chicken?”
“Even your delectable charms couldn’t work on me after our second bout of lovemaking. Since the appendage belongs to me, I think I’m pretty safe taking that bet.” And he slid his feet off the bed and onto the floor.
“I’m with child.”
He froze. Then he looked back over his shoulder and saw the happiness, joy, and pride in his wife’s eyes. A slow smile curved his lips.
With a hoot of joy he pulled her to him and kissed her possessively, tumbling her back onto the bed. “You’re not riding, Hero. Especially now you’re with child.”
“I don’t want to ride your beast.” She patted her belly. “I was simply proving a point. You don’t get to win all the bets, all of the time.”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
It was true. He could live with losing the odd bet. He could live with her, and their children, and be exceedingly happy.
He loved, with a consuming passion, the woman who’d dared the Duke of Dangerfield.
The End
Books by Bronwen Evans
Historical
To Dare the Duke of Dangerfield
(Book #1 Wicked Wagers Trilogy)
To Wager the Marquis of Wolverstone
(Book #2 Wicked Wagers Trilogy)
To Challenge the Earl of Cravenswood
(Book #3 Wicked Wagers Trilogy)
Wicked Wagers, The Complete Trilogy
The Disgraced Lords series
A Kiss of Lies – Jan 2014
A Promise of More – April 2014
A Touch of Passion – Dec 2014
Invitation to Ruin
(Winner of RomCon Best Historical 2012, RT Best First Historical 2012 Nominee)
Invitation to Scandal
(TRR Best Historical Nominee 2012)
Invitation to Passion
July 2014
Contemporaries
The Reluctant Wife
The Problem with Seduction
The Naughty Girls
Book Two
EMMA LOCKE
THE PROBLEM WITH SEDUCTION
Copyright © 2013 by Emma Locke
Excerpt from The Art of Ruining a Rake copyright © 2013 by Emma Locke.
Cover design © Seductive Designs
Cover photo © Aliaksandr Halai
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. Please do not support piracy. Obtain an electronic version of this book through an approved vendor.
Intrepid Reads
ISBN 13: 978-0-9854558-5-9
Dedication
For Lupe and Beth, my single girl-turned-mom friends.
You’re much braver than I am!
Chapter One
August, 1814
London
SURELY THIS WAS THE first and only time Lord Constantine Alexander would ever approach another man and utter the words, “Pardon me, sir, but I believe you have my baby.”
Activities at the closest gaming tables ceased. Patrons cocked their heads or leaned forward in expectation of witnessing a scene that would no doubt be fodder for the better part of the night, if not the week. Con did his best to conceal his nervousness. A slightly mocking smile curled his upper lip. It felt more like a grimace. He had no idea how Captain Nicholas Finn would reply to his allegation—or indeed, if the larger, more seasoned man would even use words. An accusation like the one Con had just made could end in fisticuffs, or a call for his second.
He would really rather not get shot tonight.
Captain Finn’s mouth slowly snapped shut. Con had carefully rehearsed his speech to make it leap out like a pithy charge, but the captain had been given no such notice to prepare his rebuttal. Con clearly had the advantage of surprise.
The captain’s brown eyes narrowed in hard-edged disbelief. A muscle at his jaw tightened. Otherwise, he maintained control. “Who the hell are you?”
“Lord Constantine Alexander, at your service.” Con inclined his head, then capped the introduction off with a rakish flourish of his arm. He quelled the urge to shift under the other man’s rancor. He couldn’t afford to fail his mission, and that meant Finn couldn’t have any reason to doubt his claim. But Con didn’t like how it made him feel, having Finn look at him like some disgusting thing that had attached itself to the bottom of his boot.
Con tightened the smile on his lips into a smirk. A man who’d just publicly claimed to have impregnated another man’s mistress would smirk, wouldn’t he? Otherwise, if he were not a cocky cad intent on embarrassing his opponent, he would have done it all in private. “Well, do you or don’t you have my son?”
Finn didn’t respond. Con was careful not to twitch his fingertips against his leg. He must look sure of himself. He must look, well, cocky. He tilted his head to the right, as if having to do complicated maths in his head were a feat that required his full attention, and yet clearly conveyed that Con already knew the answer. “By my counting, you do.”
Finn thumped his empty tumbler onto the cloth-covered gaming table, causing a hollow knock that shook Con in his boots. Finn rose. Even standing, he had to tilt his head to glare into Con’s face. “I don’t need to count backward to know my own son.”
“Measure twice, cut once, my tailor says.” Con grinned, though he didn’t feel like grinning—far from it. But appearances had to be maintained. The first requirement of his assignment was clear: he wouldn’t see a shilling until the baby was returned to its mother. The ten thousand pounds he’d then receive would stop the moneylenders in their tracks. He needed this to work. It all added up to his freedom—each crisp bank note guaranteed he wouldn’t have to spend another night in King’s Bench, the debtors’ prison that all but had his name etched into a cell wall. If he failed at this tonight, there’d be no second chance.
He grinned again, as if the rest of his life didn’t hinge on the next few moments. “I believe this has all been a misunderstanding,” he explained loudly enough for anyone listening to hear. “Please, allow me to set the events straight so there can be no doubt.”
The second stipulation of his assignment dictated that Finn could have no recourse. If all went to plan, the men right here in this room would spread their accounting of this debacle across every club in London, leaving Finn no possibility of reneging once the baby had been restored to its mother. It was up to Con to cast that doubt.
“Four months ago,” he said, “you were summoned to a tiny hamlet in Devon by the notorious courtesan Elizabeth Spencer, who had been your mistress for the majority of three years. You were presented with an infant you were led to believe had sprung from your loins. Do I have the right of it so far?”
Finn didn’t spare a glance for the ring of men watching with unabashed interest. He didn’t stop to suggest that he and Con retreat out of doors, out of earshot. Instead, his eyes bored into Con’s with an intensity that made it hard not to squirm. As if he cared with every iota of feeling in him about what Con was saying. As if Finn’s whole life hung in the balance.
Con felt the first twinge of guilt.
“Well,” he continued when Finn’s only reply was a deepening of that discomfiting stare, “why did you think she was in Dev
on? It wasn’t to see her family. They live in Shropshire, and besides, I hear they aren’t on speaking—”
“What are you trying to say?” burst out of Finn in harsh, clipped syllables. His lips didn’t quite touch afterward, lending him a feral appearance. Con had never had a man bare his teeth at him before. Not in all seriousness, at least.
God. He really, really didn’t want to get shot tonight.
But if he had to choose between a bullet and the gaol—a very real choice he could be making in the morning—the bullet might be more survivable. Just the thought of being relegated to a damp, dark box weighed on his lungs until it felt as if an entire militia were stomping across his chest. When it came time to face being locked away again, his own terror might do him in. Now it helped him to sound beleaguered, as though it pained him to explain what he’d hoped would be obvious by this point. “I live in Devon. She went to Devon to have my baby. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
Their onlookers’ collective gasp preceded several occurrences of “I say!” and one “Really, that was not well done of you, Alexander.”
Finn seemed to double in size, as though his outrage made him physically larger and not just more intimidating. “That’s absurd. Elizabeth panted after my attentions for three years. She would never have—” But he stopped.
Con barely kept from smiling with relief. He’d done it! It could be his baby. Even Finn had to admit it. Not that the notion was that far-fetched. Elizabeth was a courtesan. Certainly, she need not remain faithful to a lover who’d repeatedly and publicly tried to wash his hands of her. Who’d spent so much time sailing the oceans that she might have taken a legion of bedfellows without his knowing a whit of it.
Whether or not she had done so, Con really wasn’t in a position to know.
Finn advanced a step, testing Con’s ability to stand his ground. “She’s my mistress. Not yours. You cowardly, bloody whelp. I demand your retraction. Go on. Take it back.” He swung his arm wide and Con flinched, belatedly realizing Finn had meant to include the gaming hell crowded with men in his declaration, not plant Con a facer. “None of you laid a hand on her, not in the last three years. She’s mine. Elizabeth Spencer is mine.”
A choked cough somewhere in the back of the room drew a new level of silence. Awkwardness hung thick in the air, as each man discernibly struggled to decide if it had been a tickle in a throat or a smothered admission of guilt.
Finn spun in the direction of the cough. Finally freed of his drilling stare, Con breathed a bit easier. He rubbed his damp palms against his coat. Yet his heartbeat thumped in his chest so hard, surely everyone could hear it. He hadn’t yet convinced Finn his mistress had been unfaithful. The child wasn’t in Con’s arms—yet. He wasn’t clear of King’s Bench—yet.
“Who did that?” Finn demanded. “Which one of you sniveling bastards wants to join young Alexander in a fist-pounding?”
Seconds of silence felt like minutes. Con resisted the urge to shift uneasily. If one more man would come forward, this would be so much easier. But the silence held.
Finn turned to face him. “See? You’re a liar.”
“She isn’t yours now, though, is she?” Con’s steady voice surprised him. He could’ve sworn Finn’s boot was already pressing on his throat. “And she hasn’t always been, even in the last three years. You’ve given her up a time or two, if I recall correctly.”
Finn glowered. But he didn’t argue the fact.
Con drew his shoulders back. As he’d done with every creditor who’d ever dogged him, every angry friend who’d ever demanded he fulfill an IOU, he feigned nonchalance. “You replaced her just a month ago with Millicent Kimble. A delectable piece, I credit you, as was Mrs. Brooks before her. And a little over a year ago, if I may relate your history aloud, you were keen on Beth Rawlings. I can’t fault your taste, Finn, but I must say, women do have a strong dislike of being jilted.”
Murmurs of agreement wound through the gentlemen present. He and Finn didn’t run in the same crowds, Con being far younger, but even he knew that the captain liked to flaunt his wealth in the form of expensive whores. Despite Con’s status as fourth son of a marquis, he couldn’t afford any of the costly women Finn used and discarded without a thought, and he had always been appalled by both Finn’s excess and his callousness.
“By my math,” Con said again, feeling surer of himself the longer Finn remained quiet, “the child you’ve been tricked into acknowledging is actually mine. I am sorry, old boy. But if you don’t mind, I’d like my son back. He was the cutest little imp when he was born, you see, and I will never forgive myself for quarreling with Elizabeth just a few days later.” He laughed quietly. “It’s too easy, is it not, to rile her passions. I ought to have minded my tongue when she was at her most vulnerable. I sent her running straight back to you instead.”
Finn’s eyes darkened, and the bronzed skin of his brow creased as his eyes narrowed further. That bit about Elizabeth’s passions had done it—just as she’d said it would. For she and Finn had fought like man and wife, even up to the end of their acquaintance. And last year, Finn had briefly cast her aside to pursue a new conquest.
Con was a devil of a handsome man. An objective evaluation, based on his observation that his twin brother was an out-and-out rake. Finn was realizing the crux of it now: Con was worthy competition. And beautiful, wealthy, self-made Elizabeth Spencer did not like to be crossed.
Con almost felt sorry for him. He couldn’t take too much time to pity his opponent, though. He didn’t have the baby yet. Only when Finn stormed out of the room, growling, “That duplicitous little slut. I’ll be damned if she sneaks your bastard under my nose,” did Con finally relax. And later the next morning, when a runner knocked at the door of Merritt House, rousing the staff with the announcement that a baby was to be delivered that very afternoon, did the dread in Con’s belly begin to uncurl.
But it was the ten thousand pounds quietly transferred into his account that fully unwound his insides and allowed him to take an unfettered breath. When the last IOU had been ripped asunder and even the smallest of his creditors walked away satisfied, Con exhaled a deep sigh of relief. He even had a few coins to spare.
Coins he might not have much longer, as he was in the mood to celebrate his own resourcefulness. Until he returned to Merritt House, and his mother greeted him at the foot of the stairs. “Constantine, where on earth have you hidden my beautiful little grandchild? Mr. Benjamin seems to think you’ve no intention of raising him here, but I told him that cannot be true. You wouldn’t keep your own son from his family, even if he was born on the wrong side of the blanket.” Her blue eyes dampened and her voice trembled. “Oh, Constantine, you wouldn’t, would you?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but he had no answer. He merely stared at his mother, powerless to reassure her that no, he wasn’t that kind of father. The uncaring kind. The absent kind. The kind his father had been.
It was his first indication that, perhaps, he hadn’t thought this scheme entirely through.
***
Elizabeth Spencer would have paid Lord Constantine twenty thousand pounds for the return of her son. Even more, had he asked. She’d not told him so, of course. She’d let him name his price, then bargained him down until he’d threatened to walk. It was not by accident that she had started out penniless and become a celebrated courtesan with an impressive collection of assets.
It was to her benefit, then, that he’d been as desperate for her money as she’d been for his services. After paying for his silence, she still retained more than enough in her accounts to sustain herself and Oliver for the rest of her life. She need not return to her old tricks. A relief, for she’d had a month to come to the realization that she wanted nothing more than to become worthy of being Oliver’s mother.
She would have done it, though. Selling her body was a pittance compared to what she would have done to get her son back. She would do anything—anything—to keep him. Nicholas had stol
en five weeks of her son’s life from her. Five weeks of watching him grow, of holding him— She gasped for a breath. Surely nothing was crueler than Nicholas’s wielding the law to steal her child. Nothing except, mayhap, the false hope he’d given her prior, for after setting the three of them up as a family, and doting on her and Oliver for two glorious months, he’d had a change of heart. He didn’t need her to get to his son. He’d made short work of her, then.
She’d barely survived the heartbreak of losing her baby. The unbearably long separation, the weeks of Nicholas keeping her child from her, the days and nights knowing another woman was caring for her son, that she was never to see her son again, had felt like death. She would have done anything to have him back. Even after a full day of having him with her now, she hadn’t grasped the reality of Oliver’s presence. He was hers again. Here. At last.
Gazing into his beautiful little face, she touched his soft cheek and sighed the first real sigh of contentment she’d felt since…it didn’t bear thinking about. The past was the past. Nicholas was gone. Oliver was her joy, her life.
He squirmed in her arms, then eyes as pale as her own opened. He cooed and she smiled. “Well, look at you, there,” she murmured, nuzzling his tiny nose with her own.
Her vision was blurred by welling tears. Never again. She would never allow Nicholas to take him again. Even if she must live in fear of discovery for the rest of her life, she would do whatever it took to keep her child. Steal, lie, cheat. Nothing was worth the heartbreak of being separated from Oliver.
A scratch at the nursery door preceded the entry of her upstairs maid. Nelly, a girl with curly red hair peeking from beneath a mobcap, entered. “You have a caller, ma’am.”
Elizabeth didn’t need to be told it was a he. There was no other kind of callers. “Who is he?”
