A Measure of Deceit

by Jess Michaels

  Even Society’s most scandalous writer couldn’t have predicted this.

  The Ladies Book of Pleasures, Book 3

  The Ladies Book of Pleasures, now credited with two marriages and countless other affairs and liaisons, has Society all aflutter. The one person not benefitting from its scandalous advice? The author herself.

  From the safety of her anonymity, Lady Grace Hollis, Duchess of Jameswood, enjoys the blissful results of her handiwork—and pretends she does not miss the passionate proclivities she penned. But when her handsome editor begins making the rounds of Society parties, she wonders how long her secret will be safe.

  Connor Sheridan wants—needs—to know the answer to the one burning question on everyone’s lips: the mystery writer’s identity. And it’s not just because their correspondence, delivered via untraceable couriers, has made him smile, frown, or imagine her engaged in erotic escapades—with him.

  Other letters have begun landing on his desk, letters written by a decidedly unfriendly hand. And though it may threaten her reputation, the safest place for her could very well be his arms. Whether she likes it or not.

  Warning: This book contains secret identities, dangerous liaisons, and a very sexy Scot.

  A Measure of Deceit

  Jess Michaels

  Contents

  Cover

  Colophon

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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 Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Previews

  About the Author

  Also by Jess Michaels

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The greatest of thanks to everyone at Samhain who has supported my career since my first book here, especially Amy Sherwood. And to Michael, who helps me build my wings when I leap off high buildings in a single bound. Let’s see if these babies fly, eh?

  Chapter One

  “When you least expect it, everything can change. Isn’t it wonderful?”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures

  Spring 1814

  Although she had never been classified as a wallflower, there were times Grace, the Duchess of Jameswood, wished she could vanish into the floor and escape the boredom of a party or ball. Tonight—this very moment, in fact—was a very good example.

  Grace forced a smile as Lady Harldrum continued prattling on about some topic (perhaps it was bonnets?) and tried not to exchange a meaningful look with her two best friends, the Marchioness Lyndham and the Countess of Northfield.

  Of course, neither Isabel nor Jacinda looked as frustrated and annoyed as she felt. But then again, neither of them ever did anymore, thanks to their relatively recent marriages. They were both blissfully happy. And that made Grace happy.

  Mostly.

  “But you must know, Your Grace,” Lady Harldrum said, gripping Grace’s arm with surprising strength. “I’m certain you’ve read the book.”

  Grace blinked and shot Isabel and Jacinda a look of panic in the hopes her two friends would understand she had been woolgathering rather than listening. Isabel seemed to catch the hint first, for she gave a bright smile.

  “I believe Lady Jameswood is more than aware of The Ladies Book of Pleasures. Aren’t you, my dear?” she supplied.

  Grace tensed at the mention of that subject, just as she always did. The Ladies Book of Pleasures was a rather naughty book which had been written by “An Anonymous Lady”. It encouraged women to embrace their desires, to welcome their feelings of need and attraction. Since its appearance on the marketplace, it had taken London Society by storm, inspiring outrage, titillation and more than a few torrid affairs.

  There seemed to be two camps when it came to the book: those who supported the Lady and said she was a revolutionary, and those who despised her and wished to rip her to shreds, likely in the city square, for what she had “done to Society”.

  Grace frowned. What did Isabel mean by “more than aware”, anyway?

  Jacinda and Lady Harldrum both stared at her, expecting an answer, and she swallowed hard before she waved the hand that wasn’t captured in Lady Haldrum’s grip.

  “Oh, that book, that book,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “I realize it has supposedly changed lives—”

  Jacinda sucked in a breath. “There is nothing supposed about it.”

  Grace squeezed her eyes shut. Both Jacinda and Isabel considered The Ladies Book of Pleasures to have played a large part in their falling in love with their husbands. Not that they would say something so direct or shocking in front of Lady Harldrum.

  Grace shook her head. “Very well, it has changed lives. But I do wonder when the furor will die down. The book has been out for more than two years now. Certainly something more fascinating has come along.”

  Isabel cast her a strange look, but before the marchioness could say anything, Lady Harldrum laughed rather nervously. “I do not think the interest will pass soon. At least I hope not, for I have planned a coup of magnificent proportions for tonight that has to do with that wicked little tome.”

  Isabel had been staring at Grace, but now her attention focused in on Harldum. “A coup?” she said, her voice quivering with excitement. “Don’t tell me you have uncovered the identity of the author of the book?”

  Jacinda stepped forward, her hands clenched over her heart. “Is she here?”

  Grace’s stomach dropped at the thought and she searched Lady Harldrum’s face. The woman had a vapidness to her that made Grace doubt she could uncover such a secret. But if she used her vast supply of money, could even the most carefully covered trail be unearthed? Was it possible?

  Lady Harldrum’s face fell, putting Grace’s fears to rest even before the baroness said, “No, I’m afraid I cannot boast to that discovery.” She gave a weak smile. “But I do have someone here who might be just as good as the Lady herself.”

  “Who?” Isabel asked.

  “Yes, don’t keep us in suspense,” Jacinda encouraged.

  “I have the publisher of the book here. Connor Sheridan.”

  Lady Harldrum motioned through the crowd, which parted quite obligingly to reveal a tall, broad shouldered man with close-cropped dark hair and bright green eyes. A very handsome man—which was not going unnoticed by the ladies in the crowd, who were currently cooing over him.

  Grace could hardly breathe as she stared, drinking in the sight of him without blinking. “He—he is the editor of the book.”

  Lady Harldrum cast her a quick glance. “Is there a difference?”

  The question shook Grace from the trance Sheridan seemed to inspire in her. She thinned her lips and looked away from him. “I don’t really know.”

  But that was a lie. She knew the difference between them quite well. She knew Connor Sheridan fulfilled both roles, in this case. Because she was the Lady. And he was her editor.

  The editor she was seeing for the very first time.

  Connor Sheridan shifted and hoped his expression remained that of a man utterly at ease with the crowd currently surrounding him.
That would mean the lie was being fully perpetrated. In truth, he was anything but comfortable in this moment. He had been raised poor in Scotland until his teens. London Society might as well have been another universe.

  And yet here he was, with the rich fobs all falling over themselves to either condemn or celebrate The Ladies Book of Pleasures and beg him to reveal the identity of its mysterious author.

  He smiled at them all, a knowing little expression that said, “Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you.”

  They ate it up.

  The women were no better. They cooed and flirted and slipped salacious notes into his jacket pocket, but they all seemed to be after the same information.

  Who was “An Anonymous Lady”?

  Connor sighed as a servant handed him a glass of wine. He winced as he sipped it. How could the rich live such a watered-down existence, down to their very wine? This was most definitely not his world, and yet when Lady Harldrum’s invitation had arrived at his office a week earlier, he had not refused it as he had done all the others that had crossed his desk over the past two years.

  Why?

  Because he had the same question all those around him did. Who was the woman who had written the book of the era?

  He had never met her, only corresponded with her via post during the editorial process for her book and since its publication and shocking success. He had never seen her face, nor known her name. Her money was delivered, with great secrecy, through a series of solicitors and false identities that never allowed him to trace their ultimate destination.

  So who was she?

  He scanned the room, looking at each woman’s face as he did so. There were many striking women here, their beauty multiplied by the ease of their lives. Was one of them the Lady?

  His Lady, for he had taken to referring to her that way in his mind over the years he’d written to her. He could imagine every swirl of her handwriting, every private joke that had developed between them, every exchange that had ever made him smile or frown or imagine her, his faceless beauty, engaged in the erotic activities she explored in her book.

  He shifted, forcing the thoughts from his mind so he wouldn’t embarrass himself with an erection in the middle of the ballroom floor.

  Luckily, fate intervened to distract him as Lady Harldrum herself approached with three new ladies in tow for him to meet. He smiled at his flighty hostess.

  “Hello, my lady,” he said.

  “Mr. Sheridan,” Lady Harldrum said with a nervous laugh. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  He nodded. “I am indeed. Thank you again for including me on your guest list.”

  She motioned to her companions. “There are a few of my friends here who wished to make your acquaintance.”

  Connor smiled at the three ladies and was greeted by two smiles and one blank expression in return. The blank expression was present on the face of a beautiful woman with blonde hair and stunning blue eyes. Her skin could only be described as porcelain perfection. She was taller than many of the women in the room, but she held her height with ease and even accentuated it with the elegant lines of her evening gown.

  But why did she look at him in such an unreadable way, if she wanted to meet him?

  “May I present the Duchess of Jameswood,” Lady Harldrum said, interrupting Connor’s stream of thought.

  The woman with the blank expression nodded in acknowledgment but did not extend her hand.

  “Marchioness Lyndham and the Countess of Northfield,” Lady Harldrum continued.

  The other two ladies stepped forward, offering their hands almost simultaneously and laughing together as they did so.

  “Forgive us, Mr. Sheridan,” one of the women said. “I’m Marchioness Lyndham. My friend and I are simply aflutter to meet you.”

  He took the marchioness’s hand briefly, then did the same to the countess. “The pleasure is mine, I assure you,” he said with a smile for both pretty women. Unlike some in the room, neither were overtly flirtatious, but merely friendly.

  Could either of them be the Lady?

  While both were staring at him with wide-eyed wonder and friendliness, he didn’t get a sense from either woman that they knew him beyond their attachment to the book he had edited. He certainly didn’t feel a pull to either lady that said she was his.

  Lady Harldrum frowned across the room. “Excuse me, I must find out why the servants are moving the chairs around the dance floor.”

  The other women barely acknowledged her departure, they were all so focused on him. When she had gone, the Countess of Northfield was the first to step closer, leaning in conspiratorially.

  “This is likely a very shocking statement, but I shall make it regardless, because I don’t know that I’ll have the chance again. You must know how deeply your book has impacted me.” The countess blushed deeply. “Us. All of us. The Lady’s words regarding the physical are what so many focus upon, but her ideas about a partnership in marriage, about taking control of ourselves as women…that was what moved me.”

  Connor smiled. “I have often felt the same, my lady. The book is sometimes dismissed by those who haven’t read it and are bound to disapprove, but there is much more to it than meets the eye.”

  Lady Lyndham nodded fiercely. “Absolutely. But I suppose even the Lady’s words about how women should view themselves can be argued with. There are some who do not want women to realize they have legs to stand on, hidden beneath skirts or not.”

  Connor’s gaze again slipped to the duchess, even as he smiled at Lady Lyndham. The duchess could not have appeared more bored by the subject. It seemed she was not a fan. A pity, for she was quite beautiful and perfectly made for the kinds of sin and seduction his Lady had described in her book.

  He blinked. Where had that thought come from? He cleared his throat. “You are correct, my lady. We have even received threats against her at my office.”

  The duchess straightened up at that. “Threats?” she repeated, her eyes growing wide and emphasizing the blue depths.

  So there was a way to attract her attention.

  “Indeed,” Connor said with a frown as he thought of the ugliness those letters had contained.

  Lady Jameswood hesitated, shifting before she said, “And does the author, the Lady, know about these things?”

  Connor arched a brow and moved toward the woman a step. “Ah, you are a wily one, Your Grace.”

  She wrinkled her forehead with confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

  He laughed. “You pretend not to have an interest in this topic, and yet you ask the question everyone else has been asking me all night. You disguise it, yes, but there it is.”

  If he had thought the duchess’s face cool before, now she hardened it to a mask of ice. And yet when she shut down, it did not make her less attractive. If anything, her features became more defined in her icy state, like a queen.

  “I’m certain I have no idea what you are talking about, Mr. Sheridan,” she said in a haughty tone clearly meant to put him in his place.

  He was not offended by it. Instead he smiled, intrigued by the challenge.

  “You asked me if the Lady knew of the threats. Isn’t that your surreptitious method of trying to determine if I know the identity of the author?”

  The duchess’s eyes narrowed and she opened her full lips to speak, but Connor continued, “And once you know whether or not I know the Lady’s identity, you’ll be able to find a way to obtain that information from me.”

  The duchess snapped her lips shut and glared at him. For a moment, no one else spoke, though the duchess’s friends were staring back and forth between the two in what seemed to be stunned shock.

  Apparently no one spoke to a duchess in this manner.

  Finally, Lady Jameswood cleared her throat. “I assure you, Mr. Sheridan, I have no interest in the theories about the author of your book. I simply wondered if this person shouldn’t know that people are threatening her life so she might protect herself. If that concern
seems like a foolish ruse to you, then I suppose there is nothing else to say. Good night, sir.”

  And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked away across the ballroom, her hips twitching provocatively beneath her gown. When she disappeared into the milling crowd, both her friends began talking at once to fill the awkward silence the duchess had left in her wake.

  But even as Connor vaguely listened to the women, he couldn’t help but smile. Whatever the duchess’s motives, she had gotten his full attention. And no one had done that in a very long time.

  Grace all but shoved past the servants who greeted her in her foyer, waving them off while she staggered up the stairs and into her bedchamber. At the door, she tugged on the bell, then began to remove her gloves with jerking movements. She pulled the bell again, calling into the hallway, “Maura!”

  In a moment she heard rushing feet tramping up the backstairs and her maid skidded around the corner. Maura shoved a lock of brown hair behind her ear as she followed Grace into the room.

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” she panted, shutting the door behind her. “I didn’t realize you were home so early. I came as quickly as I could.”

  Grace waved her hand at the girl even as she paced around the room. “It’s nothing. I’m early, I know. Of course you weren’t expecting me. It’s just that he—I never predicted…but how could I? And the way he talked to me—I just—”

  Her maid drew back at the broken sentences that fell from Grace’s lips.

  “Your Grace?” she said. “I have never seen you like this. You are…are…”

  “Panicking,” Grace filled in for her, putting a name to the twisting feeling which started in her chest and crept up into her throat, where it made it hard to breathe. “Oh my God.”

  Maura rushed to her side and gripped her arm, guiding Grace to a chair where she nearly shoved her down. “What has happened?” her maid demanded in a soft, calm voice. “Are you ill?”

  Grace shook her head, making every attempt to gather her thoughts. “No, not ill. This is not a physical ailment, I assure you.”