This Rake of Mine (2 page)

And worst of all, she wanted to feel it. His kiss, his touch, the feel of his body, it made her ache in response to having him up against her.

Oh, this wasn't proper.

She was betrothed. To another man. Whose name she couldn't for the life of her remember at the moment.

A man, she dared venture, who would never kiss her like this.

Not teasing her tongue to come play with him, tugging at her bottom lip with his teeth, nor deepening his kiss until a soft moan whispered and trembled up from within her.

For one wondrous moment, she clung to him, let him kiss her, let his hand travel up the length of her hip, rising along her waist. His touch brought with it this tantalizing glimpse of the very temptation that made innocence seem a poor commodity.

Ruin me
, she thought.
Ruin me, thoroughly
.

That is, until his fingers roamed higher, until they came to cup her breast, rolling over her nipple. His touch sent shock waves through her body, made her thighs clench together, made her ache
down there
.

She sucked in a deep breath and rose up on her toes. Oh, dear heavens, this was too much. She struggled to issue a protest, to flee all the way back to her betrothed, even as Lord John's expert and talented fingers teased her bodice open, leaving her breast exposed—and if that wasn't bad enough—he was taking advantage of her nakedness by letting his mouth roam over her soft, silken flesh, leaving her nipple hardened and puckered, her knees buckling beneath her.

"So my sweetling, show me where we can be alone," he whispered into her ear, the scent of brandy assailing her senses, "and I'll make good my promise to see you well completed before the curtain arises."

There was more?

Oh, dear heavens, how could that be?
How could she stand more of this torment?

That, as it turned out, was the least of her worries, for just then she spied her mother and future mother-in-law standing a few feet away. Lady Oxley gaped in shock, and her mother looked positively ill.

"Leave me be!" she sputtered, trying to get free of him, but to her horror, the lace on her sleeve caught on one of his buttons and held her tangled in his arms all that much longer.

Long enough for Lady Oxley to find her voice, the lady's deafening shrieks bringing an end to Miranda's betrothal, and leaving her utterly ruined…

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Miss Emery's Establishment for the Education

of Genteel Young Ladies

Bath, England

1810

"I
don't see why
he
has to be allowed in," Lady Philippa Knolles complained to her cousin, Miss Felicity Langley, as they crept down the back stairs of their school.

"Pippin, when the Duke of Parkerton sends his brother to perform an errand of such a delicate nature," Felicity explained, "one cannot simply bar the door to the man. Even if he is a disreputable… a horrible…"

"Rake," supplied Felicity's twin sister, Thalia, who brought up the rear of this illicit party. Tally, as she was known, was not one for delicacy of words, and besides, she was rather excited at the prospect of getting a look at such a man.

To Tally the word
rake
conjured all sorts of dreamy possibilities, like
pirate
or
highwayman
or
smuggler
. And the very notion that Miss Emery had banished the entire school to their rooms for the afternoon until their "visitor" had departed was just too much to bear.

A rake at Miss Emery's? Why, it was like history in the making, a moment not to be missed.

"Really," Tally had declared, "how does Miss Emery expect us to recognize this sort of man if we have never seen an example of one?"

Felicity had readily agreed. Pippin had been a bit more hesitant than her daring cousins, but in the end, she'd relented and joined the party, if only because she too held a secret curiosity about the infamous rake, Lord John Tremont.

"Who was it that Lord John ruined?" Pippin asked.

"Miss Miranda Mabberly," Felicity supplied without hesitation. "He kissed her rather inappropriately at the opera."

Felicity's knowledge of the
ton
never ceased to amaze Pippin, especially given that up until two years ago, the Langley sisters had never even set foot in England, having spent their entire lives traveling the world with their father, Lord Langley, a distinguished member of the Foreign Office.

"Oh, dear," Pippin said. "If that is so, why didn't he just marry Miss Mabberly?"

Tally finished the story, for at the moment Felicity was timing their descent to ensure that they didn't run into the headmistress or one of their other teachers, especially their decorum teacher, Miss Porter.

"Miss Mabberly was betrothed to the Earl of Oxley at the time," Tally whispered. "Oxley cried off when he learned what happened."

"And Miss Mabberly?" Pippin asked. "What of her?"

Tally shrugged. "I don't particularly know. Probably the usual in those circumstances. A fatal decline, banishment from good society, not that it really matters, she was ruined after all."

"How dreadful!" Pippin whispered.

Not to let the story pass without her own stamp upon it, Felicity added, "I daresay Miss Mabberly ended up in some Eastern harem or married off to some Colonial merchant." To Felicity, either fate was of equal degradation, considering her own matrimonial aspirations were nothing less than to marry a duke, thus having earned herself the nickname of "Duchess" at a very early age.

Taking another look down the stairwell, and seeing that the coast was clear, she waved her accomplices to follow her.

Down the steps they crept and then dashed across the hall and into a nearby closet. Having feigned a megrim earlier, Felicity had been excused from Miss Porter's class and had used the time to remove the buckets, mops and brooms that usually filled the tiny space.

After they wedged themselves in, Tally looked about their quarters and sighed. "I suppose this is the best we can do," she said, setting down the fourth member of their party, Brutus, her ever-present companion. Though the small black dog had been a gift to Felicity and Thalia during their father's tenure in Austria, Brutus had taken to Tally from the first moment she'd gathered him up into her arms.

And Tally never minded (well, maybe a little) that her dog appeared to most like a little clown, with his big round eyes and funny tufted mane of hair. She took great pleasure in pointing out that Brutus possessed the heart of a lion, fearless and loyal, despite his demure stature.

Brutus immediately went to work inspecting their hiding place, sniffing at the pungent smells in the closet and finally giving his opinion by shaking his monkeylike head in protest. "Ruff!"

"Tally," Felicity whispered sharply. "Do make him be still! He'll ruin everything with his sniffing and yapping. I still say we should have left him with Nanny Gerta. It's a wonder Miss Emery allows him."

Tally gathered Brutus up and hugged him close, shooting her sister a dark glare, which the Duchess ignored with the imperial grace that only a future wife of a duke could possess.

Dogs at Miss Emery's were as much against the rules as rakes, however Lord Langley's infamous charm had gone a long way in convincing the usually impervious lady to allow Tally to keep her dear dog at school.

After all, Brutus could trace his bloodlines to Marie Antoinette's own beloved affenpinscher. Such lofty connections had a way of bending even Miss Emery's rigid rules.

"Are you sure Miss Emery is going to make Lord John use the back stairs?" Tally asked. She wasn't overly fond of dark enclosed spaces and had a growing look of panic about her.

"Yes," Felicity said with her usual certainty. "She can't let him go up the main stairs—why, everyone would be peeping out their doors at him." She opened the closet door a bare crack to afford Tally some light. "Besides, with Bella's room in the back of the house, it is the most expedient route for him to take."

And expediency was the order of the day.

Lady Arabella Tremont, the Duke of Parkerton's daughter and Lord John's niece, was being sent home in disgrace. She was the first student in the history of Miss Emery's to have caused such a scandal, having been caught kissing one of the stable lads, and her removal was being conducted with as much discretion and secrecy as one could hope to find in a house full of young ladies prone to gossip.

Tally hugged Brutus close and looked around their hiding spot like it was turning into a prison cell. "Duchess, I don't know how much longer—"

Her words came to an abrupt halt as the bell over the front door jangled with a solid tug. Almost immediately the click of Miss Emery's sturdy boots echoed forth.

The girls held their breath as they listened intently, peering through the cracked door, praying they would spy their quarry.

"This way, my lord," Miss Emery said.

Now if only Felicity's prediction would come true—and Miss Emery would escort Lord John in their direction.

And sure enough, she did.

"Make certain you get a good look at him," Felicity whispered in Tally's ear. "I want you to draw his likeness for the
Chronicles
." In the unlikely case that the Duchess wasn't able to find her duke, she kept a very detailed journal of all the eligible bachelors in England. And while Lord John was a rakish devil, hardly deserving mention, he was still unmarried and therefore qualified for a place in her
Chronicles
. She turned to her cousin. "Pippin, you as well. You have an excellent eye for detail and will ensure that Tally gets his likeness correct."

And then the moment came, and all four pairs of eyes peered through the crack at the rare sight of a rake.

In a flash he strode past their hiding spot, and then all they saw was his back as he climbed the stairs to his niece's chamber.

"I never," Tally whispered.

"Nor I," Pippin added.

Felicity, for once, was silent. Dumbfounded at what they had seen.

Lord John was nothing like they'd been led to believe.

"I thought he'd be—"

"No, I was convinced he'd be—"

Felicity put it most concisely. "Why, he's dreadful!"

Dreadful
was the word that Lord John Tremont would have found most fitting for the situation—though not quite in the same way as Felicity.

At the moment, any place, even Newgate, would have been more welcome than having to endure another moment in Miss Emery's politely strained company. The narrow, pinch-faced woman's unforgiving arched glances and barely concealed glare were yet another reminder of the lowly regard Society held for him.

He, who had once been the ton's favorite, the most invited Corinthian about town, was now reduced to being his brother's errand boy, fetching home his disgraced niece in quiet obscurity, rather than have Parkerton lower himself to such a task. Certainly, there was no love lost between the duke and his disgraced sibling, no familial sense of obligation that could have enticed Jack to come to Bath on his brother's behalf. There was, however, the matter of Jack's outstanding debts, and his brother's willingness to pay some of them in exchange for this favor. And since his brother hadn't allotted him a single penny from the family coffers since the Mabberly incident, having cut him off completely, it was an offer Jack could ill afford to pass up.

So here he was, walking on eggshells through this all-too female domain, when he should be home minding his own affairs instead of carting his niece's various hatboxes and trunks and portmanteaus down the back stairs like a common footman.

It didn't escape his notice that he had been led to the rear of the house, or that there wasn't anyone else about, the students having most likely been banished for fear the very sight of him would infect their sensibilities (as if young English ladies possessed any measure of sense), but he ignored the insult and turned his thoughts to matters far more pressing than his errant niece's behavior.

Gads, perhaps if his brother had spent less on clothes and shoes for the girl and more on decorum lessons, she wouldn't be leaving school early and he wouldn't have been summoned up from Sussex to perform this ignoble chore.

Lost as he was in these thoughts on this, his fourth trip down the stairs with Arabella's belongings, he didn't pay any heed to where he was going as he bounded off the last step and found himself colliding with someone.

And not just anyone, he soon discovered as his armload of luggage went flying into the air with what looked like a sewing basket—threads and yarns, knitting needles and poor bits of ribbon mixing with Arabella's ludicrously rich collection of belongings.

Even as the yarn tangled, the threads unraveled, and a feminine cry of "Gracious heavens!" rose in the air, Jack realized his adversary was about to fall as well, so he quickly wrapped his arms around the warm and curved lines of only one such creature.

A lady.

And not some young, soon-to-be debutante, but a woman grown.

Such curves he knew all too well. Had spent years seducing and exploring. Despite the fact that it had been some time since he'd been in such close proximity to any woman, like most inherent talents, his memory and his blood surged with bold clarity, and he pulled her close.

To keep her from falling.

"Oooh," she gasped as she slammed into him, her breasts pressing against his chest, her fingers splayed across his shoulders. Fingers that quickly turned into balled fists and began to pound against him, undermining his already tenuous stance.

"Careful, miss," he told her. Certainly he wasn't to be blamed for keeping her from hurting herself? Why, he'd done her a favor.

Perhaps it didn't help matters that his hand had landed right on the curves of her sweetly rounded bottom and his arm had wound around her slender form until his palm had come to rest beneath a perfectly formed breast.

He looked down at her, feeling a bit bemused; surely, if there was to be some reward in this errand, it was a short lapse back into his rakish past.