Beverley Kendall

by Sinful Surrender (lit)

  LUST, PLAIN AND SIMPLE

  Missy took several steps forward. The glow from the solitary tallow candle suffused her in a warm light. James swallowed again, his breathing an audible rasp in the dead quiet of the night.

  “I know you felt something when you kissed me tonight,” she said softly.

  James nearly groaned aloud, convinced his worst enemy had sent her to test him, torture him.

  “Yes, and I believe you felt it too,” he replied, his voice harsh.

  She displayed no shock or surprise at his crude reference to just how hard he’d been pressed up against her down in the study. In fact her eyes, appearing more gray than blue at present, grew smoky, her lids weighed down by desire. Her gaze dropped to his chest and then to the unmistakable distention in the front of his trousers.

  James had nowhere to go. He stood exposed and trapped, caged like a hungry lion with a voracious appetite who’d just come upon his next meal.

  “You’re very beautiful and I’m a normal male. It’s lust, plain and simple. Don’t make more of it than that. As I’ve told you before, any desirable female would elicit the same response.”

  Again, she said nothing but took another step forward, the light now illuminating the full glorious length of her slim figure, her nipples jutting out impudently from the soft cloth of her nightdress.

  “It’s more than lust.”

  SINFUL SURRENDER

  BEVERLEY KENDALL

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  This book is dedicated in loving memory of Paul Glasgow

  Acknowledgments

  There are so many people to thank who dedicated their time and effort to helping me get this book sold.

  I owe a huge thanks to my CPs, Devon Gray and Anastasia, for their unstinting support and brainstorming sessions. I’d also like to thank the ladies of Writers of the Roundtable who fostered a forum in which I felt completely at home. And to Avon Fanlit and all of the wonderful women I met there, you have my heartfelt gratitude, because without that event and topnotch writing, I wouldn’t have attempted to write a historical romance.

  To my family for their support of my writing dream, especially my sister, Dawn, who actually reads my work, I thank you. I would also like to thank my chapter, GRW, for their encouragement, the wonderful mentors, and fantastic writing workshops.

  Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Hilary Sares for pulling Sinful Surrender from the slush pile and giving me this incredible opportunity.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Devonshire, 1852

  The morning of the highly anticipated eighteenth birthday of Millicent “Missy” Armstrong—highly anticipated by her, not him—James Rutherford discovered too late that escorting her from the stables had been a monumental error in judgment.

  If they hadn’t been walking the quarter mile back to Stoneridge Hall, she would not have stumbled and fallen. There would have been no need to assist her to her feet. He certainly wouldn’t have been jerked from his own, to land sprawled atop her, her slender arms wrapped tightly about his neck, pulling his head down so she could land an impassioned kiss on lips parted in surprise.

  Damn and blast! This was precisely the kind of temptation he could ill afford and had done his best to avoid as this day had closed in on him with the swiftness of the finest pair of blacks in full gallop. A grown up Missy still suffering the pangs of a long held infatuation and entering the marriage market was a road fraught with endless pitfalls. One he’d obviously stumbled upon and currently had him cushioned by only the kind of softness and heat a female could render. And yards upon yards of muslin.

  For a shameful moment—or perhaps shameless—he didn’t extricate himself from her embrace, as surely the friend of her brother would if he at all hoped to maintain the friendship. Instead, he savored the waft of her warm breath against his cheek and discovered the softness of her eager, exploring lips. He discovered she wore the faint scent of lilacs. But the worst of his discoveries was what sprang to rigid attention beneath the front flap of his riding breeches.

  Good God, what the blazes was he doing? Armstrong would skewer him clean through if he knew the sorts of thoughts James currently entertained about his sister.

  Emitting a hiss then a tortured groan, and with the sweet taste of her still on his lips, he scrambled from atop her, levering himself to a standing position. Never had the ground felt so uneven beneath his feet or his stance quite so unsteady. Swiftly, he turned and offered her his back, drawing in a ragged breath of the cool April air. A sweeping survey across the rolling hills of Dartington revealed not a soul in sight. He should be relieved there’d been no party to the kiss. He wished he could breathe easy. His raging erection made it all but impossible.

  Sounds of her scrambling to her feet finally penetrated above the blood roaring in his ears, as did the brisk brush of hands against cloth as she went about ridding herself of dewy blades of grass and the dirt clinging to her green-checkered day dress.

  “James?” His name hitched in her throat, the lone syllable seeming to encapsulate a lifetime of yearning.

  He briefly closed his eyes, suffering his remorse in silence as he could well imagine the accompanying wistfulness in her eyes and the faint tremble of her pink bottom lip. Ensuring his jacket adequately covered his state of arousal, and with his mouth in a grim line, he pivoted on his heel to face her.

  “I thought you might actually like it if I kissed you. Might want me to kiss you.” Arresting blue-gray eyes peered up at him from beneath long, sooty lashes, her expression poignant in its vulnerability.

  His reaction to her was inexcusable. Reprehensible, really. She was off-limits to him. Armstrong had made that point clear enough when he’d demanded James give her a wide berth, at least during her debut into Society. Her crush would inevitably run its course. Or so his friend hoped. And should Armstrong have his way, she’d marry the much admired and ardently pursued heir to the Wiltshire dukedom, the Earl of Granville. Why shouldn’t she marry an exalted title, his friend had reasoned, now that the Armstrong family could no longer be considered impoverished nobility, their fortune regained and currently far in excess of most in the upper stratum of Society?

  “Missy,” James began, but her name came out hoarse, forcing him to clear the alien object—which he belatedly identified as his tongue—from his throat to begin again. “Missy, you’re like a sister to me,” he said with a solemnity honed to pitch-perfect sincerity.

  Lying to her went beyond prudent, it was now a necessity. Unfortunately, for him—for them both—any sisterly feelings he’d had toward her hadn’t been able to withstand her breathtaking emergence into womanhood. Her previously tall and thin frame had developed enticing, feminine curves, and the promise of beauty he’d first seen in the ten-year-old chestnut-haired child had far exceeded his expectations.

  A look
of hurt flitted across her face that had his heart constricting in painful response.

  “I am Thomas’s sister, not yours.”

  As if he needed a reminder. It was his relationship with Armstrong that kept him from taking what she was offering. Her beautiful body for his delectation. Although, in all honesty, even if her brother wouldn’t have him strung up by the noose outside Newgate prison if he ever laid a hand on her, Missy deserved much more than giving away her innocence to a man who could never be the husband she needed him to be. The kind of husband she deserved.

  “What I’m saying is that I have no interest in you like that…in a romantic sense.” Lust was an entirely different matter altogether.

  The sad fact was, that truth had existed up until the prior year. What he wouldn’t give that it should exist again, that he be unaware again.

  His innocence was interminably lost.

  Chapter One

  Devonshire, 1855

  Missy quietly observed James perusing a book through the hand-span opening of the library door. An instantaneous burst of anticipation and desire collided inside her. Her breath hitched in her throat.

  Consistent with his insouciant observance of societal norms, only a starchy tan linen shirt and dark green trousers graced his lean frame in casual elegance. On his feet, he wore a pair of high black Wellingtons. However, his notably absent waistcoat and neckcloth only served to magnify the aura of power and intrigue about him and enhance his charismatic appeal.

  And he was alone.

  With James, Thomas and Alex dogging each other’s steps, the task of getting him to herself this visit had been one worthy of a spy for the Crown. Such a shame it had come to this, all the sneaking about she’d had to do.

  With James constantly jaunting off to one country or the other and coming home for only snatches at a time, they had had scant contact over the past three years. He claimed it was for business but she suspected she had factored largely into his frequent and lengthy absences.

  It could have just been a coincidence that his excessive travels had commenced two weeks after the incident. The kiss. She suspected it had been her impetuousness that had earned her the subsequent years of avoidance and neglect. But, it was the news of Miss Adelaide Bash’s betrothal that would confirm her suspicions, providing the nail and hammer that would etch it into stone.

  Part of the landed gentry, Miss Bash was pretty—though not uncommonly so. And while her family was land rich, over the years their finances had been ravaged by either flood or drought. However, her lack of rank in high society and the paltry sum of four hundred pounds that comprised her dowry didn’t dissuade Miss Bash from setting her sights on no less than the handsome, wealthy heir to a viscountcy, Lord Alfred Neville.

  Many in the ton were amused that a gentleman’s daughter would be so presumptuous as to believe she could rise above her station and marry one of their own without what it would cost to pave Westminster Bridge with gold. “Truly, even those crass American females seeking titled husbands are heiresses of great fortunes,” had been only one of the more generous remarks bandied about by some in the august set.

  For the most part, people watched the whole affair with little more than passing interest, certain nothing would come of it save a bruised pride and a broken heart and that was if her heart was truly engaged. Far worse was the waste of the five hundred pounds or more it must have cost to fund her debut.

  Missy, however, devoured Miss Bash’s methods like a how-to manual, taking note of the way the woman had flirted without being forward and had shown an interest in the young lord without appearing at all humbled by her origins. The gentleman’s daughter possessed the poise of a lady accustomed to a life of privilege, and the polish of the star pupil from Mrs. Landry’s Charm School—a most esteemed finishing school.

  Yet Miss Bash—all of only eighteen—emanated a sensuality that had gentlemen young and old watching her too long, too frequently, and with far too much interest. The recipient of all her attention and efforts was smitten to such a degree he formally requested her hand in marriage three months to the day after their introduction.

  Their courtship had illuminated everything Missy, herself, had done wrong. She’d approached James with the over-eagerness of a puppy let loose to run free for the first time. She hadn’t flirted, teased, or even coaxed. Instead, she’d crashed down on him like a cyclone, too much in love and too impatient to test her new maturity, as if the stroke of midnight had suddenly given her allure beyond her years.

  Her face heated with the memory of just how much cheek she’d had. What had she expected, that the kiss she’d forced upon him would result in a grand declaration of his undying love and a betrothal ring? Such an undertaking required more panache and far more subtlety—as Miss Bash had clearly shown.

  Missy could only thank heavens she was wiser now, possessing restraint that would have done her well back then. As this year would commence her fourth foray into the marriage market and her sister waited patiently to make her own debut, Missy couldn’t afford another such mistake if she at all hoped to succeed with James.

  Straightening to her full height, she smoothed a hand over her loosely pinned chignon before pushing open the heavy oak door. In a rustle of voluminous petticoats and shimmering silk, she entered the grand library of Stoneridge Hall.

  Decorated with the lord of the manor in mind, the room boasted floor-to-ceiling walnut bookcases, a rich mahogany escritoire, and two large area rugs sitting atop gleaming hardwood floors. She’d always felt at home here, especially when her father was alive. Today, however, a whole field of butterflies had taken up residence in her belly, and clamored to come out.

  Missy gently pressed the door closed with a decisive click. James turned at the sound and stared at her. For a moment something flashed in his eyes, something she could not quite discern. Abruptly, his expression shuttered.

  “Hello, James.”

  “Missy.” A perfunctory nod accompanied his greeting.

  She saw him so rarely these days—his smile even less so—and the polite one he bestowed upon her now didn’t particularly encourage conversation. Her hopes of wedded bliss and dark-haired, blue-eyed babies had faltered under the weight of time passing with no results. But that connection they’d once shared—one she thought occurred once in a lifetime—wouldn’t permit her to cast a handful of dirt upon a pine box, or prop flowers against a headstone to signal her dream’s demise. At least not just yet.

  “Don’t you think it best if the door remained open?” he asked, his voice a pleasing blend of polished speech and velvet roughness. She gave a faint shiver. Everything about him was beautiful, including his voice. She’d missed the sound of his deep baritone as much as she’d missed him.

  “Why, are you afraid to be alone with me?” she asked lightly, trying to strike the right chord between impudence and timidity. Balance was the key.

  James’s countenance was severe, as if her presence was something to be endured in tight-lipped silence. His Adam’s apple then gave a convulsive bob under a hard swallow. She couldn’t be certain whether she had discomfited him or if she had nicked his last frayed nerve. She gathered she’d soon find out.

  Mustering up all her courage, Missy closed the distance between them. When she drew to a stop, only a couple feet from where he stood, he queried with a quirk of one dark brow.

  “Are you aware we haven’t been alone together since the day I turned eighteen? I’d begun to think you’ve been avoiding me.” Missy paused before asking, “Have you?”

  Again, an indecipherable emotion flashed in his crystalline blue eyes, before a potent smile spread like sun-warmed molasses across the chiseled beauty of his visage. No longer polite, this smile engaged. It was the kind of smile that could make a woman swoon. However, a puppeteer’s string might well have lifted the corners of that sensuous mouth, for his eyes continued to watch her intently, cheerless and sober.

  “I beg your pardon?” He sounded faintly abashed,
which was absurd as James hadn’t an abashed bone in his entire body.

  A surreptitious sweep of his form had her hands tingling with the effort to keep them at her side. She tingled in other places proper ladies dared not think of. But then, had she ever considered herself terribly proper with fantasies that could have her barred from Society had she made even one a reality? No, proper she definitely was not.

  “It’s just that we used to be…close. Now I rarely see you. What else am I to think when you have all but vanished from my life?”

  The dimples slashing his bristled cheeks all but disappeared, and through lowered lids and spiky lashes, inky black pupils stared back at her. Her claim had obviously hit a nerve because he remained mute for seconds too long. The James of years ago had never been at a loss for words.

  “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he began, ending the palpable quiet and speaking in a melodic tone best for soothing babies and small animals. “You must be aware that business interests frequently take me out of the country for long stretches at a time. Believe me, I’m a stranger to many.”

  So, she was now one of many?

  “But even when I see you, like at present, you’re so…different.” He treated her with not even the warmth of an acquaintance, much less a friend of ten plus years. He was a stranger, cold and distant, the antithesis of the James she’d known not so long ago. And all her attempts at resurrecting what little life, if any, remained in the bond they’d once shared had been met with forced smiles and guarded eyes. But sadly, that was not the worst. She’d rather those stilted pedestrian conversations than the sheer nothingness that had grown between them, and existed still.