Lady Varney’s
Risqué Business

By Cerise DeLand

Resplendence Publishing, LLC

http://www.resplendencepublishing.com

Resplendence Publishing, LLC
2665 S Atlantic Avenue, #349
Daytona Beach, FL 32118

Lady Varney’s Risqué Business
Copyright © 2011, Cerise DeLand
Edited by Jennifer Erwine and Veronica Petroelje
Cover art by Kendra Egert, www.creationsbykendra.com

Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-295-2

Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Electronic release: May 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

To readers of Regency everywhere, you have decreed
the Fashion and beautifully so!

Chapter One

May, 1818
Cavendish Square, London

Lady Katherine Varney stared into her cheval mirror in her boudoir, fluffed the ruffles at her throat and pursed her lips. “Have I aged terribly since I last saw him, Maggie?” she asked her younger sister. “I hate to think I look like a dowdy matron.”

Margaret Donaldson winked back, tossing her golden curls in glee. “Justin Belmont will be astonished at you, Puss. In the past eleven years, you’ve grown only lovelier.”

“And heavier,” Kitty pressed her palms to her waistline beneath the lavender afternoon receiving gown.

“You’ve had a child. But your bosom is high. Perhaps, even fuller? Men like that.”

Kitty grinned at Maggie, married only a year and reminding Kitty of herself at the age of twenty. But Kitty differed from Maggie in one major respect. As a bride, Kitty had not loved her husband. Never had. Nor could. And the man downstairs awaiting her in her drawing room on this Sunday afternoon was the reason why. She frowned at her own reflection. “I’m nervous, though I tell myself I should not be. He has come to me.”

Maggie arched a brow. “And we know why.”

He wants revenge. He vowed it years ago. Kitty squeezed her eyes shut. “He wants a wife.”

“And you can find him one.”

“Why could he not find one the usual way?” The man downstairs had friends—even Prinny—who could make a match for him. “With a bit of help from his set?”

Maggie tipped her head. “Puss, be reasonable. He would have more challenges than most. He’s not your average English gentleman.”

“But he is legitimate now. His uncle made him so. Adopted him and made him heir to the earldom. Many a girl in her first season wants a viscount with a fortune to burn, a house in town, two in the country and—”

“And a past as an American clipper ship captain?” Maggie rose from her slipper chair to put her arms around Kitty’s shoulders. “A man who seized a French frigate and captured an English lady on board?”

“Brought her back to London—”

“And tried to marry her,” Maggie added in a sorrowful whisper, “but her papa wouldn’t allow it.”

“What irony that the elderly man her father married her to died penniless,” Kitty murmured. She could still hear her father bellowing at Justin, demanding to know if he’d taken his eldest daughter’s virginity. He hadn’t. But how I wish he had. Then Justin and she would have been married from necessity—and that would have been better than being married to Henry Varney for money.

A knock came at her dressing room door. “Madam,” her butler called, “Viscount Belmont asks after you once more.”

“Not to worry, Harlow. I am coming.” To her sister, she said, “What a joke that today Justin Belmont is rich enough to buy my house two times over, while I must work to pay off my husband’s creditors.”

“Stop this, Kitty.” Maggie stepped backward. “Remorse solves nothing. Turn around.”

Kitty inhaled and spun.

“You are beautiful, Lady Varney. Stunning. You are the well-regarded and well-received widow of the late Lord Henry Varney. You know how to navigate theton with wit and grace. And if you also earn fees from the gentlemen who come to you to recommend a bride, then you deserve them. To date, I do believe, you have matched five men to proper ladies.”

“Seven,” Kitty corrected with a small, satisfied smile curling her lips.

“Seven then. And so now, if one of the benefits of your—shall we call it, referral services?—is to reestablish an acquaintance with a man who was once your rescuer and by some measure, your beau, who are we to question the wisdom of the Fates? Hmmm?”

“You are right. At thirty, I should be stronger.” Kitty grabbed Maggie’s hands and brought them to her heart. “You’ll not leave until he’s gone? So I can tell you how it went?”

“How he looks? And acts? What precisely he wants in a wife?” Maggie’s amethyst eyes danced in delight.

“Yes, you urchin!”

“I will revel in the smallest details!” Maggie swept aside. “Now, do go down, Lady Varney. I must learn every tiny detail about the new Viscount Belmont. Before supper, too!”

And so must I. Kitty stiffened her backbone but felt no stronger than a floundering mackerel. How she took the circular staircase down to her drawing room was a mystery, given her knees of jelly.

“Buck up, Puss,” she chastised herself. Pulling open the double doors herself rather than call her butler, she wished privacy for her meeting with Justin Belmont. She needed to look upon him alone.

And oh, my. Yes. To realize that the newly dubbed Viscount Belmont, American-born, Englishman by blood, nobleman now by adoption and the entail, was even more devastatingly handsome than a decade ago when the world seemed fresh and full of positive possibilities.

“My Lord Belmont.” Kitty sailed toward him where he stood before her fireplace, her expression, she hoped, one of civility. My lord, how can you shake my sanity so easily with that harsh look? That painful curiosity in your hazel eyes?

Here before her stood the man who had saved her from lascivious Frenchmen. Ten years ago he’d been as huge and imposing as Satan. Now he was more muscular, his face more angular, his hair more raven against skin more pale. In clothes that were better tailored and more form-fitting than the loose linen shirts that once had flowed to his fingertips, he was now the epitome of a titled English gentleman. He gave no hint of the American privateer who had captured her body with his boldness, her mind with his intellect and her heart with his artless charm.

She walked forward, her gaze up at his imperial height, her hand out for him to take.

He touched her fingertips, his own cold as the grave. “Lady Varney. Kind of you to receive me.”

You don’t sound as though you think me kind. You sound…dismayed, appalled, even—dear God—disgusted that you are here.

“Please, my lord, do sit with me.” She nodded to one settee, and as he complied, she took the one facing him. His eyes, such a myriad of earthen colors, faceted in the lamplight of late afternoon. His gaze flowed over her. Her hair, her lips, her breasts, her fingers. Everywhere his gaze touched, her body pulsed, remembering how once he had looked at her with desire. Not this…this indifference. That sparked her to lie with her next words, “I am delighted you have come to see me.”

He did not even breathe as he said, “Are you now?”

“Of course,” she countered his challenge, but stayed true to her manners by adding, “I have heard of your recent good fortune.”

He cocked a long black brow. “When the news is published in the scandal sheets as well as the social notes, nothing in London is a secret.”

She licked her lower lip. “Very little.”

“But this service of yours,” he said with measured tone as he circled a hand in the air to denote her business, “this is a tidbit only the men of the ton share with each other.”

She hastened to agree. “Those who need help have found my—”

“Assistance? That is what you call your match-making, am I correct?” One corner of his mouth tipped up, and she could not say if the move denoted humor or ruefulness. “Whatever your term, I need your help.”

His directness had her fighting for a response.

“I hear you pride yourself on your knowledge of human nature,” he prodded her.

She lifted her chin. “Or to be exact, the nature of men.”

He barked in laughter. “If you knew that, dearest woman, you and I would not be sitting here.”

Should she show him the door? She bristled and sought to hold her ground, reprimand him, if she could. “You asked for this appointment, my lord.”

“It seemed the only way to see you,” he shot back.

“Perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that you requested a Sunday afternoon appointment because—”

“Because since my newfound status as a peer of the realm was announced in September, you have not invited me to any of your dinner parties.”

“Forgive me, but you really wished an invitation to dinner?” Incredulous at that conclusion, she felt a thrill sweep up her spine that he might indeed not seek a wife. “I—I am only recently out of my year of mourning for my husband, Justin, and those who may dine at my table with me do not include bachelors.”

“Especially bachelors whom you once knew? Ah, the rules of this blasted society!” He leaned forward, his gaze at once tender and yearning. “Kitty—”

“Please, sir, I am still Lady Varney to you.”

“You never were that to me. Besides, you just called me Justin.” His eyes twinkled.

“I did not!”

“Of course, you did.” He sat back, crossed one long leg over the other and seemed too well satisfied with himself to soothe her ruffled senses.

“We are here to discuss business,” she insisted with a hauteur that had him narrowing his gaze on her.

It was not a kindly glance, either, but the fierce glare he’d worn so long ago as he climbed over the sides of the French Cyr.

He blinked, drew back and appraised her.

Good. At least we are now on firm footing. Two equals about to do business. Not two older people who had cared passionately for each other so very many years ago.

She tipped her head when he remained silent. “Please tell me what you wish.”

He set his jaw, never having cared for anyone to give him orders. “As you know, I am to inherit the Earl of Belmont’s titles and estates. He is ailing. Sadly, I might add. I have come to care for my uncle deeply in the past six years that he and I have been friends. When I first set foot in England eleven years ago, I must say I had no idea he and I would ever get on. But we did. Do. Save for one issue.”

Kitty nodded, knowing precisely the matter that divided them. Touchy subject though it was, she went on boldly, because that was her wont, because it was her business to be forthright and because she knew this man very well. Or once had. “He wants you to marry.”

Justin seemed to retreat even further into himself. His jaw firmed. His lips thinned. His large eyes turned to glittering stones. “He wishes me to marry an heiress with title, high social standing and a suitable dowry. To put a fine point on it, he wants the perfect woman.”

“The earl thinks appropriately. His titles are six hundred years old and his estates are numerous and bring in a sizable sum each year.”

Justin snorted. “My uncle was right about you.”

Kitty felt what would come next would not be a compliment. “How so?”

“He declares there is not much you do not know about the peers of the realm, their income or their need for propriety.”

“To learn the genealogies of the famous one hundred families was a favorite pastime for a lonely little girl.”

His features softened to a genuine compassion that made her heart ache. “You were alone as a child?”

She swallowed, not wishing to remember her youth. “I do have one sister, younger by ten years. But our parents were preoccupied with society. Hence, the house was often cold and dark. But the library was a wonderful room, warm and full of enchanting tales. Not all of them were fiction.”

His mouth spread wide in a grin, and her memory of how those lips felt on her own was one she told herself could not be so fresh after more than a decade. Yet, it was.

She tipped her head, unable to suppress a smile. “Please tell me about the kind of woman you wish me to seek for you.”

“Ah. Yes.” He scowled, his glittering eyes hard as glass. “First, she must be lovely.”

“Of course.” No less for such a striking man. Besides, a plain woman would be intimidated by a husband who was so damned handsome.

“Blonde.”

“Blonde?” Hair color was often listed by a man, but not usually this early in the discussion.

“Golden-haired.”

She shifted. That specific? “I see.”

“She must be a peer in her own right.”

Kitty knit her brows, recalling how her own barony of writ had been the lure to Henry. “Why is this important?”

“Her own blue-blood complements my lack. Since I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, a lady in deed secures my own legitimacy.”

Kitty’s mind was racing. How many single golden-haired ladies who were titled in their own right could she count? Four? Five?

“It also enhances the reputation of any of my offspring.”

“True. I had not thought of that.”

Looking innocent as a cherub, he lifted a palm. “You see my logic.”

“Certainly.” Dear God, a taskmaster. “What else might I add to her qualifications?” A huge dowry? That’s what the ton says the old Earl demands of you.

“She must be shorter than I. Talented at the piano forte. A good conversationalist.”

“Really, how interesting.” Her gaze wandered to her own French piano. She frowned and noted, “Most men would have asked that she be a wizard at cards.”

He chuckled.

“Most bachelors,” she ventured, “want to ensure they keep their money in the family.”

“Oh, never doubt, my dear Kitty, that I have other requirements perhaps more astonishing than not caring about my future wife’s ability at the card table.”

Oh, my. This was the point at which many men told her they wanted peculiar qualities in their spouse. She hadn’t expected any oddities from Justin. Would she be disillusioned as well as surprised? And even more jealous? “Do tell me what they are.”

“I want someone versed in the art of conjugal bliss.”

Was she gaping at him? “I’m sorry. I supposed, I mean, I presumed—”

“You thought I wanted a virgin?”

“I did. Most men do.”

“Not I.”

“Why ever not?” Was that her own shrill voice?

A grin flashed over his features. “I also want someone who has had a child.”

“A—?” Kitty blinked, clearing her impression of this man who now seemed suddenly so calculating. “Pardon me?”

“I need an heir. I need to be assured that the woman I marry can conceive and carry a child to term, birth him well and rear him. This means she must be of good constitution. After all, I will need not one child but at least two. Preferably three.”

“Three.”

“Children.”

“Raised by her.” Kitty sat, dumbfounded.

“I want no fainting lily. No frail Bess. And no parade of nurses and governesses.”

“But surely, you need one,” she babbled, “of each.”

“Of course. One governess. One nurse. And one loving mother.”

“I see.” Kitty began to have a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach that signaled either rage or a headache. Stress like this reminded her of verbal sparing with Henry, who thankfully had gone to his Maker. The cure for that had been for her to run to her garden. Prune her roses. Trim her yews. At the moment, she could do neither but deal with Justin and his demands. “You are being very specific.”

“I am.”

“Almost too much so.”

“Why do you say that?”

She rose to her feet, the sensation of standing so quickly made her head light. Airy. Euphoria had her swaying. So unexpected was this feeling that she walked toward the fireplace and put a steadying hand to the mantel. “Let me recount your requirements.”

He nodded as he sat in his chair, looking so infernally regal and congenial that she wanted to gather the fine lapels of his frock coat in her fists and shake him. “Proceed.”

“You want a young woman, an heiress with wealth”

He raised a hand to make her pause. “She need not be young. Too young and she is not useful to me as a wife who can bear children.”

“Quite,” she agreed, diverted from the issue of wealth, but making a note to return to it. “Shall we say that you want a seasoned woman? Yes?”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“Blonde. Golden-haired, specifically. Shorter than you, so then she must be fivefeetfour or five inches tall. Good at the piano, in the assembly hall and the ballroom. Versed in the bedroom. A woman who has already borne a child and who wishes to bear more. She must also enjoy the process of raising them. Anything I have missed?”

He let his gaze drift up to her cap of golden curls, then down to lock on her eyes. “That is an excellent summary.”

She braced herself for what she was now about to say. “I have made matches for men for nearly a year.”

“Ever since you began to emerge from mourning for your husband.”

She gave Justin a small smile. Realizing he knew this about her was a delight. “Yes, and I have created some very fine marriages. Though not all of my couples have yet taken vows, those five who did, are very happy.”

Justin brushed imaginary lint from his trousers. “So I have heard.”

“But these requirements you list are unusual.”

“I am a very exacting man.”

“You are. Your friends declare it. I hear your tailor does, too. Your butler.”

“I shall have to reprimand my man for engaging in gossip,” he told her, but his eyes and his lips quirked in amusement.

She tipped her head, unable to resist grinning at him and learning more. “Your butler is a good friend of my cook. They talk often.”

“To you as well, it seems.”

“My sources are legion. They help me with the work I do.” She raised her brows. “You must realize to match-make I need to know many facts about people.”

“A necessity of your occupation.” He winked at her, sending her back to days on his ship when she’d been so entranced by his charm.

She cleared her throat and returned to the subject of his visit. “Your list limits me severely.”

“I am aware of that.”

“There are few women who possess all the qualifications.”

He rose and came to stand before her.

So close now, she breathed his cologne. Smelled the mint on his breath. Admired the dimple in his left cheek and the facets of green and brown in his large heavylidded eyes. “In fact, there are only three women who meet all of your requirements.”

“Ah. But wait, you have not heard them all.”

“No? Preposterous! There is a very small pool of possible candidates, Justin. To add more requirements would be burdensome—”

“But my fortune will be very large. My homes, here and in the country, are grand estates. I will be married to this woman for many decades, and I need the best companion possible.” He frowned, very determined looking. “I have the right to declare to whom I shall be joined!”

“Precisely so, my lord, but we must be prudent.”

“You be prudent! I shall be as I am!”

His virulence shocked her.

“Your fees are high. I shall have whom I want! Who is best suited to me.” He strode closer and seized her arms, his powerful body dwarfing hers. Once his might had been comforting, but now, full of fury, his size made her wince. She had been intimidated by her husband far too often, and she would not be by any man ever again.

She stiffened her spine. “Tell me your other requirements.”

“She must spend twenty-four hours with me at Belmont Manor.”

“Oh, I see.” She let out a breath, relieved. “You want her to visit.”

“No, I want her in my bed.”

Kitty blinked. “I…I’m sorry. You want her—?”

“Naked. I want to learn if she likes men. Me, to be exact.”

“I see.” Women do like you, from what I hear. One mistress in particular who boasts of your prowess in the art of pleasing a woman. “Why wouldn’t she?

“I need to learn if she is a dry piece of toast. Or a willing woman who likes a man’s touch. If she’ll be a desirable partner.”

“Most women are.”

“Really? You think so?” With a sound of derision, he spun away and walked toward the window. “I have learned that women in English society tend to be naïve and foolish. Certainly the ones who have been shoved at me as appropriate are witless ninnies, reared in tiny rooms by smaller-minded governesses. I want a woman in my bed, a full blown beauty with brains.”

“I see.” Did you also think me witless? A ninny?

“Can you find one?” He peered at her with narrowed, merciless eyes.

She felt undressed from so far across the room, but she lifted her chin and carried on in a snit. “Indeed, I can, my lord. To fit your qualifications, I have two candidates.”

“Two. Damn me! So many!” he scoffed—and his expression implied he was surprised at her capabilities. Odd. He ought to be damn pleased. “I am delighted at your resourcefulness, Lady Varney. I wish to interview each of them, naturally. At my home in Kent.”

“First, I shall inquire if each is interested and accepts your terms.”

He waved a hand. “Of course. Do it within the week. I need to know quickly. My uncle is not well, and he wishes this matter of my marriage resolved before he sheds his mortal coil.”

Kitty frowned. Had she been wrong all these years to remember Justin as kind and caring? Had she varnished him with a romantic veneer of her own making?

He strolled closer. His magnetic allure nearly buckled her knees. But she stood taller, met him toe to toe, damn his eyes!

“And who are these women you have chosen for me?”

She gathered her courage. “Maribella Winter, Baroness Avon. And Susanna Curtis, Marchioness Hamill.”

“But to be honest, there is one more. Is there not, madam?”

“A third? No, none that I—”

“What of the illustrious blonde beauty who travels in the best of Society? What of the widow who has a son by her deceased husband? What of the heiress who holds through her own ancestry the ancient title of Lady Downey?”

Kitty caught her breath at the mention of her own ancient title. “She is not available.” Not rich. “Not suitable.”

“I say she is.”

She stared at him, tempted and hating herself for it. “She is older.” Wiser than to do this.

“She will be presented to me at Belmont Manor.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“I triple my fee.”

“Triple?” she parroted like a simpleton.

“One sum of five thousand pounds for each candidate.”

She could not refuse him. Not that sum. That amount would nearly free her of Henry’s gambling debts and give her enough to buy a few new frocks for next Season. The ability to hire a governess for Hank. “Justin, fifteen thousand pounds is a startling sum. But I cannot take it. Cannot ask three women to rendezvous with you. Really, how could I? I want to, but I cannot because—”

“Kitty! Stop this!” Justin stepped toward her so quickly, she scarcely noticed that he’d moved. But his arms crushed her close. His fingers lifted her chin. His lips took hers. Once, twice. Damn him, three times. Her own arms twined around him. She whimpered and moaned into his mouth while her breasts beaded and her nether regions flooded with a wet, hot desire. She had not felt so gloriously wanton since last she stood in his embrace.

“Oh, you’ll take it. Look at me,” he demanded. “Tell me who the third candidate is.”

She stared up at him, the devil. He had planned it this way. Devised this scheme to torture her, punish her for how she had not fought to stay with him eleven years ago. Poor man, he believed the ton. Thought she was rich. But he’d get no wife in her, only a lover. For one day and night. One risqué affair. “The last woman is me.”

Chapter Two

Would Justin be a good lover?

Ramrod straight, Kitty pondered that as she sat in her hired carriage, her fingers fiddling with the lace at her cuffs.

She rapped on the roof of her coach. “Hold here a moment, will you please, sir?”

The coachman reined the four in hand to an idle.

Her gaze, locked on the gigantic iron gate to Belmont Manor, did not stray from her destination. Nor did her mind from her quandary. To go or return home? Was that really a question? Shocked she had the boldness to have travelled alone these one hundred miles, Kitty felt caught in the trap of her own needs.

To have an affair with Justin Belmont was a magnetic idea. She sought no marriage, for she was done with such subjugations. But the very idea that she might for one day and one night enjoy a physical relationship with a man had overruled her own common sense. Would going to bed with Justin be worth the risk to her reputation? After all, she was known among Society as a woman of virtue. A woman who had honored her husband, never cuckolding him. A mother. A devoted one. She was a light of the ton and enjoyed it. Now that she had developed her matchmaking business to earn the fees, she had enough money to scrape by, even if she feared the blackguards to whom she paid Henry’s gambling debts. That left only one lack in her life. A man. If there even existed such a thing as an entertaining man in a woman’s bed. Ba! She’d never had the proof of that pudding!

But coming here did offer her one compensation. Before the next day had come and gone, she could rid herself of the notion that Justin Belmont was the only man who could please her. She’d come to prove him inadequate to the task.

It was quite true, however, that in the past years when she’d been in Society, she had not found any man who captured her attentions. True, even if she’d found such a man, she had not been free to sample his charms. But she had looked. She had dreamed that one day she might be free. When Henry had died of a sudden Christmas chill, she’d been stunned. But learning of his profligacy with her dowry and his own income, she’d realized soon after her husband’s death that she would never be free. Of Henry. His perfidy. And his debts.

“Madam?” The coachman called down from his box. “Should I continue up the drive?”

Kitty licked her lips and stretched toward the window. “Please do.”

“Walk on!” He flicked the reins and off they went.

She settled back, pushed down her fears and reached inside her well of courage to bring up resolution and force a smile.

Transforming it to the pleasant look she usually wore when receiving guests or walking the length of a ballroom in London, she awaited the coachman’s descent from his perch to open the door. With a turn of her head, she watched the butler step down from the white stone portico of the high-towered house and extend his hand to help her descend to the pebbled drive.

“My lady,” Justin’s elderly, white-haired butler greeted her with deference. “Welcome to Belmont Manor. And you there,” he addressed the coachman and waved for a footman to come forward from the foyer, “Gerald will help you with the lady’s portmanteaux. Thank you.” He placed a few jingling coins in the coachman’s palm and smiled politely at Kitty. “I will show you inside, madam.”

As she walked through the entrance hall of Belmont Manor, Kitty saw what Justin’s forty-thousand-a-year income offered. Spotless marble entry. Tromp l’oiel ceilings. Was that a Holbein on the wall there? French Aubusson runners down the far hall? Yes, she had always known she was a slave to extravagance. The odd. The new. Any lavish excess excited her mind and made her nipples into diamonds and her cunny a flowing river of wantonness.

“Lovely, is it not?” the butler queried with smug pride.

“Superb,” she affirmed.

“My name is Harrison, madam, and I am at your service for anything you require.” He extended a hand toward the broad black-veined marble staircase before them. “Please. I would imagine you wish to rest after your journey, and I can show you to your rooms.”

“Thank you, Harrison.” She removed her gloves, pulling finger by finger, then unbuttoning the frog closure of her cloak and turning to allow him to catch it. “You can show me into the presence of Viscount Belmont.”

Harrison shook his snowy head. “I am afraid not, madam. The Viscount is not at home.”

“Not—no?” She caught herself, unnerved not so much by the breach of etiquette but by the fact she could not face him now when she was as prepared as a sixty-gun galleon of the line.

“He sends his apologies and asks that you make yourself comfortable here. Gerald, the footman, Cook and I are to provide with anything you require. The rest of the staff have been given leave for the next few days and only we three remain here to serve you.”

“I see.” Oh, she understood perfectly! Miffed by Justin’s insulting absence, she was alternately grateful that she need not brave a coterie of maids and men who would find her presence here alone not only odd but titillating. “In that case, then, I wish tea and a few small cakes, after a tour of the house.”

* * * *

The tea was strong, hot and fragrantly rich jasmine. The cakes were an assortment of vanilla, spiced honey, drowning in crème and cocoa frosting. Justin’s home was huge, a mix of decors from the Ottomans, the French Empire and the Chinese Ch’ing dynasty. A rambling house, it was originally an Elizabethan country home in the shape of an E to honor that Tudor monarch. But the manse had gracefully embraced many renovations, including the sumptuous three-room suite that was Kitty’s. The abode was richly appointed with imported fabrics, art from the Continent and every amenity imaginable, including running water from a copper tube to the large porcelain bathtub in her suite.

Kitty disrobed, wallowed in a hot soapy bath, and ate a large serving of roast duck and potatoes, finished off with more iced cakes, enjoying the elegance of her rooms and the kindness of Harrison. But by midnight, she paced her suite, awake, aware and anxious for company. Male company. Her nerves would kill her before dawn.

Where the hell was Justin?

She couldn’t remain here in the country indefinitely. She had her son to raise, one new client to serve and an appointment with her Turk man for her monthly hot wax depilation!

She donned her new Chinese silk wrapper from the armoire and tied it loosely over her matching negligee. Succumbing to her need for something lovely to bring here, she’d spent far too much money on the two items. But then, she knew she was as much a fool to her own desires for fashion as Henry had been to the horse races.

“Could not appear before Justin in something old, could I?” she taunted herself as she took the stairs down and made for the gardens. True, she was not attired for a sojourn, but the curving boxwoods invited her to try the maze. The smell of spring in the air created an ethereal bouquet that filled her head with sensuous longings for a flirtation with virile male company. Justin’s to be exact. Even if he hated her.

Did he?

Sitting on a stone bench, she stared at the sliver of bright moon in the velvet May sky and recalled his strong, warm arms around her as they sailed around Gibraltar on his ship ten years ago. He had been so chivalrous, never claiming any part of her except her lips, but vowing that he would claim much more. One day. Soon.

That never happened, of course. Her father had been adamant. Angry. Violently so.

She winced, recalling the terrible scene once Justin had brought her to her home in London and revealed how he had saved her from the French. No matter that Justin had been honorable and never touched her. No matter that the French captain had. Manhandling her, spanking her, binding her to a bed, he had been rough, crude, insulting her about her nationality and “the need to teach any Englishman a lesson about arrogance.”

The arrival of Justin’s clipper ship, his command to fire the six cannon he had on board and surprise all hands on the Cyr, had been her saving grace. Justin had rescued her before the Frenchman had taken her maidenhead. But her father had not seen things that way. Instead, he had punished her severely, locking her away in her rooms for over a month. Then he’d married her off to Henry Varney. That was the beginning and the end of her naïveté, her belief in a happy future for herself. Never resurrected until her son, charming, fat little Henry, was born four years ago. And now that Justin had entered her life again, she rejected any hope she may have had to enjoy his company socially. That had died that Sunday two weeks ago in her parlor when he had shown her what he had become.

A man out for revenge.

“That is why I am here,” she whispered to the moon.

“Then tell me why.”

She jumped up at the sound. Vibrant, deep and rough, the timbre of his bass voice swept down to her stomach like a hot knife. She spun and found him.

In the shadows, one foot before the other, Justin Belmont stood framed like a dark angel between the pillars of two large shrubs. She could see he wore his shirt open at the collar, dark trousers and a long dark dressing gown. She could not, however, detect his expression, but then, she needn’t. His tone told her he was as indifferent to her as he had been during their meeting in her drawing room.

“We know why I am here.”

Moving into the moonlight, he pursed his lips and gave her a once over with languid eyes. “Do we?”

Wrapping her silk robe closer, she scowled at him.

He strode forward to stand before her and arch one dark insulting brow. “I have no idea. Enlighten me.”

“You know full well. A condition of our business agreement demanded by you is that you will try each of the candidates. Here. For twenty-four hours.”

“And you adhere to your clients’ wishes.”

“I do.” She focused her eyes on his throat and scolded herself for her failure to thwart him. “Always.”

His smile was so thin she compared it to a sneer. “How accommodating of you.”

“It’s how I have pleased my clients.”

“How you’ve made so much money.”

She froze. Not so much as you think. “Just so.”

“Why do you need to earn so much? Hmm?” He slowly walked around her. “I understand you have more than ten-thousand-a year income.”

To hear him speak the lie she told her friends, she put on a haughty air. “Such things are not discussed among polite society.”

“I am not polite, Lady Varney. Nor am I society. I am a bastard.” He faced her once more, his uncommon eyes brilliant in the scarce light. “I inherit my uncle’s title and estates only because there is no other heir born legitimately. But we digress. Tell me why you are in the business of finding wives for men.”

He was not entitled to her full disclosure. What she gained from her contracts with her male clients was the stuff of her very existence now. Her fantasies. Her need for a ravishing lover came to her only in her imaginings of how her clients’ had learned to love each other. “I understand human nature. I can easily see through a man to his natural self.”

“And what do most men want in a wife?”

A wanton. “Someone congenial. Demure. From good stock.”

“Good in bed?” he challenged with lightning in his eyes.

Someone they can train. Then, tame. Or forget. “Not necessarily.”

“More’s the pity.”

“I agree,” she said perhaps too quickly. She glanced down at her folded hands, then up at him, the memory of her soulless union washing over her cold body. “More marriages would be blissful if the arts of love were fully employed.”

He stepped closer. “How true. So then you do not think me odd for requiring—shall we call it—an audition?”

Daring. “Forthright.”

“Your first candidate for me did not last the afternoon.”

A thrill rippled up Kitty’s spine at knowledge of that failure. Kitty set her chin, attempting a nonchalance that was false. “Maribella confided in me afterward.” She was thrilled at the woman’s reticence. Indeed, Kitty knew Maribella to lack a spine. An imagination, too. How would a woman like that make love? With the candles doused. Her clothes on, too, probably!

His gaze narrowed, a sudden small vulnerability to his expression. “She came to you?”

“No. She wrote me a letter of apology for her decision to leave here early.”

Oddly, he appeared relieved. “She did not give you a reason?”

Kitty shook her head. “I think she was embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed to be here?” he pressed her.

“Of course. Alone with a man she barely knew. In his hideaway.”

“It is the estate’s wedding cottage,” he clarified with set jaw.

“How sweet,” Kitty murmured, titillated at the romantic notion of a solitary love nest. But she sobered, knowing Justin intended to seduce others here. “She was frightened.”

“She is a puritan.”

Kitty stared at him. “She had a happy marriage so I do doubt she—”

“Even knows what seduction is.” He sidled closer, observing her every breath with a predator’s ease. “She refused even to let me kiss her.”

Oh, wonderful! Appalled at her own joy, Kitty cleared her throat. “Well, if that is all—”

“She would not come anywhere near the cottage.”

Kitty’s heart did not lift. It soared. How silly you are to rejoice at that.

“How far will you come?” he asked in such a dulcet tone that she barely heard him.

“I am here, Justin,” she managed in such a raw voice she hated herself for the desire it showed. “Here to fulfill the terms of our business arrangement.”

“Is that the only reason you are here?”

To make ribald memories to keep me sated at night in my bedroom. “To be honest,” she whispered, “no. But the reason is rather…risqué, and I am not used to sharing my innermost secrets with anyone.”

“Once long ago, you shared them with me.”

She nodded. “As you say, that was long ago. And we are older. Changed.”

“More protective of yourself now, I see then.”

“I am.”

“I still must know your motives,” he demanded.

“How can they be so important to you?” she evaded him.

“After all these years, Kitty, how can they not be vital?”

“Very well. What if I tell you before I leave?”

With a look she could term no other than remorse swimming in his eyes, he said, “Promise me that.”

“I do.”

“No prevarications from this moment on,” he insisted.

She nodded, trying for a gravity of purpose her gaily-tripping heart belied. “So be it.”

He put out his hand. “Then come kiss me to seal the deal.”

“No, I—can’t.” Afraid to appear silly and unsophisticated, she sucked in a breath. “When we were on your ship, you never touched me.”

“Except to kiss you. But you know why you are here.” His gaze dropped to her clinging clothes. “Come now. This kiss, of necessity, will be very different from those youthful ones.”

She swallowed audibly and stood her ground. “You will be disappointed.”

“I was not in your drawing room two weeks ago. I doubt I will be now.”

She inhaled, looked at the moon. “I am not what you assume.”

“Which is what?”

“Knowledgeable about men and relations.”

“You mean sex.”

“Yes. Simply because I was married is no reason to believe that I am capable of having any kind of…of…”

He flowed closer and in the luminous light, his raven looks resurrected her dreams of him all those lonely nights she had yearned for him. But now he was flesh and blood. Within reach. Warm. Vibrant. Masculine. Hers. “I know of what you are capable, Kitty. I saw it in you then. I see it now.”

“Why must I kiss you? Why must I be the aggressor?”

“Because what we do here—all of what we do here—will be because you want it.”

That touched her tender heart and made her bite her lower lip. Tears threatened her composure and that outlandish joy she could not show him.

“I will not hurt you, Kitty. Never that.”

How could he know she wanted that declaration above all else? Had he made inquiries about Henry’s and her relationship? No. No. Who knew of that horror, but Maggie? No one. That left her with the only answer she could give him, “I do trust you.”

The corners of his mouth lifted gently. “Well, then, Lady Varney, allow me.”

He sank his fingers up into her hair and flowed nearer. His nose slid along hers, his mouth brushed hers. His arms came around her, and he ravished her lips.

She gasped and clutched him closer. His body was iron and heat and heaven. His tongue opened her lips, touched inside, sank deeply and drank her into him.

“God! Justin!” She broke for air.

His mouth, wet and fierce, trailed down her jaw to her throat. With his teeth, he opened her wrapper wider, slid her negligee lower and suddenly, his lips were on her nipple. Sucking her inside the cavern of his mouth, he drew on her with such ferocity she groaned. One arm held her at the waist, supporting her as he bent her back over his arm, opening her to him. One hand skimmed her other breast and slid along her torso, her belly, to her mons and beneath the silken robe, he delved and cupped her mound.

“Christ, my darling, you are bare.” He sank a finger between her sleek, pulsing labia. He stroked her, the sound of her juices, her readiness for him, a sweet beckon to his seduction. He bent and caught her up in his arms, then strode through the copse.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and wanted to shriek in delight. She was his. Would be soon.

He strode through the copse avoiding branches with speed and dexterity. If in her heated mind she thought she smelled roses, she took it as a sign of her freedom from anxiety. This tryst, despite its forbidden flavor, held for her the fragrance of release from so many of her past torments.

In a clearing, she spied his cottage. Candles blazed inside. He had planned this. Just as he had planned so carefully for their first encounter, he had prepared well for this.

He pushed the door ajar and stepped into the tiny house. The fireplace was aglow, the candles’ flames low. The aroma of roses seductive. He let her slide to the floor and turned her to him, his fingers twined in her close-cropped curls. “What do you think of it?”

She stood on tiptoe and reached up to peck him sweetly on the lips. Somehow, someway, he had destroyed her fear of this and summoned from deep within her an enjoyment of the moment. This. And him. “You have done very well. This is our nest for the next day, I presume?”

“You are correct.” He beamed, proud of himself.

Her eyes went wide, teasing him. “What of our clothes?”

His hazel eyes narrowed. “We need none.”

“Your hair brush? Mine?” she teased.

He planted his lips in her curls. “I have a new one here for you.”

“A bath?”

His mouth descended to her cheekbone, her collarbone, the tip of one begging breast. “I am at your service as your manservant, my lady.”

She would have giggled, but he sank to his knees, kissing his way from her navel to her pelvic bone. When she had wits enough about her to form a few words, she could merely whisper, “Perfume? I like perfume.”

“And I,” he ground out as his mouth found her smoothly polished cunny and his tongue slipped inside her seam, “love yours, my darling Puss.”

He knew her secret name. What else? What else? But her mind blanked as he probed inside her with a demanding tongue. He stroked her swelling labia. Licked her. Flicked his tongue at the entrance to her cunny and then, with two deft fingers, spread her lips apart.

“Sweet Puss, open wider. I am suddenly ravenous.”

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, grabbing his shoulders to steady herself. “So am I.”

At her invitation, he darted his tongue inside and somehow found an absolutely wonderful spot to suck and tickle.

She felt mindless. Boneless. “You will undo me with this, Justin.”

“No, my sweet.” He paused, looked up at her, met her gaze and grinned, then sent two probing fingers deep inside her cunt. “I am eating you. And loving every morsel.”

“I had no idea a man would want such—”

“A treat?” His face was alight with ribald joy. “I will have you this way every hour.”

Her knees shook at the naughty possibility. “I shall be ready for Bedlam.”

“Just ready for bed.” He chuckled, rose to his feet and tugged her toward the far end of the cottage. Through a door. “Come lay down and let me dine. I promise to enthrall you.”

She saw before her an enormous four-poster bed, set with soft white linens and a dozen or so pillows of every size and shape imaginable. What were they for? Her pussy gushed with hopeful answers. Then she turned and shrugged out of the wrapper.

His gaze defined her body in the transparent silk gown. And when his eyes met hers again, she gathered it up and pulled it over her head. Such a useless scrap, the sheer silk puddled on the floor, and as it did she realized she let fall with it her shyness. Her modesty. Her fear. This was Justin. As she had needed him. Aflame, hers alone.

She let her hands fall to her sides. “I have never had an affair.”

“I know,” he breathed as his gaze absorbed the sight of her nude body. “Christ, you are the loveliest creature.” He stepped near, his palms cupping her breasts. “Beautiful nipples.” He thumbed the points, and she bit her lower lip. “I shall take such good care of you, Puss.”

“Teach me…things? Will you?”

“Whatever you desire.” His heavy-lidded green-brown eyes seemed afire. “Name your pleasure.”

She stepped backward to the bed and sank upon the mattress. Sliding, she positioned herself fully on it, then opened her thighs. “Come eat me again. I adored that.”

He sucked in his breath, put one knee to the bed and one hand to her mound. “At your command, my dear lady.” He kneaded her. “You are so plump here. Soft. How long have you been shaven?”

“Waxed,” she corrected him and undulated as he climbed up between her thighs.

“Waxed! By whom?” Justin seemed outraged and envious.

She preened, delighted at his reaction. “He uses wax and honey. Then a polishing stone.”

Justin cursed wildly. “He? A man does this?”

“A Turk.”

“A—a Turk?” Justin was nigh on to apoplectic.

“You have stopped caressing me, Justin,” she reminded him, petulant and needy.

“How long have you had this man serve you?”

“A few months,” she told him, watching his eyes grow wide and his cheeks flame. “But you like the result.”

“The hell I do!” he shot back.

“Admit it,” she beseeched him, “and give me more of you.”

“Of all the….” But he spread her lips open with one hand and with the other, sent one long finger inside her.

“Ohhh, delightful.” She felt a gush of liquid rush over his fingers. “That, mmm, that is wonderful.”

“How true,” he drove his finger more deeply within. “How did you find this Turk?”

“Find him? Oh. Um.” She wiggled to get closer to him. “My sister learned of him before her wedding. He does this for ladies of theton. He is…oh, yes, I like your strokes—um. Yes.”

“He is—what?” Justin bent to lick her seam in encouragement, then paused.

She mewled at his withdrawal. “Come back to me.”

“I will, when you tell me who touches you, my Puss.”

She gave Justin the man’s name. “He is discreet. And gentle.”

“Really? How good of him.”

Her eyes shot open, and she saw by Justin’s frown he certainly did not think it good of the Turk to do this for her.

“How much do you pay him?”

“Five pounds.”

“Five—” Justin curved a hand under her derriere and bent to dart his tongue inside her cunt. “Does he do more than wax you? Hmm?” he asked as he nuzzled her and found a spot inside her to tickle with the tip of his tongue. “Does he?”

“No. No. Just—oh, my.” She lifted her head to watch Justin spread her lips to lick along the insides of her cunny. Her head fell back to the mattress while sensations rippled through her.

“He does a very good service.” Justin breathed.

She gulped. “I thought so myself.”

Justin lifted her thighs to drape them over his. “Are you ever embarrassed when he is near?”

“Some. But he says I am…”

“You are what?” He urged her, his hands still.

“Well formed.” She trembled as his two hands suddenly washed over her inner thighs and spread her cunny lips so wide she felt her face flush.

“I agree. Lucky man. Does he fondle you?” Justin pushed his finger in and out of her cunt. “Excite you?”

“Fondle?” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. “No. Excite? I dream of—” You.

“Dream no more, my darling.” Justin stroked her lips and pinched a small part of her cunny so that she shot upward. “Am I good?”

“The best!” she gasped. “Do that again, please.”

“This?” Justin complied and sent stars shooting inside her mind.

“Yes, yes.”

“This Turk. How often do you see him?”

“Once a month.”

Justin tickled the same spot that sent her reeling, and she bucked. “He sees a very prettychat while we works. Your folds. Your plump core. He must smell your musk and tasted your cream.”

“No, no. He has not dared to touch me. Only you.”

“Only me,” he whispered and lifted two fingers to his mouth to suck them dry, then sink inside her to gather more of her juices and offer her the same treat. “Taste how sweet you are.”

Stunned, she opened her mouth and with her gaze in his, she licked his fingers clean. In their nine years together Henry had used every ribald term for every part of her female form but had never helped her learn or share any passion. “Thank you. I did not know how good it is.”

“I see it,” he told her and then smiled like an accomplished rake. “I shall do my best to educate you.”

“Do.”

Grinning sadly, Justin proceeded to name her parts for her.

“Your mons.” Her mound. “Your lips.” Labia. “Your core.” Cunt. Cunny. “Your cream.” Love spunk. “Your sweet pussy.” Her insides, thick and soft and yielding, melted in his open-handed claim.

She groaned, in agony of want of him.

“You are my Puss.”

Nearly blind with his caresses, she could barely breathe. She rose up on an elbow, caught him at his nape and pleaded against his marvelous mouth, “Then let’s take your clothes off, my darling, so you can show me how to make love to you.”

Chapter Three

He pushed to his feet to stand beside the bed. With one shrug of his massive shoulders, he let his dressing gown fall to the floor.

“I had forgotten how strong you are,” she whispered. She rose up on her knees, eager to touch him. Everywhere. Her hands drew him close, and she brushed her aching nipples against his stiff white shirt. She caressed his throat. Strong, dark and smooth. “Let me feel.”

He braced his feet as she began to stroke the opening of his shirt and undo his buttons. But she shook with excitement. “I’m clumsy.”

“Not used to undressing a man? I find that refreshing.” He lifted his arms, the cords in his throat working. “Take it off.”

She smiled and lifted the garment over his head, then let it drop to the floor. “Oh, Justin, I had forgotten this, too. Your chest,” she whispered as she splayed her fingers in his springy dark hair. “How can you be so much man and I had forgotten?”

He wrapped her close, his mouth a seeking, demanding thing on hers. “Tonight is to remember.”

“And forget,” she blurted, driven, hungry for him as she fingered one of his nipples.

He gasped and stilled her hand. “Forget Henry.”

“With you in my arms, oh yes.”

Justin held her nape and kissed her once more, hard and fast. “He is not worth one moment.”

“No. Only you.” Her hands sank to Justin’s trousers. His flies. The buttons. And with her palms against his warm supple loins, she sank inside and felt the raging evidence of how this man was so different from Henry. So vital. So erect. So deliciously hard and ready for her.

She brushed his trousers down his hips and looked at his need for her. “Oh, my. Justin. I will not be able to take you, darling. You are too large. Too…too long and broad.”

He grasped her wrist. “Touch me.”

“No, no.” She yanked from his hold. “I will disappoint you.”

“Never. Touch me.” He took her fingers and wrapped them around his hot, rigid cock.

“Justin, you are longer than my hand!”

He snorted, his gaze dark golden green as he smiled at her. “Darling. You have made me so. I do promise you that you can take me.”

“How?”

He led her to move her hand back and forth along his improbable length. “Just as your hand takes this and enjoys this, so will your cunt.”

She nodded quickly, silly as a girl with a new toy. “But I am too small and this is too big. My God, the head alone is huge!”

He gave a laugh. “You compliment me, darling. Now lay back. Let me step out of my trousers, sweet, or I will do nothing but spend in your hand.”

She blinked. Henry often did that, hated it and blamed her for the loss of his spunk. “No, no, you mustn’t!”

He frowned, clamped a hand over the one she had on his cock, and tipped his head. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

She sought to be free. “Nothing. Nothing. Let me lie down as you wish. I need you, Justin, inside me, like I never needed Henry, please, quickly.”

She scrambled backwards. He stepped out of his trousers, then loomed above her, searching her eyes and somber as a preacher. “What did he do to you, Kitty?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, nothing. Love me, Justin.”

“I do, Kitty. I will. But you must tell me first whatever Henry did to frighten you that—”

“No.” She squeezed her eyes shut, his declaration that he loved her spinning in her mind, taunting her memories of him and what might have been had they been able to overcome the social strictures against their marriage. “You can never know.”

Justin caressed her cheek. “Look at me, Puss. My darling Kat. My beautiful Katherine. What did this man do in the bedroom that you—?”

“He wasn’t gentle,” she revealed.

Justin kissed her cheek. “I hear you, sweet. What else?”

The blessing of his lips on her own drew her into his spell. “He wanted me to pump him.” Aghast she had told Justin that, she stared into his eyes.

“Come, give me your hand, darling.” He led her to grasp his cock again. “You see? I am already hard and yearning to be inside you. There is no need to stroke me. Only if you wish.”

She slid her hand along his remarkable length. “I do wish.”

He swallowed hard. “I am very glad.”

She let out a gasp of laughter. “I am too.”

Justin straddled her, his face above hers, his hand combing stray curls from her cheeks. “Did he kiss you?”

“No.”

But Justin did. A sweet short melding of lips. “Did he caress you?”

“Caress?”

“Your pretty breasts? Like this?” Justin lifted one breast and thumbed an aching nipple only to take it into his mouth and stroke her with his talented tongue.

She shook her head, her body tingling, alive with his regard.

“So then, when he wanted you,” Justin asked as his hands once more spread her thighs apart and sank two fingers inside her, “he was not kind or slow or—”

“It hurt!”

Justin squeezed his eyes shut. “Darling Puss.”

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, rabid now to blot out the memory of the man who should not be here in this bed with her and the man she had always wanted. “I never felt like this with him. I was never mad to have him. Not in a carriage or a room or my bed.”

Justin’s eyes glistened as he stroked her cheek with one set of fingers. “Forget him.”

“I want you. Have always wanted you. Never felt so alive or…or—”

His dark brows shot upward. “Tight?”

“Throbbing! Hungry! Wet!”

He laughed and bent down to kiss her quickly. “Then let me show you how love should be made.”

She hastened to help him, spreading wide her arms and legs upon the mattress.

But as he chuckled, he hooked his arms around her upper thighs and hauled her up, then teased her seam with the head of his cock. “God, you are beautiful. Musky and pink and creamy.” With each word he probed the entrance to her cunny. “So swollen and hot for me.”

She sank her nails into his ribs and said with bared teeth. “And if you do not come inside me soon, I swear I will leave!”

He drove his cock deep, deep, deep within her core, and she could do nothing but open her mouth and stare at him.

“Don’t leave me, Puss,” he said with glittering gaze locked upon her own. “Please don’t.”

His plea undid her, pleased her, thrilled her. She lifted her hips, nudging him to action in any way she could. “Come closer. Have all of me. And for Christsakes, hurry before I die, will you?”

He slid out of her and slid right back in. “How is that?”

Wordless, she opened her mouth and snapped it shut.

“And this?” he stroked her again.

She gulped. “Superb.”

“Might you leave now?” he asked as he drove himself inside her.

“Never!”

“I am gratified.” He gave her wave after wave of thrilling, plunging fulfillment.

“So am I!” She clutched him closer, and felt her body yearn for something bigger, bolder, brighter. “More!”

He gripped her hips in the vise of his hands and pounded into her with stunning rhythm, pushing her across the mattress, raising a fury in her body that she could not contain. She could feel him in her pussy, and her blood, to the ends of her fingertips, the ends of her hair, the last of her breath and then she felt him bend closer, fuck her harder.

She cried out, the pulsing of her blood a roar in her ears. The slapping of his thighs on hers the only sound that spilled into her mind and sent her over the edge of a throbbing universe and into a void.

He curled her against the full length of his body, his breath ragged and rasping. She burrowed into him, his chest moist with his exertions, the fragrance of his body a satisfying essence that personified the rapture he had given her. What need for roses when you had a man you adored?

He pulled away and looked down at her. “You are smiling. This is a good sign. Will you share your thoughts on how well we did?”

Grinning at such an invitation, she languished against the pillows like a well-fed cat, then rose up to plant a kiss on his smiling mouth. “You are an excellent lover.”

He grabbed her close to roll her above him. “It is a pastime defined by two people who join together well. Dare I say then, we are excellent together?”

“You may dare to say it.” She put her head down upon his broad chest and stroked him chest to hip. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure and yours, Kitty.”

She pressed a kiss to his sternum. “You are most kind and very understanding.”

Sighing, he ran his fingers through her hair for some minutes. “He must not come between us again.”

What to say to that when nine years of marriage had taught her so many ways to dislike her husband and his proclivities in their bedroom? “We have begun well.”

“Come then.” Justin rolled her to the bed and got to his feet. “I have more to tickle your senses.”

His secretive tone tantalized her. “What?”

He tugged her to him. Kissed her breathless. “I will not tell you. You must come with me!”

“Where?”

“To the table.”

“I never noticed there was one,” she confessed and reached for her wrapper from the floor.

“No clothes,” he admonished. “Just you.”

“It is rather outrageous,” she countered.

“I told you you would need none.” His gaze grew dark with desire as he lifted one of her breasts in his palm and pinched a nipple. “I want to see you like this. Your breasts full, your nipples hard and pointed toward me. Your mouth wide with surprise and swollen with my kisses. Your pussy,” he sank his hand to her seam to ease two fingers inside her, “so ready to have me again.”

At his touch, she felt a gush of fluid run down her thighs. She clamped her legs together, but he caught her up in his arms.

“Let me wash you,” he whispered in her ear.

“No.” She pushed against him as he laid her to the bed again.

He caught her chin with two fingers. “You have allowed me to taste you with my lips and tongue, to claim you with my cock and now you will not permit me the intimacy of washing you?”

Her cheeks aflame, she swallowed. Looked away.

He turned her toward him once more. “For this night and tomorrow, you belong to me. Have I not already proven I am worthy?”

His tenderness undid all her objections. She lay back. “You are. I am a silly goose.”

He kissed her quickly. “To me you are the brave young woman who withstood a French capture in wartime. A lovely creature of the ton who makes her way alone in a society not often forgiving of free thinking.”

She chuckled. “The gossips talk of me as an oddity, do they?”

“A woman who speaks her mind about politics and marriage,” he admitted.

“Ah. Well. Politics can kill.”

“So can some marriages.” He arched a brow. “You knew it firsthand.”

“I did.” But no longer. And never again.

At her expression, he scowled but smiled half-heartedly as if he made a note of this issue. “Wait here. I will return to be your maid.”

She laughed as he strode away, his long naked back a beautiful ripple of muscle and sinew. “I enjoyed your copper tubing for heated water for my bath.”

“I’m afraid,” he called to her from the main room, “I have no such convenience here. I am boiling water.”

She inched up and pushed pillows behind her. As she sat, she looked down at her nude body and marveled at her ease under the circumstances. Had she ever thought to take a lover, she never would have presumed she could lounge about without a stitch to cover herself. But this was Justin. And she was enchanted. Amused. And you’ve thrown caution to the wind. Tossed away more than your clothes. Have you even lost your mind?

“The kettle’s boiling on the fireplace. It’ll be a few minutes,” he told her as he came to sit on the bed, lean over her and kiss one nipple and then the other. “What bothers you, darling?”

She stared at him. Her naked lover. Serene. Pleased with himself. His plans. His seduction of her. Did he think beyond this rendezvous? The consequences? God knows, she had, but then caught off guard in the garden, she had turned into a blithering idiot! “Do you have any French letters?”

“I do.” His tone grew grave. “Did you bring any with you?”

“To the Manor? Yes. They’re in my room.”

“Do you like using them?” He scowled. “I don’t.”

“I’ve never used them,” she declared. “Henry had no need for them.”

“Of course not.” Justin pushed up. “And yet you have only one child by him?”

“Yes,” she said and sat higher against the headboard. “He was not always able to perform.”

“As I thought,” he said with a mixed tone of acceptance and relief.

“I doubt you have that problem.” She could not help the challenge in her voice.

“You are perceptive.”

Her lower lip quivered. “We must use them. I cannot become pregnant.”

“If you did—”

“I cannot!” Cannot marry you. Your uncle would not allow it. He wants too much, including a sizable dowry which I do not have. Worse, if I were to become pregnant, he still might not permit the marriage for the lack of wealth. And I? Dear God. If I were to become pregnant, once discovered, my condition would mean I lose my social standing. Become disgraced. “All my work, my business, my need to—”

“Stop. Stop!” He had his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers, sweet little kisses pressed against her lips. “We will use the letters. Hate them though I do, I will not have you think me so dastardly that I will get you with child and never care for him or her or—Sweet Puss—or you! Look at me!”

She did, though tears dribbled down her cheeks.

He brushed them away. “Let me have you as I will, when I will for the hours remaining to us and know that as you do, I will use the damned letters, darling.”

He left her then, her arms crossed, her victory less than satisfying. She’d seen the letters. Odd translucent skins. She grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to imagine how the misshapen sheets fit around a man’s cock. How they would fit around one as large as Justin’s.

She grinned, wondering if it took two people to dress a man for his lover. She giggled.

Justin appeared in the doorway, a basin in his hands. “Your mood has improved, I see. Lie down.”

She stiffened her spine. “No.”

He warned her to obedience with wide eyes and a fierce, funny look on his face. “I said, lie down and let me inside here.”

As he put his fingers to her slit, she gasped. “You cannot order me about…”

“No?” he countered her, his hands opening her cunny to his view. “This is my pretty pussy. Mine, for tonight and tomorrow. And you like me inside you. My fingers.” He stroked her slit, parted her tender labia and bent to place a kiss on her pubic bone. “Let me wash you. Then I’ll get my contraceptives and fuck you again.”

At his ribald words, she groaned and widened her thighs for him.

He nuzzled her swollen labia, and she froze. He would kiss her with the essence of both of them in her cunt?

He would.

She swooned.

He did.

“You like this,” he crooned. “And so do I. No one tastes like you, Pussy mine. No one.”

She heard water trickle, swish. She felt him press a warm cloth to her hot needy cunt.

“You are still red and hot for me, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Very,” she confessed as he washed her thoroughly.

“I want you to taste you again. Now and often. You will allow me, darling.” He used two fingers to part her inner folds. “This is so lovely. I must kiss you here.”

“Mmm,” she objected, but he held her open.

“You will tell me how I please you.” Then he found that special spot that made her keen and buck. “Your clitoris. Your button. Your nub. Mine. I will use it often to unlock your secrets, Pussy mine.”

She moaned and spread her legs wider. “Kiss me again there!”

He threw the cloth to the floor and as she heard it splat, his mouth covered her clitoris and he licked her, rubbed her, massaged her right out of her mind.

She grabbed for his shoulders, and felt his muscles contract as he laved her and held her, then lifted her up and ate every inch of her like a man who was starving.

She whimpered, she thrashed. “Fuck me! Do it now!”

He lifted, shifted and rammed his cock so straight, so deep, so hard inside her, she let him ride her on a wave of madness until once more she felt a quake approach.

“How’s this?” he bellowed as he pumped her mercilessly.

“Good!” she yelled and dug her nails into the mattress.

“This?” he snarled and picked up his tempo, while two fingers pinched her clitoris in time with his thrusts.

“Great! Yes!” she screamed at him. “Yes! Now!”

She throbbed with a madness that blanked her mind and made her body tremble with delight. He yelled, his eyes shut, his body bent to fucking her. Fucking her. Taking her until she throbbed no more, but her cunt grabbed him, cupped him, kept him.

“Christ, darling. You are so swollen, I cannot move.”

She dare not loosen her hold of him. “You are superb.”

“Best only with you,” he whispered to her ear and fell over her, a heap of manly bones draped around her like a dying man. A loving man. “You are incomparable.”

She smiled to herself, her fingers tracing little patterns on his body. Little by little, she relaxed her pussy around his cock, and he slipped out of her body. Still, he held her close, his hands covering her breasts.

“Come. I will feed you,” he told her and caught her up in his arms.

“I cannot think, let alone dine!”

He chuckled, set her on his lap before a circular table laden with dishes and platters piled high with offerings. He fed her sugared strawberries and candied walnuts. Slices of cold roast beef, the juices dripping over his fingers, a silent invitation to lick him clean one she did not overlook. He dipped tiny tartlets into chocolate sauce and kissed the excess from her lips. He poured rich red Spanish wine from a jug into one large silver goblet and let her drink from it, then drained it himself. By the time the repast was gone, she was stuffed, and he, hungry still for items not on the table, cleared it with one swipe of his arm. Then he set her on it.

“My dessert,” he proclaimed then nibbled on her breasts and toyed with her clitoris. “Open wide, my pussy, I need to feast on you again.”

She let him. Reclining, reveling, moaning at his tender touch, his sweet caring mouth and tongue and teeth over her most sensitive cunny, she sighed and screamed and came once again.

This time, when he took her in his arms, he took her back to bed and there they slept.

She awoke, tangled in the sheets and his arms.

When she blinked, she noticed why she had awakened. The insatiable man was sucking delicately, devilishly on one of her nipples.

“I cannot resist these,” he declared, his voice rough with sleep. “I had to have a taste before breakfast.”

Emboldened by all they had shared last night, she ran her hand down his torso to stroke his shaft and roll his balls. She lifted her brows at him. “What’s good for the cock is good for the gander.”

With narrowing gaze, he asked her mutely if she really meant to emulate his own act.

She pushed him to his back and with a reverent touch, examined how readily he responded to her offer. His rod grew taller, prouder, fuller even as she watched. The head became purple, a drop of fluid forming at the slit. She never considered this for Henry, but her pussy pulsed and her nipples beaded at the very idea of taking Justin in her mouth. She sank over him, his taste an aphrodisiac to her, making her moan and want and suck him harder. His cock was a luscious piece with soft skin and rigid power.

He gasped, then pushed her to her back, and in one long drive, he claimed her. Fucked her. Made her his own. Once more in a pounding ecstasy that took her breath away.

Hours later when she opened her eyes, the sun streamed in the tiny windows of the cottage. Was it afternoon, perhaps?

She rose from their bed and silently crept out to the larger room. The remnants of their early morning repast stood as a reminder of how he had made love to her there. In haste. And joy. Passionately upon the tiny table.

And without protection from ruin.

She pushed that reminder aside. In months to come, there would be enough time to consider her folly here. And deal with it.

She sought the warmth of the sunshine and opened the door. Naked still, she somehow felt secure from prying eyes. Another measure of how she trusted Justin to have prepared for this tryst so well that no one, not even servants, would intrude.

She stepped out onto the path and the fragrance of roses surrounded her. At once, she saw why. Here before her stood a dozen or more cuttings of rose bushes. Each was planted in good loam, secured with posts and held to the rods toward the warmth of the sun by tiny ribbons of good hemp.

She’d not been so dazed by lust last night when Justin brought her here that she was dreaming when she smelled the musk of roses.

“They will bloom next year I am told,” Justin’s voice reached out to her.

“Your gardener has done a very good job,” she said as she walked forward to examine the expert cuttings. “What colors will they be, do you know?”

“I do. Ruby red and virgin white.” He came to stand behind her as she bent to smile at the plants and touch a fingertip to two in turn. “I understand you love those colors best.”

She tipped up her head, shielded her eyes, trying to see him but failing because his form was silhouetted by the sun. Complimented but wary of his knowledge, she had to ask, “How do you know that?”

“I’ve inquired here and there,” he said with some pride.

“My friends?” she prodded.

“Your cook,” he admitted.

“She told your butler who in turn, told you.”

“Quite so.” He grinned.

She frowned. Shot up and spun away from him.

He caught her by the arm. “Darling, aren’t you pleased?”

“How can I be, Justin?”

His brows knit. His eyes dimmed. “They are for you. You alone.”

“They cannot be.”

“I know you raise roses,” he declared. “That you garden to lighten your anxiety. That you need the fragrance and the beauty to overcome—”

She froze, intimidated, exposed and damned furious. “You have spied on me.”

“No, not–”

“Inquiring does not constitute invasion of my private life?” she rebuked him.

He swept out two hands. “What do you think this is if it is not your private life?”

“For a day. A night! Hardly the sum total of my life!”

“But it should be.” He took hold of her shoulders, his hard power only serving to unnerve her even more. “You belong here. With me.”

“I cannot stay here.” Suddenly, she was embarrassed at her nakedness. Reality drove out all joy of her interlude with him. “I never should have come.”

“You could not refuse me.”

Trembling with outrage, she challenged him, “Because I needed your fees?”

His face crumbled. “Because you love me.”

To hear him speak the truth she dare not admit to herself made her shake with despair. Tears glittered in his eyes.

In her own, too. “Let me go.”

“I dare not. I will never get you back.”

How true. How very true.

“Marry me.”

“No.”

“I love you, Katherine. I always have. Marry me.”

“I will never marry anyone ever again,” she announced with a resolve that sounded hideous, even to her own ears.

Since they had resumed their acquaintance weeks ago, she had often studied his handsome face, his unconcealed emotions. She had seen humor and compassion, consideration and rejection. She thought she had seen surprise. Now she recognized shock.

“That’s absurd. You’ll marry again. You’ll marry me!”

“Never,” she told him with such severity he blanched.

“This is what marriage to Henry did to you,” he concluded, bitterness in each word.

“Yes. And that’s my resolution. No marriage. Ever. To you or anyone else.”

Chapter Four

Three weeks later on a Wednesday afternoon at two, she sat down in the drawing room of the Lord and Lady Winston Martindale upon the occasion of their annual At Home. Parliament had dismissed two days earlier, and the Martindales’ afternoon reception was one of the three closing highlights of the late Season. Few festivities remained which drew the Set before all dispersed to the countryside for the summer months.

“I shall be happy as a bee to leave town,” Maggie confided as she sat next to Kitty and fluttered her Chinese fan in the uncommon June heat.

“You are quite flushed, Maggie. You are very sure you are not….hmmm?” Kitty had asked this question twice this past week of her sister. “I recall being very hot when I was…in that way. You know.”

“I might be.” Her sister flashed her a brilliant smile. “But I am not yet positive.”

“Just wanted to be certain.” Glancing into the hall where others arrived for this party, Kitty flicked open her own fan and gave herself a nervous cooling off. God, if she could only be certain Justin would not attend, she could proceed to enjoy herself tremendously.

“Certain, eh?” Maggie eyed Kitty’s fan. “After your visit to a certain gentleman, I could ask you the same question.”

“No.” No. Kitty knew she was not pregnant. She’d had the proof last week, much to her immense relief. Maggie had been nearly as wild as she to learn if she were enceinte. Her sister had known of her rendezvous with Justin—and if Maggie still had few facts about their affaire, they were enough for her younger, newly wedded sister to conclude that scandal and ruin might not be the only result of Kitty’s interlude at Belmont Manor.

“I still think you owe him an explanation for leaving,” Maggie ventured, her eyes straight ahead.

“I gave him one.”

“Did you?” Maggie challenged her with a huff.

Kitty drew back. It was not like her dear sister to pick an argument with her.

Maggie sniffed and fluttered. Sniffed and fluttered. “I doubt you told him all.”

“I have not even told you all.”

“And it took you over a year to reveal what you did!”

“It took me a year to even speak the words, let alone—”

“There he is.”

“What?” Kitty sat straighter, her gaze darting to the foyer. And the dark, imposing handsomeness of Lord Justin Belmont. “Oh, no.”

“Do not leave, Puss,” Maggie breathed. “You’ll be so obvious.”

“I’ll be so trapped.”

“Good afternoon, Lady Carruthers,” Maggie cooed over an elderly matron who was passing them, intent on the buffet tables. She rose to take the lady’s hand. “So delightful to see you out.”

The lady lifted her lorgnette to her rheumy eyes. “And you, too, my dear. Margaret Downey, isn’t it?”

“Yes, my lady. Except I am now married. Lady Donaldson.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Fine gel. Fine. And this is your younger sister, eh?”

Kitty was on her feet. “Older.”

“Kit? Kat? What is your name, pet? Help an old woman, will you, like a good girl?”

“Katherine Varney, Lady Carruthers.” Kitty stood and put a hand to the old woman’s. Justin hovered just behind, conversing with Maggie’s husband. “Margaret and I have not seen you since her wedding.”

“Is that so?” The woman startled. “Did I enjoy it?”

Maggie chuckled. “Yes, my lady, you did. Here is my husband. Do say hello,” and Maggie—soon to die at Kitty’s own hand for desertion—led Lady Carruthers into a discussion with her spouse.

And that left, of course, Justin peering down at her from his infernally superior height. “Good afternoon, Lady Varney. Darling,” he ventured under his breath as he took her hand and kissed it in the Continental manner.

She snatched it back. “Lord Belmont.”

“You’re looking fetching.”

You’re looking too fit and rested and totally unconcerned, damn you. “Thank you.”

“I like your hat. New, is it?”

She patted her day bonnet of pink silk and white ostrich feathers, thrilled he was a man who could notice a woman’s attire. Still, she could not resist taunting him. “Very. I’m gratified you like me in clothes.”

“Oh, but I like you any way at all, Puss. A new frock to match?”

She wanted to preen in the new pink muslin, but she dared not, for this lavishness was one of her vices. “Yes. It is.”

“Purchased with your fees.”

“How do you know that?” she shot back, then checked surreptitiously around them to see if anyone paid any attention to them. None seemed to care about them, their heads together.

“I know so many things about you. Like what a spendthrift you are with your dressmaker.”

She gasped.

“Fear not. I approve of a lovely woman spending her money to adorn herself. And though you need wear not a stitch to be the most beautiful woman in London, I applaud your style, darling.”

“You know too much. And I am not your—” two gentlemen passed by—“darling.”

“But you are. And to boot, I adore your taste in day dresses as well as negligees. So you see, I like how you are spending my money.” He had that truly irritating way of laughing with one corner of his mouth turned deliciously up.

“My money.”

“Whatever you say, my Puss. I like what you’ve done with the fees. You do have taste.” He winked.

She scolded him with her eyes. “We’ve said hello. Smile at me now, and I shall leave to rejoin my sister.”

“But why?” He took hold of her arm. “We have just struck up a conversation.”

“We have not.”

“We are. Smile again, darling. And let me get you a glass of champagne.”

“I can’t drink the stuff,” she rejoined and stuck her nose in the air, hustled along nonetheless.

“Why not?” His hazel gaze turned dark and stormy.

“Makes me sick to my stomach.”

“Why?” he insisted.

She blinked, understanding his true question was about her physical condition. “Not because of that. Don’t be daft.”

He hurried her along the hall and into an alcove. “I’m afraid you’ve made me so, my dear. While I am relieved to hear that you are not pregnant—”

“Hush! Are you an idiot?”

“Mad, delusional, a cretin in the mix!” He stepped inside a tiny hallway lined with cupboards and closed two doors on either side of the four foot space. “Call me any name you like, my Puss. You are driving me out of my head!”

“Well deserved, too!” she blustered as he pulled her into his arms and she once more felt the marvelous sensation of being captured by him. Held against his warmth. His might.

“Not by half, you minx. You cash my bank notes. But you will not receive me at home. You avoid me at church. Walk around me in the Park. I am reduced to waylaying you like a highwayman at a party on Wednesday afternoon!”

A laugh bubbled up from her throat, but she squelched it. “We have nothing to say to each other.”

“No,” he said with dour tone. “We have so much to say that only this will do.” He caught her chin, wrapped one arm around her waist and kissed her as he had that first night in her drawing room. Long and lavishly. Repeatedly. Killing her reason and her resolve.

Her fan slid from her fingers. Her hands pulled him closer. These past weeks, she’d pined for him like a schoolgirl. She’d relived every moment in his arms, in his bed, even in his rose garden at his cottage. She had cried and mooned and railed at fate for what she could not have.

He took her mouth with ravenous delight, trailing kisses across her cheek and down her throat to her bodice. His hands molded her to him and suddenly, she felt his fingers lift her skirts and slide to her pussy. Caress her seam. “Darling, I am so delighted you wear none of those ridiculous pantaloons. You are so plump and wet for me,” he murmured, and what words came next became a serenade of all the endearments he had declared in his cottage and all that still lived in her heart.

He undid his flies, and plunged up inside her. Against the cupboard, she braced herself and gave over to the rapture of his possession.

He was warm and turgid and—

Something shattered.

Tinkled all around them.

“Don’t move,” he warned as he held her tightly.

“What?” she asked soundlessly, her cunt so full of him, her breasts so needy of his kisses she thought she’d scream.

Blinking repeatedly to clear his vision and his head, he glanced about them. “Dear God, sweetheart, we’ve broken the family crystal.”

She surveyed the tiny room and the astonishing wreckage. “Justin. Oh, hell! We’re in the butler’s pantry!”

“So—we—are,” he murmured, fucking her so decidedly with each gruff word. “I’ll fix it.” He spread her thighs wider. “Christ, you are so hot for me, my darling woman. How can you deny this between us?” he whispered as he gave her the repeated thrill of his cock, the friction a wild torment that had her moaning.

“I’ll scream with this,” she told him in a rush. “You do this too damn well.”

He chuckled as he pumped her. “Don’t dare scream, Puss. Just feel.”

And oh, did she. His cock was thick, hard, forceful and so talented that she hung on him, her cunt pulsing, milking him dry.

They hung there, her head to his shoulder, his arms tight around her.

“I must go first,” she whispered as he made to withdraw and she groaned at his loss.

He reassembled her dress, his flies, then lifted her chin and gave her a sweet peck. “I adore you, Lady Varney. Now leave me to pick up the pieces.”

Would that he could also pick up the pieces of her heart, so broken that she could not have him all the time, any time, for the rest of her life.

* * * *

Sunday morning at eleven, Kitty kneaded her hands in her lap, gazing at the man seated across her friends’ dining room at another table. It had been four days since their last meeting—their last assignation—and she swore she could feel Justin’s formidable body. Still inside me.

This bright morning, Justin Belmont was attired for the occasion in morning coat and top hat. Looking splendid, Justin had arrived early to the wedding of his friend, Bruce Claymont, to Kitty’s friend, Lucy Darlington. Throughout the ceremony in the tiny chapel in the square, Kitty had felt Justin’s eyes upon her. And true to expectation, each time her gaze sought him, he examined her, head to toe.

Now with the wedding breakfast well underway at Lucy’s parents’ townhouse, Justin made his way toward her. “Where is Maggie today? Has she left you to me alone?”

She told me as much last night. Kitty set her teeth. “She is not feeling well.”

“A headache?”

“Nausea.”

“Ah. It’s what comes of love matches.”

Kitty glanced toward her friend Lucy, and the smile wreathing her face made Kitty understand the full meaning of the word envy. “You’ve seen the scandal sheets? How someone found my fan in the pantry?”

He nodded, looking horrid. “The gossip du jour.”

She clutched her stomach. “Do not make light of this.”

“Sorry, darling. I should have seen it there before I left, but I was in such a rush, I didn’t.”

She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, too. I should have had my wits about me. But I—”

“I was the same.” His gaze was consoling and incredibly sympathetic. “Undone. Wanting you.”

She inhaled, sat back. He was so kind, so sweet, so unlike Henry. “Tell me what happened after I left the pantry.”

“I cleaned up the glass. Found a kitchen maid who hailed the butler. Then I apologized and offered to purchase new glassware.”

“But how did you explain why we—you were there?”

Justin shrugged. “I lost my way in the house.”

“He believed you?”

“I thought so.”

They stared at each other for a long moment in which she expressed more gratitude with her eyes than with her words. “As soon as someone connects the broken glassware to my fan, we will be done for.”

“Not if you marry me, we won’t.”

“Do not begin that again,” she warned beneath her breath.

“I must.”

“Why?” she asked him, stood and said, “I must find the ladies’ retiring room. Excuse me.”

She made her way out of the dining room, but Justin was hard on her heels.

In the hall, she spun on him and stamped her foot. “Following me is so obvious. Go away.”

“No. You must listen to me. About the roses.”

She put her hands to her ears and strode down the hall.

In two steps, he pulled her from her chosen path and swung her into the family library. Pressing her against a stack of books, he braced his hands on either side of her head.

Blocked, she fumed and fussed, then said, “Very well. Tell me about the roses.”

“They have sprung their first blooms now. Rich reds and creamy whites. They have grown, changed. They need more space to mature. Some must be transplanted soon.”

His declaration melted a cold, hard part of her deep inside. “They must be lovely.”

“They won’t be for long.” He caught a teardrop from her cheekbone.

“No?”

“They need someone to tend them properly.”

“You have a gardener.”

“I have no wife. And I need one, my darling. I need you.” He wrapped his hand around her nape and sank his fingers against her scalp. His lips brushed hers.

“I’m not a good bet, you know I’m not.” And there is your uncle’s demand for a rich heiress.

“You married an old man and endured him. Marry a young man and enjoy him.” He kissed her then, his tongue darting inside to tantalize her with the promise of a different life.

“I want you. I do,” she told him. “But I cannot take the chance.”

“That I’d berate you? Badger you? Insult you? That’s what he did, isn’t it?”

Daily. Hourly.

Justin kissed her again, sweetly, desperately, lovingly. “Am I like him?”

“No. Never.” She put her palm to his flies, and beneath the superfine wool, she felt one piece of hard evidence that he resembled Henry Varney in no way.

He crushed her hand to his cock. “I mean to have you.”

She fought to undo his buttons. “Do it then.”

He glanced around the dim wood lined walls. “Here.”

Following his line of sight, she saw the map table. “You wouldn’t.”

“I will,” he told her and tugged her to the center of the room where a large table held maps. He lifted her and put her on it, her knees bent over the edge. “Let me raise your skirt, madam. I need to kiss your pretty pussy.”

Someone gasped.

Kitty halted. Her gaze met Justin’s.

Something plunked to the floor. A book? A shoe?

She gulped.

He seized her hand. As he pulled open the door, he whispered, “Wait. Have you left anything?”

* * * *

One ostrich feather.

Kitty let her eyes drift shut at the ribald memory of what she and Justin had done and said in that library. And what she had left there.

Oh, blast it all! The damned feather from her hat had become the subject that tickled everyone in the broad sheets for more than a week. “How many ladies wore ostrich feathers to the wedding breakfast of Lord and Lady C last Saturday?” asked one tabloid until they had a tally of three. Three women.

“One of which is me,” Kitty fretted as she sat with her sister at Lady Anna Grey’s garden party eight days later. “Now they attempt to find the owner of the fan in the Martindales’ pantry and match them!”

Adjusting her broad brimmed straw against the sun, Maggie fought hard to suppress a smile. “They’re just selling papers, Puss.”

Kitty scowled. “They should focus on discovering who the other person was in the Darlingtons’ library!”

“An assignation!” Maggie put a hand to her heart in feigned horror. “Imagine!”

“Oh, you are no help!” Kitty couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

“Just don’t go off with him here.”

Kitty froze. “He’s here?”

Maggie giggled. “Just so. Don’t look now, but he’s talking with Susanna Curtis.”

Susanna? Kitty could not resist turning to see how the two of them got on. My God. Susanna had not yet decided if she would accept Justin’s invitation to his cottage in Kent. His invitation to seduction. Though why go to Kent, when he seemed to be doing a marvelous job of it right here? Kitty wiggled in her chair while Susanna batted her long pale lashes at him, amused. Enthralled. And Justin grinned like a man enchanted.

“Oh,” she seethed, jealousy coursing through her veins like lava. “How could he?”

“Mmm. She is lovely.”

“Whose side are you on, Maggie?”

Her sister stared at her in utter exasperation. “My dearest sis, make up your mind. Do you want the man or not? Is he the man of your dreams? Rich, titled, kind, generous. Or is he simply a man whose gender alone you condemn because you’ve not the courage to see he is so different from Henry?”

Kitty considered her younger sister’s words for a long minute. “When did you grow so mature?”

“When you helped me learn to be a woman who used my head.”

“Touché.”

Kitty turned to admire dashing Lord Belmont. So changed from the privateer who captured her and saved her more than a decade ago. So very much the same man. Was she being feather brained not to admit she loved him? Wished she could marry him?

“There is the matter of money,” she said to Maggie. “His uncle demands it.”

“I don’t know, Puss, but I would say there must be a way to get round that. You said you have nearly paid off Henry’s debts with the fees you earned from Justin.”

Varney House is worth a fortune. “There is the townhouse. I could sell it.”

“As Lady Belmont, why would you need it? You’d fetch a pretty penny.”

“I could put the proceeds in trust for Hank.”

“You use your brains now.”

“I don’t know, Maggie. I do like to have my own way with money.”

“Sadly true. For one, you might give up your chef. As a widow, what need have you of four course dinners? They add only to your waistline.”

“When I am fully out from mourning, I’ll host bigger dinner parties,” she sniffed, defending her love of French pastries and sauces.

“What fun to do that alone.”

“Sarcasm does not become you.”

“Neither does this attitude of yours, Kitty. Do away with your blend of perfume from your perfumier in Grasse! And what of your dressmaker? He could go. I dare say you have more gowns in your wardrobe than a princess royal.”

Kitty narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Be careful where you tread.”

“I’ve done that for too long with you, Puss. Now you must get on with your life. Buck up. The man you care for could be ugly. Or poor.” She stood, imperial in her new found wisdom. “I think I will engage Lord Belmont for a few minutes. Shall I bring him to you, hmm?”

“You will, whatever I say,” Kitty laughed and waved a hand in dismissal.

“Quite right.”

Kitty watched her sister approach Justin and assessed their conversation with growing amazement. They were, no doubt about it, friends. They spoke easily, laughing. They conferred quietly, nodding and deliberating. When had their relationship begun? How had it blossomed? Did they share more than one subject to bond them in such congenial ways? And if so, what were their interests?

By the time Maggie strolled forward with Justin at her side, Kitty gazed upon them with new eyes. “Good afternoon, Justin,” she bid him.

“May I leave him with you, sis, without you eating him alive?”

“I think he will be safe with me, Maggie.” Kitty shaded her eyes from the sun to see his face haloed by the light. “Do sit with me, Justin. I would enjoy talking with you.”

He took the chair opposite, but his demeanor was nothing like it had been these past weeks. He sat, one leg crossed over the other, his back straight, his eyes on everything and everyone but her.

“How have you been?” she asked at last, attempting bright conversation.

“As well as can be expected.”

She glanced away, unable to keep her composure when he acted so detached. “You’ve seen the conjecture about my ostrich feather?”

His generous mouth curved up at the corners. But his eyes did not smile as they slid to hers and away to the guests. “Who could miss it?”

“May we take a stroll in the maze? Talk privately?”

He gave a short sad laugh. “No. I will lose my mind once more and want you naked. I’ll not do that again to you. Or to me.”

She stared at him, stunned, confused by this turn of his nature. “But Justin, I have much to say to you, darling.”

Her endearment made him wince.

“Call at my home tomorrow. Please. Shall we say at two o’clock?”

He shot to his feet. “No. Thank you for the invitation. Pardon me, but I must refuse, Lady Varney.”

Chapter Five

When her hired carriage idled before the massive front door to Belmont Abbey, she sat for overly long picking at her gloves. Picking at your nerve, more like it.

It had taken her a week to recover the shock of Justin’s indifference at Lady Grey’s garden party. Another week to worm out of Maggie a confession of her months’ long collaboration with Justin. Another four days to bring herself to this precipice.

She had taken far too long to confess to herself her passion for Justin. Enormously long to admit her love for him. A relatively short day and a half after Maggie’s revelations to her that she had realized she had acted like a ninny with him. And that she had been not only foolish, but rather childish.

Dire measures called for bold actions.

She winced. And now you must pay the price, Puss. Present yourself before the ailing Earl of Belmont and inquire if you might, please, be permitted to propose marriage to his nephew, his heir, Justin Simpson Belmont.

She squared her shoulders and rapped on the carriage door with her parasol. In a minute, she was down from her spot, met by the butler, shown to the reception room while her request for an audience with the eighth earl was approved. Or denied.

The butler reappeared within ten eternities of minutes. His expression, when he stood before her, was dour. To say the most.

But she was shown upstairs and round to a private sitting room. “Wait here, my lady. His lordship has received no one save his nephew since his confinement months ago. He does his best to prepare to meet you.”

The wait did not improve her nerves. In fact, she had no recourse but to imagine herself tending her rose garden at Varney House. Or Justin’s at his wedding cottage. The one that’s meant for me. She bit her lip, fighting tears at her deplorable predicament. A lady of her status and breeding, her lineage and social accomplishment facing a man who was once the ton’s most notorious rake and womanizer, asking for approval for his nephew’s hand in marriage.

“Lady Varney, his lordship,” proclaimed the butler, “awaits you.”

She followed the earl’s man in to his sitting room, a large wood-paneled expanse where a huge fire raged in the July heat.

For a man who had once stood as tall and imposing as his younger nephew, the earl was a shriveled, gnarly creature who sat in his overstuffed wing chair and beckoned her toward him with a wave of his feeble hand.

“Come closer, gel. Closer! Closer!” He peered up at her, his watery eyes slim dark orbs flowing over her like a butcher over a shank of beef. “Henry’s wife. Always wondered who he’d get. Heard you were—” He coughed and hacked into a handkerchief. “An Incomparable. Now then. Pull that chair closer to me, William. I must see more of her.”

She folded her hands in her lap and faced him in the opposite oversized chair that threatened to swallow her whole. “You are most kind to receive me, my lord.”

“You were…” He coughed and sputtered. “Vague about coming. What ails you, madam?”

She found his choice of words odd, but no matter. The man was dying. He was allowed peculiarities. She would rely on her prepared speech. “I have met your nephew.”

“Eleven years ago.”

Shocked he knew or, in his debilitated state, remembered how they had met, she moved onward. “I have met him often recently.”

He laughed until he hacked up phlegm and doubled over with the effort. Wiping his mouth with a huge handkerchief, he gave what she would best describe as a rasping laugh, pushed himself up and said, “I heard about the butler’s pantry. Good one, I must say! And the map table in old Darlington’s library! Ha! Yes, indeed.”

She took a moment to find her voice. “You have heard of these meetings. I suppose from the broadsheets.”

“Good stories, too. Best I’ve heard in years. You are a sport, my gel!”

A sport?

“A woman who loves to fuck is a priceless piece.”

Her mouth dropped open. Her cheeks flamed. Her heart picked up a tattoo. Who had told him that Justin and she had…become intimate? She would kill them in the morning. Meanwhile, she must deal with this ribald old gentleman who had no presence of mind to deal with her like a lady who never, ever fucked. “My lord, I have come to discuss your stipulations for possible brides for your nephew.”

“Have you now?” He grinned, his yellowed teeth bared to her in a satisfied grin. “Go on.”

She cleared her throat. “It is my understanding that you have demanded your heir—”

“Justin.”

She nodded. “Justin. That he find a young woman who is an heiress.”

“Quite so. A woman of blood. The Belmonts fought with The Conqueror, you see. Though we did not rise up in the world until Henry Tudor and a Belmont were good friends. Old Bess liked us too. Made the man a belted earl.”

“Yes, well, I see, sir, why lineage is important to you.”

“Good. Good.” He pursed his thin lips and gave her a once over, smiling at what he saw. “What else?”

“Well, I also hear that you wish the woman to be well respected among society.”

“Cannot buy respectability. Nor inherit it. Must have it though to make your way these days. People are more petty than they ever were.”

“This brings me to the last point.”

He folded his hands and twitched his nose at her. “Which is what, dear lady?”

Why did she have a feeling he was enjoying this tremendously? She, on the other hand, was shaking in her new, uncomfortable shoes. “Your demand that he marry a rich woman.”

“Do I?” He shot a glance at his butler who had stood by stoically during the entire affair. “Did I say that, William?”

The butler nodded once.

“I must have done so, then. What about it, madam?”

“I do wonder, sir. That is, I had hoped, sir, that you might—well….”

“Spit it out, madam. What?”

Just how ill was the earl? He seemed more irascible than terminal. “I wondered if you might consider waiving this requirement?”

“Why? Money is a precious commodity. The more you have, the better you live.”

“True, true.”

“And from what I hear and read, you, madam, like money very much.”

Taken aback by his knowledge of her proclivities for fashion and cuisine among other things, she swallowed her outrage and offered a wan smile. “I do.”

“I wonder how you manage to afford your frivolous accoutrements? Hmm?”

All right, she was done being coy with this very alert man. “I have a business. For gentlemen. Men who seek wives come to me. For a fee, I arrange to have them meet ladies who are compatible. Lately, I have earned a large sum and—“

“And I understand you managed to pay off all of Henry’s debts.”

“Close enough. Five thousand more and I shall be free of him.”

“Commendable of you.”

“Thank you,” she responded with surprise and pleasure.

“You are welcome. I know this must have been difficult for you to survive his debtors. You see, I knew Henry. Very well. For decades, he ran with me. In fact, I used to take him to the tables and clean his pockets for him myself. Dastardly thing for me to do, but it was so easy. Too easy. I had to stop, told him so, too, because to win from him was nigh unto robbery. He was such a n’er do well for so many years, I was shocked to hear he had married. And Downey’s daughter, at that.”

At the mention of her father and how she had married Henry, she glanced at her hands and then at the earl. He was more awake and aware now. His skin pink. His pale eyes bright. “When I heard he had married the girl whom the sheets declared had been rescued by an American named Belmont, well, I had to send for him and learn if he belonged to us.”

“Naturally, you did.”

The old man nodded. “Justin was a good man. He is still.”

“A fine man.”

“A very noble man, my dear, in more ways than I ever was. And in all the ways that a man should be.”

“You are proud of him,” she said, with pride of him herself, and had to fish for a handkerchief in her tiny purse to blow her nose. “I am, too. What he did for me, my lord, eleven years ago was extraordinary. Honorable and very brave. I shall forever be grateful to him.”

“So then tell me why you and I discuss him, Kitty. I may call you Kitty, may I not?”

“Yes, sir.” She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “I have come today to ask you to reconsider your stipulations for a bride for Justin.”

“Intriguing. And why should I do that, Kitty?”

“Because, my lord, I want to marry him. I want to ask him to marry me.”

He pursed his thin lips. “Why?”

“I love him dearly. I have loved him since the first days he rescued me, and I shall love him until the day I die. I want to ask you to allow me to propose to your nephew, my lord.”

The old codger seemed to float and gloat. “Wonderful. A woman who finally knows her own mind.”

She tipped her head, confused. “Finally? My lord, what–?”

He waved a hand at her. “Why must I waive the stipulations?”

“Because I do not fit them all.”

He hemmed and hawed. “You are an heiress in your own right.”

She nodded.

“You are well received, well regarded. Provided, of course, no one ever learns about what happened in the pantry and the library.”

“I am. And no one will learn of it. They have not yet, and so I doubt it will come out.”

“And the last stipulation?”

“The dowry. The money. You must know, my lord, I have little. Henry left me nothing but the house in Cavendish Square. And for you to require Justin to marry a rich woman—”

“In my position, would I not look the idiot if I did not insist on money for my heir?”

“Well—”

“Every man worth his salt declares it to be so. Don’t you agree?”

“I do, but—”

“And a man should also insist on his wife being prudent with his money.” He stared at her, then smiled. “Come, tell me about your finances.”

“Oh, well, I–” She hesitated over that. Then realized any delay now was not only foolish but also counterproductive. About the need for Justin’s bride to be an heiress, had she succumbed to a presumption? One that did not exist? “I have paid off Henry’s debts with my earnings, and I live from moment to moment. But I plan to sell the house. If Justin will have me, I will not need it. I could bring that amount of money to the marriage, if he likes. And also, I will promise Justin to temper my spending on bonnets.”

“And perfume?”

Had she no secrets at all? Good God! Maggie had told Justin so many of her foibles, but clearly in turn, Justin had shared quite a few with his uncle! Oh, hell. Best to give in and get on with it! “Absolutely. No perfume or French chefs or silk negligees.”

“Oh, my dear girl, if you marry Justin, you best buy the most diaphanous negligees your Parisian lingerie designer can sew!”

“But I cannot marry Justin, my lord, unless you agree to free him from the necessity of marrying a rich woman.”

He leaned forward and gazed into her eyes. In his, she saw the joy of an old man with a delicious secret. “My pet, Justin has been free to marry any woman he wished for more than ten years. He did not wish any of them. He wanted only one woman, and she was—until a year and a half ago—beyond his reach.”

Tears dribbled down her cheeks. “You mean to say that he made up these stipulations? All of them?”

“The frivolous ones. The golden blonde. The widow. The mother.” The earl nodded. “Of course he did.”

“But your requirement for wealth?”

“I freed Justin of that requirement the day Henry Varney died. At his demand.”

“You knew then that Justin—?”

“Wanted you for all these years. Would court you if he could. Marry you if he could persuade you. Yes. Oh, yes.”

She sat there for an hour or more, visiting with the old man, laughing and talking with him. Finally, she asked one more question of him, “Where can I find Justin? He has disappeared from London, and none of the scandal mongers has even a clue where he might have gone.”

* * * *

Two days later, Kitty climbed down from the very same carriage with the very same coachman she’s had when she first came to Belmont Manor nearly two months ago. This time, the man seemed friendlier, but she was certain that was because he suspected risqué doings between her and the owner of the manse. The fact that she insisted he return in the hour from the village and that he not remove her trunk from his boot had him frowning.

“Should I not just wait here for you, milady?” he asked after she alighted.

“No, please.” I must have hope. I must appear to be confident of acceptance.

Justin’s butler opened the door, shock the most thrilling emotion inscribed on his usually placid features. “My lady. We are honored by your presence.”

She wanted to hoot at his pleasantry. “I wish to see Lord Belmont immediately.”

But wherever Justin was, whatever he had been doing while she paced in his receiving room, she was not prepared for how he looked when he did appear in the doorway.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he rasped, eyes bleary, sans cravat and coat, casual breeches of tan and cordovan riding boots splattered with mud and dust.

She faced him fully. Not having dared to sit, lest she appear too comfortable when she really felt like bouncing around the room like a ball, she smoothed her skirt. “I came to talk with you.”

“Talk to you? No. You are deaf!” He advanced on her, fire in his eyes.

She stood her ground, even if her heart twisted painfully in her chest at his anger. “Obviously, I am blind as well.”

That took him aback. But he turned on his heel and waved an arm. “Stay. Go. I care not.”

“But you do. I now know you do!”

“Late for that,” he muttered, almost to the door and taking her heart and all her hope with him.

“I went to see your uncle.” She tried one last lure.

He spun. “At the Abbey?”

“Yes.”

“What the devil for?”

Blurt it out! “I had to ask his blessing so that I could propose marriage to you.”

His mouth dropped open. He snapped it shut. She could not have shocked him more had she fallen to her knees like a lovesick swain to ask for his hand.

She had to work quickly. “After the garden party, I felt wretched, and I suspected something between you and Maggie.”

“Never!”

She was not deterred. “Something like friendship. Something like trust. I went to her and lo and behold, I see that the two of you have been scheming together!”

“No matter. Our plans did not work.”

“My sister loves me. I know she does. And she has never in her short life worked against me.”

“She is a wise woman.”

“Wiser than I, apparently. Yes.” Taking the advantage, she rushed onward. “Then the day after the party at the Darlingtons, I learned you had left London. Soon after, the gossips put out that Susanna Curtis would come here soon. I could not bear the idea that she might be here with you and that the only person who should ever enter your tiny wedding cottage is me.”

“Susanna grows roses,” he informed her as he searched her gaze for truth.

“But you did not plant them for her to nurture, Justin.” She stepped so close to him, she could smell his cologne, and the fragrance brought back memories of his musky skin pressed to her own. “I am the only one who should tend them. I am the golden blonde, the mother, the widow, the heiress to a grand old title. I am the well-respected woman you want. Need.”

“Too late. I am done with wanting you, chasing you.”

“You are. Oh, you most definitely are! And your uncle confirmed it for me.” She placed her palms over the soft cotton of his shirt and spread her fingers over his broad chest. “He released you from the requirement of wealth long ago. At your demand. I did not know. How could I? I did not know how you and he discussed your desire to have me. To marry me. I presumed he demanded wealth from your future bride. Oh, Justin, do not divide us now by your pride. I am the woman you have loved, my darling, for so many years that you refused to marry anyone else.”

He cursed. “He should not have told you.”

“You wanted me to realize for myself that you loved me. I know. I know.” With both hands, she cupped his cheeks.

Grasping her wrists, he pushed her away.

Desperate now, she would not let him go. “For all the years we lost together, let me make them up to you. Let me.”

“How can I?” he bellowed.

“Because you will not marry any other woman.”

“And I will not marry you. Not when you do not tell me why you wish to marry me.”

Had she not declared that? Had she not tossed pride and dignity to the winds to tell him how she—

She stepped to him once more, and this time she rose on tiptoes and brushed her mouth on his once, twice. “I adore you. I have since I was a young girl. I have since I was a sad and forlorn bride, forced to marry a man because my father owed him money. I have loved you through years and years when I endured a lonely, bitter relationship with a man who did naught but belittle me and spend my dowry. All those years, I loved you for how you had saved me from the French. Loved you for the man whose reputation in the ton was sterling. I loved you for the nobility of your character. Loved you when I presumed I would never have you near me. If I was deaf and blind to your true intent with me these past few months, you must forgive me for being a creature unused to having men wait upon her. Unused to happiness. Unused to having anyone make her dreams come true. I loved you, Justin Belmont. American and privateer. Englishman and gentleman. Heir and Viscount. I loved you eleven years ago, and I love you now.”

Placing her hands on his arms, she put them around her waist. Stiff, unyielding, he did not touch her with his hands. But neither did he retreat. She put her body flush to his, the warm contours of his muscles fitting so well to hers. “Will you please marry me, Justin? I fulfill all your requirements, darling. But most of all, marry me because I love you.”

He crushed her close to him, one hand around her waist, one hand cupping her hair, dislodging her bonnet. Clasped so near, she could not breathe. Dared not think beyond the moment and the hope he might accept her.

With a groan, he put one hand to her jaw and kissed her with lips and tongue and teeth. A ravenous mating of mouths, their kiss had her gasping for air.

Suddenly, he broke away. His gaze deep green with need, he pulled her to the hall and out the garden doors. She struggled to keep up with him. But he was relentless, tugging her along toward the cottage.

As they approached, she caught the aroma of roses. Young, small roses. Tears sprang to her eyes. As she passed the cuttings, now rooted and green as they had not been when last she was here, she saw they needed a dedicated gardener. She was that, she would be that. Here.

He thrust open the little blue cottage door and turned to pull her over the threshold and into the space. In her peripheral vision, she could tell not much had changed since she’d been here.

“Tell me you want me here to tend the roses,” she beseeched him, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, her mouth seeking his. “Tell me I may stay to tend to us.”

He caught her up in his arms and strode with her to the bed. There, he laid her down and began to divest her of her buttons and bows, opening her bodice to his gaze and his hands and his lips.

The power of his kisses on her breasts, the way he sucked her into his mouth had her arching into him, yearning for more. His hands pushed up her skirt, and when he caressed the bare skin of her thighs, he growled in delight. “Promise me you will never change.”

“Never grow old? No. Never stop loving you? Never.”

His fingers found her mound, invaded her core and stroked her deeply. “Promise me you will never go anywhere without me.”

“Never again.”

He leaned up to smile slowly, though tears stood in his eyes. “Never stop seeing your Turk.”

She laughed, tracing a fingertip over his bottom lip. “Come with me. Watch what he does.”

“I fear, my darling, if I did,” he whispered as lowered himself to put his mouth to her very wet cunny lips, “I would kill him.”

“Not you,” she chuckled but cried out as Justin spread her swollen lips open and darted his tongue to her clitoris and flicked it to madness. “Promise me you will dismiss your mistress.”

“I never had one.”

“No!” She pushed at him as he laughed. “You spread that word around London to make me jealous?”

“To torment you, yes.”

“You devil. Well,” she said as she undulated to his touch, “you will never take one now.”

“What time would I have for one,” he countered as he undid his flies and in one swift drive, possessed her to the hilt, “if I am forever making love to you?”

Her nails dug in his flesh. She bared her teeth as he began to stroke her with his thick and ready cock. “I shall make it a requirement that you are with me at every ball.”

He took one of her breasts in his mouth and sucked her high and hard. “To every ‘at home’ and wedding breakfast.”

“In every butler’s pantry and library we can find,” she teased.

He cupped her face, grinned at her and pumped her once more, sending hot rivers of delight through her body. “Including our own.”

“We shall scandalize the ton.”

“And everyone shall have on their lips tales of Countess Belmont’s Risqué Business.”

“That business now will be to please only you,” she promised as he surged inside her.

“How easy that will be, my darling,” he declared as he possessed her to the hilt and held, “Merely tell me that you love me and you will never leave my side.”

“The easiest promise I have ever made, my love. The easiest and the happiest.”

About the Author

Cerise DeLand believes great romances match feisty women with one—or more—men who cannot live without them. And Cerise knows men—all types of them from living in Italy, England, Japan, New York, Washington—and wild west Texas! She blends that intimate knowledge with a passion for European and Chinese art and travel to delightful lands she loves to write about.

An award-winning author, Cerise has also penned 18 print romances and mysteries (under another name), many of which have been selections of The Doubleday Book Club and The Mystery Guild. And what does this prolific author do when she’s not writing? Ah. She is an excellent cook. To taste and prepare a few of her delicacies, do come to her blog, especially on Thursdays for her Afternoon Delights, elegant simple refreshments to serve after your rendezvous! http://cerisedeland.blogspot.com

The Stanhope Challenge Series by Cerise DeLand

Now Available at Resplendence Publishing

Lord Stanhope’s Improper Proposal

Lord Adam Stanhope faces the Stanhope Challenge of wanting to marry...and knowing it will be loveless and tormenting. But he takes one look at his childhood friend, now a lovely widow, and proposes a marriage in name only. But when he learns that his bride is determined to be his lover as well as his wife, he faces a bigger challenge: Accept her delicious offer to delight them both in bed or spend his life in a greater torment...alone.

Lady Featherstone’s Fervent Affair

Willful Lady Lacy Featherstone knows how the lack of love can warp a person’s life. When her dashing fiancé, Colonel Wesley Stanhope retreats to his hunting lodge after a devastating cavalry injury in Spain, she sweeps into Wes’s hideaway with a scandalous proposal. Wes will make her his wife or she’ll make him her lover. But if Lacy cannot conquer the Hero of Talavera with logic and kisses, how risqué must she become to prove that she is his equal in fortitude…and the only one worthy to grace his bed?

Bonus! This title includes a free read, Lady Ramsey's Ribald Choices. Don't miss this additional installment to the Stanhope Challenge series!

Miss Darling’s Indecent Offer

Emma Darling needs a protector and when she appeals to Jack Stanhope, she knows that the noted rake has never wished for a wife. That’s fine by Emma, who wants a husband--and not just in name--but only for little while.

Jack is keen to avoid the bad luck that plagues Stanhope marriages, but this gamin beauty rouses his protective instincts and his satyr’s hunger. Can he escape their temporary marriage and a few, blissful weeks of carnal delight with his heart intact? Or will taking her to his bed ruin each of them for any other lover?

The Bastard’s Passionate Prize

When American merchantman Mark Stanhope, the bastard of the Stanhope clan, falls for stunning noblewoman Sirena Maxwell, she is already promised to another man. Mark's only hope to ease his wounded heart is the familiar comfort of the open ocean. That comfort is short-lived, for he finds her stowed away aboard his ship, and the high seas are no place for lady.

Engaged to the vile Colin de Ros, Sirena fears for her life and runs to the only man who can keep her safe: Mark Stanhope. She will sacrifice everything to make him her husband: her title, her family...her good name. When they are blown off course and taken hostage, she must surrender her body, her virtue and her desire to set them both free from the seraglio of a ruthless Barbary pirate.

If Mark cannot find a way to save Sirena's gorgeous body only for himself, then he must put her on display for these salacious brutes. Can their love survive the depravities of the Barbary pirate's court? Or will their passions enslave them both forever?

Also Available from
Resplendence Publishing

Tutoring Miss Molly by Lyn Armstrong

Desperate to help her sick aunt through another brutal winter on their meager farm, Molly Cambridge will do anything to survive. Even if it means becoming a courtesan at the scandalous Harmon Manor. To catch the eye of a wealthy benefactor, she must learn the art of carnal pleasure from a resentful Marquess. Yet her traitorous heart cannot resist the handsome tutor that harbors secrets that may destroy them both. With attempts on her life and time running short, love is a luxury a courtesan can ill afford.

Bored with the spoiled, decadent lifestyle of the infamous sex society, Lord Devlin Harman has little time for courtesans and their cunning wiles. Blackmailed into tutoring an inexperienced courtesan, he is determined to show the farm girl the error of her ways. However, a unique beauty exists beneath the mud-stained rags, causing his jaded heart to melt and his flesh to burn for her touch. If she does not become the chosen courtesan at the mistress auction, he must marry a devious aristocrat by spring. Can he let Molly be a courtesan to gain freedom from his marriage contract? Or will he sacrifice everything for a farm girl?

Heat Lightning by Patricia Pellicane

Arizona Heat Series, Book Three

Abby was going home for her mother’s wedding. Caught in a train crash, she was horrified to suddenly find a strange man laying over her. That he was attractive bore no consideration. This simply could not happen. “Don’t fall asleep,” she pleaded, “oh please, don’t.”  What had she ever done to cause this impossible moment? She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t! She’d never sleep while pressed to the train’s filthy floor, held in place by the full length of a strange man.

The night went wild with the sounds of shattering glass, crushing metal and wood splintering into a million jagged pieces. Linc realized he taken a blow to his head. Something had hit him hard. He was bleeding, he thought, but the pain was already easing some. There wasn’t an inch of space and nothing he could do about it. Something held him in place. Hours later he awoke to find himself sprawled over the softest women. It took a moment before he remembered. She was that neat, little piece he’d been talking to seconds before the crash. Damn, if she didn’t smell and taste delicious. Could he be blamed for sampling a morsel of luscious woman? After all if she truly didn’t want it, wouldn’t she have stopped him?

Lady of the Isle by Temple Hogan

From the Sea Series, Book One

From the sea, two tormented souls are washed ashore—one a beautiful, mysterious lady, the other a man who'd once been the King's warrior and is now a lowly fisherman. As Rioghnach and Cormac learn to heal and trust in love again, they spend sun-seared days and starlit nights exploring the need that draws them together.

The Trouser Game by Genella deGrey

Miss Jillian Kelley, a young woman on the brink of a new millennium, has just returned from University in the States. Her new knowledge of the world—and its endless possibilities facilitates a desperate need to break free from her mother's old-fashion Victorian parlor ideal of proper behavior.

As Miss Kelley avidly pursues her childhood crush—a traditional Brit with property– a handsome American with whom she shared a passionate night comes to call. The insufferable intrusion is annoying, however, his irresistible seductive ways draw her cravings to the surface like the rise of a tide.

Bradley Townsend accepted with pleasure the bequeathed gift of Miss Kelley's virtue the very night they met, but the adventurous blue-eyed beauty stole his heart, leaving him holding nothing but a note in the morning. There's no way in Hell he's going to let her slip through his fingers—even if he has to hop on a ship, follow her home and seduce her all over again.

Infernal Devices by Abigail Barnette

The Two Aces. Victorian London’s most salacious secret, the club is a place where erotic fantasies are played out among clockwork automatons and aether powered machines. Where nothing is off limits and the pleasures are as wicked as the imagination will allow...

Permilia Deering goes to The Two Aces looking for the sexual excitement that she knows she will not find with the man to whom she is affianced, notorious cold-fish Wallace Sterling. On her first visit to the club, she meets the Ace of Spades, a masked stranger who drives her to heights of passion she’s never dreamed possible—and makes her seriously reconsider becoming a mannerly society wife.

When Wallace Sterling first glimpses his fiancée standing outside The Two Aces, he assumes she’s uncovered his secret identity—the Ace of Spades. But Permilia has no idea that her intended is living a double life, and Wallace worries that he’ll be out of the picture once she gets a taste of what the Ace of Spades can offer her...

The Pirate Bride  by Temple Hogan

Book Three in the Pirate's Booty Series

Red Charlie is the scourge of the sea, the devil himself, so imagine Jackson Shaw’s stunned disbelief when he recovers from a drunken night of revelry and discovers he’s married to the infamous pirate captain. Furthermore, he did not acquit himself with much sexual finesse on his wedding night. Now he wants to redeem his mangled pride, but a few nights in Red Charlie’s arms will make him forget about pride…

Charity, known to the world as Red Charlie ever since she was abducted by the same bloodthirsty pirate who killed her parents, relaxed her guard for one night and was ushered into a hasty marriage with a man who mesmerized her. But when the bridegroom mistakes her for a whore on their wedding night and expects her to perform sexual acts she knows nothing about, she runs away. But there’s no running away when Jackson captures her pirate ship and refuses to return it unless she spends two weeks as his wife, with all that entails.

Charity sets out to teach Jackson a much needed lesson, but the tropical nights of lovemaking teach her a few things about men that she never expected to learn.

Find Resplendence titles at the following retailers

Resplendence Publishing
www.ResplendencePublishing.com

Amazon
www.Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble
www.BarnesandNoble.com

Target
www.Target.com

Fictionwise
www.Fictionwise.com

All Romance E-Books
www.AllRomanceEBooks.com

Mobipocket
www.Mobipocket.com

1 Place for Romance
www.1placeforromance.com