A Game of Persuasion: Extended Prologue for the Art of Ruining a Rake (The Naughty Girls Book 3)

This is the companion prologue for the full-length novel,
The Art of Ruining a Rake

A night she’ll never forget…

Miss Lucy Lancester has loved her brother’s best friend, Roman Alexander, for as long as she can remember. So devotedly, she’s vowed never to marry anyone else. But her beloved libertine is hardly aware of her existence, and not the least deserving of her affection. Deciding her cause is lost, she makes plans to open a girls’ school in Bath. There’s just one thing she needs to do before she confirms her spinsterhood forever: spend one blissful night in Roman’s arms. But her handsome rogue isn’t ready to have the tables turned. It will take more than a coquettish smile to turn his head. She must play a game…of persuasion.

Don’t miss the full-length follow up book,
The Art of Ruining a Rake

Now available!

He wants her…

Practiced rake Roman Alexander never meant to seduce his best friend's sister. He certainly never intends to do it again. The handsome scoundrel has never felt more compelled to be a better man. But the damage has been done, for his buttoned-up spinster refuses to marry a bounder like him—and maddeningly, she doesn't seem to
like
him. Nevertheless, he can't seem to forget her, or her passionate response to his kisses. How much danger could there be in one more try?

She wants revenge

Practical headmistress Lucy Lancester naively believes her charming rogue has moved on to his next conquest, leaving her free to cherish their one night together for the rest of her bluestocking days. Until the afternoon he arrives at her school intent on proving their one night together wasn't enough—and this time, the scandal can't be contained. Well, two can play at that. How hard can it be to ruin a rake?

    
The Naughty Girls

    
Novella Three

Extended Prologue companion for

     
The Art of Ruining a Rake

For my readers, who wanted all the sexy details about Lucy and Roman’s affair in
The Trouble with Being Wicked
. You ladies are insatiable!

Chapter 1

London, England

The Season, 1814

MISS LUCY LANCESTER was in love with a rake. It was a truth she had accepted long ago, leaving her no reason to question it. Roman Alexander, Lord Montborne, had been a twinkle-eyed lad. He was now a handsome, libidinous charmer. Lucy’s father had been exactly such a man, and if she knew nothing else, she knew
she
was exactly like her mother.

With a wistful sigh for what should never be—and a shudder for what she feared was very much out of her control—Lucy turned on her heel and marched across the small bedchamber she’d been assigned.

The town house that her brother Ashlin, Lord Trestin, had let for her and her sister’s come-out in London wasn’t quite wide enough to give her real satisfaction. She required at least twice as much space to pace properly, but seeing as Trestin was taking his lessons at Gentleman Jackson’s, there was nowhere else she
could
go. Without Trestin to escort her through the city—streets he termed
dangerous
and
frightening—
she could do nothing more than slowly go mad, trapped inside these Chinese-papered walls.

Trapped with her thoughts of Roman.

Which were sure to drive her mad.

As mad as her mother had been?

Lucy grimaced. No, she couldn’t think of that. She had plenty to worry about without wondering if her mother’s tainted blood lurked in her veins.

Lucy’s fingers grazed her stomach; a foreboding sense of futility had put her off her luncheon. Maintaining her optimism was always most difficult when she had recently seen Roman. Though the intervening hours since Lady Ainsworth’s dinner party should have afforded her plenty of time to come to terms with what had occurred there—or
not
occurred, as better described last evening—the distressing fact was, she could never forget the hopeless sensation of being entirely invisible to the man she adored.

Oh, he’d nodded politely
at
her. For that heartbeat when his eyes had locked with hers, she’d been swept into a heady fantasy wherein Roman Alexander, the man she’d loved since she’d been a girl of fifteen, had actually
seen
her.

But he hadn’t really looked at her. His attention had barely slid away from the pretty young thing at his side. With shaking hands, Lucy had gripped the ivory silk of her new ball gown and bobbed him a curtsey in return. That slight movement had been enough to break the moment. He’d turned to the comely miss at his side and that had been that. He hadn’t approached Lucy later, not even to remark on the fine crush of people, and she hadn’t gone to him. When it came to her brother’s best friend, short of lifting her skirt and offering Roman a peek up it, she couldn’t expect more than a passing acknowledgment of her presence.

As she crossed her bedchamber a third time, she reminded herself that she was
relieved
to know Roman had no interest in her. At least she needn’t worry she’d find herself leg-shackled to a man who would show more interest in other men’s wives than his own!

Not that she ought to so much as
think
of Roman as husband material. Hers or anyone’s. She couldn’t fool herself into believing that Roman Alexander had any interest in settling into marriage. For if she had one iota of hope, she might set her cap at him.

She might try to
marry
him.

No. Roman was like her father. A rakehell, in every sense of the word. Quick to smile, quick to tease, curving his lips with some amusing secret he couldn’t be trusted to keep. A man who could turn a woman’s head at twenty paces, then dash her hopes before he even reached her.
That
was the man she knew. A marquis without a useful thought in his head, without a coin in his pocket that wasn’t owed.

And yet, nothing could dissuade her from wanting Roman to take notice of her. Even the fact that he was nine years her senior, faithless as a scoundrel, foppish as a popinjay and hardly aware of her existence, didn’t deter her heart.

Love was problematic that way.

And yet, that didn’t mean she didn’t crave the feeling of being
seen
. To be gazed at the same way Roman looked at other women…

To feel that he saw her, inside and out…

If just
once
he would look at her that way…If she could believe for one precious second that he knew what agony was in her heart…If she could feel him brush his hand against her waist and see the proof in his pale blue eyes that he knew she was a
woman,
and not just Trestin’s baby sister…

To put it bluntly, she could accept being a spinster forever after that.

But such heavenly contact required him to look at her for more than an instant. For that, she needed an occasion to be near him. Those opportunities had been few and far between—much fewer and farther between than she’d expected when she’d grudgingly agreed to make her debut in Society.

Drawing Roman’s notice had been a foolish hope. She saw that now. But sheltered on her brother’s estate in Devon, she’d naïvely believed that simply being in London at the same time as Roman would present her with plenty of occasion to turn his head.

As she’d almost managed to do not long ago, on a windswept beach near their home in Brixcombe-on-the-Bay.

Lucy curled her fingers into fists. So close. She’d been so close to making him
see
her. Then they’d all tromped to London and scattered to the four winds. The occasional glance across the punch bowl wasn’t going to be enough to change Roman’s view of her as a fatuous little girl.