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

  Her rescuer signalled to a waiting ferryman by the river’s edge who navigated his vessel towards them. After he’d deposited her upon the bench as he issued instructions, he leaped into the ferry, grinning at her obvious embarrassment when he sat so close their thighs touched.

  She drew back a little. Well, she had to, of course. This man was on a mission to…rescue her? But of his intentions? Certainly, though, the physical sensation of skin pressed against skin was considerably different from that occasioned by Lord Alverley’s pawing.

  Naturally Fanny had had to pretend to enjoy that. She wasn’t stupid and it was the price she supposed she’d have to pay to to succeed — as every young lady wished to succeed during their first, but most especially during their second season.

  There were no third chances. If Fanny didn’t find a husband during the next few weeks—one who could provide her with a lifetime of security—then it didn’t matter how long she kept her youthful bloom and good looks. They were hardly going to be of benefit in the swamps of Norfolk where she’d never meet anyone who wasn’t already half in their grave.

  “My Lady of Troy is an enigma,” the handsome man beside her murmured as he rearranged the sword and scabbard of his costume.

  Fanny liked his swaggering self confidence, so unlike Alverley’s puling, puffed up version of manliness.

  “Cavalier enough of her reputation to cavort alone with gentlemen in secluded supper boxes and offer no resistance when a better offer comes along, but suddenly so prim.” He raised an eyebrow and his mouth quirked.

  “A lady has to be discerning and I know nothing of you.” Fanny smiled at him over her fan as the ferryman propelled them across the fast-flowing river.

  She would make the most of the few minutes available for flirting, she thought, as the gentle breeze caressed her heated skin. Likely as not, she’d be returning home to to face an uncomfortable confrontation with her mother. Cousin Isadora need only to have mentioned the Earl of Quamby and Lady Brightwell would seize upon Fanny’s earlier rejection of the earl’s heir, George, to launch into another bitter tirade against Fanny at her apparent determination to ruin the Brightwell family.

  As if her father hadn’t done that already.

  She watched the play of interested emotions cross the young man’s face. The piratical eye patch didn’t disguise just what a handsome, mobile face it was. Not rugged but certainly not effete like Alverley’s. And not crafty and assessing like George’s.

  Just the thought of George made her shudder. Not even if he’d been the king of England could she ever have accepted his marriage proposal last year. Lord Quamby’s son professed to be madly in love with Fanny but he had the makings of a tyrant. She knew his sort well. He might be in line for a title and a fortune but he was too much like her dissolute father for her to ever make the same mistake her mother had.

  “And I would certainly like to know more of you,” countered her consort. “Like what those soft red lips would be like to taste.” Both challenge and flirtation flashed in his grey-blue eye as he brought his head closer. “Perhaps you would like to know what it would be like to kiss me?”

  Fanny swallowed and her heart beat thunderously in her ears.The idea was dangerously tempting. Kiss a stranger, in masquerade, in a ferry? A devastatingly attractive one, at that. No one would ever know.

  Besides, what had she to lose? After her devastating let-down by Alverley her spirits and confidence needed bolstering.

  With a smile and the faintest of shrugs, Fanny moved forward. She’d been reckless before but never like this. A kiss in a dark corner of a country house or deserted ball room was the most dangerous territory she’d ever navigated.

  Until tonight.

  She closed her eyes, tensing with thrilled expectation as she waited for the the touch of his lips upon hers. There was something magnetic and compelling about him. Rarely was she was drawn to any of the gentlemen who’d asked her to partner them during the balls and Assemblies she’d attended since her mother had brought them back to England.

  This gentleman, however, had presence; she’d have noticed him anywhere.

  The touch of his lips was incendiary. She felt the substance of her go slack as if she were putty in his hands. But when his hand cupped her breast and the other settled on her upper thigh, she drew back with a gasp.

  “I am not from the ranks of the Fashionably Impure, sir,” she said icily. Her voice shook. Never had her body enjoyed the touch of a man to such a degree but such liberties were too much, too soon.

  She’d expected contrition. Wasn’t that the mark of a gentleman? But when his mouth quirked and his eye twinkled with amusement, she glared and drew herself up. “Might I remind you that you tore me from the arms of a serious suitor—”

  “—whose marital criteria I believe you failed to meet—?”

  “His mama’s marital criteria!”

  “I beg your pardon.” With a soft laugh, he flashed her an infuriating smile before cautioning the ferryman who smelled of drink and appeared to be making straight for a boat crossing their boughs.

  His voice and his bearing left her in no doubt about the fact he was a gentleman. He was also a very well nicely proportioned gentleman. And one who was amusing himself at her expense. After the night she’d had, Fanny was in no mood for his lightheartedness.

  If he’d kissed her thoroughly and passionately then deposited her in a hackney she’d have considered it a satisfying end to the evening.

  Now she realised she was playing with fire. As soon as she was on dry land, she would take to her heels and escape whatever else he might have in mind for her.

  Fanny averted her head to stare at the moon. “I want to go home, sir,” she muttered.

  “You want to?” His voice trailed off suggestively as he moved in closer. “Or you need to?” Once again his hand was resting on her thigh and the desire to push into his arms was strong and fierce.

  Fanny swallowed, forcing herself to resist her bodily urges, unable to reign in her admiring gaze as it travelled the length of his leather-booted feet and calves, up his long, outstretched legs and lean hips. They were as impressive as the hard, flat chest against which she’d so recently been pressed. So different from Alverley’s, the weak young lord she’d hoped to marry.

  So different from George Bramley’s rough, entitled pawing. And, saints preserve her, from everything she’d heard about Lord Slyther’s proclivities for young flesh.

  “My mother will be worried.” Fanny bit her lip and tried to look as if she were staring at the moon. It was high in the sky now, a golden orb above the revellers in masquerade who promenaded along the river’s edge or who lolled in boats upon the water.

  “What your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” Again, his voice, low and suggestive, was playing havoc with her good intentions.

  She sucked in a breath. Perhaps it wasn’t as dangerous or as reckless as she’d imagined. She was in a public craft with a ferryman to play chaperone.

  And it was as if this opportunity had been handed to her on a platter. If Fanny was destined to become the wife of Lord Slyther, the handsome pirate beside her could provide the benchmark of comparison.

  The voice of reason perched upon her shoulder.

  If Mama were ever to find out…

  She shuddered. If anyone at all were ever to find out.

  Yet how would they and what was her crime—if it could ever be laid at her door? In all her nineteen years Fanny had always played the dutiful daughter, ever mindful of the faith invested in her by the rest of the family to do whatever she could to salvage their sinking fortunes.

  Even if that meant sacrificing herself.

  She gave herself a figurative—and physical—shake, turning to find her companion studying her, an interested twist to his mouth, a curl of dark hair falling across his forehead.

  Byron. That’s who he looked like. Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Just what attracted her in a man, if only because it was the antithesi
s of the man she’d inevitably marry.

  “So, you really are not a fair Cyprian? If I offered you five shillings for a quick tumble you’d turn me down?”

  She wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly before her suppressed anticipation was swept away by outrage. “How dare you!” Any cautious, properly brought-up young lady would have considered the indignity of Alverley’s let-down infinitely preferable to a horribly compromising situation with a stranger. She was a fool!

  Fanny scrambled to her feet, causing the small vessel to rock perilously and the riverman to round on them with an angry curse.

  “Careful, or you’ll drown us all.” With another lazy smile her rescuer—or was he to be her ravisher, after all, by the time he was done with her?—tugged at her hand. Clumsily, she landed across his lap, her head thumping against his chest. So hard and broad. So unlike Alverley’s.

  Arms like steel bands encircled her upper body and knees as he held her tucked against him like a baby.

  Fanny realised she had behaved like a baby. He’d been teasing her. She pretended to be so worldly but in truth she knew nothing of men—nothing, at least, of handsome men possessed of confidence and humour. Men who could offer her what she wanted—a pocket book that would please her mama, a title her sister and brother could trade upon and…

  Wistful longing for the seemingly unobtainable stayed her struggles as she stared up at him and his face fractured in her imagination before reassembling into the incarnation of all she could desire and more—a man who promised excitement and adventure at the very least.

  “Many people lose their nerve on the water”—his eyes glinted mere inches above her face with wicked pleasure—“and, while I’ve neglected to bring along my burnt feathers, a kiss works wonders for warding off the vapours.”

  Oh, she was tempted, but was this one more miscalculation?

  However, a demeaning struggle that might pitch them all into the Thames seemed an extreme reaction, Fanny decided, when this man’s close proximity was the antithesis of distasteful.

  Yes, the antithesis, she confirmed, her bones going soft as his long, elegant fingers caressed her hair, her throat and shoulders with surprising gentleness, for he had shifted her so her head rested in his lap. She gazed up at his face, with all the glory of the starlit sky behind him, closing her eyes as her companion contoured her décolletage with gentle fingertips, causing her mind to spin with wicked, sensuous thoughts.

  This time she made no protest as his hands wandered lightly over her increasingly responsive body. She closed her eyes, her head spinning with what the future held.

  She would never accept Lord Slyther. Like a patient toad, he was waiting to crawl back out of the wings to repeat his offer of three months ago, revelling in the knowledge that Fanny was cornered.

  When her companion began to play gently with her nipple, she caught her breath. This was too much—and yet it wasn’t nearly enough.

  “The unworldly virgin is out for adventure,” he murmured, lowering his head to whisper in her ear, “and, if I’m not to be accused of nefarious deeds, I think our encounter should end here.”

  The desolation of his withdrawal caused her to open her eyes and cry out incautiously, “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me again? My companion kissed me earlier this evening but it was horrible.”

  In the moonlight his look was enquiring. “If I kiss you, I can’t promise it won’t be just as horrible.”

  Longing and desire tore at her like a creature suddenly come to life within her. She reached up and stroked the plane of his cheek, contouring his high cheekbones before resting her forefinger tentatively upon his lower lip. With a glint in his eye, he bit down gently and hot, lustful longing speared through her.

  She tried to breathe evenly. “I’m prepared to take that risk.”

  “In that case, my bold ingénue…” He brought his mouth down to hers, murmuring against her lips, “Let me show you one of the things for which I am renowned.”

  He began gently, brushing his lips against her cheek, nose and lips with featherlight touches that seemed to promise more than they delivered.

  She wanted more. What harm could come from a kiss with no one the wiser? Tomorrow she would deport herself like a lady and venture forth to do her mother’s bidding. She would find herself the husband her mother demanded.

  Lord Slyther… Just the thought of him made her shudder. No, she would not think of him.

  She sucked in the scent of the man who held her—fresh sweat and sandalwood— revelling in the wonderfully suffocating proximity of his body against hers.

  Oh, sweet heaven…that’s exactly where she was. Heaven, in the arms of a man who had brought her to life—for excitement had never before fizzed through her veins like this.

  The gentle lapping of the water and the splash of the oars reminded her that their journey would soon be at an end. So would her sensory adventure—a brief flash of pleasure in an otherwise dried-up existence.

  Reaching up her hands, she pulled his face down to deepen the kiss. His dark, tousled hair, his full, poetic mouth, and the sardonic gleam in his treacle eyes made him the consummate lover of her imagination. A lover she could never have.

  But she could have a taste.

  Again his mouth returned to hers, this time bruising it with an urgency his previously unhurried pace belied. Blood coursed furiously to her extremities as he breached the seam of her lips with his tongue, gently and expertly whipping up her excitement. Murmuring against her lips, his hands skimmed her body, touching, stroking, feeling her into wild sensation through the light gauze of her costume.

  It was madness, she knew, and she was powerless against the need unleashed within her. Alverley’s betrayal of her hopes was insignificant compared with this sensual gratification. She felt the tension in her whole being stretch, feared she would burn to a cinder or explode in a shower of ashes if he continued—yet her world threatened to return to its barren wilderness if he stopped.

  “Is this what you meant by a kiss?” he murmured during a brief interlude before redoubling his efforts.

  “Oh…yes…”

  But wasn’t there more? What were these unsatisfied cravings?

  It seemed that the more thoroughly he kissed her, the more her body wanted to feel his…what? Possession of her…?

  Self-preservation, like a single dust mote, lodged in her brain, and she gasped her resistance. Miss Fanny Brightwell, who’d spent her life trying to prove that her beauty and virtue put her on a par with all those with handsome dowries, was about to throw it all away like a common doxy for five minutes of self-gratification.

  What a little fool…

  Her hands were against his chest, palms turned inwards as a prelude to forcible resistance, when another totally unexpected, all-consuming sensation cast aside every objection she’d been about to make.

  Obviously mistaking her gasp for permission to move to the next level, he’d transferred his explorations to beneath the hem of her dress and his hands were now skimming the length of her leg, moving lightly above the tops of her stockings, the gentle, rhythmic touch of soft fingertips against the heated, sensitive flesh of her inner thigh making her want to shriek aloud her pleasure.

  Instead she jerked out of his arms, upright, her breasts straining against her bodice as she remembered who and where she was: respectable debutante, Miss Fanny Brightwell in a boat alone with a stranger.

  “So nearly there and yet not quite,” murmured her pirate, as the nose of the barge hit the riverbank with a muted jolt. Not even looking chastened, he made a gallant show of helping to straighten Fanny’s clothing before he took her hand and drew her to her feet.

  “Aye, we’re at t’other side, now,” announced the riverman with a sly look as he jumped out to steady the craft.

  Fanny rose shakily, as if the foundations of her life had shifted.

  And they had, for just now she’d experienced what no unmarried young woman ought to have experienced. Certainly n
ot a respectable one.

  As they reached level ground, her pirate lover bent to kiss her lightly on the lips before signalling to a jarvey waiting nearby with his hackney carriage.

  A curious blackness had invaded Fanny’s mind, where both opportunity and terror seemed to lurk hand in hand. She’d felt excitement like she’d never known— albeit cruelly truncated—but now an even greater horror intruded at the thought of allowing Lord Slyther access to her body like she’d allowed this handsome…stranger, whom she stumbled against while he held open the door for her.

  She had no one to rely upon for support—never had—so it was ridiculous to lean against handsome strangers as if she were some helpless, lovelorn creature. Fanny had always prided herself on her strength. Feminine frailty was the preserve of her younger sister, Antoinette.

  “Good night, fair damsel.” The pirate made a sweeping bow. “It has been a delightful finale to what had been a lacklustre evening.”

  There was a painful lump in Fanny’s throat that made her eyes sting when she swallowed. Somehow she felt he deserved her gratitude. “Thank you, sir. Tonight you showed me the only excitement I will ever know for very soon I shall be forced to marry a man I do not love.”

  He helped her into the carriage, his smile disbelieving. “My commiserations, mystery lover,” he whispered as he leaned through the window to brush her lips once more with his. Yes, she decided, he was a gentleman and, like her, pretending to be someone very different tonight. And she would never see him again. She wanted to weep as she contemplated the horror that her mother was about to inflict upon her: the husband about whom her rescuer was so sceptical. “What a sad tale. Nevertheless, I wish you every happiness.”

  Fanny turned her head. Of course he didn’t believe her and she’d been naive to have imagined he felt anything other than satisfaction at his latest conquest.

  She rapped on the roof to signal the jarvey’s departure. She would not give her address in earshot of her pirate prince. The house her mother had leased for the season was lowly and the danger to her reputation unknown.