Scandalous Miss Brightwells Read online

  The moon was high in the sky now, a golden orb above the revellers in masquerade who promenaded along the river’s edge. Others lolled in boats upon the water.

  As Fanny’s pique dissipated and her good humour returned, she began to shiver. Not from the cold, or the disappointment over the events already played out with Alverley—they were best forgotten—but as a result of the sudden anticipation of what might happen during the next few minutes in the river barge with this handsome stranger…if she was bold enough.

  She sucked in a breath as she slid a glance his way. He was gazing across the river, apparently lost in thought for one brief moment. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he as excited as she? Would he kiss her?

  Having experienced her first kiss in Alverley’s thin-armed embrace this evening, Fanny wasn’t sure such an unsatisfactory mingling of tongues deserved the title kiss when she’d always dreamed of it as a magical, life-changing moment. But an 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, she decided, would 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 antithesis of the man she’d inevitably marry.

  “How disappointing. Not a fair Cyprian? So 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.

  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 the stranger’s hand brushed across her breast, she caught her breath.

  “The unworldly virgin is out for adventure,” her pirate lover 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, “My companion earlier this evening kissed me and it was horrible.” Why had she said that? Fanny was never incautious.

  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 not 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.

  Of course she would never see this man again. But what he’d done for her was immeasurable. He’d shown her that she did indeed possess a heart that could flutter with desire when the right man came within her orbit.

  The tragedy was that Lord Slyther, for whom she was now definitely destined, was not that man and after tonight her life would never be the same.

  Chapter 2

  Fanny tiptoed across the threshold, her heart pounding as much from fear of being discovered by her mother as from the tumultuous events of tonight.

  She’d had both the disappointment and the thrill of a lifetime, and at that moment she wasn’t sure if she would ever recover from either.

  The front door that Mary, her maid, had left unbolted by special arrangement, made little noise as she closed it behind her. All was silent and dark within. If she was lucky, her mother would never even know she’d left the house.

  She was not lucky. She felt the stinging slap of her mother’s hand across her cheek as she rose from shooting the bolt.

  “Little fool!” hissed Lady Brightwell, flinging her daughter into the hallway. “Where have you been? Certainly not playing cards with Miss Brownhill in that scandalous rig-out! Helen of Troy, indeed. It’s a gossamer web that leaves nothing to the imagination! Answer me, girl! Have you brought our good name into disrepute?” Lady Brightwell, her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line, hustled her daughter into the dim, candlelit drawing room, slamming the door behind her.

  “I told you Mama would find out.” Appearing out of the darkness from the other side of the room, Fanny’s younger sister resembled a pale ghost in her plain nightrail, her shining, golden hair cascading over her shoulders. “But I swear I didn’t tell her.”

  “Quiet, Antoinette,” Lady Brightwell snapped as Fanny shrugged out of her grasp and stalked towards the dining table.

  “Courtesy of Alverley, Mama!” she said, tossing a simple silver ring set with a garnet onto the table.

  In tense silence, they watched its spiralling progress across the mahogany surface. With a theatrical sigh, Fanny added, “Alas, the ring comes without security. It was merely a sop.” She didn’t care if her mother slapped her again for her attitude. Pain scoured her heart and lanced her pride. She supposed it would be even more painful if she’d loved Alverley though she’d liked him well enough. Her mother had fiercely counselled her daughters from infancy to hold onto their virtue until marriage and their hearts forever; and indeed Fanny had believed she didn’t have a heart until it had started to make all that fuss inside her chest when she’d got close to that piratical stranger. The river crossing had set the stage for more than her first experience of a proper kiss.

  Tingles of excitement coursed through her just at the memory but of course, she couldn’t be thinking of that. She must relegate her pirate stranger to her past, just like Alverley if she were to carry out her mother’s orders.

  What choice did she have?

  So with a challenging look, she said, “Invite Lord Slyther to call, mother, but do not blame me if he does not make an offer. I’ve lost my touch, as you can see.” She nodded at the ring. “Perhaps you’ll have to look to Antoinette to fill the family coffers. Or Bertram.” Her voice broke.

  She was suddenly desperately weary, though she felt she’d never sleep again—and not because of Alverley’s humiliating betrayal.

  “Don’t be saucy with me, girl.” Lady Brightwell pocketed the ring. “We may be poor but we are respectable. You asked for this chance with Alverley on account of the interest he’d already shown and I had every reason to hope you would fulfil our expectations.” Her face looked haggard in the guttering candlelight as she sank into her chair. “Now let us hope Lord Slyther will be as forthcoming in his interest as he was three months ago. You know we depend on you, Fanny. Bertram is a wastrel, just like your father was.” She fixed her sharp eyes on the last of the glowing coals. “And Antoinette’s beauty won’t make up for the fact she is a pea goose. She’ll likely take her pleasure in a haystack with a footman and ruin us all.”

  “For goodness’ sake, Mama, it’s only because of me we’ve been invited to the Earl of Quamby’s ball the night after next.” Antoinette, warming her hands by the fire, looked up, offended.

  “That was luck, not cunning, Antoinette, and I helped him as much as you,” Fanny objected, kneeling beside her sister, for the room was freezing and their breath clouded in the guttering light.

  “You only returned his walking sticks. It was my screams which frightened away the footpads.”

  “Girls, girls!” Lady Brightwell admonished wearily.

  Antoinette giggled, pushing aside the curtain of her glorious hair as she simpered, “Lord Quamby likes me immensely. I make him laugh.”

  “I’d rather you made him your husband”—Lady Brightwell’s lip curled—“though I fear Lord Quamby is not about to marry anyone. Otherwise I’d relent, Fanny, knowing the aversion you feel for Lord Slyther, and send you after the earl instead.”

  “I’d infinitely prefer Lord Quamby, with his frightful red wig and his crippled legs and his brilliant wit.” Despite herself, Fanny smiled, recalling her last spirited exchange with the eccentric earl who sometimes sent for the Brightwells at the oddest times, merely so Fanny could play cribbage with him—an excuse, Fanny knew, for some lively banter—or when he was in the doldrums because he’d been required to bail out his detested nephew and heir, George Bramley, once more.

  George Bramley. Fanny’s lip curled, just like her mother’s but with far more reason. Small wonder Lord Quamby detested his nephew, a boorish young man with not one redeeming quality she could think of.

  Fanny was always carefully chaperoned during her visits to the earl, though never had she gained the impression he was even slightly interested in her feminine attributes. It was all quite confusing.

  Her mother grunted, her shoulders slumping as if she really was preparing for the end. “If Lord Slyther declines my invitation to call, Thursday’s ball is your last chance, girls. We’ve received no further invitations.”

  Both daughters looked at her. For the first time, their mother appeared weak, her usually hard, flinty tone a mere whisper as she added, “The truth is, unless one of you contracts a good marriage by the end of this season, we have not the funds to maintain the household.”