Rake's Redemption (Scandalous Miss Brightwells Book 1) Read online

  Lady Brightwell tapped one of the fans, indicating to the assistant that she’d take that, too. Looking extremely satisfied, she said, “I think a treat is in order, Fanny. An ice at Gunter’s after your siblings appear, perhaps?”

  A treat?

  Fanny was in no mood for treating herself after the events of last night. She’d treated herself at Lord Quamby’s, treated herself to the heated kisses and the hot and humid embrace of muscled, manly flesh, and now it appeared she’d completely miscalculated.

  Yes, miscalculated when it came to giving her mama what she required: a rich and titled son-in-law; and miscalculated when it came to achieving Fanny’s heart’s desire: a man she desired and with whom she was already madly in love.

  Oh, dear Lord, how could she have been so stupid…

  She closed her eyes briefly and concentrated on holding back the nausea. She had only ulcerous sores and limbs of white, marbled fat flanking Lord Slyther’s all-too-enthusiastic Magnificent Member to look forward to.

  “Are you all right, Fanny?”

  Again, Fanny forced a smile.

  “You groaned.” Her mother took her wrist, the smile that brightened her face so at odds with her usual sour expression. “Later, after we visit Gunter’s, we must talk. You’re to be married soon and there are some things I need to tell you”—Lady Brightwell rarely spoke so kindly but she did so now, her tone low in their deserted corner of the shop—“about what to expect.”

  They were near the door, the obsequious shop assistant wrapping their purchases, when Antoinette and Bertram rushed in. Their handsome faces were flushed and showed signs of barely tempered exertion or excitement, very different from the usual languor displayed by world-weary Bertram.

  “Mama! Have you heard the news?” Antoinette’s eyes were like saucers; Bertram looked green around the gills. It was he who clapped his hand over his sister’s mouth, muttering, “Not here, Antoinette. Have you no sense of decorum?” before discreetly ushering his mother further from the curious looks of the assistant. Fanny followed. This was most unlike her brother.

  “What news?” Fanny tugged at Bertram’s sleeve, for now he was gaping like a fish, unable to say what Antoinette had been about to say so peremptorily.

  “Lord Slyther’s dead.” Antoinette’s voice shook. She looked uncertainly at her mother. “Of a stroke…around midday, I overheard it said.”

  Relief was Fanny’s immediate reaction. Relief that they were in a public place so her mother could not beat her over the head with whatever object came to hand, and relief that salvation had come before it was too late.

  Lady Brightwell put her hand to the wall to steady herself. The blood drained from her face while her eyes blazed like they were being stoked by the fires of Hell. Fanny’s joy at her reprieve was tempered somewhat by the observation. Her mother was never going to forgive her unless she succeeded with Lord Fenton.

  By all the saints in Heaven, though, she was!

  “Mama, you need to sit down.” Fanny’s tone was soothing, as if her first concern was her mother, but when she laid her hand upon her mother’s sleeve Lady Brightwell shook it off.

  “Stupid girl,” she hissed. She drew a staccato breath. Fearfully, her children watched while they formed a barrier to potential interest from other shoppers. Like a spider about to strike, Lady Brightwell glared at Fanny from the shadow of her bonnet as she tossed her tippet around her neck and stepped forward. “Stupid, stupid girl, Fanny! You’d be a widow right now if you’d played your cards right and all our fortunes would be made. But no, you were too precious and too selfish to do what was required.”

  Antoinette and Bertram looked downcast. Shuffling one foot over the flagstones, Antoinette ventured, “I saw Mr Bramley today and he was very attentive. I’m sure he’s going to make me an offer and as he is the Earl of Quamby’s heir—”

  “Shut up, Antoinette!” Her mother rounded on her. “You understand nothing of the ways of men. You think because you are loose and obliging with your affections that a wedding band will secure the deal?” She shook her fist at her youngest. “They’ll be only too delighted to secure their pleasures without having to negotiate a marriage contract with ticklish family who consider there are better contenders than the Brightwells. You are, there’s no getting round the fact”—the substance appeared to drain from her and she slumped against the wall—“not every designing mama’s dream.”

  Chapter 8

  Lady Brightwell was in no mood to accept the various attempts made by her offspring to paint their circumstances more rosily. In the bleak hues she had cast over their futures, ‘Fanny’s gross selfishness and disregard had ruined those who had sacrificed everything on her account’.

  “Fanny will find another brilliant match, Mama,” Bertram generously predicted as Lady Brightwell directed her three children—in clipped tones and with a brow as glowering as they’d ever seen—to arrange for a conveyance to take her home.

  To Fanny’s relief, she had acquiesced in allowing the rest of them to walk, provided they return directly to their dingy residence, but she was in no mood to be mollified by Bertram.

  “You’re as much a foolish optimist over your sister’s prospects as you are over your fortune at the gaming tables, Bertram,” Lady Brightwell snapped, slapping away his hand as he solicitously tugged her skirt clear of the door of the hackney.

  “Really, Mama, you all but forced the match upon her,” he persisted, unperturbed by the set-down.

  “Did it never occur to you that your folly is as much a reason why your sisters must accept unpalatable alliances as your father’s impecuniousness is the cause of our distress?” Lady Brightwell slammed the door and glared out of the window before rapping on the roof for the jarvey to take up the reins.

  Antoinette had by this stage lost a little of her usual effervescence. “I’ve never seen Mama quite so angry,” she said as the three of them set off along the pavement.

  It was a lovely day and Fanny had used the excuse of needing the good air in the hopes of spying Lord Fenton. Her distracted answer obviously needled her sister who said, “Perhaps Mama has good reason to be angry with you after all, Fanny—for all that I sympathise—since you could have been married in the morning and a widow by noon if you’d simply done what was required.”

  “I’d have been a widow before the wedding breakfast was digested,” muttered Fanny in disgust, “if Lord Slyther had tried to have his way with me. Ugh.” She shuddered. “Then I’d have had to wear widow’s weeds for a year and how do you suppose that would have advanced my chances?”

  Bertram looked quizzically at her. “Surely it wouldn’t have mattered, Fanny, since you’d have inherited a fortune? Lord Slyther had no children. I can see why Mama is down in the mouth.”

  “Fanny wants to marry Lord Fenton,” Antoinette said matter-of-factly. “She thinks he’s going to ask her in the next few days. That’s why she’s not concerned by what’s happened to Lord Slyther.”

  This came as such a shock to Bertram that he dropped the monocle he was using to ogle the passing young ladies.

  “Marry Lord Fenton?” He gawped at his sisters as if the idea were preposterous. “My, you’ve aimed high this time. I mean, after Alverley, surely—”

  “Lord Fenton thinks Fanny”—Antoinette giggled behind her hand— “highly desirable.” Fanny rounded on her with a glare before she continued. “And, after the way they carried on at Lord Quamby’s, I’d say there’s every chance he’ll make her an offer before tomorrow is ended. Isn’t that what a gentleman has to do when he compromises a lady?” Antoinette tossed her pretty head, more concerned with the interest she was receiving from the passing males than her sister’s patent horror.

  “What are you saying, Antoinette?” Fanny felt about to swoon on the spot.

  Antoinette wrapped a ringlet around her finger as she turned her dazzling smile upon her sister. “Just that I saw you and Lord Fenton when you thought you were alone and I realised that you wer
e tricking him into having to make you an offer. That’s when I realised that I, too, could be as clever, and why I agreed to slip away with Mr Bramley this morning.” She looked smug as she took Bertram’s arm. At his expression, which was more quizzical than Fanny’s scandalised horror, she added gaily, “Mr Bramley isn’t nearly as nice as Lord Fenton but he is Lord Quamby’s heir.”

  But nice as Lord Fenton was, he was also Fanny’s only chance.

  Her only chance to escape a life that was going to be even more intolerable than it had been before.

  “Isadora, has there been a letter for me?” she asked as the three Brightwell siblings swept into the drawing room.

  Isadora rose, turning from what she’d been doing at their unannounced arrival, her face ashen, and Fanny saw that her mother lay prostrate upon the sofa, a lace handkerchief covering her face.

  “I’ve given her a draught to help soothe her,” she said. “It’s perhaps a good thing that she’s sleeping when you arrive.” She sent Fanny a considering look and Fanny was highly conscious of the faint recrimination.

  She raised her head proudly and took a few steps forward as if the check on Lady Brightwell but instead to say under her breath, “I will prevail, Isadora. All seems without hope right now but I promise you that before the season is over I’ll have secured my heart’s desire. And that can only benefit you, too. You’ll see.”

  * * *

  But when she went to her own bedchamber she, too, lay prostrate upon the bed to stare at the ceiling.

  Lord Slyther was dead and it was a merciful relief.

  But what would happen to Fanny now.

  And what did Lord Fenton feel upon reflection on their incredible union, Fanny had no idea. Did he feel tricked—as Antoinette regarded it—or was he was at this very moment pondering his obligations towards Miss Brightwell, not having yet been galvanised into letting her know his intentions. He owed her something, surely—a word of reassurance at the very least?

  But no word came all that long evening, or even the next morning.

  Just before noon, the parlour maid appeared bearing a silver salver on which lay an elegant cream wafer. Fanny cried out with relief as she snatched up the correspondence, but her desperation turned to abject misery as she studied the missive before handing it to her sister.

  “From Mr Bramley,” she whispered, feeling akin to some pathetic creature slinking into a chair with its tail between its legs.

  Gaily, Antoinette scanned the few lines. “Can I go riding with Mr Bramley in his high-perch phaeton this afternoon, Mama?” she asked.

  Her mother did not look up from her stitching. Wearily she said, “I see no harm in it,” adding with a sigh, “I see no harm in anything anymore. Once the lease runs out on this place, we’re all doomed.”

  Fanny felt doomed already. Dazed, doomed and undecided as to what course she could take. Two days had not yet passed. She couldn’t behave like some eager strumpet and demand her beloved explain himself—not when she couldn’t very well explain her own actions.

  She hadn’t even the heart to reiterate her warning to Antoinette about her suspicions that Bramley was only using her—though she did mutter, “Be wary and don’t go off with him alone.”

  She felt a fool for miscalculating so badly—like a traitor to her family and, worse than that, like she carried a great hole in her heart.

  She’d pegged Fenton for a romantic. A man of sincerity. The words he’d whispered in her ear at Lord Quamby’s had filled her with hope for the future.

  So Antoinette went riding, returning full of glee owing to the admiration she’d received from all quarters. She was flushed and as pretty, Fanny reluctantly conceded, as she’d ever seen her. Antoinette, her pea goose of a sister, was either going to ruin them all or win the marriage Fanny had failed to secure, which would ensure their mother’s eternal devotion.

  * * *

  Once again, Fanny prostrated herself along the length of the window seat in their bedroom, between bouts of lonely weeping, while the others played backgammon in front of the drawing room fire. She could speak to no one of her distress. She’d taken a gamble on love, having eschewed the solid, albeit unpalatable, offer that would have made them all comfortable and secure…

  And she had lost.

  Adding to her torment was another night of Antoinette’s endless chatter, after the candle had been snuffed out, with tales ever more marvellous as to the great stir Miss Antoinette was making in London society. Fanny stared, eyes glazed, into the darkness of their bedroom, and wondered how a future without the handsome rake Lord Fenton would be even tolerable.

  She drifted off to sleep at dawn, after a seemingly eternal night of tossing and turning, and did not awake until noon…to find a letter waiting for her in the drawing room.

  Chapter 9

  Fenton twitched the ribbons of his high-perch phaeton as he searched the throng of exquisitely attired promenaders. He was as restless and uncertain of his reward as he’d been when his horse had taken the lead at St Leger three years before—and won him a purse that had trebled the amount he’d lost the night before.

  Gambling! His mother was happy that he’d got over the gambling mania that had ruled his life as a young buck, but not so happy at his choice of the one woman who might keep him interested enough in domesticity not to want to stray from the straight and narrow again. If only he knew his mother would not make his life living hell if he crossed her in choosing a wife she was dead set against. Though, truth to tell, his mother’s furious objections were only the start of Fenton’s concerns.

  Despite his anticipation, he was in a quandary, unable to decide what to do though he knew what he wanted. He wanted Miss Brightwell to come to him with an unblemished reputation so the whole world—his mother included—could endorse her as his viscountess.

  But Miss Brightwell’s nocturnal visit to Lord Slyther had rattled him. While it did not confirm that she was the man’s mistress, or that her reputation was besmirched, or that she had not been a virgin before she and Fenton had got so gloriously carried away, it posed all sorts of questions. Questions he needed answered before he was willing to proceed along the marriage path.

  So, after despatching a note that he’d meet Miss Brightwell in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour, he’d come prepared for every contingency, including a ring in his coat pocket should he decide on the spur of the moment to throw caution to the wind and ask for Miss Brightwell’s hand in marriage. That was his preferred course of action, for he’d had enough of dalliance. His Continental Tour had whittled away the mystique of feminine enticements. With the looks, leisure and licence to do whatever he chose, he’d become, quite frankly, bored to tears—until five nights ago when Miss Fanny Brightwell…

  At the mere thought of their passionate encounter his heart beat out the maddest, most creative tattoo before settling back into its steady routine. Discreetly, he put his hand to his breeches and took a deep breath. One way or another, he was going to have exclusive rights over the damnably delightful, enigmatic Miss Fanny Brightwell, or he would go mad. Their exquisite encounters had been far too cursory to satisfy a man who liked to spend hours bringing a woman to climax before following, himself, into explosive abandonment.

  Fenton shaded his eyes and perused the crowd more closely while he tried to rein in his thoughts.

  He glanced anxiously at his time piece. It was well and truly past five o’ clock and there was still no sign of her. Further ruminations took his anticipation down a notch. Lord Slyther had died several days previously. Could it be that Miss Brightwell was grieving…for her previous lover?

  No, he strenuously would not countenance such a scenario. Miss Brightwell was in love with him. Fenton. His certainty that her enthusiastic reception of his overtures was pure and unfeigned was part of her charm. Miss Brightwell was direct. She was honest and unaffected.

  Very different from the eligible maidens of his acquaintance.

  Lord, but he wanted to make her hi
s wife, though, regardless of what he ultimately settled for, right now he just wanted Miss Fanny Brightwell up here beside him.

  He shifted like a schoolboy, unable to contain his restlessness. Three rounds in the ring with Gentleman Jackson the previous afternoon had not achieved the release of pent-up energy for which he’d hoped. He felt like a large cat, coiled tight and ready to spring. Miss Brightwell was the only prey that would satisfy him.

  But the niggling doubts persisted. Was she eligible for the role of his wife? Did she even expect to be?

  And where was she?

  Impatience grew as the minutes passed. It had been torture to wait this long—now he could not wait a moment longer. He burnt to hold her in his arms, to be alone with her and to crush his lips against hers. To feel her heated flesh, suckle her magnificent breasts, plunder the exquisite body she’d offered him with such abandon…

  “My apologies, Lord Fenton.”

  The gleam in her lively, blue eyes made him want to gather her up, whisk her to somewhere secluded and repeat in exquisite detail the thrilling rendition of the other night. Trying to temper his schoolboy’s grin into something more sophisticated, he extended his hand and pulled her, then her sister, up beside him. Both girls were extraordinarily easy on the eye but there was something about the elder that simply sent him mad with yearning on all levels.

  “If you are feeling a little cramped, Miss Antoinette”—he sent the young girl a meaningful look—“Miss Conyngham over there was asking after you. She thought you’d make a pleasant addition to their party.” He indicated a knot of people in the middle distance.

  “And leave my sister alone with you, who are so concerned about the proprieties?” Miss Antoinette’s smile was pert.