“My hat,” she exclaimed, reaching out to take it from him and turn it in her hands. “It’s rather crumpled, I’m afraid. Did you find it beneath the wheel of a carriage?”
Levi laughed, easing his hip back onto the bed alongside her. “It has traveled a great deal since you saw it last, from London to Paris to New York City. And now back to London.”
“You carried my hat with you?”
“Packed inside my trunk.” He made the admission without a hint of embarrassment. Yes, she had wreaked so much havoc upon him that he had carried her hat across the globe. But now he had an infinitely better prize to treasure. The woman herself.
She smiled, love shining from her eyes, and opened her arms to him. “Come here, you vexing, wonderful man.”
And he very willingly obliged.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Sweet Scandal! I hope you enjoyed Helen and Levi’s story as much as I loved writing it.
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If you’d like a preview of Book Five in the Heart’s Temptation series—featuring the infamous Earl of Ravenscroft and a lady who refuses to behave—do read on.
Until next time,
Heart’s Temptation Book 5
She wants her freedom…
Clara Whitney is desperate to leave London and return to her native Virginia. She’ll do anything, even if it means striking a deal with the most notorious earl in England, to get what she wants. How could she anticipate just how much his melting kisses and knowing hands would tempt her?
He wants her…
The Earl of Ravenscroft is infamous for his prowess in the bedchamber and for earning his living by entertaining bored society widows and wives. When the innocent and lovely Miss Whitney seeks him out with the daring proposition of a marriage in name only in return for a generous share of her dowry, Julian accepts. After the vows, however, he isn’t ready to part with his prickly Southern belle. At least not without taking her to bed.
A restless rake no more…
Julian knows the game of seduction all too well, but this time, the rules are different, and he just may lose the one thing he thought he no longer had to give. His heart.
London, 1884
ord Ravenscroft, you’ve a visitor.”
Julian finished pouring his brandy before flicking a glance to his grim-faced butler. Osgood’s expression was one of distaste, as though a fly had flown into his mouth and his august bearing wouldn’t allow him to spit it out. Osgood was a relic of the previous earl’s days. A gargoyle made of stone, guarding against evil spirits and indiscreet late-night apparitions with unsavory intentions.
Oh, this wasn’t the first time an unexpected visitor had made her way to Julian’s front door. Nor, he suspected, would it be the last. It was a certainty that the visitor was female. They always were.
Osgood was far too loyal a retainer to make his thoughts about such callers known. He was a third generation butler who had served the Earls of Ravenscroft for the entirety of his life, and he was above reproach. But Julian could read him like a bad gambler.
No face for vingt-et-un on that one. Indeed, Julian thought as he sipped his brandy with great care, eying the old fellow, no face for much of anything save being a wilted stickler for propriety. Even if his employer was pockets to let, every sign indicating that he ought to flee the proverbial sinking ship like a rat.
But Osgood wasn’t a rat. And Julian wasn’t in the mood for visitors, especially not the unexpected variety.
He frowned at his butler. “I’m not at home. I believe I made that known.”
The butler cleared his throat. His expression remained suitably dour and pinched. “Yes, my lord, of course. Forgive me, but the visitor in question refuses to leave. Would you care for me to have some footmen brought round, my lord, to extricate her?”
Some devil in Julian rather enjoyed watching Osgood squirm. After all, with ruin so certain a future, this may well prove his final opportunity to needle the man. Another sip of brandy. He enjoyed the burn down his throat, wished it was enough to numb him. It never was.
“Surely such persistence ought to be rewarded, Osgood?” His tone was carefully mild. “Do you not think so?”
Osgood remained immovable, however. “I do not presume to think, my lord.”
“No?” Julian was feeling perverse tonight, dredged in the freeing wickedness of a man who was about to lose everything. “Terrible shame, that. Not to think. Or perhaps it’s a lie, Osgood? Surely it cannot be said that a man does not think. You must have an opinion. Tell me, should I be at home to this creature who dares to call so late at night?”
His butler paled, clearly not relishing the untenable position of being forced to comment on his disreputable master’s social niceties. “My lord, I’m certain I will be pleased to follow your instructions, whatever they may be.”
Ah, perhaps it had been a whimsical notion on his part to believe he could wrangle a concession from the block of ice before him. “Bring her in, then, Osgood. The night grows late and I’m in need of diversion.”
His butler’s expression didn’t alter, but Julian could sense the disapproval like a clap on his back. No matter. Disapproval had haunted him his entire life. He wore it like a mantle rather than a shroud. Osgood bowed and disappeared. Julian took another long sip of brandy and contemplated the visitor who wouldn’t leave. He wondered, for a brief, fanciful moment if it was Lottie.
Not Lottie, his instincts told him, for Osgood would have recognized her. It hadn’t been that long ago. What, five years? Not a great deal of time when one considered the span of a lifetime.
The door to his study opened. His butler did the pretty. A feminine figure entered, clad in a luxurious pelisse overtop a promenade gown that was, unless he missed his guess, a Worth. His visitor was petite but curved in all the right places. Her nipped waste was visible even beneath her layers of fabric, so too her generous bosom. An ostentatious hat adorned with a stuffed bird and veil hid the woman’s identity from his view, but he scarcely cared. He’d find out who she was soon enough.
He stood. “Thank you, Osgood. That will be all.” The door had only just snicked closed before he bowed to her. He wondered what lie beneath that veil. The little he could discern of her features seemed even, unremarkable. “Madam, if I may be so bold, please be seated and make the reason for your unexpected visit known.”
Her steps were not those of a confident woman. Rather, they were mincing. Hesitant. As though she feared him. She stopped a notable length from his desk. “My lord, I’m here to make you an offer.”
Her voice was soft and sweet, her enunciation rounded like pebbles worn smooth by a stream. There was beauty in that honeyed voice, and it rolled over his senses like a touch. Unless he missed his guess, she was an American. Perhaps one of the many heiresses who had exchanged her immense dowry for a title and now found herself ensnared by ennui. Or disillusioned, her girlish dreams of snagging a coronet and living a fairytale dashed by the reality of a balding duke with a paunch and a penchant for bedding servant girls.
Julian supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. He frowned. “I fear I’m no longer interested in offers of any sort.” He’d long ago grown tired of playing this role. Of whoring himself for enough money to keep from utter penury. A man could only swallow his pride for so many years before it choked him.
She clasped her hands at her waist, the only outward indication of apparent indecision. “Perhaps you would care to hear my offer before you so summarily dismiss it, my lord.”
Bold of her. Now he could place her accent, the leisurely drawl. A Virginian, unless he missed his guess. Julian closed the distance between them, not stopping until her pelisse brushed his trousers. “I daresay it couldn’t be an offer I haven’t already heard before.”
“You may b
e surprised.” She held her ground, tipping up her chin.
Feisty as well as bold, he thought, studying her with new interest. The veil was an unwanted deterrent that kept him from seeing if her face matched the lilting beauty of her voice.
He stepped closer, her skirts crushing against him, and hooked an arm around her waist. She stiffened. “What is it, love? You want me to join you and your husband in bed? You want him to watch as I fuck you? No? Perhaps you want to feel pleasure for the first time. Is that it? You’ve settled for a title but he doesn’t make you come.”
Her quick intake of breath told him he’d shocked her. She sounded young. Perhaps she was a novice to this sort of game. He should be merciful and send her on her way, but his mood was dark. A man on the edge had little to lose, and he needed distraction badly. Here was a plaything, a well-dressed naïf who had landed in his study like a benediction.
He reached beneath her veil, cupped her cheek. The contact jolted him. Her skin was smooth and warm, soft. His thumb found her lower lip, lush and full, stroking. Her lips parted. He’d consumed too much brandy tonight, it was certain. Otherwise, why would he feel such heat, such unadulterated attraction for a faceless woman with a Virginia drawl and an atrocity of a hat?
She didn’t say a word, just held very still, allowing his touch but not reacting. Her breath fanned over his skin, quick and shallow, the only sign she was affected. Was her lack of response borne of shock? He couldn’t be sure.
“You’ve heard I’ll do anything for a price, yes?” His thumb dipped ever so slightly inside her mouth. “That is why you’re here, is it not?”
She swallowed, and he absorbed the ripple in his fingertips that rested lightly beneath her jaw. Then, her drawl, steady and calm, cut into the silence. “Do you think to frighten me into fleeing, my lord?”
The lady was even more audacious than he’d supposed. Fine. How far would she take their gamble before she broke? The hand that held her waist slid with unerring precision to the buttons lining the front of her gown. He could undo buttons faster than the most skilled lady’s maid. With one hand, with his teeth, with a knife—whatever the moment and the woman required.
He watched his handiwork. Her pelisse hung open. Her bodice gaped. He could see the elegant embroidery of her corset cover, the white ribbon at the top of her chemise. Her breasts were full and high, straining against the constriction of her tight lacing. She still hadn’t moved. “Are you not frightened yet, love?”
Perhaps he would consider her offer after all, if only for the night.
“Would it please you if I were?”
Her cool question stayed him in the act of removing the final button from its moorings. Damn it, what was he about, practically ravaging some poor sod’s wife merely because she’d appeared in his study? And for what gain? To prove a point to himself? To the enigmatic lady whose face he’d yet to behold?
Part of him wanted her to run away into the night and take with her all reminders of the man he’d become. Shouldn’t she be terrified of him, of what he could do to her? Or was she not as innocent as she seemed? Did a depraved heart beat beneath her ivory breast? He had to know. “Does fear excite you?”
“No, and neither does your posturing.”
He could so easily make a lie of her words. Julian knew when a woman was attracted to him, and this one was no different than a hundred others before her. She wanted him. He trailed his hand down her throat, feeling tension in the corded muscles. Tenderly, he caressed her as if she were already his lover. Some part of him understood that she would be, that this pull between them was inevitable. If not tonight, another.
The time for playing games was at an end. “What is your offer then, love? The night grows late and I’m tired of entertaining my whims.”
Her hands remained clasped at her waist, just below the last button he’d yet to undo. The knuckles rose in stark relief from her fine-boned fingers, belying the ease with which she spoke. “I thought you were no longer interested in offers.”
She possessed a considerable amount of mettle. He smiled, for he was thoroughly enjoying himself now, in a way he had not done in quite some time. “Can a man not change his mind?”
“Of course. Man is rarely constant, I’ve discovered.”
There was a reproach in her words, though whether it was aimed at him or another, he couldn’t be certain. “Your offer, madam. What is it?”
“My offer is simple.” She unclasped her hands and reached up to remove the hideous hat and veil.
Good God, the face didn’t match the voice at all.
No indeed, it surpassed the mellifluous lure by leaps and bounds. She was beautiful, more exquisite than any goddess he’d ever seen splashed across a canvas. Her golden hair was plaited into basket weaves. Her eyes were wide, blue, unblinking. Her mouth full and lush, her cheeks pink, her cheekbones high. She was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. Who was she, and how had he never set eyes upon her before? For he couldn’t have ever crossed her path. He would have remembered a splendor so rare.
“Marry me,” she said.
The 1880s was a fascinating decade filled with great sociological and technological change that heralded the arrival of the modern era. In researching this book, I found real-life inspiration in Josephine Butler, W.T. Stead, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla, among others, all of whom changed the course of history forever with their fierce devotion to upending the status quo.
Helen and Gussie’s reform work is based loosely on Josephine Butler, who dedicated her life to championing the rights of women—particularly disenfranchised women trapped in lives of prostitution. It was Josephine Butler who helped form the Ladies’ National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in 1869 to fight legislation that enabled forced state inspections of suspected prostitutes and their subsequent detention in lock hospitals. To Josephine and her fellow reformers—notably Florence Nightingale among them—the Contagious Diseases Acts were an egregious violation of civil rights, and the fight to repeal the CD Acts spanned from 1869 until their suspension in 1883 and final, full repeal in 1886.
Wherever possible, I’ve remained true to historical integrity in an effort to preserve the authenticity of electricity’s progress in the 1880s. Thomas Edison began the Edison Electric Light Company in 1878 and within a few years, had successfully installed his low voltage direct current (DC) generators—known then as dynamos—in New York and abroad. Edison’s DC stations, however, were limited in the sense that the power they generated could only be transmitted within a small radius geographically.
Enter George Westinghouse, an indisputable genius who had already transformed railway travel by inventing air brakes. In 1885, he learned of a secondary generator—the term then for what we now refer to as a transformer—developed and exhibited by Lucien Gaulard and John Gibbs. Westinghouse, unlike many of his contemporaries who viewed alternating current (AC) as far too dangerous, realized the potential for AC systems to transmit electrical power over a great distance using a transformer to safely step down the voltage for end use. He secured American patent rights for the Gaulard-Gibbs secondary generator and developed it into the modern-day transformer.
The rest, as they say, is history.
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Heart’s Temptation
A Mad Passion (Book One)
Rebel Love (Book Two)
Reckless Need (Book Three)
Sweet Scandal (Book Four)
Restless Rake (Book Five Coming Soon)
Wicked Husbands (Coming Soon)
Her Errant Earl (Book One)
Her Lovestruck Lord (Book Two)
Her Reformed Rake (Book Three)
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
Love’s Second Chance
Reprieve (Book One)
Perfect Persuasion (Book Two)
Win My Love (Book Three)
Coastal Heat
Loved Up (Book One)
Award-winning author S
carlett Scott writes contemporary and historical romance with heat, heart, and happily ever afters. Since publishing her first book in 2010, she has become a wife, mother to adorable identical twins and one TV-loving dog, and a killer karaoke singer. Well, maybe not the last part, but that’s what she’d like to think.
A self-professed literary junkie and nerd, she loves reading anything but especially romance novels, poetry, and Middle English verse. When she’s not reading, writing, wrangling toddlers, or camping, you can catch up with her on her website www.scarsco.com. Hearing from readers never fails to make her day.
Scarlett’s complete book list and information about upcoming releases can be found on her website, www.scarsco.com.
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